"Even so, I would've been killed during the fall. But I turned on the power when it had hurtled for a hundred feet, and the craft started back up toward the top. I cut the power again, and I turned it on when I'd gone fifty feet. The craft started up again for its original destination. I cut the power once more."
By bone-jarring increments, Loga worked the vessel down to near ground level. Before this, he'd opened a port. When he thought that he was close enough, he leaped out the port, clutching the handle of his grail. He fell through the rain and the thunder and lightning, struck something, and was knocked unconscious. j
When he awoke he was draped belly-down across a branch of an irontree. It was daylight, and he could see his grail a hundred feet below at the base of the tree. Though he was severely scratched and bruised and had some internal injuries and a broken leg, he managed to get to the ground.
"The rest I've told you or you've correctly inferred."
Burton said, "Not all. We don't have the slightest inkling what this terrible thing is which you mentioned. What you were saving for the last."
"Or what Going On really means," Nur said.
"Going On? When the body of a person who's highly advanced ethically dies, the wathan disappears. Our instruments can find no trace of it. If another duplicate body is made, its wathan doesn't return to it."
"What do you do with a wathanless body?"
"Only one experiment was made, and the wathanless was allowed to live out her natural span. That's never been done with human beings. The people who came before Monat's did that.
"The theory is that, though the Creator may appear to be indifferent to Its creatures, It does welcome and take care of the wathans that disappear. What other explanation is there for that?"
"It could be," Frigate said, "that there's something about the extraphysical universe that attracts a wathan when it reaches a certain stage of development. I don't know why this would have anything to do with the extraphysical. But there could be some sort of magnetic pull caused by this, I suppose."
"That theory's been put forth. We prefer to believe that the Creator does it. Though It may do it through purely physical-extraphysical means and not by a supernatural act."
"In effect," Burton said, "you aren't relying on science but on faith to explain the disappearances."
"Yes, but when you get to the basics, infinity and finiteness, eternity and time, the First Cause, you must rely on faith."
"Which has led so many billions astray and caused such immense suffering," Frigate said.
"You can't say that about this situation."
Tai-Peng said, fiercely, "Let's get on with what's happening in this world."
"I recruited the lazari because there was a very slight probability that what has happened might happen. I put all the situations I could think of into the computer and told it to estimate their probability. Unfortunately, the computer cannot detect what sentient beings will think, what final choices they'll make, unless it has all the data and that's impossible. Well, not even if it had every item could it predict one hundred percent. Thus, Monat, and the others did what I couldn't expect. Just as I did what he couldn't anticipate. Just as you did what I couldn't predict. The human, the sentient, mind is still a deep mystery."
"May it always be so," Burton said.
"It is, it is! That is why you can't predict the stage of development of any wathan. One may be rather advanced, yet go no further. Another may be in a low stage and, suddenly, almost overnight as it were, leap to a far higher state than the previously much further advanced. It's a quantum ethical leap. Also, people regress."
"Are you an example of regression?" Burton said.
"No! That's what Siggen accused me of being when we were living in that hut in Parolando. The truth is, I am more highly advanced than anyone else in the project. Isn't it much more ethical to give everyone all the time they might need to develop? Isn't it? Yes, it is! That can't be denied!"
Alice murmured, "He's crazy."
Burton wasn't so sure. What Loga had said seemed reasonable. But his ideas for insuring his plans didn't seem so. Yet, if he continued to send false messages, then the Gardenworlders wouldn't come to investigate. Loga might gain a thousand years. Surely, in that time, anybody would attain the stage desired.
His deep pessimism told him that it might not be so.
What was his own progress?
Or did he want to get to a stage where the essential part of him just disappeared?
Why not? It would be an adventure even greater than this one, the greatest in his life.
"Very well," he said. "I think we understand all that's happened. But you've hinted that you may not be able to carry out your plans even if you have no one to stop you.
"What terrible thing has happened?"
"It's my fault, mine only!" Loga cried. He rose from the chair and, despite his limp, paced back and forth, his face twisted and sweating.
"Because of what I did, billions may be doomed forever! In fact, almost everybody! Perhaps, everybody! Forever!"
52
THERE WAS SILENCE FOR A WHILE. LOGA CONTINUED HIS PAINful limping. Then Burton said, "You might as well tell us."
Loga sat down in his chair.
"My signal put an inhibit on the resurrection line. I didn't want any Ethical to commit suicide and get to the tower before I did. What I didn't know was that another Ethical had also commanded an inhibit on the resurrection line when I was found out."
The reason for this, Loga said, was that Monat didn't want the unknown traitor to gain access to the tower. There he or she might be able to carry out his plans—whatever they were— before his presence was known.
Monat's command overrode everybody else's.
"He was the Operator."
Moreover, Monat, through his proxy, had commanded the computer to obey no one else but him until normal operations were restored.
"I'm sure that if he'd known exactly what was to happen, he'd not have given such a command. But fie had no more idea than I what course events would take."
"The universe is infinite, and the events in it are also infinite," Nur said.
"Perhaps. But you see, the computer used the wathans as its... what shall I say?... blueprints to duplicate bodies. Once, records were kept of the bodies, but it was more economical to use the wathans themselves, as I've explained. There are no other records. So, if the wathans are lost, then we have no way to duplicate bodies anymore."
Burton rolled this around in his mind.
"Well, you have the wathans. We saw them in that enclosure in the middle of the tower."
"Yes, but when the computer dies, the wathans will be released! And there is no means then to resurrect the dead. They are lost forever!"
There was another silence. After a minute or two, Alice said, "The computer...is dying?"
Loga was almost choking. "Yes. It wouldn't be if it hadn't been left unattended so many years."
The machinery was built to last for centuries without any need for repair or replacement. Nevertheless, parts and units did malfunction now and then. That was why technicians inspected everything at regular intervals, and why there were so many self-repair capabilities. Machines, however, had a well-known but as yet unexplained obstinacy, a seeming tendency to break down of their own will or refuse to operate. It had been jestingly observed that perhaps they, too, had wathans of a sort, and their free will was more ill will than anything else.
During the long absence of human supervision, a valve had quit operating.