Bearing an Hourglass (42 page)

“Oh,” she said blankly. “I’ve never been to Jupiter. Are you sure?”

“It’s why ants aren’t the size of elephants. The square-cube ratio prevents them from achieving such great size without changing form radically.”

“But the big termites—”

Excellent point! Scientifically, those monsters were impossible! But he had the answer. “Magic changes things, of course. Without magic, those huge termites could not exist.”

“Then—with magic, the universe could double!”

Another nice point; she was certainly smarter than Dursten. But her point was flawed. “Magic is limited to planetary range. Sections of the universe are not magic; these would perish. The laws of science, in contrast, are universal, so science is what applies here. Thus, where magic overrides science, as here, huge termites are possible,
but the doubling of the universe remains impossible.”

“That’s for shore!” Dursten agreed. “I never had no truck with none o’ that there magic.”

Norton had eliminated Excelsia as an independent thinker; she, like Dursten, knew less than he did. The dream-world hypothesis, so far, was two for two. “You may step down, Damsel.”

She stepped out of the alcove, seeming perfectly normal now that her interview was over. She brought out a little mirror and checked her makeup.

“Must be your turn,” Norton said to the Alicorn. “Want to try an alcove?”

“An Alicove!” Dursten said, chuckling.

The Alicorn shrugged and stepped into the third. This one turned out to be larger than it looked; there was room. He put his forehooves on the footprints and froze.

“Hello, Alicorn,” Norton said. “Can you speak?”

The Alicorn animated.
Telepathically
, he projected.
But I am not exactly the animal at the moment
.

“I understand.”

“I shore don’t,” Dursten said. “What in space is going on?”

“The Alicorn is telepathic,” Excelsia said. “Everyone knows that.”

The spaceman was silent, embarrassed. Obviously he hadn’t known—and neither had Norton. It seemed the Alicorn generally didn’t bother to communicate that way to people with whom he was not tame.

Will you accept my advice?

“First I must question you.”

Proceed
.

“This is a scientific question. You are a magical creature. Can you handle it?”

In this guise I can
.

“It is said, scientifically, that the mass of an object increases as that object is accelerated toward the velocity of light. Thus nothing can actually reach the speed of light, because its mass would become infinite.”

True
.

“But what, then, of light itself? Doesn’t its mass become infinite—thus preventing it from achieving its set velocity?”

Light is massless, so is not affected
.

“But it bends around stars. It is affected by gravity, and gravity is the force that acts on mass. Light must have mass.”

The Alicorn sent no thought; he was unable to answer.

Norton dismissed him and moved to the final alcove. The Bemme entered it, settling her base on the footprints. She froze.

He went through the ritual, animating her in the new office. He asked her his most difficult question: “Are you conversant with the scientific theory of relativity?”

“Naturally. We Bems grasped it long before Man did.”

“Then you know that when a spaceman takes off from Earth and accelerates to a significant fraction of the velocity of light, he experiences the phenomenon of time dilation. For him and his ship, time seems to slow, so that at the end of a trip of perhaps a month, he returns from the far reaches of the galaxy to discover that the folk back on Earth have aged maybe centuries and all his friends are gone.”

“Shore, any fool knows that!” Dursten put in. “Happens all the time. That’s why a true spaceman’s got to love ’em and leave ’em; they’re old hags when he makes port again.”

“Continue,” the Bemme said.

“But a prime tenet of special relativity is that everything is relevant; there is no absolute standard of rest. So, while from Earth the spaceman seems to be traveling at nearly light-speed and suffering time dilation, the effect is opposite from the spaceman’s view. To him, Earth is traveling at nearly light-speed and suffering the time dilation. So when he rejoins Earth, he should discover that the folk on Earth have aged only a fraction as much as he has. How do you resolve this paradox?”

“There is no paradox,” the Bemme said. “Though for
a while each party perceives the other as functioning more slowly than itself, this is largely a matter of perspective.”

“Perspective? They can’t both be right!”

“Perspective,” she repeated firmly. “If you are on one spaceship, and I am on another, and our ships drift apart in space, to each of us the other’s ship will appear smaller than his own, together with the people in it. The instruments of each will measure that diminution of size in the other. Each viewer is correct—but this is perspective, not paradox.”

“Say, I never thought of it that way!” Norton exclaimed.

“Me neither,” Dursten said.

“The human species does tend to cogitate shallowly,” the Bemme agreed politely.

“Hey, watch it with them dirty words!” the spaceman said.

“But does this mean,” Norton asked, wrestling with the paradox of perspective, “that when the spaceman returns to Earth, there will be no difference in their time frames? Once the distortion of perspective is eliminated?”

“No, there will indeed be a difference, though not as great as perspective made it seem. The spaceman will have aged less than the folk on Earth.”

“But then the principle of relativity—the apparent slowing of the Earth, from the spaceman’s viewpoint—”

“Perspective does not change reality,” the Bemme said patiently. “Despite your planet’s apparent slowing, from the spaceman’s perspective, there is a distinction. He ages less.”

“Now I can’t accept that just on your say-so! What dis—”

“The distinction of acceleration. The spaceman experiences it; Earth does not. To each party, the other is retreating at increasing velocity, but only the spaceman
feels
the extra gees. This distinguishes his condition from that of Earth or the rest of the universe; his time is slowed.”

“Acceleration? Why should that—?”

“Besides,” Dursten put in, “he decelerates when he comes home, so it cancels out.” He seemed to have forgotten which side of the issue he was on.

“There is no such thing as deceleration,” the Bemme said. “There is only negative acceleration, which is to say, acceleration in the opposite direction. The spaceman accelerates twice—when he is departing from Earth and when he returns to it.”

“Very well,” Norton said. “So he accelerates twice. What has that to do with time?”

“Everything. It is easier to understand in the frame of general relativity, which relates to gravity. Gravity slows time, literally—and the effects of gravity are indistinguishable from those of acceleration. So when the spaceman accelerates, or as Dursten so quaintly puts it, decelerates, his time slows—regardless of the temporary effects of perspective.”

“Gravity slows time?” Norton asked dully.

“Certainly. The effect reaches its extreme at the so-called event horizon of a so-called black hole, which is a stellar object of such density and mass that gravity increases to the point at which light itself can not escape, and time slows to eternity. Thus the spaceman bold enough to travel there would become truly timeless.”

“But nothing escapes from a black hole!” Norton protested. “How can we ever know what goes on there?”

“Three ways. First, we have worked it out theoretically, in the form of the general theory of relativity. Second, we have tested it by experimenting with lesser levels of acceleration and gravity; it has been verified that the intensity of gravity does affect a clock. Third, we have explored black holes magically and recorded the effects there. In this manner, magic, far from opposing science, facilitates it.”

“So there is no clock paradox?” Norton asked weakly.

“Correct,” the Bemme agreed. “And, I might add, your other questions were somewhat deficient in aptness. You confused the theoretical work of Galileo with that of Newton and misstated their conclusions; and as for the infinite mass of anything traveling at light-speed, you failed to take cognizance of the fact that an infinite series can have a finite total. Mass and energy are merely different aspects
of the same reality; mass is merely solidified energy. So when an object accelerates toward C, or light-speed, the energy required to—”

“Enough!” Norton cried, his mind spinning. The Bemme obviously knew more than he did, and was teaching him things he had never grasped before and could not now dismiss as nonsense. This was the mind he had been seeking. “I will accept your advice.”

“An excellent decision,” the Bemme said, stepping out of the alcove. “What is your problem?”

“I’m stuck in this frame and I need to get back to Earth. How do I return?”

“You never left Earth,” she told him. “That should have been obvious to you the moment you remembered that magic is limited to planetary scale; you can not tour the universe by magic.”

“You mean I
am
in a dream? Then how do I wake?”

“You are not in a dream. You are in an illusion fostered by the Father of Illusion. You must find a way to perceive reality with certainty; that will vanquish the illusion.”

“An illusion?” Norton asked, still reeling. “Are
you
an—?”

“No. I am what I seem—a creature alien to your planet. I needed a job, and your Figure of Evil hired me for this role.”

Norton looked at the others. “And they—?”

“They, too, are role players—but they don’t know it. For them, the roles have become reality. This is perhaps just as well, for it prevents them from realizing they are damned.”

“And you are not?”

“I am not of your socio-political-religious frame. I have no attachment to your Incarnative figures of Good or Evil. I deal with them on a purely practical basis. Your damnation does not relate to me. When I tire of this job, I will seek some other.”

“How do I perceive reality, then?”

“That I can not tell you. I can describe reality to you in superlatively accurate detail, but only you can perceive it. As with any natural function, you must do it yourself.”

Surely true! “But if I am on Earth, why do I perceive the make-believe world of the Magic-Lantern Cloud? I mean, now that I know—”

“I have some difficulty grasping the irrationalities of your species,” the Bemme confessed. “I presume you find some private satisfaction in the perceptions you maintain, and the Lord of Buzzbugs caters to this innate propensity.”

“Buzzbugs?”

“I think you call them flies. Small creatures with pretty eyes. On my planet we call them buzzbugs, because their tentacles buzz as they levitate.”

The Bemme was a real font of information! Perhaps almost too much information. “Um, Sning—do you know how I can break out?”

Squeeze.

“But I have to figure out how, so you can confirm it?”

Squeeze.

Norton sighed. He had made significant progress, but it seemed he had a long way to go yet.

He pondered a moment. “Would getting the null-psi amulet the Genius wants help me?”

“No,” the Bemme said, while Sning squeezed once.

Oops—opposite signals! Which one should he trust? Well, he would ask. “Sning says the amulet would help me, but you say it wouldn’t. How can I tell which of you is right?”

“We’re both right,” the Bemme said, and Sning squeezed once.

“But you can’t be! Your answers are opposite!”

“I shall explain, since you seem to have some difficulty grasping selective aspects of truth. If you get the amulet and take it to the Genius, he will use psi to transport you back to the real world. In that sense the amulet will help you. But that process will take so long, because of the hurdles you must pass to reach and win the amulet, that by the time you return to reality, Satan will have completed his designs and your effort to balk him will be wasted. In addition, he will still be able to send you back
into this illusion at will, forcing you to obtain the amulet again to get out, playing by his rules. Therefore the amulet will not help you in the way you need; it will merely give you the illusion of help. Sning is less sophisticated than I am and lacks the superior objectivity of being alien, so could only provide you with the limited immediate truth. When you ask an inadequate question, he is at a disadvantage.”

SQUEEZE!

Norton winced; that had been a sharp constriction! He realized that he had been giving Sning trouble all along, asking wrong questions, so that the little snake had had to give hesitant yeses or noes, or throw up his nonexistent hands with triple squeezes.

“Then how can I return to reality fast enough to balk Satan?” he asked after a pause.

“Here I have the disadvantage of being alien,” the Bemme said, though she did not seem perturbed about it. “I have no problem perceiving reality, but, of course, I have better eyes than you do. I can not reach into your mind and change your perception. Because I am immune to psi, I have none myself. All I can do is give you my intelligent advice when you ask for it.”

“Do you know how I can return, Sning?”

Squeeze.

There it was again; the one who could speak could not give him the answer, while the one who had the answer could not speak. Satan, if he happened to be watching this, probably found the irony delicious. If the occasion ever came for Chronos to torment Satan the way Satan had tormented him …

“Well, maybe the others can help,” Norton said without much hope. He turned to the group, who had been ignoring this dialogue. “Have any of you any notion how I can return to, uh, Earth quickly?”

“Why, shore, pardner,” Dursten said. “Just put that there squeeze dingus on the Bemme and let ’em talk in overdrive. They’re both a heap smarter’n we are.”

Norton gaped. So obvious a solution! “Okay, Sning?”

Squeeze.

Norton held out his hand, and the Bemme held out a tentacle. Sning uncurled, crawled across, and curled around her appendage.