Freedom Incorporated, Peter Tylee [literature books to read TXT] 📗

now you know who I am.” Hans felt the onset of a headache radiating from his jarred neck. “Do you now tell me why you knocked me to the ground?”

“I’m after information about Lars Olssen,” Dan replied in a low voice, offering his hand a second time. “I was the detective assigned to investigate his assassination.”

“Ah, an Australian. That explains why you are so clumsy.” Hans wiggled his jaw, working feeling back to his mandible. “And also why you did not shoot me when I run, which I suppose I should count a blessing.” He accepted Dan’s offered hand and pulled himself to his feet. “Now, I have heard of slow investigations, but this is ridiculous, do you not think?”

“I was distracted for eleven months.”

“Really? Doing what?”

He answered evenly and without emotion. “They killed my wife.”

Hans’s amused smirk vanished and a stern expression replaced it. “We should not talk here, it is not safe.” He waved down the street. “Come, we can talk inside.”

That signalled the end of the conversation until they were standing in his apartment and Hans had bolted the last lock on his door. He smiled at them as a cannibal might smile at his meal.

“What’s so amusing?” Dan asked, ready to reach for his Colt if the need arose.

“It has been a while since I have entertained guests.” He swept a hand around the mess in his apartment. Piles of magazines were scattered across the coffee table and Kat chose that moment to jump on top of them. She skidded across the glossy surface and sent the stack crashing to the floor. “That is Kat.”

“Oh, how original.” Dan said, coldly observing the squalor and trying to remember when he’d last had a tetanus shot.

“Excuse me a moment.” He jutted his chin at the bathroom before ducking from sight, presumably to dress his wound.

Simon sniffed the air and looked pained. “Oh man, what’s… what’s that smell?”

Dan shrugged, equally offended by the odour: a combination of burnt silicon and cat pee that smothered the air as a caustic, resin-like vapour.

“Oh, watch your step!” Hans warned, poking his head back into the room and pointing. Simon had backed into the kitchen to escape the fumes only to tread in a sticky patch that Hans hadn’t yet cleaned.

Simon lifted his shoe to the unwholesome sound of sticky linoleum. “Oh… oh man… that’s piss man!”

“Sorry,” Hans said. “Kat had an accident.”

And she’s about to have another. Simon glared at the beady-eyed animal.

“You use the cloth to wipe your shoe. I do not want it to spread.”

Simon complied reluctantly, even more grossed out when he picked up the soiled cloth and the stench of urine suffocated him.

“So what can you tell me about Lars Olssen?” Dan asked, forever feeling the pressure of passing time.

Hans emerged with a thin white tape covering the split on his chin and a fast-acting painkiller taming his headache. “He was a colleague and close associate. When we got drunk together, I would go so far as to say he was my friend. Why? Tell me what happens with his case.”

“Uh, that’s not the way it works…”

“But today I think it is,” Hans replied, occasionally struggling to think of the correct English word. “You have no authority here. You have no papers. You do not come through proper channels. You turn up on my doorstep and expect me to answer questions. You are a tourist here. You are an Australian cop far out of his league. So if you want my help, you will answer me. Now, what happens with the case?”

“Nothing.” Dan had already decided to tell the truth. He expected the same in return so it was fair to be honest. “I’m not a detective anymore. I haven’t been on active duty since my wife was murdered. But I know PortaNet had Lars killed, and I know PortaNet commissioned my wife’s death to throw me off the case. What I want to know is why they’d take those risks.”

“And you suspect his research got him in trouble?” Hans asked.

“Yes.”

“Oh man, this is gross.” Simon grumbled from the kitchen, making his urine situation worse by the minute.

They both ignored him.

“And you think because he was a colleague of me that I will know what he discovered?”

Dan nodded.

“How much do you know about quantum physics?”

“Nothing.”

Nothing? he thought in startled bewilderment. Oh dear. Hans hated dumbing down his work. “Okay, do you know about quarks, or more specifically anti-quarks?” He waited while Dan shook his head. “No? Do you not even know what a quark is?”

Dan looked briefly ashamed, as if he were back in school and he’d been unable to answer his teacher’s simple question. “No.”

“A quark is a subatomic particle, but I will spare you the details.” A shudder swept through Han’s mind. “Do you at least know how the portals work?”

Dan drew another blank and covered his ignorance with sarcasm. “Sure, you step in, press a few buttons, and hey-presto - you’re there.”

Hans tutted disgustedly, slapped a hand to his forehead, and waved Dan to the couch. “Sit, sit.” He searched for a scrap of paper and, when he found none, tore the centre from a magazine. “A scientist, Damien Richards, discovered the shortest path between two points” - he scribbled a dot randomly on the paper and another about twenty centimetres away - “is not a straight line.”

“No, you fold the paper,” Dan added from the couch. “I’ve seen this demonstration before.”

“Humour me, would you?” Hans folded the paper and poked his pencil through the two points. “Once you have folded space, the two points exist together. Then it is a simple case of matter transfer and you unfold space again. The specifics would go over your head I am sure. Let us just say that it was very hard to do.”

Dan wondered whether the lecture was heading anywhere pertinent to his investigation.

“Now think about the fold. Do you know how it is done?”

“Maybe you should assume I don’t instead of always asking me,” Dan said, getting cross.

“Well, this paper is inaccurate… you must extrapolate to three dimensions. But the basic principle is to very intensify gravity.”

Dan frowned. “How ‘very’?”

“Enough for both ends of the wormhole to be classed a Type 7 Quantum Singularity.”

“That’s a black hole, right?” Simon asked. He was finished cleaning the piss from his hands and shoes, and came to sit next to Dan, fascinated by the lecture.

“Yes.”

“What’s a wormhole?” Dan wondered how Simon knew what a Type 7 Quantum Singularity was.

“It is a cute but inaccurate description of any fissure in normal space capable of matter transfer.”

Dan’s head was starting to hurt with the barrage of new concepts.

But Hans was just getting started; he loved talking about his favourite subject. Even if I must dumb it down. “Scientist Damien Richards found a way to very intensify gravity and fold space between two points. Then he found a way to transfer matter from one side to the other without crushing it with the gravitational field.”

“Hey, isn’t it dangerous to run around creating black holes?” Simon asked with a frown, remembering an astronomy lesson from high school.

“Uh, yes and no. Yes, but not for the reason you think.” Hans held up a finger, asking them to be patient and wait. He ducked into his second bedroom and returned with a fresh waft of burnt silicon and a metallic white container, which looked like a cross between a lunchbox, a toolbox and a first aid kit, except with a power cable. He set it on the carpet and gingerly undid the latches before cracking the lid. Misty white fumes spewed out and both men pulled their feet away.

“It is safe,” Hans assured them. In a manner of speaking. “It is only liquid nitrogen.” Next, he fetched a pair of tongues and slipped his hand into a rubber glove for splash protection. He dipped the tongues into the liquid nitrogen and felt around for something, wearing a visor of concentration. “Here!” He latched onto something and pulled it free, holding it up for inspection. When the fumes cleared, they leaned closer and saw a tiny white rock. But, as they watched, it began to melt, quickly turning into a thick white paste at room temperature. “This is what Damien Richards invented to make it all possible.”

“What is it?” Simon asked, blandly unimpressed. Dan was too busy studying the almost-fluorescent paste to speak.

“PortaNet calls it SuperFlex. Have you ever down in a portal looked?” The more excited he became, the more his English deteriorated. “This is the white circle. This keeps from spreading the synthetic black hole and stops passengers from crush. This stops the gravitational fields from consuming the planet!”

“Like a black hole would.”

“Yes.” Hans dipped the tongues back into the nitrogen and banged them against the side to remove the resolidified paste before sealing the lid and peeling the glove from his hand. He was sweaty and the rubber stuck to his skin as if by suction. It yielded suddenly with a nerve-jolting slap.

Dan was eager to prove he was clever too. “Which is why they made it illegal to open the portals, right?”

“Exactly. And why portals stop work if the seal is broken, and why only certified technicians can reactivate them. The reactivation scanner works on a rotating frequency timed with the supercomputer of PortaNet. They do not want anyone to get a portal online after someone has tampered with it. Additionally, a registration computer checks regularly the status of every portal. If it detects a problem, it removes the portal from the grid and a technician must manually reset the portal and the registration computer.”

“Sounds like they’re paranoid,” Simon interjected. “And for good reason. There’s always one loon who wants to see what’s inside and will probably damage the white circle thingy and bugger up the solar system with a runaway black hole.”

“Um… yes.” Hans smiled awkwardly.

“Where exactly did you get your sample?” Dan asked, rather tactlessly Simon thought.

“Lars Olssen shared some with me.” Hans looked grave. “Which brings me to why PortaNet had him killed. You see, this matter is volatile. Its atomic structure is very weak and in large quantities has the potential to collapse.” He paused, allowing the gravity of his words to sink in.

But they didn’t.

“Yeah?” Dan prompted. So?

“That means the protons, neutrons and electrons in the atoms collapse into subatomic particles, such as quarks. Then they fold into even smaller particles.”

Simon and Dan waited patiently for the punch line.

God, don’t you know anything? “So when that happens, it amplifies gravity in the surrounding atoms and they too begin to collapse. It starts a chain reaction that ends in a black hole.” Hans held up his hands to forestall their exclamations. “But, by my calculations, you must have 500 tons for 0.01 probabilities of that to happen per thousand years.”

“Then it’s stable?” Simon was getting confused.

Hans shrugged. “Not as stable as inert gas. Not as stable as uranium. But stable enough to use safely.”

“Then why-”

“However,” Hans silenced him with his vigour. “There is a by-product of the manufacture process that is as unstable as a hydrogen balloon balanced on a burning match. PortaNet neglects to mention this to anybody, including the WEF and world governments. If they had, they never would have permission to build portals. With just one kilogram you will have one percent chance of a black hole every year.”

Dan’s eyes popped wide. “Okay, that explains why PortaNet’s willing to kill people. I don’t imagine they want this secret going public.”

“Correct.” Hans squatted and gently scratched Kat under her chin.