Chapter 11


Hidden in a forest valley, the mansion's glowing red curtains hadn't moved in years. Russia had become an extended suburb, and the nearest neighbor was more than a kilometer away. Staying on public roads, it would take three days to walk around the mansion, and it would never come in view during that time. Low density areas were easy to contain, but hard to control.
  Inside, the laws became complicated. There were false doors and stairways to nowhere, and the basement contained an unregistered lab.
  Heavy theater drapes dimmed the sounds in the main room. State Security group Solaris held its final meeting in the middle of a sea of red carpet. Most of the participants attended through Lucidspace.
  The case manager rang a bell. "Bolm first, then Irina for a minute each."
  A skilled motivational speaker, Bolm sounded ecstatic: "The Depot is ours, months ahead of schedule. We've echoed the full network, and scanned all storage units. A trillion dollars of new technology!"
  There was a flood of diagrams. State Security looked for unexpected signs of intelligence, something most governments rarely recognized it in time. The data revealed universal truths about humanity, starting with the fact that there weren't any.
  Most undercover agents tried to look slightly duller than average. Today, the case manager faced a famous anthropologist, a "hard-boiled" Pacific Ranger, an effeminate but intimidating organized crime boss, a camouflaged army commando, a wild looking Lu-Cid artist, and Mark Donitz.
  Rick's supervisor wore a Net immersion suit like sprayed concrete, his face mostly hidden by a UN cap. Only the case manager could see him. Article One was very flexible, and Donitz never regretted making a deal. Russian State Security was very disciplined, and he knew he could count on them. Donitz had encouraged them to be aggressive, and he was sorry about the fatality. He despised the Depot's culture of secrecy, but hadn't expected Rick to return here this soon. His report would stay sealed until the world had become a different place.
  "We'll clean up this mess," he promised. "I've got connections."
  The case manager didn't blame Donitz for not controlling Parkland. All her virtual missions eventually ended in disaster, but there was always a solution. She had no idea what she would decide, one minute from now. They couldn't control Simansky, Depot security, or the UN. She needed to see the big picture, a crystal moment spread over sixty seconds.

  The project had started many years ago as part of Russia's space program. For the better part of a century, the missile type that had orbited the first Sputnik had launched hundreds of cosmonauts, cheaper than any competitor. In the sixties, a moon lander was built but never flown. Twenty years later, their shuttle flew once, unmanned. The space program finally ended in 2013, replaced by international cooperation, and down-to-earth conspiracy theories. Only the dream remained.
  State Security got involved after the destruction of Moscow. For some problems, space was the only solution. Creating their own rules, they had entered the Depot, and found the Foreigner trading information through the Zondyne network. They quickly decoded two messages: apparently a pair of research articles. State Security sent them to the Russian Academy of Sciences, which received hundreds of crank submissions daily. It was a challenge not to delete them at once.
  The first article was the most outlandish one they had ever read. It discussed the oldest problem of spaceflight: thrust. The bad canceled out the good: push against an object in space, and it would keep moving forever, but a spaceship could only push against itself, by ejecting fuel. Most of the fuel had to be dragged along in the wrong direction. The last liter did more work than the first hundred, and caused more drag. Rockets often had to accelerate wastefully fast. Even low-mass, high-speed fuel like hot hydrogen couldn't solve the impulse problem. Walking to orbit, if that were possible, would take less energy. The energy of all nuclear weapons combined couldn't transport one human to the next star in a reasonable time. That would require several tons of antimatter, and the world's power plants needed weeks to make just a few kilos.
  If it were possible to "push" against space itself, a starship would have to be no larger than a cruise ship. If the push came from Earth, it could be the size of an airliner.
  According to relativity theory, space was an illusion, no more real than the number zero; but it was surprisingly hard to transmit energy across this gap: lasers were too weak, and charged particle beams dispersed too fast.
  Quantum effects did form permanent links between distant particles, but no energy could be transmitted. A change in one particle caused a corresponding random change in the other. As far as anyone could tell, the effect was as useless as the last digit in the number of human eyeblinks per second. It wasn't information at all.
  The first article discussed virtual particles. Too brief to see, too numerous to count, they appeared everywhere, at all allowable speeds. An empty cup could briefly contain the mass of a star.
  The quantum soup looked the same no matter how fast an observer moved through it. In half a page, the article suggested a way to "push" against these particles, a type of delayed acceleration.
  That persuaded the Academy to read the two million computer-generated pages of the second article. In physics, nothing was ever destroyed, and everything was reversible. A particle of light could only be emitted if, at some point in the future, it would be reabsorbed somewhere else. Light could not shine on forever. If the universe was to keep expanding, it would eventually have to go dark.
  The longer article described a beam of indeterminate particles, which could only be absorbed by a quantum receiver rotating in two directions at once. If the beam missed the receiver, it would never be absorbed; therefore it couldn't miss. The beam could accelerate a spaceship's inertial frame from any distance.
  Suddenly, space didn't seem that big anymore. The articles were deeply original and full of unstated assumptions, like content from another Net. The Academy reached three conclusions: a large group had spent years preparing them, they were more art than science, and the group had used a form of shared intuition: a truth algorithm.
  That was what State Security really wanted, a way to predict the future. There might never be starships, not with so many easier inventions in the way.
  The project was split into harmless segments, and presented to the Democratic Committee (which anyone could join) as a series of hypothetical questions. They promptly signed a secret decree.
  The confrontation with the Foreigner went better than expected. When he sensed State Security watching him, he had spontaneously offered to join their payroll. Perhaps he wanted to learn more about himself.
  They never learned his name or location. In return for cooperating, he continued to operate the Zondyne exchange, a useful part of the local economy. The Foreigner claimed the two articles had been deep research for a new game universe. Compiled online with a genetic algorithm, none of the contributors understood the end product. The truth algorithm had escaped onto the Net, where it could sporadically be questioned by those lucky enough to find it.
  The case manager was trained to make fast decisions. Her main screen had a mind of its own, and kept trying to pull her down familiar paths.
  In software battles, the outcome was unknown but inevitable. The last global hack would also be the greatest. This operation was only possible because the UN required all networks to be connected. Depot branches worldwide were calling the TNZ helpline, and their software settings were quietly recorded. They had already learned far more than expected. There were too many codes, dialects, unique protocols and double meanings.
  The room got quiet. For a brief moment, the case manager was at the very center of creation. Many forces were perfectly balanced.
  She made her decision. "Game Over!" The room went dark.
  Through many layers of encryption, the Foreigner received his farewell message. In the Depot, the man in black waited patiently, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. He seemed to float over the path, as if the night would last forever. The world was so much simpler then. He had practiced the termination so often he didn't even remember entering the code.
  A long cylinder installed on the skyscraper rotated past a flagpole, aiming with parsec accuracy. The beam made a fine line in the sky.

  Rick never knew what caused the electromagnetic pulse; perhaps a maser fired from a nearby hilltop. Every screen in the tower flickered in psychedelic sympathy, and orange sparks buzzed behind the switches. There was a slight burning smell. He could barely believe all the complicated things that were going on.
  "More phenomena." Simansky shouted in his wire microphone: "Report!"
  The beam had targeted the battery trailer next to the mainframe tent. Sparks of lightning jumped many meters in the air. Optronics still had electrical parts, and when the ground surge reached the buried factory, the remnants of the molecular processor imploded promptly, leaving only an oil slick. A burp of fog rose from the ground.
  In the tower, the operators sat back as the lights returned to normal. Simansky stared stoically at the screens around him. A river of smoke poured up into the night.
  Georgi Bezarin returned a few minutes later, wandering past the control stations. "I was not here when it happened," he said, "where are the disaster manuals?"
  "Is it OK if I leave?" Rick asked. "I don't want to get in your way."
  "Wait a minute," Simansky said. He talked to Bezarin, who glanced back angrily.
  Simansky returned. "A car will follow you to the highway. There's a news black-out." Rick nodded seriously. "We will call you for a deposition," he paused. "I wish I could sound grateful. At least one man is dead." He knew Rick had killed people in the past, under circumstances that weren't particularly brave.
  Simansky seemed distracted. A cover-up had begun. The best way to manage information was to hide it. He would not get involved with that.

  Bright lights reflected the lines of the empty parking lot, hiding the woods beyond. A vast stone field, and the ancient rustle of a summer night. Rick sat down in an automatic cart, and spoke his license number. During the ride, he made his next appointment by text.
  Five minutes later he drove back the way he'd come, a beacon in the dark. For a minute he turned off his headlights. In the distance was a huge fence. Mir Tower rose alone in the night, so high he would still see it eighteen hours later.