Quantum (10 page)
Authors: Tom Grace
Yekaterinburg, Russia
When she left Moscow a lifetime ago, Avvakum had journeyed east aboard a cramped and ancient car on the Trans-Siberian Railway. For her return trip, a corporate jet waited to whisk her from Sverdlovsk 23 to freedom. As she walked across the tarmac, she saw VIO FinProm’s logo, a golden double eagle on a field of royal blue, emblazoned on the jet’s triangular tail.
‘Welcome aboard, Dr Avvakum,’ the uniformed pilot said as she stepped into the luxurious cabin of the needle-nosed aircraft. Inside she saw Zoshchenko talking with a distinguished-looking man. Both rose as she approached.
‘Lara, it’s good to see you again. I would like to introduce your patron, Victor Ivanovich Orlov.’
Orlov clasped Avvakum’s offered hand with both of his; the grip was firm but gentle. ‘I’ve looked forward to meeting you, Lara. Oksanna has told me a lot about you.’
‘Thank you,’ Avvakum said shyly, not sure how to respond to Orlov’s attention.
‘What do you think of my new jet?’ Orlov crowed proudly.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Considering where you’ve spent the past decade, I’m not surprised. It’s the latest design from Dassault. Supersonic. Capable of Mach one point eight. It’ll only take about two hours to fly to Moscow from here.’
‘Two hours! My last trip by train took days.’
‘Welcome to the twenty-first century.’
The pilot sealed the fuselage door and walked into the passenger cabin. ‘We’re just about ready to leave. If you’ll please take your seats.’
‘Thank you, Brody,’ Orlov replied.
Orlov motioned to a wide leather captain’s chair. Avvakum sat and felt herself slowly melting into the supple material as the chair conformed to her shape.
‘Don’t get so comfortable that you fall asleep on me,
Lara
,’ Orlov warned. ‘I still want to talk with you.’
Avvakum, Orlov, and Zoshchenko buckled themselves in for takeoff as the jet’s three engines began powering up. A subtle change in the frequency of the engines’ whine accompanied a gradual forward motion of the aircraft. Were it not for the visual cues passing by the cabin windows, Avvakum might not have been able to tell they were moving.
The sleek white jet taxied out to the end of the runway, where it paused for a minute. In the distance members of the airport ground crew stood outside the hangars watching the jet take off. The engines wound up again, louder than before, and the thirty-four-meter-long, delta-winged javelin hurtled across the runway. The world raced past the windows in a blur of colors as the aircraft’s speed increased to the point at which it freed itself from the ground. Minutes later they broke through a layer of low-lying clouds and into a blue sunlit sky.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ Avvakum said as she stared out at the billowy cloud tops.
‘Isn’t it,’ Orlov agreed. ‘Shall we get to the business at hand?’
‘Of course,’ Avvakum agreed, a little embarrassed at her naive display.
‘For security purposes, Oksanna has told you little about what you’ll be working on for me. I assume that you’re curious about the project.’
Avvakum nodded.
‘I’ll give you a little background information first. My company was involved in a research project with an American corporation. Both sides provided funding and staff, and most of the work was carried out in the United States. This project ran for almost two years, but then there was an explosion in the lab. Following that incident, my American partners dissolved our collaboration claiming a loss of faith in the project.’
‘Do you still have people working on this project?’
‘
Nyet.
One of the men I sent to the United States was killed in the accident. The other decided to stay there. What I do have is all their research. Are you comfortable with English?’
‘I am reasonably proficient.’
‘Good, because all the project materials are in English. My researchers were bilingual – theirs were not – so the project documentation was kept in the common language. Since this is going to be your project from now on, you can choose any language you like, as long as it’s Russian.’
Avvakum and Zoshchenko laughed along with Orlov’s joke.
‘Will I be working with anyone?’
‘In the beginning, no. Oksanna and I have discussed this, and we believe that it will take you several months to completely familiarize yourself with the work. Once you have an understanding of what you are dealing with, then you can make a recommendation to me regarding your staffing needs. I want you to pick your own people.’
Avvakum smiled. When the time came, she would have the opportunity to select the best people she could find rather than struggling with someone else’s castoffs.
‘Can you tell me more about the project?’ Avvakum asked.
‘Oksanna, would you?’ Orlov deferred.
‘
Da
, Victor Ivanovich.’ Zoshchenko took a moment to compose her thoughts. ‘You are, of course, familiar with negative energy state theory.’
‘Certainly. The early theoretical work in this area brought about the prediction of antimatter, which has since been proved to exist.’
‘Well, our researchers were studying the use of fluctuating electrical fields on evacuated chambers to see whether they could develop a better method for producing and containing antimatter. The result of these experiments was a device that outputs roughly two thousand times the amount of energy they put into it.’
‘I would like to see that,’ Avvakum said skeptically.
‘You will,’ Orlov promised.
‘I understand your skepticism, Lara,’ Zoshchenko continued. ‘I once shared it. In fact, that’s one of the reasons you were selected to continue this line of research. The team that discovered this phenomenon has never been able to explain how it works, which is essential in securing as broad a patent as possible on technological applications. We need to know why this device does what it does.’
‘You’ve brought up another interesting point,’ Orlov said. ‘Regarding patents. My former partners said they are no longer interested in continuing the project. Both sides parted company with identical copies of the research. While I have no proof as yet, I believe that they may also try to continue working on this project. If so, we are in a race, and the winner will control a technology worth billions of American dollars.’
For a mind that regularly pondered the mysteries of the universe and plumbed the depths of subatomic structures so small that their existence could only be inferred, Avvakum found herself mentally unable to grasp the economic stakes involved in this project. If she succeeded, even a small share in an enterprise so vast could be worth more than the past twenty generations of her family had earned in their entire lifetimes.
Orlov glanced at Zoshchenko, who smiled slyly back while waiting for Avvakum to recover her senses. A decade in an impoverished scientific backwater had turned Lara Avvakum into the perfect candidate for the job. She had both the ability and, more important, the incentive to succeed.
‘Would you like to see where you’re going to be working?’
‘
Da.
’
Orlov opened his briefcase and pulled out an eight-by-ten photograph of a large, nondescript industrial building. A flag bearing the conglomerate’s logo fluttered from a pole mounted on the parapet. Below the flag, a string of large black letters spelled out the name VIO FINPROM.
‘I admit, it’s not the most elegant building I own, but the renovations are going quite well and security is excellent. It was built back in the time of Stalin; Gipromez used to design metallurgical facilities there. It’s on Prospekt Mira, about thirty minutes away from the center of Moscow. Your apartment is just a few Metro stops away, but we’ve arranged for you to have a car as well – a Saab.’
Avvakum stared at the photograph but saw her new life instead. Here she was, hurtling across European Russia in a supersonic jet. Ahead lay an apartment, a paying job, a new car, and the culture of Moscow.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, barely able to speak. She felt as though her life had just been saved.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
The sun beat down on the cab of Bud Vesper’s Caterpillar E120B excavator. Even with the windows open, the temperature inside the cab was a good ten degrees hotter than the ninety-five predicted by the cute weathergirl on the local news.
Yesterday the chairman of the University of Michigan’s physics department and several other dignitaries stood on the manicured lawn behind West Engineering and Randall. They wore unblemished white hard hats, and each was armed with an engraved bronze shovel. They broke ground with great ceremony, each turning a spadeful of sod to celebrate the construction of the modern addition that would join together the two old buildings.
Today the steel bucket mounted on the end of the Cat’s hydraulic arm bit out thirty times more earth than those ceremonial shovels each time it tore into the ground. After moving several tons of dirt and clay, Vesper called for Darrell Jones, the surveyor on his crew, to check the depth on the cut he was working on.
Jones motioned that they had reached the specified depth, so Vesper started cutting the next section.
Fifteen minutes into the new cut, Jones walked over with a story pole – an eight-foot metal ruler with markings accurate to a tenth of an inch. Attached to the pole was an electronic target that emitted a loud tone when struck by the oscillating laser on the surveyor’s transit. Jones held the pole vertical; the laser line was just shy of the target.
Jones motioned for Vesper to dig a little farther. As the bucket deftly peeled away another few inches of earth, Jones signaled for Vesper to stop as a strange object caught his eye.
Vesper had exposed a sixteen-inch-long piece of something. Jones dug around the edges of the object, which felt soft and rubbery.
‘I hope this isn’t some damn utility line,’ Jones groused.
He gripped the object with both hands and pulled. It easily sprang loose, and Jones quickly realized that it was a human arm.
‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ!’ he yelled.
‘Hey, Darrell,’ Vesper called out from the excavator.
‘Bud!’ Jones screamed, still bug-eyed and frantic. ‘Bud, somebody’s fuckin’ arm is in the goddamn hole!’
‘Easy, Jones, easy. Say again?’
‘There is a fuc-king arm,’ Jones replied, enunciating each syllable with deliberate precision, ‘in the god-damn hole.’
Vesper looked down into the excavation and saw an arm lying right where Jones had left it.
‘I ain’t no gravedigger,’ Jones complained.
Vesper shook his head in disgust, knowing that this discovery could set his project schedule back worse than a month of heavy rain. He pulled a phone off his hip and called Fred Murrow, the university’s project manager for this job.
‘Hey, Fred,’ he said sarcastically when the other man came on the line, ‘guess what I just dug up?’
‘Don’t tell me you hit the steam tunnel.’
‘No, we’re well clear of that. Guess again.’
‘Bud, I don’t have time for this. What the hell did you hit?’
‘I didn’t hit nothing, Fred. I dug up somebody’s fucking arm. I looked at all the as-built drawings for this site, and I don’t remember seeing the word
cemetery
anywhere.’
‘All right, Bud. Just sit tight. I’ll make a few calls and then I’ll be right down.’
Ann Arbor, Michigan
‘Hey, Darrell, you ready to go back to work?’
Darrell Jones walked over to where Bud Vesper sat in the excavator and hesitantly peered down into the pit. ‘Did they get all those dead fuckers out of the hole?’
‘After knocking my schedule off by a week, they better have. Fuckin’ med school.’
‘Med school?’
‘Yeah. Up until the late 1800s, the med school had a couple of buildings down here. The Gross Anatomy building stood right about where we were digging.’
‘That arm I found looked a lot fresher than the 1800s.’
‘It wasn’t. The university sent a pathologist down here to collect what we’d found. He told me the reason we didn’t find bones was that the parts were too pickled to rot and buried too deep for anything to eat ’em. The guy also said that back then there were rumors about the med school robbing fresh graves to get their cadavers. He assured me that they don’t do it like that anymore.’
‘I should hope the fuck not!’
‘Anyway, they’re all gone now and on their way to a decent burial.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Jones said as he picked up his story pole and began climbing down into the hole.
By midafternoon Vesper had widened the excavation along the side of West Engineering, but as he dug closer to the old building, he began to encounter construction debris.
‘I’d like to beat the crap out of the guy who left all this shit down here,’ Vesper said as he pulled out another bucketful of shattered bricks.
Vesper lowered the hydraulic arm back into the hole. When it hit bottom, a loud hollow sound echoed from below. Jones quickly motioned for him to pull out. Vesper parked the bucket off to the side, shut the Cat down, and walked over to the edge of the hole.
‘What the hell did I hit now?’
‘Beats me, Bud, but it sure sounded funny.’
‘Might be a branch off the steam tunnel. What’s the invert elevation?’
Jones placed his story pole down in the hole and eye-balled the depth.
‘It’s about thirteen off the original grade.’
‘Too deep for a tunnel. What the…’ Vesper thought for a moment as he looked at the masonry, trying to envision the whole structure from the exposed fragment. The rubble they’d cleared appeared to be confined to a circular area ten feet in diameter. ‘I gotta check something.’
He climbed out of the hole and walked over to the site trailer that served as his local office. He flipped through a set of drawings he had for the project until he found the campus master site plan. Vesper located the area they were working in, and there, next to a dashed circle, read a note: STACK REMOVED 1948.
‘It’s a fucking smokestack,’ Vesper growled.
Shaking his head in disgust, he picked up the phone and called Murrow.
‘Hey, Fred, it’s Bud. How’s that contingency fund holding up?’
‘What is it now?’ Murrow sounded as though he could use an aspirin.
‘Nothing much, just the foundation of a goddamn smokestack that was yanked out back in ’forty-eight.’
‘How bad?’
‘The architect wants to put a column right smack on top of the goddamn thing. Looks like there’s a cleanout tunnel coming out of one side. Sounds hollow, so it won’t bear the weight. The whole thing’s gotta come out.’
‘Okay, Bud, but take it easy on me. At the rate we’re going, the contingency money will be shot before we even get the foundation in.’
‘I’ll be gentle. See ya, Fred.’
Vesper clipped the phone to his hip and returned to the latest discovery.
‘What’s the story, Bud?’ Jones asked.
‘Once upon a time, there was a big old smokestack right here.’ Vesper pointed at the ring of shattered masonry. He then walked about ten paces west. ‘The stack was connected to the boiler house, which sat right about there. When they demolished the stack, they chopped the tree down but left the stump. I talked with Murrow, and he gave the okay to rip it out.’
‘Then let’s rip.’
Vesper climbed back into the cab of his excavator and carefully began digging out the edges around the stack’s foundation. It took almost two hours to expose the base of the demolished smokestack. Vesper widened the trench he’d dug around the stack on the side opposite the presumed access tunnel.
Vesper rammed the bucket into the bricks; a fissure opened in the brittle mortar joints, and two more hits widened the crack that ran top to bottom. Vesper then dug the teeth of the bucket into the upper lip of the cylinder and drove it downward, peeling away the masonry shell. Broken bricks spilled out of the fractured vessel amid a cloud of dust and ancient ash.
Jones signaled for Vesper to wait while he took a look inside – with their recent luck, he was afraid of what they might find. He switched on his flashlight and pointed it into the tunnel. The dust was still swirling but slowly settling.
‘No steam pipes, no wires. So far, so good,’ Jones muttered to himself. ‘Nothing but broken bricks on the—’
Jones dropped his flashlight and jumped back from the darkened opening, cursing.
Vesper leaned out of the excavator. ‘Hey, Jones, what did ya see?’
‘Sweet mother of Jesus! I just do not fucking believe this. I’m working in a goddamn graveyard! I don’t need this shit, I really don’t!’
Jones was pacing in a circle. Vesper could see panic in the man’s eyes. He leapt from the Caterpillar and ran over to the tunnel.
‘Darrell, you okay, man?’
‘I thought you told me all the dead people were gone! You said we weren’t going to find any more! You fuckin’ promised me, Bud!’
‘I swear, man, I thought we got ’em all.’
‘You know how I feel about this shit,’ Jones said, slowly recovering his composure while his heart was still trying to pound its way out of his chest.
Vesper nodded, then turned to investigate the latest discovery. He crouched down and peered into the dark tunnel and saw Jones’s flashlight lying on a pile of shattered bricks, its beam pointing down. Vesper picked up the flashlight, rotated the bezel for a wide beam, and aimed the light down into the darkened space.
About six feet ahead he saw a body lying prone on the floor of the tunnel. The fully clothed figure of a man looked as if it had been cast aside, like a rag doll, the arms and legs unnaturally askew. Off to one side lay a dust-covered leather briefcase and a rumpled hat.
Somehow
, Vesper thought,
I don’t think the med school put this guy down here.