The Vanished Seas (Major Bhaajan series Book 3)

by Catherine Asaro

  So we sat, at an impasse. To distract myself from the pain, I said, “I wouldn’t have expected a member of the Vibarr noble House to take work as the personal assistant for a corporate exec.”

  Bessel raised his head. “What?”

  “You aren’t in the line of succession,” I continued. “Otherwise, you’d never have agreed to go undercover, working for Lukas Quida. You’re only part Vibarr, an illegitimate child.”

  “Go to hell.” He sounded like he was gritting his teeth.

  I felt like I was there already. “Bessel isn’t your real name. You picked it for your cover.” I studied his face, trying to read his tells. “Your files list you as a mesh analyst, but that’s not quite right. You like math. I mean, you really like it. That’s why the Vibarrs picked you for this job. And you hoped it would help you move up in the hierarchy of the House.”

  His mouth opened. Then he closed it. “How did you figure all that out?”

  I hadn’t, not for certain, until he just verified it. “I’m good at my job. So are you. Math, I mean.” I motioned toward the starships in the east. “Talon and her bosses wanted you to decipher all those curves inside the ships. You’re the brains, the scholar.” I thought of the way he’d fought me in the dunes. “You’ve learned martial arts, but you’ve never used it to defend yourself before.”

  “You can’t know that.” He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself.

  “Sure I can.” The way he fought reminded me of the students from the Cries Tykado Academy. Undercity gangs rumbled to survive; city kids considered it a sport. Bessel was well trained, yes, and I was exhausted, but the reason I’d bested him was the slight hesitation in his responses. “It’s the same with the way you shoot. Your family encouraged you to learn. Maybe you joined them in hunting for sport. But you never expected to shoot a person.”

  He spoke coldly. “I’m perfectly capable of defending myself.”

  “Yes, you are.” I was thinking as I talked, judging from his reactions how close my words hit to home. “You joined this project because you wanted to solve the puzzle of the ships. You never thought you’d be involved in criminal actions, especially not murder.”

  “Murder?” He stared at me. “What are you talking about? I haven’t killed anyone.”

  “What do you call what happened to Mara Quida and Chiaru Starchild?” I was really guessing now. I was also getting pissed. “If their deaths aren’t murder, I don’t know what is.”

  “They shouldn’t have died!” His voice broke. “I swear it. We don’t know why it happened.”

  His response felt like a punch to the gut. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized just how much I’d hoped to find Quida and Starchild alive. “Your work killed them.”

  “No! I just solve the equations. I swear it. I had no idea the quarries could operate on their own. None of us knew.”

  Quarries? I didn’t think he meant prey. Rock quarry didn’t make sense, either; there weren’t any within hundreds of kilometers. I took a guess. “You came up with that name yourself, didn’t you? Because quarries sure as hell aren’t what the military calls those boxes in the cave.”

  “I don’t know what the military calls them,” he said. “Mara came up with the name quarry.”

  So he did mean the coffins. “Quasis box.” I pretended I knew what I was talking about. “They produce a quasis field when someone gets into them.”

  His forehead creased. “What are you talking about?”

  Damn. I’d guessed wrong. “I meant the quasis produced by the boxes.”

  “It isn’t the same.”

  Well, then, what was? “I know it’s simplifying things. But the quarries do fix the quantum wavefunction of whoever uses them.”

  He frowned. “You understand wavefunctions? That can’t be right.”

  “Why can’t that be right?”

  “You’re from the Undercity.”

  Not this again. “And of course we’re all too stupid to learn quantum theory.”

  “I didn’t mean that. But you have no schools there, right?”

  He had a point, at least in terms of formal schools. He was also being an idiot. “How do you think I became an officer in the Pharaoh’s Army? You can’t without a university degree. I’m a mechanical engineer. Of course I learned physics.”

  He squinted at me. “But not really, right?”

  “What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

  “I mean, you didn’t really complete all the requirements for your rank, right?”

  “You know, I really get sick of this fucking attitude.” I was too tired to be diplomatic. “How else would I have received my commission or promotions?”

  He spoke awkwardly. “I figured it was a program meant to give your people representation in the army, even if it meant letting you slide on requirements.”

  “Then you figured wrong.” Temper, I told myself. Don’t lose your cool. Keep him talking. “I had to meet every requirement and then some. No one ever let me slide on anything.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t intend to insult.”

  Could have fooled me.

  “I don’t understand you,” Bessel said. “How did you get out of the cave? We locked the hatch in the ship. You had no way to open it. The only other exit is impossible for you to use. You can’t activate the quarries, and if you can’t move them, you can’t get past them. Even if you did manage to reach the tunnel, you couldn’t get out at the end.”

  “Why not?” If he knew I came from the Undercity, he also knew I’d grown up underground. “It was easy.”

  “That can’t be true.” He yanked on his bonds as if he needed to gesture with his hands to give his protest more power. “You can’t operate the ancient machines.”

  I saw what he was getting at now. “Because only Kyle operators can do that.”

  “You’re not a Kyle.” He shook his head. “You don’t have the neural structures or training. Hell, none of us have the training. Daan Bialo has no idea what he’s doing. I was surprised to find out he was a Kyle. He isn’t from any noble House. My genetics aren’t pure Vibarr, so I don’t have enough Kyle DNA to activate the machines.” Anger crackled in his voice. “No way in hell could anyone from the Undercity do it. We’re talking genetics here, Major. None of those dust gangers you brought tonight have the right DNA, and we know you aren’t a Kyle. We’ve seen your army records. You have no trace of Kyle ability.”

  I remained still, showing no reaction, but my pulse surged. He’d just answered my question about the Majdas. Vaj and Lavinda both knew my army records were wrong, that I did have Kyle ability, but they were the only ones. Had they been involved with the High Mesh, they wouldn’t have held back that information, not when it could be vital to dealing with me. I couldn’t even fault Bessel’s assumption that the Undercity population didn’t include Kyle operators. I hadn’t expected many of my people to be psions, either.

  I said only, “You shouldn’t have access to my records. Stealing classified files is a crime.”

  He just looked at me, but he had a terrible poker face. He was finally realizing his words implicated him in both treason and murder.

  A lizard whistled in the dark. I whistled back. A moment later, Jak appeared with the lieutenant and Angel, materializing out of the night like ghosts haunting the desert.

  “Eh,” Angel said. She had Bessel’s machine gun slung over her shoulder.

  “Ruzik?” I asked.

  “Nowhere.” Her answer held a world of tension. I knew her tells; she might appear impassive to the others, but she was afraid, not for herself but for Ruzik.

  “We didn’t find anyone,” Jak said.

  “They’re probably trapped underground.” Bessel had it right; Daan Bialo wasn’t trained to use his abilities. I’d literally had to put myself to sleep to free us. Ruzik was probably a stronger psion than Daan, but the others had no clue and he certainly wouldn’t tell them.

  “We should check the cave first,” I said.
/>
  Jak motioned at Bessel with his coilgun. “Get up.”

  Bessel stood, moving slowly to keep his balance with his hands locked behind his back. “I know you’re out of bullets,” he told Jak.

  Jak tapped the control panel on the gun—and the menu lit up, showing the status of his magazine. He had two shots left. “I programmed it to show a false empty.”

  Bessel stared at him. “What for? You could have captured me. I’m out of ammo.”

  Jak just shrugged. He didn’t need to say he let himself get captured.

  “You weren’t trained for this,” I said to Bessel. “You never expected any of it to go so far.”

  “Never. Mara Quida was my sponsor at the Desert Winds.” Grief crackled in his voice. “She’s an amazing person. I admired her. I would never have hurt her.”

  “Then what happened?” Jak said. “Where is she?”

  Bessel looked as if he felt ill. He said nothing.

  Ah, hell. My voice tightened. “You’ve seen her body, haven’t you?”

  He turned a stark gaze on me.

  My anger was growing. “You all played with technology you didn’t understand. Those coffins under the ships—and I do mean coffins, even if that wasn’t their original purpose—the High Mesh turned them on and people died.”

  Bessel gaped at me. “You know about the Mesh, too?”

  Yah, surprise. I’m good at what I do. “The Mesh tried to get control here, but you all botched it. Even that spy dust isn’t ready. Sure, it’s better than the military version, except for one ‘little’ problem. It screws up your tech, too.” I let out a breath. “I believe you never meant to hurt anyone. But the monsters you got into bed with will do anything to get what they want.”

  Bessel spoke in a strained voice. “We never expected you to figure any of this out.”

  I met his gaze. “What happened to Mara Quida and Chiaru Starchild?”

  “I don’t know!” Anguish showed on his face. “I swear, we didn’t intend to use the quarries.”

  “They disappeared from their homes. They weren’t anywhere near the cave.” Insight hit me. “They’re both strong Kyle operators, right? That’s what activated the quarries.”

  “They couldn’t have activated the quarries,” Bessel said. “They were too far away. Your brain waves have to interact with the machinery. You have to be right next to it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jak asked.

  “The explosions in the Quida and Starchild mansions,” I said. “They’re connected to those coffins we found in the cave. Those boxes somehow blew up Mara Quida’s bedroom and Chiaru Starchild’s kitchen. And I’ll bet they exploded the tunnel with Daan Bialo in it.”

  “Daan?” Bessel asked. “Nothing happened to him. He’s with us tonight.”

  “That’s because I figured out it was about to happen.” I hadn’t figured out shit, I’d acted on instinct and been lucky. “I threw him out of the way.”

  “You witnessed the explosion?” Bessel’s voice snapped with a sudden intensity. “Where? When? How did you survive? How did you know it was happening?”

  Good questions. I spoke slowly, thinking. “Quarry. Quantum stasis and something else. That’s what the name means, isn’t it?”

  Bessel just looked at me.

  “Listen, asshole,” Jak told him. “Answer her questions. Cooperate, or the cops will hit you with every fucking charge they can bring against you.”

  Bessel swung around. “How would you know? They’re more likely to lock you up.”

  The lieutenant spoke. “He’s right, Del Bessel. I can speak for you to the authorities, let them know you helped with the investigation. Otherwise, you’re looking at a long prison sentence.”

  He stared at her. After a moment, he turned to me. “Quarry means quasis carrier.”

  “Carrier?” I hadn’t expected that. “How can quasis carry anything?”

  “Like the carrier of a signal. Fix the wavefunction and recreate it in a new place.”

  The implications finally penetrated my sleep-deprived brain. “Holy shit.” No wonder they were willing to kill to keep this knowledge to themselves.

  “What the hell?” Jak said at the same time the lieutenant asked, “What does that mean?”

  “Think about what quasis does,” I said. “It fixes the wavefunction of whatever it affects. Everything in the universe is described by a quantum wavefunction. We look solid because the wavelength is so tiny, even our best instruments can’t observe it. But in theory you could calculate it for any object. That’s what the quarries do, right? They map out the wavefunction of their target.”

  “That’s right,” Bessel said in a subdued voice.

  “So what?” Jak said. “It sounds like an incredible waste of bandwidth.”

  I spoke quietly. “Because if you digitally transmit that map to some other place and recreate the wavefunction there, you’re producing an exact copy of whatever that wavefunction defines.”

  “I still don’t get it,” the lieutenant said.

  “Jump from place to place,” Angel said.

  Apparently she’d been learning Cries-speak. It didn’t surprise me, especially after what happened in the tunnel with Daan. She’d want to do whatever she could to avoid it happening again, including understanding the people involved.

  “It’s a bit like old-fashioned three-D printing,” I said. “Except you’re producing an exact copy down to a molecular level. You make a copy of the person in another place.”

  “Printing people is impossible,” the lieutenant said. “The copy dies.”

  “That’s because three-D printing can’t perfectly replicate a living organism,” I said. “It isn’t sophisticated enough to make a copy identical to the original down to an atomic level. But suppose you had an exact map of the organism? That’s the quantum wavefunction. If you could transmit that map, you could make an identical copy at the receiving end.” The more I thought about, the more convoluted it seemed. “That’s assuming the receiver had the necessary materials and energy. If they did, they could reproduce the organism by placing every molecule in exactly the right place and state. They’d produce a clone of the original in a new location.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Jak said. “Even if you could reproduce an organism from its wavefunction—which I don’t believe you can, not with our current technology—that doesn’t mean it would be alive when you finished.”

  “No,” Bessel said, his voice strained. “It doesn’t.”

  I stared at him, feeling ill.

  “It sounds bonkers,” the lieutenant said. “How would you deal with the moral implications? Is the copy the same person? Is it self-aware? Do you keep both copies? Gods, if you sent the quantum map through Kyle space—” She stopped, drawing in a sharp breath.

  “Hell and damnation,” Jak said.

  The lieutenant didn’t need to finish; we all knew what she meant. If you sent the quantum map through Kyle space, you could reproduce the person anywhere a Kyle gateway existed. It meant you could instantaneously transport human beings across interstellar distances.

  “If it worked,” Bessel said. “It would be a technological breakthrough that dwarfed any humankind has created since we found our way to the stars.”

  I made myself stop gritting my teeth. “But it doesn’t work, does it? It kills instead.”

  He answered in a flattened voice. “That’s putting it kindly.”

  I forced myself to speak calmly. “You figured out the theory. But understanding equations and using technology are worlds apart. This tech is ancient. No one understands it. What possessed you to use it at all, let alone on people?”

  He met my hostile stare. “You’re assuming we tried to transfer people. We didn’t.”

  “Yah, right,” Jak said. “What, someone tricked you into using the boxes?”

  “No!” Bessel said. “None of us knew this could happen. It’s just—we woke up the quarries. We poked them in Kyle space.” With a shudder
, he added, “They poked back.”

  The lieutenant said, “You mean those boxes in the cave are alive?”

  “No. Maybe.” Bessel exhaled. “Hell, I have no idea.”

  I went over to him. “You need to tell me exactly what you’ve done. In detail.”

  He hesitated. “I figured out what the quarries do by translating the symbols in the ships.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone else?” I thought of Ken Roy. “Like the scientists who come here.”

  “They work a lot more slowly.”

  Jak spoke coldly. “Apparently for good reason.”

  Bessel winced. “We didn’t plan on trying the process on living organisms.”

  “What process?” I asked. “What did you do?”

  “I discovered that only Kyle operators can operate the quarries. The only Kyles in the High Mesh were Daan Bialo, Chiaru Starchild, and Mira Quida. So they helped us figure out the boxes. Our contact on the Majda staff arranged for us to enter the cave when no one else was out here at the ships.” Bessel held up his hand as if he were holding a small object. “You link what you want to copy to the quarry and activate the quarry. It makes a new version of the object inside itself.”

  “That sounds way too easy,” Jak said.

  Bessel hesitated. “We just tried transferring a rock from Mara’s house, to see what would happen. She used her mind to activate the quarry.”

  I stiffened. “And that caused the explosion? Why would she do it during the gala?”

  “No, not at the gala,” Bessel said. “We did it days before the gala.”

  It still made no sense. “A rock can’t appear out of thin air. You need materials to build it.”

  “That’s Talon’s field,” Bessel said. “Her degree is in chemistry. She analyzed the rock and provided the necessary minerals in the quarry box so it could replicate the rock.”

  I couldn’t help but be intrigued, despite the fact that we were stuck in the desert with people trying to kill us. “Did it work?”

  Bessel shifted his weight. “Yes and no.”