Charles Sheffield - Dark as Day

If the Seine network had gone down for seven minutes in the small hours of the morning, many people might not have noticed. But a detail like that meant little to the Ogre. He had told her that Project Argus was operating around the clock.

“I wasn’t working at two this morning, Jack. But I wasn’t asleep, either. I was watching a man commit suicide. He took a ship and dived into Jupiter. No one could stop him.”

“I see. Tough break. But Milly, if that lunatic Puzzle Network gang has you sitting around and wasting your time when you should be trying to crack the signal, I won’t stand for it. There’s work to be done back here.”

Which brought Milly, rather sooner in the conversation than she would have liked, to her real reason for the call.

“Jack Beston, I want to ask you a question.”

That got his attention. Nobody on the project called him Jack Beston. To a few it was Jack, to the others it was Sir. He knew that when he was not present they called him the Ogre, but he didn’t mind that.

He said suspiciously, “Question? What question?”

“Why are you involved in SETI?”

“That’s a dumb-ass thing to ask. I don’t have time to play games.”

“I’d like an answer. You’ve been working on Project Argus for most of your adult life. What do you hope to get out of it? If you had just one wish, what would it be?”

The green eyes narrowed. Jack Beston said nothing.

“That wish could be many things,” Milly went on. “I know my own wish. I know why I left Ganymede and joined your project on Argus Station. Even if we didn’t find a signal — and I’m not sure I ever expected that we would — I loved the intellectual challenge. And if we did find a signal, that would lead to the most exciting generation in the history of the human race. A discovery as big as taming fire, or learning the techniques of agriculture.”

Jack Beston opened his mouth to speak, but still said nothing.

Milly went on, “And we did find a signal.” Remembering that moment of conviction, something is there, she felt again the shiver in her spine. “In the first days after detection, it seemed to me that we had done it. I thought that the hardest job was over. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

He nodded. “Detection just calls for patience. The hardest part is interpretation, the understanding of an alien mind.”

“You knew that — maybe you’ve always known it. But I didn’t. Now detection is past, and so is verification. What’s left is interpretation. When we were trying for detection, it was all right to have parallel efforts — even competing efforts. There was no duplication going on, because we were doing an all-sky survey, and Philip had put his money on the targeted search.

“But we’re past all that now. We have a signal. Understanding it, and reaching the point where we can reply to it, will take enormous amounts of effort. There’s enough work for everybody for years and years. Cooperative work, not competitive. I know cooperation is a new idea for you, so here’s my question: are you slaving night and day because you want to be able to read a message from the stars? Or is Jack Beston working mainly to beat Philip Beston, and prove that he’s a better man than his bastard brother?”

His face was absolutely unreadable. He said, “I should have listened to Hannah Krauss. She told me you would cause trouble. She was right.”

“Trouble, because I ask you what you want out of life?”

“What I want is none of your business. You’re fired, Milly Wu. You’ll not set foot again on Argus Station.”

“That’s right, get rid of anybody who dares to ask you to face the truth. Do you think I care where I live, or who I work for?” Milly was becoming emotionally charged in spite of her determination not to. “It’s what we are trying to achieve, and the people we work with, that matter. I’ll miss Hannah, and I’ll miss Simon Bitters and Lota Danes and Arnold Rudolph. My God, I’ll even miss you, though don’t ask me why. But what we’ve been trying to do is more important than any of our personal feelings. And the work will go on, no matter where I am or you are. It would go on even if we were both dead.”

He stared at her. “The needs of the project transcend any single individual, that’s true.”

“Including you.”

“Including me. All right, I overreacted. You’re not fired. But you should take a few days off. You’re tired out and stressed out, and you are overreacting, too.”

Before she could curse him down to size, as he deserved, he added, “Eat a good meal and get some rest. That’s not a suggestion, Milly Wu, it’s an order. We’ll talk about all this later.”

His image vanished, leaving Milly shouting at a blank screen, “You arrogant son-of-a-bitch! It’s not your brother who’s the bastard, it’s you. And you can’t give me orders anymore. I don’t work for you.”

She looked down at her hands, resting on the desk in front of her. They were shaking. She felt that her insides were shaking, too.

Eat a good meal and get some rest? That was a joke. The way she was feeling, if she tried to eat she would choke on the first bite. Sleep was out of the question.

She was too agitated even to sit still. Her rooms, usually comfortably modest and cozy, now had walls that seemed to crowd in on her. The old Durer and Escher prints that she had brought in from Argus Station and hung with pleasure irritated rather than satisfied. She recalled what Hannah Krauss had said, soon after Milly arrived at Jovian L-4. The occupational hazards of mathematicians, logicians, and crypt-analysts were depression, insanity, paranoia, and suicide.

Depression was something she had fought off as a teenager. The solution in those years had been not rest, but physical activity and a change of mental focus.

Milly slipped into her exercise suit and headed for the nearest free-speed access point. She walked fast, posing a practical problem for herself as she went. Last night had started in her cubicle at the Puzzle Network’s Command Center in Sector 291, deep down on Level 147. It had ended in the research quarantine facility, up close to the surface on Level 4, in Sector 82. Today’s meeting with Bat would logically be held in one of those locations. Milly wanted an exercise route that would allow her to reach either of them quickly.

Most people would have consulted a General Route Planner, providing optimal routes between any pair of Levels and Sectors within Ganymede. Milly didn’t want to do that. She needed a distraction. She entered the free-speed system and began to jog along it, passing or being passed by scores of others running for exercise or pleasure. As she went she visualized and held in her mind the intersecting network of vertical and horizontal routes to which the free-speed course had access. When the call came, she needed to be able to move from her location of the moment to wherever Bat was holding the meeting.

She ran steadily for an hour, feeling the tension inside her gradually fade. Her brain was well into the pleasant endorphin-soothed state induced by exercise when, annoyingly, her receiver buzzed for attention.

“Yes?”

The voice in her ear was not that of Bat, or Alex Ligon, or anyone else whom she recognized. It said, “Interested parties should convene at the Ligon Industries’ Experimental Center, Level twenty-two, Sector one-one-eight.”

Milly swore to herself. The meeting was going to take place at neither of the locations for which she had planned rapid routing. She had never before been to the Ligon Industries’ Experimental Center; she had, in fact, never heard of it.

She sprinted for the next exit on the free-speed course and ran through the output chamber. You were not supposed to do that, and the output processor did not have enough time to finish its job. Milly emerged with perspiration removed from her body and clothing, but her core temperature was still well above normal. As she called on the General Route Planner and asked it to take her to Level 22, Sector 118, she could feel new sweat breaking out on her body.