And Kuwale was—understandably, if not justifiably—thoroughly paranoid. The life of a potential Keystone was not a matter to be taken lightly. It wasn't a question of the universe crumbling; if you died before "explaining everything into being," then obviously someone else would have to do it, and you simply weren't the one. That didn't exclude a great deal of reverence, though, for the, as yet, mere candidate creators—and the rumors of Mosala's emigration must have been enough to start Kuwale seeing enemies crawling out of the reef-rock.
I waited for the tram on a deserted street, gazing up through the clear, cold air at a dazzling richness of stars—and satellites—Conroy's perversely elegant fantasy still running through my head. I thought: If Mosala
And it seemed a sufficiently tall order to have to grow your own universe to wrap yourself in: your own ancestors (needed to explain your own existence), your own billions of human cousins (an unavoidable logical consequence—as would be more distant relatives, animal and plant), your own world to stand on, sun to orbit—and other planets, suns, and galaxies, not obviously essential for survival… but possibly allowing a relatively simple TOE (which could fit in one mind) to be traded for a trickier version which was more economical with cosmic real estate. Explaining all that into existence would be hard enough; you wouldn't want to be obliged to
A wise separation of powers. Leave the metaphysics to someone else.
I boarded the tram. A couple of the passengers smiled and greeted me, and chatted for a while—without anyone drawing a weapon and demanding money.
Walking up the street toward the hotel, I scrolled through a few documents on my notepad, just to check that nothing had been lost in the blackout. I'd made a list of the questions I'd planned to ask the Anthrocosmologists; I checked through them, to see how I'd done. I'd only missed one point; not bad for someone used to a permanent electronic crutch, but it was still an irritation.
Kuwale had said that ve was "mainstream AC." So if all of the wild metaphysics which Conroy had just fed me was the
My complacency was beginning to unravel. All I'd heard was one version of the ACs' doctrine. Conroy had taken it upon herself to speak for all of them—but that didn't prove that they all agreed. At the very least, I needed to speak to Kuwale again… but I had better things to do than stake out the house in the hope that ve would turn up there.
Back in my room, I had Hermes scan the world's communications directories. There were over seven thousand Kuwales listed, with primary addresses in a dozen countries—but no Akili. Which meant it was probably a nickname, a diminutive, or an unofficial nom de asex. Without even knowing what country ve came from, it was going to be impossible to narrow the search.
I hadn't filmed my conversation with Kuwale—but I closed my eyes and invoked Witness, and played with the identikit option until I had vis face clearly in front of me—in digital form in my gut memory, as well as in my mind's eye. I plugged in the umbilical fiber and moved the image into my notepad, then searched the global news databases for a match to either name or face. Not everyone had their fifteen minutes of fame, but with nine million non-profit netzines on top of all the commercial media, you didn't exactly have to be a celebrity to make it into the archives. Win an agrotech competition in rural Angola, score the winning goal for even the most obscure Jamaican soccer team, and—
No such luck. The electronic teat fails again—at a cost of three hundred dollars.
I invoked Witness again, and flagged the identikit image for continuous real-time search. If Kuwale so much as appeared in the corner of my eye—whether or not I was recording, and whether or not I noticed— Witness would let me know.
16
