David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

“That’s right, Saul. A stochastic processor works with probabilities, not discrete yes-or-no answers.”

“It’s like the way Kunie describes the operation of the human preconscious! Have you read any of Kunie’s work?”

Virginia laughed. Aloud it was a soft chuckle. In their heads, the sound of bells.

“Of course I have! I couldn’t have gotten this far without that man’s ideas on the creative process. But I’m surprised you’ve heard of him, Saul. Conceptual heuristics isn’t anywhere near molecular biology on the library shelves.”

There was a pause as Saul’s attention returned to the simulation. He nudged a particularly large molecular cluster out of one of the gaping clay tunnels before it could jam the flow of fresh material, a minor interference for the sake of this early trial.

“I knew Kunie, Virginia. His family gave me a place to stay after the Expulsion…”

The “walls” of the simulated latticework throbbed slightly, and Virginia moved gently to stabilize the model against further interference by Saul’s emotions. Without letting on, she created another pathway for his feelings—away from the model and into a small side nexus where they might be buffered, studied… touched.

“Was that when you started working with Simon Percell?” she asked. History had never been her specialty. And Virginia knew that there had been more than one “Expulsion” from the land called Israel.

“Good lord, no.” This time it was Saul’s turn to laugh. The tone resonated in the little buffer like low cello strings.

“The Levites were still a small fanatic Jewish fringe in the Judean hills, and their Salawite friends were nothing more than a bunch of seething Syrian exiles, back when I worked with Simon in Birmingham.”

While JonVon kept the simulation going, Virginia was attempting to trace the tendrils of Saul’s pain, more vivid than anything she had ever experienced in a human-to-human link before. But then Saul changed the subject again.

“We sure could have used tools like these, back when Simon and I were working on the gamete-separation problem,” he subvocalised. “All we had then were kilobit parallel processors, gigabyte memories, and inferential sequencers that took days to analyze a single chromosome.

“But they were good times.”

Virginia felt moved by his intensity, even as she focused in on it, enlarging the channel capacity and sensitivity of the link. Saul was easier to probe than any subject she had had before. Except, maybe, for the littlest children.

And for some reason it was not unpleasantly disorienting, this time. To the contrary, it was pleasant, if a little frightening. The man was… well, strong .

“Go on, Saul. The simulation’s running well. I’d like to hear more about those days. You started telling Carl and me about your early work on cures for sickle cell and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome and lupus.”

“Cures!” Saul laughed, and the cellos were joined by a bitter choir of cymbals. “Yeah, I did. Fortunately, most of our later efforts worked better. Some of the early `successes’ were only partial.”

Virginia knew that. She had already gone into the expedition’s records and expunged all trace of her own infirmity. Of course, it couldn’t affect her duties in any way—in fact the authorities would likely approve of it. But she had erased the data anyway. It just wasn’t anyone else’s damn business.

Virginia smoothed down her own emotions and concentrated on solving the mystery of this oddly open channel to Saul’s subsurface feelings. I’m learning more today than I did in a year, back home , she thought.

She felt JonVon’s central presence pull up alongside, imitating her actions, learning by “watching” how she played the channels, adjusted resonances. Smoothly, at her command, her machine surrogate slipped in to take over. Soon she was able to pull back for a minute and check the biology simulation, their ostensible reason for being here.

It surged on, piling intricacy onto complexity. Now the scale had zoomed back again to enclose an entire field of lattice openings, each with its own fringe of huge, blue-white molecules waving out into the electric stream, like cilia around gaping mouths.

She tried to keep the conversation going. “But you weren’t with Percell when…”

“When he made his fatal error? Those poor monstrosities? No. Perhaps I should have been. I might have done more good than I did by going back to Haifa to join the struggle. By then it was too late, of course. The old Sabras and the kibbutzim had risen, and been crushed by the Levites and their ‘peacekeeping’ mercenaries. Miriam and the little ones…”

The sudden wash of feelings was overpowering and direct. Virginia ’s eyes fluttered and teared as she remembered scenes of grisly horror…seemed almost to see burning settlements, forests in flame… felt the thalamic surge of anguish and guilt.

Furious, she commanded JonVon to stop creating these images. The machine had no business interfering like this!

I am only enhancing, Virginia,

JonVon announced coolly over their private channel, dryly delivering news that stunned her even more than the glittering scene of a temple rising on an ancient hill. Virginia ’s mouth was suddenly dry. But …

I am not interpolating or simulating any of this. Amplified, these are direct images from the subject.

Her hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, forcing the machine to automatically disable her fingertip controls. Her breath came in ragged, audible gasps as the truth struck hard.

“He nalulu ehaeha!”

Distantly, she felt the waldo gloves being pulled from her hands, her shoulders lifted in strong arms.

“Are you all right, Virginia ?” Saul was speaking aloud. “I didn’t mean to come on so strong. I thought you did this sort of thing all the time.”

She blinked, looking up at his concerned face. “Y-you knew what I was up to?”

He laughed. “Who wouldn’t, with you and your cybernetic familiar skulking around at the edges of my mind, poking and probing?”

He shook his head. “Honestly, Virginia, what you’ve done here is astonishing. It felt… direct! I Thought-to-thought contact. It’s been in so many stories and films, even after Margan supposedly proved it impossible, years ago, but…”

Virginia was still numb. “It is. It’s supposed to be… impossible, I mean. I use JonVon to mediate, to guess and pattern, to simulate. But I never expected…”

Now Saul’s expression was serious. “You mean that was your first time?”

Virginia had to smile. “Yes, my first. But don’t worry, Saul. You were a perfect gentleman.”

That did it. He rocked back and howled, and she joined in. They laughed together. The tension seemed to evaporate and for a long moment neither of them seemed to take any notice of the fact that he was still holding her.

This feels so good , she thought at last.

“Hmmm?” he said, tapping his helmet. “I only got a little of that, but I’m pretty sure I agree with whatever it was.”

She looked up at him. “Oh, Saul. I’d known you had a sad life. But it’s different feeling it, almost remembering it myself.”

Yet another image flickered at the edge of vision, a woman. She was no great beauty, certainly—mousy dark hair framing an ordinary face—but her smile was warm, and there was a brimming glow. Behind her were two smaller faces, a boy and a girl.

Miriam? Your children?

Yes . A pain softened by time. Love undiminished.

And in her own heart, another pain, still fierce. Love unanswerable.