And what did this poet think of a society being built around his single multimedia opera? asked the Chief Branchman.
It was a delicate question, but Dem Lia just smiled and said, Well never know. Citizen Amoiete died in a mountain-climbing accident just a month after the opera was performed. The first Spectrum Helix communities did not appear for another twenty standard years.
Do you worship this man? asked Chief Branchman Keel Redt.
Ces Ambre answered. No. None of the Spectrum Helix people have ever deified Halpul Amoiete, even though we have taken his name as part of our societys. We do, however, respect and try to live up to the values and goals for human potential which he communicated in his art through that single, extraordinary Spectrum Helix performance.
The Chief Branchman nodded as if satisfied.
Saigyôs soft voice whispered in Dem Lias ear. They are broadcasting both visual and audio on a very tight coherent band which is being picked up by the Ousters outside and being rebroadcast to the forest ring.
Dem Lia looked at the three sitting across from her, finally resting her gaze on Far Rider, the completely space-adapted Ouster. His human eyes were essentially invisible behind the gogglelike, polarized, and nictitating membranes that made him look almost insectoid. Saigyô had tracked Dem Lias gaze, and his voice whispered in her ear again. Yes. He is the one broadcasting.
Dem Lia steepled her fingers and touched her lips, better to conceal the subvocalizing. Youve tapped into their tightbeam?
Yes, of course, said Saigyô. Very primitive. Theyre broadcasting just the video and audio of this meeting, no data subchannels or return broadcasts from either the Ousters near us or from the forest ring.
Dem Lia nodded ever so slightly. Since the Helix was also carrying out complete holocoverage of this meeting, including infrared study, magnetic-resonance analysis of brain function, and a dozen other hidden but intrusive observations, she could hardly blame the Ousters for recording the meeting. Suddenly her cheeks reddened. Infrared. Tightbeam physical scans. Remote neuro-MRI. Certainly the fully space-adapted Ouster could see these probesthe man, if man he still was, lived in an environment where he could see the solar wind, sense the magnetic-field lines, and follow individual ions and even cosmic rays as they flowed over and under and through him in hard vacuum. Dem Lia subvocalized, Shut down all of our solarium sensors except the holocameras.
Saigyôs silence was his assent.
Dem Lia noticed Far Rider suddenly blinking as if someone had shut off blazing lights that had been shining in his eyes. The Ouster then looked at Dem Lia and nodded slightly. The strange gap of a mouth, sealed away from the world by the layer of forcefield and clear ectodermal skin plasma, twitched in what the Spectrum woman thought might be a smile.
It was the young Templar, Reta Kasteen, who had been speaking. so you see we passed through what was becoming the Worldweb and left human space about the time the Hegemony was establishing itself. We had departed the Centauri system some time after the original Hegira had ended. Periodically, our seedship would drop into real spacethe Templars joined us from Gods Grove on our way outso we had fatline news and occasional firsthand information of what the interstellar Worldweb society was becoming. We continued outbound.
Why so far? asked Patek Georg.
The Chief Branchman answered, Quite simply, the ship malfunctioned. It kept us in deep cryogenic fugue for centuries while its programming ignored potential systems for an orbital worldtree. Eventually, as the ship realized its mistaketwelve hundred of us had already died in fugue créches never designed for such a lengthy voyagethe ship panicked and began dropping out of Hawking space at every system, finding the usual assortment of stars that could not support our Templar-grown tree ring or that would have been deadly to Ousters. We know from the ships records that it almost settled us in a binary system consisting of a black hole that was gorging on its close red-giant neighbor.
The accretion disk would have been pretty to watch, said Den Soa with a weak smile.
The Chief Branchman showed his own thin-lipped smile. Yes, in the weeks or months we would have had before it killed us. Instead, working on the last of its reasoning power, the ship made one more jump and found the perfect solutionthis double system, with the white-star heliosphere we Ousters could thrive in, and a tree ring already constructed.
How long ago was that? asked Dem Lia.
Twelve-hundred-and-thirty-some standard years, broadcast Far Rider.
The Templar woman leaned forward and continued the story. The first thing we discovered was that this forest ring had nothing to do with the biogenetics we had developed on Gods Grove to build our own beautiful, secret startrees. This DNA was so alien in its alignment and function
that to tamper with it might have killed the entire forest ring.