Transcendental (21 page)

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to get back to the Galactic Council system. I can access its files, but there’s no record of either one.”

“And why are you going back?”

Riley felt her body tense and then relax. She had great control over her responses, but this was a question she had not yet answered for herself.

“I have many possible reasons,” she said. “To find Ren, or what happened to him. To find the
Adastra
and the lifelong companions we left there, if they are still alive. To find the Transcendental Machine and try to figure out what it does and how it does it. And if I can do that, to create more transcendents like me and, with their help, to create a transcendent galaxy, a galaxy that releases all the potential of sapience. Which reason is the right one or the most important? I don’t know.”

Riley squeezed her upper arm. “Prophets are not always in control of their prophecies—nor of their motives.”

“And you should kill me,” she said. “I’m the Prophet everyone wants to destroy before I unsettle the fragile balance of the galaxy. As someone I discovered in an old book once said, ‘I bring not peace but a sword.’ Don’t worry. I’ve blocked your pedia.”

“You can do that?”

“Temporarily. While I keep my focus, it is cut off from your sensorium.”

“Could you keep it blocked while it was cut from my head?” Riley waited for a twinge in his head or an explosion that would destroy his brain completely.

“Maybe,” she said, “but there are no brain surgeons aboard.”

“Unless one of the aliens is a surgeon.”

“You would trust your head to one of them with a knife, even if they knew anything about the human brain?”

Riley thought about Xi and then about the carbon filament thread. “Now that I consider it, no. Won’t my pedia be angry when you lift your control?”

“It will not be aware of the gap in its experience.”

“Why not wipe out its entire memory?”

“Those connections are already permanent.”

Riley held her a little tighter. “I’ll help, if this thing in my head doesn’t kill me first. But you already knew that.” Even if he didn’t like Asha and didn’t admire her strength and decisiveness and intelligence and self-discipline, making love created bonds more solid than rationality. Asha knew that. And he didn’t care.

“Yes. But we’re going to need more allies.”

“Can we get them without revealing who you are?”

“We have no choice,” Asha said. “Letting them know the truth would turn everyone into potential assassins.”

“Who else then?” Riley asked.

“The captain?”

“Ham? He has his own agenda.”

“That’s true of everybody, including you and me.”

“Tordor?”

“Maybe. Dorians are hard to read. At least I understand Xifora.”

“Xi? You think that little weasel can be trusted?”

“I didn’t say I trusted him,” Asha said. “I know where he stands. Not so about Sirians. I’ve never been able to understand them, or influence their behavior.”

“What we have aboard this ship,” Riley said, “is not only a group of outcasts but a group of overachievers longing for the ultimate overachievement.”

“Unless they are agents of unidentified powers, as Xi has confessed to being.”

“And I was trapped into being myself,” Riley said. He told her his story, leaving out nothing, even the parts that made him look weak.

“I knew you had been co-opted, when I became aware of your implanted pedia.”

“And how did you do that?”

“At first I didn’t know how I knew. Then I realized that my potential for focus and analysis had been realized by the Transcendental Machine. Nothing magical. Just normal human abilities perfected. Like this.”

She faded from his sight like the Cheshire cat in one of his boyhood books. If he concentrated, he could see a vague outline where her body had been and the whisper of her touch. As she slowly returned, he said, “What was that?”

“People see and feel and smell and hear what they expect. Their senses can be easily persuaded that they perceive what is behind me. An alternative can be as good as invisibility.”

“Teach me.”

“You’re not equipped. Not yet.”

“When?”

“After you pass through the Transcendental Machine. More important, who sent you on this mission?”

“Maybe the same agents who sent Xi,” Riley said. “Maybe a different group working toward the same ends. Or different ends that only seem similar. The Transcendental Machine is the difference-maker. Every species in the galaxy would like to get control of it, or if they can’t, destroy it. Current galactic powers would prefer that it be destroyed; those that don’t have as much power as they would like, can go either way; the powerless want to change everything—unless it means another war—and that means there is a substantial portion of the powerless who would act to preserve stasis.”

“What we must do,” Asha said, “is survive until we reach the machine and then offer the powerless a different choice.”

“We’d better get started then,” Riley said, and began the disentangling of their bodies.

*   *   *

Riley emerged first before tapping on the cubicle door to let Asha know that the area was clear of observers, but discretion was unnecessary. The passengers’ quarters was a turmoil of alien voices and flailing appendages. Only Tordor and the flower child were standing aloof.

“What’s going on?” Riley said.

Tordor pointed to the holographic screen where the thin bright line across a far corner seemed even brighter. But that was illusion. The ship had not taken another Jump.

Underneath the display Xi and the Alpha Centauran were circling each other, looking for an advantage. Xi had a knife in this good hand, while his half-grown arm fended off the Centauran’s quick jabs with its beak. On the far side of the room, two aliens were grappling with oddly shaped appendages in what seemed like a fight to the death.

“Why?” Asha asked.

“The possibility that our goal may be attainable has unleashed individual motivations and individual passions,” Tordor said impassively.

“Aren’t you going to do something?” Asha asked.

“These conflicts are better settled now than later, when they might involve the deaths of many.”

Asha looked at Tordor in a way that Riley interpreted as disappointment in the alien’s character, and moved with unexpected speed to separate Xi and the Centauran, knocking the knife from Xi’s hand without detaching the alien’s arm and pushing the Centauran back from its fighting stance. “Be civilized!” she said and turned to the aliens by the dispensary, grabbing each by an appendage and pulling them apart. “Be civilized,” she said again, but this time she added, “Times will come when we will need to depend upon one another for survival.”

The far hatch banged open, and the captain stepped into the passenger quarters followed by his first mate and two armed crew members. “Violence has been reported,” he said, looking around suspiciously.

“All done,” Riley said. “A misunderstanding.”

“We can’t have violence, you know,” the captain said. Riley thought he detected a note of futility in his voice.

“We can’t have a lot of things,” Riley said, “including the intrusion of shipboard personnel into passenger business.”

“Passenger turmoil is shipboard business,” the captain said. “This voyage has been jinxed from the beginning—”

“And even before, as we are all becoming aware,” Riley said.

“—and it threatens a worse outcome for us all if we can’t control our passions or resist acting to further only our own selfish ends.”

“We’ve already reached that conclusion,” Riley said. “As we approach the far spiral arm our reasons for cooperation may be outweighed by our reasons for competing. That prospect may have precipitated the squabble you overheard.”

“And the question,” Asha said, “is how we will survive the breakdown of our mutual interest in getting this ship to its destination.”

“And what do you suggest?” the captain asked.

“We are going to need new reasons for cooperating,” Riley said.

“And what would those be?”

“Survival?” Riley ventured.

“We’re approaching a portion of the galaxy that may—almost certainly does—offer unsuspected perils and unknown creatures,” Asha said. “We’re going to be like children venturing into adult territory. If we don’t work together, we’ll all die.”

“All that’s obvious,” the captain said.

“What isn’t obvious,” Tordor said, “is that this obvious reason for working together may conflict with individual goals of reaching the Transcendental Machine first, or of keeping others from reaching it.”

“And we have reasons to think that some aboard this vessel are acting under instruction,” Riley said.

“From whom?” the captain said.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Riley said.

“Even granting the truth of what you all say,” the captain said, “there doesn’t seem much that can be done about it.” He or his add-ons seemed impatient with all the analysis, as if they would rather deal with the violence that had brought them here.

“Except,” Asha said, “to form bonds closer than being fellow pilgrims.”

“We need to form associations within the larger group,” Riley said, “like the protection groups we formed in the climber, only now we know each other better.”

“I’m the captain of the entire vessel,” the captain said. “I can’t belong to any group smaller than that.”

“That’s understood,” Riley said. “But we want your blessing on our efforts.”

“You and Asha and Tordor?”

“And whoever we can persuade to join us, that we can trust, who will pledge to work on behalf of the group until we reach the Transcendental Machine itself,” Riley said.

“I thought you didn’t believe in the Transcendental Machine.”

“My disbelief is beginning to waver,” Riley said.

“But you still believe in your ability to judge whether creatures who don’t have as close a relation to you as an amoeba are going to subordinate their individual goals to those of a group that includes humans,” the captain said.

“What Riley and I believe in,” Asha said, “is the ability of rational beings to recognize a superior strategy.”

“And the ability of civilized galactics to recognize the virtues of civilized processes,” Tordor said.

“My blessings on that,” the captain said, and departed with his guards.

*   *   *

Tordor’s gaze followed the captain to the hatch until it closed behind the captain’s group and turned toward Riley and Asha. “We begin, then, with you two.”

It seemed to Riley like a knowing glance and then he told himself that his reaction was the consequence of unexpected intimacy.

But then Tordor said, “Humans, like Dorians, need the companionship of the opposite sex. It is time you two got together.”

“As I recall Dorian mating protocols,” Asha said, unembarrassed at being discovered, “males have harems of females.”

“True,” Tordor said, “that is a common pattern for grazing species and one that our civilization must work hard to counteract. For us it is the totality of the female companionship that provides us with a full range of interactions at every level. But perhaps transcendence will raise us to the human level of monogamy and the resultant frustration that impels the human evolutionary drive.”

Riley looked closely at Tordor but he could not detect any irony, if Dorians were capable of such subtlety, or if he were capable of interpreting Dorian subtleties.

“We must consider,” Tordor said, “the effect on our small group of pilgrims of your partnership. As we approach the destination that looms closer with every Jump, any new social configurations are likely to change the group dynamics.”

He did not say “group dynamics,” of course, or “social configurations,” either, and it was possible that neither concept was thinkable in Dorian, but that was as close a translation as Riley’s pedia could provide.

“That is true,” Asha said, “and it is why I joined with Riley here. Our little group was stable enough when we were far from our goal, but as it grows closer individual differences are going to emerge. It is time to form a mutual-defense group.”

“You turned us down in the climber,” Tordor said.

“I didn’t need you then,” Asha said. “Different situations require different approaches. Riley and I want you with us, each of us defending the rest from outside attacks.”

“Until we reach the Transcendental Machine,” Tordor said.

Now, perhaps, there was irony in Tordor’s words, Riley thought. Or maybe only Dorian realism.

“I would hope we could help each other even there,” Asha said. “I have the feeling that none of us could reach it alone. But at least until then.”

Tordor gestured toward the holographic screen with its faintly shining streak across one corner. “What happens when we reach the other arm?”

Asha shrugged. Riley wondered, not for the first time, if Tordor understood shrugs. “We’ll find out when we get there,” she said. “It’s as big as our spiral arm, with as many suns. It may not be easy discovering the one that contains the Transcendental Machine.”

“But surely the Prophet knows,” Tordor said. “Or whoever has been sending coordinates to the captain.”

Riley’s expression remained impassive, but he asked himself how much Tordor knew, or thought he knew. “What about Xi? Asha thinks she understands him.”

“What is not to understand about the Xifora? Don’t let them behind you. Watch their hands. Give them no reason to think your death will be to their advantage. You can trust them to choose whatever benefits them at the time.”

“Xi, then.”

“Kom?” Riley asked. “At least, like Xi, he was willing to reveal himself and his motivations.”

“As I was,” Tordor said, “and you can trust us all—to serve our best interests. No one can be certain about a Sirian, not even another Sirian, but it is better to have them with you than against.”

“The flower child?” Riley asked.

“Four one zero seven?” Tordor said. “We have yet to hear a lot from it, and what it says is cloaked in obscurity. But I have no reason to doubt its ability to cooperate. Its evolutionary development has instilled a need for community.”