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Coda: State of Play

there is no meanwhile. But, across a hundred thousand years and light-years, the events of A.C. 10,350 and the Seasonally Adjusted Year of Our Lord 2360 were approximately in step with the year A.D. 2362.

In the year A.D. 2357 the god in the asteroid 10049 Lora made one of its regular close approaches to Earth; and, as had become customary, a delegation from the Military Subcommittee of the Executive Committee of the Solar Commonwealth came out to visit and consult. Their skiffs hovered above its pitted surface, gently docking with the vast web of the interface that gave them access to the wealth of information in its many minds.

Greetings were exchanged, something that the humans managed through the combined actions of a myriad quantum computers and the god with the equivalent of the twitch of a toe. With some slightly higher-level processing it conveyed its thanks and congratulations on the defeat of the octopod invasion. The humans acknowledged that the war against the Spiders had been long and terrible, but that driving the alien invaders from the Solar System had been worth the cost. They mentioned the cost with a certain urgency. The long-term damage to Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere, and the losses to the many habitats across the system, had been substantial and painful.

The god thought they were taking a very short-term view, given that habitats could be replaced within decades and the atmosphere and biosphere restored to something like equilibrium within a million years. It did not, however, convey this thought to the delegation. Much as it appreciated their defense, and much as it appreciated their cooperation in maintaining a blessed radio silence throughout the system—their plethora of tight-band laser comms were only a minor annoyance—the billions of humans of the Commonwealth were, it well knew, touchy. Especially, for some reason, those who had lived in space habitats. It would be deeply unfortunate if more humans had to move off the damaged planetary surface and settle in space habitats. It would be even more unfortunate if their expanding, though cautious, skiff and lightspeeder operations were to encounter the saurs who remained in and around the Solar System. The humans’ lightspeed expedition to Alpha Centauri had been a close call, it had been given to understand.

The god was beginning to experience a certain impatience. The universe was full of much more interesting phenomena than this multicellular infestation. Briefly, for a second or two, several of its inner civilizations devoted the equivalent of centuries of human effort to investigating the possibility of resetting the planet’s evolution completely, and of arranging a simultaneous set of collisions between habitats and stray heavy-metal junk. On balance the decision was negative. Even for the gods, some exercises in celestial mechanics were just too complicated.

Even for the gods, some inspirations take time to emerge. When the box is large enough, even the greatest minds sometimes have difficulty in thinking outside it. But once it had succeeded in doing so, it took very little time for the god to communicate its inspiration to the delegation of the Military Subcommittee. They were greatly delighted with the description it gave them of hundreds of underpopulated habitable planets, and deeply grateful for the coordinates it provided to guide light-speed jumps of a hundred thousand light-years.

They assured the god that building the ships to evacuate the entire human species would take them only about five years, and they promised to keep the noise down.


At the edge of New Babylon’s old industrial zone, near where the coal wastes leached into ponds, was a deep hole known as the Traitors’ Pit. Only the senior officers of the Ninth knew exactly where it was. The material consigned to it was always delivered at night, in an unmarked truck, and thrown in without ceremony or compunction. On this particular night two colonels, their uniforms concealed under rough overalls, heaved three bodies—two of them large, one small—over the side and waited only to hear the thuds before they drove away.

After a couple of days a Multiplier emerged from the shaft. It was not large, about the size of a cat, but it had assimilated, one way or another, many millions of its fellows. It had survived an intense process of natural selection. Its mind was limited and fragmentary, its obscure sense of self flagrantly contradicted by its disparate memories. It scuttled off across the waste ground with a sense of accomplishment, both from its long and perilous ascent and from the memories it had assimilated. It was eager to sort them and share them and acquire more.

It remembered having hands with four digits, only one of which was opposable, and with those hands controlling a skiff that skimmed across endless forests that looked strangely like the complex pipework it could see in the distance. It remembered swaying on two legs, through a city of lights, and shouting in a strange language while colorful explosions lit the sky overhead and a cold liquid in the mouth made the belly warm. It remembered different hands, with five digits this time, moving over an instrument covered with glyphs. It remembered looking out from behind a transparent curved pane at a red, hot surface, while the air hung heavy and still around it and the breath sounded loud in the ears. It remembered skin cool and yet warming, under hands, and hair long or short brushing the skin that felt that electric touch. It remembered looking at stars, and at the gardens of the gods.

What memories, it thought, for one so small to have. It turned two of its eyes upward, and watched as new lights appeared in the sky. Overhead, quietly, without any fuss, the starships were coming in.



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