“Not on Earth, perhaps,” Cinnabar Baker said. “But remember, here in the Outer System we are far more dependent on all kinds of feedback control systems. Go on, Fernald. The whole story.”
“Three years ago we had our first problems with form-change processes. That was bad. But two years ago, other things began to go wrong. On a big scale. There are now billions of tons of hydrogen cyanide floating free near the edge of the Halo. The whole product line from the Kuiper Harvester went sour on us. It was supposed to produce aldehydes and alcohols from prebiotic bodies in the Cloud, but the program went wrong, the automatic checks didn’t work, and the first thing we knew was when a crewed surveyor reported anomalous spectral signatures.”
“A year’s production down the drain,” Baker added. “And five years more work before we’ll be able to clean it up.”
“Another harvester is producing the wrong materials,” Sylvia Fernald said. “We caught that early, with no damage. We’re busy now, checking the other thirty. We’ve also had signs of instability in a kernel control system; gigawatts of raw radiation if one of those got away. And oddest of all, nonsense reports have been coming in from our remote monitoring systems. They’re scattered all over the system. Either our communications are generating batches of spurious signals, or space in the Outer System is filled with bizarre… things.”
“Things?”
Aybee Smith produced a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Things. Tell him, Sylv.”
“Visual phenomena.” Sylvia Fernald was clearly uncomfortable with her own words. “Impossible events. I don’t believe in them myself, but the people who report them do.”
“Come on, Sylv—you’re stalling.” Aybee Smith grinned fiercely at Wolf. “How about a space dog—a blood-red hound running across Sagittarius, filling five degrees of the sky? It was reported from Spanish Station, on the other side of the Sun. Would you believe that?”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Wolf looked at Cinnabar Baker, but her face was serious, and she showed no sign of interrupting. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Right. So how about a flaming blue sword, down near the edge of the Halo? Or a rain of blood, sleeting across Orion. Or a great snake, wrapped around the Kernel Ring and swallowing its own tail?”
“How many people reported seeing these?”
“People?” Aybee Smith shook his head in disgust. “Wolfman, people are flaky. They’ll see anything, or say they do. Look at you; you prove my point. You’ve been having visions, but they’re right there inside your skull—no one else sees ’em, right? Right So if it was just people, I’d say the hell with it, they’re all crazy—no offense—and who cares what they say they see. But this is different. These were instrument readings, not people babble. Sensors recorded this stuff. People only saw it later, when they looked at the files. We’re talking serious here, not just crazy. You know what a lot of the people who’ve heard about this say? They don’t say phenomena, they say portents. How do you like that?”
Bey was listening, but half his attention was elsewhere. Again, something was not adding up. It took a few seconds to recognize what it was and turn again to Cinnabar Baker. “This has been going on for years?”
“More than two years. But getting worse, bit by bit. It sounds like nonsense, I know, but with everything else going on, I have to take it seriously.” She paused. “You’re skeptical. I’m not surprised. But believe me, neither Sylvia Fernald nor Aybee is exaggerating or inventing.”
“I do believe you. But I think we’re still both playing games. Let me tell you something you may not care to hear.” Wolf nodded at Leo Manx. “When he asked me to take a look at your form-change problems, I refused. Then an hour later I called him up and agreed. So why did I change my mind? I’m not an idiot, even though you may think I act like one. Well, I left Earth because I knew if I didn’t, I’d be back in Old City in less than a week. I came to a place where I couldn’t do that, even if I wanted to. I was going crazy there—maybe I’m still going crazy.”
“I do not agree.” Leo Manx sounded comfortingly confident.
“We’ll see. Either way, I didn’t feel I was cheating you. Crazy or not, I know form-change theory and practice as well as anyone. So I would get away from Earth, and maybe lose my hallucinations—you can dismiss them as nothing, but I couldn’t. And maybe you would get help with your problem. That would be a fair exchange. Except that you haven’t been honest with me. You’re having trouble with form-change, sure, but now you’re admitting your problem is much more general. All your signals and communications are screwed up. Form-change just happens to be unusually sensitive; signal distortions show up there first.”
“That is probably correct.” Cinnabar Baker was not embarrassed.
“So now let’s look at things from your point of view. I know form-change, but I sure as hell won’t solve your other problems. You ought to have experts in bifurcation theory, in optimal control theory, in signal encoding and error correction, in catastrophe theory. Those are not my fields.”
“I agree.”
“So why don’t you get the right people, people who already know the Outer System?”
“For this reason.” Cinnabar Baker gestured to Aybee Smith, who took a thin card from his pocket and passed it to Bey. “Do you recognize any of those names, Mr. Wolf?”
Bey scanned it briefly, noting his own name halfway down. “I know two-thirds of them. You’re certainly on the right track. The ones from the Inner System are top people. If the ones from here are comparable, you’ve got the best systems talent of the Solar System on that list.”
“I’m glad you agree with Aybee’s judgment. He made the list; it’s good to know he gets something right.” Baker waited for Apollo Smith’s indignant snort, then continued. “We tried to obtain the services of all those people. Every one.”
“And they refused to help? I’m surprised, if you told them what you’ve just told me.”
“No, Mr. Wolf.” The real Cinnabar Baker was showing through, powerful and deadly serious. “They did not refuse. They had no opportunity to do so, because we had no chance to tell them. Of the twenty-seven names on that list, twelve are dead. Seven are hopelessly insane. And seven have disappeared. Our attempts to trace them, assisted when appropriate by officials of the Inner System, have all failed. That makes twenty-six. You, Mr. Wolf, are the twenty-seventh.”
She stood up slowly, a massive and massively determined woman. “And now I am holding nothing back from you. You know what we know, except for the details. Do you agree with my view—that you have special motivation to work on and solve this problem?”
Chapter 7
“The emitted particles have a thermal spectrum corresponding to a temperature that increases rapidly as the mass of the black hole decreases. For a black hole with the mass of the Sun the temperature is only about a ten-millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The thermal radiation leaving a black hole with that temperature would be completely swamped by the general background level of radiation in the universe. On the other hand, a black hole with a mass of a billion tons would release energy at the rate of 6,000 megawatts, equivalent to the output of six large nuclear power plants.”
The builders, caretakers, and first inhabitants of the harvesters worked around the clock, without thought of rest. Bey Wolf was beginning to wonder if the human occupants were expected to follow the same schedule.