Eschaton 01 The Other End of Time

by Frederik Pohl

  Most of the staff had no time to chat with a new low-ranking employee, at least until they discovered he happened to be a Dannerman. Then they became more cordial, but were still busy. If the observatory didn't have any instruments of its own, it did have shared-time arrangements with ground-based and radio telescopes in New Mexico and Hawaii and the Canary Islands, not to mention neutrino instruments in Canada and Italy and even odder observatories everywhere in the world. The scientists made their observations, and then they, and all the other specialists at Dannerman, massaged, enhanced and interpreted the data and added it to the general store of human knowledge.

  Of course, Dan Dannerman wasn't qualified for any of that. If you didn't count Janice DuPage, the receptionist who doubled as payroll manager, or old Walt Lowenfeld, who ran the stockroom, Dannerman was pretty nearly the least professionally qualified human being on the payroll of the observatory. He hadn't been granted the dignity of a title, but if he had it would have been "office boy." Exploring the observatory was made easy for him, because his work took him everywhere. It included carrying things from the stockroom to the people who needed them, making coffee, killing, for Janice DuPage, a wasp that had somehow made it into the reception room, fetching doughnuts from the shop in the lobby for Harry Chesweiler, the senior planetary astronomer on the staff… taking messages, in fractured English, from the Greek friends of Christo Papathanassiou, the quantum cosmologist from the island of Cyprus… getting Cousin Pat's jewelry out of the safe for her when she was going out socially… bringing tea with a measured twenty cc of clover-blossom honey, no more and no less, for old Rosaleen Artzybachova, well past ninety and still spry but crotchety, as she pored over her instrument schematics. What he did, in short, was whatever they told him to do. "They" could be anybody, because he took orders from any of the fifteen or twenty principal astronomers and physicists and computer nerds and mathematicians who made up the major science staff of the observatory, and from any of their assistants as well. But he especially took orders from Cousin Pat Adcock, because she was the one who ran it all.

  Cousin Pat wasn't a bad boss, as bosses went. She wasn't really a good boss, either, though. She seemed to have little patience and no interest in whether any of her employees might have lives of their own. She snapped her orders out-not only to her low-man-on-the-totem-pole cousin but even to people like Pete Schneyman, the mathematician-astrophysicist who, it was said, was high on the list for some future Nobel laurel (and had been everybody's logical best bet for becoming the next director until Pat Adcock came along) and to old, honored Rosaleen Artzybachova. Maybe part of the reason for the impatience, Dannerman thought, was that everybody knew that the only reason Cousin Pat was the director was Uncle Cubby's money. But she seemed tense and preoccupied most of the time. Janice DuPage whispered that Pat hadn't always been like that and probably one reason was that, having gone through two husbands, she didn't currently have even a steady boyfriend. "Maybe so," Dannerman told the receptionist. "But she was a bossy little kid, too."

  He didn't believe that was the explanation, anyway. There had to be something else, something most probably to do with the Starlab; or else what was he doing there?

  What he was doing there, of course, was following Colonel Hilda Morrisey's orders. As ordered, he kept his eyes and ears open, and if he didn't find much that interested her in his nightly reports it wasn't for lack of trying. It wasn't because the people he worked with weren't willing to talk, either. They were a sociable lot-particularly with somebody who, however lowly his present status, was a definite relative of their great benefactor. "But all they want to talk about is their jobs, Colonel," he complained to her on the coded line. "Dr. Schneyman kept me after work for an hour talking about stuff like something he called isospin and how proton-rich nuclei were created in novae and neutron stars."

  "Screw that stuff, Danno. That's not what you're there for. What about the gamma-ray item?"

  "Nobody brought it up, so I didn't either. You told me-"

  "I know what I told you. Have you at least made contact with Mick Jarvas and the Chink astronaut?"

  "I haven't seen Commander Lin yet at all. He's been out of the office; they say he's in Houston, doing something about getting ready for the repair flight."

  "I've got one other name for you. Christo Papa-Papathana-"

  "The Greek fellow, right. From Cyprus."

  "Well, there's a file on him, only I haven't accessed it yet. It's been crazy here." She hesitated, then said, "The thing is, they found the President's press secretary, only he was dead."

  Dannerman was scandalized. "Dead? Gripes, Hilda! That was supposed to be a strictly commercial snatch!"

  "So something went sour. The word isn't out yet; the President's going to announce it at a news conference in the morning. Meanwhile, everything's pretty screwed up, so it'll be a while before I can get more. And keep after Jarvas."

  "He isn't exactly a sociable type."

  "Make him sociable, Danno. Didn't I tell you this assignment is priority? Do I have to teach you all over again how to do your job? And, look, see if you can get into some of the technical part of the work there. You're not going to find much out while you're running the coffee machine."

  Dannerman followed orders as best he could. He didn't achieve much with Cousin Pat's bodyguard, though he tried getting Jarvas to go with him for lunch or a beer. He got a frosty turndown. Jarvas didn't socialize outside the office. At lunchtime he went out only with Dr. Pat Adcock, and on the rare occasions when she lunched on sandwiches in her office he preferred to go out and eat alone.

  Dannerman did better with the other instruction. It occurred to him that the databanks for astrophysics were reached in just about the same ways as the ones for critical studies on American playwrights. When he pointed out to Pat Adcock that he could be more use in research than fixing squeaky drawers, she reluctantly agreed to allow him to do an occasional literature search.

  That was useful. It gave him a good reason to talk shop with his coworkers, and, when Harry Chesweiler found out he spoke good German and at least halting French, the planetary astronomer was delighted. "Hell, boy," he boomed, his mouth full of a bagel, "you can do something for me right now. Pat's been after me to check out some little CLO she's interested in-"

  "A what?"

  "A CLO. A comet-like object. I don't know why she's getting interested in it now-it came through a couple years ago- hut it does have some unusual characteristics. She wants to know its orbital elements for some reason, and I've got all this Ganymede stuff to work up. We don't have any data for the sectors and times she's interested in, so you'll need to check some of the other observatories. Use my screen if you want to; I'd like to get out early for lunch, anyway."

  The good part of checking up on the CLO was that it was more interesting than making coffee, and it didn't really require any knowledge of astronomy. With the information Chesweiler left for him Dan Dannerman began calling up other observatories to beg for copies of any plates they might have.

  The main sources, Chesweiler had explained, were out of the country: the German Max-Planck Institut fur Extraterristrische Physik, which had both an optical and a gamma-ray observatory still more or less functioning in orbit-gamma rays!-and Cerro Toledo in South America, which had one that observed in the extreme ultraviolet. The woman at Cerro Toledo refused his attempts at French-he knew no more of her own language than the taxi-driver Spanish any American needed-but had good enough English to make clear that, while she was perfectly willing to transmit the plates he asked for, she wanted to be paid; Dannerman took a chance and agreed to the price she asked.

  The man at Max-Planck was a cheerful youngster named Gerd Hausewitz. He was considerably more cooperative, especially because Dannerman's German was what he'd acquired in his four years in the Democratische Neuereich. Hausewitz was about to go home for the day, he mentioned-it was nearly six o'clock in Europe-but he promised to get the plates, and Dannerman, feeling cheerful, wen
t back to replacing the wilting flowers on the desk of Janice DuPage.

  Talking German again had reminded him of the good times in Europe-of the parts of those times that were good, anyway: the cakes with mountains of schlag on the ring boulevards of Vienna, the beer in Frankfurt, the girl named Use who had invited him into her bed and then into the secret society called the Mad King Ludwig. It was the Mads he had been working on, but Use was a definitely valuable fringe benefit. Undoubtedly she was a terrorist, and almost certainly she had been involved in the group that had tried to spread cholera in the drinking water of the UN in New York, but she was also about the most beautiful woman he'd ever shared a mattress with.

  Dannerman took a short lunch hour, and when he came back it was Janice DuPage, the receptionist, who checked his carry gun for him.

  "How come?" he asked.

  "Checking weapons is my job when Mick's out body guarding Pat Adcock."

  "Huh. What does she need a bodyguard for, anyway?"

  Janice looked at him unbelievingly. "Daniel, what galaxy do you come from? Pat's a good-looking woman. She needs some kind of muscle to protect her from rapists and kidnappers and general scum-not counting sometimes she likes to wear some pretty high-priced rocks when she goes out. Why do you carry a gun?"

  He shrugged. "Everybody does."

  "And everybody knows why."

  He persisted, "So why does she hire a retired kick-boxer who never won, fight that wasn't fixed?"

  "Ask him yourself. And some Kraut's been calling you, it's in your voicemail."

  Gerd Hausewitz was as good as his word, but before he transmitted the plates he wanted to talk to Dannerman again. "Anything wrong?" Dannerman asked.

  I lie broad face on the screen looked troubled. "Just that it's a hinny thing, Dr. Dannerman. You said you were looking for a comet-like object, both in EUV and our gammas? But comets do not radiate in such frequencies."

  "I guess that's what makes it only comet-like, " Dannerman said equably.

  "To be sure, yes. But my superiors were interested that you should ask, and interested also in your Starlab satellite. We understand there is to be a flight to repair it, is that correct?"

  Dannerman's expression didn't change, but he was suddenly more interested. "Yes?"

  "That would be splendid, naturally. It is a fine instrument. However, we have found nothing in the literature to describe the plans for repair. Could you perhaps send us a copy of the mission plan, if it is not too much trouble?"

  "I'll have to ask the boss."

  "Of course. But please do. We would greatly appreciate. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

  Dannerman hesitated, then took the plunge. "Your gamma-ray observer-"

  "Yes?"

  "I was just wondering, have there been any unusual gamma observations lately? In the last couple of years, that is?"

  The German looked puzzled. "Unusual? There are of course the bursters, but those occur all the time. Nothing unusual, however. Why do you ask?"

  Dannerman backtracked swiftly. "It was just something someone said. It's not important. Anyway, thanks for the plates.

  After Dannerman passed the plates on to Harry Chesweiler, the German's question stuck in his mind. He wished he knew a little more about astronomy. Did this CLO have anything to do with Starlab? Did the fact that it wasn't a normal comet mean anything? Why was the man from Max-Planck asking about the satellite in the first place?

  Colonel Hilda would want the answer to that, too, so Dannerman got into conversations on the subject as much as he could manage. He didn't get much. No one seemed to have access to the Starlab flight plan; Dr. Adcock was handling that directly with Commander Jimmy Peng-tsu Lin. No one really knew just what had happened to Starlab, not even Dr. Artzybachova, though she gave him a frosty look when he asked.

  At the end of working hours, when all the employees were lining up at Janice DuPage's desk to collect their day's pay before inflation knocked another two or three per cent off it, he dawdled to ask more questions, with little more success. It wasn't that the people in line with him were unwilling to talk, but what they wanted to talk about was their own special programs-black holes, galaxy counts, red-giant stars, red-shift measurements.

  When Dannerman got the conversation onto the prospective repair mission for Starlab they were happy to discuss that, too, or at least to discuss what a newly functioning Starlab would mean to their hunt for organic molecules in interstellar gas clouds, or for the "missing mass" that seemed to concern some of them. Whatever that was. By the time the line carried Dannerman to Janice DuPage's desk he decided he didn't even know what questions to ask until he got more information from Colonel Hilda.

  Then, as he was handing his cash card over to Janice DuPage for his pay, she said, "Oh, there you are, Dan. Dr. Adcock wants to talk to you before you leave."

  And when he got to his cousin's office she glared at him. "What's this I'm hearing about you? Why are you asking for the Starlab flight plan?"

  He wasn't surprised that she asked the question; he had no doubt that Pat Adcock kept an ear to everything that went on in the observatory. "I wasn't asking for myself, Pat. I got some data for Dr. Chesweiler from the Max-Planck people, and they were the ones who wanted to know. I thought it would be, you know, professional courtesy to give it to them."

  "Professional courtesy isn't your department. You aren't a professional here, and it's none of their damn business. You don't pass out any information to anyone outside the observatory without my personal approval. Ever. Do you understand that? And, another thing, Janice tells me that you've made a payment commitment to Cerro Toledo for their data; we'll have to pay it, but you ought to know you don't have any authority to do that, either. Dan, this just isn't satisfactory. I don't want to have to warn you again, but- Hold it a minute."

  Her screen was buzzing. Dannerman couldn't see the face on it, but he recognized Harry Chesweiler's voice. It sounded excited. "I've got your orbital elements for the CLO, and they're damn funny. There's definite deceleration, and-"

  "Wait, Harry," she ordered, turning back to her cousin. "That's all, Dan. You can go. Just be more careful in die future."

  He shared the elevator going down with two of the scientists, arguing over what the search for WIMPs really signified. They seemed close to coming to blows, so he interrupted. "What's a WIMP?"

  They paused to stare at him. "Weakly interactive massive particle," the postdoc who'd been talking to him about the missing mass said.

  "Oh, thanks. And, say, long as I've got you, there's something else I've been wondering about. If there's a comet that radiates in gamma and EUV, and it is slowing down as it comes toward the Sun, what does that mean?"

  The other man laughed. "Means it isn't a comet, that's all. Maybe it's one of your fucking WIMPs, Will."

  "Jesus," the postdoc said, "what are you telling him that for? You know it couldn't be a WIMP. Maybe some old spacecraft?"

  "You know of any old spacecraft that would be coming in toward the Sun, Will?"

  "So it's probably just a screwed-up observation. Anyway," the man said, getting back to his own subject, "believe me, WIMPs are definitely out there, and they make the difference; they're why the universe isn't going to expand indefinitely."

  Dannerman gave up. He was glad enough when they came to the ground floor and he could get out. This debate about whether the universe would continually expand, or rebound to a point again, was sort of interesting, but not, as far as he could see, in any way relevant to any of the questions he was working on.

  And, as far as he could know, it wasn't, of course. Because, of course, at that point Dan Dannerman had still never heard of the eschaton.

  That night there was a call waiting from the lawyer, Dixler, begging him to have lunch with him the next day. That was a puzzle. Dannerman could think of no reason the lawyer would want to talk to him, and even fewer reasons why he would want to spend an hour with the man. But when he had reported in to Colonel Hi
lda she said, "Do it. See what he wants."

  "It sounds like a waste of time to me."

  "So? We're the ones who're paying for your time, if we want you to waste it then you do it. Maybe he knows what your cousin is spending her money on."

  "What's that about her money?"

  "She's liquidating assets, and it isn't just to pay off her lawyers. I'd like to know why. Something else, Danno. You didn't mention the query from Max-Planck about Starlab in your report."

  He stared at her. "Oh, Christ, you've put a tap on the observatory lines."

  "No tap is allowed without a court order, you know that, and we can't apply for one without taking the chance that she'll find out about it," the colonel lectured him. "Of course we put a tap on their lines. I don't like this questioning by the Krauts, though. What do you suppose their interest is?"

  "You could ask the Bay-Kahs," he suggested.

  "No, I couldn't, even if everybody wasn't going ape about the press secretary. But I did get some data for you, like on that old lady, Rosaleen-uh-"

  " Artzybachova."

  "Sure. I think you ought to cultivate her. She's an instrument specialist; it says in her file that she helped design the original Starlab project. Is Starlab what she's working on there now?"

  "I don't know what she's working on. She always blanks her screen before she lets me bring her tea in."