The Quantum Magician

by Derek Künsken

  A loud woman called Marie, a serious woman called Iekanjika and an AI called Saint Matthew had been with them for days, setting up the first mine. Later, a sharp-eyed man called Del Casal and an exiled Puppet called Gates-15 arrived on a one-way shuttle. Then came an angry, swearing Homo eridanus called Stills, sealed in a pressurized container massing several tons. Its external walls held manipulators and sensors, but it was otherwise barely mobile and creaked under the pressure of the water inside.

  Although she didn’t think anyone else noticed, she started catching Bel telling lies. She watched him and tried to stay close, partly because most of these people made her nervous. When one of them spoke to him, he always steered the conversation away from himself. And when he failed at that, most of the things he said about himself to the others were lies. What was he doing? And more importantly, he’d promised to tell her the truth. She tried to decide if he was lying to her too, but she didn’t know how. If Bel had turned his considerable intellect to lying, his decade of practice might mean she would never know when he told the truth.

  They assembled when one last pod arrived. Cassandra hung behind Marie and Iekanjika as Bel met an older man at the airlock. William Gander took off his vacuum helmet. He had a kind face. The two men stood uncertainly, until Bel slapped William on the shoulder.

  “I got to worrying about whether you’d gotten cold feet,” Bel said.

  “I wanted to see what sort of plan your big brain thought up without my help,” William said.

  Bel shook William’s hand hard, and then pulled the bigger man into a hug. William stood stiff and awkward, and then hugged him back.

  A light flashed. “Photogallery moment!” Marie said, lowering a palm-embedded camera. “That was so sweet! I’ll magnify and send it around.”

  “This is the Marie I heard you worked with?” William said.

  “She’s an acquired taste,” Bel said.

  “Fine, I won’t magnify it,” Marie said.

  Then Bel met her eyes. “And this is Cassandra Mejía,” he said.

  “The Cassandra?” William asked.

  “Yeah, he doesn’t really stop talking about her, does he?” Marie asked.

  Bel looked sheepish. Cassandra felt her ears warming. She looked at Bel questioningly. He talked about her? William smiled at all the awkwardness, and then stepped in and kissed her hand.

  “When Belisarius was just fresh out of the Garret, he didn’t have much to talk about other than his research,” William said. “He spoke very highly of the intelligence of his co-researcher.”

  “Thank you, Mister Gander,” Cassandra said. Cassandra stood uncertainly for a moment, undecided on where to sit. The robotic crews had made the commissary almost comfortable, with a row of tables and benches and stuffed chairs. Bel was in front of everyone, beside a service band on the table over which floated the hologram of Caravaggio’s Saint Matthew. Iekanjika sat stiffly on one of the benches, away from everyone. Even if he’d wanted to, Stills couldn’t do much to join them in his great metal box against the wall. Del Casal lounged in one of the new chairs, smoking a thick cigar, while Marie, considerably shorter, sat beside him, doing a fair impression of the geneticist with her own cigar. Gates-15’s feet dangled off a cheap plastic chair. William sat uncertainly on a couch.

  Cassandra sat down beside him and crossed her arms.

  “This job is difficult, dangerous and complicated,” Bel said. “But when we pull this off, we’re looking at a few million Congregate francs. Each.”

  “Your clients got this cash just layin’ around in buckets?” Stills asked. Cassandra hadn’t gotten used to his voice. It boomed from a speaker on his steel chamber. Software to capture and translate his electrical intonations into natural speech was available, but Stills had opted for an emotionless, droning voice that was off-putting.

  “Major Iekanjika?” Bel said.

  The Union officer touched the patch on the back of her hand. A hologram of a weird shuttle appeared in yellow and green. A hollow tube speared the long axis.

  “What is it?” Del Casal asked.

  “Your payment,” Iekanjika said. “A fast shuttle, fifty-three meters long, riding an advanced drive.”

  “What kind of drive?” the speaker on Stills’ pressure chamber demanded in French.

  “It’s the fastest sub-light propulsion system ever invented, capable of sustained accelerations of twenty to fifty gees.”

  “Fifty gees?” Stills demanded over the murmuring. The translation program seemed to inflect the question with a tone of soulless longing. “Bullshit. There’s no room for fuel.”

  “There is no fuel,” Iekanjika said. “Exotic physics.”

  “I call bullshit on your lying ass.”

  “I’ve examined the shuttle, flown it and taken recordings,” Bel said. “I’ve got copies of the files here if you want to look for yourselves and check for tampering.”

  Bel seemed perfectly at ease, even with all the anger in the air. Cassandra wanted to hide.

  “If this air-sucker isn’t lying, then this is worth more than a few million each,” Stills said.

  “A few million is the lower limit of the payoff,” Bel said. “The Ummah, the Middle Kingdom or the Anglo-Spanish would pay a lot to reverse-engineer this drive. I’ve already lined up a broker who can auction very high-end goods.”

  “This is what the Puppets want from you,” William said to Iekanjika.

  “We’ve offered this to the Puppets,” the major said, “but they don’t have the scientific know-how to reverse-engineer a toilet. They want our warships.”

  “Warships?” Del Casal said. “Warships with this drive will tip more than a few balances of power.”

  “Damn,” William said appreciatively.

  “No one but the Puppets know that the Union has this drive,” Bel said. “And they’re not telling because they think they have the Union fleet trapped, and they want it all to themselves.”

  A hologram lit above the table, showing a cross-section of the Puppet Free City gnawed out of the frozen crust of Oler like an anthill. And at the bottom of a deep shaft, right in the middle of the city, was a glowing red disk, one of the mouths of the Axis Mundi wormhole network. Cassandra had seen this diagram many times. She’d always wanted to see the Puppet Axis, any Axis, up close. Beside this cross-section floated a schematic of the other end of the wormhole, the Axis mouth at Port Stubbs, shown in green. It floated free in space. A town of habitats and factories had been built around it. Bel zoomed out of the view of Port Stubbs, expanding the image to show the Stubbs Pulsar, its few broken planets and its Oort cloud. Within the inner edge of the Oort cloud, tiny pink dots clustered.

  “This is the Sub-Saharan Union’s Sixth Expeditionary Force,” he said. “The twelve ships of the Expeditionary Force want to get to the Espilon Indi system, through the Puppet Axis. The Puppets are willing to let them through, but the cost is half their ships. The Puppets have a strong defensive position, but no real offensive capabilities. And they have little reason to negotiate; they’re the only game in town.”

  “And they’re loco,” Stills said, “present company included.”

  Gates-15 lifted his chin slightly higher.

  “The Expeditionary Force, on the other hand, is in a hurry,” Bel said. “Every day they wait, the chance grows of the Congregate finding out about them. So we’re going to get the Union ships through, despite the Puppets.”

  “You’re stupid as a burro, or got a pair of oversized cojones,” Stills said in his droning voice.

  “Getting close to port is dangerous,” Bel said. “The Port Stubbs defenses are based on two asteroids: Hinkley and Rogers, twenty-three kilometers and eighteen kilometers long respectively. They’re fortified with missiles, lasers and particle weapons. One co-orbits the pulsar a hundred thousand kilometers ahead of Port Stubbs. The other follows the port ninety thousand kilometers behind. They’re like a couple of big bodyguards. Hinkley and Rogers are capable of laying down enough cross
-fire to make giving away half the fleet to the Puppets look like a good deal.”

  Marie frowned, looked like she was going to say something, then sat back.

  “Once we get the Union ships through the defenses and into the wormhole, there’s still the other side to worry about. Other than the wormhole below the surface of Venus, the Axis in the Puppet Free City is the most inaccessible wormhole in civilization.

  “The mouth of the Axis is two kilometers below the surface of the dwarf planet Oler,” Bel continued. “The shaft leading to the Axis is blocked by four successive sets of armored bay doors. Each one is ringed with weapons. Individually, each weapon deserves to be in a museum, but when all of them are aimed at a target with no maneuvering space, they’re deadly. And the surface fortifications are built to make sure that no more than one ship approaches Oler at a time. Their defenses ought to work in reverse on any unauthorized ships emerging from the mouth of the Axis.”

  Stills’ translated voice cursed in Trade Arabic.

  “The payoff sounds great, until you start to wonder if there’s any payday at all,” Gates-15 said.

  “A successful con distracts the mark with one action while we do another,” Bel said. “We’re going to distract the Puppets while we get our cargo through.”

  He zoomed in on the Puppet Free City until individual neighborhoods were visible like alveoli in the lungs. One cluster in the ice was haloed in red. “This is the Forbidden City. It’s been made famous as the place where the Puppets hold the Numen captive. It also happens to be where they keep the controls to the Free City’s fortifications.”

  “I hope he says we have to detonate our way in,” Marie whispered loudly to Del Casal.

  “Professor Manfred Gates-15, our inside man, will get into the Forbidden City and place a computer virus into the Puppet control systems. He’ll do the same thing at Port Stubbs. The viruses will activate simultaneously, immobilizing the fortifications for a few hours, maybe a little more, allowing the Expeditionary Force to transit the Axis. By the time the Puppets get their systems back in order, the Expeditionary Force will be well away from Oler.”

  “Shit,” said Stills. “Breaking into an Axis mouth ain’t never been done. Not even by the Congregate.”

  “It’s certainly going to surprise everyone,” Bel said.

  “Those fortifications have been tested twice by the Congregate and the Anglo-Spanish Banks,” Stills said. “Besides, distraction is just distraction. Most of the time, you still gotta kick somebody in the balls.”

  “What’s the distraction?” William asked in resignation.

  “Marie will be designing very powerful explosives to work in the sub-surface ocean of Oler,” Bel said. “Stills, our deep diver, will be setting those charges around the Free City, in the four lobes of Blackmore Bay itself.”

  “Coño,” Del Casal said. “How deep?”

  “He’ll have to start twenty-three kilometers below the surface of Oler,” Bel said, “at eleven hundred atmospheres of pressure. The charges have to be set higher, at fifteen kilometers.”

  Everyone looked at the great steel box with its tiny window, pressurized to eight hundred atmospheres.

  “I’m no expert on the Homo eridanus,” Del Casal said, “but even their specially engineered proteins ought to undergo conformational changes at those pressures.”

  “I ain’t takin’ a vacation down there, dumb-ass,” Stills said.

  “Any machine we build to survive those depths would be detectable by the Puppets, as would any nuclear materials. Stills’ body won’t reflect sonar, and he can navigate by Oler’s magnetic field using the same kind of electroplaques I’ve got. And conventional explosives won’t set off Puppet radiological alarms.”

  Marie leaned forward to read the tiny numbers showing the pressure readings around Blackmore Bay. “Pressure does funny things to explosives,” she said, “like go boom when you’re not ready.”

  “I got you a lab,” Bel said. She smiled. “Marie has adapted explosives for a range of environmental conditions, even if not yet for anything as extreme as Blackmore Bay.”

  “Happy for help,” Marie said, looking at them, wriggling her fingers. “This’ll be a three- or four-finger job.”

  Gates-15 frowned at her. “What’s a three-finger job?”

  “It’s how many fingers get blown off before I get it right. It’s way easier if we spread that around. Many hands make light the work,” she said cheerily. Cassandra resisted a shiver.

  “When Marie’s explosives detonate,” Bel said, “they’ll interrupt secondary systems and draw most of the Puppet military attention under the city for search, pursuit and repair.”

  “I’m still stuck on the virus,” Stills said. “A computer virus won’t last long in any modern system.”

  Bel lifted the service band from the table, along with the projected head of Saint Matthew. “Saint Matthew’s virus will bypass any of the hand-me-down systems the Puppets use.”

  “Maybe so, but maybe not so,” Stills continued. “How does half-size get in? He’s an exile ’cause he’s a nut short, right?”

  Gates-15 pursed his lips, but ignored Stills.

  “Doctor Del Casal will bio-engineer Professor Gates-15 so that his DNA matches the medical records of a Puppet in Creston who makes frequent trips to Trujillo. Saint Matthew has already planted those records.”

  “Any Puppet can walk into the Forbidden City?” Marie said.

  “As the leading state within the federation, the Free City has to allow the pilgrimages of all Puppets to the Forbidden City. We can’t control exactly when Gates-15 might get access, unless we give him a good reason. A good reason would be if a Puppet was bringing in a newly captured Numen.”

  Marie dropped her cigar. “Where did you find one?” she said. “And what Numen would be crazy enough to come out of hiding, identify themselves and go into the Free City?”

  After a few moments, William put up his hand wanly. He looked nauseous. Cassandra felt nauseous.

  “You’re a Numen?” Marie said slowly.

  “He’s no Numen,” Gates-15 said in distaste.

  “How would you know? You’re broken,” Marie said.

  “Professor Gates-15 is immune to the religious effects of the Numen. That makes him a very dangerous Puppet,” Bel said. “That’s why they exiled him. It’s also why he’s so useful to this job.”

  “But if William is no Numen,” Marie said, “that puts a hole in your plan, doesn’t it? Should I take over the planning?”

  “Doctor Del Casal is going to modify William so that his body will fake the pheremonal signals. The Puppets will think he’s a Numen, at least for a while,” Bel said.

  “But that’s worse!” Marie said as if pointing out the obvious to an idiot. “If the Puppets think he’s a Numen, they’ll treat him like one!”

  “I would pay serious cash to watch that shit,” Stills’ electronic voice said.

  “What do you know?” Gates-15 demanded, hopping to his feet before Marie. “How would you know what Puppets are like?”

  Marie gave him the finger.

  “Marie,” Bel said warningly, “if everything goes according to plan, the Puppets will think that William is divine. That won’t be pleasant for William. He’s not under any illusions. And once the Expeditionary Force is through and the Puppets realize that he’s fooled them, he knows it will go worse. Only five lost Numen have been returned to the Puppets in the last eighty years. The Puppets see spiritual meaning in many events, and this will be a major, major event.”

  Marie looked at William, aghast. Gates-15 stared sourly at the floor. Even Del Casal looked darkly pensive. This was crazy. Why didn’t anyone say this was crazy? Cassandra almost said something. No one should walk into the Free City pretending to be a Numen.

  “It doesn’t matter,” William said. “I’ve got Trenholm virus. I’ve got three to four months left.” No one said anything. “That means let’s get this job done quick.”

  �
�William’s cover story is that he wants to see Port Stubbs before he dies, where his ancestors had been colonists,” Bel said. “With luck, William will be brought there, with Gates-15. If not, Gates-15 will go to Port Stubbs alone.”

  “I still don’t get why a Homo quantus would be doing this,” Gates-15 said. “You don’t care about money or politics.”

  “You’ve been misinformed,” Bel said. “I love money.”

  “So what’s in it for her?” Gates-15 asked, jerking a thumb at Cassandra. Cassandra’s cheeks heated as everyone suddenly looked at her. “Is she as interested in money as you?”

  “I’m... I’m not even taking a cut,” she said.

  “You don’t want a piece of this new kind of ship?” Gates-15 asked Cassandra, his face reddening.

  “I want to get close to the Puppet Axis,” she said. “Researchers never have close access to the Axes Mundi.”

  “Unlike me,” Bel said, “Cassandra is one of the most skilled Homo quantus ever born. She’ll measure the inside of the Puppet wormhole so that the Expeditionary Force will be able to navigate it. The Force will be running fast, and the inner topology of the Axis Mundi can be complex.”

  Gates-15 shook his head. “You’re putting your life in danger for a research project?”

  Cassandra looked first at Bel, then at the Puppet, in surprise. “It’s better than doing it for money,” she said.

  “I’m not doing it for the money,” Gates-15 said. “I’m doing it to go home.”

  “Then we’re doing this for the same reasons,” Cassandra said.

  The briefing broke up shortly, and Cassandra walked away without meeting Bel’s eyes. She didn’t know him. He was... worldly, dishonest, money-chasing. Or he was lying. He said he wanted the data as badly as she did. They were going to try something never before tried. They were going to touch the inside of an Axis Mundi in ways that no Homo quantus ever had. Who was he telling the truth to? Maybe he didn’t tell the truth to anyone.