A dark mass slowly shrugged its way out of the subsiding froth of bubbles. It was a metallic sphere with boxes and cylinders jutting out at odd angles. Streaks of molten nulltherm insulation were running down its sides, mingling with the wreath of ectoplasm that drooled away in slippery ribbons.
“What the fuck is that?” Quinn demanded.
Explosive bolts cracked loudly, and a circular hatch flew away from the sphere. A fat man in a grubby toga jumped down, splashing into the ectoplasm pool without any noticeable discomfort.
Dariat looked round at his surroundings with considerable interest. “Bad timing?” he asked.
Tolton walked straight through the escape pod’s walls. He stood in the ectoplasm and let out a grateful sigh. Fletcher watched in fascination as the ectoplasm flowed up him, turning the ghost solid. He seemed so much more vital than any of the other entities struggling to fruit from the ectoplasm.
Powel Manani’s deep laugh rocked the air. “These are your terrifying warriors?” he mocked.
Quinn yelled in fury and sent a white fireball ripping down at the derisive Ivet supervisor. A couple of centimetres from Powel it fractured into screeching webs of energy that never quite managed to touch him. The ectoplasm heaved enthusiastically as the crackling tips plunged into it.
A long frond of the stuff leapt up to whip round Powel’s chest. Thicker, blunt tendrils were embracing his legs, knitting together. They began to pull him downwards. “How do we kill this stuff?” he shouted at Dariat. It had taken a worrying amount of effort to deflect Quinn’s firebolt; his strength was draining away rapidly.
“Fire,” Dariat called back. “Real fire works against them.” Something was lumbering up out of the pool next to Tolton, a creature five times his size, seven limbs unfolding from its flanks. He looked at Dariat, and the two of them linked hands. They sent a single bolt of white fire streaking into the base of the escape pod. The last two solid rocket motors ignited.
The events into which Joshua plunged had a form similar to a sensevise. They were real enough as they unravelled around him, but he witnessed them all simultaneously. At the same time, he could stand back and evaluate what was happening. That wasn’t an ability the human mind could perform.
“You are using my thought processing ability,” the singularity informed him.
“Then I’m no longer human. It will be you who makes the decision.”
“The essence of what you are remains unchanged. I have simply expanded your mental capacity. Consider this a supercompressed history didactic.”
So Joshua stood at Powel Manani’s side on Lalonde as Quinn Dexter performed the sacrifice and the Ly-cilph opened a gateway into the beyond, allowing the first souls to pour through. The possessed multiplied their numbers and spread down the Juliffe. He watched Warlow talking to Quinn Dexter at Durringham spaceport and accept the payment for Lady Mac to carry him to Norfolk.
Ralph Hiltch took flight to Ombey and unleashed the possession of Mortonridge. The liberation followed on, with Ketton island vanishing into another realm.
“Are you the instrument that transferred the crystal entities there?” Joshua asked.
“No. That was another similar to myself. I am aware of several within this universe, though all are in superclusters very distant from here.”
Valisk and its descent into the melange. Pernik. Nyvan. Koblat. Jesup. Kulu. Oshanko. Norfolk. Trafalgar. New California. André Duchamp. Meyer. Erick Thakara. Jed Hinton. Other places, worlds and asteroids and ships and people; their lives wound together into a cohesive whole. Jay Hilton’s unauthorised escape to the Kiint home system. Their remarkable arc of planets, housing the retired observers who gathered in front of Tracy’s television, dunking chocolate biscuits into their tea as they watched the human race falling apart.
“Dick Keaton,” Joshua said with mild jubilation. “I knew there was something odd about him.”
“The Kiint use many specially bred observers to gather data on different species,” the singularity said. “For all their scientific prowess, they do not have my perceptive faculty. Corpus still utilises technology to amass its information. Such methods can hardly be absolute.”
“Did they find you?”
“Yes. I could do nothing for them, and told them so. One day they will be able to build my like by themselves. Not for some time, though. There is no need. They have achieved an admirable harmony with the universe.”
“Yeah, so they keep telling us.”
“Not to taunt you. They are not a malicious species.”
“Can you show me the beyond as well?” Joshua asked. “Can you tell me how to travel through it successfully like they do?”
“It has no distance,” the singularity said. “It only has time. That is the direction in which you must travel.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This universe and all it is connected with will come to an end. Entropy carries us towards the inevitable omega point, that is why entropy exists. What is to be born next cannot be known until then. This is the time when the pattern of that which replaces it will be created, a pattern which will emerge out of mind, the collective experience of all who have lived. That is where souls go, their transcendence brings all that they are together into a single act of creation.”
“Then why do they get stuck in the beyond?”
“Because that is where they want to be; like the ghosts wedded to the place of their anguish, they refuse to discard the part of their life which is over. They are afraid, Joshua. From the beyond they can still see the universe they have left behind. All they have known, the condition that they were, everyone they have loved, is still obtainable, so very very close to them. They fear to leave that for the unknown future.”
“All of us are frightened of the future. That’s human nature.”
“But some of you venture into it with confidence. That’s why you are here today, Joshua, that’s why you found me. You believed in the future. You believed in yourself. That is the most precious possession any human can ever own.”
“That’s it? That’s all there ever was? Faith in yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Then why in God’s name didn’t the Kiint tell us that? You said they weren’t malicious. What possible reason can they have for denying us that? A few simple words.”
“Because you have to implement that knowledge as an entire species. How you do that is your own decision.”
“It’s a bloody simple decision. You just tell them.”
“Telling someone not to be afraid is one thing. To have them believe it at an instinctive level is quite another. In order not to be afraid of the beyond you must either understand its purpose, or have the naked conviction to move on once you encounter it. How many of your race are uneducated, Joshua? I don’t mean those of you alive now, I mean throughout history. How many have lived unfulfilled lives? How many have died in infancy or in profound ignorance? You don’t have to tell the rich and the educated, the privileged, they are the ones who will begin the great journey through the beyond of their own accord. It is the others you must convince, the ignorant masses, yet paradoxically, they are the ones hardest for you to reach. Theirs are the minds which, thanks to circumstance, have set and hardened against new concepts and ideas from an early age.”
“But they can still be taught. They can learn to believe in themselves, everyone can. It’s never too late for that.”
“You speak of high idealism, but still you have to implement your ideals in the real, practical world. How will you reach these people? Who will pay to provide every one of them with a personal tutor, a guru who will advance their inner spirit?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. How did other races do it?”
“They developed socially.”
“The Laymil didn’t, they committed suicide.”