The Light of Other Days

“Science demands patience.”

David smiled. “Yes. It always has. But for some it is hard to remain patient, in the face of the black meteor which approaches us all.”

“The Wormwood? But that’s centuries off.”

“But scientists are hardly alone in being affected by the knowledge of its existence. There is an impulse to hurry, to gather as much data and formulate new theories, to learn as much as possible in the time that is left, because we no longer are sure there will be anybody to build on our work, as we’ve always assumed in the past. And so people take shortcuts, the peer review process is under pressure…”

Now a red alert light started flashing high on the countinghouse wall, and technicians began to drift back into the room.

Bobby looked at David quizzically. “You’re setting up to run again? You told Dad you only ran one trial a day.”

David winked. “A little white lie. I find it useful to have a way to get rid of him.”

Bobby laughed.

It turned out there was time to fetch coffee before the new run began. They walked together to the cafeteria.

Bobby is lingering, David thought. As if he wants to be involved. He sensed a need here, a need he didn’t understand — perhaps even envy. Was that possible?

It was a wickedly delicious thought. Perhaps Bobby Patterson, fabulously rich, this latter-day dandy, envies me — his earnest, drone-like brother.

Or perhaps that’s just sibling rivalry on my part.

Walking back, he sought to make conversation.

“So. Were you a grad student, Bobby?”

“Sure. But at HBS.”

“HBS? Oh. Harvard.”

“Business School. Yes.”

“I took some business studies as part of my first degree,” David said. He grimaced. “The courses were intended to ‘equip us for the modern world.’ ” All those two-by-two matrices, the fads for this theory or that, for one management guru or another…”

“Well, business analysis isn’t rocket science, as we used to say,” Bobby murmured evenly. “But nobody at Harvard was a dummy. I won my place there on merit. And the competition there was ferocious.”

“I’m sure it was.” David was puzzled by Bobby’s flat tone of voice, his lack of fire. He probed gently. “I have the impression you feel… underestimated.”

Bobby shrugged. “Perhaps. The VR division of OurWorld is a billion-buck business in its own right. If I fail, Dad’s made it clear he’s not going to bail me out. But even Kate thinks I’m some kind of placeholder.” Bobby grinned. “I’m enjoying trying to convince her otherwise.”

David frowned. Kate?… Ah, the girl reporter Hiram had tried to exclude from his son’s life. Without success, it seemed. Interesting. “Do you want me to keep quiet?”

“What about?”

“Kate. The reporter.”

“There isn’t really anything to keep quiet about.”

“Perhaps. But Father doesn’t approve of her. Have you told him you’re still seeing her?”

“No.”

And this may be the only thing in your young life, David thought, which Hiram doesn’t know about. Well, let’s keep it that way. David felt pleased to have established this small bond between them.

Now the countdown clock neared its conclusion. Once more the wall-mounted SoftScreen showed an inky darkness, broken only by random pixel flashes, and with the numeric monitor in the corner dully repeating its test list of primes. David watched with amusement as Bobby’s lips silently formed the count numbers: Three. Two. One.

And then Bobby’s mouth hung open in shock, a flickering light playing on his face.

David swivelled his gaze to the SoftScreen.

This time there was an image, a disc of light. It was a bizarre, dreamy construct of boxes and strip lights and cables, distorted almost beyond recognition, as if seen through some grotesque fish-eye lens.

David found he was holding his breath. As the image stayed stable for two seconds, three, he deliberately sucked in air.

Bobby asked, “What are we seeing?”

“The wormhole mouth. Or rather, the light it’s pulling in from its surroundings, here, the Wormworks. Look, you can see the electronics stack. But the strong gravity of the mouth is dragging in light from the three-dimensional space all around it. The image is being distorted.”

“Like gravitational lensing.”

He looked at Bobby in surprise. “Exactly that.” He checked the monitors. “We’re already passing our previous best…”

Now the distortion of the image became stronger, as the shapes of equipment and light fixtures were smeared to circles surrounding the view’s central point. Some of the colours seemed to be Doppler-shifting now, a green support strut starting to look blue, the fluorescents’ glare taking on a tinge of violet.

“We’re pushing deeper into the wormhole,” David whispered. “Don’t give up on me now.”

The image fragmented further, its elements crumbling and multiplying in a repeating pattern around the disc shaped image. It was a three-dimensional kaleidoscope, David thought, formed by multiple images of the lab’s illumination. He glanced at counter readouts, which told him that much of the energy of the light falling into the wormhole had been shifted to the ultraviolet and beyond, and the energized radiation was pounding the curved walls of this spacetime tunnel.

But the wormhole was holding.

They were far past the point where all previous experiments had collapsed.

Now the disc image began to shrink as the light, falling from three dimensions onto the wormhole mouth, was compressed by the wormhole’s throat into a narrowing pipe. The scrambled, shrinking puddle of light reached a peak of distortion.

And then the quality of light changed. The multiple image structure became simpler, expanding, seeming to unscramble itself, and David began to pick out elements of a new visual field: a smear of blue that might be sky, a pale white that could be an instrument box.

He said: “Call Hiram.”

Bobby said, “What are we looking at?”

“Just call Father, Bobby.”

Hiram arrived at a run an hour later. “It better be worth it. I broke up an investors’ meeting…”

David, wordlessly, handed him a slab of lead-glass crystal the size and shape of a pack of cards. Hiram turned the slab over, inspecting it.

The upper surface of the slab was ground into a magnifying lens, and when Hiram looked into it, he saw miniaturized electronics: photomultiplier light detectors for receiving signals, a light- emitting diode capable of emitting flashes for testing, a small power supply, miniature electromagnets. And, at the geometric centre of the slab, there was a tiny, perfect sphere, just at the limit of visibility. It looked silvery, reflective, like a pearl; but the quality of light it returned wasn’t quite the hard grey of the countinghouse’s fluorescents.

Hiram turned to David. “What am I looking at?”

David nodded at the big wall SoftScreen. It showed a round blur of light, blue and brown.

A face came looming into the image: a human face, a man somewhere in his forties, perhaps. The image was heavily distorted — it was exactly as if he had pushed his face into a fish-eye lens — but David could make out a knot of curly black hair, leathery sun-beaten skin, white teeth in a broad smile.

“It’s Walter,” Hiram said, wondering. “Our Brisbane station head.” He moved closer to the SoftScreen. “He’s saying something. His lips are moving.” He stood there, mouth moving in sympathy. “I… see… you. I see you. My God.”

Behind Walter, other Aussie technicians could be seen now, heavily distorted shadows, applauding in silence.

David grinned, and submitted to Hiram’s whoops and bear hugs, all the while keeping his eye on the lead-glass slab containing the wormhole mouth, that billion-dollar pearl.

Chapter 7 The wormcam

It was 3 A.M. At the heart of the deserted Wormworks, in a bubble of SoftScreen light, Kate and Bobby sat side by side. Bobby was working through a simple question-and-answer setup session on the SoftScreen. They were expecting a long night; behind them there was a heap of hastily gathered gear, coffee flasks and blankets and foam mattresses.

…There was a creak. Kate jumped and grabbed Bobby’s arm.

Bobby kept working at the program. “Take it easy. Just a little thermal contraction. I told you, I made sure all the surveillance systems have a blind spot right here, right now.”

“I’m not doubting it. It’s just that I’m not used to creeping around in the dark like this.”

“I thought you were the tough reporter.”

“Yes. But what I do is generally legal.”

“Generally!”

“Believe it or not.”

“But this -” He waved a hand toward the hulking, mysterious machinery out in the dark. “ — isn’t even surveillance equipment. It’s just an experimental high energy physics rig. There’s nothing like it in the world; how can there be any legislation to cover its use?”

“That’s specious, Bobby. No judge on the planet would buy that argument.”

“Specious or not, I’m telling you to calm down. I’m trying to concentrate. Mission Control here could be a little more user-friendly. David doesn’t even use voice activation. Maybe all physicists are so conservative — or all Catholics.”

She studied him as he worked steadily at the program. He looked as alive as she’d ever seen him, for once fully engaged in the moment. And yet he seemed completely unperturbed by any moral doubt. He really was a complex person — or rather, she thought sadly, incomplete.

His finger hovered over a start button on the SoftScreen. “Ready. Shall I do it?”

“We’re recording?”

He tapped the SoftScreen. “Everything that comes through that wormhole will be trapped right here.”