by R. K. Syrus
Melanie also designed the horse carriage. Its pieces were fabricated in a big 3-D printer in their basement. She looks like a runway model or the most flagrant of trophy wives. She’s neither. His protégé, and Eurolincx’s chief organizer of miscellany, is a world-class inventor.
A unique balancing system and stealth coating on the wheels make them appear to float over the road. Onlookers are delighted.
Take that, Lichty!
“Say one thing about the old haggis,” Melanie says, “he can definitely throw a party.”
Her expression tells him she’s scheming toppers.
“Ide-eaa!” Her mercurial mind settles on one. “Let’s show Licht we’re no slouches. How about we rent the Coliseum in Rome and put on an ancient Greek play marathon? It can be for the EHS Kids charity. What do you say?”
“Same as the Dalai Lama said when you lectured him on the feng shui of his bathrooms: FML!” Ran scans the line ahead. “By the looks of the armored palanquin pulling up, His Serene Holiness is attending. Remember, he still has that restraining order on you.”
“That’s only valid in Nepal,” she scoffs.
After crossing the border from France, their pace down the wide and meticulously maintained Seven Rays Avenue had been swift. Just as they pass the Shiva statue they come up against a knot of traffic. Hordes of arriving scientists, politicians, sports figures, and entertainment luminaries dash against a scarcity of valets.
“I’m not breathing exhaust fumes another second.” Ran tugs the reins smartly left. “Haw!”
Cassius and Brutus turn off the road, gleefully scattering paparazzi in front of their hooves. They trample some hedges on their way to a manicured meadow. How Melanie manages to stay on her feet in six-inch stilettos is anyone’s guess, though she’s probably worked out a physics formula in her head. She grabs his arm, her curls bouncing in fading sunlight.
“Enough off-roading.”
He reins up. The tableau of them careening off the pink gravel drive sends cameras clicking and media drones buzzing toward them like flies to honey.
“Sometimes two horsepower is more impressive than two thousand,” Melanie says sagely.
“Brilliant idea, this chariot contraption.” Ran smiles at the camera lenses. “What’s my next one, by the way?”
Melanie’s voice and manner channels a club hostess who’s been sampling too much of her own wares. She just might be the brightest mind in the place tonight. Had she finished every course of study she started in sciences, medicine, and jazz dance, she would have more degrees than a thermometer.
Ran settles Brutus down.
Cassius chomps on some amusingly expensive Brazilian orchids.
Melanie’s brain buzzes. It’s almost audible.
“Licht’s nasty old Lichtstrom is so much like the cursed house of Atreus, don’t you think?” she says. “Coming here always reminds me of the Oresteia plays.”
“I know your mind works in mysterious ways,” Ran says with a sigh. “But how does the headquarters of a megalomaniac with his own country remind you of ancient Greek tragedies?
“Seriously, pay attention. We’re walking into the personal fortress of a psychopath who’s about to blast a likely alien object with gigajoules of energy.”
She is paying attention—to the thousand channels broadcasting between her left and right hemispheres.
“Oh, look!” Melanie chirps. “A red carpet.”
With a rustle of crêpe and a fluttering of ribbons, she dashes quickly over to his side. Holding out her hand, she speaks with a stage voice that would be right at home at the Old Vic.
“Now, my king,
step down from your chariot,
and let not your foot touch the ground.
Good men! Hark!
Let there be spread before this Castle of Caprice,
wherein Justice leads him,
a path of pure crimson.”
Ran looks at her as he steps out of the chariot. “You just made that up.”
“Did not, you big silly!” She giggles. “It’s from Agamemnon.”
“That sounds Greek.” They walk toward the entrance arches on a red carpet nearly as wide as a regulation football pitch. “Let me guess, it doesn’t end well for the old duffer?”
“You had to axe.”
Melanie’s laugh echoes effervescently inside the sterile arched colonnade. Hair shaking ensues. Ran sighs.
“I’m sure that’s funny to you and the three other people in the world who would get the joke.” They join the walking line to the vaulted entrance. “If you can, try to act daft and empty headed. The world abhors vacuums and loves to fill them with secrets. I’m eager to find out more about, you know, things.”
“Ranny, enjoy yourself. It’s a party, and you’re not paying!” She fusses over his lapels. “Let me fix that. You have to look neat for the snappies.”
Dexterous fingers straighten the yellow rose that was threatening to come askew.
24
The paparazzi are less obnoxious than normal. Ran sees why. They are hemmed in by translucent chicken wire. Lichtwerks guards carry festively colored shocker batons. These can, and do, extend four meters to swat cam drones trespassing out of their designated airspace. Higher up, interceptor drones circle with the same aim. Dr. Licht has tamed this unruly flock.
Still, a cacophony of voices shout. Mostly at Melanie.
“Oooooh, regardez les cheveux.”
“Líta á kjól!”
“那個女人是如此的高大，她一定吃了很多”
“Apuesto a que esos son falsos.”
“I’d like to put a bit between her teeth, I would.”
Past the reporters and vloggers is an atrium one hundred feet high. The scalloped walls of the entrance cornices are scaled to make individuals feel insignificant. On all sides are ever-narrowing polygons made of mirrors. The effect is dizzying. Four lines of infinite Rans and infinite Melanies radiate out. The reflections collapse as they walk up to the crystal staircase.
The final threshold barrier is a curtain made up of a waterfall of holographic hummingbirds. They cascade off Ran’s shoulders. He resists the urge to brush them away. He and Melanie enter Der Lichtstrom.
Ran has little interest in physics experiments. He leaves quarks, snarks, and leptons to others. This event is special. He’s been frenemies with Licht long enough to know when he’s up to something. A gentleman usher approaches.
“Bonsoir, monsieur, I shall announce Mr. Ranulph Oliphant, CEO of Eurolincx, unless you prefer another appellation.”
“I had all my appellations out.”
The usher stares.
Might as well joke with a tree stump. “Yes, that will be fine.”
“And your plus one, will it be Mrs. or Miss?”
“Doctor.”
Ah, Melanie.
“Oh!” she chirps. “On second thought, could you also appellate me Duchesse de Mer de la Terre, s'il vous plait. The title is not official yet. Ran’s been promising me my own archipelago. We’re calling it Duchy of Earthsea, after Ursula Le Guin’s book.”
An orchestra plays. Musicians sit on a transparent platform above the entrance hall. The pianist renders Chopin’s Nocturne seemingly out of thin air. Her Steinway is made of crystalline polymers. Notes float through flower-scented air and turn into light as they bounce off surfaces. Sound waves splash like neon rain on a lake.
A waiter traipses by.
“Canapé, Miss?”
Melanie’s nose wrinkles at the gray putrid goop served on a cracker shaped like a seashell.
“What is it?”
“Seafood surprise.”
“No thanks. I’ll save room to blimp out on white truffles covered in gold leaf. Where are they?”
Before they can announce Ran and the duchess, a crystal-walled inclinator descends from the tower. The single passenger is Dr. Licht.
He steps directly over. “Ach, how good of you to come to my humble get-together. I trust the
journey was smooth.”
“Quite, thank you,” Melanie replies.
Licht makes a gesture halfway between a handshake and hand kiss. Ran is torn between mirth and revulsion.
“Brilliant,” Ran agrees. “I did notice some dirt on the driveway a few miles out. You may want to have someone look at that.”
Melanie’s hair quivers as she suppresses a laugh.
“I see, Mr. Oliphant,” Licht says in an exaggerated German accent. “And everyone says the Scottish are unfunny. Clearly they have not met you.”
All around them, crown princes and ambassadors hover like dorky schoolkids waiting to chat with the in crowd. Licht steers himself to a group of Chinese nationals in suits surrounded by bodyguards. Everyone’s come with their own security. Understandable. This is foreign territory.
Ran looks for the Americans, custodians of the Ansible. They are out of sight in the massive hall.
“Dr. Fong, China’s minister of technology,” Licht says, introducing Ran and Melanie.
The world-renowned scientist Fong ignores Licht and greets Ran with a vacant nod. Then he sees Melanie. Fong beams at her with mischievous joy. Dr. Françoise has, for years, been his long-distance colleague and implacable cyber-mahjong rival. Licht looks positively ticked off.
“Dr. Françoise, how wonderful you are able to be here,” Fong says, looking like a man who has just had slivers of boredom removed from his fingernails. “Your blog on nanoparticle-infusion synthesis… It was just breathtaking.”
“Shucks, that was nothing. Mostly guessing.”
“But how else are we to move forward without a leap of faith?” Fong says animatedly. “I do mean it really took our breath away. I vaporized the formulation just as you detailed in Part One of your treatise. What do you think happened?”
He pulls at his collar and tie as though trying to inhale more deeply. Equal parts fascinated and horrified by the recent memory of the experiment.
“All the oxygen left the room instantly!” Fong says. “Only nitrogen was left. My lab assistants and I were, for a regrettable time, unable to breathe.”
Melanie looks mildly embarrassed, as though she had a clutch purse that didn’t quite go with her fingernail polish.
“Right, yeah. The inert-gas-asphyxiation booboo. How to stop that from happening is actually in Part Two of the blog post. I haven’t got ’round to putting that up. Beastly old Ran’s been keeping me so busy.” Melanie twinkles back at Dr. Fong. “Sorry.”
She adds, “But at least you didn’t suffocate yourself too harshly. Otherwise you’d be missing all this tremendous fun.”
She takes the senior scientist’s arm.
“Sooooo, tell me all about the telemetry from the Màoxiǎn jiā lander module on the dwarf planet Eris. I heard through the cosmic grapevine that you think Dysnomia is kvetching out some Milankovitch stress. Now, that’s totally normal in planetary mother-daughter relationships…”
Melanie always looks on the bright side, even when pushing the bounds of nanophysics in hazardous directions. Ran and Licht are left with the younger and more dour Chinese ambassador.
“I would say congratulations are in order,” Dr. Licht says. “China’s successful Eris probe landing is a milestone in exploration.”
Licht’s lips smile while his eyes glance venomously at a giggling Melanie.
The ambassador, who is cultivating a discreet goatee, says, “The official landing tomorrow. It is a testament to how far China has come: from the Great Wall to the farthest place in our solar system.”
Licht can’t stand being overshadowed, even by a planet. “On behalf of Lichtwerks International, allow me to express our national corporate pride that we were chosen to supply the communications link inside the Adventurer lander. You will find it the most powerful and stable communication system ever designed.”
Ran sees they’ve drifted close to the orbit of the American contingent. One rogue human satellite in a rumpled suit lurches toward them. It’s Delphino Everett, Explorer of the Century and one half of the duo who found the Ansible artifact in Antarctica. He’s reputed to be positively barmy.
“I’ll tell ya,” Everett begins in a booming voice. He lurches and nearly bumps into Licht.
Great. Famously unhinged and drunk. This should be fun.
“I’ll tellsya all something,” he slurs. “If that space probe had been built with my Ansible com-communications links, you’d have your data instantly! You hear me? In-stant-ly. Instead of waiting twelve hours for slow-assed neutrinos to take their sweet old time traveling from the edge of the solar system. No one can say I never told ya. Because I just did!”
Everett is tallish, with what can only be described as big hair. Ran suspects it is a wig covering the antipsychotic brain implant fused to his skull. The one that reputedly keeps him sane. Licht looks torn between beating a retreat and summoning security.
“Own up to it, Lichty, my boy.” Everett’s waving hand narrowly misses a champagne tray. “After these tests tonight, your photonic data network will be like carrier pigeons after the telegraph.”
Licht takes umbrage. “I hardly think our proven, world-beating technology—”
“Pigeons, Lichty. Airborne rats. Full of sticky crap and lice.”
Ran steps in before the duffers get physical.
“Dr. Everett,” he says, taking the elderly explorer’s elbow, “great to see you. You know our Dr. Melanie, right? She’s dying to ask your opinion about an Ice Age calendar her team found in Mongolia. It covers hundreds of meters. Has pictures of woolly rhinos and whatnot. Terribly fascinating.”
Like tricking a bull out of a china shop with a red cape, Melanie soon has Everett firmly in the grasp of her gargantuan eyelashes.
On the other side of the palatial hall, the UK group materializes. Along with them, Ran’s old school friend.
“Tenny, you made it.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” says a stout Englishman with a scattered mop of blond hair. “Cosmic coronation, what?”
“Professor,” Ran says, “I’m sure you know our esteemed foreign secretary, Sir Tenny Sewart the Third. Sir Tenny and I went to the same school. I cleaned the stables to pay tuition while he played polo.”
“At least it wasn’t elephant polo!”
They both smile at the long-running joke based on Ran’s family name.
“Oh, don’t rub it in, Oliphant,” Tenny goes on. “Here I am, a lowly civil servant standing between two of the wealthiest people on Earth.”
Tenny has a look typical to English landed gentry—slightly rounded shoulders, soft middle, and upright posture. His easy manner belies a reasonably active mind and ferocious ambition.
“Don’t be bashful, Sir Tenny, Number 10’s a stone flick from your office. One route or another, we’ve all found seats above the salt.”
Licht has to mention himself. “Yes, I have had quite a rise. After my formal training in physics, I started as apprentice in my dear old father’s factories. Now Lichtwerks is accepted as the first corporate state in its own right. If only dollars were wisdom, I could be much happier still.”
“Your stock took a bit of a tumble when they announced these tests.”
“A blip,” Licht snaps. “We are doing better than ever. Just wait until our laser-light-powered planes take off. Pardon my pun.” Licht turns to Sir Tenny. “Once we strike it with the world’s largest particle accelerator, any mysteries this object holds will soon be stripped bare.”
“Dunno, Wolfgang,” Ran counters. “I mean, faster-than-light communications, possibly even costless clean energy. Could be very disruptive to the order of things.”
Licht clenches his left fist. It has an odd swelling Ran’s noticed before. “He who is afraid of the future deserves to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
The Chopin piece finishes. As the last notes cascade through the hall, dozens of champagne corks erupt. Bubbly froth every color of the rainbow jets out.
“Champagne teinté!”
Sir Tenny is overjoyed. “Professor, you think of everything!”
Moments later, everyone holds a glass. Licht appears on the orchestra balcony.
“To all my fellow nations, I offer a toast. To the peaceful use of this technology, whatever its ultimate worth. Let us usher in the brightest future possible for all humanity!”
A mirrored wall flutters, turns into diaphanous silver curtains, and parts.
“Lichtwerks presents, the Ansible.”
And there it is.
25
For most of the guests, it is their first time.
“Beautiful!”
“Ohhh!”
“I have a car that color.”
“I thought it would be bigger.”
The elderly explorer Everett sputters loudly to life. “You ninnies! It’s not really here. It’s out on the collider levels. The Ansible can’t be projected or recorded or anything.” He waves people toward the exits. “This is a joke! Time to go home everyone.”
“Ya, my famous explorer friend is correct,” Dr. Licht says coolly. “I present the camera obscura, Lichtwerks style. While the Ansible may defy recording technology for now, it obeys the laws of reflection as long as some conscious self-aware being is there to view it. Behold, the tiny wonder that has captivated the globe.”
The narrow view widens into a live holographic analog window. The test chamber. Ran notices scientists in coverall smocks and masks scurrying about doing science things.
Melanie nudges him. “He must be reflecting the light from inside the test chamber onto thousands of tiny mirrors.”
Licht looks positively jittery as he downs the fourth glass of his own neon-colored swill. Ran sees a way to irritate him without appearing petty.
The Americans follow Everett around the room. Ran steers the madcap explorer toward the Russians. Orbits cross. It’s a veritable Sputnik-Apollo collision.
Legally, the United States has possession of the “football,” as they inelegantly call it due to the shape of its impenetrable skin. Thanks to Eurolincx’s defense contracts, Ran has seen the Ansible close up. It’s most like a transparent rugby ball. Everyone wants its secrets. Especially an increasingly surly bear.
