Kinsella (Kinsella Universe Book 1) Read online

  “Good. Let me know how that works out.”

  The go-cart straightened out and went another few meters, then started to turn back to them. A few minutes later it pulled up next to them and stopped.

  “Braking is an issue,” Johnny said, trying to sound helpful.

  “We use gravity,” Stan interjected.

  “Good choice,” Professor Kinsella said mildly.

  Johnny wanted to kick Stan. This was the whole ball of wax! They’d been college students now for six years. They either finished their thesis topic or they were finished.

  Professor Kinsella turned to them. “A number of ideas occur to me, in addition to the test protocol you already submitted. How about you write a new protocol and have it to me by, say, Friday?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Johnny Chang said politely.

  “I’ll see you then.”

  After she left, Stan was livid with anger. “We get her go-buggy idea to work, radio control and all in just a couple of days, and do we get a thank you? An attaboy? Nope, just more homework!”

  “Stan, she asked us to produce something and we did. She asked us for a time frame — how long we thought it would take. She gave us an extra day when we said we couldn’t meet our original estimate. She said ‘Good!’ just now when she looked at our work. When was the last time she said something other than a criticism?”

  “And that’s it?” Stan sneered. “She merely doesn’t kick us when she tosses us a tiny tidbit? You think that deserves respect?”

  “I think it deserves paying attention to, Stan!”

  “Yeah, well I told my wife that I was going to be free the rest of the week. Her mother is here and they wanted to hit a few casinos.”

  “Stan, priorities! Priorities!”

  “I suppose. You know, this is just a big ball of shit she’s wrapping us into. What on God’s green earth does it matter that we’ve got a go-cart that can move just a smidge slower than a walk? Who cares?”

  Johnny suddenly turned pale as a sheet.

  “What?” Stan asked, more in anger than in curiosity.

  “What? What if she’d asked us any questions? Like how much does the go-cart mass? How much does the fuel mass? What was the temperature, pressure, humidity, the time of day, the zodiac sign? Jeez! She’s setting us up!”

  Stan turned pale as well. “We’ve been working on the mechanics, we haven’t had time to take notes.”

  “Oh, like that’ll fly as an excuse!” Johnny said sourly.

  Which of course, it wouldn’t. Maybe a little nit here and a little gnat there, but they’d missed the boat once again.

  So, the next few days were filled with plans, plans, plans. Johnny had no idea how Stan balanced family duties with planning duties. Trina seemed to be perpetually upset with her husband.

  Still, on Friday afternoon, they walked into Professor Kinsella’s office and handed her the new experimental protocol.

  She didn’t say anything, she just read through it. When she finished, she held it up and waved it slightly. “This is it?”

  “Yes, Professor,” Stan said, trying to sound ingratiatingly polite.

  She tossed it into her wastebasket and picked up her phone. After a second she said simply, “Anna, would you and David step into my office. Now, please.”

  She looked up at them. “Do you know why you are going to be present for this meeting?”

  Stan shook his head. Johnny had no idea.

  “Because, buried way in the back of your protocol you suggested varying the location of the gravity singularity, as you call it. It’s not a singularity, but that’s another story.”

  “We considered,” Stan said, trying to sound confident, “varying the angle up to 45 degrees. We weren’t sure what effect that would have. Perhaps it would reduce the mass in the front of the vehicle, allowing it to move marginally faster... or perhaps it would increase the force on the rear wheels slowing it down. We planned on taking measurements on how that works.”

  “Mr. Benko, that measurement is something freshman physics students calculate in their first semester when we introduce them to vector arithmetic. It is not a serious topic for graduate-level experimentation.”

  Two other grad students entered the office. Anna Sanchez was tall and dark, a person who showed even less expression than her boss. David Louie was from Beijing. He was perpetually excited about everything he saw.

  “We are going,” Professor Kinsella told her grad students, “on a field trip today. Mr. Benko will drive.”

  Two thirty on a Friday afternoon is not the best of times to try to get around the LA area, particularly the San Fernando Valley. It took nearly two hours to get to the airfield.

  Professor Kinsella walked up to the hangar where the go-kart was and gestured to it. “One or both of you, explain this.”

  Stan was very nearly at the Vesuvius stage, Johnny thought, so he did the explanation.

  Professor Kinsella’s students listened raptly. Both had PDAs and calculators; both used them frequently.

  When Johnny finished, he turned to Professor Kinsella. “That’s all I have, Professor.”

  She grimaced. “That, people, sums up where we are today.” She waved at the go-cart.

  “The gas turbine that runs the cart has a mean-time-between-failures, at the current operating speed, of about a thousand years. Which means there is a measurable chance it will fail today. In that event, people as far away as hundreds of meters could be at risk.”

  Both of Professor Kinsella’s students looked at the go-cart, now wary.

  “The experimenters have no satisfactory plan for going forward. We need to start moving forward. Anna, I want a list of ideas for parameters we can change in the basic equations to enhance the depth of the gravity well the device produces. David, let Anna know if you have any ideas on that. In the mean time, David, I’d like to see if you can reduce the risk from turbine failure. Tomorrow, team, I’d like to have the start of a plan!”

  “You’re going to take this away from us,” Stan said bitterly.

  “Mr. Benko and Mr. Chang. You are now my graduate assistants’ assistants. When you aren’t answering their questions, work on a paper. Include everything you know or have theorized. You have a month from today to have it ready for my review. There are a number of issues about the publication date, but I assure you that your paper will be sitting the day you declare it ready, in both the Dean’s office and the President of the University’s office.

  “Do some research and start on a patent application. The university has a number of consultants you can talk to about that. You’re fools if you don’t avail yourselves of their advice.”

  Stan Benko finally couldn’t contain himself. “For what? A bit of math connecting gravity and electromagnetism? For a go-cart than can, at best speed, be out-walked by a dog?”

  “Come outside, Mr. Benko,” Stephanie Kinsella commanded.

  The group all followed her outside. “Mr. Benko, does your knowledge extend to knowing which way is south?” the professor asked.

  He pointed in the right direction. “Now, Mr. Benko, move your hand straight up, until you point directly above you.” He moved his hand, ignoring the fact that he passed over the moon to get there.

  “Mr. Benko, the only reason you and Mr. Chang have any place at this table is because you suggested changing the orientation of the point-gravity source.”

  Stan let his hand drop. “So what?”

  He missed seeing Johnny Chang staring at the moon. He missed the two graduate students staring in the same direction.

  “So what? Mr. Benko, point your hand to the south again.”

  He saw everyone was looking in that direction, but didn’t understand what they were seeing and shrugged, doing as he was told.

  Stephanie Kinsella stepped close to Stan and took his hand in hers and lifted it to point at the moon. “Tell me, Mr. Benko, the best angle for the point gravity source to be directed?”

  Stan was beyond thought, be
yond reason. “The moon? Are you crazy? We get fifty-eight lousy centimeters a second acceleration! Six percent of what you need to lift something off the ground! The moon? You’re insane!”

  Stephanie Kinsella turned to Johnny Chang. “How long will the propane fuel the go-cart turbine?”

  “Two hours, just about,” Johnny said, never taking his eyes off the sky.

  “It can’t lift itself from the ground,” Stan said rudely, emphasizing each word, “it can’t even manage anything beyond a slow walk!”

  Stephanie Kinsella turned to Anna Sanchez. “Miss Sanchez, an acceleration of fifty-eight centimeters per second, for a burn of two hours duration, what is the delta V?”

  “More than four kilometers per second,” the young woman said, without bothering to check her calculator or PDA.

  “Mr. Benko, Mr. Chang. You will go prepare your paper. I will see that it’s published. You will have precedence for everything you’ve discovered.” She lifted her hand and pointed at the moon. “If you include that, Mr. Benko, I’ll break every bone in your body. Each and every bone.”

  She turned and stalked away, followed by her graduate students.

  Stan Benko watched them walk away, then turned to his friend. “The arrogance of that bitch is simply... beyond belief.”

  “Stan, you don’t like her. I understand that. You need to understand some things. She figured this out the first day. There’s been nothing we’ve done since the pizza party day that’s surprised her. She did the math long ago and knew what was going on.

  “You’re worried about precedence? Stan, she’s bent over backwards, every step of the way, to make sure we get it. How many times has she told us to do the math? How many times did she listen to our reports and ask us if we had any changes? Hell, you know we didn’t have any changes! We lucked out, Stan. We found something remarkable! And we don’t have the wit to understand it. We still don’t.”

  He waved at the go-cart, sitting in the hangar. “That’s the future, Stan. We don’t understand it much, but we’ve had a little hand in making it happen. Stan, she could have taken it all away from us that first day... but she hasn’t. Think about that.”

  “So, what are we supposed to do?”

  Johnny shrugged. “It’s not a nice feeling knowing that you’re in water too deep for you to swim in. Stan, we’re in water over our head. We were kids, gosh wow, about physics. We weren’t going to get a doctorate unless we hit the jackpot. Well, we hit the jackpot. It’s time for us to write our paper and gracefully accept that the ball is now in someone else’s court.”

  Chapter 3 — Discovery

  Captain John Gilly was one of a solid phalanx of worker bees in the White House who arrived before seven in the morning. Most of the early birds were eager beavers, eager to impress the boss, but in John Gilly’s case he simply wanted to get an early start on the overnight intelligence reports from around the world. That, and his phone didn’t ring very often until later in the morning.

  This was a Monday morning and eager beavers or not, some of his fellow early birds were dragging their tails. John smiled to himself as he got off the elevator and made his way down the long, high-ceilinged hall that led to his office.

  The liaison secretary was sitting at her desk looking like she’d pulled an all-nighter. “Captain Gilly, the President wants to see you as soon as you come in. Please go right up to The Office.”

  There was never any doubt in the White House which office was being referred to when “The Office” was mentioned. John nodded, dropped his briefcase on his chair, hit the power button on his PC and walked rapidly back towards the elevator.

  A few minutes later he was showing his ID to one of the patient Marine guards, before reporting to the President’s private secretary.

  “You’re to go right in, Captain,” she told him.

  John nodded, absently wondering who was in the meeting, and what was so important this early on a Monday morning.

  He entered the Oval Office and stopped. The President was standing at the window, staring outside; the room was otherwise empty.

  The President turned and saw John and waved a hand for him to approach the President’s desk. “I’d tell you to sit, but you won’t. I’d tell you to be at ease, but I don’t think you remember how to do that anymore.”

  “Sir, you’re the President; I am a Navy captain. A captain is a big deal any place other than Washington. When I commanded the JFK I was the emperor of all I surveyed. Here... I’m pretty small potatoes.”

  John hastily wandered through his mental list of action points he’d had to do lately. He couldn’t think of one that hadn’t been done on time or satisfactorily.

  The President didn’t nod; instead, he walked behind his desk and sat down. “I was talking to the Chief of Naval Operations the other day about something else; I mentioned that I would like your tour extended.”

  John bit his lip, wondering what the CNO had said about that. Evidently this private meeting wasn’t an ass-chewing, so maybe it was something good.

  The President met John’s eyes. “He told me that this is a typical assignment for an officer who’s performed very well. The officer comes here as the Naval Liaison to the President, and after a year he is sent to a cush embassy someplace as the Naval Attaché. Since I’m properly grateful, I send your name to the Senate for confirmation, and sometime in your last couple of months of duty you get a star and a much nicer pension when they boot you out the door a little later.

  “Except the CNO said that you’d told him privately that if you could get out of here early, you’d accept a job as a training chief at boot camp.”

  John shrugged, “That’s correct, sir.”

  “I thought we had a good working relationship, Captain.”

  “This isn’t my cup of tea, sir. I’ve no complaints about working with you, but this isn’t what I want to do in my final days in the Navy.”

  “Just a few problems with some of the fatheads, eh?”

  John knew better than to answer.

  “John, you have no idea just how valuable a person is who can look me in the eye and disagree with me to my face. Someone not in the least interested in telling me what he thinks I want to hear. Someone who is willing to argue a point; someone who makes me think. Someone who makes others think.

  “And, on top of that, throw in someone who, when the decision goes against them, puts his shoulder to the wheel to get the job done with as much enthusiasm as if he’d won the day. You are one of very few in this building; there’s not that damn many more like you in this city.”

  “Sir, that’s my job. Giving advice when called upon and then doing what I can to see that what was decided happens.”

  “Well, good news and bad news. I understand you are a good sailor — but you have other talents as well. You will not be seeing an embassy any time soon. Frankly, I would be surprised if that ever happens. Not if I have anything to say about it. The thought of you holding a tray of canapés is enough to make my stomach heave.”

  John could read the President’s expression a little. He doubted he was on the shit list, not after the puff piece a second before.

  The President reached down and lifted a bound report from his desk, the report being about an inch thick. “According to my Science Advisor, this is the biggest scientific hoax of all time. Ten thousand times bigger than all of the previous hoaxes combined.

  “On the other hand, Friday I received a delegation that included Stephen Hawking, Alan Guth... a half dozen other leading lights of modern physics and mathematics. They told me that Hawking was literally risking his life to come here to talk to me.

  “Those men told me this is the biggest discovery of all time; that it will change humanity more and faster than anything that has ever come down the pike. They brought along a petition from two dozen other stars of math and physics who agreed with them.

  “You, Captain — you taught math at the Naval Academy.”

  John grinned. “Yes, sir, for
three years. Freshman math survey. Algebra to calculus for smart kids who didn’t have the background.”

  “There’s not much math in here, but what there is is Greek to me; in fact, half the symbols are Greek. Go figure.”

  The President held out the report to John. “Take this into the outer office. Read it. You may not take it out of the outer office; if you have to take a whiz, give it to my secretary, Ellen Felter, while you’re about your business. When you get done reading it, come back and we’ll talk some more.”

  John blinked and hefted the report. “An hour or so, I suspect.”

  “I read the good parts in forty-five minutes. I have read the damn thing six more times since. Cover to cover. Do your best, Captain Gilly.”

  John nodded and went outside and was waved to one of the other desks.

  The report cover was a simple white sheet with minimal printing on it. An inch high line that read “Gravity/Electromagnetism” followed by a second line with much smaller type that said, “How to get there from here” and in the bottom right corner a simple block of four lines that read: “Doctor Stephanie Kinsella; Professor of Physics; California Institute of Technology; Pasadena, California.” Someone had applied a “TOP SECRET” hand stamp, and underneath that was a handwritten scrawl, “President’s Eyes Only.”

  A mixture, John thought, of wit and modesty, and then stomped into a bureaucratic pigeon hole

  The table of contents was equally interesting. A simple vertical list. “Page 1: History; Page 2: Theoretical Underpinnings; Page 3: Executive Summary of Proposal; Page 4: Proposal Detail.”

  John smiled to himself. He had a feeling that Professor Dr. Kinsella was young; the report was perhaps two hundred and fifty pages long. A fair amount of detail!

  He read the history. It was a dry report of some rather bizarre observations and subsequent clueless behavior by grad students. The first page included a web address on it and was labeled, “Our web cam.”