“I see.” And he does, he understands how selfish he has been. He has had access to the stars, to her, while the others have nothing but the twilight world of individual minds.
“I should have realized.” Reluctantly he makes himself say, “Do you want to share with me? Touch me, or whatever?”
“Thanks, Doc. I mean, thanks. But I thought, something simpler. Like, could she relay out a picture? The circuits must be there. If she could hook in monitors we could see where we are. A check on reality.”
“Of course. I’ll ask her. By the way, how is Ted? Is he still—?”
“Yeah. Chris and I work on him now and then. But what is there for him to come out for?”
“I understand. I’ll ask right away.”
When he relays Waxman’s request to the apparition he knows as Margaret, the beautiful face listens with unusual intentness.
“I should have thought of that,” she says quickly, as if in self-reproach. To Dann’s surprise, the remote cloudy profile in the stars has also turned slightly, as though attending. Dream-Margaret goes back into the shadows of the great control room.
Dann is oddly heartened. There seems to be a chord of empathy here, some strand of responsibility to the lives outside her mystery. Perhaps it is a remnant of the Task, the transcendent impulse toward rescue. Is it possible that the human Margaret has learned some compassion toward life from this unhuman entity?
Suddenly she is back again, frowning slightly.
“ Your friends, the aliens… You say they are expert in the transmissions of life?”
“Oh yes. It seems to have been one of their main modes—” He sees that she does not want details.
“Good. I will relay also some small signal-trains that are… difficult for me. Perhaps they can comprehend better.”
He is amazed at her openness, amazed that the goddess would accept life’s cooperation. Perhaps it will be true, what she hinted. Eagerly he tells her, “Giadoc, the one who mind-traveled to other worlds, is the nearest thing we have to an expert on alien life. And he can report in our language.”
She says only, “I will set it up,” and fades away into the cloudy depths.
He has not long to wait. An exuberant communication bursts upon him from outside.
“Man, it’s beautiful. It’s all over, like a million windows!”
Again Dann is jolted by the incongruity of the young voice, the words that could be describing a sports car, used here for transreal marvels. Well, what does he expect, that Ron or Rick should boom like a cinema spook?
“The whole outside of this place is covered, and there’re screens all over, where those recording places were. And listen, we’re getting other kinds of transmissions too. Bdello and his people are really into it. I’m picking up something too, Doc, maybe like music. I can’t describe it. I think we’re going to find new forms of consciousness like we never dreamed of.”
“New forms of consciousness?”
“Yeah. Like whole planets thinking. Everything interconnected, or—I can’t explain but I really dig it. I used to, I don’t know, dream…”
The so-ordinary boy’s voice, chattering about transcendences. For an instant Dann’s old human distrust of mysticism rises. Are these unbodied minds indeed floating into fantasy? But no; he must believe that there is some reality here, if anything here is real.
“Oh, another piece of news for you,” Waxman goes on. “Did I tell you that the Tyrenni have set up a big dream-world of their own, over that way? All the Fathers have the kids in there. We call it Tyree-Two. Giadoc says the soul of Tyree came with us, that makes it a heavy trip. Val and Frodo went to see it. They liked the flying. And Winnie took Kirk to some Father who’s going to raise him for awhile, she knows she was too soft with him.”
“Tyree-Two…” Dann thinks of the strength of Ted’s dream-world. This must be incredible, a structure of joined dreams, a real place.
“ Yes. But Heagran is more worried than ever. He’s coming to talk to you soon.”
“I’ll be here.” Dann tries his first mild joke in life beyond death, in realms between the stars.
But it is Chris who comes next, a new, stronger Chris whose shyness is only a slight abruptness in the contact now.
“We need time here, Doc.”
“Time?” It seems the one thing they have.
“I mean, we need some way of marking real time. It’s weird here with nothing changing. I notice some of those stars pulse regularly. I was thinking, why can’t you tie one into a digital counter that we could read?”
“It isn’t me, Chris. I can’t do anything. I’m only the doorman here.”
“You know what I mean, Doc.”
Yes, Dann knows. Chris means what he has always meant, that there are human dimensions he can’t cope with. But the idea is, as usual, a good one.
“Cepheid variables, I think that’s what you’re seeing. The periods are generally around a week.”
“Yeah. We could spit it into intervals. Then you could keep track of things and plan to do a thing in so many periods, say, instead of this fuzzy stuff.”
“I don’t see why not. I’ll ask.”
“I know what we should call them.” Waxman has evidently been monitoring the interchange. “It would be stupid to have weeks or whatever the Tyrenni had, out here. Let’s call the base period after Chris.”
“Good,” says Dann. But Chris has already broken contact, apparently overcome by Waxman’s proposal.
When the apparition of Margaret comes again, Dann senses that she is amused by the proposal. As she moves away to whatever magical manipulations will put it into effect, an odd dreamy smile comes to her human face.
“Baseline, time zero… TOTAL can compute. It will start from when, when we awoke.”
When “we” awoke. Dann realizes anew that this dream-normalcy conceals a reality he has no access to. But he is not unhappy. Let it just go on.
The new real-time system is duly acclaimed a success. The screens carry it, and from time to time a soft unliving energy-signal resonates through the spaces round them.
On one of these occasions a new voice speaks spontaneously to Waxman: “Ship’s bells!” The lost mariner, Ted, is stirring from his dream.
Dann and Waxman are conferring, trying to compute how long, how surprisingly long, they have really been here, when a sense of something happening within the nucleus makes him break off.
His perception returns inward to find indefinable energies in action. Margaret in her human incarnation is not there, but the elegant remote profile against the stars is very vivid and strong, and the chamber seems to be thrumming with the quick rise of signals just beyond his range.
Then suddenly it is over, the energies subside, the shadowy figure fades and all is as before. And Margaret herself comes back, seated by a different part of the great console.