Probability Sun (35 page)

He looked again at the Faller’s diagram, although it was burned into his brain. From the moment he’d seen the sketch, he’d known. But Capelo stayed with it, worked it out, saw it all as the collection of floating intuitive perceptions that physics had been to him since the age of nine. A child.

The line on the Faller sketch went into one of the six Calabi-Yau spaces. And then the line continued on to a different Calabi-Yau space, with a different configuration. Only it wasn’t a different space. That’s why the Faller had drawn two “flowers,” not six. The “flowers” weren’t two different Galabi-Yau spaces. They were the same one, transformed.

The artifact focused probons, shot a huge number of them at an incoming particle stream, just as a laser focused and shot photons. The artifact thus warped probability, in the same way huge mass warped gravity. The energy to do that was certainly available; the strength of the force transmitted by a messenger particle is inversely proportional to the tension on its threads, and Capelo had calculated fairly low tension for the probon, let alone the energy in the protons. All the energy of these tiny vibrating threads brought about a different path, one of low but not zero probability under “normal” circumstances, and now of 100 percent probability. So the proton beam went into a curled-up dimension.

And stayed there.

Why?

Because the energy it brought into the dimension, energy which hadn’t been there before, did something else. It effected a space-changing flop transition, changing the shape of that tiny, curled-up dimension into a different shape. Without affecting our larger, three-extended-dimension universe at all. The energy started by making a tiny tear, and to repair the tear, the Calabi-Yau shape evolved into a different shape, which mathematicians had known was possible almost as long as they had known of Calabi-Yau shapes. The flop transition might look something like this:

As the Calabi-Yau space evolves through the tear, what’s affected are the precise values of the masses of the individual particles—the energies in their threads. The tiny vibrating threads that made up the protons, always smears of probability, now vibrate at a different resonance. It has ceased to be a proton, and has become a different, unknown particle. After all, matter itself, at the deepest level, was itself a manifestation of probabilities. The probabilities had been changed:

He had never seen it. For ten years he hadn’t seen it, Capelo the Great Crusading Lone Physicist. The mathematics of flop-transitions were well established, had been established for a hundred and fifty years. He started to calculate, using the enormous power of the ship’s computer.

Hours later, it all balanced, the elegant mathematics, and Capelo felt humbled by the hidden, ineffably beautiful structure he had uncovered.

The enormous energy needed to alter the beam’s probable path, to change the vibration of its threads, exactly equaled the net energy of the heavier probons minus the energy lost to quantum agitation. The new vibrational energy exactly equaled the energy needed to effect a space-changing flop transition in a Calabi-Yau dimension of a certain probable configuration. A piece of the dimension was unfolded, and then refolded into a subtly different shape, like refolding a part of a complex origami. All the equations balanced, led into one another with natural rightness.

The probon was real
. Now he had its mass, its spin, its thread constant, its neutral charge. Probability could take its rightful place as the fifth force in the universe. Electromagnetism, strong force, weak force, gravity, probability. No, that wasn’t right … probability had always had an equal place in the universe. It was just that humans hadn’t seen it.

Had Fallers? Did their physics start at a different place, perhaps even at probability, and come to the same elegant structure by a different path? There were an infinite number of paths: for particles, for physics, for discovery.

When he finally stood up from the chair, he was shaky from lack of food, lack of motion, uncharacteristic lack of pride. Capelo the Great Crusading Lone Physicist. Not so Lone, after all. He sat down again and looked down at his printed flimsies, at the beating mathematical heart of his theory.

His critics might say it wasn’t even a theory, but a patchwork of intuitions and guesses and borrowed maths. But Capelo knew in his bones, in his testicles that had given life to Amanda and Sudie, that the theory was true, that it did describe reality, even though many details remained to be worked out. Details of theory, solutions to some of his equations, the role of quantum entanglement. And, of course, the entire mass of engineering details that would take this from mathematics to hardware, which the Fallers had already done.

Or had they? A sudden thought occurred to Capelo, but he shoved it aside. Irrelevant to the last major step: the remaining Faller drawing to which its line led: a nine-planet star system, the third planet with one moon, the fourth with two, the sixth with rings … the Solar System, with two artifacts drawn within it and a thick circular line canceling the whole thing.

Was it some warlike statement: “We will obliterate you with our artifact and take yours”? Bellicose bragging from a helpless prisoner of war? Capelo didn’t think so.

He set about applying his new equations not to the tiny, curled-up dimensions of Calabi-Yau space, but to the large, three-extended-dimensions universe. He already had a few specific numbers to work with, including one for the energy that had fried all of the World star system, except World itself. He worked for more unnoticed hours. Once, when he lay down a flimsy, it encountered a tray of food he hadn’t noticed anyone bring in. He made himself gulp down something, he had no idea what, and went on working.

When he finally finished, he sat staring at the results for a long time.

The probability energy focused by two artifacts was huge. It was enough to do what smaller amounts did, over and over, to a small, curled-up dimension of the universe: effect a space-changing flop-transition into a different shape. It did that the same way it did it in the tiny dimensions: by first tearing the fabric of spacetime. But in the tiny dimensions, it was a tiny tear, easily repaired with the energy pouring in at the same time from the entire probability-altering event. In the large extended three dimensions, there wasn’t enough energy. The “tear” would spread, and the total dimensional shape of the universe—now a benign sphere extending fifteen billion lightyears before curling back on itself—would undergo a topology-changing flop-transition.

But the vibrational patterns of the threads that make up spacetime were intimately dependent on the shape of the dimensions in which they vibrated. Not the size, but the shape. If the three extended dimensions of the universe underwent a flop-transition, its threads would vibrate in different patterns,
giving rise to different fundamental particles
. Extended spacetime itself would be different, the disturbance to its fabric traveling outward at c. And every living thing in it—humans and Fallers, bacteria and grasses, glow-worms and genetically recreated tigers, would die.

That was why the enemy Faller had been so desperate to give humans the physics it knew. Because it knew from Marbet that humans had an artifact, too, and it knew what would happen if the two artifacts were set off as close together as within the same star system.

He had to tell somebody. Some military brass who would understand, somebody not stupid enough to either disbelieve him or to take the artifact to the Faller’s home system, where theirs probably already was. Tell somebody … Grafton … no, not Grafton rigid stupid weapon-pusher … Kaufman, then … tell somebody …

He stood up too quickly, felt the blood rush to his head, and fainted.

*   *   *

He found himself back on his bunk when he came to—God, he was tired of coming to, conscious-un-conscious-un-conscious-un, he was starting to feel like a holo persona. A medical patch adorned his arm. Lyle Kaufman sat beside the bunk, studying Capelo’s flimsies.

“Don’t worry yourself about my privacy,” Capelo said. “I’m just Solar Alliance property, like this ship.”

Kaufman said, “You did it,” and at his tone, reverent as one should be in the face of cosmic beauty, Capelo’s mood abruptly changed. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor, and found he could do so easily. Whatever the patch was delivering into his bloodstream, it was terrific.

“I did it, Lyle. Or, rather—” he hated to say this, and his old irritation returned, making him feel more like himself, “—we did it. The … the Faller and I.”

“Tell me.”

“You don’t have the math,” Capelo said brutally.

“I know. I probably don’t even have all the non-mathematical fundamental concepts. But try, Tom. Please.”

Capelo studied Kaufman. “You’re not asking as a soldier, are you?”

“Later I’ll ask like that. Everyone will. But now I just want to know.”

Capelo hadn’t realized this streak of humility lay in the man. It didn’t make him like Kaufman any better, but it made it acceptable to tell him the theory. He explained it as well as he could in layman’s terms. Kaufman interrupted with questions, but the questions were intelligent enough that they didn’t annoy Capelo too much.

When he’d done, Kaufman sat quietly, his hands on his knees. Finally he said, “The destruction of the fabric of spacetime? If two artifacts are activated at setting prime thirteen in the same star system?”

“Is that the only part you focus on?” The man was a soldier after all, with a soldier’s tunnel vision.

“It’s a not unimportant point,” Kaufman said acerbically. “Why would the makers of the artifacts have permitted such a thing?”

“I have no idea.”

“It doesn’t make sense. Surely they would have built in safeguards against tearing spacetime.”

“Yes … no,” Capelo said. He was losing the thread here. “Maybe … maybe they couldn’t control their own technology any better than we can control ours. Maybe that’s what happened to them.”

Kaufman was silent.

“I suppose this is all being recorded.”

“Everything you’ve done in the last fifty-six hours has been recorded, copied, downloaded, and encrypted. Surely you already knew that.”

“I guess,” Capelo said, without interest. Fifty-six hours? “What day is it?”

“Very early Friday morning. Oh three hundred hours.”

“Where are my children?”

“I imagine they’re asleep.”

“Did Rosalind win her chess game against Gruber?”

“I don’t know,” Kaufman said, and from the way he looked at Capelo, Capelo realized that he’d been jumping topics randomly.

“Are we nearing the space tunnel?”

“Yes. Tom, you need sleep. The doctor stabilized you—you were dehydrated, with low blood sugar and abnormal heart rhythm—but you still need sleep. I’m going to put another patch on you. A sedative.”

“Don’t tell Grafton,” Capelo said, which made no sense, even to him.

“Lie back down. There. But before you sleep … I’d like to ask one more thing. A favor.”

“What?”

Kaufman’s speech turned almost formal. “With your permission, I’d like to comlink Ann Sikorski what you’ve found. Once we go through the space tunnel, no further communication will be possible. I’d like her to know what you’ve found, while that’s still possible.”

“Why?” Capelo said sleepily. The patch was already hitting him.

“So she’ll at least know that the reason we took the artifact off World was worth doing so.”

“The natives still on your conscience, Lyle? Throw ’em out. But, yes, go ahead and comlink Ann.”

“Thank you.”

“And in return I want to ask one thing, too,” Capelo said. The torpor was coming up on him fast, but this was important. “Tell me the truth, if you’re capable of it. What happened to the Faller when the nerve gas immobilized the rest of us?”

“He died.”

That fine alien physicist mind, that motherfucking bastard killer. “Good,” Capelo said, and there was no time before he slid into sleep to examine how deeply he might or might not have meant it.

TWENTY-EIGHT

GOFKIT SHAMLOE

T
here were some tall upright sticks in front of Gofkit Shamloe. Enli had never seen such a thing. The sticks were very close together, too close to fly wind toys from, and pointed on the top. A tight row of them blocked her view of Ano’s house and then curved around the cookfires to one side.

“What’s that?” she exclaimed to Pek Sikorski. “That was never there before.”

“It’s a fence,” Pek Sikorski said, and Enli saw that it was. A fence like the low ones used to keep frebs from eating the tender new shoots of fakimib, and always removed once the fakimib grew tough stems. A freb fence grown tall and pointed, around Gofkit Shamloe. To keep out people.

Enli, Pek Sikorski, and Pek Gruber stood on the road beside their bicycles, staring at the unfinished fence, Essa and Serlit behind them. The adults were dusty and hot. The two youngsters hadn’t seemed to mind the heat, or anything else, as they rode along, giggling. Essa would go on giggling if not stopped, but for Serlit, naturally graver, the laughter was a temporary intoxicant due to Essa’s presence.