Hi Marcus
One day Goat boy was crawling around a particularly steep outcrop of the crumbly brown rock on the hillside where he kept his goats. It was a perilous place and he knew it was foolish of him to be there. But from the top of the rock spur there was a particularly good view of the valley, and what's more, at a quick glance around he could see all of his hillside and easily count all of his goats without having to run up and down and sideways all afternoon. He had climbed the pinnacle almost every day since he had discovered it. That had been, what, two years and some months?
Goat boys don't have much reason to count time, and counting goats is chore enough, if you keep in mind that counting them also means that your count had better come out the same each day. There would be all kinds of trouble if it didn't. All the running about came from the fact that you couldn't see the whole hillside from anyplace on it, you had to climb up the steep rockface.
And the rockface keeps changing every day, falling down here, dripping gravel like water over there, sometimes collapsing where there was a path. So Goat boy climbed a different way each day the weather was clear enough to see. But from the top, breathless, he could count them all, and not only that, but have a good rest looking out on the farms and villages all down the mountain valley. So he spent his afternoons.
But today, hanging out in the particularly perilous spot, he found himself face to face with something he had never seen before. It was a strange kind of ball on a loop of fine chain, like ladies wear their jewelry, and it was stuck in a hole in the crumbly rock where he never would have seen it except for that little slip, and, well, at least he caught himself from falling. He found a hold for the toe which was still tingling from the sensation of that last rock suddenly not being there, and jamming it in, he got a hand free to reach in and grab the thing.
It was unusually heavy for it's size, as if it were made of some valuable metal, like gold, he thought, or silver, but he didn't know much about precious stuff. He slung it around his neck and the chain purred like a serpent. He didn't stop to look at it until he got off the outcrop and was back on the slope that led to the very top. Then he stole a glance at it as it swung up, he took a last few steps, he grabbed it, turned and sat down plop on the edge of the cliff, breathing heavily from the climb.
Black. It didn't look like metal at all. The chain was shiney, but the little ball that hung on it so heavy was black as the sky at night, and now that he had a closer look, he even saw stars in it. Stars. That's what they were.
"Well, you might even say thank you."
"HUH?"
"Intelligent as much as clever and good looking." She sniffed the air. "And sweet smelling? Why, from over here, you hardly have any odor at all." She held her nose delicately, turning her face to the side, but looking at him still with eyes that sparkled in their corners.
"Who are you?"
She smiled at him and leaned forward, almost enough to dislodge her from her perch on a neighboring ledge, perhaps twenty feet away on the other side of a deep ravine. But she caught herself in time and smiled delicately. "I am Lissa. And I have come here to be your friend. That's my friendship gift, that you have in your hand."
"What? What gift? This is mine. I found it."
"So you did, and who do you think put it there?"
"Not you."
"Oh." She sat back. "Ok." She smiled again, into herself this time. "Well, what if I tell you what it looks like, then?"
"What?" He turned and held the ball in his fist so she couldn't see it.
"It's called a Zoharrr." She held the 'r' longer than seemed necessary. "It is a dull black sphere, tiny points of light if you look close." She watched his face change pointedly. "And if you look close, you might see, that one of the stars is different from the others. Yes, look at it. There. It's a disk, you see, and the others are mere points. She held a thin finger out to show him. "And there," she said, "If you watch that smaller star, right there, you can see that it is going around."
He startled. She was standing right next to him! There was no way across that steep wash. "How? Who? What?" She plucked the ball from his fingers as easily as picking a berry off a bush.
"And this. Look at this." She held the ball in front of his eyes and did something with her fingers. The ball changed. Inside it now was a swirl of stars like a whirlpool. She turned it again and it changed again, into his own eyeball. She tossed it back at him and he caught it clumsily, stepping backward. He almost fell, but she grabbed him and pulled him to her face. "Listen, Goat boy. Don't you ever doubt me, do you hear? I will never, ever, lie to you. You must believe me, everything I say, everything I do. Got it?"
Her eyes were green fire and her fingers thin and hard as ice, and he thought he felt his toes rise off the ground in her grip, but she set him down, let go, patted and brushed his shoulders. "There, now. It's alright. I just get a little, passionate, at times." She smiled sweetly and he caught her scent, stangely mixed with his own. His was a deep toned musk, hers the light fluteing of night blooming flowers, and between them he knew the contratemps stattico of their two beating hearts.
He sat down hard again and she sat down beside him, both of them breathing heavy. He looked at her, felt startled, looked at the ball, looked startled again, but the two starts canceled each other and he suddenly felt very calm. She smiled at him, giggled a little, and then reached up to fix the silver clasp that held her long raven hair in a braided bun at the nape of her neck. Her shoulders were narrow as a bird's and her breasts nuzzled the light flowered fabric of her blouse. Her skin was soft ivory, with a faint undertone of olive. He felt that he had been looking at her for a very, very long time. But he knew they had just met. The difference didn't puzzle him. He was sure it would always be that way.
"So. Give me that, and I'll show you how it works. It isn't just a pretty bauble, you know. It does much, much more." He hardly hesitated to put it in her hand this time, but he held onto the chain, not for safety, but because he wanted the touch of it. "You turn this here, you see, and that's the scale, it makes it larger and smaller. And this, turn this and it moves left, right. Here is up down. This is forward and back. You see it? Try."
And he did. Turning as she showed him made the image in the ball grow or shrink, and he could move the center of the sphere among the stars in it at will.
"That one, there, go close to that one." It was the star with the small, dim partner going around. "Now on the small star, got it? Now close, closer, very close." The small point of light became a disk, an orb, and then it filled the ball completely, making it look like a marble of glowing colors. It was very beautiful.
"Go ahead, keep playing with it," she said. "There's lots of stuff in there to see. Later, when you get the hang of how to move around in it, I'll show you where we are. You will never have to be alone again. Unless you want to."
She looked at him with a pout, then a little frown. "Oh well, never mind. You are the strong silent type, arent you?" She patted his hand. "And young. But don't worry. You will soon catch up to me. And pass me, no doubt. But don't go too fast. Follow me for a while, then we'll go side by side. The day I call you father is a long, long way off." She pulled his arm to her and hugged it, raised his hand to her lips as if to kiss it, but he pulled away. She laughed. He liked it.
It was she who told me about this test for gravity waves. You take two massive objects, spheres is good, and polished smooth is better. You put them very close together, as close as you can get them to stay, but not quite touching. Then, between them, you pass a beam of coherant light. On the other side, you have an array of detectors. You can amplify the effect using whatever lenses you like, and interferometry.
As the light passes through the narrow spot, it is affected by the gravity of the two spheres. The gravity acts like a lense. The light is bent. It bends in proportion to the masses, and according to how close the photons pass to the center of gravity of the two masses. When a gravitic event sends waves though your region of space, the masses of the two spheres will temporarily change in relation to each other, and you will observe changes in the light as it passes through the gravitic lense.
She also told me about this. You make a small black hole and put it in a containment vessel. Normally it would expire in a very short time, due to quantum evaporation. But what you do, see, is you feed the small black hole a steady beam of energy, enough to match the rate of radiation. That way, it lives longer. If you do it just right, it might even live forever. Longer than you, anyway.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Mad, I tell you. but that's what she said to me. You can believe it or not. Personally, I never doubt her, but as for you, well, she has never held you in her icy grip, so what would you know about that?
But maybe you can tell me about these other things. Is she right? I'd be very interested to hear what you decide.
Richard.
