"What do you find amusing?" Showm asked.
"That perhaps not all Terrans are so alien in their philosophy. You should meet Xyen Chien, who's with Christian and his group."
"The Chinese scientist?"
"Yes. She's like you in many ways. She says the world must change as it moves out of its adolescence and comes of age. I think you and she would get along. You'd understand each other."
A serving platter with a domed cover glided silently down from the level above and behind them to hover by the end of the table. The cover opened to reveal a jug containing a hot reddish beverage, two drinking goblets, some ancillary dishes and bowls, and a dish of what looked like confectionary. Mildred helped Showm set the items out on the table and load the things that they had finished with. The platter closed itself and departed. Showm remained strangely silent throughout.
"Now it's my turn," Mildred said. "What are you thinking?"
"This is called ule. The small cup is to try a sample and blend ingredients to suit your taste. The colored flakes range from tart to sweet, and the syrups add body and smoothness. When you know what you like, you can mix it again in the goblet."
Mildred made a few choices and tried the result. It was sweet and spicy with a delicious reverberation of aftertastes that died away like echos in a cathedral. "You haven't answered my question," she said as she began mixing a larger version.
Showm made her own selection without needing to use the sampling cup. "I was thinking about what you said… Earth moving out of its adolescence and entering maturity. There was a world of humans who would have passed through that phase long ago. Yes, their roots lay in the predatory jungles of Earth, and our ancestors abandoned them to perish as genetically impaired biological misfits. But they didn't perish. With no choice but to play by the rules of the environment that they found themselves in, they braved and survived every challenge that it could throw at them. They emerged finally to dominate that world in a way which was, despite all the things you've heard me say, stirringly magnificent." Showm was talking, of course, about the Lunarians, evolved from terrestrial primates that the ancient Ganymeans had transported to Minerva. She went on, "But they overcame the limitations that my ancestors inflicted on them, and developed a cooperative technological culture in a fraction of the time that it had taken Ganymeans to progress to the same level. It was astounding. You see what I'm saying, Mildred? This Terran compulsion to fight adversity, the refusal to accept defeat, if tamed and directed at the real obstacles that stand in the way of life and the growth of consciousness and spirit, instead of against each other… it could prove a more potent force than anything we have encountered in all our explorations of the Galaxy."
"I've heard Christian talk along exactly those lines," Mildred said. She hoped this wasn't going to turn into a Thurien guilt-trip over the destruction of Minerva. Had she been the one who had gotten them onto it? She was unable to recall. It was time to change the subject before they got morbid, she decided. Showm sipped her ule, testing it, then added a drop more of one of the syrups and stirred it in. "Is your whole life taken up with public affairs, Frenua?" Mildred asked her. "How about personal things? Do you have any family?"
"Children, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Oh, indeed. I have a son who's away on a distant world these days, working among the natives. They're quite primitive there. And two daughters. One excels me by far in musical talent. The younger one is in Thurios, raising a family of her own."
"So, their father?… Are you together still?" Mildred had heard no reference to another occupant of the place.
"That was a phase of living that we completed and fulfilled. But there comes a time when we are called to do other things. He is finding his inner self now. But we remain companions in life. How about you?"
Mildred waved a hand to and fro. "Oh… a few flirtatious things in younger years. But I really don't think it's for me, you know. I enjoy solitude with my own thoughts, and the freedom to do things in my own peculiar ways. I don't think I've met a man yet that I didn't end up driving to distraction. Did you know that the only reason I ended up on Thurien was because Christian was trying to get rid of me?"
"No. How could that be?"
Mildred related the story and was relieved to see that it got Frenua chuckling-at least, shaking and making funny cackling sounds that she took to be a Ganymean chuckle-and away from her threatened downward slide over Minerva. Suddenly the thread of a thought came into Mildred's mind that if Eesyan, Christian, and Victor got their machine working, then maybe they could go back there somehow and change what had happened. But she didn't want to get Frenua onto that topic again. "Are you going to let me hear some of this music that you compose?" she asked instead.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Overwhelmingly, it was the short-term capriciousness of human actions that produced the kind of disparities among local time lines that would be experienced as the clashing of incompatible events. But given that the effect was confined to a localized domain, even a complex physical device could be expected to function consistently. While the innumerable quantum transitions involved in its existence and operation would continue to define realities of their own that were, it was true, theoretically discrete, within the immediate locality of the surroundings and the recent past, the likelihood of their adding up to anything discernibly different at the macroscopic level was remote.
Eesyan therefore concluded that the indicated course of action would be to put everything at Quelsang on hold and relocate the work off-planet where it could be directed remotely. Indeed, the scaled-up MP2 Multiporter already under design was intended to do just that, but for a different reason: to safeguard researchers from the catastrophic consequences if a sizable object from a parallel experiment happened to materialize within solid matter. But when Eesyan mentioned the prospect matter-of-factly in the course of a discussion in the Terrans' office in a way that presumed such a decision to be as good as agreed, he was taken aback to discover that they saw no real need for halting the Quelsang program at all.
"Why?" was Hunt's simple rejoinder. Hunt's assistant was there too; also the German and the female scientist from China.
It had seemed obvious. Eesyan made a helpless gesture. "Well… you've all seen the kind of chaos it can create around itself. How would it be possible to conduct any work that makes sense with that going on? We've got two extra versions of an autograph book from other realities. Suppose they had been copies of you or me, or anyone else out there?" He motioned toward Hunt. "The Professor Danchekker that you talked to here in this room is now in another universe. What if another one hadn't replaced him in this one?"
"So now we're beginning to understand it better," Hunt said.
Sonnebrandt came in, "We can reduce the operating power to keep the core of the convergence zone within the chamber. That would eliminate the risk of any major discrepancies like the ones you're talking about. Maybe some slight fringe effects, yes."
"Disagreements about minor things, possibly," Chien said. "But none of us will be blaming each other now." She paused, seeing that Eesyan was readjusting his view only with some effort, and then went on, "Professor Danchekker's cousin even thinks it happens all the time anyway as a result of quantum fluctuations, but it took something on this scale to get our attention. And I think she may have a point."