Jeff snorted and opened a pocket of the briefcase resting on his knee. “Do you think they’ve got this on Cyrene too already,” he grumbled.
“Give ’em time, Jeff,” Shearer answered with a sigh.
Once inside the complex, the inevitable flurry of minor last-minute changes to plan, and the final chores to be attended to allowed few moments for reflection. In what seemed in some ways like detached kind of dream, Shearer found himself being routed through seating areas, corridors, and concrete galleries with windows set high in the walls to a staging hall; then, after a short wait, he was staring with the others out at huge steel gantries rising above a forest of service towers and masts as a shuttle bus took them out to the pad area itself. Disembarking from the bus was followed by more weaving through doors, passages, gates, and stairways, and then they were walking though the connecting ramp into the center section of the shuttle, standing with half its body length below ground level in the launch silo.
They had been issued with numbers directing them to assigned seats on the various decks, which were built cross-hull like the floors of a lighthouse. Once in freefall in wouldn’t matter which way the floors were, and the seats would be useful only for preventing everyone from floating into a tangle. There were ways of controlling one’s attitude and movements in zero-g using the gyroscopic effects of rapid rotary arm movements, but the old hands assured them that the only way to learn them was the hard way. And the same would apply for the first two days or so aboard the Tacoma. After that, life for the remainder of the voyage to a point two days out on approach to Cyrene would get easier. A bonus of Heim gravito-electromagnetic interconversion was that once past the “H-point,” where the main drive was engaged, a portion of the output could be bled off and transformed to synthesize normal gravity inside the ship.
Shearer was still too absorbed in the newness of it all to take much notice of who was around him as he settled down into his seat and secured the restraining harness. No sooner had he done so, when of course there came the announcement of a short delay while a laser boost station somewhere downrange in Russia reran a calibration. He sat back resignedly, staring at the screen facing the deck from one side like a miniature theater, currently showing an outside view of umbilicals disconnecting and blast doors being closed in the silo walls below the ship. It was the first chance he’d had to be alone with his thoughts since leaving the hotel that morning.
Everything around him — the masterpiece of engineering that he was sitting in; the concentration of technical ingenuity outside that was about to lift it free from Earth itself; and the awesome machine waiting above, along with all it represented — was a triumph of the human intellect, symbolizing surely as strongly as anything could that there were no limits to what intelligent life could achieve. The Golden Age that mythology created in the past could have been the reality of the future that centuries of visionaries had dreamed would one day be. But somewhere along the way, something had gone wrong. In his earlier years of youthful idealism bolstered by faith that human nature was at heart just, and the better side would ultimately prevail, he had crossed the continent, eager to find and devote himself to the further building of the better life that the recruiting ads and promotional agencies had promised for qualified and talented people. For surely, he had told himself, the part of the world that he had seen until then was the exception, an aberration.... But no, it was the same everywhere; just in different ways.
Shearer was originally from the west side of central Florida, toward the coast, an improbable product of a trailer-park home and dysfunctional family consisting of a violent and alcoholic father, a mother who survived by means of tranquilizers and other recreational chemicals, and a Bible-quoting sister two years older than he, whom he had last heard of fund-raising for a fundamentalist electronic church based in Virginia. He discovered his own escape in the realms of mathematical physics, revealing him to be something of a prodigy even in middle school, and confirming the suspicions of family and neighbors of his distinct inclination toward the “strange.” The fare from the public and even the school’s library had been inadequate for his insatiable appetite, but word of his abilities reached a professor at Gainesville who still believed that education meant being encouraged and shown how to think, not behavioral conditioning measured in grade points. Recognizing Shearer’s talent, he coached him privately at no charge and gave him unrestricted access to his files and bookshelves. Shearer had seemed set for early enrollment into a degree course on a state grant, which would open the way to better things. The rapid breakthroughs into the revolutionary physics being reported from researchers in both the north and south Americas as well as Europe and Asia portended exciting and unlimited prospects. A creatively fulfilling and rewarding personal future seemed assured, despite the black clouds that had been piling up and rumbling in the political sky. And then the Great Breakup happened.
Central Florida became a primary battle zone as Hispanics and Cubans, who by that time formed a majority in the south, extended themselves northward to defend their turf against the black expansion coming the other way from what would become Martina. Amid the exodus of whites who weren’t caught in the crossfire or among those being targeted by both sides, Shearer got away, thanks to arrangements that the professor made for them, on a crowded boat that was ferrying batches of people out of Tampa and across to Texas. The professor himself didn’t make it.
Shortly thereafter, Texas assumed independence and was engulfed by turmoil of its own, which had still not abated. But Shearer was already being drawn by the lure of the western coalition of former states whose secession had precipitated the whole collapse. That was where the new science was consolidating, and where the beginnings of amazing capabilities that would spring from it were already becoming visible. It took him another couple of months, but existing from one day to the next and moving on when an opportunity presented itself, he was finally able to present himself before job interview panels of corporations unheard of ten years previously, whose names were already synonymous with visions of the dazzling future that was to come. At least, that was how the Public Relations imagery portrayed it. The effect on Shearer of meeting the actuality face-to-face was devastating.
Yes, they were eager to employ his kind and quality of talent, and were prepared to pay handsomely — if one was looking for nothing beyond material recompense, conventionally accepted notions of prestige and status, and a ticket into an alienating and ruthless competition among peers to secure more of the same. It seemed that the only measure of human worth was the ability to contribute to the efficacy of creating profits or ever more fearsome weaponry to protect them. It was evident even before the sessions were over that he wouldn’t have accepted an offer on their terms even if they persevered to the point of seeing fit to make him one, after which the disinterest quickly became mutual. As a last resort before ending up a street derelict, he followed up on a lead to Evan Wade, whose name he knew from the scientific literature, and the professor in Florida had commented on favorably. The result had been a place with Wade’s obscure group at Berkeley. True, the work involved a relatively unexplored fringe quantum effect without much promise in the way of immediate tangible return — which was precisely the reason it was unexplored — not the center of mainstream Heim physics that Shearer had dreamed of; but in the way that mattered to him he was free — as free as it seemed possible to get in the kind of society that had come to be, anyway — and still work in advanced physics with any kind of support at all. And that, he supposed resignedly, was about as much as could be hoped for in a world that he was told was shaped by harsh, immutable laws — the work of nature, not humans — that permitted it to be no other way.
“Attention.” An announcement from the cabin speakers broke his reverie. “We’ve received clearance from downrange and are initiating a five-minute countdown. Make sure seat harnesses are secure and any loose objects stowed.”
And now he was moving on once again, this time
to another world completely, for how long he didn’t know. Was there some goal at the end of it all that fate had in store for him, he wondered, like fulfillment at the end of the wanderings of one of those heroes of ancient sagas? Or was it simply nature’s way of saying that the world just didn’t have a place for him? If so, it seemed that a lot of people these days were getting the same message.
CHAPTER NINE
The interconversion between electromagnetic and gravitational energy that formed the basis of the Heim drive derived from an immensely strong magnetic field rotating at high speed. However, this didn’t entail any cumbersome mechanical rotation of anything material. As in conventional electric motors, it was the motion of the field that mattered, and this could be accomplished by a suitably phased combination of currents circulating in stationary conductors — which was just as well since the Tacoma was comparable in mass to, and in size somewhat larger than, an old-time naval cruiser. But because of the nature of its primary propulsion system, its basic geometry was circular, thus rendering the notions of advanced space machines in the form of “flying saucers” that had permeated the popular literature for a century fortuitously not far from the mark in terms of what was eventually realized. Indeed, there were still some diehard devotees who took this as proof that the claims had been right all along and the “real thing” was still somewhere out there. By far the prevalent view, however, and one of the few consensuses that Shearer was inclined to share in unreservedly, was the opposite, since if Earth’s explosion out from the solar system in recent decades wasn’t enough to make any lurking aliens show themselves openly, the overwhelming likelihood was that there weren’t any. And for what it was worth, experiences so far in the nearby reaches of the galaxy were consistent with that conclusion. None of the sapient races encountered by Terran explorers had proved as advanced as Earth’s technologically, or anywhere close. As a popular aphorism held, “Someone has to be first.” Or as someone in Shearer’s group had put it earlier in the week: “UFOs are real, and they are us.”
“It’s usually called the nuts game, but it’ll work just as well with these.” Shearer came back to the table with a box lid containing the plastic counters, disks, tiles, and tokens that he had collected from the games scattered about the C Deck messroom, which also served as a recreation center. “Forget what they look like. Everything counts the same.”
The four people seated at the long table by the wall waited curiously. A metal bowl emptied of its normal content of fruits and snack items stood in the middle between them. Jerri was one. Roy, the Mouth, of course, had to be there. The other two were Arnold, the real-estate planner, and Zoe, an administrator who would be joining the logistics staff at the Cyrene base. Jeff was watching with interest from a nearby chair, while other figures who happened to be around at the time looked on. The ship was two days past the H-point, now under Heim drive and simulating normal gravity inside. It was also cut off from the familiar universe as far as anything electromagnetic was concerned. The external imagers showed uniform blackness on the screens. The only information reaching the vessel was communications and navigation data received by special instruments.
Shearer went on, continuing as he spoke, “I put some of these objects in the bowl like so.... Jeff has the watch. When he says ‘Go,’ your aim is to end up with as many as you can. Then, every ten seconds, I want Jeff to tell you to stop so I can count whatever’s left in there. I’ll double the number by replenishing from this box. Everybody okay?”
“Just end up with as many as we can,” Zoe said.
“Right,” Shearer confirmed. “Play whatever strategy you think will best achieve that.”
Roy was flexing his arms and shoulders as if loosening up for a football game. Arnold remained impassive. Jerri’s eyes flickered over them in a curious kind of way as if trying to read something or get their attention, but they failed to notice.
Shearer nodded to Jeff. Jeff consulted his watch, waited few seconds, then ordered, “Go.”
Roy lifted up the bowl, clearly with the intention of simply emptying the entire content in front of him. It was a good try, but Zoe reacted quickly enough to intercept the bowl in midcourse and dig a hand inside, in the process of which they turned it over to scatter disks and tokens all over the table. As shouts of encouragement and jeers erupted around the room, Arnold dove in smoothly to sweep a heap together with both arms as they fell, leaving Roy and Zoe to scrabble frantically for the remainder. Jerri sat watching them, motionless, making no attempt to join in. The expression on her face was a mixture of exasperation and despair.
“Stop,” Jeff announced.
The outcome was foreseeable from the beginning. Shearer made a show of righting the upturned bowl and inspecting it. “Game over,” he said.
“Some game,” a mystified voice said in the background. “That’s it?”
“Arnold wins,” another declared. “Look at all that! Nice move, Arnold.”
“Only because I stopped Roy for him,” Zoe said, sitting back to release her assortment of disks and tokens.
“It takes a planner.” Arnold grinned as he returned his own pile of spoils to Shearer to separate out.
“Damn, and I had it figured out,” Roy muttered peevishly. He braced his arms along the edge of the table and rose. “You just got in lucky,” he told Zoe, then rose and turned away. Amazingly he was irked at losing in even something as trivial as this; but Shearer had seen it before.
“So that’s it, Marc?” the person who had spoken before called again. “What’s it supposed to prove?”
“Tell you tomorrow,” Shearer answered. “Let’s just say, something to think about.”
“What was the matter with you, Jerri?” someone else asked.
Arnold got up and moved around from the bench seat by the wall, looking distinctly underwhelmed. “I’ll wait to hear about it then,” he said to Shearer. “Right now, I think I might go and check what they’ve got in the canteen. I haven’t had anything since lunch. Want to come along?”
“Thanks, I ate earlier. It was meat loaf, chicken, or fried fish.”
“Hey, can I come along?” Zoe asked Arnold. “I could use something too.”
“Sure.”
She got up to join him. “See you people later.” They left.
Jerri stayed to help Shearer sort out the items according to the various games they had been borrowed from. Jeff began picking out the boxes and passing them over, while all around, the chatter picked up again as people returned to what they had been doing.
“No, the pyramids and cubes go with those,” Shearer said, motioning with a hand.
“Oh, okay,” Jerri acknowledged.
“Why did you just sit there?” Jeff asked her, puzzled. He shook his head at Shearer. “She didn’t even try.”
“I won’t be forced into being stupid,” Jerri said. Jeff seemed baffled and looked at Shearer again.
Shearer had never seen anyone respond that way before. He stared at her for several seconds, not quite sure what to make of it. She met his eye unwaveringly, a faint, impish smile on her face and an expression that seemed to say, You know what I’m talking about. I don’t have to spell it out. “Most people don’t see it,” he said finally. “And the few who do usually get pressured into going along anyway.”
“Just like life,” she said.
“That’s the whole point.”
“And what makes it stupid. As I just said, I won’t do it.”
It was one of the rare occasions in life where Shearer felt he was communicating with someone, instead of returning expected litanies and leaving half of his person switched off. Jerri regarded him with a measured wariness, as if searching for clues that he was genuine; but the half-smile remained playing on her mouth. There was something precious and pleasingly intimate in the feeling that they were the only two in the room who understood the meaning of what had happened a few minutes ago. Jeff cemented it by doing a double take from one to the other. “Hey, is there som
ething going on here that I’m not seeing?... Oh, okay, I get it.”
Shearer was starting to find Jeff’s eternal presence a little wearisome. At every turn it seemed that Jeff was there, like a shadow. He was personable enough in his way, but at times he could be inquisitive about Shearer’s personal business to a degree that went beyond the familiarity of a new friendship. He wanted to know about Shearer’s background, his politics; the kind of work he did, who this person Wade was that he was going to join; did he know where Wade was on Cyrene? It wasn’t as if Jeff had ever met Wade, even, or if Wade’s work held any particular significance. But Jeff sometimes talked as if he were inquiring after a lost personal acquaintance.
Jerri seemed to sense it, and Shearer found that it didn’t surprise him. “It’s about time I went to check on Nim,” she said. “Want to come and say hello?” Nim was short for Nimrod. Nim and Shearer knew each other by now, from the hotel in San Jose and a couple of times since the beginning of the voyage, when Jerri had brought him out for a walk around the decks. Shearer made a point of keeping a few of Nim’s favorite treats in his pocket.
“Good idea,” Shearer agreed. He finished putting the last of the games back together, and closed the box. Jerri was already on her feet, waiting. Jeff sent him a broad wink as they turned to go. Shearer was glad that Jerri didn’t notice. Or if she did, she pretended not to.
The core section of the Tacoma’s generally circular form extended out to about a quarter of the radius and was divided into upper and lower parts. The upper part contained the command and control centers, and officer’s quarters. The lower part was designated the E Section and formed an enclave reserved for a more exclusive set of passengers. The remainder, consisting of ordinary professionals, artisans, intended settlers, and military-security personnel, were housed in the midships decks between the core and the power, propulsion, and machinery compartments located around the periphery. Accommodation in E-Section was in the form of individual cabins fitted with full-size beds as opposed to bunks, bathrooms with whirlpool tubs, minibar, office-fitted desk, and an appropriate complement of comforts not found in the regular quarters. It contained its own dining room, pool, exercise center, and entertainment theater, and access from other parts of the ship was through security points that were manned at all times. The two worlds into which society back home had polarized were represented faithfully.
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