by Ben Bova
“She did say something about blasphemy.”
“Blasphemy?”
“In connection with the matter transmitter.”
“Blasphemy,” Sam muttered.
I took a sip of my drink. “Sam, there’s something I’ve got to ask you.”
“Ask away,” he said blithely.
“Why do you want a matter transmitter? I mean, what in the world do you plan to do with it? You can’t use it for people—”
“Why not?”
“It’s too dangerous. We don’t know enough about entanglement to risk people. Not even volunteers.”
“Maybe there are some pets in Selene we can test it with,” Sam muttered.
“Pets?” I shuddered at the idea of sending a dog or cat into the device I was building. Even a goldfish. Maybe the bio labs have some mice, I thought.
“Relax,” Sam said, smiling easily. “I don’t want to send people through space. Or pets. Just certain kinds of paperwork.”
“Paperwork?”
“Legal tender. Money.” He screwed up his face in a thoughtful frown for a moment. Then, “Legal documents too, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Tax haven.” Sam smiled his happiest, sunniest smile. “I’m going to turn Selene into a tax haven for all those poor souls down on Earth who’re trying to hide their assets from their money-grabbing governments.”
“A tax shelter? Selene?”
“Sure. Earthside governments won’t let you carry your money off-planet. They won’t even allow you to bring letters of credit or any other papers that can be transformed into money.”
“It’s all done electronically,” I murmured, reaching for my drink again.
“Right. And taxed electronically. Every goddamned financial transaction between Earth and the Moon is monitored by those snake-eyed tax collectors and their computers.”
“That’s Earthside law, Sam.” “Yeah, sure. But if a person could send money or its equivalent from Earth to the Moon through a matter transmitter, privately, instantaneously, with nobody else knowing about it...” He leaned back in his chair and gave me that sly smile of his.
“Money would stream into Selene,” I realized. “Money that people want to hide from their tax collectors.”
“Selene could get very wealthy, very fast.”
“The governments on Earth would be furious,” I said.
“Right again. But what can they do about it? They tried to muscle Selene once with Peacekeeper troops and got their backsides whipped.”
“But...”
“Besides, the richer Selene gets, the more Earthside politicians we can buy.”
“Bribery?”
“Lubrication,” Sam corrected. “Money is the oil that smoothes the machinery of government.”
“Bribery,” I said, firmly.
Sam shrugged.
A tax haven. A shelter for the fortunes that wealthy Earthsiders wanted to hide from their governments. It was wrong. Insidious. Definitely evil. But it could work!
And it could even result in more funding being available for Selene University. More funding for my research.
If I could make a matter transmitter.
“So how’s the zapper coming along?” Sam asked, reaching for his South Pole water.
For the next fifteen minutes or so I nattered on about entanglement and the bench model I was almost ready to test. Sam appeared to listen closely; he asked questions that showed he understood most of what I was telling him.
Then all of a sudden he looked past my shoulder and his eyes went wide as pie plates. I turned in my chair. Ingrid MacTavish was coming down the rampway toward our table.
Even in the modest pure white floor-length outfit she was wearing she looked spectacular. Radiant. Heads turned as she followed the maitre d’ past the other tables. And not just men’s heads, either. Ingrid looked like a glowing golden-haired empress proceeding regally toward her throne. She was even followed by a quartet of acolytes, all of them women, all of them dressed in unadorned white suits. Compared to Ingrid they looked like four dumpy troglodytes.
Sam bounded to his feet and held her chair for her, making the normally impassive maitre d’ frown at him. The acolytes seated themselves at the next table.
“Bishop MacTavish,” Sam murmured as she sat down.
“Mr. Gunn,” she replied. Then, with a nod toward me, “Dr. Townes.”
I swallowed hard and tried to say something but no words came out. All I could do was smile and hope I didn’t look like a complete idiot.
Sam was at his charming best all through dinner. Not a word about his legal troubles. Or about the matter transmitter. He regaled us both with improbable tales of his past misadventures.
Despite myself, I felt intrigued. “Tell us about the black hole, Sam,” I begged. “What really happened to you?”
Ingrid seemed equally curious. “Did you actually meet truly intelligent alien creatures?”
“Very intelligent aliens,” Sam said.
“What were they like? Did they have souls? Were they able to—”
“We didn’t talk religion,” Sam replied. “They were little guys. Smaller than me. Smart, though. High level of technology. I want to go back and learn how they operate that black hole.”
“Do you?” Ingrid asked. “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”
Sam gave her his what-the-hell grin. “Lady, danger’s my middle name.”
“You’re not worried about the danger to your soul?”
Sam blinked at her. “My soul’s in decent shape. It’s my finances that I’m worried about.”
Ingrid scoffed, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world...”
“I don’t want the whole world,” Sam replied. “I just want my assets unfrozen and all you lawyers off my back.”
“What would you give in return for that?”
That stopped Sam. But only for a moment. “You could make all these lawsuits go away?”
“I think a settlement could be arranged,” she said.
“A settlement?”
“A settlement.”
“Forgive me my debts,” Sam mused, “as I forgive my debtors.”
“Even the Devil can quote scripture,” Ingrid retorted.
They were talking as if I wasn’t there. I felt like a spectator at a tennis match; my eyes shifted back and forth from one to the other.
“Mr. Gunn, the New Morality—” “Sam,” he said. “Call me Sam.”
Ingrid smiled. “Very well. Sam.”
“May I call you Ingrid?” he asked her.
Her smile widened slightly. “Bishop MacTavish, Sam.”
“No,” Sam replied, not taken aback at all. “I’ll call you Aphrodite: the goddess of beauty.”
I saw anger flare in her deeply blue eyes, but only for the flash of a second. She controlled it immediately.
“That’s the name of a pagan goddess.”
“It’s the only name I can think of that fits you,” Sam said, looking totally sincere.
And then I heard myself blab, “Galileo said, ‘Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, for things come first and names afterward.’“
They both stared at me.” Whaat?”
“Well, I mean ... that is ...” I was back in the conversation, but floundering like a particle in Brownian motion.
“Galileo was a notorious heretic,” Ingrid said.
“The Church apologized for that, er... misunderstanding,” I said. Then I added, “Three hundred and fifty-nine years afterward.”
“What’s Galileo got to do with anything?” Sam demanded.
“Well, he said names should be given based on the observable attributes of the thing being named.” Turning to Ingrid, I said, “I think naming you Aphrodite is completely appropriate.”
She looked thoughtfully at me. Then, her face totally serious, “You mean that as a compliment, Dr. Townes. And I accept it as such. Thank you.
”
“Dan,” I said. “Please call me Dan.”
She nodded, then turned back to Sam. “But you, Sam, you’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you?”
“Me?” The innocence on Sam’s face was about as obvious as a flying elephant. And as phony.
“You,” Ingrid said sternly.
Gesturing toward the next table, Sam asked, “Is that why you brought the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse? For protection?”
“I don’t need protection from you, Sam. I can take care of myself.”
Sam hmmfed. “I bet you’re still a virgin.”
“That’s none of your business.”
He shrugged. “Now what was this about forgiving me my debts?”
It took her a moment to get her mind back on business. At last she
folded her hands on the tabletop and said slowly, carefully, “The New Morality is willing to intervene on your behalf in the various lawsuits against you.”
“The New Morality, huh?” If this surprised Sam he certainly didn’t show it. “They own a lot of stock in Masterson, and Rockledge too, don’t they?”
“That’s neither here nor there.”
“And what do I have to do to get the New Morality to save my ass?”
Her eyes flared again at Sam’s crudity. I figured he had chosen his words precisely to rattle her.
“You will give up this effort of yours to create a matter transmitter.”
“Wait a minute!” I yelped. “That’s my work you’re talking about!”
“It is blasphemous presumption,” said Bishop MacTavish. “You are both placing your souls in grave danger.”
“Bullsnorts!” Sam snapped. “The New Morality doesn’t want a matter transmitter because it would loosen their control over people.”
“This is a matter of religion, Sam,” Ingrid said. “The state of your soul—”
“Stow it, Aphrodite. This is a matter of politics. Power. The New Morality isn’t worried about my soul, but they’re scared that a matter transmitter might let people do things they don’t want them to do.”
Ingrid turned to me. She actually reached across the table and took my hands in hers. “Daniel, you understand, don’t you? You can see that I’m trying to save your soul.”
I was thinking more about my body. And hers.
“Ingrid,” I said, my voice nothing more than a husky whisper, “we’re talking about my work. My life.”
“No,” she replied softly. “We’re talking about your soul.”
Up to that moment I hadn’t even considered that I might possess a soul. But gazing into those incredible eyes, with her hands in mine, I started thinking about how wonderful it would be to please her, to make her smile at me, to be with her for all eternity.
“Hey! Break it up!” Sam said sharply. “I’m supposed to be the seducer here.”
At that, all four of the women at the next table got to their feet. I saw that they were all pretty hefty; they looked like professional athletes.
“Bishop MacTavish,” one of them said in a sanctimonious whisper, “it’s time to leave.”
Ingrid looked up at her quartet of bodyguards as if breaking free of
a trance. She pulled her hands away from me and nodded. “Yes. I must go.”
And she left me there, staring after her.
I THOUGHT I knew as much about entanglement as any person living. More, in fact. But all I knew was about subatomic particles and quantum physics. Not about people. And I got myself entangled with Bishop Ingrid MacTavish so completely that I couldn’t even see straight half the time.
We had dinners together. She visited my lab several times and we had lunch with my grad student assistants. She and I took long walks up in the Main Plaza, strolling along the bricked lanes that curved through the greenery so lovingly tended up there beneath the massive concrete dome of the Plaza. I kissed her and she kissed me back. I fell in love.
But she didn’t.
“I can’t let myself love you, Daniel,” she told me one evening, as we sat on a park bench near the curving shell of the auditorium. We had attended a symphonic concert: all Tchaikovsky, lushly romantic music.
“Why not?” I asked. “I love you, Ingrid. I truly do.”
“We live in different worlds,” she said.
“You’re here on the Moon now. We’re in the same world.”
“No, it’s your work. Your soul.”
She meant the matter transmitter, of course. I spread my hands in a halfhearted gesture and said, “My soul isn’t in any danger. The damned experiment isn’t working. Not at all.”
She looked hopefully at me. “It is damned! It’s that devil Sam Gunn. He’s leading you down the road to perdition.”
“Sam? He’s no devil. An imp, maybe.”
“He’s evil, Daniel. And this matter transmitter he wants you to make for him—it’s the Devil’s work.”
“Come on, Ingrid. That’s what they said about the telescope, for God’s sake.”
“Yes, for God’s sake,” she murmured.
“Do you really think what I’m doing is evil?”
“Why do you think your experiment won’t work? God won’t allow you to succeed.”
“But—”
“And if you do succeed, if you should somehow manage to make the device work the way Sam Gunn wants it to, it will only be because the Devil has helped you.” “You mean it’ll be witchcraft?” My voice must have gone up two octaves.
Ingrid nodded, her lips pressed into a tight line. “Don’t you see, Daniel? I’m struggling to save your very soul.”
And there it was. She was attracted to me, I knew she was. But my work stood in the way. And her medieval outlook on life.
“Ingrid, I can’t give up my work. It’s my career. My life.”
She bowed her head. Her voice so low I could barely hear her, she said, “I know, Daniel. I know. I can’t even ask you to give it up. I do love you, dearest. I love you so much that I can’t ask you to make this sacrifice. I won’t ruin your life. I should do everything in my power to get you away from this devilish task you’ve set yourself. But I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t hurt you that way. Even if it means both our souls.”
She loved me! She admitted that she loved me! But nothing would come of it as long as I worked on Sam’s matter transmitter.
I told Sam about it the following morning. Actually, he ferreted the information out of me.
Sam was already in my lab when I came in that morning. He was always bouncing into the lab, urging me to make the damned bench-top model work so we could go ahead and build a full-scale transmitter.
“Why isn’t it working yet?” he would ask, about twenty thousand times a day.
“Sam, if I knew why it isn’t working I’d know how to make it work,” I would always reply.
And he would buzz around the lab like a redheaded bumblebee, getting in everybody’s way. My three technicians—graduate student slave labor—were getting so edgy about Sam’s presence that they had threatened to go to the dean and complain about their working conditions.
This particular morning, after that park bench confession from Ingrid the evening before, I had to drag myself to the lab. Sam, as I said, was already there.
He peered up at me. “What bulldozer ran over you?”
I blinked at him.
“You look as if you haven’t slept in a week.”
“I haven’t,” I muttered, heading for the coffee urn the techs had perking away on one of the lab benches.
“The good Bishop MacTavish?” Sam asked, trailing after me.
“Yep.”
“She still trying to save your soul?”
I whirled around, my anger flaring. “Sam, I love her and she loves me. Stay out of it.”
He put up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I’m just an innocent bystander. But take it from me, pal, what she really wants from you is to give up on the transmitter.”
“You want her yourself, don’t yo
u? That’s why—”
“Me?” Sam seemed genuinely astounded by the idea. “Me and that religious fanatic? You’ve gotta be kidding!”
“You’re not attracted to her?”
“Well, she’s gorgeous, true enough. But there are too many other women in the world for me to worry about a psalm-singing bishop who’s working for lawyers that’re trying to skin me alive.” He took a breath. “Besides,” he added, “she’s too tall for me.”
“She loves me. She told me so.”
Sam hoisted himself up onto the lab bench beside the coffee urn and let his stubby legs swing freely. “Let me give you a piece of priceless wisdom, pal. Hard-earned on the field of battle.”
I grabbed the cleanest-looking mug and poured some steaming coffee into it. Sam watched me, his expression somewhere between knowing and caring.
“What wisdom might that be?” I asked.
“It’s about love. Guys fall in love because they want to get laid. Women fall in love because they want something: it might be security, it might be their own sense of self-worth, it might even be because they pity the guy who’s coming on to them. But to women, sex is a means to an end, not an end in itself.”
I felt like throwing the coffee in his face. “That’s the most cynical crap I’ve ever heard, Sam.”
“But it’s true. Believe me, pal. I know. I’ve got the scars to prove it.”
“Bullshit,” I snapped, heading for the nonworking model on the bench across the lab. I noticed that one of the grad students had hung a set of prayer beads from the ceiling light over the equipment. A cruel joke, I thought.
“Okay,” Sam said brightly, hopping down from his perch. “Prove that I’m wrong.”
“Prove it? How?”
“Make the dingus work. Then see if she really loves you, or if she’s just trying to make you give up on the experiment.”
Talk about challenges! I stared at the clutter of equipment on the lab
bench. Wires and heavy insulated cables snaked all over the place, hung in festoons from the ceiling (along with the prayer beads) and coiled across the floor. They say a neat, orderly laboratory is a sign that no creative work’s being done. Well, my lab was obviously a beehive of intense creativity.
Except that the damned experiment refused to work.
Make the transmitter work, and then see if Ingrid still says she loves me. What was that old Special Forces motto? Who dares, wins. Yeah. But I thought there was a damned good chance of my daring and losing.