14
'Forgive me for asking, but are you Hiram Yaeger?' Fueled by enthusiasm, Pat had made her way through the vast computer network that covered the entire tenth floor of the NUMA building. She had heard computer wizards at the University of Pennsylvania talk in awe of the oceans data center of the National Underwater & Marine Agency. It was an established fact that the center processed and stored the most enormous amount of digital data on oceanography ever assembled under one roof.
The scruffy-looking man sitting at a horseshoe-shaped console pulled down his granny glasses and peered at the woman standing in the doorway of his sanctum sanctorum. 'I'm Yaeger. You must be Dr. O'Connell. The admiral said to expect you this morning.'
The brain behind this incredible display of information-gathering power hardly fit the image she had of him. For some reason, Pat had expected Yaeger to look like a cross between Bill Gates and Albert Einstein. He resembled neither. He was dressed in Levi's pants and jacket over a pure white T-shirt. His feet were encased in cowboy boots that looked as if they had suffered through a thousand calf-roping contests on the rodeo circuit. His hair was dark gray and long and tied back in a ponytail. His face was boyish and clean-shaven, and featured a narrow nose and gray eyes.
Pat would have also been surprised to learn that Yaeger lived in a fashionable residential section of Maryland, was married to a successful animal artist, and was the father of two teenage daughters who attended an expensive private school. His only hobby was collecting and restoring old, obsolete computers.
'I hope I'm not interrupting anything,' said Pat.
'Weren't you met at the elevator and shown to my domain?'
'No, I simply wandered around until I saw somebody who didn't look like Dilbert.'
Yaeger, a fan of the comic strip character by Scott Adams, laughed. 'I think I'm supposed to take that as a compliment. I deeply apologize for not having someone meet and escort you.'
'No bother. I took a self-guided tour. Your data empire is quite grand. Certainly nothing like the equipment I'm used to working with at the university.'
'Can I get you a cup of coffee?'
'No, thank you, I'm fine,' said Pat. 'Shall we get to work?'
'As you wish,' Yaeger replied politely.
'Do you have the photographs taken of the chamber?'
'The photo-processing lab sent them up last night. I stayed late and scanned them into Max.'
'Dick told me about Max. I'm anxious to see him in action.'
Yaeger pulled up a chair next to his but didn't immediately offer it to Pat. 'If you'll step around the console and stand in the middle of that open platform just in front of us, I'll demonstrate Max's unique talents.'
Pat walked to the platform and stood in the center, staring back at Yaeger. As she watched, the computer whiz seemed to blur before her eyes and then vanished altogether, as she found herself surrounded by what her mind swore was some kind of nebulous enclosure. Then the walls and ceiling became more distinct and she found herself standing in an exact replica of the chamber. She had to tell herself that it was a holographic illusion, but it seemed so real, especially when the inscriptions began forming on the walls in well-defined clarity.
'This is fantastic,' she murmured.
'Max has all the symbols from the photographs programmed into his memory, but although we have a monitor the size of a small movie screen, I thought it would be helpful for you to read the inscription lines in their original perspective.'
'Yes, yes,' Pat said, becoming excited. 'Being able to study the entire text in one sweep will help enormously. Thank you, and thank Max.'
'Come back and meet Max,' came Yaeger's voice from behind the illusionary chamber. 'Then we'll get to work.'
Pat was on the verge of saying 'I can't,' because the chamber seemed so real. But she broke the illusion by stepping through the wall as if she were a ghost, and rejoined Yaeger behind the console.
'Max,' said Yaeger, 'meet Dr. Pat O'Connell.'
'How do you do?' came a soft feminine voice.
Pat eyed Yaeger suspiciously. 'Max is a woman.'
'I programmed my own voice into the original program. But I've made any number of modifications since then and decided that I'd rather listen to a female voice than that of a male.'
'She's voice-activated?'
Yaeger smiled. 'Max is an artificial intelligence system. No buttons to push. Just talk to her like you would a normal person.'
Pat looked around. 'Is there a microphone?'
'Six, but they're miniatures you can't see. You can stand anywhere within twenty feet.'
Apprehensively, Pat said, 'Max?'
On the huge monitor just beyond the platform, the face of a woman appeared. She stared at Pat in vivid color. Her eyes were topaz brown and her hair a shiny auburn. Her lips were spread in a smile that revealed even white teeth. Her shoulders were bare down to the tops of her breasts, which just showed above the bottom of the monitor. 'Hello, Dr. O'Connell. I'm pleased to meet you.'
'Please call me Pat.'
'I shall from now on.'
'She's lovely,' said Pat admiringly.
'Thank you.' Yaeger smiled. 'Her real name is Elsie, and she's my wife.'
'Do you work well together?' Pat asked facetiously.
'Most of the time. But if I'm not careful, she can get as testy and petulant as the original.'
'Okay, here goes,' Pat murmured under her breath. 'Max, have you analyzed the symbols that were scanned into your system?'
'I have.' Max's voice answered in tones that sounded positively human.
'Could you decipher and translate any of the symbols into the English alphabet?'
'I've only scratched the surface, but I have made progress. The inscriptions on the ceiling of the chamber appear to be a star chart.'
'Explain.' Yaeger ordered.
'I see it as a sophisticated coordinate system that is used in astronomy to plot the positions of celestial objects in the sky. I think it might suggest changes in the declinations of stars visible in the sky over a particular part of the world in past epochs.'
'Meaning that because of deviations in the earth's rotation, the stars appear to shift positions over time.'
'Yes, the scientific terms are precession and nutation,' Max lectured. 'Because the earth bulges around the equator from its rotation, the gravitational pull of the sun and moon is heaviest around the equator and causes a slight wobble to the earth's spinning axis. You've seen the same phenomenon in a spinning top, due to gravity. This is called precession, and it traces a circular cone in space every 25,800 years. Nutation, or nodding, is a small but irregular movement that swings the celestial pole 10 seconds away from the smooth precessional circle every 18.6 years.'
'I know that sometime in the distant future,' said Pat, 'Polaris will no longer be the North Star.'
'Exactly,' Max agreed. 'As Polaris drifts away, another star will move into position above the North Pole in approximately 345 years. A hundred years before the time of Christ, the vernal equinox- Excuse me, are you familiar with the vernal equinox?'
'If I remember my junior college astronomy,' said Pat, 'the vernal equinox is where the sun intersects the celestial equator from south to north during the spring equinox, making it a reference direction for angular distances as measured from the equator.'
'Very good,' Max complimented her. 'Spoken like a college professor putting her class to sleep. Anyway,
