Manx had stood up and was craning to see the blinking point next to Bey’s finger. “I don’t know which sensor that is. Are you sure it’s not a form-change monitor?”
“I checked it a dozen times. It’s not. So I decided that it had to be a signal coming from outside the harvester, maybe something we were picking up on beamed data from an external antenna. It’s not that, either.”
“Don’t keep telling me what it isn’t.” Leo Manx was losing his usual courtly politeness. “We have to check this directly. Which sensor is it?”
“I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to like the answer.” Bey tapped the display. “That sensor is inside the harvester, but it’s in the hardest place of all to check. It monitors the radiation level from the harvester’s kernel, and that means it’s sitting where we can’t get at it. Inside the kernel shields.”
Leo was shaking his head. “You’re suggesting that somebody put a computer and a data storage unit in there? It couldn’t happen. Nothing but hardened sensors can operate inside the shields—even the remote-handling machines that manipulate the kernels don’t have programs.”
“I know. But I’m convinced there’s something there, inside the shield. Some information source, some chaos generator for the form-change process. It’s the ‘negentropic’ influence again—spurious information that’s the source of disruption for the whole system.”
“But the other problems we’ve had were nothing to do with form-change!”
“We’ve gone past form-change now, Leo. Form-change just happens to be highly sensitive to signal control sequences. Problems show up there first. But what I’ve found takes us into kernel control theory, and that’s a different game. I don’t know enough about Kerr-Newman black holes to decide what’s going on. That’s why I’ve been waiting for Aybee to get back from the Sagdeyev space farm.”
“Then you might have to wait a long time. He’s not there.”
“But he’s on the way back, isn’t he?”
“I’m afraid not.” Leo Manx retreated to a cleared area of the floor and sat down cross-legged. “Before I came here I was with Cinnabar Baker. She’d just had a report from a repair and maintenance crew who had reached the farm. Apparently it’s totally deserted. No farmers, no Aybee.”
“More mechanical trouble?”
“No signs of that. The bubble was halfway repaired, reasonably habitable. But deserted. It was just as though everyone had decided to down tools at the same time and leave. We have no idea why they went or where they went. Or even how they went. Baker says that no transit vessel was missing. All they took with them were their suits. There was no sign of new violence.”
“So it could be worse. Aybee’s probably safe. And he’s a survival type.” Bey left the screen and flopped down untidily on a pile of output listings. He was almost at home in his new body, but the odd center of mass offered occasional surprises. “But it’s very bad for me. I don’t know who else to ask.”
“We have other experts on the kernels.”
“Not like Aybee. I need somebody who thinks around corners.” Suddenly Wolf’s labors were catching up with him. He was exhausted.
“And so do I.” For the first time, Leo Manx held up his own blue folder. “That’s why I came to you. You’ve got your problems, I’ve got mine. Aybee got me started on this before we left the farm. I need him as much as you do. But he told me to talk to you if he wasn’t there—I don’t know if you cherish the notion, but Aybee suggests that you and he think about things the same way.”
“He’s wrong.” Bey made no attempt to take the proffered folder. He was still staring moodily at the display screen. “Aybee’s smarter than I am, but he makes me feel a thousand years old. I don’t have his childlike faith. If I can’t solve my own problems, I’m sure I can’t solve anybody else’s.”
It was a dismissive comment; at that point Leo Manx was supposed to stand up and leave. Instead he inched forward along the floor and placed the folder open on Bey’s knees.
“The Negentropic Man,” he said. Bey looked down at him, then shook his head.
“Where he came from,” Manx went on. “What he means. Aybee listed four ways of thinking about entropy: thermodynamic entropy, statistical mechanics entropy, information theory entropy, and kernel entropy. But he couldn’t suggest which meaning was appropriate.”
“Nor can I.”
“That’s all right. I don’t want to ask you about that.” Manx lifted one sheet from the folder. “Aybee suggested that if we want to make progress we ought to examine the exact time when your hallucinations occurred. I’ve made a list of everything that you told me when we were in transit from the Inner System. Now I’d like to make sure it’s complete.”
Bey stared gloomily at the list. He knew what Leo was doing: exactly what he would have done himself with a reluctant partner. Bait him with something he was interested in, reel him in slowly, and hope that after a few minutes he could be dragged far enough to be useful.
Well, what the hell. It was a game two could play, and Bey had gone as far as he could in the form-change tracking without allowing time for his ideas to sort themselves out.
“You only want to hear about my seeing the Negentropic Man? You know that Sylvia is sure he’s Black Ransome?”
“I know. We have only her word for it. Isn’t the Negentropic Man the only person you saw in your hallucinations?”
“He was, until a few days ago.” Wolf did not look up. He was not sure he wanted to tell anyone at all about Mary’s strange visit. It felt remote and improbable. Even the day after it happened, he had become half-convinced that he had dreamed the whole episode. “I saw Mary Walton,” he said at last. “After I came out of the change tank.”
“You mean—saw her in person?”
“No. A recorded message, left in my sleeping quarters.”
“And you didn’t tell Sylvia or Cinnabar Baker?”
“No.” Bey hesitated for a moment, evaluating the risk. He decided that he had to trust somebody—they could not all be spies. “Leo, I had a reason why I didn’t talk about this. We have an information leak here. We arrived from the space farm just a few weeks ago. No one knew we were coming; no one even knew we had survived the ‘accident’ there. No messages were sent out from here after we arrived, saying we were here. I know, because I checked the message center myself. And yet, as soon as I went to my sleeping quarters, a planted recorded message from Mary Walton was waiting for me. Leo, until I was taken to those quarters, I didn’t know myself where I would be sleeping.”
“So that’s why you didn’t talk about it to me, or Sylvia Fernald, or Cinnabar Baker?” Manx was full of unfocused energy that made his arms and legs jerk like a puppet’s. “Bey, I know you’re not used to Outer System ways, and I know where you’re heading. But it’s crazy. Those are terribly serious charges that you’re making, and it’s just as well you told this only to me. I can absolutely assure you that Sylvia and Cinnabar are not providing information leaks.”
“Not intentional ones, maybe. But think back, Leo. Somebody seemed to know we were going to the farm almost before we set out. Somebody knew we were here the moment we arrived.”
“Then it must be somebody on the harvester staff.”
“On two different harvesters? We left the Opik Harvester; we came back here to the Marsden Harvester. Are you suggesting that there are two leaks, both close to Cinnabar Baker, one on each harvester?”