The Labyrinth Key

by Howard V. Hendrix

  The noise ended abruptly as the saw was shut off. Soldiers and techs attached a cargo hook to a cable, then moved a stanchion-and-pulley setup into position over the hole. The cable was in turn connected to a portable winch. Down in the hole, well out of sight, workmen attached the hook to something. As the winch sang its whining song the cable went taut, then rose up out of the hole. Lu saw that the hook had been tangled into something that looked like shiny white fabric.

  “Careful!” Cherise LeMoyne said. “Don’t tear it bringing it out!”

  “I don’t think we could if we wanted to, ma’am,” said one of the workmen, apparently the head of the excavation crew. He turned the stone saw on and laid its whirring blade against a taut piece of the fabric. The saw bounced and ground ineffectually on the stuff before he shut it down. “See? We can’t even ding it. Had to cut the stone away from around it.”

  As more of the material emerged from the hole, however, it was clear that something had opened a gap in it.

  “What about that?” LeMoyne asked pointedly.

  “That wasn’t us,” said the crew head. “I can’t tell you what ripped it open like that, but it wasn’t any of our equipment.”

  When the last of the baggy fabric emerged from the hole, Mei-lin thought it looked rather like the empty cocoon of a silkworm, only it was the size of a large sleeping bag.

  “Any gray-pink ash inside?” she asked, as the excavation crew swung the baggy thing toward the onlookers. One of the men put a gloved hand on the hole’s edge and, opening it up slightly, looked inside.

  “No,” he said, “but there is this.”

  He spread the gap wide. A vanishing smell of burnt almonds and damp earth wafted out. Inside, rather like a cross between a Hiroshima shadow and an x-ray of the Shroud of Turin, was the image of a human being.

  The onlookers gasped audibly, Lu included. The workman let the torn edge fall closed again.

  The man in plastic handcuffs who stood beside Patsy Hon shattered the moment with his laughter. Adjoumani’s whisper identified him as Baldwin Beech.

  “Cho’s flown the coop!” Beech said gleefully. “Gone on to the next stage! You won’t find any ash this time, Ms. Lu. Look closely at the material of that abandoned cocoon. A silk woven out of diamonds, by the larval stage of an angel!”

  “Would someone please shut this guy up?” Cherise LeMoyne asked, stepping toward the empty bag.

  “You have no idea what you’re meddling with,” Beech continued, “none of you!”

  Mei-lin Lu and Cherise LeMoyne each took into their hands an edge of the rift in the bag. Cherise gave the detective only a slight nod of recognition before they spread the gap wide between them again and looked inside. As Lu examined the interior of the empty bag, she was more than a little afraid that Baldwin Beech might be right—and that, somehow, she would have to explain this situation to Wong Jun and Guoanbu.

  DUMB BOMBS

  LAKE NOT-TO-BE-NAMED

  Beside the powerhouse inside the mountain beside the lake, Don and Karuna were deeply immersed in their shared virtual environment. From the virtual space where his, Karuna’s, and M-I’s e-bodiments floated, Don saw waves of change surging through all the world’s Besterian jauntboxes. Someone or something was systematically flickering into and out of all the world’s simulations and virtual realities—stepping through uncountable doors into uncountable rooms, then disappearing out of them again.

  “We’ve got a busy ghost,” Don said.

  “At least in the sense of a faint screen image,” Karuna replied, nodding her head in its fright-wigged, witchwoman e-bodiment. “Perhaps in other senses, as well.”

  “This isn’t random,” Don noted, e-bodied as Jefferson for nostalgia’s sake. “This thing is a superspook, and it’s looking for something. M-I, are you tracking?”

  “Indeed I am, dearie. Jauntbox appearances are heaviest around the American East Coast, north central China, the Middle East, and Italy.”

  “What on Earth is it looking for?” Karuna asked. Before anyone could answer, Nils Barakian rang through into their shared space, which somehow presented as both at the center of the Earth and far above it, simultaneously.

  “I’m closing the blast doors in the entry tunnel and access shaft,” Barakian said. “I’m afraid I have to hermetically seal your hermitage there—not by occult science, but by remote control.”

  “Why?” Karuna asked, ignoring his weak attempt at humor.

  “Sorry, yes, it is all rather abrupt. I’d hoped you would have opportunity to decide whether to stay or leave, but that’s not the case. Police and military strike forces are headed toward your current location. Your position has been compromised. You’re likely going to be bombed, strafed, shot at, and gassed, beginning in the next few moments.”

  “What have we done to merit that?” Don asked, hearing a faint distant clang, followed by another from a different direction. Part of his mind registered the fact that they were now quite effectively shut off from the rest of the world.

  “The Chinese have traced the disappearance of a great deal of their most sensitive national security data to your location. Our intelligence people—and I use the term loosely—are claiming that you’re computer terrorists in league with a rogue machine-intelligence and Cybernesian Free-Zoners. You’re also somehow responsible for attacks on vital SCADA systems in both countries. In order to assure the Chinese of its good intentions, America—in the form of several Homeland Security and California Air National Guard units—has embarked upon a lightning action against the threat to national and international security posed by, ahem, you. Special Forces units are also set to raid throughout the Tri-Border area.”

  Outside their virtual environment, in that reality housing the powerhouse, the ground shook hard enough that they noticed it even in v-space. Once, twice, three times. Explosions echoed away.

  “I don’t suppose that was an earthquake?” Karuna asked.

  “More of a calling card, I should think,” Barakian remarked. “Gravity or ‘dumb’ bombs, according to our information. Surface impacts only, so far. You can expect more of that. Softening you up. After that will likely come smart weaponry targeted on the entrances to the access shaft and the entry tunnel, followed by conventional bunker busters, that sort of thing. You’re pretty far down and in, though, so those probably won’t do it. Any scenarios beyond that, M-I?”

  “They might have to go to mole warheads. Low-yield deuterium-tritium fusion devices, fourth-generation ‘clean’ micronukes. Doubtful that it’ll escalate to a high kilo- or low megatonnage robust nuclear earth-penetrator.”

  “Too much political fallout,” Barakian agreed. “The ground forces will have broken in before that.”

  “That’s really more information than I need,” Don said, hoping to damp down the panic that was beginning to rise in him. “How much time do we have?”

  “Maybe days, maybe hours,” Barakian said with a shrug. “The protection in the entry tunnel is based on blast door designs from the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Site. The system protecting the access shaft isn’t so much a door as a massive sliding cap of steel and concrete, a modification of the type used for hardened missile silos. Both of those can withstand a great deal of punishment. You’ve got plenty of air, water, food, and backup batteries, if the power goes out.”

  “Of course, if they do remotely shut down the pump/ generator unit,” M-I speculated, “that might be a sign they’re sending in frogmen to blow up the plumbing. The most likely target would be right above the big ball valve that controls the flow from the forebay through the powerhouse. That’d flood the facility completely, if the doors and walls haven’t already been breached. The powerhouse would be a total loss.”

  “The powerhouse!” Karuna said, shaking her voodoopriestess locks. “What about us? Crushed by tons of earth, starved of air, fried by fire and explosion, drowned—”

  “Yes, you could be killed by any combination thereof,” Barakian said, frowning. “W
e’re very much aware of that. We’re doing everything we can.”

  “Any suggestions as to what we should do until they successfully terminate us, or we give ourselves up?” Don asked.

  “Keep doing what you’re doing,” Barakian said. “It may be your only hope—and ours. I don’t know that you’ll be allowed to give yourselves up. I’ll let you know what I manage to learn from here.”

  Barakian signed off.

  The mountain shook again—several times.

  Don tried to picture its surface, spewing up snow and rock and dust in response to gravity-bomb impacts, but he knew his imaginings would never have as much detail as the real thing. After a moment, however, the world settled back into place, even if that “place” struck Don as somehow permanently askew.

  “Nothing for it,” he said at last. “Let’s get back to work. Maybe we can accomplish something, before the end.”

  Karuna nodded. M-I said nothing, but brought up tracking data on their ghost’s breakings and enterings throughout the world. In a short time they had narrowed the distribution of its appearances to the Washington, D.C., area, Beijing, Jerusalem, and Rome.

  Or perhaps the ghost had narrowed its searches, too.

  THE KLAATU OPTION

  CRYPTO CITY

  In the NSOC, Jim Brescoll, Maria Suarez, and Phil Sotiropolis watched live television news coverage of the bombing and attack on the mountain that hid the power station in its belly. All the Tri-Border coverage out of South America was still only reporter-on-cell phone stuff—not as complete as the official reports they were receiving, and not nearly as interesting.

  One of the television stations out of Fresno must have been tipped off, probably by someone in the Air National Guard. The TV station had gotten a camera-wielding reporter into position across the lake from the entrance to the power station. He was shooting footage of the operation and bouncing it to the satellite nets.

  Not that their intrepid reporter was having an easy time of it. His hand-held camera work, made jarring by his running, ducking, and hiding from security forces sent to clear the area, was enough to induce motion sickness in viewers who’d never experienced that wonderful sensation. Brescoll preferred the view from one of the Keyhole satellites, which had, as far as he could tell, been returned to their control. The detail and perspective were a bit lofty, but at least the view from space didn’t skitter about nearly as much.

  Brescoll’s secure phone went off and he caught it on the first ring. Director Rollwagen was on the other end.

  “Jim, I need to see you in my office immediately,” the director said. “There’s further word on events in China, including Cho’s disappearance.”

  “I’m on my way,” he replied. He turned to let Phil and Maria know where he was headed, then strode quickly from NSOC.

  Threading the maze of floors and elevators, the deputy director made his way to the Nordically spare environs of the director’s office. She was rubbing her temples when he arrived. She only dropped her hands to the desk when she noticed he had taken a seat without her prompting. She didn’t look happy.

  On one of her desktop screens floated an image with four cities highlighted. Two of them—Washington, D.C., and Beijing—he had expected to see. The other two, however—Jerusalem and Rome—surprised him.

  “You said there was more information on Ben Cho, Director?”

  She nodded, then pressed a button and a flat screen rose out of its recess in her desk.

  “This just cleared channels,” she said. “It’s from the Consulate’s FBI suboffice in Guangzhou, where Cho was taken, apparently comatose, after the explosion.”

  She flashed up into their shared media space an image of something like a big white bag, faintly sparkling, being pulled out of a hole in the floor of what looked like a vault.

  “What is it?” Jim asked.

  “The artifact that Cho, in conjunction with his binotech, spun around himself. Tough stuff, like woven diamonds, according to this report. My guess is it’s a cross between a cocoon and an escape pod.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No one does, completely. Remember what I said about exaptation? About the split-children and the next great leap in human evolution? Well, I think Ben Cho is in the process of making that leap. He’s become one of those ‘children,’ and he definitely has split. That’s why that cocoon is empty.”

  “Do you mean he’s flying around like some kind of butterfly?” Brescoll asked.

  “No,” Director Rollwagen said, shaking her head and smiling oddly. “Not like a butterfly, anyway. We have reason to believe that he’s being assisted in his metamorphosis by Jaron Kwok.”

  “I thought Kwok was dead,” Brescoll said.

  “To us he has been, for most intents and purposes. You might also say, however, that he’s been ‘permanently translated.’ Quantum apotheosized.”

  Great, Jim Brescoll thought. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  “Why do you think Kwok’s involved here?”

  “Jaron Kwok spent a great deal of time examining a Kitchener Foundation exhibit on a sort of ‘anti-art’ made by caddis flies, not butterflies,” the director said. “You should know something about those, Jim. You’re the great outdoorsman.”

  “But what does Cho’s disappearance have to do with caddis flies?” the deputy director asked, floundering.

  “We’re not sure. You know the life cycle of caddis flies. You tell me. What happens after caddis emerge from their cocoons?”

  “Most times they undergo a free-swimming pupal stage,” Jim said, taxing his memory, “before making their way to the surface of a lake or stream. Once at the surface, the pupal exoskeleton splits at the back. The adult crawls out onto the water’s surface, before flying off.”

  “Yes,” Rollwagen said, nodding. “Only in Kwok’s and Cho’s cases, if they are in a quantum-apotheosized state, then what they swim freely through is the fundamental structure of our universe itself. In such a state, no firewall, no encryption, no protection presents any real barrier to them.”

  “But if Kwok is still hanging around,” the deputy director said, reasoning it out, “then why hasn’t he made more use of that talent?”

  “We don’t know,” the director said with a shrug. “Perhaps Kwok never reached those final stages. We think he would have acted in a more high-profile fashion by now, if he had done so. But we may not be so lucky with Cho.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Something is taking over more and more of the world’s SCADA-operated infrastructure. Pipelines, dams, power grids, industrial computing, traffic and networking systems of all kinds. More and more of our systems throughout the world are falling under outside control.”

  Brescoll nodded. Then an idea occurred to him.

  “Has that something shut down anything vital? Has its takeover resulted in casualties, anywhere?”

  “Not as far as we can tell,” the director said. “At least not yet. But that’s not the point. Something is systematically working its way through all our governmental records, too. As near as we can determine, it’s also rummaging through all Beijing’s data, even pawing through the Vatican archives and the library records of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.”

  The director gave him a hard, unhappy look.

  “I think that ‘something’ is Benjamin Cho, or whatever posthuman thing he is now. What he’s doing, at both the infostructure and infrastructure levels, proves we already have no secrets from him. He must be terminated before he achieves in full what we believe he is already becoming.”

  “But what is he becoming?”

  “You’ve seen Kwok’s notes. He pointed the direction. The blurring of distinctions between theology and technology.”

  “‘Our gods have become our machines,’” the deputy director said, remembering, “‘and our machines have become our gods. What we used to ask of gods we now ask of machines.’”

  “You have an impressive memory, Jim.”

>   “It reminded me of an old axiom I once read,” the deputy director said, thoughtful. “‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Clarke’s law. That’s why I remembered it.”

  “A technology advanced enough to create a ‘gateway singularity,’” the director said, “is also advanced enough to create our next step as a species. The divine magic of the lesser Tetragrammaton, if you like. The angel Metatron, who once lived as a human being. Whom Bruno links to the Keter of Kabbalah. An enormous being of brilliant white light. Supreme angel of death, yet charged with the sustenance of the world. That is what Ben Cho is becoming, at the very least.”

  It was a dazzling image, and Jim allowed himself to be dazzled.

  “But that next stage in evolution,” the deputy director said, “is not necessarily a bad thing, if no one’s been hurt by what’s happening. Why should we want to destroy him, or it?”

  “Because of those ‘snakes and apples’ in Kwok’s holo-cast. All that, out of Genesis and Eden. The fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That important little story of humans aspiring to become something higher than human. Not just like angels, but like God.”

  The director leaned toward him, fixing him with her stare.

  “Think about it. What if this thing Cho is becoming accomplishes not only the lesser but also the greater Tetragrammaton—the final pronouncement of the Divine Name which, performed correctly, ends the universe?”

  “But why should that happen?”

  Rollwagen sighed.

  “I don’t know if it should! All the reports I’ve received, from every source, can only speculate on Kwok’s ‘bandwidth limitation’ idea. Maybe our simulation gets terminated as soon as the first fully posthuman being appears because, in that instant, we as a species will have become more trouble than we’re worth—at least in terms of computational expense.”

  Brescoll shook his head slowly. The more he thought about it, the more unfair it seemed.