Watson, Ian - Novel 08 (24 page)

 
          
“I
don’t call this freakshow a colony. Is Denise doing her job too, nesting all
over the place, twittering in the bushes, laying eggs? Sean, it’s almost better
that there isn’t any colony at all than this hamstrung superbeing’s playground
with people as His toys in it!
Or the Herr Professor’s toys!”

           
“Almost
better?
Something’s better
than nothing, old girl.”

           
“How could we report
this
back to Earth as a success?”

           
“But it is a success—in its own
terms.”

 
          
“So
why did Big Daddy switch off
Schiaparelli?”

 
          
“Maybe
He’s drawn to life and its dreams inexorably. He could affect Earth too. So He
raised a
cordon sanitaire
around
Himself. You’re talking scrambled, Muthoni. We have to work through the
projection. All the life on this world, all the landscape, is a sort of
holographic projection—into which our own psyches fit as a collective hologram.
That’s how we can die and be reborn elsewhere. That’s how we can mutate, change
color, whatever.
He's
the laser light
that says ‘Let

           
There Be Light’ to all this. This is
the form His being takes; He can project ideas into existence. Though what His
own inner being is, well . . . somehow I have to see that with His light, on
His wavelength. I have to see the light itself, not what it illuminates, not
the worldwide hologram it projects.” A thought struck Muthoni. “Do you know, if
we had a projector that could wrap a solid terrestrial reality around some of
those mudballs in the sky, we could go anywhere and settle
anywhere!
Is that what you’re thinking?
That we could
use
Him as a terraforming machine for
new colonies—if we could learn how to control the projection?
The way that
Knossos
focuses it?
Then this wouldn’t be a disaster at all.
What a marvelous secret to take back to Earth.”
“Depending on
fluxes in the collective imagery.”

 
          
“Plenty of work for an endopsych, eh?
Monitoring the
collective psyche? Tuning the projections? Licking the whole world into shape!
I guess it would require some kind of symbiosis with the ‘God’: the
projector-being. Even so ... Do you think that’s what He’s afraid of? Is that
why he switched off the
Schiaparelli?
Or was that
Knossos
’s wish—so that he could keep the secret to
himself?”

 
          
“You’re
thinking too far ahead. The thrust of evolution should put an end to
projection, in the psychological sense, when everyone realizes that what’s
outside there is actually inside
themselves
. That’s
‘The Work’: to reunify what has descended, or projected. Symbolically it ought
to happen when the birds fly back together to the evening of the world.”
“Denise—

 
          
“No, not Denise’s birds.
I mean all these birds that are
avians on the one hand, but also
ideas:
darkened wisdom— the raven; spiritual resolve—the cockerel. And so on. It all
ought to end.”

 
          
“You
mean we can’t use this power? Once we all know how to use it, we’ll be Gods
instead?
Without a solid world?
That’s what Jeremy
said, isn’t it? ‘If we were all divine Gods and sat together at table,
who
would bring us food?’ In that case, what substance could
we have?”

 
          
“Keep
talking. We’re sorting it out. Remember that this crypt is probably part of the
projection too! I don’t know whether the lens is.
Or if it’s
the origin of the projection.
But we’re certainly projecting ourselves
onto the lens.”

 
          
“Denise
did that all right!
Literally.”

 
          
“You
see a microscope with a magnified Earthlife cell down here. I see—a telescope
was wrong—it’s a
projector.

 
          
And
what we
do
with it determines what it
does with us. What Denise did . . . well, she’s always been absorbed by
ecology—almost mystically so, in her heart; now the ecology has absorbed her.
As you say, she projected herself
into !
it
.”

 
          
—‘In My thoughts all the time
. . . ’

           
The voice sounded weaker, more
remote this close to the center of things here beside the lens.

 
          
“He’s
listening to us,” whispered Muthoni.

 
          
“Of
course we’re in His thoughts. We’ve died and been reborn. He’s projecting us.
Until we died, we couldn’t become a full part of the projection, could we? We
were just visitors. We couldn’t really participate. But now we do. You know,
Denise once told me that there was some metascientific theory going around in
the old twentieth century to the effect that the whole universe is a sort of holographic
projection of a God’s thoughts. When you subdivide a hologram further and
further the picture doesn’t cease to exist, but it does get fuzzy. Maybe that’s
why fundamental particles become indeterminate, when you divide the universe
further and further. Maybe a God does dream the universe, projecting it into
being. Or it dreams itself. If that’s so, could the superbeing of this
Boschworld have evolved His consciousness to perceive this as the reality?
Could He have been exploring how existence
is?
Could He be a reflection of something that projects the universe—but within the
universe? Maybe He was a holy hermit, brooding here for eons. Then along came
our colonists with their kitbag of symbols and their secret hierophant,
Heinrich Strauss, ticking away like a time bomb among them . . . and He had to
give everyone life, a landscape, a world—because He knew how to—and that was
the psychic material waiting to be projected. That would be quite a cosmic joke
upon Him! He’s led us this far instead of absorbing us into the scheme straight
away— because he hopes.”

 
          
“He
certainly doesn’t expect us to use Him as a terraforming machine!”

 
          
“I’m
going to try and give Him something: awareness of what’s going on in the
projection.
My
awareness of it.
I’ll project that into him. Then we’ll see. Will you
come with me, Muthoni?”

 
          
She
looked around.
“Where?”

 
          
“Into God’s eye.
Into the lens.
Like two consciousness filters.”

           
“Jump into that cell? You’re crazy.
It’ll spew you out as a swarm of bees or a cloud of butterflies or something!”

 
          
“It
isn’t aqueous humor in the eye, but
aqua
nostra.
Here it is: the alchemist’s dream.”

 
          
He
slid one foot on to the membrane; Denise’s belly-dive wasn’t his style. The
lens upheld his partial weight, quivering under him. He transferred his full
weight to the surface. His arms semaphored to balance him. He pitched one way
then the other. Suddenly, both his feet slid in different directions. In a
manner which he barely had time to recognize as undignified, he sprawled
headlong on to the lens.

 
          
Light
lashed his eyes . . .

           
Young
Sean was
wearing short trousers and a school blazer. He had knobbly knees.
His fingers picked idly at a thread in the stitching of his breast pocket. The
blazer pocket bore a badge, a crest of crossed spaceships on it. It had a Latin
motto below it:
^l
PROlECTlO\
Young Sean had a project to undertake . . .

 
          
He
sat, he discovered, in the midst of an immense threedimensional lattice of
empty desks. They stretched above, below, in all directions. He was aware of
the existence of a floor; though it wasn’t visible, his feet rested on it, as
did the feet of his desk and of all the other desks on this particular
quasi-infinite plane. Other such ineffable planes were stacked above and below,
quasi-infinitely.

 
          
Out
of all the myriads of empty desks only his was occupied.
By
him.
(Somewhere there lurked a
paradox,
or two
. . .)

 
          
He
scratched his head. As a boy, he had lots of curly red hair, closely tangled.
The hairs hadn’t separated out yet like galaxies flying apart, leaving empty
space.

 
          
Desks.
How archaic. Even if they did have type keys recessed
into them, and a set of headphones and a printout slot . . . Archaic knobbly
knees.
Archaic hair.
Archaic boy!

 
          
Puzzled,
he stood up. The invisible floor existed between the desks too, not merely
under them. For a while he wandered about among the empty desks on that
particular plane (no way to reach any of the other planes) then seated himself
at another identical desk. Perhaps it was the same one. He couldn’t tell.

 
          
He
decided that he was sitting an examination, so he pulled out the little
earphones on their stalk and slipped them over his head.

 
          
A
voice promptly began speaking at a rapid dictation speed. Automatically his
fingers danced over the recessed keys. Paper began to extrude from the printout
slot. He realized that it was his own voice dictating to him, but he had no
knowledge of the text until he read it. For the voice didn’t tell him the
story; it merely operated his motor system—his typing reflexes.

 
          
Thus
(while still typing automatically) he read . . .

 
          
First
Epistle:

           
The Seventh Sun of a Seventh Sun

 
          
In a certain nebulosity there hangs a
sickle-blade of six suns, wielded by a mighty seventh sun; and this seventh sun
resolves itself on closer inspection into the most impressive multiple star
system in known space. It consists of a perfect octahedron of bright white
O-type suns which all revolve in harmony around a common center of gravity,
this center of gravity—almost lost amid the blaze of light—being a smaller
K-type sun, the seventh. One world alone attends this seventh sun: a gem of a
planet, where it is never night.

           
(The
whole ensemble of suns might have been towed into place by some long-dead
super-race, bent on re-arranging the cosmos into crystalline, gyroscopic
propriety . .
. )

           
Here,
on this world of the seventh sun of the seventh sun, miracles of healing take
place; and occasionally the very opposite—miracles of diseasing. (As though the
super-race had focused power particularly in this place . .
.
)

           
To
this world—named Gold, for its brightness and its wealth as well as for its
parent sun’s place at the center of the eight-faced stellar polyhedron, such a
shape being (as you know) the crystal structure of gold—there came the
hybernat- ing sickness ship from the constellation of Pavo with several
thousand cases of cancer and brain fever, etcetera, on board . . .

 
          
Sean
tore off the printout sheet, halting the dictating voice. What did it
mean?
That he was the seventh son of a
seventh son, exceptionally blessed with luck? He was Irish, to be sure, but
this was the first he had ever heard of any brothers!

 
          
A
long-dead super-race . . .

 
          
A
planet called Gold (only one letter away from ‘God’) built by them . . . towed
into place . . .

 
          
A
hybernating ship with all those sick souls on board . . .

 
          
From
Pavo
the Peacock
(Paavo . . . ?)

 
          
Clues,
acrostics, absurdities!

 
          
He
threw the sheet on to the invisible floor, where it remained.

 
          
His
voice spoke to him again. He typed, automatically.

 
          
Second
Epistle:

           
‘O Magnify the Lord!’

 
          
“Why should we magnify the Lord?” Herr
Professor Heinrich Strauss asked himself one day, and promptly began to grind
and polish the largest lens the world has ever seen and build the largest tube
and supports to accommodate it. “Either the Lord must be very far away, or else
He must be very small—quite minuscule, in fact!”

           
On
second thoughts, he converted his optical device into a telemicroscope: an
instrument which combined in one instrument the opposite functions of the
telescope and microscope. It could observe phenomena which are so large and so
close at hand that nobody else notices them (such as the whole wide world,
which his machine reduced to the size of a grain of sand), as well as those
which are so very far away that they’re situated right around the curve of the
whole cosmos, directly behind the observer’s own head.

           
One
day, while watching the back of his own head right around the bend of the
cosmos several billion light years away (he was using tachyon-light) the Herr
Professor observed a tiny figure dancing and waving to attract his attention.
Cranking the magnification up by a few more logarithmic notches, he was
delighted to realize that this must be God that he was at last observing . . .

 
          
Herr
Heinrich Strauss? There
was
indeed a
microtelescope —or telemicroscope—somewhere!
But where?
“Am I in it at this moment?”

 
          
Sean
tore the sheet free, balled it up and dashed it across a few desktops.

 
          
His
own voice addressed him again. His fingers heeded it.

 
          
Third
Epistle:

           
The Chicken Saviour

 
          
I came across a last outcropping of this
medieval view of the world in my youth, in the form of the following tale. We
had at that time a cook from the Swabian part of the
Black
Forest
, on
whom
fell the
duty of executing the victims from the poultry yard destined for the kitchen.
We kept bantams, and bantam cocks are renowned for their singular
quarrelsomeness and malice. One of these exceeded all others in savagery, and
my mother commissioned the cook to dispatch the malefactor for the Sunday
roast. I happened to come in just as she was bringing back the decapitated cock
and saying to my mother: “He died like a Christian, although he was so wicked.
He cried out, ‘Forgive me, forgive me!’ before I cut off his head, so now he’ll
go to heaven. ” My mother answered indignantly: “What nonsense! Only human
beings go to heaven.” The cook retorted in astonishment: “But of course there’s
a chicken heaven for chickens just as there’s a human heaven for humans.” “But
only people have an immortal soul and a religion,” said my mother, equally
astonished. “No, that’s not so,” replied the cook. “Animals have souls too, and
they all have their special heaven, dogs, cats, and horses, because when the
Saviour of men came down to earth, the chicken saviour also came to the
chickens . . .”

 
          
God as a chicken?
Cluck-cluck . . . Preposterous! Yet the
story his voice told him seemed more familiar, this time . . . Ah! It had been
written down by Carl Gustav Jung!
In
Psychologie und Alchimie.
Perhaps ... In a world of
alchemical transformations, what was
not
possible?
Even a chicken Christ.
One might indeed
become a bird, if that was the only way that one could fly ... Or flap one’s
wings, at any rate. (Shutting his eyes, he saw a flock of assorted birds
soaring up through a
Hauptwerk—
a
Great Organ—making rainbow music in its pipes . .
. )
If God
could
be a chicken, then
perhaps He
must
be a chicken some
time. He had no definable nature, yet nature tried to define Him . . .

 
          
Was
Denise’s transformation into birds genuine and lasting? Or was that only what
he had seen as she was projected forth? People couldn’t really be transmuted
into birds and beasts—at least not routinely—or the world wouldn’t be as full
of people as it was! It might be scantily populated in one sense, yet surely
there were more people than could be accounted for by the colonists and frozen
ova of the
Copernicus.
Perhaps,
though, birds and beasts were transmuted into people . . . The unicorn and the
leopard, the heron and the shrike, certainly seemed to have purposes and
motives beyond the merely animal . . . Because they were evolving?
Because they embodied ideas?
Or because
they already were consciously aware actors in the Bosch masque?
If so,
who were they all?

 
          
Sean
tore the epistle free and this time folded it and slipped it into his breast
pocket.

 
          
That
voice again!

 
          
Fourth
Epistle:

           
The God of the Singularity

 
          
God is very singular because there is only
one of Him, just as there is only one universe at any one time. But perhaps
there are other coexisting universes? In which case we do not inhabit the
Universe, consequently our universe may only embody part of God. Why not, then,
several separate parts of Him?

 
          
Schoolboy
logic! Sean groaned and crumpled up the paper.
The voice
continued, unperturbed, but saying something slightly different.

 
          
God is very singular because He can emerge
from a naked singularity in space-time. On the grounds that anything, but
anything, may so emerge, then God too may emerge from a naked singularity given
time. Let us suppose that a naked singularity generates God, as equally it may
toss out a can of beans or a monkey wrench or an exfarquib (an arbitrary name
for an alien object unknown to us). Thus, perhaps, the universe produces a God
for itself quite naturally rather than the other way about: rather than God
producing a universe. If the universe is thus stranger than God can
conceive—though it can conceive Him arbitrarily—then that’s a funny old do. The
God needs a quiet place to listen to the music that made Him, far from the
static of other natural life forms . . . Then along come life forms,
willy-nilly, docking like a hospital ship or a ship of refugees, prevailing
upon the creativity He has been endowed with . . .

 
          
Sean
wrenched the Fourth Epistle from the slot. He tore it up and flicked the pieces
about. For a while they clung to his desk like horseflies. Finally he got rid
of them all. “
Am I the bloody stochastic
monkey? Doomed to generate endless strings of nonsensical statements about God,
only one of which can possibly be true? Or can they all be true?”