Humans

Chapter Nine

“You told me earlier,” said Jurard Selgan, “that your sole interest in seeing the portal reopened was in bringing benefits to the people of our world.”

Ponter nodded curtly. “That’s right.”

“And since the ability to be in contact with that other world depended on the quantum computer that you had developed with Adikor Huld, naturally you would stay here, on this Earth, helping to oversee the quantum-computing facility.”

“Well…” began Ponter, but then he trailed off.

“You did say you had no personal interest in this issue, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“But you fought the High Gray Council yet again, didn’t you? You insisted that you personally be allowed to return to the other Earth.”

“It was the only thing that made sense,” said Ponter. “No one else from our world had ever been there. I knew some of the people, and had learned a great deal about their world.”

“And you refused to transfer the Gliksin linguistic database your Companion implant had gathered to anyone else unless you were guaranteed the right to be part of the next group traveling to the other world.”

“It wasn’t like that,” said Ponter. “I merely suggested that my presence would be useful.”

Selgan’s tone was gentle. “You did more than just ‘merely suggest,’” he said. “Like most of the world, I saw much of this on my Voyeur. If your own memory of the events has faded, we can easily access your alibi archives from that day. That’s why my therapy center was built here, close to the Alibi Archive Pavilion. Shall we go over there and—”

“No,” said Ponter. “No, that won’t be necessary.”

“So you did use—is ‘coercion’ too strong a word?—to get yourself back into the other world?”

“I wanted to make the greatest possible contribution I could. The Code of Civilization requires that of each of us.”

“Yes, it does,” agreed Selgan. “And if that contribution—if the greater good—could best be served by committing a crime, well, then…”

“You’re wrong,” said Ponter. “I hadn’t even contemplated my crime yet. My only goal…” He paused, then continued. “My only goals were to help with continued contact, and, yes, to see my friend Mare Vaughan. I never would have gone over there if I’d known what I was going to end up doing…”

“That’s not entirely true, is it?” said Selgan. “You said even if you had the opportunity to relive the moment of your crime, you still would have committed it.”

“Yes, but…”

“But what?”

Ponter sighed. “But nothing.”

The High Gray Council had finally acquiesced to Ponter’s demand that he be allowed to leave the quantum computer in Adikor’s care, so that he could return to the Gliksin world. He’d expected a reluctant agreement—and he was sure that was what it was—but he hadn’t expected to have the title of “Envoy” bestowed upon him

As much as he wanted to return, to see Mare again, he did have mixed feelings. His last visit had been an accident, and he’d been terrified that he would never get home. Although he and Adikor did believe that the portal could be reopened, and kept open indefinitely, no one really knew for sure. Ponter had almost lost Adikor, Jasmel, and Megameg once before; he wasn’t sure he could stand the possibility of losing them again.

But no. He would go. Despite his concerns, Ponter wanted to go. Yes, he was interested in finding out how things would develop with Daklar Bolbay. But it would be most of another month until Two became One again—his next opportunity to see her—and, if all went well, he would be back in this world long before then.

Besides, this time Ponter would not be traveling alone. He’d be accompanied by Tukana Prat, a female of generation 144, ten years his senior.

The first time the portal opened had been an unforeseen event. The second time, it was a desperate rescue attempt. This time it would be a planned, orderly operation.

There was always a chance that things would go wrong; that the portal would open to some other world, or that Ponter had misconstrued the Gliksins, and that they were actually waiting for an opportunity to swarm through from the other side. To that end, Bedros, one of the elder members of the Council, would hold a detonator in his hand. Mining explosives had been placed all around the rooms of the subterranean quantum-computing facility. If things turned bad, Bedros would detonate the explosives, bringing thousands of pertavs of rock collapsing down, filling in the chamber. And although the transmissions from Bedros’s Companion implant couldn’t reach the surface from here, they could reach the explosives; if Bedros should die—if Gliksins or other creatures swarmed through with weapons firing—his Companion would set off the explosives.

Adikor, meanwhile, would hold a less-stringent panic button. If something went wrong, he could shut off all power to the quantum computer, which might sever the link. And if he died, his Companion could do the same thing. Up on the surface, the entrance to the Debral nickel mine had likewise been rigged with explosives, and enforcers stood watch there, ready to act in case of emergency.

Of course, Ponter and Tukana weren’t going to just burst through to the other side. A probe was to be sent through first, with cameras, microphones, devices for sampling air, and more. The probe had been painted bright orange and had a ring of lights encircling it. They wanted there to be no possibility of the Gliksins misconstruing it as a stealthful attempt to eavesdrop—Ponter had explained the strange Gliksin obsession with privacy to the others.

Like the robot that had been sent through before to help rescue Ponter, the probe would feed its data back to this side through fiber-optic cabling. But unlike that hapless robot, it would also be anchored by a strong synthetic-fiber rope.

Although the probe was high-tech, and the Derkers tube that would be used to force the portal to stay open was a reasonably sophisticated piece of mechanical engineering, the actual insertion of the tube was to be a decidedly low-tech operation.

Ponter and Adikor’s quantum computer had been built to factor truly huge numbers. When so doing, it accessed parallel universes in which other versions of itself already existed, and each of those other versions tried a single potential factor. By combining the results from all the universes, millions of potential factors could be checked simultaneously.

But if the number being factored was so gargantuan that it had more candidate factors than there were parallel universes in which this quantum-computing facility already existed, the quantum computer would be forced to try accessing universes in which versions of itself did not exist. But as soon as it did connect with one of those universes, the factoring process would crash, creating the gateway.

The quantum-computing facility had originally consisted of just four rooms: a dry toilet, an eating room, the control room, and the massive computing chamber itself. But three more rooms had just been added: a small infirmary, a sleeping room, and a large decontamination facility. People would have to pass through decontamination going in either direction, to reduce the chance of taking something inimical from here to the other world, and to cleanse them of any pathogens they might have brought back. The Gliksins had limited decontamination technology; either having almost no body hair made it easy for Gliksins to keep clean, or having tiny noses made them blissfully ignorant of their own filthiness. But tuned-laser bodily decontaminators—to which the specific protein structures of human skin, flesh, organs, and hair were transparent, but which vaporized germs and viruses—had long been in use in this world.

There had never been so many people in the quantum-computing facility before. Ponter and Adikor were there. So was Ambassador Prat, and three members of the High Gray Council, including both of the local representatives. Dern, the roboticist, was on hand, too, to operate the probe. And two Exhibitionists were there with recording units, taking pictures they would relay once they got back up to the surface.

And now, it was time.

Adikor stood at his control console on one side of the room, and Ponter stood at his on the other. Dern had a separate console, perched on a tabletop.

“Got everything you need for the trip?” asked Adikor.

Ponter did a final check. Hak, of course, was always there—and had been upgraded with a full medical/surgical database, in case anything happened to Ponter or Tukana in the Gliksin world.

A wide leather band covered with pouches encircled Ponter’s waist. He’d already done the inventory: antibiotics, antivirals, immune-system boosters, sterilized bandages, acauterizing laser scalpel, surgical scissors, and a selection of drugs including decongestants, analgesics, and soporifics. Tukana wore a similar belt. They also both had suitcases containing several changes of clothes. “All set,” said Ponter, and “All set,” repeated Tukana.

Adikor looked at Dern. “What about you?”

The fat man nodded. “Ready.”

“Whenever you want to proceed, then,” said Adikor to Ponter.

Ponter gave Adikor a splayed-fingers gesture. “Let’s find our cousins.”

“All right,” said Adikor. “Ten!”

One Exhibitionist was standing next to Adikor; the other, next to Ponter.

“Nine!”

The three members of the High Gray Council looked at each other; more had wanted to attend, but it was decided that three was the maximum that could be risked.

“Eight!”

Dern pulled out some control buds on his console.

“Seven!”

Ponter looked over at Ambassador Prat; if she was the least bit nervous, she was hiding it well.

“Six!”

He then looked over his shoulder at Adikor’s broad back. They had deliberately not said any elaborate goodbyes last night; neither wanted to admit that if something went wrong, there was a chance that Ponter would never come home again.

“Five!”

And it wasn’t just Adikor he stood to lose. The thought of his children ending up with no parents so early in life had been Ponter’s biggest worry about repeating his journey.

“Four!”

A lesser—but still significant—worry was that Ponter would fall ill again in the Gliksin world, although doctors here had boosted his immune system, and Hak had been modified to constantly monitor his blood for foreign bodies.

“Three!”

There was also concern that either Ponter or Tukana might develop allergies to things on the other side.

“Two!”

And Ponter had some misgivings about the long-term stability of the gateway, which was, after all, based on quantum processes that were by their very nature inherently unpredictable. Still…

“One!”

Still, with all the potential problems, with all the potential negatives, there was one very positive aspect about returning to the Gliksin world…

“Zero!”

Ponter and Adikor simultaneously pulled buds on their control panels.

Suddenly, a great roar came from the computing chamber, which was visible through a window in the control room. Ponter knew what was happening, although he’d never been a spectator to it before. Everything that wasn’t bolted down in the computing chamber was being shunted to the other universe. The glass-and-steel register cylinders—even the wonky one, number 69—stayed put, but all the air in the chamber was being swapped for a comparable mass in the other universe. When Ponter had been accidentally transferred over, the corresponding space on the other side had contained a giant acrylic sphere full of heavy water—the heart of a Gliksin neutrino detector.

But this time, no heavy water came gushing through. The chamber had been drained before Ponter had returned, so that the damage his arrival had done to the acrylic sphere could be repaired.

Right on cue, the gaudy probe—cylindrical, about an armspan long—tumbled through the blue fire that marked the portal, the light hugging the probe’s contours in profile as it did so. All that was visible now were the anchoring and telecommunications cables attached to the probe, pulled taut, disappearing into midair at about waist height. Ponter swung his attention to the large, wall-mounted monitor that had been added to the control room to display what the probe was seeing.

And what it was seeing was—

“Gliksins!” exclaimed Ambassador Prat.

“I’d only half believed it,” said Councilor Bedros.

Adikor turned to look at Ponter, grinning. “Anyone you know?”

Ponter squinted at the scene. As before, the portal had appeared several body-heights above ground; the quantum-computing facility seemed to be slightly higher up and slightly to the north of the center of the neutrino-detector chamber. A dozen or more Gliksins were working inside the still-dry chamber. They were all clad in coveralls, and they all had those yellow plastic turtle shells on their heads. Most of the Gliksins had the same pale skin that Ponter’s people had, but two had dark brown skin. Ponter got the impression that almost all the workers were males, but it was so hard to tell with Gliksins. Of course, the one face he’d hoped to see was female, but there was no reason she should be doing repair work down at the bottom of a mineshaft.

All the faces were looking directly at the probe, and several of the individuals were pointing with their scrawny arms.

“No,” said Ponter. “Nobody I know.”

The probe’s microphones were picking up sounds, all echoing weirdly in the cavernous chamber. Ponter couldn’t understand much of what was being said, but he did pick out his own name at one point. “Hak,” said Ponter, speaking to his Companion, “what are they saying?”

Hak had a new voice now; while getting upgrade work done on his Companion, Ponter had had Kobast Gant program in a pleasant male voice that wasn’t based on anyone Ponter knew.

Hak spoke through his external speaker, so that the entire assembled group could hear. “The male at the right side of the screen just invoked that thing they call God—apparently in this context, it’s an exclamation of surprise. The male next to him referred to the putative son of the God thing. And the woman next to him said, ‘Wholly feces.’”

“Very strange,” said Tukana.

“The male at the right,” continued Hak, “has now yelled for somebody out of our view to get Doctor Mah on the telecommunications link.”

As Hak spoke, several of the humans came close to the probe. Ponter enjoyed hearing the gasps from the three High Gray Council members and Ambassador Prat as they got their first close-up views of the strange, pinched Gliksin faces, with their preposterously small noses.

“Well,” said Dern, the roboticist, “it looks like we’ve reestablished contact, and it seems conditions on the other side are suitable.”

The three High Gray Council members conferred for a few beats, then Bedros nodded. “Let’s do it,” he said.

Ponter and Dern each took an end of the unexpanded Derkers tube. Adikor opened the door leading out to the computing floor. There was no equalizing hiss, no popping of ears; although the air in the computing chamber now presumably was mostly from the Gliksin world, comparable volumes had been exchanged. The Gliksins carefully filtered the air in the neutrino-detector facility, and the air Ponter was breathing now had no smell at all.

The point of entry to the other universe was clearly marked by the two cables disappearing into a blue-limned hole in space. Dern, who had been on hand when Ponter was recovered the first time, maneuvered the tip of the collapsed Derkers tube so that it was in contact with the probe’s anchor cable. Ponter swung the length of the tube—a good eight armspans—and lined it up parallel to the anchor cable.

“Ready?” asked Dern, looking over his shoulder at Ponter.

Ponter nodded. “Ready.”

“All right,” said Dern. “Gently now.”

Dern began feeding the collapsed tube through the portal, which widened just enough to accommodate its narrow diameter. Ponter pushed gently from the rear. Adikor had brought a portable monitor with him, which was repeating the view from the probe. He angled the device so that Dern and Ponter could see what was happening on the other side. Although the probe had been lowered to the bottom of the neutrino detector chamber, so that the two cables attached to it took a downward turn as soon as they went through the portal, the Derkers tube was protruding parallel to the floor far below. The Gliksins couldn’t reach it; it was too far above their heads. But they were pointing at it, and shouting among themselves.

“That’s far enough,” said Dern, noting that the tube was halfway through—he’d put a little reference mark at the appropriate spot along the tube’s length. Ponter stopped feeding more through. Dern came down to the tube’s end to help Ponter pull it open.

At first, Ponter and Dern could each barely fit a hand into the narrow mouth of the tube. But the tube yielded as they pulled in opposite directions, expanding its diameter more and more, its ratcheting mechanisms making loud clickings as it did so.

Ponter got his other hand into the widened mouth, and Dern got his left hand in, too, and they continued to pull the mouth open. Soon, the tube was a good armspan in diameter—but that was only a third of its maximum extent, and they went on opening it wider and wider.

Ambassador Prat and the three High Gray Councilors had come out onto the computing floor now. One of the Exhibitionists was with them; the other was standing at the topmost step leading up to the control room—he clearly wanted to be able to get away if something went wrong.

Old Bedros looked like he wished to lend a hand—history was being made here, after all. Ponter nodded for him to go ahead. Soon, six hands were pulling at the tube’s widening mouth. On the portable monitor, Ponter could see the Gliksin’s strange pointed jaws dropping in astonishment.

Finally, it was done: the tube had reached its maximum diameter, and its bottom was resting on the granite floor of the computing chamber. Ponter looked at Tukana, and gestured for her to go ahead. “You’re the ambassador,” he said.

The gray-haired woman shook her head. “But they know you—a recognizable, friendly face.”

Ponter nodded. “As you wish.” Adikor gave Ponter a great hug. Then Ponter moved back to the mouth of the tube, took a deep breath—despite what he’d seen through the probe’s eyes, he couldn’t help remembering what had happened to him the last time he’d gone through to the Gliksin world. He began to walk down the tube’s length. From the interior, the only sign of the portal was a faint blue ring of light visible through the translucent membrane spread between the crisscrossing metal components of the tube—it seemed that by forcing the portal wide open like this, they wouldn’t have to bear the disquieting sight of seeing cross sections of themselves as they passed through it.

Ponter walked toward the blue ring, and then, with one giant step, moved across the threshold into Gliksin world. Through the tunnel’s opening, he could see the far wall of the neutrino-detector chamber, quite some distance away. It only took a few beats for him to make it to the very end of the tunnel, which, since Adikor and Dern were holding it steady at the other end, wasn’t dipping down much under Ponter’s weight.

Ponter stuck his head out the end of the tube and looked down at the Gliksins far below, with what, he knew, must be a massive grin on his face. He spoke a few words, and Hak provided the translation in the loudest volume its external speaker could muster. “Would one of you be kind enough to fetch a ladder?”