Then officials on the stage began to speak, words Mara had already heard many times in her viewings. But the speeches were, for Mara on this recording, obscured by the muttering of the assassin, close to the automated camera-microphone that happened to be following her: The Wigner paradox is inescapable. The chains of unresolved quantum states will build on and on, growing like vines, extending into the future, until the observations of the final cosmos-spanning minds rest on aeons-thick layers of history, studded with the fossils of ancient events . . .
She was unprepossessing, Mara thought. Unremarkable, in a shabby green worker’s uniform of the kind that was common in Mellborn now, a young woman so sallow and fleshless it was hard to tell her age – perhaps twenty, not more than twenty-five. But her head was shaven. Even her eyebrows were gone, Mara saw. And now, as seen from the viewpoints of those around her, she began to move through the crowd, unremarked, towards the stage.
At last life will cover the universe, still building the regressing chains of quantum functions. Consciousness must exist as long as the cosmos itself – for without observation there can be no actualisation, no existence – and, further, consciousness must become coextensive with the cosmos, in order that all events may be observed. The chains of quantum functions will finally merge at the last boundary to the universe: at timelike infinity . . .
People were seeing her without watching her, Mara realised, dismissing her mad rambling, without thinking she was any kind of threat. Perhaps they saw no need to fear. Perhaps those admitted to this ceremony had already been screened for security. And perhaps a worker like this, mixed up, talking to herself, wasn’t a remarkable sight in the new, highly pressurised labour camps of the Qax.
But now, as she neared the stage – Mara glimpsed Juq up there still, golden hair shining, beneath the glorious vision of the Interface – the woman started to speak more loudly. Those around her looked perturbed, but still they did nothing to stop her.
At timelike infinity resides the Ultimate Observer. And then the last Observation will be made. Retrospectively the history of the universe will be actualised . . .
She was almost shouting now. People in the crowd were reacting at last, recoiling from her, and on the platform they were looking alarmed, pulling back – all save Juq, who stood there smiling down even on this disturbance.
And then Mara heard the ringing cry that haunted her dreams. Look out! She has a weapon!
The girl’s last words were almost a scream, as her arm lifted up straight before her, a heavy mass in her hand. Actualised in a history which maximises the potential of being! Which makes the cosmos through all of time into a shining place! A garden free of waste, pain and death!
Tiel threw himself forward.
From a hundred angles Mara had seen the boy’s chest explode, and the Wigner’s Friend pulled down at last, still screaming, and her son, still on the stage, still smiling even as he looked down, bewildered, at the splashes of his friend’s blood on his vest.
7
The Endurance was launched on schedule, hauling its massive wormhole Interface away into deep space at high accelerations, leaving the partner Interface patiently orbiting Jupiter. Even now nobody in Mara’s circle knew what the true purpose of the Qax Governor’s experiment had been – not even Chael, as far as she could tell, not even her beautiful idiot of a son.
But everybody knew the timescale from now on: the ship’s construction had taken six months, and in a mere six more months after its launch the Endurance would return, and a gate to an unknown future would open.
As the due date for that return approached, Mara waited tensely for whatever would come next. It was hard even to sleep without medication.
And then Chael called. He’d had a message from Jasoft Parz.
Chael hurried to Mara’s home in Mellborn. When he arrived Mara called Juq, and the three of them gathered in the cellar where once Juq and Tiel had run exotic-matter experiments with splinters of diamond.
The three of them sat in a circle, under a single light globe. It was only a year ago, Mara realised, that first meeting with Parz in this very cellar, and so much had come of it.
Chael now held up a sliver of inscribed matter. He said, ‘This was a one-shot, one-use message from Jasoft. He’s not been able to return to Earth since the Endurance was launched. I don’t know how he smuggled it out of the Qax ship where he’s being held. I brought it here for us to watch together . . . It may not be wise to attempt any recordings of it. Oh, and I brought this.’ He pulled a small plastic case from a pocket. Sealed within were three translucent tablets, each the size of a thumbnail. ‘These come from the Qax themselves. They are able to manipulate biochemical structures at the molecular level – did you know? That was their, umm, competitive edge when they first moved off their home planet. And this is the fruit of their study of mankind.’ He looked at them. ‘Do you know what this is?’
Mara could guess. The tablet meant the removal of death. ‘AntiSenescence treatment?’
‘Better than human-manufactured AS. A Qax refinement. They gave it to Jasoft. This is our reward, for our cooperation with the Endurance project. The former Governor kept his word that far.’
‘Former Governor . . .’
He handed them each a capsule. ‘Don’t take it yet.’
Mara nodded. ‘Let’s hear what Jasoft has to say first.’
Chael set the inscribed sliver on the floor. Immediately light flashed from the sliver, and pixels whirled in the air, quickly coalescing.
It was as if Jasoft Parz had joined the circle.
He sat at ease, in his usual expensive-looking robes. If anything he looked younger still, Mara thought, his face less lined, his colour healthier, those odd-looking black roots spreading under his hair. Yet he looked hunted; he glanced over his shoulder repeatedly as he spoke softly. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be able to record. This message is my only chance. Please, all of you – listen and understand. Somebody needs to tell the human worlds what has happened – and what is to become of us.’
He allowed himself a grin. ‘First, the good news. Poole’s time bridge worked! As you’re aware, on the return of Poole’s ship Cauchy one group of rebels took the chance to go out and meet it – and they flew into the Interface, flew back through time, presumably all the way back to the age of Poole himself. We know now that the rebels were Friends of Wigner – the same ragamuffin group who attacked the Endurance when the Interface was completed, at Jupiter, and tried to assassinate Juq. And led, I’m told, by a young woman called Shira – she has links to the family of your son’s friend Tiel, I believe.’
Juq was wide-eyed at this. ‘Cousin Shira? I met her. But—’
Mara put her finger on his lips to hush him.
Parz went on, ‘Neither I nor the Qax Governor knows what the Friends intended, or indeed what they achieved, if anything. But their very actions threw the Governor into an existential panic, I think. Perhaps all the Qax could be wiped out, if humans were warned about the Occupation far enough into the past. The Governor proved surprisingly indecisive in the final crisis.