“We are on a planet, then,” Shilohin concluded.
“So it would appear,” VISAR agreed.
Danchekker sat forward and rubbed his brow. “Perhaps I’m getting confused. How is the planet rotating? I thought we established earlier that rotation was unknown for some reason. Wasn’t the notion of spinning objects considered to be something mystical—conceivable as an ideal, but unattainable in practice?”
“Not quite,” VISAR replied. “Unconstrained rotation was common enough. Matter elongated in the direction of motion. Thus a stick thrown into the air, for example, turning about its center, would transform into two wedges connected at their vertices. Moving things changed their dimensions. So there was no effective way of fitting fixed and moving parts together in the kinds of way necessary to build machines. They couldn’t even get axles and bearings to work.”
Danchekker sat back on his chair again, baffled. “The extraordinary thing is that she doesn’t seem capable of inventing it,” he mused. “Her grasp of even the elementary principles of mechanics is virtually nonexistent.”
Nixie shrugged without taking any offense.
“It is indeed as if her fundamental concepts had been formed in another world,” Danchekker went on.
“Which seems to exist in space as we know it, but with different laws of physics,” Shilohin said. She looked back at Nixie. “You say that solid objects could interpenetrate?”
“Yes,” Nixie assured her.
“Under the right conditions,” VISAR qualified.
“And solid matter didn’t always exhibit permanency? Things could just appear out of nowhere?”
“Not often, but apparently so,” VISAR confirmed.
“Or on other occasions might vanish?”
“In her childhood she remembers an entire landscape changing overnight.”
“And supernatural powers worked. With training and discipline, people could learn to produce such effects at will, by mind power alone? Some acquired the ability to see visions in these mysterious ‘currents’ that we’ve heard about, which pervaded everything.” Shilohin looked at Danchekker and tossed up a hand briefly. “And even more amazing, these visions were of this world—our everyday one. Such people could attach themselves physically to these currents that flowed to the sky, and rise up—and that’s how Nixie came here.”
VISAR projected an image onto one of the laboratory’s wall screens, created from information encoded in Nixie’s memory patterns. It showed armored warriors with spears and shields falling back in panic as a glowing figure that was floating in the sky directed streaks of exploding lightning down among them. Another image showed a man in robes and a high headdress slowly passing a shining rod through a slab of solid rock, without a mark or opening upon it. There were strange creatures, one with legs that looked like snakes, another that divided into two living halves.
The scenes were the nearest that VISAR could construct to representations that would be meaningful to human nervous systems, conditioned by familiar imagery; the literal data would have been incomprehensible. The humanlike figures on the screen, for instance, were artifacts of the conversion performed by VISAR, not forms that Nixie had actually seen as depicted.
“How?” Shilohin asked, mystified. “How could such things be possible?”
“Ah, well . . . that’s another question,” VISAR said.
“Could it be some aberration in the Jevlenese communications system, do you think?” Shilohin asked. “Could an i-space link have somehow made a connection to a distant part of the universe that we never knew existed?”
“I can’t say it’s impossible,” VISAR answered.
Danchekker sat contemplating the screens for some time. Shilohin waited, while Nixie watched with interest. She liked being the center of attention and was happy to cooperate.
Finally, Danchekker shook his head. “No,” he pronounced. “Even if such a realm were to exist, how could an, individual be transported from that world to this?” He looked to Shilohin in appeal. “The explanation must be purely psychological. The obvious answer as to how an unconventional but consistent system of dynamics comes to be embodied in the constructs Of somebody with no intuitive knowledge of physical principles is, quite simply, that JEVEX put it there.”
“You’re saying it’s all in my head?” Nixie asked matter-of-factly. The skepticism of the two scientists didn’t seem to trouble her. It was almost as if she had expected it.
“Hallucinatory disturbances induced by maladjustment of the neural coupling circuits, possibly?” Shilohin offered, looking at Danchekker.