Emma concentrated on the leafy smell of the child, the crackle of dead leaves, the prickle of sunlight on her neck, even the itch of the ulcers on her legs. This was reality, of life and breath and senses.
Manekato had stopped, abruptly. Nemoto fell silent. They were in a small scrap of clearing, by the side of the lichen-covered corpse of a huge fallen tree. Manekato lifted herself up on her hind legs, sniffed the air and swivelled her ears, and belched with satisfaction. “Here,” she said. “The Nutcrackers will come.” With a massive thump she sat on the ground, and began exploring the bushes around her for berries.
Emma, gratefully, put down the infant Nutcracker and sat beside her. The leaves were slippery and damp; the morning was not long advanced. She considered giving the infant some more milk, but the child had already discovered Manekato’s fruit, and was clambering up the Daemon’s impassive back.
Nemoto sat beside Emma. Her posture was stiff, her arms wrapped around her chest, her right heel drumming on the ground. Emma laid one hand on Nemoto’s knee. Gradually the drumming stopped.
And, suddenly, Nemoto began to talk.
“They made the manifold.”
“Who did?”
“The Old Ones. They constructed a manifold of universes — an infinite number of universes. They made it all.” Nemoto shook her head. “Even framing the thought, conceiving of such ambition, is overwhelming. But they did it.”
Manekato was watching them, her large eyes thoughtful.
Emma said carefully, “How did they do this, Nemoto?”
“The branching of universes, deep into the hyperpast,” Manekato murmured.
Emma shook her head, irritated. “What does that mean?”
Nemoto said, “Universes are born. They die. We know two ways a universe can be born. The most primitive cosmos can give birth to another through a Big Crunch, the mirror-image of a Big Bang suffered by a collapsing universe at the end of its history. Or else a new universe can be budded from the singularity at the heart of a black hole. Black holes are the key, Emma, you see. A universe which cannot make black holes can have only one daughter, produced by a Crunch. But a universe which is complex enough to make black holes, like ours, can have many daughters, baby universes connected to the mother by spacetime umbilicals through the singularities.”
“And so when the Old Ones tinkered with the machinery—”
“We don’t know how they did it. But they changed the rules,” Nemoto said.
Emma said hesitantly, “So they found a way to create a lot more universes.”
Manekato said, “We believe the Old Ones created, not just a multiplicity of daughter universes, but an infinite number.” The bulky Daemon studied Emma’s face, seeking understanding.
“Infinity is significant, you see,” Nemoto said, too rapidly. “There is, umm, a qualitative difference between a mere large number, however large, and infinity. In the infinite manifold, in that infinite ensemble, all logically possible universes must exist. And therefore all logically possible destinies must unfold. Everything that is possible will happen, somewhere out there. They created a grand stage, you see, Emma: a stage for endless possibilities of life and mind.”
“Why did they do this?”
“Because they were lonely. The Old Ones were the first sentient species in their universe. They survived their crises of immaturity. And they went on, to walk on the planets, to touch the stars. But everywhere they went — though perhaps they found life — they found no sign of mind, save for themselves.”
“And then the stars went out.”
“And the stars went out. There are ways to survive the darkness, Emma. You can mine energy from the gravity wells of black holes, for instance… But as the universe expanded relentlessly, and the available energy dwindled, the iron logic of entropy held sway. Existence became harsh, straitened, in an energy starved universe that was like a prison. Some of the Old Ones looked back over their lonely destiny, which had turned into nothing but a long, desolating struggle to survive, and — well, some of them rebelled.”
The infant crawled over Manekato’s stolid head and down her chest, clutching great handfuls of hair. Then she curled up in the Daemon’s lap, defecated efficiently, and quickly fell asleep. Emma suppressed a pang of jealousy that it was not her lap.
“So they rebelled. How?”
Nemoto sighed. “It’s all to do with quantum mechanics, Emma.”
“I was afraid it might be.”
Manekato said, “Each quantum event emerges into reality as the result of a feedback loop between past and future. Handshakes across time. The story of the universe is like a tapestry, stitched together by uncountable trillions of such tiny handshakes. If you create an artificial timelike loop to some point in spacetime within the negative light cone of the present—”
“Woah. In English.”
Manekato looked puzzled.
Nemoto said, “If you were to go back in time and try to change the past, you would damage the universe, erasing a whole series of consequential events. Yes? So the universe starts over, from the first point where the forbidden loop would have begun to exist. As the effects of your change propagate through space and time, the universe knits itself into a new form, transaction by transaction, handshake by handshake. The wounded universe heals itself with a new set of handshakes, working forward in time, until it is complete and self-consistent once more.”
Emma tried to think that through. “What you’re telling me is that changing history is possible.”
“Oh, yes,” said Nemoto. “The Old Ones must have come to believe they had lived through the wrong history. So they reached back, to the deepest past, and made the change — and the manifold was born.”
Emma thought she understood. So this had been the purpose the Old Ones had found. Not a saga of meaningless survival in a dismal future of decay and shadows. The Old Ones had reached back, back in time, back to the deepest past, and put it right, by creating infinite possibilities for life, for mind.
She said carefully, “I always wondered if life had any meaning. Now I know. The purpose of the first intelligence of all was to reshape the universe, in order to create a storm of mind.”
“Yes,” Manekato said. “That is a partial understanding, but — yes.”
“Whew,” Emma said.
Nemoto seemed to be shivering, exhausted. “I feel as if I have been gazing through a pinhole at the sun; I have stared so long that I have burned a hole in my retina. And yet there is still so much more to see.”
“You have done well,” Manekato said gently.
Nemoto snapped, “Do I get another banana?”
“We must all do the best we can.” Manekato’s massive hand absently stroked the Nutcracker; the child purred like a cat.
“But,” Emma said, “the Old Ones must have wiped out their own history in the process. Didn’t they? They created a time paradox. Everybody knows about time paradoxes. If you kill your grandmother, the universe repairs itself so you never existed…”
“Perhaps not,” Manekato murmured. “It seems that conscious minds may, in some form, survive the transition.”
“Do not ask how,” Nemoto said dryly. “Suffice it to say that the Old Ones seem to have been able to look on their handiwork, and see that it was good… mostly.”
“Mostly?”
Nemoto said, “We think that we, unwilling passengers on this Red Moon, are, umm, exploring a corner of the manifold, of that infinite ensemble of universes the Old Ones created. Remember the Big Whack. Remember how we glimpsed many possible outcomes, many possible Earths and Moons, depending on the details of the impact.”
“It is clear,” Manekato said, “that within the manifold there must be a sheaf of universes, closely related, all of them deriving from that primal Earth-shaping event and its different outcomes.”
Nemoto said, “Many Earths. Many realities.”