"Not significantly," Eesyan answered. "Multiporting propagation is fast." He made a tossing-away motion with his six-fingered hand. "But we're working toward sending larger configurations of matter. We will upgrade the detectors to look for the same kind of thing, too, anyway. You never know. We might glimpse something passing through."
Hunt rested his elbows on the guard rail in front of them and snorted in a way that said this still took some effort to believe. By the strange reasoning that guided the planning, there would be little point in looking for objects from next door that they were not themselves yet in a position to send. He stared up at the resonator mountings, where the tubes emerged from overhead. That was where the energy was imparted and the matrix waves-"M-waves," by the terminology being formulated-generated to initiate the multiporting process. Thurien technicians assisted by maintenance robots were working on parts of the equipment. Josef was up there, too, with Chien, hovering in a Thurien gravitic bubble, to see what they could learn.
"So what happens finally to the extended structures that you've been sending?" Hunt asked Eesyan. "The molecular configurations."
"We've no way of knowing for sure. From what we can tell, they just keep going and disperse as an expanding wave function."
Hunt nodded distantly. How, then, had the relay device that had appeared in Earth orbit been able to maintain itself there long enough to initiate and support a dialogue? Did it mean that only objects that were complex enough to contain some means of "stopping" themselves somehow could be multiported into another reality in the meaningful sense of being able to stay there?
"There's a lot to be done yet," Eesyan said, as if reading his thoughts.
At that moment, VISAR came though via avco in Hunt's head to say he had a call from Mildred. Since it was disconcerting-and certainly not the best of manners-for someone to suddenly start talking to thin air when they were with company, VISAR would have announced the event to Eesyan, too. Such courtesies were not possible on Earth, where most people didn't have avcos behind their ears, which was another reason why Hunt generally refrained from using his when back home. Those who did were not the kind who worried unduly about manners anyway. He accepted, and Mildred appeared as a framed head and shoulders superposed in his visual field.
"Victor, hello. And how is the… what do you call it… multiporting… lab?" She had decided it would all be beyond her, and instead gone off with Danchekker somewhere in Thurios to meet some of the Thuriens that she wanted to get to know in connection with her book.
"It makes our national labs back home look like alchemy shops," Hunt replied. "And they got it up and running in less time than we'd have had committees arguing about it. How's it with the sociologists?"
"Oh, unbelievably useful! They're all so helpful! It's as if they have all the time in the world and nothing is so important that it can't be interrupted. Or is it just their way of being polite? I haven't really decided which yet. At first I thought it was a result of their ideas of what we'd call economics-or absence of them. You know what I mean-when anyone can have unlimited anything, you'd think that spending your life trying to get more would cease to mean anything, wouldn't you? But then, it isn't that way with us at all, is it? The more people get, it seems the meaner and nastier they become. I always found it was the poorest people who had nothing who were the most generous. So it must be something innately different in the Thurien nature."
The frame widened to include an image of Danchekker. "Get to the point," he muttered, at the same time sending Hunt a toothy grimace of a smile. "Vic, good day to you."
"So, what's up?" Hunt asked, taking the cue gratefully.
"Oh, I was just calling to remind you that it's close to ten," Mildred said.
"And?"
"You're due to meet us at ten."
"Where?"
"Well, not really actually 'meet.'… You know, in one of those couplers, or whatever you call them."
"What for?"
Mildred looked puzzled. "We arranged to go on a tour of VISAR space. You and Christian said you'd show me some Thurien planets, and we were going to say hello to the Ganymean friends of yours in the ship that's on Jevlen."
Hunt's brow furrowed. "There must be some confusion. I've no idea what you're talking about."
Danchekker interjected, "We called you this morning, Vic. The h-space tour, with a visit to the Shapieron."
Hunt searched back through his memory but could recall nothing. He shook his head helplessly. "Well, sure, I'll come along, no problem. It would be great to see Garuth and his people again. And I'm sure you mean it. But I honestly never said anything about this."
"Well, we're about ready to depart," Danchekker said. "But we'll wait until you get yourself organized." He sounded a trifle irritable, as if he didn't believe Hunt's denial and saw it as a somewhat lame excuse for having forgotten.
"I'll be right there," Hunt said, and cleared down. He looked back at Eesyan. "Would you excuse me? Chris and Mildred are asking if I could join them at short notice about something."
"As you wish," Eesyan replied.
"Where are the nearest couplers?"
"There's one right here." Eesyan indicated a partitioned space next to the monitoring panels. "It's free now."
Hunt took his leave and entered. He felt a little irked by Danchekker's attitude of uncompromising certainty, when it was obvious there was some kind of mixup. Could he really be getting that doddery? he asked himself. But the flicker of doubt passed. No, the downhill bike ride felt smooth and reassuring, without wobbles, he decided as he eased himself back into the recliner. He hadn't forgotten anything.
CHAPTER NINE
Vranix was an old Thurien city located on one of the northern continents, famous for its art centers and museums, and as a cultural repository. It was also noted for some of the most spectacular Thurien architecture, which in the years of the city's growth had flourished as perhaps the most extreme of Thurien art forms at the time. Hunt and Danchekker had "been there" before, in their first virtual visit to Thurien. It seemed a suitable place to include in the itinerary that she and Danchekker still insisted Hunt had helped draw up to give Mildred a preliminary overview of Thurien society-but by unspoken mutual assent they had stopped talking about it. In the evening they would rejoin the rest of the group physically for dinner.
They were standing in a large, saucer-shaped space, inside which circles of tiered seating rose to an enclosing rim. Hunt and Danchekker watched as Mildred gazed up at the three slim spires of what looked like pink ivory, converging above their heads before blending into an inverted cascade of terraces and levels broadening and unfolding upward for an inestimable distance… And then she frowned in puzzlement. For beyond, where the sky should have been, the scene mushroomed out into a fusion of forms and structures of staggering dimensions extending as far as the eye could see in one direction, while forming the shore of a distant ocean in the other. They were looking over the entire city of Vranix. But it was all hanging over their heads, upside down. They waited, seeing how long it would take Mildred to figure it out.
"My God!" she said after a lengthy pause. "All that topsy-turvy wonderland we came through inside. It turned us completely over somehow, and we didn't realize it… at least, I didn't. But you said you'd been here before. This has to be underneath. We've walked out like flies on a ceiling."
"Right on," Hunt complimented. The three spires "rising" around them surmounted an enormous tower dominating the city, and supported a circular platform that contained the place they were in-actually a small amphitheater used for various events and social gatherings. But the amphitheater was on the underside of the platform, not on top.