Music of the Spheres (16 page)

Terry remained alive, but now he had more
death on his conscience.

“Sometimes,” Jose said quietly, “I wonder if
you are fully committed to our cause.”

24

Unofficial
Transcript :

Alex Manez Interview
Part One :

Dated August 2103 :

Edgar: “Good morning, Alex. My name
is Edgar Janz. I’m the assistant to the science advisor for USA, Inc.’s Board
of Directors’ oversight committee for Quantum Resources.”

Alex: “Morning.”

Edgar: “Did you have any questions before we begin? I’ve
cleared the entire day, so there’s no rush.”

Alex: “I had hoped to be debriefed by Michael Sanderson.”

Edgar: “I’m sorry, he’s retired from Quantum Resources. I’m
afraid his security clearance has been downgraded since then. Anything you
speak to him about must be of a personal nature only.”

Alex: “What about Captain Turner?”

Edgar:
“Major
Justine Turner is attached to the
training facility at Kennedy Space Center. I’m sure you can arrange to speak to
her after your debriefing. Are there any other questions I can answer for you?”

Alex: “I guess not.”

Edgar: “Well rested after your trip to Honduras?”

Alex: “Yes, thank you. I’m sorry if that delayed your
report.”

Edgar: “I won’t lie. There are a lot of people waiting to
hear your story. It wasn’t easy putting them off. But that isn’t a big problem.
I have a preliminary report I already submitted, but we need to verify some
facts. Are you ready?”

Alex: “Yes.”

Edgar: “Excellent. All right, let’s do this.
Ahem.
This is the official debriefing of Captain Alex Manez, first human to travel to
another solar system. It has been five days since his return to Earth. All
medical and psychological tests have come back, and aside from the difference
in his biological and chronological ages, Alex Manez has been given a clean
bill of health. —Yes, Alex?”

Alex: “I’ve been a little achy since yesterday.”

Edgar: “Uh. I’m sure that’s just an after-effect of all the
traveling. The doctors cleared you.”

Alex: “All right.”

Edgar: “Good. Now, can we start at the beginning? Can you
describe your experience traveling in a quantized state?”

Alex: “For me it was instantaneous. I didn’t experience
anything. One moment I was here; the next moment I was there.”

Edgar: “I’m going to ask you a series of questions. They
might seem repetitive or obvious, but this is for the benefit of the oversight
committee. I would like to start with the events leading up to the explosion of
the
Quanta
.”

Alex: “Of course.”

Edgar: “Was there power in the ship when you first
materialized in Centauri System?”

Alex: “No there wasn’t.”

Edgar: “According to pre-flight experiments this was
expected. Just for the record, can you explain why?”

Alex: “Of course. There were two separate quantities of Kinemet
on the ship. One for each leg of the trip. As I understand it, the Kinemet that
had been primed with photons would burn out just as I arrived in Centauri. The
second load, which had not been primed, was merely quantized as was every other
substance on the ship. The astrophysicists determined that once the non-charged
Kinemet rematerialized, it would re-react with its own photons and cause a
secondary reaction. Without applying a coolant, it would reach critical mass
and undergo a nuclear fission.”

Edgar: “And this is why there is a need for a human pilot at
this point, correct?”

Alex: “Yes. Assuming I would be rematerialized as well, my
only task was to restart the onboard electrical systems. I merely had to turn
on a generator, which would return electrical power to the ship. The onboard
computer would then initiate the Kinemetic dampers and interrupt the second
load of Kinemet before it reacted.”

Edgar: “And was there a problem preventing you from sparking
the generator?”

Alex: “Yes. The ship had turned solid, but I remained in a
semi-quantized state and was unable to physically grab the pull ring to charge
the generator.”

Edgar: “Do we know why you didn’t fully return to a physical
form?”

Alex: “One of the analysts surmised the longer a biological
entity was in a quantized state, the longer the transition to a normal
corporeal form.”

Edgar: “Do you agree with this theory?”

Alex: “No.”

Edgar: “Uh … Alex. I don’t have anything in my notes about
your disagreeing with that assumption.”

Alex: “I know.”

Edgar: “Well, what do you think is the reason?”

Alex: “I believe I have not been fully transformed into a Kinemat.
I am an aberration. I didn’t know this before the trip, but I do now. We need
to stop thinking about using Kinemet for light-speed travel and start examining
its other properties before more people end up like me.”

Edgar: “Will you excuse me a moment, Alex?”

Alex: “Of course.”

Edgar: “I just need to make a call.”

∞

Edgar: “Hello, Alex. Sorry that took so long. I hope you’re
comfortable.”

Alex: “They served me an early lunch.”

Edgar: “Good. I’ve been instructed to strike your last
comment from the official record and concentrate on the actual verifiable
events only. Please restrict your answers to facts rather than conjecture.”

Alex: “All right.”

Edgar: “Where were we? Right. There was a delay between when
the
Quanta
rematerialized and when you returned to physical form.”

Alex: “Yes. But during that short time, I was conscious and
aware of where I was. I was halfway between light and matter.”

Edgar: “And how long, exactly, were you in this transitional
phase?”

Alex: “It was about eight or ten seconds before I brought
myself back to material form. It’s hard to judge.”

Edgar: “ ‘Brought yourself?’ Alex. I have nothing in my
records stating that you brought yourself back.”

Alex: “I know.”

Edgar: “Did you tell anyone this before?”

Alex: “Of course, but they think it was just my imagination,
or my memory playing tricks. Did you need to leave the room again?”

Edgar: “No. Let’s just skip that last part for now.”

Alex: “All right.”

Edgar: “So you rematerialized. How long did you have before
the ship exploded?”

Alex: “Just a few seconds. I wasn’t thinking straight, and
tried to pull the kick starter ring.”

Edgar: “But … I thought that’s what you were supposed to
do.”

Alex: “It didn’t have any effect. I tried to tell them
before we left. The generator needed more of a boost to get started than a
simple pull cord—being quantized for that amount of time, the electrical system
was weakened. I had to use my electropathic ability to start the generator.”

Edgar: “Electropathic ability? What is that? Alex, I’m not
sure I can report any of this. My record and your story doesn’t match up. I
have nothing here that says anything about this.”

Alex: “I’m sure they’ll edit the parts they don’t want to
hear.”

Edgar: (coughing sound)

Alex: “Okay … the generator started, but it was too late to
start the dampers.”

Edgar: “It was too late?”

Alex: “There was only about a second or so left before the Kinemet
reached critical mass, and the coolant required at least four seconds.”

Edgar: “How did you survive the blast?”

Alex: “Well, the automatic capsule ejector launched the
cockpit just as the
Quanta
silently burst into fragments of light.”

Edgar: “All right. That’s what I have in my report as well.
What happened next?”

Alex: “I was a little stunned by the escape, and I was
dazed. After a few minutes, I realized I was stranded more than forty-trillion
kilometers from home with no way back, and I started to panic.”

Edgar: “That’s understandable.”

Alex: “All traces of the
Quanta
were gone. The
capsule only had about a week’s supply of oxygen and food. I … felt completely
alone.”

Edgar: “What happened next?”

Alex: “I instructed the shipboard sensors to scan the
vicinity for trace electromagnetic vibrations. The ship’s spectrographic
analyzer picked up a signal.”

Edgar: “The signals were similar to those emitted by the
artifact in our solar system, the
Dis Pater?
”

Alex: “Yes. The computer calculated it was a little over
twenty-thousand kilometers away.”

Edgar: “Then what?”

Alex: “I programmed the navigation system to fly to it.”

Edgar: “Based on the calculations you provided, at the
capsule’s top speed, it would take a little over a month to get there.”

Alex: “Correct.”

Edgar: “You only had a week’s worth of oxygen and food. So
how did you survive the trip?”

Alex: “I put myself back into a quantized state.”

Edgar: “You put—? Alex, there are significant discrepancies
between my reports and what you are telling me. I’m not sure we can continue
until I get this straightened out.”

Alex: “I tried to tell the analysts, but no one believed
me.”

Edgar: “We’ll continue this debriefing tomorrow. Right now I
need to get to the bottom of this.”

25

Lucis Observatory :

Venus Orbit :

Justine had never
been more frightened in all her life. She had never fully experienced the acute
isolation and helplessness of being blind like she did now.

When she had first lost her sight on Pluto, she had run the
full gamut of emotions on the six-month voyage home: anger and frustration,
denial and false hope, depression and finally acceptance.

During the trip home, however, she had never once feared for
her life. The entire ship’s crew had been as supportive and accommodating as
anyone could be. NASA had kept in constant communication with her and made
arrangements for her optilink surgery upon her arrival back on Earth.

For those first six months, she had begun to compensate for
her blindness in a natural way, relying more on her other senses: hearing,
touch and smell. After the surgery, even though she had adjusted to life as a
blind person, her visual prosthetics had been a huge crutch for her. The only
time she was without technological aid was in the comfort and safety of her
apartment. The sensory skills she had begun to cultivate over that first half a
year had never fully developed.

Now, she had no time to expand her natural abilities and
compensate for her loss of sight. Her current situation was indeed dire, and her
life was in very real danger.

The Cruzados had shown their complete disregard for life by
experimenting on the captured members of the security squadron, and Justine was
more than helpless; she was an added burden on the remaining soldiers, and on Clive.

She was relieved and more than grateful to have him with
her. As if she were a toddler, he hovered over her day and night. From helping
her navigate to the lavatory, to ensuring she was able to eat the tray dinners
their captors brought in, to holding her hand whenever there was a sharp
unexpected sound; Clive never left her side. Justine knew he had to be going
through his own emotional journey, and the shame of putting the burden of her
wellbeing on him filled her with guilt and despair.

…And anger.

She had been a commissioned officer of the United States Air
Force, the decorated captain of a NASA space vessel. She had traveled to Pluto
and been on the team that discovered evidence of alien cultures in the galaxy.
And here she was, hiding in a darkened room, barely able to care for herself, and
fearing for her life.

There were others in her group who were far worse off.

When she had realized Private Jackson was the Cruzados’
first attempt at creating a Kinemetic pilot, she was outraged.

That outrage quickly turned to horror when the young man
went into spasms and cried out in agony as his body began to die from radiation
poisoning.

Over the next three hours, he developed an angry rash that turned
first red, then black, as Clive described to her in a very low and somber tone.
The private’s skin bubbled with melanomas, and he continuously secreted bloody
pus from all of his orifices. At the end, he could barely summon the strength
to moan before he finally died. Justine could still recall the wretched sounds
the poor man made; they haunted her.

Dormant Kinemet carried extremely little risk to humans. The
minimal radioactivity it gave off was considerably less than getting a medical X-ray.

Kinemet reacted differently to other forms of radiation. Once
it was bombarded with hydrogen photons, it quantized and became an extremely
powerful fuel source.

Justine knew, from reading some of the briefing reports,
that Quantum Resources had experimented with ultraviolet radiation and Kinemet.
When exposed to this combination, humans exhibited symptoms similar to Alex
Manez’s: a few of the subjects who had volunteered for the experiment reported a
heightened sensitivity to any electronic field in their area; they seemed to
experience a kind of heightened perception, as if they were dislocated from
their corporeal bodies; and they described a high-pitched sound that permeated
their hearing. It was like a ringing in the ears, if the ringing changed pitch
on a random basis.

They also exhibited classical symptoms of radiation
poisoning, and died of rapid mutagenic melanoma. The same melanoma that the
private exhibited.

The remaining members of the security detail kept a silent vigil
while Private Jackson died a painful death. Over the next thirty-six hours, two
more soldiers were taken.

Private Anderson was the next subject; he was gone for ten
hours, and when they brought him back, he seemed physically unaltered, except
that he was completely catatonic, and had to be force-fed by one of his fellow
servicemen. His condition worsened, and though he displayed no physical
symptoms, he was dead for an hour before they realized it.

Private Teegs was missing from the room before Justine had
woken up that morning.

The soldiers had largely grown silent with despair.

Lieutenant Jeffries made his best effort to boost their
morale, but no one laughed when he cracked jokes, no one responded when he
tried to make idle conversation, and he had no takers when he attempted to start
a few parlor and word games. He gave up trying after a few hours, and the
entire group settled into a general atmosphere of malaise.

The injustice of it all made Justine simultaneously want to
rage against her circumstances, and curl into a little ball in the corner and
cry until she ran out of tears.

Justine did neither, however. She was determined to put on a
brave face, despite her handicap, and try to think her way out of this
situation. A kernel of thought had gestated in her mind over the past few days,
and if she could only concentrate hard enough, she might come up with a
solution.

The only comfort Justine found, as they passed the anxious hours,
was being as close as possible to Clive. The two of them found a spot a little
way off from the others to get some semblance of privacy. Backs against a wall,
they both sat with their legs touching. Justine folded her hands in Clive’s and
leaned her head against his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry to get you involved in all this,” he said to her
quietly.

“Nonsense.” She clucked her tongue. “It’s not your fault.”

“Maybe, but I feel responsible just the same.” Clive reached
an arm around her and pulled her close, tucking her safely to his side. “We all
feel like there should be something we could have done differently.
Second-guessing is part of being human.”

“And so is speculation,” Justine said.

“How’s that?”

“I’ve been so scared over the past few days my brain feels
like it’s been dipped in molasses.”

“Not to mention lack of proper sleep,” Clive said. “I would
kill for a mattress or even a blanket. I think my hip bone is going to come
right through my skin.”

Justine patted his hand. “Do you get the sense that there’s
something we’re missing in all this?”

“Like what?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Well, up until a week
ago, I had never heard of the Cruzados movement. No one was forewarned about this
uprising until they stole the old Mayan scroll. Since then, somehow, they’ve
managed to infiltrate Canada Station Three, hijack the
Diana
and bring
us to Venus. I mean, they’ve obviously been here at the observatory for some
time, setting things up. From the briefing I received in Houston, the
authorities didn’t really think the Cruzados were a serious threat.”

“And what do you make of that?” he asked.

“First of all, if they didn’t think the Kinemet was at risk,
why move it to Luna? Why not just put it on a military base?”

She felt Clive shift. He said, “Perhaps they thought moving
the Kinemet was a preemptive measure. Remove temptation and all that. Like you
said, no one thought the Cruzados had spread beyond Central America.”

“Then why on a commercial liner? Why not on a military
transport?”

“That was the first plan,” he said. “However, a few hours
before take-off, the rocket developed some kind of computer glitch. It would have
been days before it was repaired.”

“Still,” Justine said with an edge to her voice, “there’s
something more going on here than we’ve seen.”

“How so?” he asked.

“I don’t think the Cruzados are the only threat here.”

“Uhm—” Clive started to interject.

“No, listen,” she said, holding up a finger to illustrate
her point. “Honduras doesn’t have a space program at all. Even the nearest
spaceport is Mexico City. There has to be someone else behind the Cruzados. It
can’t just be a grassroots historical preservation movement. Someone has supplied
them with arms and training. Someone got them to Canada Station Three. Someone
set things up here on Venus. This whole thing had to have been planned for
months, or even years. And—”

Justine fell silent as the missing piece of information came
to her. A hundred thoughts bombarded her, and she struggled to make sense of
it. She stood up suddenly, as if the motion would clear her head.

A moment later, Clive got to his feet. “What?”

“They had to have inside information and help.” Justine
tapped a finger against her lower lip.

Clive scoffed. “How would that be possible?”

“Someone has to be using the Cruzados as a cat’s paw,”
Justine said. “They can’t have the resources or information to pull this off.”

She had spoken loud enough that Lieutenant Jeffries and the
others heard.

Corporal Marks, sitting across the room, asked, “Then who
would have the resources?”

With a quick tilt of her head, Justine said, “At this point,
it could be any of the major country corporations. USA, Inc. and Canada Corp.
haven’t been keen on sharing the tech, hedging against the future. World
resources are strained; one of the country corporations might be getting
desperate enough to make a play. They might think they can do a better job, or
they might have been doing their own research all along and thought they’d made
a breakthrough which we overlooked.”

Lieutenant Jeffries said, “If that’s the case, they’ve been
playing it pretty close to the vest. I haven’t heard anything through military
channels.”

“I’m on the mesh all the time,” Corporal Marks added. “If an
entire country corp. were making this kind of move, no one’s made a peep about
it.”

“Then who?” Justine wondered out loud. “They had to have
someone who could pilot the liner. Someone who knew the Kinemet would be on the
flight, and according to Clive that was a last-minute decision.”

With one hand lightly touching a wall, she stood up and began
to pace. “Maybe if we work backwards,” she said. “I know it’s a wild shot, but
if we can figure out who might have pulled the strings, maybe we can make the
connection.”

Corporal Marks asked, “Do you think it might be someone in
Lunar Lines?”

Shaking her head, Justine said, “I found out about the
shipment the morning of the flight from Director Mathers. He’s been with the
company for almost twenty years. He’s a family man, a decent guy. I can’t
believe he had any part in this. What about you?” she asked the soldiers. “When
did you find out about the mission?”

Lieutenant Jeffries said, “I was called in for a briefing by
Colonel Gagne the day before. He told us he’d received the request for a
security squad from NASA that morning. The decision to move the Kinemet had
been made only moments after we found out about the theft of the Mayan scroll.
The way everyone was scrambling, it was all news to the military. I wasn’t even
aware there had been another ship involved.”

“Well,” said Justine, “none of this explains anything. It’s
obvious someone higher up is involved. Someone with access to both the military
and NASA.”

“I have a question,” said Corporal Marks. “And I really hope
this isn’t out of line, ma’am.”

“Go ahead, Corporal.”

“Why you?”

For a moment, the question caught Justine off guard. “What
do you mean, why me?”

“Well, pardon me for saying so, but the only factor that
doesn’t make sense is why they chose you to accompany us. I’ve been on two
missions in conjunction with Lunar Lines in the past year; we’ve never had an
attendant assigned to us before. We’ve always sent a private up to get food.
And, no offense, ma’am, but why would the military request someone with a
handicap as part of an important operation like this?”

Lieutenant Jeffries cleared his throat. “That’ll be enough,
Corporal.”

Justine fought to control the flush of heat that rose to her
cheeks. “I certainly hope you don’t think I had any part in this? I’ll have you
know I have dedicated my life to NASA. I’ve—”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Corporal Marks sounded clearly
uncomfortable. “But if you remember, Lieutenant, even Colonel Gagne sounded
bewildered that we were assigned an attendant at all. The request must have
come from NASA itself.”

Justine barked out a hollow laugh. “It’s nothing so
nefarious as that. Clive is the NASA liaison. He just thought it was an
opportunity for us to spend some time together. Right?” she asked Clive,
turning her head in the direction she thought he would be.

But he didn’t reply to her question. Justine, unable to see,
felt a sharp needle of panic at his lack of response.

“Clive?”

“That’ll be quite enough of this,” he said finally, but his
voice came from the far side of the room. “Everyone stay where you are.”

Justine shook her head. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

It was in a low, steady voice that Lieutenant Jeffries said,
“He has an ion pistol.”

“A gun? —Clive, what’s going on?”

But then, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Her mind
screamed that she was wrong; that she’d leapt to the wrong conclusion. She
didn’t want it to be true. How could it?

“You arranged everything?” she said in a gasp. “No, you
can’t be part of this. It’s a mistake. It has to be.”