The Infinity Link

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Johanson waited, fatigue deadening his body. He had just come off a long shift, with too little sleep beforehand. Irwin cleared his throat and said, "According to a source at GEO-Four, Aquarius is going out armed with thermonuclear warheads." His fingers paused at the keys, and he looked toward Johanson, his eyes sober and haunted behind his spectacles.

  For a moment, Johanson could hardly react. He experienced shock, and simultaneously the thought that he should not be shocked. After all, if Aquarius was a manned ship going to do what the unmanned Father Sky had failed to do, and going in secret, then clearly it was a military operation. But still . . . there were laws, and ethics. Nuclear warheads? He let go of the window ledge and drifted slowly toward Irwin, filled with a feeling of unreality. "Are you sure?"

  Irwin turned back to his screen. "It hasn't been confirmed. That's our next problem." Irwin removed his glasses and polished them. He was a scholarly man, slight and wiry, who always seemed vaguely out of place bobbing from a toehold in zero-gravity. He looked too delicate, and with his greying hair, too old, to be living in the spartan quarters of the scientists' homestead cluster—and yet here he had lived for years, even after losing his position as chief physicist at Tachylab. Irwin held his glasses before the light and blew them free of lint. "I want you to talk to the others. We've got to find a way to confirm it." He replaced his glasses and stared at Johanson.

  "Great. How?"

  Irwin ignored the question, turning back to the computer. "Did you know, Robert, that 'Aquarius' was a name given in popular culture to a new age that many believed was dawning, some sixty or seventy years ago? It was to be an age of peace and trust. It was a reference to the astrological sign, but in its time, many took it seriously."

  Johanson sighed. "Yes, I know. But what does that have to do—?"

  "Damn them for giving that name to a ship of war," Irwin said, trembling with anger. He shook his head violently. "We have to get aboard, if we can. I don't know if it's possible—the ship's probably well guarded."

  Johanson snorted. "I'm sure it is. Listen, John—this would be a serious violation of international law, right?"

  The physicist was silent a moment; then, eyes closed, he recited, "Offensive Weapons Treaty of Mexico City, 2017, forbids the reintroduction into space of weapons of mass destruction. The Colombo Peace-in-Space Treaty of 2023 reaffirms peaceful cooperation among all operatives in space. The U.N. Space Habitat Defense Treaty of 2027 permits defensive measures, with non-nuclear weapons." He opened his eyes. "I'm not sure that trend is encouraging, but those treaties stand."

  "Then aren't there legal steps we could take?"

  Irwin sighed in disgust. "It would take forever—even if we had hard evidence. By then it would be too late."

  "Yeah." Johanson swung around to look at the computer screen. It was filled with mathematical equations. "What's this?"

  "I was trying to figure out at what range you could detect a warhead by emitted radiation. It's no good, though. They probably have them well shielded." Irwin tapped a few keys, and a flow chart replaced the equations on the screen. "Here's the chain of authority at GEO-Four. Who would know about the weapons, and who would control their use." Irwin scratched his chest. "I'm afraid this is out of date now—but still, it might be helpful—to know who would know."

  Johanson nodded and rubbed his chin. "Yah. I can't see much hope of getting near the ship. Discreet questioning seems like our only bet." He nudged himself backward, drifted into a musty-smelling dead-air zone, and kicked himself back into the center of the room.

  "Suppose we confirm it," Irwin said. "What then? Our leaks haven't had much effect. The one reporter Ellen's talked to is being unbearably cautious. I wonder if we oughtn't try something more dramatic."

  Johanson chuckled bitterly. "Like what? Lie down in front of the ship?"

  Irwin cocked an eye at him. "Perhaps something like that. Perhaps approach it in a small shuttle—something to attract attention—to ensure that questions are asked."

  Johanson's stomach lurched. "John. I'd like to stay alive, and out of jail, if possible."

  Irwin replied impatiently. "This is something larger than the two of us, or the six of us."

  "Maybe. Not maybe—yes, it is. But I'm not sure it's so clearcut. Treaties or no treaties, many people might feel that these are extraordinary circumstances."

  Irwin looked appalled. "What are you saying, that you agree with this madness?"

  "No—"

  "You just said—"

  "It's an unknown. Even to us. More so, to the rest of the world."

  "So we should go out with guns blazing?"

  "I didn't say that, dammit."

  Irwin peered over his glasses rim. "Nevertheless, you're defending their actions."

  "I'm not defending anything," Johanson said irritably. "I'm trying to be realistic. I'm pointing out that many people might support the view that if something's coming at us out of Andromeda—"

  "It's not coming from Andromeda. It's coming from Serpens. From the direction of Serpens."

  "Most people wouldn't know the difference. The point is, if something's coming at us out of space, and we really have no way of knowing what it is, whether it's friendly or not—"

  Irwin said acidly, "If they weren't friendly, I don't think they would have contacted us two years ago to warn us."

  Johanson shrugged. "Most of the world doesn't know that they did. I'm just trying to point out how people might react. I'm not saying the aliens aren't friendly, just that there are rational arguments for taking protective steps."

  "Protective? Weapons that can destroy a city? Robert, you disappoint me," Irwin said with a flash of anger.

  "All I said," Johanson snapped back, "was that there was room for debate! If you'd stop being so high and mighty, and admit that there's room for more than one viewpoint—"

  Irwin snorted. "Think back twenty years! Think about eighteen million people who died because the warheads were armed, and all it took was a knee-jerk to fire them. The same mentality says, Aliens are coming! Let's load up with bombs and go meet them!"

  Johanson was at a loss for words. Finally he said, "John, for a brilliant physicist, you're the most pigheaded man I know. Were you like this when you headed the lab? I can see why they wanted to—don't interrupt me—it's time you heard this!" Irwin's face stiffened, his eyes blinking. "You won't listen, damn you—once you've made up your mind, no one else counts. Well, maybe even you could learn something once in a while if you'd listen to people." He clutched a bookshelf to steady himself; he was bobbing around like a guppy, in his exasperation.

  For a minute, neither man would look at the other; and then the argument died as suddenly as it began. Irwin grunted and began cleaning his glasses again.

  "Anyway. We have to find out if it's true," Johanson said.

  The uncomfortable silence persisted, until Irwin said, "Tell me what you really think, Robert. Should that ship be allowed to go out—as it is?"

  Johanson studied the scientist's face for a moment, and decided that the distracted look he saw was what passed for contriteness. "No," he said slowly, "I mean, I don't know if it should go or not, but it shouldn't go in secret. Isn't that our main worry—that decisions are made without process and accountability?"

  Irwin continued polishing his glasses, looking like a newborn puppy, squinting at the world. "Perhaps that's it," he said.

  "Then let's nail down the facts first. Okay?"

  Irwin pushed his glasses back on. The contriteness was gone. "Yes. It would help a great deal if we knew what really happened to Father Sky." His eyes flicked to catch Johanson's. "Wouldn't you say?"

  Johanson pushed himself back toward the window. A sunbeam was now illuminating one corner of the apartment. Dust motes drifted, glittering. "Yeah," he said. He was suddenly depressed, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the forces they opposed, or thought they opposed. What chance did they really have? Since their tap on the tachyon link had been defeated, he and
Mark and Alicia had learned little about Father Sky. Though they oversaw the tachyon relay, they had no access to information carried by the link. And now the link itself was silent, due to the apparent failure of the probe. As for the alien transmissions, it had been weeks since the last one.

  "Robert." Johanson turned to find Irwin floating close behind him, his bespectacled face in shadow just inches from the streaming sunlight. There was a delicateness about his manner that had not been in evidence before.

  Johanson felt a certain tension in the air. "Yeah, John."

  "Robert—" Irwin had his eyes half closed. "Robert, you were right, you know . . . what you said about . . . why I was fired—"

  "Forget it. I shouldn't have brought it up. We both lost our tempers, that's all."

  "Maybe . . . you also know one of the other reasons."

  "What—?"

  "A more important reason, though no one said anything about it—"

  Johanson was watching a small shuttle maneuver about one of the homestead bubbles. He did not want to answer, but he felt Irwin's stare turn to him, out of the shadow. "Do you mean your sexual preference?" he asked softly.

  Irwin gazed outside and nodded.

  "Yeah," Johanson said. "I knew. It's a damn shame. To use that as a weapon against someone—" He shrugged; he didn't know what else to say.

  "These . . . things go in cycles, I'm told," Irwin said, blinking. He sighed, his breath a whisper. "Robert, I simply want to say . . . that you're a very kind and gentle man. We've never talked of it . . . but I want you to know . . . that if you ever want—"

  Johanson felt a flush rising into his face as he shook his head, because he sensed what Irwin was about to say. "John. I'm not . . . that's not my—"

  Irwin stared at him.

  "—preference," Johanson said hoarsely. He cleared his throat, twice.

  "Yes. Of course." Disappointment breached the surface of Irwin's gaze for an instant, then bubbled under again. "Well. I suppose you'd better get off to talk to the others, then, as you say. Let me know."

  Johanson hesitated, then nodded and shoved himself toward the exit. His scooter was docked at a service lock in the outer access tube connecting Irwin's bubble to the rest of the cluster. Turning from the bulkhead door, he gazed back at Irwin, drifting now in the golden sunlight. "We'll think of something," he said.

  Irwin looked at him absently, and nodded. "Find out what happened to Father Sky," he muttered.

  Johanson opened the hatch and floated through. The bulkhead door clanged closed in the emptiness of the accessway.

  Chapter 50

  She had been keeping to herself for some time, now.

  Feelings flowed and ebbed in her like tides. Anger that once had been frozen potential and hot electrical impulse now melted away in rivulets and streams. Sometimes it was dark and roiling with fury; other times it was misty and tearful. Joy touched her palette like a nectar—sweet, cooling, soothing. Impatience was a flame, curiosity an itch. Emotions of all kinds mingled in her thoughts like vapors.

  Talenki blood burned in her veins now, and that, she thought, was the difference. It was blood, the organic medium, the seep of oxygen, glucose, hormones, chemical transmitters—the continual life-giving swirl which circuitry could mimic but not duplicate—that drove her emotions now. Kadin was a carefully designed construct, cleanly assembled and deliberately tested, smarter and more knowledgeable than she; and yet he had failed. What had he lacked that she possessed? A memory of the brew in which real life had evolved, churning and sustaining, persevering and struggling, growing? She wasn't sure, but something that had grown hard and cold in her in the molecular matrix of the computer was now reawakening. Something subtler than emotion itself: the response to emotional cues, perhaps, the synergy of spirit and body. Her moods took on tone and color, shading one into another; rarely now did she feel that abrupt shift—emotions blinking on or off at the change of an electrical charge.

  Talenki conversation rattled and rumbled around her in her contemplations. She was occupying a quiet niche in one corner of the mind-net, her memories and spirit centered somewhere in the cluster of toadstool-shaped creatures, or "warts," around which so many Talenki huddled in the central chamber. The warts seemed to constitute the closest thing there was to a "central processor" in the structure of the mind-net, and were, she had been told, or at least thought she had been told, a genetic offspring of the fawns—perhaps an intermediate stage in the reproductive cycle of the Talenki. The warts, individually only barely sentient, spent most of their lives joined, motionless, in the net, their capacities to support consciousness united and multiplied by community and magnified by the fawns who melded their thought in the net. The intellectual and emotional capacity of the net fluctuated as individual Talenki joined in and broke from direct contact; but even at its lowest ebb, it was staggering in comparison to that of Father Sky's "state of the art" computer. Indeed, the mind-net functioned as a kind of memory pool, and a nexus of joint activity for the entire asteroid.

  Mozy wondered if its reach might not in fact be a good deal longer.

  (May I join your . . . contemplation?)

  (What?) She hadn't noticed the Talenki peering in toward her, watching her thoughts.

  (You work hard to understand.)

  She was silent a moment. (Can't a person get some privacy around here?) she asked pointedly.

  The Talenki began to back away, apologizing—it was N'rrril. She laughed suddenly and called him back, and a moment later several other Talenki had joined them to see what the joke was. She welcomed the others, but in fact secretly wished that she could be alone with N'rrril. A spark of friendship had grown between them, since their walk together along the ocean's edge. He was so serious, so grave, so young —and so gentle and hesitant in his contact, unlike many of the others.

  Well, they were all here now, and anyway, perhaps she had been alone with her thoughts long enough, and it was time for another look around. Someone heard her thought, because voices yammered in debate, and then she felt something like a drum roll; images began to blink on in her thoughts, like advertising holos, one after another—Talenki sculptures, a zoo, purple forests . . . Whoa, she began to say, laughing at first, and then not laughing. Her thought was swept away by what rapidly turned into a chaotic cinema, a rush of images from dozens of minds at once. It was compound vision gone haywire, her viewpoints multiplied, then exploded. Images dashed by her like a white-water stream, thundering. Her anchor bobbed away; she felt herself swept along by the current, out of control, tumbling, surrounded by

  . . .canyons . . .

  . . .rasping jungle . . .

  . . .starlight through shattered stone . . .

  . . .surf rising . . .

  . . .tower against sky . . .

  . . .a serpent's gaze . . .

  . . .stoneworkers lost in thought . . .

  . . .nightfall over mountains . . .

  . . .birds free-wheeling . . .

  (What's happening?) she cried softly. There was no answer, no one listening. It was a blur now, she couldn't even distinguish a scene before it was gone, and the next seven gone, and where was she now, where was she standing, or was she falling? Falling . . . tumbling . . . a cyclone of fear roared in her ears, deafening and growing louder. (Please stop,) she begged, but no one could hear her even if anyone was listening. Everything was obliterated but the rush and the roar; it was a nightmare of running running running from a relentless pursuer. Her voice was a whimper, but it gained in strength as she shouted, (Please stop!)

  (Stop!)

  (STOP!)

  (STOP!)

  * * *

  Tears were flowing in someone's eyes, somewhere, as the movement slowed, like a gigantic multidimensional merry-go-round wheeling through time and space, gradually relinquishing its enormous momentum. The images stopped appearing, but reverberated in her memory.

  Tears flowing. Whose?

  Voices were murmuring somewhere. Disquiet. Confus
ion. Disagreement. A voice whispered softly to her, so close that it startled. (I'm sor-r-ry sor-r-ry sor-r-ry . . .) Her own trembling drowned the words, but as she got control of herself and quieted her fears, she became aware that the voice had fallen silent. She heard only muted hissing sounds. Tears.

  She breathed deeply, drew strength from someone's aching lungs. And now she knew whose. (N'rrril?) she whispered. (Are you there?)

  For a few beats there was only a strained mutual awareness, before her Talenki friend answered, (So-o-o-o so sorry.)

  Silence enclosed her then, as N'rrril nudged her, and she nudged back. Two small kittens seeking comfort.

  Puzzled voices entered the silence. Was she unhappy? What was wrong? Did she want more? N'rrril's voice stuttered out a retort, too quickly for her to follow. A raucous answer followed. Another retort. An argument was about to start, over her.