Or maybe it was due to the critical nature of the work.
What made the current level of THE monitoring slightly creepier and more intrusive was that they had three workstations dedicated to them, meaning that any THE agent could sit down and call up a record of every keystroke a modeler made. Whit had had experienced teachers and others checking his work; this was far worse.
“Hello, Whit.”
He looked up to see Counselor Kate, the slim redhead from the trio that had “recruited” him in Las Vegas. Still wearing her standard THE uniform, minus the jacket, she looked relaxed, indecently healthy and happy. She lowered herself to a stand that Whit, a longtime baseball player, always called “on-deck circle”: one knee up, one on the floor.
Arm on the back of Whit’s chair. “How do you like the work so far? The facility?”
“The place is fine.” He was able to be truthful; his living quarters were bigger and nicer than where he had lived at Nellis. He wasn’t in a bunk bed, for one thing, and he shared his room with only three young men, down from seven.
“But . . .” Kate was offering him an opening.
The only thing lacking so far was free communication, and Whit’s experience with THE encouraged him to raise it: “I wish I could talk to my mother.”
Kate was all sympathy. “We told her Friday night that you had been called away on a special assignment, and that you would be in touch . . . Tuesday! Right after your shift today.” Her whole chirpy manner suggested that this was a wonderful coincidence. Whit also knew that if he hadn’t said anything, it wouldn’t be happening.
Here came the hand on his shoulder. “Anything else?”
Whit pushed back. Maybe it was exposure to Dehm, maybe it was a sense that time was short and that people with his skills were rare. He might have a tiny bit of leverage.
“I would be more productive if I knew what I was working on.”
“You’re working on modeling electromagnetic fields. Very, very large and powerful ones. Me, too, by the way.” She nodded toward her cubicle.
“I knew that,” he said. “But I don’t know why. Or what for.”
Counselor Kate seemed to process this. Whit expected to see her glance toward Counselor Hans or Margot or one of the other three for permission, but she kept her eyes focused on him as she said, “Well, then, ask me.”
“We’re creating what appears to be a giant cone—or ring—of energy, out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Correct. We can’t be messing around with that kind of energy too close to population centers.”
“I understand that. I just don’t see the use of this energy cone.” He decided to press his luck. “Is it a weapon?”
Counselor Kate didn’t hesitate. “No, you have my word on that. And, since you have no special reason to trust me, look at this.” This time she did glance at Counselor Margot. Apparently having received permission, she called up a new schematic on her screen. It showed a dozen beams of some kind emanating from a projector at the center of the ring. The beams hit the ring, which then projected a gauzy cone into the sky.
Counselor Kate tapped on her mouse pad, pointing the cone in different directions. Apparently it could even be aimed parallel to the Earth’s surface. Having some idea of the energies involved, Whit hoped he would never find the cone aimed at him.
“Cool,” he said, trying not to be sarcastic. “What does the cone do besides make a pretty shape?”
“It literally bends space.”
“Okay,” he said, not entirely sure that he understood that—or accepted it.
“The ring accelerates subatomic particles to hypervelocities. When they collide with certain other particles, a . . . distortion is created. A wave of particles.”
“Sounds very quantum.”
Kate nodded so slightly that it was impossible to know whether she agreed or thought he was teasing her. “This . . . wavicle”—she smiled, pleased with her coinage—“somehow compresses or distorts the structure of space. Think of it as taking two ends of a flat tablecloth and bringing them together. You still have all the fabric, but you’ve connected the ends.” She smiled broadly now, pleased that she remembered an important lesson.
“And once we’ve made this connection?”
“Oh, objects can move from one end to the other without taking the long way around.”
Whit smiled. “We’re back to why.”
“One possibility is to send material from one world to another without using spaceships.”
“What, it just opens a door in the universe?”
“That would be a simplistic and, uh, incomplete way of describing it.”
“I bet. Considering how power drops off the farther you get from the generator . . . ”
“If you’re picturing some cone of empty space stretching across the galaxy, don’t. The cone is only effective to a distance of several thousand kilometers. It creates . . . and here I’m using English-language terms for concepts that are not only mathematical, but Aggregate math. It creates a . . . well, a transition.”
“That isn’t remotely helpful,” Whit said.
“It’s the best I can do. I can tell you that more than a thousand Aggregate cells are currently mapping the transition.”
“How can you speak about mapping something when it’s all theory?”
Now Counselor Kate’s smile, formerly warm and helpful, became faintly indulgent, as if she had exhausted her patience. “It’s a theory that the Aggregates have been . . . pondering for five thousand years.”
“Let me get this straight,” he said. As he tried to shape his feelings into words, he couldn’t help seeing the wide eyes of his fellow field-modelers. Their thoughts were clear: Better him than us. “This ring or cone causes some kind of transition or disruption in space so large that you could send something solid through it?” He had read about experiments, pre-Aggregate days, that postulated the superluminal—faster than light speed—transfer of information.
But objects? Living things? Not according to the physics he’d studied.
Counselor Kate killed the image. She was suddenly more serious, less like someone trying to sell soap or jewelry. “I’m not saying that is the purpose. It’s one of several theoretical possibilities.”
Whit stared at her. He suspected that any further questions might elevate him to a suspect category, but what the helclass="underline" “What is that countdown clock?”
“It’s pointing us all toward what we call ‘First Light,’ which is an all-up test, and ‘Fire Light,’ which is the time when the whole cone is ready to go online.”
“‘First Light’ is only five days from now!”
“Yes. The whole project was accelerated in the past few months.” She smiled brightly. “It’s why you and the others were transferred from your other jobs.”
“So there’s no time to waste.”
“Very perceptive, Mr. Murray.”
When he was allowed to step out for lunch, Whit found Randall Dehm already sitting on top of a lunch table in the sun, dark glasses on his face, the remains of a sandwich on the table next to him. “Join me.”
“You’ve already eaten.”
He slid off the tabletop. “I can eat more.”
And, as Whit ordered a wrap and a drink, Dehm did the same. “Walk with me.”
“I only have fifteen minutes.”
“Then eat as you walk.”
Dehm led him to the edge of the platform, where a railing separated them from a drop of ten stories. “What do you see out there?”
Whit squinted. In the foreground were other buildings, including his residence. The usual electrical and environmental support required for a desert facility. One thing immediately struck Whit as odd: Site A wasn’t more than five years old, yet everything looked as though it was falling apart. There were bricks missing from walls, various bits of weatherstripping and UV protection already peeling from windows, walls that had never been painted and looked as though they never would be.