Beyond Infinity (39 page)

“Us? Originals? Impossible.”

Rin looked rueful. “I admit it seems extremely unlikely. Yet the deep records of the Library are clear, if read closely.”

“How could we make something like smart lightning?”

“Oh, it is far more than that. You may come to understand how in the fray that approaches.”

“Well, even if we helped make the Multifold, what’s that matter now? I don’t know anything about it.”

Rin looked at Seeker, but the big creature seemed unconcerned. Cley got the feeling that all this was running more or less as Seeker expected, and the procyon was never one to trouble herself with assisting the inevitable.

Rin spread his hands. “Deep in the Multifold lies a set of assumptions, of worldviews. They depend on the kinesthetic senses of Ur-humans, upon your perceptual space.”

Cley found a piece of ruby fruit and bit into it. “Um. What’s that?”

Rin looked at her solemnly. “What matters is that we cannot duplicate such things.”

“Come
on,
” Cley said. “I know I’m dumber than anyone here, but that doesn’t mean you can—”

We do not delude you.
Kata gazed at Cley somberly.
The makeup of a being circumscribes its perceptions. That cannot be duplicated artificially. We tried, yes—and failed.

Rin said, “We find communicating with the Multifold exceedingly difficult. We have struggled for centuries to no avail.”

“Centuries?” So this was not a new problem, Cley realized. “I thought you people could do anything.”

We cannot transcend our worldview any more than you can,
Kata sent, speaking aloud as well. True courtesy, or soothing noises to a necessary, nervous animal? Cley wondered.

“That is always true of a single species,” Seeker said casually.

Rin’s forehead knitted with annoyance. “And you?”

“There has been some tinkering since your time,” Seeker said.

“This
is
our time!” Rin said sharply.

Seeker leaned back and did not reply.

“Look,” Cley said, “how do you talk to the Multifold?”

“Badly. To reach it we must step through the thicket of the Ur-human mind-set.”

“Thicket?” Cley asked.

Rin shifted uncomfortably. “A
swamp
is perhaps a better term. A morass ingrained in the Multifold’s being.”

“It has some of us, dirty old Originals, in it?” Cley laughed and felt a spurt of elation. This was at least some mark her kind had left in the great ruined architecture of time.

“In the growing struggle, speed is essential. To link our own abilities with the Multifold requires connections only you and your kind can make.”

Cley’s eyes narrowed. “Those Ur-humans you manufactured?”

Rin could not cover all his signs of unease. “Yes, they will be used. If we can. Kata and the others of Illusivia have schooled them in the Talent—a labor of great difficulty in such a short time.”

“You’re manufacturing us,
using
us like, like—”

“Of course.” Rin was unbothered. “That is in the nature of the hierarchy of species.”

“You have no right!”

“And we have no wrong.”

Seeker made a rude noise and twisted her mouth into an unreadable shape. “There is no moral issue here,” Rin went on, casting an irritated glance at Seeker. “These matters transcend the concept of rights. Those ideas attach to strategies societies use to maintain order and station. As concepts they have no validity in the transactions across the gulf that separates us.”

Cley’s mouth twisted in unconscious echo of Seeker’s grimace. “Which means?”

“Ethics are nothing compared to the implications of the Malign’s mere existence.” Rin smiled with his mouth but without any change in his eyes, as though he knew this facial gesture was the sort of thing Ur-humans did to take the edge off a stark statement.

Cley said, “That’s incredible. We have an obligation to each other, to treat everyone as holding natural rights.”

Natural to what?
Kata sent.

Cley answered,
To anything and anybody who can think.

Kata sniffed derisively.
Think what? These are not times like those in which your kind evolved. Now there are many beings, large and small, who carry self-awareness. And think very differently, my dear Original.

Cley covered her own inner confusion with
Then they have to be accorded their own dignity.

Kata gave Cley a look of concern, but in her striations of quick thought there was an underlayer of annoyed impatience.
Dignity does not mean they can step outside the inherent ordering ordained by evolution’s hand.

“Look, I have to think about all this.” Cley reverted to speech in self-defense.

Rin said, “There is no time for the kind of thinking you do. The moment is upon us.”

Cley turned to Seeker. “What should I do?”

Seeker smacked her lips hungrily. “I do not subscribe to their ideas. Or to yours. Both are too simple.”

“Damn it, Seeker, I need support from you.”

“Your actions I can assist, perhaps,” Seeker said.

“Gee, thanks.” Cley considered stalking off, and then thought better of it.

Seeker held up a cautionary paw. “As these Supras say, your core abilities are much needed.”

“No, I didn’t mean help with their fight. I want you to—well, tell them they’re
wrong
. That they’re treating my people like, like animals!”

“I am an animal. They do not treat me as you.”

“You’re not an animal!”

“I am not remotely human.”

“But you’re, you’re…”

Seeker gave her a wolfish grin. “I am like you when I need to be. But that is to accomplish an end.”

“What end?” Cley asked, her confusion deepening.

“To bring you here at this time. You are essential to the struggle. And to unite you with Ur-humans, as I promised—eventually.” Seeker glanced at Rin and Kata and gave a slow—maybe mischievous?—blink. “I knew the Supras would probably fail to.”

Across Rin’s face flitted an expression Cley could not read, but the nearest equivalent was a mixture of irritation and surprised respect.

Rin said warily to Seeker, “It would have been simple to bring her here, had the Malign not managed to learn how to enter our ships. And you could not have known it would understand that so quickly, correct? Much less that it could find the Ur-humans among all the ships we have.”

“I could not?” Seeker grinned.

Cley felt something pass between Seeker and the Supras of Illusivia—a darting note of complex thought. She couldn’t catch what it meant, but…“Seeker, your Talent is showing again.”

“I try not to entangle my mind with others’,” the procyon said guardedly. “And mine is not like your Talent, no. But no matter.” Seeker turned decisively to Cley. “I believe this issue must be resolved now, so I shall do it.”

Rin said sternly, “I cannot allow so crucial a matter to—”

“Do as they say,” Seeker said to Cley.

“But I—”

“If you wish to think in terms of the structure of rights, then consider a point.” Seeker brought a nut toward her mouth but fumbled and dropped it. Her eyes brimmed with a strange sorrow. “These others of your kind—and I do not believe they are your “people,” for they are not yet people at all—will certainly die if you do not act.”

Rin scowled. “You can’t be sure of that.”

Seeker did not immediately answer. Instead, she pulled the carcass of a small rodent from a snag in her pelt and casually began to gnaw on it. The Supras all looked askance at this. Cley remembered how delicate and rarefied their own food had been, like eating clouds. Seeker was making a point, though Cley did not quite grasp it.

Seeker licked the carcass “You remember the era of simple laws?”

Rin frowned. “What? Oh, you mean the age when science discovered all the laws governing the relations between particles and fields? That ancient time is of no relevance now.”

Seeker closed one eye and let one side of her face go slack, as if she could slip halfway into sleep. Cley wondered if this was some arcane joke. The Supras shifted uneasily.

Seeker said, “The Ur-humans found all such laws—the work was that elementary. But to know how gravity pulls upon a body does not mean even in principle that you can foresee how many such bodies will move. The prediction of any real system is beyond the final, exact reach of science.”

Rin nodded, but Cley could tell that he did not see where this subject led. Neither did she. And through her Talent she felt skittering anxieties. Time was running out, while these two argued over grand principles.

Rin said, “But that is ancient philosophy. Quantum uncertainty, chaos—these forever screen precise knowledge of the future from our eyes.”

Still with one eye closed, Seeker said, “And what if this were not so?”

“Then we Supras would have discovered that long ago,” Rin insisted. “Such knowledge would reside in the lore of the Library of Life.”

Seeker blinked with both eyes, and animation returned fully to her face. At the same moment Cley felt a burst of Talent-talk, long and strong like unrecognizable bass notes. Some Supras stirred. Seeker had sent some sort of message while carrying on this lofty discussion.

Seeker said, “Much has been discovered since strata of learning were laid down like fossils. But not by you.”

Rin looked around at his fellow Supras, who seemed distantly amused by this conversation. Rin, though, was getting slowly angry. “Beast, are there higher orders which know science?”

Seeker said, “None you can readily see standing before you.”

“Magnetic minds, then? The Singular? Even they merely
use
science,” Rin said. “They do not truly comprehend it.”

“There are other methods of comprehension.”

Rin leaned forward, his lips working. “What, then?”

“The sum of species can know more. Together.”

Rin’s head jerked with surprise. “But we are discussing the fundamental limits on knowledge!”

“This ‘knowledge’ of yours is also a category,” Seeker said, “much like—what was Cley’s term?—oh yes, ‘rights.’ It does not translate between species.”

“I cannot understand how that can be,” Rin said primly.

“Exactly,” Seeker said.

“What’s that?” Cley pointed out a transparent bubble nearby. Planes of ivory laced with burnt orange were appearing in the space outside. It was as though some invisible giant were slicing a fruit, leaving only the sections visible.

Rin said, “You two should recognize them.”

Seeker frowned. “The higher dimensions. They have manifested again.”

“Let’s hope they’re on our side,” Rin said, eyes grim.

Abruptly a wobbly pattern snapped into being, amid the vine tangle. It pulsed in chromed yellow and smelled like vinegar to Cley. She shrank from it. The Supras stayed still, but Seeker swung over to it and poked a paw at it. The thing jerked away.

“Maybe it remembers us,” Seeker said.

“Want to try to grab it?” Cley said with some bravado, wondering if the others could hear the quaver in her voice.

Seeker cocked an eyebrow at Rin, who shook his head. A Supra nearby, nearly hidden in foliage, said, “It seems to have trouble telling us apart.”

Rin said, “We might have the same difficulty distinguishing one ovoid from another in two dimensions. I suspect it seeks…you.” A quick glance at Cley, as if not to draw the 4-D thing’s attention to her.

“No point in running,” Seeker said. “Let us hope it does not drop us into one of its Tubeworlds again.”

Cley backed away. “I’ll say.”

Seeker studied the air carefully. “Or perhaps by now they know that was a failed experiment.”

Rin gave quick orders to nearby Supras. “Our attempts to speak with them failed, back at the Library. Now they return. Not a good sign.”

Cley said, “What do they want?”

Rin shrugged. “Perhaps they do not wish our troubles to make theirs worse.”

Cley asked, “Worse? How can we?”

Seeker said, “I suspect, by breaching the equilibrium between dimensions.” Then she laughed at herself. “Not that we can see how…”

The slices shaped into a disjointed surface, glowing golden. It flexed and rippled and tracked along beside them. Cley got the impression of something powerful and pensive, waiting.

The chrome-bright bubble abruptly vanished with a gonglike clang.

Rin looked sober. “I would like to laugh, as you do, animal. But I fear you are right.”

The greatest good for the greatest number must mean the longest good, since the majority of humanity is yet to come.

—Jack McDevitt

S
OMETIMES IT CAN
be a relief to be ignored. The strange, darting conversation between Seeker and the Supras wound on. They had found a pleasant place amid hanging vines, chirping animals, and stringy tree trunks. A bower, echoing humanity’s primate origins. Cley curled up, arms around her knees, and tried to think.

In the end she saw that she had no choice. She had to take part in whatever was to come, no matter how little she knew to do against the gargantuan events. Already her folk, her Meta, had begun to fade in memory, crowded out by the jarring, swift events…since, Cley reminded herself forcefully, all she had loved had been burned into oblivion by the Malign.

So much had happened! She had fallen in love with a Supra—reckless of her, sure, blind, even worshipful, and foredoomed—and then seen him die. Had barely survived, then been saved, learned a lot, lived a lot—was it
always
going to be like this? How about that serenity that maturity brings? Would she never get it all straightened out?
Aaaahh!

One thing at a time, then.

She felt now the totality of what that single, vicious act had meant. To murder not merely people but
a
people, a species.

Was she becoming more like the Supras now? That such an abstraction could touch her, arouse what Rin would no doubt term her “animal spirits”?

An animal that liked abstractions? Maybe that wasn’t all that bad a definition of being human.