Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

“The Karas family sold everything, pretty much, save the ships and factories it would need, and hired the finest particle physicists and greatest engineers to come here and do what they could,” Father Chicanis added. “Among them were Professor Yamaguchi and, in the final marriage of theory to weapon, the mathematical genius of Marcus Lin, Doctor van der Voort’s chief in later years. Several fortunes were poured into this, but what could they do? They couldn’t move out so many billions of people in so short a time. There weren’t the ships and there weren’t places to put them, and there was a great deal of resistance to evacuation—denial, you might call it, up until things were imminent, by which time it was far too late.”

“But how could they expect this—apparatus to work?” van der Voort asked. He wasn’t the only one metaphorically shaking his head. “Untested, theoretical, forces explained only in computer models among theoreticians?”

“Not precisely, Doctor,” Takamura responded. “Remember, we found the other end of this occurring naturally. I know the theory, and though I cannot even conceive that they actually were able to build something that could cap it, they did. Sygolin 37, the material we use to line genholes, the artificial wormholes that we use for interstellar travel, is synthesized from purely theoretical models of substances found near the event horizons of black holes. They are theoretical because, like going to the surface of a Titan-occupied world, it is rather easy to get there but so far impossible to get back. Yet the theory worked. We made the plasma, it works, and we are here. With a slight adjustment, it was sufficient to cap the hole. Time has no real meaning inside one, so the string coming down the center of this hole is simply, well, there, waiting for an exit into true space-time so that it can continue. That was tested, before the Titans came. And because it was spewing out before we capped it, we know what happens when it strikes something.”

“Yes?” Harker prompted. This was now something he could follow.

“It simply goes through, almost like a neutrino, and within the blink of an eye it has changed into more familiar particles and come apart. But in that moment when it penetrates, the most amazing thing happens. The string—which is incredibly fine, almost microscopic in thickness—does absolutely nothing. The effect, however, of its penetration on the matter and energy on all sides of it is something else again. This is ripped, torn, and shredded in space-time. It’s a rather local effect, but it is devastating. Rapid opening and closing creates short bursts that can rend the very fabric of space-time itself in the area immediately around the penetration point. Once it emerges into true space, only Sygolin 37 appears able to affect it, and then only to divert it. The Titans do not travel by wormholes. They use a method we know nothing about. There is nothing even resembling Sygolin 37 in their ships, bases, or artifacts. They use a system of building with energy flux that remains beyond us. We have no idea how they do it. But it definitely obeys the basic laws of the physical universe.”

“You’re sure of that, are you?” Harker pressed.

“You do not have to know why gravity works to know how it works. Yes, we are sure. If we could maintain full energy on our ships and weapons, we could hurt them. The thing is, we can’t. Their system dampens everything, drains the bulk. We think they don’t actually use it—that this effect is there not to guard against us, but rather to keep their own systems pure. The beauty of using the string from Priam’s Lens is that we don’t believe they can dampen it nor contain it. It would be too fast and too vicious, and its very passage would create massive instabilities in their structures. If we could unleash just a burst or two, even for fractions of a second, at any of those bases down there, we believe that their entire grid would collapse. They are interconnected—base to base, pole to pole, nexus to nexus. If one goes, the feedback alone through their systems might destabilize the rest. If their grid comes down, then their damping fields also come down.”

“Sounds like a lot of ifs,” Harker noted. “Still, it’s better than anything they’ve come up with so far. There are, of course, a few things that you haven’t explained to me yet.”

“Yes?” Krill responded.

“First, why didn’t the Karas family use this place to shoot their superweapon at the Titans when they were coming? That was the idea, I take it?”

“It was,” Father Chicanis agreed. “Unfortunately, the Titans arrived before the defensive network was fully deployed, and they moved so swiftly that they had the damping mechanism in operation and had established primary occupation of Helena before anyone could act. Then there was the problem of what to do as a result. They had the system in place, but the plates weren’t fully deployed. Some were, and I suppose still are, in the underground complex thirty kilometers or so outside of Ephesus, or, at least, where Ephesus used to be. That’s where the Dutchman’s agent was heading, to see if anything really did remain that was of great enough value to risk a larger team to come in and loot.”

“Being that close to a Titan base, what could they possibly hope to steal?” Katarina Socolov asked, making her presence felt for the first time.

“Good question. The answer is data modules,” Krill replied. “With trickle charges they can retain their information for many centuries. The Titan scouring doesn’t go deep underground, and the damping field only sucks up significant sources of energy which it surveys and then targets. It doesn’t drain batteries; it simply ignores them since you can’t recharge them and it can act if significant stored energy is released. There was every reason to believe that the data modules for this project remained down there, probably in the cold and dark ruins of the place, but accessible.”

“You mean they were already going for the Lens?”

“No, not at all. The Dutchman never believed it would work, I don’t think. But the physics involved, the research, and, most of all, the almost century-old security codes for holdings throughout The Confederacy would still be valid in some places, particularly ones that were hastily evacuated. I will give each of the ground crew a small portion of what the agent—whose name was Michael Joseph Murphy, by the way—of the infiltration into the, area and into the complex. Part of it had collapsed, all of it was quite dark and dangerous. The upshot is that he could not make it to the data control center. He had to content himself with the administrative records only. Those are what we have. Those are what he thought was vital enough to give his own life for, to uplink after a nightmarish journey across a very alien landscape. So we know where to look. We have sufficient numbers to make it work, but we’re few enough to escape notice. And we know from the administrative recordings that it is quite likely the key ones also survive. That data on the wormhole seals would allow us to control and possibly selectively `fire’ the weapon by linking gates and opening and closing routings. That’s what this place does.”

“We’re going down there, Harker,” N’Gana said firmly. “We’re going down much better outfitted than Mister Murphy was. He was a pirate, a freebooter, a thief with enormous guts. I’ll give him that. Guts and the integrity to do his job even if he himself couldn’t make it. I don’t know what motivated him. He was a deserter from long ago and a scoundrel and probably a killer, but when he saw that the Priam weapon might just destroy the enemy, he died a patriot. Now we have to finish his job. The initial targeting systems that were here when the Titans came in are no good. The Titans drained the power from the old gates. The normal transport ones imploded as you’d expect, but the ones designed for this project were inert, they had their power supplies at idle rather than off. The Titans drained them and, as a security measure, they shorted. None of the targeting information survived there. We’re going in to get the backup. They never figured out how, even though they worked to the end finishing this thing. I understand it broke the old man’s heart as well as his wallet.”