I realized that there was a certain contradiction in what Id said. Damon and I had been playing the big boys game, by their rules. Wed been playing in a pool where a little espionage and low-level skulduggery were no longer a matter for slapped wrists. Wed been playing in a pool where people took their secrets seriously.
Even so, a thousand years was an extremely long time to be hidden away. Why hadnt Damon been able to find me? Why hadnt he been able to get me out?
Suddenly, the stars outside the fake window didnt seem so bright or so lordly. They seemed confused, lost in a darkness that they couldnt quite obliterate even though they were massed in their trillions.
I knew that they werent all stars. Some of them were galaxies. The universe was full of galaxies, a hundred billion or more, but it was also full of darkness and emptiness.
Raw space, so the theorists of my time had said, was full of seething potentials particulate eddies beyond the surface of the void, ever-ready to erupt into tangibility but the sum of all that infinite activity was nothing .
And wherever the potential was manifest wherever there was something instead of nothing there was still, if measured on any scale responsible to the true size of the universe, almost nothing.
I existed. At least, I had to suppose so. But so what?
I felt that I had an obligation to pull myself together. After all, I seemed to be the first ambassador from the world of mortal men ever to be entertained in Excelsior.
Why ninety-nine? I asked, as calmly as I could. Why did you start the calendar over?
The Christian Era had ended long before that system of counting was abandoned, she said. On Earth, the new calendar was belatedly introduced after the Great North American Basalt Flow year one was the first year of the so-called Gaean Restoration. The microworlds in Earth orbit adopted the convention because we all share the same year. Different systems apply on the inner worlds and the outer satellites, and in the more distant microworld clusters.
I saw a chance to rack up a few more marks in the big test by guessing what the Great North American Basalt Flow must have been.
So the Yellowstone Supervolcano finally blew up again, I said. Every umpteen million years, regular as clockwork. It would have been even more impressive if Id been able to remember the exact term of its periodicity.
The magma chamber that ruptured was located in the former Yellowstone National Park in the United States of North America, she confirmed, after a brief fact-check pause. It had been closely monitored ever since the Coral Sea disaster of 2542, and was thought to be under control. The recriminations and accusations are still unsettled, at least on Earth itself.
That was an intriguing remark. You mean somebody let it off deliberately ? I asked. Somebody blew up North America and plunged the whole planet into nuclear winter?
That required a slightly longer data feed, perhaps to translate the term nuclear winter. Eventually, she said: The majority opinion
is that the eruption was an accident caused by a malfunction of the systems securing the magma chamber. There are, however, factions which believe that the systems were sabotaged they differ in their hypotheses as to who might have been responsible and why.
I didnt need a data feed to interpret Gaean Restoration for me. A major basalt flow must have begun with an explosive release of gas and ash into the air, fouling the atmosphere for years. The ecosphere must have suffered a tremendous die-back but when the dust had settled and the poison gases had been neutralized, the human survivors must have set about the business of regenerating the ecosphere according to their own schemes. This time, unlike any other in the deep prehistory of the Earth, there must have been human survivors, but millions or billions must have died. Millions or billions of emortals.
Did the Hardinist Cabal still own the planet when it happened? I asked.
She didnt procrastinate over the precise significance of the term, although she took the trouble to substitute one of her own. The people who styled themselves Stewards of the Earth had already lost some of their former power and influence, she reported, and the fact that the planets balance of trade with the outer system was in irredeemable deficit implied that their decline was irreversible. They probably remain privately convinced that the eruption was sabotage directed at them, perhaps by Earthbound rebels and perhaps by outer system radicals, although their public position is that it was an unfortunate accident. Certain other factions have suggested that the Stewards were the responsible party, and that the effective destruction of the ecosphere enabled them to reestablish a local economic hegemony that they would soon have lost. That seems unlikely, given that the disaster brought about a dramatic increase in imports from the outer system.
Do the Secret Masters of Earth know youve woken me up? I asked, trying not to sound too paranoid.