They need to know what they are—charge, mass, spin, strangeness, and so on—and
“All right,” Martin said, although the full implications of this were far from clear, and he was far from agreeing with the theory.
“I think the Benefactors—and probably the planet killers—have found ways to control the privileged bands. Now that’s remarkable by itself, because privileged bands aren’t supposed to be accessed by
“Bosons travel at the speed of light. They carry information about changes in position, mass, and so on, like I said. If you can change their states and information content, you can make them
“They just tell an atom it’s anti em?”
Jennifer smiled brightly. “Nothing so simple, but that’s the gist, I think. They mess with privileged bands, they tinker with the memory stores of huge numbers of particles within atoms, all at once, and they create anti em. I’ve got the momerath…”
“How long would it take me to absorb it?”
She pursed her lips. “You, maybe three tendays.”
“I don’t have time, Jennifer. But I’d like to have the record anyway…” Her theory seemed less than important to him now. “Sounds impossible, though.”
Jennifer grinned. “It does, doesn’t it? That’s what’s so neat. Given certain assumptions, and running them through the momerath, the impossibilities
“How much information does a particle have to carry?” Martin asked.
“To differentiate itself from every other particle—a unique particle signature—and to know its state, its position, its motion, and so on… about two hundred bits.”
Martin looked to one side for a moment, frowning, getting interested despite his weariness. “If the universe is a computer, what’s the hardware like?”
“The momerath explicitly forbids positing a matrix for this system.
“There’s no programmer?”
“The momerath says nothing about that. Just, no hardware, no explicitly real matrix. The matrix is, but is not separate from what takes place. You
He was, but there seemed so little time to think even the thoughts he needed to think, and make the necessary plans. “I’ll look the work over when I can. You know I’m bogged.”
“Yes, but this could be important. If we see something that fits, something around Wormwood maybe, something high tech that doesn’t make sense unless I’m right, then we can apply whole new ideas.”
“Obviously,” Martin said. “Thanks.”
Jennifer smiled brightly, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re sweet, but I thought you’d ask about something…”
“What?”
“About the noach—how we communicate with nearby craft and the remotes.”
“Along the privileged bands?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. There wouldn’t be any distance limitations if the moms used the privileged bands to chat. Remember, we can’t chat beyond ten billion kilometers.”
“All right, how, then?”
“By setting up a resonance. You could change the bit or bits that distinguish one particle from another. The particles seem to resonate, to be somewhere else for a very short time. Signals could be sent that way. But there’s a limit how far. I don’t know why, yet, but I’m working on it.”
“Let me know what you come up with,” Martin said.
“Can I talk about it with the others? Get others to work on it?”
“If they have time,” Martin said.
She smiled again, bowed ceremonially in mid-air like a diver, and laddered through the door.
There was little time for anything but work, drill, sleep. Theresa slept with him, but they were too tired to make love more than once before sleep, down from their coasting average of two or three times per day.
Martin curled up against her in the warm darkness of his quarters, in the net. His limp penis nested between her thighs, just below her buttocks, slight stickiness adhering his prepuce to her skin. His hand on her hip, finger caressing lightly; she was already asleep, breathing shallow and even. Her hair in disarray tickled his nose. He moved his head back a few centimeters, opened his eyes, saw a dim memory of the momerath that had absorbed him in most of his time outside drilling and attending to the active teams. The personal momerath; what all the children were doing now, trying to think their way through to an individual judgment, to the most important decision of their lives.
There was much more than just analyzing the data Hakim provided. There was the intuition beyond rational thought; the unknown process of personal conviction, of human faculties at work, that made their judgments different from what the moms might have decided by themselves.
They probably had the power to destroy whatever life existed around Wormwood. The system did not look strongly defended; and in strategy, appearances could count for everything. An appearance of strength could be important… To appear weaker than one actually was could
Going over it again and again. Gradually sleep came.
The universe is made of plateaus and valleys, stars nestled in valleys, the long spaces between the stars creating broad, almost flat plateaus along which orbital courses approach but never reach straightness. Martin floated in the nose of the
Within twenty hours, they would begin separation into
Martin felt someone behind him and turned to see Ariel. She looked angry or frightened, he could not tell which, and she was out of breath.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.