Omega

The result was that when a program that deserved support on its own merits didn’t get it, Hutch took the heat. When a popular initiative went through and provided serious results, the commissioner got the credit. During the three months since she’d accepted the assignment, she’d been bullied, threatened, harassed, and hectored by a substantial representation of the scientific community. Many of them seemed to believe they could take her job. Others promised reprisals, and there’d even been a couple of death threats. Her once benign view of academics, formed over more than two decades of hauling them around the Orion Arm, had gone downhill. Now, when they contacted her, she had to make a conscious effort not to get hostile.

She’d had a modicum of vengeance against Jim Albright, who’d called her to threaten and complain when his turn at one of the Weatherman units had been set back. She’d responded by indiscreetly mentioning the incident to Gregory MacAllister, an editor who’d made a long and happy career of attacking academics, moralists, politicians, and crusaders. MacAllister had gone after Albright with a bludgeon, depicting him as a champion of trivial causes and his program as “one more example of squandering the taxpayers’ money counting stars.” He hadn’t mentioned Hutch, but Albright knew.

That didn’t matter, because the bottom line was that she didn’t hear from Albright again, although she learned later that he’d tried to have her terminated. Asquith understood what had happened, though, and warned her to call off the big dog. “If it comes out that we’re behind any of that, we’ll all be out on the street,” he told her. He was right, and Hutch was careful not to use the MacAllister weapon again. But she’d enjoyed watching Albright go to ground.

She was in the middle of trying to decide how to persuade Alan Kimbel, who was currently at Serenity doing research on stellar jets, that he could not stay beyond the original timetable and would have to come home. Kimbel had appealed to her on the ground that there’d been a breakthrough discovery, and he and his team needed a few more weeks. Please. The man had been almost in tears.

The problem was that it happened all the time. Space on the outlying stations was scarce, and there were already people en route and more in line. Extensions could be granted under certain conditions, and her advisors had told her that Kimbel was correct in his assessment. But if she granted the extension, she’d have to tell another group already a week into their mission that, when they arrived at Serenity, they wouldn’t be able to stay. She couldn’t very well do that. And the only alternative was to cut someone else short. She’d looked at the possibilities and, for various reasons, there was no easy pick. In the end, she’d denied the request.

She was recording a response to Kimbel when her link chimed. Harold Tewksbury on the circuit.

Harold was the senior member of the astrophysics staff. He’d been with the Academy when Hutch had toured the place as a high school senior. He was an organization freak, a fussy little man with a penchant for order and procedure. His reputation in the field wasn’t good. His colleagues thought him quarrelsome and uncommunicative, but no one seemed to doubt his capabilities. And he was always nice to Hutch.

“Yes, Harold,” she said. “What are you up to this morning?”

“You busy at the moment?”

She had a hatful of problems. “It isn’t like the old days,” she said. “But I can make time.”

“Good. When you can, stop by the lab.”

SHE FOUND HIM sitting at his desk staring out into the courtyard. He shook his head when he saw her, signaling bewilderment. But he also managed a smile. “Something odd’s going on,” he said.

She thought he was talking about equipment. There had been recent problems with spectrometers. Replacing them would have been expensive, so they’d gone with upgrades. Harold didn’t like upgrades, didn’t like not having the top-of-the-line. “Spend all this money to send out packages,” he’d grumbled to her just a few days earlier, “and then skimp on the retrieval-and-analysis gear.”

But he surprised her. “You know about the quasi novas,” he said.

The tewks. She knew, more or less. It seemed a bit esoteric to her, events a thousand light-years away. Hardly a matter of concern for any but the specialists.

He leaned toward her. His white hair was plumped up and one wing of his collar stuck out sideways. He presented the classic image of a researcher. His blue eyes became unfocused rather easily; he frequently lost his train of thought: and he was inclined often to stop in the middle of a sentence when some new idea occurred to him. In the bright midday sunlight, he looked like an ultimate i

“They’re almost in a line,” he said.

“And the significance of that is—?”

“It shouldn’t happen naturally.”

She just didn’t know where to go with it. “What are you telling me, Harold?”

“I don’t really know, Hutch. But it scares me.”

“You’re sure they’re not novas?”

“Positive.” He tried his coffee, examined the cup, sighed. “Among other things, there’s too much energy in the visible spectrum, not enough in the X-ray and gamma.”

“Which means—?”

“You get more visible light for the amount of energy expended. A ton more. It’s brighter. By a lot.”

“A lightbulb.”

“You could almost say that.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll pass it on. You recommend any action?”

He shook his head. “I’d give quite a lot to have a Weatherman in place the next time one goes off.”

“Can we do that? Can you predict the next one?”

Now he was looking at the spoon. “Unfortunately not. I can take a stab.”

“A stab? What are the odds?”

“Not good.”

“Harold, let’s do this: Let’s watch for a while. If you reach a point where we know an event is coming, where you can give me a target with a reasonable degree of certainty, we’ll take a serious look. Okay?”

IT WASN’T SOMETHING she could get excited about. She made a mental note to suggest that Eric Samuels, the public relations director, get in touch with Harold to see whether the Academy couldn’t squeeze some publicity out of it. Meantime, she was looking at a busy afternoon.

She had lunch with the president of the SPA, the Superluminal Pilots’ Association. They wanted more money, a better retirement system, better career opportunities, you name it. She knew Ben Zalotski well, from her own days on the bridge. Ben was a decent guy, and a hard charger for the pilots. The problem was that he had no compunctions about taking advantage of their long association to get what he wanted. In reality, it wasn’t even Hutch’s area of responsibility. Jill Watkin in Perso

So she returned to her office in a foul mood, listened to an appeal from Hollis Gunderson, “speaking for the University of the Netherlands,” to have his pet project put on the docket. The project was a hunt for a white hole, which Hutch’s scientific team had advised her didn’t exist, couldn’t exist, and would be a waste of resources. Gunderson had gotten past the appointments secretary by claiming someone had misunderstood his intentions. Hutch had made time to talk with him, on the assumption it was easier to see him while he was here than to call back and cancel him. Anyhow, there was something to be said for not making enemies u

She heard Gunderson out and concluded the “misunderstanding” to which he’d referred was semantic rather than substantive. Call it by any other name, he still wanted to go looking for a white hole. She told him that, to have the project even considered, he’d have to provide a written statement supporting his views from two of the thirteen physicists certified by the Academy to rule on such matters. “Until you can satisfy two of them, Professor,” she said, “I’m afraid we can’t help you.”

A young man had a complaint concerning one of the pilots. He’d been gruff, he said, and rude and generally not very talkative. All the way back from Outpost. Did Hutch have any idea what it was like to ride for weeks with a ship’s captain who kept to himself? He was talking about Adrian Belmont, whom she’d like to get rid of because there were always complaints, but the SPA would come down hard on the Academy if she terminated him. Better to hire a hit man. Cleaner.

In any case, it wasn’t an operational matter. “I’m terribly sorry,” she told him. “You should be aware that the pilots frequently make those voyages alone. Some of them have simply learned to get along without a social life. We ask the passengers to be understanding. But if you really want to press the matter, I’m afraid you have the wrong department. You’ll want Perso

She gave an interview to a journalist working on a book about Moonlight, arranged special transportation to Paradise for Abel Kotanik, who’d been requested by the field team, juggled shipping schedules to get a load of medical supplies (which had been mistakenly dropped and left on the pier at Serenity) forwarded to the Twins, and decided to fire the chief engineer at Pi

Her final meeting of the day was with Dr. Alva K. Emerson. It was another example of granting an interview she would have liked to hand off to someone else. Anyone else. Hutch didn’t intimidate easily, but she was willing to make an exception on this occasion.