The Venusian Gambit

by Michael J. Martinez

  “And if it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t have…”

  Stephane’s entire body was fluttering now, subtly but uncontrollably. It was if he was shivering in brutally cold weather. Or had a colony of ants in his jumpsuit. And he had, finally, broken eye contact with her. He was now staring at his twitching hands.

  “If it weren’t for that,” she continued, whispering, “we wouldn’t have fallen in love, now would we? I love you, Stephane. I really do. Which is why you’ve got to fight this thing.”

  As if suddenly struck by lightning, Stephane jumped to his feet, his eyes bugging out of his skull. He staggered a moment, hands grasping his head. His mouth was moving, but Shaila couldn’t hear. Then, finally, his body froze for a long, agonizing moment.

  “Stephane?” Shaila said.

  With a guttural shout, he picked up the cot and, with surprising strength and speed, threw it at the comm speaker.

  Sparks flew. Plastic cracked. Pieces fell to the floor.

  Shaila had ducked reflexively, and when she once again turned to face Stephane, he had already sat back down in the space where his cot used to be. He was once again completely still, and fixed Shaila with that terrible, distant gaze.

  But she knew, in that moment, that she was right all along.

  “I got you,” she said, even though she knew Stephane couldn’t hear her. “I got you, you fucker. He’s in there.”

  At that moment, a tech rushed in, looking as though she had just been rudely awakened. Which she had. “What the hell happened? I got an alarm and…oh.” She paused to look at the wreckage inside the containment cell.

  “I pissed him off,” Shaila said, grinning despite herself.

  The tech, a young Chinese woman with an Australian accent, returned the smile. “That’s brilliant! We’ve been trying to get a rise out of him ever since he got here!” She scurried over to the computers to check the readings. “Look at this! I haven’t seen brain-wave activity like this…ever. And the irregular heartbeat….wow, the Cherenkov readings dipped too. This is incredible!”

  “Thanks,” Shaila said, turning to leave.

  “Wait! You can’t go!”

  Shaila turned around with a surprised look on her face; she was pretty sure she outranked most folks on the station, and definitely sure about this particular tech. “Excuse me?”

  “Um, well…will you come back? Try again? I mean, this is really something here.”

  In all honesty, Shaila had no intention of repeating it right then. But she did want to repeat it soon. “Go over all the data, match it to the holovid recording, and write up a report. Figure out exactly what worked and didn’t. Then we’ll go another round. Yes?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the tech said, nodding vigorously before turning back to her instruments, hands fluttering across the controls. Shaila used that moment to escape quickly, shutting the door behind her and leaning against the hallway bulkhead to compose herself. She was trembling, her heart beating fast. She was oddly elated and frustrated at the same time, and utterly terrified at what she saw. Was that Stephane or Rathemas? Was Stephane winning or losing? Did she help him or hurt him?

  She had no idea.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on your rest cycle, Jain?”

  Shaila opened her eyes—she had no idea they’d been closed—and saw Diaz standing before her, hands on her hips, a slight smile on her face. “Sorry, ma’am,” Shaila said, drawing herself straight. “Couldn’t sleep. Decided to visit Stephane. It was…interesting.”

  “Yeah, I got pinged on it. Come with me,” Diaz said. “Dr. Ayim says he’s ready to give me a full report on that jury-rigged piece-of-shit we found hooked up to the comm system on Tienlong. Tell me about Stephane on the way.”

  Shaila fell in beside Diaz and gave a brief description of her encounter, along with a heavily redacted version of her own feelings about it. “It’s bound to be something positive. Better than him just staring, I suppose,” Shaila concluded.

  “Let’s hope. The President’s not too thrilled we got three alien-possessed people on the station and managed to lose whatever others they might’ve gathered. I’m hoping Stephane can get it together enough to give us some useful intel on these bastards,” Diaz said, then looked over at Shaila. “No offense, Commander.”

  “None taken, General,” Shaila said neutrally, trying her best not to sound hurt. “I hope he can get it together too.”

  The two walked for a few moments of silence until they arrived at another lab, where Ayim had set up shop with the contraption Stephane was found with on Tienlong. The door was open, and they found Ayim himself doing last minute checks of the device, which was within yet another containment cell.

  “Ah, there you are, General. And Commander. Come in, come in! I think we finally figured out what happened here. Very interesting, very exciting!” Ayim said.

  Shaila gave Diaz a sidelong glance, which was returned with a smirk. Gerald Ayim was very much a stereotypical academic, with a head for quantum physics and not, sadly, for social interaction. “So, Gerry, did you find our little critters?” Diaz asked, closing the door behind her.

  Ayim looked slightly panicked. “Umm…no. No, we haven’t, but we do have an idea or two on that. Shall I take it from the beginning?” Without waiting for an answer, he walked up to the glass of the containment unit. “So let’s start with this green stone. Previously unknown geologic composition, odd green glow, bursting with Cherenkov radiation and, most likely, linked to—if not existing partially within—another dimension.”

  “The Emerald Tablet,” Shaila said.

  Ayim gave her a brilliantly white smile. “If you want to call it that, by all means. But I cannot say. All I know is that this stone has exceptional quantum properties that will take years for us to figure out. Years! I don’t even know where to begin. But, that’s not why you’re here is it?” Again, he surged forward without waiting for a reply. “So you see this sort of electronic cradle around the device, very makeshift, this thing. Yet it somehow harnessed a bit of the energy this stone is giving off, and connected it to the two tanks you see here on either side. Now, these tanks—”

  “—were used to gather up the water Tienlong took on from Enceladus. And the critters in the water that were throwing off the Cherenkov radiation pings, yes?” Diaz said. Shaila got the impression it wasn’t the first time Diaz interrupted the scientist.

  “Exactly, General! And we found enough tubing, and a homemade vacuum pump, to come to the conclusion that the Tienlong crew vacuumed up as much of the water as they could. Now, there was still extensive water damage aboard Tienlong, as you saw from the state of the lighting systems there, but they got most of it. More importantly, after several sensor sweeps, tuned to the molecular level no less, we found zero traces of any alien proteins. They seemed to be able to find and gather them all—a 100% success rate.”

  Shaila thought on this a moment. “Between the Chinese guy infected in Egypt, and Stephane on Enceladus, it seems like the possessed people can coordinate without comms, from any distance,” she said. “Makes me wonder if Stephane and the others could pretty much sense where the proteins were on the ship, and vacuum them up accordingly.”

  “Exactly our thought as well, Commander,” Ayim said. “Now, these tanks should be full of living alien proteins, correct? We thought we might find them in there, with this stone somehow giving them the power to maintain themselves. But they’re all dead and decomposing.”

  Diaz stood taller. “Come again, Doctor?”

  “The proteins. They may have been stored in these tanks, but when we examined them, we found they were no longer intact. They’ve decomposed at the molecular level. The amino acids are, right now, in the midst of dissolving. There are very few chains intact. Mostly, all we have are sodium and carbon atoms, along with nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen isotopes. And water, of course.”

  “So it didn’t work,” Shaila said. “They’re dead.”

  “They are dead, but that is
not the really interesting part!” Ayim said, almost joyfully. “As we were investigating these tanks, we thought, why would you put this device in the communications room, of all places? Tienlong has labs for this sort of thing. Much better spaces for this. And we figured out why when we followed the wiring. Because this device was hooked up to their main relay dish.”

  Both women were still for a moment as they wrapped their heads around this. Diaz got there first. “There was a transmission burst aboard Tienlong right after the teams boarded. We assumed it was a distress call, and we couldn’t intercept the packets, and Stephane or someone else wiped the computer memories clean. So how are these proteins related?”

  Ayim clapped his hands and laughed. “That is the big question! Now, as we saw from the destruction of Enceladus and the minute traces of Cherenkov radiation immediately after, I think we can safely assume, for the sake of theory, that these proteins at one point had interdimensional qualities—that they perhaps existed in more than one place, if you will. Now, it would take years to even figure out how such simple proteins could be placed in a quantum state between two parallel dimensions, but the fact remains they were! And that, I think, is the key as to why they were hooked up to this machine, and to the communications relay.”

  Ayim stopped there, grinning, leaving Shaila and Diaz staring for a moment before looking at each other, confused. “You may want to keep going, Doctor,” Shaila said. “We aren’t following.”

  The physicist furrowed his brow a moment, then plowed forward again. “All right. If you are going to hook up series of proteins to a data transmitter, then can we not assume that there was something having to do with these proteins that could be translated into data? I think we can. And the fact that they are in a quantum superposition between parallel dimensions, the amount of data potentially ‘stored’ on each protein could be immense.”

  “So these proteins were glorified flash drives?” Diaz asked.

  “It’s possible! Yes, a crude analogy, but we believe that this device here somehow read the chemical makeup of these proteins, translated the quantum superpositioning, and then took the resulting data and downloaded it into a file to be transmitted to Earth.”

  “But we have no idea what that data was,” Shaila said.

  Ayim nodded. “We have perhaps a half-dozen decaying protein chains we’re studying right now, to see if we might come up with a pattern. But there are several hundred trillion potential combinations among the remnants we have. I do not hold out hope. But that data went somewhere, so it likely still exists. From the position the ship was in, we can pinpoint the receiver to somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan.”

  “You and I have very different definitions of ‘pinpoint,’ Doctor,” Diaz frowned. “What would the receiver look like? And what would the guys on the ground need to translate the data into something useful and/or deadly?”

  The physicist shrugged. “I have no idea how they would manage to reconstitute that data, General, because I don’t know what it was in the first place. But as for receiving it, it’s hard to say. Would they need equipment to similarly provide some kind of quantum superpositioning in order to use this information to access a different dimensional state? If so, I cannot say what that would even look like. But if not, then all they would need is a standard data receiver. A converted satellite holovision dish would do, frankly.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” Diaz said. “Looks like we need to send someone to Afghanistan.”

  “We need to leave Afghanistan,” Harry Yu said.

  “I agree, Harry,” Greene replied.

  Harry was surprised enough to actually show it, a rarity for him. He’d expected Greene and Huntington to really dig their heels in about relocation, especially after they’d been working hard on their new particle accelerator in the desert outside of Kabul. But here they were, simply sitting and nodding and agreeing with him as he stood, dumbfounded, in their shitty little office.

  “Don’t you even want to know why?” Harry asked.

  “Sure,” Huntington said, giving him one of her scary smiles.

  “So for one, we’re running out of money fast. I’ve maybe got two weeks’ worth of bribe money left, and then we’re out of luck. In fact, we should’ve been out of luck weeks ago, but I ended up getting a ForEx account and doing some day trading while you two were off in the desert. Wasn’t much, but it helped.”

  Harry expected some recognition of this from his teammates, but none was forthcoming. On second thought, he was an idiot to think they’d care.

  “So anyway, one way or another, we’re going to have to leave. And as it turns out, I have a contact, someone I used to work with, who can give us some space and freedom and divert us some resources to get things to the point where we can successfully cross over to the other side again,” Harry said. “Now, of course, she’ll want a big cut.”

  “Where’s the new location?” Huntington asked.

  “Russia. Yekaterinburg. Most of the oligarchs and congloms are headquartered in Moscow, but they use Yekaterinburg for a lot of their R&D. And the Russians are almost as good as the Afghans when it comes to regulatory stuff. So. How long will it take for you to wrap things up here?” Harry asked.

  Greene just grinned. “We brought in our prototypes from the desert this morning. As it so happens, we got all the data we need. We just need to pack up here and we’re good.”

  Harry sat stunned for several moments before finally jumping to his feet. “How the fuck did you know to do that?” he shouted. “This is creeping me the fuck out! What the fuck is going on?”

  Greene stood slowly and raised his hands in mock surrender. “Harry, we didn’t know you were already making plans to move us. We’ve been playing with the data we received from Tienlong out in the desert for over a week now, and just today we ended up with the quantum phasing we needed to figure it all out. So we brought our gear in. Problem is, of course, that JSC and DAEDALUS will probably figure out what happened soon, and then they’ll track us here.”

  Harry, of course, knew about the transmission from Tienlong, but he thought it was merely sensitive material from something they found on Titan. The fact that it took a week to decode—even with off-the-rack, second-hand quantum computers—was news. And what the hell did Tienlong send that they needed particle accelerators and quantum phasing—whatever the fuck that was—to figure it out?

  Harry would find out soon, and with his new backing, he’d be in a position to take charge of this fucked-up operation once again. Harry knew he was being used, and he was looking forward to the leverage he needed to straighten that out.

  “Then I guess we better get packing,” Harry said, heading for the door. “I’ll arrange the transport. Don’t leave anything behind. I don’t want anyone to track us down.”

  Harry went out to his car again and sent another secure e-mail to his new benefactor, asking about the security in Yekaterinburg—and advising her to get more.

  CHAPTER 7

  May 7, 1809

  When in pitch darkness, the mind is often unclear as to whether the body is fully awake or not. Hence it was that Philip, the Count St. Germain, a brilliant alchemist and tutor, spent several precious minutes determining that, yes, indeed, he had regained consciousness.

  It was the smell that gave away the game, for he could not recall ever experiencing smells in any dream-like state. Yet his nose detected notes of pine and sharp citrus quite near his head—indeed, upon the very surface he reclined against, a surface that was rough yet pliable on his skin. He was slumped up against…burlap. Yes, a burlap bag, confirmed by his fingertips.

  Next, he determined that his arse was cold.

  It was a most annoying sensation, of course, and he quickly realized that he was shivering as well. But as his mind continued to swim through the murk of receding alchemical sleep, he began to piece things together quickly enough.

  A cold floor, one made of stone, would place him in a cellar.

  A burla
p bag full of something smelling of pine and citrus would be hops, the vine-fruits used in the seasoning and preservation of beer.

  A brewery, then, was his most likely location. And the powder Berthollet used was, to Philip’s nose, a simple enough formulation. He was likely unconscious for but an hour at most, making it quite likely he remained in Oxford Town, if not upon the university grounds. In fact, given the fact that Berthollet and Cagliostro seemed to be staying within the university halls, Philip gave it better than even odds that he was being held in the cellar of one of the college halls—likely Brasenose College, quite well known for its brewing.

  Philip smiled in the darkness, congratulating himself for his deductions, until he realized he remained in darkness and, far more importantly, could not in fact deduce the location of Elizabeth without some form of light. This quickly replaced self-satisfaction with a heart-pounding fear for his stepsister, and Philip quickly hauled himself to his feet—and bumped his head on the low boards above him.

  Definitely Brasenose. He had once accompanied a Brasenose tutor down into the cellars to sample the college’s ales, and remembered the ceilings were quite low indeed. Shaking his head in an attempt to throw off the last of Berthollet’s alchemically induced sleep, Philip sought to remember the layout of the rooms. If the hops were stored here, then this would be a very dry room, not the one where the barrels of finished beer were kept, nor the room where fermenting beer was laid in. So it would be a room he had not visited before, but one close to the rest of the college’s small brewery. And it would be…

  …quite near the foundation. And possibly a cellar window.