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Salvation or Annihilation?
A strange artifact has been discovered on a distant planet, an artifact that may be the key to humanity's salvation. For we at war with the Fallers, an alien race bent on nothing short of genocide, and this is a war we are losing. The artifact is not only a powerful weapon, but possibly the rosetta stone to a lost superscience . . . a superscience that the Fallers may have already decoded. Or it may be a doomsday machine that could destroy the very fabric of space.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
| ISBN-13: | 9781466825260 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 02/17/2003 |
| Series: | The Probability Trilogy , #2 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
LOWELL CITY, MARS
General Tolliver Gordon looked up from the holocube in his meaty hands. "Who else has seen this?"
Major Lyle Kaufman, standing at attention, permitted himself a wintry smile. "Practically everyone, sir. This civilian Dieter Gruber has spent two years trying to get someone from Alliance Command interested. Anyone."
"Stefanek?"
"No, sir." It was not lost on Major Kaufman that a general had referred to the supreme commander of the Solar Alliance Defense Council without his title, and to a junior officer. For the first time, Kaufman felt a twinge of hope. He could never get in to see General Stefanak. Gordon could.
"General Ling?"
"Yes, sir."
"Ling saw this, and dismissed it?"
"He said there's no hard evidence, sir."
"Hard evidence isn't the only kind worth considering." Gordon stood, a big man in a small room. He handled the gravity of Mars easily. Born here, decided Kaufman, who had not been. That would help, too. In theory all nation members, and all service branches, of the Solar Alliance Defense Council were equal. However, some were more equal than others, especially in wartime.
Gordon walked to a small shelf on one wall of his underground bunker/office. On the shelf stood a mesh cage about a meter square, filled with plastic "shavings." He picked up a watering can, poked it through the mesh, and filled a water bowl just inside the cage. "All right, Major, I've viewed the cube and read the report. Now tell me in your own words what this scientific quest is about, why you think it's important, and why I should think so."
This was his chance. Everyone had told him that if he got this far, Gordon would really listen. Kaufman cleared his throat. "Two years ago, sir, on a routine recon, the one military officer on a scientific expedition to a new planet discovered that one of its moons was an artificial construct with the same kind of markings as the space tunnels. The war was going badly then —"
Kaufman broke off. A mistake: The war with the Fallers was still going badly, worse than ever, but he had never met an officer in High Command who appreciated being reminded of it. Gordon, however, merely picked up a bag of small seeds and began filling a clear plastic tube leading inside the cage.
"... And so we launched a secret expedition to see if the moon was, or could be, a weapon. That is, the expedition wasn't secret, it looked like just another bunch of anthropologists, but it included a team of unacknowledged military scientists led by Colonel Syree Johnson, retired. The ship was the Zeus, under Commander Rafael Peres. Johnson discovered that the moon would indeed make a formidable weapon. It released a spherical wave that destabilized all nuclei with an atomic number greater than seventy-five. While they were still testing the artifact, the Fallers showed up and wanted it, too. Johnson and Peres tried a race for the system's only space tunnel, #438, towing the moon —"
"Towing it? How big was this moon?"
"Almost twenty times the size of the Zeus, sir. Mass of nine hundred thousand tons. Just short of the tunnel, Peres engaged with the enemy. The next sequence of events isn't clear, but either the Zeus, the Fallers, or the moon itself blew up all three. Colonel Johnson's previous reports suggest that it might have been the artifact that caused the blow-up. Its mass was too great to go through a tunnel, but she tried to send it through anyway, into our space, to keep it from enemy hands."
"So everything blew up. And that was the end of it, from High Command's point of view."
"Yes, sir." Kaufman felt more and more hopeful. Gordon's tone conveyed dearly his point of view about High Command's point of view. "But not the end of it to the surface team. That included a geologist with enough physics to follow what Johnson was doing. Dr. Dieter Gruber, Berlin University. The anthropologists had some sort of trouble with the natives on the planet —"
"Industrials?"
"No, sir. Artisan-level at best. Gruber led his team to safety inside a cave-ridden mountain range, where the natives won't go for religious reasons. He says that in there he discovered a second alien artifact, potentially of inestimable scientific and military value. Shortly afterward, a rescue effort lifted him out along with the two remaining anthropologists — three more humans died on the planet — and ever since, Gruber's been trying to convince the High Command to go back and dig up the second artifact."
Gordon finished filling the seed tube and set the package on the shelf. "And?"
This was the tricky part. Kaufman proceeded carefully. "Gruber says that at the moment the artifact-moon exploded — the very moment — the artifact buried in the mountains was affected. He argues for the same kind of macro-level quantum entanglement that we think might be the principle behind the space tunnels." The words were chosen deliberately; no one knew what was the actual science behind the space tunnels, those enigmatic remains of a vanished civilization that would have dwarfed any human one.
Gordon said, "But ..."
"But Gruber has no direct proof. Nothing documented."
"Still, you believe him."
"I don't know him well," Kaufman said quietly. "But I served under Colonel Syree Johnson in the action at Edge. She was the finest and most committed scientist-officer I've ever known. It's not always an easy combination, sir."
Gordon looked at him penetratingly. "I can imagine. Pressure from science to find objective truth, pressure from the military to deploy pragmatic necessity?"
"Yes, sir. Syree Johnson, too, thought there was some connection between the alien construct in space and the buried one in the mountains. She told Gruber so just before she died."
"A recorded conversation?"
"No, sir. Unfortunately not."
"And there's no direct proof."
"No, sir. But scientifically —"
"Wait on the scientific 'buts.' I'll hear them in a moment. Tell me what you're going to want if I find the science convincing, and what we stand to gain from following your recommendations."
Kaufman took a deep breath. "I think we should send a scientific team to dig up and examine the second artifact. It would require a ship routed through Caligula space, that's Tunnel #438, with military escort and two flyers permanently attached for tunnel communications. You'd need a good political team to handle native relations, but the crucial thing is the scientist aboard. There's only one that, in my opinion, can do this. We stand to gain a possible weapon — only possible, of course — related to the moon/artifact that blew up. Gruber says they're made of the same material, and it's also the material of the space tunnels. Syree Johnson's reports say the destroyed artifact affected radioactivity levels in a controlled way, which implies it affected the probability of atomic decay. Anything that affects probability has to be related to the Faller beam-disrupter shields that are letting them attack us with impunity. We could gain a counter-weapon to the Faller shields, sir."
Kaufman paused. He'd just fired his biggest gun. If it didn't hit, nothing would. The beam-disrupter shields had only recently appeared on select Faller ships. Anything fired at such a ship-proton beam, laser cannon, any sort of beam at all — simply disappeared. Gone. Not even an energy trace left behind.
Gordon left the mesh cage and sat down again behind his desk. His eyes were shrewd.
"Big promises, Major."
"Not promises, sir. But definite possibilities. And we need those. In my opinion, General, the chance is worth the cost."
"Even though this geologist, Gruber, has no documentation?"
Kaufman kept his face blank. "Nothing new starts with documentation, sir. By definition. Especially not in science."
"I suppose not. All right, the costs. I listen well, Major, and I heard two worms in your carefully polished apple. First, why would we need 'a good political team to handle native relations'? Why not just the usual anthropologists?"
Yes, Gordon did listen well. He was good. Kaufman said, "The planet's proscribed by the Solar Alliance, sir."
"A fairly large worm. Why?"
"The natives don't want us. They've decided we lack souls. In their parlance, humans are 'unreal.'"
"Interesting," Gordon said. "And why didn't you name the 'one scientist' that, in your opinion, can do this job? Is the job of digging up and investigating an artifact that difficult?"
"This one is, sir. Syree Johnson didn't get it figured out, and she was damn good. She got blown up instead. You need someone with both experimental background and theoretical brilliance, and not many physicists ever are both. I want Dr. Thomas Capelo, sir."
He could see the name meant nothing to Gordon.
"He's probably on the short list for the Nobel, sir, although he hasn't won yet. He's still young, physicists usually do their most innovative work young. He has won the Tabor Phillips prize. His work is on the relationship between quantum events and probability."
"Quantum events and probability?"
"Yes, sir. We know that certain quantum-level events are probabilistic. They may or may not occur. We also know that some events have measurable probability — that is, we can say there's a seventeen percent chance that x will occur, or a thirty-four percent chance, or whatever. What we can't do yet is say why this event occurs seventeen percent of the time and that event thirty-four percent of the time. We have equations for the wave functions of quantum-mechanical probability, but no causals for the phenomenon of probability as a whole. That's the area of Capelo's work. He theorizes that a particle, or a virtual particle, is involved."
Kaufman could see that this meant nothing to General Gordon. He added, "I'm not a scientist either, sir. Just a very interested amateur. But let me go out on a limb and say that if you don't send Dr. Capelo, I'm not sure the expedition is worth doing at all, given the awful political beating we'll take from invading a proscribed planet."
Gordon shifted in his chair. "'Invading' is a pretty strong word, Major."
"Yes, sir."
"And why wouldn't this Capelo be everybody's obvious choice? What's the other shoe here?"
Kaufman said, "He's not military, sir. Harvard University, United Atlantic Federation. And he's reputed to be ... eccentric. Not everybody likes working with him." Kaufman paused, considered, decided on honesty. "In fact, hardly anybody likes working with him. He's sarcastic, and he's always convinced he's perfectly right."
"And is he?"
"Usually, sir."
"I see. Major, you've handed me a stinker."
"Yes, sir."
"All right. Let's hold our noses while you explain this science to me. Do it slowly, do it clearly, and show me why you think it might lead to some counter-device to the Faller shields. And don't overstate your case, Major. I probably won't be able to detect if you're doing so now, but I'll find out eventually."
"Yes, sir," Kaufman said, and had to hold still a moment before he began again. His head felt light. The science wouldn't be easy to explain, but that wasn't the problem. Nor was obtaining Gordon's consent. Kaufman knew that he, like Gordon, was a good judge of men. Gordon had already decided to chance the expedition. No, Kaufman's light-headedness wasn't because he was nervous about Gordon's refusal. He was nervous about Gordon's acceptance.
And of what train of events he, Lyle Kaufman, had just, finally, got out of the station and into motion.
CHAPTER 2THARSIS PROVINCE, MARS
When the comlink shrilled in his brother-in-law's comfortable living room, Tom Capelo said, "If that's for me, I'm not here."
"Incoming message in real-time from Earth, United Atlantic Federation, for Dr. Capelo, priority one," the house system said.
"I'm not here. In fact, I'm not anywhere. I've vanished from time-space."
"Tom," Martin Blumberg said with weary patience.
"System, tell them I'm caught in a space tunnel."
"It won't do that," Martin said. "Only your system will do that. This is a normal system. House, put the call on screen."
Capelo's younger daughter said, "Daddy, you're not really in a space tunnel." After a moment she added, "Are you?"
"Caught with all my molecules dissassembled."
"Oh, he's just acting stupid again," the older daughter told her sister, with enormous disgust. "You're such a baby."
"I am not! I'm five!"
"So what? I'm ten, and that's twice as old."
"Transferring message," the house system said. A section of the living room wall, which had previously shown the Martian sunset outside the room, darkened briefly, then brightened into an image of a sharp-featured man in a darkened bare room. The image said formally, "This is Dr. Raymond Pellier at Harvard University, UAF, calling for Dr. Thomas Capelo. Please activate two-way visual and audio. There will be a six-minute delay between transmission points. Acknowledge immediately."
"Asshole," Capelo said, into the six-minute delay.
"Daddy said a bad word," said Sudie, the five-year-old.
"Frozen star," Capelo said in a heavily fake Russian accent.
"Stop acting so fizzy, Daddy," ordered Amanda. "You always embarrass us."
"I'm not embarrassed," Sudie said stoutly. "What's embarrassed mean?"
Martin stood. "Girls, your father is receiving an important message from his department chair, and I think he needs to do it in private. Let's go find Aunt Kristen."
The two children, unmoving, looked at their father. Capelo said, "You might as well go. I'm only going to tell the frozen star that I'm disassembled."
"Daddy —"
"All right, all right, I'm not disassembled. You two never let me be anything fun. House, activate two-way visual and audio. Ray, you're acknowledged. 'Give sorrow words.'"
Martin took his nieces by the hands and led them away, closing the door behind him. Capelo waited the twelve minutes for his message to be received on Earth and responded to. While he waited, he paced restlessly around the room, touching objects. Bookshelves with actual books, a vase of genemod flowers from the garden at the far side of the dome, a severe metal table topped with a severe slab of red Martian stone — why did all of Kristen's furniture look so austere? His sister used to have a healthy sense of excess, back when they were kids. But now look: books lined up neatly, flowers sedate in a severe vase. Somehow excess had vanished when she'd married Martin, that most sensible of men. Patient Martin, putting up with his crazy brother-in-law. Although probably it was for the sake of the girls. Give them a sense of family, Kristen probably said to Martin, poor things. Well, that was all right, Capelo himself would put up with anything for Amanda and Sudie, even Kristen's ugly furniture. Even Mars, with its too-close horizon and grossly inadequate gravity. Even Raymond Pellier. Even —
"Dr. Capelo," the image of his department chair said, "I have just received a message from the Solar Alliance Defense Council. A representative is currently on her way to see you in person, and will probably arrive shortly after this message does. I'm calling you first to let you know this representative is on her way so you may prepare yourself. Also, to tell you that I'm arranging indefinite leave of absence for you from the university so you can accept the mission the council is sending you on."
"What?" Capelo said, although of course the image wouldn't hear him for six minutes. "Mission? What mission, Ray? I'm not a fucking soldier!"
"I know you're always interested in your graduate seminar, so I want to reassure you that Dr. Gerdes will be covering both that and your thesis advisees."
"Gerdes? Gerdes? He can't advise the way across campus!"
"Let me just add, Dr. Capelo, the department and the university's congratulations on your being tapped for an assignment vital to the war effort. Transmission finished."
"House, turn off the system," Capelo said.
He poured himself another drink. "Assignment vital to the war effort." What crap. The council had probably concocted another of those exploratory committees of scientists they were always putting together to forecast what the Fallers would do next and what protocols should be designed to meet it ... as if anyone knew what the bastards would do next. But undoubtedly the council had requested "a top Harvard physicist," good window dressing for PR purposes, see if you can dig up a Nobel winner or at least a short-list candidate, and just look, citizens of the Solar System, at the efforts we're making to protect you! And Ray, that pompous bureaucrat, had jumped at the chance to unload difficult touchy Capelo somewhere beyond a distant space tunnel so the physics department could have some peace.
Excerpted from Probability Sun by Nancy Kress, James Minz. Copyright © 2001 Nancy Kress. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
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When it comes to hard science fiction, few authors come to my mind more readily than Nancy Kress. Within her extensive body of work, much of which explores the genre with as close an adherence to real science as possible (while still allowing for, you know, the fiction part), is a trilogy that I return to time and again, […]
