Redemption of Light (The Light Trilogy) (38 page)

Behind Gabriel, the sun set in a blaze of maroon, painting the hillsides and ivory magnolia blossoms with a wash of blood. The soothing warmth of the day faded into a faintly moist chill. Frogs in the swamp roused with the coolness of nightfall and croaked melodiously for a few seconds, then apparently thought better of it and hushed. Carey folded her arms to fight the ice that lanced the wind.

“I’m going to tell you the absolute truth, Halloway,” Gabriel promised. “All angels tell the truth. And I say to you now, that the Archdeceiver, an angel of the highest status, has never lied. I ask you, how can that be?”

Carey’s eyes narrowed unpleasantly. Obviously if angels never lied, and the Archdeceiver was an angel, then he couldn’t lie, but since he was the Archdeceiver he couldn’t tell the truth. A paradox indeed.

She drummed her fingers on her folded arms. “What does this have to do with Maxwell’s Constant, Gabriel?”

“Light by its very nature doesn’t really exist in your universe. Isn’t that true?”

“Yes. In an absolute sense, photons spend no time and cross no space, yet they—”

“Then why do we perceive light?” He waved his hand to the magnificent sunset that had turned the drifting clouds lavender.

“Because the photons strike our retinas, stop their Constant journey, and the electromagnetic energy is translated by our brains into an image.”

“And some brains, Halloway, are better at that than others, particularly Gamant brains.”

Dread welled in her breast, stinging like a herd of minuscule carnivores trying to gnaw their way out. Is that why the Magistrates had begun extensive experimentation on Gamant brain structures? What did they expect to find? “What are we talking about?”

Gabriel quietly scuffed the toe of his sandal in the fine sand that had blown up around the base of the Tabernacle. A gust of wind pressed his crimson robe tightly across his broad chest. “So, our brains are instruments of phase-change? Our observation actually creates the thing being observed, brings light from outside the universe into it?”

“What are you getting at?”

“God.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you? What do you think happens, my dear Halloway, when Epagael decides not to observe your universe?” He leaned forward, hanging breathlessly on her answer. Glowing golden curls fell to frame his majestic face.

“Well, if He were the only observer I’d say it ceased to exist, but since my universe has its own infinite number of individual consciousnesses—”

Gabriel laughed, a low, disparaging laugh that made her blood run cold. “Come, come, Halloway, try to see it from a higher perspective. All those consciousnesses are ‘contingent’ realities. Yours, for example, is merely an expression of a holistic universal consciousness spawned by the
Reshimu.
If all the consciousnesses in your universe were taken together, they’d create nothing more than a ‘quantum wave function,’ not a series of observables. That is, not without a fundamental canvas upon which to appear.
What,
Halloway, is the single underlying principle which neither you nor any of the consciousnesses in your universe can directly observe?”

“I—I don’t …” She struggled with herself. She was a mathematician, for God’s sake, she ought to be able to figure this out. But what did it have to do with God and the liar’s paradox? “I don’t know, Gabriel.”

“No?” He smiled knowingly and extended a hand to the benchlike bases of the pillars. A bat swooped and soared in the darkness over the Tabernacle. “Why don’t you have a seat? You might be here a while.”

Rudy hauled himself across the smoke-filled bridge of the
Orphica
on his elbows. His mangled right leg left a wide smear of blood on the carpet. “Merle?” he shouted.

He couldn’t see her in the dense smoke. The three-sixty monitors looked like hazy patches of color, but he could tell that several had blanked.
Decks breached.
The First Alert sirens had shut off sometime during the last cruiser pass. They’d defended the starsails and freighters for as long as they could. They had to get the hell away from Horeb! He coughed raggedly and shouted, “Merle! Merle, where are you?”

Vaguely, he saw someone move near the captain’s chair. A black smudge of battlesuit reared over the arm and he made out her pale face.

“Kopal, take the nav console.” She sucked in a wheezing breath. “Jamice is dead.” She pulled herself into her seat and began checking damage reports on her chair arm corns while Rudy made his way to the navigation station.

He had to drag Jamice’s bloody corpse out of the seat before he could rise and slump into it. He quickly surveyed the intermittent incoming data. His eyes jerked to the forward screen where thirty Magisterial battle cruisers reconfigured, ten lining out for a head-on assault, fifteen swinging around and forming up into three flying wedges, five falling into flanking positions….

“Calculate and lay in vault coordinates, Kopal! Hurry!”

“For where?” He spun around to stare openmouthed at her. “Where the hell are we going?”

Merle shook her head in panic.

“Merle, we can’t go to Shyr—they’ll follow us straight through! The
Hashomer’s
dead in space. The refugees aboard her will undoubtedly be taken to Palaia. Where else—”

“Mainz system!”
she ordered. “Sector four! At least we might be able to warn Jeremiel and Tahn.”

“We’ve got to tell the scattered starsails and freighters or they’ll—”

“Then do it! Hurry!”

Rudy whirled around and sent the message under narrow beam, then input the request for vault coordinates. His hands shook while he waited for the numbers to come up. The lead Magisterial cruisers hurtled headlong at them, almost in firing range…. “Laid in. I’m initiating vault sequence!”

CHAPTER 39

Ornias stood before the open windows in his broad white office on Satellite 4. A cool breeze tousled his blue curtains and ruffled his sandy hair. An enormous black desk adorned the far wall, by the door. His purple general’s uniform accentuated the breadth of his shoulders and narrowness of his waist. In his hands, he carried a cup of steaming taza.

“So, Rasch, your forces ran like scared rats when the Gamants attacked?” He turned to level a malicious stare at the bald-headed major who stood stiffly at attention in front of Ornias’ desk.

Rasch’s middle-aged face twitched. “No, sir. My forces fought valiantly. The Gamants came in wave after wave, they threw themselves at the cannons suicidally—until they broke through the perimeter and overran our positions. We must have killed at least three thousand in the first half hour.”

“Yes,” Ornias said coldly. “I’ve already been reprimanded by Slothen for your body count. Don’t you realize, Major, that Gamants only work as a bargaining lever if they’re alive?”

“Yes, sir, but my people have the right to protect themselves! I couldn’t just tell them to sit there and—”

“Next time, Major. I’ll relay information on casualties. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” he grunted.

“Who was the dissident who led the attack?”

“An unknown woman warrior, sir. Some of our soldiers claimed they heard her forces call her Arikha. Her second in command was definitely named Emon.”

“Arikha … uh-huh. And your casualties, Major?”

“Seventy-five dead. Three hundred injured.”

“I see,” Ornias commented blandly, but his eyes had a savage glitter. He paced lithely before the golden light streaming in through the window. “So now we have a wild pack of five thousand Gamants running free over the satellite. I understand they’ve discovered all the rents in the substructure that the Magistrates so carelessly left when they created these hunks of junk?” He sipped his taza and lifted a brow at Rasch. The major hadn’t moved. He continued to stand rigidly at attention, his eyes focused on some distant point. “What do you suggest we do about it, Major?”

“Sir, I suggest we request the services of one of the battle cruisers at Palaia. Magistrate Slothen has ten cruisers in dock, sir, surely they can spare us one to help identify all the Gamant hiding places.”

Ornias chuckled disdainfully. “You think we’ll be able to find them, do you? You don’t know much about Gamants, Major. They’ll slither into every hole and rock crevice that exists on the satellite. Those gaps in the fabric provide perfect interconnecting passageways that lace this entire station.”

“But it’s worth a try, sir,” Rasch insisted. His expression remained inscrutable, but his fists clenched at his sides.

“All right, Major. Make the request. I have to get to Satellite 6—the Gamants there have started wailing and tearing their hair, the fools. The claim that from their satellite they can see straight through the Horns of the Calf on Palaia to Zohar. They’re afraid they’re on the direct path to oblivion.”

Rasch blinked thoughtfully. “The Horns of the Calf, General?”

Ornias shrugged disgustedly. Gamants were such imbeciles. In all the years he’d been forced to associate with them, he’d never grasped their fanatical attachment to obscure prophecies. Those ridiculous stories seemed to sustain them as surely as mother’s milk. “Yes,” he snapped tersely, “they call the Engineering Spires outside of Naas ‘horns.‘… Rasch, when you talk to the military advisory council tell them that I recommend mind-blanking for any rebel captured as a result of our search.”

Rasch fell out of his stance, his head jerking quickly to stare at Ornias. “But, sir, that’s excessive—”

“Tell them,” he instructed. “We need to keep the total numbers of Gamants high, to threaten the Underground, you understand. But mind-blanking will render the dissidents harmless.”

“Aye, sir,” Rasch said curtly. He saluted and strode for the door.

Ornias waited until he exited, then turned back to his view of the pleasant rolling countryside that spread in a green and yellow blanket for as far as he could see. The Magistrates did such a superb job recreating planetary environments. Birds soared high overhead. He leisurely sipped his taza. “Arikha … hmm.”

Carey sat on the gray base of the pillar, her knees pulled against her chest, watching the stars emerge in a twinkling shawl from the charcoal blanket overhead. Zadok had slumped to the ground by the next pillar, bracing his back against the cold marble. Darkness grew up around them, and with it the sounds of a spring night. Owls let out lonely hoots from the towering trees; insects sawed like rusty hinges in the grass; frogs sang melodiously from the swamp.

Carey took a deep breath of the night-scented wind. The chill bit at her cheeks. Gabriel had gone into the Tabernacle and closed the curtains. They hung in sculpted copper folds beneath the stained glass window.

Zadok shifted to extend his ancient legs across the dirt path. In the starlight, his bald head gleamed as though frosted with silver icing. He’d spoken to her gently for the first hour, encouraging her, but then he’d fallen silent, letting her think. Carey had developed quite an affection for him. He had a charismatic strength of character that reminded her of Jeremiel.

“Zadok,” she murmured. “I think we should be going.”

He shifted against the pillar to look up at her. His black eyes shone like empty sockets in his withered face. “Have you figured out the answers?”

“Yes.”

A look of delight lit his face. He gripped the base of the pillar and pulled himself to his feet. Dusting off his brown robe, he said, “You don’t look happy about it.”

“No. I’m not.”

He waddled forward and tenderly put a hand on her shoulder, anxiously studying her face. As he analyzed her miserable expression, his lips pursed. He dropped his hand and sat on the pillar beside her.

“What is it, Carey? How can the Archdeceiver have never told a lie?”

“Oh,” she sighed and waved a hand dismissively. “That one was easy. Over three thousand years ago, Einstein and Rosen came to the conclusion that parallel universes exist. We’ve never been able to access them, but we rely on that concept continually in our mathematics. If an infinity of parallel universes exist, Aktariel must have continuously told the truth in at least one of them. He must also have been a continuous liar in another. The question depends on which universe you’re looking at.”
Which also means, Zadok, that Rachel may be the Antimashiah in one, but she must also be the Mashiah in another.

Zadok grimaced as though he’d been defrauded. “I see. And what about …” He blinked suddenly and his elderly face darkened. “Does that mean, my dear, that in some universes, the Veil that Aktariel wrote—”

“I don’t know, Zadok. There may only be one Veil and one version of the seven heavens. But there may be more, too.”

Zadok seemed to stop breathing. “I cannot believe that Epagael would allow us to fall into error. I have faith that there is only one Veil.”

Carey slipped a hand beneath the auburn hair at the back of her neck and massaged the taut muscles. A tension headache pressed forcefully behind her eyes. She wished she had Jeremiel here—or Cole—either of them would be able to help her plan what to do if her suspicions about God were correct. Just seeing both men in her memory left her hurting.
How are you doing, Jeremiel? Cole? Are you all right?
Where would they be now? Far, far away from her, so far that it didn’t mean anything to speculate.

Somewhere in the rolling hills, a coyote yipped. Then the entire pack joined in, creating a heartrending chorus. She felt almost as though they sang just for her. Odd that this heaven contained so many Earthlike animals. The fourth had been filled with strange, odd creatures that she’d never seen before.

Zadok reached over and softly patted her knee. “What about the other question, Carey? What is the single underlying principal that no one can observe?”

“Time.”

“Time? But whenever I watch the sun cross the sky I observe time.”

“No,” she said as she exhaled. “You infer time from movement. All that you’re observing is motion.”

He thoughtfully scratched his right ear. “So it’s not possible to observe time?”

“I didn’t say that. Theoretically, an observation of time would mean that the observer could go back and repeat his observation as many times as he wanted to—an infinite number, in fact.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do either. Even if we could access parallel universes, our very presence as observers would change the experimental parameters so that we couldn’t repeat the same observation an infinite number of times.”

“But—”

“I suspect, Zadok, that an observer who exists outside the Void of Creation—one who isn’t bounded by our physical laws—could conceivably repeat his measurements of time infinitely. And, thereby,
maintain its very existence.”
She ground her teeth softly.
What happens when God decides not to observe?

As the darkness deepened, smears of galaxies fuzzed the sky, glimmering like halos over the treetops. Carey frowned. Was a timeless Observer, then, both necessary and sufficient for the existence of time? Without that observation being repeated continuously, did hard reality dissolve into its hazy realm of infinite possibilities? The universal quantum wave function? She shivered involuntarily and hugged herself. Inside the black box of the universe, the Observer became part of whatever he or she chose to watch. But what if the Observer existed outside? Had God trapped Himself in the mire of Creation? Or was He always free?

She eased off the pillar, dusted her black jumpsuit and tramped quietly for the Tabernacle. When she stood before the closed orange curtains, she called, “Gabriel?”

Zadok ambled up behind her and patiently waited, his bald head shimmering in the starlight. The archangel ducked beneath the overhanging curtain and stepped out into the starlight. His glow splashed the land with a watery blanket of liquid gold, reflecting with a flaming intensity in the stained glass window.

Carey gazed up and answered, “Time, Lord Gabriel. That is the one thing we cannot directly observe. And the Archdeceiver must have told the truth continuously in some alternate universe.”

“Very good, Halloway.” Without another word, he pulled the curtain aside and made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “You may pass the gate.”

Zadok, knowing the fickle ways of angels better than she, hurried forward and disappeared into the warm spice-scented darkness. Carey stopped beside Gabriel and narrowed her eyes. He lifted his amber brows questioningly.

“What is it, Halloway?”

“Your questions … time, multiple universes, the nature of the Observer. It’s the cosmogonic starting point, isn’t it? That’s what Aktariel’s seeking. He’s trying to turn back the clock to erase all the observables in my universe?”

“Not just your universe, Halloway, but all adjacent ones, as well. Do you know who he is?”

“Yes, the angel who came to me. What role do I play in his plan, Gabriel?”

The archangel reached down and lifted her hand to gently kiss her fingers. His touch sent a flood of warmth through her. He responded, “A very fundamental one. Now, you’d better get going. Michael—gullible fool that he is—has already arranged for you to speak to Epagael.”