Dark as Day

by Charles Sheffield

  “I can do a lot better than describe.” Alex fumbled in his travel bag and produced the data cube. “I can show. Here are all the programs and the results. We can—oh, no, I guess we can’t. With access to outside communication blocked, we can’t get to the Seine. My models really suck up computer resources.”

  “Such resources, fortunately, are available.” Bat looked smug. “Long before the Seine was activated, I foresaw dangers and difficulty in ensuring the privacy of my work. To be honest, one of my principal concerns was other members of the Puzzle Network. Cheating on a puzzle is by no means forbidden, including infiltration of another’s databases. For that reason I established an independent computer capability here on Pandora. I call it the Keep. It is fully disjoint from all aspects of the Seine, and I would be surprised if your model is unable to run on it.”

  Alex was dubious. “When I said my model eats computer time and resources, I really meant it.”

  Bat inclined his massive head. “I do not doubt you. I merely say, try, and see. One of us, I suspect, will be surprised.”

  * * *

  Bat had been referring to computer resources. Alex, as the runs proceeded, was astonished for quite other reasons.

  The computer capacity available within the Keep was everything that Bat had suggested, with far more power than had been accessible to Alex prior to the arrival of the Seine. The predictive model ran fast, even at a high degree of detail. The cause of Alex’s amazement, however, lay elsewhere.

  He began by repeating the series of runs in which an alien influence was assumed to be at work in the solar system, sometime in the next half century. He duplicated exactly the runs that he had already made, and was not surprised to find exactly comparable results.

  “You see, everything remains stable,” he said to Bat. “No storage overflow, no solar system collapse, no end to humanity.”

  “A comforting conclusion, since in that time frame we might reasonably hope to be present ourselves.”

  “Right. But now see what happens when I make the same runs, and don’t introduce any alien influence as a variable.”

  Again, it was an exact repeat of earlier runs that Alex had made. He sat back and waited for the instabilities to creep in, slowly at first and then catastrophically after half a century. He was so convinced of what he would see that he did not pay full attention to the results. Only when the time marker reached 2188, with a human population steadily growing and all variables within reasonable ranges, did he jerk up straight in his chair.

  “That can’t be right!”

  “No?” Bat had also been relaxing, watching the near-hypnotic march of numbers and graphics across the displays. He leaned forward, frowning. “Forgive me if I appear a little lacking in perception, but I fail to see any anomalies.”

  “That’s what’s wrong with it.”

  Bat, mysteriously, said, “The dog in the night?”

  Alex ignored that and pointed to the year, now 2190, and the display of population, which was approaching twelve billion. “It never did that before. Without an alien influence as an exogenous variable, the model always reached a crisis point about 2140. Population never rose beyond a maximum value of ten billion.”

  “There is a simple explanation.” Bat sounded unimpressed. “Either you had a problem with the model in your earlier runs, or you have one now.”

  “You don’t understand. It’s the same model. I simply downloaded a copy before I left Ganymede. It must be your computer. It’s not powerful enough to run my model.”

  “Never.” All signs of boredom in Bat vanished. “The Keep contains resources more powerful than any Ganymede facility.”

  “You said you don’t have access to the Seine when you’re running in this mode.”

  “That is true, but not relevant. If it is simply computer speed that concerns you, the computers in the Keep should be more than adequate. Were you drawing on the Seine for other elements of the computation?”

  “I’m sure I was. But I don’t see any way it could change the model results. Are you suggesting that the Seine itself might destabilize my predictive model results?”

  “At first sight, I agree that sounds like a preposterous notion. But what do we really know of the Seine, and how it operates? Have you run your model sufficiently?”

  “Sufficiently to confuse me totally.”

  “Then with your permission, I will determine the external situation.” Bat touched half a dozen points on the console. “Hm. Incoming signals remain inaccessible. However, that is no bad thing … I must think …”

  Bat closed his eyes and turned into an obsidian statue. Alex stared at the vast figure, motionless on the padded seat, and declined to interrupt. He had plenty to occupy his own mind. He turned his attention again to the display. It had advanced another twenty years. Every parameter showed reasonable values. According to his model, humanity was doing fine a hundred years from now.

  The Seine as a factor? That raised a whole new series of questions. The Seine had access to every data bank in the System. It could and would use whatever information the model called for. But at the level of sophistication and complexity of the predictive model, there was no way that any human could hope to track the entirety of data in use—not even for one day of prediction, never mind a century.

  So where did that leave Alex? He had stuck his neck way out, assuring everyone from Kate all the way up to Magrit Knudsen that with the Seine his predictive model would give correct results. All he needed was adequate computational power. But there was a built-in assumption: the only thing that the Seine was supposed to do was compute. The results of a model should not depend on the computer on which it was run. However, since the Seine also had the power to bring in System-wide data sets which the computer deemed relevant to the computation, then the exact reproduction of any results could not be guaranteed. What data might the Seine possess to indicate that a solar system future without alien presence was unstable and doomed to human extinction, while a future containing an alien presence was stable? And why did the Keep’s computer, aliens or no aliens, predict a future without a fatal collapse?

  Alex was as capable of deep introspection as Bat. When a subdued beep came from the communication terminal, both men ignored it.

  The beep came again, and again. At last an irate voice overrode the standard query signal and said, “Hello, Pandora. This is Atlas Station Security, calling Pandora. Are you receiving us? Hello, Pandora. Are you receiving this message?”

  And then, in a fainter off-mike tone, “I think they’re all asleep or unconscious. I wonder if they even know they were jammed?”

  Bat scowled, opened his eyes, and replied, “We are neither asleep nor unconscious. We are thinking—a phenomenon possibly outside your experience.”

  “Oh, it’s you again. Well, you might think that a little appreciation would be in order for what we’ve done for you. We’ve arrested the wacko in the ship who was jamming your com lines.”

  “Do you have an identification and a motive?”

  “Not yet. He’s acting like a big hero and won’t say a word, and we don’t have a return yet for the ship’s I/D. It’s a Ganymede registration, though. Do you have anyone on Ganymede who dislikes you?”

  “Numerous people.”

  “Surprise, surprise. Do you have any idea who this one might be?”

  Bat looked hard at Alex. “No.”

  “Let us know if you want to press charges. We’ve got this fellow’s ship in tow, and we’re on our way. You have a waiting message stream whenever you decide to stop thinking. Au revoir, my ingrate friend.”

  “He seems to know you rather well,” Alex said, then realized that might not be the most diplomatic of remarks.

  Bat shrugged. “This is not my first encounter with the militants who call themselves the Atlas security force. Their main aim in life seems to be to protect me and the Bat Cave from physical assault, preferably by shooting at something. I have pointed out, many times, that this
facility is more secure than their own base on Atlas. Although superficially rational, they appear incapable of learning this fact. No matter. Let us see what we missed in the past few hours.” He touched the console, and surveyed the list of incoming messages. “All of them can, I feel, wait—with the exception of this one.”

  Another dab at the console. Three short sentences appeared on a small screen. Meeting place, Ganymede, Level 147, Sector 291. Individual work stations established. Start date pending schedule from Philip Beston.

  Bat sighed. “As I thought. It will be necessary to leave the Bat Cave for awhile.”

  “And go to Ganymede? Is that the message from the Puzzle Group?”

  “It is. And almost certainly, Attoboy sent it. It bears his laconic trademark. I will decipher it later.”

  “It seems straightforward enough.”

  “It would not be from Attoboy if it lacked a hidden message within the clear text.”

  “Maybe to tell you when the meeting begins?”

  “I think not. I take his final sentence at face value.”

  “Can we meet again when you arrive at Ganymede?”

  That produced Bat’s longest hesitation so far. At last he said, “Your predictive model is new and intriguing, and it offers mysteries of inconsistency which so far I am unable to resolve. My instincts suggest that such a resolution could have far-reaching consequences. Certainly, this belongs on the four-sigma list.”

  Bat paused, studying Alex as though the two men were just being introduced. The shaved black head nodded a few millimeters. “Before your arrival I had heard much about the Ligon family; all of it was, I am sorry to say, highly negative. You fail to fit my preconceptions. You have a genuine interest in and talent for intellectual problems. I would not find the prospect of another meeting, when I am on Ganymede, intolerable.”

  One step at a time. Alex told himself that he had agreed to come here only because the family had pushed him, and he had never expected to succeed. Now when he returned to Ganymede he could report to Prosper Ligon and the others that, despite insane interference from Cousin Hector, he had made real progress. Rustum Battachariya had agreed to meet with Alex again—on Ganymede!

  Magrit Knudsen was not there to provide Alex with a more striking evaluation of the situation. An agreement to meet again was the highest accolade that Bat ever offered to anyone. Alex had engaged Bat’s attention in the most powerful way possible: he had provided a puzzle too subtle and intricate to be solved at once.

  In Bat’s upside-down universe, what could not be solved at once was not an annoyance; rather, in the best circumstances it would provide a source of ongoing pleasure and satisfaction for months or years to come.

  23

  Progress review meetings at Argus Station were held every Tuesday morning, starting at midday. This was Monday, ridiculously early in the morning. Why was she being summoned to the conference room?

  Milly—just out of bed, hair falling into her eyes, without breakfast, starved of caffeine, less than half-awake—answered the call and hurried to the meeting. Despite all her efforts, she arrived ten minutes later than requested. She entered, braced for a tongue-lashing from Jack Beston.

  On the threshold she paused, bewildered. The room was empty. A gruff voice from behind her said, “Yes, you’re at the right place. We’re all late. Go on in, and let’s get things moving.”

  She turned. Jack Beston was behind her, his usually ruddy face pale and taut. With him was the mystery woman, Zetter.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Jack said. He seemed to be talking to Milly, not Zetter. “Even before we left Odin Station, I knew that the bastard was up to something.”

  Milly could tell from the intonation that ‘bastard’ was being used with a different meaning. It was now a description, not a name.

  “Zetter,” Jack went on. He waved the two women to hard-backed chairs, and settled himself on a third with his arms folded over the back. “You tell her.”

  Zetter’s vulpine face was uneasy, as though revealing information to anyone but Jack Beston himself was an unprecedented and dangerous activity. “We have received information from Odin Station,” she said. The sharp nose twitched. “Soon after you two left, Philip Beston sent a secure message to certain senior members of the Puzzle Network.”

  “Secure, but not secure enough,” Jack said. “You’ve heard of the Puzzle Network, Milly?”

  “Yes.” This was no time for Milly to go into details. She was too eager to learn what the Bastard had said.

  “In brief,” Zetter continued, “Beston has proposed a working collaboration between Odin Station and the Puzzle Network. They would form a joint venture for the interpretation of the SETI message. He will make available to them everything that he and his team are able to discover. The Puzzle Network team, in return, will channel any results that they obtain to him, on an exclusive basis.”

  “Putting it another way,” Jack said, “we’re screwed. The Bastard has signed up the top brains in the System at this kind of problem. Those characters work on fancy intellectual problems for pleasure. I don’t know how good they are, but I have to assume they’re the best.”

  “They are,” Milly said. “The absolute best.”

  “Then we’re doubly screwed. They’re nuts, but they’re smart nuts. The worst sort.” Jack slumped into a chair, his chin cupped in his hands. After a moment he looked up. “How come you know so much about this, Milly Wu? Did the Bastard come crawling around you, trying to get you involved?”

  That was uncomfortably close to the truth. Milly headed in a different direction. “I know the Puzzle Network because I used to be part of it. In fact, I was Junior Champion three years running. I only dropped out when I found that thinking about SETI was occupying more and more of my time.”

  “That right?” Jack Beston’s eyes half closed to green slits. “Three years running?” Milly could hear the mental relays clicking over. “Zetter, that’s all for now. I need a few private words with Milly Wu.”

  The thin face hardened, and Zetter’s mouth compressed to a tight line. “You wish me to leave?”

  “You got it.”

  “But our … source. What instructions do I provide?”

  “Say, keep looking and listening. We’re going to handle the rest from here.”

  Zetter nodded and did not reply, but as she left she gave a glare of hatred that Milly felt she had done nothing to deserve.

  “Now, Milly.” Jack Beston humped his chair over closer. “If you were champion three years in a row, in your Puzzle Network days you must have built up quite a reputation. You must still have close friends there.”

  There were things that you never said to your boss, no matter what the provocation. Here came one of them: “The hell with that, Jack Beston. I won’t do it.” Maybe it was lack of morning caffeine. “Not if you go down on your hands and knees and grovel.”

  “I just might do that. But Milly, listen to me for a minute.” He eased his chair a few inches closer. “You started this whole thing. It’s called the Wu-Beston anomaly, but everybody remembers the Wu rather than the Beston. Which is as it should be. But you know, and I know, that detection is only part of the story, and not the biggest part. Nobody today remembers who dug up the Rosetta Stone, what they recall are the people who used it to decipher hieroglyphics. The Bastard knows this, just as well as we do. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been thinking this way for years, he’s such a sneaky devil.

  “But now suppose that you were part of the Puzzle Network team that worked on the interpretation of the signal. Your name would be associated with every phase of the work: detection, verification, interpretation. For all of history, the only name anyone would associate with the first SETI signal would be Milly Wu.”

  “And Jack Beston. What would he get out of this?”

  “The satisfaction of knowing he’d beaten the Bastard on all fronts. And Milly, you have no idea how sweet that would be. Can you do it? Can you become involved in the
Puzzle Network interpretation effort?”

  “No. That would be impossible, I’ve been away from it for too long.” But even as she spoke, Milly could imagine an approach.

  She had not, as she suggested to Jack Beston, totally burned her bridges. In fact, less than six months ago she had heard from one of the Masters, Pack Rat, an older man with a taste for adolescent girls and a definite fondness for Milly (Puzzle Network Masters had to be smart, but no one said they had to be moral). He had sent her a puzzle, and invited her to have dinner. She had solved the puzzle the same day that it arrived, returned her answer, and declined the other invitation. But she felt sure that the door was open. Pack Rat had as good as told her that she was still a prime candidate for Master level in the Network.

  Jack Beston was watching her closely. He was not, as Hannah Krauss had told her often enough, a man who easily took no for an answer. Rather, he took whatever he wanted. Milly, on the other hand, had taken as much of some things as she ever would.

  She said abruptly, “Suppose I’m wrong, and it turned out to be possible for me to become involved in the Puzzle Network’s interpretation work. Then I would have to leave here. There’s no possible way that your brother would send information to Argus Station.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t. We would have to travel to wherever the information center was located.”

  “We. What do you mean, we? Who are you talking about?”

  “The two of us. You and me. Now that we have a verified signal, our interpretation team can carry on here very well without me.”

  “I believe that. But what would you do on Ganymede? Carry my bags? Because I can assure you of one thing: no one is admitted to the higher levels of the Puzzle Network without a track record and sponsors.”

  His face went from pale to bright red. Milly was ready for the Ogre’s patented bellow of rage, but it never came. Instead, Jack took a deep breath, then said quietly, “I’m sure you are right. If I go to Ganymede, I will do whatever is most helpful in interpreting the signal.” And then, more intensely, “Milly, you have to understand how I feel. This SETI project is terribly important to me. I’ve devoted most of my life to it, and I can’t stand the idea of being anywhere but at the center of the action.”