Omega

Cosmo: A mission as important as this, with so much hanging on it: Weren’t they inspected before it left port?

Samuels: We always do an inspection before ships leave the Wheel. In fact, this one was due for routine maintenance, but there wasn’t time to finish. Je

Cosmo: Wait. Follow-up, please. Are you saying it was sent out in a defective condition?

Samuels: No. I’m not saying that at all. Had we known there was a problem, we would have corrected it, no matter how much time it took. In this case, we didn’t see a problem, we were pressed for time, so we went ahead. We just got unlucky. Je

Weekend Roundup: Yes. If there was a question about this one, why didn’t you send another ship?

Samuels: We didn’t have another ship. Not one with the carrying capacity we needed. Harvey, did you have something?

London Times: You’re saying the Academy didn’t have another ship?

Samuels: That’s correct.

London Times: How is that possible? The Council and the White House both claim they’re doing everything they can to support this effort.

Samuels: Well, there are limits to what can be done on short notice. Lookout is extremely far. Janet.

UNN: Eric, what is the prognosis for the Goompahs?

Samuels: We’re still hopeful.

In the morning she hauled Charlie out of the lab for a walk along the Morning Pool.

The forty-seven events, he said, were concentrated in a half dozen widely separated areas. None of the areas was even remotely close to the bubble of space through which humanity had been traveling for the past half century. “Which is why,” he told her, “we haven’t seen these things in our own sky. But a few thousand years from now, when the light has had time to get here, there’ll be some fireworks.”

Two of the areas were out on the rim, one near the core, and three scattered haphazardly. “And none anywhere else?” she asked.

“Not yet. But the Weathermen are still arriving on station in a lot of places. We’ll probably find more.”

There was something solid about Charlie. He wasn’t going to get caught up in wild speculations, and in his presence Hutch always felt things were under control. It was a valuable quality in a man so young. Charlie lacked his former boss’s genius, but everybody did. And you don’t need genius to have a bright future. You need common sense, persistence, and the ability to inspire others. And she could under no circumstances imagine him telling her he understood what the omegas were, then leaving her to wait while he gathered more evidence. He wouldn’t even have set it up as a big a

She looked at the sky and wondered who would be there when the light show began.

Harold had been at the Georgetown Gallery, he’d said, when the epiphany came. When he decided he knew what was happening. But if Charlie were right, if they were doing advanced research, research on areas currently beyond human understanding, how could that have happened?

Was it possible he’d seen something at the gallery?

She called them, something she should have done long ago.

An automated voice asked how the Georgetown Gallery could be of service.

“Have you anything currently on display, or anything that’s been sold over the past six months, that has as its subject matter the omega clouds?”

“One moment please.”

A human voice picked up the conversation. “This is Eugene Hamilton. I understand you’re interested in Omega.”

“I’m interested in anything you have, or may have had over the past six months, that uses the omegas as its subject.”

“That would be René Guilbert’s Storm Center. You’re familiar with it, of course.”

“Of course.” In fact, Tor had mentioned it, but she couldn’t remember the context. “May I take a look at it, please?”

“If you wish. You understand, of course, that the power and elegance of this piece, even more than most, ca

“Yes, I understand.”

“Perhaps you would prefer to come by the gallery? Ms. — ” He hesitated, inviting her to introduce herself.

“Hutchins,” she said. “I’d prefer for the moment to see it here.”

“Of course. One moment, please.”

Moments later the work materialized on-screen. Guilbert had captured all the gloom and foreboding of the objects, had caught the immensity and overwhelming power. The malevolence, however, was not there. This was not an object that was out to kill; it just didn’t give a damn. Don’t get in its way and you’ll be fine. Pretty much like Moby-Dick.

She made a copy and thanked Hamilton, assuring him she would run by to take a look.

Had Harold seen it?

She showed the copy to Charlie and he shrugged. “It’s an omega, all right.” He produced a disk. “I thought you might like to have this.”

“What is it?”

“A history of what we’ve tried to do with the tewks. If anything occurs to you, I’d love to hear about it.”

SHE SAT IN the tank for more than an hour watching the results of Charlie’s efforts to find a rationale for the tewks. He and his team had tried to establish a real-time sequence, depicting what the events would look like if light traveled instantaneously. That took them nowhere. They had looked at energy yields, at electromagnetic variations, at the ranges to nearby objects that might be affected by the events.

It was a hodgepodge.

For all she knew, it could be a code.

She smiled at the thought while a cloud lit up on the far side of the room, near the emergency exit. And went out. A minute later, fifty years in real time, another, a hand’s width away, flared and blinked off. They were like fireflies.

She increased the pace, the flow of time, and saw seven consecutive events coming down from the top of the chamber on her left, then six behind her. She had to take Charlie’s word that they were not occurring at precise intervals. She really couldn’t tell, just looking at a watch. But it was close enough. A series here, a series there.

They knew now that the events had a range of anywhere from twenty-seven to sixty-one days. And there were different spectra, which is to say the lights came on in different colors.

And that was another strange thing: A series was always the same color. Blue overhead, white at the back of the chamber, red on her left. What the hell was going on?

SHE HAD A conference that afternoon, attended a pla

It cooled down considerably when the sun set, and she strolled into the roof transport complex thinking that she should have dressed more warmly.

“Where to, please, Ms. Hutchins?” the cab asked after she’d wiped her card.

On a whim, she said, “Georgetown,” and gave the address of the art gallery on Wisconsin Avenue.

“Very good,” said the cab as it lifted away.

They turned north over the Potomac, much swollen since the days of the Roosevelts. Constitution Island, with its cluster of public buildings, glowed in the encroaching night. The Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Brockman memorials watched serenely from their embankments. And the Old White House, with its fifty-two-star U.S. flag spotlighted, stood behind its dikes. A cruise ship, brightly illuminated, moved steadily upriver.

The night was filled with traffic. A shuttle lifted off from Reagan, headed for the Wheel. Glidetrains were everywhere. She called Tor, warned him she’d be late.

“What’s in Georgetown?” he asked.

“I’m headed to the gallery.” Tor was, of course, familiar with the place. Years ago, they’d handled much of his work.

“Why?”

“Not sure. I want to get a look at Guilbert’s Storm Center.”

He seemed satisfied. She almost thought he’d been expecting something like this to happen.

The flight needed only a couple of minutes. They descended into Wisconsin Park, and the cab asked whether she wanted it to wait.

“No,” she said. “That won’t be necessary, thank you.”

“Very good, Ms. Hutchins.”

She smiled. The AI had a British accent.

The gallery was located on the east side of Wisconsin Avenue, which had been designed originally for carriage traffic and horses, given over later to motorized ground vehicles, and was now restricted to pedestrians and, once again, horse-drawn coaches. She touched her commlink to the reader and climbed out.

Every night was date night in Georgetown. The restaurants were full. Shoppers and tourists wandered the streets, music and laughter drifted out of a dozen cafés, and in the park a mime was entertaining a group of children.

The Georgetown Art Gallery was located between a furniture store and an antique shop. The entire block of buildings had a dilapidated, run-down look. The architecture suggested these were the kinds of shops where you could get quality merchandise with the sheen rubbed off, but at bargain prices. The front door of the gallery was open, and she could see two men talking. As she watched, the conversation moved inside, and the door closed.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OPERATED on two floors, co

Despite the fact she was married to an artist, she didn’t know much about the various schools, or even the prominent masters. So she wandered among landscapes and portraits of people dressed in the styles of another age. There were a few paintings of a more esoteric sort, geometric designs really, intended to stir the blood in ways she did not understand. Tor had attempted to explain some of the techniques to her, but she’d let him see that she was a Philistine in these matters and he’d let it go.

Except the two men, she saw no one else. Their conversation broke up, one left, and the other came her way, smiling politely. “Good evening,” he said, and she recognized Eugene Hamilton’s voice. “May I be of service?”

“Mr. Hamilton,” she said. “My name’s Hutchins. I spoke with you earlier.”

He beamed. “Ah, yes. The Deshaies.”

“No,” she said. “Actually we were talking about a Guilbert.”