‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Come. Let’s walk on.’
They hadn’t gone much further when a group went by, quicktalking noisily, carrying picnic lunches, towels, tablets and pads of paper, heading out of town. Some of the party nodded to Roberta as they passed, and glanced at Rocky and Stan incuriously. They were mostly young, but there were a couple of women who might have been about fifty, Rocky thought. The presence of the older people made him realize how rare they were here; there couldn’t be many folk over mid-twenties. It was a young community.
Roberta pointed at one of the older women. ‘Her name is Stella Welch. One of the brightest of the pre-emergence generation. She once worked as a relationship counsellor on the Datum, would you believe? She’d been thrown out of university – she was studying mathematics at Stanford, but the regular academic institutions of humanity couldn’t cope with her. Now, here, she’s become one of our leading thinkers on cosmological evolution. Before we found her, she worked out most of her ideas in private, on scraps of paper—’
‘Einstein in the patent office,’ Stan said. ‘Figuring out relativity in his spare time.’
‘That’s right. I told you that where we have disagreements, Stan, is at the apex of our philosophies – the levels of goals, ultimate objectives. I think we all agree that the purpose of intelligence is to apprehend the world. But how to achieve that apprehension? Some, like Stella, think big. She wants us to understand the cosmos on the largest of scales – and, perhaps, some day, participate in its evolution. But others disagree. We have a philosopher, you might call him a poet, who has styled himself “Celandine”.’
‘Like the flower,’ said Rocky.
‘That’s it. Strictly speaking the lesser celandine, a beautiful little wildflower, the spring messenger. Wordsworth admired it, yet it was treated as an invasive species in North America. Well, so it was, I suppose. Celandine, our Celandine, argues that all that is essential of our reality can be reached through the contemplation of a single flower: the mathematics of its diploid and tetraploid forms, the way its small face presses to the sunlight. Celandine says we should reach for the numinous, you see, not through the infinite but through the infinitesimal. You must meet him.’
‘Oh, we must,’ said Stan, straight-faced.
Rocky asked, ‘So where are they going, the cosmologist lady and her friends, with their swimming costumes and all?’
Roberta smiled. ‘We have a hot spring about a mile north of here. You might call the meeting they’ll have a seminar. Or you might call it a hot tub party. If you’re prissy you might call it an orgy.’
Rocky said, ‘If I went with them I don’t think I’d get much cosmology done.’
‘I told you,’ Roberta said. ‘We enjoy sex. We do use sex socially … Right now there’s a fierce debate going on over esoteric interpretations of some of the fluctuations in the radiation that’s been detected coming out of the massive black hole at the centre of the Galaxy, and that’s what Stella’s group are going to debate. Passions among us can get just as stirred up by academic arguments as amongst you, you know. But it’s a lot less easy to fall out if you’re sitting in a hot tub grooming your opponent.’
‘Grooming!’ Stan laughed. ‘Good word. Like the bonobo chimps.’
She nodded. ‘You see, you do understand. Stan, you will come here, you know. You will accept your place here.’
Rocky said hotly, ‘You can’t give him orders like that.’
‘But I’m not,’ she said gently. ‘Rocky, remember what I told you about how we lack free will, by your standards? Because often we can see what needs to be done, and have no choice but to do it. So it is with you, Stan. I’m sure you can see that your place is here, with us. It’s just a question of where you fit in.’
But Stan seemed distracted and didn’t reply.
‘Hey,’ Rocky said. ‘There’s our buddy Jules.’
Jules van Herp looked grimy, hot, but he was wearing Next clothing, as Rocky had come to recognize it: a loose waistcoat, some kind of loincloth, a belt with straps for tools. ‘Been digging that drainage ditch,’ he said to Roberta.
‘No wonder you’re sweating.’
‘I like to join in.’
Roberta said, not unkindly, ‘I’m sure everybody appreciates your contribution.’
Jules looked pathetically pleased. He spoke in a gabbling burst, and Rocky realized that he was, incredibly, attempting quicktalk, or imitating it.
Stan stared at him, as if disgusted. ‘Hey, Rocky. Remember that kobold that hangs around the plant sometimes?’
‘Bob-Bob.’
‘Yeah. Grinning and mugging, trading his bits of tat. Trying desperately to be a human, a person. Never ever going to be one.’ He stared at Jules. ‘Remind you of anyone?’
Jules seemed upset, but he didn’t reply. He looked to Roberta, as if she would make it right for him.
Rocky said, ‘Hey, that’s harsh, man—’