And New Whole Germany — as the election to UN Secretary General of Horst Bertold showed — was the Wave of the Future... as the Germans themselves liked to phrase it.
"So in other words," Freya said, "you'd take an empty passenger liner to the Fomalhaut system, spend eighteen years in transit, you, the sole unteleported man, among the seven billion citizens of Terra, with the idea — or should I say, the hope? — that when you arrive finally at Whale's Mouth, in the year 2032, you'll find a passenger complement, five hundred or so unhappy souls who want out? And so you then can resume commercial operations... von Einem takes them there in fifteen minutes and then eighteen years later you return them to Terra, back home to the Sol system."
"Yes," he said fiercely.
"Plus another eighteen years — for them — too — for the flight back. For you thirty-six years in all. You'd return to Terra in the year — " She calculated. "2050 A.D. I'd be sixty-one years old; Theodoric Ferry, even Horst Bertold, would be dead; perhaps Trails of Hoffman Limited wouldn't even exist, any more... certainly Dr. Sepp von Einem would be dead years ago; let's see: he's in his eighties now. No, he'd never live to see you reach Whale's Mouth, let alone return. So if all this is to make him feel bad — "
"Is it insane?" Rachmael said. "To believe, first, that some unhappy persons must be stuck at Whale's Mouth... and yet we're not hearing, via THL's monopoly of all info media, all energy, passing back this way. And second — "
"And second," Freya said, "to want to spend eighteen years of your life in getting there to rescue them." Professional, intent, she eyed him. "Is this idealism? Or is this vengeance against Dr. von Einem because of his Telpor construct that made your family's liners and commercial carriers obsolete for inter-system travel? After all, if you do manage to leave in the Omphalos, it'll be big news, a novelty; it'll be fully covered on TV and in the 'papes, here on Terra; even the UN won't be able to squelch the story — the first, sole, manned vessel to go to Fomalhaut, not just one of those old-time instrument packages. Why, you'd be a time capsule; we'd all be waiting for you to arrive first there and then, in 2050, back here."
"A time capsule," he said, "like the one fired off at Whale's Mouth. Which never arrived here on Terra."
She shrugged. "Passed Terra by, was attracted by the sun's gravitational field; was swallowed up unnoticed."
"Unnoticed by any tracking station? Out of over six thousand separate monitoring devices in orbit in the Sol system none detected the time capsule when it arrived?"
Frowning, Freya said, "What do you mean to imply, Rachmael?"
"The time capsule," Rachmael said, "from Whale's Mouth, the launching of which we watched years ago on TV — it wasn't detected by our tracking stations because it never arrived. And it never arrived, Miss Holm, because despite those crowd scenes it was never sent."
"You mean what we saw on TV — "
"The vid signal, via Telpor," Rachmael said, "which showed the happy masses at Whale's Mouth cheering at the vast public launching ceremony of the time capsule — were fakes. I've run and rerun recordings of them; the crowd noise is spurious." Reaching into his cloak he brought out a seven-inch reel of iron oxide Ampex and tape; he tossed it onto her desk. "Play it back. Carefully. There were no people cheering. And for a good reason. Because no time capsule, containing quaint artifacts from the Fomalhaut ancient civilizations, was launched from Whale's Mouth."
"But — " She stared at him in disbelief, then picked up the aud tape, held the reel uncertainly. "Why?"
"I don't know," Rachmael said. "But when the Omphalos reaches the Fomalhaut system and Whale's Mouth and I see Newcolonizedland, I'll know." And, he thought, I don't think I'll find ten or sixty malcontents out of forty million... by that time, of course, it'll be something like a billion colonists. I'll find —
He ended the thought abruptly. He did not know.
But eventually he would know. In the little matter of eighteen years.
2
In the sybaritic living room of his villa, on his satellite as it orbited Terra, the owner of Lies Incorporated, Matson Glazer-Holliday, sat in his human-made dressing gown smoking a prize, rare Antonio y Cleopatra cigar and listening to the aud tape of the crowd noises.
And, directly before him he watched the oscilloscope as it transformed the audio signal into a visual one.
To Freya Holm he said, "Yes, there is a cycle. You can see it, even though you can't hear it. This aud track is continuous, running over and over again. Hence the man's right; it's a fake."
"Could Rachmael ben Applebaum have — "
"No," Matson said. "I've sequestered an aud copy from the UN info archives; it agrees. Rachmael didn't tamper with the tape; it's exactly what he claims it to be." He sat back, pondering.
Strange, he thought, that von Einem's Telpor gadget works only one way, radiating matter out... with no return of that matter, at least by teleportation, possible. So, rather conveniently for Trails of Hoffman, all we get via Telpor as a feedback from Whale's Mouth is an electronic signal, energy alone... and this one now exposed as a fake; as a research agency I should have discovered this long ago — Rachmael, with all his creditors hounding him jet-balloonwise, keeping him awake night and day, hammering at him with countless technological assists, impeding him in the normal course of conducting routine business, has detected this spuriousness, and I — damn it. Matson thought, I missed, here. He felt gloomy.
"Cutty Sark Scotch and water?" Freya asked.
He nodded absently as Freya, who was his mistress, disappeared into the liquor antechamber of the villa to see if the 1985 bottle — worth a fortune — were empty yet.
But, on the credit side, he had been suspicious.
From the start he had doubted the so-called "Theorem One" of Dr. von Einem; it sounded too much like a cover, this one-way transmission by the technicians of THL's multitude of retail outlets. Write home from Whale's Mouth, son, when you get there, he thought acidly; tell your old mom how it is on the colony world with its fresh air, sunshine, all those cute little animals, those wondrous buildings THL robots are constructing... and the report-back, the letter, as electronic signal, had duly arrived. But the beloved son; he could not personally, directly report. Could not return to tell his story, and, as in the ancient story of the lion's den, all the footprints of guileless creatures led in to the den, yet none led out. It was the fable all over again — with something even more sinister added. That of what appeared more and more to be a thoroughly phony trail of outgoing tracks: the electronic message-units. By someone who is versed in sophisticated hardware, Matson thought; someone is tinkering around, and is there any reason to look beyond the figure of Dr. Sepp von Einem himself, the inventor of the Telpor, plus Neues Einige Deutschland's very efficient technicians who ran Ferry's retail machinery?