and the infinite tree. I tested the ship’s neurologics. But they were healthy and sound, and nowhere could I find the source of the Entity’s signal.
There is no signal, as you think of signal. There is only perception and touch: I look into the electric field of your ship’s logics and reach out and jiggle the electrons to change the hologram. And so your computer runs my thoughts and suffuses my voice into your brain. I would touch your brain directly but that would frighten you.
Yes, yes, it would have. I was already frightened enough. I did not want anything alien to ‘jiggle’ the electrons in my brain, to fill me with its images and sounds, to make me see and hear and touch and smell things which did not exist, to change my very perception of reality. With this thought came a much more disturbing thought: What if the Entity already were jiggling my brain’s electrons? Perhaps She only wanted me to think that the voice I heard came from the computer. I did not know what to think. Was I really thinking my own thoughts? Or was the Entity playing with me, making me doubt that I was thinking my own thoughts? Or worse still, what if it all was a nightmare of madness? Maybe the ship had disintegrated; maybe I was experiencing a final moment before death, and the Entity – for whatever reasons – had reached into my brain to create an illusion of sane existence. Maybe I was dead or just dreaming; maybe I, whatever ‘I’ was – was entirely the Entity’s dream creation. Everyone, of course, has these thoughts and fears, but very few have had a goddess speak to them. When I thought of Her being inside my mind, I was dizzy with a sense of losing my self. My stomach churned with a sick feeling that I had no free will. It was an awful moment. I thought that the universe was a terribly uncertain place where I could be certain of only a single thing: that in the realm of my mind, I wanted no thoughts other than my own to alter my thinking.
Because I was full of fear and doubt, the Entity explained how she manipulated matter through the layers of the manifold. But I understood only the smallest part of the physics, the simplest of ideas. She had created a new mathematics to describe the warp and woof of spacetime. Her theory of interconnectedness was as beyond me as a demonstration of the different orders of infinities would be to a worm. Ages ago, of course, the mechanics had explored the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. For example, they had shown that both photons in a pair of photons are connected in fundamental ways no matter how far the two particles are separated in realspace. If two photons fly away from a light source towards the opposite ends of the universe, each will ‘know’ certain of its twin’s attributes, such as spin or polarization, no matter how far apart they are. And they will know it instantaneously, as if each instantly ‘remembered’ it should be polarized horizontally, not up and down. From this discovery the mechanics theorized that it is possible to transmit information faster than light, though to their disgrace they have never succeeded in doing so. But their brains are small where the Entity’s is measureless. It seemed She had found a way not only to communicate but to instantaneously touch and manipulate particles across and through the reaches of space. How She did so, I still do not understand.
– I don’t understand your definition of a correspondence space; is it isomorphic to what we call a Lavi space? I can’t see … if only there was more time!
At the beginning of time all the particles of the universe were crushed together into a single point; all the particles were as one, in the singularity.
– And I don’t remember the derivation of your field equation. It must be –
Memory is everything. All particles remember the instant the singularity exploded and the universe was born. In a way, the universe is nothing but memory.
– The correspondences are superluminal, then? The correspondence scheme collapses? I’ve tried to prove that a hundred times but –
Everything in the universe is woven of a single superluminal fabric. Tat tvam asi, that thou art.
– I don’t understand.
You are not here to understand.
– Why do you think I’ve crossed half the galaxy, then?
You are here to kneel.
– What?
You are here to kneel – these are words from an old poem. Do you know the poem?
– No, of course not.
Ahhh, that is a shame. Then perhaps you are here to die as well as kneel.
– I’ll die in the infinite tree; there’s no mapping out of an infinite tree.
Others have come before you; others are lost in the tree.
– Others?
Suddenly the voice of the goddess grew as high and sweet as a little girl’s. Like the piping of a flute, the following words spilled into my brain:
They are all gone into a world of light!
And I alone sit lingering here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.
You must die. Deep inside you know this. Don’t be afraid.
– Well, pilots die – or so they say. I’m not afraid.
I am sorry you are afraid. It was that way with the others.
– What others?
Eight pilots of your Order have tried to penetrate my brains: Wicent li Towt, Erendira Ede and Alexandravondila; Ishi Mokku, Ricardo Lavi, Jemmu Flowtow and Atara of Darkmoon. And John Penhallegon, the one you call the Tycho.
– Then you killed them?
What do you know about killing? As an oyster, to protect itself, encapsulates an irritant grain of sand with layer upon layer of pearl, so I have confined all but one of these pilots to the branchings of a decision tree.
– What’s an oyster?
The Entity reached into my computer’s thoughtspace and placed there an image etched in light and touch and smell. By means of this forbidden telepathy – forbidden to us pilots – I experienced Her conception of oyster. In my mind I saw a soft, squishy creature which protected itself with a hinged shell that it could open or close at will. My fingers closed almost against my will, and in my hand I felt gritty sand against a scoop-shaped, hard, wet shell. My jaws moved of their own, moved my teeth against a tender meat which suddenly ruptured, filling my mouth with living fluids and salt and the taste of the sea. I smelled the thick, cloying perfume of naked proteins and heard a sucking sound as I swallowed the gobbet of raw, living flesh.
That is oyster.
– It’s wrong to kill animals for their meat.
And you, my innocent man, are a pretty pearl in the necklace of time. Do you understand the time distortions? The other pilots are alive, as a pearl is alive with lustre and beauty, yet they do not live. They have died, yet they remain undead.
– Again, you speak in riddles.
The universe is a riddle.
–
