Heaven (31 page)

What did that prove, though? Sam wrenched his brain back into gear. The servomech’s demonstration of the tenuous nature of
reality was
over
. He couldn’t spend the rest of this life doubting his senses. And he was starting to understand how the miracle might have
been accomplished. “Nanotech?” he asked the robot.

“Better. Femtotech. Recursive nanotechnology, Fourteen Samuel. It takes complex macroscopic machinery to manufacture rudimentary
nanomachines. But with the hypercomplex macromachines that we have devised, it is possible to make
complex
nanomachines. And those, in turn, can build rudimentary femtomachinery.”

“It took
seconds
!”

“Yes, the slowness of the incorporation procedure is a cause for concern,” said the servomech, misunderstanding Sam’s emphasis.
“The time required to incorporate all fifteen billion lifesouls here would be unacceptably long if for some reason it became
necessary to evacuate this world. But until we can make the step to complex femtomachines and rudimentary attotechnology,
it is the best we can manage.”

“Are you two going to leave me standing here while you talk about toys, or is someone going to tell me why I am here?”

“Further apologies, lady,” said the servomech. “It became essential for Fourteen Samuel’s education that he should ask a few
questions of a discorporate.”

“Then why did you not leave me discorporate and link him to me virtually?”

“He mistrusts anything that he experiences in virtuality. He does not consider it sufficiently real.”

Nerydd gave Sam a withering look. “It is real enough to the lifesouls of Heaven! Does he doubt the evidence of his own senses?”

“Yes,” said Sam. “When what they report is virtual. For all I know, none of this is real. I’ve already been fooled once.”

“For all you
know
,” the servomech affirmed, “everything you have experienced in your entire life may have been unreal. The best you can do
is assume that such an elaborate simulation would not have been worth the trouble.”

“You said he wanted to question a discorporate,” Nerydd reminded them. “Then let him ask his questions, and then return me
forthwith to my plainsong.”

“I’m not sure I need to ask,” said Sam. “I think that your words have already shown me where I’ve been making a mistake.”

“Which was?”

She looked so desirable . . . “That . . . that you would prefer this reality to the illusion of Heaven.”

Nerydd stared at him, thunderstruck. “Are you mad?”

“No. But I think you may be.”

“Huh! Five minutes ago I was contributing to the harmony of the cosmos. Now I’m standing in a slaughterhouse, discussing the
nature of reality with an idiot.”

“But this slaughterhouse—this discorporation facility—is
real,” Sam protested. Achingly beautiful as Nerydd might be, she seemed unable to grasp an entirely obvious idea. “The celebration
of plainsong is only a mirage in your mind, inserted by machines. Do you honestly prefer that to the real world? If you rejected
the virtual, there would be no need for the slaughterhouse.”

“You have it exactly back to front! Without the slaughterhouse, there would be no Heaven. And when I am in the virtual world
of Heaven, it
is
the reality, and there is no slaughterhouse.”

“Yes, there is! You just aren’t aware of it.”

“You were unaware of my plainsinging.”

It was a verbal trap. Wasn’t it? “That’s not the same.”

“How can you be sure? Perhaps you should join me in my choir. Then”—she moved her hips seductively and gave him a predatory
smile—“you could get to know me better and learn to appreciate my point of view.”

Cherisher, it’s tempting. Instant Heaven
. But Sam managed to resist. A quick glance at his surroundings was enough. “Even though we are not wed?” he inquired, a sparkle
in his eye.

“That could be arranged . . . No, I was joking. The offer wasn’t serious. You’re not my type.”

“You are mine,” said Sam wistfully. “That is why the machines selected you.” A thought struck him. “You seem far too young
and healthy to be suitable material for Heaven. I thought that discorporation was a medical procedure reserved for those that
could not be healed in any other way.”

“Not on a world that has reached closure in the Church,” said the servomech. “When that occurs, all citizens are discorporated,
whatever their physical condition might be. However,” he addressed Sam, “you have your answer. Your presumption was wrong.
The lady wishes to return immediately to her virtual paradise. Your alleged ‘reality’ holds no attraction for her.”

“I want to be discorporated!”
shouted Nerydd.
“Now!”

Unnoticed, a shadow had slid across the ground where they stood. Suddenly aware that something was blocking the light, she
looked up—and screamed. Before the servomech could stop her, Nerydd was stumbling through the racks of body parts, terrified
out of her wits. But she was running the wrong way.

A gigantic shape blotted out the light from above. The servomech seized Sam by the arm and began to drag him away from the
scene. “It is a levithon!” the robot cried. “We cannot stay, or you will be killed! Nothing organic can survive its attack!”

“What about Nerydd?” Sam yelled, wondering what a levithon was but realizing this was not a good moment to ask.

“She must take her chances among the organ racks,” said the servomech. “She is beyond our help.”

Despite the danger, Sam dug his feet in, and the robot ground to a halt. Behind them, Nerydd had slipped and fallen; she was
trying to dig her way into a heap of glutinous yellow mush. “That will not save her,” the servomech remarked. “Nothing now
will save her.”

“We should have left her in her Heaven!” Sam shouted as the huge, pale shape sank lower.
Cherisher, but it’s big
.

“She would still have died,” said the servomech. “Her tissues were stored in this vicinity. A levithon attack costs many lives.
The scavengers leave nothing where they have been, just a bare patch of ground. Cold ground, frozen solid by the levithon’s
metabolism.”

Only later would Sam observe that this remark demolished the robot’s view that reality was negotiable. The virtual reality
of Heaven was constrained by the external world, just as a mind becomes constrained by its material brain if its owner’s head
hits a rock. Now he was too horrified to think of anything beyond survival.

The servomech dragged him toward the nearby building and through a low doorway. Looking back, Sam saw that the levithon’s
pallid bulk had smothered Nerydd’s noisome refuge, along with the entire area where they had been standing only a few seconds
earlier.

To the accompaniment of obscene sucking noises, the levithon settled down to feed. Sam couldn’t take his eyes off the scene.
But he was glad when the robot shut the door.

Some say that emergence occurs when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But
greater, sum
, and
part
are quantitative concepts. Emergence, like meaning, is a quality. You cannot count a quality. You have to experience it.

Conversations with Huff Elder

S
ay that again?” May thought she must have misheard. The two transpods that had been sent to investigate the pond field had
found a mariner survivor, and it
was
Second-Best Sailor. He was in relatively good health, despite a long trek across the desert in a failing suit. The Tweel
had come up with a spare sailor suit—they had stores of just about everything, just in case. Now the polypoid was wearing
his new suit, but he was refusing to come out of the pond.

The Neanderthals still didn’t know how Second-Best Sailor had worked his trick with reflected sunlight, and right now they
weren’t in any hurry to find out. It could wait until they’d beaten a quick retreat from Aquifer’s sandy surface, just in
case whichever force had wiped out the colony was getting ready to mount another attack.

Talitha
was keeping a careful watch for any signs of movement on the ground, as well as scanning the space around it for inbound
ships that might be belligerent. But its orbit repeatedly took it out of visual contact with the landing party. Half the time
it couldn’t even see the North Pole, the most likely source of hostiles.

The operation was taking considerably longer than the Neanderthals had bargained for, and May was starting to feel the strain.
Her friend Will was down there, and so was Second-Best Sailor. She presumed Fat Apprentice was dead. She missed him.

The ansible carried the words as if the speakers were face to face, but they made no sense. “Will—did I hear you say he wants
to bring the pond with him? The
pond
? Whatever for?”

“He claims it is intelligent, May.”

“And I thought it was only my late friend Fat Apprentice who could surprise me . . . A pond cannot even be alive, let alone
possess intelligence.”

Will bobbed his head in an unconscious gesture of agreement, even though May couldn’t see the movement. She was quite right:
The mariner must be insane. “I have argued with him, but he insists that he is right. And he keeps telling me how important
it is. He says that the pond is alive. It is an ecosystem, composed of many organisms.”

“Yes, but it is not an organism in its own right,” came the instant rejoinder.

“He says it is. He says it has, or
is
—I cannot get him to commit himself as to which—a mind. It speaks to him with molecules.”

May had developed a theory to explain the wild delusion. “You say he spent several days in the desert? Wounded?”

“That is what he claims. But the medic has found no sign of any physiological damage.”

“The heat must have dried him out. His electrolytes would have been all over the place. He must have suffered from delusions.
Hallucinations.”

Will ran blunt fingers through his shaggy mane. “That was also my theory. But I am half convinced that he knows what he is
talking about. How else do you explain those flashing symbols,
2BS
, over and over again?”

“Easy. Some kind of flocking behavior of creatures
in
the ponds,” May instantly replied. She’d been giving that matter considerable thought. “I am not denying that the ponds
contain
some limited form of intelligence, or that Second-Best Sailor managed to bend it to his will. But I
do
deny that the ponds themselves are organisms—let alone conscious and intelligent ones!”

“I wish I were as certain as you.”

May sighed. Will was such a pushover. Why did he not use his empathic abilities? Better still, a verifier? Then the tale would
fall apart in an instant. “You cannot be serious!”

“The mariner is in his right mind, and he is telling the truth as he sees it. Of that, I have no doubt. I sense it.”

May did a quick rethink. If Will
sensed
it . . . well, maybe that changed things. Maybe not. Both empathy and verifier could confirm only that the mariner believed
what he was saying. Not that it was
true
.

Will brought her back to reality. “In any case, a walker has emerged from the pond and is . . .
drinking
it, I guess. Second-Best Sailor is making us wait until it has finished. He insists that it must come with us. He says that
the walker is a metamorph of the pond ecology.”

“I was not aware that an ecosystem could metamorphose.”

“Well . . . its dynamic state can bifurcate. It can switch to a new attractor, just as some organisms can. But enough theorizing;
that can wait. May, I want a suitable watertight compartment made ready, with a freshwater inlet valve capable of delivering
a hundred gallons per minute. Up to a total of fifty thousand gallons.”

May stopped arguing. It was wasting more time than it could save. “I imagine I can persuade Ship to cooperate. It should be
easy to build a consensus for something that simple. I will inquire.”

As it turned out, Ship was positively drooling at the prospect. Will’s recommendation alone seemed consensus enough, even
before May and Stun backed it up. They didn’t even have to approach the Cyldarians. She had never known the vessel to be so
amenable before. Was it keen to extend its ecological diversity? Who knew what went on in the mind of a mile-long spaceship?

Well, it would provide a new beast for the Neanderthals to master, she supposed. “Consider it done, Will. When should we expect
you to lift off?”

“Thirty minutes from now.” His confidence belied her intuition. She could almost hear the suppressed “provided all goes as
expected.” What he actually said was, “We must collect a supply of food for the pond, and bring that with it to Ship. The—the
insects are proving more difficult to capture than I had hoped.”

Insects? Despite the potential dangers that faced them, May could not help a throaty chuckle. A vivid picture had appeared
in her head. Very well. All they could do was wait, and watch, and react as best they could to any threat that materialized.

May had always been proud that Ship had no weapons. Now she was beginning to regret being so naive. They could do with some
heavy weaponry right now.

As it happened, the rescue went smoothly. Humoring Second-Best Sailor, who still insisted that the pond was a conscious intelligence
and the walker was its mobile form, they installed the walker in the chamber that had been prepared for it—basically, an empty
tank with a water supply. The mariner wanted a pet, they assumed. But it was a funny way to go about getting one.

The walker seemed confused until Second-Best Sailor poked a tentacle through a weak spot in its translucent skin, up on top
where no fluid would leak out, and engaged in what seemed to be a one-sided conversation. The polypoid was obviously insane,
and the “discussion” achieved precisely nothing. When Second-Best Sailor asked for the tank’s water valve to be opened, the
walker just sat there, immobile, and slowly dissolved. The creatures inside poured out and made themselves at home, so far
as that was possible in the artificial environment of a waterproof tank. And that was it.