The Lead Cloak (The Lattice Trilogy Book 1) (12 page)

The assistant closed the door as he left, giving a semblance of privacy, but the news feeds were almost certainly listening. Iwatani raised his cup to Wu and sipped his tea. They sat in silence, waiting for him, drinking.

Finally, he leaned forward in his chair and set the teacup on the small coffee table the three men were huddled around. Wu stayed behind her desk.

“Again, Mr. Shaw, I wish to apologize for following you on the street. I had hoped to catch up to you once you reached the university and explain,” Iwatani said.

“I should be the one apologizing,” Yang spoke up. “I should have recognized you.”

Iwatani waved it away.

“What did you need to tell me that couldn’t be said with a call?” Shaw asked.

“General Braybrook would not give me authorization to place the call. He said the only reason he had let Ms. Galway call you was because they knew each other socially, but that he wasn’t going to let every CEO of a company that produced Lattice readers to be able to reach you whenever they wanted. My legal department wished to file a suit, but when I heard you were coming to Asia, I thought I could meet you and discuss this situation face-to-face.”

Damn Braybrook for putting Zella Galway through to him
. He absolutely did not need this distraction right now. “I appreciate your perseverance,” Shaw smiled. “So what can I do for you and Kanjitech?”

“I would like to ask for … an assignment, like you gave Zella Galway and Dvorak. If you use one company for help, but not its competitor, you are suggesting that Dvorak is better than Kanjitech.”

Shaw tried to hold his grimace inside, but he guessed he failed. “Do you have an idea of what you would like to research?”

“Corporations.”

“Corporations? Like, your competitors, you mean? L.R.I., T-Six—”

“No, of course not. Anyone who manufacturers a Lattice reader has no interest in seeing the Lattice destroyed. But there are other companies who are …
jealous
of our success. If a company wanted to attack Kanjitech or T-Six or any one of the five manufacturers, destroying the Lattice would be the best way to do it.”

“And it would tear the world’s economy apart in the process. How would that help a company?”

“Some companies do quite well in times of trouble. We would start our research there.”

The more he heard, the worse of an idea it sounded. “Tell me, Mr. Iwatani, why are there so few Lattice reader companies?”

“Five is quite enough, I can assure you,” Iwatani said, with a slight chuckle.

“But there are hundreds who produce … home printers, for example. I don’t even know who made my printer at home. Why aren’t there hundreds of Lattice reader manufacturers? All it takes is a connection—which is free, correct?”

“The connection might be free,” Iwatani said. “But Kanjitech still had to invest more than a trillion U.S. dollars before we could even create our first Lattice reader. The technology is an immense expense. Prohibitive to most companies.”

“Couldn’t some other company just use a Kanjitech reader to figure out how you did it and build their own reader?”

“Naturally, that would be possible, except that it would break the terms of service agreement you sign when you purchase a Kanjitech reader. It expressly states that you cannot use it for industrial espionage of any company. If we discover someone has used a Kanjitech reader to build their own reader, our legal team can get them shut down long before they ever get to market.”

“And if they use a Dvorak or an L.R.I. reader instead of a Kanjitech reader?”

“I assure you, all of the five manufacturers have similar language in their terms of service agreements.”

Shaw nodded. It was brutally simple. Five companies that could essentially prohibit anyone from competing with them, because they owned the most common technology used to engineer or research anything. How far could you get if you couldn’t use a single Lattice reader to assist your efforts?

“Mr. Iwatani, I appreciate that you came here, and that you came here with an idea of what you would like to research. But I must decline. To be honest, it sounds like you are looking for the blessing of the United States military to do the same thing you prohibit your customers from doing.”

Iwatani’s face clouded, and his brow lowered. “Mr. Shaw, that sounded distinctly like you were accusing Kanjitech of something nefarious.”

“Then let me try again. Researching companies who are jealous of you, and may be working on a Lattice reader of their own, sounds like work you probably already do. If I am going to ask for your help, I
personally
would prefer that it is not work that you are already doing.”

Iwatani nodded. “I appreciate your clarification, Mr. Shaw. Thank you. What work would you propose?”

Shaw had no clue what work he wanted Kanjitech to do. All he knew was that he didn’t want to sanction them to go hunting around possible competitors. Companies skirted espionage laws all the time using the Lattice. But just because everyone did it was no reason for Shaw to agree to it. So far, he was just grateful to have gotten through two interviews with CEOs without losing his cool.

Shaw looked at Yang, almost hoping he would have an idea. Yang looked at him back blankly, and Shaw was suddenly reminded of seeing that same face the day of the raid, worn by Ono that time. And then it struck him.

He felt a smile come to his face. It was Braybrook who had opened this can of worms. Let him deal with the consequences. “Mr. Iwatani, are you aware that for nearly four hours there was an imposter at the Lattice Installation posing as First Lieutenant Yang here?”

Yang’s eyes widened.

“I was, yes,” Iwatani answered, his eyes on Yang.

“Find out if there are any more imposters at the Lattice. From Braybrook down to the janitor bot programmers. Check them all.”

“Hasn’t the military done their own checks?”

“They most definitely did. But internal checks can be fooled, as we’ve seen, and these raiders clearly know their way around our procedures. No one will expect an outside company like Kanjitech to do a one-time audit.”

Iwatani nodded his head. “Thank you. Kanjitech will not fail you.”

Once Iwatani had left, Shaw turned to Wu. “I’m sorry about all this.”

“Please! This has been the most exciting day I’ve had in ages. To think I met Shigeo Iwatani. Here in my office, no less.”

He heard an incoming call. “Not now,” he said, and the call stopped ringing.

Wu looked at him quizzically, and he pointed to his temple. “I’m guessing the general isn’t too happy with what I just did.”

“Or Grace Williams calling to ask what Altair can do,” Yang said.

“Why is it you know Grace Williams’ name, but not Iwatani’s?” Shaw asked. “If she’d been tailing us earlier, would you have slammed her into a wall?”

Yang smiled. “Everyone knows Grace Williams. Didn’t you watch her wedding?”

“What a publicity stunt … but yes.” Altair had created the ring reader three years ago, and was still the only company to have such a convenient mobile interface. Williams married her long-time partner Nosipho the day she announced the ring. And of course, the rings they exchanged during the service were Altair Lattice readers.

Shaw’s temple implant buzzed again. “Accept.”

“God fucking damn it, Byron, just what the hell are you trying to pull?” Braybrook’s avatar asked.

“I wasn’t the one who put Zella Galway through to my phone yesterday, sir. You let me play footsie with a CEO, and now the rest are pissed at us for playing favorites. So if you’re going to make me deal with the reader manufacturers, I’m going to use them to do actual work.”

“You know damn well that it breaks all kinds of laws to have a foreign company snooping around the heads of anyone at the Lattice!”

“A law that thousands of people break every day with no consequences! The raiders won’t expect it, and if we keep doing things they won’t expect, we just might have a chance at catching them.”

Braybrook took a breath like he was ready to continue, but let it turn into a sigh. “You seem to be taking a perverse amount of joy in annoying the fuck out of me right now, Byron. But you’re only going to get away with it so long as you’re right.”

“I’m aware of that, General. Now, if someone from L.R.I. , T-Six, or Altair asks to reach me, go ahead and authorize them. I may as well deal with them all now and get it out of the way.”

“I will. Go back and finish your interview with Professor Wu. As I recall you’re supposed to be asking about the spheres.”

Braybrook ended the call.

“Right.” Shaw took a few deep breaths and turned to Wu.

“For someone who supposedly doesn’t like—what did you call it?—playing footsie with CEOs, you’re pretty good at it, Mr. Shaw. I thought you said you were a soldier, a trumped-up security guard.”

“I know enough about soldiering to know that the best way to do it is to be a good diplomat. What does Sun Tzu say? ‘It is best to win without fighting.’ Diplomacy is a good way to do that.”

“Quoting Sun Tzu now? You are full of surprises,” she laughed.

“I’m sure there’s another Sun Tzu quote for that, but let’s get down to the business I traveled seven thousand miles to ask about. The spheres.”

“Of course. What can I tell you?”

Shaw looked out the open door and saw several other faculty members loitering outside the door. He whistled loudly and saw them all start at the sound. “If you’re going to listen, you may as well come inside and participate. Grab anyone else in the department who might know about the spheres.”

Wu tried to introduce the professors as they entered, but Shaw lost track of them after the first few. Within three or four minutes Wu’s office was crowded with a dozen faculty members.

Shaw moved to the front of the room and leaned against the front of Wu’s desk once everyone was settled. “OK. Let’s get down to basics. Is there anyone here who hasn’t watched a sphere appear and disappear?” Silence. “Next question. Does anyone think that these were transported using anything other than … what’s the word, quantum teleportation?”

Silence, and then a young man raised his hand. Shaw thought he saw some eye rolls around the room.

“Great, a real academic debate!” Shaw smiled. “You don’t think it was teleportation?”

“No, sir.”

“Why’s that?”

“Teleportation just can’t move anything this big.”

“Ada Dillon’s team already discovered that the whole sphere isn’t being transported, just some sort of molecular machine to build it,” another professor interrupted in Mandarin, forcing Shaw to read off his wrap. “That’s much more in the realm of the possible.”

“But still decades ahead of current technology. It doesn’t make sense,” the young professor said.

Shaw interrupted. “So, if it’s not quantum teleportation, what is it?”

The young man looked around at the room. “I think it’s an illusion.”

“An illusion!” There was an uproar, as everyone started talking to him at once.

“Hey! Hey!” Shaw finally got them to be quiet. “You’re saying the spheres are
faked
?”

“Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation is probably the truth. And I think it’s easier to believe that the spheres are faked than that some group has made a major scientific breakthrough in total secrecy.”

“I think that depends,” Shaw said.

“On what?”

“On how you think someone would ‘fake’ a sphere.”

“I was thinking it was a new form of … an invisibility cloak.
Really
!” He had to shout the last part above the loud exclamations from the rest of the professors. “Transparent nanotubes could disguise the sphere, and bend the light.”

The noise died down.

“But the sphere doesn’t
disappear
, it
shrinks
and it
grows
,” a woman answered.

“And tags can stick with invisible objects,” Wu added. “That’s why invisibility cloaks stopped being useful years ago. The Lattice can still see through them.”

“Do you think there’s an invisibility cloak that could work on the atomic level? Enough to fool a Lattice tag?” Shaw asked the young man. He looked nervous, standing up to a room full of colleagues, and Shaw took pity on him, even though he agreed with the professors that the sphere had not just become invisible.

The young man thought about it, but finally shook his head.

“I appreciate the willingness to offer a suggestion,” Shaw said, “but I’m still thinking that these spheres have been moved using quantum teleportation. Who could have pulled it off?”

No one answered.

“Do you remember any students or colleagues who showed a real aptitude for this kind of work?”

Silence again.

“OK, let’s change course, how much of the spheres could we do with current technology? On the day before you saw the spheres, how much of them could you have built?”

One of the women raised her hand. Shaw thought it was the same woman who had argued with the young man, but she was in the wrong place. He suddenly realized that with the exception of four men—the young man, himself, Yang, and a man who looked incredibly ancient—everyone in the room was a woman.

“Go ahead,” he told her.

“If the surface of the sphere has molecules on it that are entangled with molecules on the surface of another sphere, which is our working theory, that’s something we could probably replicate ourselves. It’s a new use for quantum entanglement, but it’s using existing technology—it’s how most Lattice readers work.”

“It is?”

Wu coughed behind him, and he glanced back. She seemed like she was trying to cover her surprise.

“Don’t judge me too harshly, Professor. I don’t totally get how my toaster works, either. Give me the thirty-second version of Lattice readers and quantum entanglement.”

“When particles pass through the Lattice, they can become entangled with the Lattice as well. And the Lattice reader companies built immense collectors that are able to grab a tiny fraction of those that became entangled and funnel them into storage bins. Like catching fireflies,” she laughed, “but on a trillion dollar level. Then they use the entangled photons to drive a device’s uplink with the Lattice. It’s why your military couldn’t stop other governments or private companies from using the Lattice. They couldn’t shut off anyone else’s connection without shutting off their own.”