Roger Allen - The Shattered Sphere

Sakalov followed dutifully behind. Wally saved the current settings on the simulation and stood up to follow, a bit slowly. Sianna trailed behind the others, once again struggling to ignore the forest of eyes that surrounded her.

She reached the open door and stepped from dark into light, from the gloom of the sim tank to the over-bright glare of the white-on-white hallway.

She closed the door behind her and paused, squinting, peering about to see where the others had gone. There they were, just up the hall to the right. All three waiting, stern-faced, for her to catch them up.

She forced herself to walk toward them, stiff-legged, her arms folded protectively in front of her chest. Her eyes locked with Bernhardt’s grim-faced gaze.

But then, as she got to them, Bernhardt’s face lost its fixed expression. He grabbed her by the arm, looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was behind her, and pulled her around the corner, Wally and Sakalov following behind.

Sianna glanced over her shoulder, but saw for herself there was nothing there worth looking at. But then she looked back toward Bernhardt, and saw something most remarkable indeed.

He was grinning. Grinning . Sianna had never even thought German face muscles could move that way. “You’ve got it!” he said to an astonished Sianna. “We need to be careful, and collect the proof, but there isn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that you’re right. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Sakalov?”

“Yes, yes,” Sakalov said, taking her right hand and shaking it vigorously. “At the cost of admitting I was wrong, I have to admit your theory holds together far better than anything I’ve ever done.”

“But… I… I…” Sianna’s voice trailed off for a moment before she managed to say anything more. “But, the way you came in just now, and the way you acted—”

Bernhardt laughed out loud. “Psychology,” he said. “There’s very little of my job left that has to do with being a scientist. Always it is politics and psychology. Five years ago, I was instructed to find a captain for the Terra Nova and send the ship off to explore the Dyson Sphere—straight to the Sphere itself with no precautions. That would have been a suicide mission. So I chose Captain Steiger and gave her orders I knew she would disobey the moment she could. You have to know your people. After the way you argued with Dr. Sakalov yesterday, I didn’t think that you would put forward a theory that you had not thought out carefully, so I came down ready to listen.

“But it is not just a question of knowing you are right. It is a question of being heard, of the signal not being lost in the noise. I know that I am not the most popular man down here. They know I am careful and efficient, but that I refuse to write the checks they want; I say no to their projects. So sometimes the people at MRI are for whatever I am against . Besides that, Dr. Sakalov is well thought of. If I charged down here and endorsed a theory that refuted much of his work—well, for some, that would be enough to turn them against your ideas for good. By being standoffish, I make them determined to prove me wrong.” Bernhardt reached out and patted Sianna on the arm. “You have done superb work. Now you must go home and get some rest.”

Sianna could do nothing more than stand there, blinking in astonishment. She had always thought being a scientist just meant working to find out the truth.

A lot she knew.

Sianna’s feet were dragging as she left the Sim Center. She got herself across the underground campus fairyland of the MRI Main Level and made her way up to the elevator banks. She was tired enough, and emotionally flattened enough, that getting into the steel coffin of the elevator and watching the doors close her in didn’t bother her at all. She was too numb to react to anything.

It seemed as if life had broken every promise it had ever made to her. Life had pulled her away from her childhood home, plopped her down in a foreign land, killed her parents, delivered her into an age of crisis and emergency that had no time to deal with teenage orphans.

Anything good and hopeful had always been snatched away. In the general scheme of things, it was high time that Columbia and MRI rejected her as well. And yet, somehow, they had failed to do so, even when given a prize opportunity to do so. They were congratulating her.

The elevator slowed to a halt at ground level and the doors opened. Sianna stepped blinking into the sunlight, disoriented by the bright light and open spaces, the sharpness and clarity of it all. She walked out onto the broad expanses of the central plaza, feeling more than a bit muzzy and lost.

It was like the feeling she got coming out of a matinee, stepping from a darkened theater into the sunlit street after her eyes had spent two or three hours telling her body that it was after dark. Sianna felt like that, only a dozen times more so. She felt like she had indeed been out of time for a while, and now was being thrust, most unwillingly, back into it.

In any event, it was still daytime. She looked toward the Sunstar, and gauged its position in the sky. About three in the afternoon , she decided. Or had they been down there more than a whole day? No, that couldn’t be. Or maybe it could. Bother to all of it.

She looked up at the late-afternoon sky, gleaming perfect robin’s-egg blue. The air was sweet, with just a hint of new-mown grass in the air, wafting down from the roof gardens and Central Park. The air was alive with sound as well—laughter and conversation, the whirring hum of traffic, the busy background bustle of the city, awake and alive. Even in the midst of her exhaustion, it gave her a lift, put a bounce back in her step. She still wanted to go home and get to bed, but home and bed were suddenly a destination, a reward, rather than a place to go hide.

It was amazing what the simple sight of the real open sky, even the Multisystem sky, could do for her spirits.

She got back to her apartment, freshened up, and got ready for bed, grateful that her roommate was still out. She set the phone to take messages without disturbing her and went to bed. It was over now. She had done her bit, found the idea that everyone had been looking for. Now the really smart people could work on it. She could get some rest, get up early, and get cracking on those books. She snuggled down into her pillow and went to sleep.

Next morning Sianna woke up at five a.m., and was out of bed in an instant, feeling quite virtuous, and perhaps a little bit smug. One exam today, and she had never felt readier for work in her life.

She breezed through breakfast and set to work on studying for her finals, happily working through a series of transformational analyses just for practice. She got to her exam at noon and plowed through the problems in no time. She was the third one to finish—even with having triple-checked all her work.

She treated herself to a browse through a bookshop on the way home, and got back to her apartment about three. She made herself a late lunch and indulged herself by reading half a novel instead of studying for her history exam.

It wasn’t until nearly eight-thirty that, looking up from her hook, she thought to check her message system. She had forgotten that she had left the comm switched to message-taking. Dozens of people could have called and she never would have known it.

But there was only one text, the time tag showing that it had come in some time at about five a.m.

Be in my office at 0900 hours tomorrow. W. Bernhardt .

No request, no please. Just the flat order. There was a sudden knot in her throat, and her hands turned sweaty. She had thought she had done her part, that she could let everyone else worry about it.