by Robert Graf
Swales greeted Plasket with a pleasant "Good evening, Jeffrey," and sat.
Plasket was sipping whiskey from a crystal tumbler and barely nodded. "Jonathan. Whiskey?"
"Please."
Plasket raised his arm.
They waited in silence while a server brought the drink and departed.
"Cheers," Swales said, taking a sip.
Plasket put down his tumbler. "I admit to being curious about your ‘delicate matter’. I had my people look into your latest activities, not that I expected to find anything. I didn't."
The show of interest pleased Swales.“You're aware of the Americans' Jupiter mission?"
Plasket raised an eyebrow. "Yes, it's been in the news. Don't tell me you want to go on it?" he asked, with an amused glance.
"Actually, I would, if only to observe the communication device, a revolutionary quantum system built by Global Communication."
Plasket frowned. "I was aware they had won a substantial contract with NASA. One of my companies bid, but decided the technical risks were huge and quoted an outrageous sum. Why would an MP be interested?"
Present the bait. "The system, EntCom, consists of a pair of quantum-entangled machines. They work, despite protests from some physicists who claim it's impossible." Seeing Plasket's impatient expression, he hurried on. "Global has made an unbelievable discovery. It can detect whether or not a transmitted message is true or false."
Plasket's frown changed to incredulity "You believe this? Why are you bothering me with such rubbish? It belongs on the front page of the Mirror."
"Because it's not nonsense. My sources assure me the claim is true." Swales leaned forward, lowering his voice. "Put aside your skepticism for a moment and consider the implications: Ultimate knowledge."
Plasket stared at him. "I'd say you were mad." He sipped his whiskey. "For argument's sake, pretend I believe you. Why hasn't this been splashed across the world media?"
Swales grinned. "This was discovered by accident. Global can't cancel their contract; they're stuck."
A glimmer of interest flitted across Plasket's face. "Just what do you want from me?"
"Buy one. Failing that, steal one. Do whatever it takes. Be assured someone else will as soon as NASA starts using it. We have a fleeting window of opportunity."
Plasket lowered his glass and regarded Swales. "If you're correct, why do I need you?"
Swales hid a smile. He was in his element. "The same reason you contribute to my campaigns: I have the connections and information sources you don't. There will be difficulties when this becomes known. I'll make a prediction: Your request for a quote will be rebuffed, very politely. The excuse will be that unforeseen technical issues have arisen. When you ask about the Jupiter mission installation, there will be more excuses about working out bugs with NASA first."
Plasket emptied his glass. "I'll test your prediction." His eyes narrowed. "I expect you to have the information to proceed to the next step. No, don't tell me yet."
Swales finished his whiskey, triumphant. "Give me a ring, soonest."
[Sunday, Petaluma]
Ann finished her toast and fruit, swallowed the last of the coffee and stared out the window at the rose bush. Still no blossoms, but what did she know?
Her phone chirped. She picked it up, and Jon’s face appeared. “It’s me, I’m OK,” he announced.
He looked tired. “I saw the EntCom fall on you.”
He snorted. “Yeah, right in my lap. Good thing, otherwise it might have been damaged.”
“The hardened components wouldn’t be damaged.”
“Maybe. Anyway, I told Hooper it was undamaged. He never asked about me.”
Ann wasn’t surprised. “MacDougal told me you were bruised.”
“Oh yeah. My thighs are turning yellow-purple.”
His moon girl will like that. She should feel ashamed at the uncharitable sentiment, but she didn’t. “Was there any damage to NASA’s ship?”
“No, it’s in orbit, ready to go. There was moderate damage to some facilities, plus broken bones and minor stuff.”
“Was the quake like our California variety?”
“No, it lasted minutes, way longer than what we’re used to, not anything I ever want to repeat.”
“We’re still on schedule?”
“NASA is sorting things out, so there will be some delay. Either Hooper or I will let you know.“ There was noise in the background. “Gotta go.”
Ann put the phone down. No work today, she needed a break. A bike ride seemed just what the doctor ordered.
Ann pedaled her mountain bike up the driveway and across the empty parking lot to her lab and dismounted. She leaned it against the wall and gazed at the bare spot where the sign proclaiming AnnJon, their foray into the startup world, had hung. The bare wall still saddened her.
She swiped her access card across the door. Amazingly, it worked on the first try. She swung the door open and glanced back across the lot. The old blue Honda she’d passed remained parked by the driveway. The driver, a middle-aged, mustached man, continued talking on his phone.
"Hi Craig. Where's Ricardo?"
"Off for the day. What brings you in?"
"I need a printout," she replied, signing the logbook. "I'll only be a few minutes."
Ann walked down the hall, through the Restricted door, across the silent lab and into her office. The printout lay on her desk. She picked it up, returned to the lobby and signed out.
She put the printout in the saddlebag, mounted her bike and rode across the lot to the driveway. The old Honda was still there, the driver's window rolled down. She slowed, checking for traffic, not that she expected any on a Sunday morning.
The driver stuck his head out the window. "Excuse me, ma’am?"
She braked to a halt. "Yes?"
"I'm not from around here and seem to have gotten lost. Could you direct me to the 101?"
Weird. Must have a really old phone not to have GPS. “Sure. Turn around and go three blocks to the next stop sign. Turn right one block and then left. That's Washington. It will take you to 101."
"Turn around, three blocks, right one, and left on Washington." He smiled. "Thank you."
Ann didn't reply. She pedaled out into the street, turned right and continued east. Today she intended to see more of the countryside in the Sonoma foothills. Maybe inspiration would strike and suggest a way to get the EntComs to reveal how they knew everything. Right. Maybe she'd find a pot of gold.
[Monday, Vatican City]
Brother Isaac's tablet began singing Celeste Aida, interrupting his fervent prayers. He rose from his kneeling position and stretched his cramped legs. He must get kneepads; they'd sure helped with suriwaza. He tapped the blinking icon, and Balsamo's predatory face popped up.
Uh oh. "Your Eminence," he blurted.
"Brother Isaac, I have prayed for guidance about Dr. Grey’s revelation, and this is what I have decided. I will pose questions about Church history that no one else knows the truth of. Pass them to her, and have her submit them to her device."
Isaac frowned. "What if the answers can be found on the Web?"
Balsamo waved his hand dismissively. "The Web's so full of disinformation and outright lies it doesn't matter."
"I'll ask her." He hesitated. "If she does she'll want to publish the results."
The Cardinal smiled. "That's acceptable. I'm confident you can persuade her. Let me know how many questions are necessary."
Isaac was so surprised to see Balsamo smile he forgot to acknowledge the order before the window vanished.
He stared at the empty screen. Would Ann go along? She might if the number of questions were small. How small? An answer is either Yes or No, an event happened or it didn't. If the device chooses an answer at random, the probability is .5 per question. Let's say ten questions, so .5 to the 10th is what? He expanded his calculator icon and entered the figures. Answer: 1/1024. Not exhaustive, yet compelling.
Now to get he
r to agree. Did he want to? He imagined the scenario: Ann emails the results. He tells Balsamo. Balsamo informs the Curia. Assume every question is answered correctly, and they report to the Holy Father. What then? What had she set in motion?
If he lied and said she refused, he’d have to leave the Church. Would anything change? No. He checked his clock; middle of the night for her. He'd call after Vespers.
[Monday, Petaluma]
Ann's tablet buzzed, startling her. Must be Jon. She tapped the blinking icon. To her surprise, Isaac’s face appeared. "Good morning, Ann."
She half-smiled, puzzled. "Brother Isaac. What can I do for you?"
"My, we're being formal. I related our conversation to my superior. He was, to put it mildly, incredulous. Anyway, he has a proposal for you."
“An offer I can’t refuse?”
Isaac frowned. “Ann, this is serious. He will assemble ten questions that, to the best of his knowledge, no one else knows the truth of."
How droll. "A Catholic Trivial Pursuit?"
He laughed. "Sort of, nothing earth-shattering."
"I've got my own work."
"Don't you want independent verification?"
"Of course, but I'll never get corporate's permission to publish."
"Think about it. You send the results; they'll be scored. We'll inform you, and you may do whatever you wish."
That surprised her. "I could quote your boss?”
“Yes. I have my superior's word.”
Screw corporate. “I'll do it. No questions, only statements in the form of or 'X did or did not happen'."
He nodded "I'll make sure."
She decided to rattle his chain. "Why not ask real questions? Afraid of the answers?"
He flushed. "Ann, there's no need for that." He gazed at her. "Have you asked any 'real questions'?"
Ann held his gaze with her own. "I asked if God existed."
He didn’t blink. "And?"
"The results were ambivalent."
His eyes narrowed "Did you try reforming the question?"
"No, I'll leave it to you religious types. I'm building a baseline, a sort of truth table." Should she tell him? Confession is supposedly good for the soul, whatever that was. "Fact checking fascinates and terrifies me. I feel as if I’m at the edge of an abyss. Sometimes I wish I could put the genie back in the bottle, but that's futile, there's no going back."
His expression turned somber. "No, there isn't. Reminds me of what Oppenheimer reputedly said about Trinity: 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds'." He shrugged. "Pretty melodramatic, but you've stirred up a hornet nest."
She shivered at the image of a giant mushroom cloud erupting from the Earth.
"I'll send the questions in a day or two. Say a prayer to St. Albert." His image blanked out, replaced by the Vatican's crossed-keys logo.
She killed the window. St Albert? Look it up later after another, sure to be frustrating, session of ferreting out fact-checking rules.
[Tuesday, San Francisco]
Hooper killed the clip describing the Jove Explorer's upcoming launch. How much time did he have? He couldn’t use the EntComs, and that meant the prototype. Did he need Dr. Grey? Anyone could press a button, yet the prototype complicated things. He sat, reviewing his options. Moving the prototype seemed best, out of sight out of mind, though where? He tapped a link, and MacDougal's balding image appeared.
"Yes, Roger."
"We need to move the prototype, now. Do we have any secure locations?"
MacDougal frowned. "Cat's out of the bag, is it?"
"Not yet. Too many people know about the Petaluma location What do we have nearby?"
"Why not just increase the security there? Build a fence, add dogs. There's a lot we can do."
"No. Too many prying eyes, and our Sacramento facility is out of the question. Find something isolated."
"Wait one."
Hooper watched, drumming his fingers, while MacDougal's typed commands on his tablet.
"There are three facilities we've either mothballed or have for sale. Two are in New Mexico, one in Oregon" MacDougal studied his screen. "The one in Oregon is best. It's west of Corvallis in a small community; the facility is just a few years old and isolated." He did something to his screen. "Looks good. It even has a fence."
"If the town's too small, everyone will know about it."
"Not important. The local real estate agent knows who we are. There's nothing suspicious about using it for some research we don't want advertised. It's a natural."
"I want Dr. Grey up there nursing it. She'll need a place for a couple months."
"The agent can arrange everything. Do you want me to go ahead? Guards might be a problem on short notice. I’ll need yours for Dr. Grey."
Strip his security for that woman? It’s only temporary. "Offer a bonus. Call it hardship for a few months, whatever you think best. I'll handle the estimable Dr. Grey."
Despite what he'd told MacDougal and the Greys, he had already placed orders for EntCom components. The Board needn't know. His message icon began blinking, and he stabbed it.
The Sales VP appeared, her expression alive with excitement.
"Yes?"
"I've received an RFQ from British SatCom for an EntCom system. They learned about the NASA installation and were impressed. I told their rep I'd get back to him. Your instructions state we're not to quote any systems until further notice. This is worth millions, and I don't want to lose it."
Shit! What was MacDougal always mouthing? Plausible deniability? "Engineering has encountered an unexpected problem, and I don't want it broadcast until we fix it."
"What problem? I've heard nothing."
"You won't. It's embarrassing, and we don't need the press."
She frowned. "For millions we can stand a little embarrassment."
"No. If he asks about the NASA installation, inform him we're working on some minor bugs. Play it up. It’s a brand new, untested device and nothing unexpected. Assure him we'll have a quote ready in the near future."
"How near?"
He suppressed his growing annoyance. "Engineering hasn't said. Don't go bothering them, either."
"This won't look good when it gets out."
"I'm well aware of that. Just follow orders."
With an unhappy "Yes, sir" the window vanished.
Speaking of unhappy, the Board would hear about the RFQ. He shrugged. He could handle them.
[Tuesday, Petaluma]
Ann greeted the guards, signed in and trudged down the hallway and through the Restricted door to the empty lab and her office. She poured a cup of tea from her thermos and sipped it, thinking about Hooper's two questions. Jon knew about Press, the Board member, so who was the Kraft woman, and why did her Indian father matter? An old girl friend?
A Search for 'Ann-Marie Kraft' found little: a FaceBook page and links to pay sites for personal info. But she was much too young to be an old flame, less than half Hooper's age. So? She remembered that old lecher prof in grad school.
This might interest a gossip columnist. What about Hooper himself? Nah. If there were anything embarrassing in his background, it would be long gone.
MacDougal? Search yielded hundreds of hits. She selected a link to a thirty-five year old London Times article about a court-martial for a Captain Ian MacDougal during the Afghanistan debacle. She read on, horrified by the allegations of civilian murders and cover-ups. The article didn't state any conclusions, just that charges were being considered. The reporter noted there were rumors higher-ups were involved, that MacDougal was a scapegoat. She backed out and searched for links to the charges.
Only a few hits and she read each one. To her relief he was exonerated. What if he hadn't been? How would she have felt? Wrong question. Hooper would never have hired him. She returned to her first attempt and picked the most recent hit, five years ago —a short article in Light Reading describing his new position at Global Communication. It noted he had retired from an
unspecified post with Britain’s MI6. How about that, her own spook.
What had Isaac suggested? Pray to St Albert? A search turned up Saint Albertus Magnus, patron saint of scientists. She laughed. God may not have a sense of humor, but Isaac did.
Enough. Back to work and see what the gods of physics had in store.
[Wednesday, Petaluma]
Amazingly, her Inbox was empty. Great. Time for Isaac's trivia.
She sat at the prototype, laid the list on the table and studied the entries. She recognized Charlemagne and Turin. The others meant nothing —references to Latin or Italian-sounding names. Were they people or places? No matter, just test both possibilities and tabulate the results. But first cast them into simpler declarative sentences.
An hour later she was on the last one: "The Shroud of Turin did not capture the image of the crucified Christ" flashed on the receiving screen. Deleting 'not' produced a blinking message. She'd read that the Church stubbornly maintained the shroud was genuine even after carbon dating determined it was a fourteenth century fake. She shouldn't be surprised. There probably were many beliefs the Church didn't want examined too closely.
In her office she entered the results into a spreadsheet, encrypted it and sent it. She grinned. This could get real interesting. Her tablet showed 12:30, enough for today. The message icon began flashing. Ignore it? With a sigh she tapped the icon. Hooper's scowling image appeared.
Uh, oh. "Good afternoon."
"That remains to be seen. I'm shipping the prototype to a new location. I want you to go with it and continue testing. It should only take a couple months."
Her stomach lurched. “I can't just up and leave, I have a house."
