"Radiant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)CHAPTER 13Bodhisattva [Sanskrit]: One who is close to becoming a Buddha; Prince Gotama was a Bodhisattva before his full enlightenment. In some schools of Buddhism, "Bodhisattva" also means a particular type of saint — people who are fully enlightened, but who hold themselves back from ultimate transcendence so they can remain in the world and help others achieve enlightenment too. (Such Bodhisattvas may be depicted as archetypal beings with divine powers. To the unsophisticated, they fill the role of gods and goddesses. On a higher theological level, they’re metaphoric representations of spiritual virtues and right living.) The river building’s central corridor only had a few doors leading off it — three to the left and two to the right. Apart from that, it was simply a dimly lit passage running more than two hundred meters, straight from the entrance to the exit on the other bridge. All five side doors were closed: blank expanses of the same pearly material as the exterior walls. Either the Fuentes didn’t believe in signs on doors, or the labels had eroded over the centuries. We examined the five doors before trying any of them. They had no distinguishing marks — no hint, for example, that Team Esteem had used one more than the others. There were bits of dried mud on the floor near the entrance, but the Unity people had politely wiped off their feet before venturing farther into the building, leaving us with no dirty tracks to follow. I found myself wishing I had my sixth sense back, just for a hint of what might lie behind the closed doors; but I thrust that thought aside before I started to dwell on it. I dwelled on it anyway. Totally fixated. But I pretended otherwise. With no reason to choose any particular door, we started with the one nearest the entrance. It had no lock, just a push bar. Tut and I stood against the walls on either side — out of the line of fire if something bad happened when the door opened — while Festina put her foot on the push bar and gave a heavy shove. The door swung silently open. The room beyond was as dim as the corridor — lit by dirty skylights that created more shadows than illumination. The shadows were cast by boxy machines arranged in a five-by-five grid. Obviously, the room housed mainframe computers… and just as obviously (from the silence that hung in the air) the computers were no longer running. One near the door had been cracked open, probably by a member of Team Esteem; but even in the pallid light, it was easy to see that the machine’s guts were a mess of fused metal and desiccated biologicals. "EMP’d," Tut said, looking at the remains of the computer’s innards. "What a surprise," Festina muttered. She walked around the room anyway to make sure she didn’t overlook subtle details, but the place was exactly as it seemed at first glance: a room full of big, dead computers. Perhaps an army of experts could learn something about Fuentes technology from the ruined remains, but Team Esteem hadn’t spent much effort on the task. They must have busied themselves elsewhere. On to the room next door. It was trashed. At one point, it would have been a lab; but now, glassware was smashed, microscopes had been battered to mangled metal, and delicate machines were reduced to wreckage. I could still recognize the sturdier pieces of equipment — a freezer, a fridge, an autoclave — but even those had been fiercely attacked… kicked and dented and bitten. No mystery who the attacker had been. Sprawled across the debris was a dead pseudosuchian, a human-sized protodinosaur much like the one that tried to kill Tut. It had withered to nothing but skin over skeleton… and the skin was so thin, we could see where the underlying bones were fractured — its jaw, its feet, its tail. "Poor guy," Tut said, patting the carcass. He stroked its shriveled flank. "What do you think?" he asked Festina and me. "The EMP clouds forced Rexy to come here, then drove him crazy enough to demolish the place?" "Probably," Festina replied. "Looks like the animal was so berserk it kept bashing away, even though it was damaging itself as much as the lab. Eventually, it rolled over and died from its injuries." "One problem with that theory," I said. While they’d been talking, I’d scanned the creature’s corpse with my Bumbler. "Carbon-dating says this animal has been dead more than six thousand years." "What?" Festina hurried to look at the readout. "Anything dead that long should be dust." "Not necessarily," I said. "There’s no weather inside this building. No insects either. And almost no microbes. Just the germs we’re carrying with us, on our skin and in our guts." "How can that be?" Festina asked. She took the Bumbler and twisted a few dials. The data remained the same. "Maybe it’s spatial distortion," Tut suggested. "This building is a pocket universe, right? Doing weird shit to everything inside. Maybe it kills microorganisms." "It kills microorganisms but not the cells in our bodies? How is that possible?" Festina glowered at the Bumbler’s display. "But this place "The corpse dates back to Fuentes times," I said. "If that’s the case — and if we think the EMP clouds made the animal bust this place up…" "That’s what "Then where did EMP clouds come from so long ago? The ones we’ve seen so far are from Team Esteem. Aren’t they?" "Gotta be," Tut said. "Var-Lann turned into one. And he saw his fellow team members go the same way." "If that was the work of a Fuentes defense system," Festina said, "other invaders probably turned into clouds too. The Greenstriders, for example. And any other race that tried to settle on Muta in the past sixty-five hundred years." "And maybe the Fuentes themselves," I suggested. "What do you mean?" "Live by the sword, die by the sword. It’s basic karma. Build a defense system that turns invaders into angry clouds of smoke, and it’s only a matter of time before the same thing happens to you." "Mom has a point," Tut said. "I’ve played a million VR sims where folks build a doomsday device, then some technical glitch sets it off… or saboteurs make the superweapon backfire…" Festina grimaced. "Here’s where I smack you on the head and say this is real life, not VR… except that my natural cynicism agrees with you. Building a superweapon "You think this attack was random?" I asked. "This room isn’t closest to the entrance. The Rexy passed by the computer room — nothing in there had been touched. But the animal came here and stayed in the room, smashing equipment till it died." "Yeah, Auntie," Tut said, "this looks premeditated. I mean, some clot of smog must have driven Rexy all the way from the countryside, into the city, onto the bridge, up an entrance ramp, down a dark corridor, past the first available door, and into a room in the middle of a long dark hall. Then the smog kept Rexy here breaking his own bones but still flailing about until he keeled over. If you ask me, that’s not random. Some cloud had a major hate for this room." "Fair enough," Festina said. "So why this room? What’s here?" "Look around, Auntie. Glass dishes. Microscopes. Autoclave. Doesn’t that sound like a microbi lab? Where you might develop weird-shit germs as the basis for a defense system?" Had we stumbled across the birthplace of the Fuentes’ superweapon? And if so, was that just lucky accident? No, not an accident. The Unity had been on Muta for years. They’d explored other Fuentes cities. They’d gathered plenty of data — data that led them to send their final survey team to Drill-Press. Team Esteem had, in turn, searched Drill-Press till they discovered this lab. No one in the Unity suspected the true nature of what the lab had created; if they’d known it was a weapon to turn people into smoke, they would have evacuated the planet. But perhaps survey teams at other Fuentes sites had picked up hints about "important research" or "advanced weapons development" being conducted in this location. Team Esteem had been sent to investigate. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough time to analyze what superweapon this lab had produced. Only at the last had Var-Lann put together the pieces and come to a hypothesis about what was really going on. I glanced at Festina and Tut. Both appeared thoughtful — possibly going through the same chain of reasoning I had. For a moment, I felt another pang of loss, wishing I could reactivate my sixth sense to see what was going on inside them. I wouldn’t be able to read their thoughts, but if I saw their auras, their emotions, I could tell… "Come on," I said abruptly. "Let’s check the other rooms." Without waiting for them, I hurried back out to the corridor. Two of the other rooms had also been attacked by pseudosuchians. (Tut said, "Aww, Rexy, are you in here too?" As if they were all the same animal — one who died tragically, over and over again, like some contaminated being who needed many protodinosaur rebirths to purge a karmic debt.) The devastated rooms were probably other laboratories, though their fields of research were unclear; they’d contained machines of various shapes and sizes, now smashed beyond recognition. I probably wouldn’t have known what the equipment was, even if it had been intact. How was I supposed to understand gadgets whose innards looked like dried green seaweed, or nests of thin blue tubes arranged like the back of a pipe organ? I imagined Team Esteem had prodded these remnants for hours, trying to discern their purpose. If the team had reached any conclusions, no record remained. One door was left to open. We went through the usual routine — Festina insisting she be in the line of fire while Tut and I stood safely aside — and we let her have her moment of potential martyrdom. As with the other rooms, no threat pounced out when she kicked the door open… but this time we saw more than the remains of dinosaur vandalism. No Rexy had visited this room; but Team Esteem must have come here often. It was a morgue. Or an anatomy lab. Or a torture chamber. Fuentes corpses were laid out in a variety of positions: some flat on waist-high examination tables; some clamped to vertical slabs; some in huge glass jars; some inside shimmering silver balls of light, much like Technocracy stasis fields but transparent enough to show bodies within. Cadavers exposed to the air had dried and shriveled but not decayed, just like the Rexy carcasses in the other rooms. Cadavers sealed under glass or in stasis looked even better preserved. All the dead belonged to the species shown on mosaic murals throughout the city — rabbit haunches, spade tails, insect eyes, and mandibles — but when I looked more closely, each specimen deviated from the norm. One’s head was bloated and misshapen. Another had no skin covering its chest… not from dissection, but as if the creature had been born with bare ribs open to the world. A third had no arms, while a fourth displayed mandibles twice as big as normal protruding grotesquely from its face. All told, there were more than twenty deceased Fuentes on display in the room, each drastically maimed or disfigured. "Hey look!" said Tut. "The Fuentes Explorer Corps." Festina made a strangled noise. I’m not sure if it was a growl or a laugh. Team Esteem had set up equipment around the room: scanners, data analyzers, and probes. The team had been examining the bodies — collecting DNA samples, taking X-rays/MRIs/CTs/ PPETs/JJEs, and all the other usual peekaboos — and they were also three-quarters through a complete dissection of one cadaver, who’d been conveniently lying on an operating table. While the team’s medical and bio experts plied their trades, the hard-engineering types had busied themselves with dissections of their own: taking apart Fuentes gadgets that also occupied the room. I assumed the gadgets had been the usual things one finds in autopsy labs, like devices for testing the chemistry of body fluids or for checking the state of specific internal organs. Now that the Fuentes species had vanished, the machines weren’t useful in themselves, but analyzing their components might reveal important information about Fuentes technology. Team Esteem must have hoped they’d find logic systems more advanced than anything known, or cute little black boxes that could violate the rules of physics. Carefully, cautiously, warily, they’d begun to dismantle every mechanical object in the room. The resulting bits and pieces were arranged in trays awaiting analysis. Since Tut and Festina immediately went to examine the corpses, I turned my attention toward the disassembled machinery. I had no special expertise in electronics, positronics, or neutrionics, but I decided to give everything a once-over with the Bumbler just to see if anything noteworthy stood out. It did. I turned to my companions. "These parts," I said. "They haven’t been EMP’d." Festina raised her eyebrows. "Are you sure?" "No signs of EMP damage. Even nano-scale circuits are intact." "Hmm," Festina said. "So in sixty-five hundred years, no EMP cloud has come in here… even though the door was unlocked, there’s no security system, and we think the clouds were responsible for Rexy rampages just down the hall." "Jeez," said Tut, "sounds like the clouds were afraid of this room. Like maybe there’s some kind of monster…" "Shut up!" Festina snapped. "Not another word!" For several heartbeats, all three of us stood in silence. No monster attacked. I reached out with my mind as if I still had a sixth sense, but I perceived nothing beyond what was already apparent — the corpses and dismantled machinery. At last, Festina let out her breath; she didn’t speak or drop her guard, but she joined me and checked the Bumbler’s data. "You’re right," she said. "No EMP damage. Strange." "The clouds "I know." "For six and a half thousand years." "I "Like what?" Tut asked. "What kind of equipment?" "I don’t know. Something the clouds like — something that makes them feel good." "Or perhaps," Tut said, "something that would be dangerous if it got short-circuited." "Don’t you know when to be quiet?" Festina asked. "Don’t you know not to tempt fate?" "I’m just saying it’s possible," Tut replied. "Fine, it’s possible. But not likely. Not when you realize that "Maybe when they’re smoke, they can see things we can’t. Or maybe old Fuentes smoke can talk to new Unity smoke and explain what shouldn’t be done." Festina looked like she wanted to argue… then she just sighed. "Too many maybes, not enough facts. And I doubt if we’ll find any great revelations. Team Esteem was here for months; does it look like they stumbled across important secrets?" "Nah," Tut replied. "But that’s how it is with the Unity: they’re so damned careful, it takes them years to do anything. Look at this." He went to one of the semitransparent balls of silver — a Fuentes stasis field. Inside was a body tucked into fetal position: arms squeezing knees, head down, tail wrapped tightly around the waist. Unlike other Fuentes in the room, the creature in the stasis sphere was entirely hairless, with bloated skin that bulged as if it were air-inflated. It reminded me of a soccer ball that’d been pumped up too much. Ready to pop its valve any second. "See?" Tut asked. "How long has Mr. Puffy been inside this field? Since the old days, right? Since the Fuentes were still alive. But Team Esteem hasn’t even opened the sphere. They saw all this stuff; and their first instinct was to draw up some long-term timetable for when they’d do what. Everything planned in cold blood. Heaven forbid they try anything on impulse… like this." He pulled back his foot and kicked. It was not a particularly skilled move; Tut wasn’t a dancer like me, nor had he done any more martial arts than the six-month course required at the Explorer Academy. Still, he had long, strong legs and plenty of time to deliver the strike: neither Festina nor I were close enough to stop him. I didn’t even bother to try — a sharp impact might pop Technocracy stasis spheres, but who knew if the same was true for advanced Fuentes fields? Maybe they could withstand a hit… including the toe of Tut’s boot driven full strength into the shimmering silver surface. I was wrong. Fuentes stasis fields turned out to be just as flimsy as the Technocracy type. The field dissipated with a hiss of released air, and Mr. Puffy tumbled onto the floor. A moment later, his spade tail whipped in a slashing circle, providing enough momentum to propel him to his feet. The alien stood there, tail writhing, mandibles weaving like daggers in front of his mouth… with Tut less than an arm’s length away. "Hey," said Tut, turning to Festina and me. "I found the monster that scared off the clouds." The bald Fuentes stank — a stench like ancient urine, piercing and vile. I wondered if that was the natural odor of his species, or if this particular specimen, with his lack of hair and engorged flesh, was unique among his kind. I felt stupid for thinking "Mr. Puffy" had been dead — he was, after all, locked in stasis, where not a single microsecond had passed over the centuries. Since the room’s other Fuentes were cadavers, I’d assumed the ones in stasis would be too. Team Esteem must have jumped to the same conclusion… which shows the stupidity of taking anything for granted when exploring alien planets. But Mr. Puffy was alive. His breath rasped in and out, his tail and mandibles twitched. He looked like an angry animal in search of a target to bite. Perhaps the only thing holding him back was the strangeness of his situation. When he was first put in stasis, the room must have been full of his fellow Fuentes, plus working machinery and full-strength lights. Now the only Fuentes in the place were corpses, the machinery was half disassembled, the lights were dim as dusk, and he faced a trio of unfamiliar aliens. However upset Mr. Puffy might be, he had the sense to restrain himself till he figured out what was going on. Tut, of course, showed no concern standing nose to nose with a newly exhumed mutant alien. "Greetings!" he said, holding out his hand. "I’m a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. How’s about some Hospitality?" The Fuentes stared at him a moment with mandibles knitting themselves together in a complex pattern. Tut lifted his own hands to his mouth and twiddled his fingers in response. I made a soft, choking sound — when confronted with an infuriated alien, Explorers should Off to my right, something whirred: Festina firing her stun-pistol. She must have drawn her gun the instant Mr. Puffy came out of stasis, but she’d held off shooting till the Fuentes showed hostile intent. Not that it made any difference. Mr. Puffy wasn’t fazed by the pistol blast; he didn’t even slow as Festina pulled the trigger several times in succession. As for me, I was frozen. Once again, I’d fallen victim to the reflexive paralysis programmed into me by the Outward Fleet: when taken by surprise, every muscle in my body went rigid. I had time to think, So I froze. And Festina fired. And Tut said, "Hey, what’cha doin’?" None of which slowed Mr. Puffy as he leapt across the room, landed in front of me, and shoved his bloated hand into my mouth. His urine stink had been bad before. This close up, it would have made me gag — if I hadn’t already been gagging from his fat foul fingers sticking down my throat. The taste of his flesh was putrid beyond description; even now, just remembering, I feel my mouth pucker. Vomitous. I would have thrown up then and there, but the moment my stomach began its first flip-flop, some powerful force suppressed it. Like a plunger pushing down the bile, preventing the puke from rising. For a second, I had the crazed idea Mr. Puffy had extended his hand all the way down my esophagus and was physically doing something to stop my stomach from erupting. Then a more rational explanation struck me: the Balrog had taken control of my body to forestall unwanted regurgitation. Perhaps that was another reason why I’d gone frozen — the Balrog Even as that thought crossed my mind, I felt my teeth bite down. The action wasn’t my own — if there could be anything more nauseating than the taste of urine-flesh stuffed into my mouth, it was the thought of biting that flesh and breaking the skin: spilling unknown body fluids across my tongue. But my jaw clenched anyway, without my volition; I bit full force, as if I wanted to chew off the alien’s hand and swallow it. The puffed-up flesh split in several places. Juices gushed out, squirting. Some ran down my chin; some dribbled into my throat. The alien’s blood added a sulphurous taste to the repugnant flavors already in my mouth. Once more my stomach tried to vomit… and once more something cut short the process, paralyzing the muscles needed to spew my most recent meal. The next moment brought a new horror: a flood of something pouring from the roof of my mouth. I could feel it streaming around the edges of the comm unit that had replaced my soft palate — as if the contents of my sinuses were suddenly spraying down at high pressure, forcing fluids past my implant to top up the goo already in my mouth. What could the fluids be? Blood? Mucus? Gray matter squeezed from my brain? Then my teeth eased open. The Fuentes withdrew his hand… and just for a moment, in the bleeding bite marks made by my own incisors, small red dots glowed against the lab’s faint light. Their glimmer faded instantly as the crimson specks swam deeper into the bloated flesh, entering Mr. Puffy’s bloodstream. Suddenly, the paralysis holding me rigid slumped away like a pregnant woman’s water breaking. Splash. I doubled over and threw up gratefully. The taste of vomit was clean and pure compared to everything else I’d just ingested. Then a hand touched my shoulder, and someone asked, "Are you all right?" The words were spoken in Bamar, my first language. When I looked up, it was Mr. Puffy. I gaped. How could a creature sixty-five hundred years old know my mother tongue? The Bamar language hadn’t existed when Mr. Puffy went into stasis — in those days, my ancestors spoke some Indo-European dialect far removed from anything my modern ear would recognize. Besides, even if the Fuentes had visited Earth in the ancient past, and even if Mr. Puffy had learned the language of a minuscule tribe in the Irrawaddy river valley, how would he know to address me in that tongue? Telepathy? Could he pluck my background from my mind? Could he even learn my first language by drawing it from the whorls of my brain? Then I remembered the red dots in Mr. Puffy’s bite wounds and the fluids that had poured from my sinuses. Spores. Balrog spores. I almost threw up again. The whole thing, with the hand in my mouth and my involuntary chomping down, had been a data transfer. Mr. Puffy had taken one look at me and had seen the Balrog inside. He’d shoved his hand between my teeth and I’d helplessly Now Mr. Puffy had a link to any data the Balrog chose to share. That included the Bamar language, which the Balrog had taken from my own memories. I straightened up. Wiped vomit off my face with my bare hand, then cleaned my fingers by rubbing them on a nearby tabletop. Checked my clothes, and thanked whatever reflex had helped me throw up without getting puke on my borrowed Unity uniform. Taking a deep breath, I told Mr. Puffy, "Use English. Explain what’s going on." In a soft voice, speaking English with an accent identical to my own, he said, "What do you want to know?" This time, it was Tut and Festina who reacted in shock. I enjoyed the looks on their faces. Festina recovered first. "Who are you?" she asked. "Ohpa," the alien said. Its mandibles twitched. "Does that irrelevant fact enlighten you?" Festina gave a humorless chuckle. "Fair enough. I’ll ask something more meaningful. How can you speak English?" Ohpa waved his hand. "Also irrelevant." He didn’t look in my direction. I wondered if he was keeping the Balrog’s data transfer a secret for my sake, or if there was some other reason not to speak of it. "All right," Festina said. "Relevant questions. What is this place and what were you doing here?" "This place is a playroom of reductionism and control. What you would call a laboratory." Ohpa shook himself and hopped toward a cadaver on a nearby table. Under his breath he muttered something in a language I didn’t know, then extended his hand in a gesture of blessing. He turned back and told Festina, "I’m here because I succumbed to hope and ambition. I volunteered to be a test subject." He spread his arms to display his hairless body; his tail gave a spasmodic jerk. "As you can see, the experiment was unsuccessful." "What was the experiment supposed to do?" "Make me Tathagata." I gasped. Festina looked my way, then asked the Fuentes, "What’s Tathagata?" Ohpa waved as if I should answer — a movement so human, he must have learned my body language from the Balrog as well as spoken words. I told Festina, "Tathagata means ‘the one who has come at this time.’ It was an honorific for Prince Gotama, the Buddha… to distinguish him from other Buddhas who’d lived in earlier times or might come in the future." Festina turned back to Ohpa in surprise. "The experiment was supposed to make you a Buddha?" "Tathagata." "A Festina made a face. "I’m not thrilled when an alien claims to be a figure from Earth religion. It’s way too convenient." "Ease up, Auntie," Tut said. "Ohpa likely peeked into our heads with X-ray vision, and Youn Suu’s brain happened to have an approximation for what he "I’m not Tathagata at all," Ohpa replied. "The experiment was supposed to make me so, but it failed." "How did it fail?" Festina asked. "The actual cause you would find uninteresting." Ohpa gave a sudden leap with his rabbitlike haunches, landing several paces away and pointing to a thigh-high gray box whose contents had been partly dissected by Team Esteem. "If I told you this machine had a flaw, would you be any wiser? If I said there was an unforeseen feedback loop between my DNA and the molecular logic circuits herein, would you hear more than empty words? Do you understand the complexities of dark matter and transdimensional biology, or would it be futile to explain?" "Transdimensional biology?" Festina said. "You’re just making that up." "If I were, you wouldn’t know, would you?" Ohpa made a rasping sound in his throat — perhaps the Fuentes version of a laugh. "Suffice it to say, the procedure I underwent had errors. Instead of becoming Success Number One, I became Failure Number Thirty-six. Instead of becoming Tathagata, I became a travesty." I asked, "What did you think it meant, becoming Tathagata? A mental transformation? A process to remove fixations from your brain?" Ohpa swished his tail, then drove the sharp spade tip into the computer-like box beside him. Fragments of broken metal and plastic spilled onto the floor. "A mental transformation?" he said. "Removing fixations? You give my people too much credit. We had no thought of changing our psyches; we didn’t think we needed it. My people dreamed of becoming gods — increasing our intelligence a thousandfold, abandoning our physical bodies and becoming pure energy — yet we imagined we’d retain our original personalities. We’d be vastly more powerful, but the same people, with the same prejudices, conceits, fears, hatreds, blind spots, envies, distorted priorities, unexamined desires, irrational goals, unconfronted denials… ah, such fools. Believing we could don transcendence as easily as a new coat. So sure of our unquestioned values. So ready for a fall." "What kind of fall?" Festina asked. "What happened to you? To this planet? "Karma," Ohpa replied. "A harvest of suffering, grown from the seeds of arrogance. Trying to seize heaven by force. Taking the easy way again and again, rather than daring the hard way once." Festina rolled her eyes. "Why do I always end up listening to gobbledygook from godlike aliens? And why can they never give a straight answer?" "Here’s a thought," Tut said. "Ohpa buddy, with your not-quite-Tathagata wisdom, why don’t you just tell what we need to know? And please, your Buddhousness, give it in a form we’re likely to follow. Okay?" Ohpa’s mandibles relaxed; I could almost believe he was smiling, if his complex alien mouth was capable of such a thing. Tut had done what every disciple must do: submit to the teacher’s agenda rather than demanding the teacher submit to yours. "Very well," Ohpa said. "I’ll tell you a tale of hubris." And he did. There came a time [Ohpa said] when Fuentes scientists realized the body was not the self. [He looked at me. He was quoting Buddhist doctrine. If the body is not the self [Ohpa continued], perhaps the self could be divorced from the body — made manifest in some other medium besides flesh. Flesh is weak and short-lived. Would it not be better to place the self in a stronger vessel? One that did not age. One immune to sickness. One that could not die. Many believed this goal might be achieved by becoming simulations within a computer; but that proved unsatisfactory. Computers could simulate a single person’s intellect, and they could simulate small environments, but no computer has the capacity to simulate an entire planet, let alone the galaxy or the universe. Computerized personalities soon felt they were prisoners in tiny, predictable worlds. But scientists determined there were other media to which an individual’s consciousness could be uploaded. In particular, personalities might be impressed upon constructions of normal and dark matter. This may sound like nonsense, but your scientific knowledge is too primitive to allow for more detailed explanation. How would you describe a silicon-chip computer to preindustrial peoples? Would you tell them you’d combined sand and lightning to make a box that could think? They’d think you were mad. Some concepts can’t be conveyed to those without the background to understand. You must simply accept that consciousness can be transferred from flesh into something more Celestial. Or so our scientists believed. They still had to overcome technical difficulties. A world was set aside for research. This world. Every person in every city was either a scientist or a support worker. If the project was successful, our entire species would use the resulting process to become higher lifeforms. To ascend. To become The research was divided into smaller subprojects. Experiments were conducted around the planet, but this building was one of two centers where everything came together. Scientists assembled subcomponents to create test processes, and to try those processes on volunteers who were willing to risk everything for the chance to become Tathagata. [Ohpa waved his hand at the cadavers in the room.] Here lie the volunteers. Failures all. After their deaths, they were analyzed to see what had gone wrong. Errors were corrected, and the researchers would try again. Compared to the dead, I might be considered fortunate. I survived; I even attained a partially heightened consciousness. I can perceive more than I once did — things that are hidden from mortal eyes. [He glanced at me; I assumed he was looking at the Balrog under my skin. To Ohpa’s expanded senses, the Balrog’s life force might have shone like a mossy red beacon. Perhaps Ohpa and the Balrog could even read each other’s thoughts to a small extent. That’s how Ohpa had known he needed to get bitten in order to acquire a load of spores and establish a full-bandwidth mental connection.] But though I am more than I was [Ohpa said], I am not Tathagata. I am sufficiently Aware to know how Unaware I am — like someone blind from birth miraculously granted dark and blurry vision, allowing him to understand how much he still can’t see. You who are still blind can’t understand the torture. You have no hint of the glory beyond. [Once again, he glanced in my direction. This time, he was looking at Despite such failures [he said], the experiments continued. With my spirit partly elevated, I became useful to the project. I was not wise, but I was wiser than the researchers. They sought my advice on particular efforts. They never really learned from my words, but they always found a way to twist what I said into confirmation of what they already intended to do. If I had truly become Tathagata, perhaps I would have had more effect… No. Now I am merely voicing self-pity. And pity for those who suffered what finally happened. Through trial and error — many trials, many errors — our researchers developed a successful transformation process. It worked in two stages: first, breaking down the physical body; second, reconstituting the consciousness in a higher vessel. The process worked well in small trials. Individuals truly became Tathagata… whereupon they departed to other realms of existence, without a single word to those who remained behind. Buoyed by success, the project leaders decided to uplift everyone on the planet, all at once. The same process would then be implemented on every world inhabited by our species. Stage One was controlled from this very center. A global transformation system was engineered. The system created biological agents that diffused across the entire planet: clouds of them targeting each individual. Every person’s DNA was automatically analyzed and duplicated by the microbial agents. Once the process was complete, the microbes infested the target’s body and channeled dark matter into each individual cell. As a result, the host bodies discorporated — became nothing but clouds of particles, still partly conjoined and imbued with the original person’s consciousness, but not yet transcendent. At that point [Ohpa continued], Stage Two would activate. The discorporate gas clouds, already half dark matter, would be imbued with more transformative energy, projected from facilities distributed around the world. The population would ascend as one… or so it was planned. The plan failed. I don’t know why; I spent my time here, in the center that implemented Stage One. The center for Stage Two lies on a different continent… and the people there were distant from the people here, socially as well as geographically. A childish rivalry — mostly in jest, but the two teams viewed each other more as competitors than colleagues. They did not share confidences. So I can’t tell why Stage Two failed. Stage One succeeded completely — every person on the planet was rendered into smoke. Except, of course, me. I am no longer normal; the experiment I underwent mutated my cells too little and too much. I did not become Tathagata… but my DNA became twisted and partly imbued with dark matter, to the point where the process that worked on everyone else cannot work on me. I was sent down a dead end. I cannot be pushed forward or brought back. The people around me turned into smoke, then failed to proceed to full transcendence. Stage Two never activated. Those trapped in Stage One — deprived of physical bodies but denied a new state of being — soon went mad with frustration. I watched it happen. I watched everyone in this center driven insane by their inability to move on. My eyes find it easy to see the wrath, even in placid-seeming smoke. For some reason, the clouds feared me. Perhaps the dark matter in my body exerts a force on their own dark matter that they interpret as pain. Or perhaps they cannot stand my very aura. Though I am not Tathagata, I do possess a grain of enlightenment; perhaps that makes my presence intolerable to them. They cannot face what they themselves are denied. Whatever the reason, they keep their distance. [Festina said, I stopped time for myself [Ohpa said] because I had no other way to survive. My body is far from normal; it requires special food that combines dark matter with conventional nutrients. This center was the only place such food could be manufactured… but the clouds destroyed the machinery for doing so. I would starve if I did not take measures to preserve myself. Since I am not Tathagata, a part of me still feared death. Besides, wisdom dictated I must not die until I had told my tale. My species still survived on other planets; they would come to investigate what had happened here. This was, after all, a project of great importance — its existence hadn’t been revealed to the general public, but the government kept close watch on everything we did. Government scientists monitored everything from offplanet via observation posts and broadcast relays. They would know that something had gone wrong. Help would arrive as soon as it could be arranged; I felt I had to survive to speak with those who came. So I put myself into stasis. And waited. I have waited a long time. There was silence when Ohpa finished speaking. We all must have been sorting through the ramifications of what we’d heard. Var-Lann’s theory about a defense system had been utterly wrong, yet not so far from the truth. The supposed "planetary defense system" hadn’t been intended to destroy invaders; it was built to elevate the Fuentes. However, the effects were the same: the Fuentes turned to smoke, and so did every other race to colonize Muta. Stage One of the system continued to analyze newcomers’ DNA and create microbial agents to convert everybody into angry clouds. Each time new settlers arrived on Muta, the system stirred into action… and a few years later, the settlers would be vaporized, set drifting on the wind and waiting for a Stage Two that never came. As for what happened to Stage Two — who knew? Perhaps the researchers had made a simple but fatal mistake: they’d overlooked the EMP factor. Every Fuentes on the planet turned to smoke simultaneously. That must have caused a tremendous pulse, ripping wildly through every city. The researchers may have anticipated a radical surge of energy… but what if they’d underestimated its power? What if the machines controlling Stage Two weren’t sufficiently shielded? If the worldwide EMP caused a breakdown in a single critical logic circuit, a power generator, or enough electrical switches to prevent Stage Two from initiating… …everyone would be trapped in Stage One forever. Including Team Esteem. Plus Festina and Tut as soon as the Stage One system devised a way to rip them into smoke. The same must have happened sixty-five hundred years ago. As Ohpa had said, the Fuentes offplanet would surely send teams to see what went wrong. Unfortunately, Muta’s atmosphere was still chock-full of Stage One biological agents primed to work on Fuentes cells. Any team landing without protective equipment would turn to smoke immediately. Teams How many teams had the Fuentes lost before they wrote Muta off? Possibly the government continued to formulate plans for reclaiming the planet — with suits better shielded from EMPs, or perhaps by releasing counteragents into the atmosphere, designed to destroy the Stage One microbes. But it had never happened. Circumstances must have prevented it. If, for example, the Fuentes had a shifty government like the Technocracy’s, a new party might have got voted into power, and the old government decided to destroy all records of Muta rather than taking blame for the disaster. On the other hand, maybe some new set of researchers had developed a different, more reliable process for ascending the evolutionary ladder. The Fuentes would then have no reason to return to Muta; they’d changed en masse into psionic purple jelly, conveniently forgetting the Fuentes on Muta still trapped as Stage One clouds. They’d also ignored all future starfarers who might visit Muta and suffer the same fate. Muta was a death trap; how could a supposedly sentient race leave it like this, ready to disintegrate all visitors who dropped by? One could argue the original Fuentes researchers had been volunteers, aware their work was risky. But what about the Unity, the Greenstriders, and us? At the very least, why didn’t the Fuentes build a warning beacon, telling passersby the planet was dangerous? Perhaps they did. I could imagine other races ignoring such a beacon and landing anyway. Muta was so desirable, colonists might choose to take their chances, especially if they didn’t know the exact nature of the problem. They might even dismantle the beacon to avoid attracting the attention of other races. The more I thought about it, the more likely that sounded. The recklessly territorial Greenstriders would immediately destroy any "keep out" beacon, if the beacon hadn’t already been obliterated by species of similar temperament thousands of years earlier. The Fuentes should have anticipated that… and in their elevated purple-jelly form, they should have taken steps to deal with the problem. If they now had godlike powers, why couldn’t they just teleport inside any ship approaching the Muta system and telepathically explain why the planet was dangerous? Wasn’t that basic courtesy? More important, wasn’t that what the League of Peoples might demand? Surely the Fuentes were required to stop people dying from the effects of the Stage One microbes. Unless… "Ohpa," I said, "how long can people survive in Stage One? Do the clouds eventually dissipate?" "No," the alien said. "They absorb energy from light and nutrients from the atmosphere. I don’t know their maximum life span, but they can certainly remain alive for millions of years." "Till the sun begins to fail and renders this planet uninhabitable." Ohpa’s mandibles bent in a way that might have been a smile. "In cloud form, my people are quite resilient. So are the others who’ve undergone Stage One. They may be insane, but they are definitely alive." "Bloody hell," Festina murmured. "Not bloody," Ohpa replied, "but most assuredly hell. Even with my meager awareness, I hear their screams of agony. To those with greater perception, the shrieks must be shrill indeed. But the enlightened beings of this galaxy must be inured to the sounds of suffering — they hear so much of it." Ohpa’s words left the rest of us silent… but the silence seemed to howl. It was Tut who finally spoke. "Okay," he said to Ohpa, "how do we set things right?" The Fuentes shrugged. The movement didn’t suit his alien musculature, but his Balrog-inspired knowledge of human body language seemed to think it was necessary. "I don’t know what you can do. I wasn’t a scientist — merely a test subject. I have no idea how to reverse the effects of Stage One." "We don’t want to Ohpa shook his head. "The Stage One microbes are autonomous. There’s no switch to turn them off. In a way, the microbes form their own crude hive mind — not sentient or even very intelligent, but fully capable of carrying out their purpose without outside direction." "Crap," Festina growled. "What kind of idiot builds an uncontrollable rip-you-to-shit system? Haven’t they heard of fail-safes?" "The project leaders feared someone might tamper with the process," Ohpa said. "They devoted much effort to making it unstoppable." "And since you’re only slightly wise, you didn’t tell them they were imbeciles?" "I told them not to mistake paranoia for prudence. But when you tell paranoids to be more prudent, they believe you are counseling them to be more paranoid." "You didn’t spell it out for them in words of one syllable? Make… a… way… to… shut… it… off." Ohpa replied with something in a language I didn’t recognize — presumably the Fuentes’ ancient tongue. His intonation was the same as Festina’s: short single syllables with brief spaces between. Then he switched back to English. "I told them exactly that. But they refused to listen. ‘The fool knows not the wisdom he hears, as the spoon knows not the taste of the soup.’ " I glared at him. His words came from the "Mom," Tut said, "there’s "We can change the status quo just by telling the outside world what’s going on. We’ve got a working comm; we’ve got Ohpa’s explanation. Maybe that’s all the Balrog intended — we come and find out what’s what. Now we tell "At which point," Festina said, "every treasure hunter in the universe rushes here to grab Fuentes tech. Then they "What else can we do?" I asked. "Simple," Festina answered. "Figure out a way to kick-start Stage Two." Tut turned to Ohpa. "Is that possible?" "I don’t know," the alien replied. "I don’t know why Stage Two failed." His mandibles worked briefly — maybe a mannerism to show he was thinking. "It might be something simple, like a burned-out fuse. Perhaps Stage Two is ready to go, and you just need to fix some tiny thing. But the malfunction could be more serious. Perhaps it can only be repaired by persons with special expertise. And that assumes it can be repaired at all. I’ve been in stasis a long, long time. By now, the Stage Two equipment may have degraded too much to salvage." "Those are all possibilities," Festina admitted, "but unless someone has a better idea, I don’t see we have much choice. We can’t leave Muta by Sperm-tail for fear the EMP clouds will attack "I’m all for starting Stage Two," Tut said, "but why leave afterward? If Stage Two works, we can stay on Muta and turn into demigods, right?" "Not quite," Festina told him. "If you stay on Muta, eventually you’ll undergo a process created by alien scientists with a proven record of fuck-ups: a process that might work on Fuentes but was never intended for "Auntie, you’re such a spoilsport. Isn’t becoming godlike worth a little risk?" "I’ve met godlike beings. As far as I can tell, they do nothing with their lives… except occasionally manipulate mine." "That doesn’t mean "I can do that now," Festina said. "Aren’t I a fabulous hero of the Technocracy?" "Seriously," Tut said. "Seriously, Auntie. What’s wrong with being a god?" "Seriously?" Festina sighed. "Deep in my bones, something cries out that gods are something you defy, not something you become. Humans should be standing on mountaintops, screaming challenges at the divine rather than coveting divinity ourselves. We should admire Prometheus, not Zeus… Job, not Jehovah. Becoming a god, or a godlike being, is selling out to the enemy. From the Greeks to the Norse to the Garden of Eden, gods are capricious assholes with impulse control problems. Joining their ranks would be a step down." "Jeez, Auntie!" Tut made a disgusted sound, then turned to me. "What about you, Mom? You believe in gods and stuff. Wouldn’t you like to be one?" "I’m with Festina on this. Godhood is a phase of existence for those who aren’t mature enough to be born human. Buddhists would never hurl defiance at the gods — that’s just rude — but we don’t envy the divine condition. The gods are stuck in celestial kindergarten: flashy powers, fancy toys, people prostrating themselves before your altar… it’s just childish wish fulfillment. Hardly a situation that encourages enlightenment. If your karma condemns you to birth as a god, the best you can do is resist the urge to throw thunderbolts and hope that in the next life you’ll get to be human." "Oh come on!" He turned to Ohpa. "What about you? You’re enlightened. Don’t you want to be elevated beyond what you are now?" Ohpa gave a small bow. "I yearn to be Tathagata… but will the process developed on this planet truly achieve that goal? My meager wisdom makes me mistrust easy solutions. Can genuine enlightenment be imposed by external forces? Can a normal being, full of conflicts and confusion, suddenly have every mental twist made straight? If so, is the resulting entity really the original person? Or is it some alien thing constructed from the original’s raw components, like a worm fed on a corpse’s flesh?" Tut threw up his hands. "You’re all hopeless! You’ve got a chance to go cosmic, but all you do is nitpick. Can’t you think big?" "Tut," I said, "suppose this process made you wise: honest-to-goodness wise. And suddenly, you weren’t interested in shining your face, or wearing masks, or pulling down Captain Cohen’s pants. All you wanted to do was help people transcend frivolous impulses, and recognize the emptiness of their fixations. Suppose that happened to you all at once, not gradually learning from experience, but flash, boom, like lightning. Doesn’t that sound like brainwashing? Or even getting lobotomized? Not deliberately refining yourself step by step, but having a new personality ruthlessly imposed on you." "I see what you’re getting at, Mom… but suppose honest-to-goodness wisdom turns out to Festina chuckled. "The Taoist rebuttal to Buddhism. But we don’t have time for religious debate. We’ve got to start Stage Two." She turned to Ohpa. "Any ideas how we do that?" Ohpa thought for a moment. "Stage Two involved a network of projection stations all around the planet — to bathe Stage One clouds with energy to complete the transformation. The closest such station is on this river, some distance downstream: a day’s journey by foot, if your species’ walking pace is close to ours. It’s a large building beside a dam." "A hydroelectric dam?" Festina asked. "I hope not. If the station depends on the dam for power, we’re screwed. After sixty-five hundred years with no one looking after the place, the generators will be rusted solid and clogged with silt." Ohpa gave his tail a noncommittal flick. "I don’t know how the station obtains its power. I know almost nothing about it — as I said, the Stage Two workers kept aloof from those working on Stage One." "Then come with us to the station. However little you know, it’s more than we do." Ohpa shook his head. "I’ve told you what I can; have faith it’s what you need. If you yourselves don’t lay my people’s ghosts to rest, at least you’ll pass on my words, and the news will spread. Eventually, someone will bring this to an end. But I won’t live to see it — my part is over." "What do you mean?" I asked. He turned my way. His faceted eyes showed no emotion a human could recognize, yet I felt compassion flood from him — deep pity for my ignorance. "I told you, my body needs special food. I will die without it: very soon. I avoided putting myself into stasis as long as I could, in hopes that a landing party from my own people would find me. I only entered the stasis sphere when I was on the verge of collapse." "We have rations," Festina said, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out a standard protein bar. "Maybe this can tide you over until…" "No. My body needs more than nutrition; it needs stabilization." Ohpa held out his hand. The tips of his claws were smoking. Evaporating, like dry ice steaming into the air. His hand didn’t shake as the claws slowly vanished, and his fingers began to disintegrate. "Stop," said Festina. "Don’t you dare do this. There are still things we need to know." "You’ve heard everything necessary," Ohpa told her. "And I couldn’t stop this, even if I wished to. I stayed out of stasis as long as I could — until the time remaining to this body was just sufficient to do what was needed. To speak with you." "You couldn’t know that," Festina said. "You had no idea how much time you’d need. You didn’t know who’d free you from stasis, you didn’t know if you’d speak our language, you didn’t know if we’d sit still and listen, you didn’t know if we’d care what you had to say, you didn’t even know if we’d be smart enough to follow your explanations. If we’d been a party of Cashlings, you’d have spent your last minutes listening to them complain how Muta had no good restaurants." "But you aren’t Cashlings, are you? You’re members of the human Explorer Corps. With a mysterious knack for turning up where you’re required." Ohpa’s mandibles twitched. I could almost believe he was laughing at us. "Really, Admiral Ramos… I might not be Tathagata, but give me a little credit. My timing has been impecca-" With a rush, the rest of his arm turned to smoke, followed an instant later by his entire body. The particles hung in the air a moment, still retaining the shape of what Ohpa had been; then the cloud dispersed, thinning out, spreading in all directions until there was nothing to see. "Huh," Tut said. "He called you ‘Admiral Ramos.’ I wonder how he knew. None of us ever called you that." Festina gestured irritably. "I’ve met enough higher beings to know their tricks. They’re all incorrigible show-offs, they love getting a rise out of lesser mortals, and "Downstream to the Stage Two station?" "Where else?" She muttered something about "jumping through goddamned hoops for alien puppet-masters," then headed out the door. |
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