Gods of Titan- The Cosmic Constants Read online

  ‘Something you saw?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. The place is a superheated cauldron. Nothing could possibly be alive down there. No, it was more something I felt – and now I feel stupid because I can’t even begin to describe it. Juliette, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to truly give up on your dad. If it had been possible to escape that impact in some way, he would have managed it.’

  ‘And surely he’d have been in touch by now?’

  Juliette looked worried, and Deira knew she was upsetting her and should stop this nonsense. Time to change the conversation.

  ‘I know he would. You’re absolutely right. So, how’s the thesis coming?’

  The frown disappeared, and the usual bubbly Juliette reappeared.

  ‘Well, it’s only been four weeks since I started again and most of the lab’s focus is on Adam at the moment. It’s kind of hard not to get side-tracked.’

  Deira thought back to the moment on the Moon, six weeks ago, when Tao Chen had opened her eyes and declared she was now Adam Clarke, Deira’s old partner, who had died on Mars twenty years ago. She’d initially been convinced – the vocal nuances, the mannerisms, and the phrases used all sounded like Adam. Then she’d become wary. Why, she still didn’t know. She’d used every means at her disposal to confirm his identity, asking personal questions that only Adam would have known the answers to and deliberately using false statements to try to trip him up. Though he’d passed every test she’d thrown at him the doubts remained, and she had no idea why.

  Eventually, she’d agreed with Professor Chayka that Adam should remain in his lab for further tests. She had seen the disappointment on his face as she’d left and knew he’d expected more of her – perhaps a celebration of sorts at his safe return. She couldn’t do it. In another time or place things might have been very different, but the timing had been all wrong. She couldn’t properly process the possibility that Adam might still be alive because she was at the height of her grieving for Sol and Josh. She needed time out to get her emotions sorted and regain her objectivity – though where Adam was concerned she was probably never going to be truly objective in any case.

  ‘Have you been able to confirm it really is Adam?’ she asked.

  She wasn’t sure what answer she would prefer, but a definitive “yes” or “no” would be good for a start.

  ‘The Prof’s ninety-nine percent sure it is. He tracked down Adam’s original EEG, the one he had done when he signed up for agent-training, and it seems to match. Obviously, EEGs can’t absolutely pin down an individual, but its overall appearance, together with an analysis of the harmonics, is very suggestive. Then there’s the history that Adam recounts. It correlates perfectly with what we know happened to him. I think even you felt that when you talked to him.’

  ‘Yes, I couldn’t fault him on the details. I suppose I just couldn’t allow myself to think he’d come back – and I couldn’t celebrate his return because I was too upset about Josh and Sol.’

  ‘So, how would you feel now if we were to say it was definitely him?’

  ‘Still not sure. It’d be nice to have him back as he was, but I don’t want him back if it means him occupying Tao’s body. Any news of her, by the way?’

  ‘Not so far. The first time we pulled Tao out of sub-quantal space, she had contacted us. That made things relatively easy. This time round, we haven’t heard anything from her – and it’s been two months.’

  Juliette looked uncomfortable, as if she was holding something back, and Deira jumped on it.

  ‘What? Come on, there’s obviously something. Tell me.’

  ‘Well, it’s something that happened to me on Mars. I didn’t tell you before because I was so upset, but …’

  ‘But?’ Deira got the strong feeling she wasn’t going to like what was coming. ‘What happened?’

  Juliette gulped, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Well, I was struggling to hold the fold open and … I heard Tao scream.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘There’s more. Just before she screamed, I felt Josh. He was there with me mentalically – I don’t know how he managed it – and he showed me how to expand the fold. Mum, I’d never have been able to get all those people to safety otherwise. I’d just about had it.’

  Deira felt the events of the recent past crowd back on her and the lid she’d so successfully put on her emotions being prised open again. Hell, she thought she’d come to terms with all this, but now it flooded back as if it had never been gone. Juliette swiped at her eyes.

  ‘You never told me.’ Deira said, her voice rising. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? It’s been two months!’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I suppose I was trying to spare you more pain. It’s just … I need to tell someone now. Mum, Josh spoke to me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said, “Come on Jules – this is how you do it.” And then I could suddenly expand the fold. And then … oh, Mum … then he wasn’t there any more … and Tao screamed … and then she was gone too.’

  This was all too much, and Deira had to sit down. Strangely, though, the initial emotional reaction self-terminated after only a couple of minutes, leaving her with a crazy feeling of being short-changed. This should have affected her deeply. It was exquisitely poignant. Josh had known he was going to die yet had still thought of helping Juliette. Unfortunately, it didn’t change anything. Josh was still gone – and she’d already come to terms with that. Tao, however, was a different matter completely.

  ‘So, you’re suggesting that Tao might be dead?’

  ‘She might be. That may be why she hasn’t contacted us.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. Tao’s a very resilient person.’

  ‘But it was definitely her I heard screaming.’

  ‘I’m not saying it wasn’t. I’m just questioning your interpretation.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s one of my hunches again. Tao never came across as the screaming sort – at least, I can’t imagine her screaming because of something that was happening to her. To be honest, I don’t think any of the young agents would. But suppose she knew what was happening to Josh? Perhaps she could even see it?’

  There was a pause while Juliette imagined herself in Tao’s place, watching Josh die and unable to help in any way. Yes, she could see how that could have elicited the scream she’d heard.

  ‘Oh my God! That’s terrible. But, if it’s true, it means she might still be alive.’

  ‘I’m convinced of it. She might be lost, either in her own mentalic levels or even in sub-quantal space again, but I’ll bet she’s still around somewhere. Is the Prof doing anything to find her.’

  ‘Not really, he’s more interested in Adam.’

  ‘Okay, that needs to change.’

  At last, Deira had something to focus on, an objective. She was going to track down and recover Tao Chen, from wherever she might be, and for that she’d need Chayka’s help. She felt confident she’d get that help if she could just stimulate the Professor enough, but if it looked as though he wasn’t interested, she had options. They were unsavoury options, it was true, but she wouldn’t baulk at employing them if she had to. She knew a few things about the Professor. Things she’d kept to herself for the last twenty years and which she’d continue to keep to herself if he cooperated. Things he’d be desperate to keep out of the public domain. She smiled grimly to herself. She wouldn’t usually consider blackmail, but she’d make an exception in this case if the need arose. This was Tao Chen – the girl Josh had loved.

  ‘Mum? Are you alright? Juliette had become worried by Deira’s prolonged silence.

  Deira jerked away from her thoughts and stared at Juliette with a fierce resolve. ‘I’m coming back.’

  ‘What? Coming back where?’

  ‘Coming back to Earth, to Chayka’s lab. I think it’s time I took a bit more interest in the Tao/Adam problem.

  ‘But what about Mars? I thought you were keen to take part in the
observations.’

  ‘I’ve seen Mars. It’s a superheated nightmare. I can achieve more with you.’

  ‘So, when will you come?’

  ‘Immediately. Or, at least, as soon as I’ve informed the Captain. I don’t think he’ll be sorry to see me go. Expect me in the next few minutes.’

  ‘Hell, you don’t mess around, do you? Okay. See you soon, Mum.’

  Deira made her way back to the bridge, where Sleeman was deep in conversation with the Science Officer. He glanced up and nodded but otherwise made no attempt to engage. She couldn’t understand what his problem was with her, but she had reached the point where she didn’t care. All she wanted now was to get off this damned ship and over to Juliette’s lab.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, Captain,’ she began.

  ‘One minute please.’ Sleeman raised his hand and continued gazing raptly at a screen on the Science Officer’s console.

  Deira fumed. As an agent, she had an effective rank considerably higher than the Captain and it had only been her innate sense of propriety that had ensured she’d deferred to him on the bridge of his own ship. Now she was on the point of losing it. Luckily, before she could say something she might later regret, he turned to her.

  ‘Sorry about that. We thought we might have found something interesting.’

  Deira’s ears pricked up. ‘What sort of something?’

  ‘For a moment, it looked like a massive air pocket in the mantle. It turned out to be nothing, there one minute and gone the next. Obviously, a feature of the conditions down there.’ He looked questioningly at her. ‘So, what can I do for you?’

  ‘I just wanted to let you know I’ve seen enough. I’m folding back to Earth immediately.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Deira thought he looked relieved. ‘We won’t be seeing you again, then?’

  ‘No. Once I’ve folded off I won’t be able to fold back. Thank you for letting me accompany you to this point.’

  ‘You’re very welcome.’

  He turned back to the Science Officer again, his body language giving the exact opposite message. Deira knew he had no interest whatsoever in anything she did or didn’t do. She shook her head in frustration and returned to her cabin where she packed away her few belongings. As she stood ready to fold, she briefly wondered whether there was any likelihood that she’d miss something important by not remaining here. It was unlikely in the extreme.

  She made her decision, formed a portal to Chayka’s lab, and stepped through.

  Chapter 3

  Tao Chen was lost. She had seen what Josh had been attempting to do with the last asteroid heading towards Earth, and she’d instinctively known it wouldn’t work. He was going to die. In desperation, she’d deliberately allowed herself to be pulled through into sub-quantal space, in the vague hope she might be able to save him by pulling him through his own hole in the infra-low. She’d failed spectacularly. Not only had she been unable to get a lock of any sort on Josh, but her proximity to him at the time of the explosion had been her own undoing.

  The huge nuclear explosion had not only blown the asteroid into small pieces in normal space but had also created a tsunami of highly energetic sub-quantal particles in sub-quantal space. Tao had been caught up in this flood and carried helplessly along with it, deeper into sub-quantal space and far from any chance of recovery.

  She had no idea how long she’d been down here, and she felt nothing but utter despair. The loss of Josh had been a disaster. She’d tried so hard to save him and to have failed at the last minute was too much to bare. As she’d watched her future blown apart in the nuclear apocalypse on the moon, she’d vented her frustration, anger and horror at the raging sub-quantal particles with a mentalic scream the like of which the sub-quantal realm had never heard. Now, she felt empty inside, hollowed-out like a pumpkin at Halloween. Josh was gone and, to all intents and purposes, so was she.

  She drifted aimlessly in the vague milky luminosity of sub-quantal space, caring little for what might happen to her, and wishing she could have died like Josh. How long she remained like this was impossible to say. There was nothing to change her purposeless drifting and nothing to disturb her mournful thoughts, and even those thoughts lost coherence over time as the waveform that represented her consciousness began to diffuse, becoming as one with the background waveform of sub-quantal space. Soon, it would be unrecognisable, and she would be gone. Perhaps then she would have peace.

  Yet peace had never been one of Tao’s personal goals. It didn’t sit well with her personality, suggesting as it did a life of inertia and boredom. Despite yearning for it on a superficial level, she had always rebelled against it deep within herself, recoiling from it as if from the serpent it represented. What was it that twentieth century poet had written? “To go quietly into that good night”? No way! That wasn’t her style at all.

  Her natural resilience was one of her primary characteristics and, as she automatically resisted the threatened dissolution, her waveform strengthened, and her personality began to re-assert itself. Her thoughts, so recently scattered and evanescent, became more focused and, with a final flourish, she bootstrapped herself back to a coherent identity once more. She was Tao Chen, and she would continue to fight. How many times had Josh said, “it’s never over until it’s over”? How often had he been proved right?

  Tao Chen was lost – but she hadn’t given up.

  She gazed around at the formless white light, convinced there was more structure than was immediately apparent. She could sense it, almost taste it, though it remained tantalisingly just beyond her reach. Her instinct told her she needed to further strengthen her primary waveform if she were going to make any progress, and the best way to do that was to form what she had earlier called a residual body image. A body composed entirely of photons. A body of light.

  She focused on the photons. At this depth in the sub-quantal ground substance, they were very low energy structures, and she experienced a brief doubt. Was it still possible to manipulate such entities? She needn’t have worried. Having achieved a photon body once, the second time was almost instinctive. It was simply a matter of tweaking this wave function just so and … there she was. She had a passable imitation of her flesh-and-blood body.

  She felt better almost immediately. She knew there was a close link between self-image and identity and her self-image was now rock solid. She was Tao Chen. She would endure. More than that, she would escape from this place. The question was – how?

  She reviewed what she already knew about sub-quantal space? Firstly, there was the tentacle, which snagged mentalic beings and dragged them down here like a sub-quantal Charybdis. It was undoubtedly a construct, the product of some alien entity and, if Juliet’s EEG data were to be believed, there were some sixteen thousand such entities somewhere in this luminous nightmare. So, was it possible they could help her?

  Actually, that was very unlikely because the mere fact they were here at all implied they were just as trapped as she was. She couldn’t imagine anybody, alien or otherwise, who would voluntarily remain in this environment if they had a way out. So, if they were trapped, how did they get here?

  She supposed they could have been accidentally trapped in the same way she had. But sixteen-thousand of them? That strained the limits of credibility and, if it were true, they would be no use to her. The alternative was more worrying. They might have been imprisoned here. Perhaps this was some sort of universal penitentiary, housing all those entities that were considered too dangerous to be allowed to remain in normal space? If that were the case, she should definitely make every effort to avoid them.

  So, scratch the sub-quantal entities from her plans to escape, and remain mentalically silent as far as was possible. “Run silent, run deep” was how the old submariners described it. That would be her motto too.

  That brought her back to what she could do to help herself. She was just a waveform drifting in a sea of low-energy photons, and even though she’d created a luminal body,
she’d needed to get much better at manipulating her environment if she were to stand a chance of escaping. The first time she’d been down here, she’d punched her way through into normal space and obtained help from Juliette, Sol and Deira. To do that, though, she needed to be very near the surface, where the interface between the two spaces was thinnest.

  She conceptualised sub-quantal space as a vast ocean which was divided into a surface layer and a deep layer. The surface layer of oceans on Earth extended downwards as far as sunlight could penetrate and she was fairly certain something similar applied here. The widespread photonic wave-fronts, that were responsible for the diffuse ambient white light, were quantal structures, clearly not native to this sub-quantal environment. That implied they must have originated in normal space – and that meant that, despite her previous concerns, she must still be in the surface layer of this sub-quantal ocean. The buffeting she’d received from the charged particle storm of the nuclear explosion had driven her inwards, but not into the unfathomable depths, where energy levels became infinitesimally small. She still had a chance. She could still escape.

  She focused more intently on the photons. There was something about them, something she was missing. Something so obvious, it should have jumped out at her. Then she saw it. They were all moving in the same direction, like a vast oceanic current and, since they must, by her previous logic, have originated in normal space, then perhaps normal space was also the terminus. She became more optimistic. Although she couldn’t conceive of using the photonic current as a route back into normal space, she could still use it to get closer to the surface so she could communicate with Sol and Deira again. It was enough.

  She concentrated on the task in hand, and soon discovered she was already part-way to her objective. Her virtual body was composed of the same photons that were flowing in the current and, without realising it, she’d been expending precious energy trying to remain stationary in the flow. By simply relaxing, she’d be swept along in the photon current and carried towards the surface, conserving energy at the same time. Hell, it was win-win.