“Can’t just stop what I’m doing every time you call.”
“What’s going on with the port engine?”
The second mate frowned. “It’s gonna give us problems—connecting rod, I think. But it’ll hold for now.” He pointed through the windows. “Are you keeping an eye on that?”
Cruz followed his gaze toward the horizon where the clouds had suddenly turned nearly black. What appeared to be a major squall line had materialized a couple of miles away in the last few seconds. “Heavenly Father!”
The men on deck were now shouting and pointing at the looming clouds.
Cruz had never seen anything like it. It wasn’t behaving like a storm. It was behaving like a . . . like some sort of mini-typhoon—although there didn’t even appear to be heavy seas. It was all in the sky, as if a massive hammer were coming down onto an anvil of sea. He could actually watch the clouds circling in real time, reaching up into the stratosphere and turning blacker by the second. “What is that?”
Lightning coursed through the clouds ominously. Followed by rumbling thunder.
Matapang walked over to the far side of the bridge and looked down. “We need to release that net and get under way.”
“The hell we do! There’s four million pesos of tuna in that net.”
“Then tie it off with buoys.”
Cruz couldn’t help himself. He got right up in his second mate’s face—the man was half a head shorter than him and thinner. “Shut your mouth! We lose that net and those fish in rough seas, and I might as well not bother to make it back.”
“Your debts aren’t my debts, Benigno. You’re not going to kill us all because—”
Cruz raised his fist. “Shut your mouth, or I will shut it for you.”
The sailors on deck were all shouting now.
Cruz and Matapang glanced forward, reluctant to take their eyes off each other.
But what they saw beyond the bow made them forget everything. Somehow something colossal was rising up out of the ocean. No, that wasn’t even the way to describe it—it was as though the ocean were rising up into a vast hill, lifting up like a single great wave. And yet this wave didn’t move anywhere but up, rising into the sky as the hill began to grow into a looming cone.
Cruz crossed himself as the shadow of it fell across them all.
Matapang dropped a wrench that he’d been secretly holding behind his back, and then he ran out to the railing, where he shouted down at the crew. “Release the net! Get ready to make way!”
The sailors awoke from their stupor—staring at the impossible sight a mile off their bow—and they began scurrying around to set loose their only good net. Cruz watched their preparations with almost as much horror as what he saw unfolding in the sea ahead of them. Almost. For if truth be told, the rising mountain of ocean put the very fear of God into him. He started whispering as he clutched and kissed his crucifix.
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done . . .”
Matapang ran back into the control house. “Stop praying and start closing hatchways!”
Cruz shot a glance forward as a deep roar came to all their ears, and he immediately thought the mountain of water had started to come tumbling down onto them. But instead, the sea was starting to rush into a reverse vortex, pulling them sideways—and upward into the sky.
Lightning flashed again. Thunder boomed.
Cruz kept praying as his gaze kept following the sea up, up into the clouds. It wasn’t cresting. No, instead, it was still rising, like a volcanic cone of ocean a quarter mile across lifting upward, spinning around its center. The entire crew had stopped what they were doing again, most of them collapsing onto their knees, crossing themselves. Praying.
What was it? Cruz had never heard of anything like this in all the centuries of seafaring lore. There was a thousand-foot-tall tower of solid water, the black, swirling clouds parting to accept it.
The ocean was pouring into the sky.
And now the outer edge of that slope finally reached the San Miguel itself. The trawler started listing backward onto its stern as the angle of sea beneath it rose.
Cruz gripped the wheel. “We need to turn about! Start the engines!”
Matapang clawed his way to the windows. “They’re still trying to cut away the net!”
Cruz was past caring about his financial ruin. A bizarre tsunami unlike anything he’d ever heard of loomed in front of them, and if they didn’t turn, they’d be swamped. They’d never crest this titanic monster. They were going to slip down-wave by their stern, and Cruz knew all too well the leaks and weaknesses there. The bilge pumps would themselves be drowned, along with the engines, as the rusted stern hull caved in.
But something even stranger was happening. Rather than feeling himself falling backward, Cruz felt both himself and the ship falling forward, upward—as though he stood upside down at the edge of a great hole. A hole in the sky.
“Dear God! What’s happening?” He looked to Matapang, who was silently moving his mouth, unable to find words.
And then the San Miguel starting moving forward, “up” the face of the wave that now reached high into the sky. It was a five-thousand-foot mountain of water roaring up, into, and past the clouds.
Cruz willed his knotted hands off the tiller and clawed on handholds to reach the bridge hatchway.
Cruz looked out the hatchway behind them and could see that they were already hundreds of feet above sea level. They’d apparently been falling upward into the sky for some minutes already. He pulled the hatchway closed and rammed the bolt home. A glance to port. “Mat!”
Matapang awoke from his daze, pulled the port doorway closed.
Outside, on deck, he could see that a rising gale was rolling over them. And yet there was no wake or bow wave around the boat. They were moving along with the water at a speed of at least twenty knots—far faster than this old boat had ever gone. Winches and nets flailed about as the men gave up on cutting the net free and instead tried crawling in through the nearest hatchway. The net as well seemed to move alongside them. They weren’t moving relative to the water but with it.
The steep slope of ocean now filled his forward view. Wind was howling around them as they moved faster and faster.
And then Cruz felt his body grow lighter and lighter until finally he was in free fall, along with everything else in the cabin. “Dear God, what’s happening?”
Matapang stared as if comatose at a void that spread before their boat, and sailors, fish, and equipment fell skyward, the roar of water filling their ears. The sea itself began to come apart into a turbulent mass of white water, and the temperature dropped rapidly. Their breath condensed into fog as they panted in fear.
Until finally they stared straight into the heavens, falling upward along with a thousand Niagara Falls—the roar filled their ears as terror gripped their uncomprehending minds.
• • •
“A fishing trawler got caught up in the test, Mr. Director.”
The voice came over the intercom into the observation gallery. Graham Hedrick sat surveying a control room lined with thin film displays and workstations—most of it AI-automated but not all. There were still a few scientists down there manning workstations. A towering holographic satellite image spread before him on a central dais. It was focused on a broad expanse of the South Pacific, where a supernatural funnel of water rose from the sea, pouring into the upper atmosphere. The view from space was spectacular, but then it was always spectacular. It was the test results that needed to be spectacular.
“Do we power down Kratos, Mr. Director?”
Hedrick frowned in irritation. “We’re not going to interrupt a billion-dollar test because some pirate fishing boat wandered onto my test range. This section of ocean was supposed to be clear of shipping—whose responsibility was that?”
>
A pause. “An AI, from strain R-536, sir.”
“Damnit.” It was immensely unfulfilling reprimanding AIs. They always had a built-in you’re-the-one-who-created-me excuse. “Find out which team evolved R-536 and where else it’s been deployed. This was sloppy work—not checking for unregistered vessels. Give it and its progeny a red ticket.”
“Understood, Mr. Director. What about the fishing trawler?”
“Jam its distress calls.” Hedrick cut the connection, then brought up his project leads onto several holographic screens. “What’s our telemetry look like?”
The elder of the two scientists spoke first. “Kratos is maintaining ninety-four percent power with no discernible fade. We’re projecting a gravity field a mile in diameter from an altitude of twenty-two thousand, two hundred thirty-six miles. Displacing approximately four hundred billion—”
“Maximum acceleration?”
Both scientists were suddenly quiet, waiting for the other to talk.
He stared hard at them. “What is our maximum acceleration?”
This finally shook an answer out of the older one. “Zero-point-nine-eight Earth gravities.”
Hedrick looked to the younger scientist. “So there was no increase in the excitation of the boson field? Mass remained constant?”
The scientists exchanged looks.
“Can you please explain how all these changes made no difference? This is where we started.”
“Our changes may not have increased gravitation, but Kratos is far bigger than anything we’ve—”
The elder scientist cut in. “We’re still evaluating the quantum physics of this technology, Mr. Director. There are competing theories as to why Mr. Grady’s apparatus works at all. It’s possible that what it’s creating is actually a distortion in space-time, not a manipulation of gravity. Even the Varuna AI hasn’t come up with answers.”
“Not good enough. It’s been years since we harvested this technology, and we still don’t even understand it. It’s not enough that we reflect gravity. We need to be able to create gravity from energy. We are no closer to doing that today than we were three years ago.”
“But we’ve discovered the means to project the gravity mirror over arbitrary distances. That’s a major advance.”
“A necessary advance. And so, too, is the ability to amplify gravity.”
“Having a goal doesn’t make it possible.”
“You just got through telling me you and your whole team still don’t understand the technology we have. I thought that was the whole point of putting you in charge. We are not without rivals or detractors—you realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes. I assure you we’ve been examining every angle we can think of.”
“That’s the problem: You’re apparently not able to conceive of the answer. Or perceive it—you and the synthetic intellects both.” Hedrick looked down into the control room, where technicians were high-fiving one another. The first full-scale test of the gravity mirror satellite certainly appeared to be a success in their eyes. “They don’t even seem to know they’ve failed.”
“We did succeed in creating the largest gravity mirror yet, sir.”
“I get large. Now I want powerful.”
A technical operations officer appeared as a hologram. “You have a call from L-329 at BTC Russia, Mr. Director.”
“Damnit, they’re not BTC Russia. They’re an illicit organization.”
“Sorry, Mr. Director. I was simply repeating—”
“It has no authority whatsoever.”
There was a pause.
“Did you still want to take the call, sir?”
He took a deep breath. “I hate talking to this thing.” Hedrick looked to the ceiling. And yet he knew why it was calling. It was one of the very reasons for the gravity demonstration, after all. “Varuna.”
The console’s voice emanated from the ceiling. “Yes, Mr. Director.”
“Adjust the modulation of my voice while I speak with L-329. Make sure everything I say has a sound pattern consistent with confidence and honesty.”
“I will modulate your speech transmissions to convey the desired effect, Mr. Director.”
Hedrick spoke to the operations officer. “Send the call through.”
In a moment a cartoon cat with large green eyes replaced the tech officer’s holographic image. The cat was apparently the L-329 AI’s latest avatar. It nodded in greeting. “Director Hedrick. We have detected a gravitational anomaly in the South Pacific that is a cause for collective concern.”
“I’m not only aware of it, I’m creating it.”
There was a pause—for calculated effect Hedrick assumed. AIs of this magnitude could conduct a conversation at billions of words a second. BTC records showed that L-329 had originally grown out of a poker-playing algorithm that was expanded to game financial markets. It incorporated neural logic for adaptive human psychology—logic that had quickly evolved with the addition of massive processing power. Bluffing was one of its core skills. Probably the reason for selecting a harmless-looking avatar, too.
“The mass present at the site of this anomaly is inconsistent with observed phenomena.”
“We’ve developed a new physics.”
Another pause. “You’re modifying your voice. I am unable to determine the veracity of your statements.”
“I don’t care whether you believe me. Your technology portfolio is rapidly becoming obsolete.”
“Are you prepared for the consequences of a such an innovation, Mr. Hedrick?”
“Maybe you forgot, but managing consequences is the BTC’s mission.”
“I wasn’t referring to the consequences for human civilization, Mr. Hedrick. I meant the consequences for you personally.”
Hedrick felt his blood rise. “Your organization is illegal. I will have your portfolio again. And Attu’s as well.”
“Neither we nor BTC Asia are without technological defenses.”
“Not for much longer. And you’re not the BTC. Neither of you are. I will bring you back under my control.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Hedrick cut the line. “Goddamn glorified poker bot.”
Holograms of the scientists still looked on. The older one cleared his throat. “Our current gravitational technology gives us technical supremacy over both L-329 and BTC Asia, Mr. Director.”
“They’re not BTC Asia!” Hedrick clicked the scientists out of holographic existence.
Just then the leathery-faced Mr. Morrison stepped into the gallery. He had apparently been waiting for his moment. Morrison’s expression said trouble was on their doorstep. It was his default expression, but the degree to which he exhibited it tended to indicate how Hedrick’s day would go.
“What is it, Mr. Morrison? I asked not to be disturbed.”
“Something needs your immediate attention.”
Hedrick sighed. “For God’s sake, what?”
“Washington.”
Hedrick cast a dismissive look his way and relaxed. “You interrupted me for Washington?”
“Not the usual political crap. There’s a new Director of National Intelligence, and she’s agitating for top-secret bureaus to come back under direct operational control.”
“So what? Ignore her. How did she even discover we exist?”
“Someone at the Company gave us away—currying favor, no doubt.”
“Ignore her.”
“That’s what we’ve been doing for the past couple of months, but we also monitor three-letter agencies. They’re putting together a working group to audit top-secret special access programs—part of a budget-cutting initiative—and there are people on these committees who don’t understand our unique status.”
“What happened to the people who knew to keep their nose out of our business?”
“They died off or retired.”
“Don’t these people leave instructions?” Hedrick considered this for a moment. “Perhaps it’s time I scheduled a meeting. It’s been a while since I touched base with civilian government.”
“I’ll make the arrangements.” Morrison turned to leave.
“Oh, and Mr. Morrison . . .”
The old soldier turned back.
“Do you recall our reluctant gravity genius, Jon Grady?”
Morrison nodded. “Vaguely.”
“I’d like for you to retrieve Mr. Grady from Hibernity.”
Morrison raised his eyebrows. “Retrieve a prisoner from Hibernity? That’s a new one. You realize he’s been under interrogatory control for several years now?”
“That shouldn’t be an issue. I’ve been going over his file. He had a rough start, but for three years now he’s been fully cooperative. I think it’s time we see if he’s willing to join us.”
“We can run the sincerity test at Hibernity without removing him. It’s a big deal to pull a prisoner. It hasn’t been done in fifteen years.”
“I don’t want to test him there.” Hedrick carefully considered his words. “I need him to feel that it’s really his decision.” He gestured to the holographic image of the Kratos satellite hovering above the Earth in the control room. “Show him what we’ve accomplished with his ideas. Convince him how pivotal he will be to the future.”
Morrison just stared back, expressionless.
“You don’t share my view?”
“I’m not sure Mr. Grady’s still capable of making decisions. We’ve never retrieved a prisoner from Hibernity after more than a year. The farm program does things to test subjects that can cause permanent damage.”
“Maybe after ten or fifteen years, but surely not in three—especially if the subject has been cooperating as Mr. Grady has.”
“And you really need him?”
“Progress on Kratos has ground to a halt. I think Mr. Grady could provide some vital insights. Perhaps our ingenious friend has had time to reconsider his original refusal.”