Phoresis and Other Journeys by Greg Egan

Author:Greg Egan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 2023-05-06T22:00:00+00:00

21

“You need to do the analysis,” Alice told her mother. “I don’t trust myself anymore.”

Rebecca was dubious. “You know I don’t follow all this trigonometry. I can understand a normal equation, but this formula you’ve used is like a string tied in knots.”

“That’s not important,” Alice insisted. “Christopher and I have worked out the predictions; all you need to do is check and see if the numbers people are reporting come close.”

“But why? Why don’t you trust yourself?”

“It’s not that I’d ever lie deliberately,” Alice stressed, though even as she said the words she wasn’t sure that they were true. “But I might be swayed in a certain direction. If there are any close calls, I might favor one side.”

“And you think I’m immune to that?”

Alice smiled. “Maybe not, but I’m not going to tell you which samples are which until you’ve finished the analysis. You have no way of knowing how I numbered the slides. Not unless you want to fight me for this.” She held up the sole key to the drawer that held the list, threaded on a chain around her neck.

“This is what it’s come to?” Rebecca asked forlornly.

“The first time I mixed up the slides, you said it was a good idea. I’m just trying to be more thorough.”

Rebecca stopped arguing, and carried the notebooks away to her workroom. Alice sat beside the bench, looking around the empty hexagon. The jury had voted, impartially; all that remained was the tallying of the votes. She had to be prepared for whatever was coming, even if it crushed all the hope out of her body.

Timothy had been brave, and brilliant, but it hadn’t saved his life, and it didn’t mean he’d been right about anything. The two of them had been caught up in their own dance, too honest to amount to a seduction, but not as disinterested as she’d pretended it to be. The truth was, she’d been attracted to him, and she’d let him know, because it made it easier to ask him to give her what she wanted. That he’d given her much more should have been a warning. Her mother had thought he was trying to cheat death, but she was more afraid that he’d just been trying to please her.

Her mother summoned her. “I’ve subtracted the quantities you gave me from the observations,” she said. “But the residues just look like random numbers to me.”

Alice said, “Let me get the key.”

She returned with the list, and the two of them worked together, sorting the differences into two sets. One set did indeed remain random. The other started off with a run of small values, which continued to remain small.

Rebecca said, “Now I’m starting to think there’s some way you could have tricked me.”

Alice shook her head. “Didn’t I give you the predictions to hold on to, before anyone even looked at these slides?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think I could have made the slides myself out of some kind of ersatz blood – into which I’d introduced fake organisms that Mr.

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