“Of course. He’s a rental. With his rental ship and crew.”
“Exactly,” Lobeck said. “If he is lost, we make an insurance payment. But we are expendable also. Worth more than rentals, of course, but on the scale of Affirmatix, on the scale of the value we are seeking, we are still nothing. There is a very small chance that we are wrong about the glome, and it’s an excellent gamble considering what we could gain.”
“We are leaders for Affirmatix. You may be undervaluing us,” Skylar replied.
“Leaders,” Lobeck dismissed. “Don’t you tire of the endless scrapping and clawing to gain a percentage point of market share? Then we see it taken away when another Sister launches a shiny new product. No. We have spent thirty years looking for something that will truly move the needle. Now, we have found it. We have a duty to our family. We will bring home the absolutely greatest value from the discovery that we possibly can.”
Lobeck gestured forward, in the direction of the glome, and added, “And we will not be stopped by the betrayal of a traitor.”
Alcyone
“Dr. West, I need you in here,” Colin told Sonia.
They filed into Colin’s office and he shut the door behind them. All of the displays were turned off, which was unusual. Usually at least a half dozen of them were active, showing different graphical perspectives on various ongoing projects.
Colin had been her wrangler for the past four years, and he treated her well, Sonia thought. Respectful, and he knew that there was no need to push her. Colin just identified priorities on behalf of their Affirmatix sponsor, and then her team made it happen. And he was top notch at finding the talent Sonia needed.
Colin waved to a seat at the round conference table and then took his own. The seats were smoothly curved, in a way that was supposed to be relaxing and ergonomic, but to Sonia they felt like alien creatures that might envelop her at any moment. She sat forward, on the front edge, her back straight.
“Do you want to discuss our results?” Sonia asked.
“It’s related, but no,” her wrangler said. “Here’s my question: If you had to identify a small team, of not more than you and two others, who could work independently to answer questions about your analysis, and run alternative scenarios, in near real time, who would it be?”
“For what?”
“We need to do quick scenario evaluation. Results in minutes even if not perfect.”
Sonia considered. “Ravi. And then Malken, I’d say, based on skill set. But they hate each other. So Merriam. Ravi and Merriam.”
“Sometimes a little rivalry can create results,” Colin noted.
“Not in this case,” she told him. “Ego. Ravi and Malken just hammer at each other’s ideas, all day, every day. In a larger group, I can make it work, but I wouldn’t assign them to the same small team.”
“Ravi and Merriam it will be. I’ll notify them. You too, Sonia. Pack a bag, because you’re going off planet.”
“Off planet? Are you kidding? For how long?”
“That’s above my pay grade,” her wrangler told her. “Gather up all the software and data you need. You lift this afternoon.”
“Colin, you need to give me more to work with. Something. Anything.”
“Here’s what I can tell you. Your valuation of the Versari discovery really got some attention. Unbelievable.”
“It’s all conditional,” Sonia pointed out. “Just certain outcomes, with a lot of assumptions.”
“Right. We need to take control of events, so we can realize full value. Some of the other outcomes are pretty bad for us.”
“Pretty bad? There are huge risks to Affirmatix. There’s even the potential for bankruptcy. But what about this travel?”
“We need you, Sonia. On site. To manage a rapidly escalating situation, that relates directly to your algorithms. The facts on the ground are changing too rapidly to send you data here for evaluation, and then get answers back to the site.”
“We can’t do it from here? All of our tools are set up exactly as we need them.”
“Nope. You need to be there. The Kelter system. The orders came from Arn Lobeck himself. I have the latest information for you, already posted to your account.” He looked at her in confident expectation.
It looked like there was no dodging it. “I’ll review it in transit,” Sonia told him. “First I need to go home.”
“As you like. Just be ready by 1330. We’ll send a limo for you. Hey Sonia – this is important. We’re counting on you to stay as rigorous as you always are. Run the models and provide the best possible analysis. No matter what scenario comes up.”
“Rigorous, that’s me,” she said.
Sonia stumbled out of Colin’s office, reaching for her phone. “Hey. Check out of work, get the kids and meet me at home.”
“Okay, hon …”
Sonia dropped the bombshell. “I’m being mobilized. Off planet.”
“Oh my Efessem. When do you leave?”
“In a little over two hours.”
“Two hours! You don’t know anything else?” Sonia could hear the alarm at the other end of the line.
“I can speculate. But it doesn’t matter. Let’s have some lunch and a little back yard time. See you there in ten. Love you.”
“Love you.”
For the past few weeks Sonia had been lamenting, if privately, her fate, limited to just one perfect planet. It was the sequester of the privileged, a life of luxury cut off from the rest of civilization. Nobody at her pay grade ever left Alcyone, and there was most definitely no personal correspondence in or out.
Suddenly, Sonia dreaded going anywhere else.
At a fast walk, it was easy to get home in ten minutes. Sonia multitasked, looking through the new data in a display that floated in front of her. It was total crap. So tactical. Sonia worked at a planetary scale, and she was great at that. This new data was about individual people, their movements, history, possessions, and associations. Sonia would need help to make sense of any of it.
She decided to take the fork to the left, going by the lake. It would only take an extra minute.
In this world, there was no problem walking alone. She was perfectly safe, as were her children, every minute of every day. No crime. No want. It was not just a matter of the excellent security, although it was unsurpassed. It was the population. The only people who lived here were highly skilled professionals, enjoying every imaginable perk in exchange for their considerable capabilities.
It had been a crazy three days. Sonia and her team had worked deep into each night on successive drafts of the analysis, each version being hungrily snapped up by their wranglers the moment it was ready, no matter what time of the day or night. The team found no definitive answers, just clouds of possibility as always. But in this case the clouds separated exceptionally clearly on defined pivot points, suggesting actions that her Affirmatix sponsor could take in order to get the best value from the new discovery.
Sonia looked across the lake. Just like everything on the campus, it was too good to be true. She could see the stream cascading over rocks at the lake’s head, a few hundred meters away. Water you could drink, if you had a mind to. A delightful spring morning, warm but not too hot. No biting bugs. Just the iridescent dragonflies, abundant and beautiful as always.
Her feet were taking her in the direction of home. She retrieved her domestic persona.
Yvette and the kids were just coming up the walk from the other direction. On sight, their daughters broke ranks and ran toward Sonia. “What is it, mommy?” Simone asked. “A party?”
“Party!” Jennifer chimed in. At four years old, she knew the word well.
“Yes, that’s right, sweetie,” Sonia told them. “It’s too nice an afternoon for school or work.”
“But it’s always nice,” Simone told her. “Almost always.”
“Still, today is the right day to be home with all of you. You two play in the yard and we’ll get lunch ready.”
&
nbsp; The kids safely out on the play set, Sonia fussed over the sandwiches.
“Okay. What else do you know? And look at me, please.” Yvette put her index finger under Sonia’s chin and gently pulled it up toward her.
Yvette was everything Sonia could never be. Always knowing the kind word that would resolve a conflict. With her magic, she kept their domestic family in harmony every day.
Sonia stumbled for words. “Those two nuisances. And you. I thought we were making the right choice, taking this assignment. Coming here to Alcyone.”
“And we weren’t? I thought it was the opportunity of a lifetime for you.”
“I just don’t know any more.”
“Let’s just keep hold of the one thing we always agree on − all that matters is the peanuts. And they are happy.”
“Of course. You’re right. Those two. I’ll do this assignment, and I’ll be right back.”
“Of course you will. We’ll see you in a few days, or a few weeks.”
She could not lie to Yvette. Except a lie to which they both subscribed.
“And now I know something I need to do,” Sonia told her wife. “Just a minute for a call.”
“Lunch in five, okay?”
“You got it.” They shared a look, and a kiss, and then Sonia turned to her phone.
“Colin.”
“Packing question?”
“No. There’s something I need before I go. Coverage for the Parrin Process, on our health plan. My domestic family and descendants. Irrevocable. Make it so before I lift.”
“Sonia, these things take time.”
“What’s the speed of light?”
“Touché.” It was one of Colin’s sayings. If it needed to be done on a computer, as all things did, then it could occur at the speed of light. “Still–”
“Before I lift. Approved, committed, and posted to my account.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he told her.
“You do that, Colin. If it’s not done, I’ll just wait for the next ship.”
“Sonia, that’s not how bargaining works.”
“Today that’s exactly how it works. It needs to be in my account before I set foot in the ship. You decide if you want me to deploy or not.”
Sonia signed off and turned to Yvette. “We will take care of each other. Forever.”
“It’s you and me against the world,” Yvette said. They finished together, “When do we attack?”
Together they gathered up lunch and brought it to the picnic table in the yard. Simone and Jennifer were climbing all over the play set. The lawn was framed by the abundant azaleas and rhododendrons.
“Animals!” Yvette called. “Wash your paws! Lunch time!”
With both of their moms home, the kids had the best Thursday afternoon ever. They even got to ride in the limo to the port, so they could watch mommy Sonia take off in a rocket.
One Small Step
Some people assert that they can feel the journey through a glome. An undefinable twisting, or popping, or a disembodied moment. Some signature on a person’s nervous system from translating across trillions of kilometers in a fraction of a second.
As Evan entered the glome, he knew the exact moment of the event. He felt a shock running through his body – but it was not because of any mysterious hyperspatial effect. It was due to him knowing how much he was staking on the outcome.
The ship’s navigational displays changed abruptly to match the new circumstance. Part of the ship’s job was to keep constant track of its exact position, and show it on an overhead display for the pilot. It accomplished this by merging together the set of all available visual, radar, and historical data. When the ship went through a glome, the destination was known in advance so it was easy to adjust.
This time, the ship was lost. The display showed a sun, a nearby planet, and a gas giant, with no identifiers.
Evan knew how to help. “Ship, resolve to the Kelter system,” he said. “The nearest planet is Kelter Four.”
Instantly, additional detail was added to the display. Kelter’s two moons. The inner planets and the other gas giants. As Evan had predicted, the glome had led to the Kelter system. Fifty-six light years in just eighty-three milliseconds.
“Head for Kelter Four at maximum,” he instructed, sinking into his seat as the acceleration kicked in.
Kelter Four. Breathable air, if thin and dry. Mostly brown and tan, rather than the classic green and blue of the most hospitable worlds. Low gravity. Sparsely inhabited, with a population of about fifty million people. Evan needed no shipboard display to know the details of the planet.
Kelter was Evan’s home.
In a piece of great luck, they were already heading mostly in the direction of the planet when they had come out of the point of emergence. Their intrinsic velocity, a result not only of their vector as they headed into the glome, but also of the relative speeds of the two star systems, had smiled on them.
Nonetheless, time was likely running out.
Could missiles go through a glome? The answer came unbidden. Of course they could.
The runabout had no weapons, and couldn’t exactly turn on a dime. If missiles arrived on his tail, there would be nothing he could do.
“Ship,” Evan asked. “Based on our last information, how soon could a missile come through the glome from Aurora?”
“Twelve minutes and twenty seconds,” the ship told him.
“And then how long until impact, if it pursued us at maximum acceleration?”
“Seven minutes and four seconds after emergence.” Almost twenty minutes all together.
There were two big branches of possibility. If no missiles came through the glome, then there was no problem, at least in the short term. He would head to Kelter Four and figure it out somehow. If the missiles arrived, he had a big problem. So, he needed to concentrate on that scenario.
Evan pondered the largest branches of possibility, then the smaller branches, the twigs, and finally the leaves. Not being killed, those were preferred leaves.
Then he worked backward, crossing out certain leaves, then certain twigs, and finally entire branches.
If the missiles came, there was no rational solution. All that remained was an irrational one.
Evan decided not to tell the runabout of his plan. It was on a need to know basis, and the runabout didn’t need to know. The ship also had a black box, which recorded all of its actions and communications.
Should he feel bad about deceiving a computer?
“Ship, if any missiles arrive through the glome, I plan to climb to the sled. I believe the missiles will pursue and attempt to destroy us, so I’ll need an escape vessel.”
The sled was designed to assist in scanning the surface of asteroids for faint signatures of the Versari. Of necessity, its low powered engine was shielded as completely as possible so it could operate without interfering with the delicate scanning operation.
The sled was clamped to the runabout, at a point forward near the nose.
“So here’s what I want you to do,” he told the ship. “At every moment starting as soon as possible, the ship must be at a location and velocity to go into orbit of Kelter or its moon Foray assuming no further acceleration. On my instruction, you will change course sunward and accelerate as fast as you can. Then do any maneuver you possibly can to avoid the missiles.”
“Instructions received and accepted,” the ship replied.
Evan reached for his EVA suit and pulled it on except for the helmet, then stood ready at the airlock. There was nothing to do except wait.
He had been condemned to death by one of the most powerful people in all of space. Was it just bluster? A threat blurted out in the extremity of the moment?
Over the past two years, Arn Lobeck had come to the station on Aurora about a dozen times, usually staying for a day or two. Each time Lobeck had brought his full attention, asking detailed questions, and challenging assumptions the research team had made. As the principal i
nvestigator on the project, Evan had been on the receiving end of the most focused part of the grilling.
Evan could never tell whether he looked forward to the next review or whether he dreaded it. The questions were excellent, and pushed him to think. But there was no avoiding the sense of being examined by someone of great power, who, for whatever reason, was troubling himself to stay informed on an obscure research project.
In all of that time, had Lobeck ever said anything that he did not mean?
Evan cast his mind back over the last two years, searching. An empty threat. An exaggeration. A metaphor. A joke, even.
Never. Arn Lobeck was the most serious, most humorless man that Evan had ever met. And he had always done what he said he would.
Here and now. Think. If a missile came through the glome, his plan was pathetic. There had to be something better.
But there just wasn’t.
The time arrived. “Ship, please advise. Has a missile arrived through the glome?”
“Nothing has arrived through the glome,” the ship said.
Good news. Perhaps he would be free to make it to Kelter Four – safety, at least for the moment.
“Update,” the ship told him. “An object has arrived through the glome. Two objects. Now three. Objects are accelerating in our direction at eight gravities.”
Game on. At a button push, the inner door of the airlock began to dilate open.
“How long until impact?”
The ship’s voice was anywhere it needed to be. “Eight minutes and thirty seconds at current velocity and acceleration.”
Evan put on his helmet and rotated it closed, then pressed the outer button in the airlock with a thick gloved finger.
The spacewalk was going to be a novel experience. He had only done it under conditions of weightlessness. With the craft accelerating at almost one full gravity, the trip was not going to be a free float, powered by a gentle push, or a tug on the cord if he went astray. There would be apparent gravity due to acceleration.
The airlock door opened into space.
Evan stepped to the edge of the airlock, and saw a different kind of space than he had ever before experienced. This space had a definite up and down, and the hull of the craft was a vertical wall. Up was toward the nose. Down was a small cliff of spacecraft hull, then vastness. Below, the deepest, blackest pit any person could ever fall into.
The Great Symmetry Page 2