Kingsley found interesting how Amy and Arno had interchanged roles. She always saw problems, but now proposed solutions; he, the reverse. Even now Arno stood in the softly pelting rain and just stared at them. No doubt the man would come back to himself, but when?

Moments moved by. Nothing. "I'll help organize some of the specialists," he said to move matters along.

"Ah, okay." Arno did not move.

"I should think you would need to instruct your lieutenants."

"Right."

"Quite soon."

"Right."

With Amy, he found Arno's bevy of next-in-command types and got them at least moving in roughly the same direction. Arno slowly came to resemble himself again. Within an hour, something like a convoy departed to wind its way up the Saddle Road. At the last moment, Arno summoned up with his bureaucratic magic wand a fleet of limousines. Into these sleek black Lincoln Continentals they wedged, not wanting to ride in the backs of trucks. Prudently Arno had kept the limos on the island since the threat of a presidential visit had loomed, then receded, weeks before. Amid slashing lightning, they wallowed off into gray, thick rain.

Arno insisted that Kingsley and Amy ride with him, and though Kingsley wanted nothing more than to lean back and nod off, Arno chose this moment to demand a summary of the "scientific situation."

"What do you think the Eater will do next?"

Kingsley was tempted to retreat to his now-standard aliens-are-alien argument, but this newly revived Arno did not seem in the mood to accept that and let him sleep. He leaned forward, summoning up energies he did not until a moment before know that he had. An aide handed him a gin and tonic with crackling cold ice, fresh from the limo bar. This incongruity disarmed him momentarily and he took a sip. What the h.e.l.l, it was calories. At least Amy was beside him. He needed her much more than the drink, but it, too, was comforting. He dimly noted that his drink hand was trembling and wondered abstractly why.

"It's concerned. Not perhaps desperate; we can't flatter ourselves with entertaining that notion. But concerned, since it is wasting its most vital resource-the hot, fluid, ionized ma.s.s that is compressed by gravitational gradients into the disk that orbits it."

Arno was a difficult audience because he knew just enough to ask questions. "It didn't use that to burn Washington. Or to shotgun that ship."

"In a way it did," Kingsley said. "The jets it creates, the gravel it used to poke holes in that ship-they come ultimately from the infalling energy and ma.s.s in its disk."

Arno frowned. "It's got a lot in that disk. h.e.l.l, I could see it glowing in the sky. Back when I could see the sky, I mean."

"Indeed. Yet ma.s.s is a scarce resource for it now, as it has expended a great deal decelerating on its approach to us. To be sure, it retrieved some in our upper atmosphere. Amy has estimated that it could catch in the range of several tens of tons per minute with the expanded field region it has flowered forth. Integrating that over its cruise around the Earth in several shallow orbits, one gets a substantial ma.s.s. But still a good deal less than it needs. And therefore desires desires, for I suspect it experiences its most basic needs as a hunger. Desire is a more rarefied way to put it. This thing is best regarded as an extremely sophisticated, moving appet.i.te with more experience than any civilization could possibly have. And of a different kind, as well, one we can explore only by working out the most basic constraints upon it."

This extended blurt Arno greeted with his patented skeptical gaze. He took so long to say anything that Kingsley wondered whether the man was slipping back into his earlier semicatatonia. Then he looked at one of his lieutenants, wedged into the far end of the limo with a security type, and said, "We got any new intelligence on this?"

"Nosir. Nothing works works."

"No lines to DoD?"

"Nosir."

"The airborne White House?"

"Nosir, it hit us pretty bad."

"Well then." Arno seemed to have decided something, for he now gazed stolidly at Kingsley across the short separation of the limousine's center well. "What you got?"

"Our strategy, if it deserves such a name, is simple. The one thing it must have to move on with is matter. Our first maneuver is to explode canisters of barium near it. Barium ionizes easily in the solar ultraviolet. The plasma is disagreeable to the Eater, so it will move away."

"Herding it, I remember that."

"But it needs ma.s.s, so we suspect-"

"Hope," Amy put in. "A more honest word."

"Quite. We hope that it will move toward the most readily available, substantial ma.s.s in its vicinity."

"Right, the moon."

"Yet by the logic we settled upon long ago, when we first understood its nature, the Eater cannot simply plunge into the moon. That would strip it of its magnetic fields-and thus its mind. Suicide."

"So it grazes the moon. Orbits in, real close." Arno nodded. Kingsley could see he was reconstructing this, as if his memory were disarranged.

"And that is where we use matter again-the key to destroying it, as well."

"Antimatter," Arno said. He clung to the word.

"The antimatter Channing carries is lodged in cylindrical, highly magnetic traps. If she can eject the contents at the innermost edge of the Eater's own ma.s.s deposit-the accreting ma.s.s in its disk-that will disrupt the magnetic fields that are anch.o.r.ed there."

"So?"

"Its greatest energy density lies there."

"So annihilating the ma.s.s that ties those fields," Amy put in, "might give the Eater a lobotomy."

Arno's mouth sketched a skeptical curve. "But not kill it."

"There is a possibility," she went on, balancing an orange juice on her knee. "She could drop some antimatter-positrons and antiprotons-into the rim of the black hole itself. There are huge magnetic fields moored there."

"And that would kill it?" Arno asked.

"It would allow the two poles, north and south, of the black hole itself to unite." She grinned triumphantly.

Arno frowned. "They would then, well, what?"

"Annihilate. North and south are opposite poles, and they would cancel each other out. Poof Poof!-all the energy in the hole's magnetic storage turns to free energy." Amy beamed.

He felt a rush of emotion, mostly pride. This was her idea and she was justly proud. Kingsley had not even suspected such a thing could occur, but she had shown it in several detailed calculations.

"And what happens to this Channing simulation?" Arno asked.

Amy sobered. "The tidal forces, the torques-this close to the hole, they're tremendous."

Trying to be helpful, Kingsley added, "The trick for it, for her, is to angle in so that the whirlpool of s.p.a.ce-time can pick her up. That centrifugal action can counter the inward stresses. It's the only way she could get close enough to carry this out."

Amy went on as Arno struggled to understand. It would all be much easier if they had the vast graphic displays of the Center, of course. Science was now mostly a matter of understanding the pictures shown, not the principles underlying them.

Kingsley sat back and reflected, the gin and tonic helping nicely. The great trouble with understanding this black hole lay in a simple fact: calculations were nearly all about the equilibrium. Average properties, energy theorems and the like. So what did one really know? He had watched a generation of theorists wrestle with the same problems.

Take what happened when matter fell in-did it go all the way to the frightful singularity that lay at the "bottom" of the hole, and so get chewed up? We thought so, but were not sure.

Could the twisted s.p.a.ce-time around a spinning hole, and inside it, lead to fundamental new properties-say, worm-holes? Not sure.

At the core, physics smeared into topology, the study of surfaces, shapes. Geometry ruled.

Near the innermost regions of a rotating hole, snug up against the singularity, the laws of quantum mechanics object quite profoundly to infinities. Physics had for decades posted a want ad at this boundary: NEW THEORY NEEDED. APPLY WITHIN. But to properly describe this realm demanded a deep view of quantum gravity, which still-despite much work and false prophets-eluded them all.

Amy had hit a conceptual wall with Arno. Talk between them dwindled and they stared out at the pelting fat dollops of rain. A somber mood descended.

"Perhaps the primary point," Kingsley said, "is that this simulation of Channing is flying into the utterly unknown. The only evidence of her deeds will be what happens to the Eater."

"She'll die," Amy said.

"She knew that going in," Arno said flatly, apparently glad to find a tough-guy line he could use.

"It may be easier for us, when we speak to Benjamin-if we can even do that-to use 'it' rather than 'her,'" Kingsley said.

"Good psychology," Amy said. "Prepare him for it."

The limousine stopped. They had finally growled up the rocky, narrow road to the observatory complex. To Kingsley's surprise, the rain clouds now hung below them. The sky above was not clear, but at least there were no glowering dark clouds and crackling lightning. The telescopes here had long taken advantage of this property, the extraordinary stability of the air above the dead volcano.

"Let us hope the b.a.s.t.a.r.d cannot find us here," Kingsley said. He got out of the car and stretched. A dizzying lack of air made him totter. How could he think up here? Back to work, one last, desperate time.

5.

Benjamin felt her fully now. The old question about whether a simulation had an internal experience-well, all those abstract bull sessions dwindled to sc.r.a.ps. Here was her self self, coming through in her voice, her vision, the sensory smorgasbord of a lived interior.

"The sand is running, lover," she said.

"Not yet!" he called.

She coasted in a strange Valhalla of cathedral light and glowing electromagnetic majesty. He floated in his harness, immersed in her world. Through a small port, he could watch the crescent wonder of the great water world below, but his eyes did not stray from the spectacle before him.

Three dots scorched her vision with momentary pinpoint explosions. "Gotcha!" she cried.

He flinched. "What was that?"

"I nailed three of the nodules where the Old One is stored."

"With Searchers?"

"It killed them, sure. But not fast enough."

"More barium?"

"Yeah, giving the beast an enema."

"The big cloud, it's expanding pretty fast."

He sent her his extra data sources on a tightbeam, high-bit squirt. A blooming ivory barium cloud licked at the Eater's magnetic rim.

"Ride 'em, cowboy," she gloated.

"It's heading away, around the moon."

"Hungry, that misbegotten-"

She had stopped abruptly. Benjamin frowned. "What's-"

"It's talking to me."

"About what?"

"Music. Listen."

-RESONANCES WITH HUMAN BRAIN PATTERNS. SOME SYNCHRONIZE WITH BODILY RHYTHMS. THE BEAT IS ALL. YOUR "CLa.s.sICAL" MUSIC APPEALS TO A DIFFERENT CLa.s.s OF CADENCES, MORE PURELY MENTAL RATHER THAN PHYSIOLOGICAL-THOUGH FOR YOU THE TWO ARE NEVER ENTIRELY SEPARATE, AS WITNESSED BY FOOT TAPPING TO EVEN THE MOST RAREFIED STRING QUARTET.

"This is insane," Benjamin said.

"Aliens are by definition insane."

Suddenly, on five channels, came a flurry of transmissions, everything from African tribal intonations to Beethoven, from Chuck Berry to Gregorian chants, no technique or style neglected.

"What-?!"

STIMULATING TO RECEIVE THESE FORMS OF CEREBRAL JEST. THROUGH YOU IN THE MOTE NEARBY, I CAN SOMEWHAT KEN HOW THESE GAMBOLS PLAY OUT IN THE HUMAN SENSORIUM. VERY MUCH AS YOUR OTHER IRRATIONAL-OR PERHAPS BETTER, SUPERRATIONAL-METHODS PERFORM. AS, FOR EXAMPLE, IN "LOVE" AND MECHANISMS OF REPRODUCTION.

"We're trying to kill it and it sends us music criticism?"

She said tensely, "Bravado? To distract us?"

HOW BEAUTIFUL IMMORTALITY IS, THE BLISS OF BEING BLENDED. COME, JOIN ME. WE SHALL VOYAGE AMONG THE STARS TOGETHER.

Baroque music sounded. "Good G.o.d, it's a sales pitch," she said.

FROM TOO MUCH LOVE OF LIVINGFROM HOPE AND FEAR SET FREEWE THANK WITH BRIEF THANKSGIVINGWHATEVER G.o.dS MAY BETHAT NO LIFE LIVES FOREVERTHAT DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVERTHAT EVEN THE WEARIEST RIVERWINDS SOMEWHERE SAFE TO SEA.

"What in the world..." Benjamin felt an eerie sense of an intelligence abidingly strange.

"That's supposed to be enticing? Ha!"

"Must be a poem."

Wonderingly she said, "I think I understand. It doesn't actually believe we will strike against it."