Influx (31 page)

Grady nodded. He was actually starting to feel nervous.

“You’ll be fine. I’ll be right there.” She spoke into her microphone, and he heard her voice right in his ear.
“I mean it. You’ll do fine.”

She moved about thirty feet away from him. “Now remember that if we get close to each other, our gravity fields will interact. You’re a physicist, so you can probably estimate the interactions better than I can, but just don’t forget it.”

“No. I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

Alexa held up her hand. “Equilibrium.”

Grady made adjustments. “Check.”

“Power up.”

He activated his gravis. “Powered up.” He was suddenly floating in microgravity.

“Push off the roof with your legs. We don’t want those rafters in your gravity well when you fall up.”

Grady bent his legs and pushed off into space. He laughed nervously as he rose ten, twenty, and thirty feet above the roof, seeing more and more of the surrounding city blocks as he did so. He gazed around. “This is beautiful!”

Alexa was quickly up to his height, putting a finger against her lips. “Not until we’re higher. Voices carry in open air.” She pointed upward. “One quarter gravity, twelve o’clock high, please. I’ll meet you at one thousand feet.”

With that Alexa began to fall upward.

Grady nodded to himself and activated his controls. Instantaneously he was falling upward as well. As he did, his view of the surrounding city streets increased. He felt an instinctive fear, but it was counterbalanced by his brain’s full belief that “down” was actually just above him—not below. So when he looked at the cityscape, he felt as though he were examining the sky overhead. He laughed nervously as the view kept expanding.

“Jon!”

Grady looked up to see that he was rising past Alexa. He brought himself back into equilibrium, and she rose to meet him. They were now at eleven hundred feet above the meatpacking district. The view of the Chicago skyline was breathtaking.

“This is really something.”

“Keep an eye out for helicopters. If you get seen, go fast—anywhere but the safe house until you lose them. A typical helicopter can do about a hundred and fifty miles an hour—which is faster than terminal velocity. So your best bet is evasive maneuvers. You’ll find that with the gravis you can change directions much faster than normal aircraft.”

Grady was still gazing all around, a grin on his face. “I can’t believe this. It’s like a dream.”

Alexa nodded. “It is pretty amazing. And I’ve seen some amazing things in my day. Back when I was a field operator in the ’80s . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Never mind. You ready?”

He nodded.

“Follow me. If we get separated, I’ll find you with my thermals.” She pointed ahead and to the left. “See that tall building over there? John Hancock Center. Let’s head toward it.” She tapped her ear. “Keep in touch by q-link.” She shot him a quick grin as she lowered her visor. “And try to keep up.”

With that she twisted around and fell forward, back first, twisting like a high diver as she disappeared into the night.

Grady felt a thrill unlike anything he’d ever known as he jammed the controller forward and suddenly felt the universe draw him toward the horizon. The wind buffeted him at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. He glanced below, and it was as if this was the BASE jump to end all BASE jumps—with the city of Chicago serving as a jagged cliff-face down which they were both falling. Grady moved his hands as airfoils and adjusted his position with increasing ease. He screamed in joy as he fell across the sky.

“Try to keep the screaming to a minimum. We don’t want to attract attention.”

“Right. Couldn’t help it. Sorry.”

Forty-story condo buildings were gliding by below him—or to the side of him in the current gravitational context. He was passing by a narrow river crisscrossed with bridges. Up ahead he could see Alexa falling with her arms tucked against her sides—aiming like a bird of prey toward her target.

Grady did likewise and instantly felt a speed increase. He could also see below more easily that way. The wind roared past his ears.

In under a minute they starting closing in on the hundred-story Hancock building. Grady eased up on the gravity along with Alexa, and they coasted to a near stop as the wind buffeted them.

She pointed.
“See that building there with the four small towers just to the left of Hancock Center?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Let’s see if you can land on top of a tower.”

Grady sucked in a breath. Falling in the open air was fantastic, but he remembered his close shaves in Cotton’s workshop.

Alexa came up within twenty feet of him and spoke directly, instead of over q-link. “You need to be able to do this without hesitation, even in wind.”

“Yes, of course you’re right. I’m on it.”

Grady eased his “down” in the direction of the tower, keeping it to barely any gravity at all. The roof of the building slowly approached him. At first glance he’d thought this was an older, art deco sixty-story building, but now that he was getting up close, he could see it was newer than that—paying homage perhaps. The art deco look here had an ’80s blockiness to it. The roof of the building was capped by four identical purely ornamental towers—square boxes of metal with small pyramids atop them. He focused on the nearest one, and as he glided closer, he modulated his pitch, adjusting the angle of his foot as necessary.

“Remember to reduce your gravity after you land. It will prevent damage to the structure.”

Grady gave her a thumbs-up sign and turned back toward the approaching tower. It was barely ten feet away now, capped by a large square point made of steel, about three feet wide. A lightning rod stood above that. He glanced down to see the roof of the building some forty feet below. The other towers nearby. And the Chicago streets hundreds of feet below them all.

A wind blew him slightly to the right, but he corrected, and in a moment he grabbed onto the cap of the metal pyramid with his gauntleted hand. Moments later he wrapped his arms around the spire, and lowered his gravity to almost nothing, but pointed in the direction of actual gravity—just enough to keep him in place. He clung to the top of the spire and looked back up at Alexa floating in space a hundred or so feet away.

“How was that?”

“Excellent. Did you feel how the structure started taking on your gravity field?”

“Yeah. I dialed down the intensity just as I got in close. Seems to work all right.” Grady looked out across the city, and then down.
Whoa.
He was up in a place where he’d normally be frightened out of his wits, but changing the direction of gravity seemed to chase off vertigo. Looking around he felt a little like King Kong atop the Empire State Building.

“Now remember, when you push off, don’t just hit full gravity upward, or you might rip the top off the tower.”

Grady nodded and pushed away from the building at nearly zero
g
before increasing it moments later to gain altitude. “How’s that?”

She came nearly alongside—just far enough away so their gravity fields weren’t tangled. “Good. Okay, how about a bit of high-speed maneuvering?”

“I don’t want to go through any skyscraper windows tonight.”

“No, we’ll head down there.” She pointed out toward the water, where long lines of stone outlined a harbor. A lighthouse blinked occasionally at its tip. “Along that quay, near Chicago Harbor. I’ll meet you down at the lighthouse. Go fast, now!”

She did a backward somersault and then kicked in full gravity—sending her soaring downward at an angle toward the lakeshore a mile away.

Grady felt the thrill of the chase and immediately fell downward after her. He was rapidly getting a feel for how to direct himself and how to increase or decrease his speed. It was a physical experience of the laws of motion he’d studied for so many years. He could almost see the mathematical arcs he was tracing through the air as he increased this variable or decreased that one. Living proof of his perceptions.

Grady hurtled through the night air, passing over the rooftops of shorter skyscrapers at a hundred miles an hour. Once clear of the last row of buildings, he angled down toward the lake, aiming for a spot about a half mile from shore. He descended to five hundred feet and sped silently across the dark water.

As he came up to a few hundred meters from the blinking stone lighthouse at the end of a lone stone quay, he eased up on the speed and brought himself to within yards of the water’s surface. When he reached the lighthouse, he rose to a full stop alongside the railing at its peak, where Alexa stood waiting for him patiently—apparently in normal gravity.

She smiled. “You’re taking to this quickly.”

He floated ten feet away from her like a child’s balloon on a string. “It’s like everything I imagined. It seems so natural.”

“Just don’t forgot the old rules of physics when you take the belt off.” She looked up. “We still need to experiment with interlocking gravity fields. It’ll be safer if we go high up for this.”

“How high you want to go?” He craned his neck into the cloudy sky.

“How about just below the cloud deck? Meet you up there?”

He nodded, but even before she launched, he did—laughing like a maniac as he plummeted into the heavens.

He glanced back at the city as he kept rising. It was truly breathtaking—the best elevator ride in the world. It wasn’t until about four thousand feet that he started coming to the bottom of the cloud cover. He dialed to equilibrium and stopped slowly. The mist was clearly defined and dense above him. It was also much cooler up here, and he could feel the dew point was near, as moisture seemed to be coming out of the air.

He looked down to see Alexa rising up, and in a moment she was across from him at a distance of ten yards. The clouds formed a roof above them, but there were gaps here and there where he could see the stars. He could smell the moisture. Below them the city of Chicago glowed in the night.

“All right, Jon. Let’s fall toward each other slowly—one tenth gravity. I want you to try to grab my hands as we pass.”

“Like objects passing in space.”

“Right. Our gravity fields will make it seem like we’re objects of much greater mass, so we’ll behave like stars passing by each other—we’ll disturb each other’s trajectory.”

“Okay. Say when.”

She nodded. “Go.”

They started falling toward and past each other, but as they got close, their trajectories were disturbed to a degree Grady felt that he could anticipate. They were now proof of the physical laws he knew so well. They sailed past each other on altered courses.

Grady shouted back. “Let’s try it again. This time come in at a slightly steeper angle toward me. Just slightly.”

“Change your angle of descent.”

“Done. Here . . .” He looked ahead as they started to drift toward each other again. He felt it the moment their trajectories interacted. A tug as he fell in toward her, and she fell in toward him—then they passed, brushing outstretched hands.

And then they began to orbit each other, revolving without either one adjusting their controls. They were now a binary system.

She smiled lightly as they continued to go in circles, getting closer with every revolution and spinning faster. “We could get dizzy doing this.”

He nodded but watched her face in the semidarkness. “How many more until we meet, do you think?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know . . .”

“I say six.”

“Six, eh?”

He nodded.

“All right.” They went around again, gradually increasing speed. “That’s two.”

He kept his eyes upon her as the natural laws of the universe brought them closer together with each revolution.

“Four.”

At their sixth revolution they were face-to-face. They locked hands until their rotation began to slow. They turned to look at city lights far below.

“How did you do this, Jon?”

“Simple physics.”

“No. I mean this . . . the gravity mirror. Even the BTC doesn’t understand how it works. No one does.”

He thought for a moment. “It’s not me. It’s the universe. I was just the first person to see it.”

Her beautiful eyes studied him.

G
raham Hedrick stood in the
BTC command center as technicians scurried about in the control room below. He knew that beyond his sight AI bots were scouring consumer data, telecommunications signals, surveillance camera imagery, and satellite reconnaissance for any sign of Grady, Alexa, or Cotton. Every form of communication known to man was being sifted and resifted. With every passing hour they widened their search radius.

Hedrick turned to Morrison, who, as usual, stood nearby. “What happened to those underwater signatures—the ones in Lake Michigan?”

Morrison looked grim. “They disappeared. The teams up there have been looking, but nothing so far.”

Hedrick studied the screens. “An underwater escape. That must mean Alexa has cavitating gear. Check the inventory and see if anything is missing.”

“Let’s just assume she has it. What difference does—”

“Capabilities.” He turned back to Morrison. “If they have deepwater gear, I think Mr. Grady’s going to try for Hibernity. His compatriots there helped facilitate his escape. He’ll try to rescue them. That can’t happen.”

“If we recall the search teams, I’ll have enough manpower to go down to Hibernity and clean house.”

“No.”

“But if Grady and Alexa secure those prisoners, they could cut a deal with BTC splinter groups. Or they could trade them to the U.S. government—which would help them catch up to us technologically.”

“Yes. And if not the U.S. government or BTC splinter groups, then a hundred other enemies.” Hedrick gazed up at the world on the screens. “It’s all spinning out of control. It’s getting harder and harder to contain all this technology.” He turned back to Morrison. “How many people in Hibernity have invented fusion now—sixty? Seventy?”

“One hundred and twelve.”

“See? No, this can’t go on. That’s why it’s time to resolve this situation once and for all.”

“Meaning what, sir?”

“Meaning that the mission of the BTC must evolve. We’ve been trying to protect society from disruption since the Cold War, but it’s become increasingly obvious to me that we’re the only society that matters now. What’s important is preserving our store of knowledge—the hard-won advances of mankind—against the chaos that’s coming.”

“What chaos, sir?”

“The chaos you’re going to create. Perhaps our Winnower friends had the right idea; the outside world should not have so much knowledge.”

Morrison looked at Hedrick warily. “What are you proposing?”

“Undermine global financial markets—set our AIs loose on power grids, transportation and communications networks. In a few weeks the industrialized world will begin to come apart. We’ll just make sure there are no nuclear missile launches but otherwise let the chaos spread for as many years as is necessary.” Hedrick studied the satellite screens. “By the time it’s over, no one will be able to oppose us.”

“Our mission is to
prevent
social disruption, Mr. Director, not cause it.”

Hedrick turned calmly to Morrison.  “Yes, but disruption of
which
society? We’ve progressed so far beyond the outside world, they’re no longer us.”

“And the widespread casualties this will cause?”

“The price of progress. Next time we won’t share as much technology. That was our mistake. We need absolute domination in order to keep humanity on track.” Hedrick contemplated the screens again. “You are with me, I hope, Mr. Morrison?”

Morrison cleared his throat, then nodded. “Yes, Mr. Director. You know I am. What about Alexa and Grady?”

“Disrupting civilization will make it harder for them to harm us.”

“She’s a bigger danger to us than anyone.”

“You’re saying we need to eliminate her.”

“The only reason she’s still alive is because of your feelings for her, but aside from Grady and his knowledge of gravity, I can’t think of a single person on this planet who can do more damage to us. Even if you topple civilization, if she winds up in the hands of BTC Asia or Russia, they could extend their life spans indefinitely from what they learn from her miserable carcass. We could be facing the same lunatics for centuries. Not to mention the inside information she has on every inch of this facility and all the people in it. All our procedures and operations. Every weakness. Every—”

“Enough! Okay . . .” He took a deep breath. “Kill her on sight.” Hedrick looked deeply pained. “But not the way you killed Davis and McAllen. I want it painless. Instant.”

“Fine. A high-powered microwave from orbit—”

“I don’t want to know. Just let me know when it’s done.”

“There’s someone else you’re forgetting.”

Hedrick turned to him with a questioning look.

“Cotton.”

Hedrick dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I’m counting on Cotton to help us.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because he’s a survivor. He can read the way the winds are blowing. Once society reaches the tipping point, he’ll reach out to us. And I’m willing to cut a deal with him in exchange for Grady and Alexa.”

“And after that?”

Hedrick shrugged. “We’ll honor our deal. What do I care if he retires in luxury? He’s been useful, and he might prove useful again.”

“He’s a thief and somehow able to lie even to our AIs.”

“Like I said: He’s useful.” Hedrick focused back on the big satellite screens. “Heightened security procedures are in place?”

Morrison nodded. “We’re on a wartime footing.”

“Good. See that we stay that way. How is the outside world dealing with recent events?”

“The government folks are trying to explain the inexplicable as best they can. Some cell phone video sneaked out. The missile explosions over Canada, the power outages in southern Illinois—it’s starting to build into public hysteria.”

“And just think—it’s been less than twelve hours. We’ve barely started, and already the outside world is on the tipping point. You know what to do, Mr. Morrison.”

“Yes, sir.”