The Ambassador came to a halt as something thudded and clanged on the far side of the airlock door.
‘And that’s what the Sandoz encountered inside the Network? The Inimicals?’
‘Several Sandoz Clans engaged in routine explorations of the deep future via the Network disappeared without trace. We know with great certainty that the Inimicals were responsible. Should they manage to trace the route of Cheng’s expeditions back to the Thorne system, we will all have a great deal more to worry about than just the destruction of Benares – such as the survival of our species.’
‘But you must have told Cheng all this!’
‘Oh, we have, Mr Gabion,’ the Ambassador replied, a trace of wistfulness in his voice. ‘Despite the abundance of evidence, he and his advisors have consistently ignored all of our warnings.’
‘And that’s why you threatened war?’
‘We have no objections to the Tian Di exploring the Founder Network,’ said the Ambassador, ‘so long as it is conducted with an appreciation of the considerable dangers involved. Cheng initially agreed to halt any further explorations for the duration of our negotiations with him, but he constantly reneges or ignores every agreement we have made. We now believe he has no intention of honouring any of our demands.’
‘But why would he do that? Why take such a huge risk with all our lives?’
‘A question that has been on our minds from the beginning, Mr Gabion, but the information you have brought us may answer that question. If Tian Di agents truly have attempted to retrieve artefacts from Darwin – and there is strong circumstantial evidence to support that conjecture – it may be that Cheng has simply been stalling for time until he can acquire those artefacts. It adds fuel to our growing conviction that neither Cheng nor his closest advisors are wholly sane.’
‘So what will you do now?’
‘Since he is apparently unprepared or unwilling to deal with the threat, we will have to deal with it for him, and either seal or destroy the Thorne gate. It is likely this will provoke violent action from the Sandoz, and become a full-fledged conflict throughout the Tian Di. We are extremely well prepared, however, for the coming conflict. Now, Mr Gabion,’ he said, again reaching out with his ungloved hand. ‘Time is running short.’
Luc hesitated for a moment, then reached out and gripped the Ambassador’s hand.
In a moment, the Sequoia slipped away.
He saw ships like shards of black ice tear the underlying structure of space apart, triggering the death of a star in a burst of blazing energy. He realized he was witnessing a battle between evenly balanced Inimical and Coalition forces, each side equipped with weapons the nature of which neither truly comprehended.
You see? said the Ambassador, from somewhere far away.
He remembered that once his name had been only Luc Gabion, but now he had a billion names and faces, scattered across multiple worlds, and in the cold, dark depths between stars.
Simultaneous with witnessing this battle, he stood in a busy street and watched figures – some more or less human in appearance, some multi-limbed and bizarrely alien – engage in what might have been a dance, or a ritual, or something else entirely, their emotions and thoughts tumbling around and through him.
He stood on the bottom of an ocean in a body constructed of plastic and metal, leaning in close to observe tiny, finger-like polyps that populated the edges of a volcanic fissure.
There were other eyes and other faces, some on the surfaces of worlds, and others floating above the roiling surfaces of stars, naked to the vacuum.
He was anyone and anything he chose to be.
It was, he thought, like being God.
But it was too much. Luc’s senses reeled under the assault of so many crowded perspectives and tumbling, chaotic thoughts.
Then, finally, he was all alone once more, and back in his own skull – all except for Antonov, somewhere in the depths of his thoughts, grinning toothily through a bushy black beard.
He opened his eyes to find he had folded his body into a ball next to the now open airlock door, his skin bright with sweat. Ambassador Sachs knelt on one knee by his side.
‘Now do you see?’ said Sachs. ‘Some of those weapons you saw being used were first developed so that we might defend ourselves against the Inimicals. We fought battles that destroyed entire star systems, but we did what we had to do because it was a choice between survival and extinction. But when it comes to a fight between the Tian Di and the Coalition, believe us when we say it is not a war we could possibly lose. Long ago, we seeded weapons fabricants in the outer reaches of several Tian Di systems, including this one, against the possibility that a day such as this might come.’
‘You’re not human,’ Luc gasped, the words rasping in his throat. ‘Not any more.’
‘We in the Coalition prefer to think we are more human,’ the Ambassador observed. ‘But perhaps you now more clearly understand the threat we all face, and the reason for our actions.’
‘I could be talking to anyone right now,’ said Luc. ‘There is no one, single Ambassador, is there?’
He’d seen how the Coalition’s citizens leapt from body to body at will, instantaneously, across continents and even light-years, using instantaneous communications technology, a constant shunting of encoded consciousnesses in and out of the lattices filling their skulls. Notions of privacy, as they were understood within the Tian Di, simply did not, could not exist for them. Bodies were there to be shared, rather than owned. A single mind might find itself in a dozen different bodies in the space of a week, a day, or an hour; a constant flow of conscious, living data across a civilization that now itself encompassed dozens of star systems.
In that brief moment of contact with the Ambassador, Luc had seen how a single mind could split itself into a dozen copies, each occupying a separate body simultaneously, before later reintegrating itself into a single consciousness. It was wonderful and terrifying in equal measure, and Luc wasn’t sure he could experience it all again without going insane.
‘We understand how all this must frighten you,’ said the Ambassador. ‘You think you would lose your individuality if you came to live amongst us. That’s not the case: the Coalition embraces change, since to become static is to stagnate and die. By contrast, very little in the Tian Di has changed in centuries. Your ruling Council live artificially extended lives, but they do not live well. You’ve seen how they have sunk into a mire of depredation and excess, down on that miserable sandpit of a world they call home. They keep life- and intelligence-boosting technology from the rest of you and have the audacity to claim it’s for your own good. Tell us honestly,’ Sachs continued, ‘after everything you’ve seen, who, may we ask, is more human? Men and women like Cripps and de Almeida, or what you’ve seen of the Coalition?’
Luc blinked sweat out of his eyes. ‘Was it you I spoke to when I last came here? Or was there someone else using that body?’
‘There are up to thirty agents using this body at different times,’ the Ambassador replied. ‘But the individual mind you are addressing just now is the same one that you spoke with then.’