Estlin’s roommate wasn’t breathing, at least not audibly. The waetapu wasn’t making any noise at all. Meanwhile, the cot creaked every time he shifted, and he’d spent twenty minutes thinking about ditching it to lie on the floor. The door behind him opened and closed. Estlin listened to the light footsteps crossing the floor and considered rolling over.
Yidge didn’t speak until she stepped into view, the half-light shadowing her features. “You’re not sleeping,” she said.
“Could you?” Estlin asked.
“No. It took a few days,” she said. It was a beautifully honest answer.
Estlin sat up, one hand pressed against his eyes. “I won’t last that long.”
“Do you need anything?” she asked.
“Where’s Harry?”
“Asleep at his desk,” Yidge answered. She was holding a form loosely at her side. Estlin could tell that she was waiting to inflict it on him.
“What’s that?”
“Dr. Mir would like to access your medical records,” she said. “As a precaution, in case any other complications arise.”
Estlin waved for the form, negating any further explanation or pleading. He read it quickly and accepted a pen from Yidge. “I can give you doctor names and towns,” he said. “You’ll have to look up the contact details.”
“My job,” she said, taking the form from him. “Try to sleep.”
* * *
“Look at that.” Nia joined Jeanette, leaning on the rail of the Arctic Sunrise to gaze at the forest of masts. “Everyone shaking off their day-to-day to really do something.”
The blockade had mobilized rapidly and with immense local support. Jeanette could tell that everyone had been waiting for an excuse to join the ruckus in the harbor. Several sailboats had Christmas lights strung from their masts, which, in the dusk, added to the sense of occasion.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
“You think we should let the Americans invade?”
“Nia,” Jeanette released an exasperated sigh. “They’re two miles closer than they should be.”
“The footage of the Kaiko Maru has gone worldwide,” Nia insisted.
Two Russian ships had run through the blockade before it was complete. The Kaiko Maru had followed with its horn blaring and loudspeakers warning them to move aside. Captain Arnot had not obliged and the ships had scraped hulls — the dramatic paint loss was captured on video and immediately posted to the web.
“We don’t know why the carrier is here.”
“This will make them tell us.”
“No, it won’t,” Jeanette answered. “We’ll make the news. We’ll fill the void with noise. But the story isn’t out here. It’s over there somewhere.” She pointed to the hills surrounding the inlet.
“It doesn’t matter why they’re here.” Nia’s indignant response reflected her steadfast belief in her captain and the cause. “That carrier is a nuclear war machine. Do you know how rare this water is, this place on Earth where it’s forbidden? That’s why we have to make sure the law holds.”
Jeanette considered the harbor. “The French secret service bombs and sinks the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, killing a Dutch citizen. A murder. An act of war. New Zealand, by treaty, is under America’s umbrella of protection. Imagine what might have happened, if it had been in anyone’s interests to fight?” Jeanette found it inspiring. Here, one ship sent to the bottom, one life lost, had created a pivot point that moved nations. It revealed the true character of the governments involved. Moreover, it had generated a powerful response in the larger population, like the sub-cellular reaction of an organism when the temperature rises. The nuclear testing had stopped, and legislation was pushed forward that not only banned nuclear warships, but made it illegal for any New Zealander to build, buy, design, own or sell components for nuclear weapons.
“We’re sending a message,” Nia said with a burst of open optimism. “And there will be even more of us in the morning.”
Jeanette said nothing because this was the southern hemisphere, and she was certain that their perception of the situation and their response to it were both upside down.
* * *
Bomani closed the door. The white-topped table that filled the room was surrounded by white boards on every wall. He picked up a felt marker and tossed it to Sanford. “The floor is yours. Begin at the beginning.”
Sanford went to the board, uncapped a pen and capped it again. “What if you created an infinitesimal connection between a distant point in space and this one?” Sanford said. “It’s not a hole. It’s an infinitely small point of contact, like a node or a nexus point connecting two locations in space.”
“How?” John was an attentive student, and Sanford could tell he was seeking clarification, not dismissing the idea.
“Let’s start with why.” Sanford drew a single dot on the board. “What if you had this connection between point A and point B, a hole so small that the only thing you could slip through it was part of a photon?”
“Part???” All three asked the question at once.
The answer was central to Sanford’s theory. “It’s a node connecting two distant points. If you feed electromagnetic energy from one place to another while keeping it pinned to the node, the node keeps a small fraction of the energy wave at the point of origin. Imagine a loop of electromagnetic energy, sweeping out from the node and back to it, a coherent standing wave miles long with thousands of harmonics built into it. When enough energy accumulates, it’s used like a counterweight to balance the equation as an object is transferred from one side of the node to the other. Energy is exchanged for mass.”
“You what how?” John was lost.
Jakarta used a fingernail to lightly trace numbers on the tabletop, running equations by their orders of magnitude. “It’s too much energy. The power required to move something the size of a shuttle would be insanely large. The signal was only a few seconds long. To inject and discharge that much energy, that quickly? That’s not transportation, it’s Armageddon; any mistake would be incredibly bad for the solar system.”
Sanford was prepared for this argument. “There’s no signal while the energy builds. No pulse. You can’t see a laser unless something crosses its path and scatters the light. The energy can be trickled through for months. The beam is invisible until the inversion. The energy pours back through the node. The object is transferred as the loop collapses. A fraction of the light hits the object and — flash — for a moment we see it. And the energy isn’t lost. It’s not discharged. It’s back on the other side of the node, ready to be reused.”
Sanford knew when his ideas were being received and when they weren’t. “Ever see a counter-weighted lift bridge? You can lift and drop a steel bridge using the energy required to run a couple of toasters.” Sanford tapped the marker against his palm. “There would be losses. It might cost something to trickle the energy through the node and, of course, the energy that scatters off the object as it comes through is lost. But that’s a small fraction of the power, the rest stays in the loop.”
“You are a crazy man.” Bomani spoke from his corner of the room where he flipped through Sanford’s notebook, grinning dangerously. “How would you control it?”
“With a single node? You wouldn’t.” Sanford grabbed a marker, approached the white board, and drew his arbelos. “You need three.”
Bomani joined him, looking again from the notebook to the board. He reached out and tapped each node. “Input, monitor, switch.”
“A stabilizer,” Sanford said, pointing to the central node, “that you can use to create an instability to trigger the inversion.” He offered a small smile, shrinking a bit, and stepping back to give the idea its space in the room.
“You are wonderful crazy, Sanford.” Bomani was all teeth and energy. “A space bridge. You really believe this?”
“Of course he does,” Jakarta answered. “You’ve seen the signal. Harmonics on harmonics on harmonics. It is music. I looked at it and thought only God could strike such a chord. Give us the math.”
“There are pieces missing,” Sanford answered. “Some of it is simply beyond me.” He picked up the marker again, turned to the white board, and began to write.