Stoner raised a finger to silence him. “That muscular fellow sitting in the corner is one of your medical team,” he said in a pleasant lighthearted tone. The Russian paid no attention to them. “He’s going to stick a needle in me the size of the Alaska Pipeline, right at eleven o’clock. But until then, I’ll eat and drink what I want.”
“I have vodka in my room,” Markov said.
“That’s going too far. Coffee won’t blur me tomorrow. Vodka could.”
They went back into the kitchen and Stoner started a pot of coffee brewing. The strains of Beethoven filtered through the kitchen door.
“I have been thinking,” Markov said as he sat at the kitchen table, chin in hand, “about a British philosopher—Haldane.”
“J. B. S. Haldane? He was a biologist, wasn’t he?”
“A geneticist, I believe. And a Marxist. He was a member of the British Communist Party in the nineteen-thirties.”
“So?”
“He once said, ‘The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine.’ ”
Stoner frowned, turned to the coffeepot perking on the stove, then looked back at Markov.
“Don’t you see what it means?” the Russian asked. “You’re going to risk your life tomorrow and fly off to this alien spacecraft. But suppose, when you reach it…”
“If we reach it,” Stoner heard himself mutter. It surprised him.
“If and when you reach it,” Markov granted, “suppose it’s something beyond human comprehension? Suppose you can’t make head or tail of it?”
Stoner took a potholder and pulled the coffeepot off the stove. He stepped over the table and poured coffee into the two strangely delicate china cups that seemed to be the only kind the kitchen stocked. Beethoven’s Pathétique flowed into its second movement.
“Do you hear that?” Stoner asked, gesturing with the steaming coffeepot.
“The music? Yes, of course.”
“A human being created that. A human mind. Other human minds have played it, recorded it, broadcast it over the air so that we can hear it. We’re listening to the thoughts of a German musician who’s been dead for more than a century and a half.”
“What has that to do with the alien?” Markov asked.
“An alien mind built that spacecraft…”
“A mind we may not be able to comprehend,” said the Russian.
“But that spacecraft follows the same laws of physics that we do comprehend. It moves through space just like any spacecraft that we ourselves have built.”
“And sets off the Northern Lights all around the planet.”
“Using electromagnetic techniques that we don’t understand—yet. But we’ll learn. We have the ability to understand.”
“I wonder if we do.”
Stoner put the coffeepot down on the table.
“Don’t you see, Kirill? We do. We do! Why do you think I want to go out there? So I can be overawed by something I can’t fathom? So I can worship the goddamned aliens? Hell no! I want to see, to learn, to understand.”
“And if you can’t? If it’s beyond comprehension?”
Stoner shook his head stubbornly. “There is nothing in the universe that we can’t understand—given time enough to study it.”
“That is your belief.”
“That is my religion. The same religion as Einstein: ‘The eternal mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility.’ ”
Markov grinned at him. “Americans are optimists by nature.”
“Not by nature,” Stoner corrected. “By virtue of historical fact. The optimists always win in the long run.”
“Well, my optimistic friend, I hope you are right. I hope that this alien is friendly and helpful. I wouldn’t want to have to bow down to someone who isn’t even human.”
They walked back into the common room, coffee cups in hand. The Russian medical technician sitting in the corner looked up at them, pointed to his wristwatch and said something to Markov.
“He wants to remind you that you get your shot at eleven.”
Stoner made a smile for the technician. “Tell him I appreciate his sadistic concern and I’d like to take his needle and stick it up his fat ass.”
The technician smiled and nodded as Markov spoke to him in Russian.
Beethoven ended and the little oblong radio on the bookshelf started playing chamber music: gentle, civilized strings, abstract, mathematical.
“Bach, isn’t it?” Stoner asked, taking one of the leather chairs that flanked the room’s only couch.
Markov sighed. “Vivaldi.”
The outside door banged open and Jo stamped into the room, making annoyed brushing motions across her arms.
“Mosquitoes,” she said. “Big as jet fighters.”
“One of the joys of the countryside,” Markov said.
Jo wore jeans and a light sweater. She ran a hand through her hair as she complained, “They have those damned floodlights all around the building. You can’t see the sky at all, and they won’t let you walk past the lighted area.”
“But look on the positive side,” Markov suggested. “The floodlights attract the mosquitoes.”
She laughed, despite herself, and came over toward the sofa. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Too keyed up.”
“Would you like some coffee?” Stoner asked.
“That’d just make it worse.”
“A glass of hot tea, perhaps?” Markov offered. “Or some vodka.”
“No alcohol. I’ve got to keep my head clear for tomorrow, even if they won’t let me actually get my hands on any of the hardware.”
“Perhaps we could get our medical friend here to give you the shot he’s going to give Stoner. It puts you into a deep, relaxing sleep and then lets you wake up the next morning clear as a mountain lake.”
“So they claim,” Stoner put it.
“No thanks,” Jo said. Looking at the technician, she asked, “Does he understand English?”
“No,” Markov said. “Only Russian.”
“Where’s he from?”
Markov asked the technician, who smiled hugely for her, revealing a picket fence of stainless steel inlays, and answered with a long string of heartfelt words.
“He comes from a little village near Leningrad,” Markov translated, “the most beautiful little village in all of Russia. He would love to show you how beautiful it is, especially in the springtime.”
Jo smiled back at him, asking, “He’s really a Russian, then? Not a Ukrainian or a Georgian or a Kazakh.”
Markov glanced at the overweight, red-haired, fair-skinned medical technician. “He is quite Russian, I guarantee it. But why this interest in our federated nationalities?”
Turning back to Markov and Stoner, Jo answered, “I’ve been talking with some of the people around here—you know, guards, clerks, ordinary people.”
“Not astronomers or linguists,” Markov murmured.
Ignoring him, Jo went on, “A lot of the Russians here are kind of worried about the Kazakhs, and other non-Russian ethnic groups.”
“Worried?” Stoner asked.
“The tide of Islam,” Markov said in a bored tone. “Ever since Iran and Afghanistan, the major topic of gossip is the possibility of a native uprising. It’s quite impossible, you know.”
“An uprising,” Jo said. “But what about sabotage? Suppose the people who used Schmidt use some Kazakh technician to tamper with the rocket booster tomorrow?”
Markov shook his head and raised his hands toward the ceiling. “No, no, no! Impossible. That’s one thing that our security people have checked quite thoroughly. No one but Russian nationals has been allowed near the boosters. That, I promise you.”
“Am I safe from all the Russian nationals?” Stoner asked.