Hogan, James P Giants 5 Mission to Minerva

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suit your taste. The colored flakes range from tart to sweet, and the syrups
add body and smoothness. When you know what you like, you can mix it again in
the goblet."
Mildred made a few choices and tried the result. It was sweet and spicy with a
delicious reverberation of aftertastes that died away like echos in a
cathedral. "You haven't answered my question," she said as she began mixing a
larger version.
Showm made her own selection without needing to use the sampling cup. "I was
thinking about what you said . . . Earth moving out of its adolescence and
entering maturity. There was a world of humans who would have passed through
that phase long ago. Yes, their roots lay in the predatory jungles of Earth,
and our ancestors abandoned them to perish as genetically impaired biological
misfits. But they didn't perish. With no choice but to play by the rules of
the environment that they found themselves in, they braved and survived every
challenge that it could throw at them. They emerged finally to dominate that
world in a way which was, despite all the things you've heard me say,
stirringly magnificent." Showm was talking, of course, about the Lunarians,
evolved from terrestrial primates that the ancient Ganymeans had transported
to Minerva. She went on, "But they overcame the limitations that my ancestors
inflicted on them, and developed a cooperative technological culture in a
fraction of the time that it had taken Ganymeans to progress to the same
level. It was astounding. You see what I'm saying, Mildred? This Terran
compulsion to fight adversity, the refusal to accept defeat, if tamed and
directed at the real obstacles that stand in the way of life and the growth of
consciousness and spirit, instead of against each other . . . it could prove a
more potent force than anything we have encountered in all our explorations of
the Galaxy."
"I've heard Christian talk along exactly those lines," Mildred said. She hoped
this wasn't going to turn into a Thurien guilt-trip over the destruction of
Minerva. Had she been the one who had gotten them onto it? She was unable to
recall. It was time to change the subject before they got morbid, she decided.
Showm sipped her ule, testing it, then added a drop more of one of the syrups
and stirred it in. "Is your whole life taken up with public affairs, Frenua?"
Mildred asked her. "How about personal things? Do you have any family?"
"Children, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Oh, indeed. I have a son who's away on a distant world these days, working
among the natives. They're quite primitive there. And two daughters. One
excels me by far in musical talent. The younger one is in Thurios, raising a
family of her own."
"So, their father? . . . Are you together still?" Mildred had heard no
reference to another occupant of the place.
"That was a phase of living that we completed and fulfilled. But there comes a
time when we are called to do other things. He is finding his inner self now.
But we remain companions in life. How about you?"
Mildred waved a hand to and fro. "Oh . . . a few flirtatious things in younger
years. But I really don't think it's for me, you know. I enjoy solitude with
my own thoughts, and the freedom to do things in my own peculiar ways. I don't
think I've met a man yet that I didn't end up driving to distraction. Did you
know that the only reason I ended up on Thurien was because Christian was
trying to get rid of me?"
"No. How could that be?"
Mildred related the story and was relieved to see that it got Frenua
chuckling at least, shaking and making funny cackling sounds that she took to
be a Ganymean chuckle and away from her threatened downward slide over
Minerva. Suddenly the thread of a thought came into Mildred's mind that if
Eesyan, Christian, and Victor got their machine working, then maybe they could
go back there somehow and change what had happened. But she didn't want to get
Frenua onto that topic again. "Are you going to let me hear some of this music
that you compose?" she asked instead.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Overwhelmingly, it was the short-term capriciousness of human actions that
produced the kind of disparities among local time lines that would be
experienced as the clashing of incompatible events. But given that the effect
was confined to a localized domain, even a complex physical device could be
expected to function consistently. While the innumerable quantum transitions
involved in its existence and operation would continue to define realities of
their own that were, it was true, theoretically discrete, within the immediate
locality of the surroundings and the recent past, the likelihood of their
adding up to anything discernibly different at the macroscopic level was
remote.
Eesyan therefore concluded that the indicated course of action would be to put
everything at Quelsang on hold and relocate the work off-planet where it could
be directed remotely. Indeed, the scaled-up MP2 Multiporter already under
design was intended to do just that, but for a different reason: to safeguard
researchers from the catastrophic consequences if a sizable object from a
parallel experiment happened to materialize within solid matter. But when
Eesyan mentioned the prospect matter-of-factly in the course of a discussion
in the Terrans' office in a way that presumed such a decision to be as good as
agreed, he was taken aback to discover that they saw no real need for halting
the Quelsang program at all.
"Why?" was Hunt's simple rejoinder. Hunt's assistant was there too; also the
German and the female scientist from China.
It had seemed obvious. Eesyan made a helpless gesture. "Well . . . you've all
seen the kind of chaos it can create around itself. How would it be possible
to conduct any work that makes sense with that going on? We've got two extra
versions of an autograph book from other realities. Suppose they had been
copies of you or me, or anyone else out there?" He motioned toward Hunt. "The
Professor Danchekker that you talked to here in this room is now in another
universe. What if another one hadn't replaced him in this one?"
"So now we're beginning to understand it better," Hunt said. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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