“Let’s go to the main lab,” Charles said. “If the President is feeling well enough…”
“I’ll last a few more hours,” Ti Sandra said. “Lead on.”
The center of Preamble, the main lab occupied a chamber half a hectare in area, divided by heavy steel curtains into three spaces. The dark gray ceiling arched ten meters over the middle, broken by tracks of focused lighting and life support conduits. The smallest of the spaces was the most important, near the side of the chamber, away from the shielded power supplies. Charles led the way, Leander following. The President and I flanked Leander.
Nehemiah Royce, Tamara Kwang and Mitchell Maspero-Gambacorta sat in chairs near a table that supported two QLs with integral interpreters. I had not seen these particular units; they had been installed in the past few days.
“We’re finished educating and updating the QLs,” Tamara said, glancing at us uncertainly. “They’re informed.” Her head carried several small nano connectors; the plan had been for her to back up Charles in an emergency.
“Good,” Charles said. “I’d like to show the President and Vice President what we know about the Ice Pit.”
Tamara and Nehemiah worked for a few moments to bring up displays controlled by the interpreter: graphs and charts and picts showing fluctuations in quantities as yet unexplained to us. One vid picture, however, was very clear: a crisp, full-color, three-dimensional view of a hallway filled with men and women and arbeiters carrying equipment.
‘This is a direct link, optical transfer,“ Charles said. ”The Ice Pit contains a huge Pierce region — the tweaker that William Pierce made by accident. It’s a larger version of our own, ready-made. We’re looking at a laboratory just outside the Ice Pit.“
“Live?” Ti Sandra asked.
“Next best thing to being there,” Royce said, smiling.
“Do they know we’re looking at them? And what are we looking through?” I asked.
“We can adjust part of the shielding around the Ice Pit region to have optical properties,” Charles said. “The region — the tweaker — can transmit images and sound back to our own tweaker,” Charles said. “They’ve dug out a chamber next to the Ice Pit, set up a research center. They’re not aware that we’re spying on them.”
“The Ice Pit region and all of our Pierce regions are the same,” Nehemiah said. “All tweakers are essentially coexistent.”
“Tweaker…” Ti Sandra said.
“We call it a tweaker when we adjust things with it. The Ice Pit tweaker appears larger than ours, but that doesn’t matter. They’re conterminous, and continuous.”
“Just an example of the identity of all undescribed elements in the dataflow matrix,” Nehemiah said.
“That makes it much more clear,” Ti Sandra said.
Nehemiah struggled onward. ‘Tweakers are undescribed, blank. They can become anything.“
“We’ll stick with the important issues for now,” Charles said. “They seem to know how significant the Ice Pit is, and they seem to know what to do with it. Notice these things…” He pointed to several rounded cubes resting in intricate slings. “High-level thinkers. At least one of them is a QL, but we’ve never seen thinkers like them. Large, probably very powerful.”
“More subtle and multiplex than anything we can manufacture,” Nehemiah said.
“Coming to the Moon to use the Ice Pit means they haven’t been able to create their own tweaker,” Leander said.
“Perhaps,” Charles said. “But they may be sequestering the Ice Pit to keep anybody else from getting access. We could learn how much they know right now, if you give us permission.”
Ti Sandra spoke in an undertone to one of her guards, and he stood aside to pass her orders along through his slate. “How?” she asked, turning back to us.
“If they know this is a direct link, they can receive signals from us. They’re listening to it — so to speak — right now. That’s what we did at first, to understand the nature of a tweaker. We can make the Ice Pit tweaker resonate and pass them a message.”
Lieh entered the space and stood beside Ti Sandra. Leander quickly explained the image and its implications.
“What would we say to them?” Ti Sandra asked.
“If we’ve given up any plan to leave the Solar System, then we need to resume full and public negotiations with Earth immediately,” Charles said. “We could use this as a faster, more efficient channel. But… it would have the effect of startling them.”
Ti Sandra grimaced. “If we talk to them, assure them of our peaceful intentions,” she said, “will that be enough? How can they believe us, after what’s happened?”
“They must believe,” Charles said. “We’re sunk if they don’t. Somebody will make a pre-emptive strike.”
Ti Sandra snorted. “ ‘Pre-emptive.’ That word… so twentieth century.”
“They must also be made to believe we have complete control of Preamble,” Leander continued. “That there are no splinter groups or dissenters with the same capability.”
Ti Sandra nodded to Lieh. “I’m afraid Point One doesn’t have good news for us. Tell us the details, Lieh.”
“Earth’s a shambles right now, politically,” Lieh said. “They’re paralyzed by unending plebiscites. There have been recalls on every board member and syndic of the four major alliances. Ambassadors have been recalled for consultation.”
“War footing?” Charles asked.
“Probably not,” Lieh said. “Just confusion. Whoever okayed the Freeze — probably high syndics in GEWA — has stirred up a cyclone. It keeps getting worse. We’ve received millions of messages from Terries offering their support. But we’ve received even more messages expressing sheer terror.”
“Is anybody able to govern?” Ti Sandra asked.
“In national politics, the paralysis is complete. We don’t know about the alliances. They operate at a higher level — plebiscite of the legislatures of the national governments, effectively. All our flies have gone quiet. There are searchers out on all nets, public and private. Somebody in GEWA has authorized central thinker net dumps of all data seeks for certain patterns of subjects. They’ll learn who some of our flies are. Except for public nets, we’ll be almost blind.”
“They’re violating their own laws,” I said. “That tells us a lot in itself.”
“They’re not completely paralyzed,” Charles said. “Somebody is funding the scientists. They’re working around the clock at the Ice Pit.“
“Talk to them as soon as you can, however you can,” Ti Sandra said. “Direct link or regular channels.”
“I wish to clarify one thing,” Charles said. “Our options are not reduced. I have complete confidence that we could do everything we’ve planned to do, without repeating the mistake of our last trip.”
“Would you wager five million lives on your success, Mr. Franklin?” Ti Sandra asked grimly.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Would you?” she demanded, her voice rising.
Charles did not flinch or even blink. “I would,” he said. “But Casseia might disqualify me.”
“Why?”
“My proximity to the QL,” he said.
“It was the thinker — the QL thinker — that made the mistake, wasn’t it?” Ti Sandra asked.
“It wasn’t a mistake,” Charles said.
“Poor Galena Cameron might not agree,” Ti Sandra said. She gestured for a chair to be brought forward, and reclined in it slowly, never taking her eyes from Charles’s face. I had seen her assume this attitude of concentration before, but never with such intensity.
“The QL saw an opportunity to serve its purpose more deeply,” Charles said. “It could not know the effect on human observers. It can’t even model us effectively.”
“What would keep it from doing something even more foolish?” Ti Sandra said. Charles winced but did not challenge the adjective.