The Great Symmetry (20 page)

It turned out that a minute was a
very long time.

“Launched,” the rental captain announced.

“Track on the main screen.”

They watched as the screen showed the track of the missiles on an orbital scale. Solid red lines for history, dashed green lines for trajectory. Large numbers for the minutes and seconds until impact. The display zoomed in slowly to a regional, then a local view as the numbers incremented toward zero. A few seconds after the moment of impact, the graphics
were replaced by live aerial views of the scene. First fireballs, muted to protect their vision, then a merged and misshapen cloud from the seven impacts.

They collected reports and views from observers near the site. After the cloud became thinner and finally started to drift away to the north, they zoomed in on the location, carefully checking the former cave entrances. Teams would be there on foot within a few hours. So far, there was no evidence that a cave had ever existed in the area.

Lobeck efficiently ran the surface operation, as the bridge crew monitored from the ship. The ground teams closed in. He directed that the radio jamming should continue until every square millimeter of ground had been directly examined. He was going to make certain.

Sonia hoped that Lobeck had it out of his system.

Ravi seemed to be excited. “I think this is it!” he told her. “We have done the job, helping to do what needs to be done, and
now we will be able to go home, to the ones we care for. That is good, yes?”

“Yes, a good job,” she told him.

Ravi’s smile was beatific.

Sonia knew that she would carry these events with her forever, and especially her culpability. She had helped reduce the harm, as much as she could. Three murders, plus those writers who had been silenced. Far fewer than three hundred thousand or more, as could have occurred if Lobeck had not listened to her earlier, and had struck
Abilene. That was worth something.

Once she got back to Alcyone, would she confess to Yvette? Find a place next to a running stream, white noise cloaking them, and tell her the story? Did she dare? If she did, would Yvette consent to stay with her? For the sake of the kids?

In the Valley of Dreams, the molten pools slowly cooled, solidifying into rock of a type never before seen on Kelter.

A Drop of Water

If they had decided before, they were certain now. There was no turning back. The blast had left all three of them deafened, and only now was some semblance of hearing coming back. Their pursuers had clearly used extremely heavy ordnance, somewhere near the lower entrances.

It was not just sound. The earth had wrenched under their feet, then it had settled like a pile of broken bones. Evan, from his knees, had seen Kate fall against one of the walls of the cave. He had tried to reach out for her, but he was too far away, and had no balance to offer. Even Mira had lost her footing.

For Evan, the blast told him with finality that the juggernaut was coming specifically for him
. There would be no stepping aside and letting it roll on past. For a time he had convinced himself that he was just a bystander, swept up in events far larger than what he could see. Now it was plain, even more so than Lobeck’s words at the pit. Affirmatix was pursuing him, and now his companions, until they were all dead.

If they had been able to talk with each other, there would have been a lot to say.

Mira motioned them onward.

It was surprising how much they were hampered by not being able to hear. They often had to take turns, through awkward places or up climbs. Instead of easily hearing when the way was clear, each had to rely on sight, often less useful and sometimes unreliable.

In the absence of sound and only a single beam of light from each person, other senses ruled. The cave had tremendous variations in texture, with soft silt, rounded gravel, and sharp little pebbles in places. The bare rock was smooth and gracefully rounded in some passages, and then blocky and broken in others. Sometimes the cave was a luxury to be in contact with. Often it was painful. Always, it was cold.

The breeze was always there. Where the passage was smallest, the breeze was stronger, even approaching the force of a powerful
wind. In larger rooms the air circulated more gently, in apparently random directions. Evan could feel it on any exposed skin, like his cheeks and sometimes the small seam between his gloves and the sleeves of his jacket.

Evan had always liked going for walks, completely offline. The rhythm of his steps helped him think, and the absence of the endless pings freed him to consider what really mattered.

In an odd way, the cave had the same effect.

He recalled, as well as he could, the strange conversation with the infoterrorist just a few hours before. Knowledge, screaming to be free. A crazy idea, and yet a match to what he believed at heart. He had just never heard such a colorful way of expressing it.

The knowledge of the Versari had lain in wait for him over hundreds of millennia, perhaps wishing to be known, just waiting for the right vector to be set loose upon the world. For all practical purposes, the knowledge could be ascribed a kind of volition – it certainly drove people to actions they would not have otherwise considered.

As long as his findings had been dry, of only academic interest, it hadn’t mattered. He could publish anything he wanted, anywhere he wanted. A few dozen people would parse the jargon
. Of those, two or three would send him an appreciative note. But the moment he had come upon something of material value, everything had changed. Without knowing, Evan had become an infoterrorist.

The casters on the Spoon Feed hadn’t been lying after all.

And it shouldn’t change a thing. Not one single thing. His mission had always been
to tell the world what he had found, and he was going to do exactly that. As soon as he got out of this cave.

An impact jarred Evan’s head and neck. He had been crawling, looking down, and had not seen the ledge. Dreaming. He was lucky he hadn’t damaged his light. Evan pulled back, determined the dimensions of the obstacle, and lowered himself under it, passing into the larger room beyond.

After another deeply wearing hour of travel, Evan had to beg for a break. He slumped down and closed his eyes. Everything was catching up with him.
How much had he slept? Their cold rest in the dark of the cave? Did time dozing in his EVA count? A few minutes drooling in his seat during re-entry to Kelter?

Evan awoke, stiff and cold to the bone. Kate sat next to him. Painting, of all things.
Evan got up and stomped around, anything to restore some circulation and shake off the chill.

Restored, he looked at Kate’s work. The central figure was obviously Mira. A blur of motion, bounding off a ledge and casting for the next hold, surrounded by dark that was somehow warm and not forbidding. No single feature of the climber was recognizable, but it added up in its entirety to the image they had already seen repeatedly, of an impossible climb gracefully surmounted.
The climber was portrayed as something in between a person and a Valkyrie.

“Mira, check this out! It’s you!” They could hear each other now, if they spoke loudly and clearly.

Mira sauntered over. “Pfft,” she pronounced. “Art? More like a collage. Do you teach that to those same kids who have to read your books? Cutouts and imaginary sto
ries, that will definitely prepare the next generation for leadership. Let’s get going.”

“Keep that one, Kate,” Evan told her. “I want a copy.”

As they got under way, the passage narrowed, and then they found themselves clambering over, under, and between boulders. The spaces became smaller still. Mira, leading the way, halted, creating a traffic jam. Evan found himself staring at the soles of Mira’s boots.
“I need to hand you some rocks,” she told him. “Here they come.”

“What? I thought you had been through this way. To your secret exit.”

“I have,” Mira said. “But this needs some work, so everybody can fit easily
. You know, like your belly.”

There was nothing wrong with his belly. Granted, it went out rather than in, these days. But not by much. It was just fine.

She passed him rocks, sometimes pushing them back with her feet. Evan parked the first few, then had to start passing the rocks farther back to Kate.
Fortunately, even the largest of them didn’t weigh very much, although they still had all of their mass.

It seemed like a lot more material than a simple gardening exercise for their comfort.

At last Mira crawled forward, making room. “Come on through,” she called.

Evan and Kate wiggled through the hole, emerging in a large room. Ahead, Evan could hear the sound of the wind, stronger and deeper than ever. Follow the wind, he
remembered Mira telling him from her tales of exploration.

“We’re here. What are we waiting for?” Evan asked.

“If we’re all back together, I need your attention,” Mira told them.

“You’re the cave guide. So, where do we go?”

“Before we take another step, I need both of your agreement on something.
This next place, I have never shown to anyone. Ever. And it needs to stay that way.”

“Come on, it’s just a bunch of cave passages,” Evan declared. “They’re all the same. And I think we have bigger fish to fry.”

“In a few minutes, I’ll show you, and then you’ll understand. And we’ll talk about the promise.
First, help me out.”

Under Mira’s direction, they gathered rocks and threw them down into the hole from which they had emerged. When it was full, she had them gather and pile more rocks on top. Finally she was satisfied, and led them down a comfortable walking passage, and the sound grew louder, and more irregular.

It was not the sound of air.

From the high balcony, their lights shone on the racing cascade, feeding into a deep swirling pool. The lights reflected on the walls and ceiling of the cavern beyond.
The river continued, down and to their right, around a corner and out of sight. The cold of the water reached out to them, even from far below.

“This.” Mira faced them. “This place. This river.”

Evan was amazed. He tried to estimate the flow. It was
several cubic meters per second, at least. He had seen free flowing water so rarely, and never on Kelter, that it was a challenging calculation.

The pool looked like it was at least two meters deep, and was about four meters wide. But the eddies made a mockery of any kind of estimation. Below the surface, in which direction was the water moving?

The cascade was another place to consider. But how much of the flow was water, and how much was air?

Regardless, it was an immense amount of water
. So many cubic meters flowing past, every minute of every day. Enough to supply Abilene, and more.

He remembered learning the sailor’s shower as a child. Swab the parts that matter. Rinse them into the recovery system. Good enough was good enough.

“This will never be known, to anyone. We will all swear it.”

“Mira, you can’t be serious. This much water, what a resource.”
Evan was still trying to run the numbers.

“It is not,” Mira declared. “It will never be a resource. Never. Unless you both agree, I won’t leave this spot. And you can’t find the way out, not in a million years.
Swear on whatever you hold most sacred, and tell me what you swear upon.”

“Oh Mira, I am so happy for you!” Kate was spouting nonsense. “You see it. You understand. I always knew it! Do you believe?”

Mira scoffed. “What, believe in the cartoon sky guy, with the beard? Hell no.”

Kate waved her open hand. “It doesn’t have to be that, exactly. Just – something, that matters. More than whatever trifle one of us may want at a moment. Something bigger.”

It certainly was bigger than them
. Cubic meters per second. And, it could sweep them away. Easily.

Mira stood tall. “Use whatever label you want. I just know who and what I will die to defend. And that includes this river. And the tree, of course.”

“I’ll gladly swear it!” Kate moved toward Mira.

Mira put out her
hand, palm up. “Don’t. Even. Consider it. I’ve seen how you act toward the people you despise. The lady golfer hug and a platitude. Just swear the oath, and that will do.”

Kate recited her oath. It was on the long side, Evan thought.

All eyes were on Evan.

“Ok, whatever,”
he shrugged.

Mira simply stood there. “That won’t do.”

“What?”

“That won’t do.” Then she sat down. “I don’t move until you show me you mean it.”

Evan decided that Mira was off her rocker. “Do I need to point out where we are? You know, deep in this cave, pursued by platoons of soldiers who presumably want to kill us?”

“I can wait.
I think they’ll be a while.”

It appeared that she could wait as long as required. And time was wasting. Soon they would be shivering.

Evan wondered what would satisfy Mira. If she wanted to withhold
this fantastic resource from a thirsty planet, that was her business, although it irked him that she was forcing him to be part of it.

What did he consider sacred, anyway?

The scientific method? No, that was a just a tool.

Gödel’s theorem? It was a core principle, and he lived by it, or its corollary in the physical world, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Yet, he would never apply that word, sacred, to either of those ideas. And he would feel like an idiot swearing on them. He wasn’t sure if he could finis
h such an oath and pretend to be serious.