Alternities (52 page)

Tackett viewed that as the worst possible news, for it fit Secretary O’Neill’s paranoid scenario for a sneak surgical strike on Moscow. The discrepant factor was the timing. The date O’Neill had given for the next session of the Supreme Soviet was weeks away, and it would be nearly impossible to conceal Asylum that long.

But there was a window of uncertainty in that analysis, for the newest entries in his foreign-papers clip file on the Soviet Union were ten days old. There could have been some change that would put O’Neill’s scenario back on track.

The logical next step was to talk to O’Neill again—except the Secretary was not on the Boston hoolist. Considering recent history, that was only a minor surprise. But it was a major inconvenience. The blackout rules for Asylum ruled out any calls to Washington, much less the kind of conversation Tackett needed to have.

Years of experience had taught Tackett the value and necessity of using back doors and open windows. But it was starting to look like the only way on this one was the front door—and Peter Robinson had the key.

Robinson and William Rodman arrived together at the Tower shortly after ten, in the back of a food service delivery truck. Just then, Tackett was huddling with Monaghan on the timing of the recall from Red that was to precede the mass transit, and so did not meet the truck. The President’s insistence on putting in an appearance on the ninth floor delayed their meeting still further.

But a few minutes shy of eleven found them finally face to face in Tackett’s suite. “How’s everything running, Albert?”

“We’re doing our best under the circumstances,” Tackett said. “The circumstances are not the best. We’re also a bit hungry for explanations. What’s going on out there?”

“There’s pieces moving all over the board, Albert,” Robinson said, digging in his sweater pocket for a cigarette. “Two Russian subs are sniffing up Task Force 21 in the Atlantic—the carrier
Kearsarge
and its escorts. There’ve been three peeper overflights of the Panama Canal and our Venezuelan oil fields in the last twenty-four hours. And there’s a Russian air-amphibious division on maneuvers in the Bering Strait, thirty minutes from our facilities at Cape Prince. Something’s going to break loose real soon.”

There was nothing in what Robinson said that Tackett could either refute or affirm. “So you think that Kondratyev’s planning to spank us.”

“I don’t think he’ll settle for making us wet our pants, do you?”

Robinson said. “I have to listen to Rauche and his people. They think the psychology’s right. Mr. K’s been forced to call a special plenary session of the Central Committee to bolster his position after the D-57 fiasco. It’d be a hell of a coup if he could walk into the Grand Palace tomorrow and tell them a revenge raid destroyed the Canal locks or sank the
Kearsarge
, eh?”

Tackett’s blood ran cold as he listened. A meeting of the Central Committee, with the top military brass there to testify. That’s the missing piece in your nightmare, Gregory, he thought. Served up to order by Peter Robinson.

But still Tackett resisted believing. Robinson’s story was plausible Moscow’s response to date had been puzzlingly mild. Tackett had heard about the “death letter,” but a tongue-lashing, however pointed, however earnest, hardly seemed enough. Some sort of selective, eye-for-an-eye response, even a measured escalation, was entirely credible.

“Where is Secretary O’Neill? I noticed his name wasn’t on the list,” Tackett said.

“Gregory chose to stay in Washington, at the National Command Center. He’ll be my eyes there.”

“I would have thought he’d send his family along, at least,” Tackett said, still probing.

“My understanding is that Ellen decided to wait with the flash plane at Bolling. The same with the Vice President and his family,” Rodman said. “Very courageous.”

“General Rauche wasn’t on the list, either.”

“The chiefs will go to the Rock,” Rodman said.

It made sense for the Pentagon brass to relocate to the alternate command center buried in the Catoctins. But a skeptical inner voice offered Tackett another explanation. They’re not in on it, he thought. They’re in the dark. It’s all been arranged by Robinson, Madison—and me.

Robinson seemed bored, though not annoyed, by the conversation. “What’s the status of operations in Blue? I trust you’ve got your problems under control.”

“Hardly. We still haven’t recovered our agents, the Volunteer Watch is still under alert, and the gate house is almost certainly being watched. I’m not convinced we can support Rathole at this time.”

But the President did not seem to hear him. “What’s the head count for the Blue station?”

“Four shy of two hundred.”

Robinson frowned and shook his head. “I was hoping for five hundred, between Alpha List and your people. But we’ll do what we need to with any number, so long as they’re loyal.”

It was all Tackett could do to keep from staring open-mouthed. He heard in Robinson’s words a confession, confirmation of O’Neill’s nightmare, validation of his own worst fears.

Rodman was frowning with disapproval, as though he too had noted Robinson’s indiscretion. “You have Defnet access here?”

It took Tackett a moment to realize the question was meant for him. “Yes.”

“We’ve been out of contact with Washington for nearly an hour,” Rodman prompted Robinson.

“Yes,” the President said. “If you’d excuse us, Albert—”

That quickly, Tackett found himself ushered out of his own office. It can’t be true, he told himself as he hastened down two floors to the Tower’s communications center. I’ve got to be reading this wrong.

The cork-floored rack-filled room was manned by a single technician, who blinked in surprise at seeing Tackett there.

“Director?”

“Are any of my office lines active?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who are they talking to?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Can you put that line on a set of phones for me?”

“Yes—”

“Do it. Then get out of here.”

“Sir, this room’s supposed to be staffed around the clock—”

“
I’m
here, aren’t I?” growled Tackett. “Do it.”

Unlikely as it seemed, the newest arrival at the safe house was being treated with even more deference than Warren Eden had enjoyed. But then, after all, he was the President.

Wallace did not know which of the day’s surprises had brought Brandenburg there—Eden’s casual lunchtime announcement that he had solved the structure of the maze or the disquieting news that large numbers of Guard agents were returning to Indianapolis and reporting to the gate house. He knew only that as the principals gathered in the dining room for the action caucus, there was an urgency and a tension in the air which he had not seen before.

Eden claimed the floor first. “This was an interesting problem,” he said, and there were chuckles at the understatement. “The solutions are even more interesting. They’re also a bit abstruse. I know that no one in this room is a physicist or mathematician. I suspect that’s to your advantage. It’s certainly to mine. A room full of physicists would be positive they know why what I’m going to say can’t be so, and the proofs are not yet compelling.

“I said several days ago that this was an artifact. That remains my conclusion. Specifically, I would describe it as a forced macro-uncertainty, an artificially created quantum bubble supporting mirror pockets of shaped spacetime.”

As brows furrowed and eyes glazed, Eden stalwartly continued. “I will try to explain that. For more than twenty years, we physicists have been arguing over the implications of certain experiments in subatomic structure and behavior, whether they mean that alternate universes are required or merely possible. I myself have wasted the last dozen years modeling the possible creation of fundamentally different universes at what cosmologists call Time Zero.”

“Wasted? Clearly, they are possible,” Davis said.

“Yes—but,” Eden said. “The key experiments which led to the debate were conducted with high-energy cyclotrons and accelerators built in the 1940s and later. All of the most important work took place after the Split.”

“Experimental error,” Davis said suddenly. “Systematic experimental error.”

Eden nodded. “The results were influenced by the fact that they took place inside this bubble. We were describing the local case, not the general case. I don’t know what rules hold outside.” He smiled. “Some of us would welcome a more orderly Universe.”

“But inside the bubble, at least, this kind of thing can happen,” Bayshore said.

“Not by itself. Not without a hyperdimensional structure like the maze.”

“A structure made of what?” asked Wallace.

Shrugging, Eden said, “Out of what is—matter-energy and the five forces through which it interacts.”

He reached into his pocket and produced a many-creased flat paper disc. He laid it on the table, and when he released it, the disc popped up into a many-sided three-dimensional figure. “I’ve been playing with some geometries, treating the entire complex as a kind of macromolecule, considering the junctions in terms of bond angles. This is the one that makes the most sense.”

“Isn’t that a dodecahedron?” Shan said.

“Yes. The most complex of the Platonic solids. But don’t look at the faces. Look at the edges and vertices. The edges are the force channels, and the vertices are the junctions. Imagine each alternity as a sphere connected to a single vertex at a single point.”

“The gate,” Wallace and Davis said in concert.

“More exactly, the gate house,” Eden said. “Functionally, the gate houses are a combination of anchor and fulcrum. The key characteristics they have in common are relative physical prominence and non-conductive mass. That argues for them serving both as both antennas and insulators.”

Shan asked, “Insulators?”

“A tremendous amount of energy is being poured into keeping the alternities apart. It’s that energy which makes the gate ‘sing’ to the runners, that ‘grounds’ through metallic objects brought into the maze.”

“So when I make a transit,” Wallace said slowly, “I’m moving along these force channels.”

“Yes,” Eden said, folding his arms and leaning forward to rest them on the table. “But the fact that transits are possible is probably an incidental consequence of the structure. The energy apparently is carried along the force channel in such a way as to create a neutral zone, just as the charge on a cylinder resides on its outer surface.”

“We’re just rats in the rafters?” Wallace asked.

“Essentially.”

“How can they survive in there?” Shan asked.

“I suspect that air molecules cross over through the gates at random, because of the pressure differential—nature abhors, and all that. Speculation only.”

“Antennas, insulators—but not doorways,” Davis said. “Am I reading the implications correctly?”

“I believe so. The entire structure seems designed to perform a balancing act—binding the alternities together, and at the same time isolating them from each other.”

“There’s no reason to think the gate houses were put there for our use,” Davis pressed.

Eden nodded. “The gate houses are fully justified by their structural functions.”

Brandenburg had picked up the dodecahedron and was turning it over in his hands. “In this model, Dr. Eden, there would be more than seven alternities, would there not?”

“The most likely number is twenty,” Eden said. “Push the model out to four dimensions, creating a hyperdodecahedron—which I am inclined to do, in fact—and the number soars.”

Bayshore looked stunned. “Twenty universes—”

“Oh, no. Not universes. The Split was not a Time Zero event,” Eden said, shaking his head vigorously.

“Meaning?”

“That this is a local phenomenon. The radius of each pocket may be no greater than a few hundred astronomical units, enough to enclose the solar system and little more—a very minor irregularity on the cosmic scale. It’s not that each alternity includes the whole universe—rather that the greater part not included is sensible from here. I don’t know how the rest of the universe perceives us. From their vantage point, we may simply have disappeared.”

Returning the model to the table, Brandenburg pressed his palms together and touched his fingertips to his chin. “Archimedes spoke of moving the Earth if only he had a place to stand. It seems the builders of this structure found that place.”

“Yes.”

“Who do you think they were?”

“That question I have no answer for.”

The President nodded acceptingly and did not pursue it. “You spoke of a balancing act. What would be the consequences if the balance were upset?”

Pursing his lips, Eden considered. “Less energy in the core structure and the alternities likely collapse back into a single identity. More energy and—” He shrugged. “Perhaps an alternity would go flying off into spacetime like a car broken free from a spinning carnival ride. Or rather two, in complementary pairs, to preserve quantum mechanical symmetry. It would be nice if we could keep a few principles of physics intact—”

Throughout the action caucus, Rayne Wallace had been doing his best to fight past the foreign words and wrestle with the foreign ideas. He had persevered, but the fight had left him weakened and his sensibilities bruised. He suspected that everyone in the room, Shan included, understood what was going on more clearly than he did. So when he heard the question which had been consuming him passed over so casually, he rebelled.

“But why?” he blurted out. “Why did it happen? I’m tired of half-answers, goddamn it.”

Eden stopped in midsentence. “What?”

“Why did they do this to us? For God’s sake, why is there only one of me and twenty of you?”

There was a moment of surprised silence.

“None of us knows, Rayne,” Davis said, looking down the table. “That’s the plain truth. There are no seers or prophets in this room. Even half-answers are more than we had a right to expect.”

“That’s not good enough,” was Wallace’s grim reply.

“I’m not satisfied with it, either,” Davis said. “But, look—is it any more a mystery that many worlds exist than that one does?”