Free Heaven's Reach by David Brin Page A

resembled the half-submerged spiny torso of some gigantic, lazy sea serpent that seemed to stretch toward both horizons, blocking his panorama of the purple plane.
    At its slothful rate of passage, several pseudodays might pass before Harry’s view was unobstructed once again. He stared for some time at the coils’ slow rise and fall, wondering what combination of reality and his own mental processes could have evoked such a thing. If a memoid—another self-sustaining, living abstraction—it was huge enough to engulf most of the more modest animated idealizations grazing nearby.
    When a concept grows big enough, does it become part of the landscape? Will it merge with the underpinnings of E Level? Will this “idea” take part in motivating the entire cosmos?
    One thing was for sure, he could hardly survey his assigned area with something like this in the way!
    Unfortunately, the damned banana peels still surrounded his station with a deadly allaphorical minefield. But clearly the time had come to move on.
    The station swayed at first when he tried controlling the stilt legs by hand. Apparently, his spindly tower pushed the limits of verticality in this region, where flight was forbidden by local laws of physics. The structure teetered and nearly fell three times before he started getting the hang of things.
    Alas, he had no option of handing supervision over to the computer. “Pilot mode” was often useless on E Level, where machines could be deaf and blind to allaphors that lay right in front of them.
    â€œWell, here goes,” he murmured, gingerly navigating the scout platform ahead, raising one spidery stem, maneuvering it skittishly past a yellow and brown “peel,” and planting it on the best patch of open ground within reach. Testing its footing, he shifted the station’s center of gravity, transferring more weight forward until it felt safe to try again with another.
    The process was a lot like chess—you had to think at least a dozen moves ahead, for there could be no going back. “Reversibility” was a meaningless term in this continuum, where
death
might take on the attributes of a physical creature, and
entropy
was just another predatory concept prowling a savannah of ideas.
    It became a slow, tense process of exertion, tedious and utterly demanding. Harry grew to despise the banana peel symbols, even more than before. He
used
his hatred to reinforce concentration, picking slowly amid the yellow emblems of slipperiness, knowing that any misstep might send the little scoutship flipping violently toward a gaudy oblivion.
    Somehow—he could tell—the peels sensed his loathing. Their boundaries seemed to shrink a little and solidify under his gaze.
    â€œWe do not require passionless observers for this kind of duty,”
Wer’Q’quinn had explained when Harry joined the Observer Corps at Kazzkark Base.
    â€œThere are many others we could choose, whose minds are more disciplined. More detached, cautious, and in most ways more intelligent. Those volunteers are needed elsewhere. But on E Level, we are better served by someone like you.”
    â€œGee, thanks,”
Harry had replied.
“So, are you saying you don’t want me to be skeptical when I’m out on a mission?”
    The squadron leader bowed a great, wormlike head. Rustling segment plates crafted words in ratchety Galactic Five.
    â€œOnly those who start with skepticism can open themselves to true adventure,”
Wer’Q’quinn continued.
“But there are many types of skeptical outlook. Yours is gritty, visceral. You take things personally, young Earthling, as
if the cosmos has a particular interest in your inconvenience. On most planes of reality, that is an egregious error of solipsistic pride. But on E Level, it may be the only appropriate way of dealing with an idiosyncratic cosmos.”
    Harry came away from that interview with oddly mixed