Ben Bova - New Earth

“And you overcame his resistance? You forced him to accept—”

“No, not at all,” Aditi said. “The program merely repeated the new information until it became recognizable to his brain. It’s the same process as ordinary classroom learning: it takes time to adapt to new knowledge and to accept it.”

Jordan marveled, “But you can do it in minutes, instead of a whole semester.”

With a glance at her wristwatch, Aditi said, “It took more than an hour, Jordan.”

He looked at his watch and saw that she was right.

“Still…” he said.

“He’ll be fine,” said Aditi. “In another ninety minutes, two hours at most, he’ll have absorbed everything the program has to tell him.”

Jordan couldn’t help wondering what else Thornberry’s brain was being forced to absorb.

As Thornberry slept on peacefully, Jordan gave voice to his nagging doubts.

“Aditi, dear, I’ve got to ask you—”

“If the physics program is all that I’m downloading into Dr. Thornberry’s brain?”

“Yes,” Jordan admitted, feeling awful about it.

She turned her desk chair to face him. “That’s all. It’s quite enough. I had to map his brain first to see if he could accept such a massive amount of information.”

“I want to believe you, I really do.”

“I know you do, Jordan. And I know how difficult all this must be for you.”

“It’s all so new. It takes time to adapt to new information.”

Her smile turned impish. “What did I tell you? You’re going through the same process of adaptation that Dr. Thornberry’s experiencing.”

“Except that he’s doing it in a few hours, while I’m taking much longer.”

Wheeling her chair closer to him, Aditi said, “You’re not suggesting that I use brain stimulation to indoctrinate you, are you?”

“No! Not at all.”

“That would be an ethical violation,” Aditi said. “We use brain stimulation to educate people, not to manipulate them.”

“Even if I asked you to? Even if I volunteered?”

“It’s not allowed,” she replied. “We have our code of behavior. We’re not monsters, no matter what Dr. Meek thinks.”

Jordan gazed at her utterly earnest face. “Your ethical standards are somewhat higher than ours. On Earth, the temptation to use direct brain stimulation to control people would be unbearable—for some.”

“But not for you.”

“Nor for you.”

Her stern expression eased. “You trust us, Jordan. That’s wonderful.”

“I trust you, Aditi.”

“That’s even more wonderful.”

“I love you.”

She broke into a sunny smile. “That’s the most wonderful thing of all.”

But suddenly Jordan felt uneasy. “My brother suggested that when the rest of us leave for home, I should stay here.”

Aditi’s eyes widened. “Stay? Would you? Would you stay here with me? That would be fantastic!”

“I want to,” he said. Then he heard himself add, “But…”

“But,” she said.

“All that Adri’s told me. All that the Predecessor told me. The human race is in danger. Other races, on other worlds.”

“It’s a great responsibility for you,” she said softly.

“I can’t turn my back on it. On them.”

“I know.”

“You could come with me,” he blurted.

“To Earth?”

“Yes.” Jordan’s mind raced. “In fact, it would be an enormous help. You could be an ambassador, a representative of your people. One look at you and they’d see that we have nothing to fear from you.”

Aditi gave him a skeptical look. “Just as Dr. Meek sees he has nothing to fear?”

Jordan’s heart sank. “Yes. You’re right. There would be people on Earth who’d be frightened of you, no matter what.”

For a few heartbeats neither of them spoke. Thornberry snored softly on the couch, completely relaxed.

Then Aditi said, “I’d go to Earth with you, Jordan.”

He shook his head. “There’d be danger there for you. Fanatics, madmen. What they fear they try to destroy.”

“You’d protect me.”

“No. It’d be too dangerous for you. You’d be much better off staying here.”

“While you went back to Earth?”

“I’d return for you.” Then, realizing it took eighty years, he added uncertainly, “Someday.”

Aditi reached out and took both Jordan’s hands in hers. “No. I’ll go to Earth with you.”

“But—”

“I love you, Jordan. I’m not going to be parted from you. Not for anything.”

He leaned toward her and kissed her.

“A fine thing,” Thornberry called from the couch.

Jordan flinched reflexively away from Aditi. She looked surprised, scooted her chair back toward her desk, and peered at the image of Thornberry’s brain on the wall screen.

“You two smooching away while I’m tryin’ to sleep.” Thornberry was half sitting up, grinning at them, the headphones dangling lopsidedly.

“Don’t remove the transceivers just yet, please,” Aditi called to Thornberry. While he pushed the headphones back into place, she tapped on her desktop keyboard, then spun her chair around to face Thornberry. “Very good. The program is finished. You can get up now.”

Thornberry yanked the headphones off and swung his legs off the edge of the couch. “Well now, do I look any smarter to you?”

Jordan thought he looked totally normal, except that his wrinkled shirt was stained with perspiration.

“You look fine, Mitch,” he said. “How do you feel?”

Thornberry hesitated a moment. “Pretty normal. Me shirt’s a bit sticky, though.” Then his beefy face broke into a broad smile. “B’god, I see ! I see it all! By all the saints in heaven, I understand how it works!”

Aditi asked, “What can you tell me about the energy screen generators?”

“Why, they tap the multidimensional branes that envelop space-time and focus them to produce a warping field that absorbs incoming energy.”

Jordan felt impressed. Aditi pulled a digital notepad and stylus from her desk drawer and handed them to Thornberry.

“The basic equations, please,” she said.

Grinning, Thornberry scribbled away on the notepad’s screen, his tongue peeking out from between his teeth.

“There,” he said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

Aditi said, “I don’t know. I’m not a physicist. But your equations have been sent to the chief of our physics department…”

“And?” Jordan prompted.

Aditi’s smile told him everything. “He confirms that your equations are correct. The downloading worked fine.”

“I’m a bloody physicist!” Thornberry crowed. “And I can build a field generator from scratch, b’god.”

“It worked,” Jordan breathed.

Aditi nodded happily. “It certainly did.”

Thornberry got to his feet and pranced across the room. “I want to call Hazzard. I want to impress him with me new knowledge. We can build an energy shield for the ship, b’god.”

“Well, I’m certainly impressed,” said Jordan.

Hazzard was impressed, too. On the wall screen above Aditi’s desk, his dark face was split by a bright grin as Thornberry spouted enthusiasm about building an energy shield to protect the ship from harmful levels of radiation.

Glancing at his wristwatch again, Jordan said to Aditi, “I should get over to the observatory and see how Dr. Rudaki is doing with your astronomers.”

She nodded. “I understand. I’ll stay here with Dr. Thornberry.”

Jordan looked at Thornberry, chattering happily with Hazzard. The astronaut seemed halfway between delighted and bewildered at the roboticist’s fervor.