The Best of Nancy Kress

by Nancy Kress

  “What is it, Ajit? What about gravity?”

  “Kane was right,” he said, “the mass detectors aren’t damaged. They’re showing mass nearby, not large but detectable, that isn’t manifesting anything but gravity. No radiation of any kind.”

  “A black hole,” I suggested.

  “Too small. Small black holes radiate away, Hawking showed that long ago. The internal temperature is too high. There are no black holes smaller than three solar masses. The mass detectors are showing something much smaller than that.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Were all the weird mass-detector readings in the prelim data you sent back to the Kepler?”

  “Of course,” he said, a slight edge in his voice.

  I pulled him closer. “I can always rely on you,” I said, and I felt his body relax.

  I shut us down, as we lay in each other’s arms.

  It was Ajit who, the next day, noticed the second anomaly. And I who noticed the third.

  “These gas orbits aren’t right,” Ajit said to Kane. “And they’re getting less right all the time.”

  Kane moved to Ajit’s terminal. “Tell me.”

  “The infalling gases from the circumnuclear disk…see…they curve here, by the western arm of Sgr West…”

  “It’s wind from the IRS16 cluster,” Kane said instantly. “I got updated readings for those yesterday.”

  “No, I already corrected for that,” Ajit said.

  “Then maybe magnetization from IRS7, or—”

  They were off again. I followed enough to grasp the general problem. Gases streamed at enormous speeds from clouds beyond the circumnuclear disk which surrounded the entire core like a huge doughnut. These streaming gases were funneled by various forces into fairly narrow, cone-like paths. The gases would eventually end up circling the black hole, spiraling inward and compressing to temperatures of billions of degrees before they were absorbed by the maw of the hole. The processes were under-stood.

  But the paths weren’t as predicted. Gases were streaming down wrong, approaching the hole wrong for predictions made from all the forces acting on them.

  Ajit finally said to Kane, “I want to move the probe earlier than we planned.”

  “Wait a moment,” I said instantly. Ship’s movements were my decision. “It’s not yet the scheduled time.”

  “Of course I’m including you in my request, Tirzah,” Ajit said, with all his usual courtesy. There was something beneath the courtesy, however, a kind of glow. I recognized it. Scientists look like that when they have the germ of an important idea.

  I thought Kane would object or ridicule, but something in their technical discussion must have moved him, too. His red hair stood up all over his head. He glanced briefly at his own displays, back at Ajit’s, then at the younger man. He said, “You want to put the probe on the other side of Sagittarius A West.”

  “Yes.”

  I said, “Show me.”

  Ajit brought up the simplified graphic he had created weeks ago for me to gain an overview of this mission. It showed the black hole at the center of the galaxy, and the major structures around it: the cluster of hot blue stars, the massive young stars that should not have existed so close to the hole, the red giant star IRS16, with its long fiery tail. All this, plus our probe, lay on one side of the huge, three-armed spiraling plasma remnant, Sagittarius A West. Ajit touched the computer and a new dot appeared on the other side of Sgr A West, farther away from the hole than we were now.

  “We want to go there, Tirzah,” he said. Kane nodded.

  I said, deliberately sounding naive, “I thought there wasn’t as much going on over there. And besides, you said that Sgr A West would greatly obscure our vision in all wavelengths, with its own radiation.”

  “It will.”

  “Then—”

  “There’s something going on over there now,” Kane said. “Ajit’s right. That region is the source of whatever pull is distorting the gas infall. We need to go there.”

  We.

  Ajit’s right.

  The younger man didn’t change expression. But the glow was still there, ignited by Ajit’s idea and fanned, I now realized, by Kane’s approval. I heated it up a bit more. “But, Kane, your work on the massive young stars? I can only move the probe so many times, you know. Our fuel supply—”

  “I have a lot of data on the stars now,” Kane said, “and this matters more.”

  I hid my own pleasure. “All right. I’ll move the probe.”

  But when I interfaced with ship’s program, I found the probe had already been moved.

  5. SHIP

  Kane and Ajit fell on the mini-cap of prelim data like starving wolves. There were no more games of go. There was no more any-thing but work, unless I insisted.

  At first I thought that was good. I thought that without the sense-less, mounting competition over go, the two scientists would co-operate on the intense issues that mattered so much to both of them.

  “Damn and double damn!” Kane said, admiringly. “Look at that!”

  Ajit reacted as if Kane had spoken to him, but of course Kane had not. He was just thinking aloud. I put down my embroidery and went to stand behind them at their terminals.

  Ajit said, with the new arrogance of the go wins in his voice, “Those readings must be wrong. The sensors were damaged after all, either in hypertransit or by radiation.”

  Kane, for a change, caught Ajit’s tone. He met it with a sneer he must have used regularly on presumptuous post-grads. “‘Must be wrong’? That’s just the kind of puerile leaping to conclusions that gets people nowhere.”

  I said quickly, “What readings?”

  It was Ajit who answered me, and although the words were innocuous, even polite, I heard the anger underlying them. “The mass readings are wrong. They’re showing high mass density for several areas of empty space.”

  I said, “Maybe that’s where the new young stars are forming?”

  Not even Ajit answered this, which told me it was a stupid statement. It doesn’t matter; I don’t pretend to be a scientist. I merely wanted to keep them talking, to gauge their states of mind.

  Ajit said, too evenly, “It would be remarkable if all probe equipment had emerged undamaged from the jump into core radiation.”

  “Kane?” I said.

  “It’s not the equipment.” And then, “Supersymmetry.”

  Ajit immediately objected to this, in terms I didn’t understand. They were off into a discussion I had no chance of following. What I could follow was the increasing pressure of Ajit’s anger as Kane dis-missed and belittled his ideas. I could almost see that anger, a hot plasma. As Kane ridiculed and belittled, the plasma collapsed into greater and greater density.

  Abruptly they broke off their argument, went to their separate terminals, and worked like machines for twenty hours straight. I had to make them each eat something. They were obsessed, as only those seized by science or art can obsess. Neither of them would come to bed with me that night. I could have issued an executive order, but I chose not to exert that much trust-destroying force until I had to, although I did eventually announce that I was shutting down terminal access.

  “For God’s sake, Tirzah!” Kane snarled. “This is a once-in-a-species opportunity! I’ve got work to do!”

  I said evenly, “You’re going to rest. The terminals are down for seven hours.”

  “Five.”

  “All right.” After five hours, Kane would still be snoring away.

  He stood, stiff from the long hours of sitting. Kane is well over a hundred; rejuves can only do so much, so long. His cramped muscles, used to much more exercise, misfired briefly. He staggered, laughed, caught himself easily.

  But not before he’d bumped the wardroom table. Ajit’s statue of Shiva slid off and fell to the floor. The statue was old—four hundred years old, Ajit had said. Metal shows fatigue, too, although later than men. The statue hit the deck at just
the right angle and broke.

  “Oh…sorry, Ajit.”

  Kane’s apology was a beat too late. I knew—with every nerve in my body, I knew this—that the delay happened because Kane’s mind was still racing along his data, and it took an effort for him to refocus. It didn’t matter. Ajit stiffened, and something in the nature of his anger changed, ionized by Kane’s careless, preoccupied tone.

  I said quickly, “Ship can weld the statue.”

  “No, thank you,” Ajit said. “I will leave it as it is. Good night.”

  “Ajit—” I reached for his hand. He pulled it away.

  “Good night, Tirzah.”

  Kane said, “The gamma-ray variations within Sgr A West aren’t quite what was predicted.” He blinked twice. “You’re right, I am exhausted.”

  Kane stumbled off to his bunk. Ajit had already gone. After a long while I picked up the pieces of Ajit’s statue and held them, star-ing at the broken figure of the dancing god.

  The preliminary data, Kane had declared when it arrived, contained enough information to keep them both busy until the second mini-cap arrived. But by the next day, Kane was impatiently demanding more.

  “These gas orbits aren’t right,” he said aloud, although not to either me or Ajit. Kane did that, worked in silence for long stretches until words exploded out of him to no particular audience except his own whirling thoughts. His ear was raw with rubbing.

  I said, “What’s not right about them?” When he didn’t answer, or probably even hear me, I repeated the question, much louder.

  Kane came out of his private world and scowled at me. “The infalling gases from beyond the circumnuclear disk aren’t showing the right paths to Sgr A*.”

  I said, repeating something he’d taught me, “Could it be wind from the IRS16 cluster?”

  “No. I checked those updated readings yesterday and corrected for them.”

  I had reached the end of what I knew to ask. Kane burst out, “I need more data!”

  “Well, it’ll get here eventually.”

  “I want it now,” he said, and laughed sourly at himself, and went back to work.

  Ajit said nothing, acting as if neither of us had spoken.

  I waited until Ajit stood, stretched, and looked around vaguely. Then I said, “Lunch in a minute. But first come look at something with me.” Immediately I started up the ladder to the observatory, so that he either had to follow or go through the trouble of arguing. He followed.

  I had put the welded statue of Shiva on the bench near clear hull. It was the wrong side of the hull for the spectacular view of the core, but the exotics didn’t press so close to the hull here, and thou-sands of stars shone in a sky more illuminated than Sol had seen since its birth. Shiva danced in his mended circle of flames against a background of cosmic glory.

  Ajit said flatly, “I told you I wanted to leave it broken.”

  With Kane, frank opposition is fine; he’s strong enough to take it and, in fact, doesn’t respect much else. But Ajit is different. I lowered my eyes and reached for his hand. “I know. I took the liberty of fixing it anyway because, well, I thought you might want to see it whole again and because I like the statue so much. It has so much meaning beyond the obvious, especially here. In this place and this time. Please forgive me.”

  Ajit was silent for a moment, then he raised my hand to his lips. “You do see that.”

  “Yes,” I said, and it was the truth. Shiva, the endless dance, the endless flow of energy changing form and state—how could anyone not see it in the gas clouds forming stars, the black hole destroying them, the violence and creation outside this very hull? Yet, at the same time, it was a profound insight into the very obvious, and I kept my eyes lowered so no glimpse of my faint contempt reached Ajit.

  He kissed me. “You are so spiritual, Tirzah. And so sweet-natured.”

  I was neither. The only deceptions Ajit could see were the para-noid ones he assumed of others.

  But his body had relaxed in my arms, and I knew that some part of his mind had been reassured. He and I could see spiritual beau-ties that Kane could not. Therefore he was in some sense superior to Kane. He followed me back down the ladder to lunch, and I heard him hum a snatch of some jaunty tune. Pleased with myself, I made for the galley.

  Kane stood up so abruptly from his terminal that his eyes glowed. “Oh, my shitting stars. Oh, yes. Tirzah, I’ve got it.”

  I stopped cold. I had never seen anyone, even Kane, look quite like that. “Got what?”

  “All of it.” Suddenly he seized me and swung me into exuberant, clumsy dance. “All of it! I’ve got all of it! The young stars, the gas orbits, the missing mass in the universe! All shitting fucking all of it!”

  “Wwwhhhaaatttt…” He was whirling me around so fast that my teeth rattled. “Kane, stop!”

  He did, and enveloped me in a rib-cracking hug, then abruptly released me and dragged my bruised body to his terminal. “Look, sweetheart, I’ve got it. Now sit right there and I’m going to explain it in terms even you can understand. You’ll love it. It’ll love you. Now look here, at this region of space—”

  I turned briefly to look at Ajit. For Kane, he didn’t even exist.

  6. PROBE

  “The probe has moved,” I said to Ajit and Kane. “It’s way beyond the calculated drift. By a factor of ten.”

  Kane’s eyes, red with work, nonetheless sharpened. “Let me see the trajectory.”

  “I transferred it to both your terminals.” Ordinarily ship’s data is kept separate, for my eyes only.

  Kane brought up the display and whistled.

  The probe is under the stresses, gravitational and radiational, that will eventually destroy it. We all know that. Our fleshy counter-parts weren’t even sure the probe would survive to send one mini-cap of data, and I’m sure they were jubilant when we did. Probably they treated the mini-cap like a holy gift, and I can easily imagine how eager they are for more. Back on the ship, I—the other “I”—had been counting on data, like oil, to grease the frictions and tensions between Ajit and Kane. I hoped it had.

  We uploads had fuel enough to move the probe twice. After that, and since our last move will be no more than one-fiftieth of a light year from the black hole at the galactic core, the probe will eventually spiral down into Sgr A*. Before that, however, it will have been ripped apart by the immense tidal forces of the hole. However, long before that final death plunge, we analogues will be gone.

  The probe’s current drift, however, considerably farther away from the hole, was nonetheless much faster than projected. It was also slightly off course. We were being pulled in the general direction of Sgr A*, but not on the gravitational trajectory that would bring us into its orbit at the time and place the computer had calculated. In fact, at our current rate of acceleration, there was a chance we’d miss the event horizon completely.

  What was going on?

  Kane said, “Maybe we better hold off moving the probe to the other side of Sgr A West until we find out what’s pulling us.”

  Ajit was studying the data over Kane’s shoulder. He said hesitantly, “No…wait… I think we should move.”

  “Why?” Kane challenged.

  “I don’t know. I just have…call it an intuition. We should move now.”

  I held my breath. The only intuition Kane usually acknowledged was his own. But, earlier, things had subtly shifted. Kane had said, “Ajit’s right. That region is the source of whatever pull is distort-ing the gas infall.” Ajit had not changed expression, but I’d felt his pleasure, real as heat. That had given him the courage to now offer this unformed—“half-baked” was Kane’s usual term—intuition.

  Kane said thoughtfully, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the—” Suddenly his eyes widened. “Oh my God.”

  “What?” I said, despite myself. “What?”

  Kane ignored me. “Ajit—run the sims for the gas orbits in correlation with the probe drift. I’ll do the young stars!”

  “Why
do—” Ajit began, and then he saw whatever had seized Kane’s mind. Ajit said something in Hindi; it might have been a curse, or a prayer. I didn’t know. Nor did I know anything about their idea, or about what was happening with the gas orbits and young stars outside the probe. However, I could see clearly what was happening within.

  Ajit and Kane fell into frenzied work. They threw comments and orders to each other, transferred data, backed up sims and equation runs. They tilted their chairs toward each other and spouted incomprehensible jargon. Once Kane cried, “We need more data!” and Ajit laughed, freely and easily, then immediately plunged back into whatever he was doing. I watched them for a long time, then stole quietly up to the observation deck for a minute alone.

  The show outside was more spectacular than ever, perhaps because we’d been pulled closer to it than planned. Clouds of whirling gases wrapped and oddly softened that heart of darkness, Sgr A*. The fiery tail of the giant red star lit up that part of the sky. Stars glowed in a profusion unimaginable on my native Station J, stuck off in a remote arm of the galaxy. Directly in front of me glowed the glorious blue stars of the cluster IRS16.

  I must have stayed on the observation deck longer than I’d planned, because Kane came looking for me. “Tirzah! Come on down! We want to show you where we’re moving and why!”

  We.

  I said severely, gladness bursting in my heart, “You don’t show me where we’re going, Kane, you ask me. I captain this ship.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re a dragon lady. Come on!” He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the ladder.

  They both explained it, interrupting each other, fiercely correcting each other, having a wonderful time. I concentrated as hard as I could, trying to cut through the technicalities they couldn’t do without, any more than they could do without air. Eventually I thought I glimpsed the core of their excitement.

  “Shadow matter,” I said, tasting the words on my tongue. It sounded too bizarre to take seriously, but Kane was insistent.