Event Horizon (Hellgate) (110 page)

A college of theologians rose out of the most gifted generation of philosophers and poets. Like shamans, they tranced and
traveled
to higher dimensions where they communed with both the ancestors of the Zunshu and their descendants, in realms outside of linear time, where past and future were one.

The message they brought back shocked the species to its core.

There, Lai’a let the screen lapse back into a looping series of images recorded in the city. “It would seem,” it said musingly, “that while many of the Zunshu were enjoying the products of science and regressing into much simpler minds, many more were developing a theory of religion which crossed dimensional boundaries. A priest caste increasingly flourished, becoming extremely powerful at the level of government, in the same years when the Zunshu were exploring their region of near transspace. By the time of first contact, the belief was deeply ingrained in them.

“Their priests had
traveled
to the higher realms, conferred with the ancestors and learned the destiny of the Zunshu, from the earliest of their primordial kind to the last born in the distant future. Sound evidence shows that, like the Resalq, their personality does survive the death of the physical body. Unlike the Resalq, however, the Zunshu do
not
reincarnate. They simply are, either in this dimension, or in the higher continuum, which appears to be a ‘brane,’ that is, a membrane universe which intersects our own at an acute angle.

“Resalq and human theorists have speculated about the existence of such a brane since before humans developed a robust enough interplanetary engine to visit the neighboring worlds in their own solar system. The physics, while compelling, were never empirically provable. Such speculation passed into the realm of philosophy.”

Mark’s voice was quiet and yet cut like a shard of glass. “Stop there, Lai’a. The Zunshu priests actually visited this brane? In
fact
?”

“It is likely they did; it was no empty claim,” Lai’a told him. “The Zunshu consciousness
is
connected to other Zunshu via a disused, largely dormant organ in the brain.” The screen shifted to a cross-section of the virtual dissection of the strange, elongated brain, as it had been deep imaged. A cone-shaped gland illuminated in blue. “As a species, they are marginally empathic rather than telepathic. According to their scientific record, they were always subliminally aware of the continuum, or brane, in which the Zunshu personality endures in coherent form after life functions terminate in the biological body. Zunshu shamans spent twenty generations selectively breeding a mere handful of adepts who could deliberately use the organ.”

“All right – I can accept all this,” Jazinsky said slowly. “I know Resalq don’t talk about the vestigial memories they retain of past lives. It’s taboo, like humans being caught whacking off in a public place! But, taboo or not, it’s very real – they
are
reborn.”

“Whether we want to be or not,” Mark added ruefully. “It’s not a decision we make, and it can be extremely inconvenient. It just happens … just as the Zunshu, apparently, don’t return. They live here; they live there, wherever ‘there’ is.”

“Oh, I’ve grasped that part,” Jazinsky assured him patiently. “I just don’t understand what this has to do with the downfall of their species, or their burning desire to slam every other thinking, reasoning species into extinction.”

“You procreate,” Lai’a said simply.

“Of course we procreate!” Dario protested. “Every species does!”

“Your numbers increase,” Lai’a went on, “into billions, with the real potential for trillions, given time and the opportunity afforded by the orderly colonization of limitless other worlds. And each individual is born with, for want of any more suitable term, a soul: a personality which will, or at least
may
, survive the death of the host body.”

The silence around the crew lounge was profound until at last Vidal – with the Daku sense of spirituality harnessed to the Fleet veteran’s coarse pragmatism – demanded, “So freakin’
what
? Okay, so some of us, somewhere, somehow, manage to meditate our way to the gates of Nirvana. Humans have been trying to peek under the skirts of immortality for ten thousand years, it’s the reason our ancestrals built pyramids with their bare hands! Well, suppose some of us actually managed it – you want to talk to Robert Chandra Liang about this. He’ll tell you about elevated levels of consciousness, the function of the pineal gland, access to the
Akasha
, helical time flow … I don’t understand more than a fraction of it. But open your mind for one split second. Suppose we
do
catch up with the Resalq, meditate our way to a place where personality can, and does, survive the death of the body – how in any freakin’
hell
does this concern the Zunshu?”

For a long moment Mark and Dario shared a speculative look, but Mark was not about to lay any cards on the table. “Lai’a?” he invited.

“According to Zunshu research records amassed over the space of more than a century,” Lai’a continued, “the veracity of which you may examine for yourself, Doctor Sherratt, the Zunshu were absolutely convinced of their possession of transcendent personality. Their priests, in trance, and under strict laboratory conditions,
traveled
to the brane continuum and made contact with ancestors and descendants – the formal data is compelling. Resalq and humans would endorse it; no reason exists to disparage the Zunshu for their conviction. It is the
information
returned from the brane which skewed the Zunshu academic development into violent directions.

“They quickly realized they must exterminate
all
other intelligent life forms; it was the only logical course of action, and might have been taken by a majority of creatures, as surely as such beings protect their territory and young. This knowledge, or faith, was ingrained in the Zunshu over several generations. When the time came, they deployed their weapons unquestioningly in what
may
have constituted a kind of religious mania, though I would advise caution in making this assumption.”

Travers’s heart performed a double-thump, and he shot a glance at Marin, whose eyes were dark, wide, unblinking.

“The priests,” Lai’a went on, “discovered an appalling truth. The Zunshu personality is exceptionally fragile. After the death of the host body, it survives as a tenuous energy, held in coherent patterns by the structure of the brane. The brane itself demonstrates an energy matrix not at all unlike holographic memory architecture, albeit limitless in terms of space or time. The structure of the brane encourages the perpetuation of certain life energies, which are received like a datastream at point of death.

“Within the matrix of the brane, surviving personalities apparently influence their surroundings, similarly to self-programming games which respond dynamically to input from players, creating the user-driven environments of the ‘gamespace.’ Hence, no matter the philosophy or faith of the individual in life, he or she will encounter an otherworld which was foretold – the Heaven, Hel, Nirvana,
Bardo
,
Tir
Magh
, of humans, the
Seman’djura
of the Resalq.

“However, as stated previously, the Zunshu priest-shamans learned an unspeakable truth. The tenuous energy of the Zunshu personality is ‘
canceled
’ and dissolves upon contact with other, more powerful forms; it dissipates into the background energy waveforms of the brane and is absorbed by the more robust forms which utilize the brane far more efficiently.

“In effect, the mere presence in the brane of the souls of other species – vastly more powerful than the Zunshu’s fragile surviving energy – spells termination, irrevocable and everlasting death, not merely of the body of an individual, but for the individual’s immortal soul. Furthermore,
all
individuals will suffer this absolute
end
, from the first primordial Zunshu born in the days before language or science, to the last born, in the distant future.”

Silence fell again, dense and heavy. Travers struggled to grasp the ramifications of what he had heard, though the broad facts were painfully obvious. Without any hard evidence that the human soul even existed, mankind had done heinous things across a whole planet to protect the immortal souls of the species. The Zunshu had the potential to reach further, and their very survival – not in the mundane world where physical creatures muddled along, but in the brane beyond, where a creature hoped to live forever in company with its illustrious ancestors – pivoted on xenocide.

“Oh, my gods,” Vidal murmured.

“Or, as my great-grand pop used to say,” Jazinsky added, “sweet Jesus parked on his holy butt in Heaven on a cloud. I guess in the end it all comes right down to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“You mean, every religion in history flourished around one question: ‘What happens to me when I die?’” Alexis Rusch’s voice was hoarse.

“Most people,” Marin said softly, “are desperate to believe in
something
after this, especially as they start to grow older. Humans never developed a way to take measurements beyond transspace –”

“Well, shit,” Rabelais said quietly, “back in my day, when the
Odyssey
launched, most physicists refused to believe transspace existed. It was just a bunch of phantom numbers, equations they couldn’t get to gel. They figured Hellgate was just a bunch of e-space that got tangled up like the Gordian knot, bloody-damned dangerous to shipping, so some total lunatic should go out and chart the navigation hazards. And, pardon me while I take a bow, here I am.”

“But if we
could
take measurements off a brane beyond transspace, or maybe at right-angles to transspace…” Jazinsky’s head shook slowly.

“The Zunshu had the apparatus to do this?” Rusch wondered.

But Lai’a said without hesitation, “Not apparatus, as such. The trained Zunshu
mind
, in trance, had the potential to cross a threshold, pass into the brane continuum, and return with useful information.”

Roark Hubler groaned. “And we
believe
this? Sorry guys – it sounds like the proverbial steaming pile to me.”

“Maybe it is,” Travers said slowly, “but it doesn’t make any difference what we believe, does it? The Zunshu believed. The evidence coming out of the lab was good enough for them. Damnit, Roark, I don’t
understand
one word in ten Barb and Mark say. But I
believe
’em when they tell me the sky turns inside out and there’s a doorway to the other side of the galaxy.”

“Yeah, but you can see Hellgate with your own eyes,” Rodman protested.

“And the Zunshu brain is so different from ours, and so much bigger, particularly by ratio with the body,” Mark added, “they were very probably always semi-aware of something far beyond anything human eyes and brains can comprehend.” His shoulders lifted in an eloquent shrug. “Either they were ripe to fall for the biggest confidence trick in history, or…”

“Or the data looked so good,” Leon Sherratt added, “they didn’t have to be conned. They
knew
their ancestors and descendants were out there, all of them, being bulk erased like a bunch of useless old data.” He sat back, looking from Mark to Dario and Midani and back. “You know, a lot of humans still refuse, even today, to believe there’s anything after the death of the body, at least for their species – and who could blame ’em? You guys have a long, bloody history of wars of persecution and burning people alive; and in the end the whole argument comes down to a total lack of hard, empirical evidence on one side, and a whole lot of
faith
on the other.”

“You can get pretty disgusted with the whole religion deal,” Roy Arlott said cynically. “I got interested after my parents died. It’s common among our people, Lee, because the truth is, we
know
nothing about any transcendent personality. We just hope, and try to find something to believe in. So I studied ancient human history, every religion from Babylon to the Iconic Church of Mars. The more you know about it, the less you
want
to believe. In the end you say, ‘Go on, then, show me your best stuff, convince me,
make
me believe.’ And of course there isn’t any ‘stuff.’ Some folks have faith – cheers to them, it makes them happy, what else
is
there in life? But try talking to an atheist about faith!

“That was me – the total, bloody-minded atheist – till I met you, Lee.” He reached out blindly, took Leon’s hand. Their fingers meshed and he went on, talking specifically to the humans. “Lee, uh, told me a lot about the way the Resalq retain memories of past lives. And I
know
the Resalq say it’s offensive, crass, to talk about it, Mark, but we’re all big kids and this is senior science class. We could sit here and dissect the male genital system, call a penis a penis, and it’s got
squat
to do with vulgarity. It’s biology. So? Lee, you want to enlighten us –
them
?”

It was Leon’s turn to groan. “So, we carry memories over,” he said with a trace of awkwardness. “I remember a lot about being
Jemos
Huhli
… if I were still
Jemos
, I’d go by the name of James Hurley for the sake of passing among humans. I was a trader – I imported, exported domestic goods, and I had five children. I was vain, self-obsessed, fought with the kids, competed with them, spent fortunes on frippery, cooked the books, avoided taxes, went bankrupt twice and had to be rescued by progeny who must’ve inherited their other
equero
’s genes, because they were a hell of lot smarter than me. I was a complete airhead. When the Zunshu came I was snuffed out like a candle, and nobody even noticed I was gone.”

The story was convincing, as Leon told it, but Rusch had to ask. “I’m sorry to play the
skeptic
, Leon, but … I suppose your people actually validated all this, um,
supposed
memory?”

“Supposed?” Dario echoed, and snorted with acid humor.

“Humans,” Jazinsky explained, “quite often seem to remember past lives, but it almost always turns out to be a dream, or vestigial memories of something they read, or saw, in early childhood.”

“Oh, it didn’t have to be tested,” Mark said darkly. “Property disputes would carry over from life to life. Unpaid debts. And vendettas. People would be hunted down and murdered through several lives, for heinous crimes committed by a former self. In our more barbaric epoch, one could legally be arrested, tried and executed in
this
life for crimes that went unpunished in a previous life.”

“Business deals would carry over,” Dario added. “Inheritance and bequest became a big, fat joke. You humans have a popular tradition of hauntings, where a person dies in violent or stressful circumstances and comes back as a bloody nuisance – or doesn’t go away at all, in fact. The old haunted house cliché, right? Now, imagine being ‘haunted’ by someone who just came right back, in the flesh, to make your life a total misery after you cheated or murdered him, or his kin.”

“It was a mess for millennia, plural – all part of life. And the cultural chaos was entirely normal,” Mark said in wry tones. “There’s never been any requirement for scientific proof. Not when a kid announces himself, marches into your house and finds the keys he lost during the renovations twenty years ago. He was an old man when he dropped them there, just before the new heating system was installed; now he’s back, he wants the old sportplane that’s been corroding in the back of the garage under the house since he passed away …
you
didn’t even know it was there. Better, he’ll quote its registration codes, access the license with the deceased’s ID, which was confidential to the old man and the city AI.” He spread his hands. “The taboo grew up to control sheer entropy. Life is pandemonium beyond anything humans can imagine, if one life doesn’t
end
when another starts. And as for the Zunshu, I’m afraid it’s perfectly possible their data is sound regarding the brane continuum, their persistence there … and their extinction on contact with more powerful, robust forms. Like Resalq, do you think, Dario?”