Heaven by Ian Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

role of servant.
    While its operator prayed, the duplicator continued to disgorge identical devices, one every few seconds.
    Sam rose to his feet and picked up an empty container. The boxes themselves were made by a colleague in an adjoining chamber.
     Methodically he packed the box with the devices he had made. By the time he had finished, another boxful was ready. Occasionally,
     he conversed with the box-maker, another human male.
Disseminator 714
had the fifteen types of species that the Church had determined were ideal to maintain social harmony, but repeated attempts
     to mix species on technical tasks never seemed to work very well and had been abandoned.
    In this manner Sam’s morning passed. It was fulfilling work.
    In the belly of
Disseminator 714
was a large open space, once a cargo tank. The vessel had originally been built to carry freight, mostly liquids that were
     common in some parts of the Galaxy and rare, but essential, elsewhere. When the market in liquid neon collapsed, Cosmic Unity
     had purchased the ship at a bargain price and converted it for creatures warmer-blooded than its previous Gra’aan owners.
     The cargo tank became a sanctum for the rites of the Community of the United Cosmos, and the vessel became yet another agent
     for the dissemination of the Memeplex of Universal Tolerance to a receptive Galaxy.
    His duties temporarily suspended by command of the high acolyte, Sam hurried through the bowels of the ship as he always did
     on such occasions, trotting securely in the ubiquitous artificial gravity. He was hastening to take his place in the Assembly
     of Joy so that he could renew his faith in the essential oneness of Life—be it a magnetic plasmoid in the surface of a star
     or a fragile bag of molecules like himself.
    It was the high point of his existence, a daily reaffirmation of his reason for being.
    To Sam, the atmosphere in the sanctum was pure poison. So, as he entered, protective Precursor machinery sprang into action.
     A puff of mist condensed and enveloped him in a molecule-thick membrane that would filter out toxic compounds from the air.
     If his skin had been unprotected, these would have had the same effect on him as nerve gas: He would have died within seconds
     of entering the room, his skin becoming a mass of giant pus-filled blisters. He knew this, but he seldom even thought about
     it anymore. It did not disturb him. Precursor gadgetry never failed.
    The environment in the Assembly was deliberately selected so that it suited none of those present. That was fair and just,
     reflecting the essential nature of the Community of the Cosmos. Each sentient entity present, in its own way, was protected
     by technology, be it endogenous or Precursor. Unity came at a price, the price of constant discomfort and reliance on machines,
     coatings, membranes, and magnetogravitic fields. All this served as a valuable reminder that Unity was not the natural state
     of the universe, but one that could be attained only through sacrifice, humility, faith, and tolerance.
    Tolerance was more than just a state of mind. It was an ever-present act of reaffirmation. You had to work at being tolerant.
    Sam looked around, trying to find a place to pray. Worship rings painted on the bare metal floor tacitly told ground-seeking
     species where to station themselves. Smaller rings, on the walls, were occupied by metallomorphs, which clung like lichen
     to flat surfaces and moved by hitching a ride on other, more mobile creatures. In appearance no more than shiny quasicrystalline
     patches, metallomorphs actually housed a quick electronic intelligence.
    Other areas of the walls were hung with strips of fabric from many worlds, forming an abstract representation of the striped
     clouds of a gas giant, in memory of the Founders. There were no other artworks, nothing ostentatious in any way. The only
     smells were those of a working starship, mostly the characteristic odors of its varied