“Clearly it is associated with the Ring,” Chang said.
“Obviously,” Tea snapped. Rachel could see that the former astronaut was in her element, dealing with technology and military matters with men who were slow to accept her expertise. Go, girl. “I mean, I look at this Ring and think particle beam weapon, some kind of big fricking ray gun.”
The fine hairs on Rachel’s back tingled. What would be the likely target for a giant Reiver ray gun? It had to be Keanu. The thought was so terrifying and appalling that she couldn’t say it out loud.
“But what’s not obvious is how that Ring becomes some kind of force multiplier.”
No one could offer an explanation.
“I don’t think we’re going to figure this thing out here,” she said. She was hoping they hadn’t.
She followed Pav out onto the tarmac. The air was thick, muggy, cool. In other circumstances, she would have enjoyed touring Darwin. For that matter, she would have enjoyed seeing some of Bangalore. Anything beyond the confines of Yelahanka Air Base.
“Were you able to connect with Keanu?”
Pav shook his head. “I think I got a link. You know that weird feeling you get behind your ear? So I transmitted the information—Sanjay, where we are now.”
That alarmed Rachel, and Pav noticed. “Nothing more, I promise. I got no response, but there’s some chance the message got through.”
“Only a small one.” She felt agitated and unsure. “We need to tell them about this Ring thing as soon as we can. And before we can do that with any confidence—” She turned, spotted her quarry heading for the aircraft. “Xavier!”
The rotund one detoured toward her. He still looked ashen and dazed, which made Rachel feel a bit worse about what she had to tell him. “We need the transmitter.”
“I know. If we would come to rest for more than an hour I might be able to do something—”
“Why can’t you work on the plane?”
That stumped him. He turned to look at the vehicle. “Well, it’s not stable . . .”
“Come on, even with the bumps we took going around storms, most of the flight was like glass,” Rachel said. “Are you telling me you can’t get anything done in three or four hours?”
Xavier blinked. “I’m not telling you anything like that. I just didn’t know how . . . dire this was.”
“It’s totally fucking dire. Please, please, please build that transmitter as soon as possible. Even if you only get some of it done on the plane, we’ll hold at our next stop to get it running.”
“Wait,” Xavier said. “The real problem is . . . well, power.”
“Where did we get it when all this started on Keanu?”
“From Keanu itself, the whole system. They were tapping into it inside the Temple.”
“I have an idea,” Pav said. He gestured to Xavier. “Let’s talk to Edgely and the pilots.”
To Rachel he said, “You should probably find Yahvi and get aboard.”
Has anyone heard from Colin?
As near as I can tell, he’s been dark for seventy hours—this from a guy who can’t take a breath without posting somewhere, and now that Keanu folks are back? Is something up? Is he all right? Someone tell us!
POSTER ZIRCONX, KETTERING GROUP,
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2040
WHIT
If not for the changed landscape outside his window—or just the fact that he had a window—Whit Murray could have believed he was still working in Las Vegas. There were the same cubicles, the same lighting, the same workstations.
Even the people looked the same. Most were in their early twenties, with a few outliers who might be Dehm’s age, or Whit’s. There were probably twenty in the place.
That number didn’t include the half dozen THE supervisors, two trios this time—including Counselors Kate, Margot, and Hans, who, along with their fellow monitors, patrolled the lab like herding dogs, silent and still until some worker stretched or showed physical stress of some kind.
Then one of them would swoop . . . gently, it must be said. Even supportively. “Is there a problem? Are you in discomfort? Is a command unclear? Is the task too challenging?”
Whit knew because he had been the subject of THE “support” several times in his previous posting, though there THE counselors had tended to be more gruff and impatient.
Here, though, they were all about helping you do the work, it seemed.
Maybe it was because they were all—field modelers and THE action teamsters—new here.
Or maybe it was due to the critical nature of the work.
What made the current level of THE monitoring slightly creepier and more intrusive was that they had three workstations dedicated to them, meaning that any THE agent could sit down and call up a record of every keystroke a modeler made. Whit had had experienced teachers and others checking his work; this was far worse.
“Hello, Whit.”
He looked up to see Counselor Kate, the slim redhead from the trio that had “recruited” him in Las Vegas. Still wearing her standard THE uniform, minus the jacket, she looked relaxed, indecently healthy and happy. She lowered herself to a stand that Whit, a longtime baseball player, always called “on-deck circle”: one knee up, one on the floor.
Arm on the back of Whit’s chair. “How do you like the work so far? The facility?”
“The place is fine.” He was able to be truthful; his living quarters were bigger and nicer than where he had lived at Nellis. He wasn’t in a bunk bed, for one thing, and he shared his room with only three young men, down from seven.
“But . . .” Kate was offering him an opening.
The only thing lacking so far was free communication, and Whit’s experience with THE encouraged him to raise it: “I wish I could talk to my mother.”
Kate was all sympathy. “We told her Friday night that you had been called away on a special assignment, and that you would be in touch . . . Tuesday! Right after your shift today.” Her whole chirpy manner suggested that this was a wonderful coincidence. Whit also knew that if he hadn’t said anything, it wouldn’t be happening.
Here came the hand on his shoulder. “Anything else?”
Whit pushed back. Maybe it was exposure to Dehm, maybe it was a sense that time was short and that people with his skills were rare. He might have a tiny bit of leverage.
“I would be more productive if I knew what I was working on.”
“You’re working on modeling electromagnetic fields. Very, very large and powerful ones. Me, too, by the way.” She nodded toward her cubicle.
“I knew that,” he said. “But I don’t know why. Or what for.”
Counselor Kate seemed to process this. Whit expected to see her glance toward Counselor Hans or Margot or one of the other three for permission, but she kept her eyes focused on him as she said, “Well, then, ask me.”
“We’re creating what appears to be a giant cone—or ring—of energy, out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Correct. We can’t be messing around with that kind of energy too close to population centers.”
“I understand that. I just don’t see the use of this energy cone.” He decided to press his luck. “Is it a weapon?”
Counselor Kate didn’t hesitate. “No, you have my word on that. And, since you have no special reason to trust me, look at this.” This time she did glance at Counselor Margot. Apparently having received permission, she called up a new schematic on her screen. It showed a dozen beams of some kind emanating from a projector at the center of the ring. The beams hit the ring, which then projected a gauzy cone into the sky.
Counselor Kate tapped on her mouse pad, pointing the cone in different directions. Apparently it could even be aimed parallel to the Earth’s surface. Having some idea of the energies involved, Whit hoped he would never find the cone aimed at him.
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“Cool,” he said, trying not to be sarcastic. “What does the cone do besides make a pretty shape?”
“It literally bends space.”
“Okay,” he said, not entirely sure that he understood that—or accepted it.
“The ring accelerates subatomic particles to hypervelocities. When they collide with certain other particles, a . . . distortion is created. A wave of particles.”
“Sounds very quantum.”
Kate nodded so slightly that it was impossible to know whether she agreed or thought he was teasing her. “This . . . wavicle”—she smiled, pleased with her coinage—“somehow compresses or distorts the structure of space. Think of it as taking two ends of a flat tablecloth and bringing them together. You still have all the fabric, but you’ve connected the ends.” She smiled broadly now, pleased that she remembered an important lesson.
“And once we’ve made this connection?”
“Oh, objects can move from one end to the other without taking the long way around.”
Whit smiled. “We’re back to why.”
“One possibility is to send material from one world to another without using spaceships.”
“What, it just opens a door in the universe?”
“That would be a simplistic and, uh, incomplete way of describing it.”
“I bet. Considering how power drops off the farther you get from the generator . . . ”
“If you’re picturing some cone of empty space stretching across the galaxy, don’t. The cone is only effective to a distance of several thousand kilometers. It creates . . . and here I’m using English-language terms for concepts that are not only mathematical, but Aggregate math. It creates a . . . well, a transition.”
“That isn’t remotely helpful,” Whit said.
“It’s the best I can do. I can tell you that more than a thousand Aggregate cells are currently mapping the transition.”
“How can you speak about mapping something when it’s all theory?”
Now Counselor Kate’s smile, formerly warm and helpful, became faintly indulgent, as if she had exhausted her patience. “It’s a theory that the Aggregates have been . . . pondering for five thousand years.”
“Let me get this straight,” he said. As he tried to shape his feelings into words, he couldn’t help seeing the wide eyes of his fellow field-modelers. Their thoughts were clear: Better him than us. “This ring or cone causes some kind of transition or disruption in space so large that you could send something solid through it?” He had read about experiments, pre-Aggregate days, that postulated the superluminal—faster than light speed—transfer of information.
But objects? Living things? Not according to the physics he’d studied.
Counselor Kate killed the image. She was suddenly more serious, less like someone trying to sell soap or jewelry. “I’m not saying that is the purpose. It’s one of several theoretical possibilities.”
Whit stared at her. He suspected that any further questions might elevate him to a suspect category, but what the hell: “What is that countdown clock?”
“It’s pointing us all toward what we call ‘First Light,’ which is an all-up test, and ‘Fire Light,’ which is the time when the whole cone is ready to go online.”
“‘First Light’ is only five days from now!”
“Yes. The whole project was accelerated in the past few months.” She smiled brightly. “It’s why you and the others were transferred from your other jobs.”
“So there’s no time to waste.”
“Very perceptive, Mr. Murray.”
When he was allowed to step out for lunch, Whit found Randall Dehm already sitting on top of a lunch table in the sun, dark glasses on his face, the remains of a sandwich on the table next to him. “Join me.”
“You’ve already eaten.”
He slid off the tabletop. “I can eat more.”
And, as Whit ordered a wrap and a drink, Dehm did the same. “Walk with me.”
“I only have fifteen minutes.”
“Then eat as you walk.”
Dehm led him to the edge of the platform, where a railing separated them from a drop of ten stories. “What do you see out there?”
Whit squinted. In the foreground were other buildings, including his residence. The usual electrical and environmental support required for a desert facility. One thing immediately struck Whit as odd: Site A wasn’t more than five years old, yet everything looked as though it was falling apart. There were bricks missing from walls, various bits of weatherstripping and UV protection already peeling from windows, walls that had never been painted and looked as though they never would be.
Had the Aggregates gone cheap on Site A? “I see a big bunch of run-down buildings.”
“Well, that’s because no one expects this place to be permanent,” Dehm said. “But beyond that.”
Whit blinked. What he could see was a vast open space that seemed to be filled with dun-colored vehicles in a variety of shapes and sizes. It reminded him of the one remaining automobile lot in Vegas, Auto Land, where he used to see row upon row of nearly identical silvery vehicles.
“This project has created a lot of work for some people. Plants down in Oklahoma and Texas, I hear. Can you imagine building all these things with Aggregates looking over their shoulders? No wonder there’s been no money to build a fucking bridge in this country for the past few years.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Everybody who’s been here a few months knows the same thing.”
“But why are you telling me? Charity?”
Dehm rubbed his face. “Maybe I just like to talk. Show off.”
“Maybe you’re setting me up as a security risk.”
Dehm laughed. “I’m not that powerful.” He jerked his head toward the interior of the building. “If you were a risk, the lovely Counselor Kate wouldn’t have been talking to you.”
“Then I just don’t understand—”
“They’re trying to keep you motivated, man. You realize you were the top of your field.”
“I realize no such thing.”
“Well, get used to it, while you can. When they moved the clock forward and we had to add staff, they searched outside the college pool for smart folks who were your age or younger. Your test scores and work evals showed that you were ninety-ninth percentile. I’m not saying there’s no one else in Free Nation U.S. who isn’t as good or as fast . . . I’m just saying you were a number one draft choice.”
“And everyone thinks I’ll work better if I know what I’m working on?”
“Well, I do. And so, apparently, does THE.”
“But you’re not them.”
“No.”
“Which takes me back to—”
Dehm extended his arms as if he planned to launch himself off this high building like an eagle. Then he turned. “I don’t trust this project,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good for Americans, and I’m pretty damn sure it’s going to be bad for whoever is on the receiving end of it.
“But I can’t shut it down! And thanks to my own personality traits—I happen to be one of those people who will follow orders pretty blindly without question—I am happiest when things get done.
“So I want this done, over with, complete. So I can go back to California.”
He plucked a coin out of Whit’s ear. “So you know what I know. Can you please just push this project to the finish line?”
“As soon as I finish my lunch.”
Dehm laughed, then walked away.
Whit had actually lost interest in his lunch. Because the sight of all those war machines made him think not about the assembly plants, but about the mines and pits where this raw material had been found. Or the forges or toxic fabrication plants where it had been transformed into suitable material.
His father had been sentenced to one of those places for daring to speak his mind.
However important that was, it was history now, a side issue. Because Whit Murray had put two and two and two-squared together. (After all, he had just received two indications that his calculating skills were superior.) Take this quantum ring and cone opening a “portal” in space, and add this army of badass machines, and you could only come up with one purpose:
The Aggregates were going to invade someone.
The only remaining question was . . . who?
Day Five
TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2040
Ever since the arrival of the Aggregates, we have assumed that their presence was an invasion, a hostile takeover of an independent nation, a blot on the Constitution, a betrayal of our Founding Fathers—fill in the blank with your standard phrase.
Thousands have died in the service of this belief, or call it a myth. Here we are twenty years later, with unemployment at record lows, student test scores at record highs, no reported racial or ethnic conflicts, and the Cubs finally winning a World Series.
Can anyone say “Utopia”?
Yes, there are still problems: The Free Nation coalition faces threats from without (though it appears we are on the verge of some kind of resolution) . . . and Keanu rises in our night sky, its purpose unknown.
But it seems to me that we all need to step back from our previous positions and ask ourselves if the Aggregates haven’t been a good thing rather than evil?
BLOGGER MINNESOTA SLIM, NEWSNIGHT&DAY.COM
Who wrote this? Some Aggregate? You are a traitor to the human race.
EXCHANGE POSTED 0811 EDT 17 APRIL 2040
EXCHANGE DELETED 0812 EDT 17 APRIL 2040
XAVIER
Fortunately, the small proteus printer did not require a large amount of energy. Working with the pilots, Pav and Chang had managed to scrounge up four batteries for electric vehicles.
It was up to Xavier to get the power from the batteries to the printer, which involved a bit of old-fashioned baring and bending of wires.
Heaven’s Fall Page 21
