Ben Bova - Foundation’s Friends

“You never were much of a thinker, were you, Fletcher?” said Asenion quietly, almost gently. But the savage contempt in his eyes had the force of a sun going nova.

“I do my best. But I don’t see-”

Asenion sighed. “The thiotimoline will chase the water in the outer container to the end of time, carrying with it the plutonium in the inner container. To the end of time. Literally. “

“And?”

“What happens at the end of time, Fletcher?”

“Why-absolute entropy-the heat-death of the universe-”

“Precisely. The Final Entropic Solution. All molecules equally distributed throughout space. There will be no further place for the water-seeking thiotimoline to go. The end of the line is the end of the line. It, and the plutonium it’s hauling with it, and the water it’s trying to catch up with, will all plunge together over the entropic brink into antitime.”

“Antitime,” said Fletcher in a leaden voice. “ Antitime?”

“Naturally. Into the moment before the creation of the universe. Everything is in stasis. Zero time, infinite temperature. All the universal mass contained in a single incomprehensible body. Then the thiotimoline and the plutonium and the water arrive.” Asenion’s eyes were radiant. His face was flushed. He waved his scrap of paper around as though it were the scripture of some new creed. “There will be a tremendous explosion. A Big Bang, so to speak. The beginning of all things. You-or should I say I?-will be responsible for the birth of the universe.”

Fletcher, stunned, said after a moment, “ Are you serious?”

“I am never anything but serious. You have your solution. Pack up your plutonium and send it on its way. No matter how many shipments you make, they’ll all arrive at the same instant. And with the same effect. You have no choice, you know. The plutonium must be disposed of. And-” His eyes twinkled with some of the old Asenion playfulness. “The universe must be created, or else how will any of us get to be where we are? And this is how it was done. Will be done. Inevitable, ineluctable, unavoidable, mandatory. Yes? You see?”

“Well, no. Yes. Maybe. That is, I think I do,” said Fletcher, as if in a daze.

“Good. Even if you don’t, you will.”

“I’ll need-to talk to the others-”

“Of course you will. That’s how you people do things. That’s why I’m here and you’re there.” Asenion shrugged. “Well, no hurry about it. Create the universe tomorrow, create it the week after next, what’s the difference? It’ll get done sooner or later. It has to, because it already has been done. You see?”

“Yes. Of course. Of course. And now-if you’ll excuse me-” Fletcher murmured. “I-ah-have a dinner appointment in a little while”

“That can wait too, can’t it?” said Asenion, smiling with sudden surprising amiability. He seemed genuinely glad to have been of assistance. “There’s something I forgot to show you this afternoon. A remarkable plant, possibly unique-a nidularium, it is, Brazilian, not even named yet, as a matter of fact-just coming into bloom. And this one-wait till you see it, Fletcher, wait till you see it-”

"Let there be day.”

Day was when he said it was. Periscoped sunlight obediently flooded the stateroom at the core of Terrarium Nine.

Keith Flammersfeld saw the light with still-closed eyes and knew that his little world remained safe and warm outside his eyelids. Lazily, he removed from his temples the interactive patcher that had put him into the video of Through the Looking-Glass that had just now faded from the screen of his computer/player.

He opened his eyes and sat up in his bunk and stretched. He loosed a jaw-cracking yawn, momentarily disappearing the chipmunk pouches that flanked his self-satisfied mouth. To keep up his muscle tone and stay in shape, he lay supine again and thought aerobic thoughts for a good five minutes. He was pushing forty, but he was pushing forty back.

Feeling fit after all that exercise, he sat up and swung around to put his feet on the carpeted deck. He checked his priorities: the call of nature could wait, the clamor from his stomach could not. He called for his tray.

It slid out of the bulkhead to fit just above his lap. He put away a healthy breakfast of fruits, vegetables, and grains-all grown right here inside Terrarium Nine. The tray sensed when the last of the food was gone and slid itself back into the bulkhead.

Flammersfeld stood up and got out of his pajama shorts. He tossed them into the revamper, stepped into the toilet cubicle and relieved himself, washed up, fizzed his mouth clean, and put on fresh shorts.

Two steps to the right took Flammersfeld to his office. He sat down at his master computer and tapped keys. The screen displayed a blank requisition form.

His face split in a huge grin as he typed two items and moused them into the right spaces. Tight facial muscles around mouth and eyes told him it was a malicious grin. At this awareness, he quickly slackened the grin into an expression of innocent merriment. Then, reminding himself that he was all alone aboard Terrarium Nine and that no one watched, he hauled again on the lines of the malicious grin.

He savored, then saved, the requisition. He was on the point of sending it to the home office on Earth, when he all but jumped out of his skin.

The lower right quadrant of the screen was displaying a reduced image of another monitor screen’s display.

This display labeled itself as coming from the work station in Buck Two. He put his own page on hold and filled the screen with the Intruding display.

He stared at it, feeling his eyes bulge.

Someone had entered his system and infected it with rabid doggerel.

Is the sun a milky bud?

Whence the shadows on my face? Why’s the sky as green as blood?

Who will win the Red Queen’s race?

Madness.

But even madness had to have a logical explanation.

Possible explanation number one, a computer virus. If true, it would have entered by way of the master computer, sole link to Earth and the universe. What would be the point of trying to trick him into thinking the message came from Buck Two’s slave computer, not from Buck One’s central memory? Merely the prankish pleasure of sending him on a wild-goose chase through Buck Two’s jungle? A small payoff for what would have to have been a major effort, cracking the vaccinated and regularly boostered Labcom system headquartered on Earth.

Possible explanation number two, a stowaway, presence hitherto entirely unsuspected by Flammersfeld and completely overlooked by all sensors. If true, the person would have had to slip aboard during resupply a full year ago. If such a one had survived all that while by living on the fruits and vegetables and grains grown in Terrarium Nine-though how that could be when Flammersfeld kept those precious items all carefully tagged and tabulated and tracked-why would that stowaway give his or her presence away at this point? Lonely and dying for companionship? Fallen ill and in need of help? Gone mad and about to attack? Having bided his or her time, now ready for a takeover bid?

Possible explanation number three, true madness-Flammersfeld’s own. Could Flammersfeld himself have programmed that display, say while dream-experiencing Through the Looking-Glass? Had cabin fever affected his brain, split his awareness?

Even as he stared at the screen the display changed. Another verse appeared, letter by letter, slowly, painfully, as though stiff and hesitant fingers were working in real time.

When Adam delved

Was it then I selved?

When Eve span