Chapter 38

A few weeks later...

Earth time: Tuesday, July 10, 2043 7:33 AM Central Daylight Savings Time ( 1 hour, 17 minutes after sunrise on Antelope Freeway )

Aina time: day 277 of 1449 H.E. 4:34 AM ( 1 hour, 24 minutes after sunrise at Spirit House )

Isabelle rushed into the situation room three minutes after the meeting was supposed to start. "Sorry I'm late!"

"No problem Issie." Jim replied. "How was your workout?"

Isabelle smiled. "Pretty good! Ten kilometers in forty minutes! It's nowhere near as fast as my mom can run, but for me that's pretty fast!" Isabelle sat down at the mission room table.

Cindy smiled back. "Faster than I like to run. So, Isabelle, you want to start?"

"Sure. I checked the Aina medical logs right before my workout. Both of Mayoni's patients are still unconscious, but primary repairs to their stomach ulcers are complete. The doctors are weaning both patients from the coma drugs."

"How long?" asked Cindy.

"Maybe a day to two until they wake up. At least, that's what Mayoni is expecting. The situation is still critical about the extract supply. Nothing new there since our last meeting. They still have a little time, a couple of weeks. Mayoni is still fiercely hopeful in her logs... I guess that's it for me."

"Yeah..." nodded Jim. "Good job Issie. For my own monitoring, I'm happy to report that Aina still believes the Blue Ring itself inverted the control override for Path opening. They have no idea that I was responsible for the early closing, and if they don't suspect by now, I think we're home free."

Cindy smiled. "Your finest microsecond Jim! Absolutely brilliant! You have no idea the impact you had on me, turning me from despair that the WFM was about to find the tunnel, to suddenly realizing we had completely succeeded!"

Jim smiled back. "It was your finishing touch that was brilliant! Without it, all the WFM would know for sure was that two soldiers had disappeared. So what? But now, as far as the WFM is concerned, Hawaii is a race of gods... They're off the hook..." His smile faded. "It's the Equalists' last possession. The news from New Zeeland is awful. The battle's over..."

Isabelle asked quietly, "The WFM showed no mercy, not even at the end?"

Jim slowly shook his head no.

Isabelle sighed. "I wish my mom were here, and my dad. Any hope at all, Uncle Jim, of figuring out when they might show up? It's been ten years now..."

Jim frowned. "Nothing yet. The Nebraska channel is a real anomaly. A'moth once compared it to a Chinese finger puzzle, easy to slide down, impossible to go back up. I don't know how to probe it from here... Cindy, you want to add anything?"

"Only that I've picked up some web references that the WFM had a major setback in their research with incubator technology. Their new target for being operational and having children is now 2050, not 2047. They still expect they can save humanity with women 40 to 50 years old... at least the female half of it..."

Jim grimaced. "I hate to be rooting for them, but our success is tied to theirs. We still have major hurdles before us. The WFM has to win their war and capture the Blue Ring... It's our only chance..."

The discussion lasted a while longer. The group adjourned shortly before 8 AM.

Time: Unknown, exiting the Nebraska conduit...

Gary opened his eyes. The sensation was one of waking from a dream, but he was also acutely aware of his recent experience in the quantum channel conduit. It was only his second ride through the channel, but this time he had a powerful jump sense, and he had closely studied the channel structure during the trip...

He stood up and breathed deeply and looked around. A'moth was just waking up and rising with him. It was night in the cornfield, and the stars had the fake familiarity of Earth...

"No bumps this time," Gary commented.

"Yeah, pretty smooth..."

Without thinking, Gary tried to probe the area with his jump sense. "Hey A'moth! I thought you said it was impossible to jump around here!"

"Huh?! It is impossible!"

"No it's not! Try it!"

A'moth tried for a moment. Her inner eye seemed totally blind. "Gary! You think you can jump?"

"Sure, piece of cake." Gary jumped easily to the other side of A'moth. "Nothing to it."

"I don't understand..." A'moth felt totally confused, and then was surprised to find herself annoyed that Gary could jump and she could not. She admonished herself for being so petty and banished the thought. "Gary, this is great! How far can you jump?"

"I don't know... Let me test..." Gary focused for a moment. "My gosh, the geometry! It feels so strange, the curvature in space. I can feel the walls around Antelope Freeway in all directions, about 23 kilometers away. We're exactly at the opposite side of the planet again."

"Uh, it's not a planet."

"Uh, yeah, poor choice of words, but you know what I mean."

A'moth looked thoughtful. "Can you jump through the barriers?"

"Hmm. That's an interesting question. Let me try... No. They're totally opaque. But I can jump to the top of them! Here, hold on!" Gary held A'moth tightly, and a second later they were both standing on the thin ledge at the top of the 400-foot barriers around the Freeway.

The walls were only about one foot thick, and without her jump sense A'moth felt a little uncomfortable standing there. The top of the wall was absolutely frictionless, and they started to fall off. Gary quickly jumped again with A'moth to the patio area in the center of the Freeway. He let go of her and looked at the stars. "What do you think? An April sky?"

A'moth looked up and was quiet for a moment. "Yeah, I think so too. I should have looked before we jumped. These walls are blocking some of the view."

"Hey, no problem!" Gary held A'moth, and an instant later they were standing on top of the wall again, and a second after that they were in the parking lot outside the convenience store, one mile from the Freeway. A'moth gave Gary a quick kiss as he let her go.

Gary looked around happily and A'moth studied the clear night sky, and then a look of astonishment crossed his face. "My gosh, my gosh! A'moth!"

"What?"

"My maximum jump distance! It's a perfect fit to this place!"

"Huh?"

"The half-circumference! I can feel it! It's 23,140 meters and... maybe a half meter more... My jump sense is just touching itself, as I go in opposite directions... an exact fit..."

A'moth frowned. "It can't be a coincidence..."

"Oh no..."

"So it means what?"

Gary shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know... I guess we can ask Jim. Let me explore for a bit..." Gary became very quiet and still. A'moth waited patiently. With her night- vision eyes, the starry night was bright enough to look around, and she stared at the convenience store for a while, her mind deep in thought.

"A'moth?"

"Yeah?"

"Our entry point. Can we go back to it?"

"Sure."

A few seconds later Gary made the jump holding A'moth. He smiled as he kissed her. "I knew it! The transfer conduit doesn't end here!"

"You can sense it? The path from Nebraska? Can you jump it? Don't try it! But can you?"

Gary shook his head. "I can sense it, but I would never jump it. It feels like an infinite mesh of thorny vines from this direction. I think it would tear me to pieces. But the conduit doesn't end here. It continues... in a direction orthogonal to everything else... Smooth and slick... I think I could jump it if I tried."

"Where does it go?"

Gary was silent for a long moment as he probed. "No idea. It extends beyond my jump sense." There seemed nothing else to do at the site. After a few minutes, Gary jumped A'moth back to the patio area to wait for morning.

The next morning was a repeat of some distant memories, the appearance of a small owl which shrieked and disappeared, Isabelle running into his arms a few seconds later. Gary held her in his arms as she sobbed. It was over a minute before she blurted out, "April 13, 2044."

Cindy and Jim arrived a few minutes later. After some brief rejoicings, they all spent the day in the arctic mission room briefing each other...

"And that brings us up to date on our end," said Cindy. Mayoni had a meeting three days ago, with the Hopewell's Congressional sub-committee on Earth Affairs. In her report, she sounded very hopeful about finding a chemical key to open the path to the solar tower."

A'moth nodded thoughtfully and sighed. "The solar tower... A life-form designed by the Blue Ring... Do you think Mayoni is on the right track?"

Isabelle shrugged. "We'll have to wait and see mom. I hope so. We'll know as soon as the rest of Aina does. Their web is very interconnected. Through the lower levels of Spirit House, we have access to everything they know about."

Jim looked over at her. "You look tired A'moth. We shouldn't be pushing you like this. Our war with the Tucker County militia ended eleven years ago for us. I keep forgetting it was just a few days ago for you and Gary. And your hand needs to heal. We should let you rest."