Probability Space (36 page)

Kaufman didn’t ask ‘five minutes until what.’ He knew. The Faller station raced toward Space Tunnel #301, to take the Faller artifact through and protect the home system. It wasn’t going to make it. The station couldn’t destroy the navy warship, nor the warship destroy the station, not if both were set at prime two. But surely the Faller station would switch to prime eleven, thereby protecting the entire Q System from a prime thirteen attack. Surely it would …

He accelerated at five-gees toward Tunnel #218.

Surely the Fallers would switch to prime eleven …

Something happened on his displays. Both the warship and the Faller station exploded.

“They did it!” Kaufman screamed, despite the pain in his lungs, despite the uselessness of the cry. They had done it, must have. No zone of safety at prime thirteen, apparently. Syree Johnson’s artifact had exploded when it fried the entire World System except World, and she’d thought it had been from taking too great a mass through the tunnel but it hadn’t been—

Pierce and the Fallers did it
. Two artifacts set off, prime thirteen, same system …

The wave had a lag effect, or this flyer would already be gone—

They did it, the Goddamn fucking assholes—

Kaufman accelerated madly toward the tunnel. How great a lag effect? He was losing consciousness, couldn’t do that, the navy on the other side of the tunnel would fry him if he couldn’t account for himself … stay conscious … ‘San Juan Hill’ … they did it …

The flyer dove through the tunnel. Three seconds later, the wave effect of an artifact set at prime thirteen reached Space Tunnel #218. And the inevitable happened.

*   *   *

Darkness.

“San … Juan…”

Crushing weight.

“Hill…”

Darkness again, lifting slowly.

“San…”

Kaufman didn’t know how long he’d been gasping the words, which were meaningless to his struggling mind. Blackness swept over him, receded, returned. The comlink was babbling … something … meaningless …

He was on the Artemis System side of the tunnel. Still alive.

“Cut … acceleration…”

The crushing weight abruptly ceased. The flyer hurled on.

“Slow, damn it!” the comlink ordered. With every ounce of strength he had left, Kaufman gave the command to the flyer computer.

Marbet. Tom.

He turned in his seat. They both slumped in theirs. Kaufman’s heart and lungs worked too hard to go to them. His brain seemed to bulge larger than his skull. He had only his voice, and he forced himself to use it.

“Our warship … gone … also Faller station … both artifacts … thirteen…”

“How do you know that? Colonel, what happened over there?”

“Don’t go … through.…”

But they would. It was inevitable. And on his displays, Kaufman saw the blips detach from the Artemis fleet and race toward Tunnel #218.

“Don’t … not … yet…”

“Unknown flyer, deactivate all weapons and wait for boarding,” said the comlink. Back to correct navy procedure. Fools.

But they were still alive. So the wave traveled at c, not through the tunnels. The flop transition would spread out from Q System at c, tearing spacetime and then mending it through radical reconfiguration, and it would be hundreds of years until the Solar System was destroyed.

Cold comfort.

“Ready to … accept boarding,” Kaufman said, and tried to get out of his chair to go to Marbet. The effort was too great. He fell back down, and so was facing the displays when it happened.

He saw it happen, live.

It couldn’t happen, but he saw it.

Three SADN ships flew toward Space Tunnel #218. Toward it, and into it. Not through it, into it. Two ships, a half minute apart, hit an invisible solid wall within the floating doughnut, and exploded. The third ship swerved just in time and bypassed the tunnel.

Which was somehow not a tunnel.

Kaufman threw himself out of his seat. Reserve energy he didn’t know he had galvanized him. He grabbed Capelo and shook him, heedless of the physicist’s injuries. Capelo’s thin body flopped back and forth. But he was breathing. Kaufman dropped him and reached for a taser.

Alarms shrieked over the comlink. Fleet alarms. Attack alarms.

But there was no attack, except by Kaufman. He tasered Capelo and the physicist shrieked awake. “What … oooooooeeeee…” It was a cry of pure pain.

Kaufman ignored it. “Tom, listen … listen, Goddamn it! The tunnels are closing!”

“What—”

“Space tunnel to Q System is closed! It’s a solid wall. Both sides set off the artifacts in Q System at prime thirteen and
the tunnel closed.
I need to know if they’re all closed, or just the ones to Q System!”

Capelo stared at him, no longer moaning. Then he said, “How the fuck should I know?”

Kaufman dropped him and jumped back into his seat. No help from theory. Only action left. He restarted the XXPell3 and accelerated in the opposite direction, toward Space Tunnel #212. The next tunnel on the route to Sol.

No one fired, no one ordered him to stop. Kaufman wasn’t surprised. The fleet had just lost two ships in an
accident that couldn’t have happened
. No one with authority was thinking of Kaufman. They would, in a few minutes, but by that time he’d be through Tunnel #212 and inside the star system it led to, Han System.

If it let him through.

He started to decelerate halfway, which wasn’t very far; the tunnels orbited close together. Approaching #212, he said on the comlink to the tunnel ships, “XXPell3, designated test flyer for Tunnel Number Two-one-two into Han System, coming through. Code San Juan Hill. Wish me luck, boys!”

Silence: part lag, part confusion. Then a young, scared voice: “I don’t have … proceed, flyer, and good luck!”

Seconds later: “That’s not … “but it was already too late. Kaufman’s communication had traveled faster than the one from the fleet at the fortified entrance to Q space. Kaufman had reached the floating gray doughnut made of nothing.

Slowly, to minimize impact, he flew into the tunnel.

There was no impact. He was through.

Behind him, Tom Capelo said, “Jesus Newton God.”

“what?”

Capelo didn’t answer. The tunnel ships on the Han System side said, “Identify self, flyer.”

“Flyer XXPell3, Colonel Lyle Kaufman. Emergency information from Artemis System, priority one, Special Compartmented Information.”

“Dock at will, Colonel. But your ship—”

Capelo said, “Go through the next tunnel, Lyle! Now! They’re all going to close, and I don’t know how long we’ve got! Do you hear me—
they’re all going to close!
”

“What was that, Colonel?” said the other ship, sharply.

“Nothing,” Kaufman said. There came into his mind, unbidden, a map of the space tunnels between him and Sol. Curiously, the image was not the conventionally formal military rendering but instead the same kind of rough sketch he’d made on Marbet’s handheld. Kaufman could see this new sketch, in all its crudeness, as dearly as if it floated in the air in front of him:

Four more tunnels to the Solar System, and home. Kaufman said to the comlink, “Change of orders, sealed until this locus, priority one, Special Compartmented Information. Request permission to proceed through Tunnel Number One-one-seven into Gemini System.”

“I haven’t got any authorization to—”

“Then find someone who does! I said I have Special Compartmented Information, proceeding through Tunnel Number One-one-seven!” Kaufman said loudly, firmly, impatiently. The tunnel orbited only twenty seconds away.

“I don’t have any … can you … halt!”

Too late. Kaufman was through. He emerged into Gemini System. Three more tunnels to go.

“Tom, they’ll come after us,” Kaufman said quickly. “If you can’t talk fast to them, they’ll shoot us down.”

“Evade them, or something! I don’t know how rapidly the—Goddamn it how did I ever miss
that
variable…”

Kaufman instructed the computer to proceed to Tunnel #64, leading from Gemini to Isis System, and to take all possible evasive action, keep all comlinks open. Then he turned in his seat. Capelo sat covered in blue pain patches, which was how he was working on the handheld. God, so
many
patches, the chemicals he was absorbing to keep himself pumped … the physicist coded furiously on the handheld. Kaufman glanced at Marbet and saw she still breathed. Gladness blew wildly through him.

Why? They were all going to be shot down anyway.

“XXPell3, halt instantly or I will commence firing.”

“This is Dr. Thomas Capelo!” Tom screamed. “Don’t fire! Listen to me, the tunnels are closing, they’re
closing!
I know why! Don’t shoot or I can’t tell you!”

“XXPell3, halt instantly or I will commence firing. This is your last warning.”

The Gemini-Isis Tunnel was too far away to reach before a proton beam got them.

Kaufman’s chest clutched. He could fire on the tunnel ships, on both of them, there were only two. Taking evasive action he’d probably get them both—

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t shoot down two SADN ships on active duty, not to save his life and Marbet’s, not even to let Capelo tell the galaxy what was happening to it. They’d know soon enough anyway.

“Hairing in compliance,” he said, and ignored Capelo’s shout behind him.

A ship blew up on his viewscreen, filling it with light.

The data display showed it had been a civilian cargo ship, cleared to go through a different one of Gemini System’s three tunnels. The ship had tried to sail through at one-gee acceleration and had hit solid matter. Another tunnel had closed.

“The tunnels are closing,” Kaufman said, restarting his ship, “just as Dr. Capelo said! Proceeding through Tunnel Number Sixty-four to Isis System, Priority One, Special Compartmented Information—”

No one even replied. Probably they were all stunned by what had just happened to the cargo ship. Shattered into smithereens by what should have been empty space. How many hands had been aboard?

Kaufman didn’t slow down. Twenty-two seconds, eighteen, twelve … they were through.

“Flyer XXPell3, identify self,” said a puzzled female voice on the Isis side of the tunnel. “No clearances on record.”

Capelo said, “You’ve got more time here. I think. The equations … how could I have
missed
it, my God.…”

Kaufman’s adrenaline rush was dissipating. Unlike Capelo, he wasn’t covered with blue patches. Capelo was far too jacked for the patches to be simple painkillers; probably they were systemic accelerators, peen or gull.

Two more tunnels between him and Sol.

“This is Flyer XXPell3, no current clearances. Request permission to proceed through Space Tunnel Number Thirty-two into Herndon System.”

“Why is there no record of you, Flyer XXPell3? I’m showing your craft as obsolete and retired military.”

“That is correct. I am—” Kaufman said. He cut the link momentarily and said to Capelo, “How much time? When do the rest of the tunnels close? Do you know what the fuck you’re doing?”

“No! I’ve only had ten minutes here with a major breakthrough in physics!”

Kaufman reopened the comlink. “—get the rest of that. Repeat transmission, XXPell3.”

“Repeating transmission,” Kaufman said wearily. For the first time in what seemed hours—it was actually less than twenty minutes total—he realized that he, Capelo, and Marbet were all still naked. “I said I am on a special military mission, Priority One, Special Compartmented Information.”

“Pass code for SCI missions?”

Kaufman didn’t know the code, of course. This was the end of their mad dash to Sol. The only thing left was truth.

“Listen, Gemini System. I have Dr. Thomas Capelo, the missing physicist sought by Admiral Pierce, aboard my craft. He has just discovered that the space tunnels are closing, one by one, and the scientific basis for that. It is vital that we convey this information with all possible speed to Admiral Pierce on Mars. He doesn’t yet know this phenomenon is happening, so we have no SCI pass code. But the entire galaxy is at stake.”

“Dr. Thomas Capelo?” the voice said incredulously. “That’s quite a story, XXPell3. Deactivate weapons and prepare for boarding.”

“I tell you there’s no time for that,” Kaufman said. “The space tunnels are closing.”

On his display, he saw a ship sail peacefully through the tunnel. It didn’t explode.

“XXPell3, deactivate weapons and prepare for immediate boarding.”

“In compliance,” Kaufman said. “Deactivating weapons and preparing for boarding. This is Colonel Lyle Kaufman, USDC, retired. Will you at least do one other thing? Will you send—”

“Lyle?” came another female voice. “Lyle Kaufman? This is Marjorie Barella.”

Kaufman dosed his eyes. He had served with her in combat, fifteen years ago. By pure chance then, by pure chance now. “Marjorie? It is Lyle Kaufman. Run a voice-scan match … got it?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, Colonel Barella…”

“General Barella.”

Better yet. “General, this is an unprecedented situation. I have Dr. Thomas Capelo aboard. We have just returned from Artemis System.” He didn’t mention Q System; she wasn’t SADC and so Wouldn’t even know about it, rank of general or no. “This is a long story, but the major outcome is that the space tunnels are closing, one by one, at an undetermined varying rate. I know how fantastic that sounds. All I’m asking is that you send a flyer through to Gemini System to verify that the space tunnels are becoming nonoperative. Meanwhile, I will deactivate weapons and prepare for boarding, if you wish, although I conceive my primary mission to be to convey this intelligence to Sol.”