cool mud, nodding to the old male when he arrived, grunted a greeting and lowered his old, rotund body into the mud alongside.
“I am trying to imagine to what I owe this unexpected honour, senator,” she told him.
“Perhaps you are,” the portly old male said, relaxing luxuriantly in the mud. He kept his back to the view from the wallow. There was a three-metre safety gap between the transparent wall round the whole terrace and the edge — that was pretty much the minimum that a Pavulean could cope with once they were higher than one storey up — but the old senator was known to be particularly prone to vertigo. She was surprised he’d agreed to meet on such a high level in the first place. He turned in the mud to look at her. “On the other trunk, perhaps you’re not.”
He left a space she was seemingly meant to fill, but she didn’t. Half a year ago, she would have, and might have given away more than she’d have wanted to. She declined to congratulate herself just yet. Representative Errun had many more tricks than just leaving people the space to talk themselves into trouble.
“Either way,” he said, slapping some mud over his back with one trunk, “I think we should clear some things up.”
“I am all for clearing things up,” she told him.
“Um-hum,” he said, throwing more mud over himself. There was a surprising neatness, almost a delicacy to how he did this that Filhyn found quite endearing. “We are,” the old male began, then paused. “We are a fallen species, Representative.” He stopped, looked her in the eye. “May I call you Filhyn?” He raised one muddied trunk, let it fall with a small muddy splash. “As we are in such informal circumstances?”
“I suppose so,” she said. “Why not?”
“Well then. We are a fallen species, Filhyn. We have never been entirely sure what really came before us, but we have always imagined something more heroic, more bold, more like a predator. We are told this is the price of having become civilised.” Errun snorted at this. “Anyway, we are who we are, and although we are not perfect, we have done the best we could, and done quite well. And we can be proud that we have not yet surrendered to the AIs we have brought into being, or abandoned all the attributes and mechanisms that made us great, and civilised, in the first place.”
By this, Errun probably meant the primacy of natural Pavulean decision-making rather than letting their AIs have anything other than an advisory role, and commerce: money, the accumulation of capital. And — of course — Collective Wisdom, the Pavulean philosophy/religion/way of life which still bore within it traces of male supremacism and Haremism. These were exactly the things which Filhyn personally thought were now holding their whole civilisation back, but she wasn’t about to start arguing with an ancient and revered conservative like Errun. Some problems were generational; you just had to wait for the relevant elders to die off and be replaced with more progressive types. With luck.
“You people from the Outlyings see matters differently, we realise,” Errun told her. “But still, the soul of our people — our species, our civilisation — lies here, on these plains, this planet, on the terraformed New Homes and the habitats that spin around our home star.” Errun raised his gaze to the sun, currently lighting up some layers of creamy cloud to the south.
“Under this sun,” Filhyn said. She was also not going to bring up the absurdity of her being the only Representative for the whole diasporic mass of the Greater Pavulean Herd. In theory they were all part of the Fifteen Herds and there was no need for all the tens of billions of Pavuleans who now lived around other stars to have extra representation, but this was of course complete nonsense, just a way for the centre here on Pavul to keep control of its distributed empire.
“Under this sun,” the old male agreed. “Do you possess a soul-keeper device?” he asked her suddenly.
“Yes,” she told him.
“For an Outlying religion, I dare say.”
She wasn’t sure she would even call it a religion. “I’ll stay amongst my far-flung friends when I die,” she said. “My soul-keeper is keyed to our local Afterlife.”
The old male sighed, shook his head. He seemed to be about to say something — perhaps he was going to chastise her, she thought — but then he didn’t. He slapped some more mud about himself.
“We need threat to keep us honest, Filhyn,” he told her. He sounded regretful, but intent. “I wouldn’t go as far as those who wish we hadn’t rid ourselves of predators, but we need something to keep us on our toes, to bring us up to the moral mark, don’t you see?”
“I see that you believe that deeply, Representative,” she said diplomatically.
“Um-hum. You will see the track I am heading along here. I won’t dissemble. We need the threat of punishment in the after-life to keep us from behaving like mere beasts in this existence.” He waved one trunk. “I have no idea if there really is a God, Filhyn, any more than you do, any more than the Grand High Priest does.” He snorted. Filhyn was genuinely shocked to hear him say this, even if she’d long assumed just that. “Perhaps God resides in the places where the Sublimed live, in these hidden dimensions, so conveniently folded up and hard to get at,” the old male said. “I suppose it is almost the last place He might. As I say, I don’t know. But I know most certainly that there is evil in us, and I know and accept that the technologies that have given us the means to express that evil — allowing us to exterminate our natural predators — have led in turn to the technologies that now let us save our souls, that let us save ourselves and that let us continue to administer rewards and punishments beyond the grave. Or at least… the threat of punishment.” He looked at her.
She slowly smeared her own back with mud. “Are you going to tell me that it is only the threat?”
He rolled a little closer to her, rotating in the grey-brown mud. “Of course it is just the threat,” he told her quietly, conspiratorially, with a hint of humour. He rolled back again. “All that matters is that people are frightened into behaving properly while they are alive. What happens after they are dead is really no concern of the living. Nor should it ever be.” He chuckled. “That last bit’s just my personal belief, but it’s also the truth of the matter as it stands. We scare them with these threats of correction and unpleasantness but once they’re scared there’s no need actually to impose the punishments. There are entire teams of creatives: artists, scenarioists, writers, explicators, designers, psychologists, sound sculptors and… well, God knows who and what else… Anyway, their entire working lives are spent creating a completely unrealistic environment and a completely false expectation for completely good and moral reasons.”
“So the Hells only exist as a threat, to keep people in line while they’re still alive.”
“Well, ours certainly does. And that’s all it does. Can’t speak for the Afterlives of aliens. But I’ll tell you this: a lot of the current fuss about them is founded on a basic misunderstanding. What’s annoying is that people who don’t want them to exist can’t accept that they actually
“So where are all the people who ought to be in other Afterlives, in Heavens? Because they are not there.”
Errun snorted. “In limbo.” He slapped at something on his flank, inspected what he found there. An imaginary insect, Filhyn suspected. “Stored, but not functioning, not in any sense living.” He seemed to hesitate, then rolled closer to her again. “May I speak in confidence, Filhyn?”
“I assumed all that’s being said here is in confidence, Representative.”
“Of course, of course, but I mean in particular confidence; something that you would not even share with your closest aides or a partner. Something strictly between you and me.”
“Yes,” she said. “Very well. Go ahead,”
He rolled closer still. “Some of those who disappear, who it might appear go into this so-called Hell,” he said quietly, “are simply deleted.” He looked at her, quite serious. She looked back. “They are not even held in limbo,” he told her. “They simply cease to be; their soulkeeper thing is wiped clean and the information, their soul, is not transferred anywhere. That’s the truth, Filhyn. It’s not something that’s supposed to happen, but it does. Now,” he said, tapping her on one front knee, “you most emphatically did not hear that from me, do you understand?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Good. That really is something we don’t want people knowing. Don’t you see?” he asked her. “All that matters is that people
