Trial Run

by Thomas Locke

  Finally he began to slide into sleep. The day’s events and the long nighttime cycle ride left him able to push aside the din and the light streaming under the door and even his own uncertainties. He drifted away.

  Trent had no idea how long he had been asleep when it happened.

  There was no preliminary nightmare. His sleep state simply shifted, he focused with the now-familiar crystal clarity, and Trent found himself in the classroom.

  Standing by the scarred front desk, Trent had the sudden impression that the nightmare’s recurrence had served to separate him both from his normal dream state and from his external reality. Now the nightmare was no longer necessary. Some transition had been made. Trent sensed that the nightmare would not come back, at least not in preparation for another dream session.

  He stared at his older self and saw a sense of approval, as though commending him for this newfound awareness. But all his older self said was, “You must have questions.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Remember that any scientific investigation is only as good as the initial inquiry. If you start with a bad question, your result is bad data.”

  “You’re saying my questions don’t go far enough.” He watched his older self smile. “But that doesn’t mean my questions don’t have merit.”

  “I wish you could hear yourself. This isn’t the time for defensiveness. This is your chance to focus on the big picture. Which you can’t see.”

  “Without you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And just exactly who are you? Or should I say, when are you?”

  The mirror image shook his head, the gesture carrying a sense of sorrow. “So little time together, and you insist on these tiny glimpses into a shattered reflection.”

  “So what is it I should be asking?”

  The mirror image smiled. “Now you’re talking.”

  When the three-dimensional image maker floated into the space between them, Trent protested, “I’m not done.”

  He heard his own voice respond, “You can say that again.”

  The images carried the same explosive force as before. But they had nothing whatsoever to do with new mathematical discoveries. This time, they were awful.

  Trent watched in mounting horror as two scientists in some faceless corporate lab analyzed the data from the hard drives containing his doctoral thesis. Kevin Hanley watched approvingly from the background, accompanied by two truly bizarre-looking women. One was an ice goddess with eyes of burning wrath. The other was a stunted scarecrow who wore about her a shadow shaped like a specter. Kevin Hanley and the women listened as the two scientists described gleefully what they had discovered in Trent’s research.

  The next image showed the same two scientists working with a team of technicians, reshaping the prion molecule to fit Trent’s design.

  The next, and the redesigned prion molecule ate through the supposedly impenetrable isolation tank. The glass wall simply dissolved. As did the rubber seals around the door. And the wire leads bonded to the metal walls. And the filtration system. All gone.

  The redesigned prion escaped into the lab. And killed everyone inside.

  It moved into the building outside, replicating at an exponential rate. It remained an invisible gas unseen by anyone except Trent. It moved into the outside environment. It engulfed the university. And the city. And kept going.

  It killed.

  And killed.

  53

  The hour before dawn, Charlie left his hotel room and knocked on the next door. When Elizabeth appeared, he said, “It’s time we headed for LAX.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Charlie looked over to where Elene Belote was seated in the room’s far corner, doing her best to disappear behind a floor lamp. “You’ll need to come with us. We won’t be returning here again.”

  Elizabeth wore faded jeans and lace-up boots and a T-shirt and navy jacket. Charlie thought she had never looked more alluring. She must have spotted something in his expression, because she added softly, “I could stay.”

  Charlie said, “Step out into the hall for a second, will you?”

  Elizabeth let the door shut behind her. “Gabriella can handle buying the island. What difference does it make whether I’m there or not? I won’t make the decision for the whole team. That’s not my role.”

  “You need to go.”

  But his response only accelerated her words. “I don’t like leaving you here alone. You might need backup. I’ll be six thousand miles away, along with the rest of—”

  “Just hang on a second and listen to me.” Charlie took a hard breath. “I know what you’re not saying. And I appreciate it more than I can say.”

  “Oh. Right. Let me guess what comes next.” Her mouth twisted. “You’re going to drag out the ‘let’s be friends’ spiel.”

  “No,” Charlie replied. “You know I was married before.”

  Her face lost its parody of a smile. “I heard that.”

  “We got married for all the wrong reasons. We were headed for divorce court when she died in a traffic accident.” Charlie had never expected to use a windowless hall as a confessional. But as soon as he had looked into her eyes, he had known the answer. The only one that made sense. Bitter as it tasted to shape the words. “I never want to disappoint another woman I care for, Elizabeth.”

  “When I think of us, the last word that comes to mind is disappointed.”

  “Because you see how you want it to be. Me and you. Unhindered. And I know that’s just not going to happen.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s hauling around ghosts, Charlie.”

  He moved an inch closer. Staring into that lovely fractured gaze, seeing a woman raw with honesty. Giving her the same in return. “Gabriella is not a ghost.”

  “But your love for her is.”

  “It might be,” he corrected. “But I have to deal with that first.”

  She swallowed. The act compressed her lips. “And after?”

  “I can’t predict. I can’t lead you on. I can’t promise. I can’t.”

  Her lips only compressed further, a jagged line of regret that sliced across her strong and lovely face. She nodded, a jerk of her head, and turned from him. She fumbled in her pocket for her key. Charlie watched her take two hands to fit the plastic card into the lock. He stood for a long moment after she had disappeared inside her room. Searching the empty hall for some sense that he had just done the right thing.

  They arrived in Los Angeles before rush hour. The early morning traffic was dense but moving fast. Charlie pulled up in front of the international terminal and halted in the drop-off zone. A cloud of disquiet consumed the car’s interior. He turned in his seat and asked Elizabeth, “Can I have your iPod?”

  She reached for her purse, then stopped. “You’re not thinking of going after her alone.”

  “Gabriella made me promise I wouldn’t. Will I understand the controls?”

  She handed him the apparatus and the headphones and the charger. “Hit the app marked with a simple X. Lie back and shut your eyes and go.”

  “Thank you, Elizabeth. For everything.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  He nodded. He had spent the entire journey south thinking the same.

  Elizabeth opened her mouth. Then she stopped herself before the words emerged. She jerked the car door open and rose and slammed it shut.

  Charlie pulled into traffic. He caught sight of Elizabeth watching him in the rearview mirror. Elene’s presence in the rear seat kept him from saying the words out loud. But what he was thinking was, You are such a fool.

  54

  Reese had not waited planeside for an arriving official in years. This was a peon’s duty. She had always delegated such trivialities to security. No matter who it was or how important they assumed they were, there were more important things on her agenda. Only not this morning.

  Kevin’s phone call had plucked Reese from a slum
ber so profound he had hung up before she could shape a decent protest. And now here she was, standing on the tarmac beneath dawn’s pale wash as a Gulfstream wheeled toward them.

  The jet powered down, the door opened, the stairs descended. Amanda Thorne climbed down, followed by her Washington clone, Jason. Reese remained standing where she was as Kevin moved forward to greet Amanda, who treated the formalities with the same impatience Reese would have shown in her place.

  Amanda walked over and pointed to the steaming cups balanced on the car’s front hood. “One of those mine?”

  “If you like. How do you take it?”

  “This time of day, hot and strong.” She let Kevin hold her door. Jason walked around the car and settled into the backseat beside Reese. When they were moving, Amanda went on, “Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way. Trent Major and Shane Schearer are off the grid. My people are good. They know what is at stake. Even so, last night two grad students gave them the slip. What does that tell you?”

  “They’re getting help,” Kevin said. “I said that yesterday, when they showed up at the bank.”

  Amanda sipped from her cup. Nodded her approval. “Are your people ready to brief us on Trent Major’s doctoral research?”

  “They better be,” Kevin replied. “They’ve been at it all night.”

  Reese asked, “Is that why you’re here, to determine the value of Trent’s research?”

  “Partly.” She turned so as to inspect Reese directly. “Is your team ready to go to work?”

  “Standing by.”

  “What about the missing member of your transit team? What’s her name?”

  Jason spoke for the first time since stepping down. “Elene Belote. CIA.”

  Reese liked how Amanda Thorne spoke that word. Transit. As though it was already part of her standard vocabulary. “My team is shaken by Elene’s vanishing act. No question about it. But we’re good to go.”

  Amanda turned forward again. Sipped from her cup. Said, “That’s what I came three thousand miles to hear.”

  Kevin’s two senior scientists were waiting and ready. They might not have known Amanda. But they were scientists on the federal payroll. They had a nose for power. And danger.

  The senior of the two was tall and bearded and wore the standard white lab coat. The other man was portly and frowning. He wore jeans and a faded Cancun sweatshirt with what looked like tomato stains spattered down his front. The two scientists stood before a white greaseboard covered with calculations. Beneath the window was a long bench filled with electronic apparatuses and coffee cups and two pizza boxes. Six oversized computer screens were filled with text and graphs and more math. Reese assumed it was Trent Major’s thesis work.

  Kevin rolled over a padded stool. Amanda Thorne was so small she had to hike up a bit in order to make the seat. “What have you got for me?”

  To their credit, the two scientists looked to Kevin for approval. He said, “Spell it out.”

  The taller scientist said, “The student has laid a golden egg right in our lap.”

  The fat scientist said, “Maybe.”

  “No maybe. This is a major breakthrough.”

  “We don’t know if it works yet.”

  “And I’m telling you—”

  Amanda halted the exchange with one forefinger. “Skip the debate and get to the core.”

  “Right. Our current thrust focuses upon the prion molecule as the basis for a quantum computer. The two major problems we face, everybody in quantum computing faces, is—”

  “Decoherence and interference,” Amanda supplied. “I’ve read the file.”

  “Right. So we’ve been focusing on magnetic resonance as a means of heightening the molecule’s stability in isolation. Meaning we gain more time to both program the algorithmic calculation and take our readings. We were expecting to find that he had determined a resonance frequency, probably in conjunction with a supercooled state. But instead, the student has gone in a completely different direction.”

  “Explain.”

  The tall scientist waved at the greaseboard. “He’s supplied us with a different structure for the molecule.”

  “Theoretically,” the portly scientist added.

  The tall scientist glared at his mate, then continued, “We’ve always taken the molecular structure as a given. A prion is a prion. But Trent Major is saying, hang on, a prion is already redesigned. A prion has the same atomic structure as highly complex proteins in the brain. Which is why it’s been so carefully studied. Only the prion has been refolded.”

  Amanda was nodding now. “In a totally toxic way.”

  “Right. Sure. But that’s not the point.” The tall scientist did not actually dance in place. But his caffeine-induced excitement was such that the air around him vibrated. “What Trent Major has done is taken the prion, worked back to the basic atomic structure, and calculated a totally new design.”

  “The purpose being?”

  The scientist waved at graphs on the computer screens. “This is what’s so incredible. He based his work on a question we’ve never thought to ask. What if we could have a molecule that doesn’t respond to outside stimuli?”

  The portly scientist huffed his opinion but did not speak.

  The tall scientist continued, “The time it holds superposition would shift from nanoseconds to hours. The problems we have with molecular isolation would vanish.”

  The portly scientist said, “Theoretically.”

  Amanda said, “I am all for scientific debate. And I accept that the data is meaningless until proven in the real world. But for now, I want you to swallow all further sidebars. Are we clear on this?” When she was certain the portly scientist was silenced, she turned back to the tall scientist and said, “Is it possible to redesign a molecule?”

  “Oh, sure. It’s been done any number of times. The most spectacular was with the creation of C60, also known as buckminsterfullerene or the buckyball. Organic chemists were trying to understand the method by which long-chain carbon molecules were formed in interstellar space. Up to this point, it was generally accepted that elemental carbon only existed in two states, known as allotropes. These two states are graphite and diamond. But the scientists vaporized graphite using laser irradiation, producing a third allotrope. It held a remarkably stable cluster of sixty carbon atoms, arrayed in the shape of a soccer ball.”

  “So this change is theoretically possible. And you’re suggesting that Trent Major has calculated a new shape for prions that does away with some of your problems.”

  “In a totally groundbreaking fashion.”

  The portly scientist dragged his hands in a nervous gesture across the front of his sweatshirt, revealing how the stains had occurred. He glanced at Amanda, then said, “The risk is, this realigned prion won’t function in real-world conditions.”

  “We’ve been at this all night. Have you detected a flaw in his calculations? No you have not.”

  The scientist stared at the greaseboard and kept streaking his hands across his sweatshirt.

  The tall scientist’s Ecco shoes slipped across the floor as he traced a hand across the greaseboard, smearing the calculations. “Think of a car spring. The spring compresses whenever pressure is applied. But once the pressure vanishes, what happens? Its form and tensile strength mean the spring returns to its original shape.”

  “All right. I’ve seen enough.” Amanda Thorne slid from her stool. “Thank you, gentlemen. Very good work. I suggest you go get some sleep.”

  When the lab doors slid shut behind them, Amanda turned to Jason and said, “Contact our people. I want Trent Major found. And I want him brought in. Now. And if he won’t come in, take him out.”

  55

  When Charlie and Elene returned to Santa Barbara, he shifted them to a hotel he had spotted earlier in Goleta. He checked in wearing his customary cap and shades. The motel had been built in the sixties, with the ground-floor rooms opening straight to the cars parked in the forecourt. C
harlie chose two rooms at the back of the middle block, with a side window that did not open. But in a pinch, he could cover himself with a blanket or drape and leap through the glass and come up running.

  They ate lunch at a diner just off the interstate. Charlie asked Elene to repeat her description of Reese Clawson’s operation, but Elizabeth’s fractured gaze kept inserting itself.

  Afterward he drove back to the motel and circled the block twice. He parked in a space easily reached from his room but not directly in front of the door. He saw Elene safely inside, then entered his room and closed the drapes and locked the door and put a chair under the knob. He pulled the spread off the bed and set Elizabeth’s iPod on the table.

  He lay on the bed and fitted the earphones in place. He reached over and picked up the iPod. And lay there, staring at the closed curtains.

  He had not ascended since observing Brett being swallowed by the maelstrom.

  Charlie traced a finger along the iPod’s polished surface. When he thought back to the moment he had sensed Brett’s presence, the maelstrom always appeared with an enormous amount of noise. Charlie knew that the moment’s only sound had been that parody of his own voice, calling to him, giving form to his guilt. Yet the storm’s fury had been too intense to remain soundless. So mentally he had inserted a roaring clamor, a great sucking ferocity. Just like a tornado. Tearing through everything with shattering force.

  Even so, he had to do this.

  If Elizabeth had asked why he wanted the iPod, he had been ready to tell her that he needed to locate Trent and Shane. But that was for later. Right now he had a different purpose. He did not know if honesty played any part in his remaining safe. But he knew he had to do this thing.