City At The End Of Time by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9780575081888
Publisher: Victor Gollancz Limited
Published: 2008-07-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 41

The Astyanax met Ghentun standing before a transparent rack of glittering noötic instruments, which he was applying meticulously—without touch—to a simulacrum. The subject bore a faint resemblance to one of the ancient breeds, though larger, blockier, less graceful, and with less fur. All around them the chamber shifted at the whims of the Great Eidolon. Several times Ghentun had to move to avoid being burned, frozen, or simply crushed. Out of respect, he had set his cloak to minimum, but now he surreptitiously strengthened its protection.

And this was the Astyanax trying to be polite.

“I wonder,” he began, rotating the simulacrum. “Is this what our terrestrial ancestors once really looked like? Not as pretty as your ancient breeds, to be sure…but somehow, in its awkwardness, its crudity, more convincing.”

“Quite convincing,” Ghentun said. “But we’ll never know. Those records are long since lost.”

“Fun to speculate,” the Astyanax mused. “If you don’t mind a little competition.”

The simulacrum blinked at them both with obvious astonishment.

“Do you think if I confirmed its shape and set it loose in the Tiers, that it would dream , Keeper?” the Astyanax asked. “Would it behave as our ancestors once did, shedding their discarded world-lines, their untraveled fates, each time they sleep?”

Eidolons rarely mentioned fates. Their makeup precluded variation along the fifth dimension—all fates were automatically optimized into a single path. That inflexibility made them peculiarly vulnerable to the Chaos.

Ghentun walked around the simulacrum. “It’s a possibility,” he said.

“If we could ever trace back along the combined chord of this creature and its gens,” the Astyanax continued, “linking up such a sensitive animal , made of primordial matter, with its closest ancestors, however far back…could it actually testify to those lost times? We would have to assume that its world-line would link and match with similar world-lines, retrocausally—like the mating of primitive genetic strands.”

“The experiment has been tried. It’s always failed,” Ghentun said, unsure what the City Prince knew, what the Great Eidolons had told one another across half an eternity of subterfuge.

“Yet that is precisely what you seek—confirmation of something in the remote past. The final destruction, am I right?”

“You are never wrong,” Ghentun said.

The Astyanax froze the simulacrum and then dissolved it. The primordial mass dropped into a glistening lump on the platform. “Idle play,” he said. “Have you spoken recently to the Librarian?”

“I made a visit to the Broken Tower seventy-five years ago,” Ghentun said. “A meeting was scheduled to discuss the Tiers, but I have not yet been summoned.” He knew better than to try to hide obvious truths.

“You reported a change in the Tiers to the angelins in the Broken Tower, Keeper. I assumed someone would let me know eventually. The Librarian and I, after all, have long co-ventured in this study.”

“It is not my place to carry messages between Great Eidolons.” Ghentun knew he was being provoked. He expected little more from an Eidolon—compared to the City Prince, he was less than a pede crossing a dusty road.

“I’ve heard the Librarian is still working on his radical solution to our difficulties,” the Astyanax said.

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