Mane pondered. “But what is there to look for?”
“In fact there is a valid goal,” Babo said carefully.
The Astrologers, he told Manekato, believed that the universe — any given universe — was a fundamentally comprehensible system. If a system was comprehensible, then an entity must exist that could comprehend it. Therefore an entity must exist that could comprehend the entire universe, arbitrarily well or rather She must exist, as Babo put it.
“The God of the Manifold,” Manekato said dryly.
The catch was that there was a manifold of possible universes, of which this was only one. So She may not exist in this universe.
Anyhow, it — She — was to be the ultimate goal of the Daemons” quest.
“Of course,” Babo said, “She may actually be an expression of the manifold itself — or perhaps the manifold itself, the greater structure of reality strands, is itself self-referential, in some sense conscious. Or perhaps the manifold is itself merely one thread in a greater tapestry—”
“A manifold of manifolds.”
“And perhaps there is a further recursion of structure, no end to the hierarchies of life and mind, which—”
Mane held up her hands. “If we find Her: what will we ask Her?”
Babo picked his nose thoughtfully. “I asked Em-ma that. She said, Ask Her if She knows what the hell is going on.”
Mane touched her brother’s head. “Then that is what we will ask. Come, brother; we have much to do.”
Hand in hand, the two of them loped towards the forest, seeking shade and food.
Shadow:
Shadow found a scrap of meat.
It was on the ground, under a fig leaf, where she had been looking for fruit. It was just a scrap, half-chewed, not much more than a bit of gristle. Shadow scrabbled it up off the floor. Her fingers were stiff now, her vision poor, and she had trouble making her hands do what she wanted them to do.
She sat on the ground and chewed the gristle, sucking away the dust and the tang of somebody else’s saliva. The meat was well-chewed. There was barely any flavour, any blood; she couldn’t even tell what animal it had come from. But it was tough, and the way it scraped between her teeth made her ache with hunger. She swallowed it only when she had reduced it to a shred of fibre, too ragged to hold or gnaw.
She had not eaten meat for a long, long time: not yesterday, not the days she remembered in vivid, non-chronological, blood-soaked glimpses, not as far back as she could remember.
…She became aware of their scent first. The scent of fur, musk, blood. Then their shadows.
All around her.
They had come on her silently. But they had been coming for her, one way or another, since the day when she had failed to kill the Nutcracker infant, in that blinding flash of light. She tried to run, willing all her strength into legs that had once been so strong. But her life had been very hard, and she was slow.
Young hands grabbed her legs. She fell face-first into the dirt.
She twisted, trying to get on her back. But those strong hands kept a grip of her ankle. Her grimace of hatred and defiance turned to a yell of pain, as bones snapped.
They fell on her. Both her legs were held. Somebody sat on her head, and dark stinking fur pushed into her mouth and nose and eyes. She flailed and got one blow on hard flesh. But then her arms were pinned down. She couldn’t see who they were.
The blows began to fall. Kicks, stamps, jumps, punches. Bodies hurling themselves onto her. She glimpsed others running around the main group of assailants, landing kicks and blows when the chance came. It was a bedlam, of screams, pain, motion. Still she couldn’t make out their faces.
Thumbs pressing into her eyes. Strong hands working at one of her arms, twisting. Bright red pain in her shoulder and elbow, the crunch of ligament and bone.
Termite!… But her mother was long dead, of course.
The pain lessened. With relief, she fell into darkness.
Emma Stoney:
You know, I think I always knew we couldn’t manage to live together. But I think I always dreamed we would get to die together.
But it’s been quite a ride. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, Malenfant. For all the worlds.
Of course there is another possibility. Maybe I should go with the Daemons, off into the manifold. If this really is a manifold of infinite universes, anything is possible. No, strike that — anything that can happen will happen, someplace.
And so there must be one reality where you’re waiting for me. There must be. A whole universe, just for us. Kind of romantic, don’t you think?…
I’m still blown away by what I’ve learned of the Old Ones.
The Old Ones created infinite possibility — infinite opportunities for life, for mind. What higher mission could there be? And what really overwhelms me is that they may have been us. Or at least humans from some variant of our future history. Us: we did this. Think of that.
You’d have loved it, Malenfant. But of course, maybe you already know about it all.
To redesign an infinite ensemble of universes: what terrible responsibility, what arrogance… Maybe they really were us. It sounds just the kind of thing your average Homo sap would do for a dare.
An H. sap like Reid Malenfant.
Is it all your fault? Malenfant, what did you do, out there in the forest of realities?
Time to go. Goodbye, Malenfant, goodbye.
Maxie:
The people walk across the grass. Maxie’s legs are walking. He is following Fire.
The sky is blue. The grass is sparse, yellow. The ground is red under the grass. The people are slim black forms scattered on red-green.
The people call to each other.
“Berry? Sky! Berry!”
“Sky, Sky, here!”
The sun is high. There are only people on the grass. The cats sleep when the sun is high. The hyenas sleep. The Nutcracker-men and the Elf-men sleep in their trees. Everybody sleeps except the Running-folk. Maxie knows this without thinking.
There is a blue light, low in the sky.
Maxie looks at the blue light. The blue light is new. The blue light is still. It watches him. It is a bat. Or an eye.
Maxie grins. He cares nothing for the blue light.
He walks on, across the hot crimson dust.