Cold as Ice

by Charles Sheffield

  A dozen hands were raised, and a babble of eager voices sounded from the audience. Nell was recording, but she hardly noticed them. Time was still stretching. The rush of new experience, new people, and new environments had continued. It had been enough to throw her off balance and to make her miss the most obvious thing of all about Outward Bound.

  This group wag smart and energetic—and utterly naive. Nell's very presence proved that. Any rational group would not have allowed her through the door. And it was not simply a naivety that came from lack of experience. Jon Perry—curse the man, off on Europa without her!— didn't have much experience of Nell's world, either; but he had a natural sense of balance that would keep him out of the worst kinds of trouble. Not so these people. Here was the cannon fodder, the young men and women who would give their lives for the cause. They would be the ones to storm the fort, to advance through the mine field, to fight and die on the wire.

  But revolutions did not succeed without older heads. Where was Franklin, where was Lenin, where was Ho Chi Minh? Where were the masterminds, the generals of Outward Bound?

  Nell did not know. She did know one thing: Kindly, motherly, shrewd Hilda Brandt, Tristan's "ally" and fellow member of Outward Bound, did not belong in this group at all. She would be out of place here, as out of her natural element as Nell Cotter piloting a Europan submersible.

  11

  The Service of the Sun King

  Camille Hamilton was twenty-seven years old, blond, and according to most people, thin enough for elegance and too thin for health. She massed maybe fifty kilos. Rustum Battachariya was thirty-seven, black, and who knew how many times as heavy as Camille. Five? Six? Don't ask Bat; scales were for masochists, grocers, and the outside of fish.

  The two had never met. And yet on at least one subject they were in perfect agreement: Work, real work, was best done alone.

  "All work is one man's work." Camille approved the notion, written two hundred years earlier, as much as she deplored the assumption built into its expression.

  She was working now, in a solitude that even Bat would envy. She was on Abacus, a Jovian station that orbited Callisto. The artificial moon of a moon, Abacus was not the main computing facility of the Jupiter system. With computers everywhere, a "main computing center" was as meaningless as a human body having a main cell. Abacus could not even prove that it was the most powerful or the largest facility in the net. All of the linked computer elements of Abacus were Von Neumanns, and no one knew how many times they had replicated and added the resultant offspring to the net.

  But Abacus was certainly the least-restricted facility. It had no protected programs, no passwords, no locked files. Anyone could go there, log on, and stay as long as she liked, with access to vast computing power.

  Which meant, thanks to the perversity of human nature, that almost no one did. People needed to feel that their ideas were unique, their data secret and valuable, their programs exclusive.

  Upon her arrival on Abacus, Camille had asked for a system status report. How many others were present and running?

  Answer: "Seventeen programs are currently running. And no one is present."

  So Camille was the only human on the station. That suited her very well. The task that Cyrus Mobarak had handed her was turning into a real brain-buster. He had implied, back on DOS Center, that a problem with the Europan fusion project was the stability of monster Mobies.

  It was, but it was not the only or the worst problem. Camille had studied the design of the gigantic new Mobies, and she had been astonished at Mobarak's understanding of fusion processes. He seemed to do with ease what she could do only after enormous, focused effort. That had not discouraged her. She knew from her own work that experience in a field finally provided an ability to survey the landscape as a whole, to map broad outlines, and to know almost viscerally what would work.

  "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." Following the general lines of thought suggested by Cyrus Mobarak, she could, with a few weeks of effort, provide the added factors to ensure Moby-monster stability. And at the end of it, she would see those hills and valleys for herself.

  But that was turning out to be the beginning of the story, not the end. When a Moby generated heat, it had to get rid of it. Out in space, no problem. The whole universe was available as a radiation sink. But beneath the Europan ice shield, another way of heat dissipation was needed.

  Still no problem. Massive heat exchangers attached to every Moby would do the trick and accomplish the primary goal of warming the waters of Europa and thinning the surface ice layer to a few meters. That was intrinsic to Mobarak's grand design.

  But now came the real problem. The power level provided by the new Mobies was highly sensitive to the temperature and purity of the coolant passing through their heat exchangers. The coolant temperature depended on the position, efficiency, and currents generated by other Mobies scattered through the interior ocean of Europa. There were going to be eight hundred of them. So the power produced by any one Moby depended on the power produced by the others. What Cyrus Mobarak had tossed to Camille as a single, isolated problem of fusion theory turned into a nightmare of eight hundred interlocking problems: nonlinear, time-dependent, and requiring a simultaneous solution of three-dimensional equations of hydrodynamic flow and heat diffusion—a juicy, unique monster of a problem.

  It was time to talk to Cyrus Mobarak. Maybe he knew all of this, but if not, he needed to.

  Camille opened a line and asked for a connection, hoping that he was still in the Jovian system. That would keep signal times down to a few seconds.

  She waited and waited, wondering what was happening. If he were in the Jovian system or out of it, some type of feedback should have been provided minutes ago. When Mobarak's urbane and smiling face appeared at last on the screen, she leaned forward eagerly.

  And swore.

  "Stuff it! What level are you?"

  The blinking red spot in the middle of the forehead said that she was talking to a Fax, an expert system of Mobarak's, designed to answer as he would. She waited impatiently for the facsimile's answer.

  "I am Level Three. Do you wish to proceed?"

  "For information transmission only. The data and my final question must go to Mobarak himself."

  "Noted. Continue."

  Camille swallowed her irritation and laid out the problem: how far she had gone, what was still unresolved. She did not bother to mention the value of her accomplishments. They spoke for themselves, and Cyrus Mobarak would recognize them.

  "The big question," she concluded, "isn't physics, or governing equations, or computational power. It's boundary conditions. I need to know more about the geography of Europa. I need the ocean depth and the seabed temperature at every point, particularly those where the Mobies will be located. I need to know the present thickness of the ice layer. I need to know the water impurities introduced by existing upwellings. And I need the surface albedo at every wavelength. Without those, I can't specify the problem well enough. And those data are not in the files here, nor on Ganymede. How do I get them? That's all."

  The Fax nodded politely. "Noted. If you wish, you can of course insist upon waiting for Cyrus Mobarak's personal response. However, I should warn you that his answer may not be provided to you for one day or more. In addition, I contain sufficient detail to know what he will say to you."

  Camille hesitated. She could insist on an answer from Mobarak. She could also push for contact with a higher-level Fax, which might itself take a while. Or she could take this Fax's word. And, unlike humans, no Fax exceeded its own level of competence.

  "Go on." She waited impatiently for the reply.

  "You have the capability needed to obtain answers to your questions. Therefore, you should do so. If necessary, by proceeding to Europa and obtaining data directly."

  "But I have no ship. And Europa is a controlled environment!"

  "A ship can be made available to you with Cyrus Mobarak's authorization. C
yrus Mobarak cannot, however, guarantee you access to Europa."

  "So how do I manage it?"

  "I lack that information. Can I be of additional service?"

  Camille swore, but only to herself. It was pointless to be rude to a Fax, or to try to argue with it. Even the highest-level Fax could not change its mind without additional data.

  "If David Lammerman is still on Ganymede, connect me with him."

  There was another delay. It was a task too menial for a Level Three, and Camille suspected that she had been passed on to a less complete simulation.

  "David?" The image that finally appeared on the screen in front of her was smiling broadly. "What are you grinning at? That is you, isn't it, and not a damned Fax?"

  "That's sure not your Fax I'm seeing." His smile did not waver. "I can tell it's the real Camille Hamilton, as grouchy as ever. I'm smiling because I'm glad to see you. I guess it's wrong to be pleased to see somebody. Where are you, sourpuss?"

  Camille knew that David had not been near Mobarak for a while. He was too relaxed. There was no sense of a man looking over his shoulder, no feeling of Don Giovanni waiting for the stony tread of the Commendatore.

  "Sorry, David. I'm still on Abacus, computing my life away. But I'm going through a frustrating time with you-know-who."

  Camille could tell to the split second when her words reached him. His smile vanished and was replaced by uncertainty. "Then I doubt that I'll be able to help you."

  "I don't want you to talk to him or anything like that. I just want you to listen and give me an opinion. I'm stuck." She began to outline the problem with the Europan Mobies, not waiting for David's approval. "So you see," she concluded, "the Fax says that I can have the use of a ship. But what good is that? It also says it can't get me permission to go to Europa. You know him a lot better than I do. What do you think he expects me to do?"

  "I really don't know him, not personally." And I never will, said David's bitter expression. "But I've studied him from a distance for a long time. He has some good points, I guess. One of them is deciding how much authority to give people who work for him, and letting them have it. What Mobarak's giving you is actually a vote of confidence. He thinks you can solve your problem without him. So he's letting you. But don't think that means the solution will be easy, or even that he knows how he would handle it himself. The only sure thing is that he expects you to handle it."

  "But I don't know how. The information I need isn't available here!"

  "I heard you the first time." David's smile was back, but now it was rueful. "That's pure Mobarak. What you need is on Europa. So Cyrus Mobarak expects you to get permission to visit. He expects you to go there. And he expects you to solve your problem—without his help."

  * * *

  David did not say that it would be easy. He did not say that he could do it himself. He suggested only that Camille could do so. It was that expression of confidence, more than anything, that made her feel she had to try. She would be ashamed to go back to David and say not that she had failed, but that she had never made the effort. She sighed and returned to her terminal. The general data banks on Abacus provided information on the Jovian system, including the names of the office and the individuals who controlled access to Europa and other worlds. Camille had no experience in such matters, but by the time she had data on the screen she had decided her working procedure.

  It was always easier to try for the top, as she had tried for Cyrus Mobarak, and to be bounced as appropriate down to a lower level of authority. But if she began at the top and received a refusal, that would be the end. No one lower in the chain would reverse a top-level decision. What she had to do was to begin at the lowest level. If she were told yes, she would take that answer and run with it. If she were told no, she would say that she had other information to offer and ask again at a more senior level in the hierarchy. The whole thing might take days, but she was used to problems that took a long time to solve.

  She entered her name, the topic, and her general request into the system and filed them with the Europan entry-control office.

  The response was slow. She expected that, particularly if the query were serviced at Europa, which was another four hundred thousand kilometers closer to Jupiter than Ganymede. Any reply had an absolute minimum three-second feedback delay from her present location. She spent the time in rehearsing an opening speech to a none-too-smart first-level Fax.

  And suddenly found herself facing a woman whose forehead showed no sign of the blinking red spot of Fax identification. More than that, although the woman was dressed casually in a bulky and faded sweater, pinned to it was the stabilized metallic-hydrogen emblem of the senior Jovian executive service.

  "Yes, Dr. Hamilton?" The woman was old, in her sixties at least, and only her enzyme-stabilized brown hair suggested any attempt to deny it. She was peering at Camille with bright, intensely curious eyes. "I am Hilda Brandt. What can I do for you?"

  Camille's cunningly crafted speech, designed to wring instant access to Europa from a low-level Fax, went into oblivion along with the rest of her thoughts. Dr. Hilda Brandt. Not just a human—the human, the one person who had final say on all travel to the watery world of Europa. But at least her expression was benevolent.

  Camille gave up any idea of Machiavellian cunning. She organized her thoughts, crossed her fingers, and launched into an honest and full—but also terse and organized—account of her activities for the past couple of weeks. "So you see," she concluded, "without on-site measurements, at the very least for the actual Moby sites, I'm stuck. I can't possibly produce a reliable solution."

  Hilda Brandt had been listening with her head cocked to one side. When Camille finished, she nodded. "You make a very clear case. But you know—or maybe you don't know—I'm the last person to come to with a request like the one you're making. I'm opposed to any idea of terraforming Europa. I want it held in its pristine condition."

  Which was just what Camille had been fearing. She nodded. It was all over. Down and out in the first minute. "I'm sorry to hear that. If anything could persuade you to change your mind—"

  Hilda Brandt was holding up her hand. "My dear child." She used the phrase with the sincerity of literal truth. "You are in full retreat before there has even been a declaration of war. I was going to say, I want Europa to stay just as it is, but that decision is unfortunately not mine. Yesterday the General Assembly on Ganymede passed a resolution approving the Mobarak proposal. I will of course fight it—there are at least four more votes before it becomes Jovian law—but in the meantime, I must be a realist. If the Mobarak project is finally approved, I want it performed right, without unpleasant technological surprises. And that means that the project analyses must be as thoughtful and complete as possible."

  She smiled at Camille, with no trace of animosity. "You will receive permission to travel to Europa. You may observe for as long as you wish from orbit, or land for access to local records at the Mount Ararat base. You may also, if you choose, examine the ice surface beyond Mount Ararat. You will not, of course, be allowed to cruise the interior ocean, but otherwise your visiting permit will be unrestricted. I am sorry that I cannot be there to greet you, but I have continuing business on Ganymede for the next few days, opposing the new resolution. I look forward to meeting you after that."

  And she was gone. Camille found herself, mouth open, ready to argue her case with a blank screen.

  Instead, she lolled back in her chair. She had won. Instantly, and against all her expectations.

  Camille wanted to call David back and boast of her triumph, but she didn't have the gall to do that. She would call him back, certainly, for a mutual gloat. But she would tell him the truth: that she had talked with Hilda Brandt; that she was going to Europa; that she had, in fact, achieved just what she set out to do. But that she had absolutely no idea of why she had succeeded.

  * * *

  [left]Paradigms for changing times.

  New discoveries have al
ways forced changes in perspective, slowly but irreversibly. To the eighteenth century, the System of the World laid down by Isaac Newton was, above all else, calculable, a great machine moving rationally through absolute space and time like an orrery of exquisite clockwork. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the leitmotiv for science had changed. It became the era of expanding worlds and shrinking humanity. Earth had been dethroned as the center of the universe, to become a tiny mote, one among multiple millions, on a stage that constantly expanded from planets to stars to galaxies. At the same time, mankind descended from a being in God's own image to an upstart animal, a bewildered player newly arrived on a scene where other actors had been in position for billions of years. The blow to the species' ego inflicted by evolutionary theory was immense.

  The first quarter of the twentieth century learned to accept the diminished view of Earth and of humanity's role, but science soon found forced upon it a new paradigm: the disappearance of the absolute. In place of final knowledge came uncertainty, relativity, undecidability, incomputability.

  After a traumatic seventy-five years, scientists at last came to terms with that vanishing concept of complete knowledge . . . and found themselves facing another drastic change in viewpoint. A seed planted before 1900 and dormant for a hundred years began to sprout. Soon after the beginning of the twenty-first century, a principle enunciated by an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, arose to provide the underlying scientific dogma of the new age: "Whenever a number of like items are grouped together, a small percent of them will account for almost all of the group's significance." Pareto's principle, reformulated and strengthened, explained that most of nature worked only to hold the status quo, to inhibit change. Marginal forces—small force differences—controlled the behavior of the universe.

  To children of the late twenty-first century, the struggle to develop the mathematical tools appropriate to the new scientific world view was just history. The paradoxes of the calculus of small differences, with their tangled substrate of divergent series and asymptotic expansions, were no different to them than were earlier logical worries over differentials, limits, generalized functions, action at a distance, and renormalization. What remained were the polished tools and the main principle: The natural scientific underpinning of the world is balance. The universe exists only as a delicate matching of immense forces. Change, and life itself, are the result of minuscule imbalances.