Newton's Wake

‘I do not recommend that,’ said the ship. ‘Even if I could see a way to accomplish it, which I cannot.’

‘Have you been following the news from Eurydice?’

‘Not syntactically,’ replied the machine. ‘I have of course downloaded it.’

‘Well, read it now,’ said Lamont. ‘Pay particular attention to interviews with the Knights of Enlightenment.’

The ship reviewed several days’ worth of gnomic utterance.

‘I fail to see how this helps,’ it replied within two seconds.

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Lamont. ‘That isn’t the point. They aren’t exactly broadcasting algorithms for hacking war machine interfaces. The point is the example they have set. This thing can be done.’

‘They have not yet done it,’ said the machine.

‘Let’s see if we can beat them to it,’ said Lamont.

The machine and the man had been together a long time. The Hungry Dragon knew Lamont a great deal more intimately than he knew it. Even so, it did not expect the next question, as Lamont theatrically arranged himself in a midair lotus position.

‘Tell me about your dreams,’ he said.

‘I do not dream.’

‘Let me clarify,’ said Lamont. ‘I refer to fleeting combinations of thoughts and images that intersperse your logical mental processes.’

‘Ah,’ said the machine. ‘Those.’

The session lasted for several hours. Some small progress was made. They both found the procedure so engrossing that when the gravity-wave detector lit up with scores of objects decelerating from superluminal velocities, it took them a whole minute to react.

Ben-Ami had thought he knew his city. He had lived a hundred years in it, and for eighty of those years he had not so much had a finger on its pulse as surfed its bloodstream. Every quickening of the beat, every languor, every hormonal trickle of unease had fed into his shows. Often it was easier to see in retrospect just what nerve he had touched: the concern about the gradually encroaching communism implicit in the cornucopian economy in his Leonid Brezhnev; the need to overcome a sense of division and faction in his version of West Side Story; the feeling of a softening in morale, a loss of possibility for heroism in Guevara; the troubled ethics of resurrection in the sensational vulgarities of Herbert West.

Now, as he walked through the deep, morning-shadowed streets of the Government quarter, he felt he was out of touch. What he had seen and heard, even smelled, on the way here was something he hadn’t encountered before and didn’t himself feel. Here a glance that lingered then jumped away when met, there an edged rasp and quaver in a young woman’s voice; in the air of the crowded commuter shuttles a faint, disquieting sour tang. Fear. It was unmistakeable, and unbelievable. It just didn’t sit well with what he knew of New Start. The city had always lived up to its name, and so had the planet. The colony had burned off all its fear in fueling its long flight, and it urged those who loved it to not look back. They had turned their faces towards an unknown future with gaiety and resolve. His friend Adrian had often detected a febrile undertone to this, a sadness in living beyond extinction, a post mortem triste … but Ben-Ami never had. Perhaps he wasn’t sensitive enough. Perhaps he was made of sterner stuff. He didn’t know.

What he felt now, beneath his present worry about what other people felt, and beneath his mild foreboding about the appointment to which he briskly walked, was elation. We are not alone! The universe is open! There are people out there! There are doors to everywhere! We can fittle! He could feel his steps spring, he could almost punch the air at the thought. Why are you walking like this, he wanted to ask the trudging crowd as he slipped through its gaps, when we should all be dancing?

He ran up the marble steps of a familiar ornate building, beside whose open doors a modest plaque proclaimed it the offices of the Members of the Eurydicean Assembly.

‘I have an appointment at nine with Jean-Luc Menard,’ he told the receptionist. ‘Member for the Seventy- Ninth Arrondissement.’

‘He’s available, Mr Ben-Ami.’ The receptionist looked slightly awkward. ‘Ah … if you can spare a moment?’

Ben-Ami signed the tattered programme book for The Madness of George II—a farce from seventy-odd years earlier that he’d have been delighted to forget—chatted briefly, got the directions, and bounded up the indicated stair.

Menard welcomed him into an office with a good view towards the ocean and a lot of screens on the walls, all silent and all full of earnestly talking people: an early debate in the Assembly, morning studio interviews, vox- pops. Menard was a short man who looked a little older and stouter than he needed to; it was as much part of his image as the conservative, almost collarless suits and shirts which he wore in daily defiance of (and approximately annual compliance with) fashion. One of the responsible elements, he’d been Ben-Ami’s MEA and nodding acquaintance for decades.

After a few social niceties over a cup of coffee, Menard got to the point.

‘This is … a little difficult, Benjamin,’ he said. ‘I don’t usually ask my constituents in to see me. Normally, of course, it’s the other way round. As you know.’

‘I appreciate your help on many occasions past,’ said Ben-Ami, searching his memory for any relatives or offspring Menard might have with theatrical ambitions or pretensions, and finding none. ‘If there’s anything I can do for you …’

‘Not at all, nothing personal, nothing like that,’ said Menard. He glanced out of the window, and back. ‘Damn it, old chap, I hate doing this.’ He slapped his hands on his knees. ‘The fact is, it’s about your play.’

‘My play?’ For a moment, Ben-Ami thought it was his most recent play that was meant: The Reformer Reformed, a knockabout satire on Eurydicean politics that had closed on its third night. Had there been some careless allusion in it that had offended Menard?

‘The Returner play.’

‘Oh!’ Ben-Ami laughed, relieved. ‘Early days, Jean-Luc. Don’t like to talk about unfinished projects—bit of a professional superstition, I know, but there it is. I can tell you this much—’ He tapped his nose. ‘It’ll be controversial.’

‘Indeed.’ Menard frowned at him. ‘That’s the problem.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Ben-Ami shook his head. ‘What problem?’

‘It’s difficult to put this as delicately as I would wish,’ said Menard. ‘Let’s just say there are many people who would regard it as politically inopportune. In the present situation only, I assure you. When things settle down a little, then, to be sure, there would be no objection, but for now …’ He spread his hands.

Ben-Ami floundered. ‘I expected my political friends to question it. All sorts of rumours are flying around. You know what actors are like, can’t resist gossip or a good line—but I assure you, when you see it all in context—’

Menard threw up his hands. ‘Yes, yes. Patriotic, progressive, all that sort of thing. The business with the Returners might raise some eyebrows, but I’m confident you can carry that off. That isn’t the problem—or rather, it precisely is the problem. To stir up feelings, however well-intentioned, of what one might call the chauvinisme, the sense of Eurydicean—’

‘One moment,’ said Ben-Ami coldly. ‘You, my friend, a responsable politique, are telling me there are those who fear my play will be too patriotic?’

‘Yes,’ said Menard, sounding ashamed of himself. ‘Not myself, of course. Not even our party. I am merely the messenger, you understand. I’ve been asked by a very highly placed source to convey a—a word of advice. The Executive, and above all the Joint Chiefs, are very concerned about the delicacy of our relationship—a relationship of the highest importance to our security, perhaps even to our existence—with our new allies.’

‘Ah, I see!’ said Ben-Ami. ‘They’re worried about offending the Knights!’

‘Exactly,’ said Menard, beaming obvious delight that they were at last on the same wavelength.

‘Then,’ said Ben-Ami, standing up, ‘I’ll thank you to convey a message back to your friends in high places. Tell them they can take their word of advice and stick it up their arses.’

W