The Petrovski Effect: A Tess Novel

by Randy Moffat

  “I need to go back for breath spray.” Bear said because in his bemusement he could not think of anything better.

  Dyer smiled with his teeth. The smile did not reach his eyes. Bear sensed he’s found a limit on Dyer’s fun meter and filed it for later use.

  “Selkirk said you were a bit bright and also a bit trite. Is that true?” Dyer asked looking curiously up and down him. Bear felt as naked as a microbe under a 400 power microscope lens.

  Bear grinned back regrouping his mind and attacking verbally.

  “Selkirk had a crooked broomstick shoved way up his ass when he was ten and hasn’t managed to work it out yet. We have high hopes for intensive applications of ExLax suppositories. They have specialists in that kind of anal therapy over at the Pentagon I hear.” Then just to show he got the point of their journey here he looked around. “I like the woods. It’s axiomatic that guys who listen in hate them. Pine sap is acoustically dampening both to the soul and the spirit of the signal corps. Besides—the bastards are too damn lazy to follow you into the woods in this heat so I figure we can talk about pretty classified stuff way out here . . . unless they are bugging the saw palmettos.” He pulled his shirt out from his skin and fluffed it uselessly too cool himself, his eyes asking any further questions.

  Admiral Dyer’s laugh was genuine this time. His eyes backed up the teeth. It appeared fast thinking amused him; more information for Bear’s mental rolodex.

  “Right on both counts—OK! So you’re not an idiot . . . and here’s the deal. I got a budget and I got a problem and I need a problem solver to work on the problem, solve the problem if possible and if not possible then to tell me one of two things: either forget it or else give me a number on how much budget I am really absolutely gonna need to solve it once and for all. Check?” Dyer looked intently at Bear.

  Bear said nothing, merely moved his head an eighth inch in acknowledgement and looked like he was ready to listen attentively for lots longer without complaint.

  Dyer took the cue, and Bear thought he caught a faint twitch at the corner of the lips that suggested he was pleased that he had not had to explain more.

  “What do you know about Einstein?”

  “The man? Lots! Great hair! Hell of thinker and sweet kind of guy in his old age. I know a fair amount of his theories too . . . some of the math . . . quantum physics is a hobby that kind of got buried under my physics degree and modern quantum working theory is largely built on Einstein’s foundation of ideas.” Bear got terse when he was intense and this all poured out of him rapidly.

  Dyer nodded; admiring also, it seemed, intense terseness.

  “I saw that in your bio. It is part of what attracted me—Spooky action at a distance?” Dyer asked.

  Bear leaned back against a tree, with his hands pressed against the rough tactile wonder of the bark by his buttocks. He was thinking fast.

  “Hmmm . . . ‘Spooky action at a distance’ was Einstein’s code word for what panned out to be the idea that if you change the spin of paired particle, it instantly changes the spin of its gestational twin without apparent reference to the limit of the speed of light or anything else. Distance is irrelevant to the effect and the change is instantaneous even if the pair is separated by an inch or 5000 light years . . . experimentation seems to validate the phenomenon. L’me guess! Is your project something like . . . hmmm . . . a practical application of spooky action in an unbreakable code device for naval use—primarily submarines?”

  Dyer looked first startled and then openly amused again.

  “Wow! You got that all from one question?”

  Bear shrugged and explained.

  “No mas.” He ticked fingers. “You’re an admiral. You are known to work ‘black’ signal issues. What would an admiral want but a fleet connection? The rest is just a guess—I read the results of some studies done years ago where a practical cryptographic application for the quantum . . . er . . . I dunno . . . kink that surrounds action at a distance. The idea struck me at the time as interesting and recent developments in quantum teleportation by reference to a third particle seem to me to solve some of the problems the old studies identified as surrounding the inability of information being conveyed faster than light. Ergo—faster than light communications for the Navy was also somewhere in the agenda.”

  Dyer stroked his chin and gave his most genuine smile yet, white teeth like the sun coming out in the dark night of his face.

  “Quantum kink . . . I like that. You don’t disappoint, Mr. MacMoran.”

  Bear further demonstrated his sideways analytic talent and shook his head.

  “Here’s experience talking then . . . think big money, admiral—there is only a very small community of people who can handle research on quantum physics and couple it to engineering at that level. The group of scientific rock stars is even smaller on a classified project requiring deep security clearances. Supply and demand for those people says if you want to get your hands on them, you will have to pay top dollar. As always people . . . innovative people are the key to something like this.”

  “Don’t I know it? Just try and find a project lead with the right skills . . . you’re my twelfth interview . . .” Dyer said ironically and then looked distant and paced up and down a few steps, his hands behind his back. Bear could almost hear tiny gears clicking over, evaluating variables of time, space and politics. Bear let him think. The Admiral paced for about two minutes, cast a couple rapid glances at Bear and then stopped abruptly and looked piercingly into Bear’s eyes.

  He spoke without preamble, all business.

  “You are hired, c’mon.” He jerked his head perfunctorily, turned and walked away without looking back.

  Bear blinked, and followed trying to keep open amusement off his face. He had been ready to dance for several days, doing his best get-a-job jig and lying creatively about himself. Instead . . . just like that he was hired. If Dyer thought this fast extending paychecks, Bear looked forward to the adventures to come; worrying only briefly if Dyer would be just as quick to fire him if he thought he was failing. He rolled his shoulders and his head on his neck in a broad secret shrug that he had seen Mifune use in a Kurasawa film. Once you’re in the car on a roller coaster, you are pretty much in for the ride even if you change your mind halfway up the first slope.

  They got back to the building and walked in. The admiral fetched a card off the secretary’s desk and put it in Bear’s hand.

  “This is a motel in town. Stay there. If I need you I’ll call you, otherwise be here at 1500 tomorrow.”

  “Right! Selkirk?” Bear put the name as a question—all business himself.

  “I’ll square all this with Porky Selkirk, you just be here. Plan to clean out your office soon too—soon as in . . . getting started tomorrow.”

  Bear grinned. It was only the second time he had heard his now ex-bosses Annapolis nickname. He turned and left without saying anything further. More talk would only have ruined it.

  The cable was out in the motel, Bear hoped it was not a bad omen.

  At 1455 the next day he stepped into the building and Dyer grinned with his spectacular white ivories again—a brilliant canoe shaped moon in the dark sky of his African American face.

  “Right on time! I do like a man who is timely. Let’s go.” His voice boomed.

  Bear noted mentally that seven minutes early was ‘right on time’ and followed him out and into a huge black SUV.

  The admiral drove himself like a good Unitarian. Dyer spoke a minute a later. “We are going to meet a couple guys in a quiet place . . . in case you are wondering.”

  Bear simply smiled, it was enough. They were settling in.

  Dyer focused on driving; Bear waited two minutes to soften the older man up with his stoic aura and then asked.

  “This vehicle is the size of New Jersey. It says 4 b
y 4 here on the dash. Does that mean this thing is 4 wheel drive and gets 4 miles to the gallon?”

  Dyer laughed and Bear leapt over his stealthy approach to what he really wanted to know.

  “Who are the other guys we are meeting?”

  Dyer glanced at him, tricky while driving and turning a corner at the same time.

  “One of the guys is the number two man on your team and the only other guy I have recruited so far. The other is an ‘eighter’ that got shoved down my throat over my dead body—I let them win that one as a political concession . . . long story. You will have to deal with the money boys sooner or later . . . so it’s probably for the best anyway. Who needs bookkeeping to slow you down when you want to hit the ground running quickly?”

  Bear sat quietly for a minute. People from the 8th staff section were bean-counters; accountants who doled out money. Civilian side they were the bookkeepers of the world. All those zeros imbedded in budgets tended to leak into their souls somehow—usually making them personality ciphers. It was usually better to jolly them along and buy them lots of drinks in the bar after the meetings until you got what you wanted.

  “Will Admiral Selkirk miss me?”Bear asked trying not to laugh and failing—it was pleasant not to be Damocles with the sword of his ex-bosses miserable personality hanging on a thread over his head all the time. It was a laugh of suddenly felt freedom.

  Dyer snorted looking at him momentarily.

  “You were right about that broomstick. I told him you were staying here. He bitched endlessly! He hawed like a Missouri mule—came up with all kinds of administrative crap. I ask you! The paper hanging son of a . . . anyway . . . I seriously wanted to tell him to stick his paperwork where his broom handle pokes out . . . but kept my cool. Just mentioned two or three bodies rotting away in various closets . . . he folded like an origami in a hurricane . . .”

  He laughed too then and Bear joined him easily again. Dyer did not need to say ‘you work for me’—it was clear enough. Bear could almost smell the smoke from the bridges that were in flames between the two Admirals. Bear had sprinted across his personal span over the Rubicon to Dyer’s ownership just before the conflagration collapsed the structure. He was stuck on this side of the river now and laughed the laugh of freedom again—savoring the bouquet of the fresh hot Alabama air through the crack at the top of his window.

  Three minutes later they pulled up at a dusty looking low building surrounded with chain-link fencing with a continuous loop of dangerous looking concertina razor wire glinting merrily in a weave on the top. Things were looking up from the Admiral’s office; this brick palace had the appearance of being built around ‘62 instead of ‘42. Dyer pressed the doorbell beside the only door impatiently and after a pause while a camera stared doe-eyed at them, the door buzzed opened and they stepped inside to a desk that blocked further entry. A pasty faced Non-commissioned Officer who looked like he’s had last seen sunlight when the building was constructed around him demanded IDs in a surly tone and then issued them additional hokey little badges to hang on their pockets with their normal identity tags. Bear clipped it on next to his visitor’s badge and military ID, a Christmas tree with too many ornaments.

  Dyer took a couple circuitous turns to an extraordinarily ordinary looking door. His comment earlier about a “quiet” spot had implied that the conference room they were entering was secure from eavesdropping. It would have been hardened with a copper cage built into the wall, no windows to vibrate or see into, no pipes under it to carry the sound of their voices, no phone lines and a variety of other countermeasures that prevented clandestine listening to the conversations that went on inside. It would have been swept electronically for bugs recently too.

  The other two guys Dyer had promised were already waiting inside, except one of them wasn’t going to pass the physical.

  Dyer started talking as soon as the door closed and its inhabitants could scramble respectfully to their feet.

  “Folks . . . This is the new team lead for project Q-kink. His name is . . . Dyer hesitated; they had not talked about it. “Do you use your first name?” He ended with a question.

  Bear grinned. The alliterative Phelan-phallus-phud-pucker jokes had followed him all through high school. It was a noble name in Gaelic, meaning “wolf,” but locker room humor had ruined it for him and he had gotten in the habit of using the nickname that the troops tagged him with while he was still a platoon leader.

  “Bear!” He said positively. “Nice to see you, John.” He shook the offered hand of the smaller man of oval faced Asian ancestry sincerely. He had worked with John Wong when Bear was an army Captain and the other was an Ensign JG in the middle-east. Wong was a geek with a first class technical mind whose savant skill was that he could disassemble something once and put it back together in working order without a manual. It was a skill he had demonstrated in Bear’s sight. The first show and tell had been on an armored personnel carrier transmission and the second came during a drunken bet on the water desalinization unit of a submarine. Bear had lost money on that bet. He was not alone. Wong had banked a month’s pay and lived on his winnings from the drunken group of Brits and Aussies in the Australian officer’s club in Qatar rat hole where they had met. Wong was one of the best and brightest officers the Navy had in nuclear power systems. Better, he was the kind of man who never raised his voice and always used his head—a good man to work beside in peace and war.

  “Great to see you too, Commander!” Wong smiled and Bear thought the greeting genuine which pleased him. Wong had always mixed up his naval and army ranks; a kind of dyslexia that made him seem absent minded to the unwary.

  Bear turned politely to the woman.

  She was a neat, small package who had trimmed down her essentially good looks. She might as well have held up a sign saying, “I am here on business so keep any low-level, rampant sexism inherent to the military world to yourself!” The image she had adopted was a testosterone barrier. She wore her hair pulled severely back and wound into a tight Gordian knot to deemphasize its length. She also held herself straight like a drill sergeant to maximize her modest height and contrived somehow to roll her shoulders forward at the same time which neatly avoided thrusting her chest out—presumably to keep men’s eyes only on her face. The glasses she wore had neat metal frames, but leant a bookish air that was belied by the sharp brightness of the lense-magnified hazel eyes behind them. The glasses were not for show though. Bear guessed the prescription built into the glass could burn a hole through a tree trunk in the hands of a bored ten year old on a sunny day.

  She stuck out her hand artlessly the way some young professional women did.

  “Maureen O’Hara . . .”

  “Like the . . . ?” Bear said shaking the paw with manly pressure, taking care not to crush it but still convey male strength.

  She screwed up her face on the edge of annoyance.

  “No! Nothing like that actress in the ‘Quiet Man!’ She said a trifle too sharply.

  “In my opinion it was the Duke’s best picture. All the time I presume?” Bear asked in a well-mannered way with a diplomatic quarter bow from the waist by way of apology.

  She grinned at him, grateful, he thought, for catching her background intent.

  “Yes. I hear that damned title all the . . .” She waved a hand, “. . . damned time. People get stuck on a name.” A lifetime of irritating assumptions made her look if anything, a little wistful.

  “You should try a name like Bear.”

  That got her. She laughed then with straight white teeth. She was attractive when she relaxed. He suppressed the thought consciously. The work relationship was clear, no use complicating it with anything as messy as sexual attraction. Still, despite her disguise she was one of the nicer looking money trolls he had ever met and interspecies troll/human sex would certainly be something new.

  He r
eleased her hand firmly, but neutrally.

  Dyer waved them all to seats and started talking immediately a—digital recording on fast forward.

  “Sorry, but I have three more meetings this morning and need to move us along. I’m gonna use a five paragraph military operations order for a format on this puppy! OK?

  They all nodded and Bear added an ‘mmm’ for emphasis—stopping just short of ‘get on with it!’

  “Roger.” Dyer said. “Paragraph One—Situation: The enemy is smart and getting smarter. There are three potential threats to our blue water and littoral submarine forces. Those forces have become key strike platforms along with helicopter and aircraft insertions against terror threats in marginally cooperative regions and states. Iraq’s collapse from a construct republic back into a middle eastern theocratic hoolighanocracy have taught us with lost American treasure and lost American lives that the essential imperative for change has to come from within nations and not from without. In short, invasions and nation building is a no-go as foreign policy. The fact that our last effort contributed to our near bankruptcy means the United States looks for cheaper options in safeguarding our citizens. Our new imperative is for gaining superior intelligence to back up stealthy snatch and grabs in force to rescue American citizens held hostage inside foreign borders. This means a rapid strike capability from land and sea is our doctrinal modus operandi for some time to come, especially for low order threats short of all out war. This is especially true for non-state sponsored stuff like terror. The problem is that our enemies get a vote too and the best tool they have for finding our very stealthy submarines is the boat’s communications. The bad guys have twigged the fact that anti-terror operations are very heavy on coordinative communications for quick moves from the sea. Complicating this in these lower level types of operations is that our only really cohesive conventional warfare threat right now is China who is heavily investing in their own submarine forces to leverage their inferior amounts of Yuan being spent on technological heavy weapons. They want to counter our superiority in quantity and quality of submarines by outstripping our technology in a single sector and have been investing heavily in communications jamming and monitoring—they are smart. It is big bang for their buck. Worse, once they have a technology and hold it for a short time they tend to sell it to underwrite what it cost them. If they don’t actually sell it they will end up just giving it to some idiot client state and those poor bastards will sell it to absolutely anyone with a buck—even Joe the Bomb bringer. In short, once a communications tracking technology is developed everyone will be able to get their hands on it in short order. Bottom line? In all these cases we must assume our opponents can read into the ship to shore coms which tells them where the sub is. If they know where it is, then with mildly sophisticated munitions they can hit her and it they can hit her they can sink her. It is the old poor man’s economic trade off—a two billion dollar submarine for two million dollars in radios and missiles. The EU and the Chinese are both very close to cracking our current generation of communications systems. Both will have satellites operational in the next two years that identify transmission sources to the millimeter within a couple seconds. Even terrorist organizations and regimes are acquiring high altitude drones that can stand in cheaply for satellites.” He looked sad and annoyed as military men do when they realize an opponent has taken away an edge. Despite the callus calculus of governments that emphasized money, the admiral was talking in the real coin of combat where the loss of an edge meant a loss of lives and comrades. Bear got it and shook his head in sympathy.