Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330)

by Mitchell, Laura Remson

  Rayna looked at Keith, wide-eyed.

  “On the other hand,” he continued, “it may be that only one reality exists, after all, and your grandfather directed it for 50 years. At the time Zorne died, he was refining a hypothesis that combined a lot of the most advanced physics concepts of his time with some new twists of his own. His mathematics are pretty impressive, but, as Zorne himself said, it’s really impossible for us to know for sure just how closely all that corresponds with the way things actually are.”

  “Please stop!” Rayna said, rolling her eyes. “I’m more confused than ever.”

  Keith smiled and waved his hand. “Never mind. Let’s forget about this, at least for now. I just don’t know how to explain it any better.”

  “But—”

  “All I can tell you is that it looks like the changes in reality depended not only on your grandfather but also on the reactions of other people who cared about the same things.”

  “My head hurts!” Rayna said.

  Keith laughed and tentatively reached out to her. Reluctantly, she stepped into his arms. He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt her body relax against his.

  “Don’t worry about all this,” he said, continuing to hold her close. “It’s fascinating stuff—and worth further research. But right now, it’s just a hypothesis. I’m not really sure about any of it.” Gently, he pushed her back to arm’s length so that he could look into her eyes. “One thing I can tell you: Al Frederick and his psychic powers definitely played a major role in shaping the modern world as we know it.”

  The corners of Rayna’s mouth drooped. “Not the way it is today. Not with the things that have been happening lately.”

  “You mean like your friends’ getting fired?”

  She nodded. “Among other things. It’s as if whatever Al managed to do, however he managed to improve the world over the last 50 years, it’s all started coming apart since he died.”

  Keith stared at his feet, brushing the sole of his right shoe back and forth across the carpet. “I’m not happy about the Nitinol situation or what’s going on at your school, Ray, but maybe it’s just as well that we’ve all been kicked out of Eden.”

  “What?”

  He looked up. “Think about it objectively for a minute. All these years, Al Frederick’s been making the big decisions for the world. Turning the universe into his vision of Utopia. But maybe his Utopia isn’t mine.”

  “Go on,” she said, arms folded across her chest.

  He rose and walked to the sliding glass door that opened onto Rayna’s patio. “Look at that,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the scene outside. “Look at all these buildings. Apartments and co-ops and condominiums. There’s someplace for everybody now. But we’re all the same! There’s no real incentive to excel anymore. No rewards for achievement.”

  Rayna came up beside him as he continued to look out the patio door. “Frankly,” he said, whirling to face her, “I’m beginning to feel like a sucker. Look at me, living in a ridiculous little apartment in a building that used to be a house fit for a king! A king, Rayna, not a bunch of nobodies!”

  She stared at him, lips mouthing some inaudible protest.

  “How do we know what great inventions were never created,” he railed, “what wonderful opportunities we never had? How do we know what kind of place the world might have been if Al Frederick had just let things alone?”

  “Keith,” she said after several uncomfortably quiet seconds, “I don’t under—”

  “You don’t understand? How could you understand? How can any of us understand? We’re all just babies, Rayna. Don’t you see that? The world according to Al Frederick was such a comfortable, easygoing place that we never had the chance to grow up. We never got tough, because we never needed to be tough. You don’t have to be tough to survive in the Garden of Eden. Well, now that we’re out of the garden, I’m not so sure he did us a favor!”

  She backed away, her face pale. “Keith, what I don’t understand is why you’re talking this way all of a sudden. Unless....”

  “Unless what?”

  The fear in her eyes made the hair prickle at the back of his neck. “Maybe,” she said, “maybe there’s more to what’s been happening than my grandfather’s death. If he could change reality to match his vision of Utopia, maybe other people have that ability, too.”

  Rayna didn’t have to say which people she meant, which notion of the perfect world was making her shiver. Keith knew the answers all too well. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ignore the image that had sprung forth in his mind—the image of Henry Tauber.

  Chapter 20: The Great Debate

  The debate was scheduled for noon on Monday, Nov. 22, at the historic open-speech area of downtown’s John Martin Roberts Park. Initially, only a small audience was expected, as holovision coverage made public debates easily accessible to those who preferred the comforts of home. It was quite a shock, then, when the Police Department announced, on the Friday before the big event, that because of unexpected interest in the Milgrom-Rensselaer confrontation, tickets would be carefully inspected, and only holders of valid ones would be admitted to the open-speech area. Just thinking about the police announcement chilled Rayna’s backbone with vague foreboding.

  A light breeze jostled branches and flapped the bunting on the platform in the center of the open-speech area. Fourteen students had joined her on the field trip. Not too bad, she thought. All but eight of the students in her class on contemporary American concerns. That’s a clear majority for freedom of speech.

  Heeding advice from a friend in the Park Service, she had insisted on arriving an hour early. Even shortly after 11 a.m., however, most of the 150 seats in the semicircular rows around the speaker’s platform were already taken. Unable to find 15 seats together, she grouped 12 students into threesomes. The remaining pupils would sit with her. As they awaited the start of the program, she reassured herself that all was well by making the rounds from one group to another before she finally returned to her own seat, a few rows from the back of the ticket-holders’ area.

  The sun was nearing its zenith when the official entourage left the recreation building—about 200 yards distant—and began making its way to the concrete-and-woodstone platform. The park’s open-speech center was one of the first undertakings of Project New Start’s Youth Corps, established in the aftermath of the 1971 riots. A very fitting place for a historic debate, Rayna mused, pretending not to notice the nervous flutter in her stomach.

  The area behind them was dense with spectators now, as knots of people clustered in back of the rope barricades the police had erected to separate the seated ticket-holders from any curious onlookers who might wander by. Rayna realized, however, that the throng she’d seen develop over the past hour had to include more than the merely curious.

  A buzz, growing to a steady rumble, oozed from the crowd as the speakers neared the platform. Rayna strained to see as the contingent of three men and two women mounted the steps to the stage. All but one, that is. Althea Milgrom couldn’t use the steps. Instead, she directed her powered wheelchair up a gently sloped ramp and took her place on the left side of the podium. Imposing in his navy-and-red Merchant Fleet uniform, Adm. Ethan O. Rensselaer sat on the opposite side of a woodstone lectern.

  “She’s a funny-looking old bird,” said Damon Taylor, one of the students with Rayna. “Why’s she using that chair? She lose her MediNet card or something?”

  ”They can’t help her any more, dummy!” said the dark-haired girl seated next to Damon. “Don’t you know who that is?” As usual, Ginny Winokis skipped the niceties. “For Pete’s sake! It’s Althea Milgrom!”

  Damon’s face turned a deep crimson. “Oh,” he muttered.

  Rayna’s classes had been discussing Milgrom and Rensselaer for days. The students knew about Rensselaer’s years of service in the Asteroid Belt. They knew he’d been honored for his courage and ingenuity in helping to establish life domes on some of the
most inhospitable of the colonized asteroids. And, of course, they all knew about the accolades heaped upon him for his handling of the Nitinol crisis.

  The students also knew that, despite the miracles of modern medicine, Althea Milgrom still needed her wheelchair. The chair was a token of the multiple sclerosis that plagued her from the age of 24. A vaccine developed 14 years later led to treatment that halted progression of her MS, and other treatments had managed to turn back some of her symptoms, but by that time, her condition was too advanced to be fully reversible.

  Milgrom discovered that she had a special aptitude for computers, and she worked hard to develop and apply it. Five years ago, at age 62, she was appointed to head the Consolidated Data Network—a job she had filled admirably and without incident until she began to speak out about the Nitinol controversy.

  A tall, stout man dressed in a loose-fitting gray business tunic and black trousers whispered to the others on the stage and then approached the lectern.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Franklin Wentworth, chairman of the Los Angeles Public Issues Society. Our organization is dedicated to the proposition that full and open discussion of controversial public policy questions is the hallmark of our democracy.”

  He stopped talking and scanned the audience—rather nervously, Rayna thought. She unfastened her cardigan, enjoying the unexpectedly balmy climate. Must be close to 75, she thought as Wentworth introduced the speakers and others on the dais. And the weather man said it wouldn’t get past the mid 60s today! She inhaled deeply. It felt good to be here. There was nothing quite like seeing one of these debates live. It’s not just what you hear or see. It’s knowing that what’s around you is more than a holographic projection—knowing that it’s real!

  A sudden bump jarred her out of her reverie. “Stop fidgeting, Damon,” she urged as her student contorted his body for a better view of the stage. He stopped squirming but looked puzzled.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I was just trying to see where they set up the sound-envelope generator.”

  Rayna sighed and patted Damon on the shoulder. “Save your investigation of the sound equipment for some other time. We’re here for the debate.”

  He scowled but settled down. Rayna couldn’t help smiling. Lately, Damon had lost the enthusiasm and creative energy she remembered from last year. At least, now he was actively interested in something.

  And the sound system here was a marvel of acoustical engineering, a new design especially suited to outdoor performances. It was based on a special field, a “sound envelope,” within which the sound from the stage was modulated so that it could be heard at normal, conversational volume. Outside the field, sounds remained unaltered—and thus, often unheard.

  Rayna pulled her sweater close about her throat. True, the sound-envelope generator was a wonderful innovation, but using it today? Presumably, the rope barriers indicated the limits of the sound envelope. All those people beyond the ropes would be cut off from the sound as effectively as if they were outside a building looking in. Yet only a few cords of twisted fibers separated them from the speakers and ticketed guests—including Rayna and her students.

  “As you know,” Wentworth was saying, “Earth’s energy systems were recently dealt a serious blow by the diversion of a shipment of Nitinol wire and by colonial demands for triple payment.”

  Was that an unhappy protest from the crowd behind her? Rayna twisted around for a look. The people behind the ropes made her nervous.

  “Both of today’s guests are very well informed about the situation,” Wentworth announced, “but they have come to quite different conclusions about what to do.”

  “We know all about Milgrom’s conclusions!” a voice called out. “She wants to sell us out to the rock farmers!”

  Although the comment was loud and clear to Rayna, Wentworth either didn’t hear, or else he chose to ignore it.

  “And now,” the moderator continued, “it is my pleasure to present our speakers. They have agreed that Adm. Rensselaer will make his presentation first.”

  Rensselaer slowly rose to his full height, walked to the lectern, and shook hands with Wentworth, who then joined the others seated at the rear of the stage.

  Rensselaer recited the standard thank-you’s to Wentworth and his organization, then slowly scrutinized the audience with an almost hypnotic gaze. Rayna’s flesh erupted into goose bumps. I could swear he’s looking directly at me. Of course, that was just her imagination. Good eye contact was a basic public-speaking technique. Still, she had never before encountered anyone who did it quite so effectively.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Rensselaer said in a commanding baritone, “energy is the lifeblood of our planet. Without it, most of the advances of the modern world would have been impossible. Without it, most of the things we now accept as commonplace would be useless.” Again, the turn of the head, the establishment of eye contact with a new section of the audience. “Energy is of vital importance in every facet of our lives, from transportation, to medicine, to agriculture. Yes, even to production of the very food we put into the mouths of our children.”

  Rayna heard a groan to her right and quickly shot Ginny a stern look, but the teacher couldn’t help being pleased by her student’s recognition of Rensselaer’s brand of old-fashioned political posturing.

  “Decades ago,” the admiral was saying, “Earth established colonies in the Asteroid Belt. Among the raw materials we found on the asteroids were rich deposits of nickel and titanium, the elements needed to produce the Nitinol we must use to meet most of our present energy needs. By mutual consent, we developed healthy trade relations with those colonies.”

  Rayna craned her neck until she finally spotted her other students in the audience. The separation couldn’t be helped, but it made her uneasy to be so far from some of her charges.

  “I am proud to say that I was instrumental in helping to establish some of those colonies,” said Rensselaer, “but I’m not proud of what the colonists are doing today. By holding our Nitinol supplies for ransom, they have committed nothing less than an act of war!”

  Rayna bent her head and closed her eyes. Rensselaer’s position on the Nitinol question was well-known and shared by many throughout the world, but that didn’t make her like it any better. The speech continued in the same, familiar vein: The colonists had hijacked property bound for Earth, in clear violation of the laws of interplanetary trade. They had been unresponsive or threatening in their communications with Earth. They demanded a price increase that would bankrupt some nations and cause severe economic repercussions all over the world.

  As he spoke, he grew more animated and his language became simpler. Simple words for simple solutions, Rayna thought.

  “I say it’s time for action!” he said, index finger stabbing the air. “We have the power to starve the colonies into submission!”

  While the resultant buzz remained low-key, the number of nodding heads around her tightened Rayna’s colon, and a backward glance confirmed that many of those behind the ropes were all for Rensselaer’s point of view: She could see placards—even one holographic sign—bearing anti-colony slogans, and some in the crowd appeared to be yelling or cheering, despite the fact that they could hear little if any of what Rensselaer had to say.

  Damon nudged Rayna: “I thought the colonies made their own food.”

  Rayna nodded. “Yes, but they need supplies from Earth to keep producing it.”

  Once again, she searched the audience until she located her other students. She had instructed them to meet her after the debate at the Trans-Mat center on the north side of the park, but she didn’t like the way things were going at all, and.... None of that, now. Stop worrying. Everything’s going to work out just fine.

  “If the colonies still won’t listen to reason,” Rensselaer continued with a hushed earnestness that seemed all the more powerful for its lack of volume, “if they still insist on robbing us of our Nitinol supplies,
then we have no choice: We’ll have to resort to force.”

  The admiral’s face was grave as his eagle-eyes examined the audience. It’s almost as if he’s measuring every one of us for a soldier’s uniform, Rayna thought, an icy chill once more ascending her spine.

  “I believe in this planet,” he said, voice heavy with emotion. “I believe in free trade with the colonies. But I don’t believe in submitting to a cowardly enemy who threatens our very way of life! If that means full-scale war, then so be it!”

  With a curt nod to Wentworth, the admiral pivoted smartly and returned to his seat as a loud cheer, audible despite the barrier formed by the sound envelope, erupted from behind the ropes.

  “My folks really like Rensselaer,” Damon said as Wentworth waited for the audience to finish applauding. “That’s why they let me come here today.”

  “My parents like him, too,” said Ginny, “but he makes me kind of nervous. Did you see how he limps?”

  “How come his limp bothers you, but you don’t seem to mind her being a cripple? The admiral’s a hero. but that Milgrom creep, she’s just a sickie.”

  “Damon, you’re the biggest—”

  “Now, cut it out, you two!” Rayna ordered. “This is neither the time nor the place for that sort of thing. Besides...” she tried to ignore the churning sensation in her belly “...I need your help. I want you to help me keep track of the others. This is a big crowd—a lot bigger than anyone expected—and I’d feel much better if we could all get away from here and back to school as soon as the speeches are over.”

  Ginny and Damon glared at each other for several long seconds before agreeing to cooperate. When they turned their frowning faces back toward the podium, Rayna knew they were inspired more by their anger at one another than by any interest in Wentworth’s introductory remarks about Althea Milgrom.