The Infinity Link (72 page)

Dee laughed, with a trace of bitterness. "If any of us had dreamed how it would turn out—"

Payne pulled her closer, clasping her hand tightly. Denine leaned against him, and then slid out of her chair and into his lap, the two of them tottering together in the swivel chair. She buried her head against his shoulder, and he caressed her hair with long, gentle strokes. "I love you," he said softly.

She raised her head, resting her forearms on his shoulders. "Joe, I want to see her again.
I want to see her, I want to know what she's become.
"

Payne met her tear-filled gaze. "Give it time, Dee. There must be a way."

She nestled her head against his neck again. "Promise me. Even if it takes a year," she said, her voice muffled.

"Even if it takes two years," he murmured. "Even if it takes two."

* * *

The office was quiet, finally, for which Jonders was thankful. He looked over his written report to the Oversight Committee, changing a few phrases before okaying it for transmission. Glancing beneath the report, he chuckled again at the handwritten message on his desk. In a bold, blue-inked script, Diana Thrudore had written:
"Delighted to hear of our patient's recovery. Please give her my best, and do encourage her to return for follow-up consultation. You can't be too careful, you know."
A second copy of his report was earmarked for Dr. Thrudore. He owed her that much, at least—he hadn't had time, in the end, to keep her advised about her patient.

He hadn't had time, lately, for a good many normal obligations. It had been one hell of a week.

He wasn't sure which had startled him more—the summons to speak to the Oversight Committee, or the request to address the U.N. Security Council. He had gone to both, had his say, and left; and the decisions that followed had reached him through the usual channels. In some cases, the "usual channels" meant watching the news.

It pleased him to see Joe Payne covering the Talenki regularly and accurately now. The media in general, of course, were treating them as the story of the century. He'd never learned with certainty who had leaked the full story to Payne, though he had his suspicions. In any event, no one had accused him, and he hadn't seen Delarizzo, the security advisor, since before the session with Hathorne. The Committee had finally conceded the futility of maintaining silence, and rules governing press relations had been relaxed. Jonders, in fact, had already addressed several official press conferences. One of his new problems was getting his work done in spite of constant media inquiries.

Link Center, more than ever, was the focus of intense activity. The Talenki were still weeks away from Earth orbit; but already the international community was bartering and arguing, attempting to hammer out a system for coordinating exchange with the aliens. The logistical details and political ramifications were endless. Various schemes and proposals were being discussed with the Talenki, and it had fallen to Jonders to oversee communications with them.

His family still wasn't seeing much of him, but at least now they understood why.

He glanced at the time and hurried out of the office. He had a private appointment to keep. The lab section was quiet; most of the staff had gone home already, or were working in the main operations center. Jonders unlocked the simulation control room and turned on the lights. He powered up the main console and donned the linkup helmet.

(David,) he said, when the connection was established.

(Good to see you,) said Kadin, his face a sketchy outline in the darkness of the computer matrix. (It's been a while, hasn't it? I've been following your summaries with interest.)

(I've been wanting to talk to you for days,) Jonders said. (But it's just been one thing after another.)

(How are relations with the Talenki progressing?)

(Well, they were pretty bewildered at first by our concepts of diplomacy, but they seem to be catching on. They're beginning to treat it as a game, I think. There's only one problem—)

Kadin's eyes glinted.

(Mozy hasn't shown herself at all in the last week. I keep wondering if there's something wrong.)

(Are you having trouble communicating with the Talenki?)

(No, no—they're a joy. It's just—well, I don't really
think
there's anything wrong. But I can't help wondering.)

(Have you asked?)

(They say she's busy.) Jonders was silent a moment.

(You miss her,) Kadin said finally.

Jonders nodded slowly. (Yeah,) he said. That was it, really. Her presence was a comfort, and he missed it—whatever the reason. He sighed and changed the subject. (Anyway, if I can get it cleared upstairs, I'd like to start getting you involved in the communications process. You could take up some of the routine stuff, and I think your insight would be an asset.)

(I'd like that,) Kadin said.

(The Talenki remember Kadin-One quite fondly, you know. I think you would get on well with them.)

(Bill,) Kadin said thoughtfully. (I'd like to try. But there's something I don't understand. Maybe you can explain it.)

(All right.)

Kadin's eyes probed Jonders's. (It's Hathorne.)

(What about him?)

(What changed his mind, Bill? What made him decide to trust the Talenki?) The puzzlement grew in Kadin's face. (Was it what he saw of their world—or worlds they've contacted? Those images could have been illusory. It seems to me—)

Jonders interrupted. (That wasn't it, David. Oh, it helped, sure—but that wasn't what really convinced him.)

Kadin blinked slowly. (What, then?)

Jonders smiled to himself, because he'd puzzled over precisely the same question; and when the answer had finally occurred to him, it had seemed too simple to be true. (What swung him over, David—I'm sure of it—was the way they treated
his
images,
his
memories.)

Kadin blinked again.

(They treated him with
respect
. With respect, and with sensitivity. They looked at his memories, and feelings—very personal feelings, about things that were a shock even to him to recall.) Jonders paused, remembering. He had only glimpsed most of the images, but Hathorne's emotions had touched him clearly during the final phase of the session. It had taken time for his own understanding to gel, a process that had been largely subconscious and intuitive.

(Hathorne had no idea that he would open
himself
in that way, David—but when it happened, he learned something about them that he might not otherwise have seen. And he trusted what he saw.) The other reasons, the arguments conveyed to the Committee, and the President, and the Congress, the persuasive arguments about wealths of knowledge and connections with other worlds—those reasons were perfectly valid, but secondary.

A tiny light came into Kadin's eyes. (It affected your attitudes a little, too, didn't it?)

(You mean that it made me more aware of the Talenki's—)

(Not the Talenki. Your feelings about Hathorne.) Kadin peered at him in amusement. (You almost . . .
like
him, now, don't you?)

Jonders stared back disconcertedly. (I—) He thought about it. (Why, I suppose I do.) He'd never voiced the feeling; but yes. Hathorne was still playing the hard-nosed official, but he was treating
Jonders
with more respect, now, and had even sent him a letter of commendation—really, just a short thank-you note. At the time, Jonders had tossed it aside with vague satisfaction; but in fact, it was the first real recognition he'd received in the project—not of his competence, but of the value of his judgment. Jonders was in charge of Talenki relations now—not because they had no choice, as in the past, but because his qualifications had finally been recognized.

It had seemed a small thing, that note from Hathorne; but in retrospect, it was a vote of confidence long due . . .

It was, in a sense, more like a complex stringed instrument than anything else, a maze of incredibly fine, tuned threads stretched across the light-years and converging here in the Talenki mind-net. She had, at one point, thought of it as a gigantic telephone switchboard, with thousands of conversations buzzing simultaneously; but that analogy was in the end too simplistic, failing to allow for the fluidity of the connections, the constant interplay that arose almost wistfully out of the communication.

No, it was more like an infinitely complex symphonic arrangement—each part reverberating in its own peculiar harmony with the other parts, each altering the gestalt with its own shading of tone and feeling. The communication was largely nonverbal, sensual, kinesthetic—musical, as, for the Talenki, all knowledge and understanding was music. Mozy was riding a cresting wave, rhythms racing through her like water chortling over a spillway—music from the Talenki, and from worlds of her own sun, music from distant jeweled lights and from suns obscured by galactic dust.

The variety was endless: the sighing, soughing music of the Slen; the chimes of the Kel-Kor on a world cradled deep within a wispy, red-glowing nebula; the steel orchestration of the metalloid creatures of a pink and white binary system; the wolflike howling of the bare-snouted but furry Mangorras; the keening of the R'pitt't mist-ravens of a world almost lost at the edge of a dust lane in Sagittarius; the thundering murmur of a dozen sentient suns.

Songs carried through the webbed fabric of space, swept along by the winds of the cosmic tachyon flux.

Oddly enough, it was only recently that she had become aware that not all of the Talenki voices that she heard were of this world. Indeed, some of them belonged to Talenki circling worlds of other stars, or wandering in deep space. Mozy's hosts were not the only descendants of the original refugee colony. It was in fact unclear, even to the Talenki, whether this was the original asteroid or a copy. Often, in their journeys, the Talenki had found themselves faced with a choice between wanderlust and a desire to tarry with congenial hosts, learning their cultures and ways. The solution, repeated time and again, had been to fashion a new asteroid and to divide the community, so that some might stay while the rest journeyed on. How many Talenki asteroids were there now, scattered through the galaxy? Even the Talenki didn't know.

It was while listening to a peculiar counterpoint between two worlds widely separated along the galactic plane that it occurred to her to wonder if the Talenki's reach might extend not just through space, but through time, as well; and even as the question occurred, she felt the tingle of a new sense—her awareness slipping into unfamiliar waters, like a slender hull knifing beneath the waves of a sea and slicing silently through the depths . . . a submarine in the ocean of time.

She glimpsed a Talenki world of years gone by—not in memory, but in direct vision, through a tunnel of mist. She saw fawns whose corporeal lives were now a thing of the past, guiding their world across the abyss of space, their last stop a half generation or more behind them, and the next stop, Earth, still far in the future. For an instant, she glimpsed faces . . .
living faces, eyes peering
 . . . and then they were gone, leaving her breathless.

How could this be happening? Visions shimmered in her mind of the Talenki movement through layers of reality; and she wondered, how much more did she have to learn about their abilities?

The future was enshrouded in fog, and she wasted little time trying to pierce it. But the past: she peered further still, as though along a physical timeline, stretching into the distance. The farther she looked, the murkier was her vision. In the distant past, she could not discern objects at all; her awareness was principally of tones and shadows and qualities of presence, almost a spiritual rather than a physical sense. Still, she wondered: might it be possible to peer all the way back to the origins of the universe—to sift through the layers and ridges and rifts of the continuum, back through the dim deeps of time? As she peered along the timeline, she saw no clear delimitation, but only a gradual dimming and loss of resolution; and she thought, yes, perhaps, it was possible in theory, but only with vastly greater powers of perception than even the Talenki possessed. She was reminded of Earth's astronomers, building ever more powerful telescopes to extend their reach into space and time, studying light that had traveled millions of years to reach them.

(Your sight has grown keen, Mozy.)

That was N'rrril, gently nudging her. She eased herself into his thoughts. (What do you mean?)

(We, too, have thought long on this matter of perceiving distant times and spaces.) He thought it softly, and with greater solemnity than was usual for him.

(The design?) she murmured, as another bit of understanding surfaced. It was no coincidence that the idea had occurred to her while listening to the rhythms and harmonies of the Talenki network. The network was not itself the design, she realized, but a means to the design. As the link grew—each new perspective adding to the synergistic potential of the whole, the network expanding in power far beyond the sum of the parts—so too did the clarity of view improve. She recalled the wail of the background radiation—Nature's song, and a record of the first moments of the universe. What did the Talenki perceive in that three-degree wail, and what would Earth's scientists make of the Talenki images? she wondered. The Talenki were seeking a direct window to the birth of time—and how many more worlds would have to join the link before it could be achieved?

And what next, after the origins of reality? A vision, perhaps, of that which came before the beginning?

Her thoughts drifted back to her Earth, to her
other
people, and she wondered: Would they understand? Or was their independence, their stubbornness, their aggressiveness too strong, their pride too fierce to let them join?

She had not spoken with Earth since her conversation by the sea with Jonders. They were managing all right without her, she knew; but the time was coming—a time to mend and grow. A time to listen and learn.

And perhaps—
perhaps
—others of her race would join her in this life, in a merger of Human and Talenki consciousness, in a cross-linkage stretching to the horizons of the universe. The possibilities were infinite; and she felt a growing longing for Human company to explore them with, even with the friendship of the Talenki. In her previous life, she had scarcely thought at all of motherhood, but now it seemed her destiny in a way that no one could have imagined: to be the first guiding member of a new Human race . . . the next stage, or
a
next stage, in the evolution of Humanity.