Probability Sun

by Nancy Kress

  This time it was Gruber who remembered him. “It is a directed beam destabilizer, Lyle, just as we think. A narrow conical beam following the inverse square law. The close rock is fried. The sensors in the cliff face show the beam reaches that far, but weakly, although with no loss of effect from passing through the first rock. A meter into the cliff there is no effect at all, and also none on the orbital probe.”

  “So as a weapon,” Kaufman said, “it has a very limited range.”

  Clearly Gruber had forgotten the beam was being considered as a weapon. He was caught up in pure discovery. “Ja, ja, limited range. And not acting instantaneously. You can see from the displays—see?—that the radiation does not emit instantly. There is a time lag, and a rise, and a faster fall.”

  Kaufman could see no such thing from the jumble of data before him. He considered the information carefully. Gruber jumped back into the argumentative chaos of the scientists.

  Rosalind Singh was easier to distract from her data; she and her techs stood in front of more incomprehensible displays. She actually looked up as Kaufman approached. He said, “Is there any change in what you’re measuring, as a result of the test?”

  “None.” She looked at him shrewdly. “Did any of those bloody sods tell you what I’m measuring?”

  He smiled at her uncharacteristic language. She was just as excited as any of them. “No.”

  “Then I will. We know that the inside of the artifact is mostly hollow. But there are unidentifiable structures somehow suspended inside in an extremely complex but partial manner, without direct connection to each other. These structures seem stable. They also seem to be without any mass, which seems impossible.

  “The mathematical analyses describe the suspensions as a … a sort of complicated web. Each curve folds back on itself many times, a sort of multidimensional fractal. Computer breakdown further suggests a strange attractor—do you know what that is, Lyle?”

  “No.”

  “A region in which all sufficiently dose trajectories are attracted in the limit, but in which arbitrarily close points over time became exponentially separated.” Rosalind looked as if she realized this was no help, but didn’t stop to explain. “The Hausdorff dimension of the suggested fractal is one point two. That’s the same dimension as the galactic filling of the universe.”

  “What does it all indicate?” Kaufman asked.

  “We haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “None?”

  “None. This is science so different from our own that we are in pitch black. We are, as Darwin famously said, like dogs speculating on the mind of Newton. All I can tell you is that my measurements today after the test are the same as those yesterday before the test, and that both match the measurements Syree Johnson made on the first artifact. Adjusting for scale, of course.”

  “Do you think moving the artifact into space will alter those measurements?”

  “The first artifact was found in space. The natives thought it was a moon.”

  Which, was no more definite an answer than any of the others had been.

  The team spent the rest of the day confirming their data about setting prime one. Capelo assured him that they wouldn’t be ready to test setting prime two until the next day, and that they wouldn’t start without him. Kaufman didn’t put much faith in Capelo’s assurances; the physicist looked more and more like a grasshopper, thin and brown and hopping with inhuman impulses. In the heat of science, Capelo was quite capable of forgetting that Kaufman existed.

  He felt a twinge of unmistakable envy.

  Rosalind Singh also assured him that they would not test setting prime two without him. Rosalind he believed. So Kaufman again started back to base camp. Ann was bringing the nine Worlders back down this afternoon and he wanted to be there when the shuttle landed.

  SIXTEEN

  ABOARD THE ALAN B. SHEPARD

  The “sky” of the big room brightened, and Enli realized it was “morning.” Whatever that might mean on a metal flying boat in space. She didn’t think she had slept at all.

  Sitting up, she studied her fellow Worlders. Four lay asleep. Pek Voratur, on the pallet in the corner, sat with a fixed expression that frightened her a little. His fleshy oiled face was gray as rain clouds. She approached tentatively; he neither moved nor spoke.

  “Pek Voratur?”

  Nothing.

  “Pek Voratur!”

  Slowly his head swiveled, his eyes focused. “Enli?”

  “Yes.” She took his hand, marveling at her boldness. This was the richest trader on World. But at the moment he reminded her of her small nephew, Fentil, scared from a bad fall while climbing high in a tree.

  “Enli … what has happened?”

  She considered what to say. On the next pallet Asto Pek Valifin, cook’s assistant, listened intently.

  “I think, Pek Voratur … I think reality has shifted up this high in space.”

  “Highness does not shift reality. It is shared on the mountain villages of Caulily and deep in mines of Neerit. My agents have told me so.”

  “Yes. But we are much higher than the mountains of Caulily. We are off World, you know.” She hesitated, unsure of how much to say. “Shared reality happens in our brains, you know.”

  “The brain is the home of the soul, by the blooming of the First Flower.” He said it eagerly, seizing on the familiar. Enli had a sudden inspiration.

  “Yes. And when the First Flower came down from Obri and unfolded her petals to create World, she created our souls. Our brains. And our shared reality. But now we are away from the World she unfolded for us. So reality is different.”

  “Reality is reality! As well say that a stone is a flower!”

  “Reality is different away from World,” Enli repeated. “World was unfolded by the First Flower. This place was not.”

  She watched him consider this. It made sense to him … as much as anything here could.

  He said, “Then if reality is different away from the gift of the First Flower, what is this reality here?”

  “It is not shared.”

  The listening Pek Valifin abruptly sat up on her pallet. “That is not possible!”

  “It is so,” Enli said. “We are each alone in our reality here.” But that far, she saw, neither of them could yet go.

  Pek Voratur had recovered himself. He was naturally a bold man, a great trader. He said to Enli, with all the tentativeness of a child testing the strength of sand houses, “I am Pek Malinorit, who keeps the pel house in Gofkit Jemloe.”

  Enli understood. “No. You are not.”

  They looked at each other. No head pain at the differences in their words. No head pain at Voratur’s saying what was not so. No head pain in Enli’s hearing it.

  “Aaaiiieeeeee!” the cook’s assistant wailed. “We are unreal! We can never join our ancestors in peace and flowers!”

  Ann Pek Sikorski suddenly crouched beside the terrified woman, holding her, addressing the entire room. “You are not unreal. Reality has shifted here. Enli understands. Say again what you said to Pek Voratur, Enli.”

  How did Pek Sikorski know what Enli had said? Pek Sikorski had not—Enli was certain of this—been in the room then. She had entered later, and yet she knew what Enli had said to Pek Voratur. Enli felt no head pain over knowing this.

  Enli said loudly, “When the First Flower came down from Obri and unfolded her petals to create World, she created our souls. Our brains. And our shared reality. But now we are away from the World she unfolded for us. So reality is different. World was unfolded by the First Flower. This place was not. In this place, away from the gift of the First Flower, reality is not shared.”

  “Say it again,” Pek Sikorski said.

  Enli repeated her words. She saw them bewilder everyone. Then make sense to everyone. Then bewilder them again, although this time without as much panic.

  Was that not a kind of shared reality, too?

  * * *

  For many hours, people
were afraid to do anything. They sat on their pallets. They ate the food Pek Sikorski brought, thanking her timidly. Occasionally someone exchanged a remark with someone else, commonplace remarks that spoke of what was clearly held in common: “The flying boat does not feel like it’s moving.” “The light comes from everywhere and nowhere.” “Tomorrow the Terrans will take us back to World.”

  Finally, Pek Voratur stood. His face glistened, but his eyes in their folds of flesh were determined. “Pek Sikorski!” he called.

  She had told them to simply call her name if they wanted her. Immediately a door opened and she was there. “Yes, Pek Voratur?”

  “We have come very far to this flying boat of yours. We…” he faltered, went on, “… I would like to see more of it.”

  “No!” cried the nervous gardener. “We must stay together.”

  Pek Voratur’s hands trembled. “I would like to see more of the flying boat.”

  Pek Sikorski looked surprised. “More? I … it isn’t…”

  “There are trading bargains to be planted,” Pek Voratur said.

  “Let me … let me talk to the head of the flying boat household. I will be back very soon.”

  Into the silence of her departure Pek Voratur said, “Who will go with me to see more of the flying boat?”

  No one answered.

  “Who wishes to smell the blooms of this … this different … reality?” He got the words out, face still glistening with sweat, hands still trembling.

  The cook’s assistant lay back on her pallet and pulled the blankets over her head.

  “I will go,” said someone Enli had hardly noticed, the youngest of the eight Worlders, barely out of childfur. She wore the tunic of an unskilled cleaner, a short girl with lank brown neckfur and a too-round skull. But her black eyes sparkled.

  “And I,” said Enli. Where did the girl get her courage? Enli herself had had so much time with the Terrans, so much time to grasp the idea of many unshared realities, an idea as slippery and odorous as fish. Yet here was this girl, with her eyes sparkling.

  “I have forgotten your name,” Voratur said.

  “Essa Pek Criltifor.”

  “Anyone else?” said Voratur, too loudly. No one spoke. A woman put her hand to her head, wonderingly, as if she could not believe there was no head pain. Probably, Enli thought, she could not.

  Pek Sikorski returned. “Come with me, Pek Voratur. And anyone else … Yes, Enli and … Essa? Come with me.”

  She led them through the door, into the corridor Enli remembered from last night. It was very ugly: all straight lines and dull metal. They went through another door into a room so small that Enli thought there must be some mistake. This was an empty storage shed.

  Pek Sikorski said, “Now, please, don’t be startled or frightened. This is just an elevator. A machine to move us. We will only be in it a few moments.”

  The elevator—the word was Terran, of course—closed its door, trapping them in a windowless box. Then it began to move sideways. Pek Voratur clutched at the smooth wall. Essa Pek Criltifor’s eyes widened. Then she smiled. “Why, it’s just a cart.”

  “A cart with no one to pull it,” Voratur said, nervously jaunty. “How interesting a new thing!”

  The elevator stopped and opened its door. The three Worlders exclaimed aloud.

  They stood in a garden—a garden aboard the flying boat, a garden in the sky. There were plants under glass, and small plants in bubbling vats, and beds of flowers. Strange, beautiful, perfect flowers never seen on World, all heights and colors, their petals shining with dew and perfuming the air. The beds surrounded small village greens set with chairs and little tables. The flowerbeds and greens, unlike anything else on the flying boat, curved into pleasing shapes. A few Terrans sat at these tables, drinking from plain cups; more Terrans tended the flowers. Everyone stopped to stare at the Worlders.

  Voratur boomed, “May your blossoms rejoice the souls of your ancestors!”

  Pek Sikorski said to the Terrans, “Our guest says hello.”

  “Hello,” the closest Terrans responded, smiling, and Pek Sikorski said to Voratur, “They welcome you to our garden.” She broke off a yellow flower and handed it to Pek Voratur. A Terran gardener looked as if he were going to protest, but at a look from Pek Sikorski, did not.

  She said, “Our blossoms rejoice that you visit us.”

  “We praise the blooms of your heart. May we walk in the garden?”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  The three Worlders started timidly forward. They stopped in the middle of the first village green. Enli was wondering how there could be village dancing in it, it was so small, when the two human children they’d seen before ran out from between trees. The smaller threw her arms around Pek Sikorski’s knees. “Dr. Ann! Marbet’s here!”

  A Terran followed the children, a small brown woman with short red headfur that curled prettily. She was much closer to the size of Worlders than any Terran Enli had ever seen. Her eyes were a startling color, the green of glassy rocks worn bright and smooth by river water.

  Pek Sikorski said in World, “Pek Voratur, this is Marbet Pek Grant. And these children are named Amanda and Sudie.” She switched to Terran. “Marbet, three of our guests: Pek Voratur, Pek Criltifor, Pek Brimmidin. Pek Brimmidin speaks and understands English.”

  Pek Grant said in World, “May your blossoms flourish.” Pek Sikorski looked surprised. Pek Grant added in Terran, “Learned it from Lyle.”

  Sudie said, “You have hair on your necks!”

  “What did the child say?” Voratur asked Enli, who hesitated before answering.

  “She says that Worlders have neckfur and Terrans have headfur.”

  “True enough,” Voratur said.

  Amanda said with childish formality, “Would you like to tour the garden?”

  Enli translated, and Voratur agreed. They began a slow walk through the garden in the sky. Pek Grant and Pek Sikorski walked beside Pek Voratur, with Pek Sikorski translating. Enli saw that his fear had lessened; he appraised everything with the shrewd eyes of a trader. Enli walked beside Amanda, talking with the pale human girl, who had beautiful manners.

  Not so Sudie. No Worlder child would have behaved, or been permitted to behave, as she did—not even those too young to be real. Sudie ran ahead, hid behind bushes, climbed trees, lagged behind, called, “Come find me!” And to make it worse, the girl Essa Pek Criltifor began to do the same thing. Here she was, a guest and a few years older than the well-behaved Amanda, and she was disgracing them all. And Pek Voratur, whose household she belonged to, was too preoccupied to even notice!

  Finally Enli caught Essa’s eye and frowned. Essa stood still for a moment. And then she crinkled her skull ridges at Enli and scampered after Sudie.

  Essa had disobeyed her elder. And there was no head pain to stop her.

  For just a moment Enli glimpsed what the loss of shared reality could mean.

  “Enli,” Pek Voratur said, suddenly beside her, “we can plant a very profitable bargain for some of these flowers and the healing doses that are made from them. Pek Grant tells me that garden there”—he pointed to a covered glass bowl inside which grew tall plants dense with brown pods—“contains plants which have been manufactured by seed-altering machines. The seeds contain tiny potions that will dry up many body growths people now die of.”

  Manufactured plants? Seed-altering machines? It made no sense to Enli. Pek Grant was now in earnest conversation with Pek Sikorski. Enli saw Pek Sikorski’s eyes grow wide and her face even paler than usual. What was Pek Grant telling her?

  Voratur said, “I want you to translate when I plant the bargains for the flowers and other things I want in exchange for coming here,” Voratur said. “You, Enli, not Pek Sikorski. How do I know she translates the same words I say?”

  Enli stopped watching the Terran women’s intense conversation. Pek Voratur had her full attention. He was saying that he believed the Terrans might not be sharing reality … an
d yet he was still willing to trade with them. He had not instantly decided they were unreal.

  Voratur caught her intense gaze. Quickly he said, “And you will get your share of the bargain, of course, Enli. So we want to make it a profitable one.”

  “All of us who came here will get our share.”

  “Yes, of course. Although…” he suddenly looked thoughtful. “Up here, the others do not know how much we will plant in our bargain … and it was, after all, only you and I who gave brain pictures. There isn’t as much reason to share with the others, who only came and sat like logs in that bare room. Not as much reason to share at all.”

  Enli stared at him. “Pek Voratur…”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right. We will have to share. As soon as we return to World, shared reality will return to us. We will have to share.”

  He closed his eyes, calculating silently. Enli went on staring at him, while Essa ran past, searching for Sudie, who erupted in a flurry of noise from behind the low bushes beside Pek Sikorski and Marbet Pek Grant.

  SEVENTEEN

  IN THE NEURY MOUNTAINS

  Captain Heller reported to Kaufman by comlink the return of the shuttle to base camp, even though Kaufman had just heard it screaming through the atmosphere overhead. “Shuttle has returned, sir.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Just now he didn’t want one of the military briefings so dear to Heller, status quo report and procedural report and deployment report. The second test on the artifact would begin any moment.

  “Disembarking were nine natives, who will be immediately escorted to the perimeter, and—”

  “Give them a minute to recover, Captain. They’re not used to hurtling on and off their planet.”

  “Yes, sir,” Heller said frostily. “Also disembarking were Dr. Sikorski and Ms. Grant.”

  Marbet? Why had she come down? No point in asking Heller, who had started on her meticulous reports.