What the hell, you can’t live forever.
“If you’re really worried about it,” he continued, “you needn’t be. The chances of something like that occurring are so remote they defy imagination.”
A woman stepped out of the crowd. Plain-looking, black hair, also in her twenties. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said. The comment earned her a glare. But she plunged on. “Who’s to say it can’t happen. Who’s calculating the odds? We’re in unknown territory here.”
“Oh, come on, Barb,” said Clemens. “How many times are we going to have this conversation?”
“In the end,” said Eastman, “you can’t be certain of anything. But what’s life worth if we don’t take an occasional chance?” He was trying to make a joke of it.
She threw up her hands. “You people know it all. No need for me to be concerned.”
“Doesn’t it strike you,” said Eric, “that if there’s any chance at all of a catastrophe on this order, we shouldn’t be doing the experiment?”
“It’s the nature of experimentation,” said Clemens. Whatever that meant.
LOU GOT DINNER for them. Afterward, Eric settled in with several others to listen to projections about the things mankind was going to learn from Origins when it was completed, in another century and a half. Did they think the construction effort would actually continue that long?
They were all convinced it would. Valya suspected it would become a casualty of belt-tightening before the year was over.
The facility was on Greenwich Mean Time, several hours ahead of the clock Eric and Valya had been living by. Consequently their hosts eventually peeled off and left them in an otherwise empty room.
She wished she could sit down at a radio and carry on a conversation with Hutchins. And Mac. She would have liked to be able to explain why she’d done what she had. Both of them probably believed she’d been bought. God knew what they thought of her.
She sat quietly while Eric talked about the downside of public relations, how people acted as if he were only a flack, how they refused to take him seriously. “They think I’m always trying to sell the product,” he was saying. Through a viewport, she could see the soft reflection given off by the collider, fading into infinity.
Yet, if she had it to do again, she would change nothing.
IN THE MORNING, she told Eric she was going to the West Terminal. Did he want to come?
She knew he was glad to be out of the ship’s confined quarters, and would probably have liked to put some distance between himself and her. But he was a gallant sort. Dull, but his heart was in the right place. “I’ll go along if you don’t mind,” he said.
They had breakfast in the cafeteria, said good-bye to Lou and a cluster of Eric’s newfound friends, climbed aboard the Salvator, and let the facility’s gravity controls launch them. The tubular weave of the accelerator glowed in their lights. They moved out along it, drifting past automated machines unwinding wire from spools and knitting it into the structure.
They passed one of the support rings every few seconds. Eventually, an hour or so away from the East Terminal, a couple thousand kilometers out, they approached the midsection of the accelerator, where particles were slammed into each other at the speed of light.
Eric seemed to be feeling better than he had. He’d made a peace of sorts with what she’d done, and they were even able to talk about it. He told her he understood her motivation, and he’d do what he could to help her keep her job.
That wasn’t going to happen. She knew that, but she appreciated his kindness. She was trying to think of a reply when Lou called them from the terminal. “Valya,” he said, “I think we have moonriders.”
I’m starting this because there’s a possibility that a record of events may be helpful later.
Valentina admitted to me yesterday that she was part of a conspiracy to perpetrate a hoax that would entice the government to spend large sums of money on interstellar exploration and on defense. “The truth is,” she told me, “we don’t really know what’s out there.” However that may be, she has proven herself untrustworthy. I regret her actions, because she didn’t think things out before allowing herself to get caught up in all this.
She says she cannot account, however, for Amy’s experience at the Surveyor museum. It’s possible the corporate entities behind this were able to arrange that as well. But I can’t see how, and I can’t bring myself to believe Amy would have been a participant. God help me, I hope not.
— Sunday, May 10
chapter 39
Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.
— Gregory MacAllister, “Advice for Politicians,” Down from the Mountain
Valya ignited her engines — she wasn’t supposed to do that in the vicinity of the accelerator — and started a long turn. She relayed Lou’s message to Union Ops, with the comment she was on her way back to the East Tower.
While the Salvator shed velocity and swung wide of the tube, Lou kept her apprised of the situation: “They’re just floating out there. Two of them. About twenty kilometers away. Black globes.”
“No lights anywhere?”
“Negative.”
“You try to talk to them?”
“They don’t respond, Valya.”
“Lou,” she said, “you might want to think about evacuating.”
“We have no way to do that.”
“Can you put me through to Stein?”
“As a matter of fact, he wants to speak with you. Hold on.”
Stein appeared. The self-contained vaguely superior mode was gone. “Do you two know something you haven’t been telling me?”
“No,” said Valya. Damned if she was going to drag Amy into this. Anyhow, what difference would it make?
“You have no idea what those things are?”
“No.”
“Why do you think they’re a threat?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m listening.”
“One of our people may have talked to them.”
“And what did they say?”
“She says they told her to arrange the evacuation of the Origins Project. Because they were going to destroy it. That’s why the Academy contacted Allard.”
“Why? What’s it about?”
“They mentioned Blueprint.”
“It might have helped if you’d told me all this last night.”
“Professor, I didn’t think you’d have believed me.”
“I’m not sure I believe you now.”
“We’re wasting time. What are you going to do about evacuating?”
“Not much. I have seventy-one people here. Seventy-two counting me. I’ve got two shuttles. What am I supposed to do with everybody else?”
“Get as many off as you can.”
“You really think they’re going to shoot at us? If that’s the case, we’re safer in here. The shuttles are too exposed.”
She didn’t know what to tell him. Didn’t know what she believed. “Maybe we should just take them at their word.”
“What do you mean, ‘their word’? Could you please describe the nature of the conversation? How’d it happen?”
“We thought the person imagined it. It’s beginning to look as if there’s more to it than that.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Have you informed the other tower yet?”
“We’re doing that now. Damn. I don’t believe this is happening.”
“Neither do I, Professor.”
He scattered a stack of pens and chips across his desktop. “Okay. I’ll get as many people off as possible. But when this is over, somebody’s head is going to roll.”