Firebird (5 page)

One of the speakers, Charlie Plunkett, identified as an engineer with Corbin Data, described an attempt by Robin to show that the voices in an allegedly haunted house might actually be connections with an alternate universe. “Unfortunately.” he said, “the results were inconclusive.”

In a program titled “Alternate Selves,” the panelists discussed the notion that, in an infinite sea of universes, every possibility, somewhere, would come to pass. That meant there were other editions of ourselves out there somewhere. We were consequently asked which of our alternate selves we would, if given the chance, choose to meet. Members of the audience opted for themselves as war heroes, entertainment superstars, lady-killers. The bearded guy beside me wanted to be CEO at Colossos, Inc. “Why? So that I never again have to deal with a boss.”

A substantial number wanted simply to meet a version of themselves who was accomplishing something that would be remembered. One admitted hoping that “it might still turn out to be me.” That drew applause.

When his turn came, Alex didn't surprise me: “I'll settle for where I am,” he said. “I love dealing with antiques.”

Then it was my turn. A few years back, I'd fallen in love for the one and only time in my life. And I let him get away. If I actually had the opportunity, I'd like to meet the Chase Kolpath who had held on to him, married him, and settled into a quiet life. I'd like very much to know how that would have turned out. But I wasn't going to say anything about it in front of that crowd, so I told them I'd enjoy spending an hour with the Kolpath who'd made a fortune as lead singer with the Bandoliers.

During that same panel, an historian went in a new direction. “His IQ is on the record,” he said. “It was over 260, too high for any human being. Maybe he didn't get carried off by a corporate giant. Or caught in another dimension. Maybe he simply went home.”

When I asked him later if he thought there might actually be something to that suggestion, he shook his head sadly. “No,” he said. “I wish I did.”

Shortly before he disappeared, Robin was interviewed by Todd Cunningham, the celebrated talk-show host who, at the time, was at the very beginning of his career. Robin looked better in motion than he did in the still pictures. He seemed relaxed, amiable, a guy with a sense of humor. A large smile appeared when Cunningham asked him why he persisted in saying things that left him open to criticism by his colleagues.

“I'm not sure they're my colleagues,”
Robin said.

“Other scientists, then.”
Cunningham smiled in the self-deprecating manner that suggests his guest is twisting the truth, and that had since become his trademark.

Robin allowed himself to look uncomfortable, but I got the sense he was in complete control.
“There's no easy way to say this, Todd, but the reality is that most of us, even physicists, maybe
especially
physicists, aren't generally open to new ideas. We think every important discovery was made during the Golden Age. That nothing of any significance remains to be found.”

“You're saying that's wrong?”

“I hope it's wrong. I really do. I'd hate to think there's nothing left for us to learn.”

“Do
you
hope to provide us with a breakthrough somewhere, Chris?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And what might that be?”

“I don't know. If I knew, I'd tell you now.”

“When will you know?”

He smiled.
“Maybe after Uriel.”

“Uriel?”

“When I have something, Todd, I'll be in touch.”

Cunningham frowned.
“What's
Uriel,
Chris? Are you talking about the angel?”

“I'll let you know—”

Alex found an astronomer, a quiet, dark-skinned woman who seemed out of place amid all the jokes and exaggerations. Her name was Silvia, and I suspected she'd been talked into coming. More or less like me. “Silvia,” he said, “what
is
Uriel?”

She looked pleased to have someone ask a straightforward question. “It's a dwarf star, Alex. Six and a half light-years from here. Maybe a little less.”

“Any planets?”

“A few. Nothing habitable. At least there wasn't the last time I looked.” We could hear laughter in the next room. The end of the evening was approaching. “And there's nothing unusual about it that I know of.”

“You have any idea what Robin was talking about?”

She shook her head. “None whatever. And neither does anybody else. I've seen this interview before, and I can't imagine what he's referring to. I'm not even sure he means the star. Maybe you need to ask an historian. Or a theologian.” She grinned. “Maybe the theologian would be your best bet.”

When the panels concluded, we retired to the ballroom for some drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Alex maneuvered us to a table occupied by Harvey Hoskin, the president of the Society, and Brandon Rupprecht, a biologist. Hoskin had bristly gray hair and a close-cut beard, and he was probably the oldest person in the Jubilee that evening.

We talked about the Society, how there would be a special meeting on the north coast later that year, and who was in line for the Chris Robin Award, which would be given out at the summer meeting in Andiquar. The award recognized “reaching beyond the parameters.” During a break in the conversation, Alex asked how the Society had gotten started.

“This is our twenty-seventh year,” Hoskin said. “It began here at the university after Jim Hovel did a dissertation on Robin's multiple-universe analyses. Jim was on one of the panels tonight.”

“Yes,” said Alex. “We were there.”

“Anyhow, as I'm sure you know—” Hoskin plunged into an account of the mathematics of time-space flexibility. At least, that's what I think it was. “He insisted, therefore, that alternate universes
had
to exist. I don't have the physics background to go into detail, but you can find it in his book.”

“We have a copy,” said Alex.

“Okay. Then you can imagine why a lot of people got interested. No one before had ever dared talk this way.” He looked across the table at Rupprecht. “At the time he disappeared, he'd become a figure of ridicule. Maybe a lot of people were jealous. I don't know. Anyhow, we— most of us—didn't learn to appreciate him until he was gone. Now, of course, he's a hero. Several of us went to a party one night, and we were talking about him, and I think we began to realize how much he meant to us. I mean, he wasn't afraid to be wrong. For him, it was nice to be right, but the important thing was to ask the right questions. You know what I mean?”

Rupprecht picked up the thread: “And that's how the Chris Robin Society was born.” Rupprecht was average-looking, average height, average everything. His was the kind of face you'd never be able to remember from one day to the next except for his eyes, which tended to freeze you in place.

“Is there
really
any possibility,” I asked, “any at all, that he might have been right? I mean, I know how crazy it sounds, but is there any chance that maybe you could walk into that closet over there in the corner and find yourself in another universe?”

Hoskin smiled. “It's not forbidden by the laws of physics, is it, Brandy?”

Rupprecht grinned, lifted his glass to his lips, and put it back with the drink untouched. “Above my pay grade,” he said.

I must have looked stunned.

Hoskin noticed. “We have to be cautious about ruling things out simply because they're counterintuitive, Chase. Who would have believed a particle could be in two places simultaneously?” Alex asked whether any members of the group had actually known Robin.

Hoskin passed the question to Rupprecht.

“I knew him,” he said, with a sad smile. “Chris was okay. Not the most patient guy in the world. But I was sorry to lose him.”

“What was he like?”

“He told jokes on himself. Took himself seriously but didn't expect anybody else to. If he had, I don't think he'd have survived as long as he did. He wanted to do blue sky science. That was all he really lived for. Find something new. Figure out how to travel backward in time. Find out what drives complexity. But that era was over long ago. All we do today is try to design a better engine and do studies on why life evolves in different ways on different worlds. If it shows up at all. So for a long time, nobody took him seriously. But he learned to live with that.”

Hoskin jumped in. “Something else that fascinated him was the occasional sightings of unidentified ships.”

“Unidentified ships?”

“You know, the sightings they have at the stations every once in a while? A ship will show up, cruise past, not identify itself, and just leave the area.”

“I've heard of them, sure,” said Alex. “But I never really thought much about the stories.”

“They're there.
Something
is. They're on the record. The sightings go back a long time. Centuries.”

“But that just means people get lost. Wander into the wrong system, and clear out again.”

“Well, there's something strange about some of them—” He turned toward me. “You're a pilot, Chase—am I right about that?”

“Yes, Harvey, that's correct.”

“If I watch a ship make its jump into transdimensional space, what do I see?”

I wasn't sure what he was asking. “Nothing,” I said finally. “It just disappears.”

“Exactly. Like turning off a light, right?”

“Yes.”

“But the ships involved in the sightings,
some
of them anyhow,
don't
just blink out. They
fade
out. It takes a few seconds, but it's a different process. They gradually become invisible.”

“So what did Robin think they were?”

“He never said. But they intrigued him. And I'm pretty sure I know what he
suspected.'“

“Which was—?”

“That they were ships from another civilization. Or maybe another universe.”

I'd had enough to drink, so I let the AI take us home. It was a bright, cold evening, with a few clouds drifting across a moonless sky. “Well,” I said, “that was an interesting experience.”

“Yes. And a profitable one.”

“What makes you say that? I can't see any of those people, for all their enthusiasm, buying a book because Robin scribbled a comment in it.”

“Oh, that's probably true.”

“Then what—?”

“Chase, we can get a substantial price for the Robin artifacts.”

“Really? Why?”

“The guy is the stuff of myth. Ghosts. Colliding universes. Ships from other realities. Then
he
disappears.”

“I'm not sure I'm following you.”

“We won't get a good price for his stuff if only a few people are interested in him.”

“I agree.”

“And, of course, nobody cares about physicists. I mean, nobody understands them. But a mad scientist? Who maybe got carried off to another universe? Or maybe came from one himself?”

“Alex, I don't think I like where this is going.”

“It's all P.R., Chase. What we need to do is shape the public perception.”

“And how do you plan to do that?”

FOUR

Perception is everything.

—Terrestrial proverb, third millennium

Two days after the Chris Robin conference, Alex showed up as a guest on
Newscope,
hosted by Leah Carmody. I was at home, shoes off, feet propped up, enjoying a nightbinder although I'd put too much lemon in it.

Leah's other guest was Arlen Adams. Adams could have been an Old Testament prophet. He was big and imposing, and probably a thousand years old, with judgmental eyes and a long white beard. He was also chairman of the physics department at Perennial College. He had never hidden the fact that he disapproved of Alex.

Leah introduced the topic, which would be Chris Robin,
“the physicist who disappeared forty-one years ago.”

She turned to Alex first, and he started by admitting that his own grasp of physics was virtually nonexistent, and he was consequently not competent to speak about Robin's work. He then proceeded to do so, describing Robin's desire to break into new territory, his attempt to explain why the universe was “biology friendly,” his conviction that there were alternate universes, and his determination to answer the cosmic questions that everyone else had long since given up on.

I knew that Alex had been reading everything he could find on the subject, and I was familiar with his work ethic, so I wasn't surprised by his performance.

Adams sat through this, looking placidly at the ceiling like a man wondering why he was there. When Leah turned to him and asked for a comment, he shook his head.
“When there's solid evidence for any of this,”
he said,
“I'll be happy as anyone to look at it. In the meantime, all of this talk about branes and places where the physics is different and all the rest of it is just that: talk. It's idle speculation and nothing more, and I'm sure Mr. Benedict would agree.”

Leah smiled pleasantly.
“I wonder if either of you would mind telling us what an alternate universe might look like?”

Adams managed a patient smile.
“With luck,”
he said,
“it would be one without deranged antique dealers.”

Alex returned the smile but let it pass.
“I would hope so. But, to answer your question, Leah, an alternate universe is simply a place where the rules are different. For example, if the gravity is weak, stars might never form. Or maybe the rules are pretty much the same, but the history is different. A place, say, where the
Greeks
built the pyramids. Or where
we
are different. For example, you might be the person who deals in antiquities, while I'm running a talk show. And Professor Adams has an open mind.”

Adams went back to examining the ceiling.

She laughed. Jokes between friends.
“Are we saying that a place like that might actually exist?”

“It's possible. Some physicists say it's a mathematical necessity.”

Adams made a sound deep in his throat.
“As much as it pains me to admit it,”
he said,
“Mr. Benedict has it right.”