Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (133 page)

But she had to consider the possibility.

Was it really true? What if the birds
knew
what they were doing to the Sun? Oh, the precise form of their intelligence - their awareness - didn’t matter. They might even be some form of group consciousness, like the Squeem. The key question was their
intent.

Could the wildest speculations of Paradoxa be, after all, correct? Did the birds represent some form of malevolent intelligence which intended to extinguish the Sun?

Were they smothering the Sun’s fusion fire by design?

And if so, why?

Brooding, she sank deeper into the flock, watching, correlating.

They reached the Paradoxa Planners’ Temple in Sector 3.

The little party slowed. Arrow Maker and Spinner seemed to have coped well with the sights and sounds of their journey so far, but the glowing, tetrahedral mass of the Temple, looming above them, seemed to have awed them at last. Morrow found it hard to control his own nervousness. After all it was only a few shifts since his own last, painful, personal interview with Milpitas; and now, standing here, he wondered at his own temerity at coming back like this.

Garry Uvarov stirred in his cocoon of stained blanket, his sightless face questing. When he spoke his cheeks, paper-thin, rustled. ‘What’s going on? Why have we stopped?’

‘We’ve arrived,’ Morrow said. ‘This is the Planners’ Temple. And—’

Uvarov snorted, cavernously. ‘
Temple
. Of course they’d call it that. Arrow Maker,’ he snapped. ‘Tell me what you see.’

Arrow Maker, hesitantly, described the tetrahedral pyramid, its glowing-blue edges, the sheets of glimmering brown-gold stretched across the faces.

Uvarov’s head quivered; he seemed to be trying to nod. ‘An Interface mockup. These damned survivalists; always so full of themselves.
Temple
.’ He twisted his head; Morrow, fascinated, could see the vertebrae of his neck, individually articulating. ‘Well? What are we waiting for?’

Morrow, his anxiety and nervousness tightening in his chest, moved forward towards the Temple.

‘Milpitas?
Milpitas
?’ Uvarov’s gaunt face showed some interest. ‘I knew a Milpitas: Serena Harvey Gallium Harvey Milpitas . . .’

‘My grandmother,’ Planner Milpitas said. He sat back in his chair and steepled his long fingers, a familiar gesture that Morrow watched, fascinated. ‘One of the original crew. She died a long time ago—’

Uvarov’s chair rolled, restlessly, back and forth across Milpitas’ soft carpet; Arrow Maker, Morrow and Spinner were forced to crowd to the back of Milpitas’ small office to avoid Uvarov. ‘I know all that, damn it. I didn’t ask for her life history. I said I knew
her
. Glib tongue, she had, like all Martians.’

Milpitas, behind his desk, regarded Uvarov. Morrow conceded with a certain respect that the Planner’s composure, his
certainty
, hadn’t been ruffled at all by the irruption into his ordered world of these painted savages, this gaunt ancient from the days of the launch itself.

The Planner asked, ‘Why have you come here?’

‘Because you wouldn’t come out to meet
me
,’ Uvarov growled. ‘You arrogant bastard. I should have—’

‘But why,’ Milpitas pressed with patient distaste, ‘did you wish to meet me at all?’ Now he let his cold eyes flicker over the silent forest folk. ‘Why not stay in your jungle, climbing trees with your friends here?’

Morrow heard Spinner-of-Rope
growl
under her breath.

Uvarov’s nostrils flared, the papery skin stretching. ‘I won’t be spoken to like that by the likes of you. Who’s in charge here?’

‘I am,’ Milpitas said calmly. ‘Now answer my question.’

Garry Uvarov raised his face; in the subdued, sourceless light of Milpitas’ office his eye sockets looked infinitely deep. ‘You people were always the same.’

Milpitas looked amused. ‘What people, exactly?’

‘You
survivalists
. Your blessed grandmother and the rest of the crew she fell in with, who thought they were the only ones, the sacred guardians of Paradoxa’s mission. Always trying to control everybody else, to fit us all into your damn hierarchies.’

‘If you’ve come all this way to debate social structures, then let’s do so,’ Milpitas said easily. ‘There are reasons for devising hierarchical societies -
purposes
for devising bureaucracies. Did you ever think of that, old man?’ He waved a languid hand. ‘We’re confined here - obviously - within a finite environment. We have limited resources. We’ve no means of obtaining more resources. So we need control. We must
plan
. We need consistency of behaviour: a regulated society designed to maximize efficiency until the greater goal is reached. And a bureaucracy is the best way of—’

‘
Power!
’ Uvarov’s voice was a sudden rant.

His head jerked forward on its stem of neck. ‘You’ve built walls around the world, walls around people. Consistency of behaviour my
arse
. We’re talking about
power
, Milpitas. That’s all. The power to flatten and control - to impose illiteracy - even to remove the right to reproduce. You’re damned inhuman; you people always were. And—’

Milpitas laughed; he seemed completely unperturbed. ‘How long have you been isolated up there in the trees, Dr Uvarov? How many centuries? And have you cherished this bitterness all that time?’

‘You’re obsessed with control. You survivalists . . . With your perverted vision of the Paradoxa goal, your exclusive access to the truth.’

Milpitas’ laughter faded, and a cold light came into his eyes. ‘I know your history, Dr Uvarov. It’s familiar enough. Your rejection of AS treatment, your bizarre experiment to
breed
longevity into your people - your
victims
, I should say . . . And you talk to me of obsession. Of
control
. You dare talk to
me
of these things . . .’

In his brief time with the forest folk, Morrow had learned of Uvarov’s eugenic ambitions.

Uvarov had rejected AS treatment - and any artificial means - as the way to immortality. To improve the stock, it was necessary to
change the species
, he argued.

Humans were governed by their genes. They - and every other living thing - were machines, designed by the genes to ensure their own - the genes’ - survival. Genes gave their hosts life - and killed them.

Genes which killed their hosts tended to be removed from the gene pool. Thus, a gene which killed young bodies would have no way of being passed on to offspring. But a gene which killed
old
bodies
after
they’d reproduced could survive.

So, perversely, lethal genes in older bodies could propagate.

Uvarov had come to understand that senile decay was simply the outcome of late-acting lethal genes, which could never be selected out of the gene pool by breeding among the young.

After two centuries of flight, Garry Uvarov had determined to improve the stock of humanity the starship was carrying to the future. AS treatment used nanobotic techniques to eliminate ageing effects directly, at the biochemical level, but did not challenge the genes directly.

Even before AS treatment had started to fail him, Uvarov had declared war on the lethal genes which were killing him.

He and his followers had occupied the forest Deck, effectively sealing it off. He sent his people into the forest and told them that they would have a simple life: take nourishment from the forest, make simple tools. AS treatment was abandoned, and within a few years the forest floor and canopy were alive with the voices of children.

Then, Uvarov banned any reproduction before the age of forty.

Uvarov had enforced his rule with iron discipline; stalking through the forest, or ascending, grim-faced, into the canopy, Uvarov and a team of close followers had performed several quick, neat abortions.

After some generations of this, he pushed the conception limit up to forty-five. Then fifty.

The population in the forest dipped, but slowly started to recover. And, gradually, the lethal genes were eliminated from the gene pool.

Over time, some contact - a kind of implicit trade - opened up between the inhabitants of the lower levels and the jungle folk. But there was no incursion from below, no will to break open Deck Zero. And so, with iron determination, Uvarov enforced his huge experiment, century after century.

Arrow Maker and Spinner-of-Rope - face-painted, young-old pygmies were the extraordinary result.

Milpitas listened, apparently bemused, as Uvarov ranted. ‘When I started this work the average lifespan, without AS, was about a hundred. Now we have individuals
over two hundred and fifty years old
. . . ’ Spittle looped across his toothless mouth. ‘A thousand AS years isn’t enough. Ten thousand wouldn’t suffice. I’m talking about changing the nature of the
species
, man . . .’

Milpitas laughed at him. ‘Was there ever a more obsessive control of any unfortunate population than that? To deny the benefits of AS to so many generations—’ The Planner shook his bare, scarred head. ‘To waste so much human potential, so many “mute, inglorious Miltons” . . .’

‘I’m transforming the species itself,’ Uvarov hissed. ‘And it’s working, damn you. Arrow Maker, here—’ he cast about vaguely ‘- is eighty years old.
Eighty
. Look at him. By successively breeding out the lethal genes, I’ve—’

‘If your programme was so laudable, then why did you feel it necessary to barricade yourself into the forest Deck?’

Morrow, helpless, felt as if he had wandered into an old, worn-out argument. He remembered his last interview with Milpitas, in which Milpitas had - calmly and consistently - denied the reality of the society above Deck One: a society whose independent existence had been obvious long before Arrow Maker and the others came firing darts down through the opened hatches of the Locks. And now - even when
confronted
with Uvarov and these painted primitives - Milpitas seemed unable to break away from his own restricted world-view.

Uvarov was noisy, of alien appearance, visibly half-insane, and locked inside a partial, incomplete - yet utterly inflexible - mind-set. Milpitas, by contrast, was calm, his manner and speech ordered, controlled. And yet, Morrow reflected uneasily, Milpitas was, in his way, just as rigid in his thinking, just as willing to reject the evidence of his senses.

We’re a frozen society
, Morrow thought gloomily.
Intellectually dead. Maybe Uvarov is right about mind-sets. Perhaps we’re all insane, after this long flight. And yet - and yet, if Uvarov is correct about the end of the flight - then perhaps we can’t afford to remain this way much longer.

With a sense of desperation, he turned to Milpitas. ‘You must listen to him. The situation’s changed, Planner. The ship—’

Milpitas ignored him. He looked weary. ‘I’m growing bored with this. I will ask my question once more. And then you will leave. All of you.

‘Uvarov, why have you come here?’

Uvarov wheeled his chair forward; Morrow heard a dull thud as the chair frame collided softly with Milpitas’ desk. ‘Survivalist,’ he said, ‘
the journey is over
.’

Milpitas frowned. ‘What journey?’

‘The flight of the
Great Northern
. Our odyssey through time, and space, to the end of history.’ His ruined face twisted. ‘I hate to admit it, but our factionalism serves no more purpose. Now, we have to work together - to reach the wormhole Interface, and—’

‘Why,’ Milpitas asked steadily, ‘do you believe the journey is over?’

‘Because
I’ve seen the stars
.’

‘Impossible,’ Milpitas snapped. ‘Your eyes are gone. You’re insane, Uvarov.’

‘My people—’ Uvarov’s voice dried to a croak. Spinner-of-Rope stepped forward, took a wooden bowl of water from a rack within the body of the chair, and allowed a little of the fluid to trickle into Uvarov’s cavern of a mouth.

‘My people are my eyes,’ Uvarov said, gasping. ‘Arrow Maker climbed the tallest tree and studied the stars. I
know
, Milpitas. And I understand.’

Milpitas’ eyes narrowed. ‘You understand nothing.’ He glanced, briefly and dismissively, at Arrow Maker, who returned his look with cool calculation. ‘I’ve no idea what this - person - saw, when he climbed his tree. But I know you’re wrong, Uvarov. We’ve nothing to discuss.’

‘But the stars - don’t you see, Milpitas?
There was no starbow
. The relativistic phase of the flight must be over . . .’

Milpitas smiled thinly. ‘Even now, through the fog that has swamped your intellect, you’ll probably concede that one great strength of the bureaucracies you despise so much is record-keeping.

‘Uvarov, we keep good records. And we
know
that you’re wrong. After all this time there’s some uncertainty, but we know that the thousand-year flight has at least half a century to run.’

Something stirred in Morrow’s heart at that. Somehow, he suspected, he’d never quite believed Uvarov’s pronouncement - but the authority of a Planner was something else.
Just fifty years . . .

‘You’re a damn fool,’ Uvarov railed; his chair jerked back and forth, displaying his agitation.

Milpitas said coolly, ‘No doubt. But we’ll cope with journey’s end when it comes. Now I want you out of my office, old man. I have more than enough work to do without—’

Morrow couldn’t help but come forward. ‘Planner. Is that all you have to say? The first contact between the Decks for hundreds of years—’

‘And the last, if I’ve anything to do with it.’ Milpitas raised his face to Morrow; his remodelled flesh was like a sculpture, Morrow thought abstractedly, a thing of cold, hard planes and edges. ‘Get them out of here, Morrow. Take them back to their jungle world.’

‘Was I wrong to bring them here?’

‘Get them out.’ Tension showed in Milpitas’ voice, and the prominence of the muscles in his neck. ‘
Get them out
.’