The Quantum Garden

by Derek Künsken

  “Cassie, precisely because I’m a liar, they can never believe me,” he said. “People think there’s something magical about a lie, like it’s about the lie itself, as if you make up a good enough lie, it will work. For a lie to work, the liar needs to be trusted. And no one trusts me.”

  “I do,” she said.

  He didn’t want anyone’s faith.

  “I don’t want to lie to anyone. They trust you, Cassie. They’ll believe you because they want to. And they have to be angry at someone. Let them stay mad at me.”

  After a time, they walked from her small room to the cafeteria, ate briefly in a cubicle, surrounded by other hushed cubicle eaters. Then they made their way to the low office buildings, heavy under a funereal mood. Lina Arjona received them numbly. Councilors Uribe and Samper were morosely slumped in her office too. The five of them sat in silence for a time. This was supposed to be the morning meeting to deal with the problems of the fourth day of the preparations for the exodus.

  “Lina,” Belisarius said finally, “have you thought of asking Cassie to lead the evacuation for you?”

  The mayor’s dark eyes regarded Cassie dully, then drifted to Belisarius without expression.

  “Can I appoint you mayor?” Lina asked quietly.

  “Me?” Cassie asked incredulously.

  Lina’s limp stare leaned on her. Uribe and Samper, councilors who ought to have had some claim to the mayoralty, seemed relieved at the direction of the conversation.

  “For the evacuation, and until we find a new home, it should be Bel?” Cassie said.

  She’d chickened out.

  “No one trusts me, Cassie,” Belisarius said.

  The mayor and the two councilors regarded him. Their expressions did not disagree with him, but neither did they look like they had alternatives. He saw what they wanted. They feared the unknown beyond the Garret. They couldn’t imagine getting food and shelter that wasn’t grown here or provided by the Banks, much less founding a new home. They thought he could. They wanted him to tell them what to do.

  “I’ll help you, Cassie,” he said. “I’ll be your advisor on the outside world.”

  “Legally, it isn’t difficult,” Uribe said. “The mayor appoints Cassandra deputy mayor, and then resigns.”

  “Cassie would make a great mayor,” Belisarius said.

  Cassie squeezed his hand. His heartbeat and breathing fell into resonance with hers, as if she were spotting him in the fugue.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ONE THOUSAND, THREE hundred and twelve Homo quantus assembled around the municipal building, looking up to the garden roof to watch Cassie’s swearing in ceremony. Belisarius had never been watched by so many people at once. His hands and knees trembled. He wanted to hide, in savant, or even in the fugue. But their predicament was his fault and they all knew it by now, so he had to be here.

  He was something of a prop too, now. They did trust Cassie, moreso because she’d been into the wide world. But they were angry and resentful, and he was the lightning rod. They could direct all that resentment towards him, leaving Cassie to be the one they would look up to and listen to. It was a bit of an emotional con, playing specifically on the highly developed Homo quantus ability to think in multiple channels. They could feel in multiple channels too.

  And in a sense, they wanted to be conned. Desperate marks stood out there, as desperate as people greedy for money or recognition or power. The more desperate the mark, the easier they were to con. Cassie just had to find what was important to them, and con them with the truth. Cassandra Mejía took the oath of office, becoming the sixth mayor of the Garret, and the last.

  She began her speech, haltingly. They’d written it together, using her knowledge of their people and Belisarius’ knowledge of the con. She didn’t have notes; her memory meant she didn’t need them. Her hesitation was her reaction to all the people looking at her.

  “We’ve been quiet and safe here, even ignored,” Cassie said, “but the universe has noticed us. We made ourselves the gifts that enable us to study the cosmos. There are those who would use our gifts for war. We have to run, find some place to hide, forever.”

  The crowd hung on her words. Their faces were often guilelessly expressive and with his augmented eyes and overactive brain, Belisarius could analyze dozens of reactions at once, graphing them in his mind.

  “I’m not a good pick for mayor,” Cassie admitted, “but I can lead you in exile. I can find us a new home. Finding and building a new home will be hard, but when our grandparents first came to the Garret, it was just ice. We’ll start with more. We’re tenth and eleventh and twelfth generation Homo quantus. We’ve navigated the quantum fugue. And we’re taking all our data and learning with us. None of it will be lost. We’re leaving the Garret with the most important things: ourselves and all our learning. We’ll never stop pushing at the cosmos until it gives us all it knows.”

  They were listening, really listening. Cassie was appealing to their artificially-strengthened curiosity and pattern-recognition. She went off-script, feeling their desperation, reacting to it, reassuring them, as good as any con man would have. Belisarius was lost in sweep of her words. When Cassie reached the end, no one clapped. The Homo quantus disliked noise, but he could tell she’d moved them. The Homo quantus drifted away, mildly uplifted, warily open to hoping, if only for a few hours.

  After a time, Belisarius and Cassie went down to the mayor’s office, Cassie’s office, until the Congregate blew it up. They sat in the chairs in front of the desk, instead of either one taking the mayor’s place. He kissed her.

  “You did better than I could have, Cass.”

  “I can pretend to fix what you’ve done.”

  He sat back in surprise. “You’re good at placing all the blame on me,” he said with a touch of heat, “but didn’t you see this coming? What did you think the Homo quantus project was about? Eventually this would have happened.”

  She shook her head, standing and moving away from him. Something was bothering her. Or catching up with her.

  “The Homo quantus project is about understanding the universe, Bel,” she said. “We provide knowledge and understanding to humanity.”

  Belisarius knew denial when he heard it. It was mana to a con man. She’d swept up the people of the Garret with her words, but in the best multi-channel Homo quantus thinking, she was second-guessing herself, picking apart arguments, attacking her own confidence; turning that to anger. But the same was happening to him. They were a day later, and now this all really was on them. She was the mayor, and he her advisor.

  “The project is nothing of the sort, Cassie. The Plutocracy’s Banks invested millions of pesos over eight decades to create people with quantum perceptions. They hoped their investments would buy them economic and military maps for the future. We’re economic and military technology. Our day had to come. The world has noticed the weapons the Banks have created.”

  “We aren’t dangerous.”

  “You moved a squadron of warships past militarized borders, Cass! What do you think we mean to the generals of the patron nations?”

  “It didn’t have to be now,” she said. “We could have waited. We could have not taken the job.”

  He envied the quiet life she’d led, one that hadn’t required her to build skills to push through difficult social situations, moral dilemmas and angry people. A cosseted life. A good life where the biggest arguments could be settled with data or statistical modeling. The wide world was chaotic and scary. He came close, but didn’t touch her. He lowered his voice.

  “That might not have changed much, Cass. At least now, the Homo quantus have you and me. We’ve been in the world. We’re the dangerous ones. If the Homo quantus have a chance at surviving, it’s us.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CASSANDRA WATCHED THE embarkation of the Homo quantus onto the three freighters, one day ahead of schedule and with a sinking heart. The robots from the freighters and the Garret were still working aro
und the clock and although they hadn’t finished remodeling the insides of the freighters, they were at least habitable. Water storage on the inside of the hull would shield them from radiation, but no ecosystem had been built, so for now, they chemically recycled the air and installed the colony’s bioreactors. The larger problem was that with all the stowed scientific and industrial factories there was a lot less space for the people.

  The Homo quantus boarded with haunted expressions—dejected, stunned, angry. Cassandra didn’t like feeling the dread in her stomach and wanted to be away from here. Away from the people, lost in mathematics and discovery.

  Nearly thirty-seven hundred people were boarded and unhappy, but a few hundred Homo quantus flatly refused to leave. They gathered at the port, trying to convince the others not to go. They’d changed the minds of a dozen. But finally, the last of the Homo quantus in exile were aboard.

  Bel faced the hundreds refusing to come with them with Cassie at his side. He argued with them. He pleaded with them. He reminded them of all the data they would lose access to if they stayed. He described the fireball that would devastate the Garret. But they wouldn’t budge. What could anyone do?

  They were rational, but they’d taken the information and come to different conclusions.

  Based on those conclusions, Cassandra and these few hundred would live two very different, mutually exclusive lives. One path taken. One path not. It was the closest she would ever come to a true multiworlds cosmos, where a single choice dictated so much. But their choices were made, and each side would now live out the implications.

  Belisarius was still trying to convince them. Cassie pulled on his arm and shook her head.

  “Go into savant,” she said.

  “I can’t convince anyone in savant.”

  “It’s not for convincing, Bel,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s to get the work done. Let the emotions go.”

  He frowned. Uncomfortable. The resisters around them sensed something happening.

  “My feelings won’t go away in savant, Cassie.”

  But she had already entered savant. The arguments and grief and loss washed over her, prickling, but not really getting to the core. The mathematics became clearer. Time ticked. The freighters had to be away.

  Belisarius turned from the doomed few who had chosen to stay and walked towards the boarding ramps.

  “That’s it?” Constanza yelled after him. Not at Cassandra, but at him. Constanza had helped run the telescopes for years, someone with whom Cassandra and Bel had crossed paths many times.

  Belisarius kept walking.

  “That’s it,” Cassandra said, following him.

  Terrifying feelings of separation, abandonment and betrayal washed distantly over her, refusing to define themselves. She should have been screaming, dragging these people with her, but they could not come. They were real and would soon be dead, and she was walking away.

  Once they had boarded, the umbilicals detached behind them. They were already likely under observation right now by the Congregate, and maybe even the Banks, but no one would be suspecting that the three freighters were anything but what they appeared. The patron nations were only now piecing together the Homo quantus involvement in the breakout of the Union from the Puppet Axis.

  The freighter Belisarius and Cassie had boarded, Blue, rocked as they lifted off from the Garret’s small port. They’d named the freighters Red, Blue and Green after quantum chromodynamics; the colors that bound quarks together in protons. The Homo quantus children had come up with the naming system as a kind of totem to make sure no one was lost.

  They stood on the bridge of the Blue with a few of the councillors and engineers. From behind them, deeper in the freighter, cries emerged from children and adults who’d never left home, never felt any acceleration other than the gravity of the Garret.

  When Cassandra had left the Garret, she’d been afraid, but she’d left with Bel, the boy she’d loved as a girl, and whom she might love again as a woman. She’d left the Garret with the confidence that she could always come home. Now, they were all refugees.

  Cassie’s pad buzzed. Pads buzzed all around her. Personal computers. Comms. Service bands. A message from Bel rung on every device in the fleet. The message contained data they had gathered about the wormholes; mathematical problems about the modeling of eleven-dimensional space. A sudden elation filled her, and she smiled. The Homo quantus might be terrified, homesick and mourning, but they were still Homo quantus, easily drawn into geometric problems. They didn’t particularly like applied questions, but that might not matter now. More problems and deeper questions appeared on their devices—the stability of induced wormholes; the six-dimension hyper-structure of wormhole throats, and stress problems; spaceship blackbody radiation interference questions. She even saw some of the basic entanglement models they’d started building for the Axis Mundi. Cassie smiled.

  Most Homo quantus would never have worked on anything like this, but Bel had included enough references that they could go back, learn the math and assumptions, imagine the geometries, and begin making progress. Probably in a few hours. Other messages appeared on her screen. Working groups started establishing themselves. Problems and assumption testing elements were divided up. It was hope, a sign that they might survive.

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Bel,” she whispered.

  He smiled wanly. The acceleration cut and they floated free in their seats. More grunts and exclamations came from the stacks of cubicles sternward. The freighters were far enough from the Garret’s weak gravity and blackbody radiation to induce the wormhole they’d preprogrammed. Cassie rubbed Belisarius’ arm encouragingly, trying to banish the image of those they’d left behind. She couldn’t of course, and neither could he.

  “We’re escaping, Bel,” she whispered.

  He pursed his lips and pulled her closer, touching his hot forehead to hers.

  “This is just hiding,” he said. “We have to find them something better.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  CONGREGATE MARINES IN powered armor bearing shoulder-mounted particle cannons emerged from the airlocks into the eerie stillness of the Garret. The Epsilon Indi Scarecrow followed them into the cavern. Its piezoelectric musculature whirred beneath carbon steel cloth. Zooming cameras in its face rotated, spotting the same thing as the marines: infrared signatures. Warm, breathing bodies. Radar frequencies penetrated the plastic and sintered regolith of the houses and apartment complexes on the rolling green hills.

  Two hundred and seventy people.

  Intelligence sources had estimated four thousand. There were dwellings for that many.

  The marines fanned out, securing common buildings and installations, those most likely to contain electronic records. Second and third waves followed, moving from house to house, breaking in and pulling the crying families into custody. Ultrasounds of the captives’ torsos revealed the presence of electroplaques beneath their ribs, confirming their Homo quantus natures. Most captives were anesthetized, fitted with helmets to interrupt electrical or magnetic signals and then carted back to the airlocks and onto the Congregate dropship. Some, however, were brought to the Scarecrow.

  “Where are the rest of the Homo quantus?” the Scarecrow asked in last century’s français.

  “They left,” one woman stammered.

  “Why?” the Scarecrow demanded.

  “Belisarius Arjona came back,” the woman said. “He warned us that we had to leave, that he’d seen that the Congregate was going to blow up the Garret.”

  “How did he know that?”

  “He said he traveled back in time.”

  “Did you believe that he did?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Time travel is impossible. I should have listened.”

  “Because it is possible?”

  “Because you came.”

  “Where is Arjona? Where are the other Homo quantus?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. They left i
n ships.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Two days ago.”

  The woman sobbed, hugging her child. The Scarecrow relayed the information he’d been given to Capitaine Arsenault on Les Rapides de Lachine.

  “You’ll all be coming with us,” the Scarecrow said, turning back to the Homo quantus, “for more extensive interviews about these incredible stories about Arjona, and about your quantum abilities.”

  “I don’t have any quantum abilities,” she said, eyes widening. “Most of us don’t. Every generation has a few more functional Homo quantus, but I’m only generation ten.”

  The woman was anesthetized and loaded with the others. Intelligence officers and political officers descended from Les Rapides de Lachine, systematically dismantling the Garret. The Homo quantus had left a great deal of information, mostly useless reformulations of physical theories and genetic records, but they’d also left in such a hurry that they hadn’t grabbed all the backups of how they’d inched forward in developing this new and dangerous sub-species of humanity.

  “This will anger the Banks,” Majeur Demers said.

  “Let it,” the Scarecrow said. “The Banks should have kept a tighter leash on their pet projects. We’ve no doubt already pre-empted their anger with a million-franc bounty on any Homo quantus brought to us alive. Politically, we can accuse the Banks of engineering terrorists.”

  “What do you make of the story, that Arjona had come from the future?” Demers asked.

  The Scarecrow had been turning this over too.

  “No technology we know of would enable time travel,” the Scarecrow said. “But if the Homo quantus have figured out some way to do it, that might start to explain the Union break-out of the Puppet Axis. Our spies saw no Union ships entering the Axis at Port Stubbs. Somehow the Homo quantus engineered this. And if we have four thousand genetically-modified Anglo-Spanish weapons capable of seeing the future, then the capture of Arjona and the remaining Homo quantus has to be one of the highest priorities of the Presidium.”