"Connecting all the VISARs together," Duncan said in a slow voice. He stared at her, obviously fascinated by the thought. It evidently hadn't occurred to him before. As the junior element of the team, he and Sandy had been delegated the chore of organizing the work space that the Terran group would be using. Things there were going smoothly, which didn't leave much to report, and they were happy to leave the talking to others. Sonnebrandt and Chien were strangely quiet, and Hunt thought he detected some strain between them. Danchekker was absorbed in investigating the Thurien organic preparations. Hunt stared at Mildred, his mind boggling at what she had just said. It hadn't occurred to him either.
She went on, "But the part about it that I don't buy, I'm afraid, is this business about every one of these little jiggly… what do you call them? The changes that can go one way or another."
"Quantum events?" Hunt supplied.
"Yes. I just can't accept that they lead to every reality that could possibly exist. Every combination that all the atoms that make up the universe could conceivably create. That's how you're saying it is, isn't it?"
"It's what the mathematics says," Hunt replied, treating it cautiously. He didn't want to get in a situation of having to contradict.
"Well, I'm not a mathematician," Mildred declared. "So I don't have to believe it,"
Danchekker eyed her curiously for a moment, seemingly thought better of getting involved, and returned his attention to dissecting a bulbous curiosity garnished with a yellow sauce, vaguely suggestive of a purple artichoke. Hunt smiled. "Numbers that are totally beyond anything you can grasp are just something you learn to live with after a while in this business," he told Mildred.
She shook her head. "It's not the numbers. It's the believability. You're telling me that every universe that could possibly physically happen does happen somewhere. But I don't believe it. I don't believe that a universe exists in which, say, my books are printed with all the pages blank, and they're stocked on shelves, and customers buy them. You see what I mean?" She looked around the table, inviting anyone to comment. Nobody did. "Your mathematics might say there's nothing to stop quantum… jiggles from making atoms come together to make a universe like that, but I don't believe it will happen. It just doesn't make any sense. The people in it would never behave that way."
Hunt stared at her while he thought to compose a reply… but then found that he couldn't compose one. She'd obviously missed a point somewhere… but he was unable to pinpoint exactly what. He needed time to think about this, he realized.
"But I've listened to too much of all this today," Mildred went on. "It was fascinating to meet some of the Ganymeans from the Shapieron, but I didn't understand a lot of what you were saying with them either. The most interesting for me were that couple, right at the beginning, in that upside-down superbowl in Vranix. Philosophers and artists," she said, addressing the ones around her who hadn't been there. "They've retired to live on an incredible world of rain forests and mountains that we also saw. They want to discover their inner nature. It seems that Thuriens see that as the main purpose in life. I've always thought it."
Hunt smiled again, amused at Mildred's flights of imagination. "It wasn't a couple," he reminded her. "Just Wyarel. He was waiting for his wife to show up."
Mildred gave him a reproachful look. "What are you taking about, Victor? They were both there. Asayi was charming. Surely you couldn't forget that gold and lilac gown that she was wearing. It was gorgeous!"
Hunt hesitated, not sure how to handle this. The evening seemed determined to get him into an argument over something. "I'm sorry, but you must have made this up somehow. Wyarel was alone at Vranix… He was still waiting for Asayi when we left."
"Victor, I don't understand…"
"Cousin Mildred is correct, Vic," Danchekker said quietly. "We talked with both of them. You complimented Asayi on the gown yourself." He was giving Hunt a worried look, but at the same time shook his head almost imperceptibly, indicating that it was not something to make an issue of now. Hunt sat back in his chair and finished the rest of his meal in relative silence. He was as sure of himself as he had been that morning when Mildred and Danchekker called him at the Multiporter, insisting that he had agreed to accompany them.
"VISAR, you handle all the neural traffic involved in these situations," Hunt said. He had brooded for some time after getting back to his room at the Waldorf, then told VISAR of the problem. It was still troubling him. "Do you keep records of what takes place? That would be the way to resolve something like this."
"No, I don't," VISAR replied. "The purpose is purely to provide a communications medium between users."
Hunt had been fairly sure that was the case. It was more a way of broaching the subject. "But could you, if a user asked? Suppose I wanted you to keep a log of everything you channel into my datastream?"
"That would necessarily involve other users, too," VISAR pointed out.
"Does that mean you couldn't?"
"I'm not permitted to. It would require a change of standards and operating directives from the Thurien authorities who decide those things. And a change like that would not be approved easily-if it were ever approved at all." In a mild dig at Terran history that it apparently couldn't resist, VISAR added, "Thuriens don't have a background of obsession with surveillance and keeping tabs on each other."
"Even if the other parties were to agree?"
"It would get impossibly complicated," VISAR said. "Every user wanting to come into the circuit would have to be informed. And for Thuriens something like that would take a lot of explaining. They look at life very differently."
Hunt sighed. "Okay, it was just a thought. Forget it for now." He lay back along the couch where he had been pondering and stared up at the ceiling. It was ornately molded, fashioned from a material that generated light internally, either uniformly diffuse or concentrated in whatever places were desired. Something very strange was going on. He felt confused and disturbed. As disturbed as Josef and Chien had seemed earlier at dinner, from the moment they sat down.
He checked the time. It was just after midnight. "VISAR. Can you connect me to Josef?"
An avco frame opened up in Hunt's visual field a moment later, showing Sonnebrandt's head and shoulders. "Hi, Vic. What's up?"
"Are you doing anything right now? There's something I'd like to talk about."
"Sure, no problem. Do you want to meet in the Pit Stop? Or you could come here for a drink. I was just getting ready to turn in."
"No, it's okay. I'll come there. See you in a couple of minutes."
Hunt arrived to find Sonnebrandt in house robe and slippers, with a squat, long-necked bottle and two glasses waiting on the table in the lounge section of the suite. "So what is it, an insomnia problem now?" he greeted as Hunt sat down. "I've probably had too much going around inside my head, too."
"Cheers." Hunt examined his glass after Sonnebrandt had poured. "What is it?"