“You were about to go beyond a brawl or even a murder,” said the voice. “You would have broken the Peace of the Covenant.”
It was the Worldguide that spoke, Mikel knew. Amidst tumult, a tiny part of him wondered how much of its attention the central intelligence of the Solar System was giving to this occasion and this moment.
“Did you think your actions went unobserved?”
The machines, robots, planetary maintenance, the whole incomprehensibly vast meshwork of communications, computations, and information, Mikel realized. Yes, and satellites, and invisibly small flying sensors, everything in the service of humankind and of life everywhere, therefore its deeds and decisions unquestioningly—gladly—accepted by nearly every person alive.
“Your own laws, usages, and consciences preserved it thus far in this nation. Your own ceremonies, rituals, vyings for status, and pleasures took up your energies.”
What else was left for us? cried the unborn rebel.
“But now that very tradition has led you to reignite the old violence. Unchecked, it would burn more fiercely from generation to generation, resentment, blind hate, feud, war, with unrest in many other societies. It must end at once.”
The voice mildened the barest bit. “Take comfort. Yours is not the first country where the threat has arisen, nor will it likely be the last, for long times to come. Always the flame has been quietly damped. So it shall be here.
“The raiders shall go freely home. There shall be no penalty upon them, overt or covert, and their people may feel themselves vindicated if they so desire; but neither shall there be penalty for anyone else, or revenge—ever, in the lifetimes of you and your descendants.
“Go in peace. Abide in peace.”
No words about enforcement were necessary.
The voice fell silent. Slowly, men looked into one another’s eyes.
In a rush of horror, which was followed by relief and a kind of resignation, Mikel thought: Now we know our future.
VII
The day came when that which had been Christian Brannock asked for an ending.
He supposed it had happened before, and surely it would happen again, across spans of centuries and light-centuries. Not that he knew how many of him had come into being, copied and recopied. The memories of this one recorded only four such births. In each case, an intelligence had wanted to leave a place where a Brannock chanced to be. Generally, it had stopped there in the course of exploration farther into the galaxy, seeking a site auspicious for the founding of a new outpost of intelligence. The intelligence wanted helpers with various abilities, less of the body—a body could be designed and made for any special purpose—than of the mind, the spirit. Brannock’s ranked high among the humanlike. Thus, he could hardly ever simply join the expedition. He was still needed where he was.
A new uploading gave a new Brannock, eager to go. Often the older Brannock watched the departure with something akin to wistfulness. However, the work he had been engaged in remained fascinating and challenging. Should it cease to be so, then he could shut himself down. Eventually, he would be reactivated, aroused, to a fresh undertaking or to a ship willing to carry him elsewhere.
“Old” and “new” had little meaning, though. Immediately after an uploading, the two information-patterns of his basic self were essentially identical. Afterward their destinies diverged, and different experiences wrought different changes in them. Any single line of such a many-branched descent could only guess at what had become of the others. If once in a great while chance brought two individuals together, they met as strangers.
Yet to all of them, “age” was meaningful. They existed not in short-lived, vulnerable flesh, but in enduring molecules and in data flows, complex energy exchanges, with no inevitable mortality. Nevertheless, time passed for them too. Being sentient, they felt it. At last it brought a certain weariness upon them.
This Brannock on this day flew above a planet far from Earth. Sol was invisible among its stars after dark. At the moment its sun stood small and dazzling in a greenish sky. Red-tinged clouds drifted on winds that a human could not have breathed and lived. Lakes glinted in the glare. Heat-shimmers danced over low hills and the growth upon them. Those mats, stalks, fluttering membranes, and spongy turrets were purple, ruddy, gold, in a thousand mingled shades. Now and then swarms of tiny creatures whirled aloft. Light shattered into sparks of color where it struck them.
To Brannock the world was beauty and marvel. It did not threaten him. Nor did raw rock or empty space; but here was life. That it was primitive hardly mattered, in a universe where life of any kind was so rare as to seem well-nigh a miracle. That it was altogether alien to Earth’s made it a wellspring of knowledge, from which Intelligence Prime and, through its communications, intelligences across the known galaxy had been drinking for these past seven hundred years. The farthest off among them had not yet received the news; photons fly too slowly.
And Brannock had shared in the enterprise: helping establish the first base; helping build the industries necessary for its maintenance, enlargement, and evolution; helping explore, chart, study, discover. Often, his quests had been difficult, even precarious. Always they had been adventures.
The goal was nearly gained, the planet was nearly understood, what remained was an almost algorithmic research that did not require him. Intelligence Prime was turning its attention to other things. Once Brannock had meant to go unconscious when that time came, to wait for recruitment into some undertaking new and mysterious. But time itself had worn away the desire.
Because this would be his last journey, he took care to savor it. Instead of merely communicating his intent, he went in a material body, which he had chosen just for the purpose. It flew, through its sensors, he felt power coursing, control surfaces flexing, air
