Entoverse

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hunt was still in his cabin a little over an hour later, poring over an English translation of a Ganymean introductory text on the properties of i-space. In the realm beyond the transition boundary represented by the aperture of an entry port, the usual relationships of time and space were reversed: instead of three spatial dimensions and a unidirectional dimension of time, there existed three time dimensions in which it was possible to move freely, and a single spatial direction along which movement could only be one-way. Hunt was still struggling to visualize what that might mean when VISAR informed him that the TWA shuttle from the West Coast had docked. Shortly afterward, Gina called to say that she was aboard the Vishnu. VISAR presented her as a head and shoulders superposed into Hunt’s visual system against the background of the cabin.

“Welcome aboard,” Hunt greeted. “I see you’ve got your Thurien communicator.”

“It’s incredible. Ma Bell’s going to have to learn some new tricks.”

“I didn’t hear from you, so I assumed everything was going smoothly,” Hunt said. In fact, Mitzi, Caldwell’s secretary, had checked discreetly to make sure that Gina was booked on the flight.

“It was a busy couple of days, but it went just like you said. You didn’t warn me that this would be like walking into a kaleidoscope.”

“You get used to things like that with the Thuriens.”

“Who else did you manage to get along, finally?”

“Chris Danchekker, as hoped. And we’ve got two others: Duncan Watt, my deputy from Houston that I mentioned; and the other is one of Chris’s lab people, a girl called Sandy Holmes. She was with us on Ganymede.”

“It didn’t work out too badly after all, then?”

“Not badly at all, considering the time we had. But we can talk about all that when you get here.”

“So where shall I meet you?”

“There’s a lounge with a bar here, where the Terrans’ quarters are. I’ll see you there after you’ve gotten straightened out.”

“How do I get there?”

“VISAR will take care of it.”

“Fine.” The face vanished.

Hunt spent a few more minutes grappling with Ganymean notions of dimensionality, then left the cabin and went along to the mess area. A good crowd had collected since he passed through with Danchekker and the others. He threaded his way through to the bar and ordered a Scotch. The bartender’s name tag told him that the facility was provided by the Best Western hotels group.

“Tell me, Nick, how does your company come to have a bar installed in an alien starship?” Hunt asked as he watched the drink being poured.

“Oh, they figured there’ll be a pretty regular traffic building up, I guess. Probably not too much volume right now, but the publicity’s good.”

“How did they get the franchise?”

“Just asked for it, as far as I know.”

Even with his knowledge of Ganymeans, Hunt was surprised. “As easy as that? Wasn’t there a big scramble with the competitors?”

“Not really. I don’t think anyone else thought of it.”

Hunt moved away, shaking his head. Snatches of conversation from around him caught his ear as he moved through the throng with his drink.

“Think how many people from Earth will be there, say, a year from now. I tell you it’ll be a gold mine… ”

“Ja. Unt der tourists, also dey vill be going. Ve haff plans… ”

“They just need to be told about Jesus.”

“Just checkin’ out the scene there, I guess. Shit, it’s gotta be better’n Cleveland… ”

Hunt found an empty table near a far corner and sat idly watching the company. He wondered how many more of them had also come to be there on no better authority or without any higher dispensation than juist having asked. If that was a foretaste of things to come, then a large part of the meddlesome systems of rules and restrictions by which one half of the world made it its business to approve, regulate, license, and control how the other half lived could collapse in shambles or be laughed out of existence, he reflected.

It was funny, he thought as he watched, how many of the people talked too fast among themselves as they strove to act normally while suppressing what was probably the greatest excitement most of them had ever experienced. Appearances were so important to Terrans. Ganymeans had no defensive compulsion about maintaining images, and readily said how they felt about things. Their origins had given them no concept of domination by appearances, or any instinct for intimidation.

On one of the walls was a large display screen showing a view from the Vishnu of the flock of shuttles, transporters, and observer craft hanging in space around it, with Earth partly illuminated as a crescent in the background. They seemed to be drawing back, which suggested that the departure of the Thurien vessel was not far away.

“VISAR, how long now before we shove off?” Hunt inquired.

“A little under two hours.”

Gina appeared in the doorway shortly afterward. Although it seemed slightly absurd and melodramatic, Hunt hoped she would play along with the act of running into him casually, as an old acquaintance. Some of the people whom Hunt had already identified in the room were among the last he would have wanted forming the notion that she was there at UNSA’s instigation. To his relief, although he could tell from the glance she threw in his direction that she had seen him, she moved away toward the bar and ordered herself a drink.

He rested an elbow on the back of the seat next to him and stared at the mural display screen. A TWA shuttle, probably the one that Gina had arrived on, was puffing away, nudged by brief, intermittent pulses of its auxiliary thrusters. Its red-and-white design stood out vividly against the depthless black.

Then a man in a dark suit stopped on his way past Hunt’s table, holding a glass in each hand. Hunt looked up inquiringly.

“Excuse, please. Is not the Dr. Hunt who goes to Ganymede, yes?” He sounded Eastern European.

“That’s right,” Hunt said.

“I hear through the grapetree that you go to Jevlen for UNSA, and recognize you from picture.”

“News travels fast,” Hunt commented.

The stranger bowed slightly. “Permit to introduce. My name is Alexis Grobyanin, from Volgograd Institute. Psychologist.” He nodded to indicate a mixed group by the far wall. “We are sent by UN to advise Ganymeans on administering Jevlenese. Russians have much experience in handling troubleshooters.”

“I got to know some Russians when the Pseudowar happened. Mikolai Sobroskin was one. Ever come across him?”

“Oh, yes. He is foreign minister now.”

“That’s him.”

“You will be basing there in PAC?” Grobyanin asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“We, too. So maybe we see you there later. Excuse now. I must join my friends together.”

“See you around,” Hunt said, nodding. He leaned back again as the Russian moved away, smiling faintly as he recalled why Sobroskin had said Hunt would never have been a success in Russia. “You have too many good ideas,” Sobroskin had said. “You know what you used to get there for a good idea? At least five years.”

Then another voice sounded suddenly from nearby, turning heads in the vicinity. “Vic!” It was Gina’s. “What on earth are you doing here?” Hunt had to force himself to hold a straight face until he had gone through the motions of looking up and about.

“I could say the same about you-except that ‘earth’ is hardly appropriate.”

“You show up in the most unexpected places.”

“Who are you with?” Hunt asked loudly as she came across to his table.

“Just me,” she answered, letting her voice fall to a more natural level. “I’m on a free-lance job. It’s unreal… How about you?”

“Oh, I don’t get any spare time to go gallivanting around. Regular UNSA assignment.” Hunt extended a hand to indicate the far side of the table. “Sit down and tell me all about it. When did you come on board?”

“Less than half an hour ago. I shuttled up from Vandenberg.”

Gina settled herself in the chair opposite, and smiled warmly, just like an old friend. “It’s an interesting bunch we’ve got here,” she said, waving her hand.

“How do you mean?” Hunt asked.

“Did you know there’s a bunch of kids here, going on a summer vacation from a school in Florida?”

“I didn’t know they were from Florida.”

“And there’s a marketing group from Disney World, going to check out the tourism. Some Russians to help sort out the Jevlenese.”

“I just met one of them.”

“Even a holy man from Tibet or somewhere, who’s heard the call of Jevlenese mysticism and came aboard this morning with some of his disciples.”

“Tax problems?”

“Who knows?” she shrugged. “And directors from a corporation in Denver going to see about Jevlen for their next-year sales conference, a whole mix of ologists, a group making a movie, and a South American real-estate millionaire who’s decided that Jevlen is where he wants to retire.”

Hunt set his glass down and looked at her curiously. “You’ve only just arrived on board. How do you know so much already?”

“I took your advice and asked.”

“Asked who?”

“VISAR. Apparently it doesn’t occur to very many Earthpeople. VISAR thinks it’s because we assume furtiveness everywhere.”

Hunt had to smile, It would have come to her so naturally that he should have guessed-as naturally as calling Caldwell and saying she needed help with a book.

Gina finished her drink. “How’d I do?” she asked in a lowered voice.

“Terrific. I’m sure you’ve got another profession waiting if you find you’ve got tired of books.”

“Is anyone still interested in us, do you think?”

Hunt shook his head. “We can just be natural now. If anyone gets curious later about how you got mixed up with the UNSA group, there were enough witnesses. So, forget any more Mata Hari stuff. Have you had lunch?”

“I’m still too excited about this whole business to have much of an appetite,” Gina answered. “But this ship is fantastic! What do you think the chances would be of getting to see more of it while we’re here?”

“Oh, pretty good, I should think.” Hunt raised his voice slightly. “VISAR, could you take us on a tour around the Vishnu?”

“Be my guests,” the machine replied.

They stood amidst stupefying constructions of gleaming metallic shapes, walls of light, and what looked like clean-cut massifs, as big as buildings, of internally glowing crystal. It was all too devoid of even a hint of anything recognizable for Hunt to form any coherent questions for VISAR of what it meant.

“You seem… impressed,” Gina said, finding a tactful word to describe the look on Hunt’s face.

His frown switched to a faint grin. “It is a bit much for one afternoon, isn’t it?” he agreed. “This is all a long way past the ship from Minerva that we found on Ganymede. That was from the same era as the Shapieron. We thought it was pretty spectacular at the time. But compared to this it was like the boiler room of a tramp steamer.”

“They produce some kind of ‘stress wave,’ or something, don’t they?” Gina said. “A bubble of bent space-time around the ship. That’s what moves through space, carrying the ship with it. Since the ship is at rest relative to the space inside the bubble, the usual speed limits don’t apply.”

“That’s right. The rules for space propagating through space are different.” Hunt shook his head wonderingly. “Is there anything you don’t get interested in?”

“I told you, journalists are curious, like scientists.”

Hunt nodded. “The Shapieron used a system that constrained superdense masses to move in closed paths at relativistic speeds, which generated high rates of change of gravitic potential and created a matter-annihilation zone that powered the stress field. The equipment to do it was colossal, but I don’t see anything like it here. But there has to be something like it to get us out past Pluto, where the entry port will be projected for transfer to Jevlen. VISAR, how has it changed?”

“That’s all done remotely now,” VISAR replied. “The stress wave is generated by small converters located around the extremities of the ship and coupling into the Thurien i-space grid. The ship itself can be quite compact. Remember the one that landed in Alaska?”

“I take it this is the kind of thing you’re finding out more about at Goddard,” Gina said to Hunt.

“Trying to, anyway. There’s a lot of it. Half the problem is getting the information organized.”

“Have there been any big surprises so far-I mean, apart from the ones we’ve read about? You know: the universe is bigger than we thought, smaller than we thought; parallel universes are real; Einstein was wrong. Anything like that?”

Hunt looked around from the rail he was leaning on. “Well, it’s funny you should mention Einstein,” he said.

“You mean he was wrong?”

“Not wrong, exactly… but unnecessarily complicated, like Ptolemy’s planetary orbits. It all works out a lot more simply and still agrees with the same experimental results if you take the velocity that matters as being not that with respect to the observer at all, but with respect to the traversed gravitational field. The distortions of space that Einstein was forced to postulate turn out to be simply compensations for the breakdown of the inverse square law at high speeds, caused by the finite propagation speed of gravity. If you allow for that, then practically everything in relativity can be deduced by classical methods.”

Gina stared at him as if unable to decide whether he was joking or being serious. “You mean everybody missed it?”

“Yes,” Hunt answered, nodding. “Take the business with Mercury’s perihelion, for instance. You know about that?”

“I thought that Einstein’s answer works; Newton’s doesn’t.”

“So do most people,” Hunt agreed. He looked away and snorted. “But all the prestige and money for practically the last century has come for building more spectacular gadgets, not for going over the basics of physics. Do you know what VISAR found while it was browsing through some old European archives?”

“What?”

“The same formula that Einstein obtained through Riemannian geometry and gravitational tensors was derived classically by a German called Paul Gerber, in 1898, when Einstein was nine years old. It was there all the time, but everybody missed it.”

The Vishnu was home for several hundred thousand Thuriens for periods that varied from short-term to permanent. They lived in baffling urban complexes that resembled their labyrinthine cities back home, amid simulations of external vistas beneath artificial skies, and in isolated spots enjoying the peculiarities of various landscapes, copied and contrived. Life aboard the ship combined all the functions of a complete social and professional infrastructure. The whole thing, Hunt began to realize, was more an elaborate, mobile space colony than anything conventionally thought of on Earth as a means of transportation.

“This is the kind of vessel typically sent out to explore local regions of the Galaxy,” VISAR confirmed. “It might spend several years at a newly discovered planetary system.”

Evidently the Thuriens liked to take their comforts with them.

Hunt and Gina sat on a boulder on a grassy slope overlooking a lake with a distinctly curved surface. There were boats on it, scattered among several islands, and on the opposite shore an intricate composition of terraced architecture that went up to the “sky.” The sky was pale blue-like that of Thurien. The bushes around where they were sitting had broad, wedge-shaped, purple leaves that opened and folded like fans. According to VISAR, they could shed their roots and migrate downhill on bulbous pseudopods if the soil became too dry.

“How would you classify them?” Gina mused. “If animals move and plants don’t, what are they?”

“Why does it matter what you call them?” Hunt said. “When people have problems with questions like that, it’s usually because they’re trying to make reality fit something from their kit of standard labels. They’d be better off thinking about rewriting the labels.”

They contemplated the scenery in silence for a while.

“It’s funny how evolution works,” Gina said. “Purely random factors can send it all off in a completely new direction-ones that operate at high level, I mean, not just genetic mutation. About ninety-five percent of all species were supposed to have been wiped out in a mass extinction that happened around two hundred million years ago. It didn’t favor any particular kind of animal: large or small, marine or land-dwelling, complex or simple, or anything like that. Nothing can adapt for catastrophes on that kind of scale. So the survivors were simply the lucky five percent. Whole families vanished for no particular reason at all, and the few that were left determined the entire pattern of life subsequently.” She looked at Hunt, as if asking him to confirm it.

“I don’t know too much about that side of things,” he said. “Chris Danchekker’s the one you ought to be talking to.” He stood up and offered her a hand. “Speaking of which, we ought to be getting back. It’s about time you met the rest of the crew.”

They walked down to the lakeside, where a path brought them to a transit conveyor. Soon they were being whisked back through the Escherian maze, and arrived shortly afterward at the Terran section. As they crossed the mess area, Hunt noticed that the wallscreen that had previously showed the view outside was blank. He knew that the stress wave surrounding a Ganymean vessel cut it off from electromagnetic signals, including light, when it was under full gravity drive.

“VISAR,” he said aloud so that Gina could hear. “Is the ship under way already?”

“Since a little under fifteen minutes ago,” the machine confirmed. Which would have been typical of the Ganymean way of doing things: no fuss or ceremony; no formal announcements.

“So where are we now?” Hunt asked.

“Just about crossing the orbit of Mars.”

So UNSA might as well scrap all of its designs for the next fifty years, Hunt decided.