“I don’t deny that,” Retma said, somewhat stiffly. “I’m questioning its applicability. We have no data which suggest that handling the problem in this way would be anything
“I think we’d better go,” Dee said. “Web, Estelle, please come along; we’re only interrupting, and there’s a lot we have to do.”
Her penetrating stage whisper rasped across the discussion more effectively than any speech at normal conversational volume could have done. Dr. Schloss’s face pinched with annoyance. For a moment, the faces of the Hevians went politely blank; then Miramon turned and looked first at Dee, and then at Amalfi, slightly raising one eyebrow. Amalfi nodded, a little embarrassed.
“Do we have to go, grandmother?” Web protested. “I mean, all this is what we’re here for. And Estelle’s good at math; now and then Retma and Dr. Schloss want her to match up Hevian names for terms with ours.”
Dee thought about it. “Well,” she said, “I suppose it can’t do any harm.”
This was exactly and expectably the wrong answer, though Web could have had no way of anticipating it. He did not know, as Amalfi knew very well by direct memory, that women on He had once been much worse than slaves, that in fact they had been regarded as a wholly loathesome though necessary cross between a demon and a lower animal; hence he was unequipped to see that Hevian women today were still crucially subordinate to their men, and far from welcome in a situation of this kind. Nor did Amalfi see any present opportunity to explain to Web—or to Estelle, either—why both children must now go. The explanation would require more knowledge of Dee than either of the children had; they would need to know, for instance, that in Dee’s eyes the women of He had been emancipated but not enfranchised, and that for Dee this abstract distinction carried a high emotional charge —all the more so because the Hevian women themselves were obviously quite content to have it that way.
Miramon settled his papers, arose and walked smoothly toward them, his face grave. Dee watched him approach with an expression of smouldering, resolute suspicion with which Amalfi could not help but sympathize, funny though he found it.
“We are delighted to have you with us, Mrs. Hazleton,” Miramon said, bowing his head. “Much of what we are today, we owe to you. I hope you will allow us to express our gratitude; my wife and her ladies await to do you honor.”
“Thanks, but I don’t—I really mean—”
She had to stop, obviously finding it impossible to summon up in a split second the memory of what she had meant so many years ago, when she had been, whether she was yet aware of it or not, another person. Back then, she had in fact been one of the prime movers in the emancipation of the women of He, and Amalfi had been glad of her vigorous help, particularly since it had turned out to be crucial in a bloody power-struggle on the planet, and hence crucial to the survival of the city—the latter a formula which then had been as magical and beyond critical examination as the will to live itself, and now was as meaningless a slogan and one as far gone in time as “Remember the Bastille”, “Mason, Dixon, Nixon and Yates”, or “The Stars Must Be Ours!” Dee’s first encounter with Hevian women had been in the days when they had been stinking unwashed creatures kept in ceremonial cages; something about Miramon’s present mode of address to her apparently reminded her of those days, perhaps even made her feel the bars and the dirt falling into place about her own person; yet the time gap was too great, and the politeness too intensive, to permit her to take offense on those grounds, if indeed she was aware of them. She looked quickly at Amalfi, but his face remained unchanged; she knew him well enough to be able to see that there would be no help from that quarter.
“Thank you,” she said helplessly. “Web, Estelle, it’s time we left.”
Web turned to Estelle, as if for help, in unconscious burlesque of Dee’s unspoken appeal to Amalfi, but Estelle was already rising. To Amalfi’s eyes the girl looked amused and a little contemptuous. Dee was going to have trouble with that one. As for Web, anyone could see plainly that he was in love, so
“What I suggest is this,” Estelle’s father’s voice said, way up in the middle of the air. “Suppose we assume that there is no thermodynamic crossover between the two universes until the moment of contact. If that’s the case, there’s no possibility of applying symmetry unless we assume that the crossover point is actually a moment of complete neutrality, no matter how explosive it seems to somebody on one side or the other of the equivalence sign. That’s a reasonable assumption, I think, and it would enable us to get rid of Planck’s Constant—I agree with Retma that in a situation like this that’s only a bugger factor—and handle the opposite signs in terms of the old Schiff neutrino-antineutrino theory of gravitation. That can be quanticized equally well, after all.”
“Not in terms of the Grebe numbers,” Dr. Schloss said.
“But that’s exactly the point, Schloss,” Jake said excitedly. “Grebe numbers don’t cross over; they apply in our universe, and probably they apply on the other side too,
Estelle stopped at the door and turned to look toward the invisible source of the voice.
“Daddy,” she said, “that’s just like translating Hevian math into New Earth math. If it’s No-Man’s-Land you have to deal with, why don’t you start with the bullets?”
“Come, dear,” Dee said. The door closed.
There was a very long silence in the room after that.
“You are letting those children go to waste, Mayor Amalfi,” Miramon said at last. “Why do you do it? If only you would fill their brains with the facts that they need—and it is so easy, as you well know, you taught us how to do it—”
“It’s no longer so easy with us,” Amalfi said. “We are older than you are; we no longer share your preoccupation with the essences of things. It would take too long to explain how we came to that pass. We have other things to think about now.”
“If that is true,” Miramon said slowly, “then indeed we must hear no more about it. Otherwise I shall be tempted to feel sorry for you; and that must not happen, otherwise we all are lost.”
“Not so,” Amalfi said, smiling tightly. “Nothing is ever that final. Where were we? This is only the beginning of the end.”
“Were the universe to last forever, Mayor Amalfi,” Miramon said, “I should never understand you.”
And so the betrayal was complete. Web and Estelle never heard the stiff and bitter exchange between Amalfi and Hazleton, across the trillions and trillions of miles of seethingly empty space between He and the New Earth, which resulted in Hazleton’s being forced to call his wife home before she antagonized the Hevians any further; nor did they know precisely why Dee’s recall had to mean their recall. They simpy went, mute and grieving, willy-nilly, expressing by silence—the only weapon that they had—their revolt against the insanities of adult logic. In their hearts they knew that they had been denied the first real thing that they had ever wanted, except for each other.
And time was running out.
CHAPTER FIVE: Jehad
THAT conversation had been unusually painful for Amalfi, too, despite his many centuries of experience at having differences of opinion with Hazleton, ending ordinarily in enforcement of Amalfi’s opinion if there was no other way around it. There had been something about this quarrel which had been tainted for Amalfi, and he knew very well what it was: the abortive, passionless and fruitless autumnal affair with Dee. Sending her home to Mark now, necessary though he believed it to be, was too open to interpretation as an act of revenge upon the once- beloved for being no longer loved. Such things happened between lovers, as Amalfi knew very well.
But there was so much to be done that he managed to forget about it after Dee and the children had left on the recall ship. He was not, however, allowed to forget about it for long—only, in fact, for three weeks.
The discussion of the forthcoming catastrophe had at last entered the stage where it was no longer possible to avoid coming to grips with the contrary entropy gradients, and hence had entered an area where words alone no
