For now, she thought grimly.
Not knowing what else to check at the moment, she typed in “J. Hewitt Porter” to see what came up. Below the primary entries—his university profile, a website dedicated to mathematical considerations run under his name, a couple of links to published papers—were other obituaries.
A string of “Porter, Jerry, Jeremiah, Jerard, etc.”, many of them deceased—recently, within the last ten months.
Sarah began opening each link.
John folded his phone and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. McMillin watched him with a faint smile, waiting, a study in patience.
“You’ve worked with Cyberdyne,” John said.
McMillin grinned. “I wondered how long it might take you to bring that up.”
“Were you going to mention it?”
“Eventually. When we began discussing my security problem.”
“How about discussing that relationship with Cyberdyne, instead?”
“Why is that?” McMillin said, waving a hand for emphasis. “Concerned that at any moment a—what did you call them?—a ‘Terminator’ might come out of my closet and try to kill you?”
“Or worse. What would you expect me to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know—something dramatic, I suppose. Take me hostage, start shooting up my staff.”
“You would’ve taken precautions against that.”
“Of course.”
“You might expect that I’d know that.”
“I did. I hoped you’d act accordingly. People are often irrational when they feel threatened.”
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“My rationality is on a short leash right now. Let’s assume I could rise to extremes at any moment unless I’m given a good reason not to.”
McMillin laughed. “I can see why Cruz hates you.”
“Oscar Cruz? Former Cyberdyne executive?”
“Is there another who might hate you? Yes, Oscar.”
“He’s in prison.”
“Was. Three months ago he was released. I understand some people in Washington are quite upset about it.”
John heard the contempt in McMillin’s voice, subdued but clear. There should have been no way for Cruz to be released. Several other minor players from Cyberdyne who had also gone to jail after the 2001 debacle that effectively closed down the company’s Colorado Springs operation had been paroled, but the primary actors—Cruz, a few lab people, a number of federal employees and military people—had been buried under layers of charges and red tape, most of them in solitary confinement.
Oscar Cruz, out of prison. How had that happened?
“My late partner and myself early on established a principle that we would do no weapons research,” McMillin continued. “Nothing directly for any Pentagon or Department of Defense program. Of course, it’s virtually impossible to be in this business without government contracts of some kind, so we had to find ways to skirt our own ethical standards. Sounds perverse, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds like life in our times. Not many people would admit to it.”
“More than you might think. Honesty as a salve to a bothersome conscience.” McMillin grunted. “I’d rather find ways around the problem altogether. So we’re very careful what we involve ourselves with. But we’re a large enterprise, as you can see. Mistakes happen. When we discover them, we try to remedy the situation.”
“How successful have you been at that?”
“Depends. Fifty-fifty, maybe. Cyberdyne was a mistake.
We’re not doing business with them anymore—not directly.”
“But someone you do work with does.”
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“It’s a very incestuous field. Yes, and that’s the source of the problem. I think. It could be worse than that. I’m hoping not. That’s what I’d like you to find out.”
“You said your ‘late’ partner. He committed suicide last year, didn’t he?”
McMillin frowned. “I suppose that wasn’t very difficult to find out. That’s the official version, of course.”
“Massive trauma to the brain due to a .9mm gunshot wound seems fairly conclusive. Weapon was found in his hand, in his car, pretty far out in the desert. No sign of anyone else in, around, or near the vehicle. Is there a different version?”
“For the actual death, no,” McMillin admitted. “For the reasons behind it. Well…”
“Destry was responsible for the Cyberdyne project here?”
John asked.
“Now that was a guess, wasn’t it?”
“Accurate, I assume.”
“Quite. Yes, he supervised the project. During the course of it, he changed. Something about it bothered him—a lot.
I was never able to find out. My own cross to bear—I’m afraid I was neck-deep in other projects. By the time I realized something was seriously wrong…”
“What did you do about the project?”
“After Ian’s death, I started going through it and realized fairly quickly that it was associated with Cyberdyne’s Skynet program. That was top to bottom military ap, so I set about…terminating it. That has not been the easiest thing to do, as you might imagine. It cost us a lot of money, a lot of time, and reputation in certain quarters.”
“I was under the impression Cyberdyne no longer had government contracts.”
“It took a while, but…let’s just say administrations change, and a company like Cyberdyne will always have something the government wants.”
“I see. How come it wasn’t obvious at the start?”
“Ian hid things. It was a materials project, new manufacturing technique for fusing metals and crystal lattices. Fairly 42
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straightforward for the most part. Sure, down the line the military could use it, they can use almost anything, but there was immense nonmilitary potential in the project. I’m sure that’s what attracted Ian in the first place.”
“What about it suggested military applications?”
“Lasers, specifically pulsed-plasma devices. One of the problems with them is weight—the shielding is heavy, the wear rate is enormous. To make one practical you have to make it big and, quite literally, thick. Too heavy to make a ray gun, if you catch my drift. These new techniques would’ve enabled an advanced approach to manufacturing that reduced the weight and increased durability. And it seems that’s exactly what Cyberdyne was doing.”
“I always thought Cyberdyne was strictly a computer company. More or less.”
“More or less, sure, that’s their primary product, but like any company of a certain size they diversify. They’ve had so much DoD money poured into them in the last thirty years, even with the interruption of the last few years, they’ve been able to do a wide range of R & D projects. In their own way, they’re right up there with Lawrence-Liver-more.”
“So they were going to build laser guns. And when Destry found out?”
“I don’t know. A number of times he seemed to want to tell me something, but he never got it out. Then one day he drove off into the desert; next I knew, he was all over the evening news. I had to go over Ian’s work afterward.
When I found this and looked at it closely, I started to suspect it had to do with Cyberdyne. When I understood the project, I shut it down.”
“Which cost you.”
“Considerably. If not for our own government affiliations, we might have gone under. As it was, we’ve been forced to take on a few new projects for them I’m not altogether pleased with, but at least I’ve got some control.”
“You hope.”
“No, I know. Control I have. Security is a problem.”
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“Before we get to that, please explain how I told you to hire me.”
“That has to do with part of Ian’s last project. Care to take a tour of the lab?”
John hesitated. McMillin looked disappointed.
; “Please, Mr. Connor. To use a bad cliché, if I wanted to do you harm—”
“You’d have had a bitch of a time doing it, and we wouldn’t be sitting here talking so nicely. But I take your point. Sure. What kind of a tour do you have in mind?”
McMillin led him down to one of the basement levels, from where they took a small electric cart down a tunnel to one of the other, working, structures. Office decor gave way to lab equipment, and men and women wearing their professionalism in their clothing became people who showed theirs in abstracted or intense expressions and the harried look that comes of odd circadians. Equipment crowded the space, hugging the walls, filling niches, cables and conduit running from one unknown point to another. The entire building seemed like one giant experiment.
McMillin pointed out labs and talked about projects along the way. He kept it basic, for which John was grateful—he possessed a rudimentary comprehension of science, better, he thought, than most people, but he knew his own limitations. McMillin, he saw, possessed intense pride in his company and the work. The veneer of joviality and corporate politesse lightly masked a profound passion.
Finally, McMillin stopped near a pair of sliding doors.
Above the lintel, John read CABRERA SUPERCONDUCTOR
RESEARCH.
“Do you know anything about magnetic monopoles, Mr.
Connor?” McMillin asked as he climbed out of the cart.
“Philicos.”
McMillin smiled, nodding. “Of course.”
John stood. “No, I don’t know very much about magnetic monopoles. Should I?”
“I think so. Your future may depend on them. Literally.
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After you.” He gestured for John to precede him through the doors.
John entered a large space filled with apparatus, computers, boxes, conduit, cables, and the jumbled, low background hum of expensive machinery. Two women huddled at a console, talking quietly as they studied an array of screens. They glanced around at McMillin and John’s approach. One returned her attention to the screens, the other came forward to meet them.
“Stef,” McMillin said, “I want you to meet Sean Philicos.
He’s going to be doing some work for me. Mr. Philicos, this is Dr. Stefani Jaspar. She runs this little project.”
She extended her hand. Almost as tall as John, Dr. Jaspar had sharp, angular features, reddish-brown hair, and soft green eyes. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise,” John said, clasping her hand.
“Tell him a bit about what we’re doing here, Stef,”
McMillin said, then wandered over to the console to gaze at the screens with the other woman.
“In a nutshell, or do you know anything about superconductors?” Jaspar asked.
“In a nutshell, but please don’t hold my ignorance against me.”
She snorted quietly. “We’re trying to find a way to isolate magnetic monopoles.” She raised an eyebrow. “Lost yet?”
“Um…yes.”
“Great. Okay, Physics 101, then. Tell me again why I’m explaining this to you?”
“Mr. McMillin suggested my future depends on it.”
All at once, her expression changed. She lost the veneer of polite cynicism. She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time only now. “I see. In that case, come with me.”
John followed her to a small cubicle off to the right.
Within, a desk holding a large flatscreen and keyboard half filled the space, leaving barely enough room for two chairs.
Jaspar gestured to one and sat down before the desk. She typed quickly, eyes on the screen, until an image came up.
It showed a lattice structure comprised of balls of different 45
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colors, like a child’s construction toy. In the lower left corner another box opened, this one a graph showing a slightly jagged line that jumped up to another level halfway along.
She turned to face him. “You must be John Connor.”
John’s irritation spiked. “Does everyone here know who I am?”
“No, just those few of us who can read Morse code. Calm down, ‘Mr. Philicos’—only Dennis and myself know.”
“Morse code? What—”
“Monopoles first,” she said, indicating the screen. “Otherwise the rest may seem ridiculous.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Though maybe not to you.”
She typed on the keyboard again and another screen opened, this one displaying equations. “Recognize that?”
“Actually, yeah,” John said. “Maxwell’s equations, aren’t they?”
“I’m impressed. Yes. The basic ones, describing electromagnetism.”
“Electricity and magnetism,” John ventured. “Not quite the same thing?”
Jaspar shrugged. “The problem, you see, is right here.”
She tapped the second “0” and then the “J” with a finger-nail. “The same fundamental equations described both electricity and magnetism, except when solved, you get nothing for magnetism and a current density for electricity.
They should theoretically provide either zeroes on both or a current density on both.”
“Why don’t they?”
“Because in electricity, you’re dealing with charged particles that come in discreet packets—plus or minus. With magnetism, you have a continuous field that doesn’t break down discreetly.”
“I thought north and south—”
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“Flow. Indicates direction, not charge. If you cut a magnet in two, you don’t get a north part and a south part, you get two magnets, both with north and south poles.”
“But according to theory—”
“There should be discreet north and south magnetic particles. Dirac posited it in the 1930s. We should be able to derive a charge density for a magnetic monopole. It’s implicit in General Relativity. We should be able to find a magnetic monopole.”
“So what does this have to do with Morse code?”
“I’m getting there. Dirac said there ought to be monopoles. A lot of scientists through the twentieth century thought at one time there were, but after the initial seconds of the Big Bang there wasn’t enough energy to keep them isolated, so magnetism collapsed into its present form. By this theory, electricity ought to do the same at low enough energy levels.”
“Does it?”
“Sort of. That’s kind of what we see in a superconductor.
At low enough temperatures, electricity begins to lose its charge density. That’s why magnetic fields don’t interact with current flowing through a superconducting medium—which means that a superconductor should be the ideal medium to detect a magnetic monopole. Back in 1982, Blas Cabrera set up an experiment to do just that.”
“And?”
“He found one.”
After a pause, John asked, “Just one?”
She shrugged. “The event only happened once. It was never satisfactorily duplicated, although some exciting possibilities popped up from time to time. The trace of a passing magnetic monopole looks like this.” She indicated the bottom left-hand window with the chart showing the jump in the jagged line.
“Does Cabrera work here?”
She shook her head. “This project is named for him, that’s all. We think he was correct.”
“But?” Despite himself, John found his interest roused.
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“You’ve got to ask: If this is a function of higher energy levels, that if discreet magnetic poles require the temperatures present near the Big Bang, why would they collapse into a single, homogeneous field? Why not simply disappear, like a lot of exotic particles?”
“You have a theory.”
“A pretty far-fetched one, yes. And you, apparently, have proved it.”
“Me.”
She indicated the large image on the screen. “We’ve been playing with different types of superconductors
, seeing if one energy level is better suited than the others to detect monopoles. The one we’ve found that seems to work best is a niobium-titanium alloy. Transition temperature is low, but not as low as, say, mercury. At 10° Kelvin we can set up our experiment and start monitoring for monopole events.”
“Why would this be better than any other?”
“The cooper pairs seem to be more stable. It’s a small factor, but…” She typed, lost briefly in concentration. John wanted to ask what a cooper pair was, but he felt overwhelmed as it was, which added to his annoyance. Beyond the cubicle, he saw McMillin still talking to the other woman out in the main lab. He was about to interrupt when Jaspar continued. “We started running the experiment six months ago. For four months, two weeks, we found nothing.
Odd fluctuations here and there we discounted as aberra-tions produced by flaws in the equipment or quantum flux variations. Nothing solid. Then we started receiving spikes.”
“Like the one you mentioned? Cabrera’s?”
“The same type, but a lot more of them, continuously.
Look.”
Now on the screen John saw several graphs like the Cabrera one. But the energy jumps came in bunches—up, down, pause, more. It looked sort of like…he could not say.
Familiar.
“I said I had a far-fetched theory about magnetism, why it manifests the way it does,” Jaspar said. “It has to do with 48
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the way our universe formed. When we study subatomic interactions, we see how the physical components of the world combine to form substance—matter and all that implies. At one time, everything looked different because all the forces were combined into a single superforce, right before and maybe shortly after the Big Bang. Aside from fossil evidence, we don’t really have a physical model of how time interacts with everything else. But I think that when we see a magnetic field interacting with an electrical current, or with anything else for that matter, we’re seeing a manifestation of time as a property of existence. The fingerprint of time, if you will.”
John stared at her for a long time, then shifted his gaze to the screen. “If I’m following you at all, you’re suggesting that these monopoles you’ve been hunting…what?”
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