“He’s from Capella,” Sara said.
“Well, even so.”
“I was traveling while that episode went down,” Sara said. “What happened?”
But the magisters knew even less than Gossup had told her. The public version was that a radical Oreman sect had taken Thora hostage, and Capellan authorities had been forced to extricate her. There had been hints that she was brainwashed to collaborate with her captors, but nothing about a mental breakdown.
The ship’s tension would have continued to fester unresolved, except for two pieces of good news that came almost simultaneously. Ashok and his technicians finally managed to capture a packet of paired particles to get the pepci working, and the planetary shuttle was declared fit for duty. Instantly, everyone’s attention was refocused on a mission to the planet.
Ordinarily, First Contact missions were long, slow, and meticulously planned to avoid introducing the native population to culturally inappropriate technology or information. But Iris’s uninhabited state simplified matters immensely. It would be possible to ferry an exploring expedition down with all its equipment at once.
Word spread that a meeting of the department heads had been called to plan the first foray to the planet, so Sara tested the Director’s promises by sending a memo asking to observe the meeting. To her delight, permission was granted.
They met in a trapezoidal room with a window simulation set to show the Epco logo. The Director went around solicitously shaking everyone’s hand, then took his seat at the head of the table. At his right side sat Dagan Atlabatlow, an ebony carving in uniform; at his left sat Penny Sutton. She had on a headnet that was recording her visual and aural perceptions of the meeting for the record. The others at the table were the four department heads. Sara sat beside Thora Lassiter and received a serenely opaque greeting.
“I have asked Colonel Atlabatlow to draw up a plan for establishing a base of operations on the planet,” the Director announced. “Colonel?”
The Oreman rose and pressed a button transmitting a document to the screens recessed in the table in front of each of them. Sara leaned forward to see her copy. It was a fantastically detailed threat assessment. As she looked at it, her impression of Atlabatlow gelled suddenly: he was one of those second-generation immigrants who claw their way up by conforming—a militantly by-the-rules man. She glanced at Thora to see her reaction, and found her watching the man rather than the document.
He proceeded to talk them stiffly through each major area of potential danger—toxins, microbes, radiation, fauna, and of course the unknown. Conspicuously missing was the danger from each other.
“This is the action sequence to be followed. Only four of our human assets will ferry the shuttle down to the planet—two pilots, a security professional, and a lightbeam technician. This is partly to maximize cargo capacity, and partly to reduce risk exposure. The shuttle’s manifest will include a lightbeam receiver mechanism suitable for subsequent transport of personnel. Once on the planet, the security agent will conduct safety assessments. When his review indicates an acceptable level of risk, an additional six investigators and three security personnel will go down via lightbeam to commence their studies of the planet, using the shuttle as a base.”
“Six!” Sarcodan said, dumbfounded.
“It is the maximum number whose safety we can assure, initially,” the colonel said. “It provides one slot for each department, plus two to be chosen by the Director.”
“How long will ‘initially’ last?” Sarcodan demanded.
“That will depend on what we encounter.”
“I want a number. A day? A week?”
“I cannot make a commitment.”
Sarcodan turned to the Director. “This plan is paranoid.”
“It’s the plan we’re following,” Gavere said. His tone was meant to shut down discussion, but Sarcodan did not pick up the signal.
“We came here to do research—”
“Safety is Epco’s number one priority.”
Sarcodan subsided, smoldering.
They then turned to a discussion of the research proposals that the scientists had brought. Prem’s staff were going to create a computer model of the planet’s ecology and run it back in time to see how it had evolved. They needed to start by gathering data on the ecosystem and its adaptations, if any, to the dark matter clusters. Sarcodan’s scientists had zeroed in on several “anomaly islands” in the gravitational patterns that they wanted to investigate with sensors and monitors. They had picked out a landing site close to one of the anomalies.
Sri Paul Niyama was representing Corroborative Science in place of its department head, who was observing one of his days of ritual isolation. Paul was a willowy young man with a gentle, self-effacing air and a youthful face under bobbed black hair. He gave off a heady aroma of earnestness. “We wish to search for some aspect of consciousness on Iris,” he said. “If we find no conscious organisms, it would be strong evidence for the centrality of human beings in the universe, as many creation theories predict.”
Last, the Director called on Thora to present her proposal. Hesitating a moment, she said, “I can’t give you a proposal, because I don’t know what I will discover until I discover it.”
After a moment of silence, Sarcodan said, “Well, we can certainly use the extra opening in the roster.”
“No, I wish to go down to the planet,” Thora said.
“What for?” Sarcodan pressed.
“I want to supplement your efforts with other modes of observation. You will be investigating with your own techniques—with instruments, and classification, and rational analysis. My only experimental device is consciousness itself. I want to use myself as a sensor—to observe, record, and accept without hurrying to conclude. I am hoping to reach insights that objectivism can conceal.”
“Doesn’t this belong in the Corroborative Sciences Department?” Prem said. “I don’t see the distinction.”
“The corroborative scientists are defending beliefs,” Thora said. “Sensualism is not a belief; it’s a method.”
“Not a scientific one,” Sarcodan said.
Thora didn’t react defensively. “I’m not criticizing your methods. You learn vital things by abstracting yourselves from the world, and viewing it from without. The hypothesis I am testing is that the human mind is sensitive to a wider spectrum than we suspect. It senses things we have never categorized or named, things we have never studied, whose origin we are unsure of, and whose meanings we don’t know.”
Sarcodan turned to the Director. “Prem’s right. There is already a department for religion. We don’t need two.”
“Did I mention religion?” For the first time, Sara heard in Thora’s voice an edge of steel.
“That’s where you’re going, isn’t it?” Sarcodan said. “You want to meditate on the unknowable. Well, science denies there is anything that can’t be known. Only religion revels in mystery, in order to reserve a place for God.”
“It is unscientific, wouldn’t you say, to deny that there are things we don’t know?”
“We’re not going to learn them by—what is it you want?—merging with the planet’s emanations?”
“All right, all right,” the Director interrupted. “This has been a good theoretical discussion, but we have to move on.” He looked impatient, as if at trivia. “I think Epco would want us to be tolerant of a variety of cultural traditions, wouldn’t you say?” He was looking at Sara, as if trying to guess the right answer.
“Oh absolutely,” Sara said. “Epco’s all about tolerance.” She hoped lightning wouldn’t strike her.
Sarcodan was looking as if he suspected she and Thora were in cahoots.
“Well then,” the Director said, relieved, “it’s decided. Magister Lassiter will go as planned. Anything else?”
The scientists started haggling over which departments would get the remaining two slots. The Director cut off the discussion. “I will be making those assignments
,” he said. “Magister Callicot will also be on the team, as observer. And Mr. Gibb will record the expedition for transmission back to Capella.”
Sara instantly saw the logic of his choices: the person with political connections, and a publicist. It made crystal clear the role science would be playing. Ordinarily, it would have galled her as much as it clearly did the scientists, but she was enjoying the novel feeling of being one of those rewarded because of politics rather than deserts.
“There is one last order of business,” Director Gavere announced. “As you know, the paired-particle communicator will soon be operational, and we will have real-time contact with Capella Two. We will be instituting some temporary procedures for the staff to follow. Penny?”
Sutton transmitted a policy memo to everyone’s screen. “You will each be responsible for communicating this policy to your staffs, and explaining it to them. Essentially, all communications with Capella must be submitted in advance, and will be transmitted as time becomes available. Only department heads will be allowed real-time conversations with headquarters. Until further notice, we are asking everyone to omit references to the recent … incident. This is to avoid compromising the investigation. Your cooperation will be appreciated.”
There was a shocked silence for several seconds. Then Prem said, “This is not going to be popular.”
“We understand that,” Sutton said, “and we would not insist if the security situation did not call for it.”
“How can keeping the crime secret benefit the investigation?”
“I did not say it would benefit the investigation. I said it would avoid compromising it.”
By preventing Epco headquarters from getting concerned about it, of course, Sara thought.
When the meeting was over, Prem and Sarcodan met in a hallway huddle out of sight of administrative eyes. Sara would have joined them, but for the suspicious glance Sarcodan flashed at her and Thora.
“I guess we are vermin du jour,” Sara said to Thora.
“They are uncomfortable with Sensualism,” Thora observed, unruffled. “I am used to it. Did you notice how quickly he got to God? There are people for whom whole categories of knowledge are off-limits because they can’t be objectively explored, so the objectivist can’t imagine any possible explanation but a religious one.”
“Maybe a god scared him when he was a child,” Sara said irreverently. “Now he’s phobic about them.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Thora said. “As soon as we are on the planet, everyone will forget all this.”
* * *
That nightshift, Sara suborned Ashok Chittagong into a conspiracy. It was, of course, easy.
The PPC room lay in one of the technical sections of the ship, close to the ventilation and heating systems, and remote from the habitations. At the off-hour when she had arranged to meet Ashok, only a skeleton staff was on duty in this isolated section, and the empty corridors were dimly lit to save energy. She realized how edgy recent events had made her when she heard whispery footsteps down a darkened side hall, and whirled around, fists clenched. She thought she glimpsed some movement in the shadows, but the more she stared the less sure she became.
“I think we’ve got rats,” she said to Ashok when she joined him in the tiny, warm control room crammed with equipment.
“I could have told you that,” he said.
“I don’t mean the human variety.”
“Oh.”
He had gotten the PPC operational earlier that day, and a steady stream of news had been coming through ever since, much of it personal messages going straight into the mailboxes of the staff. Tomorrow, people all over the ship would be waking up to find parents dead, children married, homes sold in their absence—Wasters went through it again and again.
“What can I do for you?” Ashok asked.
“I need to send a private message the Director’s office can’t find out about.”
“Hmm.” Ashok stroked his beard, looking like a casino gambler. For a moment Sara worried that he was thinking about the ethical problem, but it turned out to be the technical problem his attention was on. “I’ll have to falsify the time codes, or fake a little breakdown. Do you have the message ready?”
“No. Can I compose it here?”
“Sure. You realize we can only send text so far, right? Until we get a few more packets of particles, this is only a step above smoke signals.”
“Okay.” Sara sat down at a console to compose her message to Gossup, including the news Director Gavere had explicitly forbidden them to pass on. In the meantime, Ashok was busily falsifying the communication log.
When Ashok told her to press the Send key, she obeyed, wondering if Gossup would even be alive at the other end, and whether her assignment would have died with him.
“I assume that if there’s an answer, you’ll want that hidden, too?” Ashok said.
“Right. I’ll wait a little to see.” If he was dead, she would probably get an automated response.
As they waited, the room buzzed quietly, and imaginary prickles chased across Sara’s skin at the thought of the powerful electromagnetic fields around them.
“Where are the paired particles actually kept?” she asked to fill the silence.
Ashok laughed. “That’s a question that’ll start a fistfight at a physicists’ conference. The magnetic bottle is just beyond that wall—but whether the particles are there, who knows?”
She understood what he meant. The physicists spoke as if they had created two entangled particles, born and split in the same instant, that continued to influence one another across whatever distance separated them. But in fact, it might be that they had only separated two aspects of the same particle, existing simultaneously in two spots, and resonating back and forth. To detect the particles directly would destroy the effect by freezing them into existence in one spot. Until then, they had only potential existence in both spots. In this unresolved state it was possible to use them to communicate by observing their indirect effects on the magnetic field around them. But the magnetic bottle was like Pandora’s box—a thing they were forbidden to peek in for fear it would make their particles real.
Sara gazed at the wall beyond which she imagined the paired particles trapped. In some unknowable way, the space inside the magnetic bottle was on Capella Two, because the particles’ longing to be whole was so strong it could collapse distance itself. It was one of the tragic drawbacks of being human that the longings of people could never have that kind of power.
“Hang on!” Ashok exclaimed, taking his feet off the table as his monitor lit up with the seal of the Magisterium. “Someone wants to talk to you.”
“Right now? In real time?”
“Yeah, you’d better sit over here.”
Sara moved to the other console and hit a key to indicate that she was there.
It was Gossup himself, still alive, though his letterhead indicated he was now executive delegate of the Magisterium. The words appeared one by one. “I was very pleased to hear from you, Sara, though your message has caused me some concern.” It was disconcerting to think that he was writing at this instant, fifty-eight years since she had last spoken to him.
“Can you offer me any advice?” she typed back.
“I fear that an act I intended as conciliatory has been seized upon as an opportunity for mischief,” he said, uninformatively. “The incident you refer to may even have been intended as a message to me.”
“Who would wait all this time to send a message?” Sara asked.
“We are dealing with people whose time frame is in the centuries.”
“WHO?” Sara banged at her keys.
“Have you observed any symptoms of relapse in our mutual friend?”
“No. Answer my question.”
“I will be in touch. It might be best if you did not mention my name to anyone there. Please be careful, Sara.”
The Magisterium seal appeared again, signaling the end of the conversation. “Dam
n!” Sara exclaimed.
“Well, well,” Ashok said. He was leaning against a stack of electronics, arms crossed. Sara realized he had been reading over her shoulder. “Studying management theory, my ass. I should have known you were up to something underhanded.”
“Except I really suck at it,” Sara said. “You’re not supposed to know.”
“That little conversation took almost seventy seconds. You realize how hard it’s going to be to hide that?”
“You’re a prince, Ashok. I know you’ll find a way.”
“You want to tell me why I’m risking my job?”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. To tell the truth, I’m not even sure.”
“This is the disadvantage of getting mixed up with Vinds.”
“It’s not just the Vinds. It’s getting mixed up with power.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?” Ashok said dourly.
from the audio diary of thora lassiter:
Is discovery impossible, or only implausible? That is what I wonder.
We wait here, circling above our heart’s desire, caught in a paradox: to discover something new, we must understand it, yet the very act of understanding changes the thing we observe.
To perceive, describe, explain: these are the essence of discovery. “I do not know” does not constitute learning. And yet, what happens when we encounter something so genuinely outside our previous experience that we have no mental categories for it, and the only truthful statement is “I do not know”? Why, we liken it to something we do know, however bad the analogy. We apply to it rules that lie within our experience. We resist incomprehension as reflexively as we recoil from pain.
Only gradually, if all goes right, does the new information start to soften our mental walls, so that we can begin to perceive what we have encountered. But often by that time it is too late: we have so misconstrued the unknown that our learning is flawed forever. What was truly new is now just a subcategory of the old. Perhaps it is the only way we can learn, an anatomical limitation. We are organisms evolved to destroy unfamiliarity by the act of understanding it.
Dark Orbit Page 5
