“Just checking, just being scientific.” Montane gave the others a conspiratorial grin which made Nicklin want to cringe away from him.
“To proceed,” Hepworth said, “the Benign Hypothesis actually requires us to regard those artificial planets as being as durable as the ‘real’ variety, perhaps more so. We should also think of them as being ideal cradles for intelligent life—custom-designed, if you like, for our needs.”
Nicklin tried to make the imaginative leap, and failed. “You’re getting away from me, Scott,” he said. “How… how can you possibly justify that?”
“It’s implicit in the theory, Jim. It’s implicit in the fact that the conditions in Orbitsville itself were so exactly what were needed for the human race to thrive and flourish. How often have we heard Corey advance the same argument, that it was no coincidence that Orbitsville drew us into it—like wasps being lured into a jar of honey?”
“You can’t fall back on—” Nicklin glanced at Montane’s avid, watchful face. “Are we talking science or religion?”
“Science, Jim. Science! Though I don’t mind telling you I would love it if some kind of devil or demon or imp or fucking familiar were to materialise in here at this very moment.” Hepworth palmed his brow. “I’d be more than happy—believe this—I’d be more than happy to sell my immortal soul for a bottle of gin. Or even a glass!”
“What about this hypothesis?” Nicklin said, beginning to feel impatient.
“As I said, there is every evidence of design. Look at the green lines. They weakened building materials, remember. I would say that was a warning for us to keep off them—because they were dangerous boundaries.” Hepworth glanced at the awesome image on the main screen. “I wouldn’t mind betting that all that was achieved without the loss of one human life. I know how preposterous that sounds, but for beings who have total control of every geometry, every dimension—possibly including time—it could be done.”
Montane snickered. “When does the Good Fairy appear?”
Hepworth inclined his head thoughtfully, half-smiling. “That’s as good a name as any for the entity who is in control out there. It fits in well with the name of the hypothesis. I like it, Corey—Good Fairy! Yes, I like it.”
“You could abbreviate that a bit,” Nicklin said, feeling slightly awkward, like a reticent person who has been forced into a public debate. He and the others had just witnessed the most stupendous event imaginable, and it seemed inappropriate for them to be engaging in a quiet philosophical discussion so soon afterwards.
“You mean God?” Hepworth blinked his disagreement. “It’s hardly His style is it?”
“All right, can you tell us who the Good Fairy is, and what she’s up to?”
“The Good Fairy is the entity who designed and constructed Orbitsville in the first place. She must be as far ahead of us in evolutionary terms as we are ahead of amoebae.”
“I could have said something like that,” Nicklin protested. “Scott, I hate to say this—but your theory doesn’t seem to take us very far.”
“Mr Hepworth, could I ask you about the benign part of it,” Voorsanger said, his narrow face pale and intent. “What makes you think that my… that everybody we left behind is still alive?”
“Occam’s razor. You don’t do all that… you don’t go to all the trouble of creating two-thirds of a billion new homes for privileged customers and then allow the customers to die. It simply wouldn’t be logical.”
“Logical! Oh dear, oh dear! Logical!” Montane leaned far back in his seat and smiled at the ceiling.
Nicklin noticed, with a return of his uneasiness, that the smile seemed to be off centre. An obscure heavy-dictionary term flickered in his mind—plaice-mouthed—together with a horror vision of Montane’s facial tissues having turned into an inelastic dough, allowing his mouth to be permanently dragged out of place when he wiped it. Are we all going mad? Has the encounter with the Good Fairy been too much for us?
“I want to believe you, Mr Hepworth,” Voorsanger said, his eyes fixed on Hepworth’s face, pleading. “Do you think we could find the right… planet?”
“I don’t see why not.” Hepworth’s grandiloquent manner was returning. “If Orbitsville’s equatorial material has remained at an equivalent position in the world cloud- and it seems only logical that it should—then—”
“For Christ’s sake, Scott,” Nicklin cut in, raising his voice. “Don’t get carried away! I can hear the wheels going round in your head. You’re adding bits and pieces to your so-called theory as you go along.”
Hepworth wheeled on him and Nicklin saw in his eyes the beginnings of the sudden rage that so often transformed him when his scientific authority was challenged. There was a moment of silent antagonism, then Hepworth’s plump face relaxed. He stood up and slowly walked around the control console, taking up a position beside the main screen, like a teacher with a blackboard. The screen was still largely occupied by the image of the single planet.
Hepworth gave Megan Fleischer a perfunctory smile. “Would you please revert to the general view?”
The pilot’s hand moved slighdy and the planet vanished. The cloud of worlds again dominated the screen, enclosing the sun in a gauzily bejewelled sphere of impossible beauty.
“In your slightly rusticated and untutored way, you were actually making a valid philosophical point,” Hepworth said in mild tones, looking directly at Nicklin. “There is a classic test which can be applied to any good scientific theory. You make a prediction based on that theory, and if the prediction comes true the theory is strengthened.
“Would you be more kindly disposed towards my brain-child if we went through that process? If I were to make a prediction, here and now, and if- as some of us might put it—the prophecy were to be fulfilled? Would that bring a smile back to that cherubic countenance of yours?”
“Don’t make a banquet of it, Nicklin thought irritably, refusing even to nod.
“Very well,” Hepworth went on, an actor enjoying the centre of the stage. “I will now stick my neck out and predict that these worlds… which have just been created by the Good Fairy… all 650 million of them… will soon disappear from our sight.”
Fleischer sat up straighter. “How can you say a thing like that?”
The question reverberated in Nicklin’s mind as he stared at Hepworth’s jowled and silver-stubbled face. The physicist looked more disreputable than ever in his smudged and shoddy clothing. This was the scientist manque, the man who had allowed gin to leach his brain to the extent that he could flunk on high-school basics, but whose imaginative power seemed to encompass galaxies, universes, infinities.
I’m listening to you, Scott, he thought, all animosity and scepticism gone. Say what you have to say—and I’ll believe you.
“It’s all built in to the Benign Hypothesis,” Hepworth said, indicating the world cloud. “I don’t need to tell anybody that these planets are not in orbit around the sun. If the cloud is in rotation, as Orbitsville was, planets in the equatorial band might be in orbit—but I don’t think they are. The entire system is impossible in terms of our celestial mechanics. It should fly apart, but it won’t, and that is because some force is keeping those planets in place—just as another unknown force kept Orbitsville stable.”
Fleischer raised one hand a little, like a student in class. “It seems to me that you’re advancing reasons for the planets not to disappear.”