Gilmore had known his deputy long enough to see it wasn’t just the usual contentment which all Edenists shared. “You have something?” he enquired.
“A voidhawk has just arrived from the Sinagra system. It was carrying an interesting recording.”
Hemmatu perked up. “From Valisk?” The independent habitat had supplied a large amount of very useful data on the behaviour of the possessed before it vanished.
“Yes, just before Rubra and Dariat took it away,” Euru said, smiling broadly. He instructed his bitek processor block to datavise the file to them.
The sensevise they received was a strange one, lacking the resolution normally associated with full nerve channel input. Conversions from Edenist habitat memories to a standard Adamist electronic format were notoriously quirky, but this was something else again. Nesting within its environment of pastel colours, tenuous scents, and mild tactorials, Gilmore tried bravely to avoid using the connotation: spectral. He failed dismally.
The memory was of Dariat, while he bobbed about on the surface of some icy water inside a dark polyp-walled tube. The cold was severe enough to penetrate even his energistic protection, judging by the way it was numbing his appropriated limbs, and making him shiver. A plump black woman clung to him, shaking violently inside her strange waistcoat of cushions.
Did you gain any impression of size?the kohistan consensus asked Dariat.
Not really, a universe is a universe. How big is this one?
Consensus received his quick recollection of the beyond. His soul had become a feeble flicker of identity adrift in a nowhere at one remove from reality. Nowhere full of similar souls; all of them with the same craving, the sensations available on the other side.
The memory of someone else’s memory: if the sensenviron of the Valisk starscraper waste tube was tenuous, this was as insubstantial as a nearly-forgotten dream. The beyond, as far as Dariat was concerned, lacked any physical sensation, all that betrayed its presence was a transparent tapestry of emotions. Anguish and yearning flooded through the realm Souls clustered round, desperately suckling at his memories for the illusion of physical sensation they contained.
Confusion and fear reigned in Dariat’s mind. He wanted to flee. He wanted to plunge into the glorious star of sensation burning so bright as Kiera and Stanyon forced open a path into Horgan’s body. The beyond withered behind him as he surged along the tear through the barrier between planes of existence.
And how do you control the energistic power?consensus asked.
Dariat gave them a visualization (perfectly clear this time) of desire overlaying actuality. More handsome features, thicker hair, brighter clothes. Like a hologram projection, but backed up by energy oozing out of the beyond to shore it up, providing solidity. Also, the destructive power, a mental thunderbolt, aimed and thrown amid boiling passion. The rush of energy from the beyond increasing a thousandfold, sizzling through the possessed body like an electric charge.
What about senses? This ESP faculty you have?the world around him altered, shifting to slippery shadows.
There were several more questions and observations on the nature of Dariat’s state, which the rebel possessor did his best to answer. In total, the recording amounted to over fifteen minutes.
“Wealth indeed,” Gilmore said when it ended. “This kind of clarification is just what we need to pursue a solution. It seemed to me as though Dariat actually had some freedom of movement in the beyond. To my mind, that implies physical dimensions.”
“A strange sort of space,” Nowak said. “From the way the souls were pressed close enough to overlap, there appeared to be very little of it. I won’t call it a place, but it’s definitely a unified area. It was almost a closed continuum, yet we know it exists in parallel to our own universe, so it must have infinite depth. That’s damn close to being paradoxical.” He shrugged, disturbed by his own reasoning.
“That perception ability Dariat demonstrated interests me,” Euru commented. “The effect is remarkably similar to a voidhawk’s mass perception sense.”
Gilmore looked across his desk to the tall Edenist, inviting him to continue.
“I’d say the possessed must be interpreting local energy resonances. Whatever type of energy they operate within, we know it pervades our universe, even if we can’t distinguish it ourselves yet.”
“If you’re right,” Nowak said, “that’s a further indication that our universe is conjunctive with this beyond realm, that there is no single interface point.”
“There has to be an identifiable connection,” Euru said. “Dariat was clearly aware of the lost souls while he occupied Horgan’s body. He could hear them—for want of a better phrase. They were pleading with the possessors the whole time, asking to be given bodies. Somewhere there is a connection, a conduit leading back there.”
Gilmore glanced round the desk to see if anyone else wanted to pick up on the point. They were all silent, concentrating on the implications Euru and Nowak raised. “I’ve been considering that we might need to approach this from a different angle,” he said. “After all, we’ve had a singular lack of success in trying to analyse the quantum signature of the effect, perhaps we should concentrate less on the exact nature of the beast, and more on what it does and implies.”
“In order to deal with it, we have to identify it,” Yusuf said.
“I’m not advocating a brute force and ignorance approach,” Gilmore replied. “But consider; when this crisis started, we believed we were dealing with an outbreak of some energy virus. I maintain that is essentially what we have here. Our souls are self-contained patterns capable of existence and travel outside the matrix of our bodies. Hemmatu, how would you say they are formed?”
The energy expert stroked his cheek with long fingers, pondering the question. “Yes, I think I see what you’re driving at. The beyond energy is apparently present in all matter, including cells, although the quantity involved must necessarily be extremely tenuous. Therefore as intelligence arises during life, it imprints itself into this energy somehow.”
“Exactly,” Gilmore said. “The thought patterns which arise in our neurone structure retain their cohesion once the brain dies. That is our soul. There’s nothing spiritual or religious about it, the entire concept is an entirely natural phenomenon, given the nature of the universe.”
“I’m not sure about denying religion,” Nowak said. “Being inescapably plugged into the universe at such a fundamental level seems somewhat spiritually impressive to me. Being at one with the cosmos, literally, makes us all part of God’s creation. Surely?”
Gilmore couldn’t quite work out if he was joking. A lot of physicists took to religion as they struggled with the unknowable boundaries of cosmology, almost as many as embraced atheism. “If we could just put that aside for the moment, please?”
Nowak grinned, waving a hand generously.
“What I’m getting at is that something is responsible for retaining a soul’s cohesion. Something glues those thoughts and memories together. When Syrinx interviewed Malva, she was told: ‘Life begets souls.’ That it is ‘the pattern which sentience and self awareness exerts on the energy within the biological body.’ ”