Chapter 25
The ship glided into one of the docking nooks that pockmarked the outside of the station. As it bumped to a stop, the dock structure wrapped itself around the ship, bonding to the hull like a second skin. The hatches opened and security robots glided aboard.
The search was thorough. Ruskin and the others waited on the bridge while the robots scanned and probed, not just the ship’s holds, but the control console as well. It was an hour before they were allowed to leave the ship.
Once inside the station, they were met by human security officers, who took Max and Tamika to a separate room. Ruskin was the only one with clearance; his friends would have to wait until he found someone to authorize their presence. Ruskin followed an agent into a small office, where he was fitted with a gold-and-iridescent security bracelet and informed that he would be taken at once to see someone named Dr. Sharaane. “She’ll be glad to see you, Dr. Ruskin. They’ve all been pretty frantic, wondering if you would make it here in time,” the officer said.
Ruskin followed him out. The name had set a bell ringing in his mind, but he couldn’t place it.Dr. Sharaane …
If the station on the outside had looked like a malformed hornet’s nest, on the inside it was a blown-glass citadel. The corridors were clear-walled and asymmetrical; it was like walking through a hollow latticework of crystal fibers. One could glimpse a variety of offices and labs, but there was a shimmering unreality about them; none of the rooms seemed to be quitethere, except when they actually passed an open doorway and could glimpse people inside. Ruskin imagined that he was walking through a glass Klein bottle, the topology of which passed through a five- or six-dimensional space-time. He wondered if there was an n-space generator at work somewhere in the station, twisting the architecture out of normal space-time. It wasn’t exactly K-space: just a slight displacement out of the continuum, he thought.
It was hardly standard architectural design; the power consumption had to be enormous. Of course there was no shortage of power here, if they could tap even a fraction of the energy flux outside the station’s shielding. But why do it?
Dr. Sharaane.His mind fairly vibrated with memories just out of reach. There was something here that would not let him go. He felt as though he were caught by a moving dragline, pulling him underwater into an airless abyss. He drew a breath and hurried to keep up with the officer.Dr. Sharaane.
The corridor appeared to dip, and beneath his feet he glimpsed a room filled with scientific holos. Before he could ask about it, his escort led him around a curve and it rippled out of sight. A moment later, they were in a wide, translucent-walled foyer. Until now, they had passed very few people; but here people were moving about, and they mostly looked young, harried, and businesslike. A tall, green-eyed man waved and called, “Good to see you, Willard!” Staring, Ruskin watched the man disappear through a doorway. He turned to query his escort, but the officer was already gesturing impatiently for him to hurry.
The doors at the end of the foyer dissolved at their approach. They walked into a room that was practically alive with a wavering, ruddy light. For a moment, he saw no one else in the room; he saw only the wall-screen filled with the face of the sun, convection cells and spots of dark coolness swimming against the great hypnotic glow. The close companion star, Honey, was just visible in the corner of the screen. He stood, mouth half-open; then he heard: “Willard! Thank heaven you made it!”
It was as though a wind had arisen from nowhere, carrying the scent of a distant ocean and a rush of memories of a life long ago, in another world, another reality. In the back of his skull, he felt a chamber opening. He knew that voice.(Dax! Oh shit — oh for chrissakes, Dax, why didn’t you tell me?)
“Over here!”
He turned. Rising from a console cluttered with holos was a tall, impossibly bony-looking woman with curly auburn hair and round eyes with enormous pupils. No. Not enormous pupils: large eyes with deep maroon, almost black irises. They had fooled him the first time he’d seen her eyes; they’d fooled him again now. Her skin was a light, burnished brown. She wore a rust-orange jumpsuit, the color of the sun.
Dr. Sharaane.Thalia Sharaane. He blinked at her through a mist, trying to focus on her face, trying not to succumb to the wave of dizziness that was sweeping over him.
“Aren’t you going to say hello?” She was smiling, but with a trace of puzzlement on her face. “Where the hell have you been? Did you have a good flight? What’s this about some friends coming with you?”
“I — yes — our flight was fine,” Ruskin whispered. He cleared his throat and tried to return her smile. “Hello … Thalia. It’s been a long time.” He took a step toward her.A lifetime. An eternity.
Their eyes met, and the corners of her mouth dimpled upward. “A very long time, Willard,” she said softly. “Can you still give me a hug?” She dismissed the security officer with a wave and walked toward him.
Ruskin stood paralyzed, watching Thalia approach; he felt as if an electrical current were singing in his head. A flood of memories was rising in him like an ocean tide: himself, standing with Thalia Sharaane on the Wall of Thespis on Calaise, watching the changing colors as the Three Suns set over the Thousand Lakes; Thalia grinning at him over an ice cream sundae in Cambridge on the fourth world of the Pleaides Triangle; the heat of her body awkwardly embracing his, loving and welcoming …
His breath escaped him in a frightened rush as she put her arms around him — tentatively at first, then with feeling. Was she trembling as she touched him? The smell of her, lemongrass and musk, filled his head and his thoughts. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help … remembering how much he had once desired her.
(Dax, help me!)
((These memories run deep, Willard, and powerful. It’s hard to know —))
(If I could only fit it all together! But it’s too much, it’s too fast. Dax, I loved her, didn’t I?)
((The memories are confused; but we have to understand it. The terrakells will help …))
“Willard! Ow!” Thalia broke the embrace abruptly, with a grimace. “I’m glad you’re happy to see me, but don’t break my back!”
“Sorry,” he whispered. Anger flickered through his mind, and then was gone.Anger? Had he been hugging her too hard? Maybe … with the memories and all. “I —” His voice caught and he found himself breathless. What could he say?I’m sorry, but until a minute ago I had forgotten that you existed, but now I remember: we were lovers. And why did we stop …?
“You don’t have to say anything. I think I know how you feel.” Thalia smiled sheepishly. “It’s good to see you — but it’s strange, after all this time.” She beckoned toward her console. “But come on. No time to dwell on that. Let me bring you up-to-date. Then I’ll give you a quick tour.”
Wait — hold it!he wanted to cry; he needed to get his emotions sorted out. Instead, he cleared his throat and stammered, “That’s terrif — I mean, great. But, Thalia —”
She glanced up quizzically.
“Well — about my friends.” He was struggling to put together a coherent thought, coherent words. “They need —”
“Don’t worry,” she said brusquely. “They’ll be given quarters in the visitors’ section. Friends of yours are friends of — well, you know.” She shrugged. “They’ll have to stay in the restricted area, though, unless we can get a fast security check on them. Actually, Willard —” and her tone became almost reproving — “I’m surprised that you brought people along without clearing it first.” Her eyebrows twitched.
It was his turn to shrug, his face flushed. “I, ah, wasn’t aware until the last minute that I’d need their help,” he said, thinking that even to himself, that sounded lame.
Thalia looked at him, puzzled. “Help? Well, I doubt that will be possible, given the time. But don’t worry, security’s working on it.” She flashed a bright, hard smile, apparently dismissing the subject. She glanced at the console again. “There’s very little time to spare, actually. What the devil took you so long? Didn’t you get our messages? We’re coming up on the end of Stage Two right now, and convergence is happening faster than we’d predicted.”
Ruskin nodded, not answering.Stage Two … convergence … ? He was still lightheaded, memories echoing in his mind. He and Thalia, loving and quarreling …(Dax, is it my imagination, or did I just provoke a jealous response from her?) He rubbed his face, trying not to betray his confused feelings as new memories swept through him: Thalia, angry because he had sought advice from someone in the Science Council whom she thought incompetent; brooding, because he’d left her alone too long at a party; withdrawing, when he couldn’t give her exactly the kind of reassurance she needed, when she needed it.
((These feelings —))
((— are real.))
((— are a powerful part —))
((— of your memory.))
Dax? No, not Dax. It was the terrakells: a thousand little feet traipsing the pathways of his mind. He might as well ask:(Are these the things that drove us apart?)
((Not sure —))
((Still emerging —))
Still emerging. Thalia was showing him data now on the state of the solar core, its fusion evolution nearly at an end, its instabilities evident only to instruments deep in the star’s body. He could follow it, but barely. He took a sharp breath, remembering that Thalia had been supremely competent in her realm of n-space mechanics and astrophysics — so good she had almost driven him away in fear of his own failure. And yet … even in the face of her great skill, insecurities had always lurked.
He caught the words, “… where you’ll be working,” and Thalia was looking at him for a reaction. She frowned. “You look pale, Willard.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. “Just tired.” And for an instant he wondered: Was it possible that he could confide in her? And the answer came to him an instant later: not if you can’t even remember what drove you apart.
“You were supposed to arrive rested,” Thalia said impatiently. “Things are happening fast.”
He nodded numbly. “I’ll be working directly with you?”
“Part of the time. During Stage Four, we’ll all be in the control center, well away from prying eyes.” In response to his mystified look, she sighed. “I assumed that you knew. We now have observers from Tandesko and Leipzicon and the Querayn Academies here to observe ‘Starmuse,’ and any or all of them could be suspicious about what we’re really up to. We’re still under Alliance quarantine, but when that Tandesko ship made it in long enough to measure the anomalous core emissions last year —”
“Huh?”
“Surprised you didn’t hear about it. It set off a whole political thing. By some miracle it was kept quiet, but in the end we were forced to bring on board a contingent of foreign observers. All of whom are being given falsified data. If they knew how fast the sun wasreally burning — well, anyway, that’s why you’re wearing that thing.” She indicated his bracelet. “Anyone without one of those physically cannot cross into the areas where Breakstar work is going on. That’s one reason this station is designed the way it is. Obviously you’re not to mention Breakstar to anyone not wearing a bracelet, and it would be best if you talked about it to no one you don’t know personally.”
Does that include you?he wondered, even as he murmured, “Right.”
“So if a visitor asks, you’re just studying the sun. And you’re too newly arrived to have much to say. You have no idea when it’s going to blow.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m afraid that applies to your friends, as well — at least until we’ve run security on them. Okay?”
He nodded, frowning.
“Then let’s go show you the station.” With a gesture to follow, she led him out the way he’d come in.
Walking through a crossover corridor between two sections of the station was like passing through a faceted crystal. “A lot of people find the n-dimensional layout confusing at first,” Thalia said.
“I wonder why.”
She glanced back with a trace of a smile as he hurried to keep up. That was another thing he remembered now: she always walked fast. Sightseeing with her had always been a pain. As he caught up again, she said, “It’s not just for security, though. Partly it’s to give us better use of the space we have, while minimizing the volume that has to be shielded. And of course our waste heat is dispersed through radiators that are shifted out of the local continuum.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But the big reason is to give us an edge when the star actually goes. The only way to adequately protect the station is to get it out of local space before the shock wave hits. Even with radiation shielding, the concussion would obliterate us. So we get a head start —”
“By having half the station already shifted into n-space?”
“Actually, more like seven-tenths of the station. But yes. Mind you, we’re notthat sure how the blast will affect the local n-space, either. But that’s our hope.” She pointed. “In here.” They walked through a glimmering blue trapezoid.
He felt a momentary sensation of twisting, as the air rippled around him. They emerged onto a narrow balcony. It overlooked a large control room filled with people and holographic work stations. At the front of the room a huge display showed a changing selection of images — some of them graphs and data, some satellite telemetry, others images of Betelgeuse itself.
“Control and mapping,” Thalia said. She led the way down to floor level.
The work stations were arrayed in tiers, with a number of supervisors walking among them, looking over the shoulders of, or bending to speak to, the operators. Several stations were enclosed in privacy-screens — not for security, Thalia explained, but to minimize distraction. “Anyone in this room is cleared to see any of the information here.” Ruskin nodded, walking alongside her; his head was spinning, but with a growing sense of familiarity. Hefelt that he should have come expecting everything he saw right now. His fingers tingled, itching to touch work-station controls. Would he remember in time? Would he recall the knowledge he was supposed to be working with?
“Willard, how are you?” a thin-faced man asked, glancing up at him. Before Ruskin could think of a reply, a woman three stations over had noticed him and waved.
“Hi, Juan,” he answered thickly. The name was on his tongue before it was in his mind, but he knew as he spoke that it was correct. “Hi, Sabrina,” he said to the woman. Piece by piece, the memories were arranging themselves; he could practically feel them clicking into place.(Are the rest of the pieces coming?) he asked Dax.
((God willing.))
He nodded to himself.(Do you believe in God, Dax?)
There was no answer.
Thalia led him to the front row and a curved console equipped with multiple thinktank holos and operator inputs. “The mapping station. You can control it all from here,” Thalia said.
He nodded, swallowing. “When do I start?” he murmured.
“As soon as you’ve been brought up-to-date on the core condition and the newest projections. Also, we have some changes in string tracking to go over with you. And — as soon as you’ve broughtus up-to-date. Willard, your recommendations never reached us! You said you got the changes we transmitted to you?”
Scowling, he shook his head. “No, I —”
“Hell! Well, that explains why you got here so late, too.” Thalia’s expression darkened with anger. “Well, there’s no time to worry about it now. You’ll just have to study fast.”
“What were the —?”
“When you see all the data, you’ll know. But look, we’ve got to have your recommendations for shaping and mapping — and soon. When we hit Stage Three, you’ll be living at this console until it’s over. But Snyder needs to lay in the timing before that.”
“Right, he murmured, keeping up the pretense even as a rush of guilt swept through him. How long could he continue to hide his ignorance — and who or what would he hurt with it?
((I’m trying to keep you from hurting anyone. If you can make it through the review, we just might be able to pull it all togeth —))
“Do you want to spend a little time on the system before you brief us?” Thalia asked.
“Yes. Good idea. And Thalia — I really do need the help of my friends. If you can expedite even a partial clearance for them —”
Her eyebrows bristled in puzzlement. “Well — I’ll work on it. But first —” Her face relaxed.
“What?”
“I think there’s enough time for you to have aquick lunch with me.”
He cocked his head and smiled. “Okay.” And a tiny voice in the center of his mind said,
((Good. There are some things I need to talk to you about. We’re finding some interesting things here in the attic.))
His smile never wavered, even for a moment.
If he carried on an intelligent conversation with Thalia over lunch, he had only Dax’s word for it. He viewed the entire affair as if through a shadow-screen, a play of dark and light, and the murmuring voices of actors only distantly related to him. He had plenty else to keep him occupied.
He stood in a spotlight, pinned by three intersecting beams of coruscating light. All else was in darkness, except for the shadow-box play with Thalia off to one side. It took him a while to decide whether or not to remain in the spotlights; eventually he realized that it was a two-way illumination. His lips were moving; but other voices were speaking silently, as well; the spotlights were like holobeams, carrying images to him, taking his words away.
The K-space penetration into the Brant-Higgs-field must be precisely aimed for successful gravitic refraction …
The intersection of the projection with the n-dimensional hyperstring will cause barely measurable expansion in the dimensions n1, n2, and n3; however, the introduction of the black hole singularity will significantly alter the equation, as follows …
Maximum gravitic refraction and core intensification, with Ranlom-field focusing of neutrinos back into the core, will augment core collapse by a factor of …
Type IV supernova is expected to produce an abrupt neutrino flux on the order of 1053ergs, of which 0.1% will be captured and redirected by Ranlom-fields …
The question of disillusionment is important for several reasons, among them the need to identify potential chokepoints in your own thought processes …
Five minutes after lunch, Ruskin remembered nothing of his meal conversation with Thalia; he remembered only the maelstrom in his forebrain. Somewhere in the back of his mind, an eddy of thought revealed that Thalia was now ready to meet his friends.
“You are Ali’Maksam Tokandro,” Thalia said, frowning slightly as Ruskin introduced both of his friends.
“Tokandro Ali’Maksam,” the Logothian corrected her, bowing slightly.
“Forgive me. I have seen some of your work.”
“Indeed,” whispered Max.
“The consciousness research is most provocative.”
“Ah,” Max answered. “You are referring then to my society’s joint research with the Querayn?”
“Of course, yes. I confess I do not recall all of the individual contributions.” Thalia’s frown deepened. “And you are here to assist Willard in his evaluation of the star?”
Max opened his hands wide. “I am here to help him in any way I can.”
“And are you studying consciousness here, as well?”
“I always endeavor to study consciousness. That is my field,” Max said calmly.
“But,” Thalia persisted, “some of the Querayn feel that the study of the star is itself a study of consciousness.”
Max’s voice dropped low. “I must defer to their work on that question.”
Ruskin listened to the exchange, aware of Tamika’sWho is this person? expression. “Max has been my right-hand man with much of the cogitative processing,” he said, breaking in. As Thalia turned, he changed the subject hurriedly. “And this is Tamika Jones. Tamika — Thalia Sharaane, the Director of Astrophysics on Starmuse.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Tamika said, extending a hand.
Thalia’s eyes shifted to meet Tamika’s. She shook hands — rather coolly, it seemed to Ruskin. “And you are here as —” She waited for Tamika to fill in the blank.
Tamika straightened perceptibly as she heard the implicit challenge. “Companion,” she said simply.
Thalia’s eyes flicked to Ruskin and back to Tamika. “I see.” Her smile did not seem any warmer than her handshake. “Welcome, then.”
“Thank you,” Tamika murmured.
Thalia shrugged. “Not at all. I’m sure we can find something for you to do.” Her gaze narrowed as she turned back to Ruskin. “And now, Willard — suppose we get you started. You have a great deal of catching up to do.”