Stephen Baxter - Transcendent

Drea shook her head. “What’s the point of going through all that pain? It’s so morbid. ”

“I think I can see the theory,” Reath said. “At the heart of the Redemption is a desire for atonement, bringing the past into oneself. Perhaps that can be achieved through a reconciliation, a unification of oneself with a figure from the past. Witnessing was a first step. But by going to this Second Level, by suffering with that figure, by living through such a life, the anguish of the past can be” — he waved a hand — “internalized sufficiently.”

Bale said skeptically, “Sufficiently for what?”

“To make this strange superhuman guilt go away.”

Seer laughed. “So is that the truth behind our glorious Transcendence, our superhuman future? It’s all just a grim nostalgia for the womb?”

“I still say it’s morbid,” Drea said.

After a day in orbit Alia descended to Earth. She met Leropa once more in the attenuated shadows of the ruined cathedral.

“Reath speaks of atonement,” Alia said. “He says that perhaps by joining with a figure from the past you can expiate its pain.”

“Reath is a wise man,” Leropa said.

“So I was united with Poole’s lost son.”

“Yes. The Second Level is a Hypostatic Union with the past, a union of substances beneath external differences, the trivialities of locations in space and time. You felt that poor child’s small joy, his pain. And you will never forget, will you?”

“No,” Alia said fervently. “And this is the redeeming?”

“It is the beginning,” Leropa said.

Alia frowned. “I have to do this again?”

Leropa seemed surprised by the question. “Of course—”

“I have to live through a whole human life, again? ”

“It isn’t so bad,” Leropa said. “Subjective time, the time of the hypostasis, passes more rapidly than externally. To join with Michael Poole himself, for example, a life spanning nearly a hundred years, would take only a few days.”

“But a hundred years,” Alia said, “for me. A hundred years of being trapped, helpless, in some tormented body of the past. How could I survive that?”

“Oh, but you would. You’re strong, I can see that. And then of course—”

Alia saw it immediately. “I would have to do it again. Another life to be endured. And again and again.” But the present was a surface surrounding a great ocean of past; the dead far outnumbered the living. “How many lives must I live through, Leropa?”

Leropa frowned. “If you have to ask that, as I told you, you don’t understand the nature of the Transcendence.”

“ How many ?”

“All of them,” the undying said simply.

It was the ultimate logic of Redemption. The purpose was atonement not for some of the past, for some of the human suffering it contained, but for all of it. And how could that be achieved piecemeal? So Alia, like every witness, would have to live through every human life that had preceded hers: Michael Poole, his second son, his family, his ancestors, and their ancestors all the way back to the point where humanity was lost, perhaps a hundred billion of them — and, looking forward, all his descendants, to the mighty Galaxy-spanning Exultant generation and beyond. And in the future, all those watchers would themselves have to be watched — and then there would be watchers to watch the watchers — on and on, a recursive chain of watchers upon watchers.

The ultimate logic was that every human being, undying, should live through the lives, and absorb the pain, of every other.

“No doubt the process will be made more efficient,” Leropa said, unperturbed. “But the number of encounters is always finite. And finitude withers to nothing in the face of infinity.”

Alia remembered Reath’s grave, sad voice: To understand the Transcendence, you must understand infinity, Alia. “But all that pain, multiplied over and over, combinatorially, forever —”

Leropa spread her hands. “This is atonement. Atonement must hurt. To a creature of infinite capacity like the Transcendence, what can serve as atonement but to pay an infinite price?”

Alia backed away. This is insane, she thought, but she dared not say it. “I don’t want this.”

Leropa’s frown deepened. “You choose death over life? Smallness over infinity? Are you sure?”

“I’m not ready.”

Leropa bowed her head. “Take all the time you need. But I will be here, waiting for you. Forever. And remember,” she called. “Redemption has more Levels you’ve yet to glimpse…”

Alia turned and ran for the shuttle.

It was a huge relief once more to get back to orbit. But Drea had some news from the Nord — bad news.

We got together to discuss what to do: George’s surviving family, John, Tom, my mother, me, even Rosa, all huddling like VR witches, muttering behind his back.

We’d been told that none of us were to fly out to England. George made it abundantly clear that us all going to such a fuss and expense would embarrass him. He didn’t even want VR visitors, he said. We all had our own lives to lead, et cetera, et cetera. I don’t think it fooled anybody. But then the guy was eighty-seven and he was dying; I guess he had a right to a little muddle.

We had to see him, of course, virtually at least. John agreed to dig into his pockets once more. But we decided we weren’t going to go over in a mob, VR or not, like a presaging of the funeral the doctors were saying wouldn’t be more than a year away. We would visit one at a time, or in pairs. Tom went first, with Sonia. George would surely want to meet her, but he had his pride; we knew he would feel happier about facing her while he was still able to put on a show.

While Tom visited I carried on with my work in Alaska, on the hydrate project. Rosa and Gea continued to analyze the Morag visitations, but for a while I spent no more time on that. The Morag business had always tended to make us fight, me against John, Tom against me; it drove us apart. At such a time as this it all seemed trivial, a sideshow, whatever its astounding implications.

Then, a week after Tom’s visit, I went over myself.

George was glad to see me. That was obvious, gratifying, painful.

He wanted to take another walk, which surprised me. So we stepped out of his house, trailed once more by his Gea-robot care assistant. George guided me away from the maintained silvertop roads, and I soon found myself walking down the greened center lane of one half of an immense dual carriageway, as they call them in England.

The road was a mighty ribbon that curled between banks of houses, shops, and factories. Traffic lights and road signs, the clutter of the roadside, mostly survived, but the green and white paint of the signs had long faded to illegibility. The tarmac itself was giving way to green. For long stretches it was broken up by weeds, grasses, and a few bright wildflowers — “pioneer species,” George said, nuzzling into the pores of the road surface.

It was the middle of the night for my body in Alaska, and I felt dislocated, faintly jet-lagged. The experience of that fresh English day, the quality of the virtual sunlight on my virtual cheeks, was enough to make my body respond, to wake me up. But it was strange to see that carpet of green unrolling before me like a long, thin stretch of parkland, completely empty, save for ourselves.

George was in a nostalgic mood. “Sometimes I miss the traffic,” he said. “When I was a kid — why, when you were a kid — the towns and cities were full of cars day and night, and there was this dull, continual roar. I used to think about the roads, how they joined up the country. You could drive your car out from your own garage, and then expect to be able to roll all the way to wherever you wanted to get to, from Cornwall to Scotland, without your tires ever leaving the tarmac. It was as if some great volcanic eruption had flooded the whole country with asphalt. And then it went away, just like that. Christ, Spaghetti Junction is a world heritage site now.