Macroscope

by Pierce Anthony

  Ivo remained recalcitrant. “All right — all right! I accept that, for the moment. I’m just not sure yet that the situation requires this measure.”

  “I don’t see how else I can put it, Ivo. Schön is the only one I believe has a chance to handle it. We don’t dare tune in that band on the macroscope until we clear this up, and if any of it extends into the peripheral—”

  “I didn’t say no-final. I said no-presently. I don’t have enough information, yet. I’d like to take a look at those casualties, for one thing. And the mind-blasting series. Then I’ll think about it.”

  “The casualties, sure. The sequence, no.”

  “I have a notion, Brad. How about letting me work it out my own way?”

  Brad sighed, covering his frustration with banter. “You always did, junior. Stubbornest mortal I know. If you weren’t my only key to Schön—”

  It was no insult. They both knew the reason for that stubbornness.

  CHAPTER 2

  Afra Summerfield was waiting for them at the torus airlock. She spoke to Brad as soon as his helmet came off: “Kovonov wants to see you right away.”

  Brad turned immediately to Ivo. “That Russian doesn’t chat for the joy of it. There’s trouble already, probably political, probably American, or he wouldn’t ask for me. I have to run. You won’t object if I dump you on Afra?” He was out of his suit and moving away as he spoke.

  Who was this Kovonov who compelled such alacrity?

  Ivo looked at Afra, and found her as stunning as before. She was in a blue coverall, with a matching ribbon tying back her hair, the whole almost matching her bright eyes. The astonishing revelations in connection with the macroscope had diverted his mind from her for an hour, but now he was smitten with renewed force.

  “Take your time!” he yelled magnanimously, but Brad was already in the elevator. Afra smiled fleetingly, showing a dimple and striking another chord upon his fancy.

  Ivo did not believe in love at first sight, ridiculous as it was to remind himself of that now. He did not believe in coveting one’s neighbors things, either, but Afra overwhelmed him. It was a measure of Brad’s confidence in himself that he flaunted her so casually, heedless of her impact on other men.

  “I suppose I’d better show you the common room,” she said. “He’ll look there first for us, when he’s free.”

  The thought of accompanying her anywhere in any guise excited him. The imponderables of mankind’s future receded into the background as Afra preempted the foreground. For the moment, her person and her attention belonged to him, however casual the connection might be. There was pleasure merely in walking with such a beautiful girl, and he hoped the tour would be a long one.

  “Are you going to help us, Ivo?” she inquired, the implied intimacy of her use of his first name sending another irrational thrill through him. He felt adolescent.

  “What did Brad tell you about me?” he countered. Her perfume, this close, was the delicate breath of a single opening rose.

  She guided him to the elevator, now returned from Brad’s hasty use. “Not very much, I must admit. Just that you were a friend from one of the projects, and he needed you to get in touch with another friend from another project. Shane.”

  He had not realized before how small these elevators were. She had to stand very close to him, so that her right breast nudged his arm. It’s only cloth touching cloth, he thought, but couldn’t believe it. “That’s Schön, with the umlaut over the O. The German word for—”

  “Why of course!” she exclaimed, delighted. Her intake of breath delighted him, too, but for an irrelevant reason. “That never occurred to me — and I have spoken German since I was a girl.”

  She was still a girl, as he was acutely aware. He felt the need to keep the conversation going. “Do you speak any other languages?” Adolescent? Infantile!

  “Oh, yes, of course. Mostly the Indo-European family — Russian, Spanish, French, Persian — but I’m working on Arabic and Chinese, the written form of the latter for now, since it covers so many spoken forms. The Chinese symbols are based on meaning rather than phonetics, you know, and that presents a different set of problems. I feel so parochial when Brad teases me with Melanesian or Basque or an Algonquin dialect. I hope you’re not another of those fluent linguists—”

  “I flunked Latin in high school.”

  She laughed.

  Ivo tried to untangle the physical reaction he experienced from the intellectual content of their conversation, afraid of a Freudian slip. “No, I mean it. ‘Schön’ is the only foreign word I know.”

  She studied him with perplexed concern. “Is it a — a mental block? You’re good at some things, but not at—”

  The elevator ride finally ended, and she disengaged her torso from his. They climbed into a cart. Now it was her thigh that distracted him, wedged against his. Could she be unaware of the havoc she wrought along his nerve connections — his synapses? “I guess Brad didn’t tell you about that. I’m no genius. I am pretty good at certain types of reasoning, the way some feeble-minded people can do complex mathematical tricks in their heads or play championship chess — but apart from that I’m a pretty ordinary guy with ordinary values. I guess you thought I was like Brad, huh?” Fat chance!

  She had the grace to blush. “I guess I did, Ivo. I’m sorry. I heard so much about Schön; then you came—”

  “What did he tell you about Schön?”

  “That would fill a small manual by itself. How did you come to meet him, Ivo?”

  “Schön? I never did meet him, really.”

  “But—”

  “You know about the projects? The one he—”

  She looked away, and the loose ponytail flung out momentarily to brush his cheek. Is she a conscious flirt? No, she was being natural; he was the one, reacting. “Yes,” she said, “Brad told me about that too. How Schön was in the — free-love community. Only—”

  “So you see, I did not actually share lodging with him.”

  “Yes, I was aware of that. But why are you the only one who knows where to find him?”

  “I’m not. Brad knows. Other members of the project know, though they never talk about it.”

  This time her flush was frustration, and he felt the angry flexure in the muscle of her leg. She doesn’t like to be balked.

  “Brad told me you were the only one who could summon him!”

  “It’s an — arrangement we have.”

  “Brad knows where Schön is, but won’t go for him himself? That doesn’t sound like—”

  The journey by rail was over, no tunnel of love. “Brad can’t go for him himself. I guess you could call me an intermediary, or maybe a personal secretary. An answering service: that’s closest Schön simply won’t come out for anyone unless I handle it. He doesn’t involve himself with anything that isn’t sufficiently challenging.”

  “An alien destroyer that has our whole exploratory thrust stymied — isn’t that enough?”

  So she knew what Brad had told him. “I’m not sure. Schön is a genius, you see.”

  “So Brad has informed me, many times. An IQ that can’t be measured, and completely amoral. But surely this is cause!”

  “That’s what I’m here to decide.”

  They arrived at the common room: a large compartment of almost standard Earth-gravity, with easy chairs and several games tables. Ivo wondered what billiards or table-tennis would be like in partial gravity. Beside the entrance were several hanging frameworks: games ladders with removable panels. On each panel was a printed name.

  “Who’s Blank?” he asked, reading the top entry of the first.

  “That’s a real name,” she said. “Fred Blank, one of the maintenance men. He’s the table-tennis champion. I don’t really think they should — I mean, this room is for the scientists, the PhD’s. To relax in.”

  “The maintenance men aren’t supposed to relax?”

  She looked a little flustered. “There’s Fred now, reading that
magazine.”

  It was a Negro in overalls and unkempt hair. Beside him sat a Caucasian scientist, portly and cheerful. Both looked hot; evidently they had just finished playing a game. It seemed to Ivo that Afra was the only one disturbed, and that told him something about both her and the other personnel of this station. The scientists respected skill wherever they found it; Afra had other definitions. The portly white for the moment probably envied Blank his facility with the paddle, without being concerned with such irrelevancies as education.

  In the center of the room stood a pedestal bearing a shining statuette mounted at eye level. Ivo paused next to contemplate this honored edifice. It was a toy steam-shovel, of storybook design, with a handsome little scoop. The cab was shingled like the top of a country cottage, with a delicately sagging peaked roof and a bright half-moon on the door. Within the jawed shovel was a ball like a marble, and so fine was its artistry that he could see the accurate outline of the continent of North America etched upon the surface of that little globe.

  The pedestal bore the ornate letters S D P S. “What does it mean?”

  Afra looked embarrassed again. “Brad calls it the ‘Platinum Plated Privy,’ ” she murmured, quiet though no one else was close. “It really is. Platinum plated, I mean. He — designed it, and the shop produced it. The men seem to appreciate it.”

  “But those letters. S D P S. They can’t stand for—”

  She colored slightly, and he liked her for that, sensing a common conservatism though their viewpoints in other respects differed strongly. “You’ll have to ask him.” Then she shifted ground. “Here we are talking about unimportant things and ignoring you. Where do you come from, Ivo? That is, where did you settle after you left your project?”

  “I’ve been walking around the state of Georgia, mostly. All of us who participated in the project were provided with a guaranteed income, at least until we got established. It isn’t much, but I don’t need much.”

  “That’s very interesting. I was born in Macon, you know. Georgia is my home state.”

  Macon! “I didn’t know.” But somehow he had known.

  “But what interested you about that state? Do you know someone there?”

  “Something like that.” How could he explain ten years of seeming idleness, retracing the various routes of a native son?

  She didn’t press him. “I should show you the infirmary, too; Brad did mention that. I suppose he wants you to be able to describe it accurately to Schön.”

  They traveled on. Ivo wondered what was supposed to be so important about the infirmary, but was content to wait upon her explanation. He was learning more about her every moment, and positive or negative, he was eager for the information.

  “One thing I don’t understand,” Afra fretted, “is why Schön was in that other project. He should have been with Brad.”

  “He was hiding. Do you know the parable about the good fish?”

  “The good fish?” Her brow furrowed prettily.

  “The good fish that the fisherman caught in the net and gathered into vessels, while the bad were cast away. Matthew XIII:48.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course. What is the relevance?”

  “If you were one of the fish in that lake, which kind would you want to be?”

  “A good one, naturally. The whole point of the parable is that the good people shall find favor with God, while the bad ones will perish.”

  “But what happens, literally, to the good fish?”

  “Why, they are taken to the market and—” She paused. “Well, at least they aren’t wasted.”

  “While the bad fish continue to swim around the lake, just as they always did, because no fisherman wants them. I’d rather be one of them.”

  “I suppose so, if you take it that way. But what has that to do with—” She broke off again. “What did they do with the geniuses in Brad’s project?”

  “Well, I wasn’t involved in that. But I would guess Schön wanted to live his own life, unsupervised by the experimenters. So he hid where they would never find him. A bad fish.”

  “Brad had no trouble. I know he didn’t fool them any more than he fooled me. He’s a lot more intelligent than he says he is.”

  Ivo remembered that Brad had represented himself to her as IQ 160. “That so? He always seemed pretty regular to me.”

  “He’s like that. He gets along with anybody, and you really have to get to know him before you realize how deep and clever he is. He was the big success of the project — but of course you know that. Even if he does try to claim he’s stupid compared to Schön. I used to think he made Schön up, just to amuse me; but since this crisis—”

  “Yeah. That’s the way it was with me too, in a way. But now I sort of have to believe in Schön, much as I might prefer to forget all about him, or there isn’t much point in hanging around.”

  She smiled. “I’d tell you not to feel sorry for yourself, if I didn’t so often feel the same way. Nobody likes to feel stupid, but around Brad—”

  “Yeah,” he said again.

  They entered the infirmary. It carried the usual aseptic odors, the normal aura of spotless depression. “These are the — five,” she said, bringing him to a row of seated men. “Dr. Johnson, Dr. Smith, Dr. Sung, Dr. Mbsleuti and Mr. Holt. All most respected astronomers and cryptologists.”

  “Johnson? Holt? Sung? I’ve heard those names before.”

  “Yes, Brad would have mentioned them, if you weren’t already familiar with their reputations. The significant planets they discovered were named after them. Did Brad explain — ?”

  “He showed me some planets. I didn’t realize — well, never mind. I know now.”

  He looked at the seated men. Dr. Johnson was a saintly-looking man of perhaps sixty, with iron hair and brows and deep lines of character about the eves. His gaze was direct and compelling, but fixed, as though he were concentrating on some transcendent intangible.

  “Doctor,” Ivo said, stepping close. “I admired your planet, with its noodle plants and yellow trees.”

  The serene gray eyes refocused. The firm jaw dropped; then, after a second or two, the lips parted. “Huh-huh-huh,” Johnson said. A trace of spittle overlapped one corner of his mouth.

  “Hello,” Afra said distinctly. “Hel-lo.”

  Johnson smiled, not closing his mouth. A waft of ordure touched them.

  “That’s what he’s trying to say,” Afra explained. “Hello. He was always courteous.” She sniffed. “Oh-oh. Nurse!”

  A young man in white appeared, a male nurse. “I’ll take care of it, Miss Summerfield,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better leave now.”

  “Yes.” She led the way out of the infirmary. “They don’t have much control,” she said. “We’re trying to reeducate them, but there hasn’t been enough time yet to know how far they can recover. It’s a terrible thing that happened to them, and we still don’t—”

  Brad was coming swiftly down the hall. “Crisis,” he said, joining them. “There’s an American senator coming, an ornery one. Someone leaked the mind-destroyer to him, and he means to investigate.”

  “Is that bad?” Ivo asked.

  “Considering that we haven’t released the information yet to anyone beyond the station, yes,” Brad said. “Don’t be fooled by our candor with you, Ivo. This is super-secret stuff. We’ve been fudging reports from all five victims, just to keep up appearances while we try to break this impasse. Until we crack it, no one leaves this station — no one who knows, I mean.”

  “What about that man who brought me? Groton?”

  “He can keep his mouth shut. But all he knew, then, was that I needed you, where to find you, and what to say to you once he got you alone.”

  That explained the stalking. Groton hadn’t wanted to make contact in the crowd, though he had finally had to.

  “But don’t misjudge him,” Afra said. “Harold and Beatryx are very warm people.”

  Did that mean Groton was married? Ivo had not pictu
red that. It proved again how far off first impressions could be.

  “Here’s the situation,” Brad said, bringing them to his room. “Senator Borland is on his way. He’s class-A trouble. Borland is a first-termer, but he’s on the make already for national publicity, and he’s ruthless. He isn’t stupid; in fact, there’s a distinct possibility he’s smart enough to get hooked by the destroyer sequence. It’s certain he’ll demand to see the show, and there will be merry hell if we try to fob off a substitute.”

  “But you can’t show him the destroyer!” Afra exclaimed, alarmed.

  “We can’t hold it from him, if he’s determined — and he is. He knows he’s on to something big, and he means to make worldwide headlines before he finishes with us. Kovonov put it to me straight: Borland is American, so he’s my baby. I have to neutralize him somehow until we can crack this thing open and get it under control, or the whole feculent mess will erupt.”

  “When’s he due?” Ivo asked.

  “Six hours from now. We only got the hint when he embarked, and it took until now to pin down his purpose. He’s a real old-fashioned loudmouth, but he can keep a secret when it pays him to and he’s no political amateur. He’s obviously had this in mind for some time, and now he’s coming to milk us for that vote-getting publicity.”

  “Why not tell him the truth, then? If he’s that savvy, he should be willing to do something constructive for his votes, instead of—”

  “The truth without the solution would wreck us — and put Borland on his party’s next Presidential ticket. He isn’t interested in our welfare, or in the future of space exploration. He’d be delighted to take credit for pulling America out of the macroscope.”

  “But the other countries of the world would keep it going, wouldn’t they? Isn’t it under nominal UN control?”

  “More than nominal. They might indeed — in which case we’d become a has-been power in a hurry, as other breakthroughs like my heat-shield are achieved. America can’t possibly match the alien science we know is there, once it becomes available. Or — the macroscope project might founder, frightened off by talk of a death-ray from space. The average populace has a profound distrust of advanced space science, perhaps because it doesn’t match the old, space-opera conception. People might accept the notion of astronauts plunging into space fearlessly in rockets, but the ramifications of relativistic cosmology and quantum physics—”