Heaven (12 page)

The walker had no head, no mouthparts, no obvious way to ingest food. At what was presumably the front, its solitary eye was
mounted on the end of a segmented trunk. The trunk was translucent like the rest of its body, and small dark shapes moved
within it. The eye was hooded by a flap of opaque skin that flicked open and shut every few seconds.

The trunk was held upright, like a periscope. The eye could not move in its socket, but there was no need; instead, the trunk
writhed and squirmed so that the eye scanned the way ahead, with an occasional nervous glance to the rear.

The body was divided into segments—this walker had six, but anything between five and seventeen was common—and it resembled
a row of overstuffed pillows, each separated from its neighbors by a thick gelid partition. All the segments were filled with
a watery fluid. One contained brown and blue algae. In another, sporulated crustaceans were packed like grains of rice. A
third was stuffed with what looked like semolina—the tiny globes were actually dormant medusas.

A shoal of brilliant yellow fish peered through the translucent walls, watching the world go by.

The walker’s periscopic eye surveyed the terrain ahead, where a thousand ponds glistened like mirrors in the sharp blue light
of the sun. Toward the haze of the northern horizon, the walker could see that the ponds began to peter out as the land reverted
to a more uniform silver-gray, speckled with blue-green scrub and patches of the yellow spikes.

Its tube feet picked up the beat, and it plunged over the crest of the dune and down the steep slope beyond. The desert stretched
ahead like an ocean frozen at the height of a violent storm; there were many more dunes to climb before the walker attained
its goal.

The blinding sapphire pinpoint of the sun began to sink toward the horizon, and shadows invaded the troughs between the dunes.
The blue of the sky deepened, turned purple, then black; the stars came out. The walker’s eye adjusted itself to the low light,
and its tube feet continued their steady, if erratic, progress.

Eventually, the walker emerged from the pond field, heading north. Now the vegetation became a little more lush—nothing obvious,
but the cacti looked healthier and more succulent, and the yellow spikes were broader and less glossy. The walker’s periscopic
eye began to cast about for a suitable place to stop, and shortly it found one—a bowl-shaped depression where the sand had
subsided, ringed by slabs of weathered sandstone. At the center was a withered tangle of woody tissue, the desiccated remains
of what had once been a clump of marram-grass.

Perfect.

The walker slithered backward until the rear of its body overhung the patch of dried marram-grass, and retracted its tube
feet. It lay in the sand like a discarded sack, but its eye continued to scan the surrounding terrain obsessively.

A sphincter beneath the walker’s rear opened and extruded a thick proboscis, which inserted itself into the patch of marram-grass.
The proboscis poked tentatively at the sand, then settled into a satisfactory position and buried its tip deep into the ground.
The walker had found the shriveled remains of the marram-grass’s long, tubular taproot, which decades before had drilled its
way through layers of sand and soft stone to the aquifer that flowed beneath this part of the planet, filled with meltwater
from its ice-clad poles.

The proboscis now extruded a fluid filled with pea-sized blobs—algal cooperatives. The algae began to multiply with astonishing
rapidity, forming a branching network of filaments that invaded the hollow space inside the taproot, all the way down to the
cool aquifer beneath. Billions of tiny vessels began to suck up water by capillary action, passing it from one tiny valved
chamber to the next, channeling it ever higher toward the desert floor. The walker extended its tube feet, crawled away from
the marram-grass, and turned around to witness the effects of its labors. Already the sand was damp. . . . Then a squat fountain
of water was bubbling up in the center of a small puddle.

The puddle spread, lapping around the walker’s body.

The walker did not move.

As more and more water welled up from the aquifer, the puddle began to turn into a pond. Soon the walker was completely submerged
except for its eye. But the eye no longer twirled on its fleshy stalk. The trunk began to droop until the eye was floating
on the pond’s surface.

The walker began to dissolve.

Its translucent integument softened and fell away, tearing gaping holes in its body. Spores reverted to crustacean form, and
a stream of shrimplike creatures bled from the walker’s wounds. Algae seeped from its punctured pillows. Dormant medusas unfolded
their multiple rings of tiny tentacles and expelled themselves from the dissolving corpse. Humpbacked amphibians flopped from
pockets molded into the partitions between the walker’s segments. The shoal of yellow fish scattered as the amphibians splashed
into the water, then reassembled.

Now only a few flaps of skin and a half-dissolved eye, bobbing obscenely on the surface of the new pond, indicated that the
walker had ever existed. The tough skin melted to thin jelly and became one with the pond. The eye shriveled and burst like
an overripe grape; a swarm of crustaceans pounced on the fragments and devoured them. The amphibians took up their customary
station at the shady end of the pond.

Windblown sand had already started to fill the walker’s tracks.

Sam knew that he ought to feel nothing but joy. He had been chosen to serve the All in a new role.

He had earned a promotion.

The high acolyte herself had summoned him to the office of the local hierocrat so that Sam could be told in person and instructed
in his new duties.

Ever since childhood he had dreamed of this day—his first tangible step away from his forebears’ traditional duties and toward
his own advancement in the Church!

So why did he feel so vexed?

Was it worry about the use of a transible? No, he was looking forward to that. Never in his life had he expected to be assigned
a task that would require such an expensive mode of transportation. And everyone said it was painless and instantaneous. .
. .
Was
he worried, nonetheless? For irrational reasons? If so, he must search his lifesoul and seek out a preceptor, to eradicate
the needless fear. But no, he really was looking forward to passage by transible.

Was it his destination? No, what little they had told him made it sound fascinating, even though it was a fixed world, not
a starship. A world was vast, a ship small by comparison. But . . . yes, his concern had something to do with leaving the
ship. Not changing his job, for his new post would again involve running a duplicator and manufacturing apparatus according
to lists of instructions. But now those instructions would come from a hierocrat!

What, then, was it? Suddenly, he knew. He would miss the conversion of No-Moon. On his three previous occasions, when he had
finally been permitted to leave his duplicator to experience the success of the mission, the sheer feeling of joy had been
overwhelming. He could still recall the waves of happiness from the inhabitants—the appeal of the Memeplex was truly universal.
But this time he would not be present when yet another grateful world became united with the Cosmic All. Just as the time
was ripening, he was being torn from the mission fleet and sent elsewhere.

It was an unworthy thought, and he was shamed by it. Yet it would not go away. He consoled himself with another thought: He
was being sent to a monastery world, so new that virtually all the monks were novices. Many were still uncertain in their
faith. There would be many confused lifesouls to help heal.

He put his duplicator into slumber, where it would wait patiently until a successor was appointed to run it. Then he returned
to his quarters, to assemble his few belongings and—most important of all—to tidy his lodging-place ready for that same successor.
It would not do to earn a reprimand at this crucial juncture in his career.

Everything he owned packed easily inside his most prized and most expensive possession—a container that followed behind him,
immune to gravity, attuned to his own person. Mobile, faithful, personal luggage. It would accompany him to the transible
and be with him at journey’s end. It was like an old friend, only more dependable.

His heart still heavy at missing the coming conversion of No-Moon, Servant-of-Unity XIV Samuel Godwin’sson Travers made his
way through the corridors of
Disseminator 714
, wondering exactly what would await him when he stepped onto the surface of his newly assigned planet. He would wear suitable
protective gear, of course; that was understood. He had been told that it was a cold world.

He didn’t much like cold. He hoped that the protection would be effective. The ecclesiarchs advocated a spartan approach to
the comforts of living, and Sam would not be in the least surprised if his protection left him feeling decidedly chilly. Still,
a true servant of the All was expected to ignore discomforts. He was used to them, that was certain.

He arrived at the portal of the transible at the appointed time. The surrectors were in place, performing the ritual gestures
that warmed up the machine and programmed it for the correct destination. Sam hoped they were competent—he had no wish to
end up on the wrong side of the Galaxy by mistake, just because one of them sneezed at a crucial juncture.

But that was impossible, of course. The surrectors had ways to verify that the settings were correct before the transible
was triggered.

So it was said.

To the untutored eye, the transible was little more than a slightly raised platform of irregular shape, but as the machinery
approached readiness, it began to glow with a soft inner light. During his period as a novice, Sam had been told that one
operation of a transible consumed as much energy as an entire starship did in a month. Later he asked a surrector he knew
socially, and was told that if anything, the quantity was an underestimate.

It was indeed an honor to be permitted the use of a transible. It meant that speed must be of the essence, though no one had
told him why. But his task was to serve, not to ask questions. He knew that the hierocrats always had good reasons for their
decisions, even though they seldom revealed them.

Sam took a deep breath, and stepped onto the platform. His luggage snuggled up beside him, taking care not to protrude beyond
the platform edge. To do so would not cause damage, but it would prevent the transible’s functioning and waste energy—and
merit a reprimand, of course.

After checking that all was in its proper place, the surrector- responsible stepped back and spoke a few soft words to his
assistants. In unison, they bowed low, all facing the transible platform.

The transible’s metaphace interpreted their movements as instructions. The air above the platform seemed to solidify, freezing
Sam and his luggage inside a prism of sheer transparency. His internal organs became visible, but not as if his skin and muscles
had turned to glass—more as if he were being observed from a different dimension altogether.

Simultaneously, every particle of his body was undergoing quantum phase recoherence. The particles’ wave functions were being
rotated in the complex plane until they were all perfectly aligned, perfectly in phase. In this state, his velocity could
be observed with absolute precision—which implied, thanks to the uncertainty principle, that his position was completely indeterminate.
This was the secret of the transible.

The wave functions phase-locked. The observation was made, and unmade.

Sam’s body, and his luggage, surrected—and resurrected.

Their particles’ velocities became indeterminate; their Bohm positions reverted to things that had meaning. Only now those
meanings had changed. Body and luggage rested on another transible platform, in another part of the Galaxy.

Like all transible platforms everywhere, this one was entangled with all the others, including the one on board
Disseminator 714
. Recohering the phases united Sam and his luggage with that platform, and with all others. By observing their velocities
from the frame of any selected platform, those wave functions could be persuaded to decohere in such a way that his classical
self
materialized only on the intended platform. Because interactions between entangled particles were simultaneous, there was
no relativistic constraint on the speed with which everything happened. Sam arrived at his destination at the same moment
he disappeared from the ship.

A moment later, his luggage arrived too. Nobody knew why Precursor luggage always arrived late. It just did. Precursor technology
was like that. It was hard enough discovering how to use it. Understanding how it worked was impossible. And every so often,
it did something unexpected.

You got used to it.

Sailing the starlanes of the Trailing Spiral Arm, Second-Best Sailor had decided, was nowhere near as exciting as sailing
a boat. Unlike Fat Apprentice, he wasn’t greatly interested in exploring the Neanderthals’ ship or in talking philosophy.
And the myriad pinpoints of light that could be seen outside—well, he supposed it was outside, but with all that intervening
gadgetry, how could you be sure?—left him cold. You couldn’t open a sallyport and swim in space, and you couldn’t hunt a galaxy.
He felt superfluous on board the great vessel. There was nothing for him to do, no need for his skills. . . . He was about
as much use as a fish ’bovedecks.

Not to put too fine a point on it, he was bored, and he was miserable. Not even his wifepiece cheered him up, however cutely
she made her polyps dance. The hastily filled tanks of No-Moon seawater, once cargo spaces, were cramped and lifeless, bounded
by stark metal walls.

You couldn’t even get a decent stick of high-powered algae.

The trip seemed interminable. Nothing happened; every day was the same as every other. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the
periodic dimming of the underwater lighting rigs, you wouldn’t know where one day left off and the next began.