«You can't turn down offers like that! Do you want this project to survive or not?»
«It wasn't an offer,» she said hotly. «It was an ultimatum. Do as he says, or close down. And, Oliver, for God's sake, all those not-so-subtle threats and hints about national security and so on — can't you see where that would lead?»
«Well, I think I can see it more clearly than you can. If you said no, they wouldn't close this place down. They'd take it over. If they're as interested as he says, they'll want it to carry on. But only on their terms.»
«But their terms would be… I mean, defense, for God's sake. They want to find new ways of killing people. And you heard what he said about consciousness: he wants to manipulate it. I'm not going to get mixed up in that, Oliver, never.»
«They'll do it anyway, and you'll be out of a job. If you stay, you might be able to influence it in a better direction. And you'd still have your hands on the work! You'd still be involved!»
«But what does it matter to you, anyway?» she said. «I thought Geneva was all settled?»
He ran his hands through his hair and said, «Well, not settled. Nothing's signed. And it would be a different angle altogether, and I'd be sorry to leave here now that I think we're really on to something.»
«What are you saying?»
«I'm not saying —»
«You're hinting. What are you getting at?»
«Well…» He walked around the laboratory, spreading his hands, shrugging, shaking his head. «Well, if you don't get in touch with him, I will,» he said finally.
She was silent. Then she said, «Oh, I see.»
«Mary, I've got to think of —»
«Of course you have.»
«It's not that —»
«No, no.»
«You don't understand —»
«Yes, I do. It's very simple. You promise to do as he says, you get the funding, I leave, you take over as Director. It's not hard to understand. You'd have a bigger budget. Lots of nice new machines. Half a dozen more Ph.D.s under you. Good idea. You do it, Oliver. You go ahead. But that's it for me. I'm off. It stinks.»
«You haven't…»
But her expression silenced him. She took off her white coat and hung it on the door, gathered a few papers into a bag, and left without a word. As soon as she'd gone, he took Sir Charles's card and picked up the phone.
Several hours later, just before midnight in fact, Dr. Malone parked her car outside the science building and let herself in at the side entrance. But just as she turned to climb the stairs, a man came out of another corridor, startling her so much she nearly dropped her briefcase. He was wearing a uniform.
«Where are you going?» he said.
He stood in the way, bulky, his eyes hardly visible under the low brim of his cap.
«I'm going to my laboratory. I work here. Who are you?» she said, a little angry, a little frightened.
«Security. Have you got some ID?»
«What security? I left this building at three o'clock this afternoon and there was only a porter on duty, as usual. I should be asking you for identification. Who appointed you? And why?»
«Here's my ID,» said the man, showing her a card, too quickly for her to read it. «Where's yours?»
She noticed he had a mobile phone in a holster at his hip. Or was it a gun? No, surely, she was being paranoid. And he hadn't answered her questions. But if she persisted, she'd make him suspicious, and the important thing now was to get into the lab. Soothe him like a dog, she thought. She fumbled through her bag and found her wallet.
«Will this do?» she said, showing him the card she used to operate the barrier in the car park.
He looked at it briefly.
«What are you doing here at this time of night?» he said.
«I've got an experiment running. I have to check the computer periodically.»
He seemed to be searching for a reason to forbid her, or perhaps he was just exercising his power. Finally he nodded and stood aside. She went past, smiling at him, but his face remained blank.
When she reached the laboratory, she was still trembling. There had never been any more «security» in this building than a lock on the door and an elderly porter, and she knew why the change had come about. But it meant that she had very little time; she'd have to get it right at once, because once they realized what she was doing, she wouldn't be able to come back again.
She locked the door behind her and lowered the blinds. She switched on the detector and then took a floppy disk from her pocket and slipped it into the computer that controlled the Cave. Within a minute she had begun to manipulate the numbers on the screen, going half by logic, half by guesswork, and half by the program she'd worked on all evening at home; and the complexity of her task was about as baffling as getting three halves to make one whole.
Finally she brushed the hair out of her eyes and put the electrodes on her head, and then flexed her fingers and began to type. She felt intensely self-conscious.
Hello. I'm not sure
what I'm doing. Maybe
this is crazy.
The words arranged themselves on the left of the screen, which was the first surprise. She wasn't using a word-processing program of any kind — in fact, she was bypassing much of the operating system — and whatever formatting was imposing itself on the words, it wasn't hers. She felt the hairs begin to stir on the back of her neck, and she became aware of the whole building around her: the corridors dark, the machines idling, various experiments running automatically, computers monitoring tests and recording the results, the air-conditioning sampling and adjusting the humidity and the temperature, all the ducts and pipework and cabling that were the arteries and the nerves of the building awake and alert … almost conscious in fact.
She tried again.
I'm trying to do
with words what I've
done before with a
state of mind, but
Before she had even finished the sentence, the cursor raced across to the right of the screen and printed:
ASK A QUESTION.
It was almost instantaneous.
She felt as if she had stepped on a space that wasn't there. Her whole being lurched with shock. It took several moments for her to calm down enough to try again. When she did, the answers lashed themselves across the right of the screen almost before she had finished.
Are you Shadows?
YES.
Are you the same as Lyra's Dust?
YES.
And is that dark matter?
YES.
Dark matter is conscious?
EVIDENTLY.
What I said to Oliver this morning, my idea about human evolution, is it
CORRECT. BUT YOU NEED TO ASK MORE QUESTIONS.
She stopped, took a deep breath, pushed her chair back, flexed her fingers. She could feel her heart racing. Every single thing about what was happening was impossible. All her education, all her habits of mind, all her sense of herself as a scientist were shrieking at her silently: This is wrong! It isn't happening! You're dreaming! And yet there they were on the screen: her questions, and answers from some other mind.
She gathered herself and typed again, and again the answers zipped into being with no discernible pause.
The mind that is answering these questions isn't human, is it?