The Two Worlds (89 page)

Now visibly intrigued, since the prospect of evolution was implied, Danchekker returned to his chair and sat down. "Very well, Vic. Let us agree to entertain this fantastic hypothesis of yours for a moment . . . purely for the sake of argument, you understand."

"Of course," Hunt said, nodding solemnly.

"One thing that bothers me is the question of size. Clearly it would have to be much smaller than our universe. For it to be comparable, there would have to be the same order of magnitude of active cells in it as there are particles in existence, which would be absurd."

"The ratio of the size of the fundamental cell to the dimensions of the universe as a whole would be much greater," Shilohin said. "So the macrocosm would be much closer to the level of quantum granularity. Nonlinearities and curvatures would be more apparent, probably."

"Boundary effects might play a big part," Duncan mused, half to himself.

Danchekker nodded. "Yes, I accept all that. But what I was getting at was something more fundamental. To support anything as complex as life and intelligence requires a high degree of complexity. That in turn implies a corresponding richness of structure. And you can't build rich structures from a few elements." He gestured to the others appealingly. "You see my point. There is no escape from the necessity of large numbers. Enormously large numbers. And my question is, where would you possibly find a sufficiently vast computational space to accommodate the processes that you're suggesting? It's an ingenious suggestion, Vic. I'm not disagreeing with that. But if my initial estimates are anything to go by, to give what you're talking about even a reasonable chance of engendering a world as complex and varied as the one we've heard described by Nixie and visar, you'd need a computer the size of a pla—"

Danchekker's voice stopped abruptly as he realized what he had been about to say. The others all saw it, too, in the same instant. Shilohin looked stunned. Duncan slammed back abruptly against the backrest of his chair.

"Christ," Hunt breathed. They all looked at each other incredulously.

So
that
was what was so important about the mysterious planet, Uttan!

And why the Ganymeans weren't having much luck locating jevex on Jevlen.

"In the visions of Hyperia that I glimpsed only briefly, I sometimes saw devices of wondrous complexity," Thrax said. "Devices created by the beings who inhabit that realm, and yet able to move as bewildering cooperations of parts of their own accord; impossibly coordinated motions of parts that moved parts that moved parts, and all of them dancing in unison to unfold some hidden plan. Are the Hyperians thus able to divest themselves of the burden of having to project their thoughts, Master? Can they enchant matter itself with the capacity of thought, such that it serves their wishes unbidden?" He looked at Shingen-Hu, who was sitting next to him on the rocks by the dusty track. But the Master was lost in his own dejection and seemed not to hear. Thrax took in his wan, sunken features and disheveled appearance, his hair unkempt and robes turning to rags. "They build devices that see and speak across vast distances; others that voyage to worlds beyond the sky. Where does this place exist, Master? Is it a space that encloses all space? Or a dream that we manufacture in our minds?" He looked again. But Shingen-Hu sat staring dully down at the grassy slopes below the track and showed no reaction.

Shingen-Hu had been overcome by a morose deadness of mind and spirit ever since the attack by servants of Nieru's enemies at the ceremony on the sacred mount, when Thrax's chance to emerge had been thwarted. Convinced that his god had abandoned him or been overwhelmed by a more powerful celestial rival, the Master had sunk into a depressive lethargy and lost faith in his arts. His school for adepts was no more. Soldiers, encouraged by priests bearing the green-crescent emblem of Vandros, the underworld god, had come to complete its destruction. Its members had dispersed and fled, and Shingen-Hu lived from village to village on the fringes of the wilderness, reduced to the life of a fugitive mendicant. Thrax, perhaps through basic loyalty, or possibly in hope that the Master's condition would improve, or maybe simply because he had nowhere else to go, had stayed with him.

Although the day was barely into its second half, twilight cloaked the hillside above them. The sun remained a feeble, emaciated remnant of its former self, its faltering light supplemented by a few dim stars which now remained visible through the eternal night that had descended. Thrax and Shingen-Hu had eaten nothing for two days apart from a few mountain berries and water plants found by a spring. Thrax thought wistfully of the cakes and roasts that his aunt Yonel used to prepare at Dalgren's house, in days that seemed so long ago. Almost like another world . . . Thrax shook himself back to the present and forced thoughts of other worlds from his mind.

A movement in the grass just across the track caught his eye. He looked and saw that it was a brown-striped
skredgen
, up on its hind legs beneath a bush, its nose twitching and its large eyes fixed on them unblinkingly. A picture came into his head of a simmering stew, maybe with pummeled
kirta
shoots and wild-herb flavoring.

"Master," he whispered, drawing closer to Shingen-Hu carefully. A Master could paralyze an animal with thought while an assistant dispatched it with a rock or cudgel. "Over there across the path, below the bush. Do you see it? We could eat our fill this evening." He waited. "
Food
 . . . A thick stew of
skredgen
, seasoned with
var.
" Shingen-Hu's eyes flickered. He turned his head. "There," Thrax murmured. "Do you see? You can still do it, Master. Your powers have not deserted you."

Shingen-Hu licked his lips hungrily and stared. The
skredgen
watched them, motionless. The Master's arm rose shakily, and a finger of his bony hand pointed from the folds of tattered sleeve. The finger jabbed commandingly. The
skredgen
yawned and rose to its feet; then turned its back and walked away, swishing its tail contemptuously.

"Alms . . . alms for the holy who have fallen upon evil times," Thrax called, brandishing his bowl in the square of the village they came to at the bottom of the track.

"Everyone's fallen on evil times these days. Where have you two been?" a woman asked scornfully as she passed.

One of a group of laborers who were idling outside a tavern called out, "'Oly men, are yer? Let's see something' 'oly, then."

"That's what all the beggars who come through here tell us," another said. "Take us all for fools out here, they do."

"We've seen enough city thieves before. Away with the pair o' ye," a third told them.

"We're not thieves. We're genuine," Thrax insisted defiantly. "This is a Master. He has remained here, that countless others may arise."

"'Im? A Master? That walkin' bag o' rags? Looks more ter me like the only currents 'e'd know anythin' abaht are the ones 'e pours dahn 'is throat." The others laughed derisively.

"Here's my staff," the second who had spoken said, holding it up. "A good, solid wooden one. Show us the passing-through of a hand. A junior adept can do that. It should be easy enough to do in his sleep for a"—he looked slyly from side to side, inviting the others to share the joke—"
Master.
" They sniggered obligingly.

"You can do it," Thrax murmured imploringly to ShingenHu. "Your powers haven't deserted you." But ShingenHu just stood and stared at the staff glassily.

They were chased from the village by a jeering mob who pelted them with rocks and garbage, while hounds barked at their heels. Nieru hung very dim in the sky that night. Probably, Thrax thought, because the god was ashamed.

In the city of Orenash at the temple of Vandros, the high priest Ethendor had a vision. A spirit from Hyperia appeared to him and spoke in his mind, telling of great events that would soon come to pass. Filled with wonder at the things he learned, Ethendor hurried to inform the king.

"Our actions to placate Vandros were inspired. We have been tested and found not to be wanting. We shall be saved."

"Tested? How have we been tested?" the king asked.

"By the gods who look down from Hyperia. We were set the task of sending them disciples, and we have measured well. Hence we have been chosen to be the prime servants to the gods when the Great Awakening comes."

"The Great Awakening, at last! Tell me, what was revealed?"

Ethendor's voice trembled portentously. "Soon now, the days will return and the stars will shine again. The heavens will radiate their splendor as never before. Then shall the people of Waroth be called and arise to the sky in great multitudes. Hyperia itself shall be opened to them. Thus it has been revealed to me by the lord of all gods."

The king marveled at the high priest's words. "Truly it was spoken? These plagues shall be lifted from us and the world restored?"

"A mighty war has been fought among the gods. The power that lights the sky was stolen and extinguished, but now it has been reclaimed. The pretenders who desecrated the banner of Nieru have been vanquished by the true bearers of Vandros's green."

"And now, many are to arise?"

"The time has come for the last of the unclean and the profane who have defiled Hyperia to be exterminated. The faithful from Waroth shall be the wrath and the instrument. Thou, O King, will be their leader, and I, the prophet who will inspire them."

"
We
are to see Hyperia?" The king was dumbfounded.

Ethendor was exuberant. "We are to
rule
Hyperia!"

If jevex was indeed what the evidence seemed to indicate, it meant that the Jevlenese war industries were merely what the architects of the Federation had been doing on the surface of Uttan. Inside, they had hollowed out the entire planet and installed an expanded version of jevex as a single, monolithic, supercomputing matrix, servicing the Jevlenese world-system via communications though h-space. The intention had doubtless been to acquire, eventually, a system of their own capable of rivaling or even surpassing visar; but to keep the project secret, they had concentrated it all in one place instead of spreading it out across hundreds of worlds in the way visar was spread. The equipment actually functioning on Jevlen was merely part of the remote interface system into it.

In this way, the unique conditions had been created which allowed the matrix universe to come into being. Hunt christened it the "Entoverse," or "universe inside," as opposed to the familiar "Exoverse." The choice pointed to the obvious term "Ents" for its inhabitants, which was duly adopted, the Tolkienesque connotation being considered doubly appropriate.

All of which was very attractive and exciting, and could give scientists new ideas to amuse themselves with for years. But, as Danchekker pointed out, it was all still nothing but speculation. A Phantasmagoria of software-originated delusions could not be ruled out simply because of Nixie's convictions, and a planet-size jevex contained in Uttan was just as capable of creating them as a distributed jevex was. In other words, until somebody actually went to Uttan and looked, they were no nearer to knowing if an Entoverse actually existed.

But if jevex was concentrated on Uttan, then Eubeleus's motive was obviously to gain control of it; and whatever his plans were after that, they spelled no good. Hence there was a justification for taking the whole thing to JPC and the Thuriens. Such an approach would entail Garuth's going direct to Calazar. Since the team was only talking conjecture at this stage, to insure that Garuth's case would be as convincing as possible they devoted an all-night session to going over the questions that the Thuriens might come up with and seeing what other known peculiarities of Phantasmagoria the Entoverse theory could be made to account for.

The pattern-switching algorithm that Hunt had postulated for moving clusters of activated cells—solid objects, in the Ent world of perception—provided a possible explanation for a range of mystifying phenomena. Shilohin, in reviewing early Thurien processing methods, discovered that it had been common practice for the leading edge of a pattern that was being shifted through the matrix to activate before the trailing edge was switched off. Thus there would be a slight overlap of the two images, causing the pattern to be fractionally longer in the direction of motion than when it was at rest. Moreover, the degree of elongation would increase with the propagation speed. That one fact would account for the absence in the Entoverse of the invariances of dimension with motion—and because of the effects attributed to the planetary rotation that visar had inferred, with time and with spatial orientation, too—that gave the Exoverse the regularity and consistency that made possible the organized body of knowledge called science, the construction of machines, and the technologies that sprang from using them.

What about the apparent ability of solid objects in the Entoverse to penetrate one another on occasions? It was not difficult to see how that might happen if one of the "quantum numbers" defining an activated cell was some kind of priority indicator. Two objects meeting would, in effect, be competing to possess the same cells. If, as was usually the case, they were composed of equal-priority elements, they would simply bounce apart. But if one happened to be designated higher-priority, it would "borrow" the volume previously belonging to the other object for as long as their parts coincided, returning it to its previous condition upon separation. Similar causes could be found for such other phenomena as the differing "affinities" of some materials for others, the inconsistencies of cause and effect that made prediction in the Entoverse a risky business, and the sudden discontinuities that appeared as cataclysms and catastrophes.

And when the scientists got down to talking more about it, the apparent miracle-workings of some of the Ents began to sound less farfetched. The Ents were composed at the elementary level of information-processing quanta, after all, and it did not seem so strange that they should be able to influence things around them by what they would perceive as thought. Possibly, for example, they were able to change the activity levels of the constituent cells in an object, and thereby modulate its response to "gravity," or endow it with some other radiated force. That would also go a long way toward explaining the ayatollahs' unshakable faith in the validity of magic. In their world, "magical" effects were commonplace. It might also have had something to do with their uncanny aptitude for interacting directly with the inner processing functions of a Thurien computer, too.