Roger Allen - The Shattered Sphere

Wally was a forty-two-year-old doctoral candidate on loan to the Multisystem Research Institute from the Simulations and Modeling Lab in Columbia’s math department. He was the absolute archetype of the eternal student—locked into one niche in life that he could never escape, and completely unaware that he was locked into anything.

Sianna sighed inwardly, and spoke in a fair imitation of a cheerful voice. “Just had an idea or two I wanted to work on before the rest of the crowd came in,” she said. “I wanted a little peace and quiet, that’s all.” There was some hope, however faint, that he might take the hint.

No such luck. “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Wally said, nodding vigorously as he sidled through the door and sat down in the visitor’s chair, keeping himself as far from her as possible. He sat down, folded his hands tightly in his lap and stared intently at a spot on the floor just to the left of her feet.

“I know how that is,” he said. “You can get a lot more done when nobody is around. I hate it when people just barge in and— Ah. Oh.” Suddenly the light went on in his head. He looked up, startled, making eye contact for the first time. Sianna repressed a smile as she watched an expression of dismay slowly appear on Wally’s face. Only he could wander in and disrupt someone and then sympathize about the perils of being disrupted.

Sianna knew she ought to say something, ought to smooth over the awkward moment with a word or two that would make Wally feel better. But half out of mischief, and half because it wouldn’t kill Wally to be embarrassed enough not to barge in the next time, she said nothing.

The first time she had met Wally, back when she was an underage freshman four years ago, Sianna had asked him some polite question about whether he liked doing simulations. Wally had started his reply in a low, quiet, shy voice Sianna could barely hear—but as he started warming to his topic, he spoke louder, faster, his face becoming animated and excited as he described the virtues and perils of pseudo-fractal regressions and high n-dimensional projection arrays. He had gone on for twenty minutes before Sianna could find a way to escape.

Not long after that, Sianna had made it her mission in life to reform Wally, to show him the big wide grown-up world. Why, precisely, a gawky fifteen-year-old should want to do such a thing was not entirely clear to her, even at the time.

Whatever drew him to her, made her feel for him, it certainly wasn’t his looks. He was short and spindly-looking. What there was of his shaggy brown hair hung straggling down about his shoulders, uncombed and unkempt.

A large and prominent bald spot on the top of his head spoke to the fact that this was not a man much given to vanity or appearances. After all, a man could slap a dab of cream on his head twice a day and clear up baldness in a month—but that presupposed that the man cared that he was balding, and could remember to apply the medication every day. Wally didn’t qualify on either score.

His clothes told much the same story, from the slept-in look of his rumpled dark-blue shirt and wrinkled, musty dark grey work pants to the battered look of his ped-slippers. Still, even these clothes suggested some sort of progress. For Wally, wearing any other color but black was a real fashion statement.

He had bushy eyebrows, deep-set eyes of indeterminate color, a rather beakish nose, and an unfashionably large and unkempt beard that didn’t somehow seem to match his handlebar mustache. His rumpled face held that pallor peculiar to people who never see the Sun at all, and never expose themselves to the weather. It looked as if he had not slept in a while.

None of that meant anything, of course. He always looked that way. Wally could have been in those clothes for three days, nursing a computer run nonstop—or he could have just rolled out of bed, taken a bracing hot shower, and stepped into clean fresh clothes. Sianna had concluded that Wally’s unchanging appearance was a result of years of effort, the cumulative effect of decades in the student life-style. He had been pulling all-nighters at random intervals all his adult life, each one etching the lines of exhaustion and rumpledness a little deeper.

The consensus around the Institute was that Wally would develop normal social skills—and complete his doctorate—just about the time he was due to retire.

Clearly he didn’t have the skills yet. He still hadn’t apologized for barging in. He sat there, with that damned hangdog look on his face. She could never read that look. Was he embarrassed? Was he trying to think of something to say? Did he think that he had already said enough? Was he waiting for her to speak?

Sianna gave in. She would have to break the ice, as usual.

“Oh, it’s all right, Wally. Life goes on. But how about you?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, in a daydreamy voice. At a guess, he had already forgotten asking her why she was here.

What went on in that head? Sianna spoke in her calmest voice, for all the world like a patient grade-school teacher dealing with a slow student. “Why are you here, Wally?” she asked.

“Huh? What? Well, uh, I was transferred over from Columbia because—”

“No, Wally,” Sianna said, struggling to keep her voice from rising. “Why are you here this morning ? You look a little punchy. Have you been here all night?”

Wally looked surprised and glanced down at himself, clearly wondering what about his appearance would make someone think he was short of sleep. “Me? Nope. Got to bed about nine last night. I’m just coming in for the day. Dr. Sakalov wants me to set up his Sphere-interior simulation. He thinks he’s finally figured out where Charon Central is.”

“Not Charon Central again. Don’t they ever quit?”

Wally smiled, and his eyes crinkled up with pleasure. “I guess not. Dr. Sakalov really thinks he has it this time. But—ah—ah—I almost hope he’s wrong again. Every time he is, he gets me higher-priority access to sim time so I can prove his next theory.” Wally grinned broadly, very much amused.

Sianna frowned. “Maybe it’s a joke to you, but not to me, Wally. It’s all guesses and theory and philosophy and logic-chopping. Sakalov’s trying to prove the Multisystem is controlled from the Sphere core because he wants to believe it, not because there’s any proof. Because it fits his theories—hell, his theology —about how the Charonians work.” Maybe that was a bit overstated, but Sianna wasn’t the only one who thought Sakalov got a bit mystical at times. “It’s about as scientific as the quest for the Holy Grail, or creating the Philosopher’s Stone, or squaring the circle. You look for something so hard you end up trying to invent it when it turns out not to exist.”

“But… well… I don’t know,” Wally said. Wally didn’t like arguing, or any sort of confrontation, and he wasn’t very good at it.

“Look,” Sianna said, “someday, yes, maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll find Charon Central—if it even exists—and maybe that will be vital information. But for the time being, the Charonians have us penned up pretty damned tight. What use is proving Charon Central is in the Sphere when we can’t get to the Sphere? No one can even get off-planet!”

“Sure they can,” Wally objected, clearly unconscious that he was using “they” to refer to the human race. “They send supplies to NaPurHab and the Terra Nova .”

“Come on, Wally, where have you been? Yes, we can send supplies, but we can’t send people . The COREs in Earth orbit smash one outbound cargo ship out of two during boost phase. And nothing can come inbound to Earth from NaPurHab or the Terra Nova. The COREs smash up anything that even gets close to an intercept course with Earth.”