Beextu came closer, twisting the top of her body. Tonia translated, though there was no telling if the relationship with the boy would be clear. Did they have sisters or sons in their society? How did their children come into being—through birth, through hatching, in a petri dish? At least some of this information was probably in one of the NASA documents that Marie had never managed to read.
Beextu’s translucent eyes came within inches of the edge of the bubble and she peered at Marie’s arm and watch. Would she even understand what she was looking at? The ability to make sense of a three-dimensional object portrayed on a flat screen might not be universal. Even cats and dogs back home had a difficult time with it.
Beextu backed away and then, in a burst of water that made the air bubble bulge inward, she sped away and through one of the passageways.
Marie looked at Tonia. “Did I do something wrong?”
“I don’t know. Please wait,” Tonia answered.
A minute later, Beextu reappeared from the passageway, slowly, with small figures following, hiding behind her. As they approached, Marie leaned to the right to see around Beextu, and the tiny figure flitted, quickly disappearing again.
“I can’t see them very well,” Marie said. “But I think I know who they might be.”
Beextu spoke and Tonia translated. “Youth. They are mine. I told them you are human, a real one.”
Marie bent down slightly. “It’s okay, I won’t hurt you.” Tonia translated.
One tiny head peeked from behind Beextu, followed by another. They moved farther away, miniature versions only a tenth the size of an adult, but complete with tiny skirts and skinny tentacles. Their heads bobbed up and down like a spring, and their skirts rolled with waves. Beextu looked positively stiff by comparison.
“Oh, my God, they’re so adorable,” Marie gushed. She adjusted her headset, hoping the video camera was capturing the scene. “Will they come closer?”
“Give them time,” Tonia said without translating.
“They’re so sweet, Beextu. Beautiful children, er youth.”
Tonia translated everything in the back-and-forth between Marie and Beextu.
“Thank you, Meezhie,” Beextu said. “They will grow, as plants do. As humans do.”
“How old are they?”
“Four hundred days, very young.” Marie had read that a day on Ixtlub was somewhat longer than on Earth. Their equivalent age must be a few Earth years. According to the same information, Dancer lifespans could be as long as one hundred and thirty Earth years. Beextu’s children were just as she said, very young.
Marie bent lower and her voice rose naturally, childlike. “What are your names?”
“Not yet,” Beextu said. “They will take names later.”
“Can they speak?”
“Yes. Too much. They don’t know when to stop.”
There were some squeaks from the tiny Dancers and Beextu spoke directly to them. One of them squirted off to the right, faster than Marie had seen any of the adult Dancers move. Just as quickly, it returned to Beextu and circled her several times, squeaking repeatedly before finally settling down.
“He makes a show for you,” Beextu said.
“Because I’m new?” Marie asked.
“He says you look like his doll.”
Marie laughed, and the tiny Dancers zipped behind Beextu at the noise. “Oops, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare them.”
“Their doll makes no sound. You do.”
“I’m not a doll, I’m real.” Marie spoke to the children, hoping they too could understand Tonia’s translation. “I’m from a place called Earth. Your mother and I are friends.” Marie looked up at Beextu. “Or at least I hope we will be.”
The ice broken, Marie and her new friend had many questions and much to say to each other. Tonia translated every word, though the delay in a longer conversation was somewhat irritating. The more they talked, the more Marie felt comfortable within the alien place. The difference between their outward appearance was impossible to ignore, yet intellectually they had more in common than Marie expected.
Beextu was well educated in science. Her primary expertise was in the biology of her species—and of the Workers, the land-dwelling species who were on the other end of a fascinating relationship of symbiosis. At first, Marie thought Beextu might be a physician, but her knowledge was broader than just biology. She easily spoke about their planetary system, understood the difference between their red dwarf star, Earth’s yellow dwarf and the hypergiant where Core resided. She demonstrated a knowledge of orbital mechanics and even answered Marie’s practice question on whether they had launched satellites. Yes, they had, with the help of the Workers.
Beextu held an official role of some kind within a government body. She had regularly engaged with Core and with other members of the galactic consortium. Beextu’s experience with the consortium and her perception of future human involvement consumed the rest of their conversation.
Toward the end of the visit, Beextu’s children ventured close enough to Marie that one poked its head through the air bubble and for a moment was within arm’s reach. Marie wanted to touch the miniature Dancer, but a quick motion from both Beextu and Tonia made her think better of it. There were still some barriers that weren’t to be crossed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The day was long, but eventually darkness fell across the shallow sea. Their overnight accommodations consisted of one room with several narrow passageways, each dead-ending in a cove where soft material had been placed for sleeping. The main room had walls on three sides but was open to the sea on the fourth, the water held back through the technique of enhanced surface tension that the Dancers managed so well. The room was located halfway up the hill and the view across the picturesque town was magnificent. Beyond the edge of the town, perhaps a mile away, the white-sand seafloor stretched undisturbed into the distance.
The room also had tables and chairs, sized appropriately for humans, and the team was happy to get off their feet for a short break. Zin had distributed a tortilla wrap to each person, a compact and simple meal and a welcome reminder of home.
Marie soaked in the view like she was enjoying a moment at a Caribbean restaurant. She had finished telling her story of Beextu’s house and her children. Stephanie asked if she’d captured it all on video. “You can’t imagine how well that’s going to play on TV when we return home.”
“Yes, it’s wonderful that you were able to learn more about their families as well as Beextu’s role as representative,” Zin said to Marie. Zin still stood while everyone else sat. “But in your description, you implied there was some measure of disharmony? Tell us.”
“Yeah, a very interesting conversation,” Marie said, finishing her food. “Core came up a lot.”
“So, they’ve met Core too?” Wesley asked. He sat at the table across from Marie.
“Yeah. Tonia is Core’s emissary to the Dancers, just as Zin is ours. The Dancers’ first contact with Core was about a hundred years ago. Since then they’ve had contact with several other civilizations… through Core. I guess he’s kind of a clearinghouse for the developed planets. Maybe even the matchmaker.” She looked up at Zin, who was standing close.
“Roughly, yes,” Zin said. “It depends on the civilization, though. It’s tricky business.”
“That might be an understatement,” Marie said.
“So, it sounds like you learned something?” Wesley probed.
Marie looked up again at Zin. “Well… it’s a bit awkward. Sorry, Zin, I’m just not sure if I should repeat this with you here.”
Zin turned his brow bulge down in the middle. Was he insulted? His facial expressions could be surprisingly human. “I can leave, if you wish.”
“On second thought, maybe you should stay,” Marie answered. “It might be good for you to give us a response.”
“Sounds juicy,” Wesley said. “Do tell.”
Marie took a sip from a water bottle. “Well, B
eextu and I were talking about their history, and how they met Core—and it’s pretty similar to our history, except that the Dancers have a reliance on the Workers for their technology—but that’s another story. Anyway, I told Beextu that Core seemed to be pretty good about teaching us what we need to know as the newbies to this galactic group, and then she talked over me before Tonia had finished the translation. I’d never seen her interrupt me before, she had been so polite. But she said that humans should be wary in our relationship with Core, that he might not be serving our best interests.”
“Wow,” Tim said. “That’s kind of bold. And she said that with Tonia standing right there?”
“Tonia translated it.”
They all looked up at Zin, who stood motionless, without comment. Stephanie raised a hand. “I wonder if the translation was accurate. What words did she actually use? That we should be wary of Core?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly the word that Tonia translated, wary. I asked Beextu if Core had misled the Dancers or done something wrong, and she just said that they had learned their lesson over time.”
Wesley pushed his chair back from the table and crossed a leg over one knee. “Zin? Care to comment?”
Zin pulled out one of the empty chairs and sat down, facing the group. “You call me Core’s emissary, but that’s not accurate. I am your aide for the purposes of representing humans to the Dancers and the Workers of Ixtlub. Nothing more. When my mission is complete, I’ll be assigned another task, probably in another sector of the galaxy and with an entirely different exterior body.”
“Which doesn’t answer the question,” Wesley responded. “Should we be wary of Core?”
“The relationship between humans and Core is your business. As I said, it varies considerably by civilization, and much depends on your own actions.”
“You make him sound like some power-hungry god,” Tim said. “Do we have to worship him, or else?”
Zin’s tone was flat. “Never underestimate Core’s power; it’s greater than you realize. But in equal measure, take confidence in the truth that it has no animosity toward humans.” Zin looked around. “Does that answer your question?”
Wesley shrugged and no one else offered anything more.
“Good, then,” said Zin. “We will rest at this location and, in the morning, transfer to the surface to make contact with the Workers.”
If Zin wanted to move on, Marie wasn’t concerned. The whole conversation with Beextu had been recorded anyway. The revelation that Core wasn’t entirely benevolent or hadn’t been completely honest probably wouldn’t go over very well with the heads of NASA—or for that matter, the heads of government. But there would be time to sort through the implications when they returned home.
11 Decoherence
Jan Spiegel walked into Nala’s lab, holding a single sheet of paper with a graph on it. He looked upset, but he usually did when experiments weren’t going as planned.
“A singularity? Really, Nala. You’re jumping to conclusions the data doesn’t support.”
The two physicists squared off routinely, but only on an intellectual basis. Nala had the greatest respect for Jan. “It’s a quantum system, Jan. The superposition of multiple eigenstates must collapse to a single value upon observation. It doesn’t matter if its size is a nanometer or a kilometer, it’s still a quantum system.”
“Yes, I agree,” Jan answered, “but you’re suggesting that a wave function collapse of a quantum system becomes a literal collapse of physical space.”
“Decoherence is decoherence,” she responded. “A wave collapses to a particle; four-dimensional space supported only by HP bosons collapses to a point.”
Jan rubbed his chin. “A singularity? You think you created a point of zero dimensions?”
Nala flipped both hands to open palms. “Well, it’s gone now. You’re the theorist, I’m just the lab jockey. You tell me.”
Jan stood up and softened his tone. “Look, Nala, I’m not denying what you saw.” He studied the graph on the paper. “Yes, collapse of boson-supported space to a singularity is theoretically possible, but there’s not enough data here to prove it. Repeat the experiment, but start with a larger volume and higher mass. Then let it collapse and measure the baryon-to-boson ratio as it drops. If you can get data all the way down to this spinning-singularity-light thing, then I’ve got something to work with.”
Jan dropped the graph on her desk and left. Nala silently stewed for a while. Regimentation was required for good science, but it was a state of mind she didn’t enjoy. Jan was right; he usually was. Experimentation provided data, data provided guidance toward reality, and the whole point of science was to expose reality.
Nala turned to Thomas, who sat at the other end of the workbench, inexplicably wearing a leather Viking helmet complete with horns. With his curly red beard sticking out below the hat, he could have just walked off the set of a Norwegian historic film. “Okay, Thomas, let’s crank it up again.”
“Ja. You vant bigger?” he said with a Scandinavian accent. Her colleague was originally from Minneapolis; maybe that explained it.
“Ja, Thomas. Set tau to, uh…” She studied a diagram posted on the wall. “Six point five, ten to the minus ten. Then we’ll bring it to zero faster than last time. But be ready to measure the ratios. It’ll collapse fast as fuck.”
“Hmm. How fast does fuck collapse?” Thomas asked no one in particular.
“Fast.” Nala smiled and patted Thomas on the shoulder. She reached for the handheld radio. “Cody, let’s go again. Same oscillation.”
The radio crackled to life. “You got it, Nala. Protons coming up.” Nala and Thomas inserted earplugs, now standard procedure for the larger spatial compressions.
The room vibrated almost immediately, with a buzzing in the pipes above their heads. The pipes now carried a stream of light-speed neutrinos, their oscillations locked in phase. A tremendous burst of blue light blasted from the target box on the wall, followed by a bang louder than a gunshot. The camera inside the test box disappeared on cue.
Nala removed the earplugs and checked her computer monitor. “Expansion into 4-D looks good. Spatial compression of 3-D is right on target.” An image of two brilliant blue-white stars appeared on the monitor, a view from the camera now light-years away. “Big-time compression, my friend. Where did you point to this time?”
“Mizar,” the Viking replied. “The double star in Hellevagon.”
“Hellevagon?”
“Norwegian constellation, otherwise known as the Big Dipper.”
“Nice.” Nala adjusted a few controls and checked her computer monitor one last time. She turned to Thomas. “Okay, ready for the collapse?”
“Ja, sure, you betcha.”
She pressed a few keys, and the vibration immediately grew. The air in the lab started to waver like the heat above a fire. The vibration increased to a thunder.
The strange waves grew rapidly. The workbench beneath her hands rolled like an ocean breaker, deforming not just its surface but the keyboard, the computer display, and every other piece of electronic equipment stacked upon it. Above the bench, a thick pipe vacillated like a garden hose.
“They’re back!” Thomas yelled.
Nala reached across the workbench and pulled the portable radio unit from its base. Before she could key the transmit button, there was a loud crunching sound.
That’s not good.
The whole world buckled like a piece of paper that had been crushed into a ball. The workbench split in two, computer screens shattered and sparks flew in her face. Her chair jumped to the ceiling and then slammed back to the floor.
“Ooof,” she spewed as she hit the floor spread-eagled. The radio flew from her hand.
The room twisted into an L-shape, then a U-shape, and continued into a circle. More glass shattered and sprayed across the deformed room amid the sounds of carpet tearing, of wood creaking, twisting and snapping, of metal scraping against metal.
Sh
e had no idea what was up and what was down. With equal parts confusion and terror, she felt her whole body might be tearing apart. She screamed, and she heard Thomas screaming too.
The twisting room turned upside down, and shelves threw electronics boxes that crashed against walls, ceiling and floor. She desperately reached out and managed to grab the only solid thing she could find, a support bar screwed into the wall. For a brief moment, her head stabilized.
Straight ahead, the wall with the plexiglass box was gone, replaced by a gaping hole, intensely dark in its center, but with streaks of bright light pouring in around its perimeter. A radio unit flew across the room and was swallowed by the massive hole, disappearing into nothing but blackness. A portion of the workbench broke off and was also sucked in.
“Thomas!” she screamed above the tornado-like uproar. “Grab something!” She ducked as a small refrigerator unit tipped over, slid across the tilted floor and fell through the threshold of the dark hole. The bar she gripped became the ceiling and her body dangled below. Wind-whipped flying glass shredded her pants and cut her legs. She winced at the sting but held on tight to the bar.
On the far side of what was left of the lab, she saw Thomas, his hands wrapped around the leg of a table that appeared to be bolted to the wall, or what was now the ceiling. Directly below both of them, the dark hole continued to swallow everything that fell into it.
Her hands were wet with sweat and the bar was slippery. The roar continued all around and she could find no refuge. A huge crack appeared in the wall above her, the wallboard shattered and the bar she held broke free.
Falling. Darkness. A hard surface and pain. Blowing wind carried bits of debris into her face. She covered her face with her hands.
The wind lessened, and the noise subsided. Lying on her stomach, she reached out and felt debris. She pricked her hand on a sharp piece of metal, drawing blood. Lifting her head, she saw a circular light in the distance, but the light grew dimmer with each second until it finally closed to a pinprick.
The Quantum Series Box Set Page 38