Silicon chemistry was not as favorable a substrate for life as carbon. The properties of silicon compounds did not allow for as much complexity of molecular structure as carbon; and silicon did not bond so conveniently into forms that, like carbon dioxide, could be carried in the air or dissolved in the sea. That was why silicon-based life tended not to emerge even in places where there was far more silicon lying around than carbon, such as the crust of the Earth. But in some places, by chance, it did arise, such as here on Baynix II, the Dirtball.

There had been silicon-based life-forms on this silicon-rich world, native forms, long before humans arrived. And when humans came here, they chose to download their children into the silicon, rather than any carbon-chemistry medium: they had made them into these statues.

What a strange thing to do, Alia thought. She stroked the immense sandy cheek of the stone form before her. “Life would be so terribly slow.”

“Oh, yes,” Bale said. “But time is only perception. If you watch them over a century or so you can see them churn around in the sand…”

“Why keep the human form at all?”

Reath shrugged. “Sentiment? We evolved with human morphology, after all; perhaps we are more deeply wedded to it than we know.”

Alia walked around the head of the statue. She felt compelled to keep away from the line of sight of those immense graven eyes, though surely they could not see her; to this chthonic man she would be a flash of motion, gone in an instant. “So now I know what these statues are. I still don’t know why you brought me here.”

Bale regarded her gravely. “These people made their children into crawling things of stone, a form as remote from the basic human as it is possible to imagine. Why do you think they would do such a thing?”

Alia thought it through. “Because they were refugees. They had to hide.”

“Yes. And by abandoning the carbon-chemistry substrate they made themselves all but undetectable, even by a remote sweep for life. Nobody would expect to find humans hiding in stone…”

“Who were they hiding from?”

“Who do you think?” Bale said.

“Oh. Other people.”

Bale touched the huge hand of the statue. “We don’t know why they were fleeing. But after all this time, the desperation remains. Now can you see how much the Transcendence has to regret?”

Yes, Alia thought. And no matter how you try to achieve Redemption — no matter if every human who ever lived from now on spent her entire life on Witnessing, there would always be more pain: a bottomless pit of it.

Bale watched her sharply. “There. You see it, don’t you? The Transcendence is striving for a goal that is unachievable. That’s what we think. Yes, we are suspicious of it — and we aren’t the only ones. More and more of mankind’s resources are being poured into this sink of pointless ambition. Is there no better way to spend our wealth and power?

“And what if full Redemption can’t be achieved — what will the Transcendence do then? Alia, we think the Transcendence is approaching a crisis.”

Reath seemed shocked by this talk. “You must not anthropomorphize in this way. The Transcendence is not human, remember. It is more than human. And it has a cognizance beyond our petty comprehension. Even its regret is superhuman! You must not imagine you are capable of understanding it.”

Bale bowed his head. “Perhaps not. But we fear it. We are all affected by the Transcendence, as a planet is ruled by the power of the sun it circles. And if the sun becomes unstable… We want to know, Alia. We want to know what the Transcendence plans to do next — and perhaps we can have some influence over it.”

Reath said heavily, “And that’s where Alia comes in, is it? You see her as your way into the Transcendence.”

Bale spread his hands, looking helpless despite his squat, powerful build. “We don’t know what else to do.”

Reath stood before Alia, anger flaring in his eyes. “If you become a Transcendent, Alia, it must be for your own purposes, your own desires, not for his. ”

Alia stared at them. Much of this discussion went far above her head, this philosophy, abstraction. But these theological disputes obviously meant a great deal to these men, enough for them to have put her sister’s life at risk.

So what was she supposed to do?

She looked inside herself for guidance — and she thought of Michael Poole, the subject of her own Witnessing. What would Poole have thought if he could look ahead to this strange future of ours? What would he think of us, this obsession with the past — would he think we were insane?

There was only one way she could find out more, perhaps only one way to resolve all this.

She faced Bale and Reath. “I will go forward. I will continue on this path; I will go on to the Transcendence. But you are right,” she said to Reath. “If I do enter the Transcendence it will be for my own purposes, not anybody else’s. Not even yours, Reath.”

He bowed his head.

“Bale, I have listened to what you say. But I will promise you nothing. Nothing. And I will not act under duress. You will release my sister now. ”

He faced her down for a heartbeat. Then he, too, bowed his head.

Alia heard a gasp. In the shadow of the tent, Drea had slumped forward. The Campocs were clumsily attending her.

Alia turned back to Bale. “We were partners. I thought you cared for me. But you betrayed me.”

“Oh, Alia—”

“If you ever harm any of my family again, I will make you pay.”

He said nothing, and he tried to keep his mind closed to her. But she sensed fear. Good, she thought. Perhaps there will be advantages to being a Transcendent after all.

She began to walk back to Reath’s shuttle. “Are we done here? What’s next?”

I peered through the door into darkness.

I glanced back at my companions. Shelley watched me with a lively curiosity, Vander with obvious envy. In their different ways, both of them longed to step through this door. But it was me Gea had asked for.

I stepped through the doorway -

Wham.

I was standing in the open air, beside a riverbank. Under a glaring sun, the ground was crowded with vegetation. It was ferociously hot and humid.

When I looked back, the door and its frame had disappeared. I guessed I was in some kind of immersive VR. But there had been no sense of transition, none of the usual preparation, no lying down in a darkened place or a sensory-deprivation tank. I was simply here. Wherever here was.

I stepped forward, toward the river. My fake-leather shoes slipped on the bare rock, or stuck in patches of mud. Sweating hard, I felt ridiculous in my shirt and jacket, city clothes. I was not equipped for this.

There was nobody about, no sign of buildings or vehicles. As far as I could see nothing moved, no animals crawled; there was no sound but the chirping of some insect. And not a single bird flew in the sky.

The river was broad, meandering, sluggish, working its way through a wide valley littered by marshes and swamps. Vegetation crowded, green and lush, vigorous. But with the shock of my immersion wearing off, I started to tune in to strangeness.

There were lots of mosses and ferns, and lining the riverbank stands of what I thought might be bamboo, but on closer inspection looked more like horsetails. Away from the river itself taller trees crowded in thickets, surrounded by an undergrowth of ferns and mosses. The trees were some kind of fern, I thought, with a woody trunk and leaves clustered in strange starbursts at the ends of their branches. They looked like ginkgoes, maybe. Elsewhere there were patches of scrub, low-lying ferns and something like heather.

The place was oddly drab. Everything was a deep muddy green: there was no other color anywhere, no flowers. And there was no grass, oddly.