by Greg Bear
"The whole universe?" I folded myself up beside him, hugging my knees. "I can't absorb that. I can't take it in, Charles," I said.
"I think Galena will be all right in a few hours," Charles said. "Her mind will reject what she saw. She'll return to what she was before."
"What happens if we touch that descriptor again?" I asked.
"We won't. If we did, we'd get another incomprehensible universe, and it would revert. The problem is insurmountable for us, for now. The rules of our universe were created by countless combinations and failures. Evolution. We'd have to learn how to design all the rules to interact and make sense. That could take centuries. We don't know anything yet about creating a living universe from scratch."
"But we could do it, someday?"
"Conceivably," Charles said.
The way he looked at me, the way he spoke — reluctantly, afraid of hurting or disappointing me — made me, if such a thing was possible now, even more uneasy. I had been badly frightened just when I thought I was beyond caring for my personal existence.
I wondered what would have happened if we had died before the rules reverted.
Suddenly Charles seemed unspeakably exotic: not human, intellectually monstrous. "Can we go back?" I asked.
"I'll hook up again in a few minutes. The interpreter should be finished and the QL should have sorted itself out. I'm sorry, Casseia."
I stared at him owlishly, my neck hair pricking. "Why do you always feel the need to apologize to me?"
"Because I keep shoving bigger and bigger problems on your back," he said. "All I really want to do is make things easier for you, take care — "
"Christ, Charles!" I unfolded and tried to kick away, but he reached out like a cat and grabbed my ankle, bringing me down in an ungentle arc. I bumped against the chamber floor, but he had saved me from a serious head blow against the ceiling.
With a creeping horror I was immediately ashamed of, I kicked loose.
He shrank back, eyes slitted. Then he returned to his chair and attached the optic cables to his head. By now, he had become expert and did not need any help.
Charles took us home, putting Phobos into its old orbit around Mars, as if nothing had happened. By direct link, we were given a new landing site at Perpetua Station, five hundred kilometers east of Preamble, below the Kaibab plateau.
Charles asked for medical help to be ready to receive Galena Cameron and deactivated the tweaker equipment in preparation for leaving the old Phobos base.
Still ashamed of what had happened earlier, I helped him undo his cables and carry the thinker and interpreter to the shuttle. We said little. Galena's eyes focused on me as Leander and I guided her limp body to the shuttle. She stiffened slightly when we buckled her into her couch, then asked, "Have my eyes changed color?"
I really did not remember what color her eyes had been, but I said no. "They're fine," I said.
She shivered. "Is Dr. Hergesheimer alive?"
"We're all fine, Galena," Leander said.
Hergesheimer leaned over her couch, hanging from the top of the passenger compartment. "We've been worried about you."
"I don't think I've been here very long," she said, still shivering. "I know I wasn't asleep. Did we get anything?"
"We got what we went there for," Hergesheimer said. Then, looking at me, he added, "It was a wild goose chase. We can't go back."
"Because of me?" Galena asked, distressed.
"No, dear," I said. "Not because of you."
Ti Sandra Erzul and the Presidential entourage — all those privy to our plans — came to Kaibab and Preamble, and Charles, Leander, Hergesheimer and I made our personal presentations in the lab annex. Ti Sandra sat on the left side of the table, flanked by a medical arbeiter and three heavily armed security guards. Twelve kilos lighter than when I'd last seen her, the President appeared alert but distant. On the way into the annex, she had said, "I've been close to the reaper, Cassie. Saw his eyes and played a little canasta with him. Don't blame me for being ghost-eyed."
I let Hergesheimer speak first. He presented a sadly glowing picture of the new stellar system. "It's a beautiful choice," he concluded. "A planet placed between these two apopoints," he highlighted points interior and exterior to an elliptical shaded band, "would receive enough light and warmth to become a paradise. Even Mars."
Faces became more and more grim as I described the difficulties of the second passage. Ti Sandra shuddered. "Charles gives me reassurance that such a thing will never happen again, but I take a more cautious view."
Ti Sandra nodded reluctantly.
"Whatever our problems with Earth, in my opinion, we can't take the extreme solution," I concluded. "We have to find another way." Leander looked down at the floor and shook his head.
Charles took it calmly. "We must have the full confidence of all involved," he said. "I'll transfer a technical report on the passages, but I see no need to go into details here. We accomplished what we set out to do. There was a major problem, and it injured all of us, and badly disoriented one of our people. Until this group is fully confident again, I concur with the Vice President."
From most there rose an audible sigh of relief.
"I would like more experiments," Ti Sandra said. Eyes turned back to her. "How quickly could Mercury travel to an unclaimed asteroid?"
"To find an asteroid of sufficient size, rendezvous with it ..." Leander mused, and began figuring quickly on his slate.
"Two months," Charles said, beating him to the answer. "Almost certainly, we'll need to have our problems with Earth resolved before then."
"If there's so little time," Ti Sandra said, "the risks of kidnapping a few asteroids might be too extreme." She considered for a moment, weighing the options, and shook her head. "No. We can't take the chance."
Charles looked between us, a quiet, chastened little boy.
"I can't thank all of you enough," Ti Sandra said quietly.
"We feel as if we've failed them," Leander said as the President's entourage filed out. Ti Sandra stayed behind. She stood, steadying herself against the table. I approached her and she wrapped her arms around me.
"How does it feel to make history?" she whispered.
"Scary," I whispered back. "Parts of it . . . indescribable."
"I think I'd like to try it sometime," she said, glancing at me conspiratori-ally. "But I agree. Not Mars. Not with things the way they are now."
"It was never more than a pipe-dream anyway," Charles said. "Was it, Casseia?"
I did not know how to answer. Ti Sandra stepped forward, her legs steady but gait slow, and shook their hands. "You've done momentous things," she said, and her resonant voice and motherly manner gave the words impact beyond cliche. "Mars can never be grateful enough." She clasped my hands in both of hers, laughed softly, and said, "And probably wouldn't be grateful, even it if knew."
"It was getting difficult to keep everybody in agreement," Leander admitted.
"It's difficult to realize the predicament we're in," Ti Sandra said.
"The predicament hasn't gone away," Charles said, sitting forward and clasping his hands. "We've learned some interesting things in the past few hours. There's lots of activity on Earth's Moon."
"Lieh tells me Terrestrial authorities have taken over Ice Pit Station," Ti Sandra said. "What does that mean?"
"Let's go to the main lab," Charles said. "If the President is feeling well enough ..."
"I'll last a few more hours," Ti Sandra said. "Lead on."
The center of Preamble, the main lab occupied a chamber half a hectare in area, divided by heavy steel curtains into three spaces. The dark gray ceiling arched ten meters over the middle, broken by tracks of focused lighting and life support conduits.
The smallest of the spaces was the most important, near the side of the chamber, away from the shielded power supplies. Charles led the way, Leander following. The President and I flanked Leander.
Nehemiah Royce, Tamara Kwang and Mitchell M
aspero-Gambacorta sat in chairs near a table that supported two QLs with integral interpreters. I had not seen these particular units; they had been installed in the past few days.
"We're finished educating and updating the QLs," Tamara said, glancing at us uncertainly. "They're informed." Her head carried several small nano connectors; the plan bad been for her to back up Charles in an emergency.
"Good," Charles said. "I'd like to show the President and Vice President what we know about the Ice Pit."
Tamara and Nehemiah worked for a few moments to bring up displays controlled by the interpreter: graphs and charts and picts showing fluctuations in quantities as yet unexplained to us. One vid picture, however, was very clear: a crisp, full-color, three-dimensional view of a hallway filled with men and women and arbeiters carrying equipment.
"This is a direct link, optical transfer," Charles said. "The Ice Pit contains a huge Pierce region — the tweaker that William Pierce made by accident. It's a larger version of our own, ready-made. We're looking at a laboratory just outside the Ice Pit"
"Live?" Ti Sandra asked.
"Next best thing to being there," Royce said, smiling.
"Do they know we're looking at them? And what are we looking through?" I asked.
"We can adjust part of the shielding around the Ice Pit region to have optical properties," Charles said. "The region — the tweaker — can transmit images and sound back to our own tweaker," Charles said. "They've dug out a chamber next to the Ice Pit, set up a research center. They're not aware that we're spying on them."
"The Ice Pit region and all of our Pierce regions are the same," Nehemiah said. "All tweakers are essentially coexistent."
"Tweaker . . . " Ti Sandra said.
"We call it a tweaker when we adjust things with it. The Ice Pit tweaker appears larger than ours, but that doesn't matter. They're conterminous, and continuous."
"Just an example of the identity of all undescribed elements in the dataflow matrix," Nehemiah said.
"That makes it much more clear," Ti Sandra said.
Nehemiah struggled onward. "Tweakers are undescribed, blank. They can become anything."
"We'll stick with the important issues for now," Charles said. "They seem to know how significant the Ice Pit is, and they seem to know what to do with it Notice these things ..." He pointed to several rounded cubes resting in intricate slings. "High-level thinkers. At least one of them is a QL, but we've never seen thinkers like them. Large, probably very powerful."
"More subtle and multiplex than anything we can manufacture," Nehemiah said.
"Coming to the Moon to use the Ice Pit means they haven't been able to create their own tweaker," Leander said.
"Perhaps," Charles said. "But they may be sequestering the Ice Pit to keep anybody else from getting access. We could learn how much they know right now, if you give us permission."
Ti Sandra spoke in an undertone to one of her guards, and he stood aside to pass her orders along through his slate. "How?" she asked, turning back to us.
"If they know this is a direct link, they can receive signals from us. They're listening to it — so to speak — right now. That's what we did at first, to understand the nature of a tweaker. We can make the Ice Pit tweaker resonate and pass them a message."
Lieh entered the space and stood beside Ti Sandra. Leander quickly explained the image and its implications.
"What would we say to them?" Ti Sandra asked.
"If we've given up any plan to leave the Solar System, then we need to resume full and public negotiations with Earth immediately," Charles said. "We could use this as a faster, more efficient channel. But ... it would have the effect of startling them."
Ti Sandra grimaced. "If we talk to them, assure them of our peaceful intentions," she said, "will that be enough? How can they believe us, after what's happened?"
"They must believe," Charles said. "We're sunk if they don't. Somebody will make a pre-emptive strike."
Ti Sandra snorted. "'Pre-emptive.' That word ... so twentieth century."
"They must also be made to believe we have complete control of Preamble," Leander continued. "That there are no splinter groups or dissenters with the same capability."
Ti Sandra nodded to Lieh. "I'm afraid Point One doesn't have good news for us. Tell us the details, Lieh."
"Earth's a shambles right now, politically," Lieh said. "They're paralyzed by unending plebiscites. There have been recalls on every board member and syndic of the four major alliances. Ambassadors have been recalled for consultation."
"War footing?" Charles asked.
"Probably not," Lieh said. "Just confusion. Whoever okayed the Freeze — probably high syndics in GEWA — has stirred up a cyclone. It keeps getting worse. We've received millions of messages from Terries offering their support. But we've received even more messages expressing sheer terror."
"Is anybody able to govern?" Ti Sandra asked.
"In national politics, the paralysis is complete. We don't know about the alliances. They operate at a higher level — plebiscite of the legislatures of the national governments, effectively. All our flies have gone quiet. There are searchers out on all nets, public and private. Somebody in GEWA has authorized central thinker net dumps of all data seeks for certain patterns of subjects. They'll learn who some of our flies are. Except for public nets, we'll be almost blind."
"They're violating their own laws," I said. "That tells us a lot in itself."
"They're not completely paralyzed," Charles said. "Somebody is funding the scientists. They're working around the clock at the Ice Pit."
"Talk to them as soon as you can, however you can," Ti Sandra said. "Direct link or regular channels."
"I wish to clarify one thing," Charles said. "Our options are not reduced. I have complete confidence that we could do everything we've planned to do, without repeating the mistake of our last trip."
"Would you wager five million lives on your success, Mr. Franklin?" Ti Sandra asked grimly.
"I can't," he said.
"Would you?" she demanded, her voice rising.
Charles did not flinch or even blink. "I would," he said. "But Casseia might disqualify me."
"Why?"
"My proximity to the QL," he said.
"It was the thinker — the QL thinker — that made the mistake, wasn't it?" Ti Sandra asked.
"It wasn't a mistake," Charles said.
"Poor Galena Cameron might not agree," Ti Sandra said. She gestured for a chair to be brought forward, and reclined in it slowly, never taking her eyes from Charles's face. I had seen her assume this attitude of concentration before, but never with such intensity.
"The QL saw an opportunity to serve its purpose more deeply," Charles said. "It could not know the effect on human observers. It can't even model us effectively."
"What would keep it from doing something even more foolish?" Ti Sandra said. Charles winced but did not challenge the adjective.
"It realized immediately that it would never search for truths again, any truths of any kind, if it ceased to exist," he said.
"I don't know what that means," Ti Sandra said.
"It learned fear," Charles said.
Ti Sandra leaned back, still frowning, and rubbed her hands on her knees. Then she stood and put her arm on my shoulders. "I understand so little," she murmured. "King Arthur never understood Merlin, did he?"
"I doubt it," I said.
"We've accomplished so much," Charles said plaintively. "Everyone has worked their fingers to the bone on this. I think the idea should be kept open — against the chance that Earth does something drastic."
"Everything's in place," I said. "There's no reason to dismantle it. But it won't be our main emphasis."
"What about the areological reports?" Leander asked. "What about all the other balls we've started rolling?"
"We won't shut them down. They're all useful as general knowledge," I said.
"And us?" Charles asked, holding his hand
out to his colleagues.
"Keep track of the Ice Pit," I said. "I think Lieh should work with you."
"We're reduced to spies, then," Charles said.
We stared at the image of a place hundreds of millions of kilometers away, at men and women and arbeiters moving purposefully before their own mystery. On the Moon, a woman in protective clothing — black, thick on her body, wrinkled like elephant hide, perhaps to protect against radiation and cold — approached our locus of observation. Her image suddenly skewed and smeared — too close for whatever descriptor "optics" the Olympians had devised. "How much do they understand?" I asked.
"A lot," Charles said. "Or they wouldn't be there."
"What can they do, if they harness the Ice Pit properly?" I asked Charles.
"Everything we can do," he replied. "Unless they've learned more than we have. In which case, they can do more."
I walked alone across a flat, sandy, unspoiled area half a kilometer outside of the station, on the Up. I was supposed to be sleeping, but it was early morning and my head buzzed with too many problems. I did not want to induce sleep again. I had been doing that too much lately.
I had put on a guard pressure suit and sneaked outside through a newly-finished maintenance corridor frequented only by construction arbeiters. Once outside, I walked across the pebbly hard ground, in the only area free of nasty glassy lava shards, kicking my boots lightly against the brown and orange varnish. High crystal clouds crossed the dawn and refracted rainbow glints. It was cold now — about eighty below at Kaibab's altitude — but the suit provided ample insulation, and I really did not give a damn about the danger.
We had actually contemplated moving our entire planet, changing the lives of every inhabitant of Mars, simply to avoid a showdown with Earth. That seemed incredibly cowardly to me now. I tried to imagine the journey to the new system, across thousands of light-years that did not really exist, and even with the enhancement providing all of its sophistication, in my deep gut, I knew it had to have been a dream, and a bad dream at that.
