Wormholes

by Dennis Meredith

  Although Gerald wore his customary t-shirt, jeans and sneakers, he seemed different. It wasn’t just the desert sunburn, or the shagginess from being too busy to get a haircut. He was more intense than before, if that was possible. He was also more driven. Now he wasn’t just chasing some vague hunch. He knew the promise and the profound danger of the exotic object they would soon attempt to harness. He also understood that it would take extraordinary luck, besides the meticulous planning and engineering, to bring a wormhole into their grasp — a creature such as humans had never seen. Knowing that challenge had changed Dacey, too. She hadn’t minded the publicity, with the media trying to paint them as the “Bonnie and Clyde of Science” as one physicist had told Science magazine. Nor had she minded the warning her department chairman had given her about getting involved with such a dubious venture. She had tenure. She’d worked damned hard to get it. And now it gave her the freedom to take risks.

  She took Gerald’s arm and he patted her hand. He’d given her time to overcome her fear of commitment. And that fear was evaporating.

  It was a good group, thought Dacey. They had gravitated to one another almost instinctively and it was natural for them to become a team. Not only did they share the common bond of having encountered the inexplicable holes, they all liked each other. The animated Mullins, scrambling around cheerily urging his men on to greater efforts, was eager for the technical challenge. Cameron and Gaston were itching to apply their investigative training to whatever the effort would yield. George was, as usual, amiably determined to tease apart the strands of the mystery.

  They heard the distant whoosh of a small jet and saw Lambert’s plane swoop out of the cloudless blue sky and land on the nearby blinding-white runway.

  Gerald set his jaw. Dacey knew he’d only seen Lambert a few times after the first meeting. The occasions had been cordial enough, but they had invariably come on the heels of brutal negotiations with Lambert’s lawyers over commercial rights to the wormholes. Gerald knew that the friction had reflected the lawyers doing Lambert’s bidding.

  The jet rolled up beside the hangar and the door opened. Two large dark-suited men stepped out, clearly bodyguards. They were followed by three smaller dark-suited men, and then Lambert, dressed in a sport coat with no tie, a light blue shirt and wheat-colored slacks.

  Lambert’s public relations people had arrived the previous day, planning the news event to their boss’s liking. They met him and briefed him on the procedure.

  But Gerald forgot all the frustrations as he turned back to the results of their efforts thus far. He still got a thrill out of the machines. What amazing things they would do. Dacey moved up beside him, and they walked out of the hangar and over to the low platform holding the podium with its mass of microphones.

  One of Lambert’s suited assistants, his company’s public relations man, called the news conference to order and introduced his boss. Dacey, Gerald and the others sat in the front row on metal folding chairs. Lambert stood easily behind the phalanx of microphones explaining how the Meier theory, as controversial as it was, had convinced him to invest in this project. He yielded the floor to Gerald, who described the facility and the strategy for capture. He finished and gestured to the massive building. “To your right is the hangar containing the first contingent of capture machines. After the questions and answers, we’ll roll them out.” Predictably, the questions came thick and fast, reporters shouting over one another. Lambert answered the questions with the smooth confidence of a billionaire, and Gerald with the sharply contrasting precision of a scientist.

  From The New York Times: “What do you say to the vast majority of physicists who refuse to believe your theory?”

  From Associated Press: “What are the chances of capturing one?”

  From Newsweek: “What are the dangers?”

  From CNN: “How do you all feel as this deployment is about to begin?”

  From Reuters: “Are you aware that the Chinese Academy of Science has recommended a project to capture a hole?”

  From People: “Now that you two are working together, do you still consider yourselves estranged from one another?”

  Gerald pointedly ignored the last question, stepping down to stand beside Dacey. A last question was directed to Lambert from Business Week:

  “Do you have plans to commercialize these things?”

  “Good question,” said Lambert. “These objects are perhaps the most important ever discovered. Nobody really knows what incredible benefits or dangers they represent to our species and our planet. Of course, there may be commercial applications, but I am interested first and foremost in a basic understanding of their properties. We will only consider applications if they will not compromise this critical basic research.”

  Dacey leaned over and whispered to Gerald. “He is an accomplished bullshit artist.” Gerald just shook his head in amazement.

  The group moved with their notebooks and cameras to the front of the hangar, and the massive doors began to slide open. From inside echoed the rumble of diesel engines starting up, the faint odor of diesel exhaust.

  Rolling ponderously from the shadows into the sunlight emerged two massive armored vehicles, painted a light blue with Deus, Inc. logos on the side. On top of each vehicle, mounted on a boom of thick steel girders, was a thirty-foot-wide hemisphere of clear Lexan, each hemisphere covered with a complex lattice of thick, copper-wound steel bars. The dishes moved up and down, side to side on steel gimbals. Television cameras began to record the scene for live broadcast, and the rapid-fire clicking of cameras could be heard beneath the roar.

  Cameron leaned across to Gerald, his grinning face mostly hidden behind sunglasses. “Damn, Gerald, they look like bra cups for the fifty-foot woman!” The remark drew smiles, even from Gerald. His smile also reflected the wry humor he saw in his father, the consummate showman, presuming to explain high-tech equipment.

  “These are the basic capture units,” shouted Lambert, standing easily beside the two vehicles. The video crews panned their cameras and the reporters scribbled notes and typed into their laptops. “They’re Hurricane MAZ-543A Russian artillery carriers. They weigh seventeen tons each and can resist the pull of a hard vacuum without being drawn in. These were solid Soviet vehicles that the Russians sold us for cents on the dollar.” His expression showing deep satisfaction, he patted the side of one of the huge vehicles. “The electromagnets on the hemispheres are powered by diesel generators installed in shielded compartments. The magnets are controlled by one central computer in a separate control van that communicates with the drivers.”

  “You sure the seals will hold?” came a voice from the knot of reporters.

  “No doubts,” Lambert said tersely. He was annoyed by the question in the middle of his spiel, just as he didn’t like to be interrupted by bankers when he was pitching them on an oil project. “It’s the same basic docking and sealing mechanism NASA uses to connect spacecraft.” He turned quickly to a large van that had followed the carriers out. “Now, the control vans we’re using were radar vehicles for the Russian missile batteries. Got them cheap, too.” The van was also painted blue, its roof crowded with antennas. “The magnets around the hemispheres produce an intense, highly controllable magnetic field that can automatically manipulate the position of one of the magnetic holes. We plan to station units like these in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Moscow, and San Francisco.” He strolled toward a bare sandy area to the side of the hangars. “They are ideal for making a capture, as we will demonstrate.” He nodded to the drivers, who gunned the two carriers out into the sand.

  Followed by the control van, the two carriers took up positions about a hundred feet apart, facing one another. The reporters moved away from the hangar behind yellow ropes to witness the test.

  Slowly, the two hemispheres rotated on the boom to aim themselves downward into the desert sand. A faint humming issued from them and the earth began to bulge upward. The ground erupted in a whooshing show
er of sand as a seven-foot steel sphere tore itself from the ground, bobbing into the air between the two hemispheres. The camera crews moved back and forth behind the rope to get a better angle and photographers again triggered rapid-fire shots.

  The hemispheres slowly angled upward, back to their horizontal aim, and the steel sphere rose to float between them, a faint rain of dust falling from its gleaming surface. Finally, the two carriers eased forward, the steel ball still floating between them, until the Lexan hemispheres met, enclosing the ball suspended within the sphere they formed.

  “Okay, so you can do a scaled-up version of the lab experiment capturing those little balls,” said the reporter from Associated Press. “What guarantee do you have that it will work in real life … if you ever get the chance?”

  “We’ve done plenty of simulations,” said Lambert. “And we’ve set off explosions whose outward blast duplicates in reverse the inward force of a vacuum. If we get the chance, this will work.” Gerald smiled again. Lambert had never even seen the test. He would hardly have toiled away in the desert sun to set the charges, hunkering down in the blockhouse as they went off and climbing all over the dirt-covered test vehicles examining the results.

  The carriers shut down their engines, and the reporters moved forward to examine them and the steel ball that now rested on the bottom of the hollow Lexan sphere.

  The group boarded buses, which lumbered across the sun-baked desert floor to another hangar two miles away. There, the reporters filed out to tour the three cavernous vacuum chamber rooms, complete with door-sized airlocks, inside which the holes would be suspended.

  “NASA used these to test spacecraft,” said Lambert, standing beside the large doors, as television cameras recorded the huge blue-painted chambers with the Deus, Inc. logos. “We bought them and installed them here.” After another hour of giving out quotes and doing standup television interviews, Lambert boarded his plane, and it rolled from beside the hangar and vaulted into the sky. He had to be back in Houston for the morning network talk shows the next day. The contract stipulated that he would be the spokesman for the project on national TV, even though the booking producers had requested Gerald be included.

  Gerald squinted into the blue sky as the plane shrank to a dot and then was gone. Dacey came up beside him and took his arm. As the reporters trooped back onto the bus, they stood together, silently looking at the huge chambers. Without saying so, each knew the other was wondering whether the entire project wasn’t some ridiculous fantasy.

  “It’s cooling off a bit. Let’s take a ride,” said Dacey, pointing at a nearby blue-painted jeep with the Deus, Inc. logo.

  “Sure. Good idea,” said Gerald. “You haven’t really seen the area, yet.”

  “Nope,” said Dacey, surveying the sunbaked rock formations. “And this is really my kind of place.”

  They got into the jeep and Gerald drove away from the huge, lone hangar out into the desert, where the low sun made the creosote bushes cast long shadows across the subtle tans of the sand and rock. They drove together for a long time, far beyond the complex and into a deep sandy arroyo where the sun had already set. They reached the end, and Dacey found a broad sandy area, where they could sit and watch the blue of the sky deepen and the first stars begin to come out.

  “We haven’t talked for a while. I thought this might be a good place to go.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” said Gerald. “I needed to get away.”

  “I could tell.” She took his ink-scribbled hand, turning it over in hers. “You’ve been working so hard there’s layers of equations written here.”

  He laughed, as she gave him back his hand before the gesture turned into handholding. They sat for a while and enjoyed the desert quiet and the dry, gentle breeze.

  “You pissed about all this?” she asked.

  “At Lambert? No, not really. I knew what he was like. You know where they got the idea to paint those carriers blue? His publicity people said they’d be more photogenic that way. And he insisted we put a capture unit in Houston, so he could show it to his friends. Anyway, I expected to go through something like this. It’s worth it.”

  “You never really said much about him and your mom. You mind if I ask?”

  “No. She never really told me the whole story, but my aunt did. He was this hotshot young oilman. Went to Boston looking for backers and my grandfather was one of his targets. He met her when she was home from Smith. I think basically he swept her off her feet, but that’s not what you can say these days. They were married for seven years. I think she was just a means to an end for him. A way to get with an old money crowd. Anyway, he messed around so much that she finally couldn’t take it anymore. So, she divorced him and she never remarried.”

  “She loved him that much?”

  “I think it sort of crushed her. She was this kind of sheltered person. Never knew somebody could be like him. Charming. Ruthless.” He paused and looked over at her with a half-smile. “May I kiss you?”

  “No.”

  He startled slightly “Why not?”

  “Well, look, y’know, first … well, hell … I am not a demure person, y’know. It’s just that, well—”

  “You’re afraid this is going to turn into something serious.”

  Trying to recover from her previous stammer, she blew out a sigh and didn’t say anything. She was amazed at herself for being at a loss for words.

  “Well, I’d be afraid it’s not,” he said. They looked at each other for a long moment without speaking, imagining each other’s touch. But with mute gestures — a shrug, a sideways cast of the eye, a subtle arch of the eyebrow — they tacitly agreed that for a tangled knot of reasons that a certain line could not be crossed … for now. But they both remained acutely aware that something extraordinary could lie beyond that line.

  • • •

  Within two months, gigantic C-5 Super Galaxy cargo planes had flown pairs of capture vehicles to Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Moscow, and San Francisco. Except for the Houston unit, whose vehicles were prominently displayed on the plaza of the Lambert building, they sat in warehouses at strategic points calculated to give them the quickest access to any part of the city that experienced an appearance of the holes. For substantial contributions to the city treasuries, and some under-the-table contributions to officials, they were assured priority routing through the cities.

  During the third month, a subterranean seismic disturbance of some kind collapsed a shopping mall on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Geologists said it was subsidence.

  That same month, a violent cyclonic disturbance appeared above Beijing, China, obliterating almost a city block of the most crowded section. Meteorologists said it was a freak weather pattern.

  “We’re on the right trail,” Gerald told an international conference call of the project directors. “Just as we thought, these things are being reported quickly in cities.”

  “Yeah, well, wrong goddamned cities,” Lambert’s voice growled over the speaker.

  The deafening shriek shattered the pastoral stillness of the French countryside, driving cows to panicky clumsy galloping back and forth across their pastures, trying to escape it. Sunday picnickers bolted for their cars, rolling up their windows, their fingers in their ears trying to lessen the searing pain. They peered through their windshields at the cloudy sky trying to see the source of the malevolent noise. It seemed to pass northward into the Paris suburbs, prompting a flood of alarmed calls to the gendarmes. Their ears beginning to bleed, people screamed and collapsed writhing to the floor. Dogs howled in pain, cats hissed and spat in fear and the glass in window panes in houses rattled and cracked. Along with the unearthly shrieking, a strange wind rose, seeming to rush toward the object in a rising gale.

  The monster passed overhead toward the center of Paris and those who could stand to be outside witnessed its source descend from the tortured sky. They saw a round object, but only vaguely, for it was obscured by a roaring influx of vapor and
dust sucked into its maw. Enveloped in the wind and hellish noise, the observers screamed to one another that a tornado was approaching. A strange aerial tornado. The object descended into the Montparnasse section of the city, eating its way with a great grinding sound into the narrow streets of stone houses. The wall of noise swallowed up the screams of dying people, their bodies shredded to unrecognizable red pulp. No dust, no smoke arose from the area, although the skyline seemed to disappear as whole buildings collapsed away into nothing.

  Four miles away, a seismograph in a large stone warehouse registered a subterranean disturbance. The attached computer recognized the characteristic pattern and triggered a whooping alarm. Within a minute, three huge vehicles — a van and two Russian artillery carriers with giant hemispherical dishes on their fronts — accelerated out of the warehouse. They followed speeding police cars with sing-song sirens and flashing lights down the broad avenues of Paris into the narrow side streets and toward the scene of unimaginable devastation.

  Inside the van, a young brown-haired technician studied a computer screen issuing orders to the police car and the two artillery carriers. A sheen of sweat rose on his forehead. He glanced nervously at the other technician monitoring the magnetic fields. At his signal the police cars veered away, their occupants glad to be relieved of the duty. The van stopped, and the young man continued to issue radio orders directing the mammoth carriers along separate routes to a rendezvous.

  Inside the carriers, even with the roar of the engines and diesel generators, the drivers could hear, and even feel, the deep rumbling destruction ahead. The beast was moving underground, slicing through the dense, intricate jumble of sewers and power lines as if they were made of smoke.

  In one carrier, the driver touched the medallion around his neck, the one his young wife had given him. He held up a thumb to his colleague, a round-faced red-headed man who would monitor the magnetic field and make sure the dish was aimed correctly.