Dark Mirror Read Online Free PDF

navigational fix points close enough to a passing ship to be read accurately.” Picard reached out to his wineglass, smiling slightly: the prospect was exhilarating, even though it would not be his generation of starship captains who would experience it. “No need to sow thousands of beacons or squint at Cepheid variables that are too distant to be read reliably… or to hope the supernova you’re steering by in the next galaxy over will keep on behaving itself.”
    “Yes, indeed,” Hwiii said. “Alternatively, we can learn to use hyperstrings to examine matter itself… even, perhaps, to predict what matter will do. That will come much later, and the implications for all the humanities are tremendous. But for the moment, the one x2-track of hy-lepton decay in the right place, the one string sounding the one note, will be enough for me.”
    “The recurrent musical idiom, Commander,” Picard said, “is it the poetry of the scientist or the species?”
    Hwiii chuckled. “Something specifically delphine? Probably not. All our peoples are musical to one degree or another; but the great singers are the humpbacks and blues—they’re the philosophers, music is everything to them. Us, though, we’re too practical: we and the orcas. Music is talk, yes, but the talk is more interesting… with each other or you or other species.” He looked over at the buffet table with an expression of satisfaction. “That salmon, now…”
    He glided over to help himself. “Lemon,” he said,expertly squeezing a slice over the salmon. “Mmmm…. But anyway, the hyperstring researches. It’s early to be analyzing my data, but I’m seeing signs that the theory I came out to prove, of retrotemporal hyperstring oscillation, is true. That alone will create some noise when I get home, for some of my colleagues claim that such oscillations either cannot exist, because of some of the principles of quantum mechanics, or that they exist but are unreadable and unidentifiable as such because of the oscillations’ complexity. There’ll be trouble in the journals… if there’s not more immediate trouble here.”
    “The Laihe’s statement to us,” Picard said. “Have you been able to make more sense of it than we have?”
    “Some, I think, though translation is still a problem. I’ve been with these people for nearly nine months, and most of that time was spent trying to solve the linguistic and semantic difficulties. The rest was spent trying to get a version that I could use of their data on the general ‘stringiness’ of this space. About two months ago, I got what I believed to be a reliable baseline—I think. The Lalairu’s methods of taking readings are as different as their coordinate system.”
    Hwiii frowned—this expression looking almost exactly like a human one. “Anyway, I then started taking my own readings and barely got a baseline set of my own before the Lalairu changed course away from the ‘empty’ spaces—not bothering to tell
me
why… or if they did, I didn’t understand them. However, if I’ve correctly translated the statement you copied to me, the Laihe is nervous about remaining in this space because the Lalairu’s
own
baseline measurements of this area, taken fairly recently hereabouts, are suddenly no longer viable. Hyperstring structures do not match what they ‘should be’ for this space—what they were as little as a year ago. For space so empty, the hyperstrings are becoming very tightly packed together.Something has been happening to derange the normal structure.”
    “What does it mean?” Picard said.
    “I don’t know.”
    Picard breathed out softly. “If
you
don’t know, who do we ask?”
    Hwiii laughed somewhat helplessly. “Me… later. Sorry, Captain, Starfleet would probably tell you that I’m the best expert they’ve got. And I don’t have enough data yet to give you a better evaluation, which I know is what you want. I have good hopes that, with a starship’s resources to