Jintao Read online

  Quan quickly extended his hand toward her. She shook his hand with surprising vigor.

  With taller ears, she’d look like a rabbit! thought Quan.

  “Has your father returned yet?” asked Dr. Lee.

  “No, not yet. However, I expect to know something very soon.”

  Leading her to his inner office, he began looking for common ground.

  “You worked on nanomachines, is that correct?” he asked.

  “Yes, many years ago. My primary interest now is molecular biology.”

  “I built nanomachines at university,” said Quan.

  “Did you use molecular engines?”

  “I’m afraid not. The machines we built were tethered to a power source.”

  “Molecular engines are very expensive,” said Dr. Lee.

  “I believe you’re right.” Quan gestured to one of the chairs. “Please have a seat. I’d like to know about the work you did with my father.”

  “Normally I don’t work with people outside the laboratory, but your father was very kind and such a distinguished gentleman.”

  “What did you do for him?”

  “We did a trade. I provided molecular scans. I still say molecular, although the scans I provided were orders of magnitude more discrete.”

  “A trade?”

  “Yes. He provided a rare isotope I needed for my work, and in return I scanned a few things for him.”

  “Did you sign a nondisclosure agreement?”

  “Yes, but he wouldn’t tell me what the scans were for. I explained to him that HK Labs is a secure facility. Our laboratory has state-of-the-art equipment and . . .”

  As she went on, Quan felt a mounting need to thread the needle and expedite the investigation. Holding his hand upright like a stop sign, he said, “Please hold on. There’s another colleague who worked on this project. I want to bring him into the conversation.”

  Within a minute, Dr. Gaston von Ang was connected over a secure link, appearing in the air between them. Quan walked to the other side of the desk as he made the introductions. “You both worked with my father on his last project and I am trying to retrace what he did.”

  “You intend to continue your father’s experiments. Is that it?” asked Dr. Lee.

  “Not necessarily. Above all, I want to find out what happened to him. That’s priority. Now Dr. Lee, you provided molecular scans. I assume these were used in his experiments. And Dr. von Ang, you designed the apparatus. Please tell her . . . tell us both, what the machine does.”

  Without mentioning the Krakinov theory, von Ang described the equipment in general terms, while Dr. Lee sat motionless, hands in her lap, intrigued by the possibilities and engrossed by his technical acumen. He concluded by saying, “Essentially, we captured an anomaly in a bottle. The rest is theoretical. It may take decades to understand what the anomaly really is.”

  “About the things we don’t understand,” said Quan, “there are things we use every day but don’t fully understand. Take anesthesia, for example. Certain gases render a patient unconscious, and other gases bring them back. The technique has been around for centuries but we don’t fully understand how it works.”

  “I don’t know much about anesthesia or about this machine,” said Dr. Lee, “but if it can be used to do harm, then I am very concerned.”

  “The machine generates very powerful energies,” said von Ang. “However, it also has sensors and safety shutoffs. The likelihood of a catastrophic failure is negligible.”

  “From what I know,” said Quan, “this was the last thing my father was working on. So, it’s imperative that you help me understand what these experiments were about.”

  “I’ll be glad to help,” said Dr. Lee. “I would, however, like to have a say in how we proceed.”

  “Of course. I’m open to anything you have to say. Is that okay with you, Dr. von Ang?”

  “Yes, of course. Another point of view is always welcome.”

  Learning more about the reactor project, the project his father worked on up until he disappeared, seemed the best way forward. His father trusted these two and Quan felt confident they would bring him closer to knowing if there was a connection between the discovery and his father’s absence.

  One of the secretaries led Dr. Lee from the room and with a few deft moves of his fingers, Quan was back inside the hidden files. He flipped to the entries made after von Ang left the project.

  03.19.2088 16.12.43 STABILIZER INSTALLED

  03.19.2088 17.01.54 SCAN DATA FILE TOO LARGE

  03.22.2088 09.23.03 RAM UPGRADE

  03.22.2088 11.41.33 STABILIZER TEST SUCCESSFUL

  The increase in data size must be related to the scans Dr. Lee provided, thought Quan. So he had to upgrade random access memory.

  It was likely that neither of the consultants knew about the new component. It was installed after Dr. von Ang was taken off the project. Quan needed another pair of eyes to help understand what the stabilizer was doing. He looked at the time. It was 12:48 p.m. in New Hong Kong—7:48 a.m. in Oxford, England. Perfect. He opened a com line to his mentor at Oxford.

  “Professor Harrowden,” Quan said to the switchboard.

  A few moments later he heard the professor’s voice.

  “Harrowden here.”

  “It’s Quan Jintao, professor.”

  “Ah. Mr. Jintao. How are you? You’ll be pleased to know we all agreed your thesis was exceptional.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Quan. “I’m glad to know that. I wasn’t as prepared as I wanted to be. I had to leave rather suddenly you know—a family emergency.”

  “Forgive me. I should have asked firstly about your father. Has he turned up?”

  “I wish I could say yes. Unfortunately, the search is still on. Actually, I’m calling because I need help with a somewhat related matter. I need help to understand a set of plans that he was working on—plans are for a molecular stabilizer. Is there anyone there who could help me with that?”

  The conversation went on with Quan answering questions about how the plans might be used. He explained who his father was and that the device was a component to be used in a larger machine. The professor pressed on, asking what the machine would be used for and Quan declined to answer. At last Harrowden said, “Review of commercial products is not in the purview of the university. I’m sorry. I can’t help you in this matter. School policy, you see.”

  Quan said good-bye, feeling as though he could have handled the questions better. Then again, lying wasn’t an option.

  Quan immediately tapped his wrist disc again and said, “Xiaoping. Chimera Bio.”

  His view field instantly displayed the words “SECURE CONNECTION.” Surprisingly, Dr. Xiaoping appeared behind his desk, peering at Quan from under bulbous eyelids, his tan face surrounded by a thick crop of white hair.

  “Nin hao Quan. How is your research going? Any news about your father?”

  Dr. Xiaoping was easy to talk to and Quan liked him. There was a warmth about him. All the same, there was a need for opacity until he knew why his father concealed the project. He was on a fact-finding mission, gathering information from here and there without letting anyone know as much as he did.

  “No news yet, although I have came across a set of plans that may be related and I need help understanding them. It’s some sort of molecular stabilizer.”

  “Definitely out of my area of expertise. My focus for years has been administration and marketing. Have you consulted with the engineering group at Jintao?”

  “They’re occupied with other projects and I don’t want to bother them. Do you know anyone who might be able to help?”

  “I know a few outside consultants who would look at it for you. Probably the best research group is over at Yanistat Burroughs. Laosing Mao runs it. He’s really quite knowledgeable. I can send you his contact info, if you like.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” said Quan. “Shieh, shieh.”

  “Stay in touch and let me k
now how things are going.”

  After the call ended, Quan’s hand reached to the top of his head, fingers brushing the tips of his closely cropped hair. He needed to be careful. He could have shown the plans to von Ang, but the stabilizer designed by his father might be the most valuable part of the machine. Gathering bits of information from several disconnected individuals was safer. Never let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.

  ~~~

  Midafternoon, Laosing Mao squinted in the broad sunlight as he ambled across the rooftop terminus of the Jintao One building. He was a sullen man, an asthmatic with watery eyes, overweight and slightly yellow, rocking side to side as he walked. His personal life was virtually nonexistent. Abandoned by his parents at the age of nine, he was taken in by an elder who become increasingly ill and depended on the youth for his care. The young Mao tried his best to help the man, fetching ancient Chinese medicines from a local shop, only to be ridiculed by his guardian for his lack of medical knowledge. The humiliation caused Mao to turn resolutely to academic pursuit. Determined to learn everything he could, he became a voracious student, graduating with the highest honors.

  The Yanistat Burroughs Company hired him straight from university and Mao quickly became one of their top researchers. Within two years, he was promoted to research manager and a year later he was given the department to run. No one in the company was a match for his broad knowledge of applied physics and bioscience. Although he lacked charisma, using his trove of knowledge as enticement, he was able to hire several excellent researchers and he built one of the largest scientific libraries in existence.

  In his father’s office, Quan sat across the desk from Mao.

  “I’m looking at designs for a new component that may be able to stabilize molecular structures when placed in extreme environments. It’s something we might have a use for; however, I don’t know if it works, and I’d like you to look at the plans and tell me what you think.”

  Mao listened intently, blotting his eyes with a handkerchief.

  “I don’t know what help I can be, but I’ll be glad to look at it for you,” said Mao.

  Quan had him sign a confidentiality agreement and told his secretary to leave for the rest of the day. At her desk, Quan pulled up the plans then had Mao sit at the desk.

  In his private office, Quan continued to observe Mao in a sidebar on his view field.

  Culling through the schematics and drawings, Mao availed himself of several outside databases including the Yanistat Burroughs library. He set out reference materials and algorithms and worked for almost two hours. It was dark outside, 6:00, when Mao sat back, eyes still darting here and there on the view field, digesting what he had seen. At last he said aloud, “Amazing!”

  Mao trudged back into Quan’s office and plopped himself down in front of the large black desk. He seemed excited. “It’s ingenious. A complex component. Very well designed.”

  “Tell me what you found.”

  “Preservation of angular neutron flux using spherical harmonics—it’s designed to produce a stabilizing field effect. For it to work, however, the object must be sequenced at a very high resolution. After sequence data is imported, the stabilizer locks onto and tracks particle trajectories while specific field energies are used to stabilize.”

  “Does it look like it might work?”

  “That depends. What do you plan to use it for?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” A subtle smile crept across Quan’s face. “Tell me about the sequence data. How is that provided?”

  Mao did not return the smile. He only smiled occasionally, while feeding pigeons at the foot of his park bench near the Jockey Club on Sundays. “It requires a separate sequencing device upstream to analyze the subatomic structure. Very expensive. Yanistat Burroughs doesn’t have one, and in fact there are very few companies that do.” After thinking for a moment, he said, “The lab at Henan Kaifeng has one. It’s probably the closest. They’re a basic research laboratory.”

  Henan Kaifeng—same place Diayu Lee works, thought Quan. More than a coincidence.

  Mao offered additional services… for a fee. Quan thanked him and saw him to the rooftop aeropad where he boarded a Jintao corporate glide. “It will take you wherever you want to go,” said Quan as the glide began its boarding announcement. “Thank you for coming.”

  Back in his office, Quan quickly spoke to his view field. “Com Dr. von Ang.”

  The field instantly displayed, “Dr. Gaston von Ang—CONNECTING.”

  “Yes?” said von Ang.

  “It’s Quan Jintao. Are we set for our trip to the island?”

  “We are. Is 5:00 a.m. too early?”

  “That’s perfect.”

  Quan sat back in his father’s executive chair, thinking about the paths ahead of him. On one side, he was desperate to know where father was—on the other side he was titillated by research into quantum matter. And, there were his obligations to the corporation and especially to Sealy. It was only natural that he felt both beleaguered and energized at the same time. He was looking forward to tomorrow and the journey to Kau Yi Chau.

  10.

  Dr. von Ang was calm as he piloted the glide low over the dark waters. Navigating only with compass and proximity sensors to avoid detection, the glide made its way silently through the fog enveloping Kau Yi Chau Island with its nav lights turned off. Slowing as they approached one of the huge gray buildings, the vehicle hovered and rotated, surrounded by swirling mist. Below them, the aeropad became visible, only two meters away. The aircraft came to rest with a light thump.

  Stepping out, Quan shouldered his nylon pack and switched on a handheld chocklight. Except for the lapping of waves against the shore, the island was silent. “Wait for me,” he said. “I want to walk around and see if there’s another glide here,” hopeful there would be some trace of his father.

  Von Ang was sitting in the cockpit with the door open when Quan reemerged from the fog. “Find anything?” he asked.

  “No. Nothing. Is it always this foggy?”

  “Usually burns off by noon.”

  “Let’s have a look inside,” said Quan, aiming his chocklight in the direction of the buildings. “Which one is it?”

  Von Ang stepped down and said, “The one on the right.”

  Their chocklights bloomed in the mist as they crossed over to a pair of oversized steel doors. Von Ang handed his light to Quan, entered a combination, and grabbed the long stainless handle. Pulling with both hands, the door let go with a voomph. Vapor swirled around its outer edge and the sounds of lapping waves faded.

  As they entered the cavernous space, smooth xynite walls amplified their gritty footsteps. The echoey building was dank and for Quan it felt like a giant mausoleum. Following the interior wall for nearly a hundred meters, they eventually came to an industrial lift.

  “Power is off,” said von Ang. “We need to use the staircase.”

  Trudging down the stairs behind him, Quan asked, “How long has it been since you were here last?”

  “About ten months.”

  At the foot of the stairwell, their chocklights searched the vast space. Light reflected off a metal gangway overhead. Conduits and ran across the ceiling to a collection of metal shapes at the far side of the room, about seventy-five meters away. Two large polished tanks gleamed in the distance and von Ang walked torwad them.

  The tanks were huge, almost touching the ceiling, held to the wall with heavy metal straps. From the top of the tanks, insulated pipes arched down to a massive torus, five meters in diameter. The torus was elevated from the floor, supported by a series of metal struts. Its equator was fitted with a band of cooling fins.

  “This must be the field generator,” said von Ang, gesturing toward the torus.

  “Correct.”

  From below the torus, a dozen copper tubes, each the diameter of a man’s wrist, meandered up into free space, twisting like metal spaghetti, terminating in a narrow horizontal plate two meters long
, at chest level. Machined into the plate was an intricate pattern of meandering micro-channels reminiscent of termite tunnels. In front of the horizontal plate stood a metal frame about waist high with black mesh stretched tightly across like a trampoline. To the right were two antistatic workbenches, several translucent storage containers, a roll-away tool chest, and several scopes.

  Quan’s light followed conduits and cables that snaked across the floor, disappearing behind a vertical photonics rack. A thin coating of dust covered everything.

  “Looks like no one’s been here for a while,” said von Ang, his light sweeping across the dusty floor.

  Quan looked for footprints in the dust, but he saw only the fresh tracks they left behind them.

  At a power box on the wall, von Ang flipped a switch. Lights atop stands began to rotate up, sputtering as they came to life, illuminating a ceiling coffered with intersecting xynite ribs.

  “We’re on battery power until the reactor is running,” he said. He shut off his chocklight and continued to walk around, looking here and there, muttering to himself as he tapped gauges and tried to tighten connectors. “I see your father made a few modifications.” He patted a box attached to the torus. “I haven’t seen this before.”

  “I have the schematics,” said Quan.

  “You have schematics for this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. And when were you going to tell me?”

  “When the time was right,” said Quan.

  “I see,” said von Ang, turning away, somewhat miffed. At the photonics rack, he pressed a button and a miniature galaxy of pin-sized colored lights began twinkling inside the rack. The stand lights shuddered. He tapped the control panel again, thumbed a counter wheel, then tapped again. Fluorescent blue digits began to count down from thirty. Low-pitched groans emitted from the equipment and von Ang walked around, looking here and there, sniffing the air. The counter reached zero and the groaning trailed off.