"I can't say I did…" Hunt waited for a moment, then hazarded, "I, ah, was told you had some kind of proposition in mind."
"This is you, I suppose? Not one of these doubles of yours that comes zipping in and out of other universes or whatever?"
"What?…" Hunt brought a hand up to his brow. How did one handle this kind of thing? "I'm not sure I-"
The pudgy features contorted into a grin again. "Just a joke. But it's more than a joke really. That's what we want to make the movie about."
"What is?"
"You! Your story. I mean, come on, don't you know you're a big name these days? Regular on the shows; pieces in all the mags. And all to do with the kind of stuff that everybody's interested in and kids are wild about: The mummy on the Moon; real starships and aliens; people inside a computer. And now this latest!… It's a natural that's screaming out to be made. It beats me why nobody's done it yet. It'll be the blockbuster of years."
"Well, that's an interesting thought, I suppose…"
"Trust me. I know the business. It's got all the potential. But to really make it fly, we're gonna give that something-extra zip, know what I mean? We want you in it, playing yourself."
Hunt shook his head as if to clear it. Strang raised a hand in the manner of forestalling an interruption.
"We've got the angles figured. Some of those Jev lines about our guys having all that military out there at Ganymede when the Ganymeans show up are dynamite. And it's already put together. All we have to do is weave it in." He was talking about the faked surveillance accounts that the Jevlenese had fed to the Thuriens. This was already getting insane. "We've got a couple of writers working on some action scenes that make them into great paranoids to begin with-but only until they come around to realizing that we're only defending ourselves and underneath it Earth guys are really okay. Then the act comes together. It needs more sex too. We want to give you a real dazzler as a partner, to work in some good hot scenes. Somebody like Kelly Heyne, maybe. Does that sound good? She plays Danchekker. We make it a female role. The balance is perfect, and the opportunities for-"
Hunt shook his head. "No. I'm flattered and all that, but I don't think it's my kind of line."
Strang showed both palms in a conciliatory gesture. "Okay, well I kinda figured that might be the case. But we'd still be interested in having you on board as an advisory consultant. I mean, we want to make sure we get everything right, right?"
Hunt almost choked. "Really… Thanks again, but I do have more than enough to do here as it is."
"What kind of money do they pay you?" Strang inquired.
"Enough to get by."
"Whatever it is, we'll double it."
"You don't seem to understand, I don't need it. I wouldn't have the time to make use of it," Hunt said.
Strang had to stop and think about that one. His script evidently didn't allow for such a possibility. "What do you mean? How can anyone not need it?" he asked finally. "It's what it's all about, isn't it?"
"Is it? What what's all about?"
Strang seemed momentarily at a loss, as if he were being asked to explain the obvious. He made a face and threw up his hands briefly. "Everything… The works. The ball of wax. I mean, it's the thing that get's you what you want, right?"
"No, Arty, you've got it backward. The only use it has is for buying junk I don't need. Not having to waste time making it gets me what I want."
"I don't getcha. What kind of sense is that supposed to make?"
Hunt made as if to reply, then changed his mind and shook his head wearily. "Forget it," he replied. "It could be just being out here for a while. Maybe I'm starting to think like an alien."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mildred joined Hunt and Danchekker at breakfast in the Waldorf. The others of the group hadn't put in an appearance yet. She was quite pleased with the way she had been keeping to her resolution of finding her own way around and not being a burden to Christian by distracting him from his work. At the same time, there was no reason to ostracize herself from the others socially.
"I hear you've got your machine out there working-MP2, or whatever you call it… Thank you so much. Oh, it looks delicious! What kind of bread is that?" Her last words were directed at the young Thurien girl who had brought her dishes to the table. Although serving robots and platters that floated in the air like the one at Frenua Showm's house were universal, there was no shortage of volunteers wanting to perform services for the Terrans. Apparently, waiting personally on one's guests was an old Thurien custom that denoted high honors, and that was gratifying. But more to the point in the present circumstances, it was a way of meeting the aliens from Earth that so much had been heard about. Notions of any implied role or status were lost on Thuriens.
"It's called deldran, made from a sweet grain with fruit pieces, lightly toasted. The jams are for spreading on it. Very nice to start the day."
"And that smells like real coffee."
"It is. The catering manager here ordered a list of things on the last ship that came from Earth."
"Much appreciated. Do pass it on," Danchekker said.
"We try to please."
"You've been talking to VISAR," Hunt quipped, and then even as he said it, remembered it was VISAR's translation that he was listening to. "What should we call you?" he asked to move away from the subject.
"Ithel. I live here in the city part of the time, and also on a world called Borsekon. The surface is all ice and snow, ocean and mountains. We make long journeys there alone-disconnected from VISAR for days at a time. You're really, totally 'there.' The solitude is very spiritual."
"What about school?" Danchekker asked. It seemed a fair question by what Mildred guessed to be Ithel's age. "Do you take care of that here, on Thurien, or is it divided between the two?" Ithel didn't seem to follow the question. "Where youngsters go to learn," Danchekker said. "To prepare them for life."
Ithel smiled uncertainly. "Life is its own preparation," she answered, but still without seeming really to have understood. However it was instilled, politeness seemed to come naturally to young Thuriens, Mildred had observed. Unlike the situation that had become depressingly the norm in some places on Earth, they didn't confuse courtesy with subservience or equate assertiveness with being obnoxious and rude. Thurien education system was another item on Mildred's long list to investigate. In fact, it was first on her agenda today.
"I'd like to talk with you if I may, Ithel," she said. "When you have some free time. There are a lot of questions I think you could help with in connection with the work that brings me here. How would you like to be in a book read all over Earth?"
"Really? Of course!"
"What do I do to get in touch? Just ask VISAR?"
"Yes."
"I'll do that, then. Thank you very much."
"My privilege."
Ithel went away. Danchekker poked curiously at preparation that looked like a cheese omelette with some kind of chopped, red vegetable mixed in, garnished with herbs and covered with a clear gravy. Hunt answered Mildred's earlier question.
"MP2's working, but so far with nothing very exciting to report. Yes, we're sending objects off into other universes that are bigger and more complex than the specks of molecules and crystal flakes that the machine over at Quelsang handles."
"My word," Mildred remarked. "That just goes to show how quickly your ideas of what's exciting deteriorate. A couple of months ago you'd have been leaping around the room and whooping if you'd been able to say that."
Hunt acknowledged with an upturned hand and went on, "But we've no idea where they end up-or even if they end up anywhere. They might just keep on going until the wave function disperses."
Whatever that meant. "I thought Chien had come up with a way of stopping them," Mildred said, at least managing to construe that much.
"We think so," Hunt agreed. "But so far there's no way to be sure. The Thuriens have done tests that involve moving things from here to there around Thurien,
and even via h-space to other star systems. And in those cases, sure, it seems to work. But that's all still within this universe. It doesn't prove that it works when you're going transversely across the MV."
"Going horizontally, between universes," Mildred said.
"You are coming along," Danchekker told her.
Hunt continued, "The only way we'll be able to find out is by sending something that's able to communicate back. But we still haven't overcome the problem of time lines coming together around the projector and getting mixed up. It means that any message you get back out of it is a composite of different inputs all scrambled up. Totally incoherent. You can't get any sense out of it. It's clear now what that other version of myself was trying to tell us back at the beginning. Convergence is the big thing we have to solve."
Mildred thought about it while she stirred her coffee. "But they must have solved it-in the other universe that he was from. Because you were communicating."
"Exactly. That's the galling part. And I'm certain he was going to tell us how, but we lost the connection. If we'd had a battery of Thurien sensors and detectors in the area they way they have here, we'd probably have stood a good chance of figuring out how they did it."
"It sounds a bit like tuning a radio," Mildred said. "You know, you've got signals everywhere from all these stations at once, and somehow you have to pick out just the one you want. I've never really understood how that works. Well, yes, I know you 'tune a circuit.' But what does that mean?"
"Close," Hunt granted. "But in this case you're more jumping from one channel to another all the time instead of having them all there at once. If you could find some way of locking on to just one, that might work. But what is there about it, exactly, do you lock on to? As far as we can make out, It would involve identifying some kind of quantum signature that's unique to that particular universe. VISAR has been churning through permutations for a while now, but with no luck so far. The computations are horrendous, even by Thurien standards."
But it was a touchy matter with him, and on reflection she decided it would be more tactfully broached when they were alone. So they spent the rest of the meal talking about Thurien social customs and the latest stories about weird time line convergence effects instead. Then, Hunt and Danchekker left to collect the things they needed for the day. Mildred waited to have a few more words with Ithel, and then proceeded from the dining area to the space at the rear of the building where the cubicles containing the full-neural virtual travel couplers were located. She could have used the one in her room, but these were closer. The feeling of slipping out of reality as her mind opened into a vast internal void was by now familiar. She had asked VISAR to see if it could arrange for her to visit a Thurien "school."
Mildred found herself out of doors beside what could have been a river or an inlet of sea, surrounded by a small, rambling town. The houses were ornate and colorful, mixing all manner of styles, modest in scale, simple and functional compared to some of the things she had seen. She got the feeling this was an old town that hadn't changed much in a long time. Steep, tree-covered hills gouged by valleys rose behind the houses. The sky was sunny with a few clouds, the air warm, stirring enough to carry a hint of forest scents. Mildred was standing inside an area of yard by the water's edge, screened by a fence from a row of buildings. In the upper parts of one of them, some Thuriens were sitting out on a deck in front of a window opening through to the interior. The yard contained a few sheds by the water, another building behind, complicated-looking things with hoists and tackle, and a small dock. About a dozen Thurien children and two adults that Mildred could see were busy around the dock. They were building a boat.
"Oh…" Mildred looked around again, as if to check her bearings. She knew by now that if she was careless and stepped on a rope or something she would trip and feel the tumble-without actually bruising herself or breaking anything, of course. Her voice carried a note of doubt sufficient to cue VISAR.
"You rang?"
"Yes, er… this is all very nice, VISAR, but maybe I wasn't clear enough. What I wanted to see was a school-you know, where children learn the basic things they have to know for living in a community."
"Yes, I know. This is how they learn them. Or it might be laying out a garden and tending it to make things grow; renovating a theater and creating a play for it; building a machine with hands and tools the ancient way; exploring the arts of athletics or dance; learning to handle animals… It depends on what they're interested in or think they can do. This is where they find out."
"Isn't there any standardizing process that they all have to go through to conform?" She realized as she heard herself using the words that some part of her was already anticipating the response.
"Not really," VISAR answered. "We're not seeking conformity. The intention is to discover and cultivate differences. Everyone is unique. Thuriens believe it's for a reason. It makes every individual priceless. They have a saying that if any two people were the same, one of them would be unnecessary."
Mildred saw that one of the Thuriens had left his charges and was making his way across through the jumble of boat parts, materials, and work tables. Naturally, he was "here" and not connected through another neurocoupler somewhere else-which would have made it difficult to build a boat. Mildred knew the system sufficiently well by now to guess that VISAR had superposed her visually via his avco disk that Thuriens were seldom without. Protocol would have required that VISAR announce Mildred's "presence."
"Armu Egrigol," VISAR said by way of introduction.
Egrigol was one of the smallest adult Thuriens that Midred had come across, measuring somewhere around six feet. He also had one of the lightest crowns, sandy yellow, with skin varying from purple to dark red, in contrast with the normal tones of blue-black and gray. He greeted her with a broad smile, obviously expecting her. VISAR updated him on Mildred's impressions and questions since arriving. Egrigol nodded and seemed amused, apparently prepared for it. Mildred suspected that VISAR had given him some kind of briefing beforehand. He spent a short while explaining what they were doing and pointing out details. When the boat was finished, they were going to sail it along the coast and then out on the ocean to an island that sounded alarmingly far away. Mildred was struck by how young some of the Thurien children seemed for such a venture. But there seemed no shortage of enthusiasm.
As yet, they were either too engrossed to notice that he had moved away and was talking to thin air, or it was too commonplace an occurrence to warrant attention. Either way, they were not showing any signs of registering her existence themselves, although they were wearing the ubiquitous avco disks. Mildred queried this, and VISAR confirmed that her image was not being fed through to them yet.
"I think they'll forgive us if I let you snoop a little bit," Egrigol chuckled. "I wanted to let you see them working naturally for a while. They'll start showing off if they know they have an audience. Are Terran children the same?"
"Probably worse," Mildred said. "But I was just starting to ask when you came over, what about the basic skills that they have to have, surely, before they can learn anything like this? Things like being able to read and write, carry out elementary calculations… Those are what I think of as 'school.' But VISAR says you don't have anything like that. Is that really true?"
"Do you need schools on Earth to teach children to walk and to talk, to open their eyes and know what objects they see?" Egrigol asked.
"But those are natural instincts," Mildred objected.
"Yes. And so is the desire for inner satisfaction that comes from creating and from doing worthwhile work. We all want to measure as best we can in our own eyes and in the esteem of others. The skills you're talking about are what you have to know to become what you can be. When they understand that, they learn them."
"But where do they learn them?"
Egrigol shrugged. "At home, from their friends… Many who are so disposed teach themselves. Each finds the way that is right, when they
are ready. It has to come from the inside."
He turned his head to look back as he spoke. Mildred followed his gaze, and she began to see it all in a different light. A short distance away, a girl called two of the others across and pointed at something that one of the boys was doing at a bench. "Look at how Kolar can cut these joints!" It was a genuine compliment. There was no jealously or put-down. They were learning, Mildred realized, that the most important lesson life had to offer was that they all needed each other.
"Kolar was a late starter," Egrigol commented. "He had trouble working out some of the dimensions at first. We helped him with some basics." He shrugged again. "And he picked up the rest from somewhere… But anyway, it's about time we introduced you, don't you think?"
Egrigol called for attention and announced that he had a surprise, and also a mild apology to make. "One of the Terrans, who has come here to find out more about Thuriens and is going to write a book about us when she gets back, is here virtually and would like to say hello. Her name is Mildred." A moment later all eyes turned toward her as VISAR put her onstage.
At first they were awed and little reserved. But as their inhibitions melted they became first curious, then talkative, and finally eager to show her the things they could do. This was not an artificial world existing apart from the realities of adulthood, living by its own invented standards and measures that were meaningless outside. The adults were the acknowledged experts in skills they all needed to acquire, and respect was the natural outcome. Mildred found she was among young people who were loved, secure, with growing confidence in themselves and exuberance to experience this adventure ahead of them that was called life.
But it was no stranger, she realized. For she had seen it before. She had seen it kindergartens in every country she had been to on Earth. She had seen it in the eyes of the children in villages of the Amazon headwaters; of desert margin tribes in Namibia; of peasant families in Croatia. "Come and see, Johnny can stand on his head!" "Chano gave it to me. She made it herself!" "Bannuti caught three fish today!" "Juliusz, show me how to ride a horse too." What made it genuine was that their confidence came from knowledge of things they could do, as opposed to just knowing how to talk-from which stemmed every form of phoniness and delusion.
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