This is the first
book by Greg Bear that I’ve read. The book picks up the story where the first
book, Eon, left of. I didn’t read the first book, but had no trouble jumping
right in. Not only does the author give us sufficient background about the
characters, but also this book stands on its own. The 366-page book was
published by Popular Books in 1989, an imprint of Warner Books, and first published
in 1988. Greg Bear is American science fiction writer. The novel is a
many-ingredient concoction of hard sci-fi, family, love, and friendship.
Eternity (1988), a Science Fiction by Greg
Bear: Summary
Recovered Earth,
Independent Territory of New Zealand, A.D 2046
Lanier tried to look
at the mourners and found only sadness and a nervous humility. The coffin
leaned and creaked in the dirt. Lanier imagined Lawrence Heineman was finding
his grave an uneasy bed. A priest of the New Church of Rome spoke Latin over
the grave. Up there, in the sky, among orbiting precincts, the Hexamon
conducted its business, yet had sent no representative from those august
heavenly bodies; and indeed, considering how Larry had come to feel about the
Hexamon, that gesture would have been inappropriate. Garry Lanier stood with
Karen, his wife of almost four decades. Born in Hunan, China, of defected from
England. She had less Western perspective. She had still had high hopes, still
worked on her various projects. They had had expectations for the Recovery- how
things had change- divisions, separation, and disaster. She was still of the
faith, believing in future, in the Hexamon’s effort.
Now they laid a
significant part of their past in the damp earth, with no hope of second
resurrection. Heineman had not expected to die by accident, but he had chosen
this death nonetheless. Like Karen, their daughter Andia had carried an
implant, Lanier had not protested. The Hexamon had come down to bless the child
of one of their faithful servants. Then, irony had stepped in and left a
permanent sorrow in their lives. Twenty years ago, Andia’s plane had crashed in
the eastern Pacific and she had never been found. She was untraceable even with
Hexamon technology. Most of Old Natives did not have access to implants; even
the Terrestrial Hexamon could not supply everybody on earth with the necessary
devices; and if they could have, Earth cultures were not ready for even
proximate immortality.
Gaia, Island of
Rhodos, Grater Alexandreian Oikoumene, Year of Alexandros 2331-2342
Rhita Berenike
Vaskayza was the daughter of inventor and mathematician Patricia Louisa Vasques
(Patrikia). At eleven, Rhita was already aware of politics, but she was proving
even more adept at numbers and the sciences. Her grandmother Patrikia told her
Rhita the story of her arrival on Gaia. She had been young then, sixty years
ago, when she had been given the chance to seek a gate in the Way that might
take her to an Earth free of nuclear war, where Patrikia’s family might still
alive. Before she died she wanted Gaia to take her grandmother back to the Way
and from there might be able to go home to Earth. Rita studied physics and
mathematics. That was what she carried of the sophe (shadow or ghost). Her
father Rhamon, for the Hypateion’s pacifist philosophy, was a practical man, on
occasion surprisingly resourceful and worldly.
Terrestrial Hexamon,
Axis Euclid
They had applied to
create his son Tapi, seven years earlier, two years after Olmy’s official
retirement. The algorithms showed that the Hexamon wanted to return to the Way.
Olmy told his son his consent for incarnation was on record. Suli Ram Kikura
had been born in city memory, incarnated much as her son Tapi would be. She had
at least one more incarnation to go, her life was not hazardous, she might live
for millenia before the problem become practical.
Earth
The avatar of former
Liutenant General Pavel Mirsky visited Garry Lanier and asking for Paticia
Vasquez project find her way home. Garry knew Pavel as one of the Russians that
invaded Thistledown. He asked Garry to take him to Thistledown and must speak to
mathematician Konrad Korzenowski and Ser Olmy. Konrad Korzenowski was engineer
and inventor of the Way. He had designed the Way, once attached to seventh
internal chamber of asteroid starship Thistledown. Thistledown and two section
of Axis City were still in a-ten thousand-kilometer orbit around Earth.
The Way
had briefly opened into empty space: it had almost immediately sealed itself,
closing its infinity off from the universe forever. Those who had elected to
stay within the Way-Pavel Mirsky among them-were more distant than souls of the
dead, if the dead had souls. Mirsky informed there was a crisis coming to
government that the Way was going to be opened again. Konrad Kozennowski was
assassinated centuries before. Olmy had located those partials as boy, and
later been responsible for reassembling and reincarnating Kozenowski, with the
help of Patricia Vasques.
The Jarts
The Jarts were the
most formidable. Even captured, imprisoned, quiescent for centuries, somehow
they could still kill. The Jarts had not been defeated, merely pushed far down
the Way, and kept there by a series of powerful fortresses. The Jarts had a
strong independent motivation routine. Several human were captured for their
research.
Thistledown
Thistledown orbited
Earth every five hours and fifty minutes, as it had since Sundering. In some
regions of the Earth, the asteroids bright star was worshiping even after
decades of education and social engineering; humanity’s psychological yolk sacs
could not be eliminated easily. Thistledown city had been designed and built
after the asteroid’s launch, taking advantage of lessons learned the
construction of Alexandreia. It was re-occupied by citizens from precincts.
Some had been replanted with flora brought up from Earth.
For sixty years,
Patrikia had searched for elusive opening into a place she had called the Way.
This gate had proven elusive, appearing at various times in various parts of
the world only enough long enough to entice, never to be precisely located.
Patrikia had died without finding it. Rhita now knew precisely where the gate
was. Knowing about the gateway had robbed her of her own life. Her grandmother
had imposed an almost impossible burden on young girl by setting the instrument
to recognize her touch. She carried the clavicle and life-support machine in a
large locked trunk, in a smaller suitcase, she also carried her grandmother
slate and electric tablet for reading and writing upon. These were guarded by
Logotorix, her Keltic bodyguard, in her cabin.
Mar Kellen was an old
soldier and gate police comrade, about Olmy age. He had been born during the
later Jart Wars, the biggest push against the Way’s invaders before the
Sundering, when beyond two ex nine-two billon kilometers down the Way. Mar
Kellen studied the Jarts image. It was ugly. The terrasterial Hexamon, after
decades concentrating on very different problems, was not prepared
strategically or tactically to return the Way. According to Olmy’s expert
advice, the Hexamon might survive its own foolishness. And all of the beings
most likely to confront them were in the re-opened Way.
Thousand of questions
still danced on Ser Olmy’s mind: is Pavel Mirsky a human life or is he
commanded from another concern. Mirsky was not a human and he was expediter.
The Jarts found Mirsky’s presence very significant. Olmy was panic, he was a
prisoner now, his personality fragmented and completely under Jart’s power. He
quickly scanned his available natural memories and found most of blocked by
Jarts inhibitors-could hardly understand the Jart’s last clear statement.
Gaia
Alexandreia was the
center of culture and science in the Western World. Rhita enrolled the
Mouseion, the university, research center, and library. Akademia Hypatheia on Rhodo, Queen Kleopatra had thought she
could provoke response, allowing Patrikia’s grandaughter to Mouseion. Queen
sent Rhita Middle Eastern scientific expedition – a mission to open the gate.
But her team was attacked by Kirghiz soldiers and the clavicle had been taken
from her. They had been dragged out of beecraft, she didn’t know what happen to
the gate, but darkness was coming. She was a mortal. Before the memory of
capture was lost completely, blenched away by the false Rodhian sun, she hadn’t
found her friends. A young Jarts asked her where she got the Objects. She has
been several years in Gaia’s time. She was in the Way.
The Way
Rhita knew where she
was now, Parikia had described it. Above the bubble stretched the wide band of
the plasma tube, much fainter now, and the impossible region called the flaw,
the singularity. The prism rode the flaw, like the Hexamon’s flawships.
Earth
The Terrestrial
Senate was in recess, its member scattered around Pacific Rim. One influential
Terrestrial senator had lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Garry Lanier arranged
for a meeting with him. Suli Ram Kikura and Karen accompanied Garry to Earth;
their object was sabotage. Garry was in pain, he suffered a massive cerebral
hemorrhage. A shadow crossed his face, Pavel Mirsky stood no more two meters
away. Gary was dying, Mirsky was downloaded Gary into his implant. The
breathing stopped. His implant was not empty, but Garry Lanier was dead. Lanier
could not feel his body. He was between the Earth and Thistledown. There were
no ectoplasmic bodies and souls. When a body was gone, he was truly gone- and
the universe was empty, desolate, and shapeless. Unless at sometime the power
decided to arrange a kind of resurrection- the Final Mind. The technician
indicated the implant in Garry’s body contained female’s implant. Young woman
in the implant, about twenty-one years old, was Andia. She was a Terrestrial
citizen. Karen lost Garry but she found her missing daughter Andia.
Thistledown
The man was Ry Oyu,
chief gate-opener for Infinite Hexamon. The four million inhabitants of
Thistledown were evacuated from the asteroids’s five populated chambers with
every vehicle available in the Earth-Moon vicinity. The Way was open.
Korzenowski wanted to destroy it, and prevent another way being made. He was
making a sentimental journey. He wished to touch the surface of the Way before
beginning the destruction. Ry Oyu located Rhita. She lent part of herself to
the shadow of her grandmother. Konzenwoski believed Patricia have the strength
to go home. Rhita was home with real flesh, real trees, and real father. The
Way gathered in great coils and supercoils, eating itself like some ineffable
burning fuse, and died. The time of avatars on Earth came to an end. Patricia
Luisa Vasques was with her fiancé in California. Lanier joined Mirsky as the
observer. The Final Mind needed many observers.
*****
June, 2016
Terjemahan dalam
Bahasa Indonesia : Eternity (Keabadian) karya Greg Bear
Buku ini merupakan
sekuel dari novel laris Eon karya Greg Bear. Penulis berkebangsaan Amerika yang
telah mendapatkan sejumlah penghargaan dalam tulisan novel fiksi ilmiah. Sulit
mengekspresikan kehebatan penulis, karya dan imajinasi yang sangat tinggi.
Karya ini juga memopulerkan ilmu matematika dan fisika. Dibalik keseriusannya
karya ini dalam menerapkan beberapa teori fisika dan matematika, penulis masih
menyelipkan percakapan kelakar. Tokoh Kleopatra saja dikisahkan punya hobi
Matematika. Tokoh-tokoh non manusia menganggap sepele dan lucu kelakuan mortal
manusia dalam hal perselingkuhan dan masalah minum alkohol. Padahal dalam dunia
non manusia mereka lebih fokus pada hal-hal besar – sains.
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