2312

“But they don’t decide to run it,” Swan said.

“I know what you mean, but look at the image.”

In this version, he explained, red designated human power, blue the power of computers, with light blue marking classical computers, and dark blue quantum computers. A big dark blue ball appeared near Jupiter, and there were other blue dots scattered everywhere, most netted in a single web. Humans appeared as clumps of red, fewer and smaller than the blue dots, with far fewer red lines between them.

“What’s the blue ball around Jupiter?” Swan asked. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” Wang said.

“And so now someone has attacked this rather immense blue ball.”

“Yes.” Wang was frowning heavily as he stared into the table. “But we don’t know who, or why.”

After a silence, Wahram said, “Images like this one were part of what concerned Alex. She initiated some efforts to come to grips with the situation. Let’s leave it at that for now, please. I hope you understand.”

His froggy eyes popped more than ever with the force of his entreaty. He was sweating.

Swan glared at him for a while, then shrugged. She wanted to argue and realized again that it felt good to find something besides Alex’s death to be angry at. Pretty much anything would do. But in the end it wouldn’t help.

Wahram tried to return the subject to Earth: “Alex said we should think of Earth as our sun. We all revolve around it, and it exerts a huge drag on us. And because of the individual need spacers have for their sabbaticals, we can’t just ignore it.”

“For any number of reasons we can’t do that,” Wang pointed out.

“True,” Wahram said. “So. We are determined to keep her projects going. You can help with that. Your qube now has her contact list. It’ll take a big effort to keep that whole group on board. We could use your help.”

Swan, unsatisfied with this kind of generality, inspected the new image again. Finally she said, “Who did she work with most on Earth?”

Wahram shrugged. “Many people. But her main contact there was Zasha.”

“Really?” Swan said, startled. “My Zasha?”

“Yours in what sense?”

“Well, we were partners once.”

“I didn’t know that. Well, Alex certainly relied on Zasha for a sense of the situation on Earth.”

Swan had been vaguely aware that Zasha did things with the Mercury House in Manhattan, but she had never heard Alex or Zasha speak of each other. It was another new thing to learn about Alex, and it suddenly occurred to Swan that this was the way it would happen from now on; she would not learn things from Alex, but about her. That was the way Alex would live on, and small though it was, it was better than nothing. Better than the void. And if Zasha had been working with her-

“All right,” Swan said. “When your inspector lets us out of here, I’m going to Earth.”

Wahram nodded uncertainly.

Swan said, “What will you do?”

He shrugged. “I have to go to Saturn and report.”

“Will I see you again?”

“Yes, thank you.” Although he looked a little alarmed at the idea. “I’ll soon be returning to Terminator. The Saturn League council has been contacted by the Vulcanoids, who it turns out also had some verbal agreements with Alex. There are Vulcanoid light transfers out to Saturn in the works, and I am currently the league’s inner planet ambassador. So I’ll see you when you return to Mercury.”

Extracts (2)