Clifford Simak - Party Line

'Key, of course, to the entire project,' said Allen, 'lay in the development of the capability to record and store the information that is exchanged in the telepathic communication. A development of the earlier brain-waves studies.'

'You're right,' said Thomas. 'It would have been impossible to rely on the memories of the telepaths.

Many of them, most of them, in fact, have only a marginal understanding of what they are told; they are handling information that is beyond their comprehension. They have a general idea, probably, but they miss a lot of it. Jay is an exception, of course. And that makes it easier with him. But with the others, the ones who do not fully understand, we have a record of the communications in the memory bank.'

'We need more operators,' said Allen. 'We're barely touching all the sources out there. And we can't go skipping around a lot because if we did, we might be passing up some fairly solid material. We do our recruiting and we uncover a lot of incipient telepaths, of course, but very few of the kind we are looking for.'

'At no time,' said Thomas, 'are there ever too many of them to find.'

'We got off what we were talking about,' said Allen. 'Mary Kay and Jennie, wasn't it?'

'I guess it was. They're the question marks. Jay either will pin down the matter of FTL or he'll not be able to. Dick will keep on with the economics and will either get some worth-while feedback or he won't.

Those are the kinds of odds we have to play. Hal will go on talking with his alien computer and we eventually may get something out of it. One of these days, we'll jerk the memory banks on that one and see what we have. I'd guess there might be some nebulous ideas we could play around with. But Mary Kay and Jennie-Christ, they're into something that is beyond anything we ever bargained for. Mary Kay a simulation-or maybe even the actuality-of a heavenly existence, a sort of Paradise, and Jennie with overtones of an existence beyond the grave. These are the kinds of things that people have been yearning for since the world began. This is what made billions of people, over the ages, tolerate religions. It poses a problem-both of them pose problems.'

'If something came of either of them,' said Allen, 'what would we do with it?'

That's right. Yet, you can't go chicken on it. You can't just turn it off because you're afraid of it.'

'You're afraid of it, Paul?'

I guess I am. Not personally. Personally, like everyone else, I would like to know. But can you imagine what would happen if we dumped it on the world?'

'I think I can. A sweep of unrealistic euphoria. New cults rising and we have more cults than we can handle now. A disruptive, perhaps a destructive impact on society.'

'So what do we do? It's something we may have to face.'

'We play it by ear,' said Allen. 'We make a decision when we have to. As project manager, you can control what comes out of here. Which may make Ben Russell unhappy, but something like this business of Mary Kay and Jennie is precisely why the director was given that kind of authority.'

'Sit on it?' asked Thomas.

'That's right. Sit on it. Watch it. Keep close tabs on it. But don't fret about it. Not now at least.

Fretting time may be some distance down the road.'

'I don't know why I bothered you,' said Thomas. 'That's exactly what I intended all along.'

'You bothered me,' said Allen, 'because you wanted someone in to help you finish up that bottle.'

Thomas reached for the bottle. 'Let's be about it, then.'

'If you had to invent a universe,' asked Mary Kay, 'if you really had to, I mean; if it was your job and you had to do it, what kind of universe would you invent?'

'A universe that went on and on,' said Martin. 'A universe with no beginning and no end. Hoyle's kind of universe.

Where there'd be the time and space for everything that possibly could happen, to happen.'

That entropy thing really got to you, didn't it. A voice out of the void saying it was all coming to an end.'

Martin crinkled his forehead. 'More now than it did to start with. Now that I've had time to think it over. Christ, think of it. We've been sitting here, us and all the people before us, thinking that there was no end, ever. Telling ourselves we had all the time there is. Not considering our own mortality, that is.

Thinking racially, not of ourselves alone. Not ourselves, but all the people who come after us. An expanding universe, we told ourselves. And maybe now it isn't. Maybe, right this minute, it is a contracting universe. Rushing back, all the old dead matter, all the played-out energy.'

'It has no real bearing on us,' said Mary Kay. 'No physical effect. We won't be caught in the crunch, not right away at least. Our agony is intellectual. It does violence to our concept of the universe. That's what hurts. That a thing so big, so beautiful-the only thing we really know-is coming to an end.'

'They could have been wrong,' he said. They might have miscalculated. Their observations might have been faulty. And it might not really be the end. There might still be another universe. Once everything retreated back as far as it could go, there might be another cosmic explosion and another universe.'

'But it wouldn't be the same,' she said. 'It would be a different universe. Not our universe. It would give rise to different kinds of life, new kinds of intellect. Or maybe no life or intellect at all. Just the matter and the energy. Stars burning for themselves. No one to see them and to wonder. That, Jay, is what has made our universe so wonderful. Little blobs of life that held the capacity to wonder.'

'Not only the wonder,' Jay told her, 'but the audacity to probe beyond the wonder. The grief in that warning was not that the universe was coming to an end, but that it was doing so before someone could find out what it was.'

'Jay, I've been wondering…'

'You're always wondering. What is it this time?'

'It's silly. All my wondering is silly. But, do you suppose that we can experience things in time, reach things in time as well as in space?'

I don't know. I've never thought of it.'

'You know this place I've found. So quiet. So wonderful. So happy and so holy. Have you any idea of what it might be?'

'Let's not get into that right now,' said Jay. 'You'll just upset yourself. Everyone else has left. Maybe we should be leaving, too.'

He looked around the empty lounge, made a motion to get up. She reached for his arm and held him there.

'I've been thinking about it,' she said. 'I've been wondering if this place of mine is what is left after everything is gone. When the universe is gone. The few good things left over, the worthwhile things left over. The things we have never valued enough. We or any of the others out there. The peace, the love, the holiness. These are the things, I think, that will survive.'

I don't know, Mary. God, how could I know.'

'I hope it is,' she said. I so hope it is. I have a feeling that it is. I go so much on feeling. In the place I found, you have to depend on what you feel. There is nothing else. Just the feeling. Do you ever depend on feeling, Jay?'

'No, I don't,' he told her. He got to his feet, put out a hand to help her up. 'Do you know,' he said,

'that you are beautiful and crazy.'

Suddenly he bent double getting the handkerchief to his face barely in time to catch the sneeze.

'Poor Jay,' she said. 'You still have your allergy.'

Martin settled himself before the console, shoved the helmet more comfortably into place. The helmet was a nuisance, but he had to wear it, for it was the mechanism that fed the information into the data banks.

— Einstein, are you there? he asked.