“You are right to do so. We have life-extension methods available, ones that came out of S-space research and allow increased life span in normal space. And probably they will let the subject enjoy life more keenly, too. But you can’t solve the problem thrown at us by the Kermel Objects unless you can work on it for a long time. That means Gulf City, and it means S-space.” She stood up. “Will you work on this? And will you help me to persuade your friends to do the same?”
“I’ll try.” Sy hesitated. “But I still need to think. I’ve not had the thinking time that I wanted when I headed for the tanks.”
Judith Niles nodded. “I know. But I wanted you to do your thinking with a full knowledge of what’s going on here. You have that. I’ll head back now. This chamber is self-locking when you leave. And as soon as you’re ready to do it, let’s meet again with your friends.” Now she hesitated, and her expression matched Sy’s for uneasiness. “There’s something else to be discussed, but it’s on another subject. And I want to do it when all of you are together.” She gave him a worried smile and headed for the door. For the first time, Sy could see her as a lonely and vulnerable figure. The power and intensity of personality were still there, unmistakable, but they were muted, overlain with an awareness of a monstrous unsolved problem. He thought of the splendid confidence with which the Planetfest winners had lifted off from Pentecost. They had the shining conviction that any problem in the galaxy would fall to their combined attack. And now? Sy felt older, and a great need for time to think. Judith Niles had been carrying a killing load of responsibility for a long time. She needed help, but could he provide it? Could anyone? He wanted to try. For the first time in his life, he had met someone whose intellect walked the same paths as his own, someone in whose presence he felt totally at ease. Sy leaned back in his chair. It would be ironic if that satisfaction of mind-meeting came at the same time as a problem too big for both of them. * * *
An hour later Sy was still sitting in the same position. In spite of every effort, his mind had driven back relentlessly to a single focus: the Kermel Objects. He began to see the Universe as they must see it, from that unique vantage point of the longest perspective of evolutionary time. With the T-state available, humans had a chance to experience that other world-view. Here was a cosmos which exploded from an initial singular point of incomprehensible heat and light, in which great galaxies formed, tightened into spirals, and whirled about their central axes like giant pinwheels. They clustered together in loose galactic families, threw off supercharged jets of gas and radiation, collided and passed through each other, and spawned within themselves vast gaseous nebulae.
Suns coalesced quickly from dark clouds of dust and gas, blooming from faintest red to fiery blue-white. As he watched in his mind’s eye, they brightened, expanded, exploded, dimmed, threw off trains of planets, or spun dizzily around each other. A myriad planetary fragments cooled, cracked, and breathed off their protective sheaths of gases. They caught the spark of life within their oceans of water and air, fanned it, nurtured it, and finally hurled it aloft into surrounding space. Then there was a seething jitter of life around the stars, a Brownian dance of ceaseless human activity against the changing stellar background. The space close to the stars filled with the humming-bird beat and shimmer of intelligent organic life. The whole universe lay open before it. And now the T-state became essential. Planet-based humans, less than mayflies, flickered through their brief existence in a tiny fraction of a cosmic day. The whole of human history had run its course in a single T-week, while mankind moved out from the dervish whirl of the planets into the space surrounding Sol. Then S-space had given the nearer stars; but the whole galaxy and the open vastness of intergalactic space still beckoned. And in that space, in T-state, humans could be free to thrive forever.
Sy sat back in the chair, drunk with his new vision. He could see a bright path that led from mankind’s earliest beginnings, stretching out unbroken into the farthest future.
It was the road to forever. It was a road that he wanted to take, whatever the consequences. But first, humanity had to find a way to survive the stellarforming catastrophe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Elissa was the last to arrive at the meeting. As she hurried into the long conference room to take her seat she glanced around the table, and was struck at once by the odd seating arrangement. Judith Niles sat alone at the head of the table, head bowed forward and her eyes on the control console built into the table in front of her. Sy Day sat to her immediate right, and Peron next to him, with an empty chair between them. Peron looked a little uncomfortable, while Sy was obviously a million miles away, absorbed by some private concern. Wolfgang Gibbs and Charlene Bloom occupied seats on the opposite side of the table. They were sitting close together, well away from the rest. Wolfgang was scowling and chewing moodily at a finger nail, while Charlene Bloom glanced from one person to another with rapidly blinking eyes. Elissa looked at her closely. Extreme nervousness? It certainly appeared that way, but for no obvious reason. And the whole room was unnaturally quiet, without the normal casual chit-chat that preceded even a serious meeting. The atmosphere was glacial and tense. Elissa paused, still standing. She had a choice. Sit opposite Sy, and thus be between Wolfgang and the Director? Or next to Sy and Peron; or at the other end of the table, facing Judith Niles. She headed to sit next to Sy, then on some obscure impulse changed her mind and went to the end chair directly opposite the Director. Judith Niles raised her head. Elissa underwent a brief scrutiny from those intense eyes, then the Director nodded briefly in greeting. She seemed as remote and preoccupied as Sy.
“To business,” Judith Niles said at last. “I gather that Sy Day briefed both of you on our meeting and conversation?”
Peron and Elissa looked at each other. “In detail,” said Elissa. She waited for Peron, but he did not speak. “However, we still have questions,” she went on. Judith Niles nodded. “I am sure you do. Perhaps it is best if you first listen to what I propose. That may answer many of your questions. If not, we will consider them later.”
Her words were couched as a suggestion, but her tone of voice showed she expected no argument. No one replied. Wolfgang ducked his head and seemed to be studying the granular plastic table top, rendered a soft continuous blur by the oddities of S-space optics. Charlene looked expectantly around the table at the others, then back to the Director.
“It is interesting that the arrival here of the three of you should coincide with a decision point in my own thinking,” went on Judith Niles. “Although I could argue that your presence in Gulf City precipitated that point. By now you know something of our history. For fifteen thousand Earth years, research work has continued here without a break: monitoring messages from the Kermel Objects; developing new techniques for slowing of consciousness, designed to make us better able to match the Kermel transmission rates; and making many attempts at direct communication with them. Failed attempts, I should add. But we have had some successes. We are assured now of the extreme age of the Kermels; we have learned how to present signals received from them reliably, as one, two, or three dimensional arrays; we have confirmed by independent methods that the changes in stellar types in this spiral arm of our galaxy are real; and finally, we are beginning to see hints of methods to slow subjective experience rates even further, beyond those of T-state.