The Light of Other Days

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Or maybe this was all just fantasy on her part, and she ought to keep from meddling in other people’s heads, a habit she so strongly condemned in others. “I don’t get it,” Hiram was saying now. “How can it have taken until 2033 to find the Wormwood, an object four hundred kilometres across? I know it’s out beyond Uranus, but still.”

  “It’s extremely dark and slow moving,” said Kate. “It is apparently a comet, but much bigger than any comet known. We don’t know where it came from; perhaps there is a cloud of such objects out there, somewhere beyond Neptune.

  “And nobody was especially looking that way anyhow. Even Spaceguard concentrates on near-Earth space, the objects which are likely to hit us in the near future. The Wormwood was found by a network of sky-gazing amateurs.”

  “Umm,” said Hiram. “And now it’s on its way here.”

  “Yes. In five hundred years.”

  Bobby waved a strong, manicured hand. “But that’s so far ahead. There must be contingency plans.”

  “What contingency plans? Bobby, the Wormwood is a giant. We don’t know any way to push the damn thing away, even in principle. And when that rock falls, there will be nowhere to hide.”

  “We don’t know any way?” Bobby said dryly.

  “I mean the astronomers.”

  “The way you were talking I’d almost imagined you discovered it yourself.” He was needling her, responding to her earlier probing. “It’s so easy to mix up one’s own achievement with that of the people one relies on, isn’t it?”

  Hiram was cackling. “I can tell you kids are getting on just fine. If you care enough to argue… And you, of course, Ms. Manzoni, think the people have a right to know that the world is going to end in five hundred years?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Bobby said, “And you’ve no concern for the consequences — the suicides, the leap in abortion rates, the abandonment of various environment-conservation projects?”

  “I brought the bad news,” she said tensely. “I didn’t bring the Wormwood. Look, if we aren’t informed, we can’t act, for better or ill; we can’t take responsibility for ourselves — in whatever time we have left. Not that our options are promising. Probably the best we can do is send a handful of people off to somewhere safer, the Moon or Mars or an asteroid. Even that isn’t guaranteed to save the species, unless we can establish a breeding population. And,” she said heavily, “those who do escape will no doubt be those who govern us, and their offspring, unless we shake off our electronic anaesthesia.”

  Hiram pushed his chair back and roared with laughter. “Electronic anaesthesia. How true that is. As long as I’m selling the anaesthetics, of course.” He looked at her directly. “I like you, Ms. Manzoni.”

  Liar. “Thank you.”

  “Why are you here?”

  There was a long silence. “You invited me.”

  “Six months and seven days ago. Why now? Are you working for my rivals?”

  “No.” She bristled at that. “I’m a freelance.”

  He nodded. “Nevertheless there is something you want here. A story, of course. The Wormwood is already receding into your past, and you need fresh triumphs, a new scoop. That’s what people like you live on. Don’t you, Ms. Manzoni? But what can it be? Nothing personal, surely. There is little about me that is not in the public record.”

  She said carefully, “Oh, I dare say there are a few items.” She took a breath. “The truth is I heard you have a new project. A new wormhole application, far beyond the simple DataPipes which -”

  “You came here grubbing for facts,” said Hiram.

  “Come on, Hiram. The whole world is getting wired up with your wormholes. If I could scoop the rest -”

  “But you know nothing.”

  She bridled. “I’ll show you what I know. You were born Hirdamani Patel. Before you were born your father’s family was forced to flee Uganda. Ethnic cleansing, right?”

  Hiram glared, “This is public knowledge. In Uganda my father was a bank manager. In Norfolk he drove buses, as nobody would recognize his qualifications.”

  “You weren’t happy in England,” Kate bulldozed on. “You found yourself unable to overcome barriers of race and class. So you left for America. You dumped your given name, adopted an anglicized version. You have become known as something of a role model for Asians in America. And yet you cut yourself off from your ethnic origins. Each of your wives has been a WASP.”

  Bobby looked startled. “’Wives’? Dad.”

  “Family is everything to you,” Kate said evenly, compelling their attention. “You’re trying to establish a dynasty, it seems, through Bobby here. Perhaps it’s because you abandoned your own family, your own father, back in England.”

  “Ah.” Hiram clapped his hands, forcing a smile. “I wondered how long it would be before Papa Sigmund joined us at the table. So that is your story. Hiram Patterson is building OurWorld because he is guilty about his father!”

  Bobby was frowning. “Kate, what new project are you talking about?”

  Was it possible Bobby really didn’t know? She held Hiram’s gaze, relishing her sudden power. “Significant enough for him to summon your brother back from France.”

  “Brother…”

  “Significant enough for him to take on Billybob Meeks as an investment partner. Meeks, the founder of RevelationLand. Have you heard of that, Bobby? The latest mind-sapping, money-drinking perversion of religion to afflict America’s wretched population of the gullible.”

  “This is irrelevant,” Hiram snapped. “Yes, I’m working with Meeks. I’ll work with anybody. If people want to buy my VR gear so they can see Jesus and His tap-dancing Apostles, I’ll sell it to them. Who am I to judge? We aren’t all as sanctimonious as you, Ms. Manzoni. We don’t all have that luxury.”

  But Bobby was staring at Hiram. “My brother?”

  Kate was startled, and ran the conversation through her head again. “Bobby… You didn’t know any of this, did you? Not just about the project, but Hiram’s other wife, his other child.” She looked at Hiram, shocked. “How could anybody keep a secret like that?”

  Hiram’s mouth pursed, and his glare at Kate was full of loathing. “A half-brother, Bobby. Just a half-brother.”

  Kate said clinically, “His name is David.” She pronounced it the French way: Dah-veed. “His mother was French. He’s thirty-two — seven years older than you, Bobby. He’s a physicist. He’s doing well; he’s been described as the Hawking of his generation. Oh, and he’s Catholic. Devout, apparently.”

  Bobby seemed — not angry — even more baffled. He said to Hiram, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Hiram said, “You didn’t need to know.”

  “And the new project, whatever it is? Why didn’t you tell me about that?”

  Hiram stood up. “Your company has been charming, Ms. Manzoni. The drones will show you out.”

  She stood. “You can’t stop me printing what I know.”

  “Print what you please. You don’t have anything important.” And, she knew, he was right.

  She walked to the door, her euphoria dissipating quickly. I blew it, she told herself. I meant to ingratiate myself with Hiram. Instead I had to have my fun, and make him into an enemy.

  She looked back. Bobby was still seated. He was looking at her, those strange church-window eyes open wide. I’ll see you again, she thought. Maybe this wasn’t over yet.

  The door began to close. Her last glimpse was of Hiram covering his son’s hand with his own, tenderly.

  Chapter 3

  The wormworks

  Hiram was waiting for David Curzon in the arrivals hall at SeaTac.

  Hiram was simply overwhelming. He immediately grabbed David’s shoulders and pulled him close. David could smell powerful cologne, synth-tobacco, a lingering trace of spices. Hiram was nearing seventy, but didn’t show it, no doubt thanks to anti-ageing treatments and subtle cosmetic sculpting. He was tall and dark — where David, taking after his mothe
r, was more stocky, blond, leaning to plump.

  And here was that voice David hadn’t heard since he was five years old, the face — blue eyes, strong nose — that had loomed over him like a giant Moon. “My boy. It’s been too long. Come on. We’ve got a hell of a lot to catch up on…”

  David had spent most of the flight from England composing himself for this encounter. You are thirty-two years old, he told himself. You have a tenured position at Oxford. Your papers, and your popular book on the exotic mathematics of quantum physics, have been extremely well received. This man may be your father. But he abandoned you, and has no hold over you.

  You are an adult now. You have your faith. You have nothing to fear.

  But Hiram, as he surely intended, had broken through all David’s defences in the first five seconds of their encounter. David, bewildered, allowed himself to be led away.

  •

  Hiram took his son straight to his research facility — the Wormworks, as he called it — out to the north of Seattle itself. The drive, in a SmartDrive Rolls, was fast and scary. Controlled by positioning satellites and intelligent in-car software, the vehicles flowed along the freeways at more than 150 kilometres an hour, mere centimetres between their bumpers; it was all much more aggressive than David was used to in Europe. But the city, what he saw of it, struck him as quite European, a place of fine, well-preserved houses with expansive views of hills and sea, the more modern developments integrated reasonably gracefully with the overall feel of the place. The downtown area seemed to be bustling, as the Christmas buying season descended once more.

  He remembered little of the place but childhood fragments: the small boat Hiram used to run out of the Sound, trips above the snow line in winter. He’d been back to America many times before, of course; theoretical physics was an international discipline. But he’d never returned to Seattle — not since the day his mother had so memorably bundled him up and stormed out of Hiram’s home.

  Hiram talked continually, peppering his son with questions.

  “So you feel settled in England?”

  “Well, you know about the climate problems. But even icebound, Oxford is a fine place to live. Especially since they abolished private cars inside the ring road, and.”

  “Those stuck-up British toffs don’t pick on you for that French accent?”

  “Father, I am French. That’s my identity.”

  “But not your citizenship.” Hiram slapped his son’s thigh. “You’re an American. Don’t forget that.” He glanced at David more warily. “And are you still practising?”

  David smiled. “You mean, am I still a Catholic? Yes, Father.”

  Hiram grunted. “That bloody mother of yours. Biggest mistake I ever made was shackling myself to her without taking account of her religion. And now she’s passed the God virus on to you.”

  David felt his nostrils flare. “Your language is offensive.”

  “…Yes. I’m sorry. So, England is a good place to be a Catholic nowadays?”

  “Since they disestablished the Church, England has acquired one of the healthiest Catholic communities in the world.”

  Hiram grunted. “You don’t often hear the words ‘healthy’ and ‘Catholic’ in the same sentence… We’re here.”

  They had reached a broad parking lot. The car pulled over. David climbed out after his father. They were close to the ocean here, and David was immediately immersed in chill, salt-laden air.

  The lot fringed a large open building, crudely constructed of concrete and corrugated metal, like an aircraft hangar. There was a giant corrugated door at one end, partly open, and robot trucks were hauling cartons into the building from a stack outside.

  Hiram led his son to a small, human-sized door cut in one wall; it was dwarfed by the scale of the structure. “Welcome to the centre of the universe.” Hiram looked abashed, suddenly. “Look, I dragged you out here without thinking. I know you’re just off your flight. If you need a break, a shower -”

  Hiram seemed full of genuine concern for his welfare, and David couldn’t resist a smile. “Maybe coffee, a little later. Show me your new toy.”

  The space within was cold, cavernous. As they walked across the dusty concrete floor their footsteps echoed. The roof was ribbed, and strip lights dangled everywhere, filling the vast volume with a cold, pervasive grey light. There was a sense of hush, of calm; David was reminded more of a cathedral than a technological facility.

  At the centre of the building a stack of equipment towered above the handful of technicians working here. David was a theoretician, not an experimentalist, but he recognized the paraphernalia of a high-energy experimental rig. There were subatomic-particle detectors — arrays of crystal blocks stacked high and deep — and boxes of control electronics piled up like white bricks, dwarfed by the detector array itself, but each itself the size of a mobile home.

  The technicians weren’t typical of a high-energy physics establishment, however. On average they seemed quite old — perhaps around sixty, given how hard it was to estimate ages these days.

  He raised this with Hiram.

  “Yeah. OurWorld makes the policy of hiring older workers anyhow. They’re conscientious, generally as smart as they ever were thanks to the brain chemicals they give us now, and grateful for a job. And in this case, most of the people here are victims of the SSC cancellation.”

  “The SSC — the Superconducting Super Collider?” A multi-billion-dollar particle-accelerator project that would have been built under a cornfield in Texas, had it not been canned by Congress in the 1990s.

  Hiram said, “A whole generation of American particle physicists was hit by that decision. They survived; they found jobs in industry and Wall Street and so forth. Most of them never got over their disappointment, however.”

  “But the SSC would have been a mistake. The linear accelerator technology that came along a few years later was far more effective, and cheaper. And besides most fundamental results in particle physics since 2010 or so have come from studies of high-energy cosmological events.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Not to these people. The SSC might have been a mistake. But it would have been their mistake. When I traced these guys and offered them a chance to come work in cutting-edge high-energy physics again they jumped at the chance.” He eyed his son. “You know, you’re a smart boy, David.”

  “I’m not a boy.”

  “You had the kind of education I could never even have dreamed of. But there’s a lot I could teach you even so. Like how to handle people.” He waved a hand at the technicians. “Look at these guys. They’re working for a promise: for dreams of their youth, aspiration, self-fulfilment. If you can find some way to tap into that, you can get people to work like pit ponies, and for pennies.”

  David followed him, frowning.

  They reached a guardrail, and one grey-haired technician — with a curt, somewhat awed nod at Hiram — handed them hard hats. David fitted his gingerly to his head.

  David leaned over the rail. He could smell machine oil, insulation, cleaning solvents. From here he could see that the detector array actually extended some distance below the ground surface. At the centre of the pit was a tight knot of machinery, dark and unfamiliar. A puff of vapour, like wispy steam, billowed from the core of the machinery: cryogenics, perhaps. There was a whirr, somewhere above. David looked up to see a beam crane in action, a long steel beam that extended over the detector array, with a grabbing arm at the end.

  Hiram murmured, “Most of this stuff is just detectors of one kind or another, so we can figure out what is going on — particularly when something goes wrong.” He pointed at the knot of machinery at the core of the array. “That is the business end. A cluster of superconducting magnets.”

  “Hence the cryogenics.”

  “Yes. We make our big electromagnetic fields in there, the fields we use to build our buckyball Casimir engines.” There was pride in his voice — justifiable, thought David. “This was the very site where we
opened up that first wormhole, back in the spring. I’m getting a plaque put up, you know, one of those historic markers. Call me immodest. Now we’re using this place to push the technology further, as far and as fast as we can.”

  David turned to Hiram. “Why have you brought me out here?”

  “…Just the question I was going to ask.”

  The third voice, utterly unexpected, clearly startled Hiram.

  A figure stepped out of the shadows of the detector stack, and came to stand beside Hiram. For a moment David’s heart pumped, for it might have been Hiram’s twin — or his premature ghost. But at second glance David could detect differences; the second man was considerably younger, less bulky, perhaps a little taller, and his hair was still thick and glossy black.

  But those ice blue eyes, so unusual given an Asian descent, were undoubtedly Hiram’s.

  “I know you,” David said.

  “From tabloid TV?”

  David forced a smile. “You’re Bobby.”

  “And you must be David, the half-brother I didn’t know I had, until I had to learn it from a journalist.” Bobby was clearly angry, but his self-control was icy.

  David realized he had landed in the middle of a complicated family row — worse, it was his family.

  Hiram looked from one to the other of his sons. He sighed. “David, maybe it’s time I bought you that coffee.”

  •

  The coffee was among the worst David had ever tasted. But the technician who served the three of them hovered at the table until David took his first sip. This is Seattle, David reminded himself; here, quality coffee has been a fetish among the social classes who man installations like this for a generation. He forced a smile. “Marvellous,” he said.