Occasionally, letters were eroded—by natural weathering, or in a few cases perhaps effaced by some offended passerby. For one or two statues, it was difficult to piece together who the savant had been. On the statue that had evidently evoked the greatest public resentment, only the letters LTA remained.
Although the Sun was setting and the Louvre was open until mid-evening, they did not enter, but instead ambled along the Seine embankment, following the river back along the Quai d'Orsay. The proprietors of bookstallswere fastening shutters and closing up shop for the day. For a while they strolled on, arm in arm in the European manner.
A French couple was walking a few paces ahead of them, each parent holding one hand of their daughter, a girl of about four who would periodically launch herself off the pavement. In her momentary suspension in zero g, she experienced, it was apparent, something akin to ecstasy. The parents were discussing the World Message Consortium, which was hardly a coincidence since the newspapers had been full of little else. The man was for building the Machine; it might create new technologies and increase employment in France. The woman was more cautious, but for reasons she had difficulty articulating. The daughter, braids flying, was wholly unconcerned about what to do with a blueprint from the stars.
Der Heer, Kitz, and Honicutt had called a meeting at the American Embassy early the following morning to prepare for the arrival of the Secretary of State later in the day. The meeting was to be classified and held in the Embassy's Black Room, a chamber electromagnetically decoupled from the outside world, making even sophisticated electronic surveillance impossible. Or so it was claimed. Ellie thought there might be instrumentation developed that could make an end run around these precautions.
After spending the afternoon with Devi Sukhavati, she had received the message at her hotel and had tried to call der Heer, but was able only to reach Michael Kitz. She opposed a classified meeting on this subject, she said; it was a matter of principle. The Message was clearly intended for the entire planet. Kitz replied that there were no data being withheld from the rest of the world, at least by Americans; and that the meeting was merely advisory—to assist the United States in the difficult procedural negotiations ahead. He appealed to her patriotism, to her self-interest, and at last invoked again the Hadden Decision. “For all I know, that thing is still sitting in your safe unread. Read it,” he urged.
She tried, again unsuccessfully, to reach der Heer. First the man turns up everywhere in the Argus facility, like a bad penny. He moves in with you in your apartment. You're sure, for the first time in years, you're in love. The next minute you can't even get him to answer the phone. She decided to attend the meeting, if only to see Ken face to face.
Kitz was enthusiastically for building the Machine, Drumlin cautiously in favor, der Heer and Honicutt at least outwardly uncommitted, and Peter Valerian in an agony of indecision. Kitz and Drumlin were even talking about where to build the thing. Freightage costs alone made manufacture or even assembly on the far side of the Moon prohibitively expensive, as Xi had guessed.
“If we use aerodynamic braking, it's cheaper to send a kilogram to Phobos or Deimos than to the far side of the Moon,” Bobby Bui volunteered.
“Where the bell is Fobuserdeemus?” Kitz wanted to know.
`The moons of Mars. I was talking about aerodynamic braking in the Martian atmosphere.”
“And how long does it take to get to Phobos or Deimos?” Drumlin was stirring his cup of coffee.
“Maybe a year, but once we have a fleet of interplanetary transfer vehicles and the pipeline is full—”
“Compared with three days to the Moon?” sputtered Drumlin. “Bui, stop wasting our time.”
“It's only a suggestion,” he protested. “You know, just something to think about.”
Der Heer seemed impatient, distracted. He was clearly under great pressure—alternately avoiding her eyes and, she thought, making some unspoken appeal. She took it as a hopeful sign.
“If you want to worry about Doomsday Machines,” Drumlin was saying, “you have to worry about energy supplies. If it doesn't have access to an enormous amount of energy, it can't be a Doomsday Machine. So as long as the instructions don't ask for a gigawatt nuclear reactor, I don't think we have to worry about Doomsday Machines.”
“Why are you guys in such a hurry to commit to construction?” she asked Kitz and Drumlin collectively.
They were sitting next to each other with a plate of croissants between them.
Kitz looked from Honicutt to der Heer before answering: “This is a classified meeting,” he began. “We all know you won't pass anything said here on to your Russian friends. It's like this: We don't know what the Machine will do, but it's clear from Dave Drumlin's analysis that there's new technology in it, probably new industries. Constructing the Machine is bound to have economic value—1 mean, think of what we'd learn.
And it might have military value. At least that's what the Russians are thinking. See, the Russians are in a box. Here's a whole new area of technology they're going to have to keep up with the U. S. on. Maybe there's instructions for some decisive weapon in the Message, or some economic advantage. They can't be sure. They'll have to bust their economy trying. Did you notice how Baruda kept referring to what was costeffective? If all this Message stuff went away—burn the data, destroy the telescopes—then the Russians could maintain military parity. That's why they're so cautious. So, of course, that's why we're gung ho for it.” He smiled.
Temperamentally, Kitz was bloodless, she thought; but he was far from stupid. When he was cold and withdrawn, people tended not to like him. So he had developed an occasional veneer of urbane amiability. In Ellie's view, it was a molecular monolayer thick.
“Now let me ask you a question,” he continued. “Did you catch Baruda's remark about withholding some of the data? Is there any missing data?”
“Only from very early on,” she replied. “Only from the first few weeks, I'd guess. There were a few holes in the Chinese coverage a little after that. There's still a small amount of data that hasn't been exchanged, on all sides. But I don't see any signs of serious holding back. Anyway, we'll pick up any missing data swatches after the Message recycles.”
“If the Message recycles,” Drumlin growled. Der Heer moderated a discussion on contingency planning: what to do when the primer was received; which American, German, and Japanese industries to notify early about possible major development projects; how to identify key scientists and engineers for constructing the Machine, if the decision was made to go ahead; and, briefly, the need to build enthusiasm for the project in Congress and with the American public. Der Heer hastened to add that these would be contingency plans only, that no final decision was being made, and that no doubt Soviet concerns about a Trojan Horse were at least partly genuine. Kitz asked about the composition of “the crew.”
“They're asking us to put people in five upholstered chairs. Which people? How do we decide? It'll probably have to be an international crew. How many Americans? How many Russians? Anybody else? We don't know what happens to those five people when they sit down in those chairs, but we want to have the best men for the job.”
Ellie did not rise to the bait, and he continued. “Now a major question is going to be who pays for what, who builds what, who's in charge of overall systems integration. I think we can do some real horse trading on this, in exchange for significant American representation in the crew.”