The Black Hole

by Hammond, Ray

  ‘Why “thank God”?’

  ‘Because if they went on growing they’d eat up the Earth and then the entire solar system,’ said Nagourney with a smile. ‘Once a black hole reaches a certain mass it passes the point of no return. After that, everything within its proximity will be sucked into its zone of singularity.’

  The ATA agent was silent as she absorbed his words. Nicole brought her knees up and folded her arms around them.

  ‘These two equations were buried in communications between a university in Venezuela and a procurement company working for a terrorist organization,’ she confided gravely to the physicist. ‘These terrorists want to halt all progress, to turn the clock back on all science and technology. They believe that modern science is threatening the supremacy of the human race, and they’re ready to kill as many people as necessary to prevent us from destroying ourselves – as they see it.’

  ‘You mean Humans First,’ said Nagourney. Then he tailed off, staring unseeingly into the middle distance.

  Nicole followed the direction of his gaze, then glanced back at the physicist.

  ‘I seem to remember that there was some blue sky talk about a black hole weapon when I was a postgrad student at Stanford,’ Nagourney said quietly, plucking at a blade of grass. ‘But it was just speculative theorizing – pure sci-fi. The problems would immense – as would be the dangers.’

  ‘Alexander Makowski was at Stanford,’ said Nicole. ‘Did you meet him?’

  ‘He’d disappeared to South America a couple of months before I arrived,’ Nagourney told her. ‘Humans First Direct Action had just bombed a tech company in the Valley. Hundreds were killed.’

  ‘But if he’s a physicist himself, couldn’t he be building some new sort of black hole weapon?’ asked Nicole.

  ‘You really ought to see a particle accelerator for yourself,’ the physicist suggested. ‘Then you would understand why such a thing would be impossible in practical terms. Would you like to visit our Fermilab accelerator?’

  ‘It would need to be very soon,’ said Nicole.

  ‘We could go later on this afternoon,’ offered Nagourney. ‘For some reason the particle smashing guys enjoying playing with their toys in the evening.’

  *

  ‘It could be weeks, it could be months,’ said Harry Floyd as he threw underwear into an overnight bag. ‘There’s no telling.’

  It was a Saturday morning and the CTU field agent was standing in the bedroom of his apartment in Battersea, South London thrusting clothes into a back-pack. Leaning in the doorway was his live-in girlfriend of three years, Maria Peters – the woman after whom Floyd had named his virtual assistant.

  ‘And you can’t even tell me where?’ she asked angrily.

  ‘No, you know I can’t,’ said Floyd as he checked in his toilet bag to see that he had everything. You’ll need your watch if I’m not going under cover with you, said virtual Maria in his inner ear.

  ‘And you won’t be linking while you’re away?’ continued the real Maria. ‘People are always in touch.’

  That was true. Modern communications were now so powerful and pervasive there wasn’t a spot on Earth where you had to be out of contact if you didn’t want to be. But he knew that his implant would have to be removed before he attempted to infiltrate the Humans First and their direct action wing – mind linking and cerebral virtual assistants were anathema to all who sympathized with the organization’s reactionary goals. He tossed his toiletries into the overnight bag and turned to Maria with arms outstretched.

  ‘Come here,’ Floyd said.

  Maria pushed herself grudgingly away from the door jam. She was wearing only one of Floyd’s white T-shirts and her long, blonde curly hair was still tousled from their early morning lovemaking, before he had broken the news that he had to go away for an unspecified period.

  He took her in his arms and she lent her cheek against his chest.

  ‘I’m afraid for you,’ she whispered into his shirt.

  She knew he was ex-SAS and that he now worked for Britain’s principal anti-terrorism agency, although he had never told her precisely what his job entailed. She also knew he still trained regularly with his old SAS regiment and even with the American SEALs. But in their three years together he had never been out of contact for more than a couple of weeks at a time. Now he was saying it could be months before she would hear from him. She guessed he was going somewhere dangerous.

  ‘Why not have your sister here to stay for a while,’ he told her, trying to divert her tears with a practical suggestion. Gazing down, he tilted up her delicate chin with the tip of his right forefinger. Then he kissed her, savouring their kiss as if it might be his last for a very long time.

  *

  One by one, the four anonymous-looking containers had arrived safely in Bradford, Yorkshire.

  Alan Harding and Pierre Domenech had tracked each one as it cleared customs in the Hull dockyards before been trucked by an unwitting commercial haulage contractor the eighty-seven miles to an empty warehouse that had been previously occupied by Bradford Discount Tiles Ltd.

  The former ceramic tile depot was on an industrial estate on the western outskirts of the city and, at two a.m on a Saturday night, the surrounding roads were deserted. Harding and Domenech waited anxiously inside the brightly-lit warehouse for their very important visitor. Pencil thin and nervous, Harding paced as he waited. Burly Domenech sat stoically on an old packing case.

  Tomorrow morning four more HFDA volunteers would arrive with rented tractor-cab units to haul the containers and the sophisticated technology they contained to their final assembly point in London.

  A few moments after the appointed time, Harding’s communicator rang and, through an encryption filter, he heard a voice in his ear that was familiar, but which belonged to a man he had never met. The caller uttered a code phrase, Harding replied with its counterpart and then closed the connection.

  Nodding to Domenech, Harding walked towards the metal doors that led from the warehouse to the concrete parking area outside. Sliding one of the tall doors open a few feet he peered out into the night. Headlights raked the concrete as a small rental car turned into the industrial unit’s forecourt and came to a halt at the warehouse entrance.

  Both Harding and Domenech stepped backwards instinctively as the newcomer entered the warehouse.

  ‘I am Sergy Larov,’ said the man in a strong Russian accent as he shook both of the volunteers hands. But the volunteers already knew who the newcomer was. He was the HFDA’s senior technical officer, a physicist, and second only to Professor Makowski himself. Dr Larov was slender, of middle height with a neatly-clipped beard, wearing a dark suit; perhaps forty years old.

  Powerfully-built Domenech stepped forward, climbed into the visitor’s rented car and drove it into the warehouse. Then he dragged the heavy door shut, dropping its lower bolt into the concrete floor.

  Larov turned his attention to the four containers which stood on trailers waiting to be connected up to articulated lorry cab units and hauled away. He nodded in satisfaction as he scanned their familiar white stencil markings. The last time he had seen these cargo vessels had been months before in Caracas when he had personally overseen their contents being bolted into position and the containers hoisted aboard trucks for their long trip from the university campus to the sea.

  ‘You have done very well,’ Larov told the volunteers. Then he held out his hand. ‘Bolt cutters please?’

  A few moments later, the HFDA scientist had taken off his jacket, jumped up onto a trailer and was busy cutting the seals away from the container which held the most important component of the shipment.

  The tall doors of the forty-foot cargo vessel swung open and the volunteers saw inside a dense mass of gleaming steel pipework that looped from one end of the steel container to the other.

  ‘Flashlight,’ demanded Larov and, taking the torch that Domenech passed up to him, the thin scientist squeezed his way into a small opening tha
t had been left between the gleaming six-inch diameter pipes.

  They saw the flicker of light deep in the container’s interior and, after a few minutes, Larov’s thin face appeared again as he stepped carefully out from the dense matrix of pipework. He looked satisfied.

  Jumping down from the trailer to the concrete floor, the scientist turned to the two HFDA volunteers.

  ‘It is intact,’ he said. ‘You have both done well. Now, if you will close up and reseal this container, I will check the others.’

  As he moved quickly towards one of the other containers, there was a loud banging at the outer doors to the warehouse.

  Larov glanced sharply at the two active service volunteers – the military-trained foot soldiers of the Humans First party– and Domenech turned and quickly crossed the fifteen feet of open space to the doorway.

  Undoing the bolt, he slid the door open a few feet.

  An overweight, middle-aged guard in the uniform of a private security company stood frowning suspiciously at the large doors, running his flashlight over the frontage of the building.

  ‘Can I help?’ asked Domenech in his French-accented English.

  The guard stepped forward into the warehouse and peered around inquisitively. Domenech saw the man’s gaze fall on the still open container and, as a frown of puzzlement appeared on the guard’s face, the bulky volunteer quickly slipped his hand inside his leather jacket and grasped the hilt of his combat knife.

  In a single move, Domenech thrust his arm around the back of the guard’s neck and pulled him further into the warehouse. Then the HFDA soldier plunged his six-inch blade directly into his victim’s heart. The Frenchman felt the guard go limp on his shoulder and he dropped the man’s lifeless form to the ground.

  Harding ran forward, skirting Domenech and the corpse, and thrust his head out of the warehouse doorway. There was nobody else to be seen and the industrial estate seemed deserted. Only the guard’s car, its motor still running, its headlights blazing, driver’s door still open, indicated that anything unusual had occurred.

  ‘Bring the car in,’ ordered Larov, pushing the tall door further open himself.

  When Harding had driven the car into the warehouse and switched off the engine, the scientist called his two soldiers together.

  ‘That was unfortunate, but you did well,’ the scientist said, patting Domenech on the back. ‘Now we’d better clean up, and one of you should dump that body and the car out in the countryside. I’ve got to check the other containers. Pick-up is in six hours.’

  *

  ‘It was one of my professors at Stanford who once mentioned a possible weapons application for an artificial black hole,’ said Alain Nagourney casually. ‘But when someone pressed him about it, he said he had been joking.’

  ‘Who was he – or she?’ asked Nicole.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to remember all day,’ admitted Nagourney. ‘It was either Saul Schmit or Craig Phelps – but it was years ago and we didn’t have VAs then! I not sure VAs are good for our natural memories.’

  ‘Very true,’ said Nicole with a sigh. Carl had been with her for four years and although he could recall for her absolutely everything that had happened in that time, and he could provide her with instant mental access to the immense knowledge of the Web, Nicole often thought her own natural memory had become far weaker as a result. But perhaps it only seemed that way, by comparison.

  They had lunched at the Fermi Institute – the physicist asking Nicole many questions about her work for the agency, few of which she could answer – and then they had taken a rapid drive out to Fermilab, forty miles south-west of Chicago. As was usual etiquette during a meeting of strangers, both had muted their embedded virtual assistants for better interpersonal concentration.

  The three particle accelerators had been every bit as huge and impressive as Nagourney had predicted and Nicole had quickly understood why it would be very difficult to think of such things in terms of weapons.

  Now, an hour after her tour of the facilities, Nicole was sitting with her guide in a dimly-lit bar in the Fermilab social club. Nagourney had ordered a white wine. Nicole was drinking orange juice. After dropping the physicist back in Chicago, she had to return her rental car and catch a red-eye flight back to Washington.

  ‘It was Craig Phelps!’ Nagourney announced triumphantly. ‘I remember clearly now. He had a very pasty face and when he got angry it seemed to swell and turn red. He definitely got angry when Jian Chen – he was a very bright Chinese post-grad – asked him again about how black holes could be generated for military purposes. Dr Phelps told him he had been joking, but it hadn’t sounded like a joke at the time. Phelps was a heavy drinker and we all assumed he had probably been drunk when he mentioned it.’

  ‘And do you know where Dr Phelps might be now?’ asked Nicole.

  ‘No idea,’ said Nagourney, draining his glass. ‘You could try the pensions office at Stanford. They might know.’

  *

  Humans First Direct Action had selected Vancouver, Canada as the most favourable port of entry to North America. The military wing of the Humans First Party wanted its second all-important shipment safely in place before the London weapon was deployed. Once that happened international security would be rapidly stepped up and all cargo movements would become much more risky.

  Phil Manzini and Karen Ostriecher had suffered an anxious thirty-six hour wait while the containers were detained and processed in the vast, enclosed shipping park at Port Vancouver.

  Sitting in a window seat of a busy Happy Jack pancake house, right across the dual carriageway from the container park’s main entrance, the two American HFDA volunteers had watched and waited as the precious cargo arrived.

  Manzini and Karen Ostriecher, one of the few female volunteers in the movement, had both been members of the Humans First Party for more than three years. Both had been anti-technology radicals when they had met at university and become romantically linked. Then they had been recruited to join HFDA and both had trained in the training camps run by the FARC guerrillas in Venezuela.

  ‘The first one’s on the move,’ announced Manzini, staring at his hand-held communicator. ‘O.K., so is number two.’

  The two volunteers tried to appear casual as they turned to glance again at the dockyard gates. All the time they had been waiting, they had known from the signals they were receiving that the four containers were safely in the storage area, but there was no way of knowing whether the shipment would be opened and detained for examination.

  ‘That’s the first one,’ said Ostriecher glancing up from her screen as a truck began to emerge from the electrically-operated gates. On the back of the sixteen-wheel truck were two containers, both an anonymous aluminium colour. ‘And that’s the second truck behind.’

  With a bellow that could be heard even inside the pancake house, the first truck driver revved his engine, engaged first gear and turned hard right onto Water Street. He was heading out of the docks area towards the British Columbia Trans-Canada Highway – a road which led down to the open American border, then on to Interstate highway I-1, heading south for Seattle. Then the second truck emerged and followed in tight convoy.

  ‘Let’s go,’ called Manzini, already on his feet and half-way towards the cash desk. His girlfriend, and accomplice, ran to catch up.

  *

  Marvin Nesbit strode vigourously out into the dazzling stage lights of the Las Vegas Conference Center and waved. Fine silver threads woven into his grey lounge suit caught the light, causing him to glow gently. Two TV cameramen in the hall checked that their automatic luminance controls were compensating.

  Over 2,000 members of the American Society For Extreme Longevity applauded, many rising to their feet to greet this Saturday afternoon’s keynote speaker. The arch-guru of the transhumanist movement held up his hands to thank the crowd for their enthusiastic welcome.

  When the clapping and whistling finally subsided, Nesbit smiled and uttered th
e same opening line he always used at the many talks he gave at transhumanist meetings all around the world. Only the numbers changed year by year.

  ‘I am one hundred and sixteen years old,’ he began and the conference centre burst into wild applause once more.

  Behind him, to the left and the right, hung two large video screens on which were projected identical close-up views of his face. The man looked as if he were thirty-five. He was tall, slender and had luxuriant, wavy black hair. His lightly tanned skin looked supple and unlined, his eyes were clear and bright.

  ‘This is my birth certificate,’ he told the audience and high-definition images of the document appeared on the screens. His implanted VA, Nancy, was now scrolling the script up in his mind’s eye. ‘As you can see, I was born in 1931, in Ohio.’

  Whoops and whistles came from the audience and many were applauding again.