She told me. About three years ago she was a graduate student at the University of Tsiolkovskygrad, and got involved with the dissident movement, peripherally at first, then more deeply. She found that the movement was vastly more organized than she had thought, but, like most revolutionary organizations, was confined to a small cadre of activists, in this case the usual assortment of bohemian hangers-on one finds around universities ― artistes-mangues, dropouts, perpetual students, oddballs, and other perennial types ― along with some genuinely idealistic younger students and seriously committed faculty. From this intellectual hub, the movement radiated out to the colonies to encompass a fair number of people from all walks of life. Politically, the movement was a hodgepodge of ideologies, from the beady-eyed right to the bearded, bomb-throwing left, with most everything in between, including a smidge of religious doctrine. (Wilkes had been halfway justified in suspecting the Teelies, though Darla was fairly sure that they had no formal affiliation with the movement.) Then, at a dinner party her father gave, Darla met Petrovsky, who took an immediate interest in her. The interest was not mutual. However, the dissidents thought it a dandy idea to have a pair of ears in the same bed with a high-ranking Militiaman, especially an intelligence officer. Darla was asked if she were willing to make the supreme sacrifice. She was. It wasn't very long after the signing ceremony that Darla was approached by her lifecompanion's superiors and asked to become an informer ― asked, in fact, to inform on friends who were suspected of being subversive. For some reason, possibly because of who and what her father was, it never occurred to them that Darla might be a dissident herself. Why should she turn against her father and her class? (That the bureaucracy was a social class couldn't be doubted, though to speak of it as such a thing was ideological heresy.) And hadn't she married within the Authority?
"In other words, you became something of a double agent."
"Right," she affirmed. "It was exactly what the movement was hoping for. We were then in a position to feed disinformation to the Authority."
"All right," I said. "Now, from what I've gathered, this Roadmap is real enough, and so was my backtime trip. Okay. When did I come back? And who did I give the map to?"
"About eight months ago, you barged into Assemblywoman Marcia Miller's office and dropped it on her desk. I think your exact words were, 'Happy birthday, honey.'"
"That's all I said?"
"No, otherwise she would have taken you for a crank, and the thing would still be on her desk, probably being used as a paperweight. You mentioned my name and the fact that I was a double agent, and that you knew, quote, 'all there was to know about the dissident movement,' unquote ― and told her what the object was."
"Wait a minute. Was her office de-bugged?"
"At the time, yes, or so I was told. And since the Authority didn't immediately act to seize her and the map, it probably was."
"Okay. I have more questions about the map, but let me clear up some other things first. How did you get assigned to me? And who assigned you?"
"The network did. Around the same time when you came on the scene, my situation vis-a-vis the Authority became untenable. We learned then that the Authority's infiltration of the movement was very deep, a fact even I hadn't been able to uncover, but you have to remember that I was primarily a conduit for bogus information from the movement to the Authority. "And when my disinformation started sticking out like a sore thumb, I was compromised. I had to go underground." She smiled wanly and shook her head. "A misnomer. There is no underground. I took to the Skyway, as everyone does who wants to stay loose." She ran her fingers gently through the grass. "That was when Grigory got kicked upstairs to his dead-end job."
"And when your father became an unperson?"
"No. His trouble goes farther back."
I mulled it all over for a while, then said, "Here's a very big question. When you first got in my rig, why did you act as if we'd met before?"
"I wasn't acting. The first time was about two months after you gave the map to Miller. We had been tailing you. For some reason, it was very easy, and since I've gotten to know you better, I can't help but think that you wanted to be tailed."
"Where did I go?"
"From planet to planet, no particular pattern to it."
"Was I alone?"
"Yes. Just you and Sam."
"And you tried to pump me about maps and things, but got nowhere."
"Exactly. I gave up and ducked out on you, and we dropped most of the surveillance. By that time our technical people had had a chance to examine the object you handed over. It was apparent to them that the thing was a product of an unknown technology."
"But they weren't sure it was a map?"
She nodded. "Oh, yes, they were sure. But the nature of the data was so complex, it was practically indecipherable. I was told to find you and try again to get more information. By that time, it seemed everyone in creation knew about you, about the map, everything. We then got a report that you were seen in Hydran Maze. You were tailed from there to Bamard's, where you picked up a load, the one you're carrying now. We found out you were going to deliver it to Uraniborg. On the way there you picked me up for the second time. The first time."
The Paradox was real.
"How did Wilkes get into all this?"
She lowered her eyes. "Through me. I told my father about the map." She looked up at me defensively. "The Authority was closing in. There have been scores of arrests recently. Nothing about it in me news feeds, only the vaguest hints. The map-object was a hot potato being passed from hand to hand, sometimes minutes before the knock on the door. It looked as if the map would wind up in the Authority's hands after all. That was when I told him. He was going to take me with him ― here." A single, gelid tear welled in the comer of her left eye. "I tried to save him…. I tried to save the movement… both… I―" She bent over and wet the grass with bitter tears.
I let her cry as long as she needed to, then took her shoulders and lifted her from the grass, gently pried her hands from her face. "I need to know one thing more, Darla. What is it? The object, I mean. And who has it now?"
A mantle of calm settled over her. She stopped quivering and her breathing slowed. She did her straightening-up ritual, then took a deep breath. She reached for her pack, withdrew an ordinary-looking makeup box and opened the lid. It contained face coloring, the kind some women use for those partial Kabuki masks that are in vogue now, the kind of makeup job a lifecompanion of a high Authority 'crat might wear to the opera. She dug in two fingers and plucked out a black object. She wiped it off with a spare shirt from her pack, then took my hand. She pressed it into my palm. It was a jet-black cube about fifty millimeters on a side.
"You do, Jake. You have it now."
Stunned, I sat and gaped at it. The color was the blackest black I had ever seen. It wouldn't have made a good paper-weight; the thing was like air in my hand.
"Touch two leads to it at any point," Darla said, "and you get a flood of binary numbers in a patterned sequence. No one's been able to figure it out, but the best guess is that it's a multidimensional coordinate system. No doubt touching leads to it isn't the proper way of getting the information out."
I rose to my feet shaking my head, confounded beyond words.
"I know," she said. "It's a closed loop. The Paradox. A future self gives you ― the past self ― something that he got ^ from a future self when he was the past…. It's a classic contradiction. Where did the thing come from in the first place?" She got up, drew near me, and put a hand on my chest. "No one planned it this way. We gave up trying to make any sense out of the cube. And just a few days ago, when the Authority finally acted on what they got from running a Delphi on Miller, there was no one around to take the relay but me. I couldn't leave the cube behind. When you picked me up the second time, I wasn't sure about the Paradox. It was just rumor then. I thought you were… the 'you' who handed the cube over. You weren't."