Komarr b-11

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Miles glanced at Vorthys. The words obviously meant something to him. Good.

  Dr. Riva waved her hands dreamily in front of her. "Higher and higher and higher and—boop!" She giggled. It was a very fast-penta'ish sort of giggle, the disturbing sort which suggested that on some other level, in her drug-scrambled brain, she was not giggling at all. Maybe she was screaming. As Miles was. . . . "Except," she added, "that there's something very wrong somewhere."

  No lie. He walked over and picked up the hypospray of antagonist, and glanced up at Vorthys. "Anything you want to add while she's still under? Or is it time to go back to normal mode?"

  Vorthys still had an abstracted, inward look, his mind obviously ratcheting over everything he'd learned during the investigation in light of this new, revolutionary idea. He glanced up and over at the goofily grinning Riva. "I think we need all our wits about us." His brows drew down in something like pain. "One sees, of course, why she hesitated to confide her theory to us. In case it is right …"

  Miles walked over to Riva with the second hypospray. "This is the fast-penta antagonist. It will neutralize the drug in your system in less than a minute."

  To his astonishment, she threw up a restraining hand. "Wait, had it. I could almost see it, in my mind . . . like a vid pro-action . . . energy transfers, flowing . . . field reservoir . . . wait."

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head back; her feet tapped gently and rhythmically on the floor. Her smile came and went, came and went. Her eyes popped open at last, and he stared briefly and intently at Vorthys. "The keyword," she intoned, "is elastic recoil. Remember it." She glanced at Miles and held out a languid arm. "You may proceed, my lord." She giggled again.

  He applied the hypospray over the blue vein inside her proffered elbow; it hissed briefly. He gave her an odd little half-bow, and stepped back, and waited. Her loose limbs tightened; she buried her face in her hands.

  After about a minute, she looked up again, blinking. "What did I just say?" she asked Vorthys.

  "Elastic recoil," he repeated, watching her intently. "What does it mean?"

  She was silent a moment, staring at her feet. "It means . . . I compromised myself for nothing." Her lips thinned bitterly. "Soudha's device doesn't work. Or at any rate, it doesn't work to collapse a wormhole." She sat up, and shook herself out, stretching, the sense of her body doubtless coming back to her as the last of the antagonist chased through her system. "I thought that stuff would make me sick."

  "Reactions vary wildly from subject to subject," said Miles. Indeed, he'd never seen one quite like that before. "A woman we interrogated the other day said she found it very restful."

  "It had the strangest effect on my internal visualizations." She stared at the hypospray with speculative respect. "I may try it on purpose someday."

  I want to be there if you do. Miles had a sudden exciting vision of using the drug to augment his own insights—instant brains!—then remembered to his extreme disappointment that fast-penta didn't work like that on him.

  Riva glanced at Miles. "If I ever get out of a Barrayaran prison. Am I under arrest now?"

  Miles chewed his lip. "What for?"

  "Isn't violating loyalty and security oaths treason?"

  "You haven't violated any security oath. Yet. As for the other . . . when two Imperial Auditors say they didn't see something, it can become remarkably invisible."

  Vorthys smiled suddenly.

  "I thought you were sworn to tell the truth, Lord Auditor."

  "Only to Gregor. What we tell the rest of the universe is negotiable. We just don't advertise the fact."

  "That, alas, is true." Vorthys sighed.

  "How will you explain the missing drug doses to ImpSec?"

  "One, I am an Imperial Auditor, I don't have to explain anything to anyone. Least of all ImpSec. Two, we used it experimentally to enhance scientific insight. Which I gather is the truth, so I return to Go and collect my tokens."

  Her lips twisted up in a genuine, if wryly baffled, smile. "I see. I think."

  "In short, this never happened, you are not under arrest, and we have work to do. For my curiosity, though, before I call our junior colleagues back in—can you give me a quick synopsis of your chain of reasoning? In nonmathematical terms, please."

  "It's only in nonmathematical terms so far. If I can't run some real numbers in under this—well, I'll just have to dismiss it as an interesting hallucination."

  "You were convinced enough to dry up on us."

  "I was stunned. Not so much convinced as breathless."

  "With hope?"

  "With … I don't quite know." She shook her head. "I may yet be proved wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time. but you are familiar, I assume, with examples of positive feedback loops in resonant phenomena—sound, for example?"

  "Feedback squeals, yes."

  "Or a pure note that breaks a wineglass. And in structures– you know why soldiers must break step when marching across a bridge? So that the resonance of their steps doesn't collapse he structure?"

  Miles grinned. "I actually saw that happen once. It involved a squad of Imperial Junior Scouts, a flag ceremony, a wooden footbridge, and my cousin Ivan. Dumped twenty really obnoxious teenage boys into a creek." He added aside to the Professor, "They wouldn't let me march with my squad that evening because, they said, my height would mess up their symmetry. So I was watching from the back benches. It was glorious. I think I was about thirteen, but I'll treasure the memory forever."

  "Did you see it coming, or did it take you by surprise?" asked the Professor curiously.

  "I saw it coming, though not, I admit, very far in advance."

  "Hm."

  Riva's brows twitched; she licked her lips and began. "Wormholes resonate in five-space. Very slightly, and at a very high state. I believe that the function of Soudha's device is to emit a five-space energy pulse precisely tuned to the natural frequency of a wormhole. The pulse's power is low, compared to the latent energies involved in the wormhole's structure, but if properly tuned it might—no, would, gradually build up the amplitude of the wormhole's resonance until it exceeded its phase boundaries and collapsed. Or rather, I think Soudha's group thought it must collapse. What I think actually happened is more complex."

  "Elastic recoil?" Vorthys prodded hopefully.

  "In a sense. What I think happened is that the pulse amplified the resonance energies until the phase boundaries recoiled, and the energy was abruptly returned to three-space in the form of a directed gravitational wave."

  "Good God," said Miles. "Do you mean to say Soudha's found way to turn an entire wormhole into a giant imploder lance?"

  "Mmmm …" said Riva. "Er . . . maybe. What I don't know is if that was what he meant to do. The first theory made more political sense to me … as a Komarran. It quite seduced me. I wonder if they were seduced as well? If he did mean the wormhole to act as a sort of imploder lance, I don't see that he's found a way to aim it. I think the gravitational pulse was returned back along the initial path. I don't know if Radovas committed suicide, but I'm very much afraid he may have shot himself."

  "My word," breathed Vorthys. "And the ore ship—"

  "If their test platform was indeed aboard the soletta array, the involvement of the ore ship was sheer bad luck. Bad timing. It blundered into the gravitational pulse and was ripped apart, then was funneled toward and struck the soletta array and thoroughly confused the issue. If the device was aboard the ore ship—well, same result."

  "Including the confusion," said Vorthys ruefully.

  "But . . . but there's still something very wrong. You have presumably calculated most of the energy vectors involved in the soletta accident?

  "Over and over."

  "You trust the numbers you gave me?"

  "Yes."

  "And you've put limits on what energies the device can have transferred, over various lengths of time."

  "There are some fairly strict and obvious engineering limits to its
potential peak power output," agreed Vorthys. "What we don't know is how long they could run it."

  "Well," the five-space physicist took a deep breath, "unless they were running it for weeks, and Radovas and Trogir were seen downside much later than that, I think you've got more energy out of the wormhole than went into it."

  "From where?"

  "Presumably from the wormhole's deep structure. Somehow. Unless you want to posit that Soudha has invented perpetual motion as well, which is against my religion."

  Vorthys was looking wildly excited. "This is wonderful! Miles, call Yuell. Call D'Emorie. We must check those numbers."

  When D'Emorie returned with Yuell, all the tech folk were too entranced with the breakthrough regarding the novel device to broach any embarrassing questions about where the fast-penta had gone. D'Emorie would doubtless think to ask later; Miles would be bland and uninformative, he decided. Riva clearly didn't want to waste time and mental energy on anger when there was physics to be had, but if she decided to be pissed at him later, he would grovel as needed. For now, Miles sat back, watched, and listened, feeling that he understood perhaps one sentence in three.

  So did Soudha now imagine that he possessed a wormhole collapser—or a giant imploder lance? He had stolen much of the technical data from the accident investigation; he had a lot of the same numbers Vorthys did, and the same amount of time to look them over. While simultaneously managing a complex evacuation of some dozen persons and several tons of equipment, Miles reminded himself. Soudha had been rather busy. Of course, he hadn't had to waste time reconstructing the plans of his device from scattered specs.

  But the gravitational backlash from the test wormhole near the soletta array must have surprised Radovas—however briefly—and Soudha. The accident had stopped their research, brought Auditors down upon them, compelled their flight. It made no sense, none, to posit the destruction of the soletta as deliberate sabotage and suicide. If one wanted to blow up Barrayarans, there were much more inviting targets around. Such as the military stations guarding each wormhole exit from Komarr local space. As an imploder lance variant, the device wasn't going to make a very useful military weapon till they figured out how to aim it at someone besides themselves. Though if one could set it up in secret aboard a military station, turn it on, and flee before the blast occurred . . .

  Had Soudha figured out what had happened yet? He had data, yes, but his five-space man was dead. Arozzi was only a junior engineer, and Cappell the math man did not show any special brilliance in his academic record. Vorthys had been able to tap the top five-space expert on the planet, not to mention Yuell the Wonderboy, who, Miles noted, was just at this moment arguing math with Vorthys and winning. Given the data and enough time, Radovas might have made the same conceptual breakthrough as Riva, but Soudha in his flight was not equipped to. Unless he'd found a replacement for Radovas . . . Miles made a note to tell ImpSec to check for the disappearance of any other Komarran five-space experts in the last weeks.

  Soudha's flight, Miles decided, had to be following one of three logic branches. Either they had abandoned all and fled, or they'd withdrawn to hide, painfully rebuild their safe base, and try again another day. Or they had moved up their timetable and elected to risk all on an early strike of some kind. Miles wondered if they'd put what should have been a technically-driven decision to a vote. They were Komarrans, after all, and apparently volunteers. Amateur conspirators, not that it was exactly a licensed trade. Option One didn't feel right, given what Miles had seen so far. Option Two seemed more likely, but gave ImpSec time enough to do their job. The Komarrans might have thought so too.

  If you're going to worry, worry about Option Three. There was a lot to worry about, in Option Three. Panicked and desperate people were capable of very strange moves indeed; look at some of the incidents in his own career.

  "Professor Vorthys. Dr. Riva." Miles had to repeat himself, more loudly, before they looked up. "So you aim this device at a worm-hole, and switch it on, and it starts pumping in energy. At some point, it builds up to a break-point and bounces back at you. What happens if you turn it off before that point?"

  "I am not certain," said Riva, "that that wasn't exactly what happened. The backlash may have been triggered by either exceeding the phase boundaries, or by Radovas turning off the pulse source. It is unclear if the phase-boundary deaugmentation is discontinous or not."

  "So . . . once activated, the device may become in effect its own dead-man switch? Turning it off sets it off?"

  "I'm not sure. It would be a good point to test."

  From a suitable distance. "Well … if you figure it out, please let me know, eh? Carry on."

  After a moment to either digest his question, or wait to see if he'd pop out with any other interruption, the conversation around the table returned to its original polyglot of English, mathematics, and engineering. Miles settled back, feeling anything but reassured.

  If Soudha had perfected his device with an eye to using the wormholes as power sources to blow up the military stations that guarded them, as a surprise opening for a shooting war … the way to do it would be to blow up all six at once, coordinated with a Komarr-wide uprising on the scale of the ill-fated Komarr Revolt. Miles was not totally pleased with ImpSec's performance in this case so far, but Soudha's had been a small group, running close to the ground. The signs of a massive revolt brewing must be too widespread for even ImpSec to miss. Besides, the chief conspirators were all of an age to have been through that once. Anyone who'd experienced the debacle of the Komarr Revolt on the Komarr side had reason to mistrust their fellows almost as much as they mistrusted Barrayarans. The last people Soudha would want in on his plot were a bunch more Komarrans. And . . . they didn't have six devices. They'd had five, the fourth was destroyed, and the three earlier ones seemed to have been smaller-scale prototypes.

  It was like having a gun with one bullet in it. You'd want to pick your target very carefully.

  Suppose Soudha still imagined he possessed a wormhole-collapser, albeit one with a few bugs in the design. There were six active wormholes in Komarr local space, but Miles hadn't any doubt which one Soudha would go for.

  The sole jump to Barrayar. Cut us off at one stroke, yeah. From a Komarran viewpoint that was a plot worth all of these five years of devotion, all the sweat and risk: closing Barrayar's only gate to the galactic wormhole nexus. A bloodless revolution, by God, sure to appeal to these tech types. They'd return Komarr to the good old days of its glory a century ago—and Barrayar to its bad old days, in a new Time of Isolation. Whether everyone, or indeed, anyone on either Komarr or Barrayar wanted to go there or not. Did the conspirators imagine they'd be permitted to live, once the truth was unraveled?

  Probably not. But if Riva spoke straight, the process was not reversible; the wormhole, once collapsed, could not be reopened. The deed would be done, and no tears or prayers would undo it. Like an assassination. Soudha and his friends might imagine themselves as a new and more effective generation of Martyrs, content to be enshrined after death. They had seemed too practical, but who knew? One could be hypnotized by the hard choices in ways that had nothing to do with one's intelligence.

  Yes. Miles now knew where the Komarrans were going, if they weren't there already. The civilian—or the military? No, the civilian transfer station which served the wormhole jump to Barrayar.

  You just sent Ekaterin there. She's there now.

  So was the Professora, and so were several thousand other innocent people, he reminded himself. He fought panic, to follow out his thread of thought to the end. Soudha might have a bolthole of some kind set up on the station, prepared perhaps months or years in advance. He would plan to set up his novel device, aim it at the wormhole, draw power from—where? If from the station, someone might notice. If they mounted it aboard a ship (and it had to have been on some kind of ship to get out there), they could draw ship's power. But traffic control and the Barrayaran military were unlikely to tolerate any
ship hanging around the wormhole without a filed flight plan, from which it had better not deviate.

  Ship, or station? He had insufficient data to decide. But if Soudha had not seriously modified his device, the plot which began with a bloodless plan to collapse the wormhole could end in the bloody chaos of a major disaster to the transfer station. Miles had seen space disasters on various scales. He didn't want to ever see another.

  Miles could imagine a dozen different scenarios from the data they had in hand, but only this one gave him no time or room to be wrong. Go. He reached for the secured comconsole and punched up ImpSec Komarr HQ at Solstice.

  "This is Lord Auditor Vorkosigan. Give me General Rathjens, immediately. It's an emergency."

  Vorthys looked up from the long table. "What?"

  "I've just figured out that if there's any action coming up, it's got to be at the transfer station by the Barrayar jump."

  "But Miles—surely Soudha would not be so foolish as to try again, after his initial disaster!"

  "I don't trust Soudha in any way. Have you heard from Ekaterin or your wife?"

  "Yes, Ekaterin messaged when you were out getting your, ah, supplies. She'd reached her hostel safely and was off to meet the Professora."

  "Did she leave a number?'

  "Yes, it's on the comconsole—"

  General Rathjen's face appeared above the vid-plate. "My Lord Auditor?"

  "General. I have new data suggesting our escaped Komarrans are at or are heading for the Barrayar Transfer Station. I want a max-penetration ImpSec search-sweep for them on the station and aboard any in-bound traffic, to commence as quickly as possible. I want ImpSec courier transport for myself out to there as fast as you can scramble it. I'll give you the details once I'm en route. When all that's in motion, I want to send a tight-beam personal message to, um—" he did a quick search "—this number."

  Rathjens's brows rose, but he said only, "Yes, my Lord Auditor. I'll be most interested in those details."