Timeline. Part 22

Baretto said, "Ladies first."

"You got that right," Gomez said. There didn't seem to be any love lost between them. "Okay," she said to the others. "We're off."

Chris's heart began to pound. He felt light-headed and panicky. He balled his hands into fists.

Gomez said, "Relax. I think you'll find it's quite enjoyable." She slipped the ceramic into the slot at her feet, and stood back up.

"Here we go. Remember: everyone very still when the time comes."

The machines began to hum. Chris felt a slight vibration in the base, beneath his feet. The humming of the machines grew louder. The mist swirled away from the bases of the machines. The machines began to creak and squeal, as if metal was being twisted. The sound built quickly, until it was as steady and loud as a scream.

"That's from the liquid helium," Gomez said. "Chilling the metal to superconduction temperatures."

Abruptly, the screaming ended and the chattering sound began.

"Infrared clearance," she said. "This is it."

Chris felt his whole body begin to tremble involuntarily. He tried to control it, but his legs were shaking. He had a moment of panic-maybe he should call it off-but then he heard a recorded voice say, "Stand still-eyes open-"

Too late, he thought. Too late.

"-deep breath-hold it.... Now Now!"

The circular ring descended from above his head, moving swiftly to his feet. It clicked as it touched the base. And a moment later, there was a blinding flash of light-brighter than the sun-coming from all around him-but he felt nothing at all. In fact, he had a sudden strange sense of cold detachment, as if he were now observing a distant scene.

The world around him was completely, utterly silent.

He saw Baretto's nearby machine was growing larger, starting to loom over him. Baretto, a giant, his huge face with monstrous pores, was bending over, looking down at them.

More flashes.

As Baretto's machine grew larger, it also appeared to move away from them, revealing a widening expanse of floor: a vast plain of dark rubber floor, stretching away into the distance.

More flashes.

The rubber floor had a pattern of raised circles. Now these circles began to rise up around them like black cliffs. Soon the black cliffs had grown so high that they seemed like black skysc.r.a.pers, joining overhead, closing off the light above. Finally, the skysc.r.a.pers touched one another, and the world was dark.

More flashes.

They sank into inky blackness for a moment before he distinguished flickering pinpoints of light, arranged in a gridlike pattern, stretching away in all directions. It was as if they were inside some enormous glowing crystalline structure. As Chris watched, the points of light grew brighter and larger, their edges blurring, until each became a fuzzy glowing ball. He wondered if these were atoms.

He could no longer see the grid, just a few nearby b.a.l.l.s. His cage moved directly toward one glowing ball, which appeared to be pulsing, changing its shape in flickering patterns.

Then they were inside the ball, immersed in a bright glowing fog that seemed to throb with energy.

And then the glow faded, and was gone.

They hung in featureless blackness. Nothing.

Blackness.

But then he saw that they were still sinking downward, now heading toward the churning surface of a black ocean in a black night. The ocean whipped and boiled, making a frothy blue-tinged foam. As they descended to the surface, the foam grew larger. Chris saw that one bubble in particular had an especially bright blue glow.

His machine moved toward that glow at accelerating speed, flying faster and faster, and he had the odd sensation that they were going to crash in the foam, and then they entered the bubble and he heard a loud piercing shriek.

Then silence.

Darkness.

Nothing.

In the control room, David Stern watched the flashes on the rubber floor become smaller and weaker, and finally vanish entirely. The machines were gone. The technicians immediately turned to Baretto and began his transmission countdown.

But Stern kept staring at the spot in the rubber floor where Chris and the others had been.

"And where are they now?" he asked Gordon.

"Oh, they've arrived now," Gordon said. "They are there there now." now."

"They've been rebuilt?"

"Yes."

"Without a fax machine at the other end."

"That's right."

"Tell me why," Stern said. "Tell me the details the others didn't need to be bothered with."

"All right," Gordon said. "It isn't anything bad. I just thought the others might find it, well, disturbing disturbing."

"Uh-huh."

"Let's go back," Gordon said, "to the interference patterns, which you remember showed us that other universes can affect our own universe. We don't have to do anything to get the interference pattern to occur. It just happens by itself."

"Yes."

"And this interaction is very reliable; it will always occur, whenever you set up a pair of slits."

Stern nodded. He was trying to see where this was going, but he couldn't foresee the direction Gordon was taking.

"So we know that in certain situations, we can count on other universes to make something happen. We hold up the slits, and the other universes make the pattern we see, every time."

"Okay...."

"And, if we transmit through a wormhole, the person is always reconst.i.tuted at the other end. We can count on that happening, too."

There was a pause.

Stern frowned.

"Wait a minute," he said. "Are you saying that when you transmit, the person is being reconst.i.tuted by by another universe?" another universe?"

"In effect, yes. I mean, it has to be. We can't very well reconst.i.tute them, because we're not there. We're in this universe."

"So you you're not reconst.i.tuting...."

"No."

"Because you don't know how," Stern said.

"Because we don't find it necessary," Gordon said. "Just as we don't find it necessary to glue plates to a table to make them stay put. They stay by themselves. We make use of a characteristic of the universe, gravity. And in this case, we are making use of a characteristic of the multiverse."

Stern frowned. He immediately distrusted the a.n.a.logy; it was too glib, too easy.

"Look," Gordon said, "the whole point of quantum technology is that it overlaps universes. When a quantum computer calculates-when all thirty-two quantum states of the electron are being used-the computer is technically carrying out those calculations in other universes, right?"

"Yes, technically, but-"

"No. Not technically. Really."

There was a pause.

"It may be easier to understand," Gordon said, "by seeing it from the point of view of the other universe. That universe sees a person suddenly arrive. A person from another universe."

"Yes...."

"And that's what happened. The person has has come from another universe. Just not ours." come from another universe. Just not ours."

"Say again?"

"The person didn't come from our universe," Gordon said.

Stern blinked. "Then where?"

"They came from a universe that is almost identical to ours-identical in every respect-except that they know how to reconst.i.tute it at the other end."

"You're joking."

"No."

"The Kate who lands there isn't the Kate who left here? She's a Kate from another universe?"

"Yes."

"So she's almost Kate? Sort of Kate? Semi-Kate?"

"No. She's Kate. As far as we have been able to tell with our testing, she is absolutely identical to our Kate. Because our universe and their universe are almost identical."

"But she's still not the Kate who left here."

"How could she be? She's been destroyed, and reconstructed."

"Do you feel any different when this happens?" Stern said.

"Only for a second or two," Gordon said.

Blackness.

Silence, and then in the distance, glaring white light.

Coming closer. Fast.

Chris s.h.i.+vered as a strong electric shock rippled through his body, and made his fingers twitch. For a moment, he suddenly felt felt his body, the way one feels clothes when you first put them on; he felt the encompa.s.sing flesh, felt the weight of it, the pull of gravity downward, the pressure of his body on the soles of his feet. Then a blinding headache, a single pulse, and then it was gone and he was surrounded by intense purple light. He winced, and blinked his eyes. his body, the way one feels clothes when you first put them on; he felt the encompa.s.sing flesh, felt the weight of it, the pull of gravity downward, the pressure of his body on the soles of his feet. Then a blinding headache, a single pulse, and then it was gone and he was surrounded by intense purple light. He winced, and blinked his eyes.

He was standing in sunlight. The air was cool and damp. Birds chirruped in the huge trees rising above him. Shafts of sunlight came down through the thick foliage, dappling the ground. He was standing in one beam. The machine stood beside a narrow muddy path that wound through a forest. Directly ahead, through a gap in the trees, he saw a medieval village.

First, a cl.u.s.ter of farm plots and huts, plumes of gray smoke rising from thatched roofs. Then a stone wall and the dark stone roofs of the town itself inside, and finally, in the distance, the castle with circular turrets.

He recognized it at once: the town and the fortress of Castelgard. And it was no longer a ruin. Its walls were complete.

He was here.

CASTELGARD.

"Nothing in the world is as certain as death."JEAN FROISSART, 1359[image]

37:00:00.

Gomez hopped lightly out of the machine. Marek and Kate stepped slowly out of their cages, seemingly dazed as they looked around. Chris climbed out, too. His feet touched the mossy ground. It was springy underfoot.