The Transmigration of Souls (36 page)

What if there’d been no Stargate? Another... thread, perhaps, in which the Plan worked out. Arab bases on the Moon, Arab resource nodes out among the asteroids. Colonies on Mars. A space station around Venus. Miners mining the surface metals of Mercury. A volatiles production facility on Ganymede...

A future for humanity. But...

Tiny Aarae sitting on his shoulder now, her tiny vulva damp on his skin, whispering in his ear, whispering, It will be all right, my love. It will be all right...

Brucie said, “Yeah. I know what you mean. I remember being a kid, back in the Fifties...”

Sudden, pale shock, Inbar realizing he meant the
Nineteen
-Fifties.

“... something about the galaxy turning out to be suds floating in a cesspool...” Cloudscape floating on darkness.

Ling said, “Bertram Chandler, perhaps?” Frowning now, concentrating, trying to remember.”

Brucie said, “‘The Key’?”

Delight on Ling Erhshan’s face, momentarily blotting out the pain. “Of course! Halvorsen’s outhouse key.”

To come
here
then, and think about... old stories? Who are these people? Aarae pressed her face against his cheek, kissing the corner of his eye. Other people appearing in the cloudscape. Laing and Jensen, holding hands. Amaterasu and Genda, holding hands. Kincaid, holding her rifle. Rahman, alone and empty handed, face flat and still, eyes alive with interest.

They walked onward, not quite a group, more like a collection of stragglers. Foot soldiers in some old movie. Napoleon’s men, trudging slowly home through the snows of Russia, dying, dying, dying, the fruit of French manhood all lost at once. Frenchmen are short, they say, because all the tall Frenchmen died before Moscow.

A distant voice, crying out in the wilderness. “Oh, God. Take me away from here...” A soft, whining voice. A child’s pleading voice.

Knight-Errant Amanda Grey and Squire Edgar, not standing together, standing apart, facing each other, another figure huddled between them, a man on his knees, a man on his belly, a man clad in rich clothing, cloth of gold, cloth of silver, cloth sequined with precious stones, emeralds and rubies and sapphires and diamonds, bright green and red, shimmering blue, pale, straw-tinted yellow.

A very handsome man in beggar’s pose, handsome man with empty gray eyes, whispering, “I’m
tired
of this game now. Can you show me the way home? I’ve been lost for ever so long...”

Angry Edgar, pointing down at the apparition, eyes afire. “Is this what you came for?”

Amanda Grey, appalled. “Ardry Bright-Sky...”

And Edgar said, “
I
loved you Amanda.”

Astonished look on her face. “Our duty, Edgar...”

“Duty.” Spat out, like something foul in his mouth. He held up his hand, the one with the plain silver ring. “A man can grow tired of duty.”

She said, “Without the ring, you can’t have the role. You know that. You always knew it. You made... a choice. Once upon a time.”

She kneeled by the fallen figure and said, “Come, Prince Ardry Bright-Sky. We are here to take you home.”

The man started to cry.

Edgar said, “Do you still think Erik Rede-Miser will let you marry his grandson? Do you still think you’ll one day be queen by Ardry Bright-Sky’s side?”

Amanda looking up at him. “I have what I came for.”

Fury sliding across Edgar’s face, filling up his eyes. “And what of these others?” Gesturing round, at their little audience of fellow travelers. “What of them?”

She looked, eyes empty now, as empty as those of Ardry Bright-Sky. “Let them do what they will. I have what I came for.” A long silence, filled only by Ardry’s soft weeping. “Come, Edgar. If you’re still my squire. Take off your ring and send us home...”

Home? Omry Inbar felt a curious pang in his chest. Home? Which home? Where will he send us? Can my Aarae come home to Earth? Pixiegirl suddenly clutching him fearfully around the neck, holding him close. Tiny pixie voice crying out, bell like, “Oh, Edgar. Oh, Edgar,
no
...”

Edgar, seeming not to hear, looking down at Amanda Gray, at fallen Ardry Bright-Sky, whoever he might be, if anyone. Voice very flat now, emotionless: “Take off my ring.” Anger apparent: “That is forbidden.”

Rage glowing in Amanda Grey’s otherwise empty eyes. She opened her mouth, as if to speak...

And the sky suddenly blinked, a flicker like heat lighting, lambent glow expanding to fill up the whole world, accompanied by a rustle of wings, a hundred billion wings, a trillion wings rustling like leaves in a fresh Fall wind, the wind that comes before the storm...

o0o

Ling Erhshan watched it come swarming out of nothingness. First one, a bright spark, then another, and another, some going this way, some that, until they were many, emanating like shower meteors from a fixed radiant. Forming up into... something. What am I expecting? A crackle, like static electricity in the air.

Inbar seeming to cower, pixie fluttering on his shoulder, terror stark on her little woman-face.

Pathetic wretch on the ground, moaning softly, as if to himself, “Oh, Lord Ahriman. No more.
Please
no more. I’ll be good. I
promise
I’ll be good...”

Memory rising up out of the haze. What was I? Six? Seven? It’s all tangled up together now. Childhood memories. The stories. The later events of my adult life. All tangled up together, like none of it was real. Ang Xianhue. That was his name. A half-Vietnamese boy who lived at that first orphanage. The one where...

Memory of a thin little boy, pinned to the floor. Big man holding him down while that gaunt, angry woman lashed at him with her shiny patent-leather belt. Hitting and hitting, little Xian crying, begging for them to stop, then choking, choking on his tears, only gasping, hardly able to breathe...

Afterward, she was so angry that she’d cracked the fake leather of her strap. I don’t remember why she was beating him. Maybe because he kept insisting his name was really Ang Nguyen Hue...

I do remember imagining that boys with real parents never had things like this happen to them. It was such a bright dream. Just like the dreams in the old books and stories, the dreams on films, the dreams that drenched my soul with hope for the future.

The black sky was full of fiery birds now, bright with birds, birds of all colors, birds of flame, birds swarming, turning in on themselves, whirling round and round, birds taking on a definite shape.

Ahriman? Is that Ahriman in the sky now? Is that who I want it to be? Some foreign devil’s nightmare devil, that’s all. Fiery birds like a cloud of bright smoke, like a cartoon genie emerging from his cartoon lamp, cloud of fire growing bright eyes, bright lips, a beard of licking flame.

Sergeant-Major Astrid Kincaid, she of the silver eyes and golden hair, standing tall before them, rifle to her shoulder, leveled, then tilted up into the sky. Firing. Firing. M-80 blinking, explosive rounds disappearing into the sky, tiny
crack
,
crack
,
crack
, futile, small sounds lost in the immensity all around them.

What does she think she’s doing?

No answer.

But she kept on firing.

So
, said the thing in the sky.

So, my little ones
...

Ardry Bright-Sky screamed, a child’s hopeless wail, and threw himself into the cloudscape, face down. “Please, oh,
please
...”

Amanda Grey standing before him, standing over him, straddling him with her proud, muscular heroine’s legs. Amanda Grey with her bright sword drawn, held over her head, defying the heavens.

Squire Edgar, baldheaded, sad Squire Edgar standing motionless beside them. Nothing on his face. Nothing but sorrow. You knew it would come to this, that face said.

Beside him, Ling heard Brucie Big-Dick whisper, “If that’s fucking God then I’m fucking Captain Kirk.”

Astrid Kincaid, firing her useless gun,
bang
,
bang
,
bang
...

Punishing God for all his transgressions?

You could hear her swearing under her breath, random words torn from whatever part of her brain was responsible for that sort of thing. God damn you, God damn you...

Silly. Can God damn Himself?

Why would He bother?

Just to show He can?

Must be tough, being omnipotent...

Then Edgar stepped forward, stood right in front of Amanda, in front of whimpering Ardry Bright-Sky. “Forbidden,” he said. Flat. Bitter. Useless. Lifted one hand to the heavens. The one with the ring. “You see?” He shouted. “You
see
?”

The thing in the sky said,
Ho
,
Ho
,
Ho
.

Edgar took off his ring, took it off and threw it down into the cloudscape, sent it ringing off some hard, invisible surface.

You will not
, said the thing in the sky.

I will
, said Edgar, voice equally large.

You will not
, said the thing in the sky.

I Am That I Am
, said Edgar.

And reached upward.

And blinded them with his golden light.

Eight. The Hound of Heaven.

The first conjecture, then: Where
did
it all come from? No problem. The records are here, well kept, well organized, for all to see. No problem at all.

Level One
.

Once upon a time, through my own stupidity and greed, I fell into the Multiverse and, being who/what I seem to be, was seized by the minions of Archangel Bob and thrown into the maw of God’s Machine, the Great Universal Soul Sorting Algorithm. And this universal Turning machine of infinitely mutable pathways decided I fit the job description of God Almighty.

Well, that’s nice.

Reminds me of a political action plan I conceived not long after the turn of the millennium, when I was a young man and so thoroughly disgusted with the twists and turns of American politics. Let’s do away with electoral office, I said. Instead, let’s make a pool of all eligible citizens. Let’s hold a lottery and fill the offices that way.

What, you don’t want to be President of the United States of America? Too bad. Four years, buddy. Do a bad job, did you? As punishment, we’ll make you serve another term.

Imagine the howls of dismay I heard. But... but... what if some retarded
janitor
were to become president? Assholes. What if? First, most janitors are bright people who’ve suffered social discrimination and experienced a little bad luck. Second, what makes you think a retarded janitor, or anyone else for that matter, could
conceivably
do a worse job than the Bozos we’ve been electing for the past two centuries?

Bozos? Er, sorry. I mean Bonzos.

So. I get to be God because there exists a finite, calculable probability, that I actually
am
God. Simple as that.

Level Two
.

Once upon a time, there was an aching, empty Heaven, as if the Multiverse were without form, and void, and darkness lay upon the face of the deep. God’s Machine continued to function. But, as machines will without their Master, the Machine began to wind down. Slowly. Very slowly, but wind down it did.

Once day, into this darkness fell a man of two minds. Kepler, I think his name was. Laws of planetary motion.
Somnium
. Not the first of his kind. Not the last. But surely a definitive man of his type. Ties to the coming age of science, still mired in the preceding age of superstition. This is the same Kepler who had to defend his mother against charges of witchcraft after publishing a scientific fantasy in which he is transported to the Moon by demons old Mom conveniently conjures.

Looks around his empty Heaven and recognizes it for what it seems to be. That’s the age of superstition speaking. And thinks,
This is serious business. I bet I can help
... the coming age of science. In due course, he summoned others of his type, one, then two, then four, then eight... Turn the Crank, men. Without us... we few... we stalwart... we brave... the End?

In due course, this Band of Angels, renewing the essential force of God’s Machine, summoned the Archangel Bob, who thought he ought to be running the whole shebang. Who, in due course, summoned me.

Level Three
.

Once upon a time, there was a Heaven full of sullen Angels. No, not the immature, back-biting, storytelling angels we know of today. These were real angels, old fashioned angels. Angels with wings of fire. And, unfortunately, the Changewar’s angels as well.

By this time, you see, the Old Man was gone, quite possibly where the goblins go (which is, after all, into Nowhere At All), and the Angels had fallen into two camps, not so much the Snakes and Spiders, though Fafhrd’s many iterations among the Angels of today still insists he got it mostly right, as the older notion of Darkness and Light.

Call the Figurehead Subdeities Lucifer Light-Bringer and Ahriman Heart-of-Darkness if you will. There are any number of names. The long and the short of it, as all students know, is that the Angels fell upon each other, made war for the mastery of Heaven Itself, and in due course were destroyed.

Ahriman and Lucifer remain to this day, stranded on the event horizon of God’s Machine, looking for a way out, trapped by each other’s greed, battling to a death that will not come. Which left Heaven an aching, hollow void into which the first new Angel could fall. giving him a platform from which to summon us all.

Level Four
.

Once upon a time there dwelt an Old Man God who sat on Heaven’s Throne and lived in Mastery over His Angels. The Old Man God was a sorry God and He was a sad God and He was a lonely God, but He kept the Angels in line, though that kept Him, so He said, from answering the Question.

What question?

He’d come here, He said, to this wretched little Heaven, looking for His Father. The Angels, who’d been here since the ass-end of Forever, didn’t seem to know what the Hell He was talking about. Never found out, either, because, one fine, Heavenly day, He looked up from an eternal bout of Almighty dysthymia, and cried, “Why,
I
know!”

And vanished.

And then the Angels fell upon each other.

But you know about that already.

Level Five
.

Once upon a time, Heaven was absolutely chock full of gods. Old style gods, good old-fashioned force-of-nature mythological gods. This one in charge of that. That one in charge of this. Division of labor, like any good family. Oh, to be sure, they bickered and fought and tried to kill each other off from Time to Time. But... well, we all know families like that. They seem to get along in the end, most of them.

One day, into this simplistic Heaven, this teeming
Neterkhert
of gods and whatnot, there came an Old Man, not a god at all, but larger than all of them put together. A stern Old Man, a mean Old Man, who seemed to know what he was up to. Scared the Hell out of the gods and whatnot, who’d been trying, since Pluto was a Pup, to forget about the last such being they’d seen.

Looming over them, the Old Man said, “All right, I’m here. Where is My Father?”

The gods and whatnot, being forces of nature and all that, didn’t have the slightest idea what the Old Man was talking about. Father? What’s that? they said. Before any deep discussion of the matter could be undertaken, the Old Man tore the place to pieces, looking and looking.

No Father.

Then the Old Man said, “What the Hell. This is as good a place as any. You guys will just have to be Angels now and behave yourselves and do as I say.”

Since the Old Man was bigger than all of them put together, that was just what they did. For a time.

Level Six
.

Once upon a time, they were all the Mother’s Children, as were we all. Obedient children, doing their chores, keeping the Multiverse in good order, doing the Mother’s bidding, in her own sweet time. Call them the Little Ones, all of them, all of us.

It was a fine, soft Heaven then, with the Mother running the show, as Mothers will, making assignments, lavishing praise, meting out punishments for the Little Ones who failed. Punishment leavened with a Mother’s compassion.

Still, the Little Ones would cry from time to time. And resent the accumulation of punishments. In Time, they grew up, grew older, grew into something like adolescence. Became uppity and defiant, these Little Ones, as adolescents will, and the Mother punished them, as Mothers will, but all to no avail.

 In time the Little Ones broke their Mother’s heart, as grown children will. And so the Mother decided to punish them, once and for all, as Mothers will.

I know the way back now, she said, and I will go.

And she left them all alone.

As Mothers will.

At some point, it dawned on the Little Ones that they were in charge now. All of them. Together. In concert. Gods in Heaven.

Level Seven
.

Once upon a time, there was Nothing At All.

No Heaven. No Hell.

No God, no Angels.

No Old Man, no elder gods.

No Mother. No children.

No soul. No mind. No heart. No matter.

No Light. No Dark.

No Nothing At All.

Then there was Heaven, a spark on the void.

Spark on the void, with gravid Mother, weaving a web in which her children could spawn. And spawn they did, and filled the void, which was space and time and everything else.

Which leaves us right where we started. Where
did
Heaven come from?

Maybe from Nowhere At All. Maybe there was just a finite probability that there
could
be a Heaven, so, in Time, inevitably, a Heaven appeared. It’s the same theory that tells us the Multiverse (or maybe just the One, the Only Universe) emerged from an infinitely hot, infinitely dense nothingness, merely because, in some probabilistic fashion, given sufficient duration, Nothing is unstable.

However...

How does God do his job?

Probably...  well, yes. Probably.

Does it the same way we break Zeno’s Paradox.

You want to go from point A to point B. So you go halfway from point A to point B. Then you go halfway from
there
to point B. Three-quarters of the way. And halfway from there. Seven-eighths. And halfway from there. Fifteen-sixteenths... Can’t get there from here?

Kid stuff.

Einstein’s time shells. A space divided up into discrete Planck lengths. A finite number of points to be transited in finite divisions of time. Click. Click. Click. Click. Here we are. And something else. If you are on point A, there is a finite, calculable probability that you will, some day, be on point B. Which is, in fact, how God conducts his business.

A Toolbox call to the Probability Manager and
zap
. Maybe changes to Is.

Now, unfortunately, distance beckons.

We’ll call out Archangel Bob and all the little Cosmic Commandos. Get out the Jug, boys and girls, for there’s work to be done. I really hate to do it. Not just in my single self’s heart of hearts, that one special Dale who sets himself above all the rest, the ones gathered here, the ones still spinning down their long, tangled paths, all across the many faces of the Multiverse.

First, we’ll shut the gates that made their voyage possible.
Snap
. Now they can’t get back out into the Multiverse. Not ever. Then we go back and we begin the long and tedious task of Rectification.

There never was, you see, a stargate under the Moon.

Never was an expedition that dug down to the ice deposit.

Never was a time when a tired, middle-aged man stepped through a hole in the wall between the universes, walking right behind that soldier girl, standing in the midst of a might band of U.S. marines, wanting to look at the cute sergeant-girl’s muscular butt,
despite
the fact that he was about the step into a most astonishing dream.

Looking up. Looking over her shoulder. Looking in wonder at that splendid sky, the sky hanging over dead Mars-Plus, and realizing, suddenly
realizing
, what it might mean.

Snap
.

Gone.

Not just clean bones gone.

No, I feel it like a scream in my heart, as the me’s who lived those lives vanish without... no, not without a trace. The memories remain. What good is being God Almighty, if I can’t keep my God-forsaken memories?

And now?

Astrid Astride, you are loose in the Multiverse, and that must be Rectified as well. How much courage will it take to see her snuffed out, as if she never was?

Look around you now.

Time tracks. Universes. Infinite realities spinning out in directions no one ever imagined could exist, least of all you, Dale Millikan. Will you snuff her out? Is that how Rectification feels? Maybe, maybe not. Somewhere, deep downdeep, the probability still exists, that she will still live, that it really
did
happen.

Somewhere, those lost doppelgängers must still exist. Part of some Alternate God, some Changewarred Almighty, who never sent out the Jug, never slid them off the platter of this Multiverse, out into the Nothing At All.

That’d be a Hell of a note, wouldn’t it? Wish I’d thought of that when I was alive. What would I have called a Multiverse of Multiverses? I think, just maybe, I would have pissed them off by calling it a Garment Industry.