MacRoscope (63 page)

This was the substance of the first report from Horv, stranded in a globular cluster orbiting Andromeda. It was almost as though the Travelers had been arranged to
prevent
intergalactic commerce. But Horven research continued, for the same signal that revived the sadly decimated populace now allowed the planet to travel freely around Andromeda. In due course the second, more remarkable report was broadcast.

Meanwhile, one drone moon from the Dooon did reappear in the Milky Way Galaxy, carrying their full report and recordings of their Traveler signal. The recordings had no potency in themselves, but were useful for direct comparison with similar records of the local Traveler. This established that two different Travelers were involved; the “fingerprint” differed in slight but consistent ways. One more fact had replaced conjecture, and another item in the tentative map of Traveler activity had been confirmed. Data was now available on three local beams — and all had emanated from the same point source.

No other drone-moon returnees were discovered. Evidently a number had been dispatched, but were either lost in the uncharted configurations of jumpspace or had arrived but not been located in or near the Milky Way. A continuous and complete scan of the entire volume of the galaxy simply was not feasible, so chance played its part.

Finally, utilizing several of the delayed macroscopic return-messages, the records of the single recovered moon, and detailed analysis of the Traveler itself when the Third Siege began, the locals were able to come at the complete story.

It was the dawning of a new era.

The lecture was over. The convoluting shapes faded, and on the stage a prima donna was singing. Her talent was superlative; she seemed to represent the pinnacle of human art, the culmination of individual opportunity. This was as close, in
a cappella
, as one could come to perfection. This was excellence personified.

Afra considered her human heritage, and that of the galaxy. It was as though six great manifestations of culture had occurred, in whatever mode they were considered. The galaxy had gone through three long civilizations and three short sieges, the last still in progress, and now was on the brink of the seventh and perhaps climactic manifestation. Every individual, every species, every culture was on the threshold. The mirror of history provided the reflection of all the past — but that past was a lesser history than what was about to be.

The prima donna was Schön; the symbols paid scant attention to the sex of the individual. Afra was not certain of the nature of her own symbol this time, having experienced no transformation other than purely conjectural, but the incipient realization of the truth — personal and galactic and universal — was enough. Schön might represent the ultimate in Man’s prior evolution, juvenile as he was, but he did not represent Man’s future. Neither did the starfish form that Brad had become; that type of maturity had been cast aside long ago as a dead-end attempt for adjustment to a bygone and limited environment. Man was destined for something else. Not physically, not technologically, but socially and emotionally. It might be millions of years before he achieved it, but that was a mere instant, galactically. The threshold was now, in his realization of his potential, in his vision of his own esthetic future.

With only moderate effort, Afra shifted into station reality. The room had changed; this was another busy complex. Machines were turning out the element-display samples and feeding them into conveyor-slots, undoubtedly for transport to the several visitors’ lounges. Art was being reproduced, and foodstuffs manufactured. This section was, in fact, an extensive but comparatively routine station production center. Either there was a considerable turnover in samples, implying many visits here, or the displays were replaced frequently as a matter of course.

Schön was present, and he held the S′ device. “Mercury was yours, 10 to 5,” he announced. “Your damned birds…” He slapped the instrument.

She had won a round at last! But the vision was upon her:

The street of Macon, she at age seven, the Negro man standing over her. But now her terror was gone. Six manifestations — ascendant, sun, moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury — transmuted to the seventh — Jupiter — and the auspices were beneficent. She knew that the Negro had not come to hurt her; he was not the gunman. The holdup man had been white.

“Little girl, you got to come with me. Your daddy’s been hurt.”

“I know,” she said.

“I work at the store,” he continued, helping her to her feet. “I saw you bolt, and I knew you was scared. But it’s all right now. Your daddy grabbed that robber and held him, and he’s in jail by now I know, but—”

Her knee was skinned, and her shoulder was bruised from the collision in the store, but these were minor injuries. She took the man’s hand and began the walk back. “How bad — I mean, my father—”

“He’s not hurt bad. I’m sure. He’s a brave man, doing that, stepping into a gun like that. A brave man.”

Afra stepped out of the memory-vision again, independent of its power as well. She did not have to run any more.

Schön was watching her, aware that he was losing ground. He had thought to win the round by throwing her into the vision of terror and forcing her to capitulate once more, but this time she had conquered her fear. Her liability was gone. Whatever type of conquest
he
had contemplated was farther from realization now than it had been during their initial encounter in the ascendant.

She was still gaining strength, riding the crest of her victory in Mercury and her release from the continuing repression of the ascendant. She was ready to expand her horizons even more, to encompass the ultimate information and profit thereby.

“Did you consider,” she demanded of Schön, “the essential paradox of the Traveler? The single fact that makes it distinct from all other broadcasts, and makes its very existence proof that its Type III technology is qualitative as well as quantitative?”

“Certainly,” he said — but there had been a fractional hesitation that betrayed his oversight. He
had
missed the obvious, as had they all, and worked it out only in this instant of her challenge. Another point for her side! “The Traveler, as an impulse moving at light velocity, could never supervise so complex a chronological process as melting and reconstitution of an unfamiliar creature, since no memory of prior experience could exist in a pattern traveling past the subject at the ultimate velocity. The portion of the Traveler that directed the reduction of the epidermis would be twenty-four light-minutes beyond, by the time the heart dissolved. And the portion that
finished
the job would not have been advised when the process started — not when it couldn’t, relativistically, catch up for that same twenty-four minutes. Information cannot travel through the material universe faster than light. So the Traveler could not handle the job — yet did. Paradox.”

“You’ve missed it!” she cried. “Genius, you’re blind to the truth. You don’t understand the Traveler any more than the early galactics did.”

“Ridiculous,” he said, irritated. “I can tell you how the melting cycle is accomplished within that limitation. Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“This won’t fit on any picture, stupid.”

Schön intercepted a carbon-cube — one of the tremendous diamonds — on its way to some display and set it on top of one of the art-machines. He trotted down the hall to procure something resembling chalk, and returned to make a sketch on his improvised blackboard. A chalk sketch on a diamond!

“The beam originates at point A, strikes the subject at point B and goes on to point C, never to return,” he said, drawing a cartoon figure. She had no doubt he could turn out a work of art if he chose, but the chalk was clumsy, the surface slick, and he was preoccupied by the reversal of their competitive fortunes.

“For the sake of simplicity,” he continued, “we’ll ignore such refinements as the manufactured melt-beam that actually does the work; that’s merely an offshoot produced ad hoc when triggered by a suitable situation. The point is, the Traveler only touches once and moves on at light velocity. It doesn’t stay to see the job finished, any more than a river stays to watch the wader crossing it. There’s always new water.”

“You’re still all wet,” she said.

“But an object in water
will
set up a stationary ripple,” he continued, seemingly unperturbed. She knew he had to make his point — or lose points. “Because the impulse is not confined to one direction. In the case of our Traveler, the interaction at point B initiates a feedback that meets and prepares the oncoming impulses. So an extended interaction
is
feasible.” He drew another figure on a second face of the cube. “Call point D that secondary interaction, though it occurs at no fixed place. It
does
alert the oncoming signal in advance, making a type of memory and planning possible.

“So the melting is actually a function of B — the A-beam modified by the BD feedback. The only time the A-beam is encountered directly is during the introduction; and this is the reason
for
that introduction. Without that BD feedback, the melting would be a simple chaotic reduction of flesh leading inevitably to death. As it is, when a critical point approaches — such as the need to close down one lung while preserving the other — the Traveler knows, and modifies its program accordingly. The same holds for the reconstitution, which is hardly the natural reformulation of evolution it appears. It doesn’t matter where it occurs, so long as the Traveler is present; the beam is geared to react to a given stimulus in the proper way. A very sophisticated program, particularly since no part of its component is solid, liquid or even gaseous; but effective, as we know.”

“You’re talking about details and missing the whole, just as the galactics did,” she said. “The old trees/forest ignorance. You know what? I think you
can’t
comprehend the Traveler by yourself. You blocked it off along with the destroyer-memory! The truth is out of your reach!”

His face was calm, but she was sure he was furious. “What can you do with your alleged comprehension that I can’t do with mine? Show me one thing.”

“I can talk to the Traveler,” she said.

“To be sure. I can even talk to my foot. But what kind of a
reply
do you get?”

She concentrated all her attention and will-power on this one effort, knowing that her thesis, her one superiority over Schön, depended for its proof on the performance. “Traveler,” she cried, “Traveler, can you hear me?”

Nothing happened. Schön gazed at her with a fine affectation of pity.

Was she wrong?
She had been so certain—

“Traveler,” she repeated urgently, “do you hear me? Please answer—”

Y E S

It came from every direction, that godlike response. It assaulted her senses, scorched her fingers, swelled her tongue, blasted her eardrums, lanced into her eyeballs with letters of fire.
Was this what Moses had experienced on the mountain?