The Transmigration of Souls Read online

  Image of an old woman. Subaïda Rahman, life winding down, spending her last productive days among the moons of lovely yellow Saturn.

  Cold sense of despair.

  That dream is lost.

  And... this one?

  Unknown. Perhaps unknowable.

  Ling said, “How can you be sure? It’s been almost a century since the Americans first found the gate system. They haven’t been ‘rectified.’ Maybe if we just turn back...”

  Kincaid, quiet, reflective: “The rectification, a good word for it, is retroactive. The Jug will have pulled our whole timeline.”

  Ling, with obvious disbelief: “Then why were the Scavenger worlds left behind? Why are the gates themselves still in place?”

  Genda: “I don’t know.”

  Kincaid: “The Scavengers didn’t know either. They knew about the Jug itself from Colonial literature they’d read. We think they kept on pushing out into the gate system on the assumption that they’d simply misunderstood. After all, the Colonial worlds themselves are still intact, if a little beat up. The Jug seems like... well. Like eschatological literature. You know: like the last chapter of the Bible. I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am coming to punish every one for what he has done. That sort of thing.”

  Rahman heard Alireza whisper, “When the sky is rent asunder; when the stars scatter and the oceans roll together; when the graves are hurled about; each soul shall know what it has done, and what it has failed to do.”

  The others, fallen silent, were staring at him. Had he spoken in English or in Arabic? She couldn’t remember. Probably the latter. His English wasn’t really that good.

  “And yet,” said Kincaid, “I know the Space-Time Juggernaut is real.”

  “And I. “ Somber-faced Genda said, “Al-Infitahr 82:1. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this business.” He turned to back to the main conversation, and said, “We’re safe enough, here in the Pseudouniverse, whether inside the script manager, or back in the main thread. I don’t think it matters.”

  “Unless,” said Amaterasu, “the parent Creation that led to the Ohanaic subset is rectified.”

  Strange. I didn’t notice she’d moved away from Brucie, had come to sit by Genda’s side again. The little American was focused on the tall black thing now. Tarantellula? Quite focused, in fact. Surely he wasn’t thinking...

  Laing said, “No one knows what that is. Beyond the audience track, there may be no more than some prehyperspatial variation of Earth. As long as they keep their noses out of other people’s business and stay home where they belong, we’re safe enough.”

  Genda said, “I’ve had time to sample a number of the script manager’s alternate histories. In most timelines, Earthmen stay home.”

  Laing said, “In most timelines, Earthmen are extinct. Or never existed.”

  Rahman thought, Script manager. Interesting concept. How does he knows those timelines aren’t just more... stories?

  Kincaid said, “Scavengers never figured any of this out. They treated the Colonial gate system more or less like a set of interstellar transporters, even though they knew that wasn’t the case, knew they were loose in the Multiverse. That’s why it took us so long to figure out what was really going on. I think maybe the Scavengers thought if they stayed away from the probability manager, the Jug’d just let them be.”

  Genda stretched, leaning back in his chair, reaching out to put his arm around Amaterasu’s shoulders. “Come with us. My ship’s up in the hills. We can reach one of the deep space gates and get out of this skein entirely.”

  Alireza: “And go where?”

  He smiled. “I’ve been trying to figure that out for the last four hundred years. I’ve picked up a clue here and there, even some good ones right here on Arrasûn. I’ve got a good idea where to go next.”

  “And do what?”

  Rahman thought, Good question. Go off to God knows where and find... what? Why? Were just lost.

  Genda said, “I think maybe it’s the Space-Time Juggernaut we’re looking for. I’d like to go home again. Or at least to somewhere, somewhen I can pretend is home. Somewhere I can imagine is safe. Jug alone knows where that might be.”

  Alireza’s voice was oddly strained: “You sound like you’re talking about God.”

  Genda merely stared at him, not quite smiling.

  Is that what he thinks, then? Does he believe this... Jug is God? Cold thought. Could I believe that? I never really believed in God. Not in my heart of hearts. What if... just that. What if?

  Laing said, “I think you’re right. Let’s go.”

  Jensen: “Us? We can’t do that. We’re not real.”

  Laing said, “Sure we can. And, out of skein, we’re as real as any of these people.”

  “Well...” Red ant wifey tugging on his arm, going tingety-ting, Jensen making clangclang right back. He looked at Laing and said, “She doesn’t want me to leave. I think.”

  Laing smirked. “Bring her along, asshole.”

  A glance at his ant, a worried look. “But...”

  “Look, we’re damned well off-script now. Someone else is living our lives. We’re dead. If we don’t go with them, you go back to inactive routine status ‘til somebody needs parts for a hero. Think about it.”

  “Um. Well. You’ve got a point there.” And clingety-cling to the antwife.

  Rahman leaned forward slowly, feeling the intensity build. Going forward now, forward into... ? Not exactly the unknown. Forward into another dream? Subaïda Rahman, loose among all the worlds that could ever be? No so much like that other dream, a dream in which I ranged forward in the name of Humanity, but... she said, “How can you leave the story for which you were made? Characters in a book are... fixed.”

  Laing smiled at her. “In a book, yes, it would seem so. But Crimson Desert is... was an interactive drama. We’re not characters in just this one story, you know. There are others.”

  Jensen, wistful, “I wish I could remember them now.”

  Ling said, “I find myself imagining that I can somehow access memories from all the many histories in which my... total self has participated.”

  Total self. Rahman thought, In the fantasy concept of Many Worlds, variations on me are, even now, living out there lives. What would it be like to know all those lives at once?

  Laing said, “From within, the story of Crimson Desert is real; from without, merely a story, however mutable. On this skein, the characters may not leave the story, may not become real. But, when we pass through the stargate to another skein...”

  Kincaid laughed. “Somewhere, even now, there are eyes on a page.”

  Rahman thought, Somewhere, eyes on a page, a mind imagining that it will, like that, fall into the page, join the story, become one with... Cusp. Is that what they call it? With that mind’s imagining, a cusp is broken. And, on an infinite number of worlds, the reader falls into the story, is caught up in the storm. Which becomes real. As all things possible must, somewhere, be real.

  o0o

  The Kantholian flier, a rusty, shuddering old bucket flown by some crusty-looking red ants, dropped them at the head of a deep ravine back up in the mountains, left them atop the cliff and took off again while the pink sun was still high overhead, flying away into the cloudless, bright orange sky like an iridescent golden soap bubble making good its escape on dry winds scented with emery dust. Down below, nestled among the tumbled red stones, lay Genda’s starship, Baka-no-Koto.

  Shading her eyes, staring down at the silvery glitter of its hull, Rahman muttered, “A flying saucer. Why am I not surprised?” Because the public fantasies of the Americans are part of their technological history.

  Passiphaë Laing put one hand on her shoulder, the feel of those strong fingers making her jump slightly, making her skin crawl, and said, “So. I’m a little surprised, Mr. Genda. You said this was the ship you brought from your own timeline. Looks just like an Ohanaic Fleet scoutship to me.”

  Genda said, “Yes. Well. Not quit
e a coincidence, I suppose. Perhaps why the gates led me directly here. Turns out the technology of my twenty-fifth century led to the discovery of our version of your Type One hyperdrive. And, of course, when it comes to faster-than-light transport, function presupposes form.”

  Laing looked at him, frowning. “Maybe.”

  Alireza, thinking of the way high-performance supersonic fighters tended to resemble each other, said, “What does all that mean?”

  She said, “In the Ohanaic Pseudouniverse, on the skein containing the audience-track thread for Crimson Desert, at least, FTL travel was developed in the late twenty-first century, during the age of the Zarinist World State, more or less unexpectedly. The technology, now called a Type One hyperdrive, was kept a military secret. Still is. Later on we got into a scrap with another species, the Krü, who had their own hyperdrive, what we called Type Two. Beat them.”

  Rahman thought, Audience-track? Reminders, from one moment to the next...

  Genda smiled mirthlessly. “The Type One hyperdrive can hit metavelocities of around four hundred cee. Type Two is limited to something like ninety. Of course you beat them.”

  Rahman said, “Was that your ship we found crashed up in the mountains?”

  Pause for a heartbeat. “Yes. It had a Type Two drive.”

  Genda said, “There’s a Type Three, the human commercial drive developed at the dawn of the Terran Empire, not quite as good as Type Two, but something you can just buy, so long as you’ve got a good line of commercial credit. And we mustn’t forget the Bimus drive, better, by a tad, just maybe, than the Fleet’s Type One...”

  Jensen, arm around his wife’s shiny shoulders, still looking down at the ship, said, “Not to mention the Niijold drive, faster still, and whatever the Hell magic it is the Mydhra seem to be...”

  Laing, angry: “God damn it, we aren’t that far into the story yet! We’re at least a half-century from the first Niijold military encounter.”

  Rahman heard Kincaid mutter, “Jesus Christ...”

  o0o

  Later, four of them sat in Baka-no-Koto’s parlor-like control room, looking out through a transparent patch of hullmetal. Ling gazed out over a fall of sun-splashed flat rocks where the others languished over a late picnic lunch, lunch prepared, seemingly without labor, without effort at any rate, by Amaterasu, bustling about in the ship’s tiny, magical galley.

  Genda said, “We’re going to be in each other’s laps for the whole trip. Unpleasant possibly, twelve people crowding into a ship intended for three, built for five in a pinch.”

  Kincaid snorted. “I thought you Japanese liked togetherness.”

  “On your Earth, maybe. On mine, each terrestrial inhabitant is a wealthy person, living alone on his or her landed estate, surrounded only by mechanical servitors.”

  A sharp whiff of familiarity. Ling said, “Like in The Naked Sun?”

  The others looked at him, faces blank, then Laing said, “So. Where’s this special gate of yours sitting?”

  “There’s a very big tunable cargo gate about eight parsecs from here. I think it’s the one we want. Certainly indicated by the old Orovar records I came here to look at.”

  “Just floating in space, all by itself?”

  “In solitary galactic orbit, yes.”

  Kincaid: “And you can make this trip at four hundred times the speed of light? Eight parsecs seems like a long way.”

  Genda frowned. “This ship’s drive is not... as good as it could be. Three weeks, maybe. A little more.”

  Kincaid gestured out the window. “Your life support system up to that?”

  “Of course. I’m more concerned about the lavatory than anything else.”

  Ling, watching the way that strange little American, Brucie, was following the robot around down below, said, “Some of us will probably mind being in each other’s laps more than others.” A glance at frowning Lord Genda, thinking, Or maybe not.

  Kincaid said, “You keep telling us about a universe in which people fly around in various sorts of sluggish, hyperdriven starship. What are these gates for? Why aren’t they part of the story?”

  Predictable, thought Ling.

  Laing said, “They’re not part of the story, just part of the infrastructure.”

  Kincaid: “And what about on the audience track?”

  Laing: “I don’t know. I’m not part of the audience track.”

  Genda said, “There are no gates, of course. No way to get out there from in here.”

  Odd. Ling said, “Then how...”

  Genda: “Crimson Darkness is programmed into a hyperspatial information network that operates through something called a Level Six hyperdrive generator. It can’t move physical objects like the lower level drives, the audience track universe can’t muster the technology for that, but it can be used to transmit information. Their whole knowledge base is in here with us. I can get at that, even though I can’t get at them.”

  Then... “Then these gates are just packet switching cards in an old-fashioned wide-area network?”

  Laing said, “Sort of.”

  Sort of. Pulse of fear. “Then how do we know...” He suddenly felt very short of breath. No way in. No way out. “How do we know there’s any reality beyond this network?”

  Laing, grinning, “We don’t.” Something mean-spirited in her eyes.

  Kincaid said, “Some of us got in here from an external reality.”

  Ling said, “If that’s all the gates are, then it must be an ‘external reality’ that’s ... part of this network.” No. I do not wish to believe that I’m not real. I...

  Genda said, “That’s an easy inference to draw, professor. It’d simplify things no end. But the fact is, all quantum processes are link through the Toolbox to Platonic Reality. It’s why you have an experience you call consciousness.”

  Laing said, “And why I do, though I’m just a subroutine in a star-spanning information network.”

  Genda: “And so, when we go through the gate, we link to the other parts of the real gatenet, access the Multiverse, and what was real in here is also real out there.”

  o0o

  An hour, then a day, another day then another, while Baka-no-Koto spun through the dark between the stars, that classic dark of song and story, the stars still no more than jewels against the sky, unmoving. Unlike, most unlike all the old images...

  Robert Bruce Tanner Davidson the Third sat alone down in the hyperdrive bay, sitting stripped to a pair of black-and-gold paisley briefs, sweating into the drive bay’s hot, dry air, air like the inside of a kiln, looking out through the hull at the motionless sky.

  Sky with the power to entrance. The power to entrance me, magic me away from everything mundane, though I’ll soon be two hundred years old...

  He kept glancing back at the Type One hyperdrive, technically the Harveson Translight Overdrive Generator unit. That had the power to entrance as well. The power to call forth memory of emotion, of remembered fancy. Little gears and spinning disks, disks that cast forth rainbows, disks that sang as they turned to mist. Little masts projecting here and there, turning spindles bound together by silvery bits of whirling Möbius strip.

  More mist. A whiff of distant suns. Did Seacaptain Chandler tell us true? If I fall in there will I come back inside-out? Will my comrades have to shoot me out of my misery? Or will the ghostgirl do for me what she did for the German soldier’s glove?

  Too many close calls with death. A man my age should be long dead. Maybe I am dead. I don’t even remember the Korean War, though I was already a school-age boy, though my unremembered father died in that faraway land.

  Far away? He never knew. I never imagined. So many different lives. So many possible histories. If I hadn’t studied aerospace engineering, I’d never have grown rich building rocket engine components for the American Renaissance. And if I hadn’t grown rich, I wouldn’t have had the medical care I needed, two heart transplants, an artificial liver, three new sets of kidneys as I grew older and old
er still.

  I was 112 years old the day I sat with my shawl in my lap, on a balcony overlooking the garden of my country home, when that cute little nurse brought me the paper, Times was it? Little nursie shaking with excitement, and I read the headline, “Eternal Life.”

  I almost died laughing that day. Almost. She had to defib me twice before the medevac Moller came to cart me away for treatment... Outside, the stars were ruby and amber, sapphire and bright, bright gold.

  The magic hatch to the drive bay dilated open and an immense, angular black shape wriggled in, filling the room with the sound of breath, the faint scent of living flesh. Tarantellula said, “Wondered how you managed to disappear.”

  Brucie Big-Dick looked at her and smiled: “I never really enjoyed crowds.” She’d gotten out of her Marine combat fatigues, was wearing what looked like a pair of white silk briefs and some kind of thin halter-top. Black breasts concealed there? Hard to tell. The girlclothes looked incongruous on her. Like Godzilla dressed in a pink lace teddy. King Kong in a bustier.

  But it’s not hot back in the crew cabin, no matter how many people are breathing up the air. Why is she dressed down? Silence between them for a moment, white eyes so featureless you couldn’t tell... Christ. Is she looking at my crotch? No. I’m just imagining things.

  He said, “Why’d you do that to yourself?”

  Tarantellula stared, reached up and ran one spidery hand over her face, feeling its hard, rough texture, the pores and granules of an obviously artificial skin. “It’s not the only thing I’ve been. Why’d you do that to yourself?” Gesturing at the front of his shorts.

  He smiled, shrugged. It was down there, all right, waiting like a coiled-up snake. Or maybe like an uncooked kielbasa? He said, “When I was a boy, all I ever wanted was a big dick, you know? Something to show off in phys-ed class, when we went to the showers.”

  White eyes looking at him, unreadable.

  He said, “Muscles. Money. Power. Enough brains and determination, you can get all that. All I ever wanted was a big dick. One day I got rich enough to buy one.”