Because the electromagnetic interactions were the same as the two-body case—self-centering, intrinsically stable—a small amount of misalignment at each of these encounters would not be fatal. The usual two-body case, though, didn’t require the combined package, after all the bouncing and energy dissipation was completed, to be moving on a path so precisely determined that it could pass through yet another narrow hoop.
There were no guarantees, and in the end the result would be in other people’s hands. They could send requests to the three outposts, asking for these objects to be launched at the necessary times on the necessary trajectories. The energy needs hovered on the edge of politeness, though, and it was possible that one or more of the requests would simply be refused.
Jasim waved the models away, and they stretched out on the carpet, side by side. He said, “I never thought we’d get this far. Even if this is only a mirage, I never thought we’d find one worth chasing.”
Leila said, “I don’t know what I expected. Some kind of great oily: some long, exhausting, exhilarating struggle that felt like wanting through a jungle for years and ending up utterly lost.”
“And then what?”
“Surrender.”
Jasim was silent for a while. Leila could sense that he was brooding over something, but she didn’t press him.
He said, “Should we travel to this observatory ourselves, or wait here for the results?”
“We should go. Definitely! I don’t want to hang around here for fifteen thousand years, waiting. We can leave the Nazdeek observatories hunting for more beam fluorescence and broadcasting the results, so we’ll hear about them wherever we end up.”
“That makes sense.” Jasim hesitated, then added, “When we go, I don’t want to leave a back-up.”
“Ah.” They’d traveled from Najib leaving nothing of themselves behind: if their transmission had somehow failed to make it to Nazdeek, no stored copy of the data would ever have woken to resume their truncated lives. Travel within the Amalgam’s established network carried negligible risks, though. If they flung themselves toward the hypothetical location of this yet-to-be-assembled station in the middle of nowhere, it was entirely possible that they’d sail off to infinity without ever being instantiated again.
Leila said, “Are you tired of what we’re doing? Of what we’ve become?”
“It’s not that.”
“This one chance isn’t the be-all and end-all. Now that we know how to hunt for the beams, I’m sure we’ll find this one again after its shifts. We could find a thousand others, if we’re persistent.”
“I know that,” he said. “I don’t want to stop, I don’t want to end this. But I want to risk ending it. Just once. While that still means something.”
Leila sat up and rested her head on her knees. She could understand what he was feeling, but it still disturbed her.
Jasim said, “We’ve already achieved something extraordinary. No one’s found a clue like this in a million years. If we leave that to prosperity, it will be pursued to the end, we can be sure of that. But I desperately want to pursue it myself. With you.”
“And because you want that so badly, you need to face the chance of losing it?”
“Yes.”
It was one thing they had never tried. In their youth, they would never have knowingly risked death. They’d been too much in love, too eager for the life they’d yet to live; the stakes would have been unbearably high. In the twilight-years, back on Najib, it would have been an easy thing to do, but an utterly insipid pleasure.
Jasim sat up and took her hand. “Have I hurt you with this?”
“No, no.” She shook her head pensively, trying to gather her thoughts. She didn’t want to hide her feelings, but she wanted to express them precisely, not blurt them out in a confusing rush. “I always thought we’d reach the end together, though. We’d come to some point in the jungle, look around, exchange a glance, and know that we’d arrived. Without even needing to say it aloud.”
Jasim drew her to him and held her. “All right, I’m sorry. Forget everything I said.”
Leila pushed him away, annoyed. “This isn’t something you can take back. If it’s the truth, it’s the truth. Just give me some time to decide what I want.”
They put it aside, and buried themselves in work: polishing the design for the new observatory, preparing the requests to send to the three outposts. One of the planets they would be petitioning belonged to the Snakes, so Leila and Jasim went to visit the nest for a second time, to seek advice on the best way to beg for this favor. Their neighbors seemed more excited just to see them again than they were at the news that a tiny rent had appeared in the Aloof’s million-year-old cloak of discretion. When Leila gently pushed her on this point, Sarah said, “You’re here, here and now, our guests in flesh and blood. I’m sure I’ll be dead long before the Aloof are willing to do the same.”
Leila thought: What kind of strange greed is it that I’m suffering from? I can be feted by creatures who rose up from the dust through a completely different molecule than my own ancestors. I can sit among them and discuss the philosophy of life and death. The Amalgam has already joined every willing participant in the galaxy into one vast conversation. And I want to go and eavesdrop on the Aloof? Just because they’ve played hard-to-get for a million years?
They dispatched requests for the three modules to be built and launched by their three as-yet unwitting collaborators, specifying the final countdown to the nanosecond but providing a ten-year period for the project to be debated. Leila felt optimistic; however blasé the Nazdeek nest had been, she suspected that no space-faring culture really could resist the chance to peek behind the veil.
They had thirty-six years to wait before they followed in the wake of their petitions; on top of the ten-year delay, the new observatory’s modules would be traveling at a fraction of a percent below light-speed, so they needed a head start.
No more telltale gamma ray flashes appeared from the bulge, but Leila hadn’t expected any so soon. They had sent the news of their discovery to other worlds close to the Aloof’s territory, so eventually a thousand other groups with different vantage points would be searching for the same kind of evidence and finding their own ways to interpret and exploit it. It hurt a little, scattering their hard-won revelation to the wind for anyone to use—perhaps even to beat them to some far greater prize—but they’d relied on the generosity of their predecessors from the moment they’d arrived on Nazdeek, and the sheer scale of the overall problem made it utterly perverse to cling selfishly to their own small triumph.
As the day of their departure finally arrived, Leila came to a decision. She understood Jasim’s need to put everything at risk, and in a sense she shared it. If she had always imagined the two of them ending this together—struggling on, side by side, until the way forward was lost and the undergrowth closed in on them—then that was what she’d risk. She would take the flip side to his own wager.
When the house took their minds apart and sent them off to chase the beam, Leila left a copy of herself frozen on Nazdeek. If no word of their safe arrival reached it by the expected time, it would wake and carry on the search.
Alone.
6
“Welcome to Trident. We’re honored by the presence of our most distinguished guest.”
Jasim stood beside the bed, waving a triangular flag. Red, green and blue in the corners merged to white in the center.
“How long have you been up?”