Artifact

by Gregory Benford

  “Does that mean it’s sucking in more matter from one side than another?”

  “I’m afraid so. Maybe it’s chewing away at the rock on the inside now.”

  Abe said, “Despite the fact that the dust from the plug boring came from the opposite side?”

  “Right.”

  “You think it’s…getting more unstable?” Claire said quietly.

  “Yes.” It was only a reasonable hypothesis, not a certainty, but he couldn’t think of any other interpretation.

  “We should tell our Mr. Carmody,” Claire said.

  “Yes.”

  Carmody already knew. He arrived moments later and dealt with the TV crew immediately.

  “You sure didn’t have to fool with them much,” John said as Carmody came back inside the lab.

  “No problem. My men took care of it,” Carmody said. He wore a trench coat and didn’t remove it, as though he wasn’t going to stay. A sedate red tie showed at a button-down collar. He didn’t even take off his all-weather fedora.

  “What’d they tell the crew?”

  “Whatever works,” Carmody said, clearly closing the topic.

  John introduced him to Abe and then Hampton, who stood somewhat apart from the others, looking out of place but unwilling to leave. Hampton plainly saw this was important, but he didn’t know what was happening and nobody bothered to tell him.

  Abe quickly explained their data and conclusions. He phrased things in the usual scientist’s way, using sentences sprinkled with “seems probable” and “working hypothesis” and “perhaps.” Carmody was not a man who liked uncertainty. He scowled and asked, “The strongest counts are that way, to the northeast. That mean anything?”

  They assured him it did not.

  “You believe that thing, that singularity, may be breaking out of the rock?”

  “Yes,” John said. No point in being overly provisional.

  “I talked to Professor Zaninetti this morning. He estimates the minimum mass of the ‘free configuration,’ he calls it, at an equivalent of a hundred megaton hydrogen warhead. You agree?”

  “Yes.” That was a reasonable ballpark number. It all depended on how the components separated, and how efficiently they converted their mass-energy into other forms, but Carmody didn’t want to hear all that.

  “All right,” Carmody said, as if making a decision. “Do you have a secure telephone on this campus?”

  When John looked blank he said, “Never mind, I’ll make a patch through in the car. Come on.” He waved at Abe, Claire and John, ignoring Hampton.

  “Where?”

  “The docks. We have a lead on Kontos down there.”

  John realized they were not going to the Boston docks only when they stopped to pay the toll at the Callahan tunnel. Carmody was still talking on the telephone in the front of the sedan, sealed off behind a formidable transparent partition. There was an impressive array of communications gear up front, and the Lincoln Continental had a special lumbering solidity about it, as if it weighed more than usual. They could scarcely feel the inevitable potholes on the Boston streets, evidence of extra shock absorbers.

  They emerged in East Boston, a mile south of Logan Airport, and immediately turned right onto Maverick Street, past three-storey houses that despite their age were well kept up. They turned south and entered a zone of moldering ware-houses and gas stations and seedy diners. Within a few blocks the driver slowed to let the following car, this one’s identical twin, catch up. Then he turned left and stopped at a long pier. The air had a salt tang and trucks labored past.

  Carmody got out without looking back to see if anyone was following. He strode directly into a brick building with BRECKENRIDGE DOCKING over the doorway. From the following car came several men in long coats. They stood by the cars and looked around. During the trip over the three academics had been isolated in Carmody’s back seat and knew nothing of what was happening. Since no one stopped them, they went inside.

  The entrance was dominated by a broad counter littered with papers. An Irishman in overalls stood behind it, looking interested but confused. Carmody was talking to a lean man dressed in a bulky overcoat that didn’t fit very well. John wondered if he was carrying a gun under there. Carmody turned, as if noticing them for the first time, and motioned to Claire. “Dr. Anderson, if you’d have a look at this.”

  The lean man was holding an account book. He spread it on the counter. “Do you recognize this writing?”

  Claire peered at it. “Yes, I believe so. Those messy t’s and a’s, I’ve seen them. Kontos wrote his entries like that at the site. I had to decipher them for the inventory.”

  Carmody looked satisfied. Claire said, “This is a receipt for docking charges. They had a boat here?”

  The Irishman, leaning across the counter, said, “Yeah, a beat-up old towboat. Nothing much. Greek registry.”

  “When did they leave?” Carmody asked.

  “Look right there in the book. Noon, Sunday.”

  “They load anything on?” Carmody asked.

  “Somethin’, a crate, yeah.”

  “Without clearing the harbormaster?”

  “They must’ve, papers was in order.”

  “Load it on deck?”

  “No, down the hold.”

  Claire said, “Of course they wanted to keep it out of sight. They unloaded here, then drove the truck to the airport, where we’d expect to find it.”

  John said, “So they got away.”

  “No,” Carmody said, already walking out of the place. “Their boat went down off Castle Island. That’s how we backtracked it to here.”

  Boston’s inner harbor is not lovely, particularly on a chilly winter’s day. Castle Island is a stub of land jutting up from the south and defining the mouth of it. South of there is City Point Beach, where people who cannot bother to travel south toward Quincy go for picnics. Today the bleak stretches of rock and sand that made the crescent beach were deserted except for four scuba divers who had just come ashore. John wondered why anyone would go diving on a day like this until Carmody got out of the front of the Lincoln and marched down toward the four.

  Carmody had been on the telephone all during the drive back into Boston and then east on Summer Street. The traffic had eased up on Broadway and they made good time. When Carmody put the phone back into its clip he just stared straight ahead, not attempting to tell the three in the back seat anything. John was beginning to feel like a prisoner being taken to police headquarters.

  They followed Carmody again, this time with five men from the other car who didn’t look alike but gave the same feel—solid, unperturbed, alert. Offshore, a large motorboat slowly churned north. There were two more divers standing at its stern.

  Claire said, “Did you notice yesterday, Carmody didn’t actually say where he was from?”

  “Sure did,” John replied. “He mentioned the State Department, but he didn’t say he was one of them.”

  “Who are these men, the FBI?”

  “Not their jurisdiction.”

  “The CIA?”

  “Maybe, but they don’t get involved in internal stuff like this much.”

  “Then who—” But now they approached the divers, who were examining debris. Some of it had obviously washed up on the beach and was wallowing in the swell. The divers were turning over some painted planking. The boards looked scorched at one end.

  “Looks like it burned,” Carmody was saying to one of the divers.

  “There’s a big hole in the stern, right below the hatch,” the diver said. On his wet suit was stenciled ARDITTI.

  “That’s what sunk it?” Carmody asked.

  “Looks like.”

  “But there was a fire.”

  “Not much of one. These pieces burned for sure, but inside the hold there’s not much damage.”

  “The fire opened the hole?”

  “I dunno. Funny-looking, not like your typical wreck. I mean, no extensive damage except for this one hole,
like I said.”

  “You can get down to it easily?”

  “Sure, it went down in sixty, maybe seventy feet of water. Murky, though.” Arditti made a face. From the smell coming off the water John gathered it was more than murky.

  “Any trace of the crate?”

  “Nossir.”

  “Any bodies?”

  “None so far. Tide’d carry them by now, though.”

  “Check the vessel thoroughly.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Recon the area, looking for the crate. Careful of the radiation. Get more men. I’ll have the Harbor Patrol seal this area off.”

  “Yessir.”

  Arditti’s bearing was military and respectful. He asked no questions, just spoke to his team. They started putting their tanks back on.

  Carmody sighed and turned to the academics. “We got a report from the Harbor Patrol. Nobody saw the towboat go down, as nearly as they can tell. It was Sunday, nobody around, but even so, it would’ve had to go down fast to escape notice. A civilian up by Castle Rock reported it. Harbor Patrol had it in their activity list. One of our men saw it, called me. I sent a diving team out. The Harbor people would’ve gotten around to it if a craft had turned up missing, but probably not today. The divers identified the Breckenridge receipts on board, still in the captain’s log.”

  “A captain always takes his log with him, doesn’t he?” Abe put in.

  “Not this one. Probably had to jump for it. If your hull opens you’re swimming before you know it.”

  John said, “Do you think they drowned?”

  “No, the wreck’s only four hundred yards off shore. They could swim it.”

  Claire said, “The person who called in the sinking, did they see survivors?”

  “No, but their view was impeded, they said. Could be the crew got off earlier.”

  “Then where are they?”

  “Probably where they were going—a Greek freighter, the Pyramus, that just happened to be hanging around out past Nantasket.”

  “But their boat was sunk.”

  Carmody shrugged. “They could hire another. They have credit cards, a fake ID—Kontos used them on Breckenridge.”

  “Or they could go somewhere else.”

  Carmody shook his head, thinking. His pocked face was red in the chilly air, as if he were unusually warm. His eyes were round, excited, but he still spoke in the measured, solid way he had yesterday, unflappable.

  “Why not?” Claire asked.

  “The Pyramus turned out to sea at dusk yesterday. I just got a satellite to take a peep. It’s headed out at top speed.”

  “You can’t be sure,” John said.

  “We’re checking boat rentals now. Their credit card names will turn up.”

  “Can’t the Navy stop them?” Abe demanded. “They’re thieves.”

  Carmody shrugged. “Board them on the high seas? Contrary to international law.”

  “Why bother?” Claire asked, turning toward the bay. “They left the artifact out there.”

  CHAPTER

  Nine

  Claire stared down at the dirty gray waters of the inner harbor. She remembered how, when a ship went down, planes were always reported to be looking for an oil slick. Well, no problem here—the whole bay seemed to be covered with a thin blue sheen. Plus plastic bottles of Orangeade or laundry bleach, wrappers, dead fish, brown water-logged driftwood—even something like a pale snakeskin that she finally recognized with a shiver of disgust.

  She turned away from the sight and leaned against the railing. They were on a large, flat-bottomed barge, its deck stacked with diving and trawling gear. Men worked among the jumbled piles of equipment. The harbor was now sealed off from normal transport and occasionally a news helicopter churned overhead, only to be warned off. For several miles around on the gray waters, motorboats of every type churned in a grid pattern, searching. Divers surfaced, made their reports, and dove again. A slow swell rocked the barge. The afternoon wind cut by her and she hugged the down vest one of Carmody’s men had given her. It was adequate, but not by much.

  Sergio Zaninetti came staggering along the deck, though it was not rolling. He looked green.

  “They find it soon, I hope,” he said between clenched teeth.

  “You’ll get your sea legs,” she said.

  “Never. I always fly, never by sea.”

  “They’re covering the whole harbor, it will take time.”

  “When Carmody called I came without thinking. After an hour I am exhausted. What is your saying about this sickness? First you think you will die, then you fear you will not?”

  “Yes. What happens when we find it?” Claire asked, bowing her head into the sharp wind.

  “Carmody thinks he knows a way. He says, the divers cover the opening with some special plastique substance.”

  “What if it is out of the artifact?”

  He shrugged. “Trap it in some fashion.”

  “You seem blasé about the problem.”

  “No, only sick.” He managed a thin, queasy smile. “These things are beyond my competence. I calculate the field theory, the probable bound states, that is all.”

  Claire watched the gangs of men preparing a fishing boat for a run. The big winch lowered trawling nets and grapplers down into the boat’s stern. A diesel engine surged, moaning. “What’s this difficulty you and John are having?”

  “A detail, I think, but bothersome. We get solutions that have this cubic funniness to them. That we can do. It only comes when the particle had a kind of concealed mass. The new force we have, it cancels the mass. Good. That agrees with the fact that the cube, it did not have a large weight. You understand?”

  “I think so, at the level of—what does John call ‘the cartoon approximation.’ Gravity attracts them to each other, but this new force, called fashion or whatever, keeps them apart.”

  “Sí, good. That is the picture one gets from a rough calculation. I am faster at some of these mathematical tricks, however, and I have gone ahead with a better field theory, one with not so much hand-waving in it.”

  “Hand-waving?”

  “When we talk, rather than calculate. Italians, they are supposed to be good at this, sí?” He gestured dramatically and grinned despite his pallor. Claire saw he was trying to be gallant and entertaining; she gave him a smile in return, to help him forget his nausea.

  “Indeed.”

  “The mathematics gives us pairs of John’s ‘twists.’ But they attract each other and should”—he smacked his palms together—“make a lump. This is the trouble.”

  “The thing in the cube, it couldn’t be the lump?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps, but I do not know what the stable properties are. How do the twists come together? There is energy stored up, so that must be given off.”

  “You think the singularity in the cube is alone?”

  “It is well described by John’s first work. So that solution he found, it seems OK. But why is such a particle allowed to be free? It should find its mate.”

  “Maybe there’s something blocking it?”

  “Ah, you have gotten that idea from John. Sí, it may be that another kind of force is blocking the mating of these. Still, I must say finally, I cannot find any such funny force. Something is wrong.”

  Claire was alarmed. “Then can it be some kind of potential bomb? You told Carmody that.”

  “Sí, that I believe. It is hard to see how two of these twists could have a stable way to bind together. They must yield energy when they come together.”

  “But one of them sat safely in that cube for thousands of years.”

  Sergio pursed his lips. “That I do not understand. There are so many uncertainties here—”

  John’s voice at her elbow said, “Science isn’t certainty, Sergio, it’s just probability.”

  He had come back from his meeting with Carmody in the barge’s grimy cabin. He had on a pea jacket from one of the men and she was mildly surprised to s
ee he looked quite natural in it, as though he fit in with all these others. She said, “He says your first solutions are, uh—”

  “Misleading,” John said jovially. “I still think we’ve got a handle on the basic properties, though. Hell, I constructed the dynamics so it would agree with that artifact’s properties. I legislated it.”

  Sergio revived from his watery look of only moments before. “You cannot argue with the force between your twists, though! Comprende? The force is independent of the distance between them, so stupendous energies can be stored. They should come back together with a bang.”

  “Come on, mathematics can’t be done on an open deck,” Claire said decisively. “Let’s get coffee.”

  Sergio turned white at this suggestion. Claire noticed that despite himself John smiled at his colleague’s distress. They were friends, but always looking for an edge. A perpetual rivalry machine.

  The coffee, dispensed from a hastily assembled kitchen at the bow, was acrid. John dumped three packets of sugar in his and insisted on circumnavigating the deck. Sergio sat on a rickety chair and looked longingly at the solidity of Boston to the west. After a while he closed his eyes.

  “A diver just came in with some debris,” John said, striding along, left hand stuck into his pea jacket, right cradling a styrofoam cup. “It looks funny—singed.”

  “Burned under water?”

  “Right. As if it’s been heated up, but didn’t catch fire, of course.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Scattered over the bottom. It’s old wood, not from Kontos’s boat.”

  “So the cube is moving around down there.”

  “Carmody figures the artifact burned a hole through its crate and then through the hull. Fast, too.”

  “Then the currents—”

  “No way they could move something that heavy.”

  “So the cube should be somewhere near the Kontos wreck.”

  “Sure. Only it’s not.”

  “What makes it move?”

  “I dunno.” He looked out at the searching motorboats that dragged trawling lines.