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many compulsions exterior and interior; and the interior compulsions grew
stronger with each day.
The Engineer tracted from one end of the bore hole to the other, wrapped in
his closed-end, baggy red robe like an overgrown infant.
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ETERNITY · 257
The long, slender shapes of three flawships--transported from Axis
Thoreau two days before, threaded through the Thistledown bore holes
--hung suspended in softly glowing traction cradles, huge dark spindles along
his accustomed path.
These were fully armed vessels, brought in as precaution. They could also be
used to explore the Way.
Korzenowski looked down on the wide, cylindrical valley of the sixth chamber
and felt a yearning he could neither analyze nor repress. The foundation on
which all of his assembled partials had been integrated now colored him
through and through. He did not protest; something was wrong within him, but
it did not stop his work; if anything, it made him more brilliant.
For Olmy, dreaming had never been the same with implants, and it had changed
even more radically since the Jart had taken over.
Sleep was not necessary for an implant-aided homorph. The processing of
experiences and memoriesmand the relaxation and play of an overworked
subconscious mind--took place during Olmy's waking hours;
these activities were assigned to surrogate mentalities within the implants.
Essentially, Olmy's concentrated conscious effort could continue at all hours
while a parallel mentality "slept" and dreamed. The mentality could then
refine and filter Olmy's subconscious mental contents.
The process had been perfected across centuries.
Olmy's dreams were intense, as real as waking experiences, like living in
another universe with different (and changing) rules; but he did not access
them unless he wanted to. They had accomplished their purpose without his
necessarily being aware. Eventually, after five or six years, dream contents
were purged or compressed in his personal implant, and either downloaded to
external personal memory or deleted. Olmy tended to delete such contents. He
was not fond of experiencing his own dreams, and seldom did so unless he felt
they might hold the resolution to a pressing personal diffic.ulty.
Now, however, the Jart mentality occupied all of Olmy's available implant
space, including his personal implant. Olmy, even when he had been in control,
had had to reassign subconscious processing to its natural center--his primary
mentality.
He had had the choice of either sleeping and dreaming, naturally, or filtering
out waking dream experiences. Before the Jart's conquest, he had chosen the
latter. Dreaming while awake posed few problems; he was mentally disciplined
enough to not be distracted.
Now, however, the Jart was controlling and manipulating not only the
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258 · GREG BEAR
implants, but his primary conscious and subconscious routines~those activities
which took place within his organic brain. Olmy's conscious primary self was
often shunted into the dream-world abruptly and without warning.
It was a realm filled with monsters. The subconscious, all those agents and
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routines which handled automatic responses, was in a terrible state.
Olmy could be consciously calm, but his fundamental self was terrified,
helpless, and in a panic.
Often, when the Jart did not need his immediate attention, he was forced to
wander the dream landscape like a character in a bad biochrone.
Forced to confront his dreams directly, Olmy found signs of character flaws
that further undermined his already low morale. (Why hadn't he dealt with
these flaws through Talsit or other therapy decades or centuries ago? He might
not have made the disastrous decision to ingest the
~Iart'if he had been fully rational .) In his dreams, he repeatedly found
suicidal urges and had to fight them off--small, insect-like creatures that
threatened to eat away his limbs or bite off his head.
Sometimes it took all his courage and will just to survive until the Jart
allowed his consciousness access to the external world.
In time, he wondered whether the Jart knowingly put him to this torture as a
kind of revenge; drowning him in his own mind, just as the
Jart had been forced to drown in its thoughts until it had slumped into
timeless stasis .
But he had no proof, no evidence the Jart could be cruel or vengeful. It
simply needed his entire mind to sweep for information, or practice its
masquerade as a human being.
When his personality was foremost and in apparent control of his body, he
could not act on any impulse or plan unless approved by the
Jart.
So far, the Jart had not tripped any of those algorithmic snares that would
kill them both. Not even Olmy knew where they were; the partial had managed to
erase itself just before Olmy's surrender--the Jart's single lapse thus far
and only the partial had known the locations and character of the snares.
The Jart, having satisfied itself that its position was now secure, began to
give Olmy more and more control, and to act more and more as a firm rider on a
horse, rather than a puppet master. For the first time, it expressed its
wishes as a demand, rather than simply forcing him to act.
We must speak with Korzenowski. Make us available for the reopening. "They'll
open a test connection first," Olmy explained. "It would be
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ETERNITY · 25g better to wait for the final re-opening. Everl better not to be
seen in public at all . . ."
The Jart considered this. We are both on > borrowed time
expediter? We must act quickly. The risk of early exposure does not outweigh
the risk of finding your pitfalls. Once his test opening is made, Korzenowski
may have great difficulty closing it.
The sixth chamber machinery had been examined and certified, and repaired or
replaced where necessary; ten thousand corporeal humans, some seventy thousand
partials and innumerable robots and remotes had done their finest work the
past few weeks, at Korzenowski's direction.
The next major test was at hand.
In the final hours before the first connection, the Engineer rested in his'
spherical quarters, attached to the wall of the bore hole like a cocoon. He
was mentally and physically near complete exhaustion. Even dividing himself
into a dozen partials could not lighten the burden he carried. He had felt
this burden before, and in one way it exhilarated him, but it had a sour edge.
Once, gate-openers in the Way had relied on psychological self-mastery.
The cloak of ceremony wrapped around a gate-opener's duties served as a
reminder that a fogged or unfocused mind could not properly use a clavicle . .
.
Yet Korzenowski, his mind in turmoil, was about to use the entire sixth
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chamber in effect, the Thistledown itself--as a clavicle, opening something
analogous to a huge gate.
He curled tighter in his red robes, resting within a tube of sleepfield lines.
Eyes closed, he released a small cloud of Talsit, the last genuine
Talsit in the Terrestrial Hexamon, as far as he knew. The session would not
last long enough to clear his thoughts completely, but it would help.
The fog filled the sleepfield and he inhaled deeply, evenly, letting the tiny
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