Forever Peace Part 15

Well, if your mission is saving the universe, what's a little sleep deprivation? Amelia was taking a lot of it, too, but coming down (with sleepies) to sleep three or four hours a day. If you don't do that, sooner or later you'll crash like a meteorite. Peter needed a complete and ironclad argument ready before he could allow himself to sleep, and knew he would pay for it.

Amelia had told him I was sick, but hadn't elaborated. I suggested we call it food poisoning. Alcohol is a sort of a food.

He never asked. His interest in people began and ended with their usefulness to the Problem. My credentials were that I could be trusted to keep my mouth shut and had been studying this new corner of a.n.a.lysis.

He met us at the door and gave me a cold damp handshake while he stared at me with pinpoint speedie pupils. As he led us to the office he gestured at an untouched tray of cold cuts and cheese that looked old enough to give you actual food poisoning.

The office was a familiar-looking mess of papers and readers and books. He had a console with a large double screen. One screen was a fairly straightforward Hamiltonian a.n.a.lysis and the other was a matrix (actually one visible face of a hypermatrix) full of numbers. Anybody familiar with cosmology could decode it; it was basically a chart of various aspects of the proto-universe as it aged from zero to ten thousand seconds old.

He gestured at that screen. Identify ... can you identify the first three rows?

Yes, I said, and paused long enough to gauge his sense of humor: none. The first row is the age of the universe in powers of ten. The second row is the temperature. The third row is the radius. You've left out the zero-th column.

Which is trivial.

As long as you know it's there. Peter... should I call you- Peter. Julian. He rubbed two or three days' worth of stubble. Blaze, let me freshen up before you tell me about Kyoto. Julian, familiarize yourself with the matrix. Touch to the left of the row if you have any questions about the variable.

Have you slept at all? Amelia asked.

He looked at his watch. When did you leave? Three days ago? I slept a little then. Don't need it. He strode out of the room.

If he got one hour of sleep, I said, he'd still be down.

She shook her head. It's understandable. Are you ready for this? He's a real slave driver.

I showed her a pinch of dark skin. It's in my heritage.

My approach to the Problem was about as old as physics, post-Aristotle. First, I would take his initial conditions and, ignoring his Hamiltonians, see whether pseudo-operator theory came to the same conclusion. If it did, then the next thing, probably the only thing, we had to worry about was the initial conditions themselves. There were no experimental data about conditions close to the accelerated universe regime. We could check some aspects of the Problem by instructing the Jupiter accelerator to crank up energies closer and closer to the critical point. But how close to the edge of a cliff do you want to push a robot when it might be forty-eight minutes between command and response? Not too close.

The next two days were a sleepless marathon of mathematics. We took a half hour off when we heard explosions outside and went up to the roof to watch the Fourth of July fireworks over the Washington Monument.

Watching the crash-bang of it, smelling the powder, I realized it was kind of a dilute preview of coming attractions. We had a little more than nine weeks. The Jupiter Project, if it went on schedule, would produce the critical energy level on September 14.

I think we all made the connection. We watched the finale silently and went back to work.

Peter knew a little about pseudo-operator a.n.a.lysis, and I knew a little about microcosmology; we spent a lot of time making sure I was understanding the questions and he was understanding the answers. But at the end of two days, I was as convinced as he and Blaze were. The Jupiter Project had to die.

Or we all had to die. A terrible thought occurred to me while I was tw.a.n.ging on speedies and black coffee: I could kill both of them with two blows. Then I could destroy all the records and kill myself.

I would become Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, to paraphrase a nuclear pioneer. With a simple act of violence, I could destroy the universe.

A good thing I was sane.

It wouldn't be difficult for the Project engineers to prevent the disaster; any random change of the position of a few elements of the ring would do it. The system had to line up just so in order to work: a circular collimation over a million kilometers in circ.u.mference that would last for less than a minute before gravity from Jupiter's moons pulled it apart forever. Of course that minute would be eons long compared to the tiny interval that was being simulated. And plenty of time for the accelerating surge to make one orbit and produce the supercharged speck that would end it all.

I WAS GROWING TO like Peter, in spite of himself. He was a slave driver, but he drove himself harder than he did me or Amelia. He was temperamental and sarcastic and blew up about as regularly as Old Faithful. But I've never met anyone so absolutely dedicated to science. He was like a mad monk lost in his love of the divine.

Or so I thought.

Speedies or no, I'm still blessed and cursed with a soldier's body. In the soldierboy I was exercised constantly, to keep from cramping up; at the university I worked out every day, alternating an hour of running with an hour on the gym machines. So I could get along without sleep, but not without exercise. Every morning at dawn I'd excuse myself from the proceedings and go off to run.

I was systematically exploring downtown Washington during my morning jogs, taking the Metro down and going in a different direction each day. I'd seen most of the monuments (which might be more moving to someone who'd actually chosen to be a soldier) and ranged as far afield as the Washington Zoo and Alexandria, when I felt like doing a few extra miles.

Peter accepted the fact that I had to have the exercise to keep from cramping up. I also contended that it cleared my head, but he pointed out that his head was clear enough, and the only exercise he got was wrestling with cosmology.

That was not entirely true. On the fifth day I got almost all the way to the Metro station and realized I'd left my card behind. I jogged on back to the apartment and let myself in.

My street clothes were in the living room, by the fold-out bed that Amelia and I shared. I took the card out of my wallet and started back to the front door, but then heard a noise from the study. The door was partly open; I looked in.

Amelia was sitting on the edge of the table, naked from the waist down, her legs scissored around Peter's bald head. She was gripping the edge of the table so hard her knuckles were bone-white, her face to the ceiling in a rictus of o.r.g.a.s.m.

I closed the door with a quiet click and ran out.

I ran as hard as I could for several hours, stopping a few times to buy water and choke it down. When I got to the border gate between D.C. and Maryland, I couldn't get through because I didn't have my interstate pa.s.s. So I stopped running and slid into a dive called the Border Bar, icy air sharp with tobacco smoke, legal in D.C. I drank down a liter of beer and then sipped another liter with a shot of whiskey.

The combination of speedies and alcohol is not entirely pleasant. Your mind goes off in all directions.

When we first started going together, we talked about fidelity and jealousy. There's a kind of generation problem: When I was in my teens and early twenties, there was a lot of s.e.xual experimentation and swapping around, with the defendable basis that s.e.x is biology and love is something else, and a couple could negotiate the two issues independently. Fifteen years earlier, when Amelia had been that age, att.i.tudes were more conservative-no s.e.x without love, and then monogamy afterward.

She agreed at the time to go along with my principles-or lack of same, her contemporaries might say -even though we both thought it was unlikely we would exercise our freedom.

So now she had, and for some reason it was devastating. Less than a year ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity of having s.e.x with Sara, jacked or not. So what right did I have to feel injured because she had done exactly the same thing? She'd been living with Peter more closely than most married couples live, for quite a while, and she respected him enormously, and if he asked for s.e.x, why not say yes?

I had a feeling it was she who had asked, though. She certainly had been enjoying it.

I finished the drinks and switched to iced coffee, which tasted like cold battery acid, even with three sugars.

Did she know that I'd seen? I had closed the door automatically, but they might not remember having left it slightly open. Sometimes the current from the airco cycling on and off would ease a door shut.

You look lonely, soldier. I did my running in fatigue uniform, in case I wanted an unrationed beer. You look sad. She was pretty, blond, maybe twenty.

Thanks, I said, but I'm all right.

She sat down on the stool next to me and showed me her ID, professional name Zoe, medical inspection only one day old. Only one customer had signed the book. I'm not just a wh.o.r.e. I'm also a professional expert on men, and you're not 'all right.' You look like you're about to jump off a bridge.

So let me.

Huh-uh. Not enough men around to waste one. She lifted up the back of her wig. Not enough jacked men, anyhow.

Her off-white shift was raw silk, hanging loosely on her graceful athletic body, revealing nothing and everything: This merchandise is so good I don't have to advertise.

I've used up most of my entertainment points, I said. Can't afford you.

Hey, I'm not doing any business. Give you one for free. Got a dime for the jack?

I did have ten dollars. Yeah, but look. I've had too much to drink.

No such thing, with me. She smiled, perfect hungry teeth. Money-back guarantee. I'll refund your dime.

You just want to do it jacked.

And I like soldiers. Was one.

Come on. You're not old enough.

I'm older than I look. And I wasn't in for long.

What happened?

She tilted toward me so that I could see her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. One way to find out, she whispered.

There was a jack joint two doors down. In a few minutes I was in the dark humid cube with this intimate stranger, memories and feelings crashing together and mingling. I felt our finger slide easily into our v.a.g.i.n.a, tasted the salt sweat and musk of our p.e.n.i.s, sucking it rigid. b.r.e.a.s.t.s radiating. We shifted around so we were two mouths working together. There was a slight distracting ache from two of her molars that needed work. She was terrified of dentists and all of her beautiful front teeth were plastic.

She had thought about suicide but never attempted it, and our s.e.xual rhythm faltered while she relived my memory-but she understood! She had spent one day as a mechanic, a.s.signed to a hunter-killer platoon by a clerical error. She watched two people die and had a nervous breakdown, her soldierboy paralyzed.

She knew nothing of science or mathematics, physical education major, and although she felt my end-of-the-world anxiety, she just linked it with the suicide attempt. For several minutes, we stopped the s.e.x and just held on to each other, sharing sorrows at a level that's hard to describe, independent of actual memory, I suppose body chemistry talking to body chemistry.

There was a two-minute warning chime and we re-coupled, hardly moving, slight internal contractions bringing us to a slow-flowing o.r.g.a.s.m.

And then we were standing in the lemon heat of the afternoon sun, trying to figure out what to say.

She squeezed my hand. You aren't going to do it again-kill yourself?

I don't think so.

I know what you think. But you're still 'way too upset about him and her.

You helped with that. Having you, being you.

Oh. She handed me her card and I signed on the back.

Even when you don't charge? I said.

Except for husbands, she said. Your own, that is. Her brow furrowed. I got a little ghost of something.

I felt a sudden new sweat break out. Of what?

You jacked with her. Only once? Once and a... another time that, that wasn't really the real thing?

Yeah. She had a jack put in, but it didn't take.

Oh. I'm sorry. She came close and plucked at my shirt. She looked up at me and whispered, The stuff I was thinking about you being black, you know I'm not a racist or anything.

I know. She was, in a way, but not malicious and not in a way she could control.

The other two...

Don't worry about it. She'd had only two other black customers, jacked, full of anger and pa.s.sion. We come in all flavors.

You're so cool, so thoughtful. Not cold. She ought to hang on to you.

Can I give her your phone number? For a reference?

She giggled. Let her bring it up. Let her talk first.

I'm not sure she knows I saw them.

If she doesn't know, she will know. You got to give her time to work out what she's gonna say.

Okay. I'll wait.

Promise?

I promise.

She stood up on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek. You need me, you know how to get me.

Yeah. I repeated her number. Hope you have a good day.

Ah, men. Never get any real action before sundown. She waved with two fingers and walked away, the silk artfully revealing and concealing with every step, a flesh metronome. I had a sudden backflash and for a moment I was in her body again, warm with afterglow and hunting for more. A woman who enjoyed her work.

It was three o'clock; I'd been gone for six hours. Peter would throw a fit. I took the Metro back and got an armload of groceries at the station store.

Peter didn't say anything, and neither did Amelia. Either they knew that I'd seen them, and were embarra.s.sed, or they'd been too busy to worry about my absence. Whichever, this week's bundle of data had come in from Jupiter, and that meant a few hours of painstaking sorting and redundancy checks.

I put away the groceries and told them chicken stew tonight. We alternated cooking-rather, Amelia and I alternated cooking; Pete always called out for pizza or Thai. He had some private source of money, and got around the rationing because he'd w.a.n.gled a reserve commission in the Coast Guard. He even had a captain's uniform hanging in plastic in the front hall closet, but he didn't know whether it fit.

The new data gave me plenty to do, too; pseudo-operator a.n.a.lysis requires some careful planning before you actually start to grind numbers through it. I tried to put the disturbing events of the day behind me, and concentrate on physics. I was only partly successful. Whenever I glanced over at Amelia I had a flash of her face lost in ecstasy, and a pang of reactive defiance and guilt over Zoe.

At seven I put the chicken into a pot of water and dumped the frozen vegetables on top; sliced up an onion and added it with some garlic. Zapped it to a quick boil and then left it to simmer for forty-five minutes, while I put on headphones and listened to some of this new Ethiopian stuff. The enemy, but their music is more interesting than ours.

Our custom was to eat at eight and watch at least the first part of the Harold Burley Hour, a Washington news distillation for people who could read without moving their lips.

Costa Rica was quiet today; fighting in Lagos, Ecuador, Rangoon, Magreb. The Geneva peace talks continued their elaborate charade.

It had rained frogs in Texas. They actually had amateur footage of that. Then a zoologist explained how it was all just an illusion caused by sudden local flooding. Nah. Secret Ngumi weapon; they'll go hopping all over the country and then suddenly explode, releasing poison frog gas. I'm a scientist; I know these things.

There was a consumer demonstration in Mexico City, which would have been called a riot if it had happened in enemy territory. Someone had gotten hold of the three-hundred-page manifest that detailed what was actually created last month with their most favored nation nanoforges. To everyone's surprise, most of it had been used to make luxuries for the rich. That was not what the public record had said.

Closer to home, Amnesty International was trying to subpoena the strings recording the activities of a 12th Division hunter-killer platoon that had been accused of torture, in an operation in rural Bolivia. Of course it was all pro forma; the request was going to be held up by technicalities until the heat death of the universe. Or until the crystals could be destroyed and convincing fakes synthesized. Everybody, including Amnesty International, knew that (here were black operations whose existence was not even recorded at the division level.

A potential terrorist had been stopped at the Brooklyn Bridge customs point and summarily executed. As usual, no details were available.

Disney revealed plans for a Disneyworld in low Earth orbit, first launch scheduled to go up in twelve months. Peter pointed out that that was significant because of the inside information it implied. The area around the half-completed Chimborazo s.p.a.ceport had been pacified for more than a year. Disney wouldn't start building if they hadn't had a guarantee that there would be a way of getting customers up there. So we were going to have routine civilian s.p.a.ceflight again.

Amelia and I had shared a bottle of wine with dinner. I declared that I wanted to get a few hours' sleep before I pasted a new patch, and Amelia said she'd join me.

I was lying under the covers, wide awake, when she finished in the bathroom and slid in next to me. She held herself still for a moment, not touching.