Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

He smiled at the Rainbow 360. “Will, meet Karl Rove.”

I’m sorry about showing up on such short notice, Phil. I’d planned to go straight to the hotel when the flight got in. But I needed to talk to somebody.

Thanks, yes, I will take one. Straight, if you don’t mind.

You already know Abe’s dead. And no, it wasn’t the quake. Not really. Look, I know how this sounds, but if you want the truth, I think God killed him.

Do I look hysterical? Well, maybe a little bit. But I’ve been through a lot. And I know I didn’t say anything about it earlier but that’s because I signed a secrecy agreement. Don’t tell anybody. That’s what it said, and I’ve worked out there for two years and until this moment never mentioned to a soul what we were doing.

And yes, I really think God took him off. I know exactly how that sounds, but nothing else explains the facts. The thing that scares me is that I’m not sure it’s over. I might be on the hit list too. I mean, I never thought of it as being sacrilegious. I’ve never been that religious to start with. Didn’t used to be. I am now.

Did you ever meet Abe? No? I thought I’d introduced you at a party a few years ago. Well, it doesn’t matter.

Yes, I know you must have been worried when you heard about the quake, and I’m sorry, I should have called. I was just too badly shaken. It happened during the night. He lived there, at the lab. Had a house in town but he actually stayed most nights at the lab. Had a wing set up for himself on the eastern side. When it happened it took the whole place down. Woke me up, woke everybody up, I guess. I was about two miles away. But it was just a bump in the night. I didn’t even realize it was an earthquake until the police called. Then I went right out to the lab. Phil, it was as if the hill had opened up and just swallowed everything. They found Abe’s body in the morning.

What was the sacrilege? It’s not funny, Phil. I’ll try to explain it to you but your physics isn’t very good so I’m not sure where to start.

You know the appointment to work with Abe was the opportunity of a lifetime. A guarantee for the future. My ship had come in.

But when I first got out there it looked like a small operation. Not the sort of thing I’d expected to see. There were only three of us, me, Abe, and Mac Cardwell, an electrical engineer. Mac died in an airplane crash about a week before the quake. He had a pilot’s license, and he was flying alone. No one else was involved. Just him. FAA said it looked as if lightning had hit the plane.

All right, smile if you want to. But Cardwell built the system that made it all possible. And I know I’m getting ahead of things here so let me see if I can explain it. Abe was a cosmologist. Special interest in the big bang. Special interest in how to generate a big bang.

I’d known that before I went out there. You know how it can be done, right? Actually make a big bang. No, I’m not kidding. Look, it’s not really that hard. Theoretically. All you have to do is pack a few kilograms of ordinary matter into a sufficiently small space, really small, considerably smaller than an atomic nucleus. Then, when you release the pressure that constrains it, the thing explodes.

No, I don’t mean a nuke. I mean a big bang. A real one. The thing expands into a new universe. Anyhow, what I’m trying to tell you is that he did it. More than that, he did it thirty years ago. And no, I know you didn’t hear an explosion. Phil, I’m serious.

Look, when it happens, the blast expands into a different set of dimensions, so it has no effect whatever on the people next door. But it can happen. It did happen.

And nobody knew about it. He kept it quiet.

I know you can’t pack much matter into a space the size of a nucleus. You don’t have to. The initial package is only a kind of cosmic seed. It contains the trigger and a set of instructions. Once it erupts, the process feeds off itself. It creates whatever it needs. The forces begin to operate, and the physical constants take hold. Time begins. Its time.

I’d wondered what he was doing in Crestview, Colorado, but he told me he went out there because it was remote, and that made it a reasonably safe place to work. People weren’t going to be popping in, asking questions. When I got there, he sat me down and invited me to sign the agreement, stipulating that I’d say nothing whatever, without his ex-press permission, about the work at the lab. He’d known me pretty well and I suddenly realized why I’d gotten the appointment over several hundred people who were better qualified. He could trust me to keep my mouth shut.

At first I thought the lab was involved in defense work of one kind or another. Like Northgate. But this place didn’t have the security guards and the triple fences and the dogs. He introduced me to Mac, who was a little guy with a beard that desperately needed a barber, and to Sylvia Michaels. Sylvia was a tall, stately woman, dark hair, dark eyes, a hell of a package, I’m sure, when she was younger. She was the project’s angel.

I should add that Sylvia’s also dead. Ran into a tree two days after the quake. Cops thought she was overcome with grief and wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing. Single vehicle accident. Like Mac, she was alone.

Is that an angel like in show business? Yes. Exactly. Her family owned a group of Rocky Mountain resorts. She was enthusiastic about Abe’s ideas, so she financed the operation. She provided the cash, Mac designed the equipment, and Abe did the miracles. Well, maybe an unfortunate choice of words there.

Why didn’t he apply for government funding? Phil, the government doesn’t like stem cells, clones, and particle accelerators. You think they’re going to underwrite a big bang ?

Yes, of course I’m serious. Do I look as if I’d kid around? About something like this?

Why didn’t I say something? Get it stopped? Phil, you’re not listening. It was a going concern long before I got there.

And yes, it’s a real universe. Just like this one. He kept it in the building. More or less. It’s hard to explain. It extended out through that separate set of dimensions I told you about. There are more than three. It doesn’t matter whether you can visualize them or not. They’re there. Listen, maybe I should go.

Well, okay. No, I’m not upset. I just need you to hear me out. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. Phil, we could see it. Mac had built a device that allowed us to observe and even, within limitations, to guide events. They called it the cylinder and you could look in and see star clouds and galaxies and jets of light. Everything spinning and drifting, supernovas blinking on and off like Christmas lights. Some of the galaxies with a glare like a furnace at their centers. It was incredible.

I know it’s hard to believe. Take my word for it. And I don’t know when he planned to announce it. Whenever I asked him, he always said when the time is ripe . He was afraid that, if anyone found out, he’d be shut down.

I’m sorry to hear you say that. There was never any danger to anybody . It was something you could do in your garage and the neighbors would never notice. Well, you could do it if you had Mac working alongside you.

Phil, I wish you could have seen it. The cosm—his term, not mine—was already eight billion years old, relative. What was happening was that time was passing a lot faster in the cosm than it was in Crestview. As I say, it had been up and running for thirty years by then.

You looked into that machine and saw all that and it humbled you. You know what I mean? Sure, it was Abe who figured out how to make it happen, but the magic was in the process. How was it possible that we live in a place where you could pack up a few grams of earth and come away with a living universe?