Roger Allen - The Shattered Sphere

Wally pointed at the image of the Sphere as it hung in mid-air. “Nothing in there contradicts anything we know,” he said.

“That’s not good enough,” Sianna snapped back. “You can’t present a theory on the basis of there being no evidence against it. Where’s the evidence for it?”

“My dear, you are quite right,” a new voice said. The voice was gentle and low, with just a hint of a cultured Russian accent. “We have not one bit of evidence.”

Sianna gasped and spun around. Wally, standing by the control panel, brought the house lights up a bit to reveal that two visitors had arrived. Two men. One of them Sianna did not recognize, but the other was none other than Dr. Yuri Sakalov. Oh. great , Sianna thought. There goes my career. How long has he been standing there ?

Dr. Sakalov and his companion stepped further into the room. “I must confess that I had thought of the parallels with epicycle theory myself,” Sakalov said. “However, I am not lost and confused on account of theology, or a need to be proven right. We desperately need an answer— any answer we can find. It almost doesn’t matter what question it answers. Anything would be a starting place. One right idea might be the key in the lock that sets us all free.”

Sakalov looked thoughtfully at Sianna for a moment, and then turned his gaze toward the model of the Sphere. He was an elderly man, dressed in a rumpled worksuit, his hair silver-grey and pulled back in a rather old-fashioned-looking pony tail. His face was deeply lined, with sad, quiet eyes, a slightly bulbous nose, and an expressive mouth. He wore a small, neatly trimmed beard. There was a rather distracted air about him.

“I chose to focus on Charon Central,” he went on, “because I believe that when we know where and what it is, and how it works, we will have that key in the lock. We will understand our enemies, and have some hope of defeating them. I believe that my new model has some real merit. It sounds as if you hold my previous ideas in low regard. Tell me, with the new idea—do you think I am grasping at straws?”

Sianna looked at the old man, her heart pounding with fear. Sakalov . Why did it have to be Sakalov? And who was that with him in the dark? His silent companion was standing in shadow, and it was hard to see much of him in the dim light. He was a younger man, blond-headed, his expression guarded. There was something rather severe about his whole demeanor. Suddenly she placed him, and she broke out into a cold sweat. Unless she was very much mistaken, he was Wolf Bernhardt himself, head of the DSI, the man who wrote most of the checks that kept the Multisystem Research Institute going. One wrong word in front of him and—

“Miss Colette?” Dr. Sakalov asked.

“Um, ah… ah. I don’t know what to say, doctor,” she said, stalling for time.

“Surely you have some opinion. You were speaking most forcefully a moment ago.”

Sianna swallowed hard and looked the old man in the eye. She battled back her fear, made herself look at the man and not the caricature of the doddering old eccentric she carried in her head. Maybe his ideas were wrong, even mad, maybe he was building castles in the air, but at least he was trying to make sense of it all. How many people his age—mercy, he must be at least a hundred—even tried that much, instead of sticking their heads in the sand and pretending everything was all right?

Sianna was used to the world as it was. For all the short years of her adolescence and young adulthood, humanity had been a hunted, threatened species, knowing itself to be hopelessly outmatched by an invincible opponent. But Dr. Sakalov had lived his whole life, up until his twilight years, in a Universe where humankind was unchallenged and alone. What must it have been like to see all that destroyed and brought low at the end of his days? What would it be like for an astronomer to have the night sky stolen from him?

Dr. Sakalov was asking for the truth, for her honest opinion. She had to give it to him. “Well, all right, yes sir,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. “With all due respect, as best I can see, your only concrete reason for thinking Charon Central is at one of the poles seems to be that the longitudinal features meet up there.” She hesitated a moment more, marshaling her thoughts, trying to find the proper words. “You, ah, ah, offer the theory that longitudinal lines are actually huge gravity generators. That’s a reasonable assumption, and makes a lot of sense—but you have no proof . Building on that assumption, you make a series of completely unwarranted further assumptions about what it would mean if the longitudinal lines were gravitic generators, and based on those , you conclude Charon Central is at one of the poles. Your conclusion is based on pure conjecture, not proof.”

Sakalov looked at Sianna, his expression dour and unreadable. “Go on,” he said quietly.

Sianna wanted to shut up, but some part of her insisted on going on—and unfortunately, that part seemed to be controlling her mouth at the moment. “Well, ah, sir, you are working from extremely thin and highly circumstantial evidence,” she said, “and I’m afraid you are stretching it well past its limits. I don’t even see how this theory aids you in your goal. Even if Charon Central were where you say it was, how could we ever reach it? What could we do about it? How does this help us?”

Sakalov brought himself up to his full height and cleared his throat, a bit self-importantly. “The truth is not always convenient, young lady. I cannot decide where it would be convenient to place Charon Central, and then work backwards to the proof of the theory.”

“But—” Sianna began, and then bit her tongue. Enough was enough.

“But what?” Bernhardt asked from the shadows, speaking for the first time.

Great. All she needed was to draw him into the argument. “Nothing,” Sianna said, looking down at the floor.

“I am thinking you are having something more than nothing on your mind, dear miss, and I am thinking you had best tell me what it is,” Bernhardt said, in a tone of voice that made it clear he expected an answer, not an evasion.

MRI folklore had it that Dr. Bernhardt’s English took on a slightly German syntax when he was agitated, but Sianna would have been just as happy if she had never had the chance to confirm the story.

Sianna tried to say something. Anything. “Ah… ah, well,” she began, not quite sure where she was going.

“What more do you have to say, please?” Bernhardt asked, the courtesy of his words completely missing from his tone of voice.

Sianna realized her arms were wrapped around her chest, as if ready to shield her body from a blow. She put her arms at her sides, and then behind her back. She clamped her hands together so she wouldn’t knot herself up in a pretzel again. She shut her eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and spoke, being careful to direct her words not at Bernhardt, but at the slightly less intimidating Dr. Sakalov. “Well, sir, before this, all your theories have been based on the idea that Charon Central was the absolute apex of the Charonian command hierarchy.

“You have worked from the assumption that you could derive a unique physical location that was ideally and uniquely suited to be Charon Central. Your theory was that the Charonians were utterly rational, and therefore the location of Charon Central could be established by entirely rational means. Each site would offer advantages and disadvantages, and the Charonians would balance all the pluses and minuses until they derived the optimal site.”

Sakalov cocked his head to one side and nodded. “I am impressed that you have studied my work so well, but what of it? How does that invalidate my new approach?”