Mission to Minerva

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Overwhelmingly, it was the short-term capriciousness of human actions that produced the kind of disparities among local time lines that would be experienced as the clashing of incompatible events. But given that the effect was confined to a localized domain, even a complex physical device could be expected to function consistently. While the innumerable quantum transitions involved in its existence and operation would continue to define realities of their own that were, it was true, theoretically discrete, within the immediate locality of the surroundings and the recent past, the likelihood of their adding up to anything discernibly different at the macroscopic level was remote.

Eesyan therefore concluded that the indicated course of action would be to put everything at Quelsang on hold and relocate the work off-planet where it could be directed remotely. Indeed, the scaled-up MP2 Multiporter already under design was intended to do just that, but for a different reason: to safeguard researchers from the catastrophic consequences if a sizable object from a parallel experiment happened to materialize within solid matter. But when Eesyan mentioned the prospect matter-of-factly in the course of a discussion in the Terrans' office in a way that presumed such a decision to be as good as agreed, he was taken aback to discover that they saw no real need for halting the Quelsang program at all.

"Why?" was Hunt's simple rejoinder. Hunt's assistant was there too; also the German and the female scientist from China.

It had seemed obvious. Eesyan made a helpless gesture. "Well… you've all seen the kind of chaos it can create around itself. How would it be possible to conduct any work that makes sense with that going on? We've got two extra versions of an autograph book from other realities. Suppose they had been copies of you or me, or anyone else out there?" He motioned toward Hunt. "The Professor Danchekker that you talked to here in this room is now in another universe. What if another one hadn't replaced him in this one?"

"So now we're beginning to understand it better," Hunt said.

Sonnebrandt came in, "We can reduce the operating power to keep the core of the convergence zone within the chamber. That would eliminate the risk of any major discrepancies like the ones you're talking about. Maybe some slight fringe effects, yes."

"Disagreements about minor things, possibly," Chien said. "But none of us will be blaming each other now." She paused, seeing that Eesyan was readjusting his view only with some effort, and then went on, "Professor Danchekker's cousin even thinks it happens all the time anyway as a result of quantum fluctuations, but it took something on this scale to get our attention. And I think she may have a point."

They waited. "What better way could there be to learn more about it?" Duncan asked.

Eesyan had been caught unprepared. He had taken it for granted that differences would generate disagreement and disagreement implied strife, which Thuriens strove to avoid. But Terrans thrived on it. To them it was a challenge. They saw the situation not as a source of disunity to be feared and avoided, but as an enticing and amusing curiosity to be studied. Eesyan deferred making a commitment and went away to consult with Calazar.

"I've found there are times when an old race like ours could use some reminding of the spirit that drove it when it was younger," was Calazar's response. "Our ancestors were able to deal with the universe as they found it, without defensiveness projected out of their own inner fears. When the occasion demanded, they were able to rise to conceiving schemes on scales of audacity that in comparison make the most celebrated of the Terrans' heroics seem pale. I think we should keep that tradition in mind now."

The upshot was that there would be two facilities investigating trans-Multiverse propagation. The original pilot system at the Quelsang Institute would continue running micro-scale experiments to explore the physics, and in particular to delve further into the strange phenomenon that Hunt had dubbed "timeline lensing." In parallel, construction would go ahead of the larger and more powerful MP2 project remotely in space to handle objects that a nearby other universe might not appreciate having materialize under the floor of one of its laboratories. The two complemented each other. Choosing to live with the peculiarities of converging time lines was probably the quickest route toward learning more about the effect, while the larger-scale project offered the most effective means of devising some method of countering it. With Calazar already involved and now personally intrigued by the latest developments, completion of MP2 was accorded highest priority. Although the Terrans were not in a position to contribute much to the actual construction, Hunt was curious to see some Thurien space engineering in progress. He had a feeling that it would be very different from the UNSA projects that he had found himself involved in from time to time.

The original reason for locating the higher-power system remotely in space had been to safeguard against the hazard of objects materializing from corresponding experiments being performed in other parallel realities. The risk of such an occurrence was eliminated by taking advantage of a fact long-familiar to Terran physicists: that no two quantum systems could exist in precisely identical states-where a system's "state" was defined by an appropriate set of "quantum numbers." On an ordinary map, no two points can have identical coordinates. If they did, they would be the same point. In a similar way, for two quantum systems to exist as unique entities in the universe, they have to differ in at least one of the numbers ("quantum coordinates") specifying them.

MP2 was located a few hundred thousand miles from Thurien. Although that was admittedly still in their own back yard on the typical Thurien scale of going about things, statistical calculations indicated it to be sufficient for the purpose. The position had been randomly chosen from the stupendous number of possibilities that existed throughout the volume contained within an even larger radius. The intervals between permissible coordinates being such that the available possibilities would be safely far apart. Yes, it was possible that other parallel systems might use a different method. But the near-infinity of possible sending universes was balanced by the near-infinity of possible universes that an object sent could arrive in, and some arcane statistical calculations performed by VISAR gave the probability of collision at the end of it all as about the same as that of two positions randomly chosen within the entire prescribed volume of space happening to coincide.

There was no real need for Hunt to travel there physically, since VISAR could produce an indistinguishable simulation, but it seemed that Terrans either just didn't share the Thuriens' attitude regarding the equality of surrogates or else they hadn't developed it yet. After experiencing some virtual previews of the work going on at MP2, and since it wasn't taking place in some distant part of the Galaxy, Hunt decided he wanted to go out there. He couldn't exactly pinpoint why; it seemed that coming all this way from Earth only to remain confined on the same planet was missing out somehow. Duncan, Josef, and Chien felt the same way. When they mentioned it to Eesyan, such being the Thurien disposition, he put arrangements in hand to accommodate their wish. A craft appeared the next day at the space base along the coast from Thurios to transport them to the site of MP2.

If the Terrans' desire was to experience the reality of "being there," the Thurien response came as close as was alienly possible to granting them just that. The vantage point they were provided with suffered from none of the distancing effect that would have been induced by viewing the operation through windows or on a screen inside some kind of enclosed structure. Hunt had told Eesyan they wanted to be "out there," and that was exactly what they got.

When the ship arrived at the project, they were conveyed through a connecting g-field "tunnel" to a room-size platform equipped with seats and containing an assortment of housings, compartments, and pieces of strange equipment, all surrounded by a low parapet rail but otherwise open visually to the surrounding vastness of space. From VISAR's description the vehicle-for want of a better term-created a local gravity comparable in strength to that of a planet but with an abrupt cutoff distance, limiting its range. It thus imbued the occupants with normal bodyweight, while a force and filtering shell retained a breathable atmosphere and shielded out radiation and particle hazards. Thus, warm, comfortable, yet wearing only everyday clothing, they looked around, speechless, at the wonders of stars of every hue in the stellar spectrum, ghostly nebulas, and radiant filaments of color all around on every side, above and below, seemingly near enough to touch or infinitely distant. The perspective shifted spontaneously like the optical interpretation of a wire cube. There was no standard that they were familiar with to set a scale of size or distance. Despite his years of experiences from the Moon out to Jupiter, and the previous Ganymean and Thurien ventures that he had been involved with, Hunt had never before known such an overwhelming feeling of experiencing the immediacy of space. It was intoxicating, a sensation of total immersion-like someone who had seen the ocean all their life from the inside of a submarine, swimming for the first time. The children and younger Ganymeans who had been borne during the Shapieron's strange exile and known no other existence than life within the ship had tried to describe similar impressions after emerging onto a planetary surface when they arrived, finally, on Earth.

"You… certainly never let up on the surprises, VISAR." Duncan was the first to speak.

"We try to please." The phrase was by now familiar.

"You didn't make this exotic celestial tour bus just for us?" Sonnebrandt queried.

Eesyan, who was not actually present but coupled in via avco from Thurios, replied. "Actually, it's a pretty mundane, regular maintenance platform that we use for external work on vessels and structures. The shell can be molded to the surrounding contours, leaving the crew free and unencumbered. We thought it would be just right for the job. What do you think?"

"Impressive," Sonnebrandt said.

"Good. Well, I'm signing off now," Eesyan said. "Enjoy your visit. We'll see you back here at Thurien in due course."

While they were taking in the spectacle and speaking, the platform had been moving closer to the MP2 construction they had come to see, which had now grown to dominate the view on one side. Chien was studying it silently. About the size of a city block in Hunt's estimation, it had the form of a roughly spherical core with external lines flowing to blend into shapes of perhaps a score of symmetrically arranged protuberances-no doubt the ends of a converging system of projectors comparable to the ones on the smaller-scale prototype at Quelsang. Two larger, pear-shaped lobes extended from opposite sides of the sphere, again consisting of curviforms blending into the general body, instead of the cylinders and boxy modules that made up a typical piece of Terran space engineering. Even with a purely scientific experimental endeavor, it seemed that the Thuriens were incapable of refraining from imparting some art and aesthetics into their creations. The region of the sphere forming its "equator" between the lobes was still incomplete, as were the extremes of the lobes themselves and some of the projectors.

The vicinity around the construction was dotted with all manner of devices, objects, and machines, hanging in space to perform unidentifiable functions or moving on various errands. The majority were concentrated around a white, featureless hump, fifty or more feet across, sitting on a section of the structure's unfinished equatorial band. Chien glanced at Hunt. "It's an assembly processing zone in action, isn't it?" she said. This was something that Hunt had said he was particularly curious to see.

"We picked a good time for you," VISAR interjected. "This phase is just completing now."

The Thuriens didn't build things by bolting parts together the way Terrans did, in ways that had changed little since the times of Victorian factories. They grew them from the inside, by methods that were closer to the way Nature created organisms. The white hump was actually composed of fluid, constrained by a g-field shell similar to the one surrounding the maintenance platform. The fluid contained a supply of materials in various dissolved forms, and also a population of trillions of nano-assemblers programmed to extract the elements needed and incorporate them into the growing structure in precisely the way that was required at every point. In this respect, the process resembled that of organic cell differentiation, in which the cells of a developing embryo are able to activate just the correct parts of their common DNA program to turn into bone, blood, muscle, or whatever else a particular cell in the overall plan is destined to become. As they watched, the fluid inside the hump became cloudy and patchy, and seemed to go into some kind of agitation. It looked like a washing machine going into its rinse cycle.

This was new to Sonnebrandt, and in response to his questions, Duncan outlined the idea. Sonnebrandt nodded as he listened, but then frowned. "Every assembler would have to know exactly where it is to do the correct job," he said. "You said it was like biological cells. But cells can sense their relative positions in a growing organism and know which functions to switch on and which to suppress."

"They use things like chemical concentrations and electrical gradients," Chien put in.

"Yes, that's what I mean. But nothing in what Duncan just described seemed to play the role of a physical cell matrix that positional information can relate to. So how do they do it?"

Duncan looked to Hunt, who had studied the Thurien accounts more. "It's neat," Hunt said to Sonnebrandt. "The design is encoded into coordinate operators that define a high-density standing g-wave pattern throughout the construction volume. In effect, it translates it into a unique signal at every point. The assemblers decode the appropriate signal for whatever place they're at, and that tells them what to do."

"That's amazing." Sonnebrandt shook his head wonderingly. "What must be involved in computing a function like that?"

"Don't even think about trying. You'd need something like VISAR to do it."

Out on the construction, the containing shell was suddenly turned off as the process terminated. The fluid dispersed to vanish away into space in a few seconds, revealing a gleaming new layer of walls, decks, and structural members ready to be fitted out.

"Voilа," VISAR commented, sounding matter-of-fact.

Chien was looking at Hunt with an amused, slightly wry expression. "You love this kind of thing, don't you?" she remarked. "It fascinates you. As you said, 'neat.'''

Hunt didn't know quite how to reply. "Original, at least. You've got to hand it to them," he said finally.

"Were you like that as a student? Is it what Americans call nerdy?"

"Not Vic," Duncan chimed in. "He gets on with people too well. One of those popular types. Nerdy people have a problem in that area. That's why they turn to nerdy things."

"I'm not so sure," Hunt said. "I'd say it's more the other way around. Being popular is nice enough, sure… if it happens. But it's not worth spending all your time working on. There are too many things that are more interesting to spend it on. Anyway, all this business about having to be popular with everyone all the time is an American student obsession." He shrugged and looked back toward Chien. "Wouldn't you say so? What are kids like in your part of the world?"

But he saw then that Chien wasn't listening. She had turned her head and was staring at the construction in front of them again, the look in her eyes a million miles away. "Standing waves," she murmured after Hunt had waited several seconds.

"Eh?" he returned.

"Standing waves." She turned her head back and focused on him. "Defining a structure distributed through a volume of space. That's the way to halt a test object! It propagates as a longitudinal M-wave function. If we project an interference function to create a standing wave in resonance with the normal transverse solution, it will lock it into the target universe. It would force the object to materialize there."

Chien didn't have to elaborate. The others understood immediately what she meant. It sounded plausible. Forgetting all about MP2 construction methods for the moment, they put the proposition to VISAR there and then. From a theoretical standpoint, the machine could find no flaws. But only experiment could give the final word. "Can you connect me to Eesyan again?" Hunt asked.

"He is in conference right now," VISAR cautioned. Which was about as close as Thuriens were likely to come to refusing. Hunt knew it would be a violation of normal protocols to press the matter. But this was too exciting to sit on.

"I'll risk it," he said. "Offer apologies, but tell him I insist."

Eesyan appeared in a window in Hunt's visual field after a short delay. "Yes, Vic?" he acknowledged. While Eesyan's manner remained polite, VISAR injected an unmistakable undertone into its voice reconstruction that said this had better be good. Hunt summarized what had been said as briefly as he could and asked Eesyan's opinion. Eesyan was silent for what began to seem a long time. For a moment, Hunt feared that he really had offended Thurien sensibilities in a way he hadn't been prepared for. And then he read from the Thurien's face that he couldn't have been more wrong. This was good. Eesyan was going over the implications intently in his mind, far removed from whatever other business he had been attending to. Then VISAR came through for Hunt again.

"And I've just got an incoming call from the link to Earth comnet."

Earth? Probably Gregg Caldwell. It would have to be something urgent. "Sure, put it through," Hunt said absently while he waited for Eesyan's reaction.

But the face that appeared in VISAR's window was unfamiliar: fleshy and rounded, wearing an expression of implacable relentlessness. "Dr. Hunt?" it inquired.

"Er… yes."

"Dr. Victor Hunt, of the Advanced Sciences Division, UNSA at Goddard?"

"Yes. Who's this?"

"Lieutenant Polk, FBI, Investigations Branch, Finance and Fraud Division. I understand that you are acquainted with a Gerald Santello, Dr. Hunt."

What in hell was this? It couldn't have come at a worse time. "Not now, VISAR," Hunt muttered. "Cut the link. Tell him there's a technical hitch or something."

"I don't have technical hitches."

"Well, get rid of him somehow. It's only some stupid piece of bureaucracy. We're on the verge of a major breakthrough in physics here."

Polk vanished, and there was a short pause. "Okay, you're off the hook," VISAR said. "I faked a message into the comnet saying that the Terran end is having problems. Can I ask you not to make a habit of this? I have a reputation to consider."

"I'll bear it in mind," Hunt promised. At the same time, he saw that Eesyan was waiting for his attention.

"It makes a lot of sense," the Thurien said. "So much so, that I can't think why it wasn't obvious before. Yes, Vic, I think that Madam Xyen and the rest of you are onto something. This has to be the way."