Greg Bear - The Way of All Ghosts

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The Way of All Ghosts (v1.1)
A Myth from Thistledown
Greg Bear, 1999
1
"Probabilities fluctuated wildly, but always passed through zero, and gate
openers, their equipment, and all associated personnel within a few hundred
meters of the gate, were swallowed by a null that can only be described in terms
of mathematics. It became difficult to remember that they had ever existed;
records of their histories were corrupted or altered, even though they lay millions
of kilometers from the incident. We had tapped into the geometric blood of the
gods. But we knew we had to continue. We were compelled."
-- Testimony of Master Gate Opener Ry Ornis, Secret Hearings Conducted by the
Infinite Hexamon Nexus, "On the Advisability of Opening Gates into Chaos and
Order"
The ghost of his last lover found Olmy Ap Sennen in the oldest columbarium of
Alexandria, within the second chamber of Thistledown.
Olmy stood in the middle of the hall, surrounded by stacked tiers of hundreds of small
golden spheres. The spheres were urns, most of them containing only a sample of ashes.
They rose to the glassed-in ceiling, held within columns of gentle yellow suspension fields.
He reached out to touch a blank silver plate at the base of one column. The names of the
dead appeared as if suddenly engraved, one after another.
He removed his hand when the names reached Ilmo, Paul Yan. This is where the soldiers
from his childhood neighborhood were honored; in this column, five names, all familiar to
him from days in school, all killed in a single skirmish with the Jarts near 3 ex 9, three billion
kilometers down the Way. All had been obliterated without trace. These urns were empty.
He did not know the details. He did not need to. These dead had served Thistledown as
faithfully as Olmy, but they would never return.
Olmy had spent seventy-three years stranded on the planet Lamarckia, in the service of
the Hexamon, cut off from Thistledown and the Way that stretched beyond the asteroid's
seventh chamber. On Lamarckia, he had raised children, loved and buried wives ... lived a
long and memorable life in primitive conditions on an extraordinary world. His rescue and
return to the Way, converted within days from an old and dying man to a fresh-bodied
youth, had been a shock worse than the return of any real and ancient ghost.
Axis City, slung on the singularity that occupied the geodesic center of the Way, had been
completed during those tumultuous years before Olmy's rescue and resurrection. It had
moved four hundred thousand kilometers "north," down the Way, far from the seventh
chamber cap. Within the Geshel precincts of Axis City, the mental patterns of many who
died were now transferred to City Memory, a technological afterlife not very different from
the ancient dream of heaven. Using similar technology, temporary partial personalities could
be created to help an individual multi-task. These were sometimes called ghosts. Olmy had
heard of partials, sent to do the bidding of their originals, with most of their mental faculties
duplicated, but limited power to make decisions. He had never actually met one, however.
The ghost appeared just to his right and announced its nature by flickering slightly,
growing translucent, then briefly turning into a negative. This display lasted only a few
seconds. After, the simulacrum seemed perfectly solid and real. Olmy jumped, disoriented,
then surveyed the ghost's features. He shook his head and smiled wryly.
"It will give my original joy to find you well," the partial said. "You seem lost, Ser Olmy."
Olmy did not quite know what form of speech to use with the partial. Should he address it
with respect due to the original, a corprep and a woman of influence ... The last woman he
had tried to be in love with ... Or as he might address a servant?
"I come here often. Old acquaintances."
The image looked concerned. "Poor Olmy. Still don't belong anywhere?"
Olmy ignored this. He looked for the ghost's source. It was projected from a fist-sized
flier hovering several meters away.
"I'm here on behalf of my original, corporeal representative Neya Taur Rinn. You realize
... I am not her?"
"I'm not ignorant," Olmy said sharply, finding himself once more at a disadvantage with
this woman.
The ghost fixed her gaze on him. The image, of course, was not actually doing the seeing.
"The Presiding Minister of the Way, Yanosh Ap Kesler, instructed me to find you. My original
was reluctant. I hope you understand."
Olmy folded his hands behind his back as the partial picted a series of ID symbols: Office
of the Presiding Minister, Hexamon Nexus Office of Way Defense, Office of Way
Maintenance. Quite a stack of bureaucracies, Olmy thought, Way Maintenance currently
being perhaps the most powerful and arrogant of them all.
"What does Yanosh want with me?" he asked bluntly.
The ghost lifted her hands and pointed her index finger into her palm, tapping with each
point. "You supported him in his bid to become Presiding Minister of the Seventh Chamber
and the Way. You've become a symbol for the advance of Geshel interests."
"Against my will," Olmy said. Yanosh, a fervent progressive and Geshel, had sent Olmy to
Lamarckia -- and had also brought him back and arranged for his new body. Olmy for his
own part had never known quite which camp he belonged to: conservative Naderites, grimly
opposed to the extraordinary advances of the last century, or the enthusiastically
progressive Geshels.
Neya Taur Rinn's people were Geshels of an ancient radical faction, among the first to
move into Axis City. "Ser Kesler has won reelection as presiding minister of the Way and
now also serves as mayor of three precincts in Axis City."
"I'm aware of that."
"Of course. The Presiding Minister extends his greetings and hopes you are agreeable."
"I am very agreeable," Olmy said mildly. "I stay out of politics and disagree with nobody.
I can't pay back Yanosh for all he has done -- but then, I have rendered him due service as
well." He did not like being baited -- and could not understand why Yanosh would send Neya
to fetch him. The Presiding Minister knew enough about Olmy's private life -- probably too
much. "Yanosh knows I've put myself on permanent leave." Olmy could not restrain himself.
"Pardon me for boldness, but I'm curious. How do you feel? Do you actually think you are
Neya Taur Rinn?"
The partial smiled. "I am a high-level partial given subordinate authority by my original,"
it said. She said ... Olmy decided he would not cut such fine distinctions.
"Yes, but what does it feel like?" he asked.
"At least you're still alive enough to be curious," the partial said.
"Your original regarded my curiosity as a kind of perversity," Olmy said.
"A morbid curiosity," the partial returned, clearly uncomfortable. "I couldn't stand
maintaining a relationship with a man who wanted to be dead."
"You rode my fame until I bored you," Olmy rejoined, then regretted the words. He used
old training to damp his sharper emotions.
"To answer your question, I feel everything my original would feel. And my original would
hate to see you here. What do you feel like, Ser Olmy?" The ghost's arm swung out to take
in the urns, the columbarium. "Coming here, walking among the dead, that's pretty
melodramatic."
That a ghost could remember their time together, could carry tales of this meeting to her
original, to a woman he had admired with all that he had left of his heart, both irritated and
intrigued him. "You were attracted to me because of my history."
"I was attracted to you because of your strength," she said. "It hurt me that you were so
intent on living in your memories."
"I clung to you."
"And to nobody else ... "
"I don't come here often," Olmy said. He shook his hands out by his side and stepped
back. "All my finest memories are on a world I can never go back to. Real loves ... real life.
Not like Thistledown now." He squinted at the image. The image's focus was precise; still,
there was something false about it, a glossiness, a prim neatness unlike Neya. "You didn't
help."
The partial's expression softened. "I don't take the blame entirely, but your distress
doesn't please me. My original."
"I didn't say I was in distress. I feel a curious peace in fact. Why did Yanosh send you?
Why did you agree to come?"
The ghost reached out to him. Her hand passed through his arm. She apologized for this
breach of etiquette. "For your sake, to get you involved, and for the sake of my original,
please, at least speak to our staff. The Presiding Minister needs you to join an expedition."
She seemed to consider for a moment, then screw up her courage. "There's trouble at the
Redoubt."
Olmy felt a sting of shock at the mention of that name. The conversation had suddenly
become more than a little risky. He shook his head vigorously. "I do not acknowledge even
knowing of such a place," he said.
"You know more than I do," the partial said. "I've been assured that it's real. Way
Defense tells the Office of Way Maintenance that it now threatens us all."
"I'm not comfortable holding this conversation in a public place," Olmy protested.
This seemed to embolden the partial, and she projected her image closer. "This area is
quiet and clean. No one listens."
Olmy stared up at the high glass ceiling.
"We are not being observed," the partial insisted. "The Nexus and Way Defense are
concerned that the Jarts are closing in on that sector of the Way. I am told that if they
occupy it, gain control of the Redoubt, Thistledown might as well be ground to dust and the
Way set on fire like a piece of string. That scares my original. It scares me as I am now.
Does it bother you in the least, Olmy?"
Olmy looked along the rows of urns ... Centuries of Thistledown history, lost memory,
now turned to pinches of ash, or less.
"Yanosh says he's positive you can help," the partial said with a strong lilt of emotion.
"It's a way to rejoin the living and make a new place for yourself."
"Why should that matter to you? To your original?" Olmy asked.
"Because my original still regards you as a hero. I still hope to emulate your service to
the Hexamon."
Olmy smiled wryly. "Better to find a living model," he said. "I don't belong out there. I'm
rusted over."
"That is not true," the partial said. "You have been given a new body. You are youthful
and strong, and very experienced ... " She seemed about to say more, but hesitated, rippled
again, and faded abruptly. Her voice faded as well, and he heard only "Yanosh says he's
never lost faith in you -- "
The floor of the columbarium trembled. The solidity of Thistledown seemed to be
threatened; a quake through the asteroid material, an impact from outside ... or something
occurring within the Way. Olmy reached out to brace himself against a pillar. The golden
spheres vibrated in their suspensions, jangling like hundreds of small bells.
From far away, sirens began to wail.
The partial reappeared. "I have lost contact with my original," it said, its features blandly
stiff. "Something has broken my link with City Memory."
Olmy watched Neya's image with fascination as yet untouched by any visceral response.
"I do not know when or if there will be a recovery," she said. "There's a failure in Axis
City." Suddenly the image appeared puzzled, then stricken. She held out her phantom arms.
"My original ... " As if she were made of solid flesh, her face crinkled with fear. "She's died.
I've died. Oh my God, Olmy!"
Olmy tried to understand what this might mean, under the radical new rules of life and
death for Geshels such as Neya. "What's happened? What can we do?"
The image flickered wildly. "My body is gone. There's been a complete system failure. I
don't have any legal existence."
"What about the whole-life records? Connect with them." Olmy walked around the
unsteady image, as if he might capture it, stop it from fading.
"I kept putting it off ... So stupid! I haven't put myself in City Memory yet."
He tried to touch her and of course could not. He could not believe what she was saying,
yet the sirens still wailed, and another small shudder rang through the asteroid.
"I have no place to go. Olmy, please! Don't let me just stop!" The ghost of Neya Taur
Rinn drew herself up, tried to compose herself. "I have only a few seconds before ... "
Olmy felt a sudden and intense attraction to the shimmering image. He wanted to know
what actual death, final death, could possibly feel like. He reached out again, as if to
embrace her.
She shook her head. The flickering increased. "It feels so strange -- losing -- "
Before she could finish, the image vanished completely. Olmy's arms hung around silent
and empty air.
The sirens continued to wail, audible throughout Alexandria. He slowly dropped his arms,
all too aware of being alone. The projector flew in a small circle, emitting small wheeping
sounds. Without instructions from its source, it could not decide what to do.
For a moment, he shivered and his neck hair pricked -- a sense of almost religious awe he
had not experienced since his time on Lamarckia.
Olmy had started walking toward the end of the hall before he consciously knew what to
do. He turned right to exit through the large steel doors and looked up through the thin
clouds enwrapping the second chamber, through the glow of the flux tube to the axis
borehole on the southern cap. His eyes were warm and wet. He wiped them with the back of
his hand and his breath hitched.
Emergency beacons had switched on around the flux tube, forming a bright ring two-
thirds of the way up the cap.
His shivering continued, and it angered him. He had died once already, yet this new body
was afraid of dying, and its wash of emotions had taken charge of his senses.
Deeper still and even more disturbing was a scrap of the old loyalty ... To his people, to
the vessel that bore them between the stars, that served as the open chalice of the infinite
Way. A loyalty to the woman who had found him too painful to be with. "Neya!" he moaned.
Perhaps she had been wrong. A partial might not have access to all information; perhaps
things weren't as bad as they seemed.
But he knew that they were. He had never felt Thistledown shake so.
Olmy hurried to the rail terminal three city squares away, accompanied by throngs of
curious and alarmed citizens. Barricades had been set across the entrances to the northern
cap elevators; all interchamber travel was temporarily restricted. No news was available.
Olmy showed the ID marks on his wrist to a cap guard, who scanned them quickly and
transmitted them to her commanders. She let him pass, and he entered the elevator and
rode swiftly to the borehole.
Within the workrooms surrounding the borehole waited an arrowhead-shaped official
transport, as the Presiding Minister's office had requested. None of the soldiers or guards he
questioned knew what had happened. There were still no official pronouncements on any of
the citizen nets. Olmy rode the transport, accompanied by five other officials, through the
vacuum above the atmospheres of the next four chambers, threading the boreholes of each
of the massive concave walls that separated them. None of the chambers showed any sign
of damage.
In the southern cap borehole of the sixth chamber, Olmy transferred from the transport
to a tuberider, designed to run along the singularity that formed the core of the Way. On
this most unusual railway, he sped at many thousands of miles per hour toward the Axis
City at 4 ex 5 -- four hundred thousand kilometers north of Thistledown.
A few minutes from Axis City, the tuberider slowed and the forward viewing port
darkened. There was heavy radiation in the vicinity, the pilot reported. Something had come
down the Way at relativistic velocity and struck the northern precincts of Axis City. Olmy had
little trouble guessing the source.
2
A day passed before Olmy could see the Presiding Minister. Emergency repairs on Axis
City had rendered only one precinct, Central City, habitable; the rest, including Axis Prime,
were being evacuated. Axis Prime had taken the brunt of the impact. Tens of thousands had
lost their lives, both Geshels and Naderites. Naderites by and large did not participate in the
practice of storing their body patterns and recent memories as insurance against such a
calamity.
Some Geshels would receive their second incarnation -- many thousands more would not.
City Memory itself had been damaged. Even had Neya taken the time to make her whole-life
record, store her patterns, she might still have died.
The last functioning precinct, Central City, now contained the combined offices of
Presiding Minister of the Way and the Axis City government, and it was here that Yanosh
met with Olmy.
"Her name was Deirdre Enoch," the Presiding Minister said, floating over the transparent
external wall of the new office. His body was wrapped below the chest in a shining blue
medical support suit; the impact had broken both of his legs and caused severe internal
injuries. For the time being, the Presiding Minister was a functioning cyborg, until new
organs could be grown and placed. "She opened a gate illegally at three ex nine, fifty years
ago. Just beyond the point where we last repulsed the Jarts. She was helped by a master
gate opener who deliberately disobeyed Nexus and guild orders. We learned about the
breach six months after she had smuggled eighty of her colleagues -- or maybe a hundred
and twenty, we aren't sure how many -- into a small research center -- and just days after
the gate was opened. There was nothing we could do to stop it."
Olmy gripped a rail that ran around the perimeter of the office, watching Kesler without
expression. The irony was too obvious. "I've only heard rumors. Way Maintenance -- "
Kesler was hit by a wave of pain, quickly damped by the suit. He continued, his face
drawn. "Damn Way Maintenance. Damn the infighting and politics." He forced a smile. "Last
time it was a Naderite renegade on Lamarckia."
Olmy nodded.
"This time -- Geshel. Even worse -- a member of the Openers Guild. I never imagined
running this damned starship would ever be so complicated. Makes me almost understand
why you long for Lamarckia."
"It wasn't any easier there," Olmy said.
"Yes -- but there were fewer people." Yanosh rotated his support suit and crossed the
chamber. "We don't know precisely what happened. Something disturbed the immediate
geometry around the gate. The conflicts between Way physics and the universe Enoch
accessed were too great. The gate became a lesion, impossible to close. By that time, most
of Enoch's scientists had retreated to the main station, a protective pyramid -- what she
called the Redoubt."
"She tapped into chaos?" Olmy asked. Some universes accessed through the Way were
empty voids, dead, useless but relatively harmless; others were virulent, filled with a
bubbling stew of unstable "constants" that reduced the reality of an observer or
instrumentality. Only two such gates had ever been opened in the Way; the single fortunate
aspect of these disasters had been that the gates themselves had quickly closed and could
not be reopened.
"Not chaos," Kesler said, swallowing and bowing his head at more discomfort. "This damn
suit ... could be doing a better job."
"You should be resting," Olmy said.
"No time. The Openers Guild tells me Enoch was looking for a domain of enhanced
structure, hyperorder. What she found was more dangerous than any chaos. Her gate may
have opened into a universe of endless fecundity. Not just order: creativity. Every universe
is in a sense a plexus, its parts connected by information links; but Enoch's universe
contained no limits to the propagation of information. No finite speed of light, no separation
between anything analogous to the Bell continuum ... and other physicality."
Olmy frowned, trying to make sense of this. "My knowledge of Way physics is shaky ... "
"Ask your beloved Konrad Korzenowski," Kesler snapped.
Olmy did not react to this provocation.
Kesler apologized under his breath. He floated slowly back across the chamber, his face a
mask of pain, a pathetic parody of restlessness. "We lost three expeditions trying to save
her people and close the gate. The last was six months ago. Something like life-forms had
grown up around the main station, fueled by the lesion. They've become huge, unimaginably
bizarre. No one can make sense of them. What was left of our last expedition managed to
build a barrier about a thousand kilometers south of the lesion. We thought that would give
us the luxury of a few years to decide what to do next. But that barrier has been destroyed.
We've not been able to get close enough since to discover what's happened. We have
defenses in that sector, key defenses that keep the flaw from being used against us." He
looked down through the transparent floor at the segment of the Way twenty-four
kilometers below.
"The Jarts were able to send a relativistic projectile along the flaw, hardly more than a
gram of rest mass. We couldn't stop it. It struck Axis City at twelve hundred hours
yesterday."
Olmy had been told the details of the attack: a pellet less than a millimeter in diameter,
traveling very close to the speed of light. Only the safety and control mechanisms of the
sixth chamber machinery had kept the entire Axis City from disintegrating. The original of
Neya Taur Rinn had been conducting business on behalf of her boss, Yanosh, in Axis Prime
while her partial had visited Olmy.
"We're moving the city south as fast as we can and still keep up the evacuation," Kesler
said. "The Jarts are drawing close to the lesion now. We're not sure what they can do with it.
Maybe nothing -- but we can't afford to take the chance."
Olmy shook his head in puzzlement. "You've just told me nothing can be done. Why call
me here when we're helpless?"
"I didn't say nothing could be done," Kesler responded, eyes glittering. "Some of our gate
openers think they can build a cirque, a ring gate, and seal off the lesion."
"That would cut us off from the rest of the Way," Olmy said.
"Worse. In a few days or weeks it would destroy the Way completely, seal us off in
Thistledown forever. Until now, we've never been that desperate." He smiled, lips twisted by
pain. "Frankly, you were not my choice. I'm no longer sure that you can be relied upon, and
this matter is far too complicated to allow anyone to act alone."
Neya had not told him the truth, then. "Who chose me?" Olmy asked.
"A gate opener. You made an impression on him when he escorted you down the Way
some decades ago. He was the one who opened the gate to Lamarckia."
"Frederik Ry Ornis?"
Kesler nodded. "From what I'm told, he's become the most powerful opener in the guild.
A senior master."
Olmy took a deep breath. "I'm not what I appear to be, Yanosh. I'm an old man who's
seen women and his friends die. I miss my sons. You should have left me on Lamarckia."
Kesler closed his eyes. The blue jacket around his lower body adjusted slightly, and his
face tightened. "The Olmy I knew would never have turned down a chance like this."
"I've seen too many things already," Olmy said.
Yanosh moved forward. "We both have. This ... is beyond me," he said quietly. "The
lesion ... The gate openers tell me it's the strangest place in creation. All the boundaries of
physics have collapsed. Time and causality have new meanings. Heaven and hell have
married. Only those in the Redoubt have seen all that's happened there -- if they still exist
in any way we can understand. They haven't communicated with us since the lesion
formed."
Olmy listened intently, something slowly stirring to life, a small speck of ember glowing
brighter.
"It may be over, Olmy," Yanosh said. "The whole grand experiment may be at an end.
We're ready to close off the Way, pinch it, seal the lesion within its own small bubble ...
dispose of it."
"Tell me more," Olmy said, folding his arms.
"Three citizens escaped from the Redoubt, from Enoch's small colony, before the lesion
became too large. One died, his mind scrambled beyond retrieval. The second has been
confined for study, as best we're able. What afflicts him -- or it -- is something we can never
cure. The third survived relatively unharmed. She's become ... unconventional, more than a
little obsessed by the mystical, but I'm told she's still rational. If you accept, she will
accompany you." Yanosh's tone indicated he was not going to allow Olmy to decline. "We
have two other volunteers, both apprentice gate openers, both failed by the guild. All have
been chosen by Frederik Ry Ornis. He will explain why."
Olmy shook his head. "A mystic, failed openers ... What would I do with such a team?"
Yanosh smiled grimly. "Kill them if it goes wrong. And kill yourself. If you can't close off
the Way, and if the lesion remains, you will not be allowed to come back. The third
expedition I sent never even reached the Redoubt. But they were absorbed by the lesion."
Another grimace of pain. "Do you believe in ghosts, Olmy?"
"What kind?"
"Real ghosts?"
"No," Olmy said.
"I think I do. Some members of our rescue expeditions came back. Several versions of
them. We think we destroyed them."
"Versions?"
"Copies of some sort. They were sent back -- echoed -- along their own world-lines in a
way no one understands. They returned to their loved ones, their relatives, their friends. If
more return, everything we call real could be in jeopardy. It's been very difficult keeping this
secret."
Olmy raised an eyebrow skeptically. He wondered if Yanosh was himself still rational.
"I've served my time. More than my time. Why should I go active?"
"Damn it, Olmy, if not for love of Thistledown -- if you're beyond that, then because you
want to die." Kesler grunted, his face betraying quiet disgust behind the pain. "You've
wanted to die since I brought you back from Lamarckia. This time, if you make it to the
Redoubt, you're likely to have your wish granted.
"Think of it as a gift from me to you, or to what you once were."
3
"If you were enhanced, this would go a lot faster," Jarr Flynch said, pointing to Olmy's
head. Frederik Ry Ornis smiled. The three of them walked side by side down a long, empty
hall, approaching a secure room deep in the old Thistledown Defense Tactical College
building in Alexandria.
Ry Ornis had aged not at all physically. In appearance he was still the same long-limbed,
mantislike figure, but his gawkiness had been replaced by an eerie grace, and his youthful,
eccentric volubility by a wry spareness of language.
Olmy dismissed Flynch's comment with a wave of his hand. "I've gone through the
important files," he said. "I think I know them well enough. I have questions about the
choice of people to go with me. The apprentice gate openers ... They've been rejected by
the guild. Why?"
Flynch smiled. "They're flamboyant."
Olmy glanced at the master opener. "Ry Ornis was as flamboyant as they come."
"The guild has changed," Ry Ornis said. "It demands more now."
Flynch agreed. "In the time since I've been a teacher in the guild, that's certainly true.
They tolerate very little ... creativity. The defection of Enoch's pupils scared them. The lesion
terrified all of us. Rasp and Karn are young, innovative. Nobody denies they're brilliant, but
they've refused to settle in and play their roles. So ... the guild denied them final
certification."
"Why choose them for this job?" Olmy asked.
"Ry Ornis did the choosing," Flynch said.
"We've discussed this," Ry Ornis said.
"Not to my satisfaction. When do I meet them?"
"No meeting has been authorized with Rasp and Karn until you're on the flawship. They're
still in emergency conditioning." Flynch glanced at Ry Ornis. "The training has been a little
rough on them."
Olmy felt less and less sure that he wanted anything to do with the guild, or with Ry
Ornis's chosen openers. "The files only tell half a story," he said. "Deirdre Enoch never
became an opener -- she never even tried to qualify. She was just a teacher. How could she
become so important to the guild?"
Flynch shook his head. "Like me, she was never qualified to be an opener, but also like
me, as a teacher, she was considered one of the best. She became a leader to some
apprentice openers. Philosopher."
"Prophet," Ry Ornis said softly.
"Training for the guild is grueling," Flynch continued. "Some say it's become torture. The
mathematical conditioning alone is enough to produce a dropout rate of over ninety percent.
Deirdre Enoch worked as a counselor in mental balance, compensation, and she was good ...
In the last twenty years, she worked with many who went on to become very powerful in
Way Maintenance. She kept up her contacts. She convinced a lot of her students -- "
"That human nature is corrupt," Olmy ventured sourly.
Flynch shook his head. "That the laws of our universe are inadequate. Incomplete. That
there is a way to become better human beings, and of course, better openers. Disorder,
competition, and death corrupt us, she thought."
"She knew high-level theory, speculations circulated privately among master openers," Ry
Ornis said. "She heard about domains where the rules were very different."
"She heard about a gate into complete order?"
"It had been discussed, on a theoretical basis. None had ever been attempted. No limits
have been found to the variety of domains -- of universes. She speculated that a well-tuned
gate could access almost any domain a good opener could conceive of."
Olmy scowled. "She expected order to balance out competition and death? Order versus
disorder, a fight to the finish?"
Ry Ornis made a small noise, and Flynch nodded. "There's a reason none of this is in the
files," Flynch said. "No opener will talk about it, or admit they knew anybody involved in
making the decision. It's been very embarrassing to the guild. I'm impressed that you know
what questions to ask. But it's better that you ask Ry Ornis -- "
Olmy focused on Flynch. "You say you and Enoch occupied similar positions. I'd rather
ask you."
Flynch gestured for them to turn to the left. The lights came on before them, and at the
end of a much shorter hall, a door stood open. "Deirdre Enoch read extensively in the old
religious texts. As did her followers. I believe they lost themselves in a dream," he said.
"They thought that anyone who bathed in a stream of pure order, as it were -- in a domain
of unbridled creation without destruction -- would be enhanced. Armored. Annealed. That's
my opinion ... what they might have been thinking. She might have told them such things."
"A fountain of youth?" Olmy ventured, still scowling.
"Openers don't much care about temporal immortality," Ry Ornis said. "When we open a
gate -- we glimpse eternity. A hundred gates, a hundred different eternities. Coming back is
just an interlude between forevers. Those who listened to Enoch thought they would end up
more skilled, more brilliant. Less corrupted by competitive evolution." He smiled, a
remarkably unpleasant expression on his skeletal face. "Free of original sin."
摘要：

TheWayofAllGhosts(v1.1)AMythfromThistledownGregBear,19991"Probabilitiesfluctuatedwildly,butalwayspassedthroughzero,andgateopeners,theirequipment,andallassociatedpersonnelwithinafewhundredmetersofthegate,wereswallowedbyanullthatcanonlybedescribedintermsofmathematics.Itbecamedifficulttorememberthatthe...

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