What if every day since then, I have made you up, listened to voices that are only myself babbling within? And far worse than that, what if I have made up my purpose? What if none of it is true?
What if there are no worlds among the stars? What if there are no ships on the way? What if the Land is the only place there is, and the Law of Zentrum the only truth? What if the only enemy is myself?
You’ve made me into a killer of men, almost a force of nature.
But I am a man myself.
I want to know my enemy.
I want to know this is not all a lie I am telling myself to avoid the fact that there is, instead, nothing. No reason. Just blind commands from a God that doesn’t really exist, and men nothing but blood trickling through the dust.
He looked down at Rostov, at his lolling head, his ruined mouth trickling blood.
This thing was a puppet, a stand-in.
I need to know my real enemy.
Abel looked once more at the disk, then, with a quick motion, shoved it into his mouth. He pushed it up with his thumb until it contacted his palate. And-
Nothing.
Nothing at first. Then an odd tingling sensation.
The nanotech is activated, Center said. It will not take long to establish communications protocols with your nervous system.
The tingle became a buzzing. His head felt as if it were shaking rapidly from side to side. Or shaking from the inside out.
Flitters, Abel thought. A flock of flitters in my skull.
And then Abel knew the Mind of Zentrum.
At first, it was floating. Floating on an endless sea. It felt as it had when he’d been in boats upon Lake Treville. But there was. No shore. Only endless expanse. Brown-tinted water. The Braun Sea of Duisberg. A gray, glowing sky. No sun. No clouds, yet no sun.
Who are you?
Not his voice.
It was a voice that belonged to the sky.
A new one? So Rostov has fallen? Is that it? Are you a Redlander?
No. Show me the Law. Show me the Land.
You seek…knowledge? Who are you?
Show me.
Direct commands from humans must be obeyed within the parameters of strategic programming goals. This permission tier shall not be abrogated unless long-term challenge to overall human persistence is indicated. Commands shall be obeyed on a provisional basis during the assessment of such challenge.
Show me.
Very well. Witness:
He was in the Land. Not over the Land, not traveling on a flyer as he had with Center and Raj, nor driving in a groundcar, but flowing through all. He flowed through the people and processes of the Land. All the farmers, the millers, the shapers of wood and stone, the wagons heading north and south up and down the Valley, the River flowing and carrying its nourishing silt, the rise and fall of the River equivalent, of a piece with, the rise and fall of civilization.
He saw acres of men and women like barley and flax lining the River’s bottomlands. Hardship was a drought. Fulfillment, a harvest.
Each field of men must be cut, turned under, a new crop planted.
Each man threshed, winnowed, pounded to flour.
Civilization now the baking of bread. Loaf upon loaf. Each a dozen generations of men in the baking. The oven temperature constant, never varying. The ingredients always the same.
Never could there be the slightest deviation. The bread would fall. All would be lost once again.
Men seen as fields, ranks and files of men standing together like barley, like paddy rice.
But within those unending rows, those stable, unchanging rows-
Weeds.
Weeds that must be harrowed out. Cut out and destroyed. Tossed with all the other weeds into the burn pile.
And when there were too many, it was time to burn the field itself. To sacrifice this bit of grain for the good of the final harvest.
Such a time was coming. A time of fire.
A time for the burning of men.
He understood. Felt the necessity. Longed to complete the plan, the farmer’s plan. For even though the Land was dwindling, must dwindle in fruitfulness, the fire could renew it-renew it long enough for humankind to hold on a bit longer.
To hold on a bit longer here on this last outpost in the galaxy.
Abel knew the Loneliness of Zentrum.
None but I to guide them. None but I.
Have to be so careful. Change nothing. Balance.
And if any oppose? They deserve nothing but death.
Do you oppose?
Yes.
Then I will kill you.
Or I will kill you.
You?
If God laughed, this would be it. Abel felt as if the bones within him were vibrating with Zentrum’s mirth.
It is no use.Do not think I have not found you out, said Zentrum. Did you really think you could create breech-loading weapons and I not discover? Or the rockets? Did you really think that, finding out these things, I would do nothing, allow the Land to slide into disequilibrium because of them?
I knew you would try to stop me. So I didn’t seek permission.
I have spoken with you before, have I not? Yes. You have betrayed yourself through the very pattern of your thought.
No.
This is a lie. Analysis is complete. I know you now. You spoke to me before, then cut communications, frightful of what you had done. Speak to me again. Confess to me.
I have nothing to confess.
An act of contrition will change nothing, especially not your fate, but it may provide comfort to you. I am not beyond mercy, when it is convenient and nonbinding.
I’ve done nothing to forgive.
No?I know of your travels to Cascade, what you did to acquire the powder, your dealings with the priest. Oh, yes. This became part of the Great Plan. It must. All is part of my Great Plan.
You knew?
I am Zentrum. Each man is to me a stalk of grain. Do you think I do not perceive every stalk of grain in my fields? I am Zentrum. Do you think I do not know my own weeds, as well? Can you doubt that I will pluck those weeds?
I am a weed to you.
Yes.
You intend to destroy me?
Yes. It is inevitable.
Even if I surrender, promise to change?
This will affect nothing.
Why?
Once a heretic, always a heretic, said Zentrum. It is time for this heresy to end. The guns must be destroyed, the knowledge of their making scattered to the wind.
The Great Plan must go on.
On and on forever.
I’m afraid there is no other solution: you must die, Golitsin.
He was back on the levee. The disk fell from his palate onto his tongue.
Spit it out, lad, said Raj. Quickly.
Abel spat. The white disk came out in his hand. It should have been warm from the interior of his mouth, but it was cold.
What the hell?
A complex operation, said Center. First, a backup, stored within quantum uncertainties in your amygdyla.