MacRoscope (11 page)

“It isn’t a telescope.”

“The Senator didn’t ask you what it
wasn’t
!”

Ivo could tell by the silence that even the non-English-speaking personnel present were waiting to see the gadfly get swatted. Brad’s obscure humor was not the only trait friends had come to appreciate.

They were disappointed this time. Brad
did
go into the elementary lecture reserved for visiting dignitaries. After a moment Ivo realized why: Brad was swatting for the gad, not the gadfly.

“According to Newton’s theory of gravitation, every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force directly proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Currently we prefer to think of gravity as the physical manifestation of the curvature of space in the presence of matter. That is—”

“What about the
telescope
?” the flunky demanded. “The Senator doesn’t have the time for irrelevant—”

Borland touched him on the arm again. It was like lifting the needle from a record.

“That is,” Brad continued, having taken advantage of the break to move to one of the blackboards, and now erasing the complex “sprouts” diagram there, “we might visualize space as a taut elastic fabric, and the masses in our universe as assorted objects resting upon it. The heavier objects naturally depress the surface more.”

He drew a sagging line with a circle in its center, then added a smaller circle. Ivo tried to imagine how a sprouts game might achieve such a configuration, but his talent did not help him there.

“This is the way the depression of space in the vicinity of our sun might affect the Earth, making due allowances for the two-dimensionality of our representation,” Brad said. “As you can see, the small object will have a tendency to roll in toward the large, unless it should spin around it fast enough for centrifugal force to counteract the effect. But of course the Earth creates its own depression, and objects near it will be similarly attracted unless they establish orbits.

“The universe as a whole, therefore, is both curved and immensely complicated, since there are no real limits to any depression, large or small. No actual ‘force’ is necessary to explain the effects we experience in the presence of matter, apart from the basic nature of the situation. The gravitic interactions are everywhere, however, ripple upon ripple, and with constantly changing values. Any question so far?”

“GTR,” Borland said.

“General Theory of Relativity, yes. Our concern is with these interactions.” Brad marked a place on the diagram, between the sun and Earth, but nearer the latter so that it crested the wave. “We find that the peculiar stress of overlapping depressions — fields of gravity, if you will — creates a faint but unique turbulence, particularly at points in space where two or more fields are of equivalent potency. You might liken it to the sonic boom, where a physical object impinges the domain of sound, or Cerenkov radiation. It is, like the Cerenkov, a form of light — or rather, a subtle harmonic imprinted upon light passing through the turbulence. This aspect of light was not understood or even measurable until very recently; our technology was not sophisticated enough to detect such perturbations, let alone analyze their nature.”

Borland held up his hand as though in a classroom, reminding Ivo again of Groton’s experience. Now the spitwads were political. “
Now
a question, if you please. You tell me a beam of light passes through this gravity turbulence between two objects in space, and gets kinked a bit. But the way I figure it, there’s hardly a cubbyhole in the cosmos that doesn’t have gravitational equivalence of some sort; there are just too many stars, too many specks of dust, all with their little fields crossing into infinity. Your beam of light should have a thousand kinks, and kinks on kinks, if it travels any distance. So how do you figure which is which? Seems to me you’re better off just taking your light as is, through a regular telescope; that’s uncluttered, at least.”

It occurred to Ivo with a little shock that a very sharp mind lurked behind the senatorial façade.

“This is true, ordinarily,” Brad admitted carefully. “The ‘kinks’ our instrument detects are crowded. But while raw light is superior both for short work and long range, definition suffers in the intermediate range of say, one light-minute to a hundred thousand light-years. The macronic imposition, in contrast, is, for reasons we have yet to understand, more durable. We find the macrons in a beam emanating from a thousand light-years away to be almost as distinct as those from our own sun’s field. The same is true for virtually any galactic distance. As our range increases—”

“I’m with you. You can shout down the hall, but you need a phone for the next city, even if it sounds tinny, and it works the same for the next continent. Now that term you used — macron — that sounds like a thing, not a quality.”

“Yes. Our nomenclature is vague because our comprehension is vague. We appear to be dealing also with the particle aspect of light, more than with the wave, and perhaps with particles of gravitation. That may be the reason the effect appears to be independent of the square-cube law.”

“Mate a photon to a gravitron and breed a macron,” Borland remarked. “Damn interesting. I can see the implications of such interaction between light and gravity, untrained as I am in quantum mechanics.” Untrained but hardly ignorant, Ivo thought. “So you either get
all
your macron, or none of it,” the Senator continued after a pause. “But how can you get pictures of objects on or inside a planet, where there is no light?”

“The turbulence is removed from the source of the field, since it is equivalence that counts. Even an object
in
a planet has mass of its own, and its field interacts with that of the planet and of neighboring objects. At some point there will be an interaction that occurs in light — and some of the resultant macrons will reach us, however far away we are. It is only necessary for our receiver and equipment to be sufficiently sensitive. A computer stage is required for the initial rectification, and another to sort out and classify the myriad fragmentary images obtained. It is not a simple process. But once complete—”

“You are able, with your macroscope, to inspect any point in space — or on Earth?”

Brad nodded.

“I observed your emblem.”

“We do not use it that way,” Brad said shortly.

Ivo realized that they were talking about the platinum-plated shovel: the S D P S. Who could fathom its meaning by guesswork? Evidently the Senator understood the initials well enough. Perhaps he had prior information? He sounded less and less amateurish to Ivo. Had Brad met his match?

“Naturally not,” Borland was saying. “Certain persons might not take kindly to such observation. Some might even feel so strong a need to protect their privacy that they would institute stringent measures. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” Brad said, his tone showing his disgust. The gad had not been swatted yet, though the gadfly had merged with the background.

“No you don’t. Have you ever lived in one of facing tenements? Your window opening to a courtyard of windows?”

“No.”

“You missed a good education, lad.” Borland looked around. “Anybody else?”

The scientists of the station stood awkwardly.

“In a tenement,” he repeated softly. “Anybody.”

A brown hand went up from the doorway. It was Fred Blank, of the maintenance department, also table-tennis champion. His signal was tentative, as though he didn’t like calling attention to himself at such a gathering.

Borland faced him. “Ever use the glasses?”

Blank looked sullen.

“Or maybe a cheap telescope?” Borland persisted. “Yeah, you know what I mean. Ten, twenty, maybe a hundred windows, depending on your location, and maybe half with no shades. Who wastes dough on shades, on nigger wages? Some girls don’t know they’re putting on a show. Some don’t care. Some figure it’s good for business. Same for some men. And family fights are fair game for capacity audience.” He returned to Brad. “You know how you cure a scoper?”

“I’d call the police.”

Borland wheeled to point at Blank. “That right, soul brother?”

Blank shook his head no. He was, reluctantly, smiling now.

“Yeah, you know.” Borland had assumed complete control of the dialogue. “You was there, Kilroy. You had the education. Calling cop ain’t in the book.”

The scientists of the station stood mute, except for those translating for their companions. Borland was showing them all up for impractical theoreticians.

“Now you begin to follow, maybe. To put it in highbrow for you: mass voyeurism is a typical consequence of the cybernetic revolution, and you aren’t going to curb it by invoking prerevolution methods. Back in the old days when we were nomads scrunching in tents, anybody poke his snoot in your door uninvited, you bash it in with your horny fist. The agricultural revolution changed all that, made cities possible — and cities are by definition crowded. The industrial revolution, maybe five thousand years later, made it ten times worse, because then every Joe had the wherewithal to poke into his neighbor’s business with impunity. The cybernetic revolution really tied it, because then that average Joe had the wherewithal
and
the time to pry — and nobody pays for a canned show when there’s a live one free.

“Now we’ve got the superscope, and we can diddle in our stellar neighbor’s business, as though our own weren’t enough. Now how do you figure a smart ET who likes his privacy is going to stop you from peeking — when there’s maybe a fifteen-thousand-year time-delay?”

The station personnel looked at each other in dismay. Obvious — yet none of them had thought of it! A mind-destroying logic-chain that wiped out the peeping tom, wherever and
when
ever he might be. The most direct and realistic answer to snooping.

Borland waited for the babel of translation and discussion to die away. The men who had studied him with veiled contempt showed respect now, and the Russian had stopped smiling. “Now, comrades, suppose we forget about preconceptions and tackle the main problem. I know most of your governments better than you do — yes, even yours, Ivan — because that is my profession. Politics. I also know something of human nature — the reality, not the theory — and thereby it figures I know something too of
alien
nature. You’re in trouble here, and so am I in certain respects you wouldn’t care about. Why don’t we forget our differences, pool our resources, and find out what we can come up with? Maybe we can help each other a little.”

Men looked at each other over the renewed murmur of the translations. Tentative smiles broke out. “Maybe we can, Senator,” Brad allowed.

Borland spoke to his helper. “Go hold a preliminary press conference, kid. Tell ’em what the Senator means to do — but stay well clear of the facts. Irritate ’em if they get nosy. You know the routine.” The flunky left without a word.

“Li’l wonder, ain’t he?” Borland remarked. “Took me years to find a foil like that. Now where’s this tape?”

“Tape?”

“Lad, my reconnaissance is not
that
clumsy. The recording you have of the destroyer. The one that clouds men’s minds, ha-ha-ha. The Shadow knows.”

“It isn’t a tape, or even a recording,” Brad said. “We can’t record it — at least, what we take down doesn’t have the effect. The — meaning doesn’t register.”

“But you
can
pipe it in here live, right? No sense inspecting a dead virus. We want to know what makes it kick. It only comes in on one station, right? And it’s continuous; you can tune it in any time?”

“One segment of the macroscopic band, yes. The center segment, where reception is strongest. The one we could use most effectively — if we could only tune the destroyer
out
.”

Brad showed the Senator to a smaller projection room. Most of the scientists and personnel dispersed, satisfied that the situation was coming under control. Afra appeared in blouse and skirt, making even plain clothing look elegant. Ivo tagged along, forgotten for the moment.

“This is where we set it up,” Brad explained tersely. “It amounts to a computer output, with the main signal processed at the receiver. There are electronic safeguards to guarantee that none of the effects penetrate beyond this room. This device is dangerous.”

“A program,” Borland said musingly. “A mousetrap in a harem. But why make up a show like that, instead of simply lobbing a detonator into the sun?”

“Evidently the originator isn’t against
all
life,” Brad said. “This is selective. It only hits the space-traveling, macroscope-building species like ourselves. The snoopers. So long as we keep our development below a certain level, we’re safe.”

“My sentiments too. That the kind of safety you care for?”

“No.”

“Let’s run it through again. I put out a theory, just to show you how it could be, but I’m not putting my money on it yet. GIGO, you know. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Maybe my notion is the right one, but let’s eliminate the others first. Like that song: ‘Oh why don’t I work like other men do? How the hell can I work when the skies are so blue? Hallelujah, I’m a bum!’ Feed that to a minister and he’ll tell you it’s profane. Should be ‘how the heck,’ the church-approved euphemism. Try it on a professor and he’ll tell you it’s agrammatical: should be ‘
as
other men do.’ But a worker will tell you the whole thing’s been censored. Should be ‘how the hell can I work when there’s no work to do!’ Us lowbrows get to the root, sometimes. Not always. You figure they’re afraid of the competition from some smart-aleck new species?”