Transcendence (Charles Sheffield) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

Chapter Seventeen

J’merlia was convinced that he was dead.

Again.

He wanted to be dead. Deader than the previous time.

Then he had merely been stupid enough to dive into the middle of an amorphous singularity, which no conscious being, organic or inorganic, could possibly survive.

That produced physical dismemberment: one’s body was stretched along its length, and at the same time compressed on all sides, until one became a drawn-out filament of subnuclear particles, and finally a burst of neutrinos and a ray of pure radiation. Long before that, of course, one was dead and unconscious. It was an unpleasant end, certainly, but one well studied and well understood.

What he had dealt with next had been much worse: mental dismemberment. His mind had been teased apart, delicately separated piece from piece, while all the time he remained conscious and suffering. And then inside his fragmented brain everything that was mentally clear and clean had been taken away from him, dispatched on multiple mysterious and faraway tasks. What was left was a useless husk, devoid of purpose — vague, irresolute, and uncertain.

And now that poor shattered remnant was being interrogated.

“Tell me about the human you call Julian Graves — about the Hymenopt known as Kallik — about the Cecropian, Atvar H’sial.” The probing came from the Builder construct, Guardian. J’merlia knew his tormentor, but the knowledge did not help. His mind, absent all trace of free will, had to answer.

“Tell me everything,” the questioner went on, “about all the members of your party. I can observe present actions, but I need to know the past before I can make decisions. Tell.”

J’merlia told. Told all. What he had become could not resist or lie.

But it was not a one-way process; for, as he told, into the vacuum of uncertainty that was now his mind there flowed a backwash of information from Guardian itself. J’merlia was not capable of analyzing or understanding what he received. All he could do was record.

How many are we? That I cannot say, although I have pondered the question since the time of my first self-awareness. I thought for one million years. And then, more than three million years ago, I sent out my probes on the Great Search; far across the spiral arm and beyond it, seeking. Seeking first to contact, and then to know my brethren.

I failed. I learned that we are hundreds, certainly, and perhaps thousands. But our locations make full knowledge difficult, and few of us were easy to find. Some lie in the hearts of stars, force-field protected. Others are cocooned deep within planets, awaiting some unknown signal before they will emerge. A handful have moved so far from the spiral arm and from the galaxy itself that all contact has been lost. The most inaccessible dwell, like me, within the dislocations of space-time itself. Perhaps there are others, in places I did not even dream to look.

I do not know, for I did not complete the Great Search. I abandoned it. Not because all the construct locations could not ultimately be found by extended search; rather, because the search itself was pointless. I learned that my self-appointed task could never achieve its objective.

I had thought to find like minds, a community of constructs, united in purpose, a brethren in pursuit of the same goal of service to our creators. But what I found was worse than diversity — it was insanity.

These are beings who share my origin and my internal structure, even my external form. Communication between us should have been simple. Instead I found it impossible. Some were autistic, so withdrawn into their own world of delusion that no response could be elicited, no matter what the stimulus. Many were fixated, convinced past all persuasion of a misguided view as to their own role and the roles of the other constructs.

Finally, and reluctantly, I was forced to a frightening conclusion. I realized that I, and I alone of all the constructs, had remained sane. I alone understood the true program of my creators, the beings you know as the Builders; and I alone bore this burden, to preserve and protect True-Home for their return and eventual use.

Or rather, I and one ally would carry out that duty. For by the strangest irony I found one other construct who understands the nature of our true duties — and that construct is physically closest to me, hidden within the same set of singularities. That being, the World-Keeper, guards and prepares the interior of True-Home, just as I guard the exterior.

When the Great Search was abandoned I realized that the World-Keeper and I would be obliged to carry out the whole program ourselves. There would be no assistance from any other of our fellows.

And so, two million years ago — we began.

The two-way flow continued, beyond J’merlia’s control, until his mind had no more information to offer and no more power to absorb. At the end of it came a few moments of peace.

And then arrived the time of ultimate agony and bewilderment.

The pain during the fragmenting of J’merlia’s mind had seemed unbearable. He realized that it had been nothing only when the awful process of mental coalescence and collapse began.