Wormhole (34 page)

Suddenly Louis froze. One large section of the ATLAS detector’s massive end cap dangled from a ceiling crane, trailing metal scraps and cables, as if a gigantic maw had grabbed the device and ripped out a huge chunk.

“What in God’s name?”

A wave of nausea and dizziness almost buckled Louis’s knees.

“Dr. Stephenson’s order. He’s personally supervising the dismantling operation.”

“Dismantling?” Louis sputtered. “That’s wanton destruction. Where the hell is he?”

As Gary pointed to a tiny figure gesturing to the construction crew on the far side of the cavern, Louis cursed, then clambered down the stairs leading to the cavern floor. By the time he reached Dr. Stephenson, his breath hissed out in short, ragged gasps.

Grabbing Dr. Stephenson by the shoulder, he spun the American scientist to face him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Stephenson’s gray eyes took in Dr. Dubois as casually as if he’d just asked to schedule a meeting.

“The crew was falling behind schedule. I am changing that.”

“By destroying billions of dollars in instrumentation? We’re supposed to be dismantling ATLAS so that it can be reconstructed once we’re done here. You’re ruining decades of work.”

Dr. Stephenson pursed his lips. “Dr. Dubois. What portion of this piece of junk do you think needs saving? Since you probably haven’t understood a word I’ve presented in my papers, this may not have occurred to you, but your little science project is over.
The technologies and energies we are about to create in this cavern go so far beyond anything ever contemplated on earth; they make the Large Hadron Collider laughable.”

Dr. Dubois’s eyes widened as if he’d been slapped in the face.

“Face it, Louis,” Stephenson continued. “No need to search for more standard-physics-model validation. That model is dead.”

With that dismissal, Dr. Stephenson turned to yell more instructions at the foreman. Behind him, Dr. Louis Dubois stood frozen in place. As he stared up at the beautiful, intricate machine that was ATLAS, his eyes misted over. Stephenson was right. Like Louis, in the blink of an eye, it had become a dinosaur.

Dr. Rodger Dalbert slid into the indicated seat in the small breakout room adjacent to the White House Situation Room. President Jackson was seated in the opposite chair, Cory Mayfield, the director of national intelligence, sat to his right, and James Nobles, the National Security Advisor, sat on the president’s left. The arrangement had Rodger seated with his back to the door, a position that left him feeling exposed and vulnerable.

The breakout room was normally used for occasions when the president wanted to pull a couple of key staff members out of the Situation Room for a private side discussion, while the rest of the staff cooled their heels and waited for the president’s return. To be brought here directly, while the Situation Room sat empty next door, raised Rodger’s hackles, making him feel like closing himself inside one of the nearby high-security Plexiglas phone tubes.

“Rodger. Glad to see you,” the president said.

“Always a pleasure, Mr. President.”

“I imagine you’re curious as to why I had you brought down here.”

“The question came to mind.”

President Jackson leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “You understand that what we are about to discuss is top-secret SCI?”

Rodger nodded.

“You’re not to discuss anything we talk about with anyone but me. Is that clear?”

Once again Rodger felt the uncomfortable tensing of muscles between his shoulder blades. The president did tend to repeat himself. “Yes sir.”

The president smiled that broad smile that had eased his ascension into the political stratosphere, and leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Good. Then let’s get right to the meat of it. You know Jim Nobles and Cory Mayfield. They have come to me with a proposal that impacts the construction being done at the ATLAS site. As chairman of my council on science and technology, and since you were the first American to be briefed on the November Anomaly, I wanted to get your opinion before I make a final decision.”

Rodger glanced at Cory Mayfield, but the intel man’s gray eyes betrayed no hint of emotion. But James Nobles’s mouth held a tension that matched Rodger’s.

“I’m listening.”

“Go ahead, Cory.”

“I’ve recommended to the president that, through our ties with the Geneva-based construction company Dietrich and Hoechner, we install some tactical nuclear weapons within some of the prefabricated supports destined for installation in the ATLAS cavern.”

Rodger’s jaw dropped as he struggled to parse the words he’d just heard.

Regaining his voice, Rodger consciously released the pressure in his clenched fists. “Mr. President, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Motioning for the other two to remain silent, the president looked directly into his eyes. “OK, Rodger, make your case.”

Rodger struggled to bring his thoughts to bear on the problem. It boggled his mind that the president of the United States had even entertained the proposal, much less give it enough credence to warranted Rodger’s debunking it. He inhaled deeply.

“Mr. President, I assume the purpose of these devices would be to form some sort of backup plan whereby they would be triggered in order to destroy the nascent black hole?”

“That is correct.”

“That’s just wrong. As I already briefed you and the entire staff, the anomaly exists at an inflection point and is gradually tilting into a state where it is likely to become a black hole. We’re struggling to slow that process by surrounding it in as perfect a low-temperature vacuum as can be created on Earth, all in an attempt to keep the thing from absorbing additional matter and energy, just trying to give the November Anomaly Project time to build the Stephenson device. Any explosive addition of energy to the anomaly will greatly accelerate its progress in becoming a black hole. If you set off a nuclear explosion, you’ll be destroying the Earth as surely as if the sun went supernova.”

“You’re certain of that.”

“As sure as I’m sitting here.”

“Cory?”

“I understand Dr. Dalbert’s scientific analysis. But Mr. President, the fact remains that something might go wrong with
Dr. Stephenson’s device. It might not work as his theory predicts or it might not get done in time. There’s also the side issue of how much we trust Dr. Stephenson. There’s no doubt he’s a genius, but our sources say he’s rolling out theoretical applications that he never revealed to others at Los Alamos or to the rest of the government team. If something goes badly wrong, we can’t afford to go without a fallback plan.”

“Fallback plan?” Rodger sputtered. “Didn’t you hear anything I just said? If you nuke it you get an instant black hole. No need to add water or stir.”

“And if we do nothing, we get a black hole anyway. Isn’t that right, Dr. Dalbert?”

Rodger felt beads of sweat pop out on his brow. “Probably, but not as quickly. We might have time for another try.”

Cory Mayfield laughed, a harsh, guttural rasp that hurt Rodger’s ears.

“Another try? There’s not going to be another try. The world is committing every bit of its scientific and engineering might into Dr. Stephenson’s plan. Not that we wouldn’t spin up a backup project if someone came up with a competing idea, but the sad truth is that nobody’s got another reasonable idea. We’ve been all through the launch-it-into-space thing. All the top minds say that’s a no-go for a host of reasons, chief among them the problem of maintaining the isolation and containment field throughout the launch process. Then there’s the issue of this approach being incompatible with our best bet, which is building Dr. Stephenson’s Rho device around the thing. So, unless some religious group manages to pray the anomaly away, we’re left with Stephenson’s Rho device or bust.”

Rodger opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.

“So,” Mayfield continued, “if all else fails and the thing’s getting ready to eat us anyway, it won’t hurt to roll the dice.”

President Jackson turned to face his national security advisor. “James?”

“I don’t see a better alternative.”

“Mr. President! Give me a month. I’ll assemble another team, give it one more look, see if we can come up with another fallback option.”

President Jackson smiled a sad smile. “I don’t have another month to give you, Rodger. If we want to get nukes put in the prefab construction, I have to make a decision now. I’m sorry, but I’m giving the go-ahead for Director Mayfield’s approach.”

Turning to his smiling DNI, the president nodded.

“OK, Cory. Make it happen.”

The click-clack of retreating footsteps echoed down the long empty hallway, picking up a sympathetic vibration from the steel bars that locked Mark in his cell. He sat cross-legged and naked on the cold concrete, deep in the meditation that gave him respite from that lonely place.

Surprisingly, his situation had improved. Immediately after killing Dr. Krause and the two guards, Mark had waited in the closet to be recaptured. His intuition had told him that Heather should be the one to initiate their escape, that she would know when the time was right. So he had just uploaded instructions to Jennifer’s worm, destroyed the cell phone, and waited.

He had been moved to a different cell, still inside the same supermax unit, but without the chains and waterboarding table. Except for food trays pushed through a floor slot, his captors appeared to have forgotten about him, leaving him to deal with
his own demons here in solitary confinement. He shared the ten-by-twelve-foot space with a sink, a toilet, a showerhead, and a drain. The water came out of both the sink and the showerhead at the same temperature. Cold.

Except for the prison-issue orange pj’s and a single pair of briefs, Mark had nothing. On the days he washed his clothes in the sink, he waited naked for them to dry. At the cell’s constant sixty-two degrees, that drying process took a good while, even after he’d hand-wrung them. Today was one of those laundry days.

Despite the way Mark tried to keep himself busy working out and meditating, the oppressive loneliness was working on him in a way the torture hadn’t. He tried not to think of Heather, but she crept into his thoughts, and with her came a longing that tugged him irresistibly toward a black pit of despair.

And Heather wasn’t the only thing messing with his mind. Increasingly, the faces of the men he’d killed came back to haunt him. Not Don Espeñosa and his assholes, nor even Dr. Krause. It was the faces of the two guards that robbed him of peace. Did they have wives? Children? Mark thought he knew the answer. But in a moment of violent action, he’d destroyed those little families, as surely as the US government had destroyed his. No more birthdays or Christmases with Daddy. No more family barbecues in the backyard. Thank you, Mark Smythe. You’re a real badass hero.

With a start, Mark realized he’d completely lost the meditation, having allowed the rogue thoughts to entice him onto the shoals of that depressing shore. He shook his head in attempt to clear it.

Somewhere in this hellhole, his captors had Jennifer and Heather. Mark had little hope that they were receiving kinder treatment than that afforded him.

The picture of Heather sleeping beside him in that Las Vegas motel formed in his mind so clearly that he could reach out to hold her tight and safe in his protective arms. He breathed in the pleasant scent that wafted up to his nostrils from her freshly showered body. It was only the smell of a motel soap bar, but anointing Heather’s skin, its aroma surpassed that of the finest perfume.

Again Mark fought to clear his thoughts. He stared up at the camera in the upper right corner of the cell, letting his frustration and rage boil up. Rising to his feet, Mark coiled his leg muscles and, with a two-stride jump, ripped the camera from its mount, landing on the floor amid a shower of electrical sparks, the short plunging the entire corridor into darkness. Mark stood there for several seconds, listening for an alarm that never sounded. Then, tossing the small camera through the bars, he resumed his former meditative pose.