by Bill DeSmedt
“And you’re saying you can prove all this, Professor Adler?” Did she sound marginally more concerned?
“Call me Jack,” he said. “And, yes, I did prove it. It’s just the proof got itself smashed into a million pieces and scattered all over the taiga.” He went on to tell them about the wreck of his experiment, the murder of his friend, his own brush with death.
“This man, the one you say killed Igor—could you describe him?” For a skeptic, she seemed to be having no problem at all swallowing what was, to Jack, far and away the most fantastical part of his tale.
“I didn’t get a real good look, you understand. Too far away. If I’d been much closer, I expect I’d be dead now too.” He paused, tried to reconstruct horrific memories. “A, a big guy. Dressed all in black. Dark hair, moustache . . . .This isn’t helping, is it?”
“Fits too many people.” But she was listening even more intently now.
What else was there? “Oh! The guy smiled at the end there. A real evil grin. And there was something funny about it. Almost as if a couple of his side teeth were made of metal.”
“Yuri,” the woman whispered. It wasn’t a question.
Marianna’s head was spinning.
She hadn’t believed it. Didn’t really believe it even now. But when Jack Adler’s animated slideshow had all of a sudden morphed into a much more elaborately rendered twin to the wire-frame diagram she’d seen in Rusalka’s secret lab, Jon’s hunch had taken one giant step from fever dream to barely tenable hypothesis.
And now this. She wished she could shrug it off as a coincidence, or a trick of the light, or even a false, trauma-induced memory. But it sure sounded like it had been Yuri there in that remote corner of Siberia. And why else would he have traveled literally halfway around the world to obliterate some obscure researcher and his even more obscure experiment?
She stole a glance at Jon. He’d tried to tell her, and she’d snapped at him. If it had been left up to her, they’d have never uncovered this, this—call it a lead, for now. A lead linking the globe-spanning Grishin Enterprises corporation to an event long, long ago and far, far away.
Jon turned and met her gaze. “I think it’s time we pooled information here. Tell Jack what we know. About Antipode and the rest of it, I mean.”
She wished he hadn’t gone and blurted that word out, before she’d had time to think it through. “That’s all need-to-know, Jon. I’ve been stretching a point even divulging it to Dr. Laurence. I’m for sure not comfortable sharing it with an uncleared individual over a non-secure link.” She waved a hand in the general direction of Mycroft’s console.
And saw that Mycroft was staring at her, with an unfamiliar expression on his face. He cleared his throat and said in a slightly strained voice, “I think you’ll find my communications security more than adequate to the circumstances.”
That was the strange expression—she’d offended him. “I’m sure that’s so . . . on this end. But how can you vouch for the other side of the videoconference?”
“Set your mind at ease, ma’am,” Jack said. “The first thing we did after Dr. Laurence found me was download his communications-encryption software. Sets up something called a ‘VPN with IP tunneling.’ ” A whimsical smile. “Too deep for me. But it’s running on my end, too.”
“And just where is your end?”
“A hunting lodge outside Tomsk. Belongs to a colleague, a friend in need: Academician Dmitri Pavlovich Medvedev.”
“A Russian?” Marianna let that sink in. “Christ! He’s not on line too, is he?”
“No, he’s in town for the evening. But it wouldn’t matter if he was. I’d trust that man with my life—have done, in fact.”
“You said he’s a colleague, right? An astrophysicist?”
“Planetologist, actually. But, yeah, close enough.”
“Well, where does he stand on this, this micro-hole impact theory of yours?”
Jack gave a rueful laugh. “He thinks I’ve been smoking my socks. Says I’ve got no evidence, now my experiment’s been trashed. He’s right, too . . . unless you folks have dug up something new?” His mild blue eyes looked at her expectantly.
Jon didn’t say anything, but he too was looking at her, waiting.
“Oh, go ahead,” she told Jon. “If there ever was a need-to-know situation, this is it.”
And here Jack had thought he’d, had a wild story to tell! It took a conscious effort to keep his mouth from hanging open as Jon Knox filled him in on missing magnetohydrodynamicists, on a defrocked cosmologist commanding the resources of Russia’s third-largest conglomerate, on a banquet featuring room-temperature superconductivity and a strange toast, on a nuclear-powered installation with the curious name of Antipode at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, on a man named Arkady Grishin sitting in the middle of the web spun from all these separate strands.
The man who, more than likely, had ordered Jack killed.
Jack sat there integrating what he’d just learned with what he already knew.
“Well,” he said, “they could’ve found one of the hole’s other apogees. Calling the place Antipode kind of hints at that. Not that the Azores are opposite Tunguska on the globe. But they are where the thing was supposed to come out the other side. Other side of the Earth, get it?”
By the look on her face, the “client” still didn’t want to believe it.
“How could Grishin and company have found it, though?” Jon Knox said. “That’s a big ocean out there. Marianna and I can personally vouch for that.”
Jack thought a moment. “Let’s see. Given unrestricted access to the impact site, their best bet would’ve been analyzing the throw-down pattern of the trees. With a good enough fix on the entrance angle, they could’ve ballparked the Azores apogee to within, oh, I’d guesstimate twenty miles or so. What I’m having a hard time with is how they narrowed it down from there.”
The Bonaventure woman spoke up. “Would a detailed seismographic survey of the North Atlantic have helped?”
“Helped? Pinpointed it, more like.”
“Well, Grishin’s done one. The Rusalka oceanographic team published it five-six years ago.”
Jack mulled it over. “And from there they could’ve run confirmation sweeps with a SQUID. This boat of Grishin’s, did she ever spend a lot of time steaming in circles?”
“A year after that survey came out, come to think,” Bonaventure said. “Her single longest summer voyage: twelve weeks, all told. She spent almost half that time sailing round and round a stretch of ocean northwest of—oh, shit!—northwest of the Azores!”
“What I don’t get,” Knox was saying, “is why they wouldn’t just set up shop in Siberia, on the impact site itself. It has to have been simpler than building on the seabed.”
“That’s an easy one,” Jack said. “Sounds like this Grishin fellah likes his privacy. Tunguska’s no place for that; you’d have researchers crawling all over you every year or so. Besides, have you ever tried building anything on permafrost? Most treacherous stuff in the world, stress it wrong and it goes from concrete to putty faster than you can blink. No, I’d bet real money Grishin’s found another semi-stable apogee and built this Antipode Station on top of it. Question is, what’s he planning on doing with it?”
“We were kind of hoping you’d tell us,” Knox said.
“Well, I saw what looked like signs they’ve been trying to true up the orbit. A pretty hairy proposition in its own right, but it can’t be the whole story.”
Knox shook his head. “It’s not. Our best information comes down to a single word: ‘capture.’ ”
This time Jack didn’t even try to keep his jaw from dropping, “Sweet Jesus! I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Knox didn’t understand. “Isn’t it better to catch the damned thing and have done with it?”
“I guess so.” Jack sounded dubious.
“Anyway, it’s probably academic by now: The capture was slated for 10:47 P.M. on the third
of August—two nights ago.”
Knox stopped talking then and looked over at Marianna. He recognized that look she was giving the floorboards: something had just clicked for her. For some reason—the mention of the date just now?—the whole thing had right this instant stopped being an intellectual exercise. She believed.
When she looked up again, her face was several shades paler. “Would it even be possible to catch such an object?”
“Possible, sure,” Adler said. “And, with those room-temperature superconductors, Grishin’s got the right butterfly net. That’s why he needed your missing magnetohydrodynamics experts, by the way: to build an electromagnetic cage.”
He sketched out how the primordial black hole’s magnetic charge offered a hook to grapple it by. “So, yeah, it’s possible. But you’d have to be damn sure you weren’t going to drop the ball, so to speak.”
Marianna’s “Why, what happens then?” was barely on the edge of audibility.
“Wouldn’t it just go back into ‘orbit’ again?” Knox asked, somewhat louder.
“No, no, no! Catching the thing means stopping it in its tracks. If you lose hold of it after that, it for damn sure won’t fall back into its old trajectory. Best case, it’d pass close enough to the Earth’s core to slingshot into a whole new orbit, and then good luck ever finding it again.”
“If that’s the best case, what’s the worst?”
“Doomsday scenario. Major deceleration as it hits the high-conductivity zone at the core. The object comes to rest at the center of the Earth, not in centuries, but in decades or less. Here, watch.”
Adler keyed in a command and his sim resumed running in its separate window. The little computer-generated Vurdalak paused and held at the top of its arc, then it was back in motion again. But this time it wasn’t tracing out any delicate Spirographic rosette. Its new path through the Earth resembled more the dynamics of another childhood plaything.
A yo-yo.
A yo-yo on an ever-shortening string.
As they watched, the orbit degenerated further and further, the micro-hole finally coming to rest at the center of the simulated Earth.
“And that’s the beginning of the end.” Adler said. “From there it starts gulping down core material like there’s no tomorrow. And there won’t be.”
“But only if they screwed up the capture.” Knox gave Marianna what he hoped was a reassuring smile. She nodded and tried to smile back, but her eyes still held that haunted look. As if she needed to say something but couldn’t decide how to say it.
“Just hypothetically, Dr. Adler—Jack,” she began finally, “let’s assume Grishin’s succeeded in caging this thing. What would happen if, if the cage were, um, jostled?”
“Jostled?” Knox’s eyes narrowed. “Jostled, how?”
“Let’s say, by a—” Marianna took a deep breath. Her next words came fast and low. “—a low-yield tactical nuclear device.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Marianna!” Knox exploded. “Is Pete out of his fucking mind? Are you all?”
“But it’s an unmanned target—,” Marianna started to reply, thought better of it, tried again.
“Sorry, Jon. I wanted to tell you all along, honest. It’s all this damned need-to-know bullshit—” she flared briefly, then broke off. When she resumed, her voice was shaking. “Oh, God, Jon. What else can we do if Grishin really has got hold of that—that thing?”
She looked sorry and angry and scared as hell. Knox’s own anger drained out of him. It was all he could do not to take her in his arms and hold her.
Contraindicated. Once she’d mastered her immediate reaction, she’d like as not go back to stonewalling on them.
He settled for saying, “Okay, it’s okay. We’ll work through this somehow. You’d better give us the whole story, though.” He tried giving her a hard look, failed utterly.
She drew a shuddering breath. “All right. Can I make a call first?”
Marianna inserted a one-time encryption tab into her handheld, and keyed in Pete’s reach number.
“Aristos said the familiar voice, backed by an unfamiliar rumble of powerful engines. Pete must be en route to the taskforce already. She knew better than to ask.
“Pete? Marianna.”
“Marianna? Where in hell are you? The New York office was supposed to pick you up and escort you out to Tsunami.”
“The escort didn’t—they didn’t make it, Pete. And it’s Tsunami Pm calling about. We—Listen, Pete, I think we’ve got to put it on hold, at least until—”
“What? ‘Ne. bail now, we’re fucked. Not just you and me. It’s CROM’s ass on the line, too!”
“I know, Pete—believe me, I know. But we’ve got no choice. Grishin’s got hold of a—” How did she put this across to Pete when she wasn’t sure she believed it herself? “—call it a doomsday device. You hit Antipode now, you’ll trigger it!”
“Doomsday device?” Pete was nearly shouting now. “Like in Dr. Strangelove!”
“Pete, you don’t—Okay, it’s not really a doomsday device. If anything it’s worse.”
“Worse? How in hell could it be worse?”
Oh, Lord, here goes. “It’s—it’s a black hole, Pete. A real little one. That hydrophone alert Tuesday night? That was Grishin catching it. I’m in videoconference right now with an astrophysicist who’s been tracking the thing, and—”
“Black hole? It’s that Knox guy, isn’t it? He put you up to this. Christ on a crutch, Marianna, I had you figured for more sense.”
Stay calm, stay calm. “You’re not listening, Pete. I know it sounds crazy, but there are ways to check it out. Have Research verify an explosion in the middle of Siberia ninety-some-odd years ago. Check with the airlines: Grishin flew that hired gun of his, Yuri, out to the same impact site last week to whack the scientist who discovered the thing, the one who’s conferenced in with us right now. It’s why Grishin needed the MHD proles, Pete, to build a magnetic cage for the hole. And now that they’ve caught it, we can’t—” She stopped. “Pete, you there?”
“I’ve heard just about enough of this. Think what you’re saying for godsake, then answer me one thing: why? Research pegged the price tag on this Antipode Station at two to five billion—that’s dollars, not rubles. And you tell me it’s all about catching a hole? What for?”
“Believe me, Pete, if I knew what Grishin’s doing it for—”
“I don’t have time for this. You don’t either. You’re going to hustle your butt out to the taskforce, now. Give me your GPS coords and I’ll set up transport. Where in hell are you anyway?”
“Sorry, Pete,” she said, “that information is only available on a need-to-know basis.” And she hit the Exit key.
Her handheld beeped immediately. Pete, trying to home in on her. Marianna opened the back of the unit and yanked the battery.
She couldn’t talk to him again just yet. Not when the only thing he’d listen to was hard facts, whys and wherefores. She didn’t have any. And she wasn’t going to get them onboard a C-141 bound for the Azores. In fact, the only place she stood a chance of getting the answers she needed was right here at Weathertop. And to get, she’d have to give, need-to-know be damned!
She walked back to where Jon and Mycroft were talking quietly with Jack. Her own little think-tank—could they do it? Tell her what she needed to know? Had to: they were all she had.
Time to spill the rest of the beans. She sat down, cleared her throat. “You were right, Jon. They’ve got it, Grishin’s definitely got it. Like I tried to tell Pete: it’s the only explanation that fits the facts.” Quickly, then, she filled them in on the hydrophone event at 2347 Zulu Tuesday night.
“And SOSUS ruled out an undersea volcano?” Jack asked when she’d finished.
“That’s just what Sasha said it was. But, no, this was no natural eruption. No preambles, no aftershocks. Just one god-awful crunch, total duration maybe forty-five seconds. Then all quiet again. I’m sorry, Jack, I’d love to be wrong on this, b
ut it was the capture, all right.”
“Let’s just pray they can hold onto it,” he whispered.
“The hydrophone reading was enough to triangulate in on Antipode, I suppose?” Jon said.
She nodded. “The epicenter was on top of a mile-high mountain out in the Newfoundland Basin. The same place Rusalka was cutting donuts six summers back.”
“Now,” Jon said quietly, “the rest of it.”
“Right,” she went on unhappily. “Well, between that and our own intel on Antipode, Pete got the Energy Secretary to recommend a go on Operation Tsunami—that’s the codename for an all-out air-and-sea assault on Rusalka—”
“But now with a little something extra thrown in for good measure?” Jon prodded.
Marianna nodded again. “Tsunami has been reconfigured as a twopronged attack, coordinated to take out both the surface and undersea elements in one shot. Given a choice, we’ll capture Rusalka rather than sink her.”
“And Antipode?”
“Well, it’s not as if there’d be people there, not two miles down. And the best guesses on what could be down there have got the National Security Council climbing the walls. Not that it’s anybody’s preferred outcome, you understand, but if need be CROM’s ready to nuke it first, and ask questions later.
“The whole thing’s good to go for first light tomorrow,” she finished bleakly.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Jack echoed Jon’s earlier sentiments. “You’ve got to find a way to call it off!”
“But wouldn’t a nuclear explosion destroy this Vurdalak?” she asked.
“Not hardly. It took the biggest explosion of all time to create it—the Big Bang.” Jack shook his head. “No, as far as Vurdalak is concerned, all your piddling little low-yield device will do is momentarily increase its food supply. But the impact on Antipode itself is a different story: the blastwave from a nuclear explosion at that depth is going to crack your mountaintop wide open.”
“And then?”
“And then it’s doomsday all over again, except we do it to ourselves this time. As to what happens—hell’s bells, what doesn’t?” Jack waved an arm distractedly. “Tectonic upheavals, the mantle buckling, ultimately, collapse of the Earth itself. Maybe I should’ve taken the sim all the way through to the finale. If you could see—”