Passage

2050 June 3 13:28 UT
Test Year 22, Day 189, 12:42 CST/20:42 MST
Tau, Caltech – Beckman Mall/MIT – Big Dome

At Caltech, there was a picnic lunch being served to celebrate the year’s graduates. It had hardly been the commencement ceremonies of long ago, with professors posing like rock stars in academic gowns and everyone sweating in black or red in the California sun. But the kids didn’t mind the lack of finery. Karen had accepted Sakhar’s handshake with a smile. She was Caltech’s first student to receive a graduate degree in animal husbandry. Her brother was satisfied with the more orthodox choice of spacecraft navigation, which had applications now that Nerv-1’s new engine was ready to be installed.

After the General gave the keynote speech, everyone stampeded the spread out tables and sprawled back on the grass. At least the Gamblers present hadn’t worn dress uniforms; they had begun to accept Techer informality. None of them had shifted to homespun or zard leather yet.

Will had grabbed an extra plate and piled it with mozzarella and balsamic, lettuce and tomato. “Thanks to Akira and the cowboys.” Karen and Z devoured the food, since they’d been up all morning partying. “I’m proud of you.” One arm around Mina, Karen and Z joking with Vesna and Sarah and with passing friends, surrounded by three thousand of the people who had built upon what they were given, Will was at peace, even as his mental clock told him that the Examiners were due in less than a minute.

Then there came a strange tremor at the limits of his heightened senses. It started to grow, and he saw Mina and the children, and everyone in the crowd, turn their heads towards the now-empty stage …

At MIT, Marriner’s opera had just been performed on the set built inside the Big Dome. The curtain had fallen on Gera and Zijun, as they lay dying amongst the rubble of their anti-missile guns; it had risen and fallen again for the bow and curtain call; and finally been raised on an empty stage. The audience had started to rise, partly joyous over the story they had seen and partly facing the memory of the dead oligarchs.

Julian reclined in his wheelchair in the front row, a faint smile and two tears on his weary face, his eyes closed. He too had peace, even though he could feel the pressure in his lungs when he breathed and the ache in his side where the sutures hadn’t healed, and on a deeper level sense the weakness in his aorta.

And then his nervous system, precisely tuned and sensitive, felt an external compulsion to open his eyes. He didn’t need to open them to hear the crowd pause in their exit and turn back. When he did look, he was probably the only one on the planet not surprised to see:

Three indistinct figures, illuminated and casting no shadows, stood on the stage. At Caltech, the same things were on the stage, but here they were dimmer than they should have been in the noontime light. And everyone heard the voice:

“You have passed the Test.”

The younger Chamers gaped, but joined the uproarious applause: clapping, cheering, hugging, praying. As he embraced Mina, Will heard the voice continue in his head. “Give them a few seconds, and then we will speak again. But this is for you to hear.” And now he heard Julian, and seemed to see the musician in front of him.

Julian had heard the Examiners’ Voice. In the following tenth of a second, a surge of endorphins and adrenalin had been released. His heart pounded. The aneurism burst.

As fast as this happened, a string of point masses detached themselves from the network that was hovering three kilometers above the Big Dome, shot through the masonry without fuss, went through his chest wall, and formed a skein across the breach. There was a pulse of pain as his blood pressure bounced, which vanished as he moved his hand to his chest.

“Contact will be broadened. Do you want me to save you?” This Examiner spoke differently from the others. “Your work has great beauty.”

No. Julian thought. This is enough. The masses fled, and the musician felt his heart shudder and stop for the second time. Tell Will and Kathryn – That we have done the right thing. And tell them to watch that there is never again a Star Chamber, while still doing all they … can to … help … …

The train of thought failed, but there were the gentle emotions of Julian’s last thoughts – grief and loss overwhelmed by love and gratitude and pride of the Passing. And the image of Julian in Will’s vision closed its eyes.

Amongst the rejoicing, as the images solidified into the shapes of three very alien beings, Will staggered, sat down as Mina guided him. He was balanced between joy and grief. “Julian is dead.” She felt the same thing he did, coupled with uncertainty. “They told me, just then. I was right to trust them, after all.”