SWEET HOME ALLE BAMMA (SOLBIDYUM WARS SAGA) (25 page)

“I thought I had you, but it looks like you’re back to your old self again.”

“Ha,” I replied.  “Give me a few days more and you won’t stand a chance.”

“Why, youuuu,” threatened Kala playfully, as she laughed and jumped above my shoulders, trying to use her weight to push me under the water.  I grabbed her and we both went under, only to pop up sputtering and spitting out water.  We held each other and shared one last kiss before Kala pulled away and began slow and steady laps.  I joined her and we swam several laps without saying anything.  Finally we climbed out of the pool and lay at its edge, slowly regaining our breath and letting our pulses return to normal.

“Tib, do you think this will ever be over – all of these issues with the Brotherhood and the solbidyum and all, or do you think the rest of our lives will be like this?”

“I honestly don’t know, but I plan to do everything I can to bring it all to an end so you and I can spend some serious time enjoying life together.  Not that I don’t enjoy my time with you now, but I would rather it were in a different environment and less stressful circumstances.  Since I arrived, it seems that every few days someone is trying to kill us.  I suspect they will try again tonight at the banquet.  I wonder… do you think they might try to poison us?”

“It’s possible, Tib.  The food at these events is pretty closely watched; but I have a small scanner that I can bring in my pocket.  We can use it to scan the food a second time before we eat.”

“Good, bring it along, but we’ll give it to one of the security team who will scan our food for us.  Actually, he’ll be an agent of the FOI assigned to aid in our security.”

“The FOI?  You trust the FOI?”

“This FOI agent I do.  He’s Galetils’ brother.  I’m quite certain he has the same goals and values we do.  He also has a personal reason for wanting to bring down the Brotherhood.  We’re hoping to recruit him to be a mole agent for the FSO within the FOI.”

“You’re putting a lot of trust in the idea that he and Galetils were on good terms.  Have you ever considered that he may have been jealous of Galetils and wanted him dead?”

“Anything is possible, but I doubt he had any part in his brother’s death.  He and Galetils were close, from what
I understand; and there seems to be evidence within the FOI of an effort to keep Halfredies from accessing key information surrounding Galetils’ death.”

“Oh,” Kala exclaimed suddenly, “I nearly forgot to tell you, Cantolla said she would like to talk to you at your earliest convenience – something about one of the projects you asked her to expedite.”

I glanced at my com link time display and saw I had about an hour before I needed prepare for the banquet.  “I think I’ll head down to her lab and see what she’s come up with.  You want to come along?”

Kala grinned wickedly and said, “I think I will.  I always enjoy watching you squirm when Cantolla eyes me appraisingly.”

I laughed and gave her a kiss before gathering up my clothing.  A few minutes later we entered the large area of the ship that had been set aside for Cantolla’s lab.  Several of her assistants were working busily on various projects.  We didn’t see Cantolla anywhere in the main lab; and before long, one of the staff caught sight of us and directed us into her office.

Cantolla had said when she first joined my staff that she coveted my office, especially the aquarium wall; and I told her that she could have her own office modeled to suit her wishes.  So when we were ushered in, I wasn’t surprised to see a glass wall behind her desk that looked into an aquarium.  Unlike my office, which was walled with rich wood panels, Cantolla’s office had bright white walls that seemed emit their own light and a floor of a dark gray polished rock that looked like marble of some sort.  Several potted tropical plants were situated around the office and modernistic paintings with bright and dark contrasting patterns adorned the walls.

“Tibby, Kala, come in.  I’m so glad you were able to come so quickly.  I know you’ve been terribly busy, Tibby, but I think what I have to show you will interest you.  You asked me to find some means of communicating instantly over the vast regions of space.  You suggested that some of the ideas in what your planet called
quantum mechanics
might offer the solution.  What you called
quantum mechanics
I think is what we call
relative physics
, or at least they sound similar.  You talked about the action of sympathetic particles as a possible avenue of investigation, so I looked into it; but everything that I have researched indicates that isolating enough significant particles for a Federation-wide communication system would be much too difficult.

“As I researched this topic, I had another idea churning in the back of my mind.  One of the curiosities in the scientific realm are the numerous stories of people within the Federation who have experienced psychic events where they suddenly become aware of some event happening across the galaxy, such as accidents, births, deaths, etcetera.  These verifiable events usually have to do with a family member, close friend or acquaintance.  Aside from the obvious mystery associated with psychic episodes in general, the scientific aspect of these events that I’ve always found most intriguing is that the knowledge is practically instantaneous, regardless of the distance between the psychic individual and the event.  Somehow the information is transmitted or transferred without having to physically travel
in the way, for instance, a radio wave carries a broadcast.”

“I’ve never heard of psychics good enough and reliable enough for a consistent communication network,” I said.

“Nor have I,” Cantolla continued, “but it got me thinking about what happens, what sort of brainwaves are involved, and how can they be amplified or duplicated.  I began sampling the
NEW ORLEANS
crew and found a few individuals who displayed a high level of psychic ability and three that seemed to have some indication of telepathic faculties.  At first I tried to isolate various brainwaves to perhaps identify a frequency that might have some unique properties that facilitate instantaneous travel across the galaxy, but I had no success.

“I mulled over these failed approaches and compared the issue to the success of the learning headbands, believing the mechanism in each case was the same or, at least, the fundamentals of each process had to be related closely enough to integrate with each other.

“A question entered my mind.  What would happen if we took brainwave readings from persons having successful psychic or telepathic sessions and recorded them into the headband device like we did with the martial arts skills, and then transmitted them in the learning mode to individuals with no abilities?  We tried it and, amazingly, those who had no ability before the transmission suddenly demonstrated psychic abilities that were
stronger
than those of the donor.  That had me scratching my head for awhile; until I realized that every person has some ability and that the learning device was simply unlocking and/or enhancing their latent skills.

“I began to wonder what would happen if I took readings from each psychic subject and compiled these readings into a single database, which would be transmitted back to all the contributing subjects.  I conducted an informational loop experiment to this effect, particularly focusing on telepathic abilities.  The result was – well, let me show you.”

Cantolla led us out of her office and into the lab, where she called two of her assistants to join us.  She placed one in a booth that had a glass wall, much like the booth I remembered from hearing tests that were part of the military’s physical exam.  The second person was seated near us and behind a screen that prevented him and the individual in the booth from seeing each other.

“This booth is soundproof,” explained Cantolla.  “At the moment, Fabola can hear us, as indicated by the blue light over the door.  Fabola
, you hear us, correct?”

He replied over a microphone, “Yes, I can hear you.”

Cantolla then flipped a switch, which toggled the light over the door from blue to red.  “Now we are isolated, so Fabola cannot hear anything we say.  However, the microphone is still on in the booth, so we will be able to hear anything
he
says.  Fabola can you hear us?” Cantolla asked.  Fabola quietly stared at the wall, showing no sign of having heard anything.

“Now this is the fun part.  This is Eludina
,” said Cantolla, indicating the woman seated behind the screen.  Eludina, tell Fabola to scratch his head.”

Cantolla barely finished the command before Fabola scratched his head.

“Now tell him to say the name of this ship.”

Immediately Fabola said from within the booth, “The
NEW ORLEANS
!”

Both Kala and I looked at each other wide-eyed.

Cantolla continued, “The best part is that we can impart this ability to anyone now, by way of the learning bands.

“
However, there is one problem.  If we add too many people into the mix, the loop begins to destabilize and the operators start to pick up way too many extraneous thoughts from the people around them.  For instance, if someone has bad breath and picks up on a coworker thinking a negative thought about it, he or she may react in different ways.  One may simply correct the problem with a breath freshener; whereas another may take extreme offense and perhaps even confront the coworker.  In another case, an individual may not especially like their psychic peer for some reason and, when the telepath perceives the other’s feelings, they may suddenly feel angry, rejected or even paranoid.  So we’ve learned that, if we carry the psychic enhancement procedure too far, we can’t shield the subject from the many extraneous thoughts and trivial feelings that flow from others around them.  I’ve had to send several of my people back to the estate on Megelleon for treatment and exchange them with new people, due to various psychological effects caused by the over-enhancement of their abilities.  These operatives are now going through a desensitization program to help them deal with their new ability.  I fear some of them may have to be treated with drugs, at least temporarily, in order to dull their telepathic abilities until they’re able to cope with the thoughts of others around them and until my team is able to identify and teach them some effective filtering skills that they can ‘turn on and off’ as needed, so to speak.”

“So you’re saying you found a way to communicate long distances by way of telepathy; but we can’t utilize the method, because it will create a situation for the operatives that is damaging to their psyche?” Kala interjected.

“Essentially, yes, but it gave me some clues as to a direction to take the research.  I’ve been trying to circumvent the problem by developing an external mechanism for amplifying the telepathic frequency via the headband and direct it to a recipient who is operating a similar amplifier, instead of enhancing their innate abilities.  With this method the individual would not be picking up on every thought around them and would only be getting messages deliberately sent with the assistance of the machine.

“Eludina
, I’m finished with you and Fabola.  Tell him he can come out and you can both go back to your other assignments.”  In an instant Eludina communicated telepathically with Fabola and he exited the booth to leave with Eludina.

“So have you been able to isolate the frequency and amplify it?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” replied Cantolla.  “I was not able to
isolate
the specific frequency, per se, but I was able to
amplify
it without affecting the operator.  We conducted tests between operators here within the lab, as well as between the lab and our telepaths on Megelleon.  We first conducted the test with no machines using the enhanced telepaths, and then again using unenhanced operators and brainwave amplifiers of different designs.  One particular design seemed to work well – much more reliably than did the communications between enhanced telepaths – at least initially.  When we retested the system between individuals here in the lab, it wouldn’t work at all; however, when we tested the system using operatives communicating between the lab and Megelleon, we had instant success.  Then, for some unidentified reason the amplifier stopped working in the middle of a transmission.  I thought the problem was with the machine – a bad circuit or something.  It wasn’t until this morning when you and the admiral went to the surface of Plosaxen that we discovered why we were getting erratic results.  We were in the middle of a test run with Megelleon as you were leaving, when we suddenly lost all contact.”

“The RMFF,” I said, as is suddenly dawned on me what had happened.

“Right, Tibby, the RMFF.  When the RMFF is active the telepathic machine works and produces instantaneous telepathic communications of remarkable accuracy; but when it’s turned off, the transmissions stop completely.  Only one end of the communicating parties needs to have an RMFF to successfully create a two-way communication; but without an RMFF field activated between the operators, the apparatus does not function.”

“Most interesting,” I said.  “The same thing happens with the cloaking device.  There needs to be an RMFF field, or some condition produced by the RMFF, that makes it work.  Have you spoken with A’Lappe about this?”

“A’Lappe?  Why would I talk to A’Lappe about this?” Cantolla asked.

I noted tenseness in Cantolla’s voice and a change in her posture that led me to believe there was some friction developing between the two of them.  “He has isolated the aspect of the RMFF that makes the cloaking mechanism work and has duplicated it for smaller applications like the personal cloaking device and the
Mirage Fighters. It’s possible that these same conditions may apply to your telepathy device,” I said.  I noted Cantolla chewing on her lip as I was talking; and I was beginning to get the feeling that the idea of A’Lappe being part of her project was not something she was interested in.