by Chris Bunch
"Thank you, Doctor. I have won my bet. Would you mind giving me the mathematics on that?"
"Well… all right. But I am afraid I will have to charge you for that, so I hope your bet is of a consequential nature. Perhaps… a lunch?"
The description, of course, was an abstract of the AM2 particle. Kea had laboriously taught himself how to write the description of the last six months. And Kea knew of an engine that could handle that power. Stardrive. Again, all he lacked was a "handle." And the bet was of a consequential nature: The Universe.
Richards would have liked to have bought Doctor Feehely more than a meal. Hell, he would have purchased a restaurant, dedicated to making only Feehely's favorite meals and delivering them to her study for the rest of her life. But he didn't—he bought her lunch at the faculty dining room. And he could reward her no further. When business progressed further, any link with Richards or AM2 could well be lethal to her. And beyond that, she could be in even greater danger—from Kea himself. Kea Richards knew once he came close to achieving power for himself, some beings would have to die. Another saying he took as gospel: Three beings can keep a secret, if two of them are dead…
With the doctor's mathematics in hand and a copy of his original abstract, he sought out Austin. He told him he had something of the greatest importance to show him. But privately. This was far, far too big. He began with a story. The story of how, just before catastrophe struck on the Destiny I, Doctor Fazlur had been analyzing some observed phenomena taken off a darkstar they'd made close passage by. And he had been coming up with some remarkable equations. Equations that suggested a certain substance could be synthesized. A substance a bit like something he had observed off that pulsar. If his suggestions were correct, the substance could be synthesized, and modified into.
At that point, he gave Austin Doctor Feehely's equations. He scanned the first page on the screen, frowning. "Kea, old sock," he protested. "You, better than anyone, know how easily I parse numbers. Can't you give it to me straight?"
"I just wanted to make sure you'd believe me. Because otherwise you'd think I was completely gonkers." Kea had found it useful to sometimes use the old Cal Tech slang that Austin was so fond of. Then he played the abstract. Austin sat in silence, thinking. Then he managed an "Oh."
Kea watched closely—did he really track?
After a moment, Bargeta said, in a small voice, "If this particle, this substance, you know, could be synthesized… Oh. Kea, I see why you sought me out. I see why you were so mysterioso about some things that you planned to develop. You know, Kea, I feel like… who was that person? Speechless on a peak in Darien? Although what could be so impressive about Connecticut, I've never known. This is very big, Kea. Very, very big.
"I… I could be Rutherford. Better. I could be a Doctor McLean. Bigger than him, even, because this is more than just dinky little antigravity. This is everything. Stardrive first, then I am sure there will be some way to modify the substance to power anything. Everything. I feel like the first man who pumped gasoline out of the ground, whatever his name was. Oh my. Kea, this is not some kind of wicked joke, is it?"
It took almost a week of vacillating—this was too big, too important, it couldn't happen, there would have to be some government notification, perhaps a consortium of transport corporations, we could at least mount a feasibility study, actually, this would make us all richer than whoever that old Greek was, are you sure, Kea, that we should be doing something, I mean, you know, there are things that man simply wasn't meant to know, although I don't have much truck with tract-thumpers, and Christ, you know they say that genius deteriorates generation by generation, and this would certainly prove that a canard, you know, I'd be thought bigger than Father, bigger even than the first Austin, the one I'm named after, you know, the one who started this company…
Finally, "We'll do it."
A special team of lawyers and accountants were set up. They were to be firmly under Kea's direction. As was the lab he would build under supersecrecy. This might be expensive, Kea warned. Austin was willing to commit up to 10 percent of Bargeta Ltd.'s pretax resources per annum. The lab was built and top-line scientists hired for the project. Deep-space test and research ships were planned. Everyone in the corporate world knew Bargeta Ltd. was R&Ding something spectacular. Fortunately—for Kea's purposes—Austin had such a reputation as a lightweight the project was an instant joke, thought of in scientific slang as an edsel, whatever that might've been. Kea told no one why he had dubbed the operation Project Suk.
All of the hardware, and all of the personnel, were real. But it was a complete tissue. Kea knew AM2 could never be synthesized—or if it could, it would be even more gawdawfully expensive than the present fuel for stardrive. He caught himself. Never say never, he thought. Anti-Matter Two couldn't be synthesized at this moment in history, nor, most likely, at any other. Leave it at that. Besides, who would bother—once we find a way to shield the particles, which will also mean that we'll have a way to shield mining/processing ships, AM2 would be dirt-cheap. For me, at least, he thought.
There were three reasons for this elaborate charade. First, it would provide an acceptable screen for where the substance really came from one of these years. Not that important. Second, it would provide exploration ships, who were sent out with explicit instructions. The instructions were known but to those crews. They would search for an element that could be used, modified to create this shielding, which Kea had dubbed X. The exploration reports were also carefully studied, in the event they could produce a line of thought that would justify research that might lead to the synthesis of this shielding.
Yet another benefit Project Suk provided was a very quiet recruiting station. Richards sought out the best researchers on the project, which meant some of the best workers mankind could produce. The best—with two additional requirements. The first was that each person was either unattached, their family could travel with them, or they were estranged from any relatives. And the second was that each of them had some secret. An unpunished crime. Their sexual habits. Unpopular political or social theories in their home provinces/planets. Alk. Drugs. Or, best of all, that they were simply misanthropic. These people, if Richards's efforts produced anything, would be used to finish the development of AM2. Richards bought First Base on Deimos for a lab. He told Austin this was where the core research for the X particle would be conducted. There would be no possibility of leaks to business rivals—because no one except cleared Bargeta personnel would be allowed on Deimos, and all of the ancillary laboratories would be limited to a segment of the overall problem.
Finally, and most importantly, Operation Suk was Kea's cash cow. Of course there were comptrollers and such. But the day an experienced spaceship engineer couldn't steal the company's shut, while it yet thought it was wearing a formal, was the day the sun would die. Especially when Operation Suk was run in such extreme secrecy.
Six years passed. Kea was, as one of his better-liked, less-reputable, and richer mining-ship friends put it, busier'n a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest. Colorful, but accurate.
First, there was Operation Suk to run. Since he was the only one who really knew what the project was supposed to produce, he was required to go through all lab and operational summaries each reporting period and, frequently, call for the raw data. It gave him the reputation of being a very hands-on manager, as well as someone who was grudgingly respected because you couldn't slip one past him. But respect did not replace enough sleep, or personal relaxation.
Second, he was busy "helping" Austin run Bargeta Ltd. In fact—and Kea made sure that all of the people he was meeting found this out, subtly—he was running the dynasty. Austin was now regarded as even more of a numbnuts, to one level of the work force, and a dilettante, to their superiors. And Kea encouraged Austin to get out more. Travel. Get away from the job. Stay fresh. Stay active. If you bury yourself with all this little crud like I'm doing, who's going to make sure we don't stumble into a ma
nhole?
He was careful to let Austin make the decisions, and let him make some that were very poor without protest. Kea could have done a more exact job of stage-managing, but he knew just how sensitive and paranoiac the incompetent were. The last thing he needed was to be fired. Except, at his level, being canned would be phrased as "resigned to pursue exciting interests of a personal nature."
He also traveled extensively incognito. There were people he needed to meet and industries to research that had nothing to do with Bargeta Ltd. Sometimes he traveled under a false name, with false papers. One of his favorites was H. E. Raschid, in tribute to Burton and Scheherazade. Now and again people grinned—and Richards made a mental note of the person as worth cultivation.
His new contacts and friends extended far beyond the business world. Politicians. Some people who had interesting trades, some of them quite beyond the law. He spent money lavishly, but cannily. He was always willing to contribute to a pol's coffers, without regard to the man or woman's party. Eventually he controlled a significant number of Ganymede's traditionally available estates general. He also owned about a quarter of the moon itself. The estate he had constructed was more a small, ultra-secure industrial park than the sprawling demesne of a rich man.
Which is just what Kea was now. Not only was he lavishly paid by Bargeta, with his own keys to the vault with Project Suk, but his new friends offered tips and suggestions. Kea played the market in every legal and illegal manner possible, so long as it was fairly subtle. Eventually there might be an investigation and an accounting—but when or if that day came, he would either be dead, have disappeared, or have made himself beyond the law.
Then came the breakthrough, a few months into the new century. An expedition returned. Not from the stars—Kea had chanced gross amounts of Bargeta's capital to fund two stardrive expeditions—but from the Solar System's backyard. Just beyond Pluto, just beyond the shatter that had once been thought to be an eleventh planet of the system. A meteorite, almost a quarter kilometer in diameter, had been found, tested, and brought back. The ships' captain reported more drifting bodies out there that spectroed as being the same matter.
It was the X material. Nonreactive to anything that the Bargeta labs could come up with. Hard to work, but not impossible. It would not retain radiation or anything else it was bombarded with. It even failed to react to a small bit of laboratory-produced "conventional" anti-matter.
It had a melting point high enough on the Kelvin scale to be suitable for ship armor, but low enough to be workable in a high-tech foundry.
Sensing victory, and allowing himself a flash of arrogance, Richards named the X substance. Imperium X. And he ordered a certain, very unusual ship to be moved from its parking orbit around Mars to the secret lab on Deimos. There it was given a plating from bow to stem, just a few molecules thick, of the new element. The ship was that old starship he'd seen drifting in a junkyard above Mars's polar regions years ago, which he'd purchased earlier and had modified in several ways, among them so one man and several computers could ran it. It was already fueled—a good segment of Project Suk's resources had gone just to power the ship. Now for the Alva Sector, the discontinuity, and the final test.
The company announced Richards was finally going to take some time off. Kea told Austin that he would be absent for a minimum of three Earth-months. He was going somewhere, somewhere he wouldn't even tell his best friend about. Just as Austin had told him to do, a year or so ago.
"I did?"
"You did. We were fairly gassed at the time. Remember? Hey, you're the one who forgets nothing, right?"
Austin didn't laugh. Lately he had been wondering about Kea. He seemed… sometimes… as if he were setting his own course. Or, at least, behaving as if Bargeta's knowledge of the dynasty weren't that important. Perhaps, he thought, he'd have to talk to Kea. He was his friend, of course. But Austin remembered Mars, and remembered his father's reminder that the lesson of proper place must be learned and relearned, taught and retaught. There was no such thing as an irreplaceable man at Bargeta Ltd. That applied even to family members—Austin had sacked a couple of cousins just this year. No one was that vital—except, of course, Austin himself.
Two days before his planned disappearance, Richards was working out—on his private, single-station, no-links computer—the erratic series of orbits he would take to the Alva Sector. He was buzzed. His receptionist—Kea quite deliberately hired men or women for their competency and, preferably, homeliness, in deliberate contrast to Austin's office harem—said he had a visitor. She refused to announce herself. What should the receptionist do?
As she spoke, appearing to be puzzled, she kicked a pickup under her desk in the outer chamber, and a screen lit up, as instructed. This would not be the first person who preferred not to give a name to arrive at the boss's sanctum. Kea stared at the image. He was quite proud that he took less than two seconds, by his count, before he said, in a clear, normal voice, "Ah yes. Show her in."
Tamara. Still lovely. She wore a business suit that appeared to be styled for a man—once again, androgyny was the in cycle—but with a silken-looking blouse underneath, a blouse whose colors shifted and changed as sunlight and shadow crossed it. Under the suit, she would have nothing on, Kea knew. She still had that look. You may take me, any way you wish. If you can. He swam weightless for an instant. But he did not show it. He would be damned if he did.
He was delighted to see her. Embraced Tamara like a long-fondly-thought-of friend. He refused to let his mind tell him he felt her erecting nipples under the coat against his chest. Hold all calls. A drink. He seated her on his office couch, and sat close to her. But not that close. He had dreamed of seeing her again, all these years, he said. What was she doing in town? Recovering, Tamara said, her voice still sending chills, chills to match the time she'd showed him what could be done with nothing more than a few ice cubes and a leather strap. Recovering from what?
"My husband and I… are no more." She shrugged. "He's obsessed with his racing, although he certainly hasn't won anything of late. Boys and their toys, and that. I guess he never grew, and I did."
Well. Sorry, and that.
"I've been thinking about you a lot. For a lot of years. And I thought…" She stopped, waiting for Kea to pick up on the signal.
Richards waited, his expression patient, interested. Perhaps this old, respected friend was about to present an entirely new idea? Tamara tried again.
"You know, there are a lot of things I remember very, very well. Fireplaces. Silk. Laughing a lot. A hard-to-explain wind-burn." She forced a giggle, and Kea frowned for a moment, then visibly "remembered" the circumstances. Tamara's brows furrowed for an instant. This was not going as she'd planned…
"But mostly, I remember mistakes. Especially one."
"Yes. I do, too."
"I think," Tamara said, her eyes now humbly down, on her hands clasped in her lap, "that all I can say is that I was a little shit in those days. And it took me a while to grow up. And that you'll never know how sorry I am, and how much I want to make it up to you."
She managed a tear. Kea found her a handkerchief. He shrugged. "Neither one of us," he said, "was exactly an adult in those days. One mistake balances another."
Tamara started to say something, then stopped. She puzzled, unsure of what Kea had meant by his last. Then she went on. "At least," she said, "Austin wasn't as stupid as I was. So it's not like you vanished, and it's not like life only gives you…
I mean, we're in the real world. And people get a second chance, don't they?"
He took her in his arms. Kissed her. Not in a brotherly manner—but not with any marked passion. "Of course they do. And… you know, I've never forgotten you."
Kea stood and gently lifted her with a genteel hand under the elbow. "Now we have the time to get to know each other properly. Look. As soon as I'm back from this… business trip, I'll give you a call. Maybe have dinner or something. We have a lot to talk about."
/> He walked back to his desk. Tamara stared at him. She painted a smile across her face. He responded. She slowly went to the outer door, and opened it. She looked back at him. He was still smiling. Tamara stepped outside, and the door hissed closed. Just before it shut, and just before the insulation cut sound, Kea laughed.
Loudly. A harsh, unrelenting laugh. A Martian laugh. Then he forgot her.
Kea Richards vanished from man's haunts. He and the star-ship he had never bothered to name. He zigged his way across the galaxy toward the Alva Cluster. He tracked toward the discontinuity. Against interstellar blackness, he saw once again the sparklers flashing, an independence fireworks against the moonless night as tiny bits of normal matter collided with AM2 particles.
He set his course. Through the discontinuity, and into that other universe, the universe of black and all colors. He navigated, at quarter-drive, by the blind-flying system he had developed after years of hard thought, a sophisticated evolution of the navigational system Murph and Doctor Fazlur had improvised.
He had a prox detector mounted in the ship's nose. It signaled. He was closing on some interstellar debris. Perhaps no more than half a meter in size. But it would be Anti-Matter Two, more than enough to shatter this tiny ship he was aboard. He killed stardrive, went to secondary Yukawa drive, then cut all power, braked, and let inertia close him on the chunk of Anti-Matter Two.
He looked at another instrument and felt hope. This registered any object impacting on the ship's skin and was sensitive enough to go off if an Earth raindrop landed on it, when the ship was parked. Or less, actually. The readout showed his starship had been hit by particles after entering this mad universe. AM2 particles. With no adverse effect to the ship.
The prox detector's signaling was a continuous banging. Richards moved to another workstation. He fitted his hands into waldos and concentrated on instruments. From a bay just below the ship's nose, a probe extended. A claw. Another modification of Kea's. A scoop. Plated with Imperium X. He worked for long minutes with the unfamiliar controls. Sweat spattered on the controls in front of him. If he had been wrong, not only would all these years have been wasted, but he would be very dead as well, if Imperium X was not the perfect shield he had thought it to be, and the AM2 detonated in its beyond-nuclear hell.