She launched into complicated explanations, with terms and principles I could not follow. What was clear to me was QUENTIAM’s utter refusal of her reasoning. And in one sense, Its refusal was more reasonable than her wild statements. QUENTIAM wanted proof, physical or experimental or mathematical. She had none.
My nanomeds repaired my body and I stood. The meal created by the food synthesizer was the best I have ever tasted. I made Seliku eat. She didn’t want to. She sat in the front seat of the shuttle, no longer arguing with QUENTIAM, but instead asking for equations on the display, staring at them, asking QUENTIAM to perform various complex mathematical processes. I knew better than to interrupt for long. After she ate a few bites, I left them alone.
“The shuttle has reached the t-hole,” QUENTIAM said to me. “Where do you wish to go?”
I hesitated, for more reasons than one.
“Seliku… Sel?”
I don’t think she even heard me.
“Seliku!”
“What? I’m working!”
“We’re at the t-hole. Where are we going? And is it safe to go through? If your parallel universe bumps while we’re—”
“It’s not ‘my’ parallel universe.” Then her irritation vanished and she gave me her full attention. “I know what you’re asking, Alo. It might not be safe. But if this goes on, if I’m right about the multiverse, and if this series of bumps and spacetime reconfigurations doesn’t end soon, then nothing is going to be safe ever again.”
“You are talking nonsense,” QUENTIAM said.
I said, “Where do you need to go to make this… your theory known? To warn everyone?”
As soon as I said it, I knew how stupid it was. The way to warn everyone, the way to disseminate any kind of information throughout the galaxy, was through QUENTIAM. And QUENTIAM did not believe us.
I saw that Seliku was thinking the same thing. Slowly she said, “We should go back to Calyx, I guess. The Communion of Cosmology is there. It’s something, anyway.”
“QUENTIAM,” I said, “we’re going to Calyx.”
The shuttle slipped through the t-hole. I would have held my breath, but of course I couldn’t tell exactly when it happened until it was over and the stars changed configuration. Calyx rotated just below us. The city-continent came into view and the blue sea gave way to the riot of colors that was Bej and Camy’s flower art. For the first time since Seliku had first told me about Haradil, my eyes filled with tears. We are not easy criers.
“I want a new body,” Seliku said. “No matter what the risk. I won’t stay in this one a minival longer than I have to. Not one minival.”
Her tone was violent. I knew, without turning around, that she was crying, too.
The first thing I did on Calyx was get a new body from QUENTIAM. Burn the risk; I could not stay a minival longer in this ugly, ineffective shell whose every pore breathed ˄17843.
“You know it’s a risk,” Seliku said. She had barely paused long enough to clean herself before hurrying off to the Communion of Cosmologists. “If QUENTIAM takes a bump near here while you’re in the nanomachinery…”
“I’ll take the chance,” I said, and then added, “and so will you. You’ll make your initial impact on all those unsuspecting cosmologists and then just work on in upload state while QUENTIAM makes you a body.”
She did need to answer. “What body are you choosing?”
“The one we use in bond time.”
She nodded sadly and left, dragging her body through the gravity it had not been designed for.
On my way to a vat room, I took the short walk to the sea. A fresh wind stirred up small waves and blew toward me the fragrance of blossoms. So much color: magenta and cerulean, scarlet and damson, rose and crimson and delphinium. I rolled the words in my mind. This, then, was how my remote ancestors had lived, wondering if each moment might be their last. They must have had unimaginable courage. Either that or they were all crazy all the time.
I went to the vat room, climbed into an available vat, and uploaded into QUENTIAM.
*Are you sure, Akilo, that you don’t want implants in the new body?* It asked.
*I’m sure. No implants.*
*Is this because of the nonsense Seliku has been saying?*
*No implants, QUENTIAM. That’s my choice.*
*Yes, it is.*
The human mind does not do well in upload without visual simulations. I considered my standard sim, a forested bedroom copied from ˄894, and rejected it. Nor did I want our childhood home, or Calyx. Too many memories. Instead I created an austere room with a simple table, single chair and display screen. An open window looked out on a bare rocky plain. It was a room for thinking, for concentration.
Seliku would have known what to look for in QUENTIAM, what data or processes, to see if It was fundamentally different. I did not. Instead I asked questions, an endless stream of questions, about the multiverse and spacetime. Some of the answers I didn’t understand. Some seemed contradictory. Since I didn’t know whether this was inherent in the science or represented a flaw in QUENTIAM, I gave up on the whole thing, created a door in my room, and went for a walk on the soothingly blank plain. No pulpy green, no looming fronds, no treacherous sand. Firm ground underneath my “feet,” and a horizon I could scan in all directions.
The Arlbenists are wrong to think that filling the universe is a divine mission. Sometimes the best healer is emptiness.
I was examining some old, round rocks of my own imagining when QUENTIAM suddenly said, *Akilo. Magnitude one news message.*
*What?*
*The Mori Core has been destroyed.*
*Destroyed!*
*Yes. There was an explosion and the entire structure crumpled from within.*
*Do you… do you have visuals?*
*Yes.*
And then I was back in my austere room, watching the huge Mori Core cease to exist. The visuals were from the outside and slightly above, perhaps from a very low orbital. The Core, a huge precise structure of concentric rings, covered half a subcontinent.
The Mori, in direct opposition to the Arlbenists, have over time made themselves more and more biologically similar, while the Arlbenists became more and more diverse in order to seed strange worlds. Mori favor substantial, heavily furred biologicals and cold worlds. The Core stood frosted with icicles, while the winter gardens between the concentric rings bloomed with low, lacy plants in alabaster, ivory, silver, very pale blue. People with white fur walked in the gardens.
The next moment the entire huge structure was gone and a blinding flash of light filled my screen.
*Was the First Mori in residence?*
*Yes.*
I tried to sort out my feelings. The Mori had claimed more and more worlds, had imposed their own ideas of order and justice on them, had sent Haradil to ˄17843 for a monstrosity she did not commit. But the Mori were not fundamentally evil—and they were people.
*How many… how many sentients died?*
*19,865,842 humans, 15,980 androids, 598,654 enhanced dokins.*
I braced myself. *What caused the explosion, QUENTIAM?*
*Quark release seems to best fit the data.*
*Who used a quark-release device?*
*Unknown.*
*QUENTIAM—*
*Akilo, I cannot monitor humans without implants if there are no sensors in their immediate indoor environments. You and your sister-selves demonstrated that already. I don’t know what human had a quark-release device inside the Core, or why, or what motive existed for the sabotage. I have reported that to the new First Mori, on ˄10236.*
*Are you sure the… the saboteur was human?*
*Androids are not created to cause any damage without direct human instruction, and dokins do not have the intellectual capacity to detonate, let alone create, a quark-release device. Therefore, by simple logic, the destroyer was human.*
In upload—but not in merger—my thoughts are a separate program, hidden from QUENTIAM unless I choose to address It.
*Is my new body almost done?*
*No.*
*Get me a link to Seliku.*
She looked at me from the display screen, still in her ˄17843 body. She must have been standing in some great hall of the Communion of Cosmologists. Behind her rose tall pillars covered with flowers. “I heard, Akilo. And no, I can’t tell one way or the other, not for certain. There are a lot of people who hate the Mori, for religious or personal reasons. It could have been a human or… or not.”
“Your best guess.”
“Not.”
*That is nonsense.* QUENTIAM said. *Seliku, I wish you would stop disseminating this misinformation.*
In Seliku’s eyes, an exact image of the real Seliku, I saw fear.
QUENTIAM’s parameters protect you from any retaliation by It, I wanted to say to her. But she already knew that. And she knew, too, that Its parameters could be the next thing to change.
“Does the Communion have data on the explosion?” I asked her.
“Yes, we have all QUENTIAM’s measurements. We’re sorting the data now. Alo, come home.”
She knew I couldn’t hurry the creation of my body. Her plea had nothing to do with logic.
“I’m coming,” I said, “as fast as I can.”