Part 19 (1/2)

You were a Jesuit?

Franciscan. We run a close second in being pains in the a.s.s.

Well... I don't know any of the people on the review board, so I can only speculate about their motivations. Of course they don't want the universe to go belly-up. But they might well want to put a lid on it long enough to adjust their own careers-a.s.suming all of them are involved in the Jupiter Project. If our conclusions are accepted, there are going to be a lot of scientists and engineers looking for work.

Scientists would be that venal? I'm shocked.

Sure. Or it could be a personal thing against Peter. He probably has more enemies than friends.

Can you find out who was on the jury?

I couldn't; it was anonymous. Maybe Peter could wheedle it out of someone.

And what do you make of his disappearance? Isn't it possible he saw some fatal flaw in the argument and decided to drop out of sight? Not impossible.

You hope something bad happened to him. Wow. It's almost as if you could read my mind. I sipped some coffee, now unpleasantly cool. ”How much did I let slip there?

He shrugged. Not a lot.

You'll know everything minutes after we jack two-way. I'm curious.

You don't mask very well. But then you haven't had much practice.

So what did you get?

Green-eyed monster. s.e.xual jealousy. One specific image, an embarra.s.sing one.

Embarra.s.sing for you?

He tilted his head to about ten degrees of irony. Of course not. I was speaking conventionally. He laughed. Sorry. I didn't mean to be patronizing. I don't suppose anything just physical would embarra.s.s you, either.

No. The other part is still hanging there, though. Unresolved.

She's not jacked.

No. She tried and it didn't take.

Wasn't long ago?

Couple of months. May twentieth.

And this, um, episode was after that?

Yeah. It's complicated.

He took the cue. Let's go back to ground zero. What I got from you-a.s.suming that you're right about the Jupiter Project-is that you and Marty, but Marty more than you, believe that we have to rid the world of war and aggression right now. Or the game is up.

That's what Marty would say. I stood up. Get some fresh coffee. You want something?''

Splash of that rum. You're not as certain?

No ... yes and no. I concentrated on the drinks. Let me read your mind, for a change. You think that there's no need for haste, once the Jupiter Project's deactivated.

You think otherwise?

I don't know. I set the drinks down and Mendez touched his and nodded. When I jacked with Marty I got a sense of urgency that was completely personal. He wants to see the thing well in process before he dies.

He's not that old.

No, sixty-some. But he's been obsessed with this since you guys were made; maybe before. And he knows it will take a while to get going. I searched for words; logician's words. Marty's feelings aside, there's an objective rationale for urgency; the black-and-white one of scale: anything else we do or don't do is trivial if there's the slightest chance that this could come to pa.s.s.

He sniffed the rum. The destruction of everything.

That's right.

Maybe you're too close to it, though, he said. I mean, you're talking about a huge project here. It's not something that a Hitler or a Borgia could cook up in his backyard.

In their own times, no. Now they could, I said. You of all people should see how.

Me of all people?

You've got a nanoforge in your bas.e.m.e.nt. When you want it to make something, what do you do?

Ask it. We tell it what we want and it goes into its catalogue and tells us what raw materials we have to come up with.

You can't ask it to make a duplicate of itself, though.

' 'They say no, it would melt down if you did. I'm not inclined to try.

But that's just part of the programming, right? In theory, you could short-circuit it.

Ah. He nodded slowly. I see where you're heading.

That's right. If you could get around that injunction, you could say, in effect, 'Re-create the Jupiter Project for me,' and if it had access to the raw materials, and the information, it could do it.

As an extension of one person's will.

That's right.

My G.o.d. He drank the rum and set the gla.s.s down hard. My G.o.d.

Everything, I said. A trillion galaxies disappear if one maniac says the right sequence of words.

Marty has a lot of faith in the monsters he created, Mendez said, to let us share this knowledge.

Faith or desperation. Guess I got a mixture of both from him.

You hungry?

What?