The Far Shore of Time

That was when the linguists woke up to the fact that there was a lot that I hadn’t been putting into English and demanded to know what was going on.

I lied to them. I said, knowing it was going to screw up their recorded comparisons, that she had been telling me at length that Beert had to, absolutely had to, have better food. And then I told Pirraghiz that we would have to continue that discussion at some later time, because right then they wanted us to get on with our work.

I didn’t forget about what she said. I just put it aside to ripen at the back of my mind, because it definitely sounded like something I would like to do, sometime. Some other time than now.

Rosaleen hadn’t been around the last couple of times I’d been translating Mrrranthoghrow’s explanations of his drawings. I had wondered if at last she was following doctor’s orders to take a little time off for rest.

She wasn’t. Next time I went to the research lab the Docs were late in arriving, but Rosaleen was there already, sitting straight and perky in her wheelchair as she studied some fragment of a Scarecrow gadget under a crystal hood. She looked up and smiled at me. “Oh,” she said when I asked about her absence, “it is just some personal business of my own. I’ve been visiting the Observatory to ask some questions. And oh, yes, Dan, before I forget, just as I was leaving Patrice gave me something to give you.”

To my surprise, she reached up and pulled my head down to plant a kiss on my cheek. It was more grandmotherly than sensual, but I found that I appreciated the thought. “Hum,” I said, pleased and a little embarrassed. “Thanks.” Then I cleared my throat and got back to the subject. “What kind of questions?” I asked.

She looked a little embarrassed, too. “It is simply a notion of mine. Perhaps it is no more than an old woman’s foolishness, but still-“ She paused to look around for the Docs. They still weren’t in sight. “If you are interested, Dan, since we have a moment, let me show you something.”

She spun her chair around and rolled briskly to another workbench. Under a different sort of crystal hood were two objects, one the shape and almost the size of a doughnut, the other looking like a miniature dark brown peppercorn. “The big one,” Rosaleen said, “we took from the wreckage of Starlab’s matter transporter, the other from a bug. Look here.”

She leaned forward and lifted the hood, taking out the bigger gadget. At the same time she rummaged in her pockets and found a magnifying glass, and handed them both to me.

The doughnut was faintly warm, and it made my fingertips tingle. Without the glass it looked faintly spongy, with pits on its surface. Magnified a little, the pits turned out also to be pitted. “It is a fractal object,” Rosaleen told me. “Do you know what that is? It means that no matter how much we magnify it, we see the same surface structure repeated, over and over. As far as we can do so, that is.”

I hefted it for a moment, then put it back on the bench. I didn’t like the feel of the thing. “And you don’t know what it’s for?”

Rosaleen looked surprised. “Oh, did I not tell you? They are the power source for their Scarecrow machines.”

“Like batteries?”

She sighed. “I thought that at first, but Meow-Mrrranthoghrow-says they are not. Or if they are, they are batteries of a kind which never needs to be recharged. Then I thought they might be receivers for some sort of broadcast power, but that means there would have to be some sort of transmitter somewhere. Mrrranthoghrow says-if I understand him-there is not.”

“Then what?”

She shook her head moodily. “That is what I have been asking the quantum people at the Observatory. You see, there is this thing called Vacuum energy,’ about which I know little more than the name. When I ask Kit Papathanassiou he tells me that, yes, it is all about us, everywhere, all the time. Virtual particles spring into being and disappear, vast quantities of them. We cannot detect them, but quantum theory says they are there. They are gone almost as soon as they occur-usually-but some scientists think they do not always disappear. They even think that it is such a Vacuum fluctuation’ that caused the Big Bang long ago, and thus created our whole universe.”

“I never heard of any of that,” I admitted.

“No. I had heard not much more. But when I ask Papathanassiou he says certainly this vacuum energy exists, the theory is quite complete in this respect, but it cannot be tapped for any useful purpose. He is very positive about that. Yet these little things do tap into something, and I wish I knew what that was.”

Thoughtfully she replaced the cover over the objects, then looked up. “Ah, here come our Docs.”

So we got started late, but we made up for lost time: questions pouring out of the techs, Pirraghiz struggling valiantly to make sense of the answers from Mrrranthoghrow and Wrahrrgherfoozh, me translating both ways. I didn’t have much time to think about Rosaleen’s worries.