“Right,” Crozin acknowledged.
Cullen waved for Hunt to close the door again. “What about the work that Baumer’s been doing since he came here?” Hunt asked, turning back toward the desk. “Are there any reports and things from him that she could see to get more background?”
“Sure.” Cullen activated a screen by his desk and called up a list of file references. While he waited, Hunt fished his cigarettes from a pocket, lit one, and leaned back to run over what had been said. A minute or two later Crozin buzzed through to say that Gina was on the line from Geerbaine.
“You’d better take it,” Cullen said, swiveling the screen around to face Hunt.
‘‘Back so soon,’’ Gina said. “What is it this time?’’
“I think you’re in business,” Hunt told her. “We’ve got a job for you.”
“Does that mean I get to see PAC at last?”
“Yes. Catch one of those tubes into the city if they’re running today. Ask for the UNSA labs when you get here. I’m on my way to a show that Shilohin’s putting on for the ayatollahs, but you can
ask for Del Cullen. He’ll tell you all about it. I’ll see you sometime later.”
“I’m on my way,” Gina said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
At one end of a long hall inside PAC, Hunt and Sandy watched as Thardan, a young Ganymean technician from the Shapieron, checked the connections of an apparatus consisting of a metal frame festooned with tubes and cables, mounting a horizontal cylinder two feet or so long, from one end of which protruded a tapering snout ending in a hemispherical tip. Nearby, Duncan was adjusting the settings on a supply panel.
Several hundred feet away at the far end of the hall, about a dozen queesals—a kind of Jevlenese fruit, like a brown, pear-shaped melon—were mounted on wire supports positioned irregularly about the floor. A mixed company of Ganymeans, Jevlenese, and one or two Terrans were standing by the wall to one side. Shilohin was among them, with a group of gaudily clad Jevlenese who were watching the activity suspiciously. The central figure among the latter was a recently “possessed” ayatollah—Hunt’s term for them was already spreading through PAC—formerly an unknown city destitute, who now went by an exalted Jevlenese title that meant “He Who Shall Return.” Cullen had promptly christened him MacArthur. The others were followers from a Spiral of Awakening subsect that was forming around him out of the squabbles following the exit of the leader. MacArthur had restored faith and banished doubt by asserting that Ayultha, far from being a victim of transcendental retribution, had indeed discovered Truth, and as a consequence of that had attracted upon himself Cosmic Energies that even he had been unable to control. It was an opportune move at a time when the
SoA needed a new Word to pull it back together, and MacArthur was already being acclaimed by many as Ayultha’s successor.
“Phase-conjugated laser,” Hunt said to Sandy, waving at the cylinder with a black, penlike object that he was holding. “That was how they did it.”
Sandy shook her head. “Sorry, I’m a biologist—remember? You’ll have to be more specific.”
Just then, Thardan glanced across at them and nodded. “It’s ready.”
“Well, let’s see what happens.” Hunt motioned to Sandy with a hand, and they began walking toward the other end of the hail. “In the real world, perfectly parallel, nondispersing beams of light don’t exist. You can think of one as a bundle of rays, spreading and being scrambled by irregularities in the medium it passes through.”
“Okay.”
“So, you can imagine a time-reversed beam whose rays follow the same trajectories, but in the opposite direction.”
“Like Newtonian particles moving backward, you mean?” Sandy said.
“Right. Well, it turns out that to create a reversed beam, you don’t have to reverse each and every quantum-level motion of the atoms and electrons that do the reflecting and radiating. Reversing the macroscopic parameters that describe the average motions is enough. All of which is another way of saying that it’s possible to make a device that behaves as a phase-conjugating mirror, where every ray that strikes it is returned precisely along its reversed path.”