Music of the Spheres (6 page)

“It is. I hope we’re not interrupting.”

“Nah. Just testing a new compound sealant against stress.
Some of the tropical countries are a lot hotter and more humid than others and
sometimes the standard sealant breaks down.” He had a wide smile on his face.
“I’d shake your hand but I don’t want to get you wet.”

Calbert said, “Actually, if you don’t mind taking a break,
we’d like to talk to you about another project.”

“Yeah, sure.” George lifted himself out of the tank and
climbed down the step ladder in lively fashion. For a man in his fifties, he
remained in very decent shape. Laugh lines at his temples counterbalanced the
shock of silver running through his dark hair.

Michael missed George’s boyish enthusiasm for all things
scientific. The man had completely changed from his bitter days at NASA working
under his vindictive brother-in-law. Even with his current mundane task, he flourished
at Quantum Resources. It was nice to see people in their element.

George stood there looking back and forth between the two
new arrivals expectantly.

“Maybe you should change,” Calbert suggested. “This might
take more than a few minutes.”

Michael said, “Or we could all go to an early lunch.”

∞

They went to a pub down on the corner to eat. While George
decimated a Reuben sandwich, washing it down with a frosted glass of beer,
Michael related what happened with Alex, and the request to find Yaxche.

“I heard about the kidnapping,” George said. “He was a very
nice old man. I hope he’s all right.”

Michael grimaced. “I’m sure he is. The Cruzados must believe
he knows something more about the scroll than what he told us.”

Shaking his head, George said, “You don’t think he misled us
all this time? I only spoke with him a few times, but deception isn’t in his
nature. I don’t believe he’d lie.”

“Neither do I, but maybe something just kept getting lost in
the translation. I believe we’ve reached a pivotal point in all this,” Michael
said. “Alex—and the rebels, obviously—think the scroll will provide the
breakthrough we’ve been looking for. I think so, too.”

George wiped his fingers on a napkin. “All right. Sign me
up.”

“You sure?” Michael asked.

Glancing at Calbert, who nodded, George grinned like a kid
with a new robocycle. “You know, in a way, I always felt like I was one of the
pioneers, discovering the scroll in Yaxche’s possession. It pained me that no
one could figure it out. I’ve spent hours looking over the reports and studying
the simulations and recordings, but I would love to take a crack at this in
person.”

Calbert finished tapping a few commands into his portable
holoslate and said, “All right. I’ve sent in the orders to head office, reinstating
Michael to active duty and informing them of your field assignment. You’re both
booked on a flight to Tegucigalpa.” He nodded at them and winked. “You’d better
get packed!”

12

Canada Station Three
:

Lagrange Point 4 :

Earth Orbit :

Alex sat at
a
table by himself in the mess hall. He was alone in a crowd of adults. A few
familiar faces would nod and smile when he looked up, but no one invited him to
eat his meal with them.

In a way, he couldn’t blame them. He was an anomaly.
History’s first and only interstellar traveler, Alex looked nothing like a
pioneer or a hero. He looked like a sickly boy, and most people shied away at
the sight of him.

Picking at his plate of fries, Alex sighed and turned his
mind back to his memories. Since the night of his collapse, he hadn’t been able
to achieve that transcendent state again. It had been exhausting, and Alex had
felt extremely weak for several days afterward.

But there was something out there that he needed to understand.
Some metaphysical connection had been made when he was quantized. Was it that
haunting voice? What did it want?

Earlier that morning he had tried to message Michael to let
his friend know he was all right, but he only got the answering service saying
Michael was out of town, but would check his messages periodically.

“Mind if I join you?” someone said, interrupting his
thoughts.

Alex, surprised, looked up to see Kenny smiling at him.

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

Kenny sat down and arranged his lunch on the table. It was
some kind of vegetable soup and a toasted sandwich.

“Are you feeling any better?” Kenny asked as he broke some
salted crackers into bits and sprinkled them in his soup.

“I guess.” Not knowing what motivated Kenny to sit with him,
Alex was reluctant to say much.

“You gave everyone a pretty good scare.”

“Did I?” Alex spoke in a dramatic voice. “That’s good.”

Kenny stared at Alex for a moment and started to say
something, but Alex smiled to show he was being facetious.

Using his spoon to dunk the more stubborn cracker pieces
under the soup, Kenny said, “I guess everyone tends to walk on eggshells around
you. No one really knows what you can and can’t do. I’m sure it makes you feel
less than human sometimes.”

“Or more than human.”

Kenny took a deep breath. “I’ll say it again. I think we got
off on the wrong foot, and that’s my fault. I’m new and I just wanted to
impress the hell out of everyone. I’m sorry if it felt like I was using you as
a stepping stool. I’m really a nice guy when you get to know me.”

“Thank you.”

Motioning to Alex’s lunch, Kenny asked, “You not hungry?”

“I’m starving,” Alex said. “But not for food.”

“Look, if I could do anything about that…”

Alex offered him a conciliatory smile. “I know.”

Twirling his spoon in his soup absently, Kenny drew his face
into a look of concern.

He said, “I wanted to talk to you more about what you
mentioned in the lab.”

“Chrysalis.” Alex picked up a fry and bit it in half.

“For starters, yeah.” He stared into Alex’s eyes. “I went
through all the reports. I only found one where it’s mentioned, and Dr. Hoit,
who was head of the
Quanta
experiments at that time, basically dismissed
the notion. I’m reluctant to repeat his exact words.”

“You don’t have to. I read the report.”

Kenny looked startled.

Alex said, “Back then I still had my abilities. I could
see
beyond my normal range of vision.”

“Uhm.” Kenny looked uncomfortable. Not everyone could accept
that Alex had once had those powers, unless they saw it with their own eyes.
“Okay. So, let’s pretend I have a more open mind than some of the others. Do
you want to tell me about this chrysalis?”

“There’s not really much to tell,” Alex said. “Both
NASA—when it was in charge of the project—and Quantum Resources have been going
about this the wrong way from the start. What they don’t realize is that I
should not have survived my first exposure to Kinemet. I tried to warn them,
but they classified everything I said. Sometimes people get a notion stuck in
their head and they’re unwilling to believe anything that goes against that.”

“I have to admit, it comes with the territory,” Kenny added.
“Scientists can be the most close-minded people you’ve ever met.”

Alex laughed without humor. Then he said, “The entire
Quanta
project was doomed to failure from the start. One of the reasons I involved
myself early on—”

“By hijacking the
Quanta
,” Kenny added, twisting his
lips in a half smile.

“—was because they assumed that the pilot, once exposed to Kinemet,
would automatically return to a material state and turn on the electrical
systems when they arrived at their destination, and in turn be able to dampen
the reacting Kinemet.”

“And you knew there would be a greater delay than what was
required? The report said it was several seconds—too long, as it turned
out—before you rematerialized.”

“I didn’t know there would be a delay in my returning to
normal space, but I knew there wasn’t enough time to start the generators,
charge the battery and engage the dampers. The first time I was exposed to Kinemet
I was far too disoriented to be of any use. Any pilot in that situation would
take too long remembering what they had to do before being able to do it. It
was also foolish of the physicists at NASA to think they needed to irradiate a
pilot
during
a quantized flight to transform him.”

Alex took a deep breath. “But that’s not the only thing they
were wrong about.”

“The only thing?” Kenny was obviously struggling to
understand what Alex meant.

“Light-speed travel is important,” Alex said. “But the way
they’re going about it is all wrong. You have to learn to crawl before you can
walk, and you need to learn to walk before you can run. From the moment Kinemet
was discovered, everyone wanted to go straight from the crib to flying through interstellar
space. They’ve skipped a number of necessary steps before they can understand Kinemet,
let alone master it.”

“Steps?” Kenny asked.

“To begin with, like with any radiation, radical exposure
will result in death. That’s why they scrubbed the
Quanta
projects—nearly
every pilot who they exposed to the element died, and those that didn’t die are
in comas.”

“But you were exposed,” Kenny said. “Twice.”

“The second time I was already partially transformed.
Additional exposure had no effect. The first time I was exposed I was partially
shielded by the TAHU, and I was also far enough away from the point of origin
that the effects were somewhat lessened. It was a fluke; I should have died … like
my parents. But I believe there was some kind of catalyst that changed the
nature of Kinemet before it irradiated me.”

Kenny chewed on his lower lip. “You mean how we charge it with
hydrogen particles to initiate the quantum reaction?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “And I tried to tell them when I got back
to Earth, but either I didn’t explain it correctly or they were so focused on
other things they weren’t prepared to listen.”

“So … what’s your theory?” Kenny asked.

“I think there is a connection between anyone irradiated by Kinemet
and those alien monuments. Because I’m only partially changed, the connection
is not clear, but nevertheless, I feel it. It’s like a voice in my head calling
me. It was very strong when I was in Centauri, and I have to believe if I had
been fully transformed I would now know the answer. There would have been no
need to cool the Kinemet because it wasn’t supposed to be used like it was, and
the
Quanta
would not have exploded as a result.”

“Do you think…” Kenny struggled for the words. “…that voice
was a broadcast from any aliens in that system?”

“There were no aliens in Centauri,” Alex said, his voice tight.
He carefully avoided looking at Kenny. “Just me.”

Taking in a deep breath, as if absorbing all the new ideas
that way, Kenny slowly let it out again. “So that brings us back to the
original conundrum. What is the proper procedure to become … whatever it is
that you would become?”

“Kinemat,” Alex said.

Kenny raised his eyebrow. “Kinemat?”

“Someone who has been fully transformed by Kinemet. They
started to call it ‘the Manez Effect’ but I hate that.”

“I’m still not clear on what becoming a Kinemat means.”

“Part of the problem,” Alex said, “is that I don’t know either.
I don’t know the correct method to become transformed by Kinemet, and I don’t
know for certain what the result is supposed to be. It’s difficult to convince
someone they’re wrong, when you can’t prove that you’re right.”

“Forget what you can prove,” Kenny said. “What do you
think?”

“I think I’m in a transitional state that should only have
lasted a very short time. Days, maybe, or hours. My transformation is
incomplete. That’s why my health is deteriorating. I need to finish changing.”

“I’ll say it again: changing into what?” Kenny asked. “And
how?”

“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions,” Alex
told him, starting to grow frustrated.

“Do you have a theory?”

Alex took a deep breath to calm himself. “I’m not completely
sure, but I believe there are instructions on how.”

Kenny made the connection. “The stolen Mayan scroll.”

“Yes.”

Pulling a disbelieving face, Kenny said, “We had every
cryptographer, programmer, and analyst in NASA picking it apart for years.
Their conclusion was it’s a nice story, but there’s nothing there that gives us
any more information about Kinemet or the ancient races who built the monuments
on the edge of the solar systems.”

Alex shrugged. “Just because we don’t know how to read the scroll
properly at this time doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold the information we need.”
Alex absently popped a fry in his mouth and chewed without tasting.

“So,” Kenny said, his voice measured, “what you are saying
is, we can’t truly begin to understand how to use Kinemet for superluminal
travel—at least the way the aliens do—until we are able to complete your
transformation?”

“Right.”

Kenny picked up his spoon and stirred his rapidly cooling
soup. “And our only manual is missing.”

“Yes.”

∞

Although Justine had not sent Alex a message, he knew she
usually worked on the
Diana,
and wanted to come and see her when the
ship docked. He’d tried to call her from his apartment, but the Lunar Lines
receptionist said they couldn’t connect him for some reason. But he wanted to
take the chance she would arrive today.

Promising Dr. Amma that he was feeling much better, he got
her permission to go. It was an excruciating trip to the main terminal of the
space port, but he made it with time to spare. Exhausted from the effort, he
sat down on one of the benches.

He didn’t have to wait long before he spotted a familiar
face.

Clive Wexhall approached with a warm smile. “Alex, how are
you?”

“Hello, sir.” Alex stood up. “I’m good. It’s been awhile.”

“Yes it has.” He shook Alex’s hand. “They don’t let me off
the Moon very often.”

Alex found that he developed an ache in his knees if he
stood too long. His braces, designed more for walking, didn’t take any of his
weight off his joints when he was standing still. If he shuffled his feet or
subtly walked on the spot, the biomechatronics would kick in. When he made the
motion, though, people looked at him strangely or asked if he was all right.

Alex sat back down on the bench. “Are you waiting for
Justine?” he asked.

There was a slight flush to Clive’s skin. He said, “In a
way, yes; but I also wanted to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, Justine won’t be disembarking today.
She has to stay on the liner.”

Alex scrunched up his face. “Oh?”

“But,” Clive said, “she asked me to get you clearance to go
aboard for a visit while the
Diana
is in dock.”

It didn’t take any mystical powers to see there was more
going on here than the liaison was letting on. Although Alex hadn’t had a lot
of dealings with Clive, he knew Justine trusted him, and that was good enough
for him.

“All right. That sounds fine.” He stood up and followed
Clive to the security office.

∞

The cabin of the liner was completely empty of passengers
when Alex and Clive entered. There were a few members of the cleaning crew
there. Bypassing the workers, Clive led Alex to the kitchen area and to the
elevator.

Clive motioned for Alex to go into the one-person lift
first.

“Where are we—” Alex began to ask, but Clive winked at him
and put a finger to his lips.

“I’ll be right behind you,” the liaison said.

Without another word, Alex entered the elevator. The door
shut and it descended to the storage area. When it stopped, Alex stepped out
and looked around. He didn’t see anyone, and for a brief moment he wondered if
he’d been tricked, but then he heard muffled voices.

Without waiting for Clive, he walked down the aisle of containers
and spotted a group of soldiers at the opposite end of the storage bay. One of
them looked up and grabbed his ion rifle, but then someone said, “It’s all
right. He’s with me.”

Alex recognized the voice. Justine beckoned him down, and he
waved as he made his way to her.

The soldiers looked at him with a mixture of wariness and
curiosity, but Justine didn’t offer any explanations to them or to Alex.

She was wearing her PERSuit harness and looked like she was
cold. She gave Alex a wide smile, and he quickened his pace as fast as his
braces would let him.

Alex was always surrounded by people, but he usually felt
alone except when Justine stopped in on her visits. He always looked forward to
his voice chats with Michael, but it wasn’t the same as seeing someone in
person.