Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330)

by Mitchell, Laura Remson

  THE FIRST REPORTS OF THESE DIVERSIONS WERE RECEIVED AT FLEET HEADQUARTERS FOUR DAYS AGO, RENSSELAER SAID, BUT THE INFORMATION WAS KEPT STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL PENDING EFFORTS TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY WITH THE COLONIES AND QUIETLY RESOLVE ANY MISUNDERSTANDING. SO FAR, HOWEVER, EARTH’S ATTEMPTS TO CONTACT THE COLONIES AND CORRECT POSSIBLE ERRORS IN THE ROBOTS’ PROGRAMMING HAVE BEEN ANSWERED ONLY BY A BLUNT STATEMENT DEMANDING TRIPLE PAYMENT FOR THE DIVERTED WIRE AND FOR ALL FUTURE NITINOL SHIPMENTS.

  “Good Lord!” said Keith with a shake of his head. “Your trend-analysis program ought to have some fun with this one!”

  “Yeah,” Rayna responded morosely. “Some fun…. Say, do you think this might have anything to do with the emergency that Fleet lieutenant was talking about when he charged into our room at Eduardo’s?”

  Keith was slow to respond. “Hmmm. I don’t know....”

  “What is it? You look like a man who’s forgotten how to open his own front door.”

  “I’m not quite sure, Ray. Something about this bothers me.”

  Rayna grunted. “I’m not surprised. This isn’t just another case of petty vandalism. I have a hunch it’s going to have bigger repercussions than we realize. Some of our old power plants—the ones they’ve been replacing with Nitinol-based systems—are just accidents waiting to happen.”

  Keith shook his head. “No, it’s more than that. There’s something else. Something I can’t quite recall, something I—”

  “Well, well,” Rayna interrupted, pointing at a bulletin that had just flashed onto the screen. “Rensselaer’s going to make a statement in a few minutes. Full holovision coverage and everything.”

  After instructing CompuNews to resume its world-watch alert status, Rayna proceeded to a low cabinet that rested beneath the holopainting on the wall across from her sofa. At the touch of a button, the cabinet’s doors slid open, and she set the HV receiving unit to project the news conference into her living room.

  “All ready,” she said.

  A barely audible click and a soft hum announced the imminence of the broadcast. Keith and Rayna moved to the sofa and watched as a dais took three-dimensional shape in the middle of the room. A ruggedly handsome man with a thick, meticulously trimmed mustache and probing gray eyes stood stiffly behind a woodstone lectern. He wore the gold-braided uniform of a full Merchant Fleet admiral.

  The man looked about, as if awaiting a signal to proceed, then cleared his throat.

  “I think we’re ready now,” he said, nodding to the others seated on the dais. He turned to face the HV image-converters, and Rayna once again shivered at the illusion of finding a total stranger standing in the middle of her living room.

  “Members of the press,” the man behind the lectern began in a calm, authoritative voice, “ladies and gentlemen of the holovision audience, I am Admiral Ethan Rensselaer of the United Earth Merchant Fleet. As part of my duties, I have the ultimate responsibility for staffing and scheduling merchant runs to and from the Asteroid Belt’s Sectors R-1 through R-5.

  “As you may already know, a problem has developed in our R-4 Sector. Nitinol wire scheduled for delivery to Earth has been diverted to an unknown destination, apparently by colonial robots. The shipments in question were intended for the new AG-7 generating station in the northeastern United States and for expansion of an existing station in Zimbabwe. At this time, we don’t know whether this is a case of robot malfunction, an extremist act committed by a few disgruntled miners and wire workers, or part of a general breakdown in trade relations with the colonies.”

  The admiral paused to sip some water from a glass on the lectern.

  “The perpetrators of this act are demanding an increase in Earth payments for Nitinol wire in the amount of 300 per cent.”

  A cacophony of voices competed for the speaker’s attention as the hands of eager questioners shot into the air, the arms cleanly severed by the edge of the holovision projection field.

  Adm. Rensselaer raised his palms and inclined his head in a familiar, almost fatherly, calming gesture.

  “One at a time, please,” he said. “I’m here to answer your questions. We all are.” He indicated the two men and one woman seated on the dais with him. “But please let us make our presentations first. We want you to get your answers in context, not in isolated pieces that won’t mean much to you.”

  This guy has a way about him, Rayna thought, admiring Rensselaer’s self-confident bearing and his square-jawed good looks. If he ever gets tired of life in the Merchant Fleet, he’ll probably make it as a politician.

  “Before I say anymore,” Rensselaer continued, “I’d better introduce our experts.” The admiral turned his side to the audience and gestured toward the others on the platform. “Dr. Jonas Edgerton of Nitinol Development, Ltd., in London; Dr. Ruth Karlen of NiPoCo’s Pittsburgh office, and, finally, Mr. Armand Misrahi of the United Nations’ Commission on Energy and the Environment.”

  The three officials successively acknowledged their introductions with curt nods and somber expressions.

  “Dr. Edgerton,” said the admiral, “will you and Dr. Karlen kindly demonstrate for the press and the holovision audience just how Nitinol works.”

  Edgerton, a pale, thin man with wispy brown hair, rose slowly, his eyes fixed on the dark-skinned Karlen as she scraped her chair out of the way and reached for a large black case that rested on the floor behind Misrahi. At the edge of the HV projection field, Rayna noticed, two assistants were moving a long, narrow table into view. Edgerton helped his colleague move the black case to the table. Karlen nodded at the Englishman, who nervously straightened the lapels of his unfashionable jacket and walked to the lectern.

  “As you may know,” he said hoarsely, “Nitinol is a blend of nickel and titanium. It has been called the ‘memory metal’ for reasons that will soon be apparent to you.”

  Edgerton waited as Karlen and the assistants finished setting up the equipment stored in the black case. Then he returned to the table.

  “This is a simple Nitinol engine, based on an early prototype,” Edgerton explained, tapping an odd-looking contraption that consisted of a rectangular frame with a large cylinder across its width at each end. Wire loops ran lengthwise across the frame, connecting each of the cylinders with a central hub that bisected the length of the frame. The rod forming the hub extended beyond the frame’s width and was mounted on supports so that the bottom cylinder was suspended about six inches above the table on which the apparatus sat. Hose-like tubes were connected to the ends of the hub.

  “These wires,” he indicated, “are made of Nitinol. It’s wire like this, which we need for generating stations, that was diverted to the Trans-Mat relay station. Dr. Karlen?”

  “As some of you may remember,” Karlen began in a voice that was at once melodic and businesslike, “my firm’s name, NiPoCo, is an acronym for Nitinol Power Company. We’ve been working with this material for many years, and over those years, it’s become more and more of a factor in meeting the world’s energy needs. Still, to most people, Nitinol is just a word vaguely associated with electric power. Very few understand how it produces energy.”

  The NiPoCo scientist reached for a coil of wire that rested on the table about two feet from a beaker of water that was being heated by a Bunsen burner.

  “Like most of our Nitinol wire, this was made in the colonies,” she said, displaying the wire to her audience and then replacing it on the table, taking care to avoid the Bunsen burner.

  “Until we began colonizing the asteroids, Nitinol technology was very limited. Although it had some definite uses, like cooling systems for electronic equipment and computers, we couldn’t get enough pure nickel and titanium—or a cheap enough manufacturing process—to produce the amount of wire needed for widespread application of Nitinol to power generation. That meant replacement of older power plants had to wait, even though there was mounting evidence that some of those plants posed serious environmental risks.”

  “You ever
see Nitinol wire before?” Keith asked.

  Rayna shook her head. “It’s one of those things you hear about sometimes but just take for granted.”

  Keith grunted and watched as the presentation continued.

  “Now, as you probably know,” Karlen said, “several of our colonized asteroids contain large deposits of pure nickel and titanium. Furthermore, colonial life-domes can be set up to include a perfect environment for low-cost production not only of the nickel-titanium alloy but also of the Nitinol wire itself. Ever since we began getting our Nitinol wire from the colonies, we’ve been able to start phasing out the old plants.”

  She lifted the wire coil again.

  “Here’s why Nitinol is so important,” she said. “This piece was shaped into a coil while it was cool. But if I take the same wire and put it into hot water....”

  As the photographic component of the HV image-converter zoomed in on the coiled wire in Karlen’s hand, the converter’s computerized scanners adjusted measurements for all factors relevant to size, depth and relative distances of objects within the HV field of view. The merged visual and scanned data in the converter’s signal were transformed by the interference-pattern simulator, pseudo-hologram generator and dual-laser projector in Rayna’s HV receiver into a vastly enlarged three-dimensional image of coiled wire being dipped into a beaker of water. Instinctively, Rayna flinched as the gigantic wire sprang back to its original, straight shape with remarkable force.

  “Now,” Edgerton said as the HV broadcast resumed a normal field of view, “we’ve been able to apply this property of Nitinol in such a way that we can use it in engines, and, as Dr. Karlen indicated, in generators for supplying more general energy needs. As I said before, this device—” he gestured toward the apparatus on the table “—is a simple Nitinol engine. All it needs to get started is a temperature differential between these large cylinders and the hub, which happens to be hollow. To do that, I simply supply some hot water to flow through the hub.”

  Edgerton opened a valve on the model engine where the hose connected to the central rod. The entire frame began spinning end over end around the hub.

  “Incidentally,” he added, “Nitinol engines can use any of several inexpensive heat sources, including solar power and waste heat from industrial processes. Now, are there any questions?”

  Rayna glanced at Keith, who was nodding.

  “I remember seeing a demonstration like that when I was in school,” he said. “I think we talked a little about Nitinol principles in one of my physics classes, but I didn’t pay much attention. Seemed to be of more interest to the engineering students than the physicists.”

  “Looks like its pretty important to all of us now,” said Rayna.

  When they returned their attention to the broadcast, the engine had been shut off, and Rensselaer was once again at the lectern.

  “As Dr. Edgerton and Dr. Karlen explained, Nitinol generators make use of the same properties as the engine we’ve just seen demonstrated. Now Mr. Misrahi will fill you in on the significance of the Nitinol diversion.”

  Rensselaer stepped aside, and a distinguished-looking man with olive skin and a fringe of iron-gray hair replaced him at the podium.

  “Thank you, Adm. Rensselaer,” Misrahi began in English tinged by a slight, vaguely middle-Eastern accent.

  “As you have already heard, nations all over the world have been gradually replacing outdated, pollution-producing or unsafe power plants with new ones using Nitinol generators. This has been taking place gradually, over the past 10 to 20 years. In that time, reliance on nuclear and fossil-fuel based energy systems has been cut by more than 50 per cent.

  “Unfortunately, new data now indicate that several of the older plants scheduled for phase-out over the next two or three years must be shut down within the next year if we are to avoid major risks to public health and safety. In addition, the fast-growing nations of the world, like Zimbabwe and some other African and South American countries, require more and more power to meet their needs.

  “With the steady supply of Nitinol wire that we have enjoyed in the past, none of this would pose any problems. However, diversion of this shipment of wire already is causing some unrest in certain parts of the world.”

  Hands again shot up at the edge of the HV field as voices called out for recognition.

  “Are you talking about war?” one questioner’s voice could be heard above the din.

  Dry-mouthed, Rayna stared at the HV image in horror.

  “Now, let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Rensselaer said in his most soothing voice. “Mr. Misrahi is simply trying to show you just how serious this is.”

  “If we can’t do without the Nitinol,” another anonymous voice called out, “why not just pay what they want and get it back?”

  Rensselaer stepped aside to let Misrahi answer.

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” said the United Nations representative. “Some countries might be able to make a triple payment for one shipment of Nitinol, but most simply couldn’t afford it—especially if it continues from now on. That kind of price increase would destabilize the entire world economy.”

  Rayna shifted around uneasily on the sofa and reached for Keith’s hand.

  “What do the colonists say about this?” another questioner asked.

  Rensselaer took this one: “We’re still trying to straighten things out, but official spokesmen for the colonists in the R-4 Sector have simply denied any connection with the diversion—or any knowledge of the whereabouts of the Nitinol. We have confirmed, however, that colonial robots were involved.”

  “Doesn’t that prove the colonists are behind this?” shouted a man with a loud, abrasive voice. “This is an act of war!”

  The buzz in the audience grew to a din.

  “There’s no cause for panic,” Rensselaer boomed. “The situation is serious, yes. But the Merchant Fleet and the United Nations have their best people on this. We will get to the bottom of it, and we’ll keep you informed. Meanwhile, there is no immediate danger. So please remain calm.”

  Rensselaer covered the lectern microphone with his hand and whispered something to Misrahi. The United Nations commissioner nodded tensely and whispered back.

  “That will be all for now, ladies and gentlemen,” said Rensselaer. “Thank you, and good day.”

  Again, the babble of shouted voices filled the room and parts of questioners’ arms outlined the limits of the HV field. But Rensselaer simply turned and walked away, followed by the others.

  Suddenly, the HV field shifted to a program demonstrating the latest in window-box gardening techniques. Rayna shut off the HV unit, then turned, hollow-eyed, toward Keith and shook her head.

  Keith, though, seemed lost in his own thoughts.

  “That’s it!” he shouted suddenly. “I remember what was bothering me.”

  Rayna looked at him expectantly. “Yes?”

  “Aurora Sanger’s friend, Vince Barnard—the guy we had dinner with at Eduardo’s—he said something about people getting mad at the colonists when they found out about the Nitinol. Remember?”

  “Yeah, but.... You think he meant this? Could he have heard about the diversion through the Fleet grapevine?”

  Keith shook his head vehemently.

  “That admiral—Rensselaer—said they got the first reports of Nitinol diversions four days ago and kept the whole thing hushed up until they could contact the colonies.”

  “And?”

  “We had dinner with Barnard Saturday night, Rayna. That was five days ago.”

  Chapter 14: Operation Strong Man

  Henry Tauber—formerly Lt. Henry Tauber of the United Earth Merchant Fleet—let a smile of satisfaction linger briefly on his lips.

  “Good ol’ Adm. Rensselaer,” Vince Barnard said, reaching for a nearby bottle of Spacefarer’s Whiskey and refilling his glass. “Anybody else want a blast of this?”

  “Shut up, Vince,” Tauber said tonelessly. “I want to h
ear what the man has to say.”

  Barnard and Charlie Wraggon were in Tauber’s spare but efficient apartment for a briefing on the next move in the plan they had named “Operation Strong Man.”

  “We’re getting more people all the time,” Tauber had told them earlier. “This thing is growing even faster than I expected. Not only here. All over the world. America isn’t the only place that’s gone soft, and we’re not the only ones who are fed up with it.”

  Wraggon nodded. “You’re not just talking about the guys you contacted after you crashed the Fleet’s computer records, are you?”

  “No. I was able to recruit some people in key positions who used to be merchanters and still hold some kind of grudge against the Fleet or the colonies, but most of these new people are just joining us based on a sort of underground word of mouth.”

  “About those key people,” Wraggon said, “don’t you think it’s time you told us who they are?”

  “You don’t need that information,” Tauber responded sharply. “They don’t know you, and you don’t know them. At this point, at least, it’s safer that way.”

  “But—” Tauber had cut him off with a wave of the hand as a flashing blue light on the HV receiver built into his living-room wall announced the impending broadcast of a news special—the broadcast Tauber had been waiting for.

  So it was that the three men found themselves watching as Tauber’s old boss from Merchant Fleet days filled the world in on the saga of the missing Nitinol in the R-4 Sector.

  “The perpetrators of this act are demanding an increase in Earth payments for Nitinol wire in the amount of 300 per cent,” said the tall, fit-looking Adm. Rensselaer.

  Rensselaer’s bearing was so impressive that nobody ever seemed to notice that slight limp of his, Tauber thought. And of course, it was understood but never mentioned among merchanters and Fleet officials that Rensselaer suffered from poor night vision which, like his limp, was a memento of his active-duty days on merchant runs to the Asteroid Belt.