Nemesis

18. Superluminal

Three years on Earth had aged Tessa Wendel. Her complexion had coarsened a bit. She had put on some weight. There was the beginning of jowls and dark patches under her eyes. Her breasts had grown a shade pendulous and her waist had thickened.

Crile Fisher knew that Tessa was in her late forties now, that she was five years older than he was. But she did not look older than her years. She was still a fine mature figure of a woman (as he had heard someone refer to her), but she would no longer pass for a woman in her thirties, as she might easily have done when he had first met her at Adelia.

Tessa was aware of it, too, and had spoken of it bitterly to him only the week before.

‘It's you, Crile,’ she had said one night when they were in bed together (a time when, apparently, she was most conscious of aging). ‘The fault is yours. You sold me on Earth. “Magnificent,” you said. “Enormous,” you said. “Variety. Always something new. Inexhaustible.” ’

‘And isn't it?’ he said, knowing what she found objectionable, but willing to let her vent her feelings once again.

‘Not where gravity is concerned. All over this entire bloated, impossible planet, you have the same gravitational pull. Up in the air, down in a mine, here, there, everywhere, one G - one G - one G. It should kill you all out of sheer boredom.’

‘We know no better, Tessa.’

‘Yow know better. You've been on Settlements. There you can pick your gravitational pull to suit yourself. You can exercise at low gravity. You can lighten the strain on your tissues now and then. How can you live without that?’

‘We exercise here on Earth, too.’

‘Oh please - you do it with that pull, that eternal pull, yanking down on you. You spend all your time fighting it instead of letting your muscles interplay. You can't leap, you can't fly, you can't soar. You can't let yourself drop into the greater pull or rise into the lesser one. And that pull, pull, pull drags every bit of you down, so that you sag and wrinkle and age. Look at me! Look at me!’

‘I look at you as often as I can,’ said Fisher solemnly.

‘Don't look at me, then. If you do, you'll throw me over. And if you do that, I'll go back to Adelia.’

‘No, you won't. What will you do there after you've exercised at low gravity? Your research work, your laboratories, your team are all here.’

‘I'll start over and build a new team.’

‘And will Adelia support you in the style to which you are now accustomed? Of course not. You'll have to admit that Earth is not stinting you, that you are getting all you want. Wasn't I right?’

‘Weren't you right? Traitor! You didn't tell me that Earth had hyper-assistance. You also didn't tell me that they had discovered the Neighbor Star. In fact, you let me pontificate on the uselessness of Rotor's Far Probe and never once told me that it had discovered anything more than a few parallaxes. You sat there and laughed at me, like the heartless wretch you are.’

‘I would have told you, Tessa, but what if you had decided not to come to Earth? It was not my secret to give you.’

‘But after I came to Earth?’

‘As soon as you got to work, actually to work, we told you.’

‘They told me, and left me feeling stunned and foolish. You might have given me just a hint so that I wouldn't come off like such an idiot. I should have killed you, but what could I do? You're addictive. You knew you were when you heartlessly seduced me into coming to Earth.’

That was a game she insisted on playing, and Fisher knew his role. He said, ‘Seduced you? You insisted. You wouldn't have it any other way.’

‘You liar. You forced yourself on me. It was rape - impure and complex. And you're going to do it again. I can see it in those dreadful lust-filled eyes.’

It had been months since she had played that particular game and Fisher knew it came when she was satisfied with herself professionally. He said afterward, ‘Have you made progress?’

‘Progress? I think you can call it that.’ She was panting. ‘I have a demonstration that I've set up for tomorrow for your decaying and ancient Earthman, Tanayama. He's been pushing for it mercilessly.’

‘He's a merciless fellow.’

‘He's a stupid fellow. You'd think that even if a society doesn't know science, they would know something about science, about how it works. If they give you a million global credits in the morning, they shouldn't expect anything definite by evening the same day. They should at least wait till the next morning and give you the whole night to work in. Do you know what he said to me last time we spoke, when I said I might have something to show him?’

‘No, you hadn't told me. What did he say?’

‘You'd think he'd say: “It's amazing that in a mere three years you've worked out something so astonishing and new. We must give you enormous credit and the weight of gratitude we feel toward you is immeasurable.” That's what you would think he would say.’

‘No, not in a million years would I think that Tanayama would say anything like that. What did he say?’

‘He said, “So you have something finally, after three years. I should hope so. How long do you think I have to live? Do you think I have been supporting you, and paying for you and feeding you an army of assistants and workers in order to have you produce something after I'm dead and can't see it?” That's what he did say, and I tell you I would like to delay the demonstration till he is dead, for my own satisfaction, but I suppose that the work comes first.’

‘Do you really have something that will satisfy him?’

‘Only superluminal flight. True superluminal flight, not that hyper-assistance nonsense. We now have something that will open the door to the Universe.’

The site where Tessa Wendel's research team labored, intent on shaking the Universe, had been prepared for her even before she had been recruited and come to Earth. It was inside a vast mountainous redoubt that was totally off-limits to Earth's teeming population, and in it a veritable city of research had been built.

And now Tanayama was there, seated in a motorized chair. Only his eyes, behind their narrowed lids, seemed alive - sharp, glancing this way and that.

He was by no means the highest figure in Earth's government, not even the highest figure then present, but he had been, and still was, the force behind the project and all automatically gave way to him.

Only Wendel seemed unintimidated.

His voice was a rustling whisper. ‘What will I see, Doctor? A ship?’

There was no ship in view, of course.

Wendel said, ‘No ship, Director. Ships are years away. I have only a demonstration, but it is an exciting one. You will see the first public demonstration of true superluminal flight, something that is far beyond hyper-assistance.’

‘How am I going to see that?’

‘It was my understanding, Director, that you have been briefed.’

Tanayama coughed wrackingly and had to pause to catch his breath. ‘They tried to talk to me,’ he said, ‘but I want it from you.’ His eyes, baleful and hard, were fixed on her. ‘You're in charge,’ he said. ‘It is your scheme. Explain.’

‘I can't explain the theory. That would take too long, Director. It would tire you.’

‘I want no theory. What am I going to see?’

‘What you are going to see are two cubical glass containers. Both contain a hard vacuum.’

‘Why a vacuum?’

‘Superluminal flight can only be initiated in a vacuum, Director. Otherwise the object made to move faster than light drags matter with it, increasing energy expenditures and decreasing controllability. It must end in a vacuum, too, or else the result can be catastrophic because-’

‘Never mind the “because”. If this superluminal flight of yours must begin and end in a vacuum, how do we make use of it?’

‘It is necessary, first, to move out into outer space by ordinary flight and then move into hyperspace and stay there. You arrive near your destination and move out into ordinary space, and then make the final move by ordinary flight.’

‘That takes time.’

‘Even superluminal flight can't be done instantaneously, but if you can move from the Solar System to a star forty light-years away in forty days rather than forty years, it would be ungrateful to grumble over the time lapse.’

‘All right, then. You have these two cubical glass containers. What of them?’

‘They are holographic projections. Actually, they are three thousand kilometers apart through the body of the Earth, each in a mountain fastness. If light could travel from one to the other through unobstructed vacuum, it would take that light fully 1/1000th of a second - one millisecond - to make the passage. We're not going to use light, of course. Suspended in the middle of the cube at the left, held in space by a powerful magnetic field, is a small sphere, which is actually a tiny hyperatomic motor. Do you see it, Director?’

‘I see something there,’ said Tanayama. ‘Is that all you have?’

‘If you will watch carefully, you will see that it will disappear. The countdown is progressing.’

It was a whisper in each person's ear, and, at zero, the sphere was gone from one cube and present in the other.

‘Remember,’ said Wendel, ‘those cubes are really three thousand kilometers apart. The timing mechanism shows that the duration between the departure and the arrival was a little over ten microseconds, which means that the passage took place at almost a hundred times the speed of light.’

Tanayama looked up. ‘How can I tell? The whole thing could be a trick designed to fool someone you believe to be a gullible old man.’

‘Director,’ said Wendel sternly. ‘There are hundreds of scientists here, all with reputations, a number of them Earthmen. They will show you anything you want to see, explain how the instruments work. You will find nothing here but honest science done well.’

‘Even if all is as you say, what does it mean? A little ball. A Ping-Pong ball, traveling a few thousand kilometers. Is that what you have after three years?’

‘What you have seen is perhaps more than anyone had a right to expect, Director, with all due respect. What you have seen may be the size of a Ping-Pong ball, and it may have traveled no more than three thousand kilometers, but it is true superluminal flight just as much as if we had moved a starship from here to Arcturus at a hundred times the speed of light. What you have seen is the first public demonstration of true superluminal flight in human history.’

‘But it's the starship I want to see.’

‘For that you will have to wait.’

‘I have no time. I have no time,’ rasped Tanayama in a voice that was nothing more than a hoarse whisper. A fit of coughing shook him again.

And Wendel said in a low voice that perhaps only Tanayama heard, ‘Even your will cannot move the Universe.’

The three days devoted to officialdom in what was unofficially known as Hyper City had passed grindingly, and now the interlopers were gone.

‘Even so,’ said Tessa Wendel to Crile Fisher, ‘it will take two or three more days to recover and get back to work with full intensity.’ She looked haggard and intensely displeased as she said, ‘What a vile old man.’

Fisher had no trouble divining the reference to be to Tanayama. ‘He's a sick old man.’

Wendel shot an angry look at him. ‘Are you defending him?’

‘Just stating a fact, Tessa.’

She lifted a finger in admonishment. ‘I am quite certain that that miserable relic was as irrational and unreasonable in days past when he was not sick, or, for that matter, when he was not old. How long has he been Director of the Office?’

‘He's a fixture. Over thirty years. And before that he was Chief Deputy for almost as long and probably the real power behind a succession of three or four figurehead Directors. And no matter how old or sick he gets, he'll stay Director till he dies - maybe for three days afterward, while people wait to make sure he doesn't rise from the dead.’

‘I gather you think this is funny.’

‘No, but what can you do but laugh at the spectacle of a man who, without open power, without even being known to the general public, has kept everyone in the government in fear and subjection for nearly half a century simply because he has firm control over everyone's disreputable secrets and would not hesitate to make use of them.’

‘And they endure him?’

‘Oh yes. There's not a person in the government who has ever been willing to sacrifice his own career with certainty, merely on the chance of bringing down Tanayama.’

‘Even now when his hold on matters must be growing tenuous?’

‘You're making a mistake. His grip may fail with death, but until his actual death that grip of his will never be tenuous. It will be the last that goes, sometime after his heart stops.’

‘What drives people so?’ asked Wendel with distaste. ‘Is there no desire to let go early enough to have a chance to die in peace?’

‘Not Tanayama. Never. I wouldn't say I'm an intimate of his, but in fifteen years or so, I have made contact with him now and then, never without being badly bruised in the process. I knew him when he was still vigorous, and I always knew he would never stop. To answer your earlier question, different things drive different people, but in Tanayama's case, it's hatred.’

‘I should think so,’ said Wendel. ‘It shows. No-one that hateful can fail to hate. But who does Tanayama hate?’

‘The Settlements.’

‘Oh, he does?’ Wendel was obviously remembering that she was a Settler from Adelia. ‘I've never heard a Settler say a kind word for Earth either. And you know my feelings for anyplace without variable gravity.’

‘I'm not talking dislike, Tessa, or distaste or contempt. I'm talking blind scarlet hatred. Almost any Earthman dislikes the Settlements. They have all the latest. They're quiet, uncrowded, comfortable, middle-class. They have ample food, ample recreation, no bad weather, no poor. They have robots that are kept smoothly out of sight. It's only natural for people who consider themselves deprived to dislike those who seem to have everything. But with Tanayama, it's active boiling hatred. I think he would like to see the Settlements destroyed, everyone.’

‘Why, Crile?’

‘My own theory is that what gets him is none of the things I have listed. What he can't stand is the cultural homogeneity of the Settlements. Do you know what I mean?’

‘No.’

‘The people of the Settlements select themselves. They select people like themselves. There's a shared culture, even, to some extent, a shared physical appearance on each Settlement. Earth, on the other hand, is, and through all of history has been, a wild mixture of cultures, all enriching each other, competing with each other, suspicious of each other. Tanayama and many other Earthmen - myself, for instance - consider such a mixture to be a source of strength, and feel that cultural homogeneity on the Settlements weakens them and, in the long run, shortens their potential life span.’

‘Well, then, why hate the Settlements for possessing something you consider a disadvantage to them? Does Tanayama hate us for being better off and for being worse off? It doesn't make sense.’

‘It doesn't have to. Who would bother hating, if it had to be reasoned out into sensibleness first? Perhaps - just perhaps - Tanayama is afraid that the Settlements will succeed too well and will prove cultural homogeneity to be a good thing after all. Or perhaps he thinks that the Settlements are as anxious to destroy the Earth as he himself is to destroy the Settlements. The matter of the Neighbor Star infuriated him.’

‘The fact that Rotor discovered the Neighbor Star and did not inform the rest of us?’

‘More than that. They did not bother to warn us that it was speeding toward the Solar System.’

‘They might not have known, I suppose.’

‘Tanayama would never believe that. I'm sure that he feels that they knew and deliberately refused to warn us, hoping that we would be caught unprepared, and that Earth, or at least Earth's civilization, would be destroyed.’

‘Has it been decided that the Neighbor Star will approach closely enough to damage us? I haven't heard that. It's my understanding that most astronomers think it will pass at a great enough distance to leave us substantially untouched. Have you heard differently?’

Fisher shrugged. ‘No, I haven't, but I think it feeds Tanayama's hatred to believe that there is danger here. And from that, you move logically to the notion that superluminal flight is what we must have in order to locate an Earth-like world elsewhere. Then we can transfer as much of Earth's population as possible to that other world - if the worst comes to worst. You'll have to admit that's sensible.’

‘It is, but you don't have to imagine destruction, Crile. It is a natural feeling that humanity ought to spread outward even if Earth remains perfectly safe. We've moved out to the Settlements and reaching for the stars is a logical next step, and for that next step, we must have superluminal travel.’

‘Yes, but Tanayama would find that a cold view. The colonization of the Galaxy is something I'm sure he is willing to leave to generations to come. What he wants for himself is to find Rotor and punish it for having abandoned the Solar System without regard for the rest of the human community. He wants to live to see that and that's why he keeps pushing you, Tessa.’

‘He can push all he wants, and it won't help him. He's a dying man.’

‘I wonder. Modern medical procedures can perform marvels and I'm sure the doctors will go all out for Tanayama.’

‘Even modern medicine can only go so far. I asked the doctors.’

‘And they answered? I would have supposed that the question of Tanayama's health was a state secret.’

‘Not to me, under the circumstances, Crile. I went to the medical team that attended the Old Man here and told them that I was anxious to build an actual ship capable of carrying human beings to the stars, and that I wanted to do so before Tanayama died. I asked them how much time I had.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘I had a year. That's what they said. At the most. They urged me to hurry.’

‘Can you do it in one year?’

‘In one year? Of course not, Crile, and I'm glad of it. I find pleasure in the fact that that poisonous person won't live to see it. What are you making faces about, Crile? Does it bother you that I make so cruel a remark?’

‘It's a petty remark, anyway, Tessa. That Old Man, however poisonous, has done all this. He's made Hyper City possible.’

‘Yes, but for his own purposes, not mine. And not Earth's or humanity's. And I'm allowed to have my pettiness, too. I am sure that Director Tanayama never once pitied anyone he considered his enemy or lightened the pressure of his foot on that enemy's throat by a dyne. And I imagine he doesn't expect pity or mercy from anyone else. He would probably despise, as a weakling, anyone who offered it.’

Fisher still looked unhappy. ‘How long will it take, Tessa?’

‘How can anyone say? It might take for ever. Even if everything broke reasonably well, I don't see how it could take less than five years at the least.’

‘But why? You already have superluminal flight.’

Wendel sat up straight. ‘No, Crile. Don't be naïve. All I have is a laboratory demonstration. I can take a light object - a Ping-Pong ball - in which a tiny hyperatomic motor makes up 90 per cent of the mass, and move it superluminally. A ship, however, with people aboard, is a totally different thing. We'll have to be certain, and for that five years is optimistic. I tell you that before the days of modern computers and the kind of simulations they make possible, five years would be an unrealizable dream. Even fifty years might have been.’

Crile Fisher shook his head, and said nothing.

Tessa Wendel watched him thoughtfully, then said, almost testily, ‘What's the matter with you? Are you in such a great hurry also?’

Fisher said soothingly, ‘I'm sure you're as anxious to get this done as anyone, but I do long for a practical hyperspatial ship.’

‘You, more than someone else?’

‘I, quite a bit.’

‘Why?’

‘I'd like to go to the Neighbor Star.’

She glared at him. ‘Why? Are you dreaming of reuniting with the wife you abandoned?’

Fisher had never discussed Eugenia with Tessa Wendel in any detail, and he had no intention of being trapped into it now.

He said, ‘I have a daughter out there. I think you can understand that, Tessa. You have a son.’

So she did. He was in his early twenties, attending Adelia University, and he occasionally wrote his mother.

Wendel's face softened. ‘Crile,’ she said, ‘you mustn't allow yourself false hopes in this. I'll grant you that since they knew about the Neighbor Star, that's where they went. With merely hyper-assistance, however, the trip must have taken over two years. We can't be sure that Rotor survived such a trip. And even if they did, the chances of finding a suitable planet around a red dwarf star is just about zero. Having survived that far, they might then have traveled on in search of a suitable planet. Where? And how would we find them?’

‘I imagine they knew there was no hope for a suitable planet around the Neighbor Star. Wouldn't they have been prepared, therefore, simply to put Rotor into a suitable orbit around the star?’

‘Even if they survived the flight, and even if they went into orbit around the star, it would be a sterile life, and there might be no possibility of continuing it for long in any form compatible with civilization. Crile, you've got to steel yourself. What if we manage to organize the expedition to the Neighbor Star and find nothing at all, or at most, the empty hulk of what is left of Rotor?’

Fisher said, ‘In that case, that would be that. But surely there must be a chance that they survived.’

‘And that you'll find your child? Dear Crile, is it safe to build your hopes on that? Even if Rotor survived and your child survived, she was only one year old when you left her and that was in '22. If she appeared before you right now as she now is, she'd be ten years old, and if we went out to the Neighbor Star at the earliest practical moment, she would be fifteen. She wouldn't know you. For that matter you wouldn't know her.’

‘Ten years old, or fifteen, or fifty. If I saw her, Tessa, I would know her,’ said Fisher.