The expert had moved his mouth but had been too rattled to speak. His bearded colleague answered for him. “M. Weintraub,” he said, “sir. You have to understand that your daughter is currently inhabiting … ah … think of it as a localized region of reversed entropy.”
Sol wheeled on the other man. “Are you saying that she is merely stuck in a bubble of backwardness?”
“Ah … no,” said the colleague, massaging his chin nervously. “Perhaps a better analogy is that … biologically at least … the life/metabolism mechanism has been reversed … ah …”
“Nonsense,” snapped Sol. “She doesn’t excrete for nutrition or regurgitate her food. And what about all the neurological activity? Reverse the electrochemical impulses and you get nonsense. Her brain works, gentlemen … it’s her memory that is disappearing. Why, gentlemen? Why?”
The specialist finally found his voice. “We don’t know why, M. Weintraub. Mathematically, your daughter’s body resembles a time-reversed equation … or perhaps an object which has passed through a rapidly spinning black hole. We don’t know how this has happened or why the physically impossible is occurring in this instance, M. Weintraub. We just don’t know enough.”
Sol shook each man’s hand. “Fine. That’s all I wanted to know, gentlemen. Have a good trip back.”
On Rachel’s twenty-first birthday she came to Sol’s door an hour after they had all turned in. “Daddy?”
“What is it, kiddo?” Sol pulled on his robe and joined her in the doorway. “Can’t sleep?”
“I haven’t slept for two days,” she whispered. “Been taking stay-awakes so I can get through all of the briefing stuff I left in the Wanta Know? file.”
Sol nodded.
“Daddy, would you come downstairs and have a drink with me? I’ve got some things I want to talk about.”
Sol got his glasses from the nightstand and joined her downstairs.
It proved to be the first and only time that Sol would get drunk with his daughter. It was not a boisterous drunk—for a while they chatted, then began telling jokes and making puns, until each was giggling too hard to continue. Rachel started to tell another story, sipped her drink just at the funniest part, and almost snorted whiskey out her nose, she was laughing so hard. Each of them thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened.
“I’ll get another bottle,” said Sol when the tears had ceased. “Dean Moore gave me some Scotch last Christmas … I think.”
When he returned, walking carefully, Rachel had sat up on the couch and brushed her hair back with her fingers. He poured her a small amount and the two drank in silence for a while.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“I went through the whole thing. Saw myself, listened to myself, saw the holos of Linna and the others all middle-aged …”
“Hardly middle-aged,” said Sol. “Linna will be thirty-five next month …”
“Well, old, you know what I mean. Anyway, I read the medical briefs, saw the photos from Hyperion, and you know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t believe any of it, Dad.”
Sol put down his drink and looked at his daughter. Her face was fuller than before, less sophisticated. And even more beautiful.
“I mean, I do believe it,” she said with a small, scared laugh. “It’s not like you and Mom would put on such a cruel joke. Plus there’s your … your age … and the news and all. I know it’s real, but I don’t believe it. Do you know what I mean, Dad?”
“Yes,” said Sol.
“I mean I woke up this morning and I thought, Great … tomorrow’s the paleontology exam and I’ve hardly studied. I was looking forward to showing Roger Sherman a thing or two … he thinks he’s so smart.”
Sol took a drink. “Roger died three years ago in a plane crash south of Bussard,” he said. He would not have spoken without the whiskey in him, but he had to find out if there was a Rachel hiding within the Rachel.
“I know,” said Rachel and pulled her knees up to her chin. “I accessed everybody I knew. Gram’s dead. Professor Eikhardt isn’t teaching anymore. Niki married some … salesman. A lot happens in four years.”
“More than eleven years,” said Sol. “The trip to and from Hyperion left you six years behind us stay-at-homes.”
“But that’s normal,” cried Rachel. “People travel outside the Web all the time. They cope.”
Sol nodded. “But this is different, kiddo.”
Rachel managed a smile and drained the last of her whiskey. “Boy, what an understatement.” She set the glass down with a sharp, final sound. “Look, here’s what I’ve decided. I’ve spent two and a half days going through all of the stuff she … I … prepared to let me know what’s happened, what’s going on … and it just doesn’t help.”
Sol sat perfectly still, not even daring to breathe.
“I mean,” said Rachel, “knowing that I’m getting younger every day, losing the memory of people I haven’t even met yet … I mean, what happens next? I just keep getting younger and smaller and less capable until I just disappear someday? Jesus, Dad.” Rachel wrapped her arms more tightly around her knees. “It’s sort of funny in a weird way, isn’t it?”
“No,” Sol said quietly.
“No, I’m sure it’s not,” said Rachel. Her eyes, always large and dark, were moist. “It must be the worst nightmare in the world for you and Mom. Every day you have to watch me come down the stairs … confused … waking up with yesterday’s memories but hearing my own voice tell me that yesterday was years ago. That I had a love affair with some guy named Amelio …”
“Melio,” whispered Sol.
“Whatever. It just doesn’t help, Dad. By the time I can even begin to absorb it, I’m so worn out that I have to sleep. Then … well, you know what happens then.”
“What …” began Sol and had to clear his throat. “What do you want us to do, little one?”
Rachel looked him in the eye and smiled. It was the same smile she had gifted him with since her fifth week of life. “Don’t tell me, Dad,” she said firmly. “Don’t let me tell me. It just hurts. I mean, I didn’t live those times …” She paused and touched her forehead. “You know what I mean, Dad. The Rachel who went to another planet and fell in love and got hurt … that was a different Rachel! I shouldn’t have to suffer her pain.” She was crying now. “Do you understand? Do you?”
“Yes,” said Sol. He opened his arms and felt her warmth and tears against his chest. “Yes, I understand.”
Fatline messages from Hyperion came frequently the next year but they were all negative. The nature and source of the anti-entropic fields had not been found. No unusual time-tide activity had been measured around the Sphinx. Experiments with laboratory animals in and around the tidal regions had resulted in sudden death for some animals, but the Merlin sickness had not been replicated. Melio ended every message with “My love to Rachel.”