Redshift Part 25

"Not quite. Though that the two regions of error are now separating, as the moon advances, is consistent with a disturbance traveling from the stars to us. That is a first requirement, in my view."

"Your view of what?" Geoffrey finally gave up handling his small sherry gla.s.s and set it down with a decisive rattle.

"Let me put my philosophy clearly," Wright said. "If the universe is an ongoing calculation, then computational theory proves that it cannot be perfect. No such system can be free of a bug or two, as the programmers put it."

Into an uncomfortable silence Geoffrey finally inserted, "Then the moon's being ahead, the stars-it's all a mistake?"

Wright smiled tightly. "Precisely. One of immense scale, moving at the speed of light."

Geoffrey's face scrunched into a mask of perplexity. "And it just- jumped?"

"Our moon hopped forward a bit too far in the universal computation, just as a program advances in little leaps." Wright smiled as though this were an entirely natural idea.

Another silence. The Astronomer Royal said sourly, "That's mere philosophy, not physics."

"Ah!" Wright pounced. "But any universe that is a sort of a.n.a.log computer must, like any decent digital one, have an error-checking program. Makes no sense otherwise."

"Why?" Geoffrey was visibly confused, a craftsman out of his depth.

"Any good program, whether it is doing accounts in a bank, or carrying forward the laws of the universe, must be able to correct itself." Professor Wright sat back triumphantly and swallowed a Jesus College sandwich, smacking his lips.

The Astronomer Royal said, "So you predict-?"

"That both the moon and the stars shall snap back, get themselves right-and at the same time, as the correction arrives here at the speed of light."

"Nonsense," the Astronomer Royal said."A prediction," Professor Wright said sternly. "My philosophy stands upon it."

The Astronomer Royal snorted, letting his fatigue get to him. Geoffrey looked puzzled and asked a question that would later haunt them.

Professor Wright did not have long to wait.

To his credit, he did not enter the media fray with his prediction. However, he did unwisely air his views at High Table, after a particularly fine bottle of claret brought forward by the oldest member of the college. Only a generation or two earlier, such a conversation among the Fellows would have been secure. Not so now. A junior Fellow in po-litical studies proved to be on a retainer from the Times, and scarcely a day pa.s.sed before Wright's conjecture was known in New Delhi and Tokyo.

The furor following from that had barely subsided when the Astronomer Royal received a telephone call from the Max Planck Inst.i.tute. They excitedly reported that the moon, now under continuous observation, had shifted instantly to the position it should have, had its...o...b..t never been perturbed.

So, too, did the stars in the warped circle return to their rightful places. Once more, all was right with the world. Even so, it was a world that could never again be the same.

Professor Wright was not smug. He received the news from the Astronomer Royal, who had brought along Geoffrey to Jesus College, a refuge now from the inst.i.tute. "Nothing, really, but common sense." He waved away their congratulations.

Geoffrey sat, visibly uneasily, through some talk about how to handle all this in the voracious media glare. Philosophers are not accustomed to much attention until well after they are dead. But as discussion ebbed Geoffrey repeated his probing question of days before: "What sort of universe has mistakes in it?"

Professor Wright said kindly, "An information-ordered one. Think of everything that happens-including us talking here, I suppose-as a kind of a.n.a.log program acting out.

Discovering itself in its own development. Manifesting."

Geoffrey persisted, "But who's the programmer of this computer?"

"Questions of first cause are really not germane," Wright said, drawing himself up.

"Which means that he cannot say," the Astronomer Royal allowed himself.

Wright stroked his chin at this and eyed the others before venturing, "In light of the name of this college, and you, Geoffrey, being a humble bearer of the message that began all this ..."

"Oh, no," the Astronomer Royal said fiercely, "next you'll point out that Geoffrey's a carpenter."

They all laughed, though uneasily.

But as the Astronomer Royal and Geoffrey left the venerable grounds, Geoffrey said moodily, "Y'know, I'm a cabinet maker."

"Uh, yes?"

"We aren't b.l.o.o.d.y carpenters at all," Geoffrey said angrily. "We're craftsmen."

The distinction was lost upon the Royal Astronomer, but then, much else was, these days.

The j.a.panese had very fast images of the moon's return to its proper place, taken from their geosynchronous satellite. The transition did indeed proceed at very nearly the speed of light, taking a slight fraction of a second to jerk back to exactly where it should have been. Not theoriginal place where the disturbance occurred, but to its rightful spot along the smooth ellipse.

The immense force needed to do this went unexplained, of course, except by Professor Wright's Computational Principle.

To everyone's surprise, it was not a member of the now quite raucous press who made the first telling gibe at Wright, but Geoffrey. "I can't follow, sir, why we can still remember when the moon was in the wrong place."

"What?" Wright looked startled, almost spilling some of the celebratory tea the three were enjoying. Or rather, that Wright was conspicuously relishing, while the Astronomer Royal gave a convincing impression of a man in a good mood.

"Y'see, if the error's all straightened out, why don't our memories of it get fixed, too?"

The two learned men froze.

"We're part of the physical universe," the Astronomer Royal said wonderingly, "so why not, eh?"

Wright's expression confessed his consternation. "That we haven't been, well, edited ..."

"Kinda means we're not the same as the moon, right?"

Begrudgingly, Wright nodded. "So perhaps the, ah, 'mind' that is carrying out the universe's computation cannot interfere with our- other-minds."

"And why's that?" the Astronomer Royal a little too obviously enjoyed saying.

"I haven't the slightest."

Light does not always travel at the same blistering speed. Only in a vacuum does it have its maximum velocity.

Light emitted at the center of the sun, for example-which is a million times denser than lead-finds itself absorbed by the close-packed ionized atoms there, held for a tiny sliver of a second, and then released. It travels an infinitesimal distance, then is captured by yet another hot ion of the plasma, and the process repeats. The radiation random-walks its way out to the solar surface. In all, the pa.s.sage from the core takes many thousands of years. Once free, the photon reaches Earth in a few minutes.

Radiation from zones nearer the sun's fiery surface takes less time because the plasma there is far less dense. That was why a full three months elapsed before anyone paid attention to a detail the astronomers had noticed early on and then neglected.

The "cone of chaos" (as it was now commonly called) that had lanced in from the distant stars and deflected the moon had gone on and intersected the sun at a grazing angle. It had luckily missed Earth, but that was the end of the luck.

On an otherwise unremarkable morning, Geoffrey rose to begin work on a new pine cabinet. He was glad to be out of the media glare, though still troubled by the issues raised by his discovery. Professor Wright had made no progress in answering Geoffrey's persistent questions. The Astronomer Royal was busying himself with a Royal commission appointed to investigate the whole affair, though no one expected a commission to actually produce an idea.

Geoffrey's hope-that they could "find out more by measuring," seemed to be at a dead end.

On that fateful morning, out his bedroom window, Geoffrey saw a strange sun. Its lumpy shape he quickly studied by viewing it through his telescope with a dark gla.s.s clamped in place. He knew of the arches that occasionally rose from the corona, vast galleries of magnetic field lines bound to the plasma like bunches of wire under tension. Sprouting fromthe sun at a dozen spots stood twisted parodies of this, snaking in immense weaves of incandescence.

He called his wife to see. Already voices in the cobbled street below were murmuring in alarm. Hanging above the open marsh lands around the ancient cathedral city of Ely was a ruby sun, its grand purple arches swelling like blisters from the troubled rim.

His wife's voice trembled. "What's it mean?"

"I'm afraid to ask."

"I thought everything got put back right."

"Must be more complicated, somehow."

"Or a judgment." In his wife's severe frown he saw an eternal human impulse, to read meaning into the physical world-and a moral message as well.

He thought of the swirl of atoms in the sun, all moving along their hammering trajectories, immensely complicated. The spike of error must have moved them all, and the later spike of correction could not, somehow, undo the damage. Erasing such detail must be impossible. So even the mechanism that drove the universal computation had its limits. Whatever you called it, Geoffrey mused, the agency that made order also made error-and could not cover its tracks completely.

"Wonder what it means?" he whispered.

The line of error had done its work. Plumes rose like angry necklaces from the blazing rim of the star whose fate governed all intelligence within the solar system.

Thus began a time marked not only by vast disaster, but by the founding of a wholly new science. Only later, once studies were restored at Cambridge University, and Jesus College was rebuilt in a period of relative calm, did this new science and philosophy-for now the two were always linked-acquire a name: the field of empirical theology.

Kit Reed, whose writing is bright and sharp as a razor, should be declared a national treasure. Over the years her stories have appeared in publications ranging from F&SF, The Yale Review, Omni, Asimov's SF magazine to The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Literature. One of her short story collections is worth having for the t.i.tle alone: Other Stories and The Giant Baby.

She's also the author of numerous novels, including Captain Grownup and expectations, her most recent.

Though "Captive Kong" is a Kit Reed story, we actually have someone else to thank for the ending. Kit writes, "Have you ever had a story you couldn't finish? I went nuts trying to find the ending for this one. Finally I threw up my hands and gave it to my friend Brian, who solved it in three pages-a first for me, and a happy collaboration."

Happy, indeed.

Captive Kong.

Kit Reed.

(with Brian Quinette).

Trevor is looking for backup. When he goes out he wants thirty guys at his back with gravity knives c.h.i.n.king, thirty guys swinging socks full of bolts to clear the way for him. Bra.s.s knuckles, maybe, that bulge that lets attackers know they are packing heat. Plus chains. There's nothing like the menacing c.h.i.n.k of metal against leather-clad thighs to make your point for you.What Mr. Trevor means is . . .

In times like these you need extra muscle.

Times like these. It's not something you did. It's the way things are these days. You don't go out alone and expect to come back in one piece.

The skies are white all the time now; who's to say whether it's volcanic ash or human cremains or the glow of the unforeseeable? Streets liquefy and ruined cars tip into fresh creva.s.ses. The water turns black as you wade into it; you marvel at the darting phosph.o.r.escence until your feet dissolve and you start screaming. Stars jolted out of their sockets dangle like blobs in a bad van Gogh painting, and a crazy can springs out of nowhere and rips off your face.

Loved ones vaporize, freeze, walk into the bleached sunset. Trevor lost his family to an Armageddon cult and his wife, Jane, to the leader; she tortures him with ecstatic e-mails.

He lost his business to his brother Jake. If he'd had his thirty guys in place, he could have beaten Jake and hung on to the stuff marauders took out of his town house. He could have kept Jane-he knows it!

The water that comes out of the tap is a funny color.

Trevor's teeth have started lighting up at night, his hair's wild, and his underwear is sticking to him. Something big is coming. If I can get through it, he thinks, without knowing what it is, I'll come out the other side and be OK. The trick is getting through it.

He needs protection. Face it, he can't afford thirty guys. The guys aren't that hard to come by-universal unemployment!-but maintenance is a b.i.t.c.h. The cost of food and whiskey.

Fresh leather. Fuel for their hogs or choppers, drugs of choice. Plus, if they turn on you .. .

In the end he settles for a three-hundred-pound gorilla.

Even that is not what you think.

Trevor has targeted a body builder with six-pack abs and biceps that make Trevor's arms look like kosher franks hung on a coat rack. He needs to move fast because for no apparent reason society is imploding.

Winds scour the streets, blowing in from a long way off; a cosmic storm is coming. You may not see it yet, but you hear it, and by the light of burning martyrs, you can feel it. The world was never meant to end with a whimper; the cosmic slot machine turns up not lemons but goose eggs, you bet something big is coming.

n.o.body thought it would come so soon.

Go for it, man. Get what you can take. Or take what you can get. You'll get through this. You are Trevor and you are special.

Face it, we all secretly believe we are born special.

Nothing Sam Trevor has done so far comes close to proving this, but deep inside, he knows it. Otherwise, why am I still here? Good answer. Jane writes: "Adam has put me in charge of registration, do join us." In your dreams, baby. Samuel A. (for Articulate) Trevor is special, and the end is coming, and, yes-he is arming himself. If he can get her in the truck.

Right, her. The guys at the gym are all too big for him. His three-hundred-pound gorilla is a woman.Her name is Roxy.

He finds her pressing 350. The woman is offensively buff, great cords of sinew lace the flesh between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her quads are tremendous. Mental note: Keep her in shape.

Top-of-the-line gym equipment. Climbing wall. Universal trainer.

He waits until she's at full extension. "Lady, I admire your form."

Roxy gentles the weights into the cradle and looks up. "What do you want from me?" Her face is surprisingly young. Nineteen, he thinks. Not pretty, not so's you'd notice, but in times like these even a gorilla looks good to you.

"I need you is all."

"Perv?" Her pupils are ringed in white. "If you are, I'll smash your face in."

"Whatever you're thinking, no. No." He tries a smile. "To be perfectly frank, I need your help. G.o.d knows everybody needs a little help these days. A little something extra." He clears his throat, to weight the next words. Ahem. This is significant. Portentous. "In times like these."

She presses 360. "You've got to be one sick f.u.c.k," she says while in the fully extended position.

"You're looking a little shaky," he says. "Let me spot you. So. Ma'am, have you noticed the sky lately? Have you heard the wind? Something big is coming."