Artifact

by Gregory Benford

  A low ridge of rock, nearly straight. And beyond it, another.

  They were like ruined stone walls standing a few feet above drifts of sand. Looking left and right, he could barely make them out as they receded into blackness.

  The ancient remains of the subterranean stream. He had forgotten it.

  The same stream that had carved the seep hole, the tunnel, their destination. John felt a flood of relief.

  The team quickly understood his gestures. Their faces seemed impassive behind glass, but their heads followed the lines on the sandy floor below. Arditti’s eyes widened. He nodded and gestured for them to go single file.

  Arditti turned with an expert movement of his flippers and followed the two stubby, ruined rows of stone. Now that John had the width of the ridges for a comparison, he saw that in the wan glow of Arditti’s flashlight their field of view was remarkably constricted, perhaps only thirty feet across. It had been damned lucky to run across the ruined contours. They could have wandered for an hour out here.

  He brought his left arm forward in a stroke, the hand looking white and close, the pressure watch enormous on his wrist. Only seven minutes had passed since somebody had pushed him off. Probably Arditti.

  He heard cracklings and looked up. High above, thin washes of surf. They were nearing shore.

  The bottom tilted up as they flipper-trudged along the lines. More surf. Then there they were ahead, brown buttresses of rock. Far up between them, a cloistered blackness.

  He swam beside Arditti up into the narrowing space. Sea anemones spotted the flanks of the big rocks. He gestured upward and Arditti played the flashlight over an upward curving tube. It looked clear, though to John it was nothing like his memory. The red glow distorted perspectives.

  Arditti nodded, signaled to the other two and then made a pushing motion toward John. John paddled backwards and the others squeezed past.

  He was finished. He had found it. Time to go home. End of the mathematician’s duty. All he had to do was ferry the communications cables to the surface.

  The last man unlocked an axially mounted drum on his back. He freed the clipped ends of three thin black lines. Then he carefully handed them to John, waved, and turned his back. The cables unreeled from the revolving drum as the man swam away, up the passageway. Bubbles rose to meet the stone ceiling and squashed against it. Arditti’s red glow from far up the stone chimney was dimming. Time to go.

  John backed out and let himself drift. Arditti had told him to not use the flashlight that was still clipped to his belt, once he was on the surface. Okay. The next step was the hardest and he needed the light, so he had better do it down here. He clicked the light on—red, of course—and let it shine down at the sand. He was far enough under the rocky ledge to avoid detection.

  The National Security Agency didn’t go second class. The water-sealed, waxy package on his back was superbly engineered. He laboriously unstrapped it, cautiously following each step Arditti had rehearsed with him. His fins rode tip-down on the bottom.

  The cable connections slid snugly into their sockets. Good. The five activating and calibrating switches were big and easily turned. He set frequency and power, the numbers well memorized. No transmission yet, he saw from the tiny monitor, a liquid crystal display in bright yellow.

  Now the float. He unfolded the plastic underlining and pulled the red tab on it. With a rush it filled with air. He had to snatch at the package to keep it from getting away. The flotation cushion and its stabilizer fins looked like a fat, garish rocketship with an unlikely cargo.

  He drifted upward, cradling it, and stroked away from shore. There was a pyramid-shaped anchor, he remembered. He fished it and its coil of plastic line out of the flotation cushion’s lower compartment. Everything was marvelously engineered, convenient and sturdy. He dropped the anchor. It fell away below, securing the package against currents.

  Only one more step. He clicked off his flashlight as he broke water. Through his mask it was utterly black. By feel he found the rod at the top of the package, which was now floating easily on the slow swell. He pulled. It slid smoothly up and he could feel the small clicks as each set of spindly arms deployed. A crafty little antenna, capable of reaching the Watson at a ten mile range.

  Atop the floating antenna was an infrared beacon, he knew. If things were going right, the transport’s crew would be searching for it now with their scopes. John could barely see the rotating nub above, but it was black, of course, which was reassuring. No emission in the visible spectrum. Nothing to alert a sentry on the hillside above.

  He recalled the drill, remembering each step. A wave splashed his mask. Something more…

  Oh yes. He had forgotten to test the system again. It was harder now, because he was foundering in the lapping surf and the antenna was riding well on the water, reared up. He cautiously grasped the edge of the flotation cushion. Where was the small systems panel? He pushed his mask down, taking long breaths.

  There. He could see now, by a diffuse moonglow that seeped through the clouds to the east. The hill loomed behind him, a dark bulk. He could maneuver the antenna better now. If Arditti below had hooked up the cables, the rig should work, should poke a signal through to the Watson, should kick off the whole shebang.

  He jabbed the REPORT button on its side. It flashed on, three yellow numbers indicating that transmission was under way. He felt a spurt of elation. He had done it. The endless drilling had paid off.

  The guys below were already set up, their comm gear working. That was the signal back at the Watson for the helicopters to lift off. They would reconn the tomb site, checking to see if the comm link, cave to Watson to airborne, worked in action. Carmody had insisted on that. Systematic, checking each step.

  There was a deeper reason, though. The Watson was in danger as long as the cube remained on board. Better to get it aloft quickly.

  John scanned the darkness. No sign of any craft. He glanced at his watch. At least ten minutes more before he should expect the second team. When they arrived, they could deploy the big radiation and acoustic detectors. With a number of them scattered through the lower reaches of the stone cavern, the helicopter people would have a good idea when the twin singularity approached. By then Arditti’s team would be safely out.

  John back-paddled away from the antenna. The REPORT display faded out, as it was supposed to. Five feet away he could barely see the vague outline of the antenna jutting against the night sky. Nobody would pick it out from above.

  He took a splash in the face and decided to put his mask back on. In fact, wallowing around on the surface was pointless. He could stretch his air supply by treading water up here, but on the other hand the transport might run into him when it arrived. He jackknifed and sank lower, into blackness. The dark was restful in a way. He had been night fishing once at Cozumel and after the first spooky hour had enjoyed it a lot. This wasn’t any worse.

  He lazily drifted to the bottom. Check his watch. Twenty-seven minutes gone. Less than half his air used. By now Arditti would have finished hooking up the one small Geiger counter he carried, and the rest of his team would be stringing cables up the slope of pebbles and into the stone chimney itself. He wondered if the rope and pulley he and Claire had left there were still in place. If so, a man could haul himself up it. That would let them put some of the later detectors, the ones on the transport, up higher in the chimney.

  Anyway, that was somebody else’s problem. Turn it over to the specialists. Let them—

  A bright orange flash lit the scene. Rocks, pale sand, the bulky brown shore—all leaped into being around him, sudden as lightning.

  It was gone in a second, leaving him with a retinal afterimage. He turned toward the source.

  A flare. Arditti had set off a flare inside the cave, and the glow had come out this far. They must have realized the glare would escape down the water entrance, though, and snuffed it out. He hoped no one on the hillside had been looking.

  John waited f
or the afterimage to fade. Currents swirled in his ears. He breathed slowly with a tinny rush of the intake valve.

  On the other hand, maybe it was a signal. They could be in trouble in there, and wanted help.

  Impulsively, to be doing something, he swam back up. The anchor line of the antenna rubbed against his arm. He broke surface and paddled. The antenna bobbed within view. He punched for REPORT.

  Systems were okay, cables still in place. But there was no transmission under way.

  He stared at the blank signal trace, treading water, wishing it said something else.

  It could be something ordinary. They had shut off the detectors for a moment. One of the cables had popped out of its socket in the cave. Something like that.

  Or trouble. Maybe the goddamn singularity was already in there.

  Okay, wait for the transport. Let the specialists take care of it. They were getting paid for it. And drawing a lot more salary than a postdoc at MIT, too.

  That was reasonable, but it might take ten, fifteen more minutes.

  On the other hand…

  Arditti wouldn’t have violated procedures without a reason. He knew John was out here. It must be a signal for help.

  He dove again. Using the red flashlight beam he found the entrance. He would go in, find out what was happening, and report back to the men in the transport. Just that much. No more.

  CHAPTER

  Four

  Claire crouched over the comm console in the helicopter control tower, shivering. She could not seem to get the chill out of her bones, despite standing next to the room’s sole heater, which smelled of hot metal. Despite heavy leather gloves, her fingertips were numb.

  The control room looked down on the two helicopters, crew already inside the cockpits, engines warmed. They were ready to lift the moment the data link from the first team was complete.

  Idly she studied the controller’s map table. It showed the coastline, water depths and elevations, all color-coded. She remembered studying a considerably simpler map months ago, and plotting out where John had discovered the remains of the underwater seepage tube. She had sketched it in on such a map—

  It struck her at once that in the last few days she had seen something similar. Yes, Arditti. He had come to the JFK Building and marked the path left by the cube in the muddy floor of the Boston Harbor. Amid the meandering contours of water and land it had looked adamantly artificial, straight as a signpost. Yet things were just the reverse—the harbor was man’s work, and the cube was following natural law.

  She recalled the seepage tube beneath these waters. Matters had come down to two tracks on the sea bed: one from ancient water-hollowing, the other a trail left as the cube dragged vainly after its singular twin.

  She wished there were someone to talk to in these last minutes. She missed John acutely, could not stop fretting about him. Sergio would be a good man to talk to at a moment like this; he had a natural sympathy. The joke at that Harvard party couldn’t have been more wrong; he was a subtle, gracious man. Sergio had refused to come on this venture, however. Not from lack of interest or bravery, but from seasickness.

  George came clumping into the room, face red from the cold. “How long’s it s’posed to take?”

  “Should be any minute now,” the control commander said gruffly. “Keep your pants on.” The man clearly did not take to stray civilians in his territory.

  “What if they can’t find the opening?” George asked.

  “We come back tomorrow,” the man said, ending conversation.

  Claire leaned against a steel bulwark. Everything here was covered with thick gray paint and exuded a faint smell of enamel. The Watson’s engines had slowed to a purr and they were nose into the wind, to give predictable conditions for liftoff. The large plexiglass windows still showed only blackness; all exterior lights were extinguished.

  The hatch swung open and Hale came through. He was the leader of Claire’s ’copter, a wiry man with quick, piercing eyes. His blue overalls fit well and nothing from his cap to his shiny black boots carried any identifying markings. He was from the National Security Agency, Claire gathered.

  “I’d like you in your seats, folks,” Hale said. He didn’t seem under any stress.

  “I’m freezing,” Claire said.

  “We want to get off soon’s possible,” Hale said patiently.

  “Carmody said so?” Claire persisted.

  “Sure did. He wants that big thing off the deck right away.”

  “The twin singularity isn’t due for hours,” Claire said.

  “We want everything in place and checked out. Might have to neutralize the site, you know.” Hale grinned serenely.

  “Kill the guards, you mean,” Claire said dryly.

  “Hey, ease off, huh?” George said as though genuinely offended. “Man’s just doing his duty.”

  Hale nodded, still smiling, and said cordially, “Only if they shoot at us, Dr. Anderson. Satellite recon says there was nobody at the site at sundown. This’ll probably give us no trouble.”

  “See?” George said. “And I’d whole lot rather be doing something more important than postdocing, sitting in a one-room utility in Morningside Heights.”

  “That’s not the issue,” Claire said primly. The masculine enthusiasm suffusing the Watson had put her on edge. Kontos would call all this American imperialism, but to her it reeked of ancient lore and lust.

  “Ma’am, this is a nuclear device we got here. Situation like that, Carmody says, we’re not going to take chances.”

  “Is that his usual style? He’s certainly acted swiftly.”

  Hale’s grin broadened. “Yeah, ol’ Carmody doesn’t wimp out on you. He goes straight for the throat. That’s why he’s where he is.”

  “I’m sure,” Claire said with what she thought was obvious wry sarcasm, but it didn’t seem to affect Hale. Probably he’d seen civilians make the same verbal gestures before, and had learned to humor them. And why not? They grumbled, but they went along.

  “Hey!” the control commander said. “I’m getting startup data from the first team.”

  The board showed colored patterns, then a graphic display. “Looks like a normal background count.”

  “Let’s go,” Hale said, all business.

  Going out the hatchway, Claire said to George, “Good luck down there.”

  “Sure’ll be something to tell them about back at BU, huh?” George asked happily.

  Claire thought, Sure, once NSA clears it for public information. Which might be about the time we draw Social Security. She stepped out onto the steel deck and made her way down a dark stairway.

  The flight deck was suddenly alive with activity, dark shapes rushing by her, the whine of engines sluggishly stirring from their sleep, muffled shouts, the snap of cables popping free. She hurried around her ’copter’s tail pylon, head down as Hale had reminded her, then along the fuselage and up the steps, past the sliding steel doors and into the cabin. It had an amphibious hull and was surprisingly roomy inside.

  Hale was already strapping himself in. The rest of the cabin was filled with electronics gear. Two men in green uniforms sat in drop seats, holding nasty-looking weapons. Long, curved clips jutted out of the stocks, evidently meaning they carried a lot of ammunition. She had seen things like that in movies and until this moment had never wondered how they worked. For that matter, she didn’t know what was automatic about automatic weapons. Didn’t they all just shoot when you pulled the trigger? The men nodded to Claire and said nothing.

  The flight deck lights blazed on. No need for care now; anyone ashore could easily tell something was up, by the revving of the engines.

  She watched the first ’copter take off. It lifted with a high whine of effort, taking up the slack on the hoist lines with care. When they stiffened the pilot poured on the power and the crated white mass rose free from the deck, swinging slightly, looking like any other cargo. No melting at the sides, no incandescent sparks.

 
; The physicists on Carmody’s team had rigged a containment method. Apparently the singularity’s large magnetic fields could be used to insulate it. The physicists used a complicated set of magnets to make a kind of magnetic trap, and that held the singularity back from the walls. Or was supposed to.

  Abe Sprangle had suggested that the iron in the cube’s rock had made a trap of that sort, and maybe he was right. Something had made the two singularities sit docilely inside the cube for 3500 years or more. And if no one had dropped it down a 300-foot shaft, she thought ruefully, they would’ve stayed in place.

  Even then, if she and John had left the cube at the bottom of the sea, the escaped twin would probably have found its way back to its brother in the cube. The vagrant “twist” had probably gotten dislodged where the stone chimney took a sudden turn, where the crate first struck, smashing open one side.

  It must have plunged down one of the many side crannies. There hadn’t been time to seek out its twin before they hauled the cube away. And ever since, the lone singularity had been doggedly following them, chewing blindly through whatever blocked its path.

  The fact that she and John and George had seen nothing of the wandering twin suggested that it did not burn and melt its way through rock swiftly. At least not when it had low velocity. But now it might come speeding back along its self-made channel, and no one knew how energetic it would be.

  The white crate rose away into the night, dangling from thick cables. Above it, Claire could see George’s excited face peering down through the big windows in the sliding doors. The ’copters carried no identification, she saw. The roaring around her rose in pitch and acceleration pressed her into her seat. Whump whump whump came vibrating up through her boots and the Watson wheeled away below, a gray silver against the inky sea.

  The first ’copter was about a mile ahead, flying westward. The running lights were off but she could see the murky speck against the increasing glow from the moon. It drew nearer, moving slower because of the crate it carried. Clouds thinned above. A chill breeze heavy with the crisp scent of land came through the open window. She wanted to close it but Hale had deliberately left it open, apparently for better vision. She tried to make out the coastline but could not recognize any of the low hills. They passed the first ’copter and took the lead, as planned.