“And have I come up with a solution? Have I found a way to parcel out this resource?”
Sondra was scared, very scared indeed. Some games she did not wish to play with the Autocrat. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“You are quite correct,” the Autocrat said. “I as yet have no solution. But it will come. It will come.”
“So you don’t intend to seize this station?” Sondra asked.
The Autocrat looked her straight in the eye and gave her one of his finest non-answers. “That is not my current plan,” he said. “But that is of no consequence. I believe I have the answer to a more interesting problem. I think now I know why I came here,” he announced, staring out the port.
“What? I’m sorry? What do you mean, Autocrat?” Sondra asked. She got up and went closer to him—but not too close. “I thought you were here because of the gravity-beam issue. I thought you came out here with some very specific political ideas in mind.”
“Oh, yes, indeed. Quite so. And I have thought of some very promising avenues, even if I have not come up with an ultimate solution. But that is as may be. There are reasons and reasons for doing a thing, you know. Making sure that the Ring does not fall under unilateral control is important, that gravity-beam technology does not set off an interplanetary war is likewise vital. I think that my coming here has alarmed our friends on the Moon and Mars enough that we can now resolve those issues and keep you independent. Useful stuff—but it is not why I came. Not really.”
“Then why are you here?” Sondra asked. But she barely heard her own words, her heart was beating so fast.
“To see this,” he said, gesturing toward the Ring. “To be reminded what real power is, and how small I really am. I have the power of life and death over any number of people, but out there is the most powerful machine ever built by humanity—and it is as nothing compared to the might of the Charonians. They have the power of life and death over whole worlds—and yet they lay hidden here in the Solar System. They feared some other, greater power, and did all they could to hide from it. I knew all that, I suppose, and I’ve seen my share of Charonian power, but this—” he gestured toward the Ring “—this is ours. And it was powerful enough to destroy two worlds.”
“But you knew all that before you came here,” Sondra said. What was all this? He came out here, not to do a little saber-rattling, but as a tourist?
“I knew Earth was a place with fresh breezes and open skies and wild animals,” the Autocrat said. “But I did not understand it, deep in my heart, deep in my soul, down at the level of instinct, until I had been there. Now I am as far as I can get from where Earth was and still be in the Solar System. I had to come here, too, before I could really understand.”
“You’re doing better than I am, Autocrat,” Sondra said. “At least I know I’m never going to understand you.”
The Autocrat smiled at Sondra, a warm and open expression that nonetheless scared the hell out of her. “Good,” he said.
Larry Chao opened his eyes to a room full of faces. Tyrone Vespasian, Selby Bogsworth-something, Marcia MacDougal, a nurse, Lucian Dreyfuss, all of them staring at him.
Wait a second—Lucian? That was impossible. Larry shut his eyes, shook his head, and opened them again. He was relieved to see the imaginary Lucian was gone—but also more than a little disappointed. Lucian. Lucian was going to be with him for a long, long time.
“Hey,” Vespasian said. “He’s awake. Hey, Larry. You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I guess.” Larry shifted position just a bit to sit up in bed, and instantly regretted it. His body was a solid mass of sore muscles. “Well, I will be all right, anyway. Pretty stiff just now.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Vespasian said, his enthusiasm and sympathy sounding more than a bit forced. Clearly he was not here because he cared about Larry Chao’s health.
Larry decided he was not much in the mood for small talk himself. “So,” he asked, swinging his feet around and putting them on the floor. A real, solid, floor, and not a computerized pressure simulator. “Did you get it all?”
“We got it,” Vespasian said. “But we’re not sure what it was. We were hoping you could tell us more about it.”
“I have the feeling you saw less than I did,” Larry said. “Things got rather… strange… after Lucian and I started flying around. I don’t think you could have gotten the feel of it off a simple video link. So what did you see?”
“A video sequence,” Marcia said. “It showed something attacking a Sphere, and then what happens when the Sphere is shattered. It had the Shattered Sphere images we got five years ago in the middle of it. The Sphere dies, its gravity systems fail, all the Captive Suns go flying off into space. The old Shattered Sphere images must have been some sort of shorthand version of the sequence we saw today.”
Larry nodded and stood up. A robe was hanging by the bed, and he pulled it on, wincing a bit. Lots of stiff muscles. Damn it, why couldn’t they give him a few minutes by himself? A chance to go to the toilet, wash, get dressed? Well, it was important. He knew that better than they did. But he still needed a little bit of time alone. “Shorthand is about right,” he said, trying to keep his temper. “If you showed the shorter sequence of a Sphere getting smashed to any high-level Charonian, it would know what it means.”
“But what the hell does it mean?” Vespasian asked. “Why did Lucian show it to you? Was it history, or legend, or a warning?”
“All three,” Larry said, a bit sharply. “But wait a second. That’s all you saw? You didn’t see the rest of it—what I saw?”
“No one’s ever sure they saw what someone else saw,” Selby said dryly. “I know I never am. But what was it you saw? Something different from the Sphere getting smashed?
“Not something different,” Larry replied. “Something more. Something like the answer to all of it.”
“There were bursts of imagery and data,” Marcia said, “running too fast for us to make sense of them. We’ve been doing playbacks, over and over again, but we still haven’t been able to understand them.”
“Yeah, those bursts of data,” Larry said. “Though they sure weren’t bursts to me. They were long and detailed—with Lucian, or whatever Lucian is now—whispering in my ear the whole time, telling me things. For me it seemed as if it took hours for the whole sequence to run. It sounds as if it all took just a few minutes for you.”
“About five or ten,” Marcia said.
“Then you didn’t see what I saw,” Larry said. “It all changed when Lucian led me up into the sky. I think the whole time I was with him he was looking for a way to do whatever it was he did then. But everything changed then. Before, it was a plain old TeleOperator setup. Very realistic and convincing, but I could tell I was in a simulation. And then… then Lucian took me into the sky and it was all different.”
“Different how?” Marcia asked.
“It was like… like the difference between a live performance and a recording. When you’re there, really there, there’s layers, subtleties of… presence, of being there, of touching, of being inside looking around rather than outside looking in. I don’t know. It felt like all my senses were brought together. Sight and hearing and touch and taste and smell all one. Maybe there was some sort of feedback through all the connections and electrodes that put me in synch with it. What you got as data bursts, I got as someone opening up my head and pouring information in.”