Implacable Alpha Read online

  Wished to hell I’d had detectors focused on that sphere when they went.

  She sighed, staring around her office, packed as it was with printouts, rolls of diagrams, spreadsheets, and drawings. A giant flowchart marked in red, blue, and green took up most of the whiteboard that covered one wall. Her old stereo with its stack of CDs perched on a file cabinet in the corner.

  For whatever absurd reason, the lyrics of a 60s song about time being on her mind started to play in her head. The clock on the wall flipped over to 9:37. That was pm. She’d been at the lab for almost ten hours now. Time to pack up and go home. Try and sleep while she wrestled through whatever kind of nightmares were going to finger their unsavory way through her brain.

  Since the night of Nakeesh’s disappearance and the raid where Bill Minor and Pete McCoy had been killed, nightmares had become a constant. Especially the image of Reid Farmer’s partial body. What remained had looked as if it had been sliced off and cauterized. Grisly as that was, she lived with the knowledge that the other half of it was somewhere ahead of her in time, and she’d probably have to stare at it, horrified all over again.

  Kaplan twisted her Montblanc pen closed. Flipped over the pages of notes on the yellow legal pad where it rested on the desk. She was about to rise when a soft knock came at her door.

  “Yeah?”

  Virgil Wixom—faded jeans visible beneath his white lab coat—stepped into her office. The lines around his weary blue eyes accented the gleam where his balding head shone in the overhead lights. Exhaustion lurked in the set of his narrow mouth. Tonight, at least, he looked a lot older than his forty-two years.

  “Surprised that you’re still here,” he said softly. “You as frustrated as I am?”

  She flicked a hand at the data streaming down the monitor. “It’s just air, Virg. And it’s behaving like a room-temperature gas should.” A pause. “We’re going to have to think about time differently.”

  “What’s to think? Given what we now know, we can pretty much prove that the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is correct: The quantum state of the universe doesn’t evolve as a function of time. If it did, Nakeesh and Fluvium could not have traveled back from their branch of the timeline to our past. When we ran that fateful entanglement experiment, we created a beacon that Nakeesh’s navigator fixed on. One that brought her from 1380 BCE to the present. She didn’t age, and it was perceptively instantaneous. One moment she was on the banks of the Nile in ancient Egypt, the next she was standing in Lab One.”

  “Time,” Kaplan whispered, staring at her digital clock. “Given what Nakeesh teaches us, it can’t be fundamental to the initial conditions of the universe. It’s emergent. A sort of construct to allow us to explain the evolution of the universe, its variability, and the interactions of the wave function. But we take it as fundamental. It’s part of the Schrödinger equation, for God’s sake. So that’s the conundrum. How does Nakeesh violate one of the foundations of our understanding of reality?”

  Virgil gave her a wooden stare. “Maxine, we need a whole new epistemology, a new way of looking at what we accept. Amplituhedrons, de Sitter space, Heisenberg, relativity, even the notion of space-time itself.”

  She stared aimlessly at her computer. “When we asked her, Alpha was insultingly vague about it all.” She mocked the woman’s accent: “ ‘You do not have understanding. Telling is waste of my effort.’ How many times did she say that?”

  “Too many.” Wixom raised his hands defensively. “Hey, I just built what she told me to. From that, we can extrapolate how her time machine functioned. The thing created oscillations of energy fields that somehow—programmed by her navigator—interacted across the diameter of the time machine. When the fields reached the perfect sine and cosine, they canceled each other. Essentially, the energy equaled zero, and she and Tanner vanished.”

  “The energy equaled zero,” Kaplan repeated in a whisper, her brain imagining a series of self-canceling waves interacting within the circumference of that sphere in Lab One. “We’re measuring the wrong thing.” It hit her like a thrown brick. “Our detectors are looking for photons created by any trace of energy. I’ve thought of it like a wake behind a boat.”

  “So?”

  “So we have that particle detector stored away somewhere up on the fourth floor, don’t we?”

  “We do. What are you thinking?”

  “We know that photons pass through that space without being affected by what we’ll call the ‘Nakeesh’ field. But what if we used particles? Shot them through a pair of Stern-Gerlach magnets, one vertical, the other horizonal, so that we knew they were uniformly spin up, spin right, and then passed them through the Nakeesh field?”

  “The detector on the other side should still record the qubits as spin up, spin right,” Wixom told her. “You think your Nakeesh field will change that?”

  “What if it does?”

  Wixom arched an eyebrow. “Then, at the minimum, we’ll have a way to detect the Nakeesh field.”

  “And if we can detect it, we can figure out how to measure it. Measure it and we can describe it. Describe it and we can ultimately replicate it.”

  “And?”

  “And we may not even need Nakeesh and her precious navigator.”

  Wixom’s eyes narrowed as he studied her. “What are you playing at here? General Grazier was very specific in his orders. He didn’t leave much room for leeway. He said, and I quote, ‘You will monitor for Alpha’s return. When she does, you will apprehend her, immediately render any medical aid she might require, retrieve the navigator, and separate it from her presence. Once she is stabilized and in custody and the navigator is secured, you will await further instructions.’ ”

  “Yes, yes, and the same for Tanner.” What the hell was she going to do with Tanner if he survived this? No wonder she was having nightmares.

  Virgil crossed his arms. “I don’t want to remind you, but Grazier’s first impulse was to have us arrested, carted off, and locked away as national security risks. As far as he’s concerned, we’re the bad guys. We barely kept our butts out of the proverbial sling, not to mention our jobs. Essentially, we’re on probation here. One screwup, and we can still go down.”

  She didn’t dare mention Bill Stevens. Not that Virgil had ever been fully in the loop, but that would have to wait until after Bill made his move. She narrowed her eyes.

  And then there was Tanner to consider.

  Apparently, Wixom knew her well enough to interpret her expression.

  “Maxine?” he asked softly. “I know you and Tanner had . . . well, a relationship. Back then, it wasn’t any of our businesses, but now, with our changed status . . . ?”

  “Are you trying to make a point?”

  Wixom hesitated, was working over how he’d say it. She knew him well enough to almost read the thoughts rolling behind his tired blue eyes. Figured why make him suffer? and said first, “Yeah, it was mostly a matter of convenience. What? You think that banging on sixty, I’m the type to fall madly in love? Lose my head over a little sex and a bottle of champagne or two?”

  Okay, “banging on sixty” might not have been the best way she could have phrased it.

  Wixom didn’t react the way she’d thought he would. Instead of some disarming platitude, he said, “I think you calculate the odds, Maxine. Figure what’s ultimately in your best interest and act accordingly.”

  “Coldhearted bitch, huh?”

  Wixom’s only reaction was the tightening at the corners of his small mouth as he struggled to keep his expression blank.

  Chuckling at her irritation, she added, “Guess I’m not as tired as I thought I was. Go find that particle gun. I’ll adjust the detectors. Bet we’ll have our first readings on the Nakeesh field by midnight.”

  She watched him go, thinking, He’s the weak link. Means I’d better keep a damn close eye on him.

 
16

  Ryan

  It was a Diavel day. Yes, I had that immaculate Ducati 916 at home in the garage. The 916 was considered to be Massimo Tamburini’s masterpiece of motorcycle design and engineering. Ask an average collection of Americans and all of them know Harley-Davidson. Maybe one out of six might recognize that Ducati is a motorcycle brand. But among motorcycle people, Ducati is a legend. Each model is a work of mechanical and visual art. People place Ducati motorcycles as centerpieces in living rooms and dens like they would statues by Rodin or James Earle Fraser. In the pantheon of Ducati motorcycles, Tamburini’s 916 is to two wheels as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is to music: absolutely sublime.

  So, I rolled up the garage door, considered the gleaming red 916 where it rested on its side stand, and then I glanced out at the sunny Colorado morning. We were coming up on fall. Not that many riding days were left.

  The 916 is like riding a scalpel; the slightest input to the machine provides a surgically precise and immediate response. Everything has to be exact, engine rpms matched to speed and the right gear. Riding the bike requires complete focus, a seamless melding of human being and motorcycle. When that happens, the effect is truly magic. You become one, the bike an extension of your body in a poetry of motion.

  Fact was, I really didn’t want to concentrate that hard.

  Which left the Diavel. Mine is a Daytona blue with a white stripe down the tank and back fender. The only thing the Diavel and the 916 share is the Ducati name and the 90-degree layout of the twin cylinder engines. Where the 916 is a scalpel, the Diavel—that’s Devil in Italian—is a hammer. Its soul is based on sheer horsepower overlaid by a veneer of gentility. The bike was well enough mannered that it could be ridden as a daily commuter—but keep twisting the wick, and you can incinerate that big honking rear tire and leave a smoking cloud of burning rubber behind when the light turns green.

  Just straddling the bike, reaching across that long tank to the handlebars, you know you’re taking hold of something visceral. And that’s before thumbing the starter, feeling the power strokes, and hearing that big testastretta bark through its dual exhaust.

  I tucked my gear into a saddle pack and strapped it on the back of the bike. Then I outfitted myself in my armored riding clothes. Armored? You bet. When we fall off, people my age don’t bounce like we did when we were kids. We crunch. I’d crashed enough in my rowdy youth to learn my lesson. My helmet was the best in the business, but as I strapped it on, I purposely left the Bluetooth off.

  This was my day to get away. Clear my head. The last thing I wanted was to field calls from the office.

  I got out early enough to beat the traffic up US 24 to Woodland Park, let the Diavel idle its way past the coffee shops, boutiques, and microbreweries, then took the turnoff onto Colorado 67 headed for Cripple Creek. As the temperature dropped, I cranked up the electrics in my jacket and enjoyed the warm rush from the heaters in the handgrips.

  The aspen had begun to turn on the high peaks. I could see a dusting of snow on the north slopes up above the timberline. God, I had needed this. Perfect therapy. The tension drained out of me like someone had pulled the proverbial plug.

  I think better on a motorcycle. If you’ve never ridden, you don’t get it. You can’t. That sensation of motion and rushing air, of the road, and the passing of the world around you is unique. So is the relationship between you and the bike. Nothing with four wheels—not even the trickest sports car—can match the integration you have with a single-track vehicle. More than moving through space, it’s becoming part of and interacting with the entire world. Sights, smells, temperature are all intense, unfiltered through window glass. The feedback from the road is immediate, personal.

  In that clarity, I resettled my thoughts, shifted into third for a tight corner, and countersteered the Diavel into a tight lean. I’d picked the line perfectly, accelerated from the apex like a slingshot, and set myself up for the next corner.

  Motorcycles were made for moments like this.

  Cripple Creek used to be a mining camp. Now it’s a tourist trap, and it was setting out to be a good day for business. Time for a break. I caught a cup of cappuccino at one of the sidewalk cafes, sitting at an outside table and staring at the Diavel where it was parked in the sunshine. Bike people do that. We can linger for hours just looking at our bikes, admiring the lines, the gleam of sunlight on the tank, bars, and pipes. Watch next time someone pulls into a parking lot on his or her motorcycle. As they walk away, seven out of ten will look back just to make sure the bike’s all right.

  How damn long had it been since I’d been able to just get away like this? My life had been like a whirlwind of jumbled events all the way back to the day when Alpha had vanished from her room in Ward Six.

  Now, with time to finally think, how did I come to grips with all that had happened since that day? With the notion of Alpha herself? Essentially, she was an alien. Not a slimy green bug-eyed extraterrestrial, but a human from another Earth, and another time, separated from ours by . . . what? What the hell was a “branching” of the timeline? What kept those branches apart? I’d read Hugh Everett’s paper as well as all those that followed from other physicists, and it still left me hazy on the details.

  Like the fact that I was supposed to accept that, because of something called decoherence, the timelines were self-entangled to the point they couldn’t interact with other timelines. A hypothetical state called recoherence would bring them back together, but if it ever happened, it would piss off a lot of physicists because time and space would have to run backward. Among physicists, time running backward is a big bad no no.

  I stirred my little plastic swizzle stick through the cappuccino. The way Harvey Rogers had explained it, for the Many-Worlds universe to recohere would be the equivalence of the milk, coffee, and water in my drink spontaneously separating back into their three different components. So how did Alpha’s navigator and cerebrum—being only really, really smart computers—allow her to skip from one milk molecule to another halfway across the cup? Let alone back into that molecule’s past before it got poured into the milk?

  Exactly how was I supposed to accept that the universe—or even this cup of cappuccino—was a wave function? Essentially a vibrating cloud of energy?

  Compared to that, I’d rather tackle a catatonic violent schizophrenic in the middle of a psychotic break any day of the week.

  “Tim,” Grazier’s voice echoed in my memory, “Rather than worry about the theoretical physics, just accept that the rules have changed. Your job is to keep the people who have to deal with it sane, healthy, and prepared. You’re our first line of defense.”

  I’d been so busy supervising changes to Ward Six, monitoring contractors, reviewing architectural drawings, ensuring orders were delivered, and keeping track of supplies, I hadn’t had time to figure out what that meant.

  The first line of defense? As far as I could see, that was Grazier’s security team down in Los Alamos. If Alpha popped back into Lab One, they were supposed to grab her, take away her navigator, and bring the device back to Grantham. I had no clue what happened to Alpha. Assuming she hadn’t been mortally wounded when Reid Farmer had loosed a couple of rounds her way the instant she vanished.

  At this stage of the game, it wasn’t as if I or my people at Grantham could just hold up our hands, blow a whistle, and declare, “All you inter-time-branch travelers, cease and desist! Keep out. That’s an order!”

  I watched a Harley bagger with much-too-loud pipes roll past. I’d never quite caught the Harley bug. Whole different philosophy toward motorcycles. But then, you could say the same about Iron Butt riders—the men and women who rode eleven thousand miles or more in eleven days, crisscrossing the continent for a little trophy.

  The takeaway was that the world was a more interesting place with all those different kinds of motorcycle riders—even with the “squids” popping wheelies on t
heir sport bikes. They served as a microcosm for the whole planet. All seven-point-seven billion of us. People who wouldn’t have existed if Skientia hadn’t snatched Alpha out of the past, which stopped Fluvium from pouring out his bottle of weaponized Oscillatoria just so he could study plague on a planetary level.

  Talk about unconscionably rude behavior.

  Made me want to go back in time and kill him all over again.

  I finished my cappuccino, hit the head, and walked out to the Diavel. That’s when I noticed her. She was across the street. Didn’t matter that she was wearing a full helmet. Wasn’t any way to miss that it was a woman in fitted black leather riding pants and jacket. I may be in my fifties, but I’m still a healthy guy who commits the unconscionable modern sin of “male gaze.” The bike she stood next to was a gleaming black BMW RS: their sport version of the 1250cc boxer engine. A day pack was lashed to the passenger seat.

  I gave her a two-fingered wave, strapped on my helmet, and straddled the Diavel. Pulling it up off the side stand, I thumbed the big twin to life, reveling in the cadence of idling exhaust pulses.

  Leaving Cripple Creek, I caught the single headlight behind me. Sleek black bike, the two cylinders jutting out. Black-dressed rider, sunlight glinting off her midnight helmet. Had to be the BMW.

  She stayed with me as I headed north on 67. Always hanging back no more than twenty yards behind.

  Not that the Diavel was the finest machine for carving corners—the 916 would have been the preferred tool—but it wasn’t any slouch, either. I’d learned my craft in younger years, having even aspired to a place on a factory racing team until college, and then the Marine Corps, intervened.

  Set up and downshift, counter steer, trail brake into the apex, accelerate on the power curve, and catch the next gear. Poetry in motion, the Ducati’s baritone blaring authority. I’m told by people who know that the only experience that excels that of leaning a motorcycle through tight corners is in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft.