“But—” Sianna began, and then bit her tongue. Enough was enough.
“But what?” Bernhardt asked from the shadows, speaking for the first time.
Great. All she needed was to draw him into the argument. “Nothing,” Sianna said, looking down at the floor.
“I am thinking you are having something more than nothing on your mind, dear miss, and I am thinking you had best tell me what it is,” Bernhardt said, in a tone of voice that made it clear he expected an answer, not an evasion.
MRI folklore had it that Dr. Bernhardt’s English took on a slightly German syntax when he was agitated, but Sianna would have been just as happy if she had never had the chance to confirm the story.
Sianna tried to say something. Anything. “Ah… ah, well,” she began, not quite sure where she was going.
“What more do you have to say, please?” Bernhardt asked, the courtesy of his words completely missing from his tone of voice.
Sianna realized her arms were wrapped around her chest, as if ready to shield her body from a blow. She put her arms at her sides, and then behind her back. She clamped her hands together so she wouldn’t knot herself up in a pretzel again. She shut her eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and spoke, being careful to direct her words not at Bernhardt, but at the slightly less intimidating Dr. Sakalov. “Well, sir, before this, all your theories have been based on the idea that Charon Central was the absolute apex of the Charonian command hierarchy.
“You have worked from the assumption that you could derive a unique physical location that was ideally and uniquely suited to be Charon Central. Your theory was that the Charonians were utterly rational, and therefore the location of Charon Central could be established by entirely rational means. Each site would offer advantages and disadvantages, and the Charonians would balance all the pluses and minuses until they derived the optimal site.”
Sakalov cocked his head to one side and nodded. “I am impressed that you have studied my work so well, but what of it? How does that invalidate my new approach?”
“Because—because—by the criterion of unique qualification, your new location for Charon Central cannot be right. A polar control center does not offer a single ideal location, but two equally valid ones. Where would it be? North pole, south pole, or both? And if one and not the other, what is your criterion for choosing?”
That brought a low chuckle, but not from Sakalov. Dr. Bernhardt stepped forward and patted the older man on the shoulder. “I think she has you there, Yuri,” his voice far gentler than it had been. Bernhardt turned toward Sianna, and smiled, but the expression did not look as if it really belonged on his face. “I made exactly the same objection in my office not half an hour ago.”
“And I make exactly the same answer to you both,” Sakalov said. “There is a deciding variable that renders one more optimal. Charon Central is located on the south pole of the Sphere. More of the planets and Captive Suns are visible from that point than from any other on the Sphere.”
“And that just happens to be the pole we won’t see until the Earth and Sunstar complete another half-orbit around the Sphere, a small matter of a hundred years or so from now,” Bernhardt said, still with that most artificial smile in place. It wasn’t insincerity, Sianna decided. Bernhardt was just unused to smiling. Not that it mattered, but maybe if she focused on what sort of smile the man had, then she wouldn’t be thinking about how this nice chat was destroying her career.
“That is inconsequential!” Sakalov protested. “All that is needed to prove my theory is to send the Terra Nova on a course that will bring the south pole into view and—”
“Yuri, Yuri. Do you know how many requests I get a week asking—or demanding—that I send the Terra Nova to this location or that?”
“But this is—”
“Most urgent and important,” Bernhardt said, finishing Sakalov’s sentence. “They all say that. Sometimes I think that if someone sent in a request and described it as minor and trivial, that would have a better chance of getting my attention.”
“But you must listen—”
“Yes, yes, I know I must,” Bernhardt said. “That is, after all, why I am here. For you to convince me. Convince me, and I will try and convince Captain Steiger to set such a course, though after today’s news I warn you she will not be in much of a mood to listen.”
“Today’s news?” Sianna blurted out, instantly wishing she had kept her mouth shut. Shut up, shut up, shut UP! she told herself.
Bernhardt looked surprised, as if he had forgotten she and Wally were there—and perhaps he had. He looked from Sianna to Wally and back again, and shrugged. “Well, you both have the standard clearances, no doubt, and the news will be all over MRI soon enough. The Terra Nova sent a small stealthy ship out in an attempt to board a CORE. All hands aboard the stealthship were lost and the ship destroyed. Captain Steiger broke radio silence to ask if we had any ideas that might aid their next attempt.”
Sianna’s blood ran cold. Never mind for the moment that she had no clearances at all—technically, she was not even supposed to be in the sim center. That was of no consequence. Those words “next attempt.” Here they were, safely deep in the bowels of the Earth, fiddling around with meaningless questions of the whichness of what, asking each other where the enemy’s imaginary fortresses might be—and people, real people, were dying out there, in battle against the real enemy.
MRI was nothing but a bunch of dreamy time-markers far below Manhattan, but the crew of the Terra Nova was asking their advice before sacrificing themselves anew.
If that didn’t chastise a person, bring on a feeling of humility and unworthiness, then nothing would. “Do—do we have any advice to give them?” she asked.
“No,” Bernhardt said, his voice quiet and sad. He let his answer hang there for a moment, and the brief silence spoke volumes to Sianna. People are dying out there and we’re letting them down. She herself had gone in early, not to grub away at her proper work on CORE research, but to go glory-chasing after some completely meaningless thirty-seven-minute hiccup in a long-destroyed space probe’s chronometer. And to compound the crime, she had been distracted from that nonsense by the even more foolish nonsense of Sakalov’s pursuit of Charon Central.
At last Bernhardt spoke again. “But perhaps there is no need to say more about the Terra Nova. In any event, it’s quite possible that they are safer in that ship than we are here. I think, Yuri, that perhaps it’s time I showed you what I brought you here to see. I think you will see that the arrival of the SCOREs makes any discussion of what goes on at the Sphere a bit academic. We are going to have other worries.”
“SCOREs?” Sianna asked. She had heard the term go past once or twice, in the lab, but no one seemed ready or willing to explain what the acronym meant.
“Small Close-Orbiting Radar Emitters,” Bernhardt said, a bit absently. “Hmmph. Wally, I was going to operate the equipment myself, but as long as you’re here, if you could run that simulation of the SCOREs you did last week—”
“Yes, sir,” Wally said. He bent over his control panel for a moment. Good God, Wally had been working with Dr. Bernhardt himself? Why hadn’t he ever said anything about it? But Sianna knew the answer even before she was done asking herself the question. What Bernhardt said next confirmed it, even if it didn’t make her feel any better.