“What’s happening?”
“Who knows? But think it through.” Daniel gave Jack a wry grin. “We’re ants clinging to the last gobbets in the stew. Most of the chunks have already been chewed and swallowed—most of our universe is gone. Otherwise…why that?”
He pointed through a luminous rip in the curtain at an immense, flaming arc, rimming a painfully black center. It stretched across almost two-thirds of the sky. “That’s not our sun. And thatis not our city. Not anymore.”
NO ZEROS
Observers are like tiny muses. They process what they see, based on the logics they are given, but also on what they can assemble for themselves, what they think must be real, based on what they live and see and know, the truths they incorporate in their flesh. Every group of observers establishes a kind of local reality. It cannot deviate too far from consensus, from what the muses have ruled must be. But that flexibility allows the cosmos a latitude that makes it more robust than any rigid framework, because it welcomes observers, welcomes their input. And sometimes, very clever observers can influence the muses and the cosmos as a whole, and so, Mnemosyne reconciles on a huge scale, those forward and backward pulses that we’ve already discussed.
We are not so much made by a creator as deduced. In fact, all creation is collaboration between the great and the small, always interconnected and dependent upon each other. There are no lords, no kings, no eternal gods of all, but there are forces that work across time and fate, and finally, outside our conceit, there is justice.
To be alive is to be blind. It is hard work to stay alive. And when our work is done and we are unburdened, we are rewarded with the joy of matter, about which only the wisest and the most foolish can know.
—The Chronicles of the Elders of Lagado
A lost or spurious work of Spinoza
CHAPTER 68
The Chaos
Despite the efforts of their armor, light was a tricky commodity in the Chaos. Distances beyond a few yards tended to foreshorten or lengthen unpredictably. Nico in particular found this unnerving, and lost his balance more often than the others, until finally he lay down in a shallow dip and tried to be sick. The armor would not let him.
Tiadba knelt beside him while Khren and the others circled the depression. All were woozy.
“If I could just throw up, I’d feel better,” Nico said, wretched behind the golden transparency of his faceplate.
“That would be a mess, in your helmet,” Tiadba said.
“I could take off the helmet for a little bit…”
“Too late for that,” Denbord said, kneeling. “I’m not feeling so hot myself.”
“Listen. I piss and shit inside here. Why can’t I throw up?”
“Just don’t think about it,” Tiadba said. “And stop looking at the sky.”
“I can’t help it. It keeps changing. I look away, look back, and it’s different—except for that thingup there. Always burning, but not in the middle, like a big hole. If it’s on fire, why doesn’t it burn everywhere? What’s it trying to be?” His voice was getting shrill.
The fearful excitement of a few hours earlier was turning into a sour anxiety next door to panic. Their suits could only give them so much support, and weren’t designed to interfere with their emotions. Tiadba was beginning to think that Grayne’s enthusiasm for the luxurious comfort of their adventure might have been overstated.
She swallowed frequently. Her face stung, her arms itched again, and her feet hurt, though they hadn’t walked very far. She felt confined, trapped, lost, and it took real effort to keep from crying or, worse, screaming.
“You feel it, I know you do!” Nico called out, and rolled over on his stomach, grabbing at the rock, but the rock in the dip was solid, smooth.
Khren, Shewel, and Macht stepped down. Herza and Frinna flanked Nico and nudged the reclining breed. They seemed well enough, though still quiet.
“We haven’t even started yet,” Khren said.
Sad, Nico said, “Don’t make it worse.”
“We could swap. I could roll around and act scared for a while, and you could stand up here and be brave and try to see where we’re going.”
In their helmets, the beacon—a steady, low musical note—faded or increased in volume, depending on whether they kept to their course. But there had already been two broken walls high enough and long enough to force them off the course, and then they trekked about in nervous arcs and circles until they heard the beacon again at maximum melody. They had encountered crumbling barricades in the rolling emptiness, casting odd double bluish shadows in the reddish flare of the ring-fire sun. Tiadba thought it best not to climb over and investigate, and the others agreed—curiosity the first emotion to fade in that first mile. So they had walked around.
Now she worried they were already losing their will to go on. Swinging between extremes of exaltation and fear in so short a time—most unpleasant. And as yet they had met nothing particularly fearsome or frightening, just what they were trained to expect.
“I think I’m getting used to some of it,” Macht said, but didn’t sound convinced. “Really,” he added.
“Come on, Nico. Let’s keep moving.”
“We’ll go on a few more miles,” Tiadba said. She began gulping painfully. We’re being poisoned!Yet she was sure nothing was getting in from outside the armor. Surely the Tall Ones would have equipped them better than that!
But the Chaos changes all the time. How could they know what kind of armor to make?
She looked sharply at Khren. He wasn’t feeling the same symptoms. Nor were the others. Each was reacting in his own way.
Nico rolled on his back but kept his eyes closed. “Why are we still stuck here, if everything’s so different? Why don’t we just change the rules and lift up and float away?”
Tiadba suddenly felt a kind of love, and her eyes welled up. That was the sort of question Jebrassy would ask.
“It’s called gravity,” Khren said. “It’s everywhere—even out here. Pahtun told us, remember?”
“Yeah, and where is he, now?” Macht asked darkly. “I don’t even know what gravity is. Gravity orlight.”
“Light is what lets us see,” Shewel said, echoing what they had been taught. He was certainly not the swiftest learner in the group, but what he learned stayed with him in perfect detail. “Gravity is what glues us down.”
“Aren’t you getting bored down there?” Denbord asked Nico. Khren and Macht reached down to grab his hands and lift him up. He stood on wobbly legs, arms out to keep his balance. “Let’s go back. I think we could make it.”