Brian Ball - Singularity Station

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Singularity Station: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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BORDER POST OF ETERNITY Robotic minds made interstellar travel possible, but human minds still controlled the destination and purpose of such flight. Conflict develops only when a programmed brain cannot evaluate beyond what is visible and substantial, whereas the human mind is capable of infinite imagination—including that which is unreal.
Such was the problem at the singularity in space in which the ALTAIR STAR and a hundred other vessels had come to grief. At that spot, natural laws seem subverted—and some other universe’s rules impinged.
For Buchanan, the station meant a chance to observe and maybe rescue his lost vessel. For the robotic navigators of oncoming spaceships, the meaning was different. And at Singularity Station the only inevitable was conflict.

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Liz was troubled. The air of fanaticism she had worn when he first saw her had gone; but she was deeply disturbed by the strange encounter with Maran.

“Free again, Liz—Maran?” he prompted.

“I didn’t want you to waste your life looking for a ghost-ship.”

“That,” said Buchanan, realizing how little it meant to him now.

“I couldn’t stop you. We can’t stop Maran. We shouldn’t.”

“No, Liz?”

“I don’t know!” she burst out. “He’s done terrible things—I saw Yam squeeze the life out of a young crewman! But he shouldn’t be put away like an animal—not a mind like his! Al, he has qualities that we can’t begin to understand!”

“He did things to men and women that shouldn’t be done.”

“I know!”

Buchanan did not press her. The wildness was in her eyes again. They glowed golden, helpless, full of doubts and confusion.

“He is different,” admitted Buchanan. “It was impossible that this ship could project any kind of warp in the conditions that existed a few hours ago. But he told the machines to make a hypothetical warp, a Quasi-warp as he called it, and they did it. Yet there’s still no way out for him.”

“I thought he wanted me as a hostage,” said Liz.

“Lientand wouldn’t consider bargaining with—”

“No! Maran wouldn’t bargain either,” She said, puzzled. “He wanted me to stay on the ES 110— he could have had me released when he sent the survival-cylinders out, but he didn’t. I think he wanted someone with him. Maybe as a witness, Al. Someone he could explain his conduct to—someone who would be able to report that he acted as he did because he was, simply, Maran.” Buchanan thought of the man’s deep eyes, his imposing bulk, the way he had shaken his massive head to free it of the jangling residues of the sense-blinding fields he had passed through. What did he intend now?

“If I hadn’t been so blind!” he groaned. “To think I started this!” Impulsively, Liz Deffant reached across to him: “I told you I understand now, Al. You had to go—truly, Al, I know it.”

It was the thought of the Quasi-warp that made Buchanan tell Liz about the Altair Star. There was a link that he could not yet comprehend, one that he was not aware of having thought of as possible; nevertheless, the memory of that beacon-bright eerie field growing out toward the failing transport had something to do with the time-lost liner.

“I saw it,” he said. “I saw the ship.”

Liz felt a surge of resentment. It passed. The lost ship was no barrier between them anymore.

“The remains of the Altair Star!” she asked.

“The ship itself,” he insisted. “It didn’t break up, like the ES 110.”

“It’s intact?”

“It’s with a fleet of other ships—ships lost for a thousand years, Liz.” Liz knew the dreadful turmoil of spirit that Buchanan, had endured three years before. Was he suffering from some sort of hallucination brought on by grief and loneliness? She looked and saw the active intelligence in his eyes, not the visionary excitement of a Maran.

“Did you reach the ship, Al?”

“No. I caught a glimpse of a kind of ships’ graveyard—dozens of ancient ships. They were held in some kind of time-tunnel, some weird effect of the Singularity. I saw it, but the robots wouldn’t have it that it could exist. They said it was impossible. There couldn’t be such a temporal discontinuity.” Liz grappled with the idea. Cosmic events surrounded her. A bizarre genius had taken over a prison-ship and hurtled with it into the Singularity; at the Singularity, Al could talk, more or less calmly, about a strange tunnel of time. And Al, trained field man, talented beyond so many in his area of research, had not been able to persuade the robots that what he had seen could exist.

“It was like a hole in the fabric of the Universe,” went on Buchanan. “It was so utterly alien that I could not begin to explain what it was.”

“It still troubles you?”

Buchanan felt his own unsureness. He had been ready to forget the Altair Star and its ghosts. If it had been possible for them to leave the Singularity, he could have left the mystery unsolved. There was no prospect of that, though.

Liz watched him. Buchanan’s ghosts were not laid, whatever he said. The finding of the Altair Star was only the beginning of Al’s new tribulations.

“You would go to the ship—if you could?”

“It’s impossible.” But he had said that before. There was something that he should remember….

“But you’d go?”

“I keep seeing the faces!” he burst out.

“Did you see anything in the ship?”

“Not the passengers or crew. But it was exactly as I remember it. There was no further deterioriation of its fabric. It’s exactly as it was when I saw it go into the Singularity—into that weird field.”

“Al, I’ve told you I truly understand. I couldn’t before. Now I know how these ideas can hold one.” Buchanan was back in time. “If I’d been able to get down to the engines—if I’d thought of wrecking the memory-banks sooner—maybe I could have worked something out!” Liz was near to weeping with pity for him. “Does it matter so much, Al? It’s all long gone!” Buchanan looked at her. There was more, she thought. Deep lines she had not seen for years were etched into his face.

“They may not have gone.”

“They?”

“Nearly seven hundred men, women, and children.”

“Al, they must have been dead for three years! You can’t help them!” Liz felt a sense of cold inevitability. A shadowy horror hung over Al Buchanan, and it was creeping out to envelop her too.

“I wasn’t going to tell you.”

“Tell me.”

“Kochan made the station possible.”

“Why?”

“His granddaughter was a passenger.”

“Tell me, Al.”

“His scientists came up with a theory about the Singularity.”

“This—tunnel?”

Buchanan told her. “Time might hold still.”

“And if it does, then she—”

“—and all the others. Still there.”

There was a horror, thought Liz. Death was the constant companion of them all. It was the thought of not dying that was peculiarly horrible.

“A theory, Al—only a theory, you say!” She was shuddering.

“I have to make sure.”

“Maran—he won’t be interested in the tunnel! You won’t be able to go to the Altair Star, Al!” Buchanan’s craggy face was ugly with bitterness. While his mind had been ranging over the amazing glimpse of the Altair Star, he had experienced one of those moments which come, with rare and fortunate intuition, to trained field men when they are faced with irreconcilable sets of data and conflicting theories. A double mystery might, just might, be explicable. Maran’s abrupt orders; the frenzied activity of the machines; the building of the eerie Quasi-warp; the time-lost tunnel which the robots would not record. Memories, ideas, projections had surged and coalesced and strayed together. Buchanan was sure of what he said.

“Maran will want to see the Altair Star.”

“What!”

“Yes, Liz.”

Staring at the man she still loved, Liz thought she would never be able to follow his thoughts. She sagged back on the couch. She might have lain until she slept had not a robotic voice called deferentially to them. A weird, over-polite invitation brought her to her feet.

“Commander Buchanan and Miss Deffant. Commander Maran presents his compliments. He would be honored if they would dine with him immediately. This system requires confirmation,” it added. Buchanan put an arm around Liz Deffant’s shoulders. “This, Liz,” he said, “will be something to tell them about when we’re back at Center.”

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