“This job description that was posted for an assistant to go and join Wade on Cyrene,” Callen opened. Shearer raised his eyebrows and waited. “Why did you apply for it?”
“To get away,” Shearer answered. “What chances were there for working in real science back there? Nastier bombs? Better technology to boost profits a tenth of a point? The project I was on was being wrapped up. The only gain it stood to offer was in knowledge.”
Callen looked dubious; but there was also a hint of genuine curiosity on his face. “And what do you consider to be real science?” he asked.
Shearer shrugged. “What I just said. Pursuing knowledge for its own sake. Wanting to know what it’s all about — how the universe works. Where it came from and what it’s there for. But nobody in your world wants to hear about things like that.”
“Why do you call it my world?”
“Okay, then, your kind of people. They created it, and your job is to defend it for them. How do you like the results?”
“And what makes knowledge so important? Why should anyone want to know?”
“Humans are born wanting to know. It takes professional educators twenty years to kill it and turn them into what the system wants. Or if you won’t fit, you’re weeded out. Nobody’s going to change it now.” Shearer showed his hands briefly. “So you get away. That’s what I did.”
Callen stared for a second or two, but didn’t seem inclined to pursue it. “So what makes you think the universe is there for any reason at all?” he asked, picking up Shearer’s other point.
“Look around. Open your eyes. How could anyone think it’s not?”
“I thought scientists didn’t have time for ideas like that.”
“You’re talking about technicians that the system has bought. They peddle the kind of world that suits it, and tell everyone they’d better buy into it because that’s all there is. Real science just follows whichever way the evidence seems to point. You don’t decide in advance what kind of answers you’ll accept and what you won’t.”
“So what’s the reason?” Callen challenged.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you think you’d find it on Cyrene?”
“Maybe.... I don’t think it was to produce Interworld Restructuring.”
Callen’s mouth twitched. He shifted his gaze back to the notes on the flatpad and flipped the image to a new sheet. “Wade disappeared from Revo base shortly after filing the application.”
“If you say so.”
“Things like that don’t happen on the spur of the moment. Why would he file for an assistant if he was planning on disappearing?”
Callen was obviously cross-checking answers. Shearer could see himself getting tangled up in contradicting details for no good reason if he let himself be drawn in. “He’s here. You can talk to him. I was in California. I can’t second-guess his motives,” he said.
“But you were in contact before he disappeared.”
“His messages never went into it. We’d worked together before. That seemed good enough for me.” As Callen would no doubt be able to verify — and very probably already had.
“I put it to you that you had already agreed it between you,” Callen said. “Even at the time Wade departed from Earth. You both have the same political views. You’d worked with him since arriving from Florida. The intention was for you to join him at the first opportunity.”
Shearer spread his hands in feigned innocence. “He just filed for an assistant.”
“Oh, come on. He was stuck with procedures. The spec had your measurements like a suit.”
“Okay.” Shearer held up a hand. “So we think alike, and we work well together. Where I was at, I was going nowhere. This could have been a whole new start. What’s so strange?”
“What did you think you’d find there?”
“I had no idea. All I’d seen were the regular releases, same as everyone sees.”
Callen checked his notes and moved to a different angle. “The work you were doing at Berkeley involved a new kind of quantum wave. Want to tell me about it?”
Shearer drew a long breath. He must have been asked this dozens of times, both before leaving and during the voyage out. It could get involved. He had learned to try and keep things as short as possible. “The formal quantum wave equations give two sets of solutions. One kind are called ‘retarded,’ which have been used in physics for over a century. The other kind —’advanced’ — involve negative energy and travel backward in time. Traditionally they are treated as an artifact of the mathematics and not attributed any physical reality.”
“But some years ago, Wade came up with a theory that they’re real.” Technically inclined or not, at least Callen had been doing his homework.
“Yes,” Shearer said.
“And his work at Berkeley was aimed at trying to prove it. Which you continued.”
“Yes.”
“And was it getting anywhere?” Callen’s expression said that he doubted it. Why else would the project be shut down?
Shearer made a face. “Obviously the people funding it didn’t think so. We were getting results, but they were judged inconclusive. Right on the edge.”
“What do you think?”
“I’m probably the last person you should ask. People who want to believe see things that aren’t there. Trying to eliminate wishful thinking is what half of science is all about.”
Callen sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers for a moment, as if contemplating an outlandish question. “Was Wade continuing with that same line on Cyrene?”
It took Shearer by surprise. His first reaction was to stall while he collected his thoughts. “There’s nothing like Berkeley there. They’re only starting to dabble with steam engines.”
“You arranged for some specialized hardware to be shipped from his private lab. Then he managed to lift enough gear from Revo to outdo Edison — including a ten megawatt fission module, for heaven’s sake!” Callen leaned forward and shook his head, as if none of this should need spelling out. “But he didn’t wait for you to arrive, did he? Suddenly he vanishes from Revo to go and join Elena Hukishido, who had gone there on the same mission but disappeared a couple of months before he did. Her field was biophotonics. And the person who stayed back until you arrived, and who had a conduit already set up for you, was Dominic Uberg, a plant biologist.” Callen sat back, inviting Shearer to consider his case. “So what were they on to out there, Mr. Shearer? The intelligence agency that backed the Berkeley project thought it might give them a means of seeing into the future — which a report written by you did nothing to dispel. It must have been something very exciting.”
Now Shearer thought he saw what was behind all this. Callen was going back to a bloodbath involving high corporate politics and outraged Brobdingnagian egos of a kind that Shearer was grateful not to have to deal with. Callen was scouting all the angles to prepare his position. In the bizarre way that events had turned out, he was sounding Shearer out, in effect, as a potential ally to his cause. But there was no way that Shearer could oblige. He and Wade had agreed adamantly — and could only hope that noting had transpired since on Cyrene to confute them — that there could be no revealing of what the work at Linzava had established. For after the bonanza that the Heim discoveries had unleashed, the news of yet another new realm of physics being opened up would trigger a rush of commercial speculators that would dwarf everything that had happened on all the other colony worlds put together. Callen was so close... This had to be killed in the bud.
“Sure — he was interested in continuing working on his theory if he could,” Shearer said. “A man doesn’t forget something like that. It was a passion with him — and still is. But it didn’t go anywhere.” He paused pointedly. “And if you want my frank opinion, I’m glad it didn’t.”
Callen’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “How so?” he asked.
“Come on.” Shearer got a kick out of throwing Callen’s own phrase back. “That
wasn’t why you set me up, or something Interworld was interested in.” They had been through the questions of Shearer’s application being rushed through, and the role played by Jeff Lang, in an earlier session. “You’ve just told me you’d read the funding agency’s assessment. Interworld was panicking because the buzz coming in from Revo was that Wade was organizing a network of relocated Terrans to help the Cyreneans stop their planet from being turned into another industrial plantation. But it’s already a lost cause, Mr. Callen. You admitted that yourself when you ordered the gates on the base to be closed. That planet will entice away everyone they send there. Three missions are going to have to be written off. Interworld’s first big bust. How are the company’s damage control doctors going to spin that in the stockholder reports?” Shearer shook his head in a way that said he was glad it wasn’t he who was going back to it. “They’re going to want heads. It’ll be blood all over the walls back there. I don’t think I envy you in your position... on top of everything else.”
“Meaning?”
“Ah... talk goes around. Let’s just say that Milicorp might have their own reasons for needing a body for the wolves.”
Callen stared at Shearer long and hard. A change had come about in the atmosphere. Although the protocols of the situation didn’t permit it to be voiced, there was a mutual recognition of their positions as being more congruent in some ways than adversarial. The conversation was no doubt being recorded, but Shearer assumed that the interrogator would have editing capability. “My compliments on your reasoning,” Callen said finally.
“That figures both ways,” Shearer replied. And meant it. He snorted and smiled faintly. “It’s too bad you’re going the wrong way — back to a meat grinder. Your kind of thinking would be priceless to the Cyreneans. They put great value on knowledge too. But they’re more intuitive. Rational analysis is something they need to work on — especially given the direction they’re heading. And they’ll do it without all the bloodbaths and the slave camps. Knowledge to create a better life for everybody, not just the leeches.”
“What is it about Cyrene?” Callen asked distantly.
Shearer shrugged. “That’s another thing Wade was hoping to find out more about. He thought Elena Hukishido might have been on to something. That was what got him excited. Some kind of euphoric or mild hallucinogen produced by plants, that Terrans react to.... They were still working on it.” Callen would know that the labs inside the base had been following that line with negative results.
Callen seemed to dream for a few seconds longer. Then he brushed it aside abruptly and said in a brisk voice, “But that’s not the way it is, is it? Life is about playing the hand you’re dealt. We’re heading for Earth.” In that moment Shearer had glimpsed what he had been looking for since he sat down. If there was to be any chance at all of pulling something off, he had no choice now but to go for it.
He studied a knuckle while he picked his words, and then asked in a curious voice, “But does it have to be that way?”
Callen frowned. “How else could it be?”
“Listen to what a lot of people’s instincts have already told them: Go where they know the light is. Be a part of that.”
“You mean Cyrene?”
“Why not? Why go back to a nightmare?”
Callen gave a sharp shake of his head, as if to be sure that Shearer wasn’t taking leave of his senses. “Even if I thought you were serious... how do you intend getting there? You can’t just show up at an airport after you get home.”
Shearer gestured briefly to indicate their surroundings. “Why wait till you get home? The means is right here.”
Callen looked incredulous, and then laughed derisively as if he were agreeing to share a sick joke. “And how do you propose persuading the captain to turn the Ranger around? None of the crew were down on Cyrene. In any case, I don’t think he’d be interested in trading places for a brigantine out of Revo.”
Shearer maintained a serious expression. “It will need at least two surface shuttles to take everyone from the Ranger down after it docks with the transfer satellite. You could lose the crew if they were assigned for relief on the first one — not unreasonable, since they’ve just done an interstellar round trip without a break. And people from Cyrene who have reasons for wanting to go back to Earth could be included on it too, such as Emner. That would leave a majority up at the satellite who want to return to Cyrene — enough to take over the Ranger if they were properly equipped and organized, had speed and surprise on their side. Any additional ones wanting to stay could be left on the satellite to be picked up.”
“And who’s going to take the Ranger back? You?” There was still mockery in Callen’s tone but it had lessened. His eyes played over Shearer’s face searchingly. He was listening.
“Colonel Yannis has done full military space piloting and commanded Heim ships. I guess you already know his record.”
“It needs more than a captain,” Callen pointed out.
“Getting us there would just need propulsion and navigation. We can forget communications, weapons control and targeting, and other specialized military functions. Berger and Polapulos were first and second drive officers on the Tacoma. They’re being shipped back because they were in contact with runaway Terrans. Sengatrow was a master fields engineering specialist from the Boise, before the Tacoma. Wen Siyu supervised drive and generating controls instrumentation. They were picked up at Linzava. In addition there are four others who could be brought up to speed for regular duty shifts. After something the size of the Tacoma, they shouldn’t have much trouble handling the basics of this kind of ship. Recharging the D-T primary fuel bank and restocking from the transfer satellite could be done in under an hour.”
Shearer left it at that. Either Callen was with him now, or else there was no point in continuing anyway. His only choice had been to stake all or nothing. He raised his chin and waited.
Callen regarded him with what looked like open disbelief for along time; then he exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “You obviously have it all figured out.... And these people you mentioned would be favorably disposed?”
“Oh, I’d say so. Sure.”
“How do you know you can trust them?”
“Obviously there are going to be risks. Evan Wade is pretty good when it comes to judging and recruiting people who won’t talk too much. You should know that.”
Callen shook his head again, but it was from wonder more than anything else. His eyes came back to meet Shearer’s. Shearer read in them a look of disbelief that Callen could think the things he was finding himself thinking.
But Shearer was getting used to that. He had seen that look many times now. Cyrene did crazy things to people.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
For a smaller craft like the Ranger, the H-point could be closer in to Earth than had been the case with the Tacoma. It reemerged into normal space a less than a day’s flight time from the transfer station designated DSX-14. As they made final approach, Shearer and his companions were able to verify its form on one of the cabin wall screens as a toroid surrounding a cylindrical central structure. Callen, who by this time was fully committed, had provided details of the internal structure and layout. A shuttle to take the first batch of arrivals down to the surface was already attached at one of the four docking ports. Of the remainder, one was occupied by a cargo shuttle, another out of use while undergoing overhaul, and the last, reserved for the Ranger. Also, standing off at a distance of a mile or so, waiting to move in, was a robot freighter that one of the company identified from its markings as having come from Cyrene. It was not the one that had been in orbit, loading, at the time of the Tacoma’s arrival — which couldn’t have made it to Earth in the time since, anyway. Shearer guessed it to be the one that Uberg had said departed earlier, on which he had sent his consignment of botanical seeds and samples for study. It appeared have arrived shortly before the Ranger — possibly a matter of mere hours — and been put on hold to give
servicing of the manned vessel priority.
The escape plan that started as an impossible brainchild of Shearer’s had gradually come together and taken form under Wade’s quiet but skilled direction. Three quarters of the detainees being brought back from Cyrene were involved, who knew the plan and were fluent in their roles. Wade had broken the group down into teams who talked to him and Shearer but not among each other. Individuals who, for whatever reason, had elected not to be included, such as Emner, were not conversant with the details, although under the conditions of their confinement it would have been impossible not to have some idea of what was going on. There was really little else that could be done to preserve secrecy. In the final measure they depended on trust in the goodwill of their fellows, which they knew was always a risky business in situations where there could be something to be gained by plea-bargaining. But what was the alternative? Shearer remarked to Wade that if they had thought to bring some moon flowers to brighten up the place, they might have been on surer ground. The strangest thing about it was the realization that he hadn’t been joking.
Callen had turned out to be not just an asset, but essential. As appreciation deepened of just what would be entailed, it became apparent that the cooperation of somebody in a position of influence on the outside was indispensable. Not only had he been a source of vital information on the numbers and disposition of the ship’s crew and the Milicorp contingent that it was carrying, but his position gave him a say in deciding the makeup of the shuttle passenger lists. In addition, his access to Milicorp’s records enabled him to identify four troopers and a sergeant from earlier missions who were being recalled on grounds of suspected unreliability, having been replaced by new blood that arrived with the Tacoma. Guarding nonviolent miscreants aboard a spacecraft was looked on as a “soft” duty that would at least get some useful work out of them on the way back, and Callen had arranged for them to be retained in this capacity and among the contingent that would stay with the Ranger when the first descent shuttle left. After putting out guarded feelers, Callen had succeeded in recruiting the sergeant, whose name was Osterman. He had been contemplating making a break on Cyrene since learning that returning to Earth would mean having to face a former wife and a militant attorney waiting to put him through a blender. Having Osterman won over gave access to the ship’s small-arms armory.
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