The Petrovski Effect: A Tess Novel

by Randy Moffat

  Petrovski looked at him in shocked amazement.

  “I may be a genius . . . but you are just fucking crazy!”

  “Hmmm. That certainly is the consensus of opinion around here . . . Got any ideas?”

  Petrovski looked distant . . .

  Qing Li typed away with rapid precision on his new report to Beijing. The keys were a staccato series of small slaps under his practiced hands. He was typing in English. After all these years he used it every day and thought in it. Chinese was almost alien to him now so he had a program that would translate English into it instead of remembering the complexities of the slippery and imprecise pictographs making up written Chinese.

  He was pleased. He had determined that the Q-Kink team was indeed working on a very advanced communication device. It had been difficult, but his agents had been able to establish that the team working on the technology had now taken up residence at a series of old caves called Anglewood in the American state of Kansas, in a heretofore abandoned government facility—one which about which little was known. Li liked that. Americans working in secret in caves to crush China was a romantic image certain to appeal to the Chinese mentality. Li was also relieved. It also meant that they were working at a place just marginally on the extreme edge of his own operational area and he would have no hint of a requirement to turn it over to the west coast intelligence division.

  Even better the Americans appeared to be working on something that involved quantum effects. It would be radically different research and Li was certain that he was the first Chinese agent to get wind of it. If Li could hijack the results of their research it would allow China to instantly counter it and negate any American gain. In the game he was playing here, it was vital that he be the first to report it. Usually, the first to report something meant the reporter got assigned the task of its retrieval. He needed that. If he did steal it he would be a hero with his name back on the lips of everyone who counted in intelligence—he would have an instant reputation as the man who counted Coup on the Americans yet again. It would make him invaluable . . . and safe again from recall for another decade or more. He wriggled in his seat in anticipation.

  He readdressed the report to accidentally include the two people that Po had been sent to see in China. The two people whose titles meant nothing, but who were like Li . . . hidden in plain sight and clearly were players pushing the other pieces around the chessboard. They were the ones for whom this report was targeted. This was one report that would not pass through the hands of No Pants Po. The key people who read it back in China would understand who he was again.

  He drank some coffee by way of celebration.

  He preferred it to tea now.

  CHAPTER 11—LANDING HARD AND RUNNING

  A day and half later Bear sensed a rebellious mood in his troops. He trusted Petrovski and the others not to have talked about the specifics of their conversations, but somehow the word ‘ship’ had leaked out while others had got wind of the increase in funding and knew he had proposed something radically new. Bear probed and it turned out that most of them shared Petrovski’s hestitation and did not relish being remembered by history for being on the design team that created the worst weapon since Fat Man and Little Boy, while the remainder did not want to be known to be working for a known lunatic. He called for a group hug to get them onboard.

  “The news of my dementia has been greatly exaggerated.” He began by looking around at some frankly disbelieving faces and smiled his best political smile. He would see the warm and fuzzy he’d loaded into it being absorbed with relief. They were visibly putting their butterfly nets away and he imagined several were taking the Belleview asylum off speed-dial on their cell phones under the tables.

  “Right! This whole crazy notion of a ship is all on me. Totally on me! You folks have a get out of jail free card for working here and if anything goes wrong you get to point at me as responsible party. If you want that in writing you got it! What could be fairer than that? More than that, this project may be classified folks . . . . but not so classified that its members can’t call their leadership a whack job and get away with it . . .” Bear looked at each one in turn as he finished speaking with his arms open as if to embrace them. “. . . but only if it is true. No hidden agendas and nothing up my sleeve. When I called you in here it was as a vote of confidence in each and every member of this team. MY team! OUR team! Here’s what I need you to get . . .” He dropped his voice to a hoarse emotional conspirator’s whisper that would convey utter sincerity . . . perfect for manipulation.

  “I know in life you don’t hear you are respected every day. I especially know that in your past lives you probably did not get rewarded very often for innovation and inventiveness. But in here the universe is turned upside down . . . you are stuck in one of those rare moments in time and space . . . these are squatting on the coordinates when you need to leave all the bad lessons you’ve learned in your life behind and run with an absolute creative license. I have complete confidence in your insights and I need to couple that confidence with outrageous, incredible, amazing creativity to produce something truly . . . well . . . astounding!” He was meeting eyes levelly left and right.

  He could see their pride blowing up a bit as he spoke and kept huffing the bellows of glowing words under their egos. Leadership is more art than science and he was busily slapping paint on an impromptu masterpiece. Moving people to do great things required a paintbrush and an artist worthy of the work. Instinct and experience and not training were at work.

  “So here is what I want from you. Here is what I need you to want. I want to keep this simple so you can hit the ground running. I am dividing the labor and the work. First . . .” He pointed. “ . . . . we set out to design a communications device. Therefore we will continue to design and build some kind of com device using what we know now about the apparatus. Second, we discovered the possible weapons application of the Petrovski effect through its effects on the big chunk of matter called the State of Missouri. Therefore, we will study that aspect of the effect, not so much toward constructing super weapons, as discovering if the destructive effects can be measured, controlled, and replicated if only so we avoid unintended damage and kill someone by mistake. To be clear, I do not really want to build a weapon so much as understand how the unlooked for weapons aspects of the Petrovski effect can be minimized and kept them neatly inside Pandora’s Box. To do that we need to know how it works . . . what its range is . . . how to precisely point the whole mess . Clear?”

  He looked around . . . he had their interest. They were all listening closely and he drove on . . . using the passion he was half surprised to find in himself to carry into his voice. He made a miserable spin doctor, but a pretty good sincere leader type.

  “Finally, we have an additional responsibility to discover something newer still . . . it is an aspect to the effect called the Alcubierre metric and we must find out if it can be harnessed in any usable way based on simple experimentation. My gut tells me that this may be even more important than either of the other two outcomes. It is therefore this team’s primary objective. I’ll say that again for emphasis. The priority mission is the next application of the Petrovski effect! Not communications. Not weapons. We think it causes ripples in the space time matrix, now let’s prove it. The quickest method I can think of to do that is to apply it to the practical world. You may have overheard the word ‘ship’. It’s a good word people. Think big folks. Forget all the crap of middle class mediocrity and limited bureaucratic event horizons. Think really big on this one. What could be more dramatic than the movement of a ship across the space time matrix to prove the notion? So what if it doesn’t work? Who cares? I certainly don’t. A wise man once said, ‘If things are always working exactly the way they were planned, you probably aren’t pushing the edge of the technological envelope.’ I couldn’t agree more. The tortoise of the government’s officially sanctioned
projects will always be surpassed by the hare of an ad hoc skunk-works like this one. It’s basic guerilla science doctrine—They are big and clumsy, we are small and agile. It’s our strength, not our weakness. I’ve assembled here in the bat cave the tools, the money, the people and the material . . . the one ingredient I cannot give you all is ganas . . . the genuine desire to do it!I cannot infuse you with the mood for an adventure on the ragged edges of human understanding! I need you to help me. I need each and every one of you. All of us have to focus ourselves to work harder than we have ever worked before. If we make mistakes . . . so what? T. Alva Edison said ‘2% inspiration and 98 % perspiration.’ He burned a hundred crappy filaments to find the one that worked in the light bulb. A hundred strike-outs for every grand slam . . . but man! Look at the grand slams that guy hit! It is time for your all to perspire a bit people.”

  In the complex dynamic of the human psyche they were all watching him differently now. A shift on their faces from a dour expectation of looming disaster had given way to various looks of interest and excitement. They had come to his side more or less. It was going to be an exploration. It could be exciting. It could be fun, and could be just a little dangerous, but he had cunningly ameliorated the danger to the civil service sensibilities among them by taking any blame on himself. Instead he enlisted their better instincts to excel. As the leader went, so too went the followers and this leader was moving forward at 300 kilometers per hour. It was exhilarating and a few were even wriggling from the tingle.

  “Priorities people!” Bear clapped his hands, “Here is the duty roster.” He grinned suddenly. “The communications rig belongs to Mr. Feathersgait and Rivera . . . with help from Woo part time. The death ray belongs to Aziz and Gaston . . . with part time help from Pinta. Top priority is further applications though. That goes to Petrovski, Wong and Baxter with help from everyone else when Baxter schedules you. Follow on operations are the responsibility of the whole team and if you ain’t sweating you are dead wrong! Everyone helps at critical junctures on all three projects. I want everyone working without break. No vacations folks! The soft times are over. We will need another working accelerator as soon as possible so we do not jam up around the single set of equipment. O’Hara, order anything you need, but get it here . . . tomorrow if you can. I do not want shortfalls of materiel to be what short circuits our pace of operations. We have the money, use it! Everyone works . . . Baxter sets the work schedules, you do not need my OK, set them up and drive them hard Sergeant!”

  The Non-Commissioned Officer grinned evilly back at him. Being a non-commissioned officer he loved setting schedules. He was positively anal about schedules. Too many years in the Army had made him wedded to schedules like a crack addict for the sweet hit of his next baseball and series of snow lights.

  “I will set up the base Gant and PERT charts to timetable the work schedule . . . they will be open source so anyone can access them and make changes in pencil, but changes have to be initialed by me or Johnson so we can see larger interactive effects and meet mission objective . . . OK? Questions?”

  There were surprisingly few and most were around large details that Bear quickly put to rest. When they were done, Bear grinned openly at them. It was infectious and they all smiled openly back. Their lead loony appeared to be manageable after all . . . rather than a true psycho he was merely an eccentric like Miss Marples or anyone in Washington. He was back in their good graces again. The madness of King MacMoran bore with it the smell of calculation rather than the stink of a Schizoid. They would now be too busy to second guess their support or anything further he had to say. Most rose eager to get to work. with Bear clapping his hands

  “Let’s make the Anglewood Bat Cave the new Menlo Park!” Bear said.

  There was a collective titter and they left. Wong stayed because Bear laid a hand on his arm.

  “XO. I can’t do this alone. Help me to figure out the power plan fix . . . and fast! I trust you. Take all the time you want . . . as long as we have a rough plan by day after tomorrow.”

  Wong grinned and laughed. As a sailor he was used to this kind of abuse. The US navy thought nothing of 23 hour shifts.

  “Thanks for the extra time. Maybe I can do a few other heroic chores, slay Grendel’s mom or lower the national debt in my spare moments . . . By the way . . . an experiment inside an experiment inside yet another experiment? That is just Brilliant! Nice snow . . . I mean sales job, Boss! And may I say with great respect that you are one crazy motherfucker?”

  Bear smiled with the corners of his lips.

  He had expected Wong to see through his rhetoric to his underlying worry. It was encouraging and yet scary that his second in command did not understand yet how tight time had just gotten.

  He had a lot on his mind now that people were no longer the problem . . .

  O’Hara was on top of him. Ironically, her black hair gave no illusion of the redhead in the movies that bore her name. The half light picked up highlights that iridesed like the wing on a Raven. She had already enjoyed herself once and then being of a giving nature had shaken off a post coital half stupor with jolts of mysterious female hormones and climbed on top of him, taking him inside her and rolling around energetically to help him out. As always it was very good for him with her, like most men the visual image playing a significant part in his arousal—the sight of her with her tangled hair flung out in a static electric halo that was falling half over her face and her breasts hanging forward like small beautiful pears drove him almost mad. Being by his own nature a gentleman he waited until her own gyrations gave her the friction she herself needed for a second round, though it wasn’t at all easy to hold his lust in check at this point. It was always that way with courteous men . . . held on the exquisite razor’s edge, trying not to fall off into orgasm. Bear knew her just enough by now and was able to time it so that he arrived at his moment of crisis in tune with her own barely swallowed hollers of pleasure. It was the kind of lovemaking he liked best and the sight of her remained in his mind’s eye for twenty minutes as their passion cooled through damping stages like a fading fire; first hugs and intense mindless kisses, through collapsing squeezes and relaxation and then finally into a languid spoon that was as nice as the sex in its own way. They fell asleep like that.

  Bear awoke around 5 AM to find her studying his face intently.

  Disconcerted he stretched and half sat up, cradling her head on his chest.

  She still looked up at him out of the top of her eyes from that position and he returned her soft gaze gladly for a few minutes until her practical female nature overcame their developing fondness for one another and thrust itself to the fore so that she sat up.

  “Bear . . .”

  Bear looked at her chest frankly and she dragged the sheet up to cover the erect nipples in annoyance, clearly wanting his attention in another way.

  “Bear . . . I been thinking about it. I think I may have found a spacecraft . . . sorta.”

  Bear looked at her face in astonishment.

  “Honey, you have just taken me to the outer edges of the universe . . . you are my spacecraft Acushla. And such beautiful lines she has too . . .” He ran his fingertips along her arm, the light brushing raising goose-bumps.

  She gave him an expression that was uniquely female, something between a smirk at the compliment and annoyance at not being taken seriously by the big lug she’d kindly shared her mattress with.

  Bear sighed and sat up straighter.

  “OK. Tell me.”

  “You ass . . . and don’t think for a minute I did not get how you were manipulating this group into supporting your wacky schemes . . .” She rolled over, her back to him.

  “I’d have underestimated you if you hadn’t caught on . . .” Bear said around a smile.

  He spooned her again.

  One thing led to another in the way of human silverwa
re drawers.

  Bear had demanded his team sweat and now was sweating with his team.

  At that moment the salty sweat stung his eyes and a big drop dangled on the end of his nose. Bear dragged a forearm across his forehead to clear some of it which added a nice slash of grease on his forehead like war paint while just missing whacking himself on the head with the crescent wrench he forgot was still gripped tightly in his fist. He was tired. Worse, the pain in his muscles was almost making him regret putting Baxter in charge of personnel scheduling. The power had clearly gone to Baxter’s head and he was working everyone pitilessly. Seeing everyone else working so hard, Bear had been embarrassed to be the only one with his hands in his pockets and naturally volunteered to fill in around the edges of his other important duties like thinking, drinking coffee, and pointing randomly at things while assuming leader-like poses. The Non-Commissioned Officer had seized on his offer like a man overboard snatching at a life preserver just flung from the promenade deck above by a lady of delicate years wearing a ball gown. He jammed Bear into the work plan with a vengeance. Since most important jobs were already being worked on by the small teams he had built, Bear ended up doing all the jobs that the other team members were either putting off as too hard or too complicated. On many of the chores wet armpits represented the shortest distance between two points so Bear was beginning to regret firing everyone up quite so much. Even Feathersgait had been seen out of his business suit although expecting to find dirt under his fingernails was still a bit too much to expect in such a natural enemy of the proletariat.

  At present Bear was helping Rivera torque down a framework of tubing for something or other that she was building with Woo for the communications rig. It had a small dish antennae mounted on it and four big rubber wheels so it could be rolled around. There was another just like it half finished across the room and a third one a quarter mile away in an empty room of the caves. Everything else on the rig was unrecognizable or unfinished and Bear had been too busy to ask.