Iain Banks - Transition

The Concern had first discovered the world a few years after the catastrophe and had repaired and restored the palace. It had become a place where privileged officers of the Concern could holiday. Mrs Mulverhill, who now seemed to be able to go anywhere and do anything as long as she stayed away from the Concern proper, had found a version – indeed, a whole unshuffled deck of versions – where this had been done but nobody had yet come to visit. For now at least it was her private world. She had brought him here. This time, she had only needed to hold his hand.

“What is the point,” she asked him, “of trying to do any good in the many worlds when there will always be an infinite number of realities where the horrors unfold unstopped?”

“Because one ought to do what one can. Good is good. Specific people and societies benefit. That not all people and societies benefit is beside the point. That a finite number of lives and worlds are better as a result of the actions of the Concern is all the justification that is required, and refusing to do a finite amount of good because you cannot do an infinite amount of good is a morally perverse position. If you feel sorry for a beggar you still give them money even though doing so does nothing for the plight of all other beggars.” He let himself slide under the steaming water and the islands of bubbles, resurfacing and wiping water from his face. “How am I doing? I’m paraphrasing here, but it’s sounding pretty good to me. I should probably write a paper or something.”

“Extremely well. You’re a credit to your teachers.”

“I thought so.” He pushed his fingers through his hair like a rough comb. “So. Tell me where I’m wrong and what the Concern is really up to.”

She nodded once. There were times when he thought she lacked any sense of humour, irony or sarcasm. “I think now that the Concern,” she said, “exists for a much more specific purpose than simply acting as a multiversal niceness-enforcement agency. It does do some good, but it’s incidental, a cover for its true purpose.”

“Which is what?”

“That is what I hope you will agree to help me find out.”

“So you still don’t know?”

“Correct.”

“But you suspect they’re up to something.”

“I know they are.”

“How do you know?”

“I feel it.”

“You feel it.”

“Indeed. In fact I feel certain of it.”

“You know, if you’re going to convince anybody else about this, including me, you’re going to have to do better than just telling them you’re certain. It’s a little vague.”

“I know. But consider this.”

Of course, she had a slyly refined sense of humour and appreciated ironies that entirely passed him by. Sarcasm was generally beneath her, but even so.

“I am,” he told her, “sitting comfortably.”

She put one hand up to the side of her head, so that one rosy nipple surfaced briefly from the white bubbles. She took the little white hat and the veil off, laid them on the black granite at the side of the tub. Slitlike pupils in amber irises narrowed fractionally as they regarded him.

“We have access to an infinite number of worlds,” she said, “and have visited some very strange ones. We suspect there are some so strange that we are unable to access them just because of that strangeness: they are unenvisageable, and because we cannot imagine going to them, we cannot go to them. But think how relatively limited is the type of world we do visit. For one thing, it is always and only Earth, as we understand it. Never the next planet further in towards or further out from the sun: Venus or Mars or their equivalents. This Earth is usually about four and a half billion years old in a universe just under fourteen billion years old. Usually, even if it supports no intelligent life, it supports some life. Almost without variance, it exists as part of a solar system in a galaxy composed of hundreds of millions of other solar systems, in a universe composed of hundreds of millions of other galaxies.”

As she spoke, she flexed one leg and reached out with it to find his groin with her foot. Her toes brushed against his balls, his cock, stroking them, wafting like the water.

“Wait,” he said, opening his legs a little to allow her more room, “this isn’t the ‘Where Is Everybody?’ question, is it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s easy. There is no everybody. There is only us. There are no aliens. Not a single one of the many worlds shows any sign of alien contact, past or present. Their lack, throughout the multiverse, proves the point. We are alone in the universe.” Her toes were gently brushing first one side of his penis, then the other, bringing him erect.

“In all the universes?” she asked, smiling.

“In every single one.”

“Then infinity seems to be failing somehow, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Failing?”

“It hasn’t produced any aliens. It has produced only us. A single intelligent species in all the wide universe does not smack of infinity.” She supported herself by stretching her arms out to either side of the tub and reached out now with both feet, finding his erection with two sets of toes and stroking it gently up and down.

He cleared his throat. “What does it smack of then?”

“Well, it could simply be due to what the transitioneering theorists call the problem of unenvisionability, as mentioned: we cannot imagine a world that includes aliens – or perhaps, deep down, we don’t want to.” Mrs Mulverhill raised one hand and blew some bubbles from it to inspect her fingernails before looking at him and saying, “Or it might smack of deliberate quarantine, systematic enclosure, some vast cover-up…”

“Why, Mrs Mulverhill, you’re a conspiracy theorist!”

“Yes,” she agreed, smiling. “But not by nature. I’ve been forced into it by the conspiracy I’m investigating.” She hesitated, uncharacteristically. “I’ve found some examples. Ones you’ll know about. Want to hear?”

“Fire away.” He nodded down to where her glistening feet, bobbing rhythmically through the surface of the swirling, bubbling water, were caressing his cock, parenthetical. “Feel free to not stop doing that, though.”

She smiled. “The examples are from the more extreme end of the exoticism spectrum,” she told him, “but still.”

“I’ve always liked extremities.”

“I’m sure. Max Fitching, the singer?”

“I remember.”

“The green terrorist explanation was a lie. He was going to give his money to SETI research.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Marit Shauoon?”

“I still wince.”

“He was going to use his network of communication satellites to do a SETI in reverse, deliberately broadcasting signals to the stars. In his will he’d have funded a trio of orbiting telescopes dedicated to finding Earth-like planets and looking for signs of intelligent life on them. You killed him days before he was going to alter his will with just that provision in mind. Glimpsing how it’s all heading?”

“You missed out Serge Anstruther.”

“Yerge Aushauser. No, he really was a shit. He wasn’t really a genocidal racist as such but whenever he’s not stopped he ends up causing such havoc he might as well have been. Wanted to buy up a state in the US midwest and build an impregnable Nirvana for the super-rich; Xanadu, Shangri-La. Fantasy made real. A Libertarian.” From his expression she must have thought he wasn’t entirely familiar with the term. She sighed. “Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.”

“You’ve obviously thought about it.”

“And dismissed it. But expect to hear a lot more about it as Madame d’O consolidates her power-base – it’s a natural fit for people just like you, Tem.”