Class Fives: Origins (17 page)

Dan stopped, hand on the doorknob, and turned to regard him.

“Yes, John, I know. I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

John smiled, almost bitterly.

“I don’t really trust anybody.”

Dan nodded slowly.

“I can see that,” he said simply, turned the knob and opened the door.

Closing it behind them, John deliberately threw the lock and turned to look at the kitchen counter. Was there any more of that bottle from last night left, he wondered? He certainly could use a good stiff one right about now. Maybe two.

Dan preceded Jim out the front door of the apartment building and moved across the street toward the cruiser. Both men were lost in their own thoughts, trying to organize what they had only recently known was true about the universe and attempting to make these new puzzle pieces fit in some way, without having to bang them in place with a hammer.

Neither noticed the nondescript black car parked far down the block, nor the man in the passenger’s seat holding the binoculars to his eyes.

“Time,” Jones said, giving the little wheel between the long lenses a tiny turn and bringing the two distant men into even sharper focus.

“Eighteen minutes nine seconds,” White replied, glancing at his watch, which had been tallying up the microseconds since the two officers had first exited the vehicle and approached the building.

“Nature of the anomaly?” Jones inquired.

“Unspecified. Further data is required.”

Jones lowered the binoculars as the cruiser began to pull away from the curb and toward the end of the block ahead.

“Interrogate?” White asked.

“Not yet. Resume surveillance of the witness. But record for later action.”

White nodded and reached into his pocket, extracting the small cell phone. He punched the single number with which it had been programmed, and heard a single ring before a connection was made.

“Crawford.”

“Identify,” said the soothing female voice.

“White.”

“One moment.”

The line clicked off for the space of two breaths before it clicked to life once more.

“Crawford.”

“This is White. We may have a second anomaly. Inconclusive at this time.”

“Explain,” Crawford said.

“Post-questioning surveillance of the officer witness resulted in a visit to a different party than the suspected anomaly. Identity of the subject most likely John Kleinschmidt, unemployed, thirty-five years of age. Recently questioned by the officer witness in connection with an unrelated case.”

“Go on.”

“Other case also has questionable elements, including the statement of the victim, a liquor store clerk. He reports Samaritan neutralizing a potential armed robbery suspect upon entry to the place of business, prior to any indication of a criminal intent.”

“How is that an anomaly?” Crawford asked.

“Victim also states seeing the Samaritan make unexplained physical displacement just prior to the event.”

“Very well. Note and follow up. But for now, concentrate on the accident. Find the Samaritan.”

“Understood.”

White flipped the phone closed and leaned to rotate the key in the ignition.

The cruiser was just pulling away into traffic at the far end of the block. It would be easy to reacquire upon mirroring the turn.

White cast a flat, blank glance at the apartment building as the vehicle slid by it.

Somewhere inside, he wondered if there was anything there worth looking for.

A few moments later they, too, had turned into traffic.

6

Security

“It’s a great honor to meet you,” Marvin said, feeling a bit overwhelmed, even as he leaned forward to extend his hand and the other physicist shook it.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Vernon responded, casting a quick glance around the office, searching for a surface he could offer as a seat that wasn’t piled with papers, but failing to find one.

Normally he was the only one who ever spent any time here, so he’d removed much of the furniture in order to give him the space to bring in the extra rolling blackboards in case the ones that occupied most of the wall space wound up too full to take another calculation.

He never erased them. They contained every significant concept that had popped into his head for the last several years, always awaiting him, always there for his eye to fall over when he pondered some other seemingly unrelated idea, which might suddenly trigger yet another new thought. And when they needed correction, it merely took the swipe of a sleeve over the chalk to clear the exact space he required.

“Listen, why don’t we go get some coffee or something,” he said, “You can tell me what this is about.”

“Sure,” Marvin replied, “Whatever you want.”

Vernon hustled around the cluttered desk, pulled open the drawer and began to rummage.

“So, you saw my lecture? At the conference?” he said, distractedly.

“Actually, no,” Marvin said, a bit embarrassed, “A friend of mine, my old professor, he saw it, thought it might relate to some work I’m doing myself.”

Vernon nodded absently, but seemed to locate what he was seeking in the drawer and extracted a small, dark object which he rammed into the pocket of his rumpled trousers and raised his head to shoot Marvin a wide smile.

“Shall we go?”

As they walked down the hall and left the building on their way to the small café tucked in the far corner of the campus, Marvin outlined his conversation with Professor Manstein, and Vernon gave a quick summary of his concept of the layers of the universe.

But when Marvin mentioned his need to probe Vernon’s thoughts about finding a way to detect Dark Matter, the resident physicist jerked to a halt in the middle of the walkway, his body stiffening.

Marvin stopped and whirled, surprised.

“What?” he said, suddenly concerned.

Vernon stared at him, his eyes slowly clouded with suspicion.

“Why do you want to detect Dark Matter?”

Marvin hesitated, glancing around, not really sure how to respond, then fixed his attention back on the other physicist.

“Something happened,” he said, simply. “And I need to know why, and if it could happen again.”

“What?” Vernon choked, tensely.

Marvin’s face screwed up for a moment.

“I’m not really supposed to say.”

Vernon seemed to consider this, then took a step toward the other man and rooted himself, lifting his head to stare seriously into Marvin’s face.

“Look,” he said, rapidly but with a tone of deep reason, “I cannot work in an atmosphere where any concept or any data which supports or clarifies that concept is withheld. Now I have just about the highest security clearance anyone who isn’t qualified to push a nuclear launch button can get. I need one because of my work. Now if you want my help, you’re going to have to trust me and tell me what I need to know to help you. All right?”

Marvin felt an uncomfortable sensation settle on him. He had to try and solve what had caused the displacement of the asteroids, but he was confined within the security rules. He sighed.

“I work on Deep Look,” he said flatly.

Vernon’s eyes flared a moment before falling back to puzzled curiosity.

“The near Earth orbit tracking system?”

Marvin’s face contorted with a kind of internal pain.

“It’s a bit more than that,” he said. He had one last moment on the nearside of the security breach, then took a deep mental breath and stepped over it.

“The primary purpose of Deep Look is to track all celestial objects within the plane of the solar system, not just near Earth.”

Vernon’s expression began to mirror that of a curious dog.

“What do you mean, all? Space junk? Satellites? Stray nuts and bolts?”

Marvin was nodding as he plucked up the thought, carrying it along.

“And asteroids,” he added, “And planets and comets and the Ort cloud. Anything that gets anywhere near the plane of the solar system and might represent a catastrophic threat.”

Vernon stared at him a long moment.

“Everything? That’s how much stuff? How many individual objects?”

Marvin smiled.

“Billions.”

Vernon’s face blanked for a moment as he considered this.

“Where’s the data come from?”

“Everywhere,” Marvin replied. “Any data source on the planet. Every observatory, radio telescope, receiver dish. Everything. It all gets fed to our facility.”

Vernon’s expression seemed to tighten, his eyes fixed on some intense point outside the world.

“What happened? Why do you need to detect Dark Matter?” he said, his voice tense.

“We – Well, I, detected an anomalous orbital pattern in a particular asteroid. And I used the Deep Look software to backtrack it and found something, some force, knocked it out of its normal orbit a long time ago.”

He paused for Vernon to comment but the other physicist seemed rooted and miles away.

“I also found,” Marvin continued, “That in that same location a number of other objects also got bumped. None of them are on trajectories that present any threat, but they all got bumped at the same time, from the same thing. It’s like someone threw a baseball through a window. Only there was no baseball. No physical object, and no energy force we can detect caused it. So I thought Dark Matter is tied somehow to gravitational fields – “

“Oh my God,” Vernon breathed, his body suddenly slumping, growing unsteady.

Marvin flinched, already reaching out to grab his arm and help him to the side of the walkway where he eased him to the grass.

“Are you okay? Should I call 911?”

Vernon flapped an arm dismissively and sagged over to prop himself up, sucking in  deep, quick breaths.

“Nothing,” he gasped. “Anxiety attack.”

Marvin remained half crouched, his arms extended, as if the ability to suddenly grab the other man would be of any use.

“Do you need a paper bag to breathe into or something?”

Again Vernon lifted a warding-off arm and seemed to focus on controlling his breathing. After a few moments, it was deep but regular once more.

“This event,” he gasped. “When did it happen?”

Marvin was momentarily confused.

“Thirty five years ago.”

Vernon nodded.

“And the location?”

Marvin hesitated.

“Russia. Somewhere in the Bilyarsk region.”

Vernon sucked in one final deep breath and shifted himself around to draw up his legs and wrap his arms around them.

“Karillan,” he said in a harsh rasp. “Alexander Karillan.”

Marvin stared down at him for a moment, then lowered himself beside him on the grass.

“Who is Alexander Karillan?”

Vernon took a final few seconds to settle himself before speaking.

“He’s the basis of my work. His experiments.”

Marvin waited, allowing the other man to calm himself enough to speak clearly. At last Vernon turned to look at him.

“He’s not well known. Most of his work was kept top secret. He never collaborated with anyone, he was funded out of some covert Russian thing.”

“What was he doing?”

Vernon sighed.

“He was attempting to find what was on the other side of the quantum field, at the fundamental level of existence.”

Marvin raised a hand.

“Wait. Other side of the quantum field?”

Vernon nodded briskly.

“Right. Atoms made of protons, neutrons, electrons. Protons, neutrons and electrons made of quarks. Quarks made of Mezons, Bozons, you know the drill. Way down at the bottom, the quantum field. No mass, just energy.”

Marvin nodded.

“Right, beyond that, nothing.”

“No,” Vernon said sharply, “Beyond that is outside. Beyond the canvas.”

“What canvas?”

“It’s this analogy I use. Reality is like a painting. The matter is the paint. The canvas is what holds it all together, in our case, space-time.”

“Okay,” Marvin said slowly.

Vernon turned awkwardly to confront him.

“We have never been able to get down to the canvas,” he said, his voice tightening. “We can’t even touch it. But what if we could? What if we could scratch a hole in it, peek really close, see what was on the other side?”

Marvin stared back at him.

“Another universe?”

Vernon shook his head sharply.

“No. Outside what we think of as the universe. Outside all universes. The thing all the multiple universes are inside of.”

“Extra-dimensional space?” Marvin asked.

“No, not extra-dimensional. Beyond dimensions. Something else entirely.”

“What?”

Vernon smiled, almost wickedly.

“Where the Dark Matter actually is,” he said. “Where gravity is leeching from.”

He fixed Marvin with a strange, passionate, frightening look.

“Where God lives,” he added quietly.

Marvin stared back at him in silence, not sure whether he was being bathed in the faintest reflection of some brilliant new human insight, or witnessing the first flickers of a complete mental breakdown.

Vernon finally pulled his eyes away.

“But I didn’t know…” he muttered.

“Didn’t know what?” Marvin prompted.

Vernon sat thoughtfully for a long while before replying quietly.

“He said he just wanted to fund my research and get it to the experimental stage.”

“Who did?”

“He gave me Karillan’s work. His notes. I don’t know how he got hold of them but it was exactly along the same path. He’d already cracked a few of the equations that had been stumping me, and filled in some gaps on some things that weren’t connecting for me. Ultimately it allowed me to figure out how to get substantial matter to interact with insubstantial matter. To get the fundamental forces in the universe in which we all exist to interact with what’s outside.”

Marvin pondered this for a long moment.

“So, that’s a good thing, right? A whole new area gets opened up. That’s what we want as scientists.”