Greg Bear Heads

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'My apologies, William.'
'Judging from your face, you'd think we've already lost,' he said.
'No. We may have won,' I said.
'Then cheer up a little, if only to give me some breathing room in all this
gloom.'
He returned to work; I walked out on the bridge and deliberately stood between
the force disorder pumps to punish my body with their fingernail-on-slate
sensation of deep displacement.
Rho and I joined William in the Ice Pit laboratory at eight hundred. He
assigned Rho to monitoring the pumps, which he ramped to full activity. I sat
watch on the refrigerators. There didn't seem to be any practical need for
either Rho or me to be there. It soon became obvious we had been invited more
to provide company than to help or witness.
William was outwardly calm, inwardly very nervous, which he betrayed by
occasional short bursts of mild pique, quickly apologized for and retracted. I
didn't mind facing pique; somehow it made me feel better, took my mind off
events happening outside the Ice Pit.
We were a strange crew; Rho even more subdued than William, unaffected by the
grating of the disorder pumps; I getting progressively drunker and drunker
with an uncalled-for sense of separation and relief from our troubles; William
making a circuit of all the equipment, ending at the highly polished Cavity
containing the cells, mounted on levitation absorbers just beyond the left
branch of the bridge.
Far above us, barely visible in the spilled light from the laboratory and the
bridge, hung the dark grey vault of the volcanic void, obscured by a debris
net.
At nine hundred, William's calm cracked wide open when the QL announced
another reverse in the lambda phase, and conditions within the cells that it
could not interpret. 'Are they the same conditions as last time?'
William asked, fingers of both hands drumming the top surface of the QL.
'The readings and energy requirements are the same,' the QL said. Rho pointed
out that the force disorder pumps were showing chaotic fluctuations in their
'draw' from the cells. 'Has that happened before?'
'I've never had the pumps ramped so high before. No, it hasn't happened,'
William explained. 'QL, what would happen to our cells if we just turned off
the stabilizing energy?' 'I cannot guess,' the QL replied. It flatly refused
to answer any similar questions, which irritated William.
'You said something earlier about this possibly reflecting future events in
the cells,' I reminded him. 'What did you mean by that?'
'I couldn't think of any other explanation,' William said. 'I still can't. QL
won't confirm or deny the possibility.' 'Yes, but what did you mean? How could
that happen?' 'If we achieved some hitherto unstudied state in the cells,
there might be a chronological backwash, something reflected in the past, our
now.'
'Sounds pretty speculative to me,' Rho commented.
'It's more than speculative, it's desperate rille dust,' William said.
'Without it, however, I'm completely lost.' 'Have you correlated times between
the changes?' Rho asked.
'Yes,' William said, sighing impatiently.
'Okay. Then try changing your scheduled time for achieving zero.'
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William looked across the lab at his wife, both eyebrows raised, mouth open,
giving his long face a simian appearance. 'What?'
'Reset your machines. Make the zero-moment earlier or later. And don't change
it back again.'
William produced his most sardonic, pitying smile. 'Rho, my sweet, you're
crazier than I am.'
'Try it,' she said.
He swore but did as she suggested, setting his equipment for five minutes
later.
The lambda phase reversal ended. Five minutes later, it began again.
'Christ,' he whispered. 'I don't dare touch it now.' 'Better not,' Rho said,
smiling. 'What about the previous incident?'
'It was continuous, no lapses,' he said.
'There. You're going to succeed, and this is a Prior result, if such a thing
is possible in quantum logic.' 'QL?' William queried the thinker.
'Time reverse circumstances are only possible if no message is communicated,'
it said. 'You are claiming to receive confirmation of experimental success.'
'But success at what?' William said. 'The message is completely ambiguous...
We don't know what our experiment will do to cause this condition in the
past.'
'I'm dizzy, having to think with those damned pumps going,' I said.
'Wait'll they're completely tuned to the cells,' William warned, enjoying my
discomfort. His grin bared all his teeth. He made final preparations, calling
out numbers and settings to us, all superfluously. We echoed just to keep his
morale up. From here on, the experiment was automatic, controlled by the QL.
'I think the reversal will end in a few minutes,' William said, standing
beside the polished Cavity. 'Call it a quantum hunch.'
A few minutes later, the QL reported yet again the end of reversal. William
nodded with mystified satisfaction. 'We're not scientists, Micko,' he said
cheerfully, 'we're magicians. God help us all.'
The clocks silently counted their numbers. William walked down the bridge and
made a final adjustment in the right hand pump with a small hex wrench. 'Cross
your fingers,' he said.
'Is this it?' Rho asked.
'In twenty seconds I'll tune the pumps to the cells, then turn off the
magnetic fields ...'
'Good luck,' Rho said. He turned away from her, turned back and extended his
arms, folding her into them, hugging her tightly. His face shone with
enthusiasm; he seemed gleeful, childlike.
I clenched my teeth when he tuned the pumps. The sensation was trebled; my
long bones seemed to become flutes piping a shrill, unmelodic quantum tune.
Rho closed her eyes and groaned. 'That's atrocious,' she said. 'Makes me want
to crap my pants.'
'It's sweet music,' William said, shaking his head as if to rid himself of a
fly. 'Here goes.' He beat the seconds with his upheld finger. 'Field ... off.'
A tiny green light flashed in the air over the main lab console, the QL's
signal.
'Unknown phase reversal. Lambda reversal,' the QL announced.
'God damn it all to hell!' William shrieked, stamping his foot.
Simultaneously with his shout, there came the sound of four additional
footstamps above the cavern overhead, precisely as if gigantic upstairs
neighbours had jumped on a resonant floor. William held his left foot in the
air, astonished by what seemed to be echoes of his anger. His expression had
cycled beyond frustration, into something like expectant glee: Yes, by God,
what next?
Rho's personal slate called for her attention in a thin voice. My own slate
chimed; William was not wearing his.
'There is an emergency situation,' our slates announced simultaneously.
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'Emergency power reserves are in effect.' The lights dimmed and alarms went
off throughout the lab. 'There have been explosions in the generators
supplying power to this station.'
Rho looked at me with eyes wide, lips drawn into a line.
The mechanical slate voices announced calmly, in unison, 'There has been
apparent damage to components above the Ice Pit void, including heat
radiators.' This information came from auto sentries around the station. Every
slate in the station - and emergency speaker systems throughout the warrens
and alleys - would be repeating the same information.
A human voice interrupted them, someone I did not recognize, perhaps the
station watch attendant. Somebody was always assigned to observe the sentries,
a human behind the machines. 'William, are you all right? Anybody else in
there with you?'
'Mickey and I are in here with William. We're fine,' Rhosalind said.
'A shuttle has dropped bombs into the trenches. They've taken out your
radiators, William, and all of our generators are damaged. Your pit is drawing
a lot more power than normal I was worried perhaps-' [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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