like ‘vitally important.’ He didn’t want to say too much, but he wanted to warn me.” He leaned forward. “So we’re walking along Occam’s razor now. The simplest explanation of these events is that you and Peter and Amelia were wrong. The world, the universe, is not going to end because of the Jupiter Project.”
“True, but—”
“Let me carry this along for a moment. From your point of view, the simplest explanation is that somebody in a position of power wants your warning to be suppressed.”
“That’s right.”
“Allow me the assumption that nobody on this jury would profit from the destruction of the universe. Then why, in God’s name, would anyone who thought your argument had merit want to suppress it?”
“You were a Jesuit?”
“Franciscan. We run a close second in being pains in the ass.”
“Well . . . I don’t know any of the people on the review board, so I can only speculate about their motivations. Of course they don’t want the universe to go belly-up. But they might well want to put a lid on it long enough to adjust their own careers—assuming all of them are involved in the Jupiter Project. If our conclusions are accepted, there are going to be a lot of scientists and engineers looking for work.”
“Scientists would be that venal? I’m shocked.”
“Sure. Or it could be a personal thing against Peter. He probably has more enemies than friends.”
“Can you find out who was on the jury?”
“I couldn’t; it was anonymous. Maybe Peter could wheedle it out of someone.”
“And what do you make of his disappearance? Isn’t it possible he saw some fatal flaw in the argument and decided to drop out of sight?”
“Not impossible.”
“You hope something bad happened to him.”
“Wow. It’s almost as if you could read my mind.” I sipped some coffee, now unpleasantly cool. “How much did I let slip there?”
He shrugged. “Not a lot.”
“You’ll know everything minutes after we jack two-way. I’m curious.”
“You don’t mask very well. But then you haven’t had much practice.”
“So what did you get?”
“Green-eyed monster. Sexual jealousy. One specific image, an embarrassing one.”
“Embarrassing for you?”
He tilted his head to about ten degrees of irony. “Of course not. I was speaking conventionally.” He laughed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be patronizing. I don’t suppose anything just physical would embarrass you, either.”
“No. The other part is still hanging there, though. Unresolved.”
“She’s not jacked.”
“No. She tried and it didn’t take.”
“Wasn’t long ago?”
“Couple of months. May twentieth.”
“And this, um, episode was after that?”
“Yeah. It’s complicated.”
He took the cue. “Let’s go back to ground zero. What I got from you—assuming that you’re right about the Jupiter Project—is that you and Marty, but Marty more than you, believe that we have to rid the world of war and aggression right now. Or the game is up.”
“That’s what Marty would say.” I stood up. “Get some fresh coffee. You want something?”
“Splash of that rum. You’re not as certain?”
“No . . . yes and no.” I concentrated on the drinks. “Let me read your mind, for a change. You think that there’s no need for haste, once the Jupiter Project’s deactivated.”
“You think otherwise?”
“I don’t know.” I set the drinks down and Mendez touched his and nodded. “When I jacked with Marty I got a sense of urgency that was completely personal. He wants to see the thing well in process before he dies.”
“He’s not that old.”
“No, sixty-some. But he’s been obsessed with this since you guys were made; maybe before. And he knows it will take a while to get going.” I searched for words; logician’s words. “Marty’s feelings aside, there’s an objective rationale for urgency; the black-and-white one of scale: anything else we do or don’t do is trivial if there’s the slightest chance that this could come to pass.”
He sniffed the rum. “The destruction of everything.”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe you’re too close to it, though,” he said. “I mean, you’re talking about a huge project here. It’s not something that a Hitler or a Borgia could cook up in his backyard.”
“In their own times, no. Now they could,” I said. “You of all people should see how.”
“Me of all people?”
“You’ve got a nanoforge in your basement. When you want it to make something, what do you do?”
“Ask it. We tell it what we want and it goes into its catalogue and tells us what raw materials we have to come up with.”
“You can’t ask it to make a duplicate of itself, though.”
“They say no, it would melt down if you did. I’m not inclined to try.”
“But