“Then we’re going to have to retake the gate,” Bill answered. “Wherever it is, from Eustis to Saskatchewan. And the only way we’ve been able to do that is by nukes.”
“And we’re only set up at the active gates, anyway,” the national security advisor pointed out. “Dr. Weaver, are you sure they won’t destabilize all the gates with one nuke?”
“No, ma’am,” Bill said. “But I wouldn’t have expected them to destabilize the way they did at all. It may destabilize some, it may destabilize all of them. It may only destabilize the local gate. It’s something that we just don’t know and haven’t experimented with.”
“Could you?” the President asked.
“Certainly,” Bill replied. “Test it on one of the gates that is in an out-of-the-way area. Drop a nuke in it and see if it destabilizes the whole track.” He thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “I think Track Four would be best. There’s a gate in Northern Ohio, out in the country. The planet on the other side is a low atmospheric pressure planet with virtually no life. Certainly nothing sentient that we’ve encountered. Understand, sir, it will irradiate the immediate area on our side, just as the blast at Eustis irradiated Staunton. But we can do the test.”
“Nothing more remote?” the President asked.
“There are a couple of bosons out in the desert areas,” Bill said. “We could probably test open them and see what’s on the other side. Or, maybe, do a link between two bosons in deserted areas, but that would leave one nuke on the earth. I think that would definitely violate the test ban treaty.”
“Not to mention ruin any chance of reelection,” the President said, dryly. “Dr. Weaver, on my authority prepare to send a nuke through the Mississippi gate; get the Titcher over there off our backs for the time being at least. Cleanup can be arranged.” He reached into the interior pocket of his jacket, pulled out a card that looked somewhat like an American Express Gold Card and shook his head. “When I came into office, we were, more or less, at peace. Since then we’ve had 9/11, the Iraq War and now this. No President had authorized the use of a nuclear weapon since 1945. Now I’m getting to the point I’m wearing out the plastic on this thing. Dr. Weaver, find a better way. We must all pray to God that you find a better way.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Bill said. “And you should really talk to my counterpart among the Adar sometime, Mr. President.”
“Why?” the President asked, coldly.
“He said almost the same thing to me yesterday. That I should pray to God.”
“Mrs. Wilson, I really need to talk to Mimi alone,” Bill said.
As Mrs. Wilson had predicted, with the exception of very occasional “local interest” programming when the news was slow, and it had rarely been slow lately, the media seemed to have forgotten Mimi and Tuffy.
The Wilsons lived in a ranch house in west Orlando, an older neighborhood but pleasant and not run down, probably built during the first rush of construction after Disney World was completed. It had a pleasant “Old Florida” feel with oaks in the yard that had grown well in the succeeding thirty years.
The interior was neat as a pin and done in a country manner. Mimi had been carefully dressed for the interview in a flowery dress, Tuffy perched on her shoulder. She was seated on the same plaid couch that had been in the news broadcast, which turned out to be in a “Florida Room,” a room filled with windows to bring the light indoors. Bill sat to one side in an overstuffed, matching armchair. Mrs. Wilson was seated beside Mimi, on the far side from Tuffy he noticed, eyeing him warily.
“I don’t think that’s good,” Mrs. Wilson said. “I don’t think it’s proper.”
“Ma’am,” Bill said, as politely as he could. “I’m here at the direction of the President of the United States to ask Mimi some questions. If you want to stay, what you have to understand is that the questions, and any answers that I might get, are matters of National Security. You can’t ever talk about them.”
“You’re going to ask Mimi the questions, aren’t you?” Mrs. Wilson said, puzzled. “What about her talking about them?”
“I’ve got a feeling that she won’t,” Bill replied. “It has to do with Tuffy. I’ve met other aliens like him, I think. I need to ask him the questions, frankly. I’m just hoping that he’ll answer.”
“People have asked him things before,” Mrs. Wilson said.
“They’re not me,” Bill replied. “If you’re staying, you have to understand that this is like knowing the names of spies or knowing how to build nuclear weapons. You can’t ever let anyone know that you even know those things.”
“Do you?” Mimi asked, suddenly.
Bill looked at her and shrugged. “If I did, I couldn’t tell you.”
“Auntie,” Mimi said. “Tuffy asks you, nicely, if you could let us talk. Alone. He doesn’t think that you would like some of the things they have to talk about.”
“What about you, honey?” Mrs. Wilson asked.
“I’ll be okay, Auntie,” Mimi replied in very close to a monotone. “The Lord is my shepherd.”
Mrs. Wilson considered this carefully and then stood up. “You going to be long?”
“I doubt it,” Bill replied. “If we are, it’s going to have to be a very strange conversation.”
Mrs. Wilson, with occasional backward glances, left the room.
“What are you?” Mimi asked. “You’re a doctor you said.”
“I’m a physicist,” Bill answered. “I’m called a doctor because I went to college a lot.”
“What’s a physicist?” Mimi asked.
“A person who studies how the world works,” Bill answered. “Why gravity pulls things down.”
“Because it likes us,” Mimi answered then giggled. “Tuffy says that gravity is the world giving us a hug. I’m going to be a physicist, too, when I grow up. I need to know the words. For Tuffy. He’s smart, so smart I feel dumb all the time. But he helps me with my work. He doesn’t do it for me, but he explains how I can do it. School is getting pretty boring.”
“Have you told anyone else that?” Bill asked.
“No, Tuffy said I shouldn’t,” Mimi replied. “My teachers just think I’m really smart. They don’t know Tuffy’s smarter than them. He’s smarter than you, too. And he says he’s met you before. Not at the place where everything blew up. Someplace else. I don’t understand what he’s saying. Something about between the small bits.”
“In the space between the atoms,” Bill said, wonderingly.
“He says something like that. Even smaller.”
“Can you tell Tuffy I need to close the gates?” Bill said. “There are bad monsters coming through. They’ll destroy everything. I don’t think you would be killed, I think Tuffy would probably protect you. But everything else will be gone. There won’t be any colleges for you to go to.”
Mimi considered this carefully and then looked at the giant spider on her shoulder.
“Tuffy says I don’t know the words,” Mimi replied, softly. “I don’t know the mathematics. He’s been showing me some of it, but we’re not far beyond something called algebra. He says that’s not even close, yet. He can’t say the words.” She looked at the spider again and nodded.
“Tuffy says, when you take a grain of sand and cut it, then cut it again and again, getting smaller and smaller, when you get to the smallest bits that you can possibly cut. When you get to the bits that are smaller than those, bits that won’t cut because they flow away like air, like water, like trying to cut sunshine, that is the secret of closing the gates. But you need a lot of them. More than he thinks you can make. Enough that they get in the space between the gates, in the space between the smallest bits and smaller, and push the gates apart. The gates are the lock and the key to the lock as well.” Mimi grabbed her head and shook it, a faint trickle of tears coming out of her eyes.