‘That's enough, isn't it?’
‘We'll see.’ He changed the subject deliberately. ‘Are you sure the neuronic detector will work?’
‘Absolutely sure. We could follow any Settlement in orbit just by its radiation of plexons.’
‘What are plexons, Merry?’
‘Just a name I made up, for the photon-complex characteristic of mammalian brains. We could detect horses, you know, if we're not too far away, but we can detect human brains in masses at astronomic distances.’
‘Why plexons?’
‘From “complexity”. Someday - you'll see - someday they're going to be working on plexons not just to detect life but to study the intimate functioning of the brain. I've made up a name for that, too - “plexophysiology”. Or maybe “plexoneuronics”.’
Fisher said, ‘Do you consider names important?’
‘Yes, indeed. It gives you a way of speaking concisely. You don't have to say, “that field of science that involves the relationship of this and that.” You just say “plexoneuronics” - yes, that sounds better. It's a shortcut. It saves your thinking time for more important subjects. Besides-’ She hesitated.
‘Besides? Yes?’
The words came in a rush. ‘If I make up a name and it sticks, that alone would get me a footnote in the history of science. You know, “The word ‘plexon’ was first introduced by Merrilee Augina Blankowitz in 2237 on the occasion of the pioneer faster-than-light flight of the Superluminal.” I'm not likely to be mentioned anywhere else, or for any other reason, and I'll settle for that.’
Fisher said, ‘What if you detect your plexons, Merry, and there are no human beings present?’
‘You mean alien life? That would be even more exciting than detecting people. But there's not much chance, really. We've been disappointed over and over again. We thought there might be at least primitive forms of life on the Moon, on Mars, on Callisto, on Titan. It never came to anything. People have speculated on all kinds of weird life - living galaxies, living dust clouds, life on the surface of a neutron star, all sorts of things. There's no evidence for any of it. No, if I detect anything, it will be human life. I'm convinced of that.’
‘Wouldn't you be detecting the plexons emitted by the five people on the ship? Wouldn't we drown out anything we can spot at millions of kilometers of distance?’
‘That is a complication, Crile. We have to balance the ND so that we five are canceled out and it has to be delicately done. Even a little leakage would wipe out anything we could detect elsewhere. Someday, Crile, automated NDs will be sent through hyperspace to all sorts of places to detect plexons. There'll be no human beings in their vicinity and that alone would make them at least a couple of orders of magnitude more sensitive than anything we can do now, with ourselves hanging around and having to be allowed for. We'll find out where intelligence exists long before we approach anyplace ourselves.’
Chao-Li Wu made his appearance. He looked at Fisher with a touch of distaste and said indifferently, ‘How's the Neighbor Star?’
Blankowitz said, ‘Nothing much at this distance.’
‘Well, we'll probably be making another transition tomorrow or the next day, and then we'll see.’
Blankowitz said, ‘It will be exciting, won't it?’
Wu said, ‘It will be - if we find the Rotorians.’ He glanced at Fisher. ‘But will we?’
If that were a question directed to Fisher, he did not respond to it. He merely stared at Wu expressionlessly.
Will we? Fisher thought.
The long wait would be over soon.
35. Converging
As noted before, Janus Pitt did not often allow himself the luxury of self-pity. In anyone else, he would consider such a thing a despicable sign of weakness and self-indulgence. There were, however, times when he sadly rebelled at the fact that the people of Rotor were only too willing to leave all of the unpleasant decisions to him.
There was a Council, yes - duly elected, and meticulously involved in passing laws and in making decisions - all but the important ones, the ones that dealt with the future of Rotor.
That was left to him.
It was not even consciously left to him. The matters of importance were simply ignored, simply rendered nonexistent by mutual unspoken agreement.
Here they were in an empty system, leisurely building new Settlements, absently convinced that time stretched infinitely before them. Everywhere was the calm assumption that once they had filled this new asteroid belt (generations from now, and a matter of no immediate concern to anyone presently alive) the hyper-assistance technique would have improved to the point where it would be comparatively easy to seek out and occupy new planets.
Time existed in plenty. Time blended into eternity.
Only to Pitt himself was it left to consider the fact that time was short, that at any given moment, without warning, time might come to an end.
When would Nemesis be discovered back in the Solar System? When would some Settlement decide to follow
Rotor's lead?
It had to come someday. With Nemesis inexorably moving in the direction of the Sun, it would eventually reach that point - still far distant, of course, but close enough - at which the people of the Solar System would have to be blind not to see it.
Pitt's computer, with the aid of a programmer who was convinced he was working out a problem of academic interest only, had estimated that by the end of a thousand years, the discovery of Nemesis would be inevitable, and that the Settlements would begin to disperse.
Pitt had then put the question: Would the Settlements come to Nemesis?
The answer was no. By that time, hyper-assistance would be far more efficient, far cheaper. The Settlements would know more about the nearer stars - which of them had planets, and what kind. They would not bother with a red dwarf star, but would head out for the
Sun-like stars.
And that would leave Earth itself, which would be desperate. Afraid of space, clearly degenerate already, and sinking farther into slime and misery as a thousand years passed and the doom of Nemesis became apparent, what would they do? They could not undertake long trips. They were Earthpeople. Surfacebound. They would have to wait for Nemesis to get reasonably close. They could not hope to go anywhere else.
Pitt had the vision of a ramshackle world trying to find security in the more tightly held system of Nemesis, trying to find refuge in a star with a system built tightly enough together to hold in place while it was destroying that of the Sun it passed.
It was a terrible scenario, and yet inevitable. Why could not Nemesis have been receding from the Sun? How everything would be changed. The discovery of Nemesis would have become somewhat less likely with time and, if the discovery came to pass, Nemesis would become ever less desirable - and less possible - as a place of refuge. If it were receding, Earth would not even need a refuge.
But that was not the way it was. The Earthmen would come; ragtag degenerating Earthmen of every variety of makeshift and abnormal culture, flooding in. What could the Rotorians do but destroy them while they were still in space? But would they have a Janus Pitt to show them that there was no choice but that? Would they have Janus Pitts, between now and then, to make sure that Rotor had the weapons and the resolution to prepare for this and to do it when the time came?
But the computer's analysis was, after all, a deceitfully optimistic one. The discovery of Nemesis by the Solar System must come about within a thousand years, said the computer. But how much within? What if the discovery came tomorrow? What if it had come three years ago? Might some Settlement, groping for the nearest star, knowing nothing useful about farther ones, be following in Rotor's trail now?
Each day, Pitt woke up wondering: Is this the day?
Why was this misery reserved for him? Why did everyone else sleep quietly in the lap of eternity, while only he himself was left to deal each day with the possibility of a kind of doom?