the face, like the barrel of a cannon. His
way, just far enough not to be able to reach
Homo quantus brain, always snuffling for pat-
any wall. He sighed.
terns and symmetries, tasted at a new parallel:
“It’s been a while since zero-g,” he said. “I
a drive with no fuel, a cannon with no ammu-
could use a hand.”
nition.
The MP made a disgusted face and held out
An inf laton cannon. Their drive propelled
his hand. Belisarius clapped his hands around
them on the picosecond-brief existence of in-
the MP’s as if holding onto a lifeline and then
f laton/anti-inf laton pairs in the drive tube.
caught the rungs on the wall. He followed
What would such particle pairs do outside of
them more deliberately down corridors
the containment of the drive system?
whose walls of discolored carbon polymer felt
“How destructive is your inflaton cannon?”
unwelcoming and oppressive. Small colored
he asked finally.
lights would have made the ship feel warmer.
“Not your concern,” she said, but there was
Iekanjika stopped, placed her palm against a
a smugness in her voice.
sensor, and a door ground open. A gloomy
How had the Expeditionary Force devel-
room, the size of a few coffins, lay revealed.
oped so much? Had they stumbled across
“We moved an off icer into the main bar-
some kind of forerunner artifact and f igured
racks so that during your stay you would feel
out its secrets? Forty years was a long time,
like an honored guest,” Iekanjika said, without
but not long enough for all they’d invented.
any irony he could detect. His shower stall in
The inf laton drive alone was many decades
the Puppet Free City was bigger than this
ahead of anything in civilization, perhaps
room.
more than that. The size of this job, the scale
He f loated in and turned to face her. Her
of the political and military implications, bog-
brown eyes stared back at him challengingly.
gled the mind. This was far, far beyond con-
“You can’t beat the Congregate,” he said final-
ning businessmen and gangsters. Frankly, it
ly. “When they sneeze, even the other patron
was probably beyond his skills. And he didn’t
nations get nervous.”
doubt that if he tried and failed, Major Iekanji-
“Do your magic, and we’ll do the rest.”
ka would consider it an eff icient use of her
Her hard eyes bored into his, and then she
time to put a bullet in his brain.
softened slightly.
“The job is to move twelve ships across the
“I have nothing against you, Arjona,” she
Puppet Axis,” he mused. When he said it like
said. “You don’t live with someone else’s boot
that, with none of the political context, it
on your neck. You bumble into arguments
THE QUANTUM MAGICIAN, PART I
17
ANALOG
that have played themselves out over decades.
those organelles in his muscle cells containing
On n’est pas maîtres dans nos maisons . . .”
microscopic coils of iron. A weak magnetic
she said, leaving the old expression unf in-
f ield blossomed around him, letting him feel
ished. We are not masters in our houses . . .
the electrical and magnetic fields of the Muta-
The machinery in the wall ground the door
pa pressing at his arms and legs. The metal
closed again. A dim panel on the ceiling lit
hinges on the panels to the sink distorted his
age-discolored gray-brown carbon fiber walls.
magnetic f ield. The metal wiring behind the
A zero-g sleep bag was strapped onto one
powered-down computer display did the
wall. Handles on another wall opened up a
same. And so did a camera embedded in a cor-
tiny sink and the head. Sweat laced the air. Of
ner of the tiny cabin. He varied his magnetic
course some camera must be watching him.
f ield, feeling for the distortions produced by
The paranoia of the Union was as palpable as
the camera. It was unresponsive, dumb tech,
their passion. He gingerly opened the sleep
monitoring the visual band only.
bag and strapped himself in. He shut the light
Belisarius turned his back to the camera and
and closed his eyes, his thoughts still spinning.
huddled his head in the bag as if in sleep. In
The Sub-Saharan Union wanted a war of in-
the dark of the bag, he pulled out the plastic
dependence against the biggest power in civi-
patch that he’d taken from the back of the
lization. And they needed a con man to get
MP’s hand. It had been some time since he’d
their secret weapon to where it could get
lifted a wallet or coin or chip from anyone.
chewed to pieces. Not an appetizing problem
He’d worried he might have lost his touch.
on its surface.
The patch was semi-conductor nano-circuit-
Iekanjika hadn't told him how they'd gotten
ry over a breathable carbon f ilament web.
the new drive. The probability that a lone
Flexible. Vaguely shiny. Powered by the move-
Union scientist had suddenly come up with an
ment of the body. He pressed it to the back of
idea for a new type of propulsion system was
his left hand. Small displays lit faintly. Belisar-
vanishingly small. Where had they gotten their
ius had asked Iekanjika to rotate the holo-
new inf laton drive and their new weapons?
graphic displays often today so he could see
He needed to think.
how she manipulated her patch. Her move-
The Homo quantus brain had been engi-
ments had been conf ident, practiced. His
neered over eleven generations for mathemat-
were tentative. A simple, stylistically back-
ical and geometric talents, coupled with an
ward holographic display f loated in French
eidetic memory. This alone produced children
above the back of his hand. The patch wasn’t
capable of remarkable mental feats, but to
password-locked, which meant everything
wrestle with the deepest conceptual prob-
else would be.
lems of the cosmos, the Homo quantus need-
If they found him fumbling about in their
ed more.
networks, he’d be on a short list for a visit to a
Engineered from electric f ish DNA, every
f iring squad. Hopefully, the Sixth Expedi-
Homo quantus had electroplaques, stacks of
tionary Force was still walking around with
muscles under their ribs that acted like batter-
quantum computers fifty years old. Belisarius
ies. Belisarius sent a sustained, polarized mi-
carried a head full of quantum processing abil-
cro-current from h
is electroplaques into the
ities, but he was nervous. It wasn’t often he
left temporal area of his brain, an area associ-
put his own skin this far into the game. But he
ated with sensory input and language. After a
had to know the Union to f igure out if he
few moments, his capacity to conceptualize
should take the job, or if it could even be
linguistic and social nuance dwindled, as did
done.
smell, taste, and touch. At the same time, ac-
A con man called Gander had once taught
tivity in the right anterior lobe increased, aug-
him that there were only three bets.
menting mathematically creative connections
Sometimes, you play the cards.
and increasing geometric thinking beyond
Sometimes, you play the player.
prodigy levels. The Homo quantus called this
Sometimes, you just throw the dice.
state of being “savant.”
He pressed into the Union network. A grid
Belisarius sent a different current from his
of standard icons bloomed over his hand in
electroplaques to electrify his magnetosomes,
yellow light: communications, common
18
DEREK KÜNSKEN
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
archives, research, power systems, weaponry,
fifth-generation ones were begun, right?
status dashboards, and restricted files. An au-
Had the Union been doing illicit research
thentication image grew, f lashing interroga-
long before they left? If Union forces routinely
tive. It would be a quantum password.
accessed the Congregate Axis Mundi worm-
The world dizzied around him as he
holes, and always acted under the surveillance
switched his thinking to quantum logic. The
of shipboard political commissars, how would
world did not become less precise, but it
they have kept their research secret from their
seemed to adopt an attitude that made preci-
patrons? They couldn’t have. So they hadn’t
sion less important. Interactions and relation-
started the research before they’d left.
ships became more important than identity
He skimmed more of the references and
and state. Auras throbbed around blurring ob-
notes. Much of their research seemed related
jects. Sound became deeper and richer, modi-
to wormhole physics, including some obser-
f ied by the constructive and destructive
vations that couldn’t have been made without
interference of barely heard sidenotes. The
access to one of the permanent wormholes of
portion of time called the present gently
the forerunner’s Axis Mundi network. The Ex-
widened.
peditionary Force must have found one.
His visual augments picked apart the dense-
If so, it was a treasure of incalculable value.
ly textured information in the authentication
Owning any of the permanent wormholes of
image. The encryption was tough. Belisarius’
the Axis Mundi network was the defining fea-
mind, in savant, and using quantum process-
ture of patron nations. Client nations, by defi-
ing, struggled with the new challenge for long
nition, didn’t own any, and under the Union’s
seconds, ten, twenty, thirty seconds, until he
Patron-Client Accord with the Congregate,
thought surely alarms would be going off.
any new Axis Mundi wormhole had to be giv-
Then the holographic icons greened.
en to their patrons. That was what had driven
He toggled the insubstantial power systems
the Expeditionary Force to vanish.
icon. The directory contained eyebrow-raising
There was something deeply personal too
acceleration and heat dissipation specif ica-
in this discovery. The observations they’d
tions for the inflaton drive, do-not-cross toler-
made, if correct, opened up whole f ields of
ances and detailed maintenance instructions,
research that Belisarius had abandoned when
but no blueprints or theory. The information
he’d left home years ago. Old memories
was probably in isolated systems. Dead end.
welled up in him, silty with imprecise long-
He dug into the research directory. His pat-
ings. He pushed those feelings down, to focus
tern-sniffing brain focused in on mathematical
on what was before him.
formulations attached to snippets of incom-
The jumble of time signatures remained im-
plete physical theories. Weirdly, the Expedi-
penetrable. Logical lines of causality did not
tionary Force didn’t have an inf laton theory
link investigation to discovery to new waves
but had modified something familiar—worm-
of investigation. Many complex discoveries
hole physics—to underpin their engineering.
seemed to have been made at the beginning of
Their formulation lacked the rigor that had
the forty years.
given his own teenage theories their predic-
One directory was labeled Research Coordi-
tive and analytical power. The disorganized
nating Center. The coordinating center had
snippets of theory looked like something in-
been dormant for the last three years, but be-
vented by outsider artists. Perhaps this wasn’t
fore that, it had been an enormous clearing-
surprising; few military strike forces would
house of research transactions, a centralized
carry theoretical physicists with them.
economy of discovery. Research questions
His brain stalled at the dating of the re-
had been issued on particular dates, and an-
search. The reports had overlapping and back-
swers delivered on later dates: wormhole
ward dates. First-generation tests were listed
physics, weapon research, defensive technol-
as beginning in 2499, but four different sets of
ogy, sensor technology, propulsion, and com-
f ifth-generation experiments had begun in
puting. Decades of research at a time. It was
2476, only a year after the Expeditionary
when the results were passed to different re-
Force disappeared. The first generation of ex-
search units that the dates became confused.
periments had to be completed before the
Belisarius customized the display to suit his
THE QUANTUM MAGICIAN, PART I
19
ANALOG
brain better. He wanted a geometric display,
Union had a time travel device.
preferably with four or more dimensions and
And in forty years, they’d completed not
vectors of causality drawn from experiments
four decades of research, but perhaps four
to their results, to trace where those results
centuries’ worth. The Union had started from
were incorporated into the design of the next
far behind and might have succeeded in leap-
set
of experiments. The holographic display
ing past all other nations. And if news of the
complied, showing a hyper-dimensional knot
time travel device’s existence got out, all the
that human eyes and brains would have had
patron nations would march to war for it. If he
difficulty disentangling.
took the job, it might trigger a civilization-
The shape of a fountain appeared, a foun-
wide war. It was too much to absorb all at
tain of light with six streams; time ran vertical-
once.
ly into the future with the streams. The
Belisarius found a set of f iles containing
beginnings of experiments and questions
the mathematical formulations of the time
were at the bottom. Experimental results rose,
travel device. The work was frustratingly in-
propelled by the researchers of the Expedi-
elegant, but after some minutes, he worked
tionary Force, staying in their discrete streams,
out that it described a pair of wormholes,
not interacting with the other research lines.
only dozens of meters across, imperfectly
Further experiments shot upward from those
bound to one another, forming a one-way
f irst results, begetting new results, and then
bridge across eleven years of time. They’d
new experiments, until, near 2487, slightly
found not one of the forerunners’ worm-
more than a decade after the beginning of the
holes, but two, stuck together by some acci-
experiments, the results disappeared and next
dent of orbital mechanics. A pair of
showed up at the base of the neighboring
wormholes bound together would give off all
streams.
sorts of quantum-level interference, probably
At the base.
the odd electromagnetic f ields he’d felt
In 2476.
when approaching the f leet. The wormholes
Eleven years back in time.
could be nearby. Then it hit him: they were
Belisarius refused to make the connection.
only a dozen meters in diameter. The Expedi-
He double-checked the date markings. The
tionary Force was carrying the pair of worm-
patterns were too organized to be the result of
holes in one of their ships.
inconsistent dating or database errors. His
He remembered the signals he’d felt ap-
brain was built to find patterns in the world,
proaching the fleet with Iekanjika and Babedi.
but the genetic engineers had built his abilities
He worked backward, calculating where the
so well that often he found patterns that didn’t
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