by John Ringo
“Soldiers?” the French woman in the environment suit said. “War?”
“Actually,” Bill replied. “I think it’s more like ‘smart’ or ‘good damned job.’ ”
The alien reached up and manipulated some latches on his neck at which one of the others waved a hand. He waved back and then took off his helmet, snuffling at the air.
He wasn’t pretty. There were three eyes, one on either side of its head and one placed more or less where a human forehead would be. Just below it was an opening and below that was a wide beak, flat and round. Its skin was a pale bluish color.
“Tchar,” the alien said through the snout; his mouth remained closed. “Tchar,” he added, tapping his chest. Then he pointed at Bill. “Bill. Tchar.”
“Hello, Tchar,” Bill said. “Pleased to meet you. I hope.”
* * *
“The Adar appear to be about fifty, maybe a hundred, years advanced upon us. They use neural implants, their primary air method of transport is suborbital rockets that work off of laser launch technology, they have very advanced computing devices and the guns that they were carrying seem to be some sort of plasma-toroid generator. They’re not super guns, but they’d probably take out a Bradley Fighting Vehicle from the pictures Tchar showed me. They do not appear to be friends with the Titcher or Dreen as they call them. They’ve showed us pictures of their planet, had one team over on a suborbital rocket from which a large area was visible, and appear to get the point that we’re not going to just fall for the friendly alien thing. Once bitten twice shy and all that but this time the aliens appear to be friendly.”
“That’s good,” the President said. “If true.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Bill replied. “If true.”
“Most of the time the Adar team on Earth have been using their communicators,” the national security advisor said. “They appear to be radios, they’re giving off RF emissions, but we haven’t figured out exactly how they’re broadcasting or what is being said. So we haven’t been able to get much of their language. Dr. Avery from the State Department, however, has been communicating with some of their people on the other side, we don’t know if they’re leadership or not, and he’s making headway. He thinks he’s gotten about a five-hundred-word vocabulary so far.”
“Avery’s amazing,” the secretary of defense said to the President. “He can pick up an Earth language just listening to it for a couple of hours. If anyone can decipher their language he can.”
“They’re being helpful in that as well,” the national security advisor said, biting her lip. “I’m inclined, this time, to side with them being friendly. As friendly as could be expected. They appear to have a couple of internal gates open as well and the means to move them; they apparently had the theory of wormhole formation and then started making bosons. And Dr. Weaver will be gratified to learn that the way they move them is by using very large Van Der Graff generators.”
“Yes,” Bill said. “Maybe we can buy a couple off of them.”
“I still want a full analysis this time,” the President replied. “As much as we can determine of their economy and order of battle. I don’t want to be fooled again. It’s not good for politics and it’s not good for America. Dr. Weaver, any idea when the Titcher gates might open?”
“No, Mr. President,” Bill replied. “Tchar took me to what they call their Dreen gate. It’s in the same area as the one that connects to us, a big open desert area with some mountains in the distance. Except for some of the colors it looks a lot like Groom Lake. They have the Dreen gate surrounded by their tanks inside a large hole in the ground that they can fire downwards into. And there’s a big device right opposite it. Again, this was all pantomime, but I get the impression that it’s got something like a nuke in it that they can trigger if their gate stabilizes. It wasn’t stable, though; it was rippling just like ours. I tried to get some idea if they knew how long they stayed down but that was just too complicated. If Tchar knew what I was talking about, he couldn’t answer me. Among other things, sir, they don’t have our clock, obviously. Their planet seems to have about a thirty-hour day and I have no idea what their year might be. I started to try to get him to count it out in Planck seconds since every physicist in this universe would know what that is… but for the life of me I couldn’t think of how to pantomime ‘what is the time delay if you count that in the smallest possible time increment allowed in this universe?’ I’m open for suggestions on that one.”
“Ask Dr. Avery to concentrate on that question,” the President said to the national security advisor.
“I will, sir,” the NSA said, then temporized. “The thing is, they might take it as a request to find out about their nuclear capability. We’ll have to know things like the yield of their weapons and delivery methods. If they started asking us those questions, I’d be uncomfortable.”
“Tell him to explain why we’re asking, first,” the President said. “I’m sure they’ll understand in that case.” He frowned and then shook his head. “They seem to have a point, though. Don’t we have some artillery-fired nukes? Is there any reason we can’t fix up something like that at all the sites?”
“I don’t think we have any left in inventory…” the secretary of defense said.
“We don’t,” the national security advisor said, definitely. “But there ought to be some way to set up a launcher on a standard Mark 81 MIRV warhead, and we have a bunch of those in inventory.” She smiled for a moment and shook her head. “We’re supposed to come up with things like that, Mr. President. What do you want to do, work us out of a job?”
“No, but I do want to make sure the Titcher stay on their side of the gate,” the President answered. “Get that set up as soon as possible. Not just at the open gates but at the inactive particles as well. I don’t want to be caught with our pants down again. Then there’s the inactive particles. Dr. Weaver, Columbia is taking far too much time in opening them.”
“I have to take the Fifth on that one, Mr. President,” Bill replied, formally. “It’s not my department and the one time I brought it up I was reminded of that fact.”
“Well, I’m not afraid to bring it up,” the President said, somewhat angrily.
“I’ll call Kevin Borne over at Columbia,” the secretary of defense said. “I know they’ve got some issues but I’ll point out that they really don’t want to get us upset with them. I’ll be pointed about that fact, rest assured, Mr. President.”
“Just get it done,” the President said.
“There’s the point that there is still only one gate generator,” Bill pointed out. “It takes a skilled team about ten hours to set up, then there’s transportation time. Even if they had gotten on the ball right away, and ignored arguments about which gates should open where, there wouldn’t be many linked, yet. There is a firm that was scheduled to build some more, but I don’t know the status of that project.”
“I’ll talk to Kevin and light a fire under him,” the secretary of defense said. “If there’s something holding it up besides lawyers, money I guess would be the answer, I’ll talk about that as well.”
“I think that’s all we have,” the President said. “Let’s hope the Titcher gates don’t open soon.”
* * *
“Robin,” Bill said, from his office. “Could I see you for a second?”
“Sure,” the programmer replied, walking to the open door.
“Come on in and close the door,” Bill said, opening the refrigerator by his desk. “You drink Pepsi, right?”
“He said as he slipped in the strychnine?” Robin asked.
“No,” Bill said, chuckling. “I got a call from the Columbia rep in Paris. The Adar are asking about the boson generator. Communication is still spotty so they’ve asked me to go over there and try to figure out how to communicate what’s going on and what we think happened. You’re better at 3-D modeling than I am. I’d like to just make up a little cartoon to show what we think happened and what is happening
now. Could you do that?”
“Sure,” Robin said, smiling. “It doesn’t require modeling at all. I’ll just do a rip on an Unreal Tournament engine; that will give enough detail for what you’re asking about.”
“Great,” Bill said. “Can you do it on a plane?”
* * *
The biggest problem had been passports; Robin didn’t have one. By the time they were in D.C., though, one had been prepared and they took a trans-Atlantic flight, First Class, on British Airways.
It was a hell of a lot better than his first flight to Paris when they’d loaded him in another F-15 and flown nonstop with one aerial refueling. The service was much better, from some very pretty young English stewardesses, and Robin was good company.
They’d laid out the script for what they wanted to impart on the way to D.C., then Robin had started modeling it on her laptop. By the time they got to Paris the video, which had had some glitches, was working fine. They spent the night at the embassy, then took a French Alouette helicopter to the Adar gate site.
The French military was, apparently, not taking the Adar at their word. The vineyard was now ringed by entrenchments and a large concrete bastion was under construction. But the Adar representative, wearing a respirator, was apparently willing to ignore the formalities. Perhaps that was because when they stepped through the gate, also wearing respirators since the Adar atmosphere was high in carbon dioxide compared to Earth, there was a similar military buildup on the Adar side. There was also a large device that looked vaguely like a tank without the treads. The weapon it mounted had a large bore but no larger than that on an Abrams. Bill suspected, though, that it was something much more powerful than a 120mm tank cannon. If the humans turned out to be less friendly than it appeared, the Adar were clearly willing to close the gate with all due force.
Rather than flying casual diplomats all over their globe, the Adar had set up a meeting center near the Terran gate. Bill saw quite a few humans, most of them apparently international diplomats uncomfortable in their respirators, moving around the grounds. The Adar that had greeted them on the Terran side accompanied them by ground vehicle to the meeting center, which was a large building that had the vague feel of a hangar, sectioned up by hasty plastic panels, and turned them over to another guide. He, in turn, led them to the back of the center where a more substantial office was located.
In it were Dr. Avery, wearing an oxygen nosepiece and toting an oxygen bottle, and three Adar. There was also an Adar-sized conference table surrounded by chairs for the Adar and a few human swivel chairs that had been brought through the gate. All the Adar looked the same to Bill and he suspected that it was the same with them. But one of them stepped forward and crossed his chest, bowing slightly.
“This is Tchar, Dr. Weaver,” Avery said. He was a slim man with an erect carriage, a former Army officer who had attained the rank of rear admiral before retiring. He weighed 173 pounds, which was the same weight he had been upon entering the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. “You met him before.”
“A pleasure to see you again, Tchar,” Bill said, pulling aside his respirator then clamping it back down. “I see you’ve found a better solution, Admiral Avery.”
“A necessity of the mission, Doctor,” Avery replied. Before he did he took a breath through his nose which slowed his speech, but it was better than shouting through a respirator or pulling it aside. “Do you think we can explain the gate phenomenon to the Adar?”
“We can’t even explain it to ourselves, Admiral,” Bill admitted. “Miss Noue?”
Robin set her laptop on the table as Avery and the Adar sat down. The laptop was nearly at Avery’s eye-level due to the height of the Adar table. She keyed the video and then sat down herself.
The scene was a daytime, apparently viewed from the air. The notional camera swooped in over some suburban tracts and roads and then showed a stylized college campus. A few students were walking around the campus, carrying books or laptops. The camera zoomed in on a building and then through the wall into a laboratory. A few people were grouped around a device. The only portion that was clear was a linear accelerator. A man that didn’t look like Ray Chen but did have vaguely Asian features said: “Let’s see what happens,” and pressed a button.
The camera cut back to outside the building and there was a flash. It cut to farther away and watched the shockwave roll out from the building and the mushroom cloud form.
The next sequence was video from the news choppers on the day of the event. They showed the police helicopter closing in on the base of the dust cloud and then the shot of the Chen Anomaly. And the bug that first fell out.
The next sequence was computer animation again. The anomaly was shown and then particles zipping out. The “camera” showed one of the particles zipping away down between and through buildings, then zoomed out to show that it was covering a portion of the globe. It came to rest at a random spot and then, a few moments later, a gate opened.
Another was shown zipping not far from the anomaly on the map and then a gate opening in a dark wood. Dog-demons, and they had been the hardest to create of all the images, came out of the gate sniffing the ground. They went into a house and came out dragging two people, taking them into the gate. Last there was a shot of the fighting in Eustis.
“And the rest you know,” Bill said as the video stopped.
One of the Adar said something to Tchar and he made a gesture like a horse tossing its head. He said something to Admiral Avery, crossing his arms in front of him.
“Tchar says that he grieves for the pain inflicted to us,” Avery translated. “But he is also puzzled.” The translator nodded for the Adar to continue.
“He says that he is puzzled by the scene in the laboratory. Unless we have something to use great power, I think he means something like superconductors, that he is unaware of, there did not seem to be enough power available to create a single boson, much less many of them. He also asks how many bosons we have generated. I’m not sure that we can answer that. Also, be aware that the other gentleman is called Tsho’futt. He appears to be picking up English rather quickly.”
“It’s common knowledge in general on our world,” Bill pointed out. “They’ll find out sooner or later and I don’t even have an exact number. Tell him over thirty for each one of their days. And, no, Ray Chen’s accelerator should not have been able to make a single boson, much less many.”
This was translated and Tchar made another head gesture, waving one hand and speaking.
“Only one boson that they have generated seems to be accessible to the T!Ch!R!,” Avery said, doing the closest approximation of the word Bill had ever heard. “He wants to know if you know if the T!Ch!R! can access only certain bosons and if you’ve identified them.”
“Yes,” Bill said. “Twenty-one of them were generated on that fractal before we learned how to prevent it. They are scattered across our country but not in other countries, not in France near your gate.”
Tsho’futt made a noise that sounded like pain and so did Tchar as the words were translated.
“What have you done about that?” Tchar asked through Avery.
“An explosion happened on the Dreen side that destabilized the entire fractal. But we don’t know for how long. Do you have any idea?”
“Was it your device?” Tchar asked.
“No, one of theirs,” Bill said, pulling out a sketch of the thing in the gate-room. It was the best they could do from his and Miller’s recollection; both of their camera systems, which had been recording the events, had been erased. Miller’s was straightforward EMP damage; the scorching was noticeable. Bill wasn’t so sure about his; the systems weren’t functioning when he got back to earth but after replacing a few parts they worked fine. The recording chip, however, had been erased. It was fully functional, there just wasn’t anything on it.
The Adar examined the picture, then set it on the table.
“We have seen nothing like that,” Avery transl
ated. “As to the question of time, Dr. Weaver, we’re working on that. We’ve shown them the time pieces we have and vice versa but we’re still working out what it means.” He listened as Tchar spoke, nodding.
“Tchar said that they have had the gate restabilize three times since they have opened it. They were hit by the T!Ch!R! when they first formed the boson, a heavy attack which they repulsed on the ground. Then they brought up the… it’s not a device to throw a nuclear warhead, we’re not sure what it is exactly, but it is a weapon. They triggered it at the gate and shut it. But it opened again…” He listened and pulled out a piece of paper. “I think it’s seventeen of their days later.”
“Holy…” Bill said. The Adar day was approximately thirty hours long. That meant less than three weeks. There had been more time than that already. “Do they know what… we need to know what kilotonnage they use!”
“That is more difficult,” Avery said when he translated. “Time we’re getting better on. And I’m aware that science is supposed to be a universal language, but only in certain details and not in the notations.” He smiled thinly at his little joke.
Bill was well aware that many scientific baseline measurements were taken from nonuniversal constants. The meter was a fraction of the Earth’s diameter, as best it could be measured in the seventeenth century, and only later defined as a certain number of light waves of a particular wavelength. Joules, the internationally recognized standard for energy, were similarly arbitrary. But one was not.
“Singlet transition,” Bill said, pulling out a sheet of paper. He made a dot on the paper then drew a circle around it and placed a smaller dot on that circle. Then he drew a squiggly line hitting that circle. Then he would drew a larger circle around the thing showing the dot jumping from the inner circle to the outer circle. “I should have set this up as a cartoon, but most physicists would understand it if I showed it to them,” he added, sliding the picture across the table to Tchar. Tchar tilted his head and considered the picture for a moment, then tilted it the other way. Then he picked up the pen and began to draw.
