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Authors: Robert Charles Wilson
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always sounded to Tess like wailing babies, hungry and lonely. They meant something bad was happening. She shivered and ran the rest of the way home.
Chapter Seven
Wednesday morning, Sebastian Vogel joined Chris at one of the tiny makeshift tables in the community center cafeteria.
Breakfast consisted of croissants, watery scrambled eggs, orange juice, and coffee, free of charge to involuntary guests. Chris started with the coffee. He wanted a little neurochemical fortification before he even glanced at the steam table.
Sebastian ambled up and dropped a copy of
God & the Quantum Vacuum
on the tabletop. “Elaine said you were curious. I inscribed it for you.”
Chris tried to look grateful. The book was a premium edition, printed on real paper and bound in boards, sturdy as a brick and about as heavy. He imagined Elaine suppressing a smile when she told Sebastian how “anxious” Chris was to read it. Sebastian must have carried a suitcase full of these into Blind Lake, as if he were on a promotional tour.
“Thanks,” Chris said. “I owe you one of mine.”
“No need. I downloaded a copy of
Weighted Answers
before the links were cut. Elaine recommends it highly.”
Chris wondered how he could repay Elaine for this. Strychnine in her breakfast cereal, perhaps.
“She seems to think,” Sebastian went on, “this security crisis may work to our advantage.”
Chris leafed through Vogel’s book, scanning the chapter heads. “Borrowing God,” he read. “Why Genes Make Minds & Where They Find Them.” The pernicious ampersand. “To our advantage how?”
“We see the institution in crisis. Especially if the lockdown goes on much longer. She says we can get past Ari Weingart’s publicity machine and talk to some real people. See a side of Blind Lake that’s never been explored in the press.”
Elaine was right, of course, and for once Chris was ahead of her. For a couple of days now he had been interviewing the stranded day workers, getting their take on the security shutdown.
He hadn’t needed Elaine’s pep talk the other night. He knew this was in all likelihood his last chance to salvage his career as a journalist. The only question was whether he wanted to take it. As Elaine had also pointed out, there were other options. Chronic alcoholism or drug abuse, for instance, and he had come close enough to both of those to understand the attraction. Or he could take some inconspicuous job writing ad copy or tech manuals and slide into a sedate, respectable middle age. He wasn’t the first adult to face diminished expectations and he didn’t feel entitled to sympathy for it.
The assignment to Crossbank and Blind Lake had come like a childhood dream too long deferred. A dream gone stale. He had grown up in love with space, had relished the images from the early NASA and EuroStar optical interferometers—tentative, crude pictures that had included the two gas giants of UMa47’s system (each with enormous, complex ring systems) and the tantalizing smudge that was a rocky planet inside the habitable zone of the star.
His parents had indulged his enthusiasm but never really understood it. Only his younger sister Portia had been willing to listen to him talk about it, and she treated these discussions as bedtime stories. Everything was a story, as far as Portia was concerned. She liked to hear him talk about these distant and freshly envisioned worlds but always wanted him to go beyond the established facts. Were there people on these planets? What did they look like?
“We don’t know,” he used to tell her. “They haven’t discovered that yet.” Portia would pout in disappointment—couldn’t he have made something up?—but Chris had acquired what he would later think of as a journalistic respect for the truth. If you understood the facts they needed no embroidery: all the wonder was already there, the more spellbinding because it was true.
Then the NASA interferometer had begun
Chapter Seven
Wednesday morning, Sebastian Vogel joined Chris at one of the tiny makeshift tables in the community center cafeteria.
Breakfast consisted of croissants, watery scrambled eggs, orange juice, and coffee, free of charge to involuntary guests. Chris started with the coffee. He wanted a little neurochemical fortification before he even glanced at the steam table.
Sebastian ambled up and dropped a copy of
God & the Quantum Vacuum
on the tabletop. “Elaine said you were curious. I inscribed it for you.”
Chris tried to look grateful. The book was a premium edition, printed on real paper and bound in boards, sturdy as a brick and about as heavy. He imagined Elaine suppressing a smile when she told Sebastian how “anxious” Chris was to read it. Sebastian must have carried a suitcase full of these into Blind Lake, as if he were on a promotional tour.
“Thanks,” Chris said. “I owe you one of mine.”
“No need. I downloaded a copy of
Weighted Answers
before the links were cut. Elaine recommends it highly.”
Chris wondered how he could repay Elaine for this. Strychnine in her breakfast cereal, perhaps.
“She seems to think,” Sebastian went on, “this security crisis may work to our advantage.”
Chris leafed through Vogel’s book, scanning the chapter heads. “Borrowing God,” he read. “Why Genes Make Minds & Where They Find Them.” The pernicious ampersand. “To our advantage how?”
“We see the institution in crisis. Especially if the lockdown goes on much longer. She says we can get past Ari Weingart’s publicity machine and talk to some real people. See a side of Blind Lake that’s never been explored in the press.”
Elaine was right, of course, and for once Chris was ahead of her. For a couple of days now he had been interviewing the stranded day workers, getting their take on the security shutdown.
He hadn’t needed Elaine’s pep talk the other night. He knew this was in all likelihood his last chance to salvage his career as a journalist. The only question was whether he wanted to take it. As Elaine had also pointed out, there were other options. Chronic alcoholism or drug abuse, for instance, and he had come close enough to both of those to understand the attraction. Or he could take some inconspicuous job writing ad copy or tech manuals and slide into a sedate, respectable middle age. He wasn’t the first adult to face diminished expectations and he didn’t feel entitled to sympathy for it.
The assignment to Crossbank and Blind Lake had come like a childhood dream too long deferred. A dream gone stale. He had grown up in love with space, had relished the images from the early NASA and EuroStar optical interferometers—tentative, crude pictures that had included the two gas giants of UMa47’s system (each with enormous, complex ring systems) and the tantalizing smudge that was a rocky planet inside the habitable zone of the star.
His parents had indulged his enthusiasm but never really understood it. Only his younger sister Portia had been willing to listen to him talk about it, and she treated these discussions as bedtime stories. Everything was a story, as far as Portia was concerned. She liked to hear him talk about these distant and freshly envisioned worlds but always wanted him to go beyond the established facts. Were there people on these planets? What did they look like?
“We don’t know,” he used to tell her. “They haven’t discovered that yet.” Portia would pout in disappointment—couldn’t he have made something up?—but Chris had acquired what he would later think of as a journalistic respect for the truth. If you understood the facts they needed no embroidery: all the wonder was already there, the more spellbinding because it was true.
Then the NASA interferometer had begun
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