Mission to Minerva

EPILOGUE

In a large boulevard bookstore facing out over a bank of the Danube in Vienna, Mildred sat at a table piled with copies of The Thurien Soul, as well as a selection of her earlier works. It was doing respectably well, and the line of readers and buyers waiting for autographs hadn't abated all morning. Her current project was to organize into book form a collection of her thoughts on the philosophy and physics that she had found herself drawn into in the course of researching it. The tentative title she had in mind was, Learning to Live With the Multiverse. Collecting her thoughts together on anything was always a daunting business.

"If you'd written it two thousand years ago, it would have done a better job than the Bible," the woman in the red dress who has just had her copy inscribed to "Inga" was saying. "It spells out exactly everything that's wrong with this materialistic, legalistic system of ours."

"It does make us look a bit like children showing off their toys to each other, doesn't it?" Mildred agreed.

"And it proves it isn't inevitable, the way all our experts used to say. Just imagine, honorable individuals working for knowledge and wealth to be used to create a better life for everyone. The part on Frenua Showm's feelings about war was wonderful. All the things I've wanted to say for years. I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. Thank you so much."

"On the contrary, thank you for stopping by." Mildred smiled.

After almost a whole morning, she was content to let others do the talking. Actually, she had persevered at the discipline she'd set herself while on Thurien, and it must have shown because several of her friends had commented on it. She was beginning to think that maybe her previous tendency to chatter had been a defense against self-images of inadequacies that she need never have felt. After all, when a biologist and a physicist both tell you that you've caused them to rethink some fundamentals in their own fields, it could only be good for one's confidence. But it wouldn't do to let herself go too far the other way and be carried away by overly grand notions of self-importance, she reminded herself. Such as when she had made a trip all the way back from Thurien to see Caldwell, because she thought she had something to say that he needed to hear. The very idea! But the Ishtar was back at Earth again now, and Mildred was looking forward to hearing more about the later activities that had been going on at Thurien, which Christian had touched on tantalizingly in his calls and messages. The story wasn't public knowledge yet.

There was a mild stir near the door over something, but the next person in line blocked Mildred's view. He was a young man with lively dark eyes, hair tied at the back, and a short, pointy Vandyke beard. "Fantastic stuff!" he said.

"Thank you."

"Do you really think the Thuriens are right about all of us being extensions of some greater consciousness in a bigger realm? It seems so… I mean, why don't we know anything about it?"

"Should I make this 'to' anyone?"

"Oh, yes. To Ulrich, if you would."

"What made it clearer to me was one time when I was having dinner at a house on Thurien, and watching the serving robot," Mildred said as she wrote. "Although it acts autonomously within its own limited range of local awareness, it's connected to their whole network that exists across star systemss: VISAR. But it doesn't know anything about VISAR, or the higher concepts that VISAR deals in. Does that help?"

"Hm, maybe. I'll have to think about it… And could you make this one to Anna, and say Happy Birthday?"

"Your ladyfriend?"

"My sister."

As Mildred complied, she only half noticed another copy, opened at the title page, being slid across the table in front of her. Then she registered that the hand holding it was huge, dark purple-blue in color, and had two thumbs. She looked up disbelievingly, then dropped the pen and was on her feet.

"Frenua!"

"I decided it was time I came to see this world of yours for myself."

They embraced warmly, if incongruously-diminutive Mildred and Showm's seven-foot frame. "But… why didn't you tell me?"

"Terrans are supposed to like surprises. The Ishtar was due back. So… And anyway, I wanted to see the book. We arrived yesterday."

"We…?" Then Mildred saw Christian and Vic Hunt, standing and grinning a few paces back. "Oh my…"

The line of people looked on, waiting patiently and good-naturedly, all happy that they were getting to see a little extra for their money. A customer who had stopped to watch came across and tested Showm's arm and a shoulder approvingly. "Say, you know, that's pretty… Oh, my God! You're real! I thought it was a publicity stunt for the book."

Danchekker moved closer and treated his cousin to a rare hug. "Good heavens!" Mildred gasped.

"I'm here for the week," he informed her. "You can thank the accumulation of your relentless and merciless admonishments over the years. I come in contrition to bring atonement to Emma and Martha, and yes, even to see Uncle Stefan and his firm… But later. Let us not hold up the good work here."

"We've got another story for you, Mildred," Hunt said. "Whatever you were thinking of working on next, forget it. I guarantee this one will trump anything."

Two days later, after leaving Danchekker to a well-earned vacation and to attend to his family matters, Hunt boarded an Air Europe suborbital bound for Washington National direct. There were matters he could have attended to at some of the European offices of UNSA, but they could wait until another day. Reporting back to Caldwell was first thing on his list.

The blue above the plane darkened, and the horizon of Earth below took on curvature as the skyliner climbed toward the top of its trajectory. It reminded Hunt of the westbound flight he'd made five years previously with a colleague from the British company he had worked for then, going out to assist UNSA with its investigation of Charlie. He would have found it hard to believe then that a hypersonic suborbital skyliner would ever seem quaint and antiquated.

Charlie-who had lain entombed there on the lunar surface, slowly turning into a natural mummy for fifty thousand years, since the time when Luna orbited a different world. Yet only a matter of weeks before, Hunt had walked on that very world. In all probability Charlie had been alive and walking around there too somewhere, at that very time. The outlandish thought struck Hunt suddenly that there was no reason why Charlie couldn't have been Kles.

What the future relationship should be between Minerva and the Thurien-Terran culture from the future who had so drastically altered its situation had been a major issue to emerge during the remainder of the Shapieron's stay. Some were for maintaining contact, arguing that the young culture would do better if launched onto its new course of history with the benefit of all the knowledge and resources available. Others were less sure, and felt that it perhaps needed a period of independence and isolation to absorb what it had learned and to discover its new identity for itself. Harzin had subscribed to the former view, Perasmon, the latter. Some Minervans had joked that they had the beginnings of a another war here already.

Another issue had been whether Minerva should attempt to contact the Thuriens who already existed twenty light-years away at Gistar in their own universe. Once again, there were mixed opinions about that. The Thuriens accepted it all as simply illustrating the fact they had long resigned themselves to, that two humans in a room equated to inability to agree about anything.

In the end, it had been decided to leave the beacon probes live but inactive for a period of quarantine. Barring some kind of emergency, neither side would initiate any contact for one year, which would give them all time to reflect and debate. At the end of that time, they would confer again.

Hunt looked out at the sprinkling of stars that were beginning to appear overhead. Not anywhere out there, because in the universe they were all part of the Minerva that had disappeared long ago, but somewhere across the greater vastness of the Multiverse that was still so veiled in mystery, there existed a realm where whatever future was destined to emerge from the changes that he and the others had wrought had already unfolded and was reality. And somehow in the turmoil of it all, the original question of whether humanity's ills were due to something innate or the product of circumstances had been forgotten. It really didn't matter. He didn't pretend to know the answer. But as Frenua Showm had persuaded them, they'd had no choice but to try.

Hunt had faced one more small perplexity when the Shapieron was finally brought back to Thurien. After the Jevlenese destroyed the locator beacons, Eesyan had pointed out that even if a probe projected from Thurien should, against all probability, find them, there could be no guaranteeing that it would be a probe from "their" Thurien. Countless other versions of the reality they had come from would be trying the same thing, and a probe that happened to hit on the universe they were in could have come from any.

But Hunt had allowed for such an eventuality during the earlier tests and set up means by which he could tell. Before departing, he had loaded into his compad a randomized mathematical function that could be compared against a master that he had left lodged in VISAR. If the two matched, it would mean that they had returned to the identical reality that they had departed from. If not, even though the difference might be trivial, they would have come back somewhere else.

For days after returning, he had agonized inwardly over the check and its implications. In all that time, though he had searched and watched for any inconsistency, he had found none. By every measure and criterion he could devise, he was home. Finally, he had confided his dilemma to Danchekker. Danchekker had opined that if one couldn't tell a difference, there was no difference. Hunt told VISAR to delete the function unread. Chris was right. It didn't matter. Some things were best left alone.

A few rows ahead in the cabin, people were leaning toward the windows and pointing. Hunt sat forward to peer out and up. A pearl of light was crossing the sky against the starry background. "I think it's the Thurien starship," he heard someone say.

He wondered if they would one day meet the culture that existed somewhere, developed from the humans and the Thuriens who had met long ago. What kind of world would they have created by now, that might make even VISAR and Thurien seem quaint and antiquated in comparison? After the things he had seen in just five short years, Hunt had a feeling that life still held much in store yet that would be new and exciting.

As the edge of Earth's dark side crept slowly into view ahead, the Ishtar moved away and diminished, finally disappearing below the horizon.