The Enceladus Crisis

by Michael J. Martinez

  The boy looked worried. “There is a Frank here to see you. There are two soldiers with him.”

  Finch, however, smiled broadly. “About bloody time. This Frank is dressed well?”

  Jabir nodded. “He looks like a peacock.”

  “Excellent!” Finch rubbed his hands together. “It seems our English spy-merchants have done well enough. Let’s go and say bonjour.”

  Jabir led the way through Finch’s house—a large one for a foreigner, and a sure sign of the beys’ favor—until they arrived in an open-air parlor. Two French soldiers, looking distinctly uncomfortable in their wool uniforms, flanked the door and kept watch over the gentleman, who was peering at one of Finch’s bookshelves.

  “Monsieur, welcome to my home,” Finch said in passable French. “What may I do—why, Dolomieu!!” In his surprise, Finch lapsed into English. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

  The gentleman smiled most broadly at Finch’s surprise, and it was a charming smile, writ upon a handsome face. Deodat Gratet de Dolomieu was perhaps one of France’s finest alchemists of the materia school, specializing in the alchemical properties of minerals. He was also something of an adventurer and ladies’ man, and when Finch first met him a decade ago, they had developed common kinship over the Great Work, good wine and questionable women.

  “Andrew!” the Frenchman said, striding toward Finch with arms outstretched. The two met in a ferocious hug, punctuated by kisses on each cheek. “Look at you!” Dolomieu scanned Finch’s kaftan and robes with a broad grin. “Don’t you look perfectly native!”

  “I should have known you’d be among these savants I’ve heard so much about,” Finch said, equally pleased. For a man of forty-eight years, Dolomieu remained the picture of health, thanks to numerous mountain treks in search of minerals and, perhaps, a few alchemical treatments in a nod to vanity. He was a short, wiry man with a shock of graying hair atop his head, and his coat and breeches spoke of fine tailoring, with the cut of his linen offering a hint of panache. “So you’ve come to divine the secrets of ancient Egypt, have you?”

  Dolomieu laughed heartily. “Oh, goodness, I very much doubt we will do so much, Andrew. We are a company of lost men, scholars and bookworms thrust into the desert with hot clothes and bad wine. And why are you in such a place where alcohol is forbidden by law? Not to mention how the women are covered head to toe in bedsheets!”

  And comments such as these are why the French will not make friends, Finch thought. No matter how many proclamations Napoleon issues saying he is a fellow Muslim. “I do hope you keep such opinions to yourself on the streets, Deodat. These comments are likely a stoning offense. And you will not have enough time to analyze the rocks before they hit your head!”

  “Like I said, we are lost men, all of us,” Dolomieu said, though the brief shadow that crossed his thin, angular face showed the truth of his words. “General Bonaparte has scholarly ambitions along with his military ones, and so we come to fulfill them. Now, Andrew, will you leave me standing here, or will you get me something to drink? I am parched!”

  A few minutes later, the two were sitting in the shade of a fig tree in Finch’s modest courtyard, with Jabir serving tea. A small fountain in the center of the courtyard bubbled agreeably, helping to mask the hustle and bustle of Cairo’s streets outside the walls of the house. The two men chatted amiably and excitedly about their activities since they last met, the fates of old acquaintances and what life was like in Cairo.

  “You must understand, Deo, the Muslims here, they take it all quite seriously,” Finch said. “Insulting their religion and customs will mark you as an enemy far more than simply occupying the land. The fruits of the Enlightenment are all well and good, but they cannot be positioned as being better, but rather just new and different. Something to add to life here, not to replace anything.”

  Dolomieu nodded. “We have seen as much already. Not a day goes by where one of the savants insults a merchant or imam or some such. We have invited many of their scholars to attend us, but they have not taken up the opportunity thus far.”

  “Maybe you should be attending them,” Finch replied pointedly. “This land is old. Alchemy got its start here. Surely, they’ve not our scientific methods, and their works are cloaked in superstition and religious trappings. Only the truly wise, they say, may know the secrets of Al-Khem and still walk with God.”

  Dolomieu snorted at this. “Which is why it was all too easy for Napoleon to invade, Andrew. As you well know, any man who considers himself a scholar knows something of the Great Work, even if he hasn’t the aptitude for its higher secrets. And we have worked hard in France to strip away these cloaks of folly. Alchemy is science, not magic, and it should be treated as such!”

  “And this is why you will not be met with welcome here,” Finch said. “You must understand these people, not try to change them.”

  “Spoken like an Egyptian,” Dolomieu said. “How long have you been here?”

  “Five years. And I came as a student, not a master, which is why they have welcomed me,” Finch said. “I have made some little headway in teaching alchemy to others here, even as I learn from their greatest workers. But I walk a fine line, and I show the utmost respect for their imams and priests when I cannot steer clear of them entirely. You would be wise to do the same.”

  “Wisdom, I’m afraid, does not come easily to us,” Dolomieu said sadly. “But we are here, and we have things we are set upon doing, so they must be done. Or tried. Do you know of Claude Louis Berthollet?”

  Finch nodded. “A fine alchemist, said to understand both materia and vitalis quite well. He is here as well?”

  “He is why I’m here, despite your agreeable company,” Dolomieu said. “He is perhaps foremost among our little company, though Gaspard Monge is the leader of our group appointed by Bonaparte. But it is Berthollet who has excited the scholars here as to the wonders of Egypt, and the secrets that lie between the desert sands.”

  “And what secrets are these, Deo?”

  The geologist merely shrugged in that perfectly equivocal way so common to all Frenchmen. “He has yet to say, really. But he has asked for you. More precisely, he has asked me to determine whether you are trustworthy.”

  Finch laughed at this. “You know I’m not.”

  “This is what I have told him,” Dolomieu said, grinning. “You were a friend of the Revolution for a time, but you are English. I told Berthollet as much, if only to dissuade him from dragging you into this. But from what we are told by the natives here, there is no other European in Cairo who knows both the country and the mystic sciences as well as you. And so I must ask, Andrew, how is your relationship with your homeland?”

  Finch knew the question was coming. He’d been crafting his answer for days, with all the care and precision usually given over to his workings. “You know I supported the Revolution, Deo,” he replied cautiously. “I’ve no love for the Crown and the politicians and the bankers who pull their strings. But you also must know that I feel France has squandered its opportunity. Look at what happened on Ganymede. They threw off the English yoke and have made for themselves a nice little democracy. No beheadings. No Robespierre.”

  Dolomieu’s smile dropped as he nodded grimly. “I agree with you, ami. But France may yet make things right. For now, however, I must simply be assured that we may . . . shall we say . . . consult with you as we begin our explorations here.”

  And that is the opening, Finch thought. “Scholarship and alchemy should have no borders, Deo. You know that. So long as your band of savants is here for the right reasons, I shall be glad of your company.”

  This actually gave the Frenchman pause. “I cannot say whether the reasons are right, because I’ve not been told enough,” he said, echoing Finch’s caution. “There are plans afoot that only a handful of us know. The fact that I am to secure your cooperation tells me only that they are intimately intertwined with Egypt itself.”

  Finch polished off his tea
. “Then leave it to me to determine whether you are in the right or not,” he said. “Rest assured, I am a scholar first. Should your reasons be sound, you may count on me.”

  Dolomieu smiled as he rose from his chair. “I know you, Andrew. That is more than enough. There is a meeting six days from now, the first of what we are calling l’Institut d’Egypte. I invite you to attend.”

  Finch rose and extended his hand. “And so I shall. Thank you, Deo. I look forward to it.”

  With a few more formalities and off-color jokes, Jabir ushered Dolomieu out, leaving Finch to stare idly at the fountain, deep in thought until Jabir returned.

  “Murshid?” the boy asked.

  “Yes?”

  “This man, he is a friend?”

  Finch smiled up at the boy. “Yes, he is.”

  This seemed to trouble Jabir. “Then you lied to a friend?”

  “I lied to a friend, yes,” Finch sighed. “The French have come with an army of scholars, and I do not know why they are here. So I must find out.” He took up a quill and paper from the table and scribbled a note. “Go to the suq and give this to the spice merchant, Mr. Gregory. For now, I will keep Nelson apprised of what’s happened.”

  The boy took the note. “And later?”

  “We’ll see.”

  June 16, 2132

  “Maria, we’re talking about an ongoing scientific experiment here, one that cost several hundred billion terras to construct and maintain! ‘We’ll see’ isn’t exactly something I can run with,” Greene complained as he struggled to match strides with Maj. Gen. Maria Diaz, USAF, despite being several centimeters taller than her.

  The general, a short Hispanic woman with a powerful build and the barest streaks of gray in her hair, couldn’t help but smile at the charismatic Greene’s unusual fluster as she walked toward the conference room at DAEDALUS headquarters. “Evan, we have four trained quantum physicists at McAuliffe now. Your baby is in good hands. Fact is, I need you here and now to help us make sense of the BlueNet data. You know that.”

  Greene did indeed know that, but wasn’t about to concede the point. “Maria, I’m the science lead for DAEDALUS. The science is happening on Mars.” For the third time in the past two days, he tapped on his datapad to send her the results of the latest particle accelerator experiment. “I had a chance to review all the data en route from Mars, and I’ve spelled out a number of new ideas for future experiments, experiments that could conceivably regulate the interaction between two dimensions. That’s real science. This . . . this is running down a bunch of dead ends!”

  Diaz wheeled around and fixed Greene with a hard stare. Despite having to look up at him, the general suddenly seemed a lot taller than the physicist. “Listen, Evan. You know damn well our first job is defense, not experimentation. If there’s another invasion into our Solar System, we’re the ones at the front lines. And that means I need my best brain here, on Earth, fully engaged when we power up BlueNet and try to figure out when and where those incursions might happen. Why do we keep having his conversation? You knew what you signed onto. You’re the science lead, but I’m the one in charge, and I’m answerable to a lot of people who feel the same way I do.”

  Greene stood his ground well, considering. “OK, fine. But say we see the people on the other side opening up something. Our experiments on Mars can teach us how to close portals as well as open them. Yes, it’s risky, but right now, we have no defense other than to be able to say, yes, they’re coming. Then what? The basic science needs to be better understood before we can defend anything. And what if Weatherby and his crew are trying to reach us? They had a better grasp of the situation than we did last time.”

  “Evan, I know you. You want to open the door and see what’s over there,” Diaz replied. Her words were quiet, but carried accusation as well.

  “Yeah, you’re right, I do. There are entire new worlds out there. And if we can figure this out, we can go see them. That’s what this should be about.”

  They both stared at each other a moment. This wasn’t the first sparring match for either of them, though it was perhaps the most honest one they had in a while.

  “You know that can’t happen, Evan,” Diaz said with an air of finality. “We’ll talk later. Right now, I need you in there. Let’s go.”

  The general didn’t wait for an answer, instead wheeling around again and striding off, leaving Greene at an uncharacteristic loss of words. Defeated for the moment and feeling more than a little chastened, Greene slowly walked behind Diaz as they headed to the BlueNet control center, parked incongruously in a simple office building along the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.

  All four of the DAEDALUS team’s BlueNet techs were at their holostations around a large central holoimager. The walls flickered through a variety of two-D readouts, and it took but a glance for Greene to see that all systems were nominal. The last of thirty-four satellites had been launched yesterday, and they were now linked to each other and to various tracking stations around the Earth and Moon. The satellites were not solely dedicated to BlueNet—most were commercial or military sats with a little bit of extra comm and sensor gear attached. When the government offers to pick up some costs in exchange for a bit of payload—for scientific purposes, of course—most companies don’t ask too many questions.

  The result was a network that blanketed the Earth, Moon and surrounding space with Cherenkov radiation detectors. If there was so much as a blink of Cherenkov radiation anywhere within a million kilometers of Earth, they’d know about it in five seconds or less.

  “Huntington, report,” Diaz said.

  A young African-American woman, wearing the uniform of a U.S. Marine captain, turned to her. “All systems go for network launch, general.”

  “Thanks, Maggie. Greene, how we doing on our databases?” Diaz asked.

  Greene had already settled into his station and didn’t bother turning around as he responded. “We have U.S. Department of Energy and IAEA databases up and running, along with CIA, MI6 and UN Security Council intelligence reports,” he replied. “All fusion reactors, public and classified, should be ready to map against the results. Same with all your potential ‘anomalous’ sites.”

  Greene finally turned around and shared a quick smile with Diaz at this, their earlier animosity temporarily forgotten. At Diaz’ insistence, the BlueNet monitoring system included a database of carefully selected sites including the Pyramids of Giza, Machu Picchu, the Nazca lines and any number of sites that may have been a landing point for little green men in ages past.

  Two years ago, Diaz would have laughed herself out of government service for even considering such sites. Given what she’d been through, however, she figured better safe than sorry. When she delved into the slew of “ancient astronaut” theories that had cropped up over the past century or so—actually, she had a junior officer do it, but still—she found to her great surprise that some of the seemingly spurious evidence of earlier ancient visitations by “aliens” actually dovetailed with some of the architectural images she had seen in the Martian “temple” that appeared two years ago. There were elements in Weatherby’s journal that likewise had surprising links to many of the various conspiracy theories, even the more outlandish ones.

  Another voice piped in. “General Diaz, we have our observers online and ready, ma’am,” said Flight Lieutenant James Coogan of the U.K. Royal Air Force. He was Diaz’ logistics officer and all around gopher, and she figured DAEDALUS would collapse under its own bureaucratic weight without the good cheer and fanatical organization of the British officer.

  “Thanks, Jimmy, and hello out there to any and all observing,” Diaz said. She knew the higher ups at JSC, the EU Defense Forces, the Pentagon and a few political folks would probably be listening in. She specifically asked Jimmy not to show her the list; she was nervous enough as is. “We’ve gone through our final system checks and we’ve laid in our database work. Thank you everyone who helped us with the intelligence and information
we needed to make this system reliable.” She took a deep breath. “Captain Huntington, deploy BlueNet.”

  The young woman nodded and began working her holocontrols, the images of which glowed faintly around her hands. “Initiating startup sequencing. Network links active . . . sensors responding to diagnostics . . . all sensors in position . . . and all sensors now active, ma’am. BlueNet is active and feeding data, ma’am.”

  Diaz thought there should be a cheer or something, but everyone just kept hunkered down. Probably for the best—the work was just beginning. “All right then. Greene, go to work.”

  Now this was a role Greene was accustomed to. He took a holographic model of the Earth-Moon system and transferred it across the room to the central holoimager, then stood up and followed it there as the image grew larger and blue dots began to appear all around the two worlds. “All right, then. The idea here is to identify any and all sources of Cherenkov radiation currently active anywhere in the Earth-Moon system. And so far, we’ve got some pretty good C-rad hits already,” he said. “Let’s take away the DoE and IAEA stuff first.”

  A few seconds later, several of the blue lights winked out. “OK, those were the registered fusion energy sites around the world operating at reported capacity. Next, let’s throw the military sites out there.” More lights winked out, including every single ocean- and Moon-based light. “OK. Those are the subs and ships at sea, all the lunar colonies. Nothing around the Moon?” Greene reached out and gave the holoimage of the moon a quick spin in his hands to check. “Good,” he said as the Moon righted itself in orbit once more. “All right, let’s put the black stuff on there now.”

  The “black stuff,” as Greene liked to call it, represented the highly classified sites that would be producing fusion energy, such as research labs and top-secret military installations. For some, even DAEDALUS—an ultra top-secret program in its own right—was given only a location and a rough sense of the fusion energy output . . . and nothing else.