James Hogan - Mission to Minerva

And over the rest of the meal, the whole astonishing story came out. The conclusion that the call had originated from some alternative future brought up the question of time-travel contradictions, which Sarah confessed to having been unclear about ever since the business with the Jevlenese. Going back to the past changed it, she maintained, and that didn't make sense.

"Not with the old notion of a single reality and one time line," Hunt agreed. "But going back to an earlier point on a different time line avoids the contradictions. It could be arbitrarily close to the one that you came from, but nevertheless not the same one."

Owen came in. "You couldn't change your own, exact past-where no one from the future had ever shown up to bring about any changes. That's true."

"But you're changing the other one just as much," Sarah objected. Owen looked at Hunt.

"The Multiverse totality itself is timeless," Hunt said. "Nothing in it ever really changes anyway. "

"So what's this change that we all see? Where does it come from?" Leonard asked.

"Now you're getting into philosophers' and theologians' territory," Hunt answered. "I just deal in what the physics says."

"Some kind of construct of consciousness," Caldwell offered. "Consciousness navigates its way through the totality somehow." He shrugged. "Maybe that's what consciousness is."

This aspect intrigued Danchekker. His first reaction was usually to reject anything radical, but Hunt had been through this with him several times by now. It seemed that Chris had been doing some more thinking. "The ramifications are profound," he told Caldwell. "Perhaps one of the most significant developments in the history of science yet. The bringing together of physical and biological science at the quantum level. Generalizing 'consciousness' to mean any form of self-instigated behavior modification gives us a whole new way of looking at living systems."

"You sound as if you want to get more involved in it, Chris," Caldwell commented. His steely gray eyes had an odd twinkle.

"Well, absolutely," Danchekker agreed. "Who in my position wouldn't? I mean-" The clacking of the MC's gavel from the podium above the head table interrupted.

The clattering of dessert cutlery had died away by now, and the waiters were serving coffee, port wines, and liqueurs. The MC looked around while the last murmurs of conversation faded. "Thank you all, ladies and gentlemen. Now that everyone is wined, contented, and fed, it's my pleasure to bring us to the prime business of the evening…"

A buildup followed, outlining Owen's career and achievements. Several speakers followed, relating their personal anecdotes, and Hunt went up last to deliver the keynote address. It went over well. The MC called Owen up from the floor to respond, and at the end the room rose to give him an ovation. But then Owen remained at the podium. Puzzled looks traveled this way and that around the room. Even the MC seemed thrown off balance.

"And now I have something further to tell you all," Owen said. "Something that will set tonight aside as a truly memorable occasion in all our lives. Several days ago, an event took place just a few miles from where we are sitting now, which I believe could signal one of the most startling developments in the entire history of our species, with incalculable implications for the future. It's fitting that I should be saying this as my last official duty on behalf of UNSA. For the era of discovery that I represented is over. A new one is about to begin…"

By the time Hunt got up again to complete the story, the thunder for the evening had truly been exercised where it belonged. All fears of stealing Owen's show were forgotten. The room was all but stunned into silence and immobility, except for one or two figures making inconspicuously for the exits, who Hunt guessed to be media people hurrying to send off their stories. Some questions followed, generally echoing those already heard at Caldwell's table, but not a great many-no doubt because most of the listeners would need time to fully grasp what they had heard. Hunt thought it just as well. This was a celebration dinner, not a technical conference.

But it seemed to have achieved its aim. Owen expressed satisfaction that the occasion had been immortalized. People were staying at their tables and talking in intense, animated groups instead of breaking up and starting to leave in the way that would have been typical. "That would be a tough one to follow," Rita said as Hunt came back over and sat down after exchanging contact details with a number of people wanting to know more who had stopped him on the way.

Caldwell waited until he had Danchekker's attention and looked at him fixedly for a moment as he sipped from his glass. "And now that it's all official, I have some more news-for you, Chris," he said.

"Me?" Danchekker frowned quizzically. "What kind of news?"

"I've been talking to Calazar about Vic's matrix propagation ideas." Calazar headed the planetary administration on Thurien. "He agrees that their scientists and our scientists need to get together on this. And before the speeches, you'd just started telling us about how bioscience and physics are all implicated together. So we've arranged for you and Vic to transfer to Thurien with a small team and work with them."

"Vic and me? To Thurien?… When?"

"A week from now-on the ship that you mentioned. It's called the Ishtar. Some Thuriens who have been visiting places in Asia are going home in it."

Maeve looked delighted. "Why, that's wonderful, Professor!" she exclaimed. "The same ship that your cousin will be going on. So you won't have to lose contact with her after all."

"That's what I was thinking, too," Caldwell said. "I've no doubt she can take care of herself, but an alien culture at another star needs a lot of adjusting to. I've had a taste of it myself. Even if she did make her own arrangements independently, we are still Earth's official space agency, and I feel we have a responsibility. So I'd like you to keep an eye on her, on UNSA's behalf, Chris, if you would." Danchekker appeared to have frozen. He sat, holding a grape that he had taken from a dish on the table suspended halfway to his mouth. Caldwell's brow furrowed. "Okay, Chris?"

"I'd be happy to, of course," Danchekker managed finally in a flat voice.

The sides of Danchekker's mouth moved upward mechanically to bare his teeth, but the rest of him remained immobile. Only then did Hunt see the look of stark horror in the eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. Then the pieces of what must have happened fell suddenly into place. Hunt grabbed his napkin from the table and clasped it to his mouth with a spluttering sound which he disguised as a cough. Rita, to one side, saw the expression that he was struggling to conceal.

"What is it?" she hissed in his ear. "What's so funny?"

"I'll tell you later," Hunt muttered, brushing away a tear.

One of the things about working for Gregg Caldwell that suited Hunt was that Caldwell was able to function within a large bureaucracy without acquiring the mind-set of one. Through his career as a nucleonics scientist in England before joining UNSA, Hunt had found that small groups of capable and dedicated individuals were more effective than the armies assembled for large, managerially inaugurated research projects, where too much energy tended to be dissipated fruitlessly on communicating more and more about less and less. Caldwell expressed it succinctly by saying, "If a ship takes five days to cross the Atlantic, it doesn't mean that five ships will do it in one day." Danchekker was necessarily led to the same philosophy, since the number of people he was typically able to tolerate limited the effective horizons of his personal work space in any case.