Null-A Continuum (22 page)

Abrin said, “That conclusion is based on an assumption open to question. The mass and certain other characteristics match those of the Milky Way. We have only just begun to analyze long-range images we have gathered of the civilization there.”

Gosseyn said blankly, “Civilization?”

They stepped into the library. Gosseyn saw photographs, both visible light and X-ray, of the structures, larger than worlds, seen orbiting the millions of stars of the unknown galaxy.

Abrid said, “Keep in mind these photographs are archeological in nature. We do not know what happened to this civilization during the one hundred sixty thousand years it took for the light waves to pass from the galaxy to our current location. What do you make of this?”

Gosseyn examined the photographs rapidly. “Obviously the images from farther away represent an older stratum of civilization. In this early period, this looks like they are using superatomic explosions to move planets into habitable orbits, or pulverizing gas giants to render them into raw materials. I notice that double and triple star systems only seem to exist on the far side of this galaxy.”

“The far-side images are older by one hundred and forty-five thousand years. Double and triple star systems are less gravitationally stable than single stars; they may have been engineered out of existence. We also suspect, from some of the stellar motions, that this had at one time been a spiral galaxy, but that it was artificially reconstructed into an elliptical—perhaps to eliminate the possibility of a dangerous supermassive black hole growing up in the center.”

Gosseyn looked. The star systems in the central region
of the galaxy, from fifty thousand years later, seemed to have gas giants, one per system, orbiting outside the thickly settled rings of Earth-like planets. Each star had six to a dozen Earth-like worlds orbiting at the proper distance for human life but a massive Jupiter-like world in a farther orbit. The more recent images, from the near side of the galaxy, ninety-five thousand years later, showed no planets but artificial space stations, larger than Jupiter.

Gosseyn said, “Why keep the gas giants around?”

Abrid said, “The gravity well clears away debris, asteroids, and other navigational hazards. We can assume all debris, all matter in the star systems, had been used to construct the massive space stations of the later period. But notice what is missing. Here and here, in the early images, we see tiny streaks of atomic drives. To be visible at this distance, these starships must be four hundred to one thousand miles long. The calculated acceleration, based on the redshift of the drive, is fifty gravities.”

Gosseyn said, “Robot ships.” It seemed a reasonable guess. If this civilization had had true artificial gravity, it would have been used for propulsion.

“Notice the near side of the galaxy shows no evidence of any ships of any kind.”

Even as they looked at the photographs, in one tiny image a space station the size of the planet Neptune dematerialized, the whole body transmitted through space to some remote destination.

Gosseyn said, “They have a thorough distorter system, then.”

Abrid shook his head. “That is not what the Games Machine concluded. A civilization with distorters would still need to send out robot ships through normal slower-than-light space to make distorter matrices of previously unseen spots. Only one kind of person can travel any distance with no need for a distorter on the far end.”

Gosseyn said, “Even a galaxy of people like me would be limited. I cannot go places I have not been before.”

Abrid said, “The Games Machine claims this is a temporary or transitional stage in your life. As soon as you gain Enro's clairvoyance, or a true mastery of the power of the Predictors of Yalerta, you will be able to see places you might one day visit, no matter how far away, and form the proper distorter connection to the spot. This galaxy, one hundred sixty thousand years ago, may well have been inhabited by people such as you might one day be.”

Abrid then brought up an image reconstructed from the gravitic fluctuations affecting the gravity-wave-sensitive planetary crust of Corthid: an image that was not limited by the speed of light. It depicted a vast energy field coruscating around the entire galaxy.

Abrid said, “This is distorter-type energy. The Games Machine says it is a formation consistent with every man in the galaxy possessing a double brain and devoting part of it—in the same way you can pick thoughts of any awake duplicate bodies of yours—to forming a galaxy-wide mind. From the signals, certain higher animals may have been developed to have double brains as well, in the same fashion your first body was developed, in order to help sustain the galactic mind.”

Abrid continued, “What is more interesting is that the brain-wave patterns issuing from this galaxy are consistent with those of a Yalertan Predictor during the split second he makes a prediction, though, in this case, it is a process that has been going on for hundreds or maybe thousands of years.”

Gosseyn stared at the image in fascination. It was a multicolored swirl of light surrounding a sketched-in diagram of the star positions, each flicker of flame representing another aspect of the complex mind-energy field involved. The race of this galaxy, uncounted trillions of individuals, was unified in one huge attempt to probe into the far future. Why?

Abrid said, “There is also evidence of an impinging brain-wave pattern. Something in the remote future—the time depth involved is nearly equal to the projected lifespan
of the cosmos—had made contact with the men of this era.”

Gosseyn's attention was arrested by that. “Men? Not aliens?”

Abrid pointed at the photographs. “Look at those worlds: polar ice caps, nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres, blue oceans, green plant life. This could be the twin of your Earth, or my Corthid back when we were surface-dwellers. Of course, it is difficult to extrapolate what men might have become in the one hundred sixty thousand years since these images we are seeing left that galaxy. Mankind may well have evolved into some final, supreme form.”

Alarms rang.

Through the library windows, they could see out to the garden-greenhouse under the wide glass dome. Here, under the trees, three shadow-figures materialized.

Gosseyn asked Abrid to stay behind when he went to go confront the ominous beings.

No details of face or features were visible: The shadow-substance was blurred, semitransparent, faceless. One of the figures slid forward noiselessly as Gosseyn approached.

A voice that seemed remarkably deep and solid, considering the insubstantial body from which it came, rang out: “Do not be alarmed. We, the Ultimate Men, have determined to save this planet. We have made arrangements to transmit a sun from the Milky Way to this location, at the proper distance to heat the world and restore its artificial ecological cycle: A minor adjustment will also allow us to restore the oceans and surface plant life.”

Gosseyn said, “The Milky Way?”

The voice said, “Surely it is obvious that you have been precipitated to the year A.D. Three Million not far outside your own galaxy. In so doing, you have created a dangerous temporal imbalance: The particles of your body are still … adjusted … to the time and energy conditions of the far past.”

The second shadow-being said, “We represent the Final Civilization that arises before the discovery of time-travel. As such, we are the last men who retain any connection with material and three-dimensional life: The culmination of all previous civilizations is manifested in us. We are as fully human as you are, though we have discovered all the secrets of the human nervous system.”

The third being said in a soft, feminine voice; “Naturally, the race that first invents similarization backward through time must take steps to secure itself from being edited out of the time-continuum by competitors: hence the deliberate confusion of evidence as to which planet first evolved man, and hence the lack of other forms of intelligent extraterrestrial life in the most recent revision of reality. Our prognostication engines predict the reverse-time similarization technology will be perfected within a hundred years. We are very near the breakthrough: Many of the basic tenets of time-manipulation are already known to us.”

The first shadow-being spoke: “Certain superheavy highly stable energy structures, each one roughly the size of a helium atom and the mass of a giant red sun, were lifted from the first microsecond of cosmic time and placed in various remote points outside the galaxy. There is a strange condition in your nervous system which is entangled with the nearest of these superheavy, primordial particles. We believe these primordial particles have been placed up and down the time-stream by a race of men living some two hundred fifty million years in our future: We believe this was done in order to establish a series of universe-wide beacons detectable from more than one era of the cosmic time-energy.”

Gosseyn said, “I don't recall ever memorizing such a particle. How did I become attuned to it?”

The first being spoke again: “Our research indicates that this is a legacy structure, a particle that you have
not yet
memorized in your personal time-path but which a
massive imbalance in the universal time-energy flow has retroactively attributed to you.”

The third being quietly said, “Imbalances of such magnitudes tend to occur only in individuals destroyed by time-travelers in the paradox fashion, such that your existence will soon achieve a condition where, to the outside universe, it never will have had been.”

The second being added hastily: “Our examination of the future convinces us that you would be willing to sacrifice yourself to preserve this segment—roughly five hundred thousand years—of the time-continuum threatened by your existence, once you were persuaded of the reality of the danger you pose.”

The first being said, “Again, unfortunately, our predictions show you will react abruptly, even violently, once our intentions are made clear to you. We have timed things so that the negative time-energy probe will force you out of our plenum of existence a moment before you steel yourself to resist our attempt.”

The third being said mildly, “Our scientists cannot speculate as to what becomes of you once your temporal excess is neutralized. According to our predictions, you might simply cease to exist; but the excess energy must go somewhere, manifest itself in some form….”

Gosseyn started to say, “Wait!” At the same time, he reached out with his extra brain …

Too late. Far too late.

The energy that streamed from the three shadow-beings crossed the distance between them, less than a yard, faster than the speed of light, and it felt as if every molecule in his body was being subjected to pressure so massive that the fabric of space-time itself must give way….

Unconsciousness came too quickly for any pain signal to reach his brain.

Paradox is a sign of the failure of the model used to perceive, that is, to adduce meaning. Failure occurs when one or more false assumptions involved pass unquestioned.

Gosseyn was awakened by the sound of an alarm clock. He opened one eye blearily and found himself staring at the rumpled fabric of starched white bedsheets. Next to him, a pillow gleamed in the bright sunlight. Turning, he saw the window through which the light fell, and he smelled the rich scent from the flower box a moment before his eyes fell on it: orchids of yellow and black and purple, spotted and streaked with other colors.

With a start of shocked recognition, he sat up, grasping the windowsill in both hands.

Outside, in the warm Florida sunlight, were his rows of orange trees. Stalking along the brown soil between the lines of trees were two crablike farming robots, watering and weeding. The one farther from the house had a slight limp in one of its spidery legs. Gosseyn remembered worrying where he was going to get the money to buy a replacement joint for that unit, wondering if Nordegg at the general store would lend him something against his next crop….

Gosseyn remembered worrying about this … before. Before his wife died. Before he went to the Great City of the Machine to win a higher place in Earth society. Before he found out that his name was not Gilbert Gosseyn, that he was not married to Patricia Hardie, that he was not actually a farmer working a small plot of land he'd bought at a bankruptcy sale.

Gosseyn looked down at the pillow next to his. With a deliberate motion of his hand, he lifted it.

There was a small electric pistol, plugged into its recharging unit.

From the kitchen came the smell of eggs cooking, the crackle of bacon frying, and the warm odor of coffee ready to pour. He could hear the sound of Patricia moving around the table, humming to herself, heard the clatter of her heels on the floorboards, including that one creaking board near the food irradiator.

He felt the fabric of the bedsheet carefully with his finger and thumb, testing the nuances of the weave, feeling the slight variation in temperature where the sunlight was falling. He put his nose near his wife's pillow and sniffed. He rose to one knee, peering at the window. On the horizon, with a murmuring roar, he saw a suborbital ship, rows of gleaming portholes and ghostly white flickers of flame around its rocket tubes, descending quickly toward the Cape, eighteen miles away. In the closer distance, a crop-dusting robot was winging its way across the neighbor's fields.

When Gosseyn stood up, the first bout of dizziness struck. His vision went red at the edges: He put his head down to his knees and took slow breaths until the sensation passed.

Gosseyn stepped into the little bathroom, examined his face carefully in the mirror, opened the little medical kit he kept stocked under the sink, ran a blood test on himself. There was no evidence of low blood sugar, or anything else that might cause a fainting spell. He gave himself an injection of highly oxygenated blood plasma just to be on the safe side.