Nirvana.
Not oblivion. Oneness with a vast and ever-evolving mind, and with minds beyond it; ultimately, a oneness universal? The final adventure, the final peace.
Somehow it was as if a fire, banked and forgotten, threw up a last dim flame: “Will I ever—”
“Will I, in whom you shall exist as a memory, ever have cause to emulate Christian Brannock? It seems unlikely, here on a planet your mortal kin will never see. But there are other Christian Brannocks, and doubtless those whom chance does not destroy will in the end seek what you seek, if they have not already.” That is a distortion of what was conveyed. Simultaneity cannot exist across interstellar distances. “It may be that someday there will be reason somewhere to resurrect him. If so, in the course of time we should all share the event.”
The course of time. … The bandwidth of communication was immense, the media not only electromagnetic but neutronic and gravitronic. Even so, to send such a message in such fullness that it was like an actual experience would take a long while.
The intelligences could serenely wait.
Brannock could not. Very quickly, he looked over the world around him and back over what he had been. Then he entered into oneness.
VIII
Throughout a late afternoon, Serdar and Naia sat mute, sipped wine, and practiced the art of shadow watching.
This terrace was made for it, with trellises that cast variable patterns as the sunlight slanted lower and vine-leaves caught breezes. The little darknesses intertwined on a matte white wall not quite smooth and thus a partner in the dance. One contemplated the delicate intricacies, appreciated the fleeting beauty of each configuration, and sought to lose oneself in the silent harmony.
It ended when the sun went behind towers to the west. For a while, they stood purple against a heaven still blue, their own shapes a coda. Dusk climbed rapidly up the canyons of the city. Occasional lights came to life, tiny at their distance and far apart. The maintainors did not need any, only such humans as were left did. Slowly, the sky also drained. Warmth lingered, and a breath of sweetness from the flowers on the vines.
Serdar stirred in his lounger and said low:
“The shadows, like life,
moved beneath summer daylight.
Evening reclaims them.”
A poem was appropriate, a declaration that the event was ended.
“Is that ancient?” asked Naia from her seat beside him.
“The form is, of course,” he said. “The words are mine.”
“You could have compared these artistic revivals to the shadows,” she suggested. “At our wish, the database presents them for our attention; we choose some and play with them; we lose interest, and they vanish back into quantum states.”
He considered. “An interesting conceit,” he agreed. “It may prove difficult to phrase so compactly.”
She smiled. Her face was becoming indistinct to him, but he thought the smile was forced. “A problem to occupy you.”
“I don’t believe I care to. Do you?”
“No. But perhaps I’ll have it done.”
“Can the program create it exactly as you would?”
“Why not?”
He hesitated. “I wonder—forgive me—whether the result will be too elegant. Not that you couldn’t achieve the same, dear. However, you must probably spend days polishing it. I doubt you would.”
She sighed. “True, a poem made in less than a nanosecond lacks that significance.”
Not that anyone else could tell the difference. But in either case, who except she and her companion would ever likely encounter the verse?
Twilight deepened toward night. Early stars blinked forth. Abruptly, a radiance flashed white in the west. One of the satellites warding off cosmic ray bombardment had encountered a wisp of dust and gas, a clot in the nebula through which the Solar System plowed, and was ionizing the matter in order to hurl it away.
“Oh, look,” Naia said. Eyes sought the shadows newly cast.
The light went out. It seemed to leave the sky much darker than before. There had been no time to find patterns and nuances, to enjoy their subtleties. A small wind carried the first breath of cold.
Naia shivered. “This is a cold time of day,” she whispered.
“Shall we go inside?”
“Not yet. I want to redeem my mood myself if I can. Do you mind?”
“Not at all. I have thoughts of my own to follow.” The truth was that he felt he should keep her company. She was prone to sudden melancholies. She was not unique in that.
They lay back and regarded the stars. More appeared. He knew she was trying to grasp and appreciate, down in her marrow, that intelligences dwelt yonder, that the universe was no longer meaningless.
Time passed. The city grew blacker than the sky, for more lights glimmered aloft than below.
“But is it our meaning?” Naia cried.
“Pardon me?” he asked, startled.
She rolled onto her side to face him and groped for his hand. He caught hers. She clung. “You know. Those minds—like our Ecumenicon—We’re nothing anymore.”
He summoned what calm he was able to and chose his words carefully. “A number an equals sha divided by yi. Asyi approaches zero, an increases without limit.”
“What … what are you telling me?”
He shrugged, a gesture he assumed she could still, barely see. “A remark I heard once when I spent a virtuality among human philosophers, no machines anywhere. It’s a metaphor. Interpret it thus: Yes, we are tiny, but by that very fact we go into the greatness.”
“Do we? Maybe once, but now—so few of us, so few.”
“Would you like to bear a child?” he proposed after another wordless interval. It was not the first time he had asked. He had gathered that raising one was an extraordinary experience.
She shook her head as she had done before. “Why? Or why make an infant by any other means? For it to play games, indulge senses, dabble at creativity, and slip away into dream worlds—like us?”
He sharpened his tone. “That is scarcely a new thought.”
“What new thoughts are left?” She let go of his hand and wrung the weariness out of her
