The Transmigration of Souls (28 page)

Kincaid nodded, “We ourselves found quite a bit of evidence of that sort. Stuff left behind, even though the Space-Time Juggernaut had... done its work. Enough evidence to convince us that the Colonials themselves hadn’t built the gate system either.”

Laing said, “We always wondered about the presence of the gates inside the net. I mean, if our universe wasn’t
real
, why did it include things that...”

Genda said, “The gates are the linkpoints for the universal operating system. They were there, were everywhere, from the beginning of time.”

If, Kincaid thought, that can possibly mean anything. “That’s why we started calling it the Toolbox. Why we started using common computer programming jargon to describe the way the Multiverse seemed to work.” Wistful now. “Dale kept suggesting we ourselves might be inside some kind of simulacrum. No one was willing to buy that idea.”

Ling said, “That was a question Tipler and his fellows really didn’t try to address. If there’s no way to distinguish between reality and a perfect emulation, how would we know we hadn’t already gone through the process? Or that the perfect emulation wasn’t the
a priori
reality?”

All those old, sophomoric questions bobbing up and down. Kincaid said, “How would God know he was really omniscient?”

A bizarre look from Ling.

She said, “I mean, if there were things an omniscient God knew he didn’t know, then he wouldn’t be an omniscient God, and then he’d know he was omniscient, so he could know that...”

A suppressed snicker from Ling.

Slight warmth of anger surfacing. “All right, I’m just getting this all mixed up. All I’m trying to say is, how would the being or beings who created this
emulation
, if that’s what it is, know they themselves weren’t part of some larger emulation?”

Silence. Then Ling said, “They wouldn’t, of course.”

“Unless they were
really
omniscient.”

Genda sighed, and said, “This is useless.” He tapped the screen. “The evidence I’ve collected indicates that the gate system has some hierarchical qualities. From what you’ve told me, you Americans wasted your time treating it as a genuine transport network. Spent your limited time out here trying to explore what the Scavengers and Colonials had been up to.”

Kincaid said, “It seemed reasonable, at the time.” Excuses, but... Hell. Dale kept trying to tell us we should go farther afield, stop going to places already listed in the Colonial and Scavenger address tables. Start looking for places they
hadn’t
been.

Genda said, “Especially in the emulation universes, there’s some indication the gates can be followed right down to the...” He seemed to fumble for words. “The core of things.”

Ling, eyes dark, narrower than usual: “What sort of core?”

Amaterasu said, “For a while, we talked about calling it the Throne of God.”

Rahman, voice full of evident disquiet: “God?”

Genda: “Just a metaphor. It is evident to me that some... being, some thing, some intelligence, call it what you will, has constructed the Multiverse. Constructed it as a hierarchical entity. Built it as a series of shells. And it seems to me that the more obvious emulations...”

“Like the Ohanaic Pseudouniverse,” said Laing.

“Yes, Like that,” said Genda. “It seem to me they’re closer to the heart of things. I’ve been heading inward, from the outermost realities, ruled by mere probabilistic chains, inward toward ever greater levels of... explicit
creation
, if you will. And I find that the deeper I go, the greater the depth of creative detritus. In here. In
these
worlds, God was less careful to hide his... toolmarks. Yes, that’s what I like to call them. Toolmarks.”

Long silence. The sound of the wind sighing in green trees. Kincaid thought, That was the way Dale talked about it, too. Just a story, he’d say. When you read a book you know it’s just a story. If something doesn’t quite ring true you can simply dismiss it. Willing suspension of disbelief, it’s called.

But it isn’t like that in real life.

Is it?

“Koro’mal’luma,” said Ling Erhshan. “That’s Esperanto, isn’t it? For ‘Heart of Darkness’?”

“Oh, Great,” muttered Brucie Big-Dick. “Whose waiting for us on the other side,
Tuan
? Marlon Brando?”

Nothing from the others, remark lost.

Kincaid said, “How far?”

“I don’t know. The scale...”

Jensen laughed. “Not much more than seventeen thousand kilometers, mind you...”

Time passes, because there are many more objective markers than merely the transit of the sun across the sky. Finally, Rahman stirred uncomfortably, got to her feet, started walking away from the group clustered around the computer.

Kincaid said, “Where’re you going?”

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom. I’ll just be right over...”

“Someone with a gun had better go with you.” She was reaching for her own M-80, long, slim weapon leaning against a nearby boulder.

Rahman hesitated, reluctant.

Amaterasu stood. “I’ll go. I don’t need a weapon.”

Kincaid stared at her for a second, then said, “I saw the way you ricocheted around the control room when we crashed. Right out through the damn hull and not a dent on you. I guess maybe you don’t need a gun.”

The robot smiled, sudden sunshine in her face. “You built well, Mother.”

“The kit manufacturer, at any rate...”

Rahman walked away, urgency in her bladder, not waiting for the robot.

o0o

Beyond the shoulder of the nearest hill, the view was down into a small, wok-shaped valley. Rahman stood for a moment, staring at the low, grassy slope, lined with bushes and copses of trees. There was a stream at the bottom of the valley, clear water over sand and stones, a little waterfall, water almost crackling as it fell, a crisp, inviting sound, a little lake, reflecting blue sky, foothills beyond, giving way to mountains rising up toward the clouds. Only when you looked higher, expecting featureless blue... It’s like a mirage. Landscape you can’t quite see. And, of course, only blue sky beyond that, the sun hanging motionless at noon.

She went into the bushes and undid her coverall, squatting, listening to the faint breakfast-cereal sound of her urine soaking into dead leaves and old pine needles. Remembering that Russian woman, Sasha, big and dikey, though she was always seen in the evenings in the company of some man or another, one of the many technicians working in and around the space center. Sasha could reach into her clothing, twist herself just so, and piss straight forward into the old urinal that was in the women’s restroom, which had once been a men’s room, back when their hadn’t been so many women in the workforce. I remember how I laughed, the first time I saw her do that. A most excellent little trick, but you have to be built just right...

When she came out of the bushes, the brook was still there, the lake, the grassy field. She said, “That looks nice. Too bad we can’t go down and swim.”

Amaterasu said, “Why not?”

o0o

A little while later, Astrid Kincaid stood at the crest of the hill, looking down into the little valley, hands on hips, watching Ling and Inbar get undressed by the water’s edge. Not so hard to figure out just where they’d gone. Men, after all...

Rahman was paddling about in the little lake, swimming on her back now, close to shore, dark-nippled breasts sticking up, black triangle of pubic hair plainly visible. Amaterasu stood on the shore nearby, watching the men as well, standing with her hands clasped behind her back. Much better breasts. A lot less pubic hair.

And the men? She grinned to herself. Sorry specimens indeed. Ling was spindle-shanked, flabby, old-looking. No more old people in America. Old people faded away and gone from my memory. I haven’t seen a middle-aged person in decades. Eternal life. Eternal youth. For everyone. Everyone inside with us. We found it. We’re keeping it...

For Christ’s sake. I haven’t felt this young in fifty years. She set off down the hill to join them, thinking, Well. The very least I can do is yell at them for swimming in an unknown lake. What if there’s a
dragon
out there?

No dragon.

And she thought Inbar’s eyes would pop from his head as she stood on the shore and shrugged out of her military tunic, as she unbuckled her belt and dropped her pants, stripped off brassiere and underwear. Breasts that must require antigravity to stand up like that on their own. Pubic hair like a Brillo pad made of spun gold.

Astrid Kincaid laughed at him. Laughed and threw herself into the water, cold, lovely water, water striking freshness, new life deep in her heart, and swam, powerful overhand strokes, head turning from side to side, eyes open, legs kicking beneath the surface, swam far out into the lake. Turned and floated on her back, staring up at a blinding sun, tiny sun like a bit of incandescent metal hanging beyond the sky.

God. I feel like a child again. Caught up in a dream. Caught up in my favorite dream. How could we have missed this, the first time through? How could we have been so afraid? Image of the Jug. Image of Death’s Angel killing all her friends. Has it really swept in behind us, wiping away our path? Can the Earth, my Earth, the real Earth, possibly be gone?

No answer.

And no will to worry about it, just now.

You’ve been old for a hundred years, Astrid Kincaid. Old since you were a child. Time now to be young again. Perhaps to be young for the very first time.

o0o

They were sitting together, naked on the shore, sprawled up on the shore’s grassy lawn, sitting together like old friends, used to each other, so accustomed to one another, somehow, that even Inbar could relax, could look at Rahman, at Amaterasu, even at Kincaid, without that silly erection rising to embarrass him.

Hours had passed, what felt like hours anyhow, and Ling found himself wishing for a sunset that refused to come. The sun just hung up there, eternal noon. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a red sun low in the sky now, a sky turning ruddy, sunlight coloring the clouds red and brown, shadows turning black within them? But the sky was still bright blue, sunlight tingling on his skin. The urge came to tell the others all about his feeling, about this world, this lake, this little gathering, how he felt, about himself, about everything, perhaps, and he said, “I think...”

Something buzzed over them, something like a giant wasp, sweeping down the hillside with a deep, shuddery drone, a dark, misty something, hidden by a blur of wings, sweeping over their heads, flying out over the lake, turning, banking, heading back for them. Kincaid cursed, reached for her rifle, jumping to her feet, taking a bead on whatever it was, while the others stood up, tried almost simultaneously to stand behind her. All but Amaterasu, robot Amaterasu, fearless, indestructible.

“What the Hell...” Buzzing globe of dark, insectile wings, slowing, hovering above them, not far away.

And Ling whispered, “There is
no
such thing...”

The buzz softened, the blur of wings slowed, and there hung a tiny woman, naked woman, perhaps twenty or thirty centimeters tall, it was hard to tell. A dark-haired woman with pale white skin, huge, slanting dark eyes, a tiny red mouth...

Inbar muttering, as if to himself, in thick Arabic, Rahman saying something back.

The apparition laughed, a rich, tinkling, happy little sound. Laughed, and said, “Pretty, pretty girls, swimming naked and free.” A tiny frown on tiny red lips. “Oh, not such pretty boys. Tsk. Tsk. Pretty little girls ought to have nicer boys than
these
...”

Kincaid leveled her gun at the thing and said, “Who the fuck are
you
?”

“Oh, oh, oh. Silvereyes is a tough little girl, is she? Well. Well.”

Pop
.

Suddenly the thing was high overhead. “Peeka
boo
, I see
you
!”

Pop
!

And it was behind Kincaid, pulling hard on her golden hair, making her stagger. “Can’t catch
me
! I’m a
Christmas
tree!”

Pop
!

Right in front of the gun, hovering, motionless, in the middle of her buzzing wings.

“Go ahead, Silvereyes.
Shoot
!”

Kincaid lowered the M-80, let its useless muzzle droop to the ground, her mouth set in a grimace of dismay. “Oh, fucking
great
,” she whispered. “Fucking Tinkerbell.”

Peal of joyous laughter from the apparition. Loud buzz of wings, blurring the tiny woman’s body as she soared over their heads, swooped low with a buzzsaw roar, right between Rahman’s legs, Rahman jumping and screaming and grabbing at her crotch while the creature danced overhead.

“Aarae be my name!” she cried. “
Silvestris nympha
.” Bride of the forest.

She shimmered and buzzed again, twirled around them like a mote of magic dust, flew behind Kincaid and goosed her hard, flew between Inbar’s legs and seemed to swing from his penis for a moment while
he
jumped and screamed, floated over their heads again for just a moment, grinning downward, laughing at the man, “Pixie to
you
, Toots!”

Shimmered and buzzed and flew straight up into the sky and was gone.

There was a moment of silence, then Kincaid said, “Well. Jesus Fucking Christ. What the Hell
next
...”

o0o

No use trying to make any sense of it, or argue the point. Is this Pellucidar, or merely Never-Never Land? In the Multiverse, there’s no reason there can’t be a place that partakes of both. On the other hand, there’s no reason to believe, really
believe
in any of it.

There was that, during the walk back up the hill, after they’d slowly, silently put on their clothes, more or less oblivious of one another. Funny, though, to see Inbar standing there, spraddle-legged, looking down at himself in disbelief. Me Tarzan. You vine. Toots.

And then there’d been the puzzled, unbelieving stares of the others, back at the ship. Genda finally saying, “What do you
mean
, you were attacked by Tinkerbell? Tinkerbell who?”