“Life comes first,” I said. “Everything else is secondary.” Yes, I thought as I framed the words; that was just.
“Then,” Leropa said, “what of the Redemption?”
The Transcendence was like an immense parent, I thought, brooding over the lives of its children—all of humanity, in the future and the past. And the Transcendence longed to make its children safe and happy, for all time.
But I was a parent, too. I had lost one child, saved another. If I could somehow have
fixed
Tom’s future at his birth, or even before he was conceived, so that his life would be lived out in safety—would I have done so? It seemed a monstrous arrogance to try to control events that might happen long after my death. How could I ever know what was best? And even if I did, wouldn’t I be taking away my son’s choices, his ability to live out his own life as he wanted?
You had to let go, I thought. You had to let your children make their own mistakes. Anything else verged on insanity, not love.
I didn’t have to say it. As I formulated these thoughts I glanced around the sky-mind of the Transcendence. There was a change, I thought. Those pinpoint awarenesses whirled in tight, angry knots, and giant reefs of wisdom loomed out of the dark like icebergs on a nighttime ocean. I had troubled the Transcendence with my decision, then. Perhaps that meant it was the right one.
On some level,
the Transcendence must already have known,
I thought. I was just a lever it used to lift itself back to sanity. But that didn’t mean it was happy about it. Or grateful.
Leropa hissed, “Michael Poole. You know that if the Redemption is abandoned, you will lose Morag forever, don’t you?”
I recoiled from this personal attack. So much for the lofty goals of the Transcendence, I thought; so much for transhuman love. “But I already lost her,” I said. “Nothing the Transcendence can do will make any difference to that. I guess it’s part of being human. And so is letting go.”
Leropa said, “Letting go?”
“Of the past, the dead. Of the future, the fate of your children. Even an arch-instrumentalist like me knows that much.”
Leropa laughed. “Are you
forgiving
the Transcendence, Michael Poole?”
“Isn’t that why I was brought here?”
“Good-bye, Michael Poole,” Leropa said. “We won’t meet again.”
And suddenly, I knew, it was over. I searched for Morag. Perhaps there was a trace of her left. But she was receding from me, as if she was falling down a well, her face diminishing, her gaze still fixed on me.
And then the stars swirled viciously around me—for an instant I struggled, longing to stay—but I was engulfed in the pain of an unwelcome rebirth, and a great pressure expelled me.
Chapter 59
The six of them gathered in Conurbation 11729: Alia and Drea, Reath, and the three Campocs, Bale, Denh, and Seer.
Under the mighty electric-blue tetrahedral arch of the ancient cathedral, the undying walked their solitary paths. Some of them mumbled to themselves, continuing their lifelong monologues, but the very oldest did not speak at all. But even now she was aware of the presence of the Transcendence, in her and around her. And she was aware of its turmoil, like a storm gathering, huge energies drawing up in a towering sky above her.
Campoc Bale drew Alia aside. She could still faintly sense the extended consciousness he shared with his family, like a limited Transcendence of its own. And about him there was still that exotic sense of the alien, the
different,
which had given their lovemaking so much spice.
He said carefully, “We did not mean any harm to come to your ship, your family.”
“But you led the Shipbuilders to the
Nord.
”
“Yes.” It was the first time he’d admitted it explicitly. “We were concerned that the Redemption would rip everything apart. We were right to be concerned, weren’t we?”
“And I was your tool, your weapon to use against the Transcendence.”
“You were more than that to me,” he said hotly.
“Your manipulation was gross. You threatened my sister, you endangered my family—”
“We would never have harmed Drea.” He looked up. “I think on some level you always knew that, didn’t you? And we did not mean the incident with the Shipbuilders to go so far.”
“
Incident.
My mother died, and my brother. Are you looking for forgiveness from me, Bale? Do you want redemption, after all that’s happened?”
“Alia, please—”
She laughed at him. “Go back to your Rustball and bury yourself in the empty heads of your brothers. You will never be a part of my life again.”
His broad face was full of loss, and she felt a faint stab of regret. But she turned her back on him and walked away.
Reath walked with her. “Weren’t you a little hard on him?”
She glared at him, refusing to answer.
He sighed. “It is a time of change for us all, I suppose.”
“What about you, Reath? What will you do now?”
“Oh, there will always be a role for me and my kind,” he said wryly. “Many of the Commonwealth’s great projects will continue whatever the Transcendence decides to do next: the political reunification of the scattered races of mankind is a worthwhile aim.”
“That’s noble, Reath.”
They came to Drea, who was sitting, looking bored, on a block of eroded rubble.
Reath asked, “And what of you two? Where will you go next?”
“Back to the
Nord,
” Drea said immediately. “Where else? The
Nord
is home. Besides, I think my father needs us right now.” She reached up and took her sister’s hand. “Right, Alia?”
But Alia did not reply.
Reath turned to her. “Alia?”
She found a decision formulated in her head, a decision she hadn’t known she had made. “Not the
Nord,
” she said. “Oh, I’ll miss Father—and you, Drea. I’ll visit; I always will. But—” But she couldn’t live there anymore. She had seen too much. The
Nord
and its unending journey were no longer enough for her. “I’ll find a role for myself. Maybe I can work for the Commonwealth, too. . . . Someday I’ll find a new home.” She pulled Drea to her feet and hugged her. “Somewhere to have children of my own!”
Drea laughed, but there were tears in her eyes.
Reath watched them more seriously. “Alia.” His tone was grave, almost reprimanding; it was just as he had spoken to her when he had first met her.
She snapped, not unkindly, “Oh, what is it
now,
you old relic?”
“If this is your true intention—just be careful.”
“Of what?”
“Of yourself.” He had seen it before, he said: in Elect who had failed, or even mature Transcendents who, for reasons of health or injury, had been forced to withdraw from the great network of mind. “You never forget the Transcendence. You
can’t.
Not once you have experienced it, for it is an opening-up of your mind beyond the barriers of
you.
You may think you have put it aside, Alia, but it always lurks within you.”
“What are you saying, Reath?”
“If you are going to roam the stars, be sure it is yourself you are looking for—and not the Transcendence, for that is lost to you forever.”
On impulse she took his hands; they were warm, leathery. “You are a good friend, Reath. And if I am ever in trouble—”
“You will have me to turn to,” Reath said, smiling.
“I know.”
Leropa emerged from the flock of the undying. She approached Alia, as enclosed and enigmatic as ever. The others stood back, uncertain—afraid, Alia saw.
Leropa said: “The Transcendence is dying.”
Alia was shocked. Beside her Reath grunted, as if punched.
Leropa went on, “Oh, it’s not going to implode, today or tomorrow.”
Alia said, “But the grander aims, all that planning for infinity—”
“All that is lost. Perhaps the project was always flawed. We humans are a blighted sort. Too restless to be bucolic, too limited to become gods: perhaps it was always inevitable it would end like this. The Redemption was our best effort to resolve the paradox of an attempt to build a utopia on shifting bloodstained sands—an attempt to mold a god from the clay of humanity. But we succeeded only in magnifying the worst of us along with the best, all our atavistic cravings. And so the Transcendence will die—but at least we tried!
“This is a key time in human history, Alia, a high watermark of human ambition. We’ve been privileged to see it, I suppose. But now we must fall back.”
“And what about the undying? What will you do now?”
“Oh, we aren’t going anywhere. We will get on with things in our own patient way. We still have our ambitions, our plans—on timescales that transcend even the Transcendence, in a sense. And even without the power of the Transcendence behind us, the issues of the future remain to be resolved.”
“Issues?”
Leropa’s leathery, immobile face showed faint contempt. “Alia, you and your antique companion Poole indulged in some wonderful visions about the evolutionary future of mankind—the purpose of intelligence, all of that. Perhaps we can all find a safe place, where we can give up the intelligence we evolved to keep us alive out on the savannah, and subside comfortably back into non-sentience. Yes?”
“It happens. Like the seal-men of the water-world—”
“It’s a bucolic dream. But unfortunately the universe cares little for our wishes, or our dreams.”
Mankind sprawled across the Galaxy it had conquered, speciating, variegating, gradually reunifying. But the wider universe was empty of mankind. And in those vast spaces beyond, enemies circled, ancient and implacable.
Leropa said, “We are still out on the savannah of stars. And there are ferocious beasts out there—beasts we have driven out of the Galaxy altogether—
but they are still there.
And they are aware of us. Indeed they have a grudge.”
“They will come back,” Alia breathed.
“It’s inevitable. It might take another million years, but they will come.”
“And you undying are planning for war . . .”
“Earth will endure, you know. One day even all this, even the traces of the Transcendence itself, will be nothing but another layer in Earth’s stratified layer of rocks and fossils, just another incident in a long and mostly forgotten history. But
we
will still be here, taking care of things.” Her face was hard, set, her dry eyes like bits of stone.
She had never seemed more alien to Alia. And yet, she knew, this grim, relentless inhumanity might in the end be the saving of mankind.
“You frighten me, Leropa.”
Leropa grinned, open-mouthed, showing teeth as black as coal. “But I think you understand why we undying are necessary. Perhaps even
we
are an evolutionary recourse, do you think? But you aren’t going to take your immortality pill, are you? You aren’t going to join us.”
“No,” Alia said. She had no need of endless life, to become one of these sad old people. And she had no need of Transcendence. She would embrace her own humanity with two hands—that would be enough . . .
She staggered. The world pivoted around Alia, as if the wind had changed, or gravity had rippled.
Drea took her arm. “Alia? Are you all right?”
Reath asked anxiously, “Is it the Transcendence?”
Leropa said, “It is nearly over.”
Drea grabbed Alia’s hands. “Then we must hurry. There is something I want to show you while I can. Come. Skim with me. Like when we were kids, before all
this.
”
“Drea, I don’t think it’s the time for—”
“Just do it!” Laughing, she Skimmed, and Alia had no choice but to follow.
She found herself suspended over the head of Reath. His upturned face shone in the light, his mouth round with shock. Leropa had turned away, uninterested, already absorbed by her own long projects. They had traveled only a fraction of the height of the great exotic-matter cathedral.
Drea was still laughing. “Again!” she cried. “Three, two, one—”
Clutching each other, the sisters Skimmed again, and again.
Chapter 60
I have come home to Florida. Although not to my mother’s house, which is in increasing peril of slipping into the sea.
I live in a small apartment in Miami. I like having people around, the sound of voices. Sometimes I miss the roar of traffic, the sharp scrapings of planes across the sky, the sounds of my past. But the laughter of children makes up for that.
The water continues to rise. There is a lot of misery in Florida, a lot of displacement. I understand that. But I kind of like the water, the gentle disintegration of the state into an archipelago. The slow rise, different every day, every week, reminds me that nothing stays the same, that the future is coming whether we like it or not.
Alia told me stories of the far future, of her time. Her stories come back to me in dreams.
A half a million years from now, she said, children can Skim. It’s like teleporting, I think, “beaming,” but you don’t need any equipment, any fancy flashing lights and instrument panels and stern-jawed engineers. You just do it. You just decide you don’t want to be
here
anymore, you would rather be over
there,
and there you are. Literally.
Children are born this way. Babies learn to Skim before they can walk, or crawl, or climb. Teleporting babies: imagine that. Their parents have to chase them down with butterfly nets. And the problem of droppings is awesome. But nobody minds: on Alia’s starship, people like having a sky full of babies.
Older children use their Skimming in play. These are smart post-human super-kids who can teleport; their games are elaborate, endlessly complicated. One game Alia tried to describe to me sounded like an aerial combination of football and chess.
Adolescence comes late for kids in Alia’s time; you live a long life, and you get to enjoy a very long childhood. But when the hormones do kick in, the Skimming games get sexual, morphing seamlessly into elaborate courtship chases that can thread their way from one end of the ship to the other. The older adolescents are trained up for more formal dances, endlessly complicated quantum ballets.