“That can’t be good,” said Cass.
“We should leave,” said Wilhelmina. “Now!”
“Run!” shouted Kit. Snatching Cass by the hand, he pulled her away.
Gianni and Wilhelmina spun around and started for the jungle. They managed only three or four flying steps before they were overtaken by the shock wave of a horrendous explosion. The sound, like that of a runaway jet engine or a volcano igniting, shook the ground beneath their feet, and the world blanked out in a blaze of brilliant, all-consuming fire.
CHAPTER 34
In Which the Numbers Do Not Lie
Director Segler slumped in an overstuffed chair on the second-floor lobby of the JVLA headquarters. It had been a long, exasperating night—the third in a row—and he had slept only minutes snatched among meetings, phone calls, and virtual conferences with colleagues from Illinois to Australia. Eyes closed, he could hear the electronic hum of distant machines churning over the latest data gathered by his massive radio telescope and the shush of air-conditioning forever recycling the same flat air. He also heard soft footsteps padding toward him across the carpet.
“What is it?” he yawned.
“Sorry to wake you, chief,” said Leonard Dvorak in a hushed voice.
“I’m not asleep—just resting my eyes.” He tilted his head to see his technical director standing over him with an odd, almost apologetic look on his face. “Whatcha got?”
“I can’t—I mean, I don’t really know . . .” He glanced down at a paper in his hand. “But I thought you should see this.”
Segler rubbed a hand over his face and sat up. At this rate, it was very likely that he would never enjoy a full night’s sleep again, he thought. On second thought, with time itself ending in a few days, that was one less thing he would have to worry about. He reached out and took the offered paper.
“What is this?” he asked, scanning the page. It was a string of equations and values. There were no words that he could see. “Lay it out for me.”
“I noticed a slight differential in the current scan and just started playing with the numbers. I plugged them into our prediction formula and this is what came out.” The technical director gave his boss a fishy look. “I thought you should see it.”
“Okay.” Segler yawned again. “I’ve seen it. So?”
“Don’t you think it’s . . . well, strange?”
The director sighed. “Strange, Leo? My office has been invaded by NASA and I am a prisoner in my own facility. I haven’t slept horizontal in I don’t know how long, and the last meal I had came from a vending machine that takes only quarters. I haven’t seen my wife in a week, and as things are going I will probably never see her or speak to her again. Fox News and CNN and NBC and the BBC and the New York Times and everyone else with a camera and microphone are all sniffing around like jackals on the scent of a kill, and we are only hours away from this story going viral and inciting a global panic that will demolish whatever society we have left. And if all that was not enough, the president of the United States calls me every hour to find out what I’m doing to save the planet.” He thrust out his chin in defiance of his besetting woes. “So forgive me if I seem a little too preoccupied to guess the meaning of your numerical riddles.”
“Sorry, chief.”
“Forget it. Just tell me, okay? Can you do that, Leo?”
Dvorak stared at his boss, then swallowed and said, “It’s just that the numbers indicate that our anomaly has changed.”
“Define changed.”
“The rate of blueshift appears to be slowing. Not only that, it looks”—Dvorak paused to find the right word—“lumpy.”
“Lumpy?”
“Yeah, you know . . . like it could be breaking up somehow.”
Segler jerked to attention. He leaned forward and examined the equations more closely. “Breaking up—are you sure?”
“Not a hundred percent,” the technical director confessed. “But pretty sure. The numbers don’t lie, chief.” He tapped the page in his boss’ hand. “Blueshift is slowing and returning to the red. It’s happening pretty fast.”
“How fast is pretty fast?”
Leo frowned. “Well, I can’t tell. The scan isn’t complete, obviously—but if the trend holds true, we won’t be able to keep up with it.”
Segler jumped to his feet, all thoughts of exhaustion forgotten. “Who else has seen this? Who knows about it?”
“Nobody. Like I said, I was just fooling around with the equations. But when the scan finishes, others are sure to notice. We’re all looking at the same thing, you know.”
“How long before the scan finishes?”
“It’s got another four hours to run.”
Segler nodded. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. First off, keep this under your hat. Don’t breathe a word to anybody. I’m going to terminate the current scan and start another right away. Set it up. Narrow focus, zero in on the region where you picked up the greatest—um, lumpiness. Get the TA coordinates and be ready to push the button when I say the word.”
“What about the NASA boys? They’ll know something is up if you terminate the scan and start recalibrating the array.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll handle them.” Segler started for one of the unoccupied offices. “You hurry downstairs and clear the decks—get Patrick to help you run the new numbers as they come in. I want a second set of eyes on this. If it checks out, I’ll get Hernandez at Aricebo to drop everything and run corroboration for us.”
“And then?” wondered Dvorak.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In a few hours we should have a better idea what’s going on out there. Until then, we keep it low key.” Segler sent his technical director away, then called to him as he headed for the stairs. “By the way, have you seen Dr. Clarke around? Is he down in the den?”
“He was last time I saw him—that was an hour ago.”
“If he’s still down there, tell him I need to see him up here right away.”
“You could page him . . .”
“I want to keep this to ourselves for now, okay?” Segler said. “No sense getting people all worked up if it turns out to be a false alarm.” The elevator arrived and the door slid open. “Go!”
The director returned to his office and slid into his chair; he grimaced at the phone, hoping no one would call him until he had a chance to either verify or disprove Dvorak’s observation. He did not doubt his technical director, but the stakes were ultra-high, and before he went on record with any mind-blowing revelations, he wanted to be absolutely convinced. He was still planning his next moves when there was a knock at the door and Tony Clarke poked his head into the room. “You rang, Sam?”
“That was quick.”
“I was already on my way up to see you when I ran into Dr. Dvorak. What’s up?” He stepped into the room and closed the door.
“You were coming up to see me?” asked the director.
“To ask you if I could go home,” Tony explained simply. “There’s nothing more I can do here. I’d like to see my daughter before . . .” He paused, then let the thought go. “You know.”
“If it were up to me we’d all be home in our beds right now, Tony. I hope you know that.” He shook his head in sympathy. The last few days had aged his friend years; he was looking gaunt and haggard, as if hollowed out by some wasting disease. Before Tony could object or reply, he hurried on. “But listen, we may be on to something that could get us all home very soon.”
“I’m listening.” Tony moved to the desk and folded himself into one of the visitors’ chairs. “What sort of something?”
“A game changer,” said Segler. “Leo was just up here, and he may have found evidence that the universe is no longer contracting. He’s got new blueshift figures that seem to indicate the rate of contraction is slowing. He thinks redshift has restarted.”
“The last scan is still running, and so far—”
“I know. He told me.”
The director shoved the piece of paper across the desktop to his friend. “Have a look—this is what he came up with.”
Tony pulled the page to him and read through it quickly. Halfway down he stopped, went back to the top, and started again, and then read it all once more just to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. “I assume Dr. Dvorak didn’t pull these numbers from thin air?” said Tony, running his finger along a relevant line of figures.
“The equations are Leonard’s,” Segler confirmed. “The numbers he plugged in came from the current scan. He pulled them on the fly—I guess he noticed discrepancies he thought didn’t make sense.”
“What this shows is that the contraction in sector B240-22N has slowed significantly,” Tony observed.
“Leo thinks there’s more to it than that. He thinks the anomaly may be breaking up.”
“But that’s impossible.” Tony lifted his gaze from the page now clutched tightly in his hand. “Contractions in the fabric of the universe do not simply disperse like so much fog on the wind.”
“Tell me about it.” Segler held out his hand for the paper. “That’s why we’re keeping quiet about this until we’ve got an idea of what is actually going on out there”—he gestured vaguely at the ceiling—“in the great beyond.”
“Good call,” agreed Tony, handing back the paper. “What’s the next step?”
Director Segler outlined his plan and Tony listened, nodding from time to time in agreement. Segler concluded, saying, “It would be a massive help if you could work directly with Leo on this. I told him to have Patrick help with the donkey work, but it would be good to have a steady hand on the wheel to, you know . . .” He shrugged. “Keep things from drifting off course.”
“I hear you—and I agree. We want this nailed down tight before we take it to Bayer and his crew.”
“Let’s just say I don’t want to be the kid who cried ‘False alarm!’ while Rome burned.”
“Only this time, if Rome goes up in flames, nobody is going to care—or even remember.”
Segler pulled a sour face and Tony stood. “I’ll head downstairs—unless you have any other bombshells to throw at me.”
“No, that’s it. You go. I’ll stay up here and keep NASA busy. Remember, don’t let on about the redshift—at least until we get outside confirmation. And pray this nightmare is really over.”
Tony crossed to the door, his step markedly lighter, his posture straighter than when he first entered the room. He paused with his hand on the doorknob and glanced back. “We do seem to forget that we’re not in this alone.”
Segler gave him a rueful nod. “Too true.”
Tony made his way down to the Rats’ Nest where he found Leonard Dvorak and Keith Patrick in a far corner hunkered down over a bank of monitors. “The reversal pattern is holding,” Dvorak announced as Tony joined them.
Tony glanced at the monitor and then looked at the clock; it was a little after four thirty. Oddly, he did not feel tired anymore. “I think we’re all going to wake up tomorrow and wonder what all the fuss was about.”
CHAPTER 35
In Which Footsteps Are Traced
The blazing fire in Kit’s eyes was matched only by the howling squeal in his ears. Whether he was dead or alive he could not say; the former appeared by far the more likely because he seemed to float suspended in a timeless nowhere. Eternity? There was no physical discomfort, only the raging whine in his ears and the formless white that obscured all vision—the after-effects of the explosion that had killed him.
The explosion! Yes, there had been a blast of some kind. He remembered that now. As more of his shattered consciousness returned, he sensed also that the light that washed out all sight was beginning to fade. Slowly, slowly, the all-pervading brightness gathered itself into a sphere that shrank and shrank until it eventually blinked out, leaving him in darkness soft and close. But just before the light went out, Kit felt a change in his state of buoyant equilibrium: a slow-revolving fall combined with the odd weightless sensation he generally experienced when making a ley leap. There was movement and direction, and suddenly it seemed that he was speeding through a void, a black zone, a region without form or feature.
As he sped along, the velvet envelope of darkness that enclosed him began to thin and wear away. He perceived tiny flecks of light glinting through its fabric like fireflies flickering in the night. These first scattered specks were gradually joined by more and more until Kit was flying headlong through a spray of luminous effervescence, massed arrays of glowing particles coursing through the void in onrushing waves. Photons flashed around him and through him, blending into streaming rays that carried a sound like that of surf washing a distant shore. On and on he sped, the particle streams thickening into currents, blending, braiding, joining one another to become many-branched rivers. These shimmering plaits coagulated, steadily congealing into what looked like islands of light amidst an ocean of endless night.
Attracted by an invisible force, these isolated beacons drifted together, slowly merging and melding into one another, knitting together to form whole continents. As Kit raced on and ever on, one of the nearer landforms of light contracted, compacting into a dense glowing mass that erupted in a blinding flash. When Kit could see again, he saw a band of silver radiance seeded with the swirling spiral disc of a newborn galaxy.
All across the limitless void, Kit witnessed the same pattern: islands of light coalesced, contracted, and flared into life, illuminating the darkest reaches of never-ending night. Soon, even the emptiest regions of space were alight and shining with the brightness of ten thousand suns, each glittering island a separate galaxy spinning with graceful, measured elegance—each and every one a bright empire containing realms and worlds beyond number.
Kit gazed upon the spangled deep and glimpsed part of the answer: each and every world was a subtle variation on the original, created as a way for the universe to work out the myriad possibilities of the decisions made by the innumerable souls inhabiting those realms. These bright empires would continue to bloom into being until every variable, every permutation, every possibility of existence had been explored, every expression articulated, every potential achieved. Then, and only then, would the Omega Point arrive—that great and glorious celebration of eternal existence—to transform the universe into the paradise promised and purposed from the beginning of time.
Dazed by the gleaming array spreading before him, Kit plunged dizzily through it, drinking in the sight, revelling in it, breathing deeply of the prodigious creative energy suffusing all he saw. And still it came, expanding in ever-widening rings with no end in sight. Engulfed, immersed, Kit perceived all of creation spread out before him and knew that he was intimately connected to it, forever entangled. As he gazed upon this firmament of infinite space, he sensed the restless vitality that permeated the Omniverse. More than mere energy, more than a force, this creative dynamism of the cosmos was in all and through all, but also beyond all—not only sustaining and supporting everything it touched, but also nourishing and gently guiding it toward its endowed potential.
Strangest of all, however, Kit felt that this vast, formless power knew him, accepted him, and cherished him. It also possessed an individual character, and that character expressed itself as a will with desires and rational faculties not unlike his own, but of a magnitude far beyond his abilities of comprehension, ceaselessly working to bring about its purposes and designs.
Streaking like a comet through this living presence, Kit was stunned into inarticulate awe; the magnificence overpowered comprehension. He could not take it all in, much less understand or make sense of more than the merest fraction of the whole. His only thought was that he was being allowed a fleeting look into the heart of a mystery greater than life itself.
Bewildered, numb with wonder, Kit reached the point of exhaustion. Unable to take in any more, he closed his eyes on the dazzling spectacle, seeking refuge in the darkness behind his eyes. But escape was denied him; even with his ey
es closed, he could still see the vision of creation burned into his brain. Sometime later—a day, a year, a few seconds only?—Kit sensed that his flight was slowing. The end came with the suddenness of a drop from a high ladder. He fell to earth.
Head throbbing, ears plugged, aching in every limb and joint, he lay on his side and assessed his state. Aside from the shock, he seemed to be uninjured. He opened his eyes; he was lying on the ground. Thin, watery light filtered down upon him through cracks in a roof fashioned from the skeletal remnants of many animals. His first coherent thought was: Bone House.
Raising his head, he looked around. He was alone. Where were the others? Had they survived?
He rolled over, pushed himself up on hands and knees, and crawled to the entrance of the structure. The day outside was sunny and cold. Fresh snow lay undisturbed all around, glistening beneath a sky so brilliant it stung his eyes. He drew a deep breath and tasted the cold tang of the air, like electricity on the tongue. He rose and was just getting his feet under him when he heard voices. The first one said something he could not make out, but a second voice answered, “I’ll check inside . . .”
Kit started around the side of the Bone House; he managed two steps before his legs went slack and he fell with a grunt face-first into the snow. A moment later a shadow passed over him. He wiped snow from his face and looked up to see Wilhelmina peering down at him. “Kit, you okay?”
She called to someone he could not see. “Found him! He’s back!”
He pulled himself upright, stood, and turned—coming face-to-face with Cass. She threw her arms around him and squeezed him until it hurt. “What a relief! We didn’t know where you were.”
“We? Who else is here?”
“Everybody. I mean, Gianni, Burleigh, Mina, me. We all made it back.”
“Any doppelgängers?”
She shook her head. “Just us.”
Kit regarded her closely, trying to discern whether her return matched his own experience. He hoped it did, because he knew he would never be able to describe, much less explain, all that he had witnessed.