Mission to Minerva g-5 Page 7

  Hunt shook his head. "It doesn't eavesdrop. Thuriens are finicky about things like that."

  "How do you know when it's online and when it isn't?"

  "You learn to cue it. It's a knack that you pick up."

  Sonnebrandt rubbed his fingertip lightly over the device, tracing its outline. "This isn't the Thurien total-sensory thing that people talk about, right?" he checked. "It's just an audio-visual subset. That's what avco means."

  "You've never tried the full Thurien system?" Hunt was surprised. For some reason he imagined all major scientific establishments like the Max Planck Institute as having a Thurien neurocoupler or two hidden away somewhere. But Sonnebrandt shook his head. Hunt flipped the mental switch to raise VISAR. "I assume you've got couplers installed at various locations around the place?" he checked.

  "Sure. It's a Thurien ship. Comes with all the fixings."

  "Josef's never used one. Think we could give him an introductory ride?"

  "No problem," VISAR replied. "Finish your beers, and I'll guide you to the nearest ones that are available right now."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Thurien engineering tended not to be intrusive or ostentatious. VISAR directed Hunt and Sonnebrandt along one of the corridors from the Terran lounge area of the ship to a space divided into a number of partitioned cubicles. They entered one of them to find what looked like a fairly standard padded recliner, with panels of multicolored crystal mosaics positioned behind and alongside the headrest in a manner vaguely suggestive of sound baffles in an acoustic room. An array of video and other sensors covered the area from high on the walls and other directions to capture the subject from all angles for an accurate virtual surrogate to be produced. Otherwise, apart from a convenience shelf to one side, coat hanger, and a mirror, the cubicle was bare. A pattern of intriguing artistic designs relieved the monotony of the walls. "That's it. Take a seat," Hunt said, gesturing.

  Sonnebrandt looked around, evidently mildly surprised. "What, no flickering lights and forests of wires? You don't stick your head in a helmet, or anything like that?"

  "It all went out with steam radio. This is easier than having a haircut."

  "Steam radio?"

  "Oh, an English expression. Here. Hop aboard the VISAR express."

  Sonnebrandt turned and sat down, looking mildly self-conscious. "This couples into the total nervous system, yes?" he said. "What exactly do I do?"

  "It activates when you relax back into it. VISAR will guide you through. Your sensory inputs are suppressed and replaced by what the system channels straight into your brain. Likewise, it monitors your motor and other responses and manufacturers a total environment, complete with a surrogate self, that you think you're actually in. So instead of sending your body to China to experience what's going on there, it brings the information to you. Much faster and flexible. Hop from Thurien to Jevlen and another dozen of their star systems in an hour and be home for lunch."

  "It wouldn't know what's going on in China," Sonnebrandt pointed out.

  "I picked a bad example," Hunt conceded. "Thurien worlds are fully wired. They can send the data to reproduce what's happening anywhere. So you get injected into an authentic backdrop-the way it actually is there."

  "It seems like a lot of effort to put in."

  "Thurien psychology is different. They have this hangup about having to get everything exactly right. If something like this ever becomes standard on Earth, you're right-we'd never go to all that trouble. We'd probably make do with lots of extrapolations and simulation. VISAR does that to a degree, too, such as when you want to get the feel of being somewhere that's uninhabited or inhospitable. But where they can, Thuriens have this thing about getting it like it is… Anyway, lie back and enjoy, as they say. I'll hook in next door. See you in psy-space."

  Leaving Sonnebrandt to privacy, Hunt went into the adjoining cubicle, sat himself down, and lay back. This had long ago become a familiar routine. A warm feeling of total ease came over him. He sensed the system tuning in to his neural processes. And in moments it was in passive reception mode, waiting for his directions. With Sonnebrandt, things would take a little longer the first time. The system needed to run a series of sensory calibration tests to fix a user's visual and auditory ranges, thermal and tactile sensitivity, and so forth in order to create inputs that seemed normal. Once done, however, the profile was stored and could be invoked immediately on future occasions. It was a good idea to have it updated periodically-a bit like getting one's eyes checked from time to time when approaching the age where things start to get fuzzy.

  Hunt swung his legs down and sat up. Or at least, everything in his vision, realistic feelings of pressure against the recliner and friction of his clothes, and simulated internal feedback from his muscles and joints, told him that he did. It was only because of his past experience with this that he knew he was really still immobile in the recliner and would remain so until he decoupled from the system. In earlier days he had found it necessary to convey his wishes, for example as to where he wanted to "go," or whom he wanted to contact, as explicit instructions to VISAR. Now, his interaction with the system had grown subtle enough for it to respond to his unvoiced volition.

  When he got up, the recliner behind him appeared empty. What he was seeing was coming into his head from the coupler now, not from his eyes. He walked back around to the adjoining cubicle and leaned casually against the side of the doorway. Sonnebrandt was to all appearances comatose, still undergoing the profiling process. It took a few minutes but was subjectively telescoped to seem a lot less. "Locate him here, too," he said inwardly, evoking VISAR. "Let's see how long he takes to twig it."

  "Still can't resist playing a joke, eh?" VISAR observed.

  "Consider it an experiment. Purely scientific curiosity."

  Sonnebrandt stirred and focused back within the confines of the cubicle. For a moment he seemed unsure of where he was, like somebody coming out of a deep sleep. He saw Hunt, turned his head first one way, then the other to take in the surroundings, then sat up and turned to look at the recliner. He was clearly confused. Finally, he looked back at Hunt. "Do we have a technical hitch?"

  Hunt shrugged. "I guess it can happen to anyone," he said noncommittally. "Want to take a tour around? We can try back here later."

  "Sure." One of Sonnebrandt's shoes had a scuff mark near the toe, Hunt had noticed earlier. It we there, faithfully reproduced on his virtual shoe. Amazing, Hunt thought to himself.

  "I hope it's not a very common thing," Sonnebrandt joked as they exited the cubicle. "I mean, stuck in this starship crossing the Solar System in hours. It's not very reassuring to realize that things can go wrong."

  "Oh, I think you can trust the Thuriens, Josef," Hunt replied mysteriously. Then, vocalizing aloud so as to include Sonnebrandt, "VISAR, care to be the tour guide?"

  "How about Control and Command Deck, Communications Center, on-board power pickup from the h-space grid, and propulsion control?" VISAR suggested. Since Hunt had initiated a public conversation, Sonnebrandt heard the response, too.

  "Does that sound good?" Hunt asked Sonnebrandt.

  "They won't mind? Tourists coming in and gawking in places like that?"

  "I can see you're not used to being around Thuriens yet."

  "Well, I'd say that is about to be corrected in the not very distant future." Sonnebrandt turned his head to glance at Hunt as they walked. "Is there anything I should know about Thuriens?-in dealing with them, I mean. Anything they get upset about? Things that offend them?"

  "You won't offend them, Josef. They don't have the competitive grounding that makes humans get defensive from feeling inferior or inadequate. It just isn't in their nature. For the same reason, it's no use trying to win your point by being aggressive or making an argument out of it. They won't respond. What we think is firmness and take pride in, they'd be more likely to see as being pointlessly obstinate and mildly ridiculous. If you realize you're wrong, just say so like they do. If you're rig
ht, don't crow about it. See my point? There isn't any gaming for one-upmanship points going on. Their minds don't work that way."

  "Hm… You make them sound very patient. Is that something that comes from being such an old civilization?"

  "They make you feel like children at times," Hunt agreed. As an afterthought, he added, "Maybe you should talk to Chien."

  They came to a cross-corridor and turned in the direction of the Thurien part of the ship. Danchekker, Chien, Mildred, and the two Thuriens were around the corner, studying a live mural display of scenes from various Thurien planets. For a moment, Hunt could only stand and stare at them, perplexed. This didn't make sense.

  Hunt and Sonnebrandt were surrogates-virtual creations that existed in their own minds, projected into a VISAR-supplied environment, which in this case happened to be the interior of the ship as captured by the senors that Thuriens embedded in everything they built. And it was true that VISAR could include as part of that environment the images of people who happened to actually be there-or edit them out; it depended on what the user that the experience was being delivered to wanted. But in such a composite situation, the "background" figures-like Danchekker and the others, who were physically there, where the imagery was coming from-couldn't interact with surrogates-like Hunt and Sonnebrandt-who were not. But Danchekker was interacting-by gaping speechlessly, showing all the signs of being as surprised at their meeting as Hunt was. The only explanation that came to Hunt in his befuddlement was that Sonnebrandt had been right, and Hunt was the one who had been fooled. For some reason, unprecedented in Hunt's experience, Thurien technology had failed to function… Or was VISAR the one, maybe, who was playing a joke? Hunt had come across some of its weird ideas of humor before.

  "Dr. Hunt. You've caught up with us," Chien said. "We didn't get very far, I'm afraid. Your colleague, Professor Danchekker, was going to show us the Thurien virtual travel system. But it seems to be down at the moment. I hope it's not a general indicator of Thurien engineering."

  "That's extraordinary!" Sonnebrandt exclaimed. "We did the same. And I said exactly what you just said." Chien laughed. The two Thuriens, who were still with the other group, remained detached in a curious kind of way.

  But Danchekker wasn't laughing. He looked at Hunt with an expression of somebody confronting the impossible and not knowing how to frame a question to express it. It seemed he was having the same problem, which would mean that he thought the same that Hunt did-or had until a moment ago. But that could only be because he had tried to pull the same trick on his companions, too.

  "Okay, VISAR, a good one," Hunt fired at it.

  "What do you mean, Vic?"

  "The joke's over. Come on, level up. What's going on?"

  Mildred, however, was acting differently from the others. She stood, staring uncertainly at Hunt for several seconds, and then moved a step nearer, bringing her face close. For a moment he thought she was about to kiss him on the cheek. She stepped back, her eyes twinkling mischievously. "Christian told me you used to be a smoker until not very long ago. Is that right?"

  "Well… yes." He shook his head. "What does that have to do with-"

  "Ah! Gotcha, VISAR," Mildred said softly. "You're getting lazy."

  "What did I do?"

  Mildred smiled at Hunt as she replied. "You used your old stored profile to create Dr. Hunt. It included a hint of the aroma that smokers typically have. It's there now. But it shouldn't be. It wasn't earlier, or when we came up in the shuttle." She explained to the others who were listening, but who still hadn't figured it out, "The system is working just fine. We are inside it right now, as I speak-all of us! I'm amazed. Congratulations, Christian. You really had us fooled." Danchekker was looking too astonished to reply. Behind him, the two Thuriens were grinning.

  "Okay, you win," VISAR conceded. "So shall we continue with the tour?"

  "But of course," Chien said. At the same time, she sent Mildred an approving nod.

  It occurred to Hunt that this would be one way of making sure that the crew in the Command Deck and elsewhere wouldn't have to be bothered by gaggles of tourists coming through. Sonnebrandt moved close as they started moving again. "She's sharp," he murmured. "It may be as well that she's coming along."

  Hunt had to agree. He was still getting over the surprise himself. It was the first time ever that he had known VISAR to be caught out on something.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  From records pieced together in the course of investigating Charlie and the other Lunarian remains uncovered on the Moon, it had been established that the Lunarians knew of the lost race of giant-size bipeds that had inhabited Minerva long before their own time. Lunarian mythology told that this race still existed at a star known as the Giants' Star, which could be identified on the charts. At the time of these discoveries, the scientists of Earth had no way of knowing if the legend was true. But they kept the star's name, and it had persisted since.

  Giants' Star, or Gistar, was located approximately twenty light-years from the Solar System in the constellation of Taurus. It was Sun-like in size and composition but somewhat younger, and supported a system of five outer gas giants and five inner terrestrial-type planets, all of them attended by various gaggles of moons, that came uncannily close to duplicating the pattern back home. This was hardly surprising, since ancient Ganymean leaders had searched long and diligently to find a new home for their race that would present as few hazards in the way of unknowns and surprises as possible.

  Thurien was the fifth planet out from its star, as Minerva had been, a little smaller than Earth, and cooler, which suited the Ganymean range of adaptation. However, the composition and dynamics of the atmosphere provided a more equalized pattern of heat distribution than Earth's, resulting in polar regions that were smaller than a simple comparison of distances would have indicated, and equatorial summers that were seldom hotter than the equivalent of marginal subtropical to Mediterranean. The surface was roughly seventy percent water, with four major continental land masses distributed, unlike those of Earth, fairly equally across both hemispheres, but with a greater variation in height between the deepest ocean chasms and highest mountain peaks.

  The Thuriens had been pursuing their unsuccessful attempt to unravel the mystery of trans-Multiverse movement in terms of their existing h-space physics at a place called Quelsang, close to the city of Thurios, the planet's administrative and governing center. Thurios was where Hunt and his group would be staying, as would most of the other Terrans aboard. It stood near the coast in a setting of lakes connected by gorges and waterfalls on one of the two southern continents, called Galandria. There was none of the complication of docking at a transfer satellite and having to board a surface shuttle as happened when Terran interplanetary craft arrived at Earth. The Ishtar went straight from its approach into a descent that brought it down into the great space port situated by the water just over a hundred miles east of the city. Even Hunt, who had probably had as much dealing with Thuriens as any Terran, was awed by the vast complex of launch and loading installations, with starships the size of ocean liners lined up like suborbitals and freighters on a busy day at O'Hare or JFK.

  Thurien architecture delighted in immense, soaring compositions of verticality, adorned with towers and spires, some of the larger cities extending upward for miles. A flying hotel lobby that looked like a flattened blimp from the outside but was burnished gold in color carried the arrivals to the city. Their first sight of it came before they were halfway there. It appeared on the horizon as a slowly growing cluster of whiteness and light, at first belying the distance by the suggestion being of some kind of monolithic structure. But as they drew closer and its true proportions revealed themselves, what had seemed to be facets of a single structure gradually unfolded and resolved into entire precincts of colossal frontages and vistas, terraced skyscrapers, canyons, and cliffs of architecture woven amid festoons of bridges and arcades around towering central massifs in a tapestry that sent the mind
reeling. There was as much greenery as glass and sculpted stone filling the progressions of tiers and levels, with lakes connecting via a system of canals, and waterfalls constrained between the faces of buildings, while above, layers of cloud wreathed the topmost pinnacles. It wasn't so much a city, Hunt found himself thinking, as an artificial mountain range.

  By the time the ray-shaped blimp brought them to what appeared to be the city's transportation center-or maybe just one of them-Hunt had lost track among the compositions of cityscape that they had passed between and over. They sailed into a vast, hangar-like space high in a stepped block of city vaguely reminiscent of an outsize ziggurat, disappearing below into a tangle of curving traffic ramps and lesser structures. From here, conveyances of every description seemed to come and go, from a web of tubes radiating from the lower levels like an integral circulation system built into the city, to streams of objects following the ubiquitous g-conveyor lines across the spaces above and between, which were as much a part of Thurien city-building as the edifices themselves. It was not always easy to tell what constituted a "vehicle," for pieces of the architecture seemed capable of moving and reattaching elsewhere. On leaving the blimp, the Thurien hosts took Hunt and his group down a couple of levels to a dining area for lunch. When they had finished, they emerged to find that the room had become part of their hotel. A little under thirty-five hours had elapsed by their watches since the Ishtar lifted out from orbit above Earth.

  Earlier Terran guests had christened it the Waldorf. Originally provided for the convenience of Jevlenese making short visits to the city, it was designed to human proportions rather than Ganymean. Although it included accommodation, catering, recreational and other facilities, "hotel" didn't really describe it since it wasn't set up as a commercial venture. But it was near enough. The rooms had all the comfort and extras that Hunt had come to expect, including a full Thurien neurocoupler in each. There was also a section of cubicles for public use at the rear of the main entrance level, behind the lobby area. The gymnasium below included a gravitically sustained freefall pool where the water was spherical inside a trampoline-like elastic surrounding wall, and swimming combined with power diving became a whole new experience.