"Creamer?"

"No, creamer's okay."

Ma.s.sey added the items to his list. "Seeing Liz tonight?" he asked casually as he looked over the sheet, trying to remember anything he might have missed.

"Yep. I'm not sure what we're up to, though. There's dancing at the Amazon, which I like, but a concert in Jefferson Hall that she wants to see. Probably we'll end up doing both."

"What's the concert?"

"Something cla.s.sical. Brahms and Mahler, I think."

"Oh. Who was it who said that Wagner's music isn't really as bad as it sounds?"

"Not sure. Oscar Wilde?"

"Could be. I thought it was Shaw."

"I'd go with either."

"Yes, it's-" The phone on Ma.s.sey's desk interrupted. He touched a key to accept. To his surprise, the screen activated for a video call; most lines were being restricted to voice in order to conserve bandwidth. It showed a man's face Ma.s.sey didn't recognize.

"h.e.l.lo. Ma.s.sey here," he acknowledged.

"Gerold Ma.s.sey, the research psychologist?"

"Yes."

"NASO headquarters, Washington. I have a message for you that's come in via the ground station net from Genoa Base, t.i.tan. Can you take it now?"

"Oh . . . yes, of course." Ma.s.sey's eyebrows rose in surprise. Probably it was something from Zambendorf again; Ma.s.sey hadn't heard from him since the follow-up messages confirming the success of the ruse they had staged from theOrion. Ma.s.sey still wasn't sure how he had ended up as an accomplice to a rogue like Zambendorf, whom he had originally set out with the aim of exposing. But the truth of it was that he had enjoyed himself. Psychologist or not, he still wasn't completely sure why.

"Okay to receive," he said, tapping in a code.

"Sending it through."

The caller was not Zambendorf. The face of the NASO operator was replaced by a peculiar,cartoonlike sketch of a cube with legs and a face. A curiously singsong voice that Ma.s.sey didn't recognize said, "h.e.l.lo, Gerold Ma.s.sey, master of the ancient occult lores of Earth, adept of the higher powers that transcend s.p.a.ce and time."

Ma.s.sey blinked and turned in his chair to face the screen fully. At the other desk Vernon sat back, staring in astonishment. Ma.s.sey shrugged and sent him a frowning glance. The message continued: "My name is GENIUS. I am an artificial machine-resident intelligence located in one of the t.i.tan processing complexes. I am originally from a planet that the humans call Asteria, which was the world of the Asterians. Asterians built the machines that came to t.i.tan."

"It's some gag of Karl's," Vernon muttered.

Ma.s.sey waved a hand. "Shh."

"I have spoken with the master Zambendorf of ancient Terran arts but ask proof. Zambendorf says that you are able to read numbers by mind instantly in time. This I wish to test. Send a reply that you agree. If agreed, Zambendorf will send numbers at four o'clock P.M. precisely, your time. You are to return your received values via the NASO link. I will compare them."

"What in h.e.l.l is he up to out there now?" Ma.s.sey mused, shaking his head.

GENIUS went on. "With your reply, send surrounding views outside the window. Also a filter shot of the sun's disk with a foreground object for reference. Thank you very much. Over and out." The cube vanished.

For several seconds Ma.s.sey and Vernon stared at each other, speechless. "This isn't real . . . Not even with Karl," Ma.s.sey said finally, still in a daze.

Vernon shook his head. "Is it genuine?"

"How would I know?"

"It's a repeat of the stunt that we did from theOrion. "

"I do know that much, thank you, Vernon."

They stared at each other for a while longer, baffled.

At last Vernon spoke. "It has to be some crazy stunt of Karl's. If it's really an alien AI, wouldn't Karl have sent something through ahead to at least warn us? But instead it happens like this. The answer's gotta be that it's something cryptic, and we're supposed to read something into it." Ma.s.sey contemplated the far wall of the room and didn't reply. Vernon waited, shifted restlessly in his seat, then threw out a hand. "Why the shots out the window? And what's all this business about the sun?"

"If itis really an AI, it could be monitoring the communications," Ma.s.sey said at last. "So Karl let it make its own introductions and tell us the arrangement itself. He didn't want to be seen communicating with us himself in any way."

Vernon downshifted a gear, seeing the point. "So no one could say he'd prearranged anything through a code."

"Exactly."

"Um . . . So what in h.e.l.l's going on, Gerry?"

Ma.s.sey shrugged. "Karl obviously wants to repeat hisOrion act. Presumably it's for the benefit of this . . . GENIUS. And for some reason it's crucial that it be accepted as genuine."

Vernon rubbed his brow. It added up, but it didn't make any sense. "Do alien AIs care about things like that?" he said.

"I don't know. I've never asked one."

There was another long silence.

"This stuff with the window and the sun could be to prove that we're sending from Earth," Vernon said. "The subtended angle would give our distance from it."

Ma.s.sey thought about that, then nodded. It made good sense. He put his hands on his desk and stood up. "Well, we have to a.s.sume that itis genuine," he said briskly. "The reasons why will doubtless make themselves clearer in due course. But in the meantime, let's get started. We've got work to do."

40.

This was going to have to be Zambendorf's star performance. The voiced recitations of the numbers from one to a hundred that Ma.s.sey had sent through earlier were still available as recordings on t.i.tan. This time, however, Zambendorf decided to let Dave Crookes's signals experts take care of merging them with the incoming message from Earth instead of having it improvised by Joe Fellburg.

Rather than involve equipment on the surface as Fellburg had done-which GENIUS might be monitoring-Crookes and his team shuttled up to the orbitingShirasagi to use its processors for their preparations. They set up a separate link, off-line from the regular datacomms complex at Genoa Base, to beam the selected numbers up to theShirasagi, where they would be merged with Ma.s.sey's incoming transmission; then the combined signal would be redirected to the NASO relay satellite handling the Earthlink. The resultant beam would come in at Genoa Base to receiving equipment that GENIUS would control. Everything depended on GENIUS accepting the idea that the whole package had come from Earth. From what Zambendorf had seen of them, the Asterians wouldn't have bought it. Graham Spearman hadn't, either, and had figured out the correct answer after a little thought. But a computer programmed to deduce necessary conclusions from what it was presented with as fact just might.

Local time at Genoa Base was synchronized to Greenwich Mean Time, which was five hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast. At nine in the evening locally, therefore, Zambendorf sat back in a chair in the communication room, closed his eyes, and went through a rigmarole of concentrating and tuning in to "vibrations."

"Very well. I'm in contact with Ma.s.sey now," he announced in a dreamy voice. "What's the first number?"

GENIUS generated two random ten-digit numbers, multiplied them together, and truncated the result to two places.86 appeared on the screen before Zambendorf.

Zambendorf stared at it, closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again and nodded.

"Next?"

Then came43, followed by84.

"Isn't there-" Drew West, who was among those watching, started to say something, but Clarissa cut him off with a sharp wave.

"Shh," she hissed. "Let him focus."

"Oh, right . . ."

21was next, and finally,78.

Zambendorf exhaled, seemed to take a moment to gather himself, and then sat up, shaking his head as if awakening from a long sleep. "That's it."

"The master, Ma.s.sey, has received them?" GENIUS queried.

"More than that. They're already on their way back to us even now."

"What's the current transit time?" West asked.

"Fifty-seven minutes," GENIUS supplied.

"We'll see then how well we did," Zambendorf said, rising. "And now, if you'll all excuse me, I think I'll take a break. I'll be back again in fifty-seven minutes."

He went to Weinerbaum's lab area to kill the waiting time until Ma.s.sey's response came in. All the equipment there had been isolated from the general t.i.tan complex, so there was no risk of their conversation being monitored.

"You're sure that Ma.s.sey will have cottoned on?" Weinerbaum asked, pacing nervously about in the work s.p.a.ce outside his office.

"If anyone will, Gerry will," Zambendorf a.s.sured him, although for once he was finding it difficult to conceal his agitation."I must say it impressed me when you did it before," Weinerbaum confessed. "I wasn't going to say so at the time, though. Are scientists really so easy to fool?"

"They are when they fool themselves," Zambendorf said candidly. "An exaggerated opinion of their own perspicacity leads them into believing that what they can't see can't exist. Children are the worst.

They terrify me."

"Hm. It says something about our educational system, then, doesn't it?" Weinerbaum observed.

"The best preparation for making them scientists by the time they're twenty would be to teach them conjuring when they're ten," Zambendorf said. "But that wouldn't suit most of society. Too many of its sacred myths could never stand."

"But imagine, if at such early ages, with a whole lifetime before them, people could break out of the mental prison-" Weinerbaum stopped abruptly and turned to face Zambendorf, a strange expression on his face.

"Are you all right?" Zambendorf asked him.

"Prison . . ." Weinerbaum repeated. "My G.o.d, I think I've got it!"

"Got what?" Zambendorf was nonplussed.

"What the Asterians are doing out there-putting up those new factories and redesigning the a.s.sembly machines. It's obvious. They're pure intelligences trapped inside an electronic jungle. They're making artificial bodies for themselves in order to get out." He thought it through again and nodded.

"Maybe that's what they were doing in electronic form inside the ship that started it all in the first place.

Perhaps that's how they planned to migrate to other stars. But something went wrong on t.i.tan, and all this happened . . . and then we reactivated them."

Zambendorf stared at him. Itwas all so obvious. There was nothing he could add. "And when they've made their bodies?" he said. "What then?"

Weinerbaum could only shake his head. "I don't know. But Colonel Short hit it right on the head when we were all up in theShirasagi. With everything on t.i.tan reengineered to produce whatever they want, how long until they come after us? And what with? As Short said, Earth couldn't defend itself against an attack of school buses . . ." He licked his lips dryly. "Karl, this thing with Ma.s.seyhas to succeed!"

"Whatever's going to happen with him already happened nearly an hour ago," Zambendorf said.

"There's nothing we can do to affect it now. Let's just hope that Dave Crookes and his guys have got their act together."

A phone rang across the lab. One of Weinerbaum's scientists answered it. "Communications room," he announced. "They say it's almost time."

Zambendorf caught Weinerbaum's eye and drew in a long breath. "Tell them we're on our way."

They stood with Mackeson, the rest of Zambendorf's team, and a mix of scientists and NASO officers, watching a screen showing what GENIUS was receiving from the Earthlink satellite. GENIUS had viewed the scenery and traffic outside the university building, measured the sun's disk as seen from Maryland (fortunately, it was a fine day), and p.r.o.nounced itself satisfied that Ma.s.sey was genuinely on Earth.

They saw Ma.s.sey sitting in a recliner, eyes closed, his arms draped loosely along the rests. "Yes, I'm reaching out now, feeling my way into s.p.a.ce extending away from Earth. I'm getting something now: an image of Karl and, yes, the feeling of a number. It's . . . let me see . . ." Ma.s.sey touched his fingertips to his brow. "Eighty . . . eight-six, yes?"

"Astounding!" GENIUS acknowledged. Zambendorf looked at Weinerbaum for an instant, but neither of them risked betraying anything by a change of expression. Weinerbaum's forehead was damp with perspiration.

"Now I think I'm getting the next." On the screen Ma.s.sey sat forward, gripping the armrests of his chair, and announced in the direction of the floor, "Forty-three." Another hit.Ma.s.sey frowned, seeming to have difficulty. "This one's not very clear, I'm afraid. It has a feel of 'threeness' about it-thirteen or thirty-something . . . No, sorry. I have to pa.s.s."

"What has happened?" GENIUS asked.

"Nothing is perfect," Zambendorf replied. "Sometimes the contact falters."

"That was when you were distracted," GENIUS remarked, meaning the moment when Drew West had started to interrupt.

"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten that," Zambendorf said. He hadn't at all, of course. None of his team ever did anything without a reason. It was amazing how others were always ready to explain away an apparent failure and manufacture an excuse for him. And for some reason, doing so strengthened their inclination to believe. They just needed a little help.

Ma.s.sey seemed uncomfortable with the next number also, shifting his gaze and looking around, but then, suddenly, they heard him say, "Twenty-one."

"Ah, he has recovered," GENIUS observed.

Ma.s.sey, apparently exhausted, dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. "And the last one is-"

his arm pa.s.sed across his face, obscuring it for an instant- "seventy-eight." He pocketed the handkerchief and looked out from the screen. "Well, that's it, GENIUS. Right now only you and the others out at t.i.tan know how well we did. I'll be curious to find out. And I'mextremely curious to find out more about you. Until then, so long from Maryland, USA, Earth." The image blanked out, leaving the four numbers and one blank.

"I compute the probability of getting those four numbers as 1 in 92,188,800," GENIUS said.

"Precisely right," Zambendorf said, nodding approvingly.

"So, should I be convinced now?" GENIUS asked.