Class Fives: Origins (22 page)

“Not a lot. Just enough to get his opinion about my conclusions related to the orbital anomalies of the asteroids.”

Crawford eyed him a moment, then gave a sharp nod.

“Go on,” he said.

Marvin collected his thoughts and plunged onwards.

“Dr. Jenkins is working on Dark Matter. Do you know what that is?”

Crawford hesitated before giving a small nod.

“Refresh my memory,” he instructed.

Marvin paused to organize and mentally compress the essence of his standard lecture about the mysterious substance only recently determined to exist throughout the universe, then began.

“Dark Matter is, currently, only theoretical. It can’t be observed directly but we can see some of its effects on celestial bodies.”

He continued for another minute, providing a brief background about the still-mysterious possibility that the bulk of what we know as the universe, that shaped and controlled its larger structure, was completely beyond our ability to observe through anything other than complex, obscure equations and the unexplained aberrations in the motions of stellar bodies throughout the galaxy.

As he finished, Crawford responded with a sharp nod, finally leaning forward in his chair.

“All right. Continue,” he said, an edge of impatience in his tone.

“Well,” Marvin said, “Dr. Jenkins told me about something he’d learned from a colleague, someone he’s been working with, that seems to relate directly to what I discovered from Deep Look.”

“What’s that?”

Marvin paused, considering how to impress upon this stranger the seriousness of what he had learned, despite its esoteric nature.

“There was a Russian physicist, Alexander Karillan, who was working on the idea of multiple universe theory. The multi-verse. The idea is that there is more than one universe, maybe even an infinite number of universes all occupying the same location, but invisible to one another because of some factor we can’t even begin to understand yet. Karillan conducted some sort of experiment thirty-five years ago, in Siberia, way out in the middle of nowhere. Only something went wrong and it blew up. Destroyed the entire facility, killed everybody, including Karillan.”

“Go on,” Crawford prompted briskly.

“According to the Deep Look backtracking software, that experiment is what caused the bumping of the asteroids.”

Crawford’s attention seemed to sharpen behind his eyes.

“How is that possible?” he cut in. “They’re millions of miles away.”

Marvin paused for a moment, searching for a halfway suitable analogy to communicate what was actually an incredible mass of equations.

“Okay, think of a water balloon,” he finally said, seizing upon the simple image. “It’s full of water under high pressure. If you take a pin and poke a tiny hole on one side, one of two things will happen. If there is a weakness in the balloon close to where you pricked it, it could tear, and the pressures from inside would rip it apart, so you’d wind up with a shredded balloon and a big puddle of water. But if the structure of the balloon is solid enough, all you get is this one, tight stream of water shooting out that tiny hole and across the room.”

“And you’re saying this Karillan character poked a hole in the balloon and got a stream that hosed the asteroids.”

“Exactly, yes,” Marvin sighed, leaning back.

“Okay,” Crawford said, finally leaning back himself to ponder what he’d just been told. “So what does that have to do with anything current? I mean, if it happened three and a half decades ago, then whatever damage was done is concluded, correct?”

Marvin hesitated.

“Possibly,” he said, his tone uncertain.

Crawford eyed him intently.

“Explain,” he said.

Marvin licked his lips, leaning slightly forward in his own seat.

“Dr. Jenkins said this colleague of his might be trying to recreate Karillan’s experiment.”

A silence fell over the plush room as Crawford absorbed the statement.

“Would that result,” he finally said slowly, “In another stream of water, or a shredded balloon?”

Marvin could feel a queasiness begin to rock back and forth in his stomach.

“I don’t know. It would depend on if there was any kind of permanent damage from the first time.”

“Where would this experiment be conducted?” Crawford prodded.

“Most likely, the same site as before.”

“In Russia.”

Marvin nodded.

“Yes, I think so. The idea is that Karillan discovered or created something at that site, some condition, that made it suitable to his experiment. And that an… emission of some kind is still leaking from it.”

He quickly explained Vernon’s work on the detector, designed to locate what couldn’t be observed in any other way.

“He gave this detector,” Marvin concluded, “To his colleague some months ago. What happened after that, he doesn’t know.”

“And what is the name of this colleague?” Crawford said evenly.

Marvin hesitated only a fraction of a second, feeling the momentarily uncomfortable sense that he was about to commit some sort of betrayal. He was about to cross some invisible but palpable line from scientist in an elite, exclusive community that preserved and nurtured universal secrets, to an informant in league with dark, unknown forces of hidden power. Because whoever this man was, he would never understand the yearning to know things merely to know them, not exploit or shape them to some unseen agenda.

But he knew all this was beyond him, and his ability to do anything about it. And if it was true, what it implied scared him half to death.

“Dr. Walter Montgomery,” he said at last.

Vernon rode the escalator down to the bare, low-ceiling space where luggage is delivered down long shoots to large rotating turntables, to be plucked up by any passing hand and whisked through the doors and into the world.

He spotted the large, bald man in the dark suit holding the sign bearing his name, and felt a wave of relief.

The directions Dr. Montgomery had given him stopped at the small airport, but he had been assured he would be met. Vernon was beginning to think he might wind up stuck in this distant place, surrounded by nothing more than open, flat wilderness, until he noticed the large, muscular, bald-headed man.

Vernon doubted he was a limousine driver. He looked more like what someone with a suspicious nature might call “muscle”. A bodyguard maybe?

For a moment as he stepped off the escalator and walked to where the man was now eyeing him, he wondered what he might be getting himself into, but shook off the sudden, creeping feeling when the man smiled warmly.

“Dr. Jenkins?” he said, in a low, rich baritone.

Vernon nodded, glancing around.

The man’s smile widened.

“Dr. Montgomery is waiting to meet you. Do you have any additional bags?”

“Uh, no,” Vernon said, glancing down at the duffle slung over his shoulder and hanging heavily by his side. “Just this.”

The man nodded again and leaned to expertly slip the strap from Vernon’s shoulder and take the loose bag, then half turned, gesturing toward the sliding glass doors that led to the parking lot.

“Shall we?”

Vernon followed him out into the sudden, harsh sunlight and slitted his eyes against it, raising a hand to cover his brow.

“So this is Montana,” he said absently.

“This is Montana,” the driver confirmed. “God’s country.”

Vernon glanced around. He’d never seen an environment so utterly flat in all directions.

“Dr. Montgomery said something about living in a piece of human history,” he ventured.

“Indeed he does,” the man said as they arrived at the long, black car and he opened the trunk to deposit the duffle into it.

“So, what did he mean?” Vernon prompted.

The bald man turned to regard him, grinning almost playfully.

“I’m not supposed to spoil the surprise,” he said.

Vernon stared at him a moment before shrugging.

“Okay,” he said.

The bald man stepped around him and opened the passenger door for the back seat, allowing Vernon to shuffle over and slip inside.

In a few moments the bald man slid behind the wheel, and very quickly the long, black car was exiting the airport onto the wide, open highway.

John sat at the table in the small, tiered bar at the top of the long spectator stands, looking over the race program. He glanced up to look at the large, illuminated board that sat on the infield beyond where the horses dashed madly around the track.

It was turning out to be a lousy day. Six races down and all the favorites were coming in so far. The best odds of the first half dozen heats had been less than even, winning back only two dollars for every five bet. At this rate, if he put down his whole stake, even on a quinella for a single race, he wouldn’t even be able to double it. And today was the last date of the season.

The next wouldn’t start up for over a month, and that was trotter races in New Jersey. And he hated those. They took too long to run, and left him with very little time to make a jump and get a bet down. And most of the time the odds sucked.

He felt a rumble of panic as he realized he was down to just about enough cash to live for a couple of months, but hardly any to build a good, solid bankroll with.

He told himself he was close to Las Vegas, but his prior attempts to utilize his unique skill on any of the standard table games was problematic, at best.

He had long ago reasoned that it took an event of sufficient size so that any difference he might cause by jumping wouldn’t knock the expected outcome off track of actually happening.

He had tried it several times in Atlantic City, when he’d first begun attempting to make this thing he could do pay off, but the probabilities involved with such things as craps, poker, blackjack, even the slot machines, occurred on such tiny scales that he always seemed to change them, however careful he attempted to be.

He couldn’t just jump at the table as soon as he saw a winning event such as the toss of the dice or the turn of a card. He had to get up, go off somewhere private, then jump and return to the table… where he would have miraculously vanished from a short time before. That tended to stop the game cold and destroy the potential win.

And slot machines selected the numeric combination from millions of possibilities every second in the depths of some random number generator, utterly ruining his chances of catching that same micro-second after a jump.

Only something where his jumping would have no influence, like a race, would play out exactly as he first experienced.

Even unintentionally, his knowing that something would happen, if he altered the circumstances by a single molecule, might redirect an unforeseeable sequence of tiny events and cause that thing not to happen. One guy up in the clubhouse making one anonymous bet moments before the deadline would have absolutely no impact on the way the race transpired. It happened on a different level than he could change, unless he jumped, made the bet, then shot the winning horse.

The public address system crackled to life and the next race was announced.

John scanned the race program.

Two more to go. Two chances for a little bit of luck.

But the next to last race was another stinker, featuring almost an even money field. No long shots, no way of building a decent trifecta. He glanced up at the scoreboard on the infield and let his eyes flick over the odds. El sucko, he thought.

Well, he considered with a sigh, he at least had the final race. It had a wider field and he should be able to build something from that.

He leaned back and glanced around the upper level of the massive grandstands where he sat.

It was somewhat crowded, with fans attempting to consume the final day of the sport for some months, and the betting was most likely heavy.

He glanced at his watch, noting the few minutes left until the betting closed on the next to last race of the day, then looked up and over the green grass of the tracks infield.

Something caught the corner of his eye, an unexpected something, like a brightness, at the very rim of the long, wide window.

The boom of the first blast rattled the entire structure, sparking a sharp, whining exclamation of human shock around him. The second was closer, and this time the entire building seemed to jolt, and the running began.

The third was just beyond the next section of the high, covered grandstand, spitting bits of wood and twisted metal from the billowing fireball.

John threw himself back hard against the chair, and jumped.

He caught the tail end of a small chorus of shocked gasps as he tumbled over backwards, the chair making a loud crack on the smooth floor.

“Geez, buddy, are you all right?”

The man was bending over him, reaching out to grab his arm and help him to his feet.

But as soon as he’d gained his balance John tore his arm away and was running, through the wide archway into the next section of the covered grandstand.

He was already searching, scanning, looking for anything that might have caused the blast. And he had less than ten minutes to find it.

He raced to the other end of the elevated grandstand and skidded to a halt beside the large open windows that looked down over the expansive parking lot at the far end of the track.

It was flooded with cars. Would one of them explode? A bomb? An accident?

But how could that trigger multiple blasts all down the length of the huge structure?

Glancing quickly around, he spotted a large, burly man in a dark sport coat with a colorful crest on the pocket.

“Hey!” he called over as he moved swiftly toward him, “What kind of cooking do they do here? How do they heat this place? Do they use gas? Or electricity?”

The burly man was now fixed on him, his body stiffening uncertainly.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Do they use gas here? Yes or no?”

The man eyed him with a furrowed brow and hesitated.

“I believe the kitchens run on gas, yes.”

Bingo, John thought. There were multiple kitchens for the many restaurants in each section of the sprawling stands. If something went wrong with the main line…