The Great Symmetry (12 page)

Denison was nodding in approval. “Gritty realism. Excellent.”

“I’m glad someone likes it, because I sure didn’t. And then Mira makes me hide in the intake for another few hours, because she isn’t sure I’ve suffered enough.”

“Hey, that move saved your ass,” Mira called out from the front
. “Security rooted through the whole ship. Don’t forget to thank me!”

“I’m dying for a wash,” Evan continued. “And I itch. And someone has been trying to kill me. With missiles! And I have no idea who you are. Mira, how long until we get to ground?”

“
An hour and three minutes. But we’ll start re-entry soon, and it’s going to get noisy.”

“Mr. McElroy−”

“Evan.”

“Evan, I won’t put you on the spot,” Denison offered. “If you’re amenable, I
’d like to know more, whenever you choose. And meanwhile, every minute of this journey is news in the making!”

“I assume you know that I am a fugitive, likely to be killed, and you with me. Are you okay with that?”

“Not if we’re with Mira! Luckiest woman I know. Something always saves her. Charms her way out of any situation.
”

“Charms? Mira?” Evan shook his head.

“Just the ride down,” Mira told Denison. “After we land, we’re going to disappear. You need to complete your courier trip, Rod, because the record shows that’s the reason you came down.
If you don’t do that, alarm bells. We’ll send you a note when we’re ready for you.”

“I just hate to miss out.”

“And a reminder,” Mira prodded. “You agreed as a condition of the charter to respect the privacy of my passenger. You cannot, under any circumstances, mention Evan to anyone, especially to your employer, until we release you from that agreement. Do we have that straight?”

“But I need to file a full report.”

“Ship, dates, times, that’s fine. But my passenger is a private matter. You can’t breach trust on that. Not to anyone.”

Mira looked back and saw Denison nod his acceptance.

Sound appeared around them and then it grew. The small ship began to shudder. Soon it was too loud to talk. The atmosphere of Kelter, thin as it was, was rocking the ship. Re-entry had begun.

How Many Lives

They were nominally on break, although the wheels never stopped turning. There was always a next topic to discuss. Sonia had one in mind.

“Ravi, I’m a little worried, that our work could be misinterpreted,” Sonia opened. How to say this delicately,
without raising too many flags? “Or misapplied.”

“We provide the analysis, they do with it what they will,” he dismissed. Ravi’s thin, sharp features were a perfect match to his typical outlook. “They will never understand the limitations. So we will just do our job.”

“But our job is to help them make good decisions,” Sonia insisted. “You heard that Lobeck is gunning for the ninety-nine percent outcome
. Controlling ninety-nine percent of all entities, of all families. All assets anywhere.”

“That’s his business, isn’t it?” Ravi shrugged. “He told you, it’s above our pay grade.”

The small observation deck recommended by the captain had a magnificent view. They were perched five thousand kilometers up, looking directly down on Kelter.

Sonia visualized the piercing
green thread, among the myriad possibilities. “That outcome is so unlikely. The chances of making it there are so low, and the risks are so high. On that path there is a clear risk of war. Large or small.”

“We fully informed Lobeck, and he’s not stupid.”

“Here’s what I suggest we do,” Sonia said. “It’s completely consistent with our job responsibilities. We should put broad labels on the outcomes, such as Most Realistic, Less Realistic, and Unrealistic. And we should always use them. So if Lobeck plans for the ninety-nine percent outcome, ultimately that’s his choice, but we can keep reminding him, and everyone around him.”

“That’s okay, I guess,” Ravi replied. “Just don’t expect me to get political about this
. You’ve got an agenda, and it’s all yours. Not mine. Label the outcomes as you will.”

At the moment, Kelter was a thick crescent, close to half filled. Just a few days before, Sonia had tried to explain to Simone why half a moon was called a quarter. That was going to take a few more tries.

“Here’s another thing I want you to look at,” Sonia told Ravi. “We’ve been working with the Marcom team
on suppressing stories that point toward our discovery, and now we are also replacing those stories with something better.”

“Seems like it has been successful.
Those Marcom guys are all over it. What are you on about?”

Sonia pulled out her tablet. “I was following some individual cases, and I saw something strange. Look at this article from yesterday. We caught it within 12 minutes and got it pulled. But the author has been zeroed.
For a first time post, no warning. And he’s still zeroed.”

Ravi squashed an imaginary bug on his arm rest. “I’ll bet he won’t repeat that error.”

“But he didn’t even know that it was a sensitive topic. Let’s look at this next one. Yesterday again. Article pulled after nine minutes. This morning the author suffered a myocardial infarction, and died
.”

“So? That’s unusual, but it still happens to people. Especially if they don’t watch what they eat.” Ravi still seemed unconcerned about the trend.

“Next one. We caught this post after only four minutes, which was good because it was pretty explosive. Author speculated that the new glome’s route might have been found by a predictive model.
”

“Good thing we caught it so fast.”

“Yes, but then I checked on the author.”

“And?” Ravi wore his accustomed skeptical look.

“Nothing.”

“So? That’s good.”

“No, I mean nothing,” Sonia said. “No news, no updates, no heartbeat at all.” A heartbeat was the steady stream of information that any person tended to leave while going through the world. Lunch purchases, phone calls, downloads, social chatter.

“What are you driving at?”

“People are out there just doing what people do. Thinking and writing. No malice, no intent to harm us or anyone. And we are not just stomping on the articles, we’re stomping on people. People who have done nothing wrong.”

Ravi looked at her deeply. “Have you truly such power of denial, that you
have found a way not to know? Every day, Sonia. Every day. For years. We provide the path, and they do what needs to be done. Usually, we are farther away than this. When you look at a whole planet, you do not see the fleas upon it.
But you cannot tell me that you did not know.”

“We work with planetary trends.” Sonia indicated the world below them. Two of Kelter’s larger cities were visible. Bergen was lit up on the night side, while Abilene just an uneven smudge in the daylight zone. “We do not suggest specific actions like this.”

“We do not need to.
Let me give you an example. When you proposed the De Beers method, tell me, what was the greatest risk?”

Sonia knew the answer easily. “If one of the Sisters held back on publishing a new glome for a time, an independent might explore it and thus claim it. That was the reason it had not been done before. Fear of being scooped.”

“And we provided clouds of probability, with outcomes better or worse. The better outcomes were all cases where the independents somehow failed to make those discoveries
. If you wanted the De Beers method to succeed, then all you needed to do was stop the independents from having any success exploring. A relatively small budget item, compared to the gains that would then be realized. Vast gains.”

Sonia felt that she was being led by a ring through her nose toward doom. She could not take the step herself. “What do you mean?”

Ravi set out to shred the last tattered remnants of plausible deniability that remained to her. “
Do you not think it is funny that no independents have claimed even one new glome in the past eight years? A slight misalignment of a sensor is all it takes to enter a glome at the wrong vector, you know. In that case, you are turned into plasma. Sometimes a fuel mix can be less than optimal. Credit checks might fail for just long enough to scuttle an expedition. Key investors given an offer they can’t refuse, if they agree to walk away.”

“That’s CT.”

“No, it’s Occam’s Razor. The simplest answer. And it is the one that is factual. Just look carefully at recent history, and you will see. We will never know how many lives, Sonia. Whether lives ended too soon, lives
ruined, or just deflected to a lesser course. We will never be able to count them. If you found a way not to know for this long, I am sorry to end it for you now.”

Sonia looked at the desert planet. Fifty million people. Trends, numbers, economies, customer demographics, social groups. People. “This is not our doing,” she denied without hope. “We are scientists.
”

“What we unleash is our responsibility. If you do not like it, then it is still the case.”

“I was providing for my wife and daughters, every day. The best possible home for them.”

“Spare me your perfect domestic family,” Ravi sneered. “If you tell me one more story of brilliance in grade school, I think I will puke.”

Then Sonia saw a new Ravi. No calculations, no analysis. Just passion. He cupped his hands as if he were holding a baby bird.
“Do you think you are the only person who can love? I am not the good looking guy, or the one with the great words. But someday, I will tell her. Someday I will have enough to offer, for our future. The most beautiful, the most spirited woman who ever lived.”

In a flash, Sonia
knew. Malken. No matter how they argued. Or perhaps because of it. Ravi was in love with Eliza Malken.

And who wouldn’t be?

Then Sonia knew something else.

“Don’t say it! Don’t say her name!
Let it be your secret still. Just for now.” Sonia looked at him with wide eyes, palms raised, ready to hush him. It might already be too late.

It probably was.

“Let’s get back to the analysis,” Sonia said.

“Yes, let’s,” he
quickly agreed.

As they headed back to their work station, Sonia struggled to absorb the meaning of what Ravi had just told her – what she had always known to be true. Ravi set a rapid pace, focusing on a spot in front of him as if he could exclude the rest of the universe.

The sight of his jerky and nervous pace suddenly brought to Sonia an unbidden thought, and she had to suppress a snort at the thought of Ravi’s chances with Eliza Malken. As if.

Diapers And Beer

Lobeck was fit to be tied. “Check every milliliter of space along that path!” he ordered. “The object could be right in front of us. We must have it.”

Skylar had just delivered the news. The message had been decrypted, ultimately by brute force. They had read the vector, and had matched it to the path of McElroy’s runabout, at a certain moment in time
before it had changed its course. The vector led straight to a stable orbit around the moon Foray, just a few hundred thousand kilometers from their position near Top Station.

“We’re starting now,” she told Lobeck. “We now believe that McElroy may have dropped off an object before the ship started evasive maneuvers, along this vector
. For instance, he could have sent a container with the artifact.”

“Could McElroy himself be on that vector?”

“It’s possible. Although, he had no other ship. He would just be in his EVA. Who would do that? Step off an accelerating ship into space?”

“But possible,” Lobeck persisted. “He could be in orbit around Foray even now, in his EVA.”

Skylar admitted the fact. “He could be.”

Lobeck obviously could not remain sitting. He jumped up and paced for exactly three steps, which was what the room allowed. “How long would the air system in his suit last?”

“Until a few hours ago,” Skylar told him.

Lobeck considered for a moment. “Still, we must recover the body. The original artifact may also be with it, since we didn’t find it on the remains of the ship.”

“We have four shuttles that can be under way within the hour.”

“An hour? Tell the crews they have five minutes to launch. We are not here for a picnic.” Lobeck reached into his case and pulled out two small cylinders. He turned each one up to maximum resistance, then raised each one in turn high over his head. The exertion and the pain felt good, life affirming. The objects were a perfect fit to his hands, even with a small rounded dent for each finger. Lobeck had recently found that he begrudged every moment away from that which gave him continued life.

“As you say,” Skylar told him. “
Anyway, we will cover that track, and report results as soon as possible.”

“Ok.” Lobeck pivoted to the next topic. “What about the media?”

“We have been detecting and suppressing sensitive stories. We have had to remove six authors who persisted in republishing. We will have to stay vigilant.”

Lobeck brought the cylinders down in turn and held them in front of his chest, moving them against the strong resistance level that he had set. “Jarvis is cooperating?”

“Fully,”
Skylar assured him.

“Good. After we get the body, or whatever it is, we might be able to leave a Marcom team here and call it done. Then we will move our emphasis to whatever steps we can take, whether in this system or in any other, to protect our discovery and prevent it from being rediscovered in another place.
If we don’t have to take more drastic measures, then it will be good. It’s always more efficient not to destroy resources or harm consumers.”