Netlink (10 page)

“How close are they to developing this thing?” Kara wanted to know.

“Very. We’re not sure, but we think the Imperials may already have some of their fleet units equipped with I2C already.”

“ ‘I2C’?”

“Instantaneous Interstellar Communications.The latest in government-military acronyms.”

“But… but
how?
I thought something like that was impossible.”

“Apparently it’s not. You’re familiar with phase entanglement?”

Kara pulled a fast download from her RAM. “Twentieth-century quantum mechanics,” she said. “The first experiments, anyway.”

“That’s right. It was demonstrated that if two particles interact—two quons, I should say, particles that act on a quantum level, photons or electrons—if they interact, they become… related. More than related. In some ways, it’s as though the two particles are the
same
particle.”

In swift, concise thoughts, Katya described the concept. Two phase-entangled quantum particles acted as though they were connected, even when separated by light years. Early quantum physics investigators had focused on phase entanglement, hoping to disprove it because it suggested a faster-than-light connection, something thought at the time to be impossible. They never did, though. Phase entanglement was part of the mathematics of quantum mechanics, and eventually they were able to prove the fact in the laboratory.

And now nanotechnology had provided a way of dealing with this particular twist to the murkier side of physics. Machines small enough to manipulate individual atoms could literally build a cage a few atoms wide on a side, a cage designed to trap and hold a single quon, and to register such properties as spin. Quantum cages were routinely manufactured as a part of the nanofields projected ahead of warstriders when they were operating in floater mode, or in the projected impeller fields of private vehicles.

Presumably, the Imperials had found a means of using electron cages and quons to transmit data. In theory, the spin of an electron could represent one binary bit of data in a message—up spin for one, say, and down spin for zero. With an array of caged electrons, each paired with an identically caged twin at a distant site, data could be fed in at one end, and it would emerge at the other, instantaneously, no matter how many light years separated the two. More, it was a communications link that could never be tapped, never be jammed, and never be intercepted, since the data passed from transmitter to receiver without crossing the intervening space at all.

Their mental conversation slipped into the military aspects of the discovery. Communications were one of the key factors in any combat situation. Clearly, with I2C the Imperials would possess an overwhelming advantage if they faced the Confederation in any military showdown.

“Really!”

People linked directly with each other were not entirely cut off from the outside world; one of the reasons for using comm modules in long-distance linkages was to cut off external distractions in order to help build the virtual reality world within the participants’ brains. In full linkage, of course, all external stimuli could be filtered out by the AI managing the session. In a simple one-to-one like this, however, a loud voice could still work its way into her perception, grating and annoying. Kara opened her eyes, blinking.

“Oh…
really!”
a woman standing with the group a few meters away exclaimed again, louder this time, loud enough that the murmur of conversation in the room momentarily faded away, and carrying a distinct edge of shock and unhappiness.

Arra Thornton was a substantial woman, the wife of a general on Vic’s planning staff. She was wearing a diaphanous gown and a tasteful, golden halo holographically projected above her head. She was staring at the far side of the atrium with something akin to horror on her face.

“Arra?” Katya called sweetly. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Oh, Senator!” the woman said, turning. “I didn’t see you there!”

“You sounded upset, dear.”

“Oh, dear, I was just wondering who had invited
her.”

Kara looked toward the atrium. A woman was there, a
Japanese
woman, wearing a conservative gray sheath. Daren was at her side.

“That is my son and his guest, Ms. Thornton,” Katya said, her voice a trifle chillier than liquid nitrogen. “Is there a problem?”

“Oh!” The woman’s eyes bulged and the corners of her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “Oh, my, well, I mean, of
course
not! You can invite whatever you want to your party, dear, of
course.…
”

“I do, Ms. Thornton.”
After all, I invited you.

The big woman turned away hastily and began talking with the people near her in hushed, flustered tones.

Katya grinned at Kara. “You know, that was fun! I’ve always wanted to do something like that.”

“I agree with her,” Kara said. “How the hell could Daren bring—”

“Kara!” Katya’s tone was sharp. “I take people one at a time, not as monolithic wholes.”

She stood as her son approached them.

“Mother!” Daren said. “Sis! I didn’t think you’d mind if I brought a guest. I’ve told you about my colleague from the University? Dr. Taki Oe.”

“Dr. Oe,” Katya said formally, bowing.
“Konichiwa.”

“Konichiwa,
Senator Alessandro,” the woman replied, returning the bow. “Thank you so much for having me.”

“Dr. Oe,” Kara said, frowning, “I wonder if it was a good idea, your coming here tonight. There’s a certain amount of tension—”

“Between the Japanese and the New Americans, lately. Yes, Lieutenant, I am very much aware.” She looked at Katya. “And I assure you, Senator, that I am New American. Whatever shape my eyes might be.”

Katya sighed. “You’re welcome in this house. You should be aware, though, that some of my other guests may not draw the same distinction between nationality and phenotype.” She looked pointedly at Kara. “But I will have my guests treated with hospitality.”

Kara heard the anger just beneath her mother’s
men.

“We won’t be staying long, in any case,” Daren said, a bit hastily. “Mostly just wanted to drop by and link in. Nice party.”

Kara was furious.
Damn
Daren, anyway! He could get so wrapped up in himself sometimes, completely oblivious to everyone and everything outside his immediate circle of awareness. Here she was getting psyched to go out and kick Nihonjin ass, and her brother had the nerve to bring one to the party! Insane! She scanned the room until she caught sight of Ran walking toward her with two drinks in his hands.

“Here’s your icecaf, Mums. Ran and I have to go now,” she told her mother. “It was nice to see you.” She walked away without another word.

*    *    *

Katya watched her go with a sinking feeling inside.

“I’m sorry,” Taki said. “Daren? Maybe we should go—”

“Nonsense,” Katya said, addressing her son and his guest. “Stay as long as you like. You can at least have something to eat before you go.”

“That’s an idea,” Daren said. “We haven’t had much to eat today. I’ll get something for us from that ’vot over there.”

As her son walked away, Katya looked at Oe, unsure what to say. “So, Dr. Oe. Have you known my son long?”

“We’ve been working together on several projects for about a year and a half now, Senator. He is very good at research.”

“I know.” He
was
good, if a bit single-minded in his pursuit of his own interests and projects, sometimes.

Katya studied Taki Oe as they chatted, measuring her. Daren had introduced the woman as his colleague, but Katya was both a mother and a human being with an unusually fine-tuned set of perceptions. She could look at Daren and the Oe woman, look at the way they stood, the way their eyes made contact with one another, and in that moment she knew, that these two were more than friends, more even than partners in casual sex.

“Mother,” Daren said brightly as he returned with two plates of food. “I was hoping to get some time with you tonight. I, I mean,
we
need to talk to you about the survey project.”

Katya shook her head. “This is a bad time, Daren.”

“I’m beginning to think there is no good time.”

“I don’t mean now, the party. I mean it’s a bad time for the Confederation. I don’t think you have a prayer of getting the appropriations you’d need. Or the ships.”

“Yeah, but if you could just push a little for us.…”

“Damn it, Daren! Do you think my political career exists so that you can run surveys? Look for aliens? It doesn’t work that way!”

He looked stricken. “If you just knew how important this was—”

“I’ve heard the arguments, Daren. Believe me. I even believe most of them. But there are political and economic realities,
military
realities, too, that won’t simply vanish because we want them to. I’m flattered that you think I possess so much power, but I don’t, and I’m sick of hearing your whining!”

She was angry with herself for losing her temper, but the anger was tempered by the realization that she was already upset by the possibility of losing Kara.

Oh, Dev!
she thought, a little wildly.
Where are you now, and why didn’t you stay here with me, with us? I need you!

It was all she could do to keep her
men
in place.

Chapter 7

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.…

—
Fire and Ice

R
OBERT
F
ROST

C
.
E
. 1923

Frost had it right,
he thought. Some chance crossing of memories had led him to download the ancient poem during the flight toward Nova Aquila’s orphaned, inner world. Now, standing on the ice plain beneath a black and star-strewn sky, »
DEVCAMERON
« recited the lines to himself once more.

Some say the world will end in fire…

The planet was as dead as he had expected. As his walker stepped off the grounded DalRiss ship, his upper body sensors took in a dim panorama of ice and broken, blackened rock. The two suns were only just visible, a close-set pair of bright but minute pinpoints close to the zenith. With a thousandth of the luminosity of Earth’s sun, they were by far the brightest of the sky’s stars, twin beacons casting eerie shimmers of light across the rolling plain of ice, with a radiance carrying no warmth at all. Though it was nearly local noon, the landscape was so poorly lit, only by the stars, that even with enhanced vision »
DEVCAMERON
« found it difficult to penetrate the shadowy landscape.

The temperature, he estimated, was around minus two hundred Celsius.

He remembered a popular expression from his human life:
iceworld.
It meant… be calm. Be cold. Don’t let it bother you. Standing here on an icy plain, impressed by the preternatural stillness of the place, he knew more than ever what that expression meant.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great…

This world had perished twice, first in fire as its twin suns exploded nearly two thousand years ago, then in ice as those stars dwindled away to hot but tiny fractions of their former light and warmth. The expanding shell of gas from the nova had probably widened the planet’s orbit, but more, white dwarfs simply didn’t have the surface area to provide the heat necessary for life.

He began moving away from the grounded DalRiss ship. The rest of the fleet remained in orbit over the planet or near the Device, watching for further appearances of the mysterious spacefarers who’d built—or who at least presumed to use—the Device for their own ends.

It always felt strange having a body, familiar but with odd and sometimes contradictory sensations. »
DEVCAMERON
« took a cautious step on the ice and then another, still working to get the proper feel and balance for his radially symmetrical body. The ice was not as slippery as it looked; it was far too cold and was as hard as granite. Too, »
DEVCAMERON’S
« new feet, all six of them, possessed stubby, rubbery projections that gripped even the smoothest surface and gave him excellent traction. He was aware of the cold through various sensors embedded in his skin, but his brain registered the temperature as chilly only and not as a cold bitter enough to liquefy oxygen.

The walker was a biological construct specially grown for him by the DalRiss’s master biologists, but it was not even remotely human. It resembled one of the DalRiss themselves, a starfish shape two meters across, supported well off the ground by six blunt, spiny arms, and with a crescent-shaped sensory package and a forest of delicate manipulatory tendrils perched on top.

»
DEVCAMERON’S
« original human brain and nervous system had evolved to handle only two legs, two arms, and two eyes; the DalRiss had written a special software package that let him handle six of everything, downloading it into his Naga-patterned brain.

The basic Dal form had been modified in several ways for his convenience, however. It possessed the visual sensors and nervous system of a Perceiver, giving »
DEVCAMERON
« sight, and it had been designed with a particularly thick and impermeable hide, one that would retain its metabolic warmth and internal pressure despite the frigid temperatures and hard vacuum of the world’s surface. In a sense, it was a living environmental suit, capable of surviving for days at temperatures below minus two hundred Celsius, with oxygen stored as hyperoxygenated fatty tissue padding his legs.

The ice gave way to black and crumbling rock. “Frost,” he said, transmitting on his inner radio circuit.