Pohl, Frederik - Eschaton 01 - The Other End Of Time.pdf

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The Other End Of Time – Eschaton 01
Frederick Pohl
BOOKS BY FREDERIK POHL
Bipohl
The Age of the Pussyfoot
Drunkard's Walk '
Black Star Rising
The Cool War
The Heechee Saga
Gateway
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
Heechee Rendezvous
The Annals of the Heechee
The Gateway Trip
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Homegoing
Mining the Oort
Narabedla Ltd.
Pohlstars
Starhurst
The Way the Future Was
The World at the End of Time
Jem
Midas World
Merchant's War
The Coming of the Quantum Cats
The Space Merchants (with C. M. Kornbluth)
Man Plus
Chernobyl
The Day the Martians Came
Stopping at Slowyear
The Voices of Heaven
With Jack Williamson:
The Starchild Trilogy
Undersea City
Undersea Quest
Undersea Fleet
Wall Around a Star
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The Farthest Star
Land's End
The Singers of Time
With Lester del Key:
Preferred Risk
The Best of Frederik Pohl (edited by Lester del Rey)
The Best of C. M. Kornbluth (editor)
FREDERIK POHL
OTHER END OF TIME
Copyright 1996 by Frederik Pohl
BEFORE
WHEN THE FIRST MESSAGE FROM SPACE ARRIVED ON EARTH, five people who were on
their way to the eschaton were busy at their own affairs. For one, Dr. Pat Adcock was having a really
bad day with her accountant inNew York . For another, Commander (or, actually, by then already
ex-Commander) Jimmy Peng-tsu Lin was on the lanai of his mother's estate on Maui, glumly running up
his mother's telephone bill with fruitless begging calls to every influential person he knew. Major General
Martin Delasquez had just been given his second star by the high governor of the sovereign state
ofFlorida . Doctorat-nauk (emeritus) Rosaleen Artzybachova was discontentedly trying to make the time
pass with chess-by-fax games against a variety of opponents from her boring retirement dacha outside
ofKiev . And Dan Dannerman was holed up in a seedy pension inLinz ,ProvinceofAustria . He was hiding
from the Bundes Kriminalamt with a woman named Use, who was by profession an enforcer for the
terrorist Free Bavaria Bund, more commonly referred to as the Mad King Ludwigs. (Dannerman himself
was a mere courier in the same group.) Most of these five people had not even met each other yet. Pat
Adcock, being an astronomer by profession, might conceivably have had some rough idea of how the
message would affect all their lives-though even she couldn't have known just how, or how very much.
None of the others could have had a clue.
All the same, all five of them were, in varying degrees, startled, thrilled or frightened by the message,
because nearly everybody in the world was. What would you expect?
It was a major historical event. It was definitely the very first time that the patient astronomers who
tended the SETI telescopes, or for that matter anybody else, had received an authentic, guaranteed alien
message from an extraterrestrial source.
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Of course, that left a lot of large questions. Not even the few dogged hangers-on in the nearly extinct
SETI program had been able to interpret what the message said, either, except for a few fragments. The
dits and dahs of the radio signal were not Morse code. They were certainly not in English, either-were
not, in fact, in any recognizable language of any variety; unless pictures are considered to be a language
of sorts. When the signals had been painstakingly massaged by some of the world's biggest and fastest
computers, which they naturally were very quickly, it turned out that at least one chunk of the message
wasn't in words at all. It was in pictures. When the bits were properly arranged, what they displayed was
an animated diagram.
In their hideout on the Bonnerstrasse, Dannerman and his girl watched it over and over on their wall
screen, Dannerman with curiosity, Use with only cursory attention. She was one of the very few who
didn't give a hoot in hell what the stars had to say. Even her cursory interest didn't last, since whatever
this bit of drek from space was meant to convey, she declared, it certainly had nothing whatever to do
with the unswerving determination of the Mad King Ludwigs to free Bavaria from the cruel Prussian
grip-to which liberation at any cost, she reminded him, they had both agreed to dedicate their lives.
As a matter of fact, the diagram really wasn't much to look at. That didn't keep the channels from
repeating it endlessly, usually with some voice-over commentary provided by somebody who possessed
several scientific degrees and a passion for seeing himself on TV. The commentaries varied, but the
diagram was always the same. First the screen was dark, except for one tiny brilliant spot in the middle of
it. Then an explosion sent a myriad smaller, less bright spots flying in all directions. The expansion
slowed, followed by a general contraction as all the specks slowly, then more rapidly, fell back to the
center of the screen. Then the central bright spot reappeared . . . and then the commentators took over.
"Unquestionably" there is much more to the message," one said-this one an elderly Herr Doktor from the
astronomy department of the University of Vienna, "but we cannot decipher the remainder as yet. That is
a great pity, since as you see the diagram by itself is quite uninformative in the absence of the rest of the
message. This segment, by itself, is no more than perhaps five per cent of the total transmission, merely
the first few seconds. We have not been able to decode the rest. Still, I believe I can interpret what that
fragment is intended to show. It is nothing less than a description of the history of our universe,
compressing to a few seconds a process which in fact will require many tens of billions of years. The
model begins by showing the tiny and-I must confess, even to those of us who have given our lives to the
subject-the quite incomprehensible quantal-realm object that preceded the birth of the universe. Then the
object explodes, in what is called the Big Bang, and the universe as we know it begins. It expands-as we
actually do see the universe doing now, when we measure the red-shifts with our telescopes. Finally it
contracts again in what the Americans call the 'Big Crunch.'"
"Big Crunch! What nonsense. Come to bed now," Use said crossly. "You have seen all that a hundred
times at least, Walter."
"You don't have to call me by my party name here," Dannerman said absently, watching the screen. The
Herr Doktor had begun talking about Stephen Hawking's theory of repetitive universes, just as he had the
last three times Dannerman had watched that particular interview.
"Do not tell me what to do. You are a dilettante," she said severely, "or you would not say a thing like
that. It is basic doctrine, which you have not adequately studied: There is no security ever unless there is
security always."
"I suppose so," he said, his attention still on the screen. He switched channels until he found the diagram
on another newscast.
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"You are impossible," she told him. "At least turn down that totally useless sound. I am going to sleep."
"Fine," he said, but he did as she asked. He didn't look away from the wall screen, however, in spite of
the fact that he was beginning to be as tired of the damn thing as she. What Dannerman wanted was
something different. He wanted her to go to sleep without him; and when at last her gentle, ladylike
snores assured him that that had happened he moved silently to the door, collecting his down jacket on
the way, and slipped out.
He wasn't gone long, but when he came back Use was sitting on the edge of the bed, arms crossed,
wide awake, greeting him with a glare. She was quite a pretty woman most of the time, but, in this mood,
not. "Where were you?" she demanded.
He said apologetically, "I just wanted some fresh air."
"Fresh air? In Linz?"
"Well, a change of scene, anyway. And, all right, I stopped in the bierstube for a drink. What do you
want from me, Use-I mean, Brunnhilde? I get tired of being jailed twenty-four hours a day in this dump."
"Dump! Your words show your class origins, Walter. In any case, what I want from you is proper
dedication to our cause. Also, if you were seen you would become far more tired, because in five
minutes they would have you in a real jail."
"Hell, uh, Brunnhilde. The Bay-Kahs aren't looking for us inAustria , are they? Anyway, that was part of
the reason I went out. I wanted to see if anybody was watching the pension. Nobody is."
"And how would you know if they were, dilettante? Security is my task, not yours, Walter. Did you
telephone anyone?"
"Why would I go outside to telephone?" he asked reasonably. It wasn't a lie; Dan Dannerman preferred
not to lie when a simple deception would do.
"So." She studied him for a moment; then, "All the same," she said, softening slightly, "you are not
entirely wrong. I too would like to leave this place. It is inBavaria that we are needed, not here."
"We'll be there soon," he said, trying to make her feel better. The funny part was that he did want her to
feel better. All right, the woman was a criminal terrorist, a known killer with blood on her hands, but he
had to admit to himself that he was-almost-fond of her anyway. He had noticed that about himself before.
He often came to like the people he put in prison, though that didn't keep him from putting them there
anyway.
He reached for the control for the wall screen, and Use moaned. "Oh, my God, you are not going to turn
that on again? It is not of any importance to us."
"It's just interesting," he said apologetically.
"Interesting! We have no room in our lives for what is only 'interesting'! Walter, Walter. Sometimes I
think you are not a true revolutionary at all."
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