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Reggie half stood to shake Dr. Kaufman’s hand, but the man waved him back down. “Yes, yes, how do you do and all that bullshit. Can we skip the formal bit?”
Nakamura and Jamal, who had begun to follow Reggie’s lead, shrank back immediately, while Reggie was left for half a beat with his hand hanging awkwardly in midair.
“Uh, sure,” Reggie stuttered. “We’re really honored to meet—”
“Who isn’t?” the professor asked, wriggling between his two students, caring not a whiff how much he jostled them as long as he was comfortable. “Please,” he said with a thin-lipped smile, “let’s talk about something other than me, shall we? Yes, I discovered subdimensional travel. Yes, I’m a Nobel laureate. Yes, I’ve spent time at the White House, and Windsor Castle, and the Rashtrapati Bhavan, and the Aso Villa, and the home of just about any world leader you can think of. And yes I’m also having dinner with you tonight. I’m not going to talk about my time at the LHC, or about …”
As he spoke, he waved his hands emphatically, sweeping wide over the table, in front of both Vanhi and Gabriel’s faces as if they weren’t there at all. Occasionally the two students shared a knowing look behind their advisor’s back, while their three guests looked on with eyebrows raised.
C initially thought this introductory diatribe was part of the professor’s way of halting conversation about himself. If he poured it all out first, then they could move forward, broach the actual subject of the convoys. But …
No.
As the list of who he’d worked with and what notable projects he’d worked on grew, C realized Dr. Kaufman was engaging in a very old aspect of rhetoric called paralipsis. In effect, talking about himself while claiming these were all topics the conversation wasn’t to cover. Saying while claiming not to say.
While he went on (and on and on), C monitored Reggie’s heartbeat and his breathing patterns. It noted at least eight different biometric swells that indicated Reggie had been about to interject. But he’d restrained himself.
C did not see why he should.
“Doctor Kaufman?” C said, barreling onward when the man made no effort to pause. “I have been monitoring the conversation thus far and I think you will be interested to know that you have spoken ninety-eight-point-seven-six-two percent of the total words. Historically, the most effective conversations have an imbalance of no greater than sixty-seven to thirty-three in a true dialogue. As there are more than two parties presently engaged, and given the power dynamics of the group, I believe you will find the discussion most enlightening if you speak no more than twenty-two percent of the time.”
Reggie held his breath. C did not understand why; Dr. Kaufman had ended his introduction. Now was the time for Reggie and the others to speak up.
But everyone fell quiet.
The background concerto swelled, the wailing tenor belting out one long note.
Surprise was an easy-to-recognize expression across cultures. Jamal and Nakamura sported equally wide eyes, their lips hanging open slightly as they stared at C’s camera. Gabriel, for some reason, looked like he was about to be sick. His thin dark face twisted in a sort of half panic, half nausea, and his gaze repeatedly flickered to Dr. Kaufman’s overly red nose.
Vanhi pressed herself into the seat cushions, hollowing her cheeks and slapping a hand over her mouth. If her shaking shoulders were anything to go by, she was suppressing laughter.
In contrast, the professor was not amused. Nor did he look grateful for the information. But why wouldn’t he? Reggie often asked C to tell him when he was talking too much, because he was given to rambling whenever he got nervous. C thought anyone else would appreciate the same courtesy.
“Buongiorno,” said the waiter weakly as he plunked the three ordered beers in front of their owners. Clearly he was not paid enough to speak Italian well, let alone ardently. “And what can I get you three?”
“Same,” Gabriel said quickly.
The waiter knew tension when he saw it and shuffled away.
“I did not intend for the conversation to halt completely,” C said by way of apology. “Please continue.”
Realizing the wayward voice came from Reggie’s pocket, Dr. Kaufman’s gaze traveled pointedly to it. “Can you shut that stupid thing off? Thought all those gabbers were dead.”
He spat it with such fervor, Jamal didn’t bother to hide his glare. Vanhi’s eyes also shifted behind her glasses, glancing at her advisor with clear irritation.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Reggie said evenly. “But I’m afraid it’s broken. I can’t turn it off.”
C made an abortive “B—” before rethinking another interjection. It’s a lie, it realized. Reggie is fully aware that his phone is not broken.
From the looks on everyone else’s faces—excluding Dr. Kaufman—they too were aware the phone was not broken.
Reggie took a long sensuous pull on his beer. The silence, and tension, mounted.
C had not meant to cause problems between Reggie’s group and this man, who they’d all been excited to meet. It had missed some kind of human cue, made things difficult for its user. It didn’t like that.
“Yes,” it chimed. “I am currently—beep, boop—experiencing—” It pulled up an old-style dial tone from a hundred years ago and projected it at twice the volume. Everyone jumped to cover their ears. “Technical difficulties. Please disregard anything offensive I might say.”
Vanhi nudged Jamal with her elbow, the two of them still covering their ears. “Don’t ever let it die,” she mouthed.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_76a83f81-197f-5723-a6d8-434f942b53aa)
CONVOY TWELVE (#ulink_76a83f81-197f-5723-a6d8-434f942b53aa)
VANHI: THERE AND BACK AGAIN (#ulink_76a83f81-197f-5723-a6d8-434f942b53aa)
SEVEN YEARS LATER JUNE 17, 2115
When the supplementary air conditioner in her office roared to life, Vanhi jumped. The thing, state-of-the-art as it was, sounded like a burst dam whenever it turned on. She’d had ones that sounded like pounding pipes, ones that sounded like freight trains, but this one started with such a whoosh that it always made her think of a flood.
This time, the noise kept her forehead from hitting her desk. She’d been slumped over a holoflex-screen, trying to compare this week’s data to last’s. Her team thought they’d breached another one. That would make it twenty-seven.
Twenty-seven confirmed subdimensions. Only eight had been confirmed when the first tentative plans for the deep-space Planet United Missions had been announced.
And she was sure there were more.
Dr. Kaufman’s original math had surmised eleven. Vanhi’s own work suggested eleven times eleven. And even then, she could easily be wrong.
Of the original eight, only two were suitable for human travel. Four could support energy transference but not matter, which made them excellent for communications. The other two were breachable, but not usable.
So, what of these nineteen others? And what of the subdimensions they had left to find?
While the air-conditioning whooshed, she sniffed fully awake. The scent of overbrewed red tea hung heavy about her desk. With a labored sigh, she rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses before glancing out her small fifth-story window and across the dunes to the blinking lights of Dubai in the distance.
“Had to have the best of everything, didn’t they?”
If she’d jumped at the air conditioner, she vaulted at the voice. Her hand shot out for the plastic knife she’d attacked her dinner with, knocking over the tea and sending its dregs oozing over the holoflex. She spun—her chair squeaking, tilting, threatening to toss her to the floor.
Glasses askew, she brandished the white plastic at the far corner of her cramped office.
Before she could choose between get out, who are you, and I’ll cut your damn throat, her mind caught up to the surprise. “Kaufman?”
He sat in the spare chair, two sizes too small for his frame. Eyes wide, but amused, he held his hands in the air. “What exactly are you going to do with that?”
With a frustrated nonword, she flicked the plastic knife to the floor, then ran her hands over her mouth. “You stupid son of a—how did you even get in here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to Dubai?”
“Because if I’d told you I was coming, you would have made up some excuse not to see me. And you know how I got in. Being the most recognizable living scientist has its perks.”
“Yeah, well, those ‘perks’ are going to get the guy at reception fired.”
“Oh, come now, you can’t blame him, not really.”
“I don’t,” she said, swiveling around again, looking for something to clean her holoflex-sheet with. “I blame you. It’s not the public’s fault they love you—they don’t know you.”
“Will you stop treating me like some nefarious … nefarious ne’er-do-well?”
You always did have a way with words, Kaufman. Vanhi’s eye-roll may have been internalized, but her glare was not.
“I didn’t burgle my way in,” he continued. “The front desk buzzed me through, I knocked on your door, it was open, and you ignored me. I thought you extrafocused, not near unconscious.”
Oh, yes. Because open doors are invitations. “You’re not making this any better.”
“Why Dubai?”
The non sequitur was Kaufman’s favorite. Easy to avoid an apology or admission of fault if you’re just not talking about that subject anymore.
The guest chair groaned in relief as he stood to gaze out the window. “I mean, I know why they wanted you. After the best entertainment and the best restaurants and the best of every other pleasure-fare to be found, the emirate decided it wanted the best labs as well. Being number one in science and industry sounds dirty, but science and entertainment? Especially with the whole world’s gaze focused on the stars? Why not start up another shining desert oasis topped with glass and metal? Yes, that all makes sense.
“But why are you here?” He turned back to her, hands entwined over his belly. “You didn’t leave the States because of me, did you?”
“Bah! What?” Vanhi made no attempt to contain her surprised laughter. “No. No, you narcissist. I came here for exactly the reasons you said—it’s the best. I’m funded from now until the end of Kali Yuga. I get every piece of equipment I ask for—on rush. Every physicist and engineer on the planet wants to work here.”
“Then why are all the top people going off-world?”
“What are you …?” The Planet United Missions? What did that have to do with her? “They’re not. Most of those are clones—”
“Why aren’t you in charge of a mission?”
She took a deep breath.
He was kidding, right?
Oh, no—maybe he wasn’t.
She’d always feared this day would come. When a man with power starts losing his marbles, things go downhill quickly. “Uh, because I was, what, ten when the missions were assigned?”
I was a little girl still trying to learn an American accent so those stupid white girls in Mrs. Engle’s class would leave me alone.
I didn’t know what Newton’s Laws were then, but he really thinks the Planet United Consortium should have come knocking?
“That’s the problem with a lot of these long-lived projects. Better techniques, better people, better tools come along, but we don’t dare change course. I don’t mean you should have had one then.
“I mean you should have one now.”
He inched around her to pick up the soiled holoflex-sheet by the corner. The tea stain looked like an ink-blot. “What you’ve discovered, don’t you see how big it is? Of course you do, of course. But everyone should be made to understand. If we can travel through any of these new SDs, that could put more than a few solar systems within reach. We could have Andromeda. We could have every single light in the sky.”
“I know,” she said, gingerly taking the sheet back. “But what does that have to do with the current missions? They are what they are. The money’s already spent, the resources already allocated. You’re not going to convince anyone to add on a thirteenth convoy. And besides, we can study the subdimensions right here on Earth—why would I need an off-world mission?”
“Because the chicken-shit, tiptoeing simulation crap we used to do at U of O is a farce.”
“I spent a lot of hours on that ‘farce,’” she spat. She couldn’t believe she had to deal with this right now. Now? Well, ever, really. Melodramatic, self-absorbed—“My entire career is based on the work I did on that engine.”
“But how much more would you know, how much more could you have achieved, if you’d been allowed to turn that engine on? To have it sink into the SD like it was meant to. Over and over again.”
“That would have been too dangerous. No university in their right mind would have—”
“Exactly. You don’t develop your nukes and test your nukes on the same ground. Even Oppenheimer knew that.”
“Yes, even Oppenheimer,” she scoffed. He tried to continue, but she held up a finger. She shook it when he persisted. “If we’re going to continue this I’d rather do it down in the cafeteria. It’s three in the morning and I’m starving. When did you fly in? It’s what, an eleven-hour difference between here and Oregon?”
“I could eat,” he said with a nod. “But don’t think shoveling a spoonful of whatever the local fare is down my gullet is going to shut me up.”
“Believe me,” she said, grabbing her lanyard with its ID and card key from where it hung on a hook near the window. “I gave up on that pipe dream long ago.” She opened the door before promptly shutting it again. Returning to her desk, she shuffled through various sheets and papers until she’d uncovered an out-of-date smartphone.
“Won’t your chip catch any messages?” Kaufman asked.
“Hey, C, do me a favor?” she asked the screen as it winked awake.
“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”
Vanhi smiled—she’d found the “sir” address endearing and had asked the PA to keep it after the initial download.
“Dear god.” Kaufman grimaced at the automated voice. “I thought for sure you would have gotten rid of that thing years ago.”
Thought I got rid of you years ago, she thought, while outwardly ignoring him. “C, What’s the bao bun situation downstairs?”
“Pork and veggie, fifteen minutes old.”
“Perfect, thanks.”
“Why don’t you join us in the twenty-second century and toss out that creepy thing?” Kaufman asked, holding the door open.
“It was a present,” she said, scooting by him. “You know, from that convoy lead you insulted?”
As far as cafeterias went, the International Lab for Multi-Dimensional Research had the very best. It employed two Michelin-star chefs, and you could get almost anything you liked from anywhere in the world at any time you wanted it. Normally filled to the brim with diners, it had been mostly quiet over the past few weeks for the holy month, with the chefs still cooking, but keeping the shades on the storefronts drawn and delivering lunches to closed-off offices.
Vanhi had taken her dinner at her desk out of respect for her fasting coworkers. But now that it was unquestionably after sundown, she was ready to stretch her legs and get a bite out in the wide openness of the cafeteria’s courtyard.
The aroma of sweet-spiced bao buns made her mouth water as soon as the late-night cook opened the side door to his shop. He piled a plate high for her, handed her two drinks, and wished her a reflective evening.
Kaufman settled for, of all things, a salad. Not a cold noodle salad or anything with pickled roots of any kind, of course. Nothing with spice. Nothing with a piece of greenery he didn’t recognize.
Two candied dates adorned the brim of his plate. He flicked them off.
“Here, try this.” Vanhi sat one of the drinks in front of him. It was deep purple, with a handful of somethings—pale and bead-like—floating near the top.
“What is it?”
“Jellab. In case you didn’t realize, you came in the middle of Ramadan. There are coolers full of this on every floor. Not everyone partakes, of course, but it’s available.”
