Limberg frowned faintly. A silence came over both of them. Limberg turned away for a moment, avoiding the light upon his eyes. Then he opened his mouth to speak, beginning to turn back, and Michaelmas said: "We should wait for Cikoumas. It will save repeating."
Limberg nodded slowly, faced forward again, and nodded to himself again. Michaelmas stayed comfortably where he was, facing the connecting door. The glass behind him was thrumming slightly, but no one across the room could see he was trembling, and the trembling had to do only with his body. Machinery hummed somewhere like an elevator rising, and then stopped.
Cikoumas came back after a few moments. He peered at Michaelmas up the length of the room. Behind him there was a glimpse of white angular objects, a gleam of bur-nished metals, cool, even lighting, a pastel blue composi-tion tile floor. Then he closed the door. "There you are."
He progressed to a show of indignation. "I have something confidential to discuss with Dr.
Limberg."
"Yes," Michaelmas said. "About the telemetry sender." Cikoumas made his face blank.
Limberg turned now. "Ah." He raised a hand sideward. "Hush one moment, Kristiades. Mr Michaelmas, can you tell us something about the sender?"
Michaelmas smiled at Cikoumas. "Norwood has told you UNAC's analytical computer programmes say the sender isn't Russian. It's a clever fake." He smiled at Limberg. "He says it's probably from Viola Hanrassy's organization."
Cikoumas and Limberg found themselves trying to ex-change swift glances. Limberg finally said: "Mr Michael-mas, why would they think it's from Hanrassy?"
"When it isn't? Are you asking how has UNAC fooled Norwood?"
Cikoumas twitched a corner of his mouth. "To do that, as you may not realize, they would have to reprogramme their laboratory equipment. Events have been too quick for them to do that."
"Ah. Well, then, are you asking why has Norwood become a liar, when he left here so sincere?"
Limberg shook his head patiently. "He is too fine a man for that." His eyes glittered briefly.
"Please, Mr Michael-mas. Explain for me." He waved silence towards Cikoumas again. "I am old.
And busy."
"Yes." Not as busy as some. "Well, now, as to why the sender appears a fake, when we all know it should appear genuine . . ." He rubbed his knuckles gently in his palm. "Sincere. If it could talk; if there was a way you could ask it Did He who made the lamb make Thee, it would in per-fect honesty say
Da."
And how does it do that, I wonder. Or how did they convince it? Which is it? What's that noise beyond Cikoumas's door? Then if you see the impossible occurring, Doctors, I would say perhaps there might be forces on this Earth which you had no way of taking into account." He addressed himself directly to Limberg. "It's not your fault, you see?"
Limberg nodded. The flesh around his mouth folded like paper.
Cikoumas dropped his jaw. "How much
do
you know?"
Michaelmas smiled and spread his palms. "I know there's a sincere Walter Norwood, where once over the Mediter-ranean there was nothing. Nothing," he said. "He'll be all right; nice job in the space programme, somewhere. Ad-ministrative. Off flight status; too many ifs. Grow older.
Cycle out, in time. Maybe get a job doing science com-mentary for some network." Michaelmas straightened his shoulders and stood away from the window. "It's all come apart, and you can't repeat it, you can't patch it up. Your pawns are taken. The Outer Planets expedition will go, on schedule, and others will follow it." And this new sound, now.
It was a faint ripple of pure tones, followed by a mechan-ical friction as something shifted, clicked, and sang in one high note before quieting. Perhaps they didn't know how acute his ear for music was. Cikoumas had taken longer in there than he might have needed for a phone call.
Limberg said : "Mr Michaelmas—these unknown forces . . . you are in some way representative of them?"
"Yes," Michaelmas said, stepping forward. His knees were stiff, his feet arched. "I am they."
His mouth stretched flat and the white ridges of his teeth showed. The sharp breath whistled through them as he exhaled the word. "Yes." He walked towards Cikoumas. "And I think it's time you told your masters that I am at their gates." As if I were deaf and they were blind. He stopped one step short of Cikou-mas, his face upturned to look directly at the man. There's something in there. In his eyes. And in that room.
Cikoumas smiled coldly. That came more naturally to him than the attempts to act indecision or fear. "The op-portunity is yours, Mr Michaelmas," he said, bowing from the waist a little and turning to open the door. "Please follow me. I must be present to operate the equipment at the interview."
"Kristiades," Limberg said softly from his chair, "be wary of him."
There was no one beyond the door when Michaelmas fol-lowed Cikoumas through it.
It was a white and metal room of moderate size, its exterior wall panelled from floor to ceiling with semi-globular plastic bays, some translucent and others trans-parent, so that the mountains were repeated in fish-eye views among apparent circles of milky light. Overhead was the latest in laboratory lighting technique : a pearl-coloured fog that left no shadows and no prominences. The walls were in matte white; closed panels covered storage. The composition underfoot was very slightly yielding.
To one side there was a free-standing white cylindrical cabinet, two and a half metres tall, nearly a metre wide. The faintest seams ran vertically and horizontally across its softly reflective surface. It jutted solidly up from the floor, as though it might be a continuation of something below.
Ahead of Michaelmas were storage cubes, work surfaces, instrumentation panels, sterile racks of teasing needles, for-ceps and scalpels, microtomes, a bank of micromanipula-tive devices — all shrouded beneath transparent flexible dust hoods or safe behind glassy panels.
Michaelmas looked around further. At his other hand was the partition wall to Limberg's office.
From chest height onwards, it was divided into small white open compart-ments like dovecotes.
Below that was a bare workshelf and a tall, pale-blue-upholstered laboratory stool to sit on.
Cikoumas motioned towards it. "Please."
Michaelmas raised his eyebrows. "Are we waiting here to meet someone?"
Cikoumas produced his short laugh. "It cannot come in here. It doesn't know where we are.
Even if it did, it couldn't exist unprotected here." He gestured to the chair again. "Please." He reached into one of the pigeonholes and produced a pair of headphones at the end of a spiral cord. "I do not like the risk of having this voice overheard," he said. "Listen." He cupped one earpiece in each hand and moved towards Michaelmas. "You want to know?" he said, twisting his mouth. "Here is knowledge. See what you make of it."
Michaelmas grunted. "And what would you like to know?"
Cikoumas shrugged. "Enough to decide whether we must surrender to these forces of yours or can safely dispose of you, of course."
Michaelmas chuckled once. "Fair enough," he said, and sat down. His eyes glittered hard as he watched Cikoumas's hands approach his skull. "Lower away."
Cikoumas rested the headphones lightly over his ears. Then he reached up and pulled out another set for himself. He stood close by, his hands holding each other, bending his body forward a little as if to hear better.
The voice was faint, though strong enough, probably, at its origins, but filtered, attenuated, distant, hollow, cold, dank: "Michaelmasss . . ." it said. "Is that you? Cikoumas tells me that is you.
Isss that what you are—Michaelmasss?"
Michaelmas grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. "How do I answer it?" he asked Cikoumas, who momen-tarily lifted one earpiece.
"Speak," Cikoumas said, shifting eagerly around him. "You are heard."
"This is Michaelmas."
"An entity... you consider yourself an intelligent entity."
"Yes."
"Distinguishable in some manner from Limberg and Cikoumasss..."
"Yes."
"What does A equal ?"
"Pi R squared."
"What is the highest colour of rainbows?"
"Red."
"Would you eat one of your limbs if you were starving?"
"Yes."
"Would you eat Cikoumas or Limberg if you were starv-ing?"
Cikoumas was grinning faintly at him.
"First," Michaelmas said coldly.
"An entity ... to speak to an intelligent entity ... in these circumstances of remoteness and displacement... you have no idea how it feels ... to have established contact with three entities, now, under these peculiar circumstances ... to take converse with information-processors totally foreign . . . never of one's accustomed bone and blood . .."
"I — ah — have some idea."
"You argue?"
"I propose."
"Marriage?"
"No. Another form of dialectical antagonism."
"We are enemiesss . . . ? You will not join with Limberg and Cikoumas ...?"
"Why should I ? What will you give?"
"I will make you rich and famous among your own . . . kind . . . Contact with my skills can be translated into rewards which are somehow gratifying to you . . . indivi-duals . . . Cikoumas and Limberg can show you how it'sss done ..."
"No."
"Repeat. Clarify. Synonimize."
"Negative. Irrevocable refusal. Contradiction. Absolute opposition. I will not be one of your limbs." He grinned at Cikoumas.
"Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Then is your curiosity in the name of what you think science...?"
"Justice."
"Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Complex motivations . . .! Ah-hah! The academician Zusykses sssaid to me this would be so; he said the concept is not of existences less than ours, but apart from oursss in origin only, reflecting perfectly that quality which we define as the high faculties; I am excited by your replies ... I shall tell my friend, Zusykses, when we reunite with each other this afternoon; his essential worth is validated!"
"I might be lying."
"We know nothing of lies . . . No, no, no ... in the universe, there is this and there is that. This is not that. To say this is that is to hold up to ridicule the universe. And that is an absurd proposition."
"What is it, then, that isn't the truth but isn't a lie?"
Cikoumas looked at him with sudden . intensity. But Michaelmas was nearly blind with concentration.
"Shrewd . . . you are a shrewd questioner . . . you speak of probability ... yesss ... it was my darling Zusykses who proposed the probability models of entities like you; who declared this structure was possible, and ssso must exist somewhere because the universe is infinite, and in infinity all things must occur. And yet this is only a philosophical concept, I said in rebuttal. But let me demonstrate, said my preceptor, Zusykses, in ardour to me; here, subordinate academician Fermierla, take here this probability coherence device constructed in accordance with my postulates . . . while away this noon and ssseek such creaturesss as I say must be, for you shall surely find their substance somewhere flung within Creation's broadly scattered arms; take them up, meld of their varied strains that semblance which can speak and touch in simulacrum of a trueborn soul; regard then visage, form and even claim of self. Return to me, convinced — we tremble at the brink of learning all that life Is. Clasp to yourself my thought made manifest, which is my self; know it, accept it, make it one with us; I shall not sssend you from me any more.. ."
Michaelmas looked at Cikoumas, frowning. He lifted off the headphones but held them near his ears. Fermierla's voice continued faintly.
"It thinks we are chance occurrences," Cikoumas said dryly. "It says this Zusykses, whatever it is, deduced that humanity must exist, since its occurrence is possible within the natural laws of the infinite universe. The probability of actually locating it to prove him right is, of course, in-finitely small. So they think they are communicating with a demonstration model. Something they created with this probability coherer of theirs. It isn't likely to them that this is the human world. It's likelier that accidental concentra-tions of matter, anywhere in the universe, are moving and combining in such a manner that, by pure chance, they perfectly match infinitesimal portions of Zusykses's concept. Zusykses and Fermierla think the coherer detects and tunes an infinitely large number of these infinitely small concentra-tions together into an intelligible appearance. They think we might actually be anything—a sort of Brownian move-ment in the fabric of the universe—but that entirely at random in an infinity of chances, these selected particles invariably act to present the appearance of intelligent creatures in a coherent physical system."
"Just one?" Michaelmas asked sharply.
Cikoumas's head twitched on its long, thin neck. "Eh?"
"You're talking as if ours is the only probability Fermierla can reach with the coherer. But why should that be? He has his choice of an infinity of accidentally replicated pseudohuman environments, complete with all our rocks and trees and Boy Scout knives. It's all infinite, isn't it?
Everything has to happen, and nearly everything has to happen, and everything twice removed, and thrice, and so forth?"
Cikoumas licked his lips. "Oh. Yes. I suppose so. It seems a difficult concept I must be quite anthropomorphic. And yet I suppose at this moment an infinite number of near-Fermierlas are saying an infinitely varied number of things to an infinity of us. A charming concept. Do you know they also have absolutely no interest in where we actually are in relation to each other? Of course, they don't think we actually exist. And incidentally, where they are, this Fer-mierla creature has been waiting for afternoon since before Dr. Limberg was my age. So there are massive displace-ments; the gravitic, temporal and electronic resistances in-volved must be enormous."
"The what?"
"The resistances." Cikoumas gestured impatiently. "The universe is relativistic - You've heard of that, surely ? — and although, as a life scientist, I am not concerned with all the little details of non-Newtonian physics, I read as much as I have time for—"