That was a game she insisted on playing, and Fisher knew his role. He said, ‘Seduced you? You insisted. You wouldn't have it any other way.’
‘You liar. You forced yourself on me. It was rape - impure and complex. And you're going to do it again. I can see it in those dreadful lust-filled eyes.’
It had been months since she had played that particular game and Fisher knew it came when she was satisfied with herself professionally. He said afterward, ‘Have you made progress?’
‘Progress? I think you can call it that.’ She was panting. ‘I have a demonstration that I've set up for tomorrow for your decaying and ancient Earthman, Tanayama. He's been pushing for it mercilessly.’
‘He's a merciless fellow.’
‘He's a stupid fellow. You'd think that even if a society doesn't know science, they would know something about science, about how it works. If they give you a million global credits in the morning, they shouldn't expect anything definite by evening the same day. They should at least wait till the next morning and give you the whole night to work in. Do you know what he said to me last time we spoke, when I said I might have something to show him?’
‘No, you hadn't told me. What did he say?’
‘You'd think he'd say: “It's amazing that in a mere three years you've worked out something so astonishing and new. We must give you enormous credit and the weight of gratitude we feel toward you is immeasurable.” That's what you would think he would say.’
‘No, not in a million years would I think that Tanayama would say anything like that. What did he say?’
‘He said, “So you have something finally, after three years. I should hope so. How long do you think I have to live? Do you think I have been supporting you, and paying for you and feeding you an army of assistants and workers in order to have you produce something after I'm dead and can't see it?” That's what he did say, and I tell you I would like to delay the demonstration till he is dead, for my own satisfaction, but I suppose that the work comes first.’
‘Do you really have something that will satisfy him?’
‘Only superluminal flight. True superluminal flight, not that hyper-assistance nonsense. We now have something that will open the door to the Universe.’
38The site where Tessa Wendel's research team labored, intent on shaking the Universe, had been prepared for her even before she had been recruited and come to Earth. It was inside a vast mountainous redoubt that was totally off-limits to Earth's teeming population, and in it a veritable city of research had been built.
And now Tanayama was there, seated in a motorized chair. Only his eyes, behind their narrowed lids, seemed alive - sharp, glancing this way and that.
He was by no means the highest figure in Earth's government, not even the highest figure then present, but he had been, and still was, the force behind the project and all automatically gave way to him.
Only Wendel seemed unintimidated.
His voice was a rustling whisper. ‘What will I see, Doctor? A ship?’
There was no ship in view, of course.
Wendel said, ‘No ship, Director. Ships are years away. I have only a demonstration, but it is an exciting one. You will see the first public demonstration of true superluminal flight, something that is far beyond hyper-assistance.’
‘How am I going to see that?’
‘It was my understanding, Director, that you have been briefed.’
Tanayama coughed wrackingly and had to pause to catch his breath. ‘They tried to talk to me,’ he said, ‘but I want it from you.’ His eyes, baleful and hard, were fixed on her. ‘You're in charge,’ he said. ‘It is your scheme. Explain.’
‘I can't explain the theory. That would take too long, Director. It would tire you.’
‘I want no theory. What am I going to see?’
‘What you are going to see are two cubical glass containers. Both contain a hard vacuum.’
‘Why a vacuum?’
‘Superluminal flight can only be initiated in a vacuum, Director. Otherwise the object made to move faster than light drags matter with it, increasing energy expenditures and decreasing controllability. It must end in a vacuum, too, or else the result can be catastrophic because-’
‘Never mind the “because”. If this superluminal flight of yours must begin and end in a vacuum, how do we make use of it?’
‘It is necessary, first, to move out into outer space by ordinary flight and then move into hyperspace and stay there. You arrive near your destination and move out into ordinary space, and then make the final move by ordinary flight.’
‘That takes time.’
‘Even superluminal flight can't be done instantaneously, but if you can move from the Solar System to a star forty light-years away in forty days rather than forty years, it would be ungrateful to grumble over the time lapse.’
‘All right, then. You have these two cubical glass containers. What of them?’
‘They are holographic projections. Actually, they are three thousand kilometers apart through the body of the Earth, each in a mountain fastness. If light could travel from one to the other through unobstructed vacuum, it would take that light fully 1/1000th of a second - one millisecond - to make the passage. We're not going to use light, of course. Suspended in the middle of the cube at the left, held in space by a powerful magnetic field, is a small sphere, which is actually a tiny hyperatomic motor. Do you see it, Director?’
‘I see something there,’ said Tanayama. ‘Is that all you have?’
‘If you will watch carefully, you will see that it will disappear. The countdown is progressing.’
It was a whisper in each person's ear, and, at zero, the sphere was gone from one cube and present in the other.
‘Remember,’ said Wendel, ‘those cubes are really three thousand kilometers apart. The timing mechanism shows that the duration between the departure and the arrival was a little over ten microseconds, which means that the passage took place at almost a hundred times the speed of light.’
Tanayama looked up. ‘How can I tell? The whole thing could be a trick designed to fool someone you believe to be a gullible old man.’
‘Director,’ said Wendel sternly. ‘There are hundreds of scientists here, all with reputations, a number of them Earthmen. They will show you anything you want to see, explain how the instruments work. You will find nothing here but honest science done well.’
‘Even if all is as you say, what does it mean? A little ball. A Ping-Pong ball, traveling a few thousand kilometers. Is that what you have after three years?’
‘What you have seen is perhaps more than anyone had a right to expect, Director, with all due respect. What you have seen may be the size of a Ping-Pong ball, and it may have traveled no more than three thousand kilometers, but it is true superluminal flight just as much as if we had moved a starship from here to Arcturus at a hundred times the speed of light. What you have seen is the first public demonstration of true superluminal flight in human history.’
‘But it's the starship I want to see.’
‘For that you will have to wait.’
‘I have no time. I have no time,’ rasped Tanayama in a voice that was nothing more than a hoarse whisper. A fit of coughing shook him again.
And Wendel said in a low voice that perhaps only Tanayama heard, ‘Even your will cannot move the Universe.’
39The three days devoted to officialdom in what was unofficially known as Hyper City had passed grindingly, and now the interlopers were gone.
‘Even so,’ said Tessa Wendel to Crile Fisher, ‘it will take two or three more days to recover and get back to work with full intensity.’ She looked haggard and intensely displeased as she said, ‘What a vile old man.’
Fisher had no trouble divining the reference to be to Tanayama. ‘He's a sick old man.’
Wendel shot an angry look at him. ‘Are you defending him?’
‘Just stating a fact, Tessa.’
She lifted a finger in admonishment. ‘I am quite certain that that miserable relic was as irrational and unreasonable in days past when he was not sick, or, for that matter, when he was not old. How long has he been Director of the Office?’