The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (92 page)

“Holy O'Golden!” Washington muttered.

“How many'd we lose?” Ing asked. He knew it was going to be bad—worse than he'd expected.

There was a long wait, then Washington's shocked voice: “A hundred and eighteen cleaners down. It isn't possible!”

“Yeah,” Ing said. “They're all over the floor. Shut off the beam before that dust drifts up into it.”

The beam disappeared from Ing's faceplate responders.

“Is that what you thought would happen, Ing?”

“Kind of.”

“Why didn't you warn me?”

“You wouldn't have given me that 'lash.”

“Well how the devil're we going to explain a hundred and eighteen cleaners? Accounting'll be down on my neck like a…”

“Forget Accounting,” Ing said. “You're a beam engineer; open your eyes. Those cleaners weren't absorbed by the beam. They were cut down and scattered over the floor.”

“But the…”

“Cleaners are designed to respond to the beam's needs,” Ing said. “As the beam moves they move. As the debris count goes up, the cleaners work harder. If one works a little too hard and doesn't get out of the way fast enough, it's supposed to be absorbed—its energy converted by the beam. Now, a false 'lash catches a hundred and eighteen of them off balance. Those cleaners weren't eaten: they were scattered over the floor.”

There was silence while Washington absorbed this.

“Did that 'lash touch angspace?” Ing asked.

“I'm checking,” Washington said. Then: “No … wait a minute: there's a whole ripple of angspace … contacts, very low energy—a series lasting about an eighty-millionth of a second. I had the responders set to the last decimal or we'd have never caught it.”

“To all intents and purposes we didn't touch,” Ing said.

“Practically not.” Then: “Could somebody in cleaner programming have flubbed the dub?”

“On a hundred and eighteen units?”

“Yeah. I see what you mean. Well, what're we going to say when they come around for an explanation?”

“We quote the book. ‘Each problem should be approached in two stages: (1) locate those areas which contribute most to the malfunction, and (2) take remedial action designed to reduce hazards which have been positively identifying hazards.'”

*   *   *

Ing stepped over the lock sill into the executive salon, saw that Washington already was seated at the corner table which convention reserved for the senior beam engineer on duty, the Supervisor of Transmission.

It was too late for day lunch and too early for the second shift coffee break. The salon was almost empty. Three junior executives at a table across the room to the right were sharing a private joke, but keeping it low in Washington's presence. A security officer sat nursing a teabulb beside the passage to the kitchen tram on the left. His shoulders bore a touch of dampness from a perspiration reclaimer to show that he had recently come down from the surface. Security had a lot of officers on the station, Ing noted … and there always seemed to be one around Washington.

The vidwall at the back was tuned to an Earthside news broadcast: There were hints of political upsets because of the beam failure, demands for explanations of the money spent. Washington was quoted as saying a solution would be forthcoming.

Ing began making his way toward the corner, moving around the empty tables.

Washington had a coffeebulb in front of him, steam drifting upward. Ing studied the man—Possible Washington (Impossible, according to his junior engineers) was a six-foot eight-inch powerhouse of a man with wide shoulders, sensitive hands, a sharply Moorish-Semitic face of café au lait skin and startlingly blue eyes under a dark crew-cut. (The company's senior medic referred to him as “a most amazing throw of the genetic dice.”) Washington's size said a great deal about his abilities. It took a considerable expenditure to lift his extra kilos moonside. He had to be worth just that much more.

Ing sat down across from Washington, gestured to the waiter-eye on the table surface, ordered Marslichen tea.

“You just come from Assembly?” Washington asked.

“They said you were up here,” Ing said. “You look tired. Earthside give you any trouble about your report?”

“Until I used your trick and quoted the book: ‘Every test under field conditions shall approximate as closely as possible the conditions set down by laboratory precedent.'”

“Hey, that's a good one,” Ing said. “Why didn't you tell them you were following a hunch—you had a hunch I had a hunch.”

Washington smiled.

Ing took a deep breath. It felt good to sit down. He realized he'd worked straight through two shifts without a break.

“You look tired yourself,” Washington said.

Ing nodded. Yes, he was tired. He was too old to push this hard. Ing had few illusions about himself. He'd always been a runt, a little on the weak side—skinny and with an almost weaselish face that was saved from ugliness by widely set green eyes and a thick crewcut mop of golden hair. The hair was turning gray now, but the brain behind the wide brow still functioned smoothly.

The teabulb came up through the table slot. Ing pulled the bulb to him, cupped his hands around its warmth. He had counted on Washington to keep the worst of the official pressure off him, but now that it had been done, Ing felt guilty.

“No matter how much I quote the book,” Washington said, “they don't like that explanation.”

“Heads will roll and all that?”

“To put it mildly.”

“Well, we have a position chart on where every cleaner went down,” Ing said. “Every piece of wreckage has been reassembled as well as possible. The undamaged cleaners have been gone over with the proverbial comb of fine teeth.”

“How long until we have a clean tube?” Washington asked.

“About eight hours.”

Ing moved his shoulders against the chair. His thigh muscles still ached from the long session in the Skoarnoff tube and there was a pain across his shoulders.

“Then it's time for some turkey talk,” Washington said.

Ing had been dreading this moment. He knew the stand Washington was going to take.

The Security officer across the room looked up, met Ing's eyes, looked away.
Is he listening to us?
Ing wondered.

“You're thinking what the others thought,” Washington said. “That those cleaners were kicked around the corner into angspace.”

“One way to find out,” Ing said.

There was a definite lift to the Security officer's chin at that remark. He
was
listening.

“You're not taking that suicide ride,” Washington said.

“Are the other beams getting through to the Seed Ships?” Ing asked.

“You know they aren't!”

Across the room, the junior executives stopped their own conversation, peered toward the corner table. The Security officer hitched his chair around to watch both the executives and the corner table.

Ing took a sip of his tea, said: “Damn tea here's always too bitter. They don't know how to serve it anywhere except on Mars.” He pushed the bulb away from him. “Join the Haigh Company and save the Universe for Man.”

“All right, Ing,” Washington said. “We've known each other a long time and can speak straight out. What're you hiding from me?”

Ing sighed.

“I guess I owe it to you,” he said. “Well, I guess it begins with the fact that every transmitter's a unique individual, which you know as well as I do. We map what it does and operate by prediction statistics. We play it by ear, as they say. Now, let's consider something out of the book. A tube is, after all, just a big cave in the rock, a controlled environment for the beam to do its work. The book says:
‘By anglespace transmission, any place in the universe is just around the corner from any other place.'
This is a damned loose way to describe something we don't really understand. It makes it sound as though we know what we're talking about.”

“And you say we're putting matter around that corner,” Washington said, “but you haven't told me what you're—”

“I know,” Ing said. “We place a modulation of energy where it can be
seen
by the Seed Ship's instruments. But that's a transfer of energy, Poss. And energy's interchangeable with matter.”

“You're twisting definitions. We put a highly unstable, highly transitory reflection phenomenon in such a position that time/space limitations are changed. That's by the book, too. But you're still not telling me…”

“Poss, I have a crew rigging a cleaner for me to ride. We've analyzed the destruction pattern—which is what I wanted from that test 'lash—and I think we can kick me into angspace aboard one of these wild geese.”

“You fool! I'm still Supetrans here and I say you're not going in there on…”

“Now, take it easy, Poss. You haven't even…”

“Granting you get kicked around that stupid corner, how do you expect to get back? And what's the purpose, anyway? What can you do if you…”

“I can go there and look, Poss. And the cleaner we're rigging will be more in the nature of a lifeboat. I can get down on TA-IV, maybe take the container with me, give our
seeds
a better chance. And if we learn how to kick me around there, we can do it again with…”

“This is stupidity!”

“Look,” Ing said. “What're we risking? One old man long past his prime.”

Ing faced the angry glare in Washington's eyes and realized an odd thing about himself. He wanted to get through there, wanted to give that container of embryos its chance. He was drunk with the same dream that had spawned the Seeding Compact. And he saw now that the other troubleshooters, the six who'd gone before him, must have been caught in the same web. They'd all seen where the trouble had to be. One of them would get through. There were tools in the container; another beam could be rigged on the other side. There was a chance of getting back … afterward …

“I let them talk me into sending for you,” Washington growled. “The understanding was you'd examine the set up, confirm or deny what the others saw—but I didn't have to send you into that…”

“I want to go, Poss,” Ing said. He saw what was eating on his friend now. The man had sent six troubleshooters in there to die—or disappear into an untraceable void, which was worse. Guilt had him.

“And I'm refusing permission,” Washington said.

The Security officer arose from his table, crossed to stand over Washington. “Mr. Washington,” he said, “I've been listening and it seems to me if Mr. Gump wants to go you can't…”

Washington got to his feet, all six feet eight inches of him, caught the Security man by the jacket. “So they told you to interfere if I tried to stop him!” He shook the man with an odd gentleness. “If you are on my station after the next shuttle leaves, I will see to it personally that you have an unexplained accident.” He released his grip.

The Security agent paled, but stood his ground. “One call from me and this no longer will be
your
station.”

“Poss,” Ing said, “you can't fight city hall. And if you try they'll take you out of here. Then I'll have to make do with second best at this end. I need you as beam jockey here when I ride that wild goose.”

Washington glared at him. “Ing, it won't work!”

Ing studied his friend, seeing the pressures which had been brought to bear, understanding how Earthside had maneuvered to get that request sent from a friend to Ivar Norris Gump. It all said something about Earthside's desperation. The patterns of secrecy, the Security watch, the hints in the newscasts—Ing felt something of the same urgency himself which these things betrayed. And he knew if Washington could overcome this guilt block the man would share mankind's need to help those drifting containers.

“No matter how many people get hurt—or killed,” Ing said, “we have to give the embryos in those containers their chance. You know, I'm right—this is the main chance. And we need you, Poss. I want everything going for me I can get. And no matter what happens, we'll know you did your best for me…”

Washington took two short breaths. His shoulders slumped. “And nothing I say…”

“Nothing you say.”

“You're going?”

“I'm going where the wild goose goes.”

“And who faces the family afterward?”

“A friend, Poss. A friend faces the family and makes the blow as soft as possible.”

“If you'll excuse me,” the Security man said.

They ignored him as the man returned to his table.

Washington allowed himself a deep, sighing breath. Some of the fire returned to his eyes. “All right,” he growled. “But I'm going to be on this end every step of the way. And I'm telling you now you get no Go signal until everything's rigged to my satisfaction.”

“Of course, Poss. That's why I can't afford to have you get into a fracas and be booted out of here.”

*   *   *

Ing's left ankle itched.

It was maddening. His hand could reach only to the calf inside the webbing of his shieldsuit. The ankle and its itch could not be lifted from the area of the sole contact controls.

The suit itself lay suspended in an oil bath within a shocktank. Around the shocktank was something that resembled a standard cleaner in shape but not in size. It was at least twice the length of a cleaner and it was fatter. The fatness allowed for phased shells—Washington's idea. It had grown out of analysis of the debris left by the test 'lash.

The faint hissing of his oxygen regenerators came to Ing through his suit sensors. His viewplate had been replaced by a set of screens linked to exterior pickups on the belly. It showed a rope of fluorescing purple surrounded by blackness.