A Connection That Spans Everything

While I was reading Jeffrey Carver's The Infinity Link, I had deja vu. There's a sequence where one character describes tachyons to another. He talks about how something moving at sublight speed can never reach light speed, and something moving faster than light speed (tachyons) can never be slowed to merely light speed. As I read that, i had the strangest sense that not only had I read that exchange before, I'd blogged about it, and had a discussion about it in the comments. Which is impossible. I've never read the book before. I think it must have been one of my premonition dreams, which I have periodically*.

Anyway, the book. Mozelle Moi (Mozy for short) is a test subject at Sandaran Research Center. She enters a mental link-up with a fellow called Kadin, and they go through various challenges, with the purpose being psychological research. What does Kadin need to do to convince Mozy to go along with him? What are the buttons he needs to push? Mozy falls in love with Kadin, who is up on a space station, and resolves to reach him somehow. Fortunately, SRC is working on using tachyons as basically a transporter, and she convinces Hoshi Aronson, who works at SRC to help her. Naturally, things are not what they seem, and she receives a rude surprise. Also, the attempt does not go smoothly.

Earth has been receiving tachyon signals they believe are being created artificially, from something headed this way. Kadin is being prepped to make contact, and try to establish peaceful relations, and Mozy has just placed herself in the middle of it, to the consternation of the higher-ups. Contact is made, things are going fairly well, but contact with Earth has been lost, and with the military involved, you know what that means.

The book shifts focus between several different characters. Mozy, Hoshi, Jonders (who is in charge of the link setup), Leonard Hathorne (who's one of the higher-ups), and Joseph Payne (a reporter chasing a story). There are a few chapters focusing on other characters, such as Slim Marshall the man in between Jonders and Hathorne in the command structure, and Payne's friend Donny Alvarest, but the first five dominate. I generally like this, as each character tends to have their own circle of supporting characters. Mozy has Mardi and Mother Program, Jonders has his family and Kelly, the security chief. Payne has Denine, his girlfriend, Teri and old friend, and Donny, plus a professor. Some of these supporting players serve to connect the main characters, others are their for plot or character conflict purposes (or both). It gives a sense of scope to the book, that the world is a big place, with lots of people, and one event can impact many of them. So that's good.

On the downside, with so many characters, it feels like certain bits fall through the cracks, because Carver didn't have time to explore them further. Mozy has a scar on her face, from an attack she and a friend survived when they were teens. While this feeds into her questions of self-worth, and how she interacts with people (defensively), there's never any indication from the characters we see that they notice or care about the scar. Maybe that's the point, but I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to see some indication of how it makes it difficult for Mozy to interact with people from the perspective of those others. Also, in the Slim Marshall chapter, as Marshall wonders why he feels so tense, he questions if part of it is feeling that, as a black man, he has some extra standard to uphold in this position of authority. He dismisses it quickly, thinking he's put those feelings well behind him, but if he had, why would the possibility occur to him? That's the only chapter from Slim's perspective, though, so it felt out of place, an anvil dropped in the middle of that paragraph, then ignored. I was considering adding how quickly Kadin exits the book as a major player, but I think that reinforces something the aliens point out a couple of times. Namely, humans have very limited perceptions, and it's difficult for them to go beyond them when confronted with something they aren't prepared for**. Mozy works through it, but Kadin is more limited, and can't.

I'm not sure about the importance of singing to the aliens, certainly not as it relates to joining disparate species. What would sound glorious to one group might sound ear-shatteringly horrifying to another. Also, the aliens love Earth rock n' roll. Well why not? Rock n' roll is only the jammingest musical style in the whole universe! It's totally got the music of the Universe*** beat!

The character that most intrigues me is Hoshi, who acted out of strong emotion, with disastrous results. He descends into madness as the story progresses, and questions his true motives for acting, which made me question them as well. It seemed like he was trying to make Mozy happy, while leaving some small chance he could be happy as well. I don't think it was going to work, even if things hadn't gone south, but I'm not willing to label him one of those "Nice Guys" that aren't really nice. Hoshi probably would apply that descriptor to himself, though, but I wonder if that would change if he knew how things turned out?

I think what happened with this book is that there are several ideas presented I wanted to know more about, that were really just pieces added for atmosphere. Each section of the book starts with a couple of pages from the perspective of some sentient species in the Solar System that isn't humans. See, now I want to know more about the beings living deep inside the sun, or the methane-slush eating creatures of Titan, or the crystalline entities on Pluto. We get brief glimpses, mostly how they react to the aliens' tachyon-signal songs, but how their civilizations worked prior to that interests me more than a story where humans try to form peaceful relations with aliens, but the military almost fucks it up, because that's what it's for, apparently.

Related to that, one other bit I find myself wondering about. Once the aliens arrive, and the public knows about them, it's said that while there is some panic, most people are excited about the aliens, and when word gets out the government tried to nuke the aliens, people are angry, wanting to know why they can't be friends with the aliens? I wonder, if extra-terrestrials actually did show up, would that be the way reactions would go? Or would the majority of the people be terrified, or aggressive? I'd like to think curiosity would win out, and we'd extend a friendly hand, but a more fearful response wouldn't surprise me in the least****.

The possibilities brought up by the book intrigued me more than the story itself, but I still enjoyed the story, I just felt things progressed to quickly in places, but there's no strict timeline, so the plot may take place over an even longer period of time than I think. The book read quickly, though some of the techno-jargon made me start to zone out, and the aliens' tendency to speak over each other, kind of grates, even if it is probably the best representation of that particular organizational approach. The Infinity Link isn't going to break into my favorite books of all time list (if I had one of those), but I feel the time spent reading it was well-spent.

* Though they never tell me something useful, like lottery numbers. It's more like "That one girl in your class with the scar will wear a yellow sweater tomorrow", and lo and behold, she does. The Legion of Superheroes would laugh their asses off at me.

** At least the aliens aren't particularly condescending about it.

*** Also known as the microwave background radiation that is the remnant of the universe's formation, and can be heard as music, apparently.

**** Not coincidentally, while I'd hope the aliens were friendly, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to kill us, and take our planet for their own. It's the kind of thing we do.