Blasphemy (20 page)

“Clever.”

“It was Volkonsky’s idea.” Hazelius shook his head sadly.

Ken Dolby’s voice tolled out, “Ninety percent power.”

Hazelius held up his empty coffee mug. “Get you another?”

Ford winced. “Why don’t you get a decent espresso machine in here?”

Hazelius went off with a low chuckle. Everyone else in the room was quiet, focused on various tasks, except for Innes, who paced the room with nothing to do, and Edelstein, who sat in a corner reading
Finnegans Wake
. The boxes from the frozen pizzas they’d eaten for dinner spilled out of the trash bin by the door. Coffee rings marked various white surfaces. The bottle of Veuve Clicquot still lay by the wall.

It had been a long twelve hours—long stretches of crushing boredom, punctuated by brief bursts of manic activity, and then more boredom.

“Beam steady, collimated, luminosity fourteen point nine TeV,” said Rae Chen, hunched over a keyboard, her glossy black hair spilling in an unruly curtain over the keys.

Ford strolled along the raised part of the Bridge. As he passed Wardlaw, who was at his own monitoring station, he caught a faintly hostile glance, and smiled coldly back at it. The man was waiting and watching.

He heard Hazelius’s quiet voice. “Bring it to ninety-five, Rae.”

The faint clicking of a keyboard sounded in the hushed room.

“Beam holding steady,” said Chen.

“Harlan? How’s the power?”

St. Vincent’s leprechaun-like face popped up. “Coming in like a tidal bore: smooth and strong.”

“Michael?”

“So far so good. No anomalies.”

The murmured catechism went on, Hazelius asking for a report from everyone in turn, then repeating the process. It had been going on like this for hours, but now Ford could feel the anticipation finally beginning to build.

“Ninety-five percent power,” said Dolby.

“Beam steady. Collimated.”

“Luminosity seventeen TeV.”

“Okay, folks, we’re verging into unknown territory,” said Chen, her hands on a set of controllers.

“Here there be monsters,” intoned Hazelius.

The screen was awash in color, like a flower forever blooming. Ford found it mesmerizing. He glanced over at Kate. She had been working quietly on a networked Power Mac to one side, running a program he recognized as Wolfram’s Mathematica. The screen displayed a complicated infolded object. He went over and looked over her shoulder.

“Am I interrupting?”

She sighed, turned. “Not really. I was going to shut this down and watch the final run-up anyway.”

“What is it?” He nodded at the screen.

“A Kaluza-Klein eleven-dimensional space. I’ve been running some calculations on mini black holes.”

“I hear that Isabella will investigate possibility of power generation using mini black holes.”

“Yes. That’s one of our projects—if we can ever get Isabella online.”

“How would that work?”

He saw a nervous glance back at Hazelius. Their eyes met for just a moment.

“Well, it turns out Isabella might be powerful enough to create miniature black holes. Stephen Hawking showed that mini black holes evaporate after a few trillionths of a second, releasing energy.”

“You mean, they blow up.”

“Right. The idea is that maybe we can harness the energy.”

“So there’s a possibility of Isabella creating a black hole that will blow up?”

Kate waved her hand. “Not really. The black holes Isabella might create—if any get created at all—would be so small that they would evaporate in a trillionth of a second, releasing a lot less energy than, say, the bursting of a soap bubble.”

“But the explosion might be bigger?”

“Highly unlikely. I suppose it’s possible that if the mini black hole lasted, say, a few seconds, it might knock around long enough to acquire more mass and . . . then blow up.”

“How big an explosion?”

“Hard to say. The size of a small nuke, perhaps.”

Corcoran glided over, sidling up to Ford. “But that’s not even the scariest scenario,” she said.

“Melissa.”

She arched her eyebrows at Kate, putting on an innocent look. “I thought we weren’t going to hide anything from Wyman.” She turned to Ford. “The really scary possibility is that Isabella will create a mini black hole that might be
completely
stable. In which case, it would drift down to the center of the earth and hang out there, swallowing up more and more matter until . . .
krrrrch
! Good-bye Earth.”

“There’s a chance that might happen?” Ford asked.

“No,” said Kate irritably. “Melissa’s just teasing you.”

“Ninety-seven percent,” intoned Dolby.

“Luminosity at seventeen point nine two TeV.”

Ford lowered his voice. “Kate . . . Don’t you think even the smallest possibility is too high? We’re talking about the destruction of the earth.”

“You can’t shut down science on outlandish possibilities.”

“Don’t you care?”

Kate flared up. “Damn it, Wyman, of course I care. I live on this planet, too. You think I’d risk that?”

“If the probability isn’t exactly zero, you
are
risking it.”

“The probability
is
zero.” She swiveled her chair, roughly turning her back on him.

Ford straightened up and noticed Hazelius still looking at him. The physicist rose from his chair and strolled over with an easy smile.

“Wyman? Let me reassure you with this little fact: if miniature black holes were stable, we’d see them everywhere, left over from the Big Bang. In fact, there’d be so many that they would have swallowed up everything by now. So the fact that we exist is proof that mini black holes are unstable.”

Corcoran smirked at the sidelines, pleased at the effect of her words.

“Somehow I’m not completely reassured.”

Hazelius placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It’s
impossible
that Isabella will create a black hole that will destroy the earth.
It simply can’t happen
. ”

“Power steady,” said St. Vincent.

“Beam collimated. Luminosity eighteen point two TeV.”

The murmuring in the room had increased. Ford heard a new sound—a faint, distant singing.

“You hear that?” Hazelius said. “That’s a sound generated by trillions of particles racing around Isabella. We’re not sure why there’s a sound at all—the beams are in a vacuum. Somehow they set up a sympathetic vibration transmitted by the intense magnetic fields.”

The atmosphere on the Bridge was thickening with tension.

“Ken, take it up to ninety-nine and hold,” said Hazelius.

“Will do.”

“Rae?”

“Luminosity just over nineteen TeV and rising.”

“Harlan?”

“Steady and cool.”

“Michael?”

“No anomalies.”

Wardlaw spoke from his security station across the room. His voice was very loud in the hushed atmosphere. “I’ve got an intruder.”

“What?” Hazelius straightened up, astonished. “Where?”

“At the perimeter fence up top, around the elevator. I’m focusing in.”

Hazelius strode over, and Ford quickly joined him. A greenish image of the fence materialized on one of Wardlaw’s screens, seen from the perspective of a camera mounted high up on a mast above the elevator. It was of a man, pacing restlessly along the fence.

“Can you zero in?”

Wardlaw hit a switch, and a different view sprang into focus from the level of the fence.

“It’s that preacher!” said Hazelius.

The form of Russ Eddy, as gaunt as a scarecrow, paused in his pacing and hooked his fingers into the chain links, peering in with a suspicious scowl on his face. Behind him, the moon cast a greenish glow across the barren mesa.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Wardlaw, rising.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Hazelius.

“He’s trespassing.”

“Leave him be. He’s harmless. If he tries to climb the fence, then you can speak to him over the loudspeakers and tell him to scram.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hazelius turned. “Ken?”

“Holding at ninety-nine.”

“How’s the supercomputer, Rae?”

“So far, so good. Keeping up with the flow of particles.”

“Ken, take it up a tenth.”

The flower on the screen flared, flickering and spreading, running through all the colors of the rainbow. Ford stared at the screen, mesmerized by the image.

“I’m starting to see the very lowest end of that resonance,” said Michael Cecchini. “It’s a powerful one.”

“Take it up another tenth,” said Hazelius.

The writhing flower on the screen grew more intense, and two faint, shimmering lobes appeared on either side of the central point, darting outward again and again, like a grabbing hand.

“All power systems go,” said St. Vincent.

“Up a tenth,” said Hazelius.

Chen hit the keyboard. “I’m starting to see it—extreme space-time curvature at CZero.”

“Up a tenth.” Hazelius’s voice was calm, steady.

“There it is!” said Chen, her voice resonating across the Bridge.

“You see?” said Kate to Ford. “That black dot right at CZero. It’s as if the spray of particles was just briefly passing out and then back into our universe.”

“Twenty-two point five TeV.” Even the laid-back Chen sounded tense.

“Steady at ninety-nine point four.”

“Up a tenth.”

The flower writhed, twisted, throwing off veils and sprays of color. The dark hole in the center increased, its edges flickering raggedly. The resonance suddenly lunged outward, right off the sides of the screen.

Ford saw a drop of sweat crawl down Hazelius’s cheek.

“That’s the source of the charged jet at twenty-two point seven TeV,” said Kate Mercer. “We seem to be tearing the ‘brane at that point.”

“Up a tenth.”

The hole grew, pulsating strangely, like a beating heart. In the middle it was black as night. Ford stared, drawn in.

“Infinite curvature at CZero,” said Chen.

The hole had grown so large, it swallowed most of the center of the screen. Ford suddenly saw flashes in its depths, like a school of fish darting about in deep water.

“How’s the computer?” Hazelius asked sharply.

“Flaky,” said Chen.

“Up a tenth,” said Hazelius, his voice low.

The flecks increased. The singing noise, which had been steadily rising, added a hissing, snakelike overtone.

“Computer’s getting funkier,” said Chen, her voice tight.

“How so?”

“Take a look.”

Everyone was now standing before the big screen—everyone but Edelstein, who continued reading. Something was materializing in the central hole, with little bits and flashes of color, swarming faster, coming up from infinite depths, shimmering, taking shape. It was so strange, Ford wasn’t sure if his brain was interpreting it right.

Hazelius pulled the keyboard over and rapped in a command. “Isabella’s having trouble managing the bitstream. Rae, kill the checksum routines—that should free up CPU.”

“Hold it,” said Dolby. “That’s our early warning system.”

“It’s a backup to a backup. Rae? Please do it.”

Chen hammered in the command.

“Computer’s still funky, Gregory.”

“I’m with Ken—I think you should turn the checksum routines back on,” said Kate.

“Not yet. Take it up a tenth, Ken.”

A hesitation.

“Up a tenth.”

“All right,” said Dolby, his voice uncertain.

“Harlan?”

“Power’s deep, strong, and clean.”

“Rae?”

Chen’s voice was high-pitched. “It’s happening again. The computer’s getting all glacky on me, just like it did with Volkonsky.”

The shimmering intensified.

Cecchini said, “Beams still collimated. Luminosity twenty-four point nine. Tight and focused here.”

“Ninety-nine point eight,” said Chen.

“Up a tenth.”

Dolby spoke, his usually laconic voice uncharacteristically tight. “Gregory, are you sure—?”

“Up a tenth.”

“I’m losing the computer,” said Chen. “I’m losing it. It’s happening again.”

“It can’t be happening. Put it up a tenth!”

“Approaching ninety-nine point nine,” said Chen, a slight tremble in her voice.

The singing had become louder, and it reminded Ford of the sound made by the monolith in the movie
2001
, a chorus of voices.

“Take it up to ninety-nine point nine five.”

“It’s gone! It won’t accept any input!” Chen tossed her head, her hair sweeping back in an angry cloud of black.

Ford stood with the others, just behind Hazelius, Cecchini, Chen, and St. Vincent, all of whom were riveted to their own keyboards. The image, the thing in the center of the Visualizer had taken solidity, and it was shimmering faster, with purple and deep red darts whipping in and out, a whirling hive of color, deep and three-dimensional.

It looked almost alive.

“My God,” gasped Ford involuntarily. “What
is
that?”

“Slag code,” said Edelstein dryly, not even looking up from his book. Instantly the Visualizer went blank.

“Oh no. God no,” Hazelius groaned.

A word popped up in the middle of the screen:

Greetings

Hazelius smacked the keyboard with his hand. “Son of a bitch!”

“Computer’s frozen,” said Chen.

Dolby turned to Chen, “Power down, Rae. Now.”

“
No
!” Hazelius turned on him. “Up to one hundred percent!”

“Are you crazy?” Dolby screamed.

Suddenly, instantly, Hazelius became calm. “Ken, we’ve
got
to find the malware. It seems to be a bot program—it’s moving around. It’s not in the main computer. So where is it? The detectors have built-in microprocessors—
it’s moving around in the detectors
. And that means we can find it. We can isolate the output from each detector and corner it. Am I right, Rae?”

“Absolutely. That’s a brilliant idea.”

“For God’s sake,” said Dolby, his face covered with sweat, “we’re flying blind. If the beams decollimated, they could slice through here, blow the shit out of all of us—not to mention frying two hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of detectors.”

“Kate?” said Hazelius.