by Allen Steele
“I’m sorry, Dr. Whittaker, but I didn’t have any choice except to have them interned. As your family, they’re considered security risks as well. I’ll do my best to make their stay as short as possible, but—”
“What’s the point? You’ve got everything you want. You know I’m guilty. You can only go through the motions now.”
Which was the truth. The best he could expect was a show trial on Govnet, in which the prosecution attorneys would denounce him as an enemy of the people and his government-appointed lawyer would offer only a token defense. A federal judge would determine his fate, without the unnecessary distraction of a jury of his peers, and in the United Republic of America, there was only one sentence for capital crimes. Yet just before he was marched to the gallows, usually within hours of the end of the trial, Govnet would show a quick shot of him hugging his wife and child goodbye. A small, public display of tenderness, demonstrating that the government was not without mercy. To be denied even this…
“You’re right. Your guilt has already been determined. But…” A pause. “There won’t be a trial, nor will there be a public execution. Not if you’re willing to cooperate.”
“What?” Jonas was confused; he shook his head. “I don’t…what are you—?”
“We don’t have much time. Please, you have to listen to me.” Then the figure sat down beside him, and for the first time since he’d entered the room, Jonas saw his face.
Roland Shaw, the Director of Internal Security. Next to the attorney general, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the country. If President Conroy himself had shown up, Jonas couldn’t have been more surprised.
Seeing that he’d been recognized, Shaw nodded. “You know who I am. Good. Glad we’ve got that out of the way.” He raised a finger to the ceiling, twirled it slightly. “In case you’re wondering, I’ve already had the room cleaned. No mikes, no cameras. No one’s listening, and there’ll be no record of what’s been said here.”
“I…I find that hard to believe.”
“You’re right to be suspicious. I would be, too, if I were in your position.” Then he moved closer. “Yet my position is even worse than yours. Your involvement in this affair has already been exposed. Mine hasn’t…or at least not yet.”
If he hadn’t been so afraid, Jonas might have laughed out loud. “Oh, I believe you. Of course. The top Prefect, involved in a plot to commit treason. Makes perfect—”
“Robert Lee was the ringleader.” Shaw spoke softly, yet there was an urgency in his voice. “It was his idea to hijack the Alabama, with the assistance of as many crew members and FSA people as he could recruit. The conspiracy was arranged as a pyramid, with only a few people at the top knowing where all the pieces lay. Lee and his senior officers were at the highest level. I was on the second tier, yet my job was just as crucial, because when all the D.I.s who went aboard the Alabama were rounded up by my people, I was the one who arranged for them to be taken off the prison train to Camp Buchanan.”
“I’m not aware of—”
“Of course not. That was the part you weren’t told about.” Shaw sighed, shook his head. “If you hadn’t been so smart, you’d have been aboard that train, and my friend here”—he gestured to the Prefect standing quietly behind them—“would have been able to remove you and your family from the train and put them aboard a maxvee for Cape Canaveral. You were that close to getting aboard the Alabama, but—”
“Oh, God.” Jonas slumped in his seat. “I didn’t know.”
When word had come down through the grapevine that the Prefects were closing in, he’d swept up his wife and daughter and they’d fled for their lives. Their home was an old farm on the outskirts of Huntsville, and the dense woods behind their house had hidden them. The rendezvous point was supposed to have been a closed-down restaurant in Titusville, not far from the Gingrich Space Center on Merritt Island, yet they didn’t make it nearly that far. Jonas had borrowed a coupe from a friend who lived nearby, and there he’d made his mistake; no sooner had they left when his neighbor had a change of heart and tipped off the Internal Security Agency. A couple of hours later, Jonas found himself spread-eagled across highway pavement, a mere mile from the Florida state line.
That was the last time he’d seen Caroline and Ellen. As a heavy boot against the back of his neck held his face against cold asphalt, he watched as they were bundled into a maxvee just a few yards away. Caroline screamed his name, and then the rear hatch shut behind them and they were gone.
“You were too clever for your own good,” Shaw went on. “No one told you that you were supposed to be arrested in Huntsville, because they figured…we figured…that the Prefects would be as efficient as they always were in rounding up D.I.s.”
D.I.s—dissident intellectuals, the Liberty Party’s favored term for the so-called liberal extremists who took issue with the United Republic of America. Jonas had heard it so many times, mainly from people who had the courage and intellect of rats, he took it as a badge of honor. “So we were too late to make the train. Were there others?”
“Two were shot trying to run a roadblock near Atlanta. Everyone else made it. Rather a miracle, although coming up five short resulted in some problems down the line.” Shaw impatiently waved a hand. “But that’s beside the point. Our problem is more immediate.”
“Which is…?”
“Namely, it’s the fact that you’re still here.” Shaw reached forward to push a button, and a touchpad flickered to life on the table’s black surface. “Of all the people who should have been aboard the Alabama, you were perhaps the most important,” he said as he typed in a six-digit code number. “Not because your presence was vital…you know as well as I do that it wasn’t…but because of the work you’ve been engaged in.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jonas forced himself to remain calm.
“Please, Dr. Whittaker. We don’t have time for this. I’m fully aware of what you’ve been working on for the last twenty-five years. After all, I am in charge of internal security.” Shaw moved the tip of his forefinger across the touchpad, accessing and opening classified files. “If you need proof, though…ah, here it is.”
The image on the wallscreen changed, and Jonas looked up to see something he thought he’d successfully purged from his FSA database: a three-dimensional wire-frame model of a ring-shaped structure, a hundred and thirty feet in diameter. A circular gridwork of red and blue lines collapsing into one side indicated its event horizon; on the other side was the narrow funnel of an artificial wormhole, leading to an identical ring on the other side.
“A spacetime access reactor…or starbridge, as I believe you call it. A way of harnessing quantum mechanics to create a Morris-Thorne wormhole.” He regarded it with admiration. “Faster-than-light travel. Quite an achievement, sir. If we had one of these today…”
“The Alabama would’ve been unnecessary.” Along with Henry Johnson and several others, Jonas had been one of the designers of the Alabama, yet even that vessel, however advanced it may be, was a mere rowboat compared with a starbridge. With a maximum cruise velocity of twenty-percent light-speed, it would take the Alabama 230 years to reach 47 Ursae Majoris, while a ship using the hyperspace tunnel opened by a pair of starbridges could—at least in theory—travel the same distance in a matter of seconds. “You know, of course, that this is impossible.”
Shaw sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Dr. Whittaker, I’m not an idiot. You’ve spent more than two decades working on this. A man of your intelligence…genius, really, because that’s how your colleagues regard you…wouldn’t have wasted his time if he thought it was impossible. Implausible, perhaps, with our current level of technology, but impossible?”
Jonas remained quiet. Shaw was correct. Starbridges weren’t impossible; it was just that no one knew how to build them yet. He and the other physicists on Project Starflight had shelved the idea—along with its close-cousin, the diametric dri
ve—in favor of developing a fusion-augmented Bussard ramjet for the Alabama. There, at least, the physics were clearly understood, the engineering safely within the realm of near-term possibility. Even so, he’d continued to research hyperspace travel on his own time, in hope that, one day, the technology would be available to manipulate quantum singularities to the extent that wormholes could be created at will. He was confident that it could eventually be done, but for now…
“And that’s why I’ve had you brought here,” Shaw continued. “The moment I learned you’d been arrested, I knew that you were too valuable to be scarified. If you were hanged, it would be as much a loss as when Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for stating that distant stars might harbor other worlds.”
“Then put me in a reeducation camp.” Jonas didn’t want to plead, yet nonetheless he found himself doing so. “I can keep my mouth shut. Just let me—”
“No.” Shaw slapped a hand against the table, and the display vanished from the wallscreen. “If I do that, then it’ll only be a matter of time before someone else discovers what I know about your work.”
“Not if you don’t let them.”
Shaw was quiet for a moment. “I won’t be able to protect you much longer,” he said at last, not looking at him. “Making sure that Robert Lee got away cost me more than I can say. It may be only days, or even a few weeks, but sooner or later they’ll discover my part in all this. When that happens…” He gave a resigned shrug.
“You won’t be hanged.”
“Oh, I most certainly shall. I’ve made many enemies, and the Department of Justice loves nothing more than to trot out disgraced government figures.” He nodded toward the Prefect standing behind them. “We’re both guilty of treason, just as much as you. He has his reasons, as do I, and it’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out. But before that happens, there’s one last thing that needs to be done.”
“And that is…?”
“I have to make sure that no one ever learns what you know.” Shaw gestured toward the wallscreen, which once again displayed random fractal images. “It’ll take the Alabama a little more than 230 years to reach 47 Ursae Majoris. In the meantime, it’s reasonable to assume that the technology may become available for the construction of a starbridge. Hence, the Republic…if it lasts so long…could eventually develop the means to pursue the Alabama. Perhaps even beat it to 47 Uma.”
“If the enabling technology becomes available, yes, this may be possible.” Then Jonas shook his head. “But starbridges have to be constructed at both the departure and destination points. So a second ship wouldn’t arrive until after—”
“I realize that.” Shaw was becoming impatient; once again, he glanced toward the closed door. “There’s several variables we have to consider, not the least of which is that someone in the future develops an engine capable of achieving near-light-speed velocity. In fact, I understand you yourself were investigating this, yes?”
What didn’t Shaw know about his work? It was frightening to consider how long the ISA must have had him under surveillance, how much they’d learned about his work. “It’s possible,” Jonas admitted reluctantly. “But if you have my notes—”
“Encrypted files, which can be erased in an instant.” Shaw tapped a finger against the touchpad. “However, one copy will go with you…and where you’re headed, they’ll never be found. For that, I can give you my word.”
“Uh-huh.” Jonas’s hand trembled as he picked up the glass, drank what little water was left. “So…what is it that you want from me?”
“Let me tell you what I’ll do in exchange for your cooperation. As I said, you’ll never be able to see your family again. I wish it could be otherwise, but that’s simply the way it is. However, I can make sure that they receive good treatment during their stay at Camp Buchanan, and that they’re released as soon as possible.”
Jonas reluctantly nodded. He was in no position to negotiate a better deal; he realized that now, and the best he could do now was to save Caroline and Ellen. He sighed, shrugged in resignation. “Fair enough. So what do you want me to do?”
Shaw looked past him, nodded his head. From somewhere just behind him, Jonas heard a hollow metallic click. He didn’t need to look back to know that the Prefect had just drawn his gun from its holster and cocked it.
“First,” Shaw said, “I need for you to die.”
CLARKSBURG, GREAT DAKOTA / HAMALIEL 69, C.Y. 13 / 1112
The wind turbine was a slender white pylon rising from a ridge overlooking town. A hundred and sixty feet tall, it towered above the treetops of the surrounding forest, its three paddle-like blades creaking softly as they revolved in the mid-summer breeze. A hundred yards away, an identical turbine rose from another hilltop; another hundred yards farther down the ridge, a third tower thrust upward against the sky, dwarfed only by the rocky peaks of the Black Mountains looming in the background.
They looked out of place, like weird contraptions erected by some alien race. Which, Carlos reflected, they were indeed. Although smaller turbines had been built elsewhere in the colonies, beginning with the ones in Liberty shortly after First Landing, the Thunder Ridge Wind Farm was the most ambitious energy facility yet erected on Coyote, and they wouldn’t be here were it not for the presence of humankind.
“Okay, I’ll admit it,” he murmured. “I’m impressed.”
“Nice of you to say so.” Marie chuckled quietly. They stood together outside Tower One’s control shack, gazing up at the giant machine. “I mean, we knew we had a good plan, but it’s so nice of you to vindicate our efforts.”
“Cut it out. You know what I’m saying.”
“Maybe I don’t. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m talking to my brother or the president.” Then she relaxed; stepping closer, she hugged his arm. “Never mind. I just wanted you to see this.” She looked up at the tower. “Awesome, ain’t it?”
“It is at that.” Carlos gave his sister a kiss on the forehead. “Y’all done a good job.”
Nonetheless, he knew what she was getting at, the reason why she’d had him hike all the way up here just to look at something he’d already seen in countless photos. Although the towers themselves were built from Great Dakota timber—mountain rough bark for the support pylons, faux birch for the lighter wood of the blades—much of the construction material had been imported. The concrete blocks of the base structures were made of volcanic ash shipped in from the eastern side of Mt. Bonestell, the electrical cables of copper mined from the Gillis Range and insulated with tightly woven strands of chokeweed vine from New Florida.
Nonetheless, these were all local materials, derived from the mountains, woodlands, and savannahs of this world. Their generators, though, were not renewable resources. Like so many other items upon which the colonists depended, they’d been manufactured on Earth. And it was forty-six light-years to the nearest electrical supply store.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Marie said. “Three towers, that should give us enough power to run the mills, plus some for the rest of town.”
“No question there. That’s what you asked for.”
“Right. And you delivered.” She pointed toward the line of hills to the southwest, where Thunder Ridge continued until it was broken by Mill River, leading into the highlands of the Black Mountain Range. “But we figure that, if we can build three or four more towers—”
“How many?” He looked at her askance.
“All right. Three…” She caught his look. “Two at least…but even then we’d have enough generating capacity to be able to expand the mills. That way, we could produce more material for the rest of the colonies. More lumber, more paper…and not only that, but eventually we might even be able to export surplus power across the channel to New Florida.”
“I liked it better when you stuck with lumber and paper. Then I might have believed you.” Carlos released her arm. “C’mon, kid. I didn’t leave my brains at the door when I got elected. Expanding the mills
, that’s one thing. But when you start talking about producing power for New Florida, you’re talking about putting lines across the channel.”
He looked to the east. Below the foot of the ridge, past the narrow coastline of Great Dakota, lay the broad expanse of the West Channel. In the far distance, through the haze, they could make out the western shore of New Florida. “From here to there, that’s…what? Eight miles? Ten? And most of that’s across water. You think we’d be able to lay a cable across the channel? And even if we could do that, then we’d still have to get them all the way to Liberty. That’s a lot of line, not to mention the transformer stations that have to be built.”
“Okay, then what about Leeport? That’s almost halfway to—”
“Have you been to Leeport? Lately, I mean?” Carlos tried not to laugh. “Not exactly what I’d call a boomtown. At least, not unless you’re into fried swamper and—”
“Do you have to be so cynical?”
“No. Just realistic.” He checked his watch. Quarter past eleven already. Garth Thompson had invited him to lunch at his place before they met with the rest of the town council, and he didn’t want to keep the mayor waiting, even if he was his brother-in-law. “Look, it’s not a bad idea,” he said as he turned to walk toward the path that would lead them back down the ridge. “I just think that your eyes may be bigger than your stomach.”
“Jerk!” She playfully punched him in the arm. “Are you making fun of my weight?”
“No, no. Just an expression.” Truth to be told, though, Marie had put on a few pounds in recent years; she was in her late thirties, by Gregorian reckoning, and having two kids had cost her the slender physique she’d once enjoyed. Not that he himself had done much better…“I’m sure Klon and his people got this all worked out on paper, but even if we could lay electric lines all the way to Liberty, that would mean requisitioning two or three more generators. And you know what that means.”
Marie didn’t have to be reminded. The generators used for the wind farm’s first three turbines had been salvaged from skimmers left behind seven Coyote years ago by the Western Hemisphere Union. One had been severely damaged by Hurricane Bertha, and weardown had rendered the other two inoperative, so it hadn’t taken much effort on the part of the Civil Engineering Corps to convert their duct-fan engines into electric generators suitable for wind turbines. But it also meant that, for every new turbine the Thompson Wood Company proposed to build, another skimmer would have to be cannibalized. And she didn’t have to check with Jack Dreyfus to know that the remaining skimmers were still in good operating condition.
