“Listen—” Vanamoinen said suddenly, aloud, fingering his ear nervously. They were avoiding the neural comm linkages that were so much easier to monitor from space, even though his own equipment had assured him that there was no one eavesdropping on any imaginable band of the spectrum. … He touched his ear, feeling for the absent ear cuff, the dangling cascade of crystal that normally he always wore: the information system made into a work of art, as much a part of him as his skin. Vanamoinen’s ear was also empty. It was like being naked … no, worse, like being lost in a void. (Lost in the void. He felt his identity begin to slide… .)
“Damn it all!” a voice said, gasping for breath, as the band of coconspirators reached their meeting place at last. “Ilmarinen, I hope it’s you.”
“Yes. It’s me,” he answered, a little unsteadily. He slid his nightvision back into place with a blink of his eyelids, and smiled at last, as relief flooded through him. He realized as he did that a smile was not an expression he was much familiar with these days. They had come: Mede, and six more she had recruited, as she had promised. One more gamble he had won, one more small victory, one more painful step on a journey that seemed impossibly long… .
“By all that lives, Ilmarinen, I’m too old for this nonsense,” Mede wheezed. She embraced him warmly in spite of the complaint, for old time’s sake, and dropped down heavily onto an outcrop of rock. “What are you—and I—doing in this godforsaken place?”
“You know,” he answered, even though the question was rhetorical. “Trying to save the future.”
She made a sound that was somehow mocking and hopeful all at once.
“How are the children doing?” he asked. He assumed that if they were not doing well, she would have let him know. He and Mede had been together in their youth for long enough to produce three children, before their lives had taken separate turns. They had stayed in touch, and remained friends; their children were grown now.
“Bezai finally gave it all up; she’s gone native on Sittuh’. The others are still in the Guild, hanging on, like the rest of us. It’s in the blood, I suppose.” She shrugged. “You could ask them yourself, sometime.” Her voice took on an edge.
He looked down. “I’m sorry. I’ve been involved in this … project for so long. We’ve had no lives beyond it.” When he looked up at her again he saw understanding, and was grateful.
He made introductions; she jerked slightly, showing her surprise as she met Vanamoinen face to face. For years Vanamoinen had been as reclusive as he was notorious within the Guild. Vanamoinen stared at her with a gaze so intense that Ilmarinen always thought of it privately as murderous; though he knew there was no one in existence who had more reverence for life than Vanamoinen had. “You were receptive to my data?” Vanamoinen asked softly, peering at her with naked wonder, as if she were some rare and unexpected insight that had turned up in a random datascan.
She glanced dubiously at Ilmarinen, as if Vanamoinen had asked her something nonsensical. “Of course I was,” she said, looking back at him. “I’m here, aren’t I? So are they.” She gestured at the six other men and women gathered behind her, all of them wearing the uniform of Survey, as she was, with the datapatch of Continuity glowing dimly on every sleeve.
“How many of the people you shared it with refused to come?” Vanamoinen asked.
She looked surprised again. “Three.” Her eyes clouded. “When I input your message, I felt … transformed. When I knew what it held, I had to come … we all did.” Her voice filled with hushed wonder. “But the others—they got no input, any of them. They said I must be hearing things.” She shook her head. “I was sure it was something that they would want to share in. I wanted to tell them … except that your message forbade it. Maybe there’s something wrong with your transfer medium?”
“It worked exactly as I intended,” Vanamoinen said flatly. “They weren’t suitable for the project. I designed the data medium to select suitable personalities only.” He grinned with sudden triumph. “Ilmar!” he shouted, and the empty night echoed. “I did it!”
Ilmarinen smiled. “Again,” he said gently, and held up a warning hand.
Mede stared at Vanamoinen for a long moment, and shook her head. “Then I’m flattered, I suppose,” she murmured. “It’s brilliant, Vanamoinen—a centralized databank with biological ports, as a stabilizing force for the Pangalactic. The Interface is going to hell, and this could make a real, measurable difference. …” Her eyes gleamed. “But why not just give the concept to the Establishment? Why this pathological secrecy, for the love of All?”
Ilmarinen frowned, looking up at the stars. (Gundhalinu looked with him, feeling incredulous wonder push his consciousness through the darker mood that now moved the man called Ilmannen, into the realization of who and where he was, at what fixed moment in time—) “Because I already approached them about it. If they were capable of implementing something like this, don’t you think they would have? All they’re capable of now is preventing it from happening.” He shook his head, hearing the bitterness of years in his voice. “Stupid use of smartmatter has been killing the Pangalactic; we all know it. That’s why the Establishment has been trying to root it out of everything nonvital. ‘Nonvital’ … they use the longevity drugs themselves, by the All!” His hands jerked. “We’re history, Mede… . But smartmatter can save what’s left of us, if we’re only smart enough—” He broke off. “You know what we think, or you wouldn’t be here. Believe me, Mede, we are not two lunatics alone in this.” He glanced past her, at the half-dozen other earnest faces, the men and women who stood in a semicircle around her, watching his face in the darkness “We could never have come this far otherwise. The computer is already functioning.”
Mede let out a breath of surprise. “Where?”
He shook his head, as the image began to form in his thoughts; not even letting himself (or the other who held his breath inside him) remember its name. “I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to. No one must ever know. It has to be that way, or it will never last.”
She nodded. “But at least you can tell me what you want from me … us?” She gestured at her companions, glanced around her again, as if she were still astonished to find herself here. But there was almost a hunger in her voice as she asked, “What can we do?”
Slowly he reached into his jacket, and drew out a small container. On its side was the ages-old barbed trefoil signaling biological contamination. “Become sibyls,” he said.
She stiffened. “Smartmatter—?”
He nodded, getting on with it before she could form real protests. “You’re in Continuity. It gives your people excellent reason to travel extensively. What we need now are outlets—human computer ports able to interact with, and speak for the net. It would be easy for you to spread the word, to recruit them on the worlds you visit, just as we recruited you.”
“Ilmarinen, we share a long history. You know I trust you with my life, or I would not have come …” she said slowly. “But are we the first you’ve asked this of?”
He nodded again. “Yes. But you won’t be the last.” He caught her stare, abruptly understood it. He touched the container of serum. “It’s under control,” he said, willing her to believe him. “There are no mistakes in its programming. The technoviral that will make you receptive has been designed by one of the few people who truly understands—“
She gazed at the container for a moment longer. “How can we know … ?”
“You’re not the first to be infected.” She looked back at him abruptly, as he drew out the thing that he wore night and day now, hidden beneath his clothing, close to his heart. A trefoil on a chain, the same symbol imprinted on the container, symbolizing how it bound him now to his chosen future. Silently Vanamoinen produced the same sign. Vanamoinen had been the first; he had been the second.