by R. K. Syrus
Flanked by a thinly disguised hulking cyborg, Ambassador Yuri Madyanov starts in on the Yanks.
“On behalf of the Federation of Federated Federal Russian Republics, I challenge the USA to renounce military applications of the Ansible device and open its Cheyenne Mountain facilities to our inspectors.”
Yuri stands squarely in front of Americans talking without pausing for breath.
“We demand the Ansible be placed in protective custody of the United Nations. Since the UN has no personnel here, we have brought a secure vehicle transport of the world’s—and I say the world’s—great natural treasure!”
The US’s General Halley whispers to Ran, “If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s gettin’ lip from foreigners. Particularly in a foreign country.”
This is the last thing Licht wants. Ran enjoys the moment.
“Well, Yuri,” Halley says, “none of us really know all what it does, do we? Dr. Everett here is a citizen. He found the darned thing and made a formal request we become conservators. That’s all we are.”
Delphino Everett’s hair is askew. He’s in some kind of private maudlin agony. “I only wish my co-discoverer could pee with us… I mean, be with us.”
Not even the Russian interrupts him. In matters of the Ansible, its owner’s pledge to give any derived technology away for free to all nations has popular opinion squarely behind him. Everett also knows where all the bodies are buried. From what Ran understands, that’s not just a metaphor.
“But… the accident. It was horrible. He’s dissolving. My good, best friend,” Everett says, devolving into sobs. “Kofi—it means Friday in his language—Kofi Akan is vanishing bit by bit. Like a sugar cube in hot tea. Nothing anyone can do.”
He ends up weeping on Ran’s shoulder. This further deranges his wig, until the metal of his neural implant shows.
Ping-ping-ping. Their host taps a glass.
“Honored Royal Highnesses, lords, ladies, and gentlemen, my technicians advise me we are on schedule. The supercollider sequence is initiated.”
Waiters scurry between caviar fountains and the ring of theatre-style seats.
“Please enjoy the real-time holographic representation.”
Everyone sees the Ansible slightly differently. Ran, like most people, perceives a ball of yellow light like a kindly fire. He does not believe in the supernatural or unexplainable, but he can’t help conceding its mesmerizing quality. Once he starts to stare, it always seems to develop petal shapes folding in upon themselves.
Sir Tenny ambles over. “Boy, there it is. Did you ever, eh?” He leans forward to the holo display. “Say… is there a shadow on it?”
Melanie shakes her head, staring, completely captivated. “There’s no shadow,” she says. “It’s just an eye. An eye that belongs to everything.”
26
Licht breaks the hypnotic moment. “First will come the all-important qubit data test, sponsored by the conservator government: the United States.”
Tenny pokes Ran. “You’ve seen it before.”
He nods. “They’ve tested my company’s handsets with mated beryllium chips. Once two objects come in contact with the Ansible’s shell, some kind of connection forms. Energy and data transmit instantly over any distance. No one knows how.”
Excited, Melanie forgets to filter. “Walsh-Hadamard gate theory doesn’t apply, but neither does pure state no-broadcast theory, and don’t even get me started with dagger compact topological—”
“Aye.” Ran makes eyes at her.
You’re supposed to act dumb.
“Oh, right,” Melanie says, fluttering eyelashes long enough to fan up a breeze. “I just noticed: the green champagne has the most bubbles.” She holds her glass to the Ansible’s light and squeals like a dippy porpoise. “Isn’t that the best?”
“Following on,” Licht continues, “comes the energy-potential test. Done according to the protocols of the People’s Republic of China.”
Melanie whispers, “I hope they’re gentle with the poor thing. Be a shame to break it before we know what it is.”
“Finally, the scientific journey will conclude with the gravity-well assimilation sequence based on the research of the Federation of Federated Federal Russian Republics.”
The professor forces a grin. “I will tell you to fasten your seatbelts for that one.”
“I’m glad the champagne is better than the floor show,” says Sir Tenny. “Say, Ran, I’m not big on the science stuff. What do you think makes this Ansible glow?”
“Best guess, Tenny, and mind you this is highly, highly classified.” Ran puts on his serious face. “Moonbeams and puppy dog tails.”
The foreign minister thinks for a second.
“Oh boy, you do love to gad about, don’t you? That’s why we all love you so much.”
“No one has a clue why it does anything it does. What do we know? Everett and Akan found it in the Bentley Subglacial Trench. International territory. No nation had any claim. A survey laser bounced off it and struck Dr. Akan. Everett called to a US base for assistance. Then a certain group of hostiles from an unnamed superpower showed up. After a tussle, the American’s special-ops team flew off with the prize.”
Ran is momentarily distracted, thinking back on the dangers that those soldiers faced at the bottom of the world. “During the skirmish, they discovered it could be used for faster-than-light communications. The Ansible got its name.”
The collider warm-up drags.
Licht struts nervously.
Everett mopes.
Ran sips a drink, recounting Ansible trivia.
“There was even some wanker who theorized moving it from the ice cavern would throw the Earth off its axis. That didn’t happen, right, Melanie?”
“Not even a wobble.” Melanie sounds a little disappointed.
“You don’t suppose there’s any danger to us?” Tenny says. “By blasting it with rays and whatnot?”
The foreign secretary finds something more captivating than the Ansible—down the front of Melanie’s dress. Melanie shifts her shoulders and makes sure no naughty bits are visible to her unwanted mammary scholar.
Just in case he’s still interested in orbs of a celestial origin, she says, “Totally theoretical, Sir Knight. There are two components: the invisible, impenetrable capsule and what’s inside.”
Tenny positively trembles. “What is inside?”
“Did you not follow the impenetrable part?” Ran chides him.
“Ah, totally sinking in.”
“The outer shell has some interesting properties. Especially interacting with lasers.” Saying the last word always makes Melanie’s eyes twinkle.
“The Chinese will test its ability to start”—she covers her mouth with a napkin before talking scientific—“an inertial-confinement fusion reaction. It could generate a usable heat sink or simply explode with a yield around, umnnn, two gigatons, rounding all the zeroes.”
“Golly, is that…a lot?”
“It’s only a millionth of a petaton.”
“Barely ruffle your hair,” Ran adds reassuringly.
“Er, good to know.” With surprising agility, Tenny darts after a drink tray.
Licht gestures. “We only get one shot. The clock cannot be stopped. An energy buildup of this magnitude has to come out somewhere.”
0000:11:28
In contrast to his gravitas, the holographic view of the test chamber plays like comic cinema. A technician furiously and silently tugs at one of the support struts. It seems to have something to do with keeping the Ansible from falling onto the floor. Licht’s face is a brittle mask.
China’s top scientist Dr. Fong has been taking full advantage of the open bar. His round face is beet red.
“When the winds of change rise,” he lisps sagely, “some build brick walls. Others build windmills.”
The Russians and Americans increasingly look like they want to bash each other with bricks or any hard material.
�
��What about security?” Ambassador Madyanov continues his harangue. “It’s one thing to monopolize a resource that belongs to everyone, but I see only a few of your Secret Service. I was expecting to see your fabled Army Delta Force.”
The ambassador points to the cyborg. “Komandir Zvena was hoping to thank the squad leader, Sienna McKnight, face-to-face for leaving him in a pool of South Polar ice water.”
“Oh yeah, Mr. Ambassador?” General Halley counters. “I’d say our Ansible is a lot more secure than that load of lithium isotopes you all ‘misplaced’ last year. Talk about a dirty bomber’s wet dream!”
Ran drifts over to Melanie. She has calmed Everett down, even managing to straighten his wig without him noticing.
“Oh, sure, Louis could write,” she says. “But since he was drunk all the time, Mary Leakey did all the heavy lifting. He often spent evenings boozing and flipping tiddlywinks into cavemen skulls.”
Everett thinks for a moment. “Say, I do hope it wasn’t Sahelanthropus Man.”
Melanie grins.
“You’re so wicked, Delphino. I should say not! Their tiny little brain pans wouldn’t hold more than one wink.”
“Right. Can you imagine the continual tiddly scrunging that would happen?”
Everett and Melanie’s raucous geek laughter is drowned out by a bloodcurdling scream.
“What is that?” a woman cries out. “Who are those people?”
She shrieks the last word of each sentence.
Everyone looks at the hologram of the Ansible test chamber. Two vicious eyes stare into the camera obscura out of an otherwise black-masked face.
Behind the intruder, a technician screams soundlessly at someone out of sight. His protests are cut short by a hand with a knife. It slices his white cloth-covered neck.
A surge of adrenaline jolts Ran to the soles of his Fosters shoes, specially made with bone-crunching carbon inserts. His worst fear had been a dull evening.
On the holoscreen a small woman scientist gets an icepick-style weapon shoved up under the base of her skull. The point comes out of her eye socket and knocks off her black-rimmed glasses.
To her right, a fellow whose white lab coat is carefully cinched under man boobs gushes blood from precise wounds on both sides of his neck. He drops out of view. The image freezes into a jittery staccato of mayhem.
The change in programming from BBC Science to silent Benny Hill comedy to slasher-flick atrocities took all of ten seconds.
In a delayed reaction, everyone hangs a moment between disbelief and instinctive flight. No one in the observation lounge moves or speaks or panics.
Then everyone tries to do all those things at once.
“Oh my God!”
“Professor, is something wrong?”
“Relax, ladies, it’s probably part of the show.”
Ambassador Madyanov motions to his cyborg bodyguard.
“Idti!”
The mass of flesh and metal covered by a hastily altered formal suit lurches away, shouldering aside frenzied partygoers.
0000:01:59
27
ZAUBERWALD WOODS
LICHTSTROM
TOMMY SHARA
Tommy Shara stares out a window in mute agony as two thugs drive him through treed hills. Numbly, he recalls the name of this place from the map he studied during his trip here. Zauberwald. The Magic Forest. An orderly woods ringing uniform hills kilometers away from high crystal spires.
Licht is up there. In the steel and glass icicle stabbing at the afternoon sky, the space elevator lattice sparkles. It mocks him.
Licht. That madman.
He had arrived a respected journalist. He’d hoped to ensnare and expose Dr. Licht with that corporate despot’s own words. Now he is trapped. We are trapped.
My wife Mira! She doesn’t even know. How can I tell her? Why did I get involved in this?
The composite-frame electric car lurches like a golf cart on the way to the executive residences.
Executive prisons, he thinks bitterly.
They stop.
The goons give him the ignition keycard. He understands. Perimeter gates are lightly manned. There are no bars, no locked doors. None are needed.
Shara feels like a still-alive moth pinned to corkboard. He can flutter all he likes—escape will tear him to pieces. Love and devotion for his dear wife and…
Is it really true?
Their unborn child. These facts bind him more harshly than any chains.
Oh, Mira! What will I tell you when you get here?
Licht’s people have made up some story. She is flying on one of the company’s jets. He must tell her the truth. In all their years together, they have never had a corrosive falsehood between them.
Or… Is it possible he’s thinking this way? What if he tells Mira that after their interview, Licht surprised him. Shocked him, really. Presented him with a job offer so tempting he could not refuse.
Just today, Mira narrowly escaped being killed by a bomb. Their close friend was murdered. Indonesia is too dangerous. Her legal work is mostly international. Where better for them to be than at the heart of the world’s information hub? It makes chilling sense.
A gilded noose. Is that why his predecessor took his only way out? Why he drowned himself in that lake, the one that sits dark and quiet on the edge of the Magic Forest? If he lies to Mira, he will make for himself the heaviest chain of all. Was that planned?
When he looks up and notices where they’re leading him, he’s in front of a country house. His? Theirs? A cage in a most ingenious zoo.
There’s even a reptile section in the garage. Most of its interior is taken up by custom-built glass and walnut habitats. Inside the largest of these lies a brightly speckled coil of muscle, its head tucked out of sight.
Corporate goons usher him to a garden off the kitchen. The place has tranquility that is toxic. It makes liberty alien, even frightening.
Tommy Shara jams his hands in his pockets. Clenching fists, he vows he will use all his energies, all the lessons Licht just taught him about subterfuge, manipulation, and blackmail, to plot his own vengeance. Somehow he will destroy the twisted fiend who ruined his life.
He needs time. To get it, he’ll have to lie to Mira and to everyone. Can he play Licht’s sick game? What did he call it? Liar’s poker? Can he do that and keep his resolve? His sanity?
What else could he do? Run?
He forces himself to consider it. He must be close to France. Even if he can’t get across the frontier, friends of his are here for the Ansible tests. Reporters, diplomats. He knows them. They’ll help, they will… For the hundredth time, the idea evaporates.
A green pinprick of light blinks on his recorder. It is empty. The kilobyte counter has been hacked. It could count to infinity. Its silica brain remembers nothing. The truth is only in his mind. Useless.
Without proof, what is he? An accomplice to his wife. The presumed terrorist who personally delivered a bomb to the ministry offices in Jakarta. With one click on his control panel, Licht could send them both down the macabre pipes of his country’s so-called justice system.
There is no way he can save himself, not without destroying her. And their child? Has anyone learned such a thing under more perverse conditions?
“You relax here, yes?” a thug tells him. “Herr Doktor said you are to be comfortable. But do not wander. This forest, Der Zauberwald, can be tricky. Especially in the dark.”
The other thug ushers him forward to the garden in front of the porch.
“We stay until Mrs. Shara arrives. Then off to Human Resources we all go. They are open through day and night. Welcome to Der Lichtstrom.”
• • •
An hour later, the guards leave. Quickly. Shara finds himself alone.
Reality creeps into his head. Like this air, it feels damp, strangely thin. Exhausted from pacing, he sits. From a garden chair, he stares at trees. Trees planted in rows just so. Beyond the edge of that lake invisible phot
onic eyes watch, unblinking.
Shara thinks about the cottage’s last resident. A waterlogged corpse in the Lichtstrom’s morgue. Did he have the same thoughts? Perhaps he was caught in a similar web, partly of his own making—
How had he and Mira been so stupid? They knew fringe elements in Indonesia talked violence. Licht was the perfect opportunist. He had not created any of the players. He just arranged the game to suit his megalomaniac aims.
Had the drowned man sat in this chair thinking? Of escape? Vengeance? Justice? How had that worked out for him? He had strapped on ankle weights and sunk to the bottom of the cold, uncaring waters of the lake.
A bleak wind hovers from its mirror surface. He gathers a blanket closer. Its woolly surface is festooned with twigs and leaves. His chill grows. The air in Europe is different. Must be the elevation.
What is that buzzing?
Some noise. Not quite a sound. From behind his sinuses, above his throat from the center of his skull. He looks around.
The guards have gone. Yes. Ten minutes ago.
There had been chattering on the radio. A heavier vehicle, a truck, came. They left. One yelled at him to stay. Is something wrong with the Ansible?
If the place blows up and Licht dies, we might be free.
The small electric car they came in is there. He has the keycard for the ignition.
Shara has an inkling… It ebbs from his nerves and the edges of his will. Thoughts run through ice water. He should get up. Unseen frost crystals penetrate.
Cold, so cold.
Get up. Go inside. Be ready to… Get up.
Shara does not get up.
Something.
Movement.
To the left. To the right. Behind?
With a jerking start, he looks. Nothing.
More and less, too.
He wishes the guards were back. Anyone. Mira! Little by little, the fear grips him.
The terrible cold. He is in its web and cannot move. Some things, more than one thing, he is sure of it. These things, they look like frozen shockwaves in the air. Just flickering outside the edge of vision.
