“Have you gotten any new curios in, Mauree? I mean in the last few months.” If the ship had been planted, maybe they planted other evidence.
“Always, dear, always! Look at these Burgundian shamanistic feather-wands, still charged with power. And here are two ancient scrolls speaking of alien visitations, although sadly untranslatable by modern means. Or perhaps this vial of rare sea salt, said to restore youth and vigor … oh, you did say you were specifically not interested in that. Perhaps a chakratic notch filter? I understand it works off of an alien technology that enhances audio replay. A young fellow brought me some just a few weeks ago.” Mauree started to wander down the corridor, peering at objects on the shelves, as if he were not entirely certain himself what a chakratic notch filter would look like.
She would have to steer him in the right direction. It should be safe to reveal facts to him that she had concealed from everyone else. No one was going to question Mauree, anything he said would be easy to deny, and in any case, he was unlikely to remember who had told him the facts in the first place.
“What about spiders, Mauree?”
“Eh?” he said, surprised. “No, I don’t think so, dear. I had the exterminator in a month ago.”
“Giant spiders, Mauree. Giant alien intelligent spiders with spaceships.”
“Oh no, dear.” His tone was authoritative and reassuring. “You don’t need to worry about that. I’m sure this Kassan thing, however terrible it is, is just ordinary people misbehaving. There aren’t any evil aliens in the great Out.”
This answer was so utterly at odds with what she expected from Mauree the alien artifact dealer that her suspicion went into full thrust. If only she could figure out a plot that included Mauree in any capacity and still made a shred of sense.
He sensed her change of mood, and tried to comfort her. “My dear, the aliens mean us no harm. They’re trying to help.”
She remembered Kassa, smashed like a sand castle. She wanted to reach out and shake Mauree until his head cracked. She didn’t, but she wanted to.
Mauree surprised her again, reading her emotional state. She had lied to smarter men than Mauree, deceived sharper vision than his rheumy old eyes. But now he could sense her pulling away from him, and he tried to bridge the gap.
“Let me tell you a secret, my dear.” He lowered his voice, in conspiracy. Or perhaps just in shame. “All these artifacts are junk. They don’t matter.”
She followed him, to see where he would go. “Then why do you sell them?”
Mauree shrugged again, the same way he had at the register. “Because people need them. They need a focus for their work. But the artifacts are just signposts. The path is internal, my dear. We are the problem. Our own inner selves. Our own violent, petty human nature. They are watching us, you know, watching from other dimensions. They are waiting for us to cleanse ourselves, to outgrow our obsession with the physical and the material. To become like them spiritually, before we can join them.”
She had to ask. “Who are They?”
He smiled at her. “The tech-ten, of course.”
Prudence unconsciously fingered the medallion that hung around her neck. There was an obscure school of sociology that rated the technological capacity of various planets. The scale was logarithmic, from one to ten, and star-flight was set at seven, for unfathomable academic reasons. Level-one planets were in the Stone Age, capable only of making simple things that did not require tools. Prudence had never actually heard of a world that poor. Kassa had been classified as level two, producing biological goods like wood and grains. Altair was level seven, since it built starships. Level eight was the level of automatics, computers that anticipated your needs and ground cars that drove themselves. According to the advertising industry on every planet Prudence had visited, this level was just around the corner. It had been just around the corner since mankind left Earth.
Level nine was true artificial intelligence: machines that were human. The robots of story and legend, the ones that pondered on their metaphysical condition and tried to take over the world.
And level ten was utopia, the pinnacle of achievement, the Highest Possible Level of Development. Genetic science that cured every illness, regenerated every deformed body into perfection. Ships that made their own nodes. Gravitics that fit into shoes, so man could fly as easily as walking. Nano-scale machinery that made wealth out of dirt. Free energy. Immortality.
“You’re a starship captain,” Mauree said earnestly. “You’ve been to many worlds. Some are behind and some are ahead. In all the many worlds of man, there must be one who has gone all the way ahead. Beyond technology, to spirituality.” Mauree was citing the Doctrine of Transcendence, the mystical philosophy that claimed technology would eventually transform human beings into gods.
Consciously, she took her hand away from her throat, to argue. “Then why don’t they do something? Why don’t they share their knowledge? Altair conceals trade secrets for profit, but why would your angels care about profit?”
Mauree nodded. “Yes, why? Why indeed? But the answer is inside us. We are not ready for such power. We would destroy ourselves. Science brings knowledge to all, but wisdom must be cultivated in each individual. When our hearts are ready, then they will take us away from all this.”
They would never take Jelly away. They would never do any good for the thousands that had died on Kassa. For the millions that had died in the flames that haunted her past. That Jelly’s salvation should be denied because an aging con man was still struggling to purify himself was a cosmic injustice of unforgivable proportions.
Someday, when she found her mother’s world, the place that made the nanosharp knife that hung around her neck, she intended to demand an explanation.
For now, she confronted Mauree with her own doubts.
“What if tech-ten isn’t transcendence? What if it’s not
Mauree shrugged, undefeatable. “Then tech-eleven. It doesn’t matter what the number is, you see. All that matters is that everything can be fixed, even people. And if it can be fixed, then surely it must have been. Humanity is less than a million years old. The galaxy is billions. Some alien race must have already evolved to the end, already solved everything. We don’t need to struggle to develop new technology, my dear. We only need to develop ourselves, our own inner lights.”
Prudence imagined a two-meter-wide spider biting off Mauree’s head and looking for an inner light. Petty, yes, but it put things into perspective.
“I don’t think it’s that simple, Mauree.” She settled for dry exasperation. It was the only compromise between rage and grief that let her speak.
“Of course you don’t. You’re too successful. You have your own starship, the respect and admiration of your fellows. You have too much attachment to this world. But you must not let your imagination be stifled, or you’ll turn out like that poor fool Rama Jandi.” Mauree was trying to remain noble, but the flush of animosity crept through.
“Who’s that?” she pressed. Prudence was currently not very sympathetic to Mauree’s feelings.
With the tortured sigh of the persecuted genius, Mauree launched into an answer. “An academic, of great stature and honors, but cold and dead inside. He has taken his hope and imagination and killed it. Now he lashes out at anyone who dares to reveal a true human soul.”
All she had to do was quirk an eyebrow, and Mauree was happy enough to dish out more slander. Perhaps he needed to spend more time meditating over his crystals.
“He had me thrown off Altair, can you believe it? Hounded out by threat of prosecution. Me! For doing no more than selling hope. A few paltry artifacts to the university museum, a pathetic handful of credits, and he cried bloody murder. Said he could prove they were not really alien. Said he could prove I knew it. Called me a fraud!”
Since Mauree had just confessed that everything in his shop was junk, Prudence found his outrage remarkably misplaced. She didn’t remark on it, though. “He sounds like a terror. Altair, you said?”
“I used to run my shop there. It seemed like a nice place, but what kind of intolerant planet would let retired professors ruin businessmen?” At least Mauree didn’t describe himself as an honest businessman.
