Godlike Machines (39 page)

The freight elevator seems to take forever. During our ascent, Cotton begins to explain her perception of the mine’s topology, sketching crudely with her toe on the dusty floor as she does so.

“It helps to think of it in terms of horizontal and vertical, even though the topology is obviously much more complicated than that.

“There are two different sorts of shafts, too: those that move ordinarily through space, and those that cut through it. The ordinary sorts are no different to those in any mine, connecting faces drilled horizontally out of the earth. All the shafts leading down from the surface of Gevira are this sort.”

“We call the second sort transcendents because they cut through multidimensional space. Either end of the shaft can be literally anywhere—on the other side of the same planet, or on the other side of the universe. It’s hard to tell, because it takes so long to connect the dots by conventional means.

“You probably haven’t realized it, but we’ve been using transcendents ever since we left Gevira. Every time you use an access code, that’s how you’re travelling.”

“Now, transcendents are usually charted horizontally because it makes sense to think of them that way. But they can move vertically too. A vertical sequence of ordinary and transcendent shafts is called a stack.”

“Calling them stacks is more than just a convention. To each there’s a top-always a planetary surface like the one on Gevira, a different planet for each stack—and there’s also a bottom. The bottoms are-well, they’re much harder to describe. But what you get is always the same, broadly speaking.”

I press her to elaborate, but she insists that seeing is the only way to believe it.

The freight elevator chooses this moment to arrive, and she scrubs out the sketch with the sole of her shoe.

My mind is left in a tangle of horizontals and verticals, shafts and stacks, ordinaries and transcendents. Could any of this be true? That she seems wholly convinced of it is no proof at all. My feelings on the matter remain sharply divided.

When I ask her how big the mine is, she is similarly evasive.

“We call it the Structure,” she concludes as we summon the carriage to take us elsewhere.

I recognize the name from one of our earliest conversations. It seems as good as any.

Our first port of call is the last we traversed on the way to the level called Samagrinig. The Director has already killed there in our wake, and we brace ourselves for a repeat when we emerge from the transcendent shaft.

None occurs. We stand blinking in the light of this vibrant space, surrounded by people untouched by the menace of our very existence, and I am momentarily filled with the urge never to move again.

But Cotton has the map, and the imperative to continue is irresistible. Not daring to speak, we step into the next shaft and wait breathlessly for our arrival. By voicing the hope that the curse has been lifted we fear bringing it back down upon us again. That is patently absurd, of course, but cannot be helped.

The dashing of that unvoiced hope makes us feel all the worse. As we step into the second port of 17, cries and alarms break out almost immediately. A woman has been killed, crushed with inexplicable force by something unseen even as she nestled in her lover’s arms. He was spared.

Cotton and I exchange guilty looks. Can any knowledge be worth this?

To that question, we both know the answer.

Hurriedly, she uses the access codes to summon the next carriage.

Cotton recites the names as we travel from one to the next.

... Emkemi, Idris, Taftefiah...

With each transfer, the list grows one name shorter. Soon we know the last dozen off by heart, but the recitation continues. It is a mantra composed of meaningless syllables that expunge from our minds all other consideration.

... Chanoch, Tantemy, Dynamis...

We are no longer thinking creatures. We are electrons caught in a wire, moons tidally locked in a shared orbit, entangled particles without self-determination or morality. We have no care for anything beyond that list of names for, temporarily, that is all that exists for us.

... Itmon, Sarha-Olam, Yeshaya ...

The human race becomes an abstract concept in which all distinctions are blurred. Spacers, miners, Terminus agents, individuals—all are meaningless. What are one or two deaths on such a large canvass? How can we be blamed for the screams and panic? We are just dots on a line, dots moving slowly from one abstract to another.

... Panaion.

Writing this account from what seems a place of sanctuary, at least for the time being, I look back on our arrival with no small amount of chagrin. This is the level where Huw Kindred had come seeking information on Trelayne. (Cotton is pursuing that information while I compose this portion of my account and prepare myself for what lies ahead.) It seemed unreasonable to expect that we would find what we needed immediately, so the two of us were prepared for a slaughter on a grand scale before we could move on.

On that score we were to be relieved, but not after a moment’s panic on seeing an entrance hall filled with hundreds of people. Conveyances in their dozens whirred along mag-lev tracks and even through the air above us. The hall was huge, nearly 50 meters high. A reverberating hum filled the space, created spontaneously by so many people speaking at once.

So great was the throng that the Director’s first and only act was not noticed for some minutes. The absence of one solitary person among so many came to light only when his luggage was found unattended in a niche, from which a nearby stall-owner reported seeing him enter but not exit. Security guards were called but no tumult erupted. The scene was investigated, the luggage impounded, and that was the sum of it.

Cotton and I waited five minutes for the Director to strike again. When no one else was afflicted by a visitation from the mine’s deadly apparition, it dawned on us that the threat had passed.

“Could it be so easy solved?” I asked as we moved away from the elevator cluster from which we had emerged and blended into the crowd.

“Things rarely are,” she said, “but I’ll take this one if it’s going.”

The moment I had stepped from the carriage I knew that the stack called Panaion was different from the others we had visited. That impression was confirmed as we explored its buttressed halls and vine-covered thoroughfares. Tens of thousands of people live here in quarters that seem palatial by Geviran standards. (I say “Geviran” now, master, simply out of convenience. My null hypothesis remains that we are ensconced within that planetary body and have never left it.) Its air is rich with the exhalations of life and industry, both of which thrive under a moderate gravity allowing considerable feats of engineering and endurance. Citizens wave from terraces to passers-by far below. Hawkers call and chant in a melange of languages and pidgins. Musicians play. There are children in abundance, and schools to educate them in both science and the arts, as practised by those who live in the mines.

Cotton and I walked wide-eyed for an hour, seeking the residence Huw Kindred had occupied while in Panaion. The rooms had already been let out, for which I was secretly glad, but we found others nearby. Cotton paid with Kindred’s credit, and a shadow passed over her delicate features. When the transaction was concluded, she locked herself in her suite and left me to my own devices. It never seemed to cross her mind that I might wander away and never come back.

I did wander, aimlessly and in unrelieved amazement at the size of the habitat. It truly was an underground city, and any actual mining that took place was kept at a distant remove. I imagined generations of miners and their contraptions hollowing out this vast space, then leaving it to their descendants to inherit and make into anything they desired. The machines dug for riches while a more gentle life blossomed in their wake.

When I returned to the rooms, Cotton was waiting for me.

“From here on, it’s guesswork,” she said. “Huw is—was—a creature of habit. He’ll have left dumps for himself and other Terminus agents to find. But they won’t be lying around in the open. I’ve been poring over the maps of Panaion, looking for the kind of places that would appeal to him. I’ve found three. The information we need could be in any of them, or none of them.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s find out.”

“No,” she said, putting a hand on my chest. “I’m doing this alone. You’ve got somewhere else to be.”

I braced myself for an argument. To have come this far, to have risked so much, and to be turned away was unacceptable.

“I mean
down
, space boy,” she quickly corrected me. “You need to see the bottom for yourself or else you’ll never accept anything Trelayne says about the Structure. I’ve given up on you taking me at my word.”

Whatever she thinks is waiting in the lower levels of the Panaion stack, I could only agree to undertake this side-mission. To refuse would sound like closed-mindedness, or even cowardice, and if I did indeed learn more about the nature of the mines along the way, all the better.

Cotton divided Kindred’s supply of concentrates in two and shrugged the pack back onto her shoulders.

“Just don’t stay down there too long,” she warned me before we took our leave of each other. “It might be months before you come back here—or you might return before we arrived, which would be really messy.”

She meant it as a joke, but I didn’t laugh.

We parted without shaking hands or embracing. I watched her blend into the crowds of Panaion with only a mild apprehension. She had Kindred’s charts in the pack, so if she failed to return I would be set adrift.

I reassured myself that I could always ascend to the top of the stack and—if
my
theory was correct—simply travel across country to the entrance I had originally used. Or scouts from the Great Ship could be summoned and return me to you, Master Catterson. It unnerved me slightly that her wild speculations were infectious enough to rouse my anxiety on this score, but I suppressed all negative emotions and returned to my quarters to plan my exploration of Panaion. The truth will out. Of that I am completely certain. I leave in an hour.

Panaion possesses eleven levels. Our rooms are in the sixth. I have created this partial map from interviewing those queuing alongside me for a carriage leading to the seventh level. Their testimonies conflict, and not one of them has visited the deepest level. I am informed that an access code is needed, as though it were a horizontal transcendent. I can only hope that the one Cotton provided me will work.

• minerals

• machinery and maintenance

• habitat

• minerals

• hydrocarbons (?)

• habitat (our rooms)

• minerals

• gas extraction

• diamonds (?)

• fusion

• (bottom-unknown)

Every miner I ask denies knowing the name “Gevira,” except for one who referred to it as a backwater he had passed through some years back. I did not feel compelled to disavow him of that notion.