“Not yet,” Venator told him. “But she will soon.”
“And you—the, the cybercosm—the government —it really won’t try to suppress the news or, or any consequences that follow?”
Venator caught Kentnuir’s gaze and held it a moment. “You and your friends can help us in that, you know. In fact, you must. The Federation—the humans in key positions—we don’t want them led or forced into taking stands it would be hard for them to retreat from. As you guessed earlier, the less said publicly on either side, the easier for everyone concerned.”
It was not a capitulation, Kenmuir realized. It was an adaptation to circumstances. It could be the first move in a new plan that extended centuries ahead … No, he would not think about that. Not yet.
“I’ll certainly be glad to cooperate,” he said. “So will Aleka and, uh, Matthias, I’m sure.”
Now Venator grinned, above raised brows. “Like Lilisaire and her Lunarians?”
“I think they’ll agree.”
“The story can’t actually be blotted out, you know,” Venator reminded. “What we can try for is that your people be discreet enough to allow mine to be the same.”
No, the story could never be blotted out, Kenmuir thought. Not out of him. Pain surged. O download Dagny!
“Must we talk about opposite sides?” he asked fast. “I still can’t see why the issue has to be … irreconcilable. Are a few Lunarians in deep space such a big factor? How can they be, in the near future or ever?”
Venator frowned. “It seemed more clear to you before,” he said. With a shrug: “It did to me too, then.” He paused. “Let me propose a very crude analogy. Picture an intelligent, educated Roman in the reign of Augustus, speculating about what things would be like in another thousand years. He says to himself, ‘Perhaps the legions will have marched over the whole world as they did over Gaul, and everybody everywhere will be Roman. Or perhaps, which Caesar’s current policy suggests is more likely, the frontiers will stay approximately where they are, beyond them the forests and the barbarians. Or perhaps, pessimistically, Rome will have fallen and the wild folk howl in the ruins of our cities.’
“I don’t know which future he chose, and it doesn’t matter, because of course the outcome was none of them. A heretical oifshoot of the religion of a conquered people in one small corner of the Mediterranean lands took over both Romans and barbarians, transforming them entirely and begetting a whole new civilization.”
Faustian civilization, Kenmuir thought.
“Just the same,” he argued, “the sheer power of— your—cybercosm, which is bound to grow beyond anything we can conceive of—”
“The biocosm will grow too,” Venator said. “And as for influences on it and on us, what may humans turn into, they and their machines, out among the comets?”
An idea struck from the rim of Kenmuir’s mind. By its nature, the cybercosm must seek for absolute knowledge; but this required absolute control, no wild contingencies, nothing unforeseeable except the flowerings of its intellect. The cybercosm was totalitarian.
“Well, as events have developed, this has become yet another factor to deal with,” Venator went on. “There are many more, after all, and in any case theuniverse will doubtless continue springing surprises for millions of years to come. Time will see who copes best, and how.”
Totalitarianism need not be brutal, Kenmuir thought. It could be mild in its ways, beneficent in its actions, and … too subtle to be recognized for what it was.
Wings flashed overhead. He looked aloft, but the sun dazzled sight of the bird from him. A hawk, hunting? Never could he have imagined that ruthless beauty, had not a billion years of unreined chance and blind will to live shaped it for him. Suddenly he could endure remembering what had happened in the tomb on the Moon.
Maybe there would be no real affray between the Daos. Maybe in some remote age they would find they had been two faces of the same. Or maybe not. He knew simply that he was with the Mother.
“And this is rather abstract, isn’t it?” Venator was saying. “We can do nothing but handle the footling details of our lifespans, one piece at a time.”