Ingrid seemed equally curious. “Did you actually meet truly intelligent alien creatures?”
“Very intelligent aliens,” Sam said.
“What were they like? Did they have souls? Were they able to—”
“We didn’t talk religion,” Sam replied. “They were little guys. Smaller than me. Smart, though. High level of technology. I want to go back and learn how they operate that black hole.”
“Do you?” Ingrid asked. “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”
Sam gave her his what-the-hell grin. “Lady, danger’s my middle name.”
“You’re not worried about the danger to your soul?”
Sam blinked at her. “My soul’s in decent shape. It’s my finances that I’m worried about.”
Ingrid scoffed, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world…”
“I don’t want the whole world,” Sam replied. “I just want my assets unfrozen and all you lawyers off my back.”
“What would you give in return for that?”
That stopped Sam. But only for a moment. “You could make all these lawsuits go away?”
“I think a settlement could be arranged,” she said.
“A settlement?”
“A settlement.”
“Forgive me my debts,” Sam mused, “as I forgive my debtors.”
“Even the Devil can quote scripture,” Ingrid retorted.
They were talking as if I wasn’t there. I felt like a spectator at a tennis match; my eyes shifted back and forth from one to the other.
“Mr. Gunn, the New Morality—” “Sam,” he said. “Call me Sam.”
Ingrid smiled. “Very well. Sam.”
“May I call you Ingrid?” he asked her.
Her smile widened slightly. “Bishop MacTavish, Sam.”
“No,” Sam replied, not taken aback at all. “I’ll call you Aphrodite: the goddess of beauty.”
I saw anger flare in her deeply blue eyes, but only for the flash of a second. She controlled it immediately.
“That’s the name of a pagan goddess.”
“It’s the only name I can think of that fits you,” Sam said, looking totally sincere.
And then I heard myself blab, “Galileo said, ‘Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, for things come first and names afterward.’ ”
They both stared at me.” Whaat?”
“Well, I mean … that is …” I was back in the conversation, but floundering like a particle in Brownian motion.
“Galileo was a notorious heretic,” Ingrid said.
“The Church apologized for that, er… misunderstanding,” I said. Then I added, “Three hundred and fifty-nine years afterward.”
“What’s Galileo got to do with anything?” Sam demanded.
“Well, he said names should be given based on the observable attributes of the thing being named.” Turning to Ingrid, I said, “I think naming you Aphrodite is completely appropriate.”
She looked thoughtfully at me. Then, her face totally serious, “You mean that as a compliment, Dr. Townes. And I accept it as such. Thank you.”
“Dan,” I said. “Please call me Dan.”
She nodded, then turned back to Sam. “But you, Sam, you’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you?”
“Me?” The innocence on Sam’s face was about as obvious as a flying elephant. And as phony.
“You,” Ingrid said sternly.
Gesturing toward the next table, Sam asked, “Is that why you brought the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse? For protection?”
“I don’t need protection from you, Sam. I can take care of myself.”
Sam hmmfed. “I bet you’re still a virgin.”
“That’s none of your business.”
He shrugged. “Now what was this about forgiving me my debts?”
It took her a moment to get her mind back on business. At last she folded her hands on the tabletop and said slowly, carefully, “The New Morality is willing to intervene on your behalf in the various lawsuits against you.”
“The New Morality, huh?” If this surprised Sam he certainly didn’t show it. “They own a lot of stock in Masterson, and Rockledge too, don’t they?”
“That’s neither here nor there.”
“And what do I have to do to get the New Morality to save my ass?”
Her eyes flared again at Sam’s crudity. I figured he had chosen his words precisely to rattle her.
“You will give up this effort of yours to create a matter transmitter.”
“Wait a minute!” I yelped. “That’s my work you’re talking about!”
“It is blasphemous presumption,” said Bishop MacTavish. “You are both placing your souls in grave danger.”
“Bullsnorts!” Sam snapped. “The New Morality doesn’t want a matter transmitter because it would loosen their control over people.”
“This is a matter of religion, Sam,” Ingrid said. “The state of your soul—”
“Stow it, Aphrodite. This is a matter of politics. Power. The New Morality isn’t worried about my soul, but they’re scared that a matter transmitter might let people do things they don’t want them to do.”
Ingrid turned to me. She actually reached across the table and took my hands in hers. “Daniel, you understand, don’t you? You can see that I’m trying to save your soul.”
I was thinking more about my body. And hers.
“Ingrid,” I said, my voice nothing more than a husky whisper, “we’re talking about my work. My life.”
“No,” she replied softly. “We’re talking about your soul.”
Up to that moment I hadn’t even considered that I might possess a soul. But gazing into those incredible eyes, with her hands in mine, I started thinking about how wonderful it would be to please her, to make her smile at me, to be with her for all eternity.
“Hey! Break it up!” Sam said sharply. “I’m supposed to be the seducer here.”
At that, all four of the women at the next table got to their feet. I saw that they were all pretty hefty; they looked like professional athletes.
“Bishop MacTavish,” one of them said in a sanctimonious whisper, “it’s time to leave.”
Ingrid looked up at her quartet of bodyguards as if breaking free of a trance. She pulled her hands away from me and nodded. “Yes. I must go.”
And she left me there, staring after her.
I thought I knew as much about entanglement as any person living. More, in fact. But all I knew was about subatomic particles and quantum physics. Not about people. And I got myself entangled with Bishop Ingrid MacTavish so completely that I couldn’t even see straight half the time.
We had dinners together. She visited my lab several times and we had lunch with my grad student assistants. She and I took long walks up in the Main Plaza, strolling along the bricked lanes that curved through the greenery so lovingly tended up there beneath the massive concrete dome of the Plaza. I kissed her and she kissed me back. I fell in love.
But she didn’t.
“I can’t let myself love you, Daniel,” she told me one evening, as we sat on a park bench near the curving shell of the auditorium. We had attended a symphonic concert: all Tchaikovsky, lushly romantic music.
“Why not?” I asked. “I love you, Ingrid. I truly do.”
“We live in different worlds,” she said.
“You’re here on the Moon now. We’re in the same world.”
“No, it’s your work. Your soul.”
She meant the matter transmitter, of course. I spread my hands in a halfhearted gesture and said, “My soul isn’t in any danger. The damned experiment isn’t working. Not at all.”
She looked hopefully at me. “It is damned! It’s that devil Sam Gunn. He’s leading you down the road to perdition.”