The Great Symmetry (23 page)

But Sonia knew what the dragonflies were.

Dividing The Spoils

Two of the delegates on Sanzite’s ship had by now been replaced by the Presidents of their families. Counting Sanzite, that made three Presidents and four Delegates.

The Delegates were empowered to negotiate at the highest level on behalf of their family, but Sanzite appreciated the other Presidents making the journey. He knew how much he hated to travel.

Sanzite, obviously, was the only one of them who was in a tank of thick
fluid rather than walking around. The others showed their respect by treating him as simply another president, facing him when he spoke, arranging themselves so that he was always a core part of the discussion. It made sense, since he was the host. No shaking hands, though. That had stopped many years ago.

Sanzite called them to order. “I trust that everyone has had a chance to evaluate the information that I have provided. Does anyone need more time?”

That would be embarrassing. He had provided a full two hours. Nobody asked for a delay.

“So you know what we have discovered,” Sanzite continued, “and you may be gaining some idea of its value. We have done a valuation, and I was shocked by the result. If we manage this resource correctly, it is valued at ten times the amount of all existing asset value. All assets, that exist anywhere in civilization. Ten times that amount.”

The designers of the travel tank had at least done one thing right. The top edge of the tank looked down over a slightly sunken floor, and nobody could look down on the fluid surface, even when standing. As Sanzite presented his findings, he was able to look just slightly down on the assembled presidents and delegates.

“Why are you telling us all this?” President Lu, of ProSolutiana. “Why are you not exploiting this discovery for your benefit?”

“Oh, we are.” Sanzite smiled, because he could still do that. “We have identified several of the most promising new planets, and we have ships on their way already.”

“Still, why involve us?” Lu pressed. “Are you simply here to gloat?”

“We are here for a very good reason. My associate Mr. Lobeck, who is directing our operations around Kelter, has forecasted that Affirmatix could control over ninety nine percent of all assets using this discovery. But he is not paying attention to a key principle.”

“The Controlling Interest Rule. Of course.” Lu nodded.

“Precisely,” Sanzite affirmed. “We abide by this rule on a micro scale. None of us may subscribe to more than forty percent of the salary and expenses of any government official. There are many good reasons, such as avoiding bidding wars over the subscription for a powerful post. But the biggest single reason is that if one of us insisted on a controlling interest in a top government official, the other six would not stand for it. In this case, on a macro scale, at some future day when you discern
the trend, you would all take Affirmatix down, and we would be far worse off than if we had not made the discovery.”

“So what do you propose?” Lu asked.

Sanzite laid out his plan. “We will divide the value up in a manner that awards very substantial rewards to Affirmatix, because we brought it to the table, but does not violate the Controlling Interest Rule. I propose three shares for Affirmatix, and one share each for the other six families.”

Sanzite had to stop himself from his deeply ingrained habit of gesturing when expressing a key idea. He didn’t want to bump against the confining walls of the travel tank. Someday, he resolved, he would just have a full size tank installed in a dedicated ship, so he could go wherever he wanted in comfort.

“Three shares out of nine, that’s one third,” Lu objected. “Rather close to the forty percent limit, don’t you think?”

“Three is too much,” put in Delegate Alsatie from RealHealth.

“Two. Two shares.” President Remon from Individua.

“Very good,” returned Sanzite. “We have established that three shares may be too much, and I tell you that two shares is definitely too little. Let us leave the rest of the haggling to the lawyers. Do we have agreement on the principle? We will divide this bounty. We will not war over it. And, we will maximize
the value we can realize from the discovery, by working together. Most importantly, we will coordinate on the schedule on which we announce new discoveries.”

“We can accelerate the pace of discovery,” said Remon.

“Only by a very little bit,” Sanzite responded. “For the most part, we must keep on a schedule very similar to what we would have discovered anyway. Most importantly, we do not want anyone to detect a trend of greater discoveries that cannot be explained.”

“But for the crowded worlds−”

“Crowds are good for property values.
They are mostly our properties, let me remind you. We must proceed carefully, so that we do not undermine the value of the investments we all hold.”

The Presidents and the delegates continued the discussion for several hours. The implications. How to develop their discovery, without attracting unreasonable attention. It was the postcompetitive spirit at its finest, and this made Sanzite proud. Coopetition, for the good of everyone.

After a time, they came to agreement on many topics, and identified others for further discussion. Details, that others could work out. Finally, it was time to adjourn.

Sanzite was glad they were done. It had been a long meeting, although very productive. And, he was overdue for physical therapy.

It was not a good idea to neglect his health.

Publish Or Perish

Mira suddenly stopped them in a small room and announced, “I know how to solve our problem. But first, I need to know that it’s real, beyond a shadow of a doubt. If you have a wondrous glome chart as you’ve described, let’s see it.”

Without hesitation, Evan pulled a card out of his pouch and held it up. “This is it.”

She held out her hand. “Give it here.”

Evan surrendered the card. “I can bring it up on your tablet.”

Mira inserted the card, and Evan invoked a program. “This isn’t the actual artifact,” he explained for Kate as the tablet initialized. “The original format couldn’t be read by our machines. This is just a basic database program with a lot of the information translated into it.”

“All right, let’s see what she’s got,” Mira said.

“It’s loaded. What glome do you want to know about?”

Mira pondered. “There’s a problem here. Anything I could confirm, you could have loaded from any star atlas. Anything else, I have no way of knowing that it’s correct.”

Evan threw up his hands. “I don’t want you to be convinced.
I just want all of us to survive this. You don’t need to know, you don’t want to know. Forget I said anything.”

“Show me the real one again. The original.”

Evan pulled a small box out of his pocket and opened it, then proffered it to Mira.

Mira reached out and felt the object drop into her palm. It was the amber cube, about a centimeter on a side, which Evan had shown her while they were heading to Top Station. She held it to her lamp. Light spilled through, casting flowing patterns on her thumb. “This is crazy.”

“This is real,” he told her. “And, I can prove it. You know that I glomed from Aurora, right?”

“You say you came from Aurora.”

“Ok, we agree that I came in from two million kilometers trailing Kelter Four. And you know I’ve been in Aurora for the last two years.
Well, here’s the thing. That’s not a known way into this system! You know there are only four known emergent glomes here. Well, there’s a fifth, and I explored it by diving blind into an unknown glome, based only on my read of the data from this artifact which said the glome came out here.”

Mira considered. She knew the glome had not been publicly known. That fact had been all over the news. It was conceivable that it had somehow been known, but secret, or recently discovered. But this was unlikely for the simple
fact that a person or family who discovered a glome between two known and inhabitable worlds was already wealthy by virtue of that discovery, and the associated royalties collectible over the first forty nine standard years of operation.

She realized that there was another way to check. “I want you to query on the star AL-54B, no inhabited planets, one relay station.”

“I can do that. Give me a minute . . . okay, here it is. What do you want to know?”

“Tell me, is there
−” No. Mira realized that was not the way to control the experiment. There was a better method. “Just show me all glomes in that system farther out than a billion kilometers.”

Evan queried a minute further then pulled back so she could see the screen. “Her
e you go, an even dozen.”

There it was. At 1,350 MKM out, 8 degrees north of plane, sidereal 34 degrees. She knew it was there, and nobody else in the world did. Twelve years before, she had been on the first ship, the first human ship, she corrected herself, in the system. At the very edge of their sweep, she was certain that there was the signature of a glome,
worth logging. The captain had overruled her because the strength of the signal was below the ASTM standard, and there had been no time or budget to alter course and get closer than 50,000 kilometers to be sure. It was too far out for practical use, anyway. Far out glomes almost always went to other far out
glomes.

“This one, where does it go?” she asked.

Evan selected an icon. “Let’s see. Looks like the Alpha entry into the glome goes to a system about 50 parsecs inward, sidereal 340 degrees, not yet explored, also over a billion kilometers out. Upsilon Andromeda, if you like the mythical names.”

“Hang on, why did you specify the Alpha?” Mira asked
. “That’s the only entry to a glome that ever works.”

“That we know of, right? The dataset also specifies destinations for the Omega entry.” The Omega vector was the exact opposite point of entry into a glome from the Alpha. “But here’s the strange thing – as far as I can tell, the Versari data is wrong about the Omega destinations.
It lists some entries that can’t possibly be right – they would have been discovered long ago. That’s a big reason it took me so long to decode the matrix. Only the Alpha destinations match what we know.”

“But you nailed the location of that glome, and I am the only person who has ever seen it. It’s true, isn’t it? All of it.”

Evan nodded. “It’s all true.”

“The glome routes to a
hundred thousand new star systems,” Mira considered. “Endless wealth. I could take it. Right now. I am the only one who knows the way out. Leave you two with lots of time to make up, in the dark.”

Mira stood, holding the tablet. “I could find the perfect planet. Once this blows over and the fleet is gone, get a crew together and light out for the ragged edge. What would be better than that? So, you two, why wouldn’t I do that?”

Kate looked horrified. Evan took her hand. “Don’t worry,” he told Kate. “It’s a riddle, and I know the answer.”

Evan looked up at Mira.
“Why not?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“Because it’s you.”

They regarded each other.

Just a hint of a smile from Mira was enough. “Do I get first choice of a planet, at least?”

“Pick of the litter,” Evan
assured her. “Assuming we make it through this. Now please stop frightening Kate like that.”

“I can have a little fun, can’t I?”

“Hey, I wasn’t scared!” Kate protested. “Anyway, I know a little about business these days, and
I know exactly how Affirmatix plans to gain as much as possible. They’re going to publish every glome and claim every planet. For the royalties and the rights. And they can only get to everything first if nobody else knows about this
– that’s the key. Evan, you said that they went crazy, but that’s not true. Affirmatix is just acting in their rational self-interest.”

“Sociopathic self-interest,” he amended.
“A massive case of lucraphrenia.”

“Rational, sociopathic.” Kate held up two open hands as if weighing each word equally. “Same thing, when you’re that big. Believe me, I have lived it since I started running
my little family. They’ll take an advantage like this and run everyone else out of business. There’s no actual sisterhood there.”

Mira nodded. “Just one major, running everything.”

“I expect that’s their plan,” Kate said. “They won’t think twice. Non
e of the Sisters would hesitate, given the same chance. And we need to stop them. Mira, you said you have a solution.”

“If you’re done yammering, then yes I do. There is one person who can inform all of Kelter about this. And by extension, all of civilization.”

Evan knew where Mira was going
. “The infoterrorist.”

“Yes. Axiom. Freeing information, that’s his reason for living.”

“He’s got really interesting ideas,” Evan said. “I’d like to talk with him more. But – getting this out to the whole planet and even beyond, all at once – that’s a big job. Can he pull it off?
He said he would protect us, and he failed to do that. I mean, what has he actually done recently? Say, in the last fifty years.”

“I think he has been waiting,” Mira said.

“It’s been a pretty long wait, then. Listen, I know he was pretty famous
or infamous in his day, in the thirties, and I know you’re fond of him, but has it ever occurred to you that the reason he hasn’t been caught is that he’s not worth catching? These days he just hangs around naked in his infoterrorist retirement home.”

“He’s our best chance. If anybody can get the story
far and wide, it’s Axiom. It’s not just him. He has friends, and I know some of them.” Mira pulled out the two readers. “Remember these? Once we get out of the cave, all we need is a connection, stick in a card with whatever we want to send to him, and we’re done. There’s another h
uge advantage. For any other choice, we would need to get back to civilization, and maybe travel where we can be tracked, in order to pitch the story. To get it to Axiom, we just need these.”