“Yes. What we see must be a test rig for the instantaneous communication device.”
“How do you suppose it works?” Stick to details; keep it off the Xeelee—
A longer pause. Through the ceiling skin I watched a cathedral of buttressed smoke. The Statue said, “I fear the translator box cannot provide the concepts… At one time these two hoops were part of a single object. And an elementary particle, an electron perhaps, would be able to move at random between any two points of that object, without a time lapse.”
“Yeah. This is quantum physics. The electron we perceive is an ‘average’ of an underlying ‘real’ electron. The real electron jumps about over great distances within a quantum system, quite randomly and instantaneously. But the average has to follow the physical laws of our everyday experience, including the speed of light limit.”
“The point,” it said, “is that the real electron will travel at infinite speed between all parts of an object — even when that object has been broken up and its parts separated by large distances, even light years.”
“We call that quantum inseparability. But we thought you could use it only to send random data, no information-bearing messages.”
“Evidently the Xeelee do not agree,” the Statue said dryly. “It took many generations before my species could be persuaded that the elusive ‘real’ electron is a physical fact, and not a mathematical invention.”
I smiled. “Mine, too. Maybe our species have got more in common than they realize.”
“Yes.”
Well, that was a touching thought which augured hope for the future of the Galaxy. But I noticed it didn’t touch the zap gun.
The thing in the Statue’s stomach started to feed on something; I turned away. The gloom deepened as the pale supernova remnant was eclipsed by the edge of the ceiling. I tried to sleep.
The first day was bad enough, but the second was the worst. Except for the third.
For me, anyway. The suit had water and food — well, a syrup nipple — but the recycling system wasn’t designed for a long vacation. I didn’t want to lose face by sluicing out my plumbing system all over the floor. And so, when I went for my regular walks around the bereft pillar, I sloshed.
By contrast, the Statue was unmoving, machinelike. Bizarre fish swam in its stomach, and the zap gun tracked me like the eye of a snake.
On the third day I stood by my pillar, swaying in unstable equilibrium. I didn’t have to feign weakness. I sneaked glances at the futuristic sky. I had to time things just right—
At length, the Statue said, “You are weakening and will surely die. But this has always been inevitable. I do not understand your motivation.”
I laughed groggily. “I’m waiting for the cavalry.”
The stomach creature twitched uneasily. “What is this ‘calvary’?”
Too uneasy. I shut myself up with the truth. “Maybe I just don’t like being robbed. I’m a prospector for Xeelee gold, but it’s not just for me. Can you understand that? It’s for my son. My off- spring. That’s what you’re taking from me, and I don’t even know what you are.”
A flicker in the sky like the turn of a page.
It was time. I stumbled to my knees.
The Statue said, not unkindly, “You have been a worthy opponent. I will allow you to end your life according to the custom of your species.”
“Thank you. I — I guess it’s over.” I forced myself to my feet, took the hoop from my neck, and laid it reverently atop the little pillar. I began walking stiffly towards the door, feeling ashamed of my trickiness. Amazing, isn’t it. “I’d like to die outside,” I said solemnly.
The Statue glided away from the doorway, respectfully lowering its zap gun.
I got outside the building. Another shudder across the weird sky. I limped around the corner of the building—
— and ran for my life. My legs were like string, shivering from under use. A bar of light swept behind the stars. There were tiny explosions in my peripheral vision; it was as if something was solidifying out of the layer of space that cloaked the planet.
The Xeelee didn’t believe in a quiet entrance.
I tumbled face first into a shallow crater and stayed that way. It didn’t feel deep enough; I imagined my backside waving like a flag to the marauding Xeelee.
A giant started stomping around me. I held onto my head and waited for the pounding to stop. I glimpsed wings, night-dark, hundreds of miles wide, beating over the planet, eclipsing the glowing gas.
The planet stopped shivering.
I tried to move. My muscles were like cardboard. Pieces crackled off the back of my suit, which was burnt to a crisp. I walked from the crater scattering scabs like an unearthly leper.
I reached the site of the Xeelee station. I was a fly at the edge of a saucer; the hole was a perfect hemisphere, a hundred yards wide. I skirted it carefully, heading for a sparkle of twisted metal beyond it.
The Statue lay like Kafka’s cockroach, its sketch of a head battered into concavity, its limbs and torso crumpled. Fluid bubbled through a crack in the porthole, and something inside looked out at me listlessly.
The translator box was hesitant and scratchy, but intelligible. “I… wish to know.”
I knelt beside it. “Know what?”
“How you knew when… they would come.”
“Neat timing, huh?” I shrugged. “Well, the clues were there for both of us.”
“Quantum inseparability?”
“Signals will pass instantaneously between a communicator’s two halves. But those halves must once have been in physical contact. Once joined, they can never be truly parted. Like people,” I mused. “It takes more than time or distance—”
“I begin to… understand.”
“The components of this station, and all its clones throughout the Galaxy, must have been carried here from a central exchange. That’s where the repairmen we’ve just, ah, encountered, must have come from. And the exchange has to be at the Xeelee home base, at the Galaxy core. Three days’ travel for the Xeelee.”
“So they had to come. But the Xeelee Prime Radiant is a matter of speculation. You did not know—”
I grinned ruefully. “Well, I knew for sure I’d had it unless I took a long shot. Your precious logic demonstrated that.”
More bubbles from the stomach, and the voice grew weaker. “But your… ship is destroyed. Your victory does not bring success.”
“Yeah.” I sat in crunchy dirt beside the dying Statue. “I guess I didn’t like to think this far ahead.” The depth of focus seemed to shift; light years expanded around me.
Even the Statue was company. “You have been a worthy… opponent.”
“You’re repeating yourself,” I said rudely.
“My ship is at… the planet’s nearer pole, one day’s journey from here. You may be able to adapt its life system to your purposes.”
“Ah… thank you. Why?”
“Because you would probably find it anyway. And I hope your species will… be tolerant of mine in the future.”
I stayed with the Statue until it bubbled to silence.
I looked back ruefully at the hole the Xeelee had left. There went a hundred fortunes.
But, Lethe’s waters could take the money. I’d take away the Statue’s ship, and at least the principle of the instantaneous transmitter. That ought to be enough; resourceful creatures, we humans.
I felt Tim’s presence steal over me; it was as if his hand crept into mine, reasserting our inseparability. I picked up what was left of the zap gun; it would make a great gift for him. Then I walked over fire-crisped slag to the pole.
The Switch
After the ship landed, Krupp and I made our reluctant way to the airlock. We found Ballantine already there, climbing into his neat little suit.
“Wouldn’t you know it, Gorman,” Krupp growled at me as he thrust his tree-trunk legs into silvered fabric. “That little bastard Ballantine always has to be first.”
I searched for my helmet in a cluttered locker. “Well, it is his job, Krupp. He’s the xenotechnologist… A landfall is the only time he gets to do anything useful around here.”
Krupp pulled his gigantic shoulders straight. “Ask me, that creep doesn’t ever do anything useful. Waste of a berth.” Little Ballantine heard all that, of course. Krupp didn’t care. Nor would you, I guess, if your biceps measured wider than the other guy’s chest. But I thought I saw Ballantine’s big-eyed face redden up just a little inside his helmet.
Captain Bayliss came stomping down the corridor. She was still rounding us all up for the EVA. Soon there were a dozen bodies, the entire crew, crammed into that airlock. Alien air whistled in and we grumbled quietly.
“Stow it!” Bayliss said irritably.
“Ah, Captain, these science stops are a waste of time,” Krupp rumbled. “We’re a cargo freighter, not a damn airy-fairy survey ship—”
“I said stow it,” the Captain snapped. “Look, Krupp, you know the law. We’re obliged to make these stops. Every time his instruments detect something like that wreck outside.”
Well, we all knew who the “his” referred to. Ballantine kept his face turned to the door’s scuffed metal; but his shoulders sloped a bit more.
On that ship we were all alike, all semi-skilled cargo hands. All except for Ballantine. He was the xenotechnologist the law said we had to carry.
