Part 30 (2/2)
”I suppose. The magnetic storage of information, I wonder what it feels like?”
”Stay away from that,” he said with quick alarm.
”I think I've got to go there.”
”Observe. That's all you're supposed to do.”
”Y'know, I'm in charge up here.” Just to slide the point in Just to slide the point in.
”Don't scare me.” His face was naked again and she felt a burst of warmth for him.
”Tell me what you guys know now, then. I need to know.”
He was glad to lapse into tech-mode again. The experts thought it was best for her to get her input this way, through Benjamin, and neither of them cared to know why. They liked it; that was all that mattered.
”The way Amy describes it, there are captive-well, 'pa.s.sengers' might be the best word-in the Eater's magnetic 'files.' It keeps records of cultures it has visited.”
Channing said, ”That's what it calls 'Remnants'?”
”You know about that?”
”They gave me thick files of what it's been saying. I can read it ten thousand times faster than I could with eyes.”
”Does that help?”
”Understand it? At least it puts me on a processing level more nearly like its own.”
”Ominous stuff it's sending, seems to me,” Benjamin said delicately.
”I've picked up waves from the distinctive knots in the magnetic structure. There are tens of thousands of them, at a minimum. They're living ent.i.ties, all right. Somehow they share its general knowledge, so some at least have learned to speak to us. They say they were 'harvested' by the Eater.”
”Magnetic ghosts.” He s.h.i.+vered; she could feel his inner states by reading the expressions of his pinched mouth.
”There's something else, an 'Old One.' Any idea what that is?”
”Last I heard, the theory people here think it might be the original civilization that uploaded itself into the magnetosphere. Just a guess, really.”
”Ask Amy for me? See if there's anything new on this 'Old One'?”
”Sure.”
”I suppose you don't have to. This whole conversation, it's monitored, right?”
”I suppose so. Haven't thought.”
Dear thing, he wouldn't. ”Privacy is not giving a d.a.m.n.”
She had not expected this to make him cry, but it did.
7.
Kingsley stood beside Benjamin as they watched the launch on a wall screen. History in the making, if anyone lived to write it down.
He was partly there to see the event, but mostly to steady Benjamin, should he start to fall over. That had happened twice already from apparently random causes. If Benjamin were seen to get visibly worse-distracted, morose, or worse-Arno would see him off the property straightaway. That would depress the man even more. Leaving him alone in their house would invite something far worse still.
”Steady there,” he whispered. Benjamin took no notice, just stared.
The view was of a lumbering airframe framed by puffball clouds that could have been anywhere; these were above Arizona. He still had a bit of trouble getting excited about these air carrier, three-stage jobs. Takeoff from any large airport, drop the rocket plane at 60,000 feet, whereupon the sleek silver dart shot to low Earth orbit. This one would in turn deposit its burden, a fat cylinder instructed to find and attach to the Channing-Searcher craft.
The modular stairway to the stars, as the cliche went. Economical, certainly. Without it, they could never have fielded an armada of Searchers and support vessels to meet the Eater. Still, he missed the anachronistic liftoff and rolling thunder.
The dagger-nosed rocket plane fell from the airframe belly and fired its engine. In an eye blink, it was a dwindling dot.
Benjamin murmured stoically. Kingsley wondered what was going through his friend's mind and then, musing, recalled Arno and the Marcus Aurelius reference made by the Eater. Why had the creature dwelled upon Aurelius?
Stoic indeed, that was the smart course in such times. Did the isolation of Aurelius at the top of the Roman Empire correspond remotely to the utter loneliness of the Eater? The paradoxical permanence of change must loom as an immensely larger metaphor for it.
Such a being, though constructed by an ancient intelligence, surely had undergone developments resembling evolution. Parts of so huge an intelligence could compete and mutate as magnetic fluxes carrying the genetic material of whole cultures. There could presumably be selection for what Kingsley supposed could be called ”supermemes”-to coin an utterly inadequate term for something that could only be conjectured.
Amy said from Benjamin's other side, ”They've set up a bar.”
”Capital idea,” Kingsley said with utterly false enthusiasm.
”Think that's a good idea?” Benjamin asked mildly.
”I believe it to be a necessity.” Kingsley made a beeline for the bar before the crowd noticed it. It was admirably stocked and he complimented Arno on it as the man took a gin and tonic and the barman prepared Kingsley's exact specifications.
Arno seemed pleased and proud. ”Great idea, wasn't it?”
Unlikely he was referring to the bar, but what else? Before Kingsley could rummage through a list of suspects, Arno added, ”The antimatter thing.”
”Quite so.” This would not seem immodest because clearly Arno had forgotten who had thought of it.
”My guys are sure it'll work-and they should know.”
”Certainly.” How to play this How to play this? Arno was not exactly a torrent of information at the best of times. His habits of concealment, well learned in other agencies known chiefly by their initials, still held.
”They've done the simulations, pretty sure it'll work.”
”The physics is a bit dicey. I-”
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