“I’m listening. We’re listening, Sean.”
Gogarty’s eyes widened. “The’… noocytes? Have they responded?”
“You haven’t given them much to respond to. Do go on, Professor.”
“Until now, the densest single unit of information processing on this planet was the human brain… slight nod to cetaceans, perhaps, but not nearly as much stimulus and processing going on, much more insular I’d say. Four, five billion of us, thinking every day. Small effects. Time stresses, little tremors as it were, not even measurable. Our powers of observation—our power to formulate effective theories—is not sufficiently intense to bring about the effects I’ve discovered in my work. Nothing in the solar system, perhaps not even the galaxy!”
“You are rambling, Professor Gogarty,” Paulsen-Fuchs said. Gogarty gave him an irritated nod and fastened his eyes on Bernard’s, pleading with him.
He speaks of interest.
“He’s getting to the point, Paul, don’t rush him.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much, Michael. What I am saying is that we now have conditions sufficient to cause the effects I’ve described in my papers. Not just four, five billion individual cogitators, Michael, but trillions… perhaps billions of trillions. Most in North America. Tiny, very dense, focusing their attention on all aspects of their surroundings, from the very very small to the very large. Observing everything in their environment, and theorizing about the things they do not observe. Observers and theorizers can fix the shape of events, of reality, in quite significant ways. There is nothing, Michael, but information. All particles, all energy, even space and time itself, are ultimately nothing but information. The very nature, the timbre of the universe can be altered, Michael, right now. By the noocytes.”
“Yes,” Bernard said. “Still listening.”
Something not stated… evidence…
“Two days ago,” Gogarty said, becoming more animated, his face reddening with excitement, “the USSR apparently launched a full-scale nuclear strike on North America. Unlike the Panama strike, not one of the warheads went off.”
Bernard looked at Paulsen-Fuchs first with pique, then amusement. He hadn’t been told a thing about this.
“The USSR is not that bad at building warheads, Michael. There should have been holocaust. There wasn’t. Now, I have compiled several striking graphs from observations and information. One very important source was an American reconnaissance aircraft carrying scientists and reporters over North America, with a live broadcast going to Europe by satellite. The aircraft was in the middle of the United States when the strike was attempted. The plane apparently went down, but not because of the strike itself. Nobody is sure why it crashed, but the way its telemetry and communications were cut off… The timing, the queueing, fits my theory precisely. Not only that, but in places around the globe, very peculiar effects were felt. Radio silences, power cut-offs, meteorological phenomena. All the way out to geosynchronous orbit—two satellites separated by twelve thousand kilometers malfunctioned. I put the effects and coordinates of the incidents into our computer and it produced this profile of the four-space field.” He lifted a blown-up photo of a computer image from his satchel.
Bernard squinted to see it more clearly. His vision suddenly sharpened. He could make out the grain of the photo paper. “Like a weightlifter’s nightmare,” he said.
“Yes, a bit twisty around the torus,” Gogarty agreed. “This is the only figure that makes sense in light of the information. And no one can make sense of this figure—but me. I’m afraid it’s made my stock jump a bit in the scientific marketplace. If I’m correct, and I believe I am, we are in for a lot more trouble than we think, Michael… or a lot less, depending on what sort of trouble you’re anticipating.”
Bernard could feel the diagram being intensely absorbed. The noocytes left off their constant tinkering with his mentality for seconds.
“You’re giving my small colleagues a lot to think about, Sean.”
“Yes, and their reactions?”
Bernard closed his eyes.
After several seconds had passed, Bernard opened his eyes again and shook his head. “Not a word,” he said. “Sorry, Sean.”
“Well, I’d not expected much.”
Paulsen-Fuchs looked at his watch. “Is that all, Dr. Gogarty?”
“No. Not quite. Michael, the plague cannot spread beyond North America. Or rather, beyond a circle of seven thousand kilometers diameter, if the noocytes are averaged out over that area of the globe.”
“Why not?”
“Because of what I’ve been saying. There are too many of them already. If they were to expand beyond that radius, they would create something very peculiar—a portion of space-time much too closely observed. The territory would not be able to evolve. Too many brilliant theorists, don’t you see! There would be a kind of frozen state, a breakdown on the quantum level. A singularity. A black hole of thought. Time would be severely distorted and the effects would destroy the Earth. I suspect they have limited their growth, realizing this.” Gogarty wiped his brow with a kerchief and sighed again.
“How did they prevent the warheads from detonating?” Bernard asked.
“I’d say they’ve learned how to create isolated pockets of observation, very powerful. They delude trillions of observers into establishing a small, temporary pocket of altered space-time. A pocket where physical processes are sufficiently different to prevent warheads from detonating. The pocket doesn’t last long, of course—the universe violently disagrees with it—but it lasts just long enough to prevent holocaust.”
“There’s one crucial question,” he continued. “Are your noocytes in communication with North America?”
Bernard listened internally, and received no response. “I don’t know,” he said.
“They can be in communication, you know, without using radio or any such familiar means. If they can control the effects they have on the local manifold, they could create waves of subtly disrupted time. I’m afraid we don’t have instruments sensitive enough to detect such signals.”
Paulsen-Fuchs stood and tapped his watch meaningfully.
“Paul,” Bernard said, “is that why my news has been cut back? Why I didn’t hear about the Russian attack?”
Paulsen-Fuchs didn’t answer. “Is there anything you can do for Mr. Gogarty?” he asked.
“Not immediately. I—”
“Then we will leave you to your contemplation.”
“Wait a second, Paul. What in hell is going on? Mr. Gogarty would obviously like to spend much more time with-me, and I with him. Why all the limitations?”
Gogarty glanced between them, acutely embarrassed.
“Security, Michael,” Paulsen-Fuchs said. “Little pitchers, you know.”
Bernard’s reaction was a sudden, short wry bark of a laugh. “Pleasant meeting with you, Professor Gogarty,” he said.
“And you,” Gogarty said. The viewing chamber sound was cut off and the two men departed. Bernard walked behind the lavatory curtain and urinated. The urine was reddish-purple.
You are not in charge of them? They command you?
–If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m quite mortal. What’s with my piss? It’s purple.
Phenyls and ketones being discharged. We must SPEND MORE TIME studying your hierarchic status.
“I’m low monkey,” he said aloud. “Very low monkey now.”
35
The fire crackled lustily and cast broad, dim tree-shadows across the historic old buildings of Fort Tejon. April Ulam stood facing away from the pit with arms wrapped around herself, her tattered gown rippling slightly in the chill evening breeze. Jerry poked the fire with a stick and looked at his twin. “So what did we see?”