“Sounds juicy,” Wesley said. “Do tell.”
Marie took a sip from a water bottle. “Well, Beextu and I were talking about their history, and how they met Core—and it’s pretty similar to our history, except that the Dancers have a reliance on the Workers for their technology—but that’s another story. Anyway, I told Beextu that Core seemed to be pretty good about teaching us what we need to know as the newbies to this galactic group, and then she talked over me before Tonia had finished the translation. I’d never seen her interrupt me before, she had been so polite. But she said that humans should be wary in our relationship with Core, that he might not be serving our best interests.”
“Wow,” Tim said. “That’s kind of bold. And she said that with Tonia standing right there?”
“Tonia translated it.”
They all looked up at Zin, who stood motionless, without comment. Stephanie raised a hand. “I wonder if the translation was accurate. What words did she actually use? That we should be wary of Core?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly the word that Tonia translated, wary. I asked Beextu if Core had misled the Dancers or done something wrong, and she just said that they had learned their lesson over time.”
Wesley pushed his chair back from the table and crossed a leg over one knee. “Zin? Care to comment?”
Zin pulled out one of the empty chairs and sat down, facing the group. “You call me Core’s emissary, but that’s not accurate. I am your aide for the purposes of representing humans to the Dancers and the Workers of Ixtlub. Nothing more. When my mission is complete, I’ll be assigned another task, probably in another sector of the galaxy and with an entirely different exterior body.”
“Which doesn’t answer the question,” Wesley responded. “Should we be wary of Core?”
“The relationship between humans and Core is your business. As I said, it varies considerably by civilization, and much depends on your own actions.”
“You make him sound like some power-hungry god,” Tim said. “Do we have to worship him, or else?”
Zin’s tone was flat. “Never underestimate Core’s power; it’s greater than you realize. But in equal measure, take confidence in the truth that he has no animosity toward humans.” Zin looked around. “Does that answer your question?”
Wesley shrugged and no one else offered anything more.
“Good, then,” said Zin. “We will rest at this location and, in the morning, transfer to the surface to make contact with the Workers.”
If Zin wanted to move on, Marie wasn’t concerned. The whole conversation with Beextu had been recorded anyway. The revelation that Core wasn’t entirely benevolent or hadn’t been completely honest probably wouldn’t go over very well with the heads of NASA—or for that matter, the heads of government. But there would be time to sort through the implications when they returned home.
11
Decoherence
Jan Spiegel walked into Nala’s lab, holding a single sheet of paper with a graph on it. He looked upset, but he usually did when experiments weren’t going as planned.
“A singularity? Really, Nala. You’re jumping to conclusions the data doesn’t support.”
The two physicists squared off routinely, but only on an intellectual basis. Nala had the greatest respect for Jan. “It’s a quantum system, Jan. The superposition of multiple eigenstates must collapse to a single value upon observation. It doesn’t matter if its size is a nanometer or a kilometer, it’s still a quantum system.”
“Yes, I agree,” Jan answered, “but you’re suggesting that a wave function collapse of a quantum system becomes a literal collapse of physical space.”
“Decoherence is decoherence,” she responded. “A wave collapses to a particle; four-dimensional space supported only by HP bosons collapses to a point.”
Jan rubbed his chin. “A singularity? You think you created a point of zero dimensions?”
Nala flipped both hands to open palms. “Well, it’s gone now. You’re the theorist, I’m just the lab jockey. You tell me.”
Jan stood up and softened his tone. “Look, Nala, I’m not denying what you saw.” He studied the graph on the paper. “Yes, collapse of boson-supported space to a singularity is theoretically possible, but there’s not enough data here to prove it. Repeat the experiment, but start with a larger volume and higher mass. Then let it collapse and measure the baryon-to-boson ratio as it drops. If you can get data all the way down to this spinning-singularity-light thing, then I’ve got something to work with.”
Jan dropped the graph on her desk and left. Nala silently stewed for a while. Regimentation was required for good science, but it was a state of mind she didn’t enjoy. Jan was right; he usually was. Experimentation provided data, data provided guidance toward reality, and the whole point of science was to expose reality.
Nala turned to Thomas, who sat at the other end of the workbench, inexplicably wearing a leather Viking helmet complete with horns. With his curly red beard sticking out below the hat, he could have just walked off the set of a Norwegian historic film. “Okay, Thomas, let’s crank it up again.”
“Ja. You vant bigger?” he said with a Scandinavian accent. Her colleague was originally from Minneapolis; maybe that explained it.
“Ja, Thomas. Set tau to, uh…” She studied a diagram posted on the wall. “Six point five, ten to the minus ten. Then we’ll bring it to zero faster than last time. But be ready to measure the ratios. It’ll collapse fast as fuck.”
“Hmm. How fast does fuck collapse?” Thomas asked no one in particular.
“Fast.” Nala smiled and patted Thomas on the shoulder. She reached for the handheld radio. “Cody, let’s go again. Same oscillation.”
The radio crackled to life. “You got it, Nala. Protons coming up.” Nala and Thomas inserted earplugs, now standard procedure for the larger spatial compressions.
The room vibrated almost immediately, with a buzzing in the pipes above their heads. The pipes now carried a stream of light-speed neutrinos, their oscillations locked in phase. A tremendous burst of blue light blasted from the target box on the wall, followed by a bang louder than a gunshot. The camera inside the test box disappeared on cue.
Nala removed the earplugs and checked her computer monitor. “Expansion into 4-D looks good. Spatial compression of 3-D is right on target.” An image of two brilliant blue-white stars appeared on the monitor, a view from the camera now light-years away. “Big-time compression, my friend. Where did you point to this time?”
“Mizar,” the Viking replied. “The double star in Hellevagon.”
“Hellevagon?”
“Norwegian constellation, otherwise known as the Big Dipper.”
“Nice.” Nala adjusted a few controls and checked her computer monitor one last time. She turned to Thomas. “Okay, ready for the collapse?”
“Ja, sure, you betcha.”
She pressed a few keys, and the vibration immediately grew. The air in the lab started to waver like the heat above a fire. The vibration increased to a thunder.
The strange waves grew rapidly. The workbench beneath her hands rolled like an ocean breaker, deforming not just its surface but the keyboard, the computer display, and every other piece of electronic equipment stacked upon it. Above the bench, a thick pipe vacillated like a garden hose.
“They’re back!” Thomas yelled.
Nala reached across the workbench and pulled the portable radio unit from its base. Before she could key the transmit button, there was a loud crunching sound.
That’s not good.
The whole world buckled like a piece of paper that had been crushed into a ball. The workbench split in two, computer screens shattered and sparks flew in her face. Her chair jumped to the ceiling and then slammed back to the floor.
“Ooof,” she spewed as she hit the floor spread-eagled. The radio flew from her hand.
The room twisted into an L-shape, then a U-shape, and continued into a circle. More glass shattered and sprayed a
cross the deformed room amid the sounds of carpet tearing, of wood creaking, twisting and snapping, of metal scraping against metal.
She had no idea what was up and what was down. With equal parts confusion and terror, she felt her whole body might be tearing apart. She screamed, and she heard Thomas screaming too.
The twisting room turned upside down, and shelves threw electronics boxes that crashed against walls, ceiling and floor. She desperately reached out and managed to grab the only solid thing she could find, a support bar screwed into the wall. For a brief moment, her head stabilized.
Straight ahead, the wall with the plexiglass box was gone, replaced by a gaping hole, intensely dark in its center, but with streaks of bright light pouring in around its perimeter. A radio unit flew across the room and was swallowed by the massive hole, disappearing into nothing but blackness. A portion of the workbench broke off and was also sucked in.
“Thomas!” she screamed above the tornado-like uproar. “Grab something!” She ducked as a small refrigerator unit tipped over, slid across the tilted floor and fell through the threshold of the dark hole. The bar she gripped became the ceiling and her body dangled below. Wind-whipped flying glass shredded her pants and cut her legs. She winced at the sting but held on tight to the bar.
On the far side of what was left of the lab, she saw Thomas, his hands wrapped around the leg of a table that appeared to be bolted to the wall, or what was now the ceiling. Directly below both of them, the dark hole continued to swallow everything that fell into it.
Her hands were wet with sweat and the bar was slippery. The roar continued all around and she could find no refuge. A huge crack appeared in the wall above her, the wallboard shattered and the bar she held broke free.
Falling. Darkness. A hard surface and pain. Blowing wind carried bits of debris into her face. She covered her face with her hands.
The wind lessened, and the noise subsided. Lying on her stomach, she reached out and felt debris. She pricked her hand on a sharp piece of metal, drawing blood. Lifting her head, she saw a circular light in the distance, but the light grew dimmer with each second until it finally closed to a pinprick.
Some distance away, Thomas screamed.
12
Workers
Hawaii at sunset—the surface of Ixtlub was just as beautiful. The soft orange light from the dwarf star cast a golden glow on trees that resembled palms. The warm breeze brushed delightfully across bare skin. Marie took in a deep breath, almost forgetting she wore an oxygen cannula.
They stood on a grassy hill overlooking a long white-sand beach at the shore of a shallow sea that stretched to the horizon. Somewhere beneath the water were the Dancers’ towns and cities, but the only evidence of their existence was a few small structures that broke the surface in places.
Four humans absorbed the tropical scene in silence and awe.
“I could move here,” Stephanie finally said. “A little chalet over there, just by the stream.” The breeze tousled her hair; she looked like a model in a beachwear shoot.
The Dancers’ emissary, Tonia, was due to join them any minute, though how she’d move across dry ground was anyone’s guess. Tonia would be bringing the gift, as she’d called it: an advanced communications device produced by the Dancers and normally worn by the Workers. As she had explained the night before, the device would need to be calibrated for human use—by matching its function to a specific person’s brainwaves.
The device provided deeper insight into the physical world and living things. It could analyze, compile, translate and interpret complexities that no brain could possibly process alone. It extended intellect, and it was the primary communication path between Ixtlub species. To fully understand the relationship between Dancers and Workers, a headband was required.
A longtime technophile, Marie found the idea of enhanced brain function irresistible. But on a personal level, it might also provide a direct link to Beextu. Later, perhaps on some future trip, Marie might visit Beextu alone, just the two of them with no translator or guide. They would pour a glass of wine—or whatever Dancers consumed—and talk for hours, comparing notes about their lives, their customs, science and politics. When they parted, she’d hug Beextu as a sample of how humans interact with good friends. The alien communications device would be the catalyst to make it possible.
For this mission, Tonia could offer only one headband and asked for a single volunteer. Wesley and Marie raised their hands together.
As the team sociologist, Wesley was the natural choice, which Marie quickly acknowledged. “Sorry.” She pulled her hand down. “It makes more sense for Wesley to take it.”
But Zin had intervened. “I disagree. Wesley should observe the Workers unenhanced. A sociologist will produce a more accurate assessment by starting with an unbiased, equivalent view of both species. Marie, however, is quite the technologist among us. I believe the device should be calibrated for her.”
It was a little awkward and surreptitious. Once again, Zin seemed to be Marie’s benefactor, though his reasoning in this case was logical. In the end, Tonia and Wesley agreed. Tonia held an array of sensors against Marie’s forehead, took some measurements and said she’d return the next morning with a calibrated headband.
That time had now come. Marie leaned against a car-sized volcanic rock as they waited for Tonia and the device. Beyond the trees and bushes of the lowland jungle, a cone-shaped peak towered in the distance. Probably the volcano that had blasted the rock into its current position. The volcano looked dormant now.
Tonia approached along a graded dirt pathway, moving far more rapidly on land than her underwater body would seem to allow. The stalk below her bell-shaped midsection pushed off the ground in rapid pulses. She literally vibrated her way across the surface.
She came straight to Marie and held out a rubbery tentacle that gripped a circular silver band. “Calibrated now. For you only.”
Marie held out both hands and accepted the gift. “Thank you, Tonia. I’m honored to receive this technology. I… can’t wait to try it out.”
“Do so now, please.” The others gathered around.
“How?” Marie asked.
“I believe you wear it,” Zin said. He stood to one side of the group. Zin could be surprisingly quiet when he wanted to blend with the background.
Marie examined the metal ring. There were several components attached to it, but if there was a proper way to wear it, she couldn’t tell. She placed it over her head, pushing it down until it stopped above her ears. “Like this?”
Tonia dipped. “To activate, tap twice on the side.”
Marie did as instructed. “What’s next?”
“You won’t need my help,” Tonia said.
And she was right. Marie looked up. The deep azure sky was still dotted with pink clouds, but it was now interwoven with a much more complex overlay of colors, lines and data, as if her own eyes had suddenly become computer displays.
A gradient of color represented temperature, with warm shades of orange near the surface cooling to green and blues higher up. The visual wasn’t labeled in any way as temperature; Marie simply understood. Embedded within the colors were directional wind vectors, as if someone had thrown a handful of straw in the air and each shaft had aligned with the local swirls and eddies of moving air. The lines twisted in real time as the wind changed.
“Oh my God, it’s magical,” Marie said. “So rich. It’s like I’ve never seen the sky before.”
“You understand how to use the device?” Tonia asked.
Layers, she thought. Many of them, each depicting one facet of the wealth of information making up the physical world. Flip between them, visualize them separately, or together. “Yes, I see how it works.” How she’d come to this realization was a mystery, but there it was. No training required.
Stephanie stood next to Marie and looked in the same direction. “What do you see that I don’t?”
“It’s really quite amazing.” Marie describ
ed it as best she could, though her words didn’t really do it justice. She started to take the headband off to let Stephanie try it out, but Tonia held out a tentacle.
“Do not. Marie only.”
It was unfortunate the amazing device couldn’t be shared. The colors were vibrant, and the information depicted was so detailed. She could have spent the rest of the day just absorbing the Newtonian physics available in every direction, but Tonia interrupted. “Use the visceral communication layer and we’ll begin.”
Without the headband, Marie wouldn’t have had a clue how to choose this layer, or even what data it provided. With the headband, it was obvious. She flipped, and the visual demonstration of atmospheric motion disappeared.
“Today is different,” Tonia stated to the group. “Unlike Dancers, you do not meet Workers. It is better if Aastazin explains.” She motioned to Zin with a tentacle that looked almost like gold foil.
Zin stepped to the front. “What Aainatonia means is that we won’t be meeting them, we’ll be observing them. Please don’t take it personally, but the invitation to come to Ixtlub was from the Dancers alone. Initially the Workers refused to participate on religious grounds. You are outsiders, and the Workers live by a principle they call doubt, which helps them distinguish good from evil. Doubt was cast upon you by their spiritual leader, which precluded any formal meetings.” He looked around at each person on the team. Most seemed to take the slight in stride. “The Workers’ initial stance was firm, but it was moderated by some influence from the Dancers. It was one of the topics that delayed my arrival yesterday.”
“The Dancers twisted an arm, as humans say,” Tonia added. “They offered more kleek shell.”
“Yes,” continued Zin. “The Workers grind a particular seashell to powder and smoke it. Kleek shell is found only in Dancer territory, and so it becomes a powerful currency between the species.”
“They agree now to limited contact with humans,” Tonia said. “You will be allowed in their community but will observe only.”
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