Tao was obviously on a roll – possibly motivated by the opportunity of seeing Josh again – and had opened a portal back to Chayka’s lab before Sol had even stood up from the table.
‘Hey, girl, take it easy,’ he said. ‘You’re dealing with the next generation here.’
Tao just grinned even more and stepped through, followed closely by Juliette. Deira looked at Sol as if to say, ‘Come on, shift it,’ and went through after Juliette, leaving Sol to bring up the rear, feeling like he should be thinking of retiring.
Once back in the lab, Juliette ran off in search of Chayka. Sol sat at her workstation and looked at Tao.
‘Wouldn’t you have been better staying at home and lying on the bed if you’re going to sub-quantal space?’
‘Yeah, almost certainly, but I’d lay odds that Chayka will want to observe me again, and we don’t want to upset him, do we?’ She suddenly looked crestfallen. ‘Josh is going to be upset, though,’ she murmured almost inaudibly.
She turned as Juliette returned with Chayka and Gary. As she’d expected, the professor had been entranced by the recordings he already had, but eager to add to them. She sighed and climbed onto the scanner gurney where Gary began the process of hooking her up. She looked up at Deira.
‘Soon as we’re ready, I’ll be off,’ she said. Could you have a word with the Prof about what we were talking about?’
‘Copy that,’ Deira said, and winked at Sol. ‘I think we’ve received our orders,’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know what it is with me and strong women,’ he whispered back. He grinned. ‘But whatever it is, I like it.’
Chapter 24
Tao was as good as her word, immersing the moment Gary was happy she was connected up to all their equipment. She paused in the infra-low to let the automated retriever lock on, then relaxed to allow it to drag her through the hole. It was amazing, really, how routine this had become in such a short space of time. It hadn’t been so long ago that she’d seen “the tentacle” as the enemy. Now she was actively using the thing to get to where she wanted to be, saving the energy she would have expended if she’d done it on her own.
As she popped out into the familiar photon-flow, she found Barth and Nerima waiting. Apparently, “the tentacle” set off some sort of alarm when it was activated. Not surprising, she thought, and very useful under the circumstances. When Barth saw who it was, he contacted Josh. Tao hadn’t worked out how to do that yet, but vowed she’d learn before she left for normal space again.
When Josh arrived, he found that Barth and Nerima had thoughtfully fabricated the familiar cabin in the woods. He grinned at Tao, clearly expecting some time alone with her on the large bed again, but the way Tao hugged and kissed him, told him otherwise.
‘What’s up?’ he whispered. ‘You look a bit flustered.’
‘No time to waste, I’m afraid,’ Tao said, unhappily. ‘Can we get Barth and Nerima to join us?’
Almost as soon as she’d said it, the two aliens were there, making her wonder all over again about whether she and Josh had ever had true privacy. There were already four rockers by the log burner, so they all sat. Tao paused in thought. She hadn’t rehearsed any of this and now the other three were watching her expectantly. In the end, she felt she could only tell it as it was.
‘We’ve had a bit of a development.’ She started. ‘Josh, there’s something I need to tell you first.’
Josh was mystified. ‘What?’
‘You know when I told you all about what happened at the end of the asteroid crisis, and how Juliette rescued all the Base personnel? What I didn’t tell you was that your dad had taken a shuttle to try to blow up the fragment of Titan that was threatening Mars. He was obviously unsuccessful.’
‘Yeah, well I can see that.’
‘He found something embedded in the fragment – a huge alien ship – and decided he should investigate before blowing it up. He was trapped inside when the fragment impacted Titan.’
Josh looked horrified. ‘What happened to him?’
‘We all thought he’d died in the crash. Your mother spent eight weeks grieving not only for you, but for him too.’
‘Oh my God!’ Josh was distraught. He could only imagine what his mother had gone through. ‘But Dad? You said you thought he’d died. Does that mean …?’
‘He casually stepped through a portal into Chayka’s lab the other day as if nothing had happened. He’s fine, Josh.’
‘Oh, thank God! How’s Mum?’
‘Apart from being somewhat shell-shocked at the beginning, she seems to be coping with it very well. Anyway, that was all a necessary preamble to what I’m about to say. The ship Sol found belonged to another group of aliens. They survived the crash because the ship erected a folded-space barrier around itself, but Sol was still badly injured. The aliens put him into a stasis chamber and used a regeneration procedure on him, and this has apparently enhanced his mentalic abilities considerably.’
Josh smiled. ‘Typical Dad. He could fall into a sewer and still come up smelling of a summer’s day. So, he’s back with you. That’s great. Why the serious face?’
‘While he was on the alien ship – they’re called the El, by the way and have names corresponding to your Christian angels – he discovered that their prime motive is to prevent the escape of Barth and his fellows from sub-quantal space.’
Barth and Nerima had been listening politely up until now, but that revelation clearly shocked them both.
‘But why?’ Barth took Nerima’s hand in a very human-like response. ‘Why would they want to do that?’
‘Because,’ Tao said, ‘they believe that if you leave sub-quantal space the cosmic constants will change, and the universe will be destroyed.’
‘But that’s precisely the opposite of the truth,’ Nerima chipped in. ‘We’ve already explained all this to you. Why would they think something different.?’
Tao went on to explain about the organisation of species that the El were but one part of, and how they were all convinced that the sub-quantal aliens had to remain where they were. She continued with the story of the Cthon, and the Eich and how their contradictory views had resulted in a massive war on Earth many thousands of years ago.’
‘That’s what the Cthon meant about The Way,’ she said. ‘They’re convinced The Way must remain closed. In other words, the route out of sub-quantal space should stay shut – and it seems humanity has been tampering with it for centuries. Now, we’ve reached the point, with our mentalics, where we can accomplish what all these races, from all over the galaxy, have been trying to prevent for millennia. We can free Barth and Nerima and their colleagues. The question is, should we?’
There was a moment of stunned silence.
‘But we’ve explained everything to you,’ Barth said, ‘Why wouldn’t you help us?’
‘We haven’t said we wouldn’t help you,’ Tao replied, watching Josh and pleased he wasn’t getting involved for now. ‘But we need to find out where the truth lies. After all, it seems that every race in the galaxy, except for the Eich, thinks you should remain. Against that, we just have your word. What we’ve decided is that we should see the raw data for each of these opposing viewpoints.’
‘We can give you our data, of course,’ Barth said. He hesitated, looking suddenly uncomfortable. ‘However, there is a degree of interpretation required.’
‘That’s exactly what we’re concerned about,’ Tao said. ‘We think it possible that the same data is being interpreted in two different ways. If that’s true, we have a big problem.’
‘We’ll begin immediately,’ Barth said. ‘I’ll show Josh what we have and how we’ve interpreted it.’ He and Nerima got to their feet. ‘This is a terrible situation. We have little enough time to organise our extraction from sub-quantal space in any event. The last thing we need is further delay.’ He looked at Josh. ‘I’ll catch up with you shortly.’
‘Yeah. See you soon.’ Josh was looking thoughtful. He waited un
til the two aliens had disappeared in a shower of photons and turned to Tao. ‘Is there something else you’re not telling me?’
‘Nothing significant this time. Sorry about keeping the news about your dad from you. I just didn’t know how to tell you – and I’m glad, now, that I didn’t.’
‘I guess so.’ Josh seemed doubtful. ‘What I’m concerned about is what these El might do to ensure we don’t free the entities – and what the Eich might do to try to force us to do exactly that. There could be another flare-up of this war between the two groups – the War in Heaven that you say Dad calls it – and we seem to be right in the middle.’
‘You may be right.’ Tao was thinking back to what Sol had said and her own experience with the new Eich Speaker. ‘I’m already worried that something’s going on among the Eich, and Sol told us the only reason he managed to escape the El was the onset of a mutiny on board their ship. So, not only have we got two groups with mutually opposing views, we’ve also got instability within each group. That sounds like a particularly toxic mix.’
‘We need this data and we need it fast. How are you planning to get the El data?’
‘I’m going to their ship to speak to them directly, and for that I’ll need to know how to fold to a rapidly moving object. I gather you’ve already found out how to do that? Show me how?’
‘Sure. It’s very easy, actually.’ Josh swiftly demonstrated the required mentalic procedure.
‘I see what you mean. Thanks for that.’ Tao was all business-like efficiency. ‘Better get going now. I’d been hoping to take the entities’ data with me for Chayka to look at, but I guess it’ll have to wait for now. I just hope whoever’s in charge on that El ship’s amenable to logic.’
‘I’ll take a look at their data and make sure it’s available next time you come,’ Josh said, hugging her tight and wishing she could stay. ‘You’ll take care?’
‘Don’t I always?’
‘Not really – and I won’t be there to pull you out of any trouble.’
‘I’ll take care. I promise.’
He let her go and they shared one final kiss before she turned away. She would have loved to stay as much as Josh would have loved her to, but she was nothing if not pragmatic and knew that time wasn’t on their side. She gave one last smile.
‘See you soon,’ she said, and disappeared into the infra-low.
She emerged rapidly and opened her eyes, to find once again that only a few seconds had gone by in the lab. She climbed quickly off the gurney, ripping the various monitors off as she went. Her intention had been to move on immediately to the El ship. However, she’d neglected to consider the tiredness that was an inevitable consequence of trips to the infra-low or sub-quantal space. She was exhausted – again. This was becoming extremely irritating.
Deira had been fussing around, removing various electrodes from Tao’s skin, and she could see the change that came over the girl as she climbed off the gurney. She’d become white as a sheet and was clearly having difficulty keeping her eyes open.
‘You’d better fold back to the house and get some sleep,’ she said. ‘You look terrible.’
‘Thanks for that,’ Tao said wryly. ‘Always good to know.’
‘I’m serious,’ Deira said. ‘It’s just like last time, isn’t it? You need food and rest before you try your fancy fold onto the El ship. Don’t worry – you won’t miss anything. Sol and I will have a chat with Chayka but there’s nothing more to be done today.’
Tao yawned and knew she hadn’t any alternative. Damn, but this was becoming a real issue if she was going to need hours of rest after every visit to see Josh. Perhaps there was a way round it. If there was, though, it would have to wait for later. She really was tired.
‘Thanks, Deira. I’ll see you later – probably tomorrow.’
‘Go,’ Deira said.
Tao went, and Deira turned to Sol, who’d been standing watching all this with interest.
‘Time to talk to Chayka, I think,’ she said.
‘Oh joy. I knew there was something I was looking forward to today.’
Sol looked so unhappy Deira couldn’t help but laugh. She’d got so used to working on her own for the past few weeks, she’d forgotten what fun she and Sol tended to have when they were together. It was mainly his irreverence that did it, together with his apparently unending store of quips, that popped out when you were least expecting them. God, she’d missed him.
Chayka was beginning to scan the data they’d just collected, and didn’t seem overly pleased when the two agents, accompanied by Juliette, asked for a private chat.
‘Is it important?’ he asked. ‘This data is fascinating.’
‘It concerns the survival of the entire universe so, yes, I’d say it’s of marginal importance,’ Deira said.
Chayka was about to make some caustic comment when he saw they were deadly serious.
‘You’d better come to my office.’ He led them out of the scanner lab and back to the main admin hub.
They entered his office and sat across his desk from him, waiting for a moment while he checked for messages on his terminal. Finally, he looked up.
‘So, what do you have for me now?’
Deira explained about the threat to the fundamental cosmic constants and how they were struggling to determine which interpretation, of what she thought was probably scanty data, was correct.
‘We were hoping you’d be prepared to take a look and see what you think,’ she finished. ‘We’re completely out of our depth with this.’
Chayka gazed steadily at her for what must have been at least two or three minutes, and Deira, used to this behaviour by now, said nothing, and waited for him to respond. Sol, on the other hand, began to get restless after about thirty seconds, and it took a hefty nudge in the ribs to ensure he stayed silent. It had the desired effect, even if it also left a slightly hurt expression on his face.
Finally, Chayka came back to earth.
‘You say the issue is whether or not the presence or the absence of these entities is resulting in a risk to the constants?’ Deira nodded. ‘And you also say that the presence of these entities in the early universe resulted in consciousness becoming an added constant?’
‘That’s what we’ve been told,’ Deira said.
‘Fascinating.’
There was another long period of silence while Chayka did something on his terminal, then he looked up and smiled. Sol had to bite his tongue again, because he always thought Chayka smiling looked something like a great white shark.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘This is truly interesting. A quick look suggests there might be some links to the work Gary has been doing on sub-quantal topology.’
Deira couldn’t help but notice the Professor’s use of Gary’s first name. That was unprecedented, as far as she was aware. The young mathematician had to be doing something right.
‘We’re hoping to have some hard data for you soon,’ she said. ‘Tao is planning to visit the El ship tomorrow to obtain their set and Josh will get hold of the set used by the sub-quantal entities.’
‘Even better. Excellent.’
‘There is a bit of a time issue,’ Deira said.
‘Isn’t there always? What’s the headroom?
‘We don’t know for certain. We’re told that, if things go the wrong way, they’ll unravel very quickly, and we could be looking at disaster within two to three years.’
‘I can work with that.’
‘Yes, but we also have to factor in the time to get these entities out if that’s where the data takes us. Unfortunately, that’s an unknown, at present. It largely depends on how many of our young agents we can get suitably developed in the time-frame available to us. Best case scenario is two to three months. Worst case is two to three years.’ She stared hard at Chayka. ‘Professor, we need an answer to our question as soon as you can possibly get it. I have a horrible feeling that time is going to start running out on us quite rapidly.’
‘I assure you I will do what I can,’ Chayka said. ‘However, you may have to accept that I cannot provide you with any better interpretation of this data than already exists. These other races have had millennia to study the maths. I would be very surprised if I could come up with anything new.’
‘Understood. Providing you do your best, we can ask no more. Incidentally, is there any news yet on the cloning initiative? Getting Josh out of sub-quantal space would be a huge help at this stage.’
Chayka shook his head slowly. ‘No, there’s nothing new to report. The Glasgow team has obtained DNA from both Agent Clarke and your son, and the initial cultures have been successfully achieved. Once the embryos are fully formed and have been checked for abnormalities, the accelerated development phase can be initiated. There’s still some way to go.’
Although Deira had understood the projected time-frame when they’d embarked on this strategy, she remained disappointed, so little had been achieved. While she was aware that patience wasn’t one of her strong points, in this case there really was an imperative to get things moving. She sighed and turned to Sol.
‘I don’t think we mentioned this to you, did we?’
Sol shook his head. ‘Damned right you didn’t. When you said that Josh’s body had been destroyed, I wondered what we were going to do. I guess I thought Josh might be capable of making his own body, like those sub-quantal entities.’
Deira’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. Shit, Sol had just come up with a real blinder. Why shouldn’t Josh be able to do this? Then her thoughts went one step further and she leapt to her feet.
‘Excuse us, Professor.’ She yanked on Sol’s arm. ‘Sol and I have to get going.’
‘
Chayka looked a little startled by this sudden change of direction.
‘Of course. I presume I’ll see you again soon?’
‘You can bet on it.’
Deira hurried to the door, propelling Sol and Juliette in front of her. Juliette had coloured-up with embarrassment and, once the door was closed, turned to Deira.
Gods of Titan- The Cosmic Constants Page 19