I/We know. Tolerate it. Here:
Greetings. I employ the single-consciousness approximation. This you may find uncomfortable.
Regard: How narrow.
We/You tried it before and found it stifling.
We should accommodate |>A<|.
Very well. But what a demented limitation!
Bear with |>A<| for a moment.
To plumb the recesses of primate thinking such strictures are necessary.
Why study them, then?
Their sense of beauty is like no other. Variant organics are unique, as well, but these have long duration here at True Center.
Beauty? We are arbiters of that.
I seek to find wholly fresh reaches of grace and flavor. These are species-specific, lavish in lore.
A needless luxury. We face sterner issues now.
Beauty is as vital to our being as any of your raw pursuits.
Is that an insult?
Never—but a fact.
Careful, then.
I intend no offense. I am a specialist intelligence, with my own drivers. Let me point out to you gathered minds what a richness these primates have! These are the creatures who developed the Five-Digit Motif. It grips the perceptual centers as can no other! And then there are their inner, colorful emotion-curtains. Wondrous! Their Subverted-Maximal Abstractions. All wonderful creations!
I/We are more concerned with their possible danger to us. All because of some semi-mythical knowledge they carry.
But without knowing they carry it. That is important. They must not learn what they possess!
I believe they sense some special destiny which they carry. But they do not know its nature, that is clear. Such beings carry deeper knowledge as narratives. To primates, a myth is a deep story which answers the difficult questions of their lives.
I/You thought that myths were simply someone else’s religion.
Of course, but I speak of primates. I have studied them well.
Then you are the one who must enter the Wedge and act for us there.
Why? I have other matters—
You know them best.
But I have never been to the Wedge.
I do not wonder, with your time spent on the beauties of underlife.
The Wedge is treacherous.
Indeed. But we/you have breached it with minor forms. Even now the tiny informants have filtered into their portal city. They are keeping close watch on the primates of the ship—those we allowed to enter.
A move you/I opposed.
It gained us valuable information. This Legacy of theirs—it hints at much we do not know.
We/I would not need to know it if we had expunged the primates.
No! You should not think this way. The primates are a valuable form, approaching extinction. Protect such beings for their last moments.
That is a luxury.
We command you to follow close upon the important primate members which their own Legacy has identified.
The Wedge is perilous. I cannot even be sure, entering it, where I shall be. Or when.
We/I shall give you/I resources.
I could become lost in the chaotics.
A risk we/you must take.
I have heard that there are agencies in the Wedge which can harm even higher systems such as ourselves.
True. We do not know what they are.
But I am in single-consciousness mode! If I perish, the “I-form” shall vanish!
I\We cannot help that.
You/We elected this state.
Though of course we will archive your present state. A copy of you will carry on.
To venture into such turmoil—I am not qualified.
You/We seem reluctant. Yet you\we have trained in the most important skill—you have dealt with primates. You moved them to their intersection with the quasi-mechanicals. Very adroit.
And we/you have other motivations.
What motivations? To risk so much—
Think of beauty. Of art.
PART FOUR
Gravity’s Gullet
ONE
The Esty Wind
The city of the dwarves slipped away behind them.
Toby and Quath moved quickly, using scattered buildings for cover and then a dense grove of curious spindly trees. These rose to greater and greater heights as they fled into a gorge of arched and tangled rock. Toby’s attention fled as well, veering away from the confrontation with his father, taking refuge in the pure bliss of flight. He ran hard.
<I believe we are taking a dangerous path.>
“More dangerous to stay back there.”
Dangerous? Toby asked himself. To whom? The word was wrong but he was not going to inspect his inner feelings now. Time to act.
<In the descriptions of this place, which I attended and you regrettably did not, there were severe warnings. I do not quite understand the nature of these prohibitions but they seem to reflect the inherent [untranslatable].>
“Great help, those [untranslatable]s.”
<You are still troubled,> Quath sent.
“Hey, leave me alone, yeasay?”
<I do not know how to explain how Killeen has changed.>
“Humans aren’t so easy to figure, you said once.”
<He has been obsessed with coming here, that I knew. His shadow falls across his memories of Shibo. That his love of the woman would intrude upon your relationship—this I could not anticipate.>
“Me either. Some way he needs it, more than the Legacy . . . or me.” He swallowed hard but the lump in his throat would not go away.
Into his mind sprang scattershot images, ripples of sensation, rushing fragments of ideas briefly glimpsed and then tumbling away. Shibo lurked just behind his nervous eyes.
You cannot understand what is going on here and neither can Killeen. I urge you to relax into it, not strive so hard.
Toby felt a hot flare of indignation. “Look, it’s your ass I’m saving.”
From the erosions of real life, yes. Do not think I cannot feel appreciation for that. And it would be best for us to be together for at least a while longer.
His hurt irritation swerved to grateful warmth. “You want it, I want it. My father, he can’t see that.”
Do not suppose this relieves you from your Family obligations.
Shibo’s whispery words carried a flinty edge. “What obligations?”
To find Abraham. To carry forward the Family ways.
To this he had no reply. Shibo’s Personality engulfed him, cool and lofty. She spoke in longer sentences than the real Shibo ever had. Her Personality had begun picking up the jittery anxieties of chip-bound selves, a flavoring utterly unlike the living Shibo.
Was she learning from Isaac and Zeno and the others, taking on some old-timey warp? He vaguely sensed her changes but he hoped they were not important.