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9

"The Adar appear to be about fifty, maybe a hundred, years advanced upon us. They use neural implants, their primary air method of transport is suborbital rockets that work off of laser launch technology, they have very advanced computing devices and the guns that they were carrying seem to be some sort of plasma-toroid generator. They're not super guns, but they'd probably take out a Bradley Fighting Vehicle from the pictures Tchar showed me. They do not appear to be friends with the Titcher or Dreen as they call them. They've showed us pictures of their planet, had one team over on a suborbital rocket from which a large area was visible, and appear to get the point that we're not going to just fall for the friendly alien thing. Once bitten twice shy and all that but this time the aliens appear to be friendly."

"That's good," the President said. "If true."

"Yes, Mr. President," Bill replied. "If true."

"Most of the time the Adar team on Earth have been using their communicators," the national security advisor said. "They appear to be radios, they're giving off RF emissions, but we haven't figured out exactly how they're broadcasting or what is being said. So we haven't been able to get much of their language. Dr. Avery from the State Department, however, has been communicating with some of their people on the other side, we don't know if they're leadership or not, and he's making headway. He thinks he's gotten about a five-hundred-word vocabulary so far."

"Avery's amazing," the secretary of defense said to the President. "He can pick up an Earth language just listening to it for a couple of hours. If anyone can decipher their language he can."

"They're being helpful in that as well," the national security advisor said, biting her lip. "I'm inclined, this time, to side with them being friendly. As friendly as could be expected. They appear to have a couple of internal gates open as well and the means to move them; they apparently had the theory of wormhole formation and then started making bosons. And Dr. Weaver will be gratified to learn that the way they move them is by using very large Van de Graaff generators."

"Yes," Bill said. "Maybe we can buy a couple off of them."

"I still want a full analysis this time," the President replied. "As much as we can determine of their economy and order of battle. I don't want to be fooled again. It's not good for politics and it's not good for America. Dr. Weaver, any idea when the Titcher gates might open?"

"No, Mr. President," Bill replied. "Tchar took me to what they call their Dreen gate. It's in the same area as the one that connects to us, a big open desert area with some mountains in the distance. Except for some of the colors it looks a lot like Groom Lake. They have the Dreen gate surrounded by their tanks inside a large hole in the ground that they can fire downwards into. And there's a big device right opposite it. Again, this was all pantomime, but I get the impression that it's got something like a nuke in it that they can trigger if their gate stabilizes. It wasn't stable, though; it was rippling just like ours. I tried to get some idea if they knew how long they stayed down but that was just too complicated. If Tchar knew what I was talking about, he couldn't answer me. Among other things, sir, they don't have our clock, obviously. Their planet seems to have about a thirty-hour day and I have no idea what their year might be. I started to try to get him to count it out in Planck seconds since every physicist in this universe would know what that is . . . but for the life of me I couldn't think of how to pantomime 'what is the time delay if you count that in the smallest possible time increment allowed in this universe?' I'm open for suggestions on that one."

"Ask Dr. Avery to concentrate on that question," the President said to the national security advisor.

"I will, sir," the NSA said, then temporized. "The thing is, they might take it as a request to find out about their nuclear capability. We'll have to know things like the yield of their weapons and delivery methods. If they started asking us those questions, I'd be uncomfortable."

"Tell him to explain why we're asking, first," the President said. "I'm sure they'll understand in that case." He frowned and then shook his head. "They seem to have a point, though. Don't we have some artillery-fired nukes? Is there any reason we can't fix up something like that at all the sites?"

"I don't think we have any left in inventory . . ." the secretary of defense said.

"We don't," the national security advisor said, definitely. "But there ought to be some way to set up a launcher on a standard Mark 81 MIRV warhead, and we have a bunch of those in inventory." She smiled for a moment and shook her head. "We're supposed to come up with things like that, Mr. President. What do you want to do, work us out of a job?"

"No, but I do want to make sure the Titcher stay on their side of the gate," the President answered. "Get that set up as soon as possible. Not just at the open gates but at the inactive particles as well. I don't want to be caught with our pants down again. Then there's the inactive particles. Dr. Weaver, Columbia is taking far too much time in opening them."

"I have to take the Fifth on that one, Mr. President," Bill replied, formally. "It's not my department and the one time I brought it up I was reminded of that fact."

"Well, I'm not afraid to bring it up," the President said, somewhat angrily.

"I'll call Kevin Borne over at Columbia," the secretary of defense said. "I know they've got some issues but I'll point out that they really don't want to get us upset with them. I'll be pointed about that fact, rest assured, Mr. President."

"Just get it done," the President said.

"There's the point that there is still only one gate generator," Bill pointed out. "It takes a skilled team about ten hours to set up, then there's transportation time. Even if they had gotten on the ball right away, and ignored arguments about which gates should open where, there wouldn't be many linked, yet. There is a firm that was scheduled to build some more, but I don't know the status of that project."

"I'll talk to Kevin and light a fire under him," the secretary of defense said. "If there's something holding it up besides lawyers, money I guess would be the answer, I'll talk about that as well."

"I think that's all we have," the President said. "Let's hope the Titcher gates don't open soon."

"Robin," Bill said, from his office. "Could I see you for a second?"

"Sure," the programmer replied, walking to the open door.

"Come on in and close the door," Bill said, opening the refrigerator by his desk. "You drink Pepsi, right?"

"He said as he slipped in the strychnine?" Robin asked.

"No," Bill said, chuckling. "I got a call from the Columbia rep in Paris. The Adar are asking about the boson generator. Communication is still spotty so they've asked me to go over there and try to figure out how to communicate what's going on and what we think happened. You're better at 3-D modeling than I am. I'd like to just make up a little cartoon to show what we think happened and what is happening now. Could you do that?"

"Sure," Robin said, smiling. "It doesn't require modeling at all. I'll just do a rip on an Unreal Tournament engine; that will give enough detail for what you're asking about."

"Great," Bill said. "Can you do it on a plane?"

The biggest problem had been passports; Robin didn't have one. By the time they were in D.C., though, one had been prepared and they took a trans-Atlantic flight, First Class, on British Airways.

It was a hell of a lot better than his first flight to Paris when they'd loaded him in another F-15 and flown nonstop with one aerial refueling. The service was much better, from some very pretty young English stewardesses, and Robin was good company.

They'd laid out the script for what they wanted to impart on the way to D.C., then Robin had started modeling it on her laptop. By the time they got to Paris the video, which had had some glitches, was working fine. They spent the night at the embassy, then took a French Alouette helicopter to the Adar gate site.

The French military was, apparently, not taking the Adar at their word. The vineyard was now ringed by entrenchments and a large concrete bastion was under construction. But the Adar representative, wearing a respirator, was apparently willing to ignore the formalities. Perhaps that was because when they stepped through the gate, also wearing respirators since the Adar atmosphere was high in carbon dioxide compared to Earth, there was a similar military buildup on the Adar side. There was also a large device that looked vaguely like a tank without the treads. The weapon it mounted had a large bore but no larger than that on an Abrams. Bill suspected, though, that it was something much more powerful than a 120mm tank cannon. If the humans turned out to be less friendly than it appeared, the Adar were clearly willing to close the gate with all due force.

Rather than flying casual diplomats all over their globe, the Adar had set up a meeting center near the Terran gate. Bill saw quite a few humans, most of them apparently international diplomats uncomfortable in their respirators, moving around the grounds. The Adar that had greeted them on the Terran side accompanied them by ground vehicle to the meeting center, which was a large building that had the vague feel of a hangar, sectioned up by hasty plastic panels, and turned them over to another guide. He, in turn, led them to the back of the center where a more substantial office was located.

In it were Dr. Avery, wearing an oxygen nosepiece and toting an oxygen bottle, and three Adar. There was also an Adar-sized conference table surrounded by chairs for the Adar and a few human swivel chairs that had been brought through the gate. All the Adar looked the same to Bill and he suspected that it was the same with them. But one of them stepped forward and crossed his chest, bowing slightly.

"This is Tchar, Dr. Weaver," Avery said. He was a slim man with an erect carriage, a former Navy officer who had attained the rank of rear admiral before retiring. He weighed 173 pounds, which was the same weight he had been upon entering the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. "You met him before."

"A pleasure to see you again, Tchar," Bill said, pulling aside his respirator then clamping it back down. "I see you've found a better solution, Admiral Avery."

"A necessity of the mission, Doctor," Avery replied. Before he did he took a breath through his nose which slowed his speech, but it was better than shouting through a respirator or pulling it aside. "Do you think we can explain the gate phenomenon to the Adar?"

"We can't even explain it to ourselves, Admiral," Bill admitted. "Miss Noue?"

Robin set her laptop on the table as Avery and the Adar sat down. The laptop was nearly at Avery's eye-level due to the height of the Adar table. She keyed the video and then sat down herself.

The scene was a daytime, apparently viewed from the air. The notional camera swooped in over some suburban tracts and roads and then showed a stylized college campus. A few students were walking around the campus, carrying books or laptops. The camera zoomed in on a building and then through the wall into a laboratory. A few people were grouped around a device. The only portion that was clear was a linear accelerator. A man that didn't look like Ray Chen but did have vaguely Asian features said: "Let's see what happens," and pressed a button.

The camera cut back to outside the building and there was a flash. It cut to farther away and watched the shockwave roll out from the building and the mushroom cloud form.

The next sequence was video from the news choppers on the day of the event. They showed the police helicopter closing in on the base of the dust cloud and then the shot of the Chen Anomaly. And the bug that first fell out.

The next sequence was computer animation again. The anomaly was shown and then particles zipping out. The "camera" showed one of the particles zipping away down between and through buildings, then zoomed out to show that it was covering a portion of the globe. It came to rest at a random spot and then, a few moments later, a gate opened.

Another was shown zipping not far from the anomaly on the map and then a gate opening in a dark wood. Dog-demons, and they had been the hardest to create of all the images, came out of the gate sniffing the ground. They went into a house and came out dragging two people, taking them into the gate. Last there was a shot of the fighting in Eustis.

"And the rest you know," Bill said as the video stopped.

One of the Adar said something to Tchar and he made a gesture like a horse tossing its head. He said something to Admiral Avery, crossing his arms in front of him.

"Tchar says that he grieves for the pain inflicted to us," Avery translated. "But he is also puzzled." The translator nodded for the Adar to continue.

"He says that he is puzzled by the scene in the laboratory. Unless we have something to use great power, I think he means something like superconductors, that he is unaware of, there did not seem to be enough power available to create a single boson, much less many of them. He also asks how many bosons we have generated. I'm not sure that we can answer that. Also, be aware that the other gentleman is called Tsho'futt. He appears to be picking up English rather quickly."

"It's common knowledge in general on our world," Bill pointed out. "They'll find out sooner or later and I don't even have an exact number. Tell him over thirty for each one of their days. And, no, Ray Chen's accelerator should not have been able to make a single boson, much less many."

This was translated and Tchar made another head gesture, waving one hand and speaking.

"Only one boson that they have generated seems to be accessible to the T!Ch!R!," Avery said, doing the closest approximation of the word Bill had ever heard. "He wants to know if you know if the T!Ch!R! can access only certain bosons and if you've identified them."

"Yes," Bill said. "Twenty-one of them were generated on that fractal before we learned how to prevent it. They are scattered across our country but not in other countries, not in France near your gate."

Tsho'futt made a noise that sounded like pain and so did Tchar as the words were translated.

"What have you done about that?" Tchar asked through Avery.

"An explosion happened on the Dreen side that destabilized the entire fractal. But we don't know for how long. Do you have any idea?"

"Was it your device?" Tchar asked.

"No, one of theirs," Bill said, pulling out a sketch of the thing in the gate-room. It was the best they could do from his and Miller's recollection; both of their camera systems, which had been recording the events, had been erased. Miller's was straightforward EMP damage; the scorching was noticeable. Bill wasn't so sure about his; the systems weren't functioning when he got back to earth but after replacing a few parts they worked fine. The recording chip, however, had been erased. It was fully functional, there just wasn't anything on it.

The Adar examined the picture, then set it on the table.

"We have seen nothing like that," Avery translated. "As to the question of time, Dr. Weaver, we're working on that. We've shown them the time pieces we have and vice versa but we're still working out what it means." He listened as Tchar spoke, nodding.

"Tchar said that they have had the gate restabilize three times since they have opened it. They were hit by the T!Ch!R! when they first formed the boson, a heavy attack which they repulsed on the ground. Then they brought up the . . . it's not a device to throw a nuclear warhead, we're not sure what it is exactly, but it is a weapon. They triggered it at the gate and shut it. But it opened again . . ." He listened and pulled out a piece of paper. "I think it's seventeen of their days later."

"Holy . . ." Bill said. The Adar day was approximately thirty hours long. That meant less than three weeks. There had been more time than that already. "Do they know what . . . we need to know what kilotonnage they use!"

"That is more difficult," Avery said when he translated. "Time we're getting better on. And I'm aware that science is supposed to be a universal language, but only in certain details and not in the notations." He smiled thinly at his little joke.

Bill was well aware that many scientific baseline measurements were taken from nonuniversal constants. The meter was a fraction of the Earth's diameter, as best it could be measured in the seventeenth century, and only later defined as a certain number of light waves of a particular wavelength. Joules, the internationally recognized standard for energy, were similarly arbitrary. But one was not.

"Singlet transition," Bill said, pulling out a sheet of paper. He made a dot on the paper then drew a circle around it and placed a smaller dot on that circle. Then he drew a squiggly line hitting that circle. Then he would drew a larger circle around the thing showing the dot jumping from the inner circle to the outer circle. "I should have set this up as a cartoon, but most physicists would understand it if I showed it to them," he added, sliding the picture across the table to Tchar. Tchar tilted his head and considered the picture for a moment, then tilted it the other way. Then he picked up the pen and began to draw.

The picture that he slid back to Bill was . . . incomprehensible. There was a complicated group of figures at the center with another figure in an oval off to the side. There were three more symbols spaced around the central symbol. Overall, it looked like a Chinese charm or a mystic spell and Bill wasn't sure what they represented.

"What is this?" he asked, looking at Admiral Avery.

"He says it's a drawing of an atom," Avery replied. "Look, Bill, some things are intuitively obvious to humans because our societies evolved in connection with each other. I have no idea what that's saying, exactly; we haven't gotten that far. For all I know, it could be saying the same thing as yours. What is a . . . singlet transition?"

"The energy necessary for an excited electron to jump from one orbital level to another. It's a base energy equation."

"Try something else?" Robin asked. "Calories? That's just the energy necessary for one gra . . . damn, we'd have to get measurements for a gram, right?"

"Right," Bill said, leaning back and steepling his hands. Then he leaned forward and tapped the symbols. "Does this represent an atom? Are we sure of that?"

"Yes," Admiral Avery said. "They consider it a transitional state, which is interesting. But it's definitely an atom." He spoke to Tchar for a moment and then shrugged. "Tchar said it's the smallest possible atom."

"Hydrogen, good," Bill said. "What amount of energy is released when one of these atoms fuses into the next largest atom?"

Avery translated that and the Adar got a distant look. Admiral Avery explained that he was accessing their datanet.

"I wonder if it's like ours," Robin said. "One-third data, two-thirds pornography and singles sites?"

Tsho'futt made a hacking noise and translated the question. Tchar continued to look distant but the third Adar, who had not been named, said something.

"Announcements of tcheer," Tsho'futt said in not bad English. "And much announcements of herbal remedies to prevent loss of youngness."

"Tcheer is the reaching of bonding age of a sexual transfer intermediate," Avery said, tightly. "Nonsentient. I suspect we just discovered what their pornography is."

"The wonders of science," Weaver replied.

Tchar spoke and Avery paid rapt attention.

"Tchar says that he can see where we are going and he thinks we can come to some conclusion on energy level translations," Avery said. "When we have those, we might have a measurement of their weapon's yield. And he's willing to let us know what theirs are if we tell them what ours are."

"Ouch," Bill said. "We'll get the materials but the rest we'll have to kick upstairs."

Three hectic hours later they had a measurement.

"Ten megatons, give or take," Bill said, looking up from the calculator on his laptop. "I wonder if it's straight geometric progression or nonlinear or what?"

He and Tchar had spent most of the time, with Avery as an interpreter, discussing the formation of bosons and boson gates and their characteristics. They had come to a mutual understanding of muons, neutrons, neutrinos and quarks. Because they weren't generated by inactive bosons or nuclear weapons, quarks had been a little harder, but Bill was pretty sure they were talking about the same particles. They'd also discussed, badly, quantum mechanics. Bill got the impression it was as insanity causing for Adar as for humans.

The French physicist, Dr. Bernese, had turned up and had joined in the discussion for a while and then politely excused himself as it turned to weaponry. He was a firm member of the nuclear disarmament committee and while he appreciated the current necessity he deplored actually discussing them.

Bill, on the other hand, had, without getting into anything that would violate security, discussed them with wholehearted abandon. The Adar, it turned out, did not use fission-fusion devices but something else. Tchar was somewhat reluctant to specify what it was but he noted that the results that Bill described from the gate room might, in fact, have been the same thing. Bill was pretty sure that the thing in the gate room had been an antimatter containment system, but when he brought up the subject of antimatter, after having a tough time explaining it, Tchar had been more than happy to discuss the material. Ergo, it was not their weapon system.

Antimatter was the reverse of normal matter; at its most basic a positron was an electron that had a positive, instead of a negative, charge. Antimatter that was placed in contact with regular matter would explode, violently. Both it and the regular matter it encountered immediately transmuted into energy. It had been produced, in minuscule quantities, in the big matter-accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. Minuscule being individual antiprotons and antihydrogen. Producing it wasn't actually all that difficult, but storing it for any amount of time used up so much energy that the final output was a negative.

Bill had postulated that the thing in the gateway had been a carrier for antimatter. Positrons could be kept from contact with regular matter by inducing a magnetic field around them, generally called a containment bottle. The thing had looked like some sort of containment bottle, if such was made by a species that used biology instead of mechanical devices.

But Tchar had hinted that there was something else, something more powerful as an explosive than antimatter. And the Adar had it. In sufficient quantity to use it as a weapon.

"Something like that would be a tremendous fuel source," Bill said, dangling for information.

"It was what I was working on before we opened the first gate," Tchar said, then changed the subject.

The Adar had formed the bosons with the purpose of creating gates for transportation on their own world. They had just about exhausted their easily worked areas of fossil fuels and relied heavily on nuclear fission power to provide motive transport. Even the suborbital rockets that they used instead of most aircraft were powered by nuclear fission. But it had the same byproducts that it did anywhere; spent fuel rods that even when recycled left behind unusable radioactive byproducts that had to be stored for centuries. The Adar did not seem to have the, often irrational, human fear of nuclear power and its byproducts, however. Or, at least, Tchar wasn't letting on if they did. The one thing Bill had decided in the three hours was that, besides being a crackerjack physicist, Tchar would have made one hell of a poker player.

But finally the measurements were completed as were the calculations.

"They used the same weapon, every time?" Bill asked.

Avery did not seem to have minded three hours of translation, sometimes very esoteric translation. The old admiral was as fresh as when they had started. If anything, he looked more enlivened by the conversation.

"They did," he said to Tchar's reply. "The suggestion was made after the first to vary the power to determine if the portals stayed down for more or less time but the Unitary Council, their Cabinet if you will, did not want to take the chance."

"And we don't know what the output was on the Dreen side," Bill mused. "Okay, Tchar, Tsho'futt, Mr. Unintroduced, I thank you for your information. Can I tell you anything we've missed?"

Avery translated this and then shrugged. "I don't think we have anything they want in the way of information. Except data about boson formation beyond what we can translate."

"I've got one more thing to cover," Bill said. "But, with the permission of the Adar, I'd like to only discuss it with Tchar and for him to be willing and able to keep it to himself for the time being. It does not relate directly to security of either of our worlds but to . . . the philosophy of physics."

Avery frowned but translated the request. There was a discussion among the Adar and then Tchar spoke.

"The one who has not been introduced," Avery said, "requires that he stay. Are you familiar with the Japanese method of negotiation?"

"No," Bill said. "I've dealt with Russians before . . ."

"With the Japanese, the more senior of the negotiators will often spend the entire exchange with his mouth shut. The junior does all the talking. In this case, it appears to be protocol to completely ignore the third party, who I would guess is a senior scientist or politician."

"Scientist," the unintroduced Adar said, suddenly. "And linguist."

"I want to express that the following information is known to very few people," Bill said. "Our President, his national security advisor and the secretary of defense. Besides those persons, I have told no one else. And despite the fact that it appears that it has security implications because of the personages involved, I'm certain it does not. It does, however, I believe, relate to the physics of boson formation and gates. And I would be willing to discuss it with you. If you understand the importance of securing the information carefully."

The Adar discussed this again and then Tsho'futt got up and left the room.

"Your artass will leave or stay?" Tchar asked, pointing at Robin.

Avery looked confused for a moment then chuckled, dryly. "It had been assumed that since Bill was doing all the talking, Robin was his . . . control."

"I hope not," Bill said, looking over at Robin. "Got anything you want to tell me?"

"Only that I hope I get to find out what you're talking about," Robin said.

"Robin, you're a great person, but . . ."

"The answer is no," she said, shrugging. "I'll figure out a way to drag it out of you. One day." She picked up her materials and left.

"Does your artass wish to do the translation?" Avery asked, carefully phrasing the question to Tchar.

Tchar responded with a head motion that indicated negative.

"Admiral Avery," Bill said. "I have to ask one technical question. What's your clearance?"

"Sonny boy," the admiral answered, tartly, "I was doing nuclear negotiations with the Russians when you were a gleam in your daddy's eye. My clearance is higher than yours. You can judge for yourself the need-to-know but I don't even talk in my sleep."

"Sorry," Bill said, chuckling. "Okay, here goes. The first thing to understand is that humans are subject to hallucinations."

"I don't have an Adar word for that," Avery said then spoke to Tchar for a moment. "Okay, they have something similar. I think I can work with it, anyway, but it has religious connotations."

"Well, so does this," Bill said and then launched into a repetition of his experiences in Eustis during the gate malfunction. He didn't leave out the fact that he had been tired at the time, up too long and wired to the max, perfect conditions for hallucination. He pulled out notes and referred to them, notes he had made shortly after his experience against letting anything get in the way of the memories. They were as close to verbatim of the exchange he had experienced as he could manage. Stuffed children's toys were a bit of a problem but he had a picture of Tuffy and Mimi on his laptop.

When he was done the as yet unintroduced artass sat forward, turning his head from side to side and examining him critically with his third eye, which was high on the head as if to check for overhead threats.

"Wonder if you dream," the artass said. The words were dragged out and hollow.

"Yes," Bill replied, looking into the weird alien face and wondering what was going on in his mind.

The artass started to say something then spoke a word at Tchar who spoke at length to Avery.

"Human scientists try to separate science and what we would call philosophy or religion," Avery said. "The Adar do not. They said that the one thing in your ramblings that made true sense was that, at our level, science and philosophy are brothers. To them, science, philosophy and religion are intertwined."

Tchar looked over at the artass, who made a head motion. Tchar continued.

"Our greatest saints," Avery translated, "experienced visions just such as yours, visions that asked them to open up their mind and explore what is reality. What is the universe? If bosons can contain a universe, who is to say that we are not experiments in some cosmic laboratory? Are we the result of one of the stuffed Tuffy dolls saying: 'Let's see what happens.'? Is God one? Is God omniscient and omnipotent? Or is God many researchers, searching to understand Their own reality? Are we made in God's image as lab rats? Or are we, too, researchers, furthering Its quest for understanding? At our level of physics, these are viable questions, not to be dismissed. As you apparently dismiss them." Tchar made another head movement as Avery completed the translation and then said something quietly.

"He grieves that you do not open your mind to the wonder of the universe."

Bill, who felt that he had spent the better part of his life doing just that, was taken aback.

"Actually," Bill said, shrugging, "what you're saying sounds about right. But it's less a question of the scientists than the religious persons. Most scientists at my level, who work with advanced physics, are just fine with God as researcher and us as assistants. Perhaps it is the way that God is portrayed among my people. Very few of the religious are scientific and vice versa. In early science, many of our discoveries were made by religious persons. But as time went by the belief structure of religion seemed to interfere. To most of our religious persons, if they think about it at all, things either are or are not. God made gravity pull to keep people from flying into space. That's good enough. That attitude creates a good bit of friction, but the friction for physicists is simply that they won't bow their heads to the unthinking and say 'yes, you're right about God and I'll stop researching since it's pointless.'"

Tchar looked over his shoulder but the artass was simply watching Bill.

"Then, perhaps," Tchar said, carefully, "we should be talking to your religious leaders."

"Good luck," Bill laughed, hollowly. "Hope you don't get lynched."

Avery winced but translated the statement.

"This would happen?" Tchar asked.

"Probably not in the United States," Bill admitted. "But if you went to Mecca and preached your word of God, you'd have your head taken off. And I don't think the Reform Baptists would be really open-minded, either."

This required a good bit of back and forth between Avery and Tchar, each explanation requiring more explanation. Finally the artass spoke to Avery and Avery nodded.

"They, too, have religious sects," Avery explained. "But very few are antiscience although some are militant to a degree. One sect provides the bulk of their fighting forces. In fact, as they seemed to indicate, science and religion among the Adar seem to go hand in hand. I think, once they get the language down, they could have a very instructive time talking to some religious leaders I know."

"I will consider your words carefully," Bill said, wondering if he could get his mind around God as a researcher. It certainly made more sense than "in six days he created the earth and then kicked Adam out of the garden for simple curiosity."

Maybe that was it. From the very beginning, curiosity among the religious had been degraded. "Don't eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or you, too, will be thrown from the Garden."

He knew that early science had been heavily supported by religion. Even some of the urban legends surrounding "religious bigotry" about science were false. Galileo, for example, rather than being a victim of religious bigotry had been a victim of simple failure to rigorously base his conclusions. The theory of planets going around the Sun and the Moon going around the Earth required a theory of gravity and calculus to explain it. Since Galileo could not show conclusive proof of why his theory worked, the best scientific minds of his day, admittedly supported by false theories that had built up starting with Aristotle, dismissed his work as fraudulent. But it had been his inability to show a method, rather than pure religious bigotry, that had doomed him. That and the fact that he was a revolting son of a bitch. The pope of the day had protected him from his detractors, but that was all that he could do. Galileo, himself, made it impossible to do any more.

For that matter, it was not those who believed that the world was flat who argued most vehemently against supporting Columbus' mission that had found the "New World." It was, instead, the best scientific minds of Isabella's court, who pointed out that going west, instead of around Cape Horn, was an impossible distance, with the technology of that day, to India. They had determined the size of the globe and the distances involved and realized that Columbus would be out of food and fresh water before he was halfway there.

Fortunately, before he was a third of the way there he landed in the Caribbean. But they didn't know that was there. And Isabella, the poor dear, was too stupid to understand their math.

Nevertheless, religious bigotry against science did exist. The Scopes Monkey Trial and continuing bills to try to enact "Creationism Science" as being on the same order as evolution. The hysteria about the current boson formation which was being supported and exacerbated by religious leaders.

He wondered if one of the first people to convert to the Church of Adar or whatever might not be William Weaver.

"I'll think about it," Bill repeated.

"Do," the artass said. "Open your mind. Or we all may fail."

Admiral Avery accompanied him out of the meeting room where they picked up a visibly curious Robin and headed back to the gate. When they were on the other side, and out of hearing, Avery touched Bill's arm.

"I just figured something out," Avery said.

"What?" Bill asked, wondering if Tuffy was really God. The Church of Tuffy. Somehow, it just didn't have that ring. Tuffy's Redeemed Church? Nope. He remembered the interview with Mimi's aunt and thought about what that good woman would have to say if he tried to tell her Tuffy was holding God.

"Those defenses the Adar have on their side," Avery said, looking around to ensure nobody would overhear.

"Yes?"

"They're not for us. They're for if . . . when the Titcher overwhelm us."

* * *

"The largest nuclear weapon we have in the inventory is the Mk-81," the national security advisor said, nervously. "That's right at two megatons. You're saying that that will only close the gate for, what? A couple of weeks?"

"Maybe three," Bill said. "Right now it's been closed for more than a month. And I somehow suspect that something that size wouldn't shut down all the gates simultaneously."

"We've converted Mk-81s and mounted them at the three gates," the secretary of defense said. "But at that rate . . ."

"A potential of a nuke every three weeks on a potential twenty-two gates," Bill replied. "And that assumes that every one works; the failure rate for nuclear weapons we're not even considering."

"True," the national security advisor said, biting her lip. "To be sure, we should have two or three at each gate. And you don't have any idea what this weapon system they use is?"

"No, ma'am," Bill said. "That is, I've got a couple of theories but nothing I can test."

"Between twenty-two and sixty-six nuclear weapons every three weeks," the secretary of defense said, shaking his head. "We're going to have to begin scrapping our nuclear arsenal and converting them for gate closure. We're going to have to go back into the nuke building business. In ten years we're going to have to have a flock of breeder reactors just to keep up with the plutonium usage. And if any of the devices fail . . ."

"Then we're going to have to retake the gate," Bill answered. "Wherever it is, from Eustis to Saskatchewan. And the only way we've been able to do that is by nukes."

"And we're only set up at the active gates, anyway," the national security advisor pointed out. "Dr. Weaver, are you sure they won't destabilize all the gates with one nuke?"

"No, ma'am," Bill said. "But I wouldn't have expected them to destabilize the way they did at all. It may destabilize some, it may destabilize all of them. It may only destabilize the local gate. It's something that we just don't know and haven't experimented with."

"Could you?" the President asked.

"Certainly," Bill replied. "Test it on one of the gates that is in an out-of-the-way area. Drop a nuke in it and see if it destabilizes the whole track." He thought about it for a moment and then nodded. "I think Track Four would be best. There's a gate in Northern Ohio, out in the country. The planet on the other side is a low atmospheric pressure planet with virtually no life. Certainly nothing sentient that we've encountered. Understand, sir, it will irradiate the immediate area on our side, just as the blast at Eustis irradiated Staunton. But we can do the test."

"Nothing more remote?" the President asked.

"There are a couple of bosons out in the desert areas," Bill said. "We could probably test open them and see what's on the other side. Or, maybe, do a link between two bosons in deserted areas, but that would leave one nuke on the Earth. I think that would definitely violate the test ban treaty."

"Not to mention ruin any chance of reelection," the President said, dryly. "Dr. Weaver, on my authority prepare to send a nuke through the Mississippi gate; get the Titcher over there off our backs for the time being at least. Cleanup can be arranged." He reached into the interior pocket of his jacket, pulled out a card that looked somewhat like an American Express Gold Card and shook his head. "When I came into office, we were, more or less, at peace. Since then we've had 9/11, the Iraq War and now this. No President had authorized the use of a nuclear weapon since 1945. Now I'm getting to the point I'm wearing out the plastic on this thing. Dr. Weaver, find a better way. We must all pray to God that you find a better way."

"Yes, Mr. President," Bill said. "And you should really talk to my counterpart among the Adar sometime, Mr. President."

"Why?" the President asked, coldly.

"He said almost the same thing to me yesterday. That I should pray to God."

"Mrs. Wilson, I really need to talk to Mimi alone," Bill said.

As Mrs. Wilson had predicted, with the exception of very occasional "local interest" programming when the news was slow, and it had rarely been slow lately, the media seemed to have forgotten Mimi and Tuffy.

The Wilsons lived in a ranch house in west Orlando, an older neighborhood but pleasant and not run down, probably built during the first rush of construction after Disney World was completed. It had a pleasant "Old Florida" feel with oaks in the yard that had grown well in the succeeding thirty years.

The interior was neat as a pin and done in a country manner. Mimi had been carefully dressed for the interview in a flowery dress, Tuffy perched on her shoulder. She was seated on the same plaid couch that had been in the news broadcast, which turned out to be in a "Florida Room," a room filled with windows to bring the light indoors. Bill sat to one side in an overstuffed, matching armchair. Mrs. Wilson was seated beside Mimi, on the far side from Tuffy he noticed, eyeing him warily.

"I don't think that's good," Mrs. Wilson said. "I don't think it's proper."

"Ma'am," Bill said, as politely as he could. "I'm here at the direction of the President of the United States to ask Mimi some questions. If you want to stay, what you have to understand is that the questions, and any answers that I might get, are matters of National Security. You can't ever talk about them."

"You're going to ask Mimi the questions, aren't you?" Mrs. Wilson said, puzzled. "What about her talking about them?"

"I've got a feeling that she won't," Bill replied. "It has to do with Tuffy. I've met other aliens like him, I think. I need to ask him the questions, frankly. I'm just hoping that he'll answer."

"People have asked him things before," Mrs. Wilson said.

"They're not me," Bill replied. "If you're staying, you have to understand that this is like knowing the names of spies or knowing how to build nuclear weapons. You can't ever let anyone know that you even know those things."

"Do you?" Mimi asked, suddenly.

Bill looked at her and shrugged. "If I did, I couldn't tell you."

"Auntie," Mimi said. "Tuffy asks you, nicely, if you could let us talk. Alone. He doesn't think that you would like some of the things they have to talk about."

"What about you, honey?" Mrs. Wilson asked.

"I'll be okay, Auntie," Mimi replied in very close to a monotone. "The Lord is my shepherd."

Mrs. Wilson considered this carefully and then stood up. "You going to be long?"

"I doubt it," Bill replied. "If we are, it's going to have to be a very strange conversation."

Mrs. Wilson, with occasional backward glances, left the room.

"What are you?" Mimi asked. "You're a doctor you said."

"I'm a physicist," Bill answered. "I'm called a doctor because I went to college a lot."

"What's a physicist?" Mimi asked.

"A person who studies how the world works," Bill answered. "Why gravity pulls things down."

"Because it likes us," Mimi answered then giggled. "Tuffy says that gravity is the world giving us a hug. I'm going to be a physicist, too, when I grow up. I need to know the words. For Tuffy. He's smart, so smart I feel dumb all the time. But he helps me with my work. He doesn't do it for me, but he explains how I can do it. School is getting pretty boring."

"Have you told anyone else that?" Bill asked.

"No, Tuffy said I shouldn't," Mimi replied. "My teachers just think I'm really smart. They don't know Tuffy's smarter than them. He's smarter than you, too. And he says he's met you before. Not at the place where everything blew up. Someplace else. I don't understand what he's saying. Something about between the small bits."

"In the space between the atoms," Bill said, wonderingly.

"He says something like that. Even smaller."

"Can you tell Tuffy I need to close the gates?" Bill said. "There are bad monsters coming through. They'll destroy everything. I don't think you would be killed, I think Tuffy would probably protect you. But everything else will be gone. There won't be any colleges for you to go to."

Mimi considered this carefully and then looked at the giant spider on her shoulder.

"Tuffy says I don't know the words," Mimi replied, softly. "I don't know the mathematics. He's been showing me some of it, but we're not far beyond something called algebra. He says that's not even close, yet. He can't say the words." She looked at the spider again and nodded.

"Tuffy says, when you take a grain of sand and cut it, then cut it again and again, getting smaller and smaller, when you get to the smallest bits that you can possibly cut. When you get to the bits that are smaller than those, bits that won't cut because they flow away like air, like water, like trying to cut sunshine, that is the secret of closing the gates. But you need a lot of them. More than he thinks you can make. Enough that they get in the space between the gates, in the space between the smallest bits and smaller, and push the gates apart. The gates are the lock and the key to the lock as well." Mimi grabbed her head and shook it, a faint trickle of tears coming out of her eyes.

"Tuffy says that's as much as I can take," she said, in a very small voice, suddenly just a six-year-old girl who was old beyond her years. "He says I shouldn't talk about it right now. That if the bad monsters come he'll take me in his arms, as Jesus took up the small children, and take me to a place where there aren't any monsters."

"Mimi," Bill said, softly. "I'm going to do everything I can to make sure the monsters don't come here and you don't have to go away. And thank you for your help. You're a good girl, the best girl in the world, and Tuffy's a great friend to all of us."

"Can you really keep the monsters from coming?" Mimi asked.

"If I can find a small enough knife," Bill replied, looking at the shifting dust motes in the light through the window.

It was three a.m. and Bill still couldn't sleep. He'd ridden back to the encampment around the anomaly at two, sure that he was exhausted enough from riding all over North Orlando to turn his mind off. But it hadn't happened. It wasn't functioning right, either, twisted in the mire of images. Tuffy, the shattered man, patrol cars with evil police, the grains of dust in the light, bosons that had happy faces on them. Ray Chen smiling as he pressed a button that changed the world. He picked and pried at particle theory, but it was no use. He'd had a drink and that hadn't helped; it just seemed to make him think faster and more chaotically. Finally he'd gotten up from the couch where he'd been sitting and made his way from shadow to shadow until he reached his exercise bike and started furiously pumping.

He'd been at it for an hour, trying to use up all the energy in his body so that maybe his mind would rest, when the door to his trailer opened and Robin walked in.

"I heard the squeaking of that damned thing from over in my trailer," Robin said.

"Sorry," Bill replied, letting it coast to a stop. "I just can't get my mind to work. It's spinning around like an out-of-control boson. Occupational hazard."

"Tried having a drink?" she asked, stepping into the trailer and flipping on the light over the stove. She was wearing a robe and bunny slippers.

"Yeah," Bill said, leaning on the bike and frowning.

"A glass of warm milk . . . perhaps?" she intoned with a faint accent.

"Maybe an Ovaltine?" Bill replied, smiling. "I wish there was a book in some musty room. But all there is are these strange dream images and hints that I think I'm supposed to be smart enough to figure out."

"You've lost some hair," Robin said, frowning. She walked over and touched where some had fallen out.

"Radiation damage," Bill replied, shrugging. "It'll grow back. Most of it."

"Anything else wrong?" she asked.

"My white blood cell count dropped for a while," Bill admitted, frowning. "Other than that, no damage."

"None?" Robin asked, rolling the word off of her tongue.

"Nope," Bill said, finally getting the hint.

"QUARKS!" Bill shouted.

"What?" Robin panted, clearly exasperated. "Is that a normal thing to shout at a moment like this? Usually it's 'Oh, My, God!'"

"It's what they're talking about!" Bill said, taking her face in his hands. "Quarks!"

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Robin said, coldly. "But if you do not return to the business at hand you're going to be unable to explain it to anyone. Except, maybe, if I'm kind, as a soprano."

"Oh, right. Sorry."

"The key to the gate is quarks," Bill said. He had more to go on at this point than just raw speculation. With that link in hand he had seen the theory of gate formation clearly and had even worked out most of the physics. He hadn't waited for much in the way of peer evaluation; among other things he was as anxious as the government to classify the data. Because it worked as a weapon as well as a gate. "When the Chen Anomaly formed we didn't have a universe inversion; we had a high rate of unlinked quark emissions. That was what caused the explosion."

"How high a rate?" the national security advisor asked.

"Oh, the total emission was probably right at two or three hundred thousand particles," Bill said.

"That's all?" the President asked. "I mean, these are smaller than atoms, right? It takes a lot more uranium than that to get a nuclear blast . . ."

"Yes, sir," Bill replied. "But their destructive power is orders of magnitude higher than any substance except strange matter. And we don't have any theory on how to form either one in any quantity. Even the biggest supercollider only forms one or two at a time and those almost immediately link. But the point is that we may be able to adjust one of the inactive bosons to form a stream of unique quarks, one particular type, strange, charmed, whatever. That way, they don't link at all; it's like pushing the same poles of a magnet together. If we can, we can capture them and move them to one of the gates. When it opens, we pop them in and get either a big explosion, low in neutron emission, on the far side or, possibly, we collapse the gate. I'm virtually certain that a large enough quantity will collapse the gate. Permanently. It will not only close the gate it will eliminate the bosons on either side."

"Hold on," the national security advisor said. "I know just enough about quarks to know that they always link. A muon is two quarks, right?"

"Yes," Bill said, frowning. "But they have to have the right color to link . . ."

"Color?" the President said, puzzled.

"Ai-yai-yai," Bill said, frowning again. "Okay, quarks are described as coming in flavors and colors. Why? Because they were discovered by physicists who didn't have much else to do but come up with strange terms. The point is that you have to have a quark and an antiquark of two different colors to create a muon. In this case, we'll create a stream of a single type of quark, probably strange since that seems to be the easiest to create for some reason."

"You've already been experimenting with it?" the NSA asked.

"Oh, yes," Bill replied. "Otherwise we'd be spinning our wheels. The problem isn't tuning the boson to produce them, it's capturing them. . . ."

"And you're going to do that, how?" the NSA asked, fascinated.

"We're looking at two different possibilities," Bill admitted. "We might put two bosons in close proximity. Have one produce a stream of similar color muons, ones that can't bind to strange quarks, and set up a magnetic field to create a capture bottle. The muons will pass through the field and create a sort of stream field that will surround the quarks. I'm not sure that one will work but it's less energy intensive than the other way."

"What's the other way?" the President asked.

"Well," Bill said, his face working, "the other way is to create a miniature white dwarf. But that's going to take a whole lot of power."

"A white dwarf?" the defense secretary said, grinning. "You're serious?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Secretary," Bill replied. "All a white dwarf is is a collection of electrons. What we'll do is create an electron field and then use a magnetic field to sort of cup it. Then we'll shoot a whole bunch of quarks into the cup and wrap the electrons around the quarks, compressing them at the same time, sort of like catching water in your hand. Some of the quarks will escape but, hopefully, not enough to destroy the containment vessel. The only problem is, maintaining it will require a whole lot of electricity. But it will work for sure."

"And then you slip this . . . device into the gate?" the secretary asked. "And that destroys the bosons."

"Yes, sir," Bill said.

"Destroying whole universes?" the President asked.

"Errr . . . possibly," Bill replied. "But current theory is changing as to the nature of bosons; at this point theory is pointing to them being gates to other universes, or links, rather than the universes themselves."

"How much?" the secretary of defense asked. "How many particles?"

"Probably on the order of a million, Mr. Secretary," Bill said. "We'll have to see what the rate of emission is of the boson."

"How long to do the experiment?" the national security advisor asked.

"There's a boson conveniently settled in Death Valley," Bill replied. "We'll have to assemble the materials and set up a base camp. A week, maybe less. Getting enough power to it will be the key."

"I want Dr. Weaver to have whatever he needs to get this experiment running," the President said to the secretary of defense.

"I'll see that he gets it," the secretary replied. "You're saying that these things are the equivalent of nuclear weapons?"

"Yes, Mr. Secretary," Bill said, frowning. "More like nuclear explosive material. That's why I've been pretty careful about spreading the theory around. If the theory is right, making unlinked quarks and then capturing them is going to be relative child's play. Any decent physicist with access to a boson could make them."

"Giving every two-bit country on Earth nuclear weapons." The national security advisor winced.

"Close one Pandora's Box and we open another," the President said.

"That's science for you, Mr. President."

* * *

"Remember Ray Chen," Bill said as his hand hovered over the initiator.

The base camp had been set up ten miles from the inactive boson. A bunker, constructed of concrete filled sandbags and steel beams, had been built a mere five miles away. Comfortably cooled by an air-conditioning unit, similarly protected, it had independent power and materials to dig out if it were covered by an explosion. It was there that the team had assembled to study the anticipated quark formation.

In the end the muon field plan had been a bust. A brief, and mildly traumatic, experiment had proven that they'd be unable to hold the field closed well enough to capture sufficient quarks. Bill was almost sure that tinkering would fix the problem, but they didn't have time to play around with the idea so they'd set up the white dwarf bottle instead.

The problem, of course, would be moving it; they were going to be using several megawatts of power just to create the field and about a half megawatt per hour, if they could spin the electrons in a toroid, to maintain it. The Army was trying to find a portable half-megawatt per hour generator, thus far with little success.

Mark was there, having assembled another whatchamacallit device on less than a week's notice. Bill Earp from FEMA, who pointed out that for once the agency might as well get there before the disaster. Sergeants Garcia and Crichton who had been useful military liaisons. Robin had been writing code, with Garcia's fumble fingered help, eighteen hours a day for the last four. The only person missing was Command Master Chief Miller, who Bill, after a certain amount of argument, had sent off on a different project. But everything was finally in place and it was time to find out if it worked.

"Let's see what happens," Bill Earp said, inserting earplugs. "Everyone got their plugs in? Safety first."

Bill already had earplugs in and he hoped he wouldn't need them. If everything went as planned nothing would happen, outside of some changes in very sensitive instruments.

He looked around one more time

"Everybody ready?" Bill asked.

"Ready, sir," Garcia and Crichton said.

"Let's get it over with," Robin said, yawning.

"Gotta test it sometime," Mark said.

"Just proud to be here," Earp intoned.

Bill pressed the button.

Nothing blew up. The lights dimmed rather deeply, though.

He looked over at Garcia who was frowning.

"Something's happening," the sergeant said. "We've got fluctuations in the magnetic containment bottle."

"Power's going somewhere," Mark added. "Quite a bit. We keep this up and we're going to start affecting California's power requirements in a bit."

"More fluctuations," Garcia added a few minutes later as everyone was congratulating themselves. He had stayed glued to his monitor, however, his brow furrowed in a frown. "The electrons are starting to slip. I think we're . . ."

There was a very slight ground shudder and everyone looked at the external monitors. In the distance was dust rising from a small explosion where their expensive and difficult to build quark generator now appeared to be so much metal and plastic scrap.

" . . . losing it," Garcia finished. "Negative signal."

"Back to the drawing board," Bill said.

"It looks like it's working this time," Garcia said, watching his monitors carefully. "The Quark Hotel is in operation."

Analysis of the data that they had gotten before the explosion indicated that some of the quarks, rather than being fully trapped in the bottle, had gotten caught in a magnetic eddy. When their local charge overcame the eddy they reacted, violently, with the surrounding matter and released the rest of the quarks to do so even more energetically.

The containment bottle had been upgraded and redesigned so that, as Garcia put it: "Quarks go in, but none get out."

It had been instantly dubbed the Quark Hotel.

"Negative radiation emissions," Crichton said. "But the rate of entry is really low. It looks like only a quark per second."

"Not fast enough," Bill said. "We need to increase the rate by a couple of orders of magnitude."

"Up the power input?" Mark asked. "We need to increase the size of the bottle anyway."

"Maybe," Bill replied. "We're probably only catching a fraction of the potential stream. But we don't have the generators for that. We're already pushing a hundred kilowatts through at the moment. To up it we'll need big power. I don't think we can do it here unless we can get some really monstrous generators and then we'll be hauling in diesel so fast the experiment is going to be pretty damned obvious."

"So what do we do?" Robin asked.

"Shut it down," Weaver replied. "We can do it, we just need another boson that has access to a lot of power. Set the quarks on battery backup. We need to see if we can move the containment bottle, anyway. I'll have to kick this upstairs."

"So that's where we're at," Bill said. "We can make the material, we can even contain it and move it, with relative safety. But we need orders of magnitude more power. I don't think the rate of capture will be linear, more like asymptotic . . ."

"What?" the President said. "You're usually pretty good about avoiding extreme jargon, Dr. Weaver, but . . ."

"That means for a little more power we'll get a lot more result, Mr. President," Bill said. "But we're still looking at needing to have something on the order of a megawatt or more of power. We're going to need to move someplace that has that sort of power available."

"Savannah River?" the secretary of defense said, looking over at the national security advisor.

"Oak Ridge, Savannah River, Hanford," the NSA said with a shrug. "All have secure facilities, all have access to enormous power. Take your pick."

"Savannah River," Bill replied. "Mark worked there. He'll know where to set up and who to see when we need something. And besides, there ain't much left of Oak Ridge."

"Get moving, Doctor," the President said. "We may not have much time." He looked up as someone entered the Situation Room. The agitated messenger walked up to the secretary of defense and whispered in his ear at which message the secretary's face suddenly looked every day of his seventy-odd years.

"We're out."

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