New Title 1 (14 page)

“Mostly,” Calvin replied. “Not today, though. Today I’m acting in my capacity as Science Advisor.”

“Really?” Valeria grinned widely, clearly impressed. Valeria didn’t harbor any professional jealousy towards Calvin… many people with his credentials would have been less than comfortable with his media and government positions, or jealous over the lucrative paycheck the position earned, but she only seemed happy to know someone who had done so well with his career. Not that her career was bad… working as one of Verdant’s theoretical mathematicians was nothing to sneeze at. “And what,” Valeria continued, “has you wearing your official hat today?”

“This,” Calvin said, holding up a chip. “Ceo Lenz wanted me to examine this material from Tranquil, and as one of my closest professional peers, I need you to look over it to make sure I’m not missing something.”

He handed the chip to Valeria, who did not bother to examine it visually. As she turned to insert it into her workstation, she said, “I’m duly flattered. What is it?”

“Get ready,” Calvin said. Valeria turned back to look at him, and raised her eyebrows expectantly. “They’ve been researching defensive force fields.”

It took about a second before Valeria coughed out a single laugh, and a smile spread across her face. “
No
yeah!” She said it in the fashion of the characters of a recent comedy that was being circulated worldwide.

“
Oh,
yeah!” Calvin nodded, giving the trademark response and gesturing at the chip. “The Tranquil Ceo passed this on to Lenz, in the hope that we could find something useful in it that their people couldn’t. Lenz gave it to me yesterday.”

Valeria continued to look at him, and slowly, her smile faded. “What’s this all about?”

“Lenz is worried that the U.S. is likely to try to force Verdant to accept refugees, and who knows what else,” Calvin told her. “Apparently Tranquil expects the same. So they started to work on this defensive system. Lenz wants us to try to find a way to make it work… just in case.”

“In case we need to repel American boarders or missiles? They’ve got to be kidding,” Valeria said.

“I know how it sounds, Val” Calvin shrugged. “But all the same, it makes sense to at least cover our bases. Now, I looked over the research this morning, and made some notes on their data. I wanted you to take a look, from the mathematical perspective, to see if you see anything I’ve missed.”

Valeria gave him a doubting look, but finally levered herself off the edge of the desk, and came around to her chair. “Well, I did say I needed the break…” Calvin stood, picked up his chair, and brought it around the desk so he could see over her shoulder. Valeria gave Calvin one last look, before finally focusing on the display screen.

It was fully fifteen minutes before Valeria spoke next. When she did, she asked about notations in the original research, and clarifications of the notes Calvin had added, and Calvin answered her in turn. She opened a fresh workpage, and started punching in numbers and equations. Every now and then, she would hit a button that lit up the display column, and a 3-D mathematical construct would form inside. As Calvin watched, it would rotate slowly inside the column, sometimes changing colors, or twisting and deforming as if being manipulated by invisible hands. Then Valeria would abruptly clear the display, and go back to the notes on the chip. Throughout, they muttered between themselves, exchanging thoughts and suggesting alterations here or there.

They passed almost three hours like this, before Valeria finally pushed herself back from her workstation, took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes. After a few moments, she looked tiredly at Calvin. “Sorry, Cal, but I can’t find anything you’ve overlooked. These numbers just can’t be made to work. That’s all.”

“That’s what I wanted confirmation of,” Calvin nodded, rubbing the back of his neck as he stretched next to her. “I can’t ask for anything more, Val.”

“I don’t know, though.” Val stopped rubbing her eyes and looked at her workstation. “There might actually be something in there. Something beyond the raw numbers… or maybe something their theoreticians missed.” She looked down, as if hoping something would reveal itself, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Just a feeling. Maybe there’s a potential in there, somewhere. For something.”

“I had the same feeling,” Calvin admitted. “That there’s something missing in their theory. Or that they’re applying it the wrong way, to the wrong thing.”

They looked at each other, and repeated in unison: “Something.”

Valeria removed the chip, and her workstation went dark. “I need a serious break, now!” She stood up, reached for the ceiling and stretched, and Calvin just stood there and admired her shape as she did so… although he was sure he heard a mildly-alarming double-
crick
from her back. Then she handed the chip back to Calvin. “I’m sorry, I can’t do any more with this. But I can suggest the one person in this satellite who is probably enough of an expert in all disciplines to see if there’s anything more to this stuff.”

“And that would be?” Calvin asked, though he was sure who she was going to suggest.

“Who else?” Valeria smiled. “Jacqueline Silver.”

~

Calvin approached Dr. Silver’s office from an unexpected direction, due to his getting unexpectedly turned about upon leaving Valeria’s office. When he finally found a lift, he discovered he had arrived in a different section of Floor 2 than he’d expected. So he used a wall-mounted guide to regain his bearings and find the doctor’s office.

As he walked down the hallway, he barely noticed at first the two people who entered the hallway from an adjoining section ahead of him, walking ahead of him in the same direction. But a moment later, he thought he recognized one of the voices, and came to the belated realization that Dr. Silver was just ahead of him. Not wanting to shout in the middle of the floor, he simply increased his pace to catch up with her.

She was walking with a man a bit shorter than she was, wearing what Calvin could tell even from behind was an expensive suit. Calvin suspected it was Lin Sen Chiu, Dr. Silver’s assistant, and when he heard his voice, his guess was confirmed. Chiu held a datapad, and the two of them seemed to be conversing over it. Calvin approached from behind, but they hadn’t noticed him yet. Calvin, not wanting to interrupt them in an important discussion, tried to tune into their conversation in order to divine a convenient place to interrupt them.

“…Fortunately, the final potential of the laser pulse was larger than the engineers had anticipated,” Chiu was saying. “But it is absolutely vital to lock down the placement with no more than a fiftieth of a degree of variance, or the pulse doesn’t reflect evenly.”

“I expected that,” Silver replied. “The question is, how much will the energy requirement scale up?”

“Fortunately, it’s not an exponential increase. If it was, I don’t think we’d have a prayer of powering it.”

“Well, now that the linkages for the gigacapacitors have finally arrived, we can—”

Dr. Silver’s voice trailed off, and it took Calvin a moment to realize that she had noticed someone following behind them. Chiu turned about sharply, realizing for the first time that someone was there. At once, Calvin saw a quick rotation of expressions on Chiu’s doughy face, from shock, to confusion, to fright, to anger. Finally his face turned into a mask, and he glared at Calvin stonily.

Dr. Silver also regarded Calvin, but her expression was more relaxed (and, Calvin suspected, better-controlled). She turned a bit, not losing her stride, and said, “Dr. Rios. What can we do for you?”

“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” Calvin said apologetically. “But I need to speak to you about a new project given to me by Ceo Lenz. It’s important.”

“If it’s from the Ceo, what else could it be?” Silver said neutrally, and turned to Chiu. “Get the boys started on the linkages, so we can start testing ASAP. We’ll discuss the rest of the project later.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chiu said. With one last, withering look at Calvin, he veered off and headed back the way he had come.

Once Chiu had gone, Dr. Silver said: “So, what is the Ceo looking for now?”

“It would be best to discuss it in your office,” Calvin advised her. Dr. Silver relented easily, and they walked towards her office. Along the way, Calvin mused about the bit of conversation he’d overheard, and wondered if it might be related to the freight equations Val had said she was working on. However, Silver and Chiu’s reaction to his presence suggested to him that they may not want to talk about the subject publicly, so he remained silent as they continued along.

Once they reached her office, and she shut the door behind them, Calvin asked, “What was that project you and Chiu were discussing? And is it supposed to be a secret?”

“Not quite a secret,” Dr. Silver told him. “As in, ‘if we told you, we’d have to kill you.’ But we are trying to keep it quiet, due to its rather radical nature. There are some who might think we’re wasting our money on pie-in-the-sky projects.”

“Such as?”

“It’s really just a new way of moving freight,” Dr. Silver explained. “But if we crack it, it will mean a quantum-level increase in efficiency.”

“With lasers and gigacapacitors? Sounds like a new power source. A freighter engine?”

“Hopefully something better than that,” Dr. Silver smiled. “But anyway, we’re here to discuss your new project.”

“Yes,” Calvin nodded. “Speaking of pie-in-the-sky.” He removed the chip from his pocket. “The Ceo of Tranquil passed this on to Lenz, because she thought our people might have better luck at getting it to work than her people apparently have.”

“What is it? A perpetual motion machine?” Dr. Silver reached out her hand for the chip.

As Calvin put the chip in her hand, he said, “A defensive force field.”

Dr. Silver froze in place, staring at the chip, then at Calvin. “No yeah.”

“Oh, yeah.
Brane Boy
stuff, Lenz called it. But he and Tranquil’s Ceo—Volov, if I remember right—are concerned about an imminent attack from the ground, probably the United States, and they want to see if this idea has any merit.”

After another second’s regarding him, Dr. Silver finally started to move again. “Have you looked at it?” she asked, as she inserted it into her workstation.

“Yes,” Calvin said. “I also had one of your other people, Val Epstein, look at it with me.” Dr. Silver glanced at him, a look that suggested to Calvin that she probably knew they were old acquaintances. It may have also reflected the possibility that Val had mentioned her freight equation project to him, he reflected. He hoped that he hadn’t inadvertently gotten Val into trouble, though she hadn’t acted as if she was supposed to be keeping anything a secret. “As is, the raw numbers don’t seem to add up. But we both had the feeling that there might be something else there—something they’ve missed, or mis-stated, or something—that would actually make sense out of all that.”

“Mm.” Dr. Silver called up the specs and notes, and began examining them. Only a few seconds later, she said, “Yes, I see what you mean. Whoever started putting this together was obviously searching for a potential in field strength that is simply beyond feasibility.”

“Val and I had the impression that this might be intended to knock down ballistic missiles or other projectiles.”

Dr. Silver eyebrows arched. “Someone’s got an imagination, all right. But there are a number of problems with that idea. First of all, the power requirement needed to create and maintain a shaped field—especially one that might encompass a satellite—is massive. But that shaped field won’t be powerful enough by any means to destroy a missile, or even to deflect anything much larger than a bullet. You’re talking megawatts of power required, every second, to every square centimeter of a field, to create a charge that could potentially fry conventional electronics, or prematurely set off an explosive charge. Second, military hardware is hardened to prevent exactly that. And third… they must have known all that.”

Calvin nodded. “So. There must be a fourth… something. I think it had something to do with particle beam weapons.”

Dr. Silver shook her head. “PBWs all have the same drawbacks: They must be tightly focused to do any good; they are notoriously difficult to aim over an extended period of time, and they’re horrible at tracking a maneuvering target; and they rarely pump enough energy into their target to do any damage in time. They’ve had that problem, all the way back to the lasers they tried with the Star Wars program. I mean, PBWs are fine for taking out orbital debris, but most of that is small, non-powered, and easily broken up or deflected into re-entry. Nothing like a missile. But again… they must have known this.” She did not sound too confident that they would find anything useful.

Calvin sighed, and allowed his eyes to rove about the room. He remembered Lenz’s words to him about Silver: “Very practical, but maybe not as imaginative as yourself.” So far, Silver’s practicality seemed to be without question. She was methodically knocking down the theories Calvin lined up for her. But Lenz thought there was something else. And he thought that Dr. Silver might be able to exploit it, her people might be able to explain it… but Calvin would find it. Something outside of the box… beyond the pale… above the threshold.

He stared at Dr. Silver’s 3-D display column, and imagined the column itself as Verdant, as if canted on one end, spinning in the hard vacuum. He thought of the data, and tried to fathom a system that would offer the satellite protection. How do you protect all that satellite?

Dr. Silver watched him carefully, clearly trying to divine his thoughts. Abruptly she said: “But the idea may not be without merit.” After a moment, Calvin brought his eyes away from the column to look at her. “Yes. Maybe the secret is in the microcycle frequency of the field.” She looked at Calvin again, and seemed to consider her suggestion. “Let’s take another look at the frequencies they planned to use. Maybe the harmonics are designed to accomplish something…”

~

Shay was already in Lambert’s suites when he arrived at the end of the day. Two roll-in trays filled with covered plates and a chilled bottle of wine sat next to the coffee table by the window. Shay was just pouring the wine when he walked in.