“Hmph. We’ll see about that.” Teresa brushed a wisp of cobweb from her eyes. As Alex turned to go, she paused to watched the tiny shred of spider silk flutter, descend to touch the round globe, and instantly disappear.
It was, indeed, a potent, bitter brew, and Teresa rather liked it. Still, for appearances she said the stuff explained a lot about Englishmen. It obviously stunted your emotional growth. He only laughed and leaned over to refresh her glass.
Teresa sat in the shuttle’s command chair while Alex perched cross-legged in the copilot’s seat. Neither of them felt any particular need to fill the long silences. So it often was, in Teresa’s experience, between people who had faced death together.
“You’re worried,” she surmised at last, after one extended pause. “You don’t think the deal can hold.”
“It was hopeless from the start.” Alex shook his head. “In retrospect, I can’t understand why it took so long for Spivey to find us. But at least we were a small conspiracy, operating on a shoestring. Now? Our beams are producing detectable phenomena all over the globe. The alliances can’t keep a thing like this under wraps, not with everyone on Earth prying to find out what’s going on.”
“Then why did Spivey and Hutton agree to try?”
He shrugged. “Oh, it seemed a good idea at the time. Take care of Beta, get the situation stabilized, then present the world with a fait accompli. And of course it’s giving us a chance to characterize the singularity, to prove its origin. Our technical report should let the science tribunals extend inspection to the Earth’s core, preventing any new arms race over gazers and such. Then, in an open debate, it could be decided whether to keep Beta around, as a possible planetary-defense weapon, or try to expel it forever.”
“Sounds reasonable.” Teresa nodded, grudgingly.
“The only problem is, that time’s already come! Beta’s relatively stable, I have data for a full report, and I’m certain the other great powers have already started clandestine graviscan programs of their own. There was a pulse from Nihon, yesterday—” He shook his head. “I wish I knew what Spivey was waiting for.”
“Did you hear about the meeting at the U.N.?” Teresa asked. “Everyone, all the delegates, were talking in parables and double-entendres. Moralizing and posturing, and saying nothing any of the reporters could sink their teeth into.”
“Hm.” Alex frowned. She sensed him begin to say something, stop, and then start again.
“I… I’ve started fighting him, you know.”
“Fighting who?” Then she stared. “You’re fighting Spivey! But how?”
“I’m tweaking the beams from South Africa and Rapa Nui, the ones I still control. Using them to pump Beta’s orbit higher… out to where it’ll lose mass faster. And also where the damn thing doesn’t leave those weird tracks in the lower mantle anymore—”
She interrupted. “Has he reacted? Has Spivey noticed?”
Alex laughed. “Oh has he! Got George to send me a telex. Here’s a copy.” He pulled the flimsy sheet from a breast pocket. “They’re both urging me to go along… not to let the side down. You know? All hang together or we’ll surely hang separately?
“Then, this morning, New Guinea fired three microseconds late on a routine run.”
“What did that do?”
He shook his head. “It pulled energy from Beta’s orbit, Rip, letting it fall a little lower. Seems our colonel isn’t about to let his mirror lose mass. Not while there are more experiments to run.”
Silence reigned for many heartbeats, their only measure of time’s passage. Finally, Teresa asked, “What can Glenn be trying to do? Surely he can’t be planning to use it as a weapon? His superiors can’t be that mad!”
Alex stared out through the streaked windshield, beyond a stretch of black-topped runway to a bluff of scrub grass growing scraggly out of the thin volcanic soil. Beyond lay the foam-capped waters of the ash-gray Pacific.
“I wish I knew. But whatever he’s after, I’m afraid you and I are mere pawns.”
□ How hot is it? You folks really want to know how hot it is? I see farmer Izzy Langhorne sitting under a cottonwood right now, having his lunch while watching the show. Hey, Izzy, how dumpit hot would you spec it?
Aw, no, Izzy, gimme euthanasia! Not with your mouth full! We’ll go back to Izzy after he’s cleaned up. Lessee now, gettin’ a shout-back from Jase Kramer, over by Sioux Falls. Looks like you’re having some trouble with your tractor, Jase.
“No, Larry. It’s just you… have to climb under the suspension of these Chulalongkorn Sixes and clear the deadwood by hand. See, it gets trapped over here by the—”
Well that’s great, Jase. Nice of you to take the holo under with you so we could all get a look. Now tell me, how hot is it?
“Well, hell, Larry. Yesterday my chickens laid hard-boiled eggs …”
Thank you, Jase Kramer. Whew. Send that codder some relief!
Now hold it just a millie… here’s an actinic flash for you current affairs junkies. Seems the latest round of those secrety-secret talks — pardon my urdu — have broken up for lunch over in New York village. Our affiliates there have joined the mob of news-ferret types chasing the delegates to the deli. For a direct feed, shout a hop-link to News-Line 82. For play-by-play plus color, call Rap-250. Or you can cake-and-eat-it. Just hang around with us while your unit does a rec-dense for later.
While we’re talking about the gremlin crisis, have any of you out there seen anything new today? Anything that might’ve been a gremmie? Yesterday Betty Remington of St. Low showed us a perfectly circular patch of amaranth where the kernels had all been mysteriously turned inside out. And in Barstow, Sam Chu claims one of his prize brood carps up and exploded, right in front of him! Day-pay-say!
So who’s got an opinion out there? You know the code, let’s hear the mode…
• HOLOSPHERE
Jen remembered what a wise man told her long ago when she was similarly obsessed with the problem of consciousness. It had been an astronomer friend of Thomas’s, a very great mind, she recalled, who listened patiently for hours as she expounded the hottest new concepts of cognition and perception. Then, when at last she ran out of steam, he commented. “I’m uneducated in formal psychology. But in my experience, people generally react to any new situation in one of four ways:
Aha!… Ho-hum… Oy Vey!… and Yum, yum…
“These illustrate the four basic states of consciousness, dear Jennifer. All else is mere elaboration.”
Years later, Jen still found the little allegory delightful. It made you stop and ponder. But did those four “states” actually map onto human thought? Did they lead to new theories that might be tested by experiment? She recalled the astronomer’s smile that evening. Clearly he knew the deeper truth — that all theories are only metaphors, at best helpful models of the world. And even his clever notion was no more real than a mote in his own eye.
There are one hundred ways to view Mount Fuji, as Hokusai showed us. And each of them is right.
Jen wished she had someone like that old astronomer to talk to now.
Today I’m the aged professor with no one to talk to but a bright high school dropout. So who is there to give me reality checks? To tell me if I’m off on a wild goose chase?
She was treading a narrow path these days, skirting all the pitfalls of pure reason — that most seductive and deceptive of human pastimes. Jen had always believed philosophers ought to have their heads knocked repeatedly, lest they become trapped in the rhythms of their own if-thens. But now she was hardly one to cast stones. While crises roiled on all sides, the compass of her own existence contracted, as if her once far-flung reach were drawing inward now, preparing for some forthcoming contest or battle.