Simon Hawke - The Nautilus Sanction

“So the mysterious inventor of the warp grenade joined the Underground,” said Finn. “Christ, no wonder they’ve classified everything about him, including his name.”

Martingale shook his head. “You’ve got that wrong,” he said. “Darkness isn’t part of the Underground. He isn’t part of anything. Years ago, he just split the scene. Took off for some remote corner of the galaxy. He’s real strange, Delaney. All he ever wanted was to get as far away from people as it was possible to get, but he wanted it both ways. He wanted to be able to deal with people when he felt like it, only on his own terms.”

“Sounds like what a lot of people want,” said Andre.

“True,” said Martingale, “only Darkness did it. He was working on temporal translocation around the same time Mensinger was, only he was going at it from another angle. He started out working on voice and image communication by tachyon radio transmission.”

“That isn’t possible,” said Finn.

“Hey, don’t tell me, I’m no scientist,” said Martingale. “Tell the Doctor. He’s been doing it for years. What he came up with was a means of communication at a speed six hundred times faster than the speed of light. That still meant a delay in transmission, though. A five-second time lag over thirty-six hundred light seconds or a one-year delay in messages at a distance of six hundred light years. He wanted it to be instant. He got involved in some very obscure mathematics, working from the Georg Cantor theory of transfinite numbers. He discovered a solution. He found a way to make his tachyon beam move more quickly by sending it through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Instantaneous transmission. Going from Point A to Point B without having to cover the distance in between. Only he wasn’t satisfied with just having achieved instant tachyon TV communication. He wanted to travel.”

“Wait a minute,” Lucas said, pausing in his ministrations. “You’re telling us he did all this before Mensinger invented the chronoplate?”

“I don’t know if it was before or about the same time,” said Martingale. “It was certainly before the chronoplate was perfected.”

“And no one knew about this?”

“How would anyone know unless Darkness told them?” Martingale said. “He didn’t give a damn. He just took off for deep space like some Flying Dutchman and started living life according to his own rules. But he still wanted to be able to keep in touch, so he started working on a process by which the human body could be turned into tachyons which would depart at 60 °C along the direction of the tachyon beam through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. His chief concern was that conversion to tachyons would violate the law of uncertainty.”

“How do you mean?” said Finn.

“Well, the way he explained it to me was that if you take one hundred eighty pounds of human being and one hundred eighty pounds of bacteria and put them into a genetic blender, the result would be indistinguishable. His main concern was whether the RNA and DNA would reassemble themselves in the appropriate order at the appropriate time and place.”

“Same thing Mensinger was worried about in terms of chronoplate transition,” Finn said.

“Exactly. Because if they didn’t, what might materialize would be a blob. He was also worried about the reassembly process itself, since there wouldn’t be a receiver. He solved this by incorporating a timing mechanism into the tachyon conversion, which reassembled him at the moment of arrival based on time coordinates of transition. He focused the beam by means of gravitational lenses scattered throughout the galaxy. But while the uncertainty principle didn’t trip the Doctor up, it didn’t turn out as he imagined, that he had invented the ultimate form of transportation. Mensinger did that. Darkness discovered instead that the taching process was ultimately restrained by a little known law of physics, called the law of baryon conservation. While he arrived “in corpus,” he was unable to move. He appeared much like a holographic projection or a distant ghost seen underwater. A figure frozen in time and trapped by the laws of the universe.”

“You mean he’s insubstantial?” Andre said.

“Well, no, though he can be, if he wants to. He can project an image of himself or actually tach himself, but he can’t move from one spot. He’s trying to work on a way to do more than talk and wave his arms and stare at people, but he hasn’t got that one licked yet.”

“Why can’t he simply use a warp disc or even a chronoplate?” said Andre.

“Because his body has been tachyonized,” said Martingale. “Something about the way the process has altered his subatomic structure won’t let him clock. He can transmit objects, but he can’t clock himself. It makes him angry as hell. Mensinger perfected the device that would allow him to do exactly what he wanted all along, only he can’t use it. He said once that after twenty years of scientific research, consulting thousands of libraries on hundreds of worlds, he still can’t duplicate the beaming process envisioned over one thousand years ago by some television writer. He hates that writer.”

“Now let me get this straight,” said Finn. “He can teleport, much the same way we can, only he does it through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge via tachyon beam and he can’t move once he gets there?”

“He can move some, but he can’t leave the spot he materializes on,” said Martingale. “Sort of like a hologram with substance. I wouldn’t get too close to him if I were you. He may be a genius, but he’s unbalanced, sort of. He just might grab you.”

“And this guy is supposed to help us?” Andre said.

“That graft you gave me,” Lucas said, “it’s a device for him to home in on?”

“Essentially. I’ve got one, too. Don’t ask me how it works, though. I haven’t got the faintest notion. The Doctor comes up with stuff most scientists don’t even understand. Like the warp grenade. He had a brainstorm one day and designed the thing, then didn’t know what the hell to do with it. So he tached over to the Temporal Army Ordnance Chiefs and laid the plans on them. Just like that.”

“Well, if it’s all the same with you,” said Lucas, “you can keep your little tachyon homing device or whatever, but I think I’d feel better getting rid of mine. Long as we have the medical kit here, we’ll do a bit of minor surgery. Finn, give me a hand with the local.”

“Don’t waste your time,” said Martingale. “You can’t remove it.”

“What do you mean, I can’t?”

“You remember feeling a sort of burning, tingling sensation when you put it on?” said Martingale.

“Yes?”

“That was the device bonding itself to you.”

“What?”

“It’s fused with your atoms, chum. Become a part of your chemical essence. Unless you can figure out some way to get a body transplant, you’re stuck with it, permanently.”

“You mean anytime this spaced-out scientist wants to find me-”

“He finds you and pops in for a visit.”

“You son of a bitch! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you wouldn’t have done it if I had,” said Martingale. “The Doctor told me to make sure one of you guys got terminaled. That’s what he calls it. When Darkness says to do something, you do it. You don’t argue with a guy who’s liable to materialize a warp grenade between your legs and make it go boom.”

“That’s just great,” said Lucas. “I should have just let Gambi’s men cut you to ribbons.”

“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t have received any answers.”

“Well, the answers stink.”

“Sorry. You should’ve thought up better questions. Look, the Doctor might be a little weird, but he knows what he’s doing. Your superiors knew what they were up against and what the odds were. That’s why they asked his help.”