Touli stayed behind with his colleagues; Sara and Thora plunged into the labyrinth again. With help from passing crewmates, they managed to find the Embassy and the clinic.
“Callicot! Lassiter! Welcome back to Starship Calamity,” said David when he saw them.
“Hello, David,” Sara said. “Apart from being stirred and shaken, how’s it been going up here?”
“Oh, nothing much happening,” he said. Then he became serious. “Actually, we were extraordinarily lucky. No one ended up with his legs growing out of his ears. Two people are still missing, and there were three amputations, but nothing fatal.”
“Amputations?” Sara said queasily.
“Yes. Appendages cut off clean as a whistle, just like that poor bastard of a security guard when we first got here.”
“You mean … the murder?”
“It wasn’t a murder,” David said. “No one did it; it was some localized outbreak of what we just experienced. The reason we couldn’t find the head is that it’s in some other dimension now.”
Sara didn’t feel relieved at this news, only more horrified. The fact that it had been a random natural phenomenon didn’t make anyone less vulnerable. It just meant there was nothing they could do to lessen their chances of going the same way.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said.
“I don’t think you’d get much argument about that,” David said, “but the news on the wayport isn’t good. They’ve been trying to fabricate a new quantum imbricator, but apparently we don’t have the topological superconducters.”
“I have no idea what you just said,” Sara said.
“It means everyone’s begun banking on your news from the planet. Did you find any nice places?”
Sara shook her head gloomily. “The natives are just as desperate to get out as we are. They say a terrible natural disaster is coming that will make the planet uninhabitable. They call it fold rain.”
David took in the implications of this news. “Well,” he said. For once, he had nothing else to say.
Sara turned to Thora. “You said there was an experiment you wanted to do. What is it, are you going to try your hand at wending?”
Thora glanced mistrustfully at David, so Sara said, “He’s all right. That’s true, isn’t it, David? You can keep a secret?” Thora still hesitated, so Sara said in a low tone, “Look, we need to know if it’s possible for us to do what they do.”
Reluctantly, as if forcing the words out, Thora said, “It is possible. I’ve done it. In fact, I even—no, let me tell you from the beginning.”
She then described to them, in precise sensory detail, how Dagget had led her into the Ground. She did not try to explain it—just gave them the observational data, exactly as she had experienced it, finishing with the fact that she had briefly seen Orem. When she fell silent, David shifted restlessly. Sara looked at him.
“If someone came to me describing that kind of experience, my diagnosis would be TLE,” he said. “Temporal lobe epilepsy. The classic symptoms are distorted perception of time, out-of-body experiences, sensory hallucinations, and overwhelming feelings of déjà vu, inspiration, or bliss.”
Ironically, Thora said, “A disease. The mentationists on Capella would agree with you, only they called it psychosis.”
“You mean this is what happened to you before?” Sara said.
“Not this precise experience. Something similar; only then I did not have a guide, but a kind of predator with me.”
“So you don’t believe it is a disease?”
“No. I think it is a natural perception we dismiss because it is so rare. In Torobe, it isn’t rare; all the wenders experience it.”
“There could be something on the planet inducing it,” David said doggedly. “Sensory deprivation, for example. Their brains could be manufacturing an illusion of reality to replace the one they have lost. They have created an elaborate cultural construct to explain it. As a matter of fact, I could electrically stimulate your brain to produce the same experience.”
“I could electrically stimulate your brain to create the sensation of sight. All I need to do is shine a light on something. That’s what electromagnetism does, stimulates the brain to create a sensation. Yet you think that’s real, and the other sensation is not. That is simply illogical.” Thora was now speaking with controlled fervor. “The part of my brain that perceived the Ground evolved to sense an aspect of our environment less often encountered than light, but nonetheless real.”
“All right, prove it.”
Visibly forcing herself to be patient, Thora said, “I am hoping to do that. Or at least, I am hoping to prove the indirect effects of the Ground. Proving its existence is a little like trying to prove the existence of beauty. You have to experience it yourself.” She paused thoughtfully. “I wish you could. There was such a strong feeling of authority, authenticity—no, not just that, insight, as if I were perceiving something more real than everyday reality. Almost like revelation, like finally figuring it all out.”
“Limbic system involvement,” David said.
“Yes,” she said. “Precisely. As if it were coming from that vast volume of the interior brain that is inaccessible to conscious thought. All we’re normally aware of is what the thin layer of cortex on the surface tells us; the majority of the brain makes itself known only through intuition, emotion, and the subconscious. I’m saying we need to expand our definition of evidence to include that.”
“What about Moth’s headnet?” Sara interrupted impatiently. “That’s pretty concrete evidence.”
“What headnet?” David said.
“Remember when Moth disappeared, and we turned the ship upside down looking for her? Thora says she was in Torobe then, and brought one of our headnet recorders to show everyone.”
“Did you see the headnet?” David asked Thora.
“No, of course not. It was dark. I felt it.”
“Well then, if Moth really did transport a headnet to Torobe, and it wasn’t just some sleight-of-hand, all I’m saying is she didn’t do it by using her mind. Prove me wrong if you can. I hope you do. But until then, I’m still hoping they fix the wayport.”
Thora seemed preoccupied when they left the clinic and went to the Embassy. They found the suite of rooms relatively untouched by spatial distortion. Sara watched Thora pace, eyes on the floor, hands kneading each other nervously. She looked a little mad.
“I knew I would face opposition here,” Thora said.
“I believe you,” Sara said. “Or at least, I want to, but for a reason David wouldn’t accept. Every culture we’ve ever encountered has held common beliefs that scientists scoff at—spirit possession, ghosts, spells, mind reading, out-of-body travel, that sort of stuff. I’ve always wondered why those ideas seem so plausible that virtually every society but ours believes in them, and continues to believe in them because they just seem intuitively right. I like the idea that those people aren’t just superstitious and deluded—that they’re dimly perceiving something that’s not fully accessible to our senses.”
“But they may be explaining it wrong,” Thora said, her eyes fixed on Sara. “Spells, ghosts—those are simplistic, inexact explanations. The Torobes’ explanation may be no more right. That’s why we need to continue the research. It’s why I came up here.”
“What do you want to do?” Sara said. “Can I help?”
Thora looked around, as if seeing the room for the first time. “Is this where Moth stayed when she was up here?”
“Yes.”
“Then this is the place she would come back to. I told her to try as soon as we had time to return. We need to bemind her. Or rather, one of us needs to bemind her, while the other observes, so we can prove it objectively.”
Sara was tired and would have put it off, but Thora was now filled with a kind of manic energy. She positioned a chair where Sara could sit and see the whole room, then dimmed the lights a little and settled on the floor in a posture of meditation.
The room grew very quiet. Sara could hear the whoosh of the ventilation, and random clicks and creaks of the questship structure. She was not accustomed to sitting still without anything to occupy her mind, and first grew impatient, then inattentive as her mind wandered. She kept having to pull her mind back so as not to miss anything. But there was nothing to miss. Eventually an itch started on her back, then a cramp in her leg. She kept glancing at the clock, wondering how long this experiment would take.
At last Thora sighed and opened her eyes. “This is not working,” she said.
Sara yawned. “Right. I need a break.”
“You beminded her before, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I must have.”
“It might work better if you tried to bemind her, and I observed.”
“Not before I get some coffee.”
Sara left to stretch her legs and fetch something from the refectory. When she got back, Thora was sound asleep on the couch. Sara didn’t disturb her, just stood sipping coffee and wondering what to believe. Here, surrounded by the bulkheads built by rationality, Thora’s theory seemed so much less plausible than in the earthy, whispering darkness of Torobe. But if it were true …
Sara could feel the thrill of power right down to her fingertips. Something humanity had been seeking for centuries might be within her grasp, hiding in the scrambled mind of this woman sleeping on her couch, and in a handful of blind villagers below. For once in her life, Sara might be at the center of a momentous discovery, at the fulcrum where everything would change. If Thora were right, the fundamental geometry of space would be repealed. It would erase the barriers that had kept humankind imprisoned in their little patch of space, and open up the galaxies to exploration.
How ironic that the breakthrough wasn’t information at all—not something that could be published, trademarked, or copyrighted. It was a skill. A rare skill that, so far, only the mad and the blind had been able to acquire.
She turned off the lights and went into her bedroom, and was soon asleep herself.
The next two days were filled with a series of repeat experiments, all similar failures. They tried to bemind Moth with their roles reversed, and with conditions changed. Thora repeatedly attempted to touch the Ground herself, without any success. At first she seemed grimly determined, then desperate, then despondent. With every failure, Sara’s doubts grew, and she felt a little foolish for continuing.
“There must be a localized spatial phenomenon on the planet,” Thora finally said. “We always went to a specific place to touch the Ground. I thought I might be able to do it from here, but I was wrong. The place is more important than I realized.”
On the third morning, Sara was wakened by the sound of voices out in the common room. She listened vaguely at first, still half asleep. Then she realized what she was hearing, and was instantly wide awake. One of the voices was Moth’s.
Moth looked exactly as she had when they left her in Torobe—wearing the same Epco shorts and shirt, the same bare feet, the same expression of smug conspiracy. At sight of her, all Sara’s doubts evaporated and she cried out, “You did it, Thora! You beminded her!”
“Not deliberately,” Thora said, looking troubled. “I dreamed of her.”
“Aye, that was me touching thee from without,” Moth said.
“Then I became half awake, and it was as if she were standing close to me. The sense of her presence was quite vivid. Then I woke up, and she was actually there.”
“Did you see her … materialize?”
“No, I was asleep, and the room was dark.” Thora sounded frustrated. “We still haven’t observed it happening. Someone could argue that she followed us and sneaked onto the shuttle while we weren’t watching. We can’t prove what we’ve done.”
“What have we done?” Sara said. They looked at each other, unable to answer.
“We need more evidence,” Thora said.
Moth was quite willing to collaborate with them. This time they set up a camera so they would have unimpeachable evidence, as well as two witnesses. When all was ready, they told Moth to return to Torobe.
She did not settle down to meditate, as Thora had done. Instead, she stood in the middle of the room, poised on the balls of her feet, as if trying to pick up a rhythm, like a child about to step in on a jump rope. At last she took a small, dancing step forward, then stumbled, tried to regain her balance, and turned around, as if confused.
“What happened?” she said, looking disoriented.
“Nothing happened,” Sara said.
“I missed it!” Moth was clearly disturbed and embarrassed. “I have not failed so for years, not since the first time I tried.”
“Well, try again,” Thora said.
But nothing worked. They tried it a variety of ways: with just Sara observing, just Thora, and just the camera. At last Moth became so upset by her repeated failures she burst out, “You are thwarting me! You are interfering!” Then she stormed off into her bedroom and slammed the door.
Sara silently switched off the camera and looked at Thora. “Do you suppose she really did stow away on the shuttle?”
Thora looked thoughtful. “She wended to Torobe from here before, true?”
“So she claimed.”
“Then maybe we are preventing her, just by observing. Maybe it’s a phenomenon that can’t happen if someone is watching, like particles on a subatomic scale. We can’t observe an electron shell in an atom, because the electrons exist in all the possible positions simultaneously until they are observed, and then the effect collapses. That doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before.”
“So you think that we also could exist in more than one place simultaneously? But physicists have been looking for an effect like that for centuries.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Thora said. “They’re looking. Maybe it can’t be observed, because if you observe, you prevent it. Maybe sight actually obscures reality, and that’s why removing it makes it easier to perceive the Ground.” She seemed intense, keyed up, a little obsessed. There were dark circles under her eyes.
Frustrated, Sara said, “If that’s true, then wending isn’t going to get us out of here. We’re still trapped. None of us grew up blind, and if you can’t do it again, with all your practice and skill, there’s no hope for the rest of us.”
Thora’s voice dropped very low. “I haven’t given up, and the rest of you shouldn’t either. If I could just get back into the Ground, as I did before, perhaps I could find someone on Capella to bemind me. Then I could get a replacement imbricator for the wayport and return.”
A twinge of hope nudged Sara’s optimism awake again. “So what do we do?”
“I’ll have to go back to Torobe,” Thora said. “I can’t do it from here. Maybe it’s because there is a thin spot there, where dimensions overlap and space is fluid. Or maybe it’s because I’ve seen the Escher, and I am too convinced of its spatial reality. Regardless, I have to take the shuttle back down.”
Sara shook her head. “Colonel Atlabatlow will never allow that, even if we tell him the truth. The scientists might support us if only we had some evidence.”
“How can we have evidence? It’s a subjective phenomenon. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Pain exists, and it is subjective. Consciousness exists, but we can’t prove it. We only know it’s real because we experience it.”
Sara thought of trying to convince Sarcodan or Prem with an argument like that—to support doing something impossible by an improbable method whose existence they couldn’t prove. The thought was so discouraging, she got up to knock softly on Moth’s door. “Moth, come out,” she said. “You’re our only evidence.” Moth didn’t answer, so she said, “Let’s have some popcorn.”
There was still no answer. With a sudden misgiving, Sara opened the door.
Moth was gone.
* * *
Every time Sara saw Touli in the refectory, he looked more gloomy than the day before.
“You mean it gets worse?” she said.
He nodded. “The unstable spots are all around us. Local space is simply peppered with them. In fact, there’s a huge cluster just ahead, in the path of the planet we’re orbiting. We’re trying to calculate when we’re going to pass through it.”
“Are we talking hours, or months from now?” Sara asked cautiously.
He just shrugged and left Sara to imagine the worst.
When the answer came, it spread like panic. They had two weeks, give or take a day.
Just when they needed strong leadership most, the Director seemed to have vanished. Penny Sutton was intercepting all attempts to speak with him. “He is very busy dealing with the situation,” she said. But what he was doing, no one knew. What he wasn’t doing was far more obvious. He wasn’t making decisions or coordinating any efforts to solve their problem.
“Maybe he’s using one of his innovative management techniques,” David said to Sara. “Cleverly bonding us by giving us a common enemy to criticize.”
“You sure don’t have an irony deficiency, David,” Sara said.
Sara decided it was time to play her Magisterium card. She marched into the Director’s antechamber and asked to see him.
Penny Sutton appeared instead, wearing an iron-gray skirt-suit that made her look like a gunmetal fireplug. “Director Gavere can’t be interrupted,” she said. “He is—”
“I know. Dealing with the situation,” Sara said. “Well, I can help him there. I have a solution, but it’s for his ears only.”
Sutton hesitated a moment, then said, “Write me a report and I will give it to him.”
“I said, for his ears only.”
“I am his ears,” Sutton said. “If I didn’t screen his appointments, he would be overwhelmed with complaints about offices being rearranged.” She made it sound like a minor inconvenience. As it would have been, if offices hadn’t been rearranged upside down on the other side of the ship.
Dark Orbit Page 26
