‘And you,’ he said.
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Clarin. Did you tell Jamieson once that you loved me?’
Her eyes filled. ‘Yes, I did. He shouldn’t have told you.’
‘It was the last thing he said to me, Clarin. He asked me to keep it in mind, for his sake.’
She wept.
‘All these conversations I’ve been having with people, Clarin – they haven’t taught me anything that I didn’t already know. Only two people on this journey taught me something I didn’t know. You and Jamieson I didn’t know anyone could feel as I did about Jubal, care the way I did about Jubal. I set myself apart from people really, separate, in a class all by myself.’ He laughed ruefully. ‘Don asked me why I picked Celcy, why I didn’t try to find someone more suitable. There was a simple reason. It never occurred to me that anyone could be what I needed. I was elite, Clarin. Solitary in my mystical splendor. I thought I was all alone. Jamieson had to force himself on me to teach me I had no monopoly on wonder. Jamieson … and you.’
The tears spilled. ‘I miss him,’ she whispered.
‘So do I. You’re right. If I owe Lim, I owe Jamieson, too. He told me where my heart was.’
‘Are you trying to say you love me?’
‘I’m trying to say I love you both. Loved him. Love you. Not the way I thought I loved Celcy. Something quite different from that….’
‘I don’t want to be your child.’
‘No. I didn’t think you did. I don’t want that, either.’
‘Will you get confused about who I am, Tasmin?’
He thought about this. It was so easy to get confused about who people were. Each person was so many persons. One could only try. He lifted her from the chair, holding her tightly against him. She felt as she had that time at the foot of the Watcher, trembling. She smelled the same. He remembered their voices rising together as they ascended the Ogre’s Stair. Two voices, like one. Like himself. If he knew himself, he knew her. If he knew himself….
‘If I get confused,’ he promised, ‘I’ll ask Bondri to help me sing you, Clarin.’
Technical Appendix to the Enigma Score
Mark E. Eberhart, Ph.D. Department of Materials
Science and Engineering, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
The Presences on Jubal present an intriguing view of crystalline intelligence and, as in any scientific mystery, sufficient information to form a hypothesis on how these Presences might function. The possibility of sentient crystals is hardly new. Modern computers are, after all, an assemblage of crystalline silicon, and one goal of those involved in creating artificial intelligence is to impose an intelligence on such an assemblage. Yet it is doubtful, for evolutionary reasons, that the Presences of this novel would function as some super-sophisticated silicon chip.
The single most important requirement for a living system to come into existence naturally is the ability to self-replicate. Biological life on this planet almost certainly had its genesis in short segments of DNA or RNA, which, when occurring in solution with the building blocks of DNA or RNA, will produce a complementary strand of material. Through the process of natural selection, those segments that are the most efficient at self-replication will dominate over those less efficient. Life, as we know it, is a manifestation of highly effective systems of DNA replication.
The basic building blocks of computers made from crystalline silicon are p-n junctions. A p-n junction is a planar region that has been chemically modified so that electrical current will flow easily only in one direction across, or ‘normal to,’ the plane. To create p-n junctions requires tremendous amounts of processing, that is, energy and human intervention. They occur nowhere in nature. It is not easy to conceive of a ‘natural’ process that would allow for the self-replication of such junctions in such creatures as the Presences. It is, therefore, unlikely that thinking crystals would look anything like modern computers. It is the ability of the Presences to grow that provides a clue as to their inner workings.
Before taking a closer look, we might review the underlying structure of crystals.
A crystal is any periodic array of atoms. The key word here is periodic: a crystal is analogous to a checkerboard with no edges. If one starts on any white square on the board and then moves two squares in any direction perpendicular to the square’s edge, left or right, forward or backward, one would find himself in a position indistinguishable from the starting point. The same would hold true for a black square. In fact, from any starting point on a checkerboard one can translate to an identical position by moving an even number of squares in any direction. A checkerboard is, therefore, a periodic array of squares with a period of two squares. Such a periodic array has the property of translational invariance, for obvious reasons. No matter how one translates himself on the board, moving an even number of squares in any direction, the surroundings will be the same. A checkerboard is a two-dimensional system with translational invariance. A crystal is a three-dimensional system with translational invariance.
Whereas crystals are defined to be translationally invariant, there are no examples of perfect crystals anywhere in the universe. All crystals have defects. The defect we are most familiar with is surface. As soon as a crystal has a boundary – as soon as the checkerboard has an edge – the system is no longer translationally invariant. This is how we know that no perfect crystal exists anywhere in the three-dimensional universe. If it did, it would have no edges and would thus fill the universe, leaving no room for us. A real checkerboard – not
