"Then you’ll have to explain it to me," Michael said tiredly. "Harry, do you have that option I asked for?"

Harry’s smile was strained. "We can close the Interface, the AIs say. But I don’t understand how. And I don’t think you’re going to like the solution."

Michael felt an enormous, oppressive weight; it seemed to be striving to crush his chest. "I don’t like any of this. But we’re going to do it anyway. Harry, start when you can."

He closed his eyes and lay back in the couch, hoping for sleep to claim him. After a few seconds the surge of the Spline’s insystem drive pressed him deeper into the cushions.

Chapter 13

At the zenith the Interface portal was a tiny, growing flower of electric blue. The Spline ship was already within the thousand-mile region of exotic space, the squeezed vacuum that surrounded the wormhole mouth.

Jasoft Parz settled, birdlike, to the deck in the new artificial gravity of the Spline drive; he took a seat and watched Michael closely, his green eyes sharp, fascinated.

Shira got out of her chair and walked unsteadily across the deck. Her eyes were huge, bruised, the shape of her skull showing through her thin flesh. "You must not do this," she said.

Michael began, "My dear—"

Harry cut in, "Michael, we’re in the middle of a storm of messages. I’m surprised the hull of the dome hasn’t burned off under comm-laser fire… I think you’ll have to deal with this. All the ships within a thousand miles are aware we’re moving, and a dozen different authorities want to know what the hell we’re doing."

"Can any of them stop us before we reach the Interface?"

Harry considered. "Probably not. The Spline, even disabled as it is, is so damn big it would have to be blown out of the sky to be stopped. And there’s no armor in range heavy enough to do that."

"Okay. Ignore them."

"And we’re getting messages from the earth-craft," Harry reported. "Also inquiring politely as to what we think we’re doing."

Shira’s hands twisted together. "You must listen to them, Michael."

"Answer me honestly, Shira. Can the Friends do anything to stop us?"

Her mouth worked and her eyes seemed heavy, as if she could barely restrain hysterical tears; and Michael felt an absurd, irrational urge to comfort her. "No," she said at last, quietly. "Not physically, no. But—"

"Then ignore them too." Michael thought it over. "In fact, Harry, I want you to disable the whole damn comms panel… Any equipment the Spline is carrying too. Permanently; I want you to trash it. Can you do that?"

Again a short hesitation. "Sure, Michael," Harry said uncertainly. "But — are you sure that’s such a good idea?"

"Where we’re going we’re not going to need it," Michael said. "It’s just a damn distraction. In—" He studied the zenith. "What, forty minutes?"

"Thirty-eight," Harry said gloomily.

" — we’re going to enter the Interface. And we’re going to close it. And there’s nothing more anybody can say that will make a piece of difference to that."

"I’m not going to argue," Harry urged, "but — Michael — what about Miriam?"

"Miriam’s a distraction," Michael said firmly. "Come on, Harry; do it. I need your support."

There was a silence of a few seconds. Then: "Done," Harry said. "We’re all alone, Michael."

"You are a fool," Shira told Michael coldly.

Michael sighed and tried to regain a comfortable posture in his couch. "It’s not the first time I’ve been called that."

"Might be the last, though," Parz said dryly.

"You think you are solving the problem, with one bold, audacious stroke," Shira said, her water-blue eyes fixed on Michael’s face. "You think you are fearless, in the face of unknown dangers — an encounter with the future, even with death. But you are not fearless. You are afraid. You fear even words. You fear the words of your contemporaries — how many lectures have I endured on how important it was that we should allow you into our confidence… that we should share the immense problems with which we grappled? And now you — as arrogant as you are foolish — turn your back even on your own kind. You fear the words of the Friends themselves — even of me — you fear the logic, the truth in our convictions."

Michael massaged the bridge of his nose, wishing he didn’t feel so damned tired. "Quite a speech," he said.

She drew her back straight. "And you fear yourself. For fear of your own weakness of resolve, you dare not even consider the possibility of consulting the one closest to you, Miriam, who is less than a light-second away. You would rather, as you put it, ‘trash’ your comms equipment than—"

"Enough," Michael snapped.

She drew back a little at the sharpness of his tone, but she held her ground; pale eyes glittered from her fleshless face.

Michael said, "To hell with any of that. It’s academic, Shira. The rules have changed; the outside universe might as well not exist as far as what happens to this ship from now on; we’ve established that. There’s only the four of us now — you, me, Parz, and Harry—"

" — and several hundred drones," Harry put in uncertainly. "Who I’m having a certain amount of difficulty controlling—"

Michael ignored him. "Just the four of us, Shira, in this bubble of air and warmth. And the only way this ship is going to get turned aside is if you — you — convince me, and the others, that your Project is worth the incalculable risk it entails." He studied her, trying to gauge her reaction. "Well? you have thirty-eight minutes."

"Thirty-six," Harry said.

Shira closed her eyes and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "All right," she said. She crossed the deck to her chair, her gait stiff and ungainly, and sat down.

Michael, watching her, felt himself come alive with anticipation, rejuvenated by the prospect of having his questions answered at last.

Shira talked to them of Eugene Wigner, and of the von Neumann catastrophe.

Like the alive-dead condition of Schrödinger’s cat, events remained in a state of unreality until observed by a conscious entity. But each act of observation merely added another layer of potentiality to the core events, itself unrealized until observed in turn.

The chains of quantum functions, in Wigner’s view, extended to infinity in an unending chain, an infinite regress.

"Thus, the paradox of Wigner’s friend," Shira said.

Michael shook his head impatiently. "But this is pure philosophical debate," he said. "Wigner himself believed that the regress was not infinite… that the chain of wave functions terminates as soon as a conscious mind makes an observation."

"That is one view," Shira said quietly. "But there are others…"

Shira described the participatory universe.

Life — intelligent life — was, under this hypothesis, essential for the very existence of the universe. Imagine a myriad box-cat-friend-Wigner chains of quantum functions, all extending through time, without end. "Constantly," Shira said, "life — consciousness — is calling the universe into existence by the very act of observing it."

Consciousness was like an immense, self-directed eye, a recursive design developed by the universe to invoke its own being.

And if this was true, the goal of consciousness, of life, said Shira, must be to gather and organize data — all data, everywhere — to observe and actualize all events. For without actualization there could be no reality.

Arising from a million chance beginnings, like the stirring of the chemical soup of Earth’s ancient seas, life had spread — was continuing to spread — and to observe, to gather and record data using every resource available.