Authors: Nancy Kress
But actually, as physicists had known for two hundred years, a particle took all possible paths. A proton beam fired from a warship traveled directly to its target, traveled obliquely to its target, reached its target by detouring first to the Andromeda Galaxy. All possible paths. Including through the six curled-up dimensions of spacetime, the tiny Calabi-Yau spaces. The proton beam traveled through the Calabi-Yau dimensions countless times because the dimensions were so tiny, returning each time to its starting place. But, ultimately, the average of all these circuitous journeys was the least-resistance sumover-paths integral, because that’s the force probons carried and it operated everywhere, just as gravitons made gravity operate everywhere.
Large masses could warp gravity, sometimes to extremes, which was why black holes existed. The Protector Artifact, that strange leftover from an unimaginable race, warped probability.
The artifact focused probons, shot a huge number of them at an incoming particle stream, just as a laser focused and shot photons. The artifact thus warped probability, in the same way huge mass warped gravity. The energy to do that was certainly available; the strength of the force transmitted by a messenger particle was inversely proportional to the tension on its threads, and Capelo had calculated fairly low tension for the probon, let alone the energy in the protons. All the energy of these tiny vibrating threads brought about a different path, one of low but not zero probability under “normal” circumstances, and now of 100 percent probability. So the proton beam went not into its target but into one of the six Calabi-Yau spaces, the curled-up dimensions of the universe.
Once it was there, it couldn’t just lose all that energy; the law of conservation of energy didn’t allow it. So the energy brought into the Calabi-Yau dimension, energy which hadn’t been there before, did something else. It effected a space-changing flop transition, changing the shape of that tiny, curled-up dimension into a different shape.
Without
affecting our larger, three-extended-dimension universe at all. The energy started by making a tiny tear, and to repair the tear, the Calabi-Yau shape evolved into a different shape, which mathematicians had known was possible almost as long as they had known of Calabi-Yau shapes. The process was called a flop transition.
The enormous energy needed to alter the beam’s probable path, to change the vibration of its threads, exactly equaled the net energy of the heavier probons minus the energy lost to quantum agitation. The new vibrational energy exactly equaled the energy needed to effect a space-changing flop transition in a Calabi-Yau dimension of a certain probable configuration. A piece of the dimension was unfolded, and then refolded into a subtly different shape, like refolding a part of a complex origami. All the equations balanced, led into one another with natural rightness.
But there was a price.
As the Calabi-Yau space evolved through the tear, that affected the precise values of the masses of the individual particles—the energies in their threads. The tiny vibrating threads that made up, say, a proton beam, always smears of probability, now vibrated at a different resonance. It had, in fact, ceased to be a proton at all, and had become a different, unknown particle. This was possible because matter itself, at the deepest level, was itself a manifestation of probabilities. The probabilities had been changed.
When you applied the equations to the large, three-extended-dimensions universe, the price became terrible.
The probability energy focused by
two
artifacts was huge. It was enough to do to the three-dimensional universe what smaller amounts did, over and over, to a small, curled-up dimension of the universe: effect a space-changing flop-transition into a different shape. It did that the same way it did it in the tiny dimensions, by first tearing the fabric of spacetime.
But in the tiny dimensions, it was a tiny tear, easily repaired with the energy pouring in at the same time from the entire probability-altering event. In the large extended three dimensions, there wasn’t enough energy. The “tear” would spread, and the total dimensional shape of the universe—now a benign hyper sphere extending fifteen billion light-years before curling back on itself—would undergo a topology-changing flop transition.
But the vibrational patterns of the threads that make up spacetime were intimately dependent on the shape of the dimensions in which they vibrated. Not the size, but the shape. If the three extended dimensions of the universe underwent a flop transition, its threads would vibrate in different patterns,
giving rise to different fundamental particles
. Extended spacetime itself would be different, the disturbance to its fabric traveling outward at light speed.
And every living thing in the universe—humans and Fallers, bacteria and viruses and genetically recreated elephants, would die.
This much Kaufman understood, at least superficially. Now he tried to follow the work that had been done, by Capelo and others, on the probability equations and their implications. He was looking for something, anything, that might have led someone to kidnap Dr. Thomas Capelo. To keep Capelo working on some specific idea, or keep him from publishing some specific idea, or something. Anything.
Kaufman didn’t find it.
All he could discern from the masses of equations and heavy prose in the journals, or from the breathless, sensationalized speculation in the popular press, was that there was one huge hole in Capelo’s theory. It didn’t account for macro-level quantum entanglement. That was the most accepted idea about how the space tunnels worked, and Capelo had not tied together probability, as a fifth universal force, with quantum entanglement. Some physicists saw this as a flaw so fundamental that it invalidated Capelo’s whole theory. Others saw it merely as a blank to be filled in as the theory was refined and added to. Capelo himself, in the one interview with him in Magdalena’s library, seemed to see it as neither.
It gave Kaufman a little start, seeing that thin dark face with its inevitable irritable expression, come up on the terminal. Capelo had never suffered fools gladly. He said that yes, quantum entanglement had not yet been accounted for. No, he didn’t think that invalidated his theory. No, he didn’t think he’d published prematurely, given that General Stefanak had ordered him to do so and everyone in the scientific world knew how profound was the military understanding of physics.
Despite himself, Kaufman smiled. Same old Tom.
But Kaufman was no nearer to any idea of why Capelo had been kidnapped. Perhaps it had, as Stefanak had claimed, been Life Now, seeking something major and emotional to blame on the Stefanak regime.
Perhaps it had been the Stefanak regime, seeking something major and emotional to blame on Life Now.
Perhaps it had been some third party, a ransom attempt aborted midway.
Perhaps Tom was already dead, as Stefanak was.
Kaufman had gotten nowhere, and had wasted three days doing it. But, then, what else did he have to do?
“Lyle!” a voice screamed down the corridor. Marbet. “Lyle, come quick!”
Marbet never screamed. Kaufman hurled himself out of his chair, despite the gravity, and ran clumsily to their cabin.
* * *
She’d spent too much time just lying on her bed, Magdalena thought, and that was bad. It wasn’t the gravity. She could handle gravity, handle her ridiculous passengers, handle McChesney and, in Caligula system, that bastard Hofsetter. What Magdalena was having trouble handling was the fear.
What if she couldn’t find Laslo? Two people might keep her from him: Admiral Pierce and Laslo himself.
She hadn’t really expected Stefanak’s assassination. Her mistake: She’d overestimated his hold on his power. Somehow Sullivan Stefanak had slipped up, or a brute like Pierce would not have been able to pull off his coup. She, Magdalena, should have foreseen that possibility, should have guarded against it. Definitely her mistake. And Pierce was capable of simply sequestering Laslo somewhere for a very long time, just to make Magdalena crawl and caper and cede territory she otherwise would never surrender to an asshole like Pierce. Well, if she had to crawl, she would. Just don’t let Pierce keep her at it for years.
The other fear was Laslo. Magdalena could easily visualize a scenario in which Stefanak’s most trusted aides, immediately after the assassination, might panic. They’d jettison everything nonessential, including Laslo. And Laslo might then put himself in hiding, away from his mother’s control that he so desperately needed but was too weak to accept. It could take her years to find him, if he’d had time to pull major funds from her account or his father’s and prepare a hiding place. While she was stuck traveling back to Sol System from the backside of the galaxy.
But that had been necessary, too. The first rush of a new tyrant’s power was always the most confused, dangerous time. Pierce could easily have made her disappear. Now, when he must be discovering the limits of his reach, and when her contacts had a firmer sense of the situation, she had a far better chance of playing that situation so that he could not kill her without public notice.
But Laslo …
She had to stop this. Brooding never solved anything. Magdalena despised brooders; they were weak. Action was the only thing that forced the universe into submission. Too few people understood that—although, oddly enough, among them was that otherwise misdirected straight player, Kaufman.
Magdalena swung her long legs against the gravity and off the bed. She sat up, and heard someone screaming.
Instantly Rory, in the corridor, had flung open her door and drawn his gun. “No, I’m fine, Rory. It’s Marbet Grant. Come with me!”
As quickly as her leaden legs allowed, Magdalena moved down the corridor. The bunkroom door was open and Lyle Kaufman was already darting through it in response to the Grant woman’s shout: “Lyle, come quick!”
Magdalena crowded into the room behind Rory, who shielded her. But there was nothing to shield anyone from, only the alien child lying on the floor, clutching her head.
“What is this? What’s wrong with her?” Magdalena demanded. Everyone ignored her.
“It started about a half hour ago,” Marbet said rapidly to Kaufman. “How close are we to the tunnel?”
“About an hour out. Marbet, how can you be sure?”
“Easily,” Marbet snapped. She knelt on the floor beside Essa, scooping her up into her arms and murmuring to her in her native language. “Watch. I just told her that she’s Essa, she’s aboard a flying metal boat in space, that I am Marbet … watch.”
As Marbet murmured, the alien’s face stopped contorting. The ugly wrinkles on her bald head smoothed. She clutched at Marbet, listening, but she no longer looked hurt.
“Now,” Marbet said, “watch this … oh, God, I hate to do it but you need to see!”
She began talking again in World. The child looked at Marbet in consternation, and her skull started to crinkle. Within thirty seconds she was clutching at her head, clearly in pain.
“I told her,” Marbet said rapidly to Kaufman, “that we’re headed back to World, that you and I hate each other, that flowers are not important during a trade. And look.”
“Look at what?” Magdalena demanded but the two of them went on ignoring her. She felt her face harden. How dare they pretend she wasn’t here?
Kaufman said in a strange voice, “I still don’t see how that can be happening. Shared reality only existed in the presence of the artifact. In the field it generated around World.”
“Yes,” Marbet said.
“Yes.”
Kaufman stood very still. “McChesney.”
“Hand-picked for the original Faller project by Stefanak,” Marbet said. “How trusted do you have to be for that? And still there.”
“The
Alan B. Shepard
docked with the
Murasaki
to take on supplies,” Kaufman said. “I was in brig, but an ensign told me. Docked on this side of the tunnel.”
“And McChesney’s still there!”
The two of them stared at each other until Essa whimpered. Marbet bent her head over the child and spoke comfortingly.
Magdalena said tightly, “Kaufman, what are you gibbering about, both of you? What’s wrong with that kid?”
“She’s experiencing shared reality. Again.”
“So? What does that mean?”
For the first time, Kaufman looked at Magdalena. She recognized the calculation in his eyes. When he spoke, it was with great deliberation: a sum totaled and reached.
“It means, Magdalena, that Essa is once again in the presence of the probability field she spent her life in. It means Dieter Gruber’s insane theory of brain evolution was right. It means that the Protector Artifact isn’t hidden somewhere in the Solar System, under Stefanak’s or Pierce’s control.
“The artifact is right here, aboard the
Murasaki
.”
SEVENTEEN
AT SPACE TUNNEL #438
A
utomatically Magdalena said, “It can’t be.”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes no sense, Kaufman. Stefanak had the artifact in the Solar System, set at eleven, to protect the entire system from Fallers.”
Kaufman said, “You don’t know that. Not for sure. The thing was supposedly hidden.”
“But why would Stefanak have done anything else with it? There’s no point!”
“Yes, there is. I’m going to sit down, Magdalena. This gravity.”
He eased his tall body onto a bunk. After a moment’s hesitation, Magdalena did the same. Rory remained standing beside her, but she hardly noticed. A bodyguard was not a person. On the floor, the Grant woman cradled the alien, who seemed to have recovered but whose silly neck-furred face looked as if she enjoyed Marber’s attention.
Kaufman said, “Stefanak didn’t have to actually have the artifact in the Solar System to stop the Fallers from bringing in theirs and frying us. All he had to do was make the enemy
think
the artifact was in the Solar System. We know they monitor our outpost electromagnetic broadcasts, and that they know a hell of a lot more about us than we do about them. For two years the human media’s stated, discussed, shouted that the Protector Artifact is somewhere around Sol. Just as theirs is around their home star.”