“This is true, ordinarily,” Brad admitted carefully. “The ‘kinks’ our instrument detects are crowded. But while raw light is superior both for short work and long range, definition suffers in the intermediate range of say, one light-minute to a hundred thousand light-years. The macronic imposition, in contrast, is, for reasons we have yet to understand, more durable. We find the macrons in a beam emanating from a thousand light-years away to be almost as distinct as those from our own sun’s field. The same is true for virtually any galactic distance. As our range increases—”
“I’m with you. You can shout down the hall, but you need a phone for the next city, even if it sounds tinny, and it works the same for the next continent. Now that term you used — macron — that sounds like a thing, not a quality.”
“Yes. Our nomenclature is vague because our comprehension is vague. We appear to be dealing also with the particle aspect of light, more than with the wave, and perhaps with particles of gravitation. That may be the reason the effect appears to be independent of the square-cube law.”
“Mate a photon to a gravitron and breed a macron,” Borland remarked. “Damn interesting. I can see the implications of such interaction between light and gravity, untrained as I am in quantum mechanics.” Untrained but hardly ignorant, Ivo thought. “So you either get all your macron, or none of it,” the Senator continued after a pause. “But how can you get pictures of objects on or inside a planet, where there is no light?”
“The turbulence is removed from the source of the field, since it is equivalence that counts. Even an object in a planet has mass of its own, and its field interacts with that of the planet and of neighboring objects. At some point there will be an interaction that occurs in light — and some of the resultant macrons will reach us, however far away we are. It is only necessary for our receiver and equipment to be sufficiently sensitive. A computer stage is required for the initial rectification, and another to sort out and classify the myriad fragmentary images obtained. It is not a simple process. But once complete—”
“You are able, with your macroscope, to inspect any point in space — or on Earth?”
Brad nodded.
“I observed your emblem.”
“We do not use it that way,” Brad said shortly.
Ivo realized that they were talking about the platinum-plated shoveclass="underline" the S D P S. Who could fathom its meaning by guesswork? Evidently the Senator understood the initials well enough. Perhaps he had prior information? He sounded less and less amateurish to Ivo. Had Brad met his match?
“Naturally not,” Borland was saying. “Certain persons might not take kindly to such observation. Some might even feel so strong a need to protect their privacy that they would institute stringent measures. Do you follow me?”
“Yes,” Brad said, his tone showing his disgust. The gad had not been swatted yet, though the gadfly had merged with the background.
“No you don’t. Have you ever lived in one of facing tenements? Your window opening to a courtyard of windows?”
“No.”
“You missed a good education, lad.” Borland looked around. “Anybody else?”
The scientists of the station stood awkwardly.
“In a tenement,” he repeated softly. “Anybody.”
A brown hand went up from the doorway. It was Fred Blank, of the maintenance department, also table-tennis champion. His signal was tentative, as though he didn’t like calling attention to himself at such a gathering.
Borland faced him. “Ever use the glasses?”
Blank looked sullen.
“Or maybe a cheap telescope?” Borland persisted. “Yeah, you know what I mean. Ten, twenty, maybe a hundred windows, depending on your location, and maybe half with no shades. Who wastes dough on shades, on nigger wages? Some girls don’t know they’re putting on a show. Some don’t care. Some figure it’s good for business. Same for some men. And family fights are fair game for capacity audience.” He returned to Brad. “You know how you cure a scoper?”
“I’d call the police.”
Borland wheeled to point at Blank. “That right, soul brother?”
Blank shook his head no. He was, reluctantly, smiling now.
“Yeah, you know.” Borland had assumed complete control of the dialogue. “You was there, Kilroy. You had the education. Calling cop ain’t in the book.”
The scientists of the station stood mute, except for those translating for their companions. Borland was showing them all up for impractical theoreticians.
“Now you begin to follow, maybe. To put it in highbrow for you: mass voyeurism is a typical consequence of the cybernetic revolution, and you aren’t going to curb it by invoking prerevolution methods. Back in the old days when we were nomads scrunching in tents, anybody poke his snoot in your door uninvited, you bash it in with your horny fist. The agricultural revolution changed all that, made cities possible — and cities are by definition crowded. The industrial revolution, maybe five thousand years later, made it ten times worse, because then every Joe had the wherewithal to poke into his neighbor’s business with impunity. The cybernetic revolution really tied it, because then that average Joe had the wherewithal and the time to pry — and nobody pays for a canned show when there’s a live one free.
“Now we’ve got the superscope, and we can diddle in our stellar neighbor’s business, as though our own weren’t enough. Now how do you figure a smart ET who likes his privacy is going to stop you from peeking — when there’s maybe a fifteen-thousand-year time-delay?”
The station personnel looked at each other in dismay. Obvious — yet none of them had thought of it! A mind-destroying logic-chain that wiped out the peeping tom, wherever and whenever he might be. The most direct and realistic answer to snooping.
Borland waited for the babel of translation and discussion to die away. The men who had studied him with veiled contempt showed respect now, and the Russian had stopped smiling. “Now, comrades, suppose we forget about preconceptions and tackle the main problem. I know most of your governments better than you do — yes, even yours, Ivan — because that is my profession. Politics. I also know something of human nature — the reality, not the theory — and thereby it figures I know something too of alien nature. You’re in trouble here, and so am I in certain respects you wouldn’t care about. Why don’t we forget our differences, pool our resources, and find out what we can come up with? Maybe we can help each other a little.”
Men looked at each other over the renewed murmur of the translations. Tentative smiles broke out. “Maybe we can, Senator,” Brad allowed.
Borland spoke to his helper. “Go hold a preliminary press conference, kid. Tell ’em what the Senator means to do — but stay well clear of the facts. Irritate ’em if they get nosy. You know the routine.” The flunky left without a word.
“Li’l wonder, ain’t he?” Borland remarked. “Took me years to find a foil like that. Now where’s this tape?”
“Tape?”
“Lad, my reconnaissance is not that clumsy. The recording you have of the destroyer. The one that clouds men’s minds, ha-ha-ha. The Shadow knows.”
“It isn’t a tape, or even a recording,” Brad said. “We can’t record it — at least, what we take down doesn’t have the effect. The — meaning doesn’t register.”
“But you can pipe it in here live, right? No sense inspecting a dead virus. We want to know what makes it kick. It only comes in on one station, right? And it’s continuous; you can tune it in any time?”
“One segment of the macroscopic band, yes. The center segment, where reception is strongest. The one we could use most effectively — if we could only tune the destroyer out.”