Transition (43 page)

Loscelles looked her in the eyes. “Well then, ma’am,” he said softly, “I could not allow that. It might serve to put me with
Obliq, and Plyte, and Krijk, and the rest. There have been… narrow squeaks reported; abnormal events.”

Madame d’Ortolan nodded, her expression a picture of concern. “
Haven’t
there?” She tutted. “We should all be very careful.”

Loscelles smiled wanly. “I believe I am being.”

She smiled radiantly at him. “Why, I believe you are too!”

The Transitionary

“What is it that we do? What are we for and what are we against? What are we for?”

“This again? I have a feeling that if I say what anybody else in the Concern would expect me to say, you’re going to tell
me I’m wrong.”

“Give it a go.”

“We help societies across the many worlds, aiding and advancing positive, progressive forces and confounding and disabling
negative, regressive ones.”

“To what end?”

He shrugged. “General philanthropy. It’s nice to be nice.”

They sat in a hot tub looking out across a polished granite floor towards a starlit sea of cloud. She scooped a handful of
the warm water and bubbles and let it fall over her left shoulder and upper breast, then repeated the action for her right
side. Tem watched the bubbles slide. Mrs Mulverhill, even here, wore a tiny white hat like piled snow, and a spotted white
veil. She said, “How do we define the different forces?”

“The bad guys tend to enjoy killing people, preferably in large numbers. The good guys – and girls – don’t; they get a buzz when
infant mortality rates go down and life expectancy goes up. The bad guys like to tell people what to do, the good guys are
happy to encourage people to make up their own minds. The bad guys like to keep the riches and the power to themselves and
their cronies, the good guys want the money and power spread evenly, subject to the making-up-your-own-minds thing.”

In this world, there had once been an Emperor of the World. He had caused this palace to be built, levelling the top of the
mountain that was variously called Sagarmatha, Chomolungma, Peak XV or Mount Everest (or Victoria or Alexander or Ghandi or
Mao, or many, many other names). The palace was vast, enclosed by great glass domes which were pressurised and warmed to mimic
the conditions of a tropical island. Now, though, after a catastrophe caused by a gamma-ray burster happening relatively nearby
by cosmic standards, the world was devoid of humans or almost any other living thing, and was in the slow, eons-long process
of changing profoundly as all the processes associated with life, including carbon capture and even most of its plate tectonics,
started to shut down.

The Concern had first discovered the world a few years after the catastrophe and had repaired and restored the palace. It
had become a place where privileged officers of the Concern could holiday. Mrs Mulverhill, who now seemed to be able to go
anywhere and do anything as long as she stayed away from the Concern proper, had found a version – indeed, a whole unshuffled
deck of versions – where this had been done but nobody had yet come to visit. For now at least it was her private world. She
had brought him here. This time, she had only needed to hold his hand.

“What is the point,” she asked him, “of trying to do any good in the many worlds when there will always be an infinite number
of realities where the horrors unfold unstopped?”

“Because one ought to do what one can. Good is good. Specific people and societies benefit. That not all people and societies
benefit is beside the point. That a finite number of lives and worlds are better as a result of the actions of the Concern
is all the justification that is required, and refusing to do a finite amount of good because you cannot do an infinite amount
of good is a morally perverse position. If you feel sorry for a beggar you still give them money even though doing so does
nothing for the plight of all other beggars.” He let himself slide under the steaming water and the islands of bubbles, resurfacing
and wiping water from his face. “How am I doing? I’m paraphrasing here, but it’s sounding pretty good to me. I should probably
write a paper or something.”

“Extremely well. You’re a credit to your teachers.”

“I thought so.” He pushed his fingers through his hair like a rough comb. “So. Tell me where I’m wrong and what the Concern
is really up to.”

She nodded once. There were times when he thought she lacked any sense of humour, irony or sarcasm. “I think now that the
Concern,” she said, “exists for a much more specific purpose than simply acting as a multiversal niceness-enforcement agency.
It does do some good, but it’s incidental, a cover for its true purpose.”

“Which is what?”

“That is what I hope you will agree to help me find out.”

“So you still don’t know?”

“Correct.”

“But you suspect they’re up to something.”

“I know they are.”

“How do you know?”

“I feel it.”

“You feel it.”

“Indeed. In fact I feel certain of it.”

“You know, if you’re going to convince anybody else about this, including me, you’re going to have to do better than just
telling them you’re certain. It’s a little vague.”

“I know. But consider this.”

Of course, she had a slyly refined sense of humour and appreciated ironies that entirely passed him by. Sarcasm was generally
beneath her, but even so.

“I am,” he told her, “sitting comfortably.”

She put one hand up to the side of her head, so that one rosy nipple surfaced briefly from the white bubbles. She took the
little white hat and the veil off, laid them on the black granite at the side of the tub. Slitlike pupils in amber irises
narrowed fractionally as they regarded him.

“We have access to an infinite number of worlds,” she said, “and have visited some very strange ones. We suspect there are
some so strange that we are unable to access them just because of that strangeness: they are unenvisageable, and because we
cannot imagine going to them, we cannot go to them. But think how relatively limited is the type of world we do visit. For
one thing, it is always and only Earth, as we understand it. Never the next planet further in towards or further out from
the sun: Venus or Mars or their equivalents. This Earth is usually about four and a half billion years old in a universe just
under fourteen billion years old. Usually, even if it supports no intelligent life, it supports some life. Almost without
variance, it exists as part of a solar system in a galaxy composed of hundreds of millions of other solar systems, in a universe
composed of hundreds of millions of other galaxies.”

As she spoke, she flexed one leg and reached out with it to find his groin with her foot. Her toes brushed against his balls,
his cock, stroking them, wafting like the water.

“Wait,” he said, opening his legs a little to allow her more room, “this isn’t the ‘Where Is Everybody?’ question, is it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s easy. There is no everybody. There is only us. There are no aliens. Not a single one of the many worlds shows any
sign of alien contact, past or present. Their lack, throughout the multiverse, proves the point. We are alone in the universe.”
Her toes were gently brushing first one side of his penis, then the other, bringing him erect.

“In all the universes?” she asked, smiling.

“In every single one.”

“Then infinity seems to be failing somehow, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Failing?”

“It hasn’t produced any aliens. It has produced only us. A single intelligent species in all the wide universe does not smack
of infinity.” She supported herself by stretching her arms out to either side of the tub and reached out now with both feet,
finding his erection with two sets of toes and stroking it gently up and down.

He cleared his throat. “What
does
it smack of then?”

“Well, it could simply be due to what the transitioneering theorists call the problem of unenvisionability, as mentioned:
we cannot imagine a world that includes aliens – or perhaps, deep down, we don’t want to.” Mrs Mulverhill raised one hand and
blew some bubbles from it to inspect her fingernails before looking at him and saying, “Or it might smack of deliberate quarantine,
systematic enclosure, some vast cover-up…”

“Why, Mrs Mulverhill, you’re a conspiracy theorist!”

“Yes,” she agreed, smiling. “But not by nature. I’ve been forced into it by the conspiracy I’m investigating.” She hesitated,
uncharacteristically. “I’ve found some examples. Ones you’ll know about. Want to hear?”

“Fire away.” He nodded down to where her glistening feet, bobbing rhythmically through the surface of the swirling, bubbling
water, were caressing his cock, parenthetical. “Feel free to not stop doing that, though.”

She smiled. “The examples are from the more extreme end of the exoticism spectrum,” she told him, “but still.”

“I’ve always liked extremities.”

“I’m sure. Max Fitching, the singer?”

“I remember.”

“The green terrorist explanation was a lie. He was going to give his money to SETI research.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Marit Shauoon?”

“I still wince.”

“He was going to use his network of communication satellites to do a SETI in reverse, deliberately broadcasting signals to
the stars. In his will he’d have funded a trio of orbiting telescopes dedicated to finding Earth-like planets and looking
for signs of intelligent life on them. You killed him days before he was going to alter his will with just that provision
in mind. Glimpsing how it’s all heading?”

“You missed out Serge Anstruther.”

“Yerge Aushauser. No, he really was a shit. He wasn’t really a genocidal racist as such but whenever he’s not stopped he ends
up causing such havoc he might as well have been. Wanted to buy up a state in the US midwest and build an impregnable Nirvana
for the super-rich; Xanadu, Shangri-La. Fantasy made real. A Libertarian.” From his expression she must have thought he wasn’t
entirely familiar with the term. She sighed. “Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those
unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.”

“You’ve obviously thought about it.”

“And dismissed it. But expect to hear a lot more about it as Madame d’O consolidates her power-base – it’s a natural fit for
people just like you, Tem.”

“I’m already intrigued.”

“Well, you would be.”

“How do you know all this?”

She waggled her toes over his penis as though it was a flute and her feet were intent on playing it. “I seduce forecasters.
I’ve even turned a few. I have my own now.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The Concern use you, and others, to do this sort of thing more and more these days, Tem. You still get to kill the genuine
bad guys now and again, but that’s become little more than cover now, not the main focus of their activities. They’ve even
started going after people who’re just thinking about what humanity’s true place in the cosmos might be. There’s a guy called
variously Miguel Esteban/Mike Esteros/Michel Sanrois/Mickey Sants who keeps cropping up across one batch of worlds. All the
poor fucker wants to do is make a film about finding aliens but they’ve started kidnapping him too now. That’s one of the
few examples we know about. I’m betting there are hundreds of others.”

“This is all back to Madame d’O, isn’t it?” he said, gripping the rim of the tub and flexing his shoulders to ease his hips
forward, closer to her, so that her legs spread a little more, glistening knees appearing out of the surface of the gently
bubbling water on either side while her soles and toes still grasped his cock.

“Madame d’Ortolan continues to believe in her imbecilic theories and pursue her sadistic research,” Mrs Mulverhill agreed
graciously.

“It just always seems more personal,” he said, “this thing between her and you.”

“I’ve no particular desire to personalise any of this, Tem, it’s just that when you follow the relevant trails she’s always
what’s waiting at the end.”

“No doubt.” He reached forward, took her ankles in his hands. “And now I think you should come over here.”

She nodded. “I think I should, too.”

The dawn began to break across the teeth of the eastward mountains, a yellow-pink stain slowly spreading. They stood, bundled
in pillowed layers of high-altitude, four-season clothing, on a high circular balcony situated on the summit of the highest
dome of the great empty palace. They were in the open air, beyond a small airlock, sucking oxygen from transparent masks over
their noses, leaving their mouths free.

Small oxygen tanks in their outer jackets kept them supplied with the life-giving gas and a back-up system of valves dotted
round the balcony stood ready to replace those if something went wrong. Even so, one could not simply step from the scented
sea-level warmth of the palace into the open air of nine and a half kilometres above the ocean; the pressure difference was
so great that a period of adjustment was required in the airlock to prevent discomfort. Before dawn, when the air was most
likely to be still, was the best time to be here. Nevertheless, a strong, thin wind was blowing from the north. A movable
glass screen linked to a man-high tail of a blade like a giant weathervane had positioned itself to deflect the worst of the
blast over the balcony. Glowing figures on a small screen set into the parapet indicated that the temperature was forty below.
The air, felt on the lips and the few square centimetres of exposed skin around the eyes, seemed powder-dry, sucking up moisture
as much as warmth.

She said, “People will generally make whatever compromises with the world they think necessary still to convince themselves
that they are the most important thing in it. The trouble with what we’re able to do – specifically the trouble with unfettered
access to septus and through it to the many worlds – is that it abets and encourages this delusion to the point of naked solipsism.”
Her voice, carried over the steady roar of wind, sounded calm and strong, unaffected by the thin air.