I saw the flash through closed eyelids.
I tumbled backwards. The pain in my chest passed into a dull acceptance. Those Ghosts would have to move fast.
A cold smoothness closed around me.
There was light behind my eyes. I opened them to an airy room. A window to my left. Blue sky. The smell of flowers. A nurse’s concerned face over me.
A human nurse.
Behind him, a Ghost hovered.
I tried to speak. “Hello, Wyman.”
A footstep. “How did you know I was here?” His pinched expression made me smile.
“You’re looking a lot older, Wyman, you know that?” My voice was a croak. “Of course you’re here. You’ve been waiting for me to die. But here I am, ready to collect my fee.
“I expect the doctors will spend the next year scanning me on all wavelengths, mapping out the quagma scars and working out what they mean. I’ll be famous.” I laughed; my chest hurt. “But we’re going to get the treasure, Wyman. A message from another realm of creation.
“Of course we’ll have to share it. Humans and Ghosts… but at least we’ll get it.
“And you’ll have to share the profits, won’t you? And there’s my fee as well. You didn’t budget for that, did you, Wyman? I’d guess you’re about to become a lot poorer—”
He walked out, slamming the door.
“But,” I whispered, “we must put the interests of the race first.”
There was a bit of blue sky reflected in the Ghost. I stared at it and waited for sleep to return.
The burst of human inventiveness characterized by the prototype Susy drive was not sustained. As Wyman foresaw, it was simply too easy for human beings to steal what others had already discovered, rather than develop their own.
The Susy drive — unstable, expensive, unproven — was abandoned.
New images formed before my eyes.
Suddenly I was looking at my own face.
“Jack, every life has a part, in the great cosmic drama we are forced to act out. Watch, now…”
Planck Zero
Recently I’ve been poring over theoretical physics texts. My friends — those who can still stand to see me, since the Ghosts rebuilt me — can’t understand it. Okay, they say, you were almost killed by the Ghosts’ Planck Zero experiment. It was terrible. But isn’t it all over now? Why brood? Why not walk — or rather, fly — out into the sunshine, and enjoy what’s left of your life?
…But I have to do this. I need the answer to a specific question.
Is there any way out of a black hole?
When I heard of the Ghosts’ experiment I made a lot of noise. Eventually their Sink Ambassador agreed to meet me — but they insisted the venue had to be the exposed surface of the Moon. Earth conditions wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference to a Silver Ghost, of course; it was all part of the Ghosts’ endless diplomatic gavotte. As chief administrator of the Ghost liaison project, it was my precise job not to find such matters irritating.
I guess age — and Eve’s death — were making it harder for me to stomach the pettiness of interspecies diplomacy.
Into Lethe with it.
I rode out on the Sahel Cable, then took a flitter to the Moon. We were to meet outside Copernicus Dome; I suited up and walked out briskly. If the Ambassador had been hoping that my sixty-five years would keep me at home it had another thing coming.
The Silver Ghosts’ Ambassador to the Heat Sink floated a yard off the crisp Lunar regolith; the reflection of Earth was a distorted crescent sliding over its midriff.
We met without aides, as I’d requested, and spoke on a closed channel.
I came straight to the point. “Ambassador, I’ve asked to meet you because we suspect you are conducting unauthorized experiments on quagma material.”
It bobbed up and down, a child’s balloon incongruously dispatched to the airless Moon. “Jack, I would like to see evidence to support your allegation.”
I was prepared for that. “I’ll download the dossier to you. As soon as I’m satisfied you are being just as honest with me.”
“Perhaps you are speculating. Perhaps this is a—” Pause. “ — a shot in the dark? You are trying to extract valuable information from me on the threat of evidence which does not exist.”
I shook my head. “Ambassador, think it over. Your race and mine have contacts at many levels, right down to the one-man traders. Security measures between our species are as porous as human flesh.” A charming Ghost simile.
“Perhaps.” Its bobbing evolved into a complex shimmering. “Very well. Jack Raoul, we have grown to know each other, these past decades, and I am aware that you are an honest man… if not always an open one, despite your present posture as an injured party. Therefore I must accept that you have such evidence.”
I felt a surge of satisfaction. “Then you are conducting a covert project.”
“Covert, perhaps, but not intentionally so from our human partners.”
“Oh, really?…” I let it pass. “Then from whom?”
“The Xeelee.”
I studied the Ambassador with a sneaking admiration. “I’ll be impressed if you manage to keep secrets from the Xeelee. How are you doing it?”
The Ghost began to roll gently. “All in good time, Jack Raoul. We cannot be sure of secure communications, even here.”
“This conversation has served its purpose, then. Our staff can proceed with the details—”
“But we would not allow the dissemination of any data. Only an inspection tour, at the highest level, would be acceptable.”
“The highest level?”
“Perhaps you would care to visit the site yourself, Jack Raoul.”
I laughed. “Perhaps… when I find out what the catch is.”
The rolling accelerated. “We know each other too well. Jack, we would have to rebuild you.”
There was no inflection in the artificial voice. The image of Earth rippled across Ghost skin.
I shivered.
“Ambassador, just give me one hint. You know I’m an inquisitive man.”
“A hint?”
“What are you trying to do, with your quagma?”
The rolling stopped. “You have heard of the Uncertainty Principle…”
“Of course.”
“We have violated it.”
After my meeting with the Ambassador I returned to our New Bronx apartment, poured myself a malt, slumped on my favorite couch, and called up Eve.
One wall melted. Eve was heartbreakingly real, at least when she didn’t move and the image stayed stable.
She looked around quickly, as if establishing where she was, then fixed me with an admonishing stare.
“You’re looking good,” I said, raising my glass at the wall.
She snorted, but pushed a hand through her grayed hair. “What do you want, Jack? You know this is bad for you.”
“I want you to tell me about the Uncertainty Principle.”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain later.”
She frowned. “The walls have plenty of popular science texts—”
“You know I can never understand a word of that stuff unless you explain it to me.”
“Lethe, Jack; that’s just sentimental—”
“Humor me. It’s important.”
She sighed and pulled at a stray lock of hair. “All right, damn it. But I’ll keep it brief; and when it’s over, that’s it.”
“It’s a deal.”