They listened politely, and Peter was encouraging now and again. But they had difficulty understanding the sequence of events. Much of what she related somehow worried them. Her excitement was noncontagious. It was hard for them to grasp that the dodecahedron had been gone for twenty minutes, much less a day, because the armada of instruments exterior to the benzels had filmed and recorded the event, and reported nothing extraordinary. All that had happened. Valerian explained, was that the benzels had reached their prescribed speed, several instruments of unknown purpose had the equivalent of their needles move, the benzels slowed down and stopped, and the Five emerged in a state of great excitement. He didn’t exactly say “babbling nonsense,” but she could sense his concern. They treated her with deference, but she knew what they were thinking: The only function of the Machine was in twenty minutes to produce a memorable illusion, or–just possibly–to drive the Five of them mad.
She played back the video microcassettes for them, each carefully labeled: “Vega Ring System,” for example, or “Vega Radio (?) Facility,”
“Quintuple System,”
“Galactic Center Starscape,” and one bearing the inscription “Beach.” She inserted them in “play” mode one after the other. They had nothing on them. The cassettes were blank. She couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. She had carefully learned the operation of the video microcamera system and had used it successfully in tests before Machine Activation. She had even done a spot check on some of the footage after they had left the Vega system. She was further devastated later when she was told that the instruments carried by the others had also somehow failed. Peter Valerian wanted to believe her, der Heer also. But it was hard for them, even with the best will in the world. The story the Five had come back with was a little, well, unexpected–and entirely unsupported by physical evidence. Also, there hadn’t been enough time. They had been out of sight for only twenty minutes.
This was not the reception she had expected. But she was confident it would all sort itself out. For the moment, she was content to play the experience back in her mind and make some detailed notes. She wanted to be sure she would forget nothing.
Although a front of extremely cold air was moving in from Kamchatka, it was still unseasonably warm when late on New Year’s Day, a number of unscheduled flights arrived at Sapporo International Airport. The new American Secretary of Defense, Michael Kitz, and a team of hastily gathered experts arrived in an airplane marked “The United States of America.” Their presence was confirmed by Washington only when the story was about to break in Hokkaido. The terse press release noted that the visit was routine, that there was no crisis, no danger, and that “nothing extraordinary has been reported at the Machine Systems Integration Facility northeast of Sapporo.” A Tu-120 had flown overnight from Moscow, carrying, among others, Stefan Baruda and Timofei Gotsridze. Doubtless neither group was delighted to spend this New Year’s holiday away from their families. But the weather in Hokkaido was a pleasant surprise; it was so warm that the sculptures in Sapporo were melting, and the dodecahedron of ice had become an almost featureless small glacier, the water dripping off rounded surfaces that once had been the edges of the pentagonal surfaces.
Two days later, a severe winter storm struck, and all traffic into the Machine facility, even by four- wheel-drive vehicles, was interrupted. Some radio and all television links were severed; apparently a microwave relay tower had been blown down. During most of the new interrogations, the only communication with the outside world was by telephone. And just conceivably, Ellie thought, by dodecahedron. She was tempted to steal herself onboard and spin up the benzels. She enjoyed elaborating on this fantasy. But in fact there was no way to know whether the Machine would ever work again, at least from this side of the tunnel. He had said it would not. She allowed herself to think of the seashore again. And him. Whatever happened next, a wound deep within her was being healed. She could feel the scar tissue knitting. It had been the most expensive psychotherapy in the history of the world. And that’s saying a lot, she thought.
Debriefings were given to Xi and Sukhavati by representatives of their nations. Although Nigeria played no significant role in Message acquisition or Machine construction, Eda acquiesced readily enough to a long interview with Nigerian officials. But it was perfunctory compared with the interrogations administered to them by project personnel. Vaygay and Ellie underwent still more elaborate debriefings by the high-level teams brought from the Soviet Union and the United States for this specific purpose. At first these American and Soviet interrogations excluded foreign nationals, but after complaints were carried through the World Machine Consortium, the U.S. and the S.U. relented, and the sessions were again internationalized.
Kitz was in charge of her debriefing, and considering what short notice he must have been given, he had arrived surprisingly well prepared. Valerian and der Heer put in an occasional good word for her, and every now and then asked a searching question. But it was Kitz’s show.
He told her he was approaching her story skeptically but constructively, in what he hoped was the best scientific tradition. He trusted she would not mistake the directness of his questions for some personal animus. He held her only in the greatest respect. He, in turn, would not permit his judgment to be clouded by the fact that he had been against the Machine Project from the beginning. She decided to let this pathetic deception pass unchallenged, and began her story. At first he listened closely, asked occasional questions of detail, and apologized when he interrupted. By the second day no such courtesies were in evidence.
“So the Nigerian is visited by his wife, the Indian by her dead husband, the Russian by his cute granddaughter, the Chinese by some Mongol warlord–”
“Qin was not a Mongol–”
“–and you, for crissake, you get visited by your dearly departed father, who tells you that he and his friends have been busy rebuilding the universe, for crissake. `Our Father Who art in Heaven…’? This is straight religion. This is straight cultural anthropology. This is straight Sigmund Freud. Don’t you see that? Not only do you claim your . own father came back from the dead, you actually expect us to believe that he made the universe–”
“You’re distorting what–”
“Come off it, Arroway. Don’t insult our intelligence. You don’t present us with a shred of evidence, and you expect us to believe the biggest cock-and-bull story of all time? You know better than that. You’re a smart lady. How could you figure to get away with it?”
She protested. Valerian protested also; this kind of interrogation, he said, was a waste of time. The Machine was undergoing sensitive physical tests at this moment. That was how the validity of her story could be checked. Kitz agreed the physical evidence would be important. But the nature of Arroway^s story, he argued, was revealing, a means of understanding what had actually happened.
“Meeting your father in Heaven and all that, Dr. Arroway, is telling, because you’ve been raised in the Judeo-Christian culture. You’re essentially the only one of the Five from that culture, and you’re the only one who meets your father. Your story is just too pat. It’s not imaginative enough.”
This was worse than she had thought possible. She felt a moment of epistemological panic–as when your car is not where you parked it, or the door you locked last night ajar in the morning. “You think we made all this up?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Dr. Arroway. When I was very young, I worked in the Cook County Prosecutor’s office. When they were thinking about indicting somebody, they asked three questions.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Did he have the opportunity? Did he have the means? Did he have the motive?”
“To do what?” He looked at her in disgust.
“But our watches showed that we’d been gone more than a day,” she protested.
“I don’t know how I could have been so stupid,” Kitz said, striking his forehead with his palm. “You’ve demolished my argument. I forgot that it’s impossible to set your watch ahead by a day.”
“But that implies a conspiracy. You think Xi lied? You think Eda lied? You–”
“What I think is we should move on to something more important. You know, Peter”–Kitz turned toward Valerian–“I’m persuaded you’re right. A first draft of the Materials Assessment Report will be here tomorrow morning. Let’s not waste more time on…stories. We’ll adjourn till then.”
Der Heer had said not a word through the entire afternoon’s session. He offered her an uncertain grin, and she couldn’t help contrasting it with her father’s. Sometimes Ken’s expression seemed to urge her, to implore her. But to what end she had no way of knowing; perhaps to change her story. He had remembered her recollections of her childhood, and he knew how she had grieved for her father. Clearly he was weighing the possibility that she had gone crazy. By extension, she supposed, he was also considering the likelihood that the others had gone crazy, too. Mass hysteria. Shared delusion. Folie à cinq. “Well, here it is,” Kitz said. The report was about a centimeter thick. He let it fall to the table, scattering a few pencils. “You’ll want to look through it, Dr. Arroway, but I can give you a quick summary. Okay?”