“Well…” began Ponter, but then he trailed off.
“You did say you had no personal interest in this issue, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“But you fought the High Gray Council yet again, didn’t you? You insisted that you personally be allowed to return to the other Earth.”
“It was the only thing that made sense,” said Ponter. “No one else from our world had ever been there. I knew some of the people, and had learned a great deal about their world.”
“And you refused to transfer the Gliksin linguistic database your Companion implant had gathered to anyone else unless you were guaranteed the right to be part of the next group traveling to the other world.”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Ponter. “I merely suggested that my presence would be useful.”
Selgan’s tone was gentle. “You did more than just ‘merely suggest,’” he said. “Like most of the world, I saw much of this on my Voyeur. If your own memory of the events has faded, we can easily access your alibi archives from that day. That’s why my therapy center was built here, close to the Alibi Archive Pavilion. Shall we go over there and—”
“No,” said Ponter. “No, that won’t be necessary.”
“So you did use—is ‘coercion’ too strong a word?—to get yourself back into the other world?”
“I wanted to make the greatest possible contribution I could. The Code of Civilization requires that of each of us.”
“Yes, it does,” agreed Selgan. “And if that contribution—if the greater good—could best be served by committing a crime, well, then…”
“You’re wrong,” said Ponter. “I hadn’t even contemplated my crime yet. My only goal…” He paused, then continued. “My only goals were to help with continued contact, and, yes, to see my friend Mare Vaughan. I never would have gone over there if I’d known what I was going to end up doing…”
“That’s not entirely true, is it?” said Selgan. “You said even if you had the opportunity to relive the moment of your crime, you still would have committed it.”
“Yes, but…”
“But what?”
Ponter sighed. “But nothing.”
The High Gray Council had finally acquiesced to Ponter’s demand that he be allowed to leave the quantum computer in Adikor’s care, so that he could return to the Gliksin world. He’d expected a reluctant agreement—and he was sure that was what it was—but he hadn’t expected to have the title of “Envoy” bestowed upon him
As much as he wanted to return, to see Mare again, he did have mixed feelings. His last visit had been an accident, and he’d been terrified that he would never get home. Although he and Adikor did believe that the portal could be reopened, and kept open indefinitely, no one really knew for sure. Ponter had almost lost Adikor, Jasmel, and Megameg once before; he wasn’t sure he could stand the possibility of losing them again.
But no. He would go. Despite his concerns, Ponter wanted to go. Yes, he was interested in finding out how things would develop with Daklar Bolbay. But it would be most of another month until Two became One again—his next opportunity to see her—and, if all went well, he would be back in this world long before then.
Besides, this time Ponter would not be traveling alone. He’d be accompanied by Tukana Prat, a female of generation 144, ten years his senior.
The first time the portal opened had been an unforeseen event. The second time, it was a desperate rescue attempt. This time it would be a planned, orderly operation.
There was always a chance that things would go wrong; that the portal would open to some other world, or that Ponter had misconstrued the Gliksins, and that they were actually waiting for an opportunity to swarm through from the other side. To that end, Bedros, one of the elder members of the Council, would hold a detonator in his hand. Mining explosives had been placed all around the rooms of the subterranean quantum-computing facility. If things turned bad, Bedros would detonate the explosives, bringing thousands of pertavs of rock collapsing down, filling in the chamber. And although the transmissions from Bedros’s Companion implant couldn’t reach the surface from here, they could reach the explosives; if Bedros should die—if Gliksins or other creatures swarmed through with weapons firing—his Companion would set off the explosives.
Adikor, meanwhile, would hold a less-stringent panic button. If something went wrong, he could shut off all power to the quantum computer, which might sever the link. And if he died, his Companion could do the same thing. Up on the surface, the entrance to the Debral nickel mine had likewise been rigged with explosives, and enforcers stood watch there, ready to act in case of emergency.
Of course, Ponter and Tukana weren’t going to just burst through to the other side. A probe was to be sent through first, with cameras, microphones, devices for sampling air, and more. The probe had been painted bright orange and had a ring of lights encircling it. They wanted there to be no possibility of the Gliksins misconstruing it as a stealthful attempt to eavesdrop—Ponter had explained the strange Gliksin obsession with privacy to the others.
Like the robot that had been sent through before to help rescue Ponter, the probe would feed its data back to this side through fiber-optic cabling. But unlike that hapless robot, it would also be anchored by a strong synthetic-fiber rope.
Although the probe was high-tech, and the Derkers tube that would be used to force the portal to stay open was a reasonably sophisticated piece of mechanical engineering, the actual insertion of the tube was to be a decidedly low-tech operation.
Ponter and Adikor’s quantum computer had been built to factor truly huge numbers. When so doing, it accessed parallel universes in which other versions of itself already existed, and each of those other versions tried a single potential factor. By combining the results from all the universes, millions of potential factors could be checked simultaneously.
But if the number being factored was so gargantuan that it had more candidate factors than there were parallel universes in which this quantum-computing facility already existed, the quantum computer would be forced to try accessing universes in which versions of itself did not exist. But as soon as it did connect with one of those universes, the factoring process would crash, creating the gateway.
The quantum-computing facility had originally consisted of just four rooms: a dry toilet, an eating room, the control room, and the massive computing chamber itself. But three more rooms had just been added: a small infirmary, a sleeping room, and a large decontamination facility. People would have to pass through decontamination going in either direction, to reduce the chance of taking something inimical from here to the other world, and to cleanse them of any pathogens they might have brought back. The Gliksins had limited decontamination technology; either having almost no body hair made it easy for Gliksins to keep clean, or having tiny noses made them blissfully ignorant of their own filthiness. But tuned-laser bodily decontaminators—to which the specific protein structures of human skin, flesh, organs, and hair were transparent, but which vaporized germs and viruses—had long been in use in this world.
There had never been so many people in the quantum-computing facility before. Ponter and Adikor were there. So was Ambassador Prat, and three members of the High Gray Council, including both of the local representatives. Dern, the roboticist, was on hand, too, to operate the probe. And two Exhibitionists were there with recording units, taking pictures they would relay once they got back up to the surface.