The Depths of Time (58 page)

Then, finally, pacing the far corner of the room, the only one besides herself who was taking no refreshment, there was Karlin Raenau. Neshobe and Raenau had
worked together reasonably well over the years, but their relations had been correct and businesslike, rather than
friendly. She had never felt any sort of connection with the man.

And yet, now, having heard his description of his meet
ing with Koffield and Chandray, and its aftermath, she realized that they did have something in common: They both hated their offices—not their jobs, but the actual,
physical offices, the rooms where they were required to do their work. Both Raenau
’
s office and her own had been designed by the same man. It was plain from what he had said that his workplace bedeviled him with the same sort
of nuisances that beset her, and for that they could both
thank the great genius Oskar DeSilvo.

DeSilvo. Damn the man. He seemed to be at the back of
everything. Ashdin, along with most of the population of Solace, was quite sure DeSilvo had been a genius. But the
more Neshobe learned about him, and was called upon to deal with his legacy directly, the more she doubted he was any such thing. If he had been a genius, he was one who seemed to have made nothing but mistakes. From his terra-forming the planet to laying out an office workspace, she could find nothing but muddle in his work.

The people in the story about the Emperor
’
s new clothes had merely joined in
pretending
the Emperor was dressed in splendor. The people of Solace went one better. They were truly not aware that old Oskar was buck-naked. They genuinely
believed
DeSilvo had been a genius.

DeSilvo. The damned old man had been dead—truly and finally dead—for a hundred years or more, and yet it was as if he was in the room as well.

Well, that made sense. He had, after all,
designed
the place. Neshobe considered the office, the DeSilvo-designed room itself. The Diamond Room, they called it. The room was shaped, more or less, like an oblong,-octagonal-cut jewel. The floor was white marble, and the ceiling was another of the damned skylights DeSilvo had put everywhere. But it was the walls—if you could call a system of concave-angled panels walls—that were the defining feature of the room.

Panels angled out from the octagonal ceiling and floor at about a thirty-degree angle, and between these upper and lower panels was a set of center panels a.t waist level. The center panels, at least, were at right angles to the floor, as walls are supposed to be. The eight sides of the room were aligned with the cardinal and semicardinal points of the compass. The west and east sides of the room were the longest, the north and south sides exactly half as wide, and the northeast, northwest, southwest, and southeast sides were narrower still, really nothing more than angles set into the corners of the longer sides.

The center and upper wall panels at the east, west, and south of the room were permanently transparent, like the skylight, and the room was positioned so as to provide dramatic vistas out three sides of the room. Neshobe
wasn
’
t entirely clear on the matter, but her understand
ing was that the clear wall panels and ceiling were sup
posed to symbolize open government. No doubt Ashdin
could have told her, if Neshobe had dared ask. Neshobe
did know that the splendid views from the windows were
supposed to imbue the planetary leader with vision and
ambition.

She also knew that it was by no means an accident that
there was a lot to see—or at least there would be a lot to
see, if the weather ever cleared. The Executive Mansion
had been built on a bluff overlooking Solace City, and the
sea beyond, on a carefully chosen and landscaped site.
Supposedly, DeSilvo had picked the site for the Mansion first, and then laid out the city to provide an impressive view as seen from it.

The east side of the room presented one with a raw and
barren rockscape, littered with craters: the unterraformed
part of Solace. To the south lay Solace City itself: the sig
nal achievement of the present age—at least in the mind of
the architect who had designed both the city and the view
of it. A grand highway, little used in an age of aircars, led
from the city to the airport/spaceport complex, due south of town. Beyond the aero-spaceport was the seaport, and
beyond that, the waters of Landing Bay stretched to the
horizon.

Neshobe had read somewhere that a person considering the view south was supposed to reflect on the juxtaposition of land, air, space, and sea transport, and the
part each had played in the history of exploration, expan
sion, and settlement. That notion had always irritated Neshobe. When she looked out a window, she wanted a view, not a lecture on high-minded notions written in visual symbols.

To the west lay lush and verdant parklands of Nova-
terra Reserve, more than merely terraformed, but elaborately landscaped and planted, the old craters transformed
into lakes and ponds: the radiant, living future of the world.

DeSilvo had, by all accounts, been much taken with the
conversion of dead craters into living bodies of water. For
him, it had been a potent symbol of remaking the lifeless
into the living, and he had used the motif in many ways, in
many places. The unfortunate fact that there had been no craters to work with in Novaterra had been dealt with by
digging craters and then filling them with water. A silly
extravagance, it seemed to Neshobe, but one that hardly
mattered anymore. Half of Novaterra Reserve had been
ruined by mudslides, and the lakes and ponds had long
since overflowed their basins. Flooded-out artificial lakes
in artificial craters.
That
should have been a symbol of
something, but Neshobe was not sure what.

The trouble was that, since the rains had come, the
grand views and all their sanctimonious symbolism might
as well not have been there. Whatever the character of
the rain at any given moment—drizzle, mist, downpour—
it cut visibility to only a few hundred meters at best.
Besides, the transparent wall and ceiling panels, designed
for the far drier climate that had once existed, tended to fog up. The Diamond Room was shrouded in mist and
fog. And that was symbolism plain enough for anyone to
read.

Neshobe hated the Diamond Room, but it was the
most famous room in the Executive Mansion, and probably the most famous on the planet. She was more or less compelled to use it. People expected it of her. A meeting
that took place in the Diamond Room was, by virtue of that fact alone, imbued with importance. The time or two she had tried to use a more practical and comfort
able room, the participants had taken it as a sign that they,
or the subjects of their meetings, were not important
enough to rate the Diamond Room treatment. Getting into
it, for whatever reason, was a great honor. Ashdin had nearly had palpitations at the mere thought of seeing it,
let alone sitting down in it, no matter how grim the occa
sion.

And this extremely grim occasion was far from over. There was still a lot left to discuss. No sense denying her
self the bite to eat the others were having. She
’
d need a
little something to tide her over. Neshobe Kalzant forced herself to relax, willed a sincere-looking smile onto her face, and went over to join the others.

The refreshment cart trundled itself out of the room, and the doors of the Diamond Room folded shut behind it. The conference table had reopened itself, and placed everyone
’
s papers and possessions precisely back in their previous positions. Neshobe took her place at the head of the table and waited for the others to do the same.

“
Very well,
”
she said.
“
We
’
re back in session. Let me just go over what happened this morning, to be sure I have it clear. I
’
ve heard from all of you, all the evidence that
’
s been checked, all the rush research that
’
s been done, the navigational analysis of the
Dom Pedro’s
journey brought in by Commander Raenau, and so on. As you
’
ll understand, Admiral Koffield, Second Officer Chandray, we had to find out as best we could if you were indeed who you claim to be, if you got here by the means you claimed, and if the warning you brought is authentically from the last century.
”

Neshobe turned to Vandar.
“
If I
’
ve got this straight, Dr. Vandar, you found the prediction highly, even fright-eningly accurate, and that where it was in error, the errors of prediction seem to have been caused by unforeseeable events, such as the mass transport of refugees from Glister several decades ago.
”

“
Yes, ma
’
am. It
’
s difficult to quantify such things, but I
’
d estimate that the predictive value of Admiral Koffield
’
s work, if we compare it directly to real circumstances, is on the order of about sixty-five percent accurate.
”

“
That doesn
’
t sound so startlingly good,
”
said Jorl Parrige.

“
Ah, no, Senyor Parrige, you
’
re right. But I was about to say that it
’
s more complicated than that. Admiral Koffield developed a sophisticated mathematical model and applied it against the real Solace of a hundred-plus years ago, and then projected forward, assuming everything would go according to plan. But, as the admiral knew at the time, things don
’
t go according to plan. The
unexpected happens, and the plan itself changes. We have
to correct for those factors.
”

“
So you change the model to fit the circumstances?
”
Parrige asked, the disapproval plain in his voice.

“
No, sir, of course not,
”
Vandar replied, sounding almost offended.
“
The model remains the same. It is merely
a question of adjusting and correcting the data that we
feed
to the model. Now, I have to confess that I have had very little time to work with the Koffield model, and
I don
’
t pretend to understand it completely. But I have managed to plug in at least rough corrections for the two largest classes of major, unplanned, great-impact events:
the influx of refugees from Glister, and the repeated res
torations and repair done to SunSpot and Greenhouse. De-
Silvo
’
s original plan called for SunSpot and Greenhouse to be decommissioned over seventy years ago. With those
corrections plugged in, I got a predictive value match of
about eighty-five percent, on a first pass. I have no doubt
at all that, given more and better data, I could get it up over ninety percent, perhaps even to ninety-two percent, or ninety-four or ninety-five. It
’
s a strong, solid model. Far
better than the tools we
’
ve been using up to now. But the
model
’
s ability to predict the present situation is sec
ondary. Far more important is what it predicts for the fu
ture.
”

“
And what is that?
”
Parrige asked.
“
In layman
’
s terms.
”

Vandar shook his head sadly.
“
In layman
’
s terms? Disaster. Absolute catastrophe. A collapse every bit as hard and deep as the one at Glister or Far Haven. The current planetary ecosystem is headed for sudden and
drastic collapse that will make our present problems look
trivial. If you want to be melodramatic about it, we
’
re
doomed.
”

“
Just a moment, please, Dr. Vandar,
”
Neshobe said.
Damn the man. Melodrama, however accurate, was the last
thing they needed at the moment. A situation this frightening, this emotional, absolutely demanded cold, careful,
calm discussion. The people around the conference table
were already close to the edge. There was no sense, and no
purpose served, in pushing them closer to it, or over it. The best time to defuse panic was before it got started.
“
I need to take it one step at a time. All I need to know from you at the moment is that you are satisfied that the work pre-. sented by Admiral Koffield is legitimate. Is the math honest, are the assumptions valid, and so on. I take it you are satisfied?
”

Vandar nodded vigorously.
“
Very much so. I feel certain that—
”

“
Please, Dr. Vandar. We will explore further in a moment. Right now I just want to be sure we have some sort of consensus. Commander Raenau, your people have examined the spacecraft our friends came in on, and run navigation checks on the course for the, ah,
Dom Pedro IV,
along with various other details, such as the identity match performed by your command system before it unlocked the report. Does their story hold together?
”