In the end, the Five were permitted to talk among themselves. She systematically bade farewell to each.
No one blamed her for the blank cassettes.
`These pictures on the cassettes are recorded in magnetic domains, on tape,” Vaygay reminded her. “A strong electrical field accumulated on the benzels, and they were, of course, moving. A time-varying electrical field makes a magnetic field. Maxwell's equations. It seems to me that's how your tapes were erased. It was not your fault.”
Vaygay's interrogation had baffled him. They had not exactly accused him but merely suggested that he was partof an anti-Soviet conspiracy involving scientists from the West" I tell you, Ellie, the only remaining open question is the existence of intelligent life in the Politburo.”
“And the White House. I can't believe the President would allow Kitz to get away with this. She committed herself to the project.”
`This planet is run by crazy people. Remember what they have to do to get where they are. Their perspective is so narrow, so… brief. A few years. In the best of them a few decades. They care only about the time they are in power.” She thought about Cygnus A.
“But they're not sure our story is a lie. They cannot prove it. Therefore, we must convince them. In their hearts, they wonder, “Could it be true?” A few even want it to be true. But it is a risky truth. They need something close to certainty…. And perhaps we can provide it. We can refine gravitational theory. We can make new astronomical observations to confirm what we were told—especially for the Galactic Center and Cygnus A. They're not going to stop astronomical research. Also, we can study the dodec, if they give us access. Ellie, we will change their minds.” Difficult to do if they're all crazy, she thought to herself. “I don't see how the governments could convince people this is a hoax,” she said.
“Really? Think of what else they've made people believe. They've persuaded us that we'll be safe if only we spend all our wealth so everybody on Earth can be killed in a moment—when the governments decide the time has come. I would think it's hard to make people believe something so foolish. No, Ellie, they're good at convincing. They need only say that the Machine doesn't work, and that we've gone a little mad.”
“I don't think we'd seem so mad if we all told our story together. But you may be right. Maybe we should try to find some evidence first Vaygay, will you be okay when you… go back?”
“What can they do to me? Exile me to Gorky? I could survive that; I've had my day at the beach….
No, I will be safe. You and I have a mutual-security treaty, Ellie. As long as you're alive, they need me. And vice versa, of course. If the story is true, they will be glad there was a Soviet witness; eventually, they will cry it from the rooftops. And like your people, they will wonder about military and economic uses of what we saw.
“It doesn't matter what they tell us to do. All that matters is that we stay alive. Then we will tell our story—all five of us—discreetly, of course. At first only to those we trust. But those people will tell others.
The story will spread. There will be no way to stop it. Sooner or later the governments will acknowledge what happened to us in the dodecahedron. And until then we are insurance policies for each other. Ellie, I am very happy about all this. It is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”
“Give Nina a kiss for me,” she said just before he left on the night flight to Moscow.
Over breakfast, she asked Xi if he was disappointed.
“Disappointed? To go there”—he lifted his eyes skyward—”to see them, and to be disappointed? I am an orphan of the Long March. I survived the Cultural Revolution. I was trying to grow potatoes and sugar beets for six years in the shadow of the Great Wall. Upheaval has been my whole life. I know disappointment.
“You have been to a banquet, and when you come home to your starving village you are disappointed that they do not celebrate your return? This is no disappointment. We have lost a minor skirmish. Examine the… disposition of forces.”
He would shortly be departing for China, where he had agreed to make no public statements about what had happened in the Machine. But he would return to supervise the dig at Xian. The tomb of Qin was waiting for him. He wanted to see how closely the Emperor resembled that simulation on the far side of the tunnels.
“Forgive me. I know this is impertinent,” she said after a while, “but the fact that of all of us, you alone met someone who… In all your life, wasn't there anyone you loved?”
She wished she had phrased the question better. “Everyone I ever loved was taken from me.
Obliterated. I saw the emperors of the twentieth century come and go,” he answered. “I longed for someone who could not be revised, or rehabilitated, or edited out. There are only a few historical figures who cannot be erased.”
He was looking at the tabletop, fingering the teaspoon. “I devoted my life to the Revolution, and I have no regrets. But I know almost nothing of my mother and father. I have no memories of them. Your mother is still alive. You remember your father, and you found him again. Do not overlook how fortunate you arc.”
In Devi, Ellie sensed a grief she had never before noticed. She assumed it was a reaction to the skepticism with which Project Directorate and the governments bad greeted their story. But Devi shook her head.
“Whether they believe us is not very important for me. The experience itself is central. Transforming.
Ellie, that really happened to us. It was real. The first night we were back here on Hokkaido, I dreamt that our experience was a dream, you know? But it wasn't, it wasn't.
“Yes, I'm sad. My sadness is… You know, I satisfied a lifelong wish up there when I found Surindar again, after all these years. He was exactly as I remembered him, exactly as I've dreamed of him. But when I saw him, when I saw so perfect a simulation, I knew: This love was precious because it had been snatched away, because I had given up so much to marry him. Nothing more. The man was a fool. Ten years with him, and we would have been divorced. Maybe only five. I was so young and foolish.”
“I'm truly sorry,” Ellie said. “I know a little about mourning a lost love.”
“Ellie,” she replied, “you don't understand. For the firsttime in my adult life, I do not mourn Surindar.
What I mourn is the family I renounced for his sake.”
Sukhavati was returning to Bombay for a few days and then would visit her ancestral village in Tamil Nadu.
“Eventually,” she said, “it will be easy to convince ourselves this was only an illusion. Every morning when we wake up, our experience will be more distant, more dreamlike. It would have been better for us all to stay together, to reinforce our memories. They understood this danger. That's why they took us to the seashore, something like our own planet, a reality we can grasp. I will not permit anyone to trivialize this experience. Remember. It really happened. It was not a dream. Ellie, don't forget.”
Eda was, considering the circumstances, very relaxed. She soon understood why. While she and Vaygay had been undergoing lengthy interrogations, he had been calculating.