Strings (18 page)

Jathro sat on her left, being darkly inscrutable, either suppressing excitement or possibly just sulking over Alya’s continuing lack of interest in him. She did not care which. He did offer to find her a coffee. She declined, without asking him how she could drink one when sealed inside a bubble suit.

The room held half a dozen people seated at coms, all in the same sanitary packaging, half of them jabbering into mikes over other voices coming from speakers. Two walls were transparent and showed larger and busier rooms beyond, where more troglodytic shadows moved in ruddy-tinged dimness. Another wall held a giant circular window, and after a moment Alya guessed that the blackness beyond must be de Soto Dome itself. The glass—or whatever the port was made of—could probably withstand anything up to and including stellar infusion.

A constant rain of voices splattered through the air around her, individually quiet and calm and confident, but in the mass conveying a sense of turmoil and confusion. Once in a while she recognized Baker Abel, sharp and imperative, devoid of jocularity. Often the voice was the nasal twang of System.

“Four-seven…four-six…four-five…Stand-by, Prometheus. Three-five…three-six…Bering finalizing, Prometheus engaging…calibration, is that a shadow on seven?…Confirming shadow on seven…shadow noted…mark two-nine.”

What did it all mean? Did anyone know?

Did anyone care?

“Prometheus counting…three…two…one. Stellar infusion.”

Machines clicked and clattered somewhere in the dimness. She yawned until her jaw ached. Her interest in Rhine was absolutely zero. Tiber, fine. Tiber felt good. And at the moment a certain long young man would feel good. She wondered where he was billeted. Her head was clogged with fatigue.

Devlin reappeared and settled on her right, too close. “Just a minute or two, now. We’re stoking up Prometheus to heat Nauc’s morning bathwater. Rhine’s next, if it’s there. Abel’s laying bets that Contact’ll be around on the night side this time. Lord alone knows how anyone can tell, but that guy’s right more often than he’s wrong.”

“Perhaps he has intuition also, Dr. Devlin.”

Devlin flashed a big smile to show he was unwounded. “Grant! Call me Grant. I doubt it. You are unique; a unique woman.” If he was trying one of his steamy glances, the dim lighting masked it. “Baker’s goddamn baby sense of humor riles me, but he’s a good operator.”

Voices weaved and twined in intricate polyphony.

“Perhaps I should explain some of the physics here,” Devlin remarked, sliding closer and laying his arm along the back of the couch.

She made a noncommittal noise.

“Her Highness studied superstring theory under Gutelmann in Ankara,” Jathro said with satisfaction.

“The hell she did!” Devlin said, and for a moment he was speechless.

Except that Her Highness has forgotten every integral and fractal tensor she ever knew, Alya thought. Four-dimensional space-time was a special case within ten-dimensional superspace—that much had been known by every schoolboy for sixty years—but the way in which the Chiu-Laski transmensor realized one of the normally nonoperational dimensions by exchanging it for one of the three spatial dimensions was something that could only be expressed in math.

And the resulting string could be regarded as being of either infinite length or of no length at all. That had never made any sense to Alya, but as Gutelmann himself had said, “Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t stop it working.” On a clear night a telescope swept across the heavens would catch a million stars. So the transmensor could sweep a string through superspace, finding stars whose location relative to the Earth could not be expressed in real quantities. A transmensor gave strings, not answers, Gutelmann said—
more knots than yesses
. Baker Abel might appreciate that one.

“Four-two…elevation…”

Prometheus had disengaged. Alya gathered that much. Just as well, or it would have melted the planet. She heard a sudden tremor of excitement in the dryness: “Response at predicted coordinates. A little high on
tange
…No rippling.”

Pause…

Tange?

“Ah! Here we go,” Devlin said with satisfaction.

The voices began picking up again, muttering their incomprehensible muddle of sounds.

Then she sensed a sudden crackle, and everyone seemed to look toward the window. Was that a faint bluish tinge she could see?

“Young devil’s right again,” Devlin said. “That’s moonlight out there. Two moons, both a fair size. Come!”

He rose and insisted on assisting her. They went over to the port and peered through.

There was nothing startling, for Alya had seen such places on a hundred holodramas and even a few newscasts. The sheer size of the dome impressed her. It was larger than any stadium she had ever seen, and she had seen many. Of course, its relative emptiness was making it seem larger. The floor saucered down to flatness in the center, where an indistinct clutter could just be discerned as a ring of armored skivs like patient dinosaurs, plus a blur of other equipment, anonymous in the muddled glow of red lamps high above and moonlight blue streaming up from the middle.

It was all irrelevant. If they suggested Alya go out there and take a look, she would obey without argument and it wouldn’t make any difference. Tiber. Not Rhine,
Tiber
!

The voices rose again, and then fell still, listening to a warbling rattle on a solitary tinny speaker.

“They’re picking up the robbie!” Devlin explained tensely.

A robbie would be a robot of some sort, some gadget that for the last seven or eight days had cruised around—crawled? flown? swum?—and now was radioing in its findings.

“…at mean sea level point nine nine nominal…variance subnominal…oxygen one point one nominal…” That was System, relaying.

Alya wandered back to the couch. The rustle of excitement came again. The rest of the people in the room were grinning at one another.

“…noble gases nominal…deuterium point…”

“Looks good!” Devlin said.

Then…she had missed it, but others had not. Devlin muttered “Fart!” under his breath.

“Grant, you read?” That was Baker’s voice.

“Yeah, we got that, Abel.”

“You heard? She’s bassackward.” Disappointment.

“I heard.”

“Suggest we throw out a couple o’ mark fours and a seven-eighty-eight, and strike our tent here. Pick ’em up next window.”

“Fine,” Devlin said. “Go ahead.”

“What’s wrong?” Jathro asked, petulant at being out of things.

Devlin yawned and stretched. “Right-hand thread. Amino acids—they’re what make up proteins, okay? All terrestrial amino acids are left-rotary. Almost all Class Twos are the same—you’d expect half and half, but that’s not so. But a few have right-rotary isomers, like this one.”

“So?”

“So they would mess up your body chemistry something horrible. I’m not sure what happens, but they plug the works. We’ve tried hamsters and we’ve tried mice. They don’t last long on a bassackward. You were right, Alya—Rhine’s not important.”

Tiber…

Devlin escorted Alya back to Columbus Dome, with Jathro scowling along in the background like a distrustful maiden aunt. She felt groggy and weary beyond caring about anything, and yet a sudden spasm of…
something
…struck her as the spiralator brought her to her floor. She stumbled as she stepped out, just as Baker Abel had done earlier in the evening.

She thanked her escorts at her door and closed it in their faces. The clock showed exactly 0400. By Banzarak time it was afternoon, and she ought to be wide awake.

She leaned helplessly back against the door and stared across at the oversize bed, which was grotesquely rumpled by her earlier attempts to sleep on it. If she did not sleep soon, she would collapse. She felt near to tears with exhaustion. She would do anything for a good night’s sleep.

Anything
?

Yes, she decided. Anything. The
buddhi
was completely unyielding, completely immoral. It would give her no peace. Not here. But she had slept like a baby in Hubbard Cedric’s embrace. She had been right about Rhine. She had no cause to doubt her intuition.

Torn between relief and disgust, she went back to the spiralator. Two floors higher felt right to exit. The circular lounge was the same, and she walked around, studying doors, until she found one that—again—felt right.

She had no doubts that this was where she must come, of all the rooms in Cainsville. Nor did she doubt that he would have left his door unlocked. She did not knock.

She was surprised, however, to find a light on. He was sitting up in bed, bare-chested, reading a magazine. He laid it down as she entered, his face so shadowed that she could not see his expression. She had hoped for darkness to hide her shame, but there could be no pulling back, although surely hordes of royal ancestral ghosts were petitioning all the gods in history to hurl thunderbolts at her. Pretending a calm that her knotted stomach and dry throat belied, Alya walked across to him.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked.

He adjusted the covers around his waist in an oddly defensive gesture. “Bed’s too short. And I was checking on Rhine, like you.”

“You saw me?”

He shook his head vigorously, registering alarm. “Wasn’t spying on you—just the data. But I knew that’s why you’d come.”

She was surprised that he had gained access. Illiterate or not, he was skilled on a com; she had forgotten. Holos had been mother and father to him.

Now what? He was staring, naturally—wide-eyed with hope, starting to blush, and yet not able to believe his good luck. All she wanted was to lie there beside him. That was the only place in the world she would be able to sleep. Fair enough—but first she would have to pay the rent.

The preliminaries were over and each was waiting. Surely he would not make her beg? Then he pulled back the edge of the covers, but not far enough to expose himself. It was an invitation to sit and talk, as if ladies really did visit men in the middle of the night for conversation—perhaps he thought they did. Or it was an invitation for more, if that was why she had come. The gesture was oddly touching, a good solution to their problem.

Well! If this was what Alya must do, then she would do it properly. No cheating—the works. She smiled as though she expected to enjoy herself. She kicked off her shoes and reached for her zip, and saw his ribcage heave in a deep sigh of wonder.

And suddenly she was certain that this was not going to be child molesting. He was watching her intently, eyes glittering with excitement, but a man was supposed to react like that. He was not squirming, or making nervous jokes, or smirking a juvenile leer. His unpredicatable boy-man transitions continued to surprise her, but the manual for the act of love did not require literacy. Cedric had done it before—she was sure. And then she felt less guilty.

“You want the light off?” he muttered, his voice thick.

“Not unless you do?” Dumb question.

She took her time, dropping her clothes deliberately, letting him look. Even naked, she found that she could take his gaze without flinching—it was flattering to be so obviously appreciated. Then she took time to unfasten her hair and shake it loose. Pale skin was very revealing—his flush of arousal was spreading over his chest.

Then she was ready, and he seemed to think that it was his turn, or that she might be equally interested. He took a deep breath and threw off the covers completely. He slid down, flat on his back. He was not wearing anything, either.

Alya slipped into his embrace. The body contact sent a delicious sense of peace rushing through her—Safety! It was dry land in a flood. It was slamming a soundproof door on a clamoring factory. It was all she needed.

It was not, obviously, all she was going to get.

“Just hold me first,” she whispered, melting against him. “Not yet! Just hold me for a minute.” Then you can collect the rent.

Cainsville, April 8

SHAVED, SHOWERED, DRESSED, and feeling quite extraordinarily pleased with himself, Cedric set off down to the cafeteria in search of a hearty breakfast, and for the first time managed the spiralator without banging his head. He felt faintly fuzzy after three sleep-shy nights—excitement on Tuesday, terror on Wednesday, and now miracles. What miracles! Were it not for his extremely smug sense of well-being, he might have concluded that she had been only a dream.

Crazy! When he had bought all his new clothes the day before, he had forgotten underwear. At night, therefore, he had rinsed out his briefs and hung them up to dry. For the first time in his life he had gone to bed in the raw. Then the most beautiful girl in the world had come and climbed in beside him and let him make love to her. He must remember to buy some shorts, but he would certainly sleep that way from now on. It paid off!

He wished he could share that joke with—but he had decided not to think about Meadowdale.

And good guys did not tell tales, anyway.

There were a dozen or so people eating, but no one he recognized. They would all know him, after yesterday. He was not inconspicuous. Some of them, he noticed, were reading as they ate. He had not brought the magazine he had bought to practice on, and he was not going to try reading in public, anyway.

So he thought about Alya instead. He had been careful not to ask her why she had come there all the way from Banzarak, but he was beginning to guess. Last night he had done some research on the traditional ritual with the cobras. System had coughed out clips of it, because it had survived into modern times as a tourist attraction. Of course, the whole thing was a fake, the reports said, and always had been—the snake was defanged and the prince or princess was warned in advance which pot to choose, anyway.

Cedric did not think Alya would have cheated like that. Some people were born with a good musical ear, some were born to grow tall, and Alya’s family all had a sort of second sight, handed down from the distant past. Everyone knew that the East held mysteries that science did not understand yet! She must have been hired by the Institute as a consultant seer. The Institute was supposed to do scientific research, and would never admit that it was using mystics. That explained why System was treating Alya as a secret.

And the previous night the hope had been to find a Class One. Devlin himself had been there with her—in the middle of the night—but the party had dispersed as soon as Rhine had turned out to be a mirror world. Everything else about it had been fine, apparently.

Obviously they had been hoping for a Class One. After thirty years of unsuccessful hunting for Class One worlds with science, his grandmother was trying with mystics, obviously. He had put that idea to System, but all he had discovered was that there must be a Grade Zero confidentiality, higher even than his own Grade One. But if he could get so close to so stunning a secret so quickly, then the media would do the same, sooner or later, and the more information they were given, then the more sooner and the less later. His grandmother would not tolerate that—she dared not. Small wonder that she did not get along with BEST! Conventional scientists would denounce her as a charlatan. That was what Alya had been hinting at on the lev, when she had warned him not to make any announcements until Gran had approved them.

Breakfast was good and there was lots of it. He would have liked a third helping, but he had an appointment with Dr. Fish to talk about the ten o’clock commeeting. In the cruel light of morning he thought he had been absurdly snotty to issue that invitation; but Gran had given him a job to do, and he must try his best.

He found a golfie and told it to go to Philby Dome, where the offices were, and he arrived right on nine.

Dr. Fish’s room was small and plain and starkly tidy. Along one wall stood a row of metal cabinets, and the two drawers that were open were full of papers. Cedric wondered what sort of records could be too secret to store in System.

He liked Dr. Fish, who was short and almost plump and much less intimidating than, say, Devlin Grant or Hastings Willoughby. His hair gleamed like black plastic, heat-molded to his head, but there was no gray in it. Cedric had seen people wearing glasses in historical holodramas often enough, but never in real life. Funny things, eyeglasses—they made Dr. Fish’s eyes seem as though they never blinked. The deputy for Security reached across his desk to shake hands, and of course that reminded Cedric of how he had made a fool of himself in Gran’s office.

Dr. Fish had soft white hands, with extremely short fingers, and he waved his visitor to a plain, hard chair.

“Now, Deputy,” he said with a smile that did not crease his pudgy face at all. “What can I do for you?” His voice was an elusive murmur; it required a listener’s full attention, and it made everything sound like a secret.

Cedric laid his right ankle on his left knee. “Dr. Fish, would you please call me Cedric? I’m not very comfortable being a deputy.” He paused and then decided to take a chance. “And, sir…why did Gran do that to me? They thought she’d gone crazy!”

“They’ve been thinking that for thirty years.”

Silence. Apparently that was an answer.

“Oh. Well, what I need is some advice.”

He outlined Gran’s instructions, and what he thought the media would want, and his own idea for a one-way download. Dr. Fish listened to the whole thing without moving at all, his hands lying limply on the desk, his eyes so still that they might have been painted on the backs of his glasses. So attentive an audience was very flattering, and Cedric could feel himself relaxing. At the end he switched—left ankle on right knee—and waited for reaction.

“That would work, Cedric. Will you announce it today?”

The answer should have been yes, and Cedric was relieved that Dr. Fish had approved of his idea, but he remembered Alya’s advice. Alya did not trust Gran, and Alya knew a lot more about the world than he did, even a lot more about the Institute.

So he said, “No. I think I should listen to what the media want, and then I’ll call Gran before I make an announcement. Maybe she should make it, not me.”

Dr. Fish pursed fat lips. “She’s on her way—she’ll be here by noon. But a quick resolution of the problem would enhance the viability…make you look good. A definitive statement of your proposed methodology would be welcomed by the press. It would do a lot to ameliorate—take the heat off the director.”

“I’ll see, sir. When I see what they ask for.” But it was a tempting thought, to be able to help Gran so soon.

“I’m sure you’ve already guessed their requirements and have elicited—found the answer.” Dr. Fish smiled again.

“One other thing, sir. I need some expert help! Surely there must be consultants that I could hire to advise me?”

Distaste showed on the clay-white mask. Dr. Fish curled his lip. “They might be members of BEST.”

“Huh?”

The curvature increased. “Members of the Brotherhood of Engineers, Scientists, and Technicians are not allowed into Cainsville under any circumstances.”

Oh! Cedric put both feet on the floor. “Well…thank you for your time, sir.”

“There is one other matter we should discuss.”

“Yes, sir?”

Fish’s tiny voice crept over the desk like lurking spiders. “Dr. Eccles Pandora, of WSHB.”

Cedric winced and said nothing.

“She is planning a special tonight. Normal programming has been canceled to make way for it.”

Gran had foretold that it would be put off until tonight. “What sort of special, sir?”

Dr. Fish smiled more broadly than ever, and yet somehow his face held no amusement at all. “That is not quite certain, but as deputy director for Media Relations, you should be standing by to make a quick rebuttal.”

Gelded with a rusty saw…Cedric gulped and took a couple of very deep breaths. Why did it have to be Eccles Pandora? “How can I, sir? I’m new on the job, and I don’t know the truth. It would be the truth, wouldn’t it? I’m not a very good liar.”

“Certainly the truth. Come and see me this afternoon—I should have amassed more data by then. We can draft something up together, or perhaps even prerecord it.” Dr. Fish blinked for the first time. “We might enlist some help—from Frazer Franklin, for instance.”

Cedric felt confused. “He’s WSHB, too! Why should Dr. Frazer help us, sir?”

“Because I can blackmail him.”

Dr. Fish’s face was as deadpan as ever, but Cedric knew when he was having his leg pulled. He laughed appreciatively and unfolded himself from the chair. The deputy for Security rose also. Perhaps it was because Cedric was then so very much taller than the dumpy Dr. Fish, or just because he trusted the man’s gentle benevolence, that he found the courage to ask, “Is Pandora’s show likely to be about Class One worlds, sir?”

The glasses gleamed up at him inscrutably. “No,” Dr. Fish whispered. “No, I don’t think it’s about Class One worlds, Cedric. Just between ourselves, I think it’s about murder.”

The commeeting was not as terrible as Cedric had feared. Only about a dozen companies had bothered to participate, so System was able to arrange full-size images around one big table. Most of the representatives were very junior, chosen to show how little faith their employers had in Cedric’s abilities or prospects. At least half looked no older than himself, and a couple were strikingly female into the bargain—not in the same league as Alya, of course, merely stunning. Some looked almost as scared as he felt.

But he soon realized that this was much like being back in charge of the dining hall at Meadowdale, and then he felt better. He bade them all welcome, asked their names, and told them to do the talking. He was going to listen and their words would be recorded, he said. They must assume he knew absolutely nothing, and if they wanted to call him nasty names, then that was fine by him—he was trying to broaden his vocabulary anyway. Soon they were all relaxed enough to start kidding around, and after that things went okay.

The main complaint, one he heard six or seven times, was that the Institute held back information and then edited it. The media wanted to elect their own heroes—they were tired of having Devlin Grant and a few others thrust down their throats.

And Cedric would never have guessed how much Gran was hated. The trick she had pulled the day before had been merely the last and greatest of many provocations she had used to bait the media over the years. Being a genius herself, she had no patience with stupidity in others, but there had to be more to it than that. He was certain that she had been deliberately keeping the media at bay, and if that were so, then he was wasting his time. Any proposal he came up with would go squasho.

Around eleven the meeting ended, and he found himself alone at the end of the table again, the ghosts departed. They had not seemed like ghosts, and he would have enjoyed trying to make friends with some of them, especially that slinky auburn fox from NABC.

Now what? Fish had said Gran would be arriving before noon. Likely she would have bigger balls to juggle than Cedric, but he decided he would try to stay out of her way. In the flesh she was lots more scary than she had been in the Meadowdale com. Fish himself had designs on Cedric for later, and he would rather not think about those at all.

For a moment he considered calling Meadowdale, but the thought of facing Ben or Madge was nauseating. They must have known. All the adults must have known—teachers and nurses and instructors, even the farmhands. How could they live with themselves? How did they justify their own lives when they looked in a mirror?
If I don’t do it, someone else will
? That would cover any crime at all.

Now Cedric understood why nobody called back after leaving Meadowdale. Either they had been butchered and used for autografts, or they had discovered the truth about that and could never bear to talk to the ghouls again. And obviously they would never be allowed to talk to the kids. He shivered and tried to put it out of his mind.

Which left Alya.

“
System, where is Princess Alya
?”

“No such person on file,” the nasal voice said sniffily.

Gran had said Cedric was to play host for Alya, so she was business. “
Override
.”

“She is in the command room for David Thompson Dome.”

“
Am I allowed to go there
?”

“Grade One rating allows physical access to all parts of the complex except—one: the personal offices of staff members ranking higher than Grade Three; two: those parts of the stellar…”

The list unrolled for a while, until Cedric told System to shut up and send him a golfie. He would try it and see.

When small, Cedric had almost killed himself a few times by putting a plastic bag over his head and pretending it was a bubble suit. Most boys did that, and some were less fortunate than he. Growing older, he had come to understand that bubble suits were not especially glamorous garments. They were not designed for real exploration; they were lab clothes, overpressured to prevent invasion by gas or dust or microbes, the last line of defense against accidental contamination. Yet they were still not much more than plastic bags, fitting closely over shoes and hands, and usually belted at the waist, but otherwise ballooning everywhere else. They were not elegant.

Nevertheless, he felt a satisfying little thrill as he was assisted into a real bubble suit for the first time. The technician who helped him muttered darkly about how old that one must be, speculating that it might not be safe after so long in storage. No demand for that size, he explained, and he insisted on testing it to well beyond the required pressure.

But the seals held, and Cedric’s irresistible authority as a deputy director won his way past successive layers of sullen guards until at last he was ushered into the command room of David Thompson Dome. It was large and dim, with many people sitting around muttering at coms. Voices wove in and out of the red darkness in a basketwork of sound, while a spectators’ corner of comfortable couches held Devlin Grant and the man with the turban—and Alya.