The Lead Cloak (The Lattice Trilogy Book 1) (13 page)

“Thank you. What else of the spheres could we do on our own? Could we grow one?”

“Nitrogen diamonds themselves aren’t unusual. If we exert incredibly heavy pressure—rivaling the pressure at the core of the Earth—we can form them. But this seems to just pull nitrogen out of the air … It’s unheard of.” The woman shook her head and Shaw glanced back from his wrap, which had been translating.

“And transporting it?”

There was a shuffling of feet. “
Maybe
,” another professor said in English. “It depends on how they’re sending the molecular machine that builds the sphere. Right now what we call quantum teleportation is not actually sending matter. We’re sending information and creating an exact duplicate of a molecule somewhere else. If that’s how they’re doing it, we might be able to do the same thing after some trial and error. But it’s
possible
they’re actually teleporting the molecule itself somehow. In some ways, while it’s the bigger leap in science, it actually makes more sense in this case, given the molecule’s complexity.”

Shaw looked back at the roomful of professors. “So do you have a student … do you know a graduate … is there a former colleague who has been researching these kinds of things? Quantum teleportation, quantum entanglement? Likely someone no one’s seen recently?”

In the silence that followed, Shaw felt the same tension in the room that he remembered as a student, sitting in the back of a classroom, annoyed that the professor had asked a question that clearly no one knew the answer to, and yet was unwilling to break that awkward silence. Shaw was glad to know that even professors could be on the receiving end of it. He held it as long as he could and then let everyone go.

When the room cleared, Shaw turned to Wu, who was glancing at her forearm. Shaw realized it was getting late into the day. Wu looked up and said, “I don’t know what else we can provide …”

“Professor, I need to be blunt. I can’t believe that none of your colleagues could even give me a name of someone from here who’s
interested
in teleportation.”

“You didn’t just ask for people who are interested in teleportation.
I’m
interested in teleportation, but I don’t have any idea how these spheres would work. But we know our students and our graduates. We know what they’re capable of. And I have to impress on you the years of testing this would have taken to accomplish.

“But more than that,” she pushed on as he tried to interrupt, “
more than that, we don’t lose touch with people anymore
. Things just don’t work that way. It would have been impossible for a brilliant graduate to fall off the map. Someone would wonder where she was, what kind of work she was doing. That’s the other thing. The spheres aren’t as surprising to me as the idea that they could have been developed in secret.”

Shaw was silent, and nodded. “Thank you, Professor. Those are both excellent points.” Shaw was starting to wonder if he was on a wild goose chase. How many universities would he need to visit for this strategy to pay off?

Before he could get out of Hefei, Shaw received calls from the CEOs of T-Six and L.R.I., offering their companies as resources for his search. Shaw asked T-Six to track down the current whereabouts of the scientists who knew anything about teleporting matter. And once they finished that, to do the same with those scientists’ colleagues and students. To L.R.I., he farmed out the pasts of everyone who had attacked the Lattice before, going on the theory that there might be a common link somewhere between the most recent attack and past ones.

Those two calls out of the way, Shaw received another call. Expecting Grace Williams from Altair, he answered. Instead he got Zella Galway again, who wanted to complain that Dvorak Systems was only asked to research two people, the pilot and the surgeon, while the other companies were given dozens, if not hundreds, of people to research.

Shaw was stumped. He was running out of things to ask for. The best he could give her was to trace all the materials used to make the hovercraft, paying particular attention to the hull that had absorbed the space laser’s impact and shifted that energy to forward momentum. It was way too complex a vehicle to have been printed. Galway ended the call seeming slightly mollified.

He ended the conversation and waited for the inevitable call from Grace Williams, the only CEO of a Lattice reader manufacturer who had yet to call. While he waited, he tried to figure out what he could ask Altair to do. Fingering his ring, he was pleased to think that unlike the other CEOs, she had actually been the one to invent her company’s flagship product.

Finally Shaw got tired of waiting and he decided to try Williams on his own.

He found her in his directory on his wrap and was surprised to see that he was authorized to place a call. The sun had just set in Hefei, but Williams’ headquarters in Buenos Aires should be open. He placed the call and waited for her avatar to appear in front of him. Instead he got a floating Altair logo. Was it just another attempt at corporate advertising? Or a small attempt to keep things private?

“Good morning, Byron! How nice to hear from you,” her voice said.

“Good morning, Ms. Williams. Although it’s been dark for an hour here in Hefei.”

“Oh! I didn’t realize your search had taken you to China.”

“Ah … it did, yes. I’m surprised you didn’t know. I guess I’m already used to people knowing my every move.”

“Welcome to the club,” she scoffed, but with sympathy.

“Does that make me terrible? That I now expect it?”

“Of course not. I’m sorry to hear you’ve been discovered by the masses. It’s a hard transition.”

“How do you handle this crap? I feel like it’ll make me crazy if it keeps up.” Shaw didn’t know he’d wanted to ask that question until just now. But now that he’d asked it, he very much wanted to know the answer.

“Other people will know whatever they want to know. But
you
don’t have to know everything. Does that make sense?”

“Not really,” he laughed.

“Just because someone else jumps into your life, doesn’t mean you have to jump into theirs. You can’t spend your time worrying about what they know.”

“It’s a nice thought, but …”

“Give it a try. So a great set of waves is coming in and I don’t want to miss them. What can I do for you?”

“Wait, you’re surfing?”

“Mar de Plata is just a quick flight from the office. Nosipho and I wanted to get away for a few days. Not the most interesting waves in the world, but close enough to home that we can drop in when they’re running strong.”

“I had no idea you surfed.”

“I’ll send you my biography so that you’re prepared for the next call. What’s up?”

“Well … Zella Galway called and offered to help with the search for these raiders, and I took her up on it. Then Iwatani followed me to Hefei to offer to help because he felt like I was favoring Dvorak over Kanjitech, so then I gave Kanjitech some work. And just now I spoke to Cunningham and Pajitnov, so I gave T-Six and L.R.I. some tasks, too. I wanted to be fair and offer Altair a piece of the hunt as well, so that it doesn’t appear that we think less of your company.”

There was silence. And then Williams cracked up laughing. “They did what?” It took her a good thirty seconds to be able to talk again. “Oh, Byron, you have just made my week. Thank you.”

“So you don’t want to help?”

“Not counting you, doesn’t the U.S. have hundreds and hundreds of people working on this problem?”

“Well, yes, of course.”

“Listen, if there’s something Altair
specifically
can do to catch these raiders, then by all means call me and I will put my best teams on it. But we didn’t get to where we are by distracting our engineers and designers on a moment’s notice.”

“But aren’t you worried about the perception of your company?”

“The dossier I read on you yesterday said you’ve got one of my rings on your finger. Trust me, having the man in charge of protecting the Lattice using an Altair ring is good enough for me. You find the raiders, I’ll keep working to improve the ring. Sound like a deal?”

“It does.” Shaw felt relief. Finally, it was just that simple. “Thank you.”

“No, thank
you
. You’re the one doing the hard work right now. But when you’re done … Have you ever been surfing, Byron?”

“Never.”

“Well, when this whole thing is over, come visit me in Argentina. Nosipho and I will take you out surfing. The water washing over you, the hot sun, the adrenaline. There’s nothing like it in the Lattice.”

“Ellie and I just might take you up on that, Grace.”

“But first find these raiders.”

If Shaw expected the physicists at the University of Heidelberg to know more about the spheres than those in Hefei, he was sorely mistaken. That went for SupOptique in Paris, as well.

After an overnight slingshot to Germany and their interviews there, Shaw and Yang were able to get to Paris by the late afternoon and get their interviews done just before dark. Shaw decided they could stay in Paris for the night before moving on to Geneva the next day.

Hefei, Heidelberg, Paris. No matter the city, no one knew anything.

In Heidelberg, a couple of names of exceptional students were thrown out, but just as quickly another professor would know what the student had done after graduation—and it wasn’t building spheres. In Paris, a few retired professors had to be tracked down. Their friends and colleagues they had co-published papers with were located. No one was building spheres. All he got was a more technical explanation of how difficult the project would be.

The world’s best scientists were all telling him it couldn’t be done.

If there had been a redeeming virtue to this trip, it was the physicists themselves, which was surprising, he’d mostly expected them to be bores—to use too much jargon and have poor social skills. Well, maybe that last one was partly true. But the
way
they were socially inept was interesting.

One professor in Heidelberg kept double tapping her Altair ring on her desk anytime she said anything she thought was funny. Shaw recognized the gesture—it tagged the moment in the Lattice for her and her friends to check back on later. But he’d never seen someone tag a single conversation so often, nor only tag their own supposed witticisms.

(On the other hand, Shaw’s job meant he was banned from using any of the Lattice’s social features, so maybe he was just feeling jealous that he couldn’t double tap his own best jokes.)

Another professor—Chavel—this one in Paris, was on the extreme other end of the spectrum—he was 106 years old, he’d never used the Lattice, and saw no reason to change. He eloquently described how the Lattice had stifled innovation and creativity, how it killed true intimacy, and destroyed the real connections that could be formed between two people. Unfortunately, Shaw never got a word in, and disparaging anyone who used the Lattice seemed like the only conversation topic the professor was interested in. Shaw decided he had no chance of forming a real connection with Chavel, Lattice or no Lattice.

The youngest woman he met had just received tenure at Heidelberg. She was also the fattest, probably 250 or 260 pounds, Shaw estimated. Weren’t Europeans supposed to be incredibly fastidious about their appearance? Was it the German beer?

His mind flashed back to the obese man eating the ice cream cone back home. Was he the last fat person Shaw had seen? So few declined the treatment these days, it was certainly possible. This young woman thought the spheres were designed by Wulfgang Huxley himself, despite his death twelve years before.

“And how do you figure he worked that?” Shaw asked, trying to keep his eyes on hers, and not on the fat hanging from her bare arms. Didn’t she know how difficult it was to have a conversation with fat people? Or was that the point she was trying to make?

“I think someone’s cloned Huxley,” she said.

That grabbed his attention. “No one’s been able to create actual consciousness in a clone. Just replicating a body cell-for-cell hasn’t proven to be enough.”

“Huxley was brilliant at manipulating quantum entanglement for his advantage. If anyone could have teleported these spheres, it’s him. And what’s easier to believe? That someone is secretly decades ahead of known science, or that someone else has made an incremental improvement in cloning technology, and cloned the only genius who could have done it? And as long as we’re cloning people, why not Einstein too? I bet he’d be a good lab assistant to Huxley.”

She double-tapped her ring on the desk, laughing loudly, making her round cheeks shake. Shaw thanked her for her time.

The young German’s suggestion that it was Wulfgang Huxley was in direct opposition to Emmanuel Aliyu, a young physicist from Niger who was doing his post-doctoral work at SupOptique. Shaw’s wrap was perfectly well-equipped to translate his French, but Aliyu insisted on using his broken English. It was decidedly uneven, but he barreled through it, making up with gusto what he lacked in flow.

“Whoever created the spheres. She is a woman. You can count on it.”

“A woman? Why?” Shaw glanced at the other professors and post-docs in the room. Fourteen women and two men. And they all looked slightly pained.

“I grew up in Damagaram. In Niger. I did not know a woman could be a scientist or a leader. They told to me the last three—in a row!—United States Presidents have all been women, and we laughed. We did not believe it! But I receive a scholarship to come to Paris to study and what do I find? The French President also a woman! My professors—women!

“Six of my classmates were boys. Six! Where are all the boys, I wondered. I was shy, and I did not know how to talk to girls, so I asked for help from the boys. And that’s when I realized. The boys are stupid. The men are stupid. I am mostly stupid but I am lucky that I am a hard worker, which makes up for it.

“In school, I had to learn or I lose my scholarship. I made myself talk to the girls. They were the only ones who knew the answers. So I learned. I learned to listen to the girls and what they have to say. I go back home and tell them about all the women and they do not believe me. But it is the truth. And that is why I believe these spheres were created by a woman.”