A CRASH CAME OVER THE BOW OF QUINN'S KAYAK. A patchy, thin fog tore now and then to reveal a sky the color of what Johanna used to call cerulean. He sped northward, lulled by the rhythm of paddling. Brief glimpses of the horizon drew his gaze outward, to the limit of sight. Some days he thought he would try to reach that horizon, just paddle without stopping. He'd thought of that more and more lately. He'd even fantasized that he'd find—somewhere past the horizon—the place that eluded him, that kept Johanna and Sydney. The place that Lamar Gelde claimed was now found.
He kept up a brutal pace, propelling the kayak through the chop. It was no coincidence that Lamar Gelde had shown up just when the newsTides were nosing around to do a major story on Titus Quinn, one that would bring unwelcome attention to Minerva's stellar transport losses. To protect his coveted privacy, Quinn had no intention of giving an interview, but Stefan Polich couldn't know that. The man would do anything to shut him up, even concoct a story that they might have a lead on Johanna and Sydney.
He sliced the paddle again and again into the waves, reaching for exhaustion, for peace. Not that peace was that easy to come by.
The ocean always conjured that other place, but when he tried to summon the details, all he grasped was fog. And a vast emptiness. In that vastness were his lost memories. This was the reason he couldn't move beyond what had happened. Because he didn't know what had happened.
A wisp of fog descended over him. On its fuzzy screen he imagined a strange river flowing. It moved slowly, more like lava than water, more silver than blue…. And the things that rode the river...The image receded, leaving him no wiser. Somewhere in the murk lay his memories of the other place. Ten or so years of memories. But the tests had all shown he was the same age as when he left Earth, still thirty-four years old. Of course, these contradictions only existed if one held to strict rules of logic. And Quinn's hold on strict rules had always been loose.
Up the beach he could see someone on his property. Paddling fast, he got close enough to see that it was his brother Rob. Caitlin and the kids were with him. They hadn't spotted him yet. He could still evade them, as he had been doing for two years now, for reasons not entirely clear to him. Rob with his normal family. Those kids. He was becoming a lousy uncle—eccentric, unpredictable, unavailable. He wearily paddled to shore. For Caitlin's sake, because she always thought the best of him, and he hated to prove her wrong.
As he pulled the kayak up the beach, his brother and caitlin came down to help. Quinn nodded at them. “I thought you weren't coming until the twenty-third.”
Rob smirked. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”
Caitlin gave Quinn a big hug, which he returned with feeling. Her face always lit up when she saw him, the last human being who seemed to look forward to seeing him. She wore her light brown hair pulled casually back from her face—round, where Johanna's was oval, green eyes where Johanna's were deep brown. He couldn't understand what a fine woman like that saw in his brother, though he liked Rob, too, after a fashion.
“Uncle Titus,” Mateo shouted, “I found a dead bird!” Down the beach, Mateo was holding a mass of greasy feathers.
“Good!” Quinn shouted. “Give it to your little sister!”
Mateo began chasing Emily with the bird as caitlin hustled down the sand to forestall a sibling fight.
Quinn gazed at his brother, seeing a mirror image of himself: big-boned, deep blue eyes—but gone a little soft with that desk job he liked so much. “I thought you said you were coming on Friday.”
“This is Friday.” Rob gestured at the porch with his armload of presents. “Let's get these inside.” He stared at his brother. “We are invited in? We drove three hours from Portland, Titus.”
“I haven't got any food or anything. For the kids.” Well, there were some hard candies left over from last christmas.
“Caitlin brought the food, naturally. You don't think we'd let you cook a turkey, do you?”
Quinn helped to carry the presents, feeling like an ass that, again this year, he had more or less forgotten about Christmas. He cut a glance at Rob—Rob doing the brotherly thing, reaching out, doing Christmas. Rob the stalwart, the steady.
Rob hanging by a thread at the company.
Quinn began the unlocking procedures on his front door, fiddling with mechanisms he'd designed himself. Also he'd designed his door knocker. In the shape of an impossibly long face, with finely formed lips and brows, it was cast in bronze from his own carving. Rob took in the view. “It's nice here.”
“Yes. No one around for miles.”
“That's not what I meant.”
To avoid a rerun of the lecture on becoming a hermit, Quinn made a show of bundling the packages inside and looking for a place to stow them. He dumped the parcels on the couch, on top of the kayak equipment he'd been cleaning that morning, while Rob carried bags of food into the kitchen. Thunderous jolts from the porch announced the arrival of Mateo and Emily, hollering and streaming sand.
Caitlin managed to grab Mateo by the collar. “Shoes off,” she ordered.
Quinn waved at them. “Don't bother.” He looked around at the mess. “Little sand can't hurt the place.”
Emily was drawn to the dining room table, where the Ives New York Central locomotive sat prior to the new headlight installation Quinn had planned for that afternoon. Before his brother showed up a day early.
“Uh-uh,” Quinn said. “Don't touch, remember?” His heart crimped a little looking at his niece, his memories of Sydney at that age poking up as always when Emily was around.
Emily nodded sagely. “Espensith.”
Quinn smiled. “Very espensith hobby.”
From the kitchen came his brother's voice. “My God.”
“Oh, that thing in the sink?” Quinn said. “It's a jellyfish.” He got Mateo's attention. “Ever seen one? You can see their innards through their skin.”
Mateo dashed into the kitchen to confirm this marvel.
Looking around the living room, Quinn realized he should have picked up a little. He started lifting items off chairs, then spun around looking for where to put them.
“It's all right, Titus,” Caitlin said. “Really. We don't need to sit.” She took the pile from his hands and plopped it at the base of a pole lamp. Then, checking that Emily wasn't listening, she looked him square in the eyes. “How are you? Tell me the truth.”
Quinn cocked his head and put on a jaunty smile. “Good. I'm good.”
“You are not.”
“Am too.”
“We haven't seen you for months.” The words were reproachful, but her tone made it go down just fine.
“Guess I've been too wrapped up in the hobby. You said I should take an interest in things.”
“I meant people, Titus.”
“Oh. Well. People are harder.” He noted that the Lionel Coral Isle was going into the curve at the sofa a little fast and flicked his right hand into the digit commands that controlled his railroading models. He could have used a voice-actuated system, but he liked hand controls. He'd always been good with his hands, and wearing the three tiny rings on his right hand, he could manipulate the timing and performance of eight trains on five tracks, no problem.
Mateo was back. “Can I hold the new engine? The one that cost eleven thousand dollars?”
Pointing at the St. Paul Olympian just emerging from the back bedroom, Quinn said, “Just for watching, Ace, not for touching.”
Mateo eyed the sleek train with its brass and die-cast trim pieces as it raced under the dining room hutch. “I wish I had a toy like that.”
“It's not a toy,” Quinn said, rummaging in the coat closet for the presents he'd mail-ordered for the kids.
“Then what is it, if it's not a toy?” Mateo asked.
Rob had returned from the kitchen. “It's an escape.”
Emily pronounced, “It's a hob-by.”
Retrieving the cardboard boxes from the closet, Quinn responded, “It's a way to keep from thinking.” Then, seeing the worry on his sister-in-law's face, he put on a cheery grin. “Merry Christmas, to my favorite nephew and favorite niece.”
Mateo rolled his eyes at the old ploy. “We're your only nephew and niece.”
“Well, there you go, then.” Quinn handed the presents to the kids, who received a nod from Rob as to opening them now. They tugged open the boxes, filled with tronic gadgets five years in advance of what either of them could figure out.
“Didn't have any wrapping paper,” Quinn said.
“That's okay—” Caitlin was saying, but Rob interrupted. “For God's sake, Titus.” He looked like he'd say more, then glanced at the kids.
Caitlin's hand came onto his arm again. Like a dog handler, Quinn thought. Why didn't she just let Rob have his say? He knew what his brother thought of him. Of his hobby, his crappy little cottage.
Instead of the expected rebuke, Rob said, “Join us for Christmas, Titus.”
Christ, the man had no idea what lay just around the corner, at his cushy little job.
The kids were punching buttons and causing lights to flash on their respective gifts.
Quinn managed a smile. “I'll try.”
Mateo, still fiddling with his present, said, “Kiss of death.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Rob said. He locked a gaze on Quinn. “You aren't going to come. Why don't you just say so, save us all from waiting up for you?”
Quinn shrugged. “Okay, then.”
Rob snapped, “Fine with me.” Kneeling next to the kids, he started repacking the gifts, shoving paper into the boxes while the kids watched in dismay.
Emily said, “I thought we were staying.”
“So did I,” her father murmured.
Caitlin watched this familiar interaction play itself out, knowing better than to step between them until they'd each taken a hunk of flesh. If they didn't love each other, it wouldn't matter if Titus came for Christmas, but Titus could infuriate her husband in ten seconds flat, without even trying.
“Kids,” she said, “play outside for a few minutes before we head back.” She was letting her husband's edict stand, and Rob looked surprised.
“I'll keep them from drowning,” Rob said, knowing when to get some distance from the heat of an argument.
You do that dear, Caitlin thought. You could look at the Pacific Ocean as a drowning pool or a beach adventure. Rob would be watching for beach logs in the surf every time.
Titus was smiling. Damn his blue eyes, anyway.
“I just don't do Christmas,” he said, engaging and wry. But it wasn't going to work on her this time.
“You're slipping away, Titus. From us.” As he started to shake his head, she added, “From yourself.”
He looked around his living room as though assessing whether this could be true or not. But it was true. No jollying the kids along, no earnest hobbies could hide the fact that her second-favorite man in the world was becoming one of her least favorite.
Titus's face relaxed, grew serious. “I don't much care anymore, Caitlin.”
She shook her head. “That'll be true in another year. It's not true right now.”
“It's not?” He looked hopeful that she was right.
He was giving her some power over him with that simple utterance, and it was a heady gift. “No,” she said, “it's not. That's why you're coming for Christmas.” He didn't answer, but she hoped he'd come. It would be a small gesture—for Rob, for the kids. She hoped her request wasn't just for herself. She always worried that she was the only one who felt electricity in any room where Titus Quinn stood.
Happy screams from the beach drew their attention to the open door, where they could see Rob looking at them from the shore. He wouldn't like her begging Titus to come. So she hadn't. She'd commanded him. And Titus was at least listening to her, listening with a blue-eyed intensity that held her transfixed. She let herself imagine that he liked a woman who could match his strong will. Not that Caitlin would ever compare herself to Johanna, a woman she'd both loved and deeply envied. They'd been friends: the beauty and the plain Jane. The flamboyant and the responsible. Just once, Caitlin would have liked to trade places.
She picked up one of the toy boxes, using that moment to cover the heat that had come into her face. Standing, she put her hand on Titus's arm. “Say you'll come.”
He didn't answer, but he looked at her, all defenses gone. “I miss them, Caitlin.”
“I know.” Let them go, she wanted to say, but hadn't the heart.
He reached toward her, and for a moment her breath caught on a snag, but he was taking the gift box from her grasp. “I'll put these in a bag,” he said, and the moment was gone.
“Titus, at least see us off. Rob will take that for amends.”
“Which it won't be.”
She grinned. “No, of course not.”
At last they were packed and on their way. Quinn watched as Rob's truck climbed the steep driveway. The kids waved from foggy windows, and Rob honked the horn. All was patched up until it fell apart again. Quinn reflected that Caitlin was the best thing that ever happened to his brother. He hoped Rob knew that, or he'd have to give him a black eye.
As the truck disappeared up the road, he snapped on the juice to the property defenses. He always looked forward to seeing Caitlin, but he was glad she was gone. For a moment there, she had looked so much like Johanna.
In a heavy rain, the copter swooped down the approach to Minerva/Portland, skimming over a vast and uniform lattice of Company buildings, a land-devouring sprawl that—combined with the other corporate holdings of EoSap and TidalSphere—stretched from Portland to Eugene. Helice Maki gazed out the rain-splashed canopy at the squat office buildings glued together with parking lots and roads.
Banking, the copter provided a view of the Columbia River slinking through the city, and in the distance, Mount Hood's white cone. These were the only things that hadn't changed about Portland, covered as it was with Company warrens stretching from here to the horizon. Dense canyons of office buildings might be smarter use of the land, but the masses preferred ample parking for their custom transport rigs. Helice shook her head. As the ultramodern world spun toward its sapient destiny, some things remained impervious to good planning and higher math.
In the cool cabin, her business suit sent a surge of warmth to maintain her comfort zone, but her hands were clammy from nerves. This was her first board meeting at Minerva, the Earth's fourth-richest Company. Slipping into fifth position, as Stefan Polich had admitted over drinks. Helice thought the events on the Appian II would change all that, but only if managed wisely, a task CEO Stefan Polich might fumble.
Approaching for landing, the copter sped toward the roof pad of a cavernous building housing at least eight thousand workers. As the craft settled on the roof, security crew sprinted across the pad to open the hatch, then stood back as Helice hopped out, ignoring helping hands. A short distance off, Stefan Polich stood, so lean he looked like he might disappear if he stood sideways.
He hurried forward, waving at the pilot, calling him by name. Helice winced. It was the wrong name. Stefan was starting to lose his edge.
“Helice, how was the ride on the beanstalk?” He held an umbrella for her, ushering her into the building. Stefan handed the dripping umbrella to a staffer.
“It was fun.” The space elevator was fun and had given her some time to prepare herself to meet the company on new terms—equal terms, as Minerva's latest partner. And to begin to put her stamp on things—starting with the proper handling of Titus Quinn.
Dismissing the security staff, Stefan led the way in his blue jogging suit and sneakers, making Helice feel overdressed. The black fabric of her suit sparkled now and then with little computing tasks. She stranded the data from her suit into the company data tide, that omnipresent stream of data cached in data structures embedded in the walls and carried by light beams through the work environment.
Amid his long strides, Stefan glanced at her. “He said no.”
“I know he said no. Titus will change his mind.” It was essential. They needed his experience with the adjoining region, as it had been dubbed. Minerva's great hope was that the adjoining region, if it existed beyond the quantum level and if they could penetrate it—mighty ifs, no doubt—that it might be a path, plunging through the universe in a warped course, giving access to the stars. An access that might not rip apart a stellar transport like a barn in a tornado.
Stefan said, “He likes to be called Quinn, now.”
“I heard.” Why did people insist on telling her things she already knew?
Stefan kept up a good pace, in his habit of using the Company's long corridors to stay in shape. “He ran Lamar off the property.”
“I know that,” Helice said. “Even the threat about the brother...what was his name?”
“Bob.”
“Even that made no difference. But we'll let him stew a few days. He'll come around.” When he did, when he agreed to go, Helice would go with him. Somebody had to make the business judgments. Minerva wouldn't let him go alone, Stefan had already said as much.
The validity of the find was becoming more convincing every day. Earthside mSaps—tightly under control—confirmed the optical cube data Helice had salvaged. At irregular points in time and locale, Minerva sensors detected quantum particles that mirrored the proper quantum orientation. Shunning ordinary matter, they were devilishly hard to register. But the mSaps reasoned—with the nonchalance of machine sapience—that beyond the horizon of our universe lay another. It was incredible. And she wanted to see it for herself—wanted it with a fierce hunger that had slowly crept upon her during the three-day descent on the space elevator. She didn't know who Stefan was considering for the junket, but she had to make her pitch now—now that she had him alone.
They power-walked through the savant warehouse, packed with technicians tending the savants and tabulators that in turn tended Minerva's data tide. Every tender aspired to administer to the mSaps, but that privilege fell only to the savvies, those who could, for example, solve complex equations on the back of a napkin, or even without a pencil at all. Like Helice herself.
Here in the warehouse, young scientists on the make had only a few months to prove themselves. Failing in the Company, they might find a menial job—but most would opt for the dole, the guaranteed BSL, the Basic Standard of Living. Just shoot me, Helice thought, if I ever sit drooling in front of a Deep Vision screen.
The savant warehouse led to the central warrens, where the work cubes formed a vast lattice. Stefan broke into a jog and Helice followed. The occupants barely took note of the owners passing by, intent on their data entry quotas. This was where the data cycle began, where the information strands wound onto the skeins of the nonquantum tronics forming the broad base of the computing pyramid that embodied Minerva's collective knowledge. This scene was repeated at similar company nests at Generics, EoSap, ChinaKor, and TidalSphere.
And now Helice Maki was at the top of that pyramid. She took a moment to savor this, but the taste ran thin. The region next door towered in her imagination, casting a long shadow on the day.
She glanced at Stefan, “Still got a fix on the emissions? Three locales, right?”
After the destruction of the Appian II, every Minerva installation in commercial space had joined in the search for anomalous particles. They'd found them in three other locations, across several parsecs of space, now that Minerva knew what to look for, and how to look, using a next-generation program of the one Luc Diers had inadvertently set in motion.
“One locale,” Stefan answered. “Two of them dried up.”
Helice knew about the shifting coordinates. “That just reinforces my thesis. It's not merely a quantum reality. If it was, the readings would be constant. So it's a universe of greater than Planck length.”
“Right, it's bigger than that, but smaller than our universe. And it's not always in the same place.” He banked around a corner and sprinted up a stairway, his face starting to redden.
On the first landing, Stefan bent over, hands on knees. He shook his head. “Damn, but I'd like to believe all this, Helice.”
“I know you would.” He'd been a worried man since the day she'd met him. She'd heard that he used to be a driving force, but these days he was afraid of risks, looking for proof before making decisions. This was not the man to lead Minerva, or manage the real estate next door.
He puffed, catching his breath. “Hell. What makes you so cocksure?”
“No guarantees,” Helice said, “but try thinking of it this way. How come we live in a perfect universe? Ever think of that, how we just happen to live in a space-time where things are stable and tend to support life? We just happen to have the exact force of gravity, the exact force of the strong nuclear force so that things cohere rather than not. That's a lot of fine-tuning for our convenience. Religion says that God arranged it that way. Nice answer, except it kind of stops further discussion.”
Stefan unfolded from the bent-over position and leaned against a railing. She had his attention.
“So you could say, of course the universe is finely tuned for us. If it weren't, we wouldn't be here to wonder about it. But then it leads to the idea that there must be other space-times where things aren't perfect for life. Where the fundamental particles have different values, and some universes—maybe the majority—will be cold and dark. And some, like ours, won't.”
“Right. The multiverse has some scientific logic behind it, if not scientific evidence.”
“No evidence. Until now.”
Stefan smiled. On his thin face, it looked more like a crack than a grin. “Wait until you see what we've got at the meeting.”
Frowning, Helice realized he'd kept something from her. “Tell me now, Stefan.” She hated secrets. All her life she'd had a horror of people whispering, knowing things she didn't, talking behind her back. Being smart could be a curse in a world where intelligence measured your worth. Being smarter than her parents had been the worst, when they couldn't follow where she went, when she outgrew them before she'd even grown up.
Stefan started the next flight, a little slower now.
Helice didn't move from the landing. “Stefan.”
He turned, waiting. This was her last chance to get him on her side.
“I'm your best thinker. Your best strategist. I'm young, in great shape. I don't have a family to hold me back. I'm new, and willing to put myself on the line to prove my worth.” She wouldn't beg. But she could argue.
He let the words settle. “And if true?”
She didn't like the hostile tone, but she pressed on. “I want to go. With Titus. As his handler.” She walked up to join him, standing finally on the same step, but he still towered over her. If he sided with her, she would be the first—along with Titus—to know what the new universe held. How could knowing mean so much? And yet it did.
“It'll be dangerous, Helice. Titus might not come back.”
“I've said I'm willing to risk a lot.”
“Maybe I need you here.”
She forestalled a harangue by a declaration: “I won't be content to stay behind.”
He watched her with narrowed eyes, appraising her. “I'll consider it.” He turned and, breath returned, ran up the steps, leaving her to follow. Leaving her with hope, though not much.
She and Stefan arrived at the boardroom, and all faces, real and virtual, turned to them.
Around a smart table sat the other partners: Dane Wellinger, Suzene Gninenko, Peter DeFanti, Sherman Pitts, Lizza Molina, and special projects manager Booth Waller. Twelve others shunted in virtually, and their chairs silvered with their images. Looking at Booth Waller, Helice stopped and touched Stefan's arm. “I thought it was just the partners.”
“Booth is on track for partnership. You knew that.”
She hadn't known. Booth was an easy man to underestimate, a mistake she wouldn't make again.
The board members welcomed Helice with nods. She thought that one or two might even be sincere. She brought prestige to Minerva at a time when they needed it. And she'd brought them the Appian II. That was the contribution that really earned her the expedition. It was, after all, her region. She'd salvaged it from the Appian, ensuring its discovery wasn't lost to an obsessed mSap.
Stefan said, “We've made a little progress while you were in transit.” He nodded, a motion that made his face look even more like a hatchet than it normally did. He voiced the table display, and in front of each board member appeared a V-sim projection of a small circle.
“It doesn't look like much at first,” Stefan said. “Booth, take us through this thing.”
Booth rubbed his hands on his thighs and started to stand. Then, thinking better of it, remained seated. “It's not always in the same place, so we had trouble getting a lock on it. We finally got this result at the Ceres Platform,” he said, referring to another K-tunnel outpost. “The physics team says we're bumping up against the membrane of another universe. Think of it like a bubble within a bubble, where reality is on the surface, or the brane. Sometimes the branes touch.”
Helice rolled her eyes. To be lectured on brane theory by this guy...
Booth noted her impatience and went on: “Anyway, at one of these brane interfaces we went in about nine hundred nanometers. We've consistently gotten in at least that far, proceeding a nanometer at a time, and recording the sights. We're confident we can transfer in a mass, but we're not to that point yet. We're using ultra-high-energy quantum implosions, followed by an inflation to macroscopic size.” He shrugged. “If you want the gruesome details, we'll bring in the physics guys. But for now, think of it as a simulation of the big bang. But instead of creating a universe, we're punching through to one that already exists. Apparently exists.”
Helice tried to keep her voice even. “We know this, Booth.”
“Okay, then,” he said, “what you're looking at is the picture so far.”
“The picture of what?”
“The other place.” Booth got the reaction he was hoping for. “I thought you'd be surprised.” As the board members leaned in to squint at the display, he added, “We've been busy, as I said.”
Booth enlarged the sim until the center of the circle looked grayish, like a fried egg seen in negative. Vertical slashes appeared in the gray center. To Helice it looked like chromosomes in a nucleus. He enlarged the display again. Some of the vertical slashes were askew, or bent over. Booth pointed a wand at the display, changing angles of view, from the vector of the pointer. The scene began to look familiar, but not quite...
“We're not sure if the color spectrum is distorted, or how the transmission degrades through our interface.”
Helice peered at the V-sim. “Are you saying that this is a visual? Not just a graphic representation?”
Booth coughed. “Yes. It's the adjoining region. What we've seen so far.”
Helice stared, and stared hard. They'd been talking about a mirror universe, a place, and until now—even as intriguing as those words were—it had just been talk. But here was a visual. It staggered her. The board members, silver and real, remained silent for a long while.
Then, from down the table Suzene Gninenko asked, “So what exactly are we looking at?”
Stefan made a sweeping gesture at Booth. “And the answer is?”
Booth's voice squeaked as he said, “Well, actually, our best guess is...that it's grass.”
It could not have been a more remarkable utterance if Booth had claimed to see angels dancing on the head of a pin.
The board members exchanged glances. Suzene Gninenko peered at the V-sim like she'd never seen a blade of grass before.
“Grass,” Helice said. Now that the suggestion was planted, the picture did look like blades of grass.
Face beaming, Stefan looked at Helice. “Apparently the universe next door is not dark, barren, or chaotic. It has an atmosphere. It possesses life.”
“The blades aren't green,” Helice murmured, still strangely moved by the presence of those brave shoots of grass.
“We don't know what light is falling on it, or what the photosynthesis analog might be. Chlorophyll isn't the only option.”
“What are the chances that grass would look so similar—over there?” She controlled her elation with difficulty. She had believed in it before anyone else. It shouldn't come as such a surprise. But the implications of grass, of life, were almost beyond comprehension—as few things were to Helice Maki.
Stefan smiled, enjoying her reaction. “Maybe God plays in more than one realm.”
Along with every other member of the board, Helice stared at the bent-over blades of grass. She murmured, “Yes, but which god?”
She intended to find out.