Probability Space (25 page)

McChesney said patiently, “You’ll have to give the orders to your crew. Bring the ship into cargo-exchange configuration with the
Murasaki
.”

She didn’t move. Kaufman took her arm and gently pulled her toward the door. She shook him off but followed McChesney out, leaving Kaufman and Marbet alone.

Marbet said, “When she shatters, she’ll rip up the galaxy if she can.”

“I know.”

“Are you sure her son is dead?”

“As sure as I can be without having been an eyewitness. I told you about the recording. That was Tom’s voice. I think Stefanak had a decoy artifact location set up in the Belt, something for his enemies to find if they looked hard enough. I think he had Tom housed there, too, for whatever reason. Then, after Laslo accidentally stumbled across the site, Stefanak decided to move Tom. I don’t know why, or why he put Tom here. Maybe Tom knows.”

Marbet said, “We didn’t even ask to see him!”

It was true. Chagrined, Kaufman said, “Magdalena was so…”

“I know. Lyle, she’s not completely sane. You can’t rely on her, no matter how much you think you need her. In fact, why do you need her, now that we’ve found Tom?”

“I don’t know yet. Let me think. Don’t lecture me, Marbet.”

Her green eyes darkened. “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to comment. Tell me what else I’m supposed to do or not do. Am I going down to the planet with the artifact as Magdalena said, to—what was it?—‘bribe the local natives into silence’?”

“Of course not. You and I and Magdalena and the commander have to all be out of the World system before Pierce’s force arrives, if it does arrive. And Tom, too. A good thing Magdalena’s flyer will seat six. Our flyer is still on World. The
Sans Merci
will have to vaporize it, in case Pierce does land a detail on the planet. Come on, let’s get McChesney to take us to Tom.”

She didn’t get out of her chair. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?”

“Essa.”

Oh, God, he had forgotten her. The alien had been nothing but trouble since the beginning.

“Don’t look so put-upon, Lyle,” Marbet said acidly. “If it weren’t for Essa, you wouldn’t know the damn artifact was here in the first place.”

He said evenly, “Essa can go back down to the planet in Magdalena’s ship. That’s where she belongs. Are you coming to talk to Tom?”

She rose silently and followed him.

McCnesney’s ship came alongside. With the two cargo bays sealed to each other, no one could see what was transferred. This was how the artifact had been moved from the
Alan B. Shepard
to the
Murasaki
three years ago. Kaufman had been aboard. Supposedly he had been in charge of the entire expedition to dig up, investigate, and transport home the artifact—but he had never been told that the artifact was being left on the
Murasaki
. Suddenly, he wanted to see the thing for himself.

McChesney and Magdalena stood inside the joined cargo bays. Her crew trundled the artifact, resting in a metal ring mounted on a wheeled platform, from one ship to the other. The artifact looked exactly as Kaufman remembered. A sphere of dull gray that looked like metal but was actually an allotropic form of carbon that resembled, but wasn’t, a known class of fullerenes. Spaced evenly around its circumference were seven protuberances, each a small raised crater. Inside each crater were, two nipples, spaced apart. The craters were marked in primes, although apparently the unknown makers had also considered “one” a prime: one, two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, each indicated by raised dots outside the crater.

To activate a given setting, you had to depress both nipples. Kaufman’s team, under the leadership of Tom Capelo, had tested settings prime one, prime two, prime three. Prime five had, sometime during fifty thousand years of burial on World, acquired two small rocks wedging its nipples inward, which meant that setting prime five had been permanently depressed. Causing, according to Syree Johnson, the protection of World against the weapon that had fried the entire rest of the World star system. Also causing, according to Ann Sikorski and Dieter Gruber, the quantum-effect probability field that had led Essa and her people to evolve shared reality.

Settings prime seven, eleven, and thirteen had only been worked out mathematically, by Tom Capelo. They had not been tested. Unless you counted the “test” by the Fallers, presumably at setting prime seven, that had irradiated the entire human-colony star system of Viridian. Millions of people had died.

Kaufman reached out and touched the artifact.

“A kick in the head, right?” Magdalena said. “All this time all the good citizens of the Solar System thought this thing was there, protecting them at setting eleven. And Stefanak had it here, instead. Why was that, Lyle? You’re the fellow soldier.”

“I don’t know,” Kaufman said. Magdalena’s mocking tone was back to normal, but her eyes glittered like broken glass, and her body was so taut that every muscle would ache by evening. “Ethan, I’d like to see Tom Capelo.”

McChesney glanced at him bleakly. “As soon as we’re done here and the
Sans Merci
takes off.”

Kaufman didn’t argue. Hiding the artifact from Pierce was priority one. He didn’t ask what McChesney had told, was going to tell, the
Sans Merci
crew. Kaufman knew. They were going to have to stay on World until it was safe to send for them, maybe years. They wouldn’t be told this until they had all been ferried down and scattered into hiding among the tiny villages or in the Neury Mountains. It would be hard for Pierce’s soldiers to find thirty men on an entire planet, especially when they didn’t know they were supposed to be looking. As for the
Sans Merci
, she would be sent to burn up in World’s atmosphere.

Probably only the captain and exec knew all this now. Whatever deal Magdalena was cutting with them would undoubtedly make it worth their enforced exile.

Marbet said to McChesney, “There’s an alien girl aboard the
Sans Merci
. She has to be dropped off by shuttle at coordinates I’ll give you.”

“An alien girl?”

“It’s a complicated story,” Kaufman said, and McChesney clearly had no interest in hearing it.

Nor did he pay attention to Marbet, who said dearly, “Do you realize you’re restoring shared reality to this planet?”

Restoring shared reality. Kaufman hadn’t realized, either, hadn’t stopped to think about it. Oh, Ann … after all the work you’ve done to create a society without it! Enli, Calin, the village with its barely weathered stockade … Not priority one. Ann would cope. World would cope. Kaufman’s concern was the entire galaxy.

Setting prime thirteen, according to Tom Capelo, could destroy it by altering the fabric of spacetime itself.

Kaufman waited for McChesney to take him to Capelo.

TWENTY

ABOARD THE
MURASAKI

M
y God, it’s the cavalry. Or are you the savages, Lyle?”

“Hello, Tom,” Kaufman said, surprised at how glad he was to see Capelo. After months of seeing Tom’s face, and then his daughter’s, on the news holo, months of speculation about whether the physicist was dead or alive … and here he was. Thin, but Tom had always been thin. Intense. Furious.

“What the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck am
I
doing here? Are you here to give me more military orders from El Generalissimo Stefanak?”

“No, I’m here as a civilian,” Kaufman said, because he had to start somewhere.

“My family?”

Kaufman hesitated. But truth had always been the only way to deal with Capelo; everything else cost too much later on. “Your wife and younger daughter are fine. Amanda seems to have disappeared. We hoped she was with you.”

Capelo went ashen. “She … she wasn’t even home when I was abducted.”

“Apparently she was. The news holos said she left her swimming class early. Her friends said she told them she was going home. Tom, there’s no evidence that whoever took her took you, and in fact if that were the case, she’d probably be here with you. There’s been no political demands, no ransom requests. If they didn’t take her along with you, my guess is that she hid in the house and then later went into hiding somewhere.” Kaufman hoped this was true.

A little of the color returned to Capelo’s face. “She’s an unusually resourceful kid.”

“I believe it,” Kaufman said. He’d decided on a strategy: Hit Capelo hard with everything at once. “Tom, we need to talk to you quickly. A lot has happened, and we think the artifact might be used at setting prime thirteen in the same star system as the Falters’ artifact.”

“No one would be stupid enough to do that, not even Stefanak.”

“Stefanak’s dead. Nikolai Pierce brought off a military coup.”

“Pierce? He’s crazy as a syphilitic shark!”

Kaufman had never heard a more apt description. “Yes. He didn’t know the artifact was actually here, aboard the
Murasaki
 … did you?”

“Of course I did, what do you suppose Stefanak’s thugs brought me here for? Soldiers know nothing about science. They were stupid enough to think that a theoretical physicist has to actually be in the presence of a phenomenon to do its math, Good thing they weren’t trying to force Sarinsen to extend his work on black holes.”

Marbet said, “What were they trying to get you to do?”

“Figure out why the artifact affected brain functioning. Stefanak refused to put it in the Solar System until he knew it wasn’t going to turn his soldier’s brains into pulp. Although I don’t know how he’d tell the difference. Hello, Marbet. Hello, McChesney. The jailer himself—I’m honored.”

So that was the reason the artifact—and Tom—were here. Not that it mattered now. Kaufman said, “The artifact is on its way back down to World. Pierce didn’t know where it was; evidently Stefanak kept that information highly restricted. But he’ll learn eventually, and he’ll come after it, and we think he’ll use it to try to fry the Fallers’ home system. We’re trying to prevent that.”

Capelo stared. “Well, aren’t you three the reverse Prometheuses. Promethei. And when Pierce’s army gets here and finds our merry little band?”

“That’s why we’re leaving. Now. Get together anything that identifies you and—”

“There isn’t a whole lot. The kidnappers didn’t let me gather up the family photo album.”

“—wipe the ship system of any work you did while you were here. Now.”

“I’m moving, don’t turn all authoritarian on me, Lyle. And just how are we leaving? Is Colonel McChesney graciously loaning us a flyer plus free passage? He shouldn’t—who the hell is
that?
”

Magdalena burst in, shoving Marbet out of the way. McChesney must have escaped her briefly, but here she was again, and even Kaufman stepped out of her way. She looked as if any contact with her would burn. He had never seen such eyes: desperate, frightening, pathetic.

“Is my son with you? Laslo Damroscher? My son?”

Something in her question, half demand and half plea, quelled Capelo’s usual sarcasm. Kaufman remembered that he, too, had a daughter missing.

Capelo said gently, “No, ma’am, I don’t have your son here, or anyone’s son. I’ve been imprisoned here alone for months, and transported around the galaxy alone for months before that. I’m sorry.”

“He was with you! You spoke to him!”

Too late, Kaufman saw the tsunami coming. He tried to head it off. “Magdalena, it—”

“Listen!” She pulled the data cube from her pocket, the same cube Kaufman had heard on World. The two drunken, young, stupid voices filled the room.

“Thass not ‘sposed to be there.”
Laslo’s voice, very drunk.

“What isn’t supposed to be where
?” Another young man, sounding marginally less drunk.
“Just an asteroid.”

“Isn’t ’sposed to be there. Hand me ’nother fizzie.”

“They’re gone. You drunk the last one, you pig.”

“No fizzies? Might as well go home.”

“Just an asteroid. No … two asteroids.”

“Two!”
Laslo said, with pointless jubilation.

“Where’d they come from? Isn’t supposed to be there. Not on computer.”

“N-body problem. Gravity. Messes things up. Jupiter.”

“Let’s shoot ’em!”

“Yeah!”
Laslo cried, and hiccuped.

“What kinda guns you got on this thing? No guns, prob’ly. Fucking rich-boy pleasure craft.”

“Got … got guns put on it. Daddy-dad doesn’t know. Illegals.”

“You’re a bonus, Laslo.”

“Goddamn true. Mummy doesn’t know either. ’Bout the guns.”

“You sure ’bout that? Isn’t much your famous mother don’t know. Or do. God, that body, I saw her in an old—”

“Shut up, Conner,”
Laslo said savagely.
“Computer, activate … can’t remember the word…”

“Activate weapons. Jesus, Laslo. YOU gotta say it. Voice cued.”

“Activate weapons!”

“Hey, a message from th’asteroid! People! Maybe there’s girls.”

“You are approaching a highly restricted area
,” a mechanical voice said.
“Leave this area immediately.”

“It don’t want us
,” Conner said.
“Shoot it!”

“Wait … maybe…”

“You are approaching a highly restricted area. Leave this area immediately.”

“Fucking snakes,”
Conner said.
“Shoot it!”

“I…”

“Fucking coward!”

“THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING! YOU HAVE INVADED A HIGHLY RESTRICTED AND HIGH-DANGER AREA LEAVE IMMEDIATELY OR YOUR CRAFT WILL BE FIRED ON!”

And then a fourth voice, speaking rapidly,
“Unknown Craft … SOS … Help! I’m being held prisoner here—This is Tom Capelo—”

The very brief, high-pitched whine.

“Oh my God,” Capelo said. “That was me, before they moved me. I had rigged a short-range transmitter—stupid keepers had no idea what I needed for my work, I wish I’d asked for a proton beamer. They might have given me one. The flyer turned up on the asteroid’s screen, I could break that firewall easily enough, and I sent a message—”