Dark Matter (49 page)

'May I see the letter?'  Jack asked Solomon.

'No.  Sorry, but my mother was most clear on this point, it is for my eyes only.'

'I see.'  Jack said, not really understanding the reasoning but leaving it for now.  'You know as the Duke asked me to ensure your safety, I think it would be best if I found you somewhere to live where it will not raise any questions.  Excuse me a minute.'  Jack popped out of the room but was back in short order.

'OK you will be staying at Sally and Anita's place in Brixton.  It’s a busy part of London with a good ethnic mix so the three of you should fit right in.'

'The three of us?'  Severine asked pointedly.

'Yes.  I would like you to stay with them and provide protection.  I'm not anticipating any trouble, but just in case...'

'Just in case you want me on babysitting duty?' 

'While you are not on active missions.  Yes.  Are you OK with this or not?  I need to know.'

Severine looked at Solomon and then at Jack.  There was seriousness about him she recognised from her time undertaking assignments for the French government. 

'I will still be on active missions then?'

'Yes, absolutely.  I rather hope that you will be my liaison to Group 79 through the spa days and that you will be actively recruiting personnel and planning missions.  That is, if you are up to it.'

That did it,
Jack saw, the flash of indignation in Severine's eyes told him all he needed to know.  Besides, he had called in a couple of favours and had read the full military history of Severine Pascal.

'Yes.  I'm up to it.'  She replied.

'Good.  I'll make the arrangements.  You'll also need false papers.  I've never dealt with that before however I do know a lawyer who works extensively with asylum seekers.  I'll give you an introduction and say that you researching the area.  That way he should be forthcoming.  I'll leave the rest in your capable hands Severine.  Once you have your new identities, set up a bank account, and let me know the details and I'll have some money transferred into it.  Here's my card, you can contact me day or night.'

'What about this?'  Solomon asked holding aloft the gold box.

'Ah yes,’ Jack said, 'I had almost forgotten.  If it is OK with you Solomon I would like to hand it over to a Scientist we have for analysis.'

'It was my mother's...'  Solomon hesitated.

'I'm sure it will be in good hands.'

Solomon handed over the gold box, her hands trembling as she did so.  However once out of her hands she relaxed considerably.  The shaking had gone.

09:20              31 December  [09:20  31 December GMT] 

Research Laboratory, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England.

Jack had left soon after dropping off the small gold box.  John had been staring at it ever since.  It was as if he was trying to open it through sheer will power.  Instead, he was just letting his mind wander as he often did when presented with a new problem.  He had weighed it, measured it, and calculated its average density at 2.7 g /cc, which was a lot lower than solid gold at 19.32 g /cc.  This confirmed what he already knew instinctively that it was a box and contained something.  How it opened, he didn't have a clue.  Every side was the same.  Flat with no markings.  Every edge was perfectly sealed, with no evidence of how it was sealed.  It was essentially a locked box.  Not only did he not have the key, he couldn't even find the lock so had no idea what the key would look like.  He starred at it some more.  The X-ray hadn't provided anything, as they didn't seem to penetrate it, even at the highest setting.

He placed it under a tunnelling electron microscope;
this should allow me to see its atomic construction, at least on the surface.
  The machine activated with a soft hum, the probe moved closer to the surface and when it reached one nanometre, about the size of a single atom, it would start to scan the surface and produce an image.  The machine's status changed as it reached one nanometre.  John watched the screen.

NO DATA, it blinked. 

He continued to watch, giving it a few minutes. 

NO DATA continued to flash on the screen. 

He sighed, realising that he wasn't going to get anywhere with this either.  He tried a simple conductivity test on the box. 
Damn
, he thought as he read the instrument,
its non-conductive, but it looks and feels like gold.
  He set it up on the test bench, which he usually used to construct devices and fixed it to the bed of a pillar drill.  He tried a tungsten carbide drill.  The machine whirred at high speed and the drill made contact with the box's surface.  The drill screamed and sent up a plume of acrid smoke. 
So much for tungsten carbide.
  He switched it off and changed it for a diamond drill.  This produced less smoke but it too failed to penetrate the box. 

He decamped to the materials testing laboratory with the box.  There they had a Universal Testing Machine.  He started with the Brinell Hardness Test.  He set it up installing the tungsten carbide indenter for the standard steel one.  This machine had been used to test the hardness of all known materials by applying forces of tonnes to the indenter.  He started with a force of one tonne.  He released the box and measured the indentation.  He couldn't find one.  He re-ran the test with two tonnes of pressure and ran the test for a full sixty seconds, double the usual thirty.  Still no indentation.  He changed the indenter for a five-millimetre ball thereby increasing the pressure at the contact point and he raised the pressure to ten tonnes, way beyond the normal maximum load of three tonnes.  This last test still provided no indentation.  With no indentation, he had no way to measure the hardness of the box.  He decided, just for the hell of it, to say that it had made a small indentation of zero point zero one millimetres.  He ran the calculation.  It was in excess of one hundred and twenty seven million.  That compared to one thousand five hundred to one thousand nine hundred for hardened tool steel. 
At over sixty-six thousand times harder than tool steel this box should weigh over five hundred tonnes, whilst it actually weighs nearer three kilogrammes. 

This stuff is amazing.  It’s defied all testing so far and it isn’t even scratched.  If you built something out of this, it would be virtually indestructible.
Of course
, he realised,
someone has
.  He wanted to ask the materials specialists, but couldn't.  He didn't want to raise any awkward questions that he couldn't answer.  He phoned a colleague in the medical department.

'Hi Stephen, its John Deeth.  I wonder if I could borrow one of your MRI scanners this afternoon?'

After some initial reluctance Stephen finally agreed once John offered to cross-fund one of Stephen's research projects. 

In the medical lab, he placed the box in the Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine and set up the initial test.  As the box was so small compared to a human body, the test took only took a few minutes.  The result was a cube shaped image with no internal imaging.  Not surprised, John set about writing an entire test program.  This would vary the intensity and frequency of the magnetic pulses.  It was well outside the normal use of the machine and John had to set it into test mode to achieve it. 

Finally, he was ready.  Even with such a small test subject, the program would take over two hours to run.  He sat back, cleared his mind, and watched the box on both the video monitor and the MRI screen.  Forty minutes in to the test program, with his mind focused on other things the MRI screen was still blank but the box suddenly ceased to be a box.  Each corner had disappeared to be replaced by a flat section.  It now had fourteen sides instead of six. 

Curious
.  He decided to let the program run.  The box refused to change shape again.  The test over, he reviewed the test conditions around the time that the box had altered shape. 
Now I'm getting somewhere, the index on the video indicates that the box changed shape when the magnetic field changed in both frequency and intensity to, 1.3GHz and 45Kw.
He wrote another program limiting the range of frequency and intensity from 1.2GHz and 43Kw to 1.4GHz and 48Kw.  This program only took twenty minutes to run and produced six shape changes, each shape geometric in construction.  The box was still sealed however.  He again noted the values each time when the box had changed shape.  He phoned one of the lab technicians and had them replace the standard video camera with a high-speed one.  He fed the control of the camera into the program and set it to record the shape change.  He re-ran the last program.

As he watched the box changing shape in slow motion, it didn't provide any clue as to what it contained but it did yield the result that the box remained sealed whilst it changed shape.  The skin, or whatever it was, simply reformed itself.  Edges appeared or disappeared as if it was a plant he was watching grow in time-lapse photography.
But a plant has DNA to tell it how to grow, where is the box getting its instructions?
  He now knew more than he did. 
The box must have some kind of power source to change its shape, it must have some kind of programming or intelligence to know what shape to assume and it must be controlled or influenced by magnetic impulses, as that was the only variable I have changed. 

Not bad for a few hours’ work
.  Now he wanted to get it open. 
Now, where to start.  Getting it to change shape is one thing, getting it to open up is another.  It just remains completely sealed when changing shape.  If this were a safe, I would just blow it open....
  That, he suddenly realised, was it. 
Brute force.  Knowing the frequency at which it changes shape I can vastly increase the magnetic field.
  He went back into the MRI scanners’ test mode and removed all the safety overrides.  He was going to apply the full power of the device to the box and hope to overwhelm it.

When the program kicked into life, the noise, even in his observation room, was deafening.  The pulses, created by the interference between the electro-magnetic and magnetic fields, felt like the Earth itself were splitting in two and causing the scanner to scream in pain.  The box was changing shape rapidly now, each shape more complex than the previous one.  Finally, the box lost its coherence and changed into three interconnected shapes, leaving an opening.  John shut down the program and his ears were blessed with silence, but the loud pounding continued to ring in his ears.  He walked over to the scanner and pulled out the box.  He peaked inside.

The box contained what appeared to be a large diamond, about the size of a tennis ball.  He took it out and its brilliance shone like a bright star, casting rainbows around the room.  Holding it between his index finger and thumb the sight of it stunned him.  He looked inside the box.  There was a small dark object, about the size of a box of matches.  Thousands of tiny fibres, no thicker than a strand of a cobweb, protruded from each end and were connected to the interior of the box.  He picked up the box and left to return to his own lab.

23
The Teacher

09:20
              31 December  [09:20  31 December GMT] 

Moore Terraces, Flat 4d, Brixton Road, Brixton, London, England.

Solomon looked around the top floor flat.  It was not what she had hoped for, longed for all this time.  The flat was in stark contrast to her former home and life in St. Petersburg.
But then
, she reflected,
it is a world away from there, which is what I wanted.
  Natasha was happy though, she was looking around the entire flat, poking into every nook and cranny.  Whilst they had been bringing their luggage up, Natasha had met a girl about her own age, living in the flat below.  She was from the Czech Republic, her blonde hair and blue eyes contrasting with Natasha’s now back to her natural Chestnut.  Natasha had unfortunately introduced herself, which was a problem, as they hadn't yet decided on new names for their new identities.  It wasn't Natasha's fault; she just hadn't been told yet as Solomon couldn't think how to broach the subject.  She turned her mind to more practical matters.  There were two bedrooms, she would have the larger for her and Natasha and Severine the slightly smaller room.  Sally and Anita had already removed their belongings and had told them that they could change anything they wanted.  Solomon dearly wanted to; she wanted to create a home for her daughter that she would finally feel settled in.
For the moment,
she reminded herself,
we will be moving on at some point. 

The windows in the combined lounge-kitchen were open.  The sound of the traffic and people outside was deeply intrusive.  The flat was situated on a busy junction.  There was a taxi rank outside and the noise from this would go on through the night.  It didn't matter though; it was warm, dry, and safe.  It was also theirs.

There was a knock at the door.  Solomon's heart froze.  Severine ushered Solomon and Natasha into one of the bedrooms and closed the door.  She took off the chain and undid the latch.  Her handbag slung over her right shoulder, her hand inside resting lightly on her silenced Heckler & Koch P30.  Severine stiffened slightly and opened the door.  She was aiming at nothing.  She looked down.  A small blonde girl was stood in front of her.

'Is Natasha coming out?  We can play in the garden.  See,' she said holding aloft two small badminton rackets, 'I have a spare.'  She looked very pleased with herself.

'I'll go and see.'  Severine closed the door on the girl and went into the bedroom.  Solomon looked out the back window, indeed there was a large area of grass behind the block of flats.  It was fenced all around and there appeared to be a sturdy locked gate to the car park behind.
  I guess normality has to start somewhere.
  Solomon looked at her daughter, Natasha was reserved, but Solomon could see in her daughter's eyes how desperate she was just to play.  Solomon relented.  Natasha ran to the front door and didn't look back as she disappeared from view.

Severine and Solomon took the time to discuss their living arrangements and their urgent need for new identities.  Severine suggested that Natasha take the second room and she would sleep on the sofa bed in the lounge.  Solomon wouldn't hear of it, instead arguing that for appearances sake it made more sense to decorate the smaller bedroom as a child's room but that Severine would occupy it.  In this way, they could pretend to be a couple, which would be a better cover story anyhow. 

Their discussion on new identities involved deciding upon new names.  Solomon didn't have a clue.  Her surname already gone, she wasn't too keen to lose her forename.  Severine suggested a compromise.  New official forenames and surnames were essential to their cover.  These would be publicly available and therefore available to the Russian authorities.  However, there was nothing to stop them from using their 'new' middle names in everyday conversation.  It was elegant, Solomon agreed.  As long as their middle names were listed as initials in official documents then the risk was minimal.  Smaller than the risk of inadvertently using the wrong names, they decided.  Solomon chose the surname of a Russian composer in memory of her mother.  Solomon would become Anastasia Solomon Kasparov and her daughter Valentina Natasha Kasparov.  Now all Severine had to do was to get in touch with the lawyer who, she hoped, would know where they could purchase false identities. 
No small task,
she thought.

08:17
              01 January  [08:17  01 January GMT] 

Research Laboratory, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England.

John looked at the box.  It interested him far more than the diamond, as he had decided to refer to it.  Unsure of how to proceed, he decided to remove the black matchbox device and investigate it further.  There were no screws or fixings of any recognisable description that he could remove.  He tried picking it out, the box came with it.  He held the box in his hand and tried moving it.  It was stuck fast.  He tried pulling out some of the threads.  They wouldn't budge either.  He placed it under a high-powered optical microscope and examined it further.  The threads were six hundred and fifty nanometres in diameter, which put them about two thirds the thickness of a spiders web.  The tensile strength was incredible though.  He tried cutting a thread with a pair of high-tensile steel cutters.  He managed it, but he strained doing it. 

He looked at the cross-section of the fibre.  It was crystalline in appearance, but with a thin film of gold atoms about one third of the way in. 
It is almost as if it is a combined data and power cable… shit, of course, that’s e exactly what it is.
 
The atoms of the box's walls must require power of some kind so as to be able to re-orientate themselves, plus the message of how to change.  This means that the key to the power and intelligence of the box must be in the interior of the black matchbox device.

He had to know what was inside.  He moved the box to his workbench for further investigation.  He tried the drill.  This time there was little resistance, the matchbox device composed of a different material.  He only penetrated the surface slightly.  He transferred it to a vertical milling machine and began milling away the surface of the box.  It was just two millimetres thick.  Inside were a small, thumbnail sized disc and a fleshy substance that was soft to the touch.  The surface of the disc was warm to the touch.  He recoiled instinctively.  It was radioactive.  He left the box where it was and headed off to the physics department in search of a Geiger counter.

He returned with the Geiger counter, switching it on before he re-entered his laboratory, he read the display,
little more than background radiation...
  He opened the door and stepped in, the clicking of the counter seemed to increase, but the display didn’t change.  He slowly approached his workbench, trying his best to keep one eye on the display and the other on the gold box with the radioactive material inside.  He sidled up to it and extended his arm, tilting the counter so he could read the display.  The material was not hazardous.  He relaxed, just a little, and managed to remove it from the box. 

He weighed it and calculated its half-life as somewhere between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand years.  Then he back calculated the amount it had decayed to gauge how long it had been since it was sealed inside the gold box.  He arrived at a figure of twenty thousand years. 
Twenty thousand years,
it wondered through his mind. 
This places it squarely in the Stone Age during the last glacial period.  Man had not discovered metal then, wouldn't for thousands of years and yet someone constructed this box and placed inside it this radioactive material, obviously designed to power it for thousands of years.  That makes it alien.  I am looking at an alien device that is twenty thousand years old and still far advanced by modern standards.
 
Modern human standards,
he corrected himself. 

Why? 
He wondered.  Then he realised that the answer was close to hand. 
The diamond
.  It was the only thing in the box other than the box and its mechanism. 
Someone wanted to preserve the diamond for a long time; they thought it was that important.
 
If they thought it was that important that long ago, then it must be even more important now.
  He was in the horns of a dilemma.  The box represented a source of technical wonders.  The diamond's secrets were unknown, but of equal or greater value.  Where to focus his efforts, that was the question.  His mind reviewed his priorities, the Deeth particles were the key, of this he was certain.  The box represented the best option for this he thought.

If only I could get a sample of the box's material for analysis.
He tried milling it, it was extremely hard going, but he managed it. 
That's odd, it wouldn't budge before.
Then he realised that he had removed the radioactive disc, which must have been its power source.  He removed a small section of the box and placed it in the tunnelling electron microscope.  Now he was getting an image.  The material was composed of gold, iron and carbon atoms.  They were arranged in a Buckyball structure, like the outside of a football, sixty atoms arranged to make an almost perfect sphere.  He knew of the nature of Buckyballs.  Carbon 60 had been identified as one.  It was incredibly strong; a single Buckyball had been tested by slamming it into a stainless steel object at fifteen thousand miles per hour, it survived totally unaffected

He let the microscope continue to trace the surface of the material.  The image grew on the display; dozens of the Buckyballs were now visible.  They were all orientated in the same direction.  He removed another section of the box, from an adjacent side to the first.  These Buckyballs were also orientated in one direction, but different to the first sample.  However when he compared the original orientation of the first sample to the second they were all pointing in the same direction, regardless of their place on the cube.  He tried another sample from each of the remaining surfaces.  They all pointed in the same direction when they were on the cube.  He had seen the box change shape several times and it appeared that each time the Buckyballs were orientated in the same direction. 
They must be able to be orientated, steered to point in one direction.
  The question was why. 
Why would you want to be able to steer the atoms?  What advantage would it bring?
He decided it was time for a coffee and a cigarette.

The air outside was fresh in his face, the coffee hot but not scolding.  As he drew on his cigarette, his mind floated over the surface of the material.  He let it wander.  He looked down on the sea of Buckyballs below, noting their orientation.  They changed direction whilst he was looking.  They changed again and again.  His mind swooped lower skimming the surface.  Still it didn't make sense.  It came to hover above just one Buckyball and then descended down inside it.  It floated there watching the Buckyball move around it.  The movement reminded him of something but he wasn't sure what it was.  Their movement was orchestrated like a wind farm, continually making adjustments to face the wind.  He imagined a wind blowing though at a sub-atomic level.  He added some colour to the wind so he could see it interact with the Buckyballs.  The wind passed through the surface, right through the material itself.  Some of it was stuck though.  The Buckyballs seemed to capture an exact amount of wind each, held within each of the moving spheres.  It was only held for an instant, and then released to allow the next particles of wind to enter. 
The wind is the key
, his mind said. 
The magnetic properties of the iron atoms could combine with the diamagnetic ones of the carbon atoms to steer the Buckyballs.  They could also be used to pass power from one Buckyball to the next.  That leaves the gold atoms, which are the most abundant as well.  They must be providing the temporary capture of the wind.  The wind must be composed of Deeth particles,
he realised. 
If you could capture Deeth particles, no matter how briefly, you would have an enormous force at your disposal.  That must be where its strength comes from.  I was trying to drill through layers of Deeth particles!  Moving at a billion times the speed of light and with incredible mass it would have been like trying to push a drinking straw through a brick wall…

He headed back into his laboratory wondering to himself,
how do I validate my theory without blowing up my lab again?  I need to build a software model to test the theory.  Shit, I have so much to do and so little time...I’m going to need some help with all this.

He remembered that both his computer and the entire web were still infected with the virus. 
That is going to make it even more tricky.  What I need is a virtual classroom, where I can bring in the brightest minds from around the world to work on the problems with me.  But I need a way of doing this that protects them from the contagion.
He sighed, realising that he needed some initial help before he could get more help, meant that he was initially limited to the students on the campus.  He headed over to the vice chancellor’s office.