“Definitely,” he answered, turning his back on her and everything she stood for. “Like your mother, I’m just some farmer who used to be somebody.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
in which an act of kindness takes flower
Conrad would have cause to regret those words, for as a king he’d’ve been entitled to throw these smug missionaries out on their collective ear. As it was, they dealt with the Furies instead, and with the Grand Kabinet of Viense, and in short order they had conspired together to launch the largest restoration project in history.
Murdered Earth was, apparently, an affront to all humanity, for the Biarchists promised, at their own expense and under their own supervision, to place a shell around it which closely mimicked the original surface to a depth of fifty kilometers. Following this, they contemplated the resurrection of Mars, and possibly Venus as well. And resurrection was the proper word, for they planned to populate these worlds with simulacra of their departed residents—most especially the famous ones.
“It’s nothing personal,” Tilly Nichols insisted, in response to Radmer’s outrage. Was Earth to be an amusement park, then? A monument to its former self, incapable of growing beyond the fairy tales that had accreted around it like orbiting debris?
“Not at all,” Tilly said, looking and sounding politely amused. “We expect it to be as different from the original as you are from the dapper fellow my mother once courted. In your experience, eternal life and eternal death are the only options. You admit no shades of gray.”
“But some people will remain dead,” he accused. “Most, in fact. The vast majority.”
To which she simply shrugged. “Our powers are limited. And the ones who do live will be reincarnations, yes. Not literal resurrections, not faxed copies. But also not witless and alone, like the natural-born, with no past lives to draw upon, no wisdom to inform their childhoods… I don’t know what you’re so offended about, truly; in Barnard your children were born as functional adults!”
“That also offended me.”
“Oh. Well. We’ll try to be conscious of societal norms here, to avoid such offenses wherever possible.”
“How kind of you.”
Unperturbed, she said, “To answer your question, Mr. Radmer, we start with celebrities because the reincarnation process is more accurate the more we know about a person. And through the gratings and lenses of their memory we can sift the quantum traces of those we know less well. Slowly but surely, Earth will give up her secrets.”
And it was with precisely these sentiments that they exhumed the grave of Bruno de Towaji, and scanned his rotting carcass and the many electromagnetic ghosts it had left behind. De Towaji had gotten around in his long life; there were imprints of him all over the ruins of Sol system.
And of Tamra, who’d left nearly as many writings behind, and a great many more recorded images. “The lift of an arm,” said Tilly, “speaks volumes about the mind that controls it.”
Alas, through Tilly’s eyes he could see that it was true. Poor Tamra. To be a literal puppet for these oversweet invaders, lifting her arms for their amusement!
“I’d love to scan you as well,” she told Conrad on another occasion. “You knew the king and queen personally; you knew the age. Living brains make questionable witnesses when it comes to detail, but for recalling the scope and flavor of a bygone era, nothing else really quite compares.”
But Conrad had no desire to meet—much less help create!—the Biarchy’s caricatures of his dead king and queen. And as for the Xmary they would surely pluck from his dreams… God, the notion was seductive. Fragments of a woman half-remembered, whom he’d loved fiercely but never wholly known, for who could know the mind of another? Still less a woman! For all he knew, she would be as monstrous as the ghost of Bascal in a robot body. And know it! And resent it!
“Thank you, no,” he said to Tilly. “My wife would kill me.”
Finally, though, during his fiftieth or two hundredth argument with this alien woman, relations began to shift. They were in her quarters near the top of the starship, seated on opposite sides of a dining table that had risen up from the deck, overflowing with faxed meats and cheeses, steaming flavor-designer breads and lightly chilled fruits. The outer bulkhead had gone transparent, and the views of Timoch and the ocean behind it were pleasing.
They could have met anywhere; it was an act of kindness—of respect—for her to invite him specifically here. She wasn’t even playing him, particularly—just being thoughtful. And it came to him suddenly, that she was doing exactly the same thing on a global scale: simply extracting and fulfilling the most deeply held wishes of Lune. Was it her fault she was rich? Had guarded generosity become a sin? Her resources seemed to dwarf even those of the Queendom at its peak, and there was no wickedness in her, nor foolishness.
Whether Conrad liked it or not, the people of this world were indeed choosing their own destiny. They wanted an end to death and politics, and who could begrudge them that age-old impossible dream? More than that, they wanted the stars, as Conrad had once wanted them. When had he shriveled into this ridiculous old fuddy-duddy, with nothing to do but stand in their way? His time was past. How lucky they were not to have him for their king!
But even this sentiment brought only kind laughter when he shared it with Tilly.
“You love these people, Mr. Radmer. It’s evident in everything you do.”
“Call me Conrad.”
“All right, I will. Thank you.”
“You’re genuinely welcome.” But then a black thought overtook him, and slowly became a certainty. “You beamed signals at this world. You tried to activate our wellstone systems remotely. Nineteen years ago, was it? Maybe twenty?”
“We tried. It didn’t work,” she said, shrugging.
“It did,” he told her. “My God. The haunted towers of Imbria. A fax machine briefly awakening in its sandy grave. The finger of God, commanding a robot to waken. It was you!”
“I… don’t understand.”
“You stirred up old horrors, Ms. Nichols. You’re responsible for the robot army that nearly destroyed this world! Bruno had the sense to kill his monstrous child, millennia ago, but you brought it back!”
That seemed to rock her. “We what? Conrad, in all our encounters we’ve done our level best to avoid damage—”
“And a splendid job you’ve made of it!” he spat, trying to sound venomous. “Only two of four nations destroyed, a fifth of the world’s population killed…” He wanted to unload the full sedition act on her, but he found his heart wasn’t in it. His voice trailed away.
Because how could they know? How could they imagine their well-intended fumbling might kick loose such an avalanche? That there’d been a hill of loose scree waiting to collapse was no fault of theirs, and if a beggar should choke on a gift of bread, did that lessen the kindness of the gesture?
“If what you say is true,” she answered guardedly, “then reparations are in order.”
“How?” he demanded, briefly flaring once more. “You’re already giving this world everything it ever dreamed of. Its heroes, its riches, its dead… Your apology—if I dare call it that—is lost in the noise of your… overwhelming generosity…”
He stopped there, for he was spouting nonsense: they had been so good that they couldn’t do better? And that was a bad thing?
In spite of everything, the two of them looked at each other and burst out laughing. They laughed until the tears streamed down their cheeks, and then Conrad laughed some more, and wept, and felt an unfamiliar ache at the corners of his mouth. A grin that refused to be wiped away by his anger, no matter how hard he tried.