He could no longer see the grid, just a few nearby balls. His cage moved directly toward one glowing ball, which appeared to be pulsing, changing its shape in flickering patterns.
Then they were inside the ball, immersed in a bright glowing fog that seemed to throb with energy.
And then the glow faded, and was gone.
They hung in featureless blackness. Nothing.
Blackness.
But then he saw that they were still sinking downward, now heading toward the churning surface of a black ocean in a black night. The ocean whipped and boiled, making a frothy blue-tinged foam. As they descended to the surface, the foam grew larger. Chris saw that one bubble in particular had an especially bright blue glow.
His machine moved toward that glow at accelerating speed, flying faster and faster, and he had the odd sensation that they were going to crash in the foam, and then they entered the bubble and he heard a loud piercing shriek.
Then silence.
Darkness.
Nothing.
In the control room, David Stern watched the flashes on the rubber floor become smaller and weaker, and finally vanish entirely. The machines were gone. The technicians immediately turned to Baretto and began his transmission countdown.
But Stern kept staring at the spot in the rubber floor where Chris and the others had been.
"And where are they now?" he asked Gordon.
"Oh, they've arrived now," Gordon said. "They are there now."
"They've been rebuilt?"
"Yes."
"Without a fax machine at the other end."
"That's right."
"Tell me why," Stern said. "Tell me the details the others didn't need to be bothered with."
"All right," Gordon said. "It isn't anything bad. I just thought the others might find it, well, disturbing."
"Uh-huh."
"Let's go back," Gordon said, "to the interference patterns, which you remember showed us that other universes can affect our own universe. We don't have to do anything to get the interference pattern to occur. It just happens by itself."
"Yes."
"And this interaction is very reliable; it will always occur, whenever you set up a pair of slits."
Stern nodded. He was trying to see where this was going, but he couldn't foresee the direction Gordon was taking.
"So we know that in certain situations, we can count on other universes to make something happen. We hold up the slits, and the other universes make the pattern we see, every time."
"Okay. . . ."
"And, if we transmit through a wormhole, the person is always reconstituted at the other end. We can count on that happening, too."
There was a pause.
Stern frowned.
"Wait a minute," he said. "Are you saying that when you transmit, the person is being reconstituted by another universe?"
"In effect, yes. I mean, it has to be. We can't very well reconstitute them, because we're not there. We're in this universe."
"So you're not reconstituting. . . ."
"No."
"Because you don't know how," Stern said.
"Because we don't find it necessary," Gordon said. "Just as we don't find it necessary to glue plates to a table to make them stay put. They stay by themselves. We make use of a characteristic of the universe, gravity. And in this case, we are making use of a characteristic of the multiverse."
Stern frowned. He immediately distrusted the analogy; it was too glib, too easy.
"Look," Gordon said, "the whole point of quantum technology is that it overlaps universes. When a quantum computer calculates - when all thirty-two quantum states of the electron are being used - the computer is technically carrying out those calculations in other universes, right?"
"Yes, technically, but - "
"No. Not technically. Really."
There was a pause.
"It may be easier to understand," Gordon said, "by seeing it from the point of view of the other universe. That universe sees a person suddenly arrive. A person from another universe."
"Yes. . . ."
"And that's what happened. The person has come from another universe. Just not ours."
"Say again?"
"The person didn't come from our universe," Gordon said.
Stern blinked. "Then where?"
"They came from a universe that is almost identical to ours - identical in every respect - except that they know how to reconstitute it at the other end."
"You're joking."
"No."
"The Kate who lands there isn't the Kate who left here? She's a Kate from another universe?"
"Yes."
"So she's almost Kate? Sort of Kate? Semi-Kate?"
"No. She's Kate. As far as we have been able to tell with our testing, she is absolutely identical to our Kate. Because our universe and their universe are almost identical."
"But she's still not the Kate who left here."
"How could she be? She's been destroyed, and reconstructed."
"Do you feel any different when this happens?" Stern said.
"Only for a second or two," Gordon said.
Blackness.
Silence, and then in the distance, glaring white light.
Coming closer. Fast.
Chris shivered as a strong electric shock rippled through his body, and made his fingers twitch. For a moment, he suddenly felt his body, the way one feels clothes when you first put them on; he felt the encompassing flesh, felt the weight of it, the pull of gravity downward, the pressure of his body on the soles of his feet. Then a blinding headache, a single pulse, and then it was gone and he was surrounded by intense purple light. He winced, and blinked his eyes.