Class Fives: Origins Read online

  He turned to regard them, his tone serious.

  “In one hundred and ninety six days KL4440R will traverse the orbit of the Earth. It will pass within one hundred thousand miles of the moon. The gravitational field of the moon will alter its trajectory and it will slingshot past the Earth at a distance of less than seventy five thousand miles.”

  “How close is that in terms of effects on the Earth?” one of the men at the far end of the table said.

  “Damn close,” Marvin replied, unable to suppress a twitching hint of a grin. “It will at least have some kind of effect on tidal flow, maybe some shifting of tectonic plates resulting in minor tremors. The fact that it is primarily iron will increase its gravitational effect, it's got a substantial mass.”

  “Is there any danger of a collision?” another man asked.

  “No,” Marvin replied quickly. “And that’s a very good thing, because if it were to hit us, the effect would be the equivalent of shooting a watermelon with a fifty caliber bullet.”

  There was a long pause before a handsome middle-aged woman in a tasteful business suit finally spoke.

  “So what you’re saying, Dr. Henry, is that while this asteroid will make a close pass by the Earth, there is no danger that it will impact.”

  “No ma’am,” Marvin admitted.

  “Then,” the woman continued, “I fail to see the urgency of this meeting. Or the issuance of a heightened alert condition. At the very least, it seems premature.”

  Marvin’s face took on a tense expression and he shot a glance at where the bulldog-faced man sat, then directed his attention back at the woman.

  “That isn’t the reason for this meeting. It’s something else. Something very disturbing.”

  “And that would be what, Dr.?” the woman said with a bit of a challenge.

  Marvin nodded toward the officer who again pressed the button, beginning the second part of the presentation. Behind Marvin, on the large screen, the long lines that had been slowly extending toward one another reversed direction, now slowly separating. But Marvin kept his attention fixed on the woman, his expression now serious.

  “The software has a secondary application. It not only predicts a forward trajectory, it can also use the direction, mass and velocity of many multiple objects and track backwards in time to the origin of the motion, and beyond. It can use the known mass, size and composition of the objects to extrapolate earlier, unobserved collisions and show the trajectory prior to that collision.”

  “You’re losing me, Doctor,” a small, elderly man with a reedy voice seated toward the front of the table said quietly.

  Marvin nodded, thought a moment.

  “Think of a pool table. You make a break shot, and as all the balls are flying around the table you shoot a second of film of them moving around. The software can take that one second of film, run it backwards, and use what it knows of the weight, size, shape and speed of those balls on that specifically shaped table of that specific size in that one second of film, to show you the exact path each of those balls had taken, banging off each other and bouncing off the sides of the table, all the way back to the moment the cue ball shattered the rack.”

  “All right,” the elderly man said, nodding slowly. “Go on.”

  “I ran that subroutine on this data, and tracked back along the path of NC1107, the smaller object, to see where it came from.”

  “Why?” the woman asked.

  “Because the direction it is now moving in is not a natural orbit. If it had been following that trajectory normally, it would have already collided with some other object on a previous orbit. When I checked back on all our previously recorded data on its position and direction, the software came to one conclusion. Exactly thirty five years ago it made an eighty seven degree turn for no apparent reason.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” the elderly man said, slightly puzzled.

  Marvin paused to order his thoughts, and continued.

  “Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion are pretty much immutable, at least in terms of the motion of solar objects. In order to make such a radical turn, an actual collision or some kind of extreme gravitational field would have had to act on it. But we know for a fact there was no collision thirty five years ago. Nothing touched it, nothing with any significant mass came anywhere near it. If it had, the porous nature of its composition would have shattered it to bits. And yet it turned, sharply.”

  “So what does that mean?”, another man interjected.

  Marvin raised a hand as if to emphasize the approach of a key point.

  “I then had the software run a detailed check of other quadrants of the asteroid belt slightly offset from where NC made its turn, and it showed that NC was only one of a large number of objects that were knocked out of their trajectories at exactly the same moment. At that particular region, some force of substantial magnitude hit that section of the asteroid belt and knocked a large chuck of that debris out of its way. It was like they were leaves hit by the blast of a garden hose of pure energy.”

  “What kind of energy?” said an officer seated just beyond the woman, sharply.

  Marvin shook his head.

  “I’m still working that out. But something big. Powerful.”

  “Something related to the Star Wars program?” one of the other military men seated in a tight group on one side of the table asked, briskly.

  “Negative, sir,” another responded. “We don’t have anything in the inventory that would have anywhere near that power.”

  “Where exactly,” the spindly old man with the reedy voice cut in quietly, “Did this energy come from?”

  Marvin turned to regard him, hesitating a moment.

  “From the Earth, sir. Somewhere in Russia.”

  John sat nervously in the small, plain room, his hands clasped before him on the table, his body leaning tensely forward in the hard wooden chair. Across from him the door remained ominously closed. He flicked a glance over to the large mirror on the side wall. One-way glass, he told himself. So they can watch the questioning. And there are probably microphones and even hidden cameras somewhere, too.

  Maybe, he told himself, this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe he should just jump and –

  No, he chided himself sternly, don’t even think about it. You’re in a police station, for God’s sake. If you can’t explain how you knew a guy was going to stick-up a liquor store, how in Hell would you ever explain something like that? Besides, he’d already been waiting at least fifteen minutes, probably more, and that was well beyond his capabilities. If he did jump, he’d just pop back in exactly where he was seated and what good would that do?

  He could try to jump forward, he thought, but quickly squashed the idea. No, don’t even consider that, he commanded himself. Jesus, what a mess that might be. He never, ever, jumped forward. Not since that one time when he’d tried, just to see if it was possible, and popped smack into existence in the middle of a crowd that hadn’t even hinted it would be there when he’d jumped.

  However it worked, that little seeming safety feature had kicked in, thank God, so he’d simply appeared among them, startling the ones surrounding him but doing no essential harm. There was something about what he could do that never allowed him to jump back into a moment when the space he was occupying had something else in the way, but always delivered him before or after that point, when the space was clear to receive him.

  Because he didn’t actually move, at least not in space. Wherever he was when he jumped, that’s where he would be when he landed.

  Going backwards worked because there seemed to be some kind of something that helped anchor it somehow. Because everything had already happened, it was somehow defined in a way he couldn’t quite understand, but it was like jumping off a ledge onto a surface that was like a trampoline. It somehow bent, shaped itself to that pre-definition because in whatever perspective, it had already passed. Jumping ahead was more like landing on a totally unknown surface. It m
ight be concrete and shatter your legs. It might be tissue paper, giving way completely and dropping you onto God knows what beneath.

  So he never jumped forward. Ever.

  Besides, there was never any reason to. If, for example he was running from someone and ducked into an alley and jumped forward, how could he know that his pursuers wouldn’t be there, standing, glancing around, wondering where he’d disappeared to, when he popped back in? In that case what good would the jump have been? At least if he ducked into the alley and jumped backwards he knew that wherever he had been at that exact instant in the past, it would be blocks away. He would simply disappear and at that same instant arrive at the alley, a place he wouldn’t have reached for several minutes.

  He sighed, shaking his head, trying to brush away the thoughts. It didn’t do any good. He wasn’t a scientist and hadn’t a chance in Hell of understanding how it worked. All he knew was that it did, that was all. And that he had to make sure no one else ever discovered it, or they’d lock him up somewhere and study him like a weird kind of new lizard.

  His gaze jerked up when he heard the quiet click of the knob being turned and the door swung open.

  It was the same cop from the day before, the older one of the pair who’d come to his apartment. He moved through the door, looking down into an open folder spread on his hand.

  “Mr. Kleinschmidt?” Dan said.

  John nodded, swallowing nervously.

  Dan turned to close the door gently, then moved to the desk and placed the folder onto it as he settled into the chair opposite John.

  “I’m Sergeant Dan Sinski, LAPD. Do you know why we wanted to speak with you?”

  John hesitated.

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  Dan glanced up at him.

  “Can I ask how you knew we were looking for you?”

  “The super at the place where I live. Said you wanted to talk to me for some reason.”

  Dan nodded and turned his gaze back to the folder.

  “Mr. Kleinschmidt, is your vehicle license number two, Victor, X-Ray, David, six, one, four?”

  John nodded.

  “That’s right. 2VXD614.”

  “And you drive a late model, dark green Toyota Camry?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dan dropped the folder, which flapped quietly to the table, and directed his full attention on John.

  “John, can you tell me where you were at four thirty five in the afternoon on Tuesday?”

  “Tuesday?” John asked.

  “Yes. Tuesday.”

  John hesitated, feeling a squirming, unpleasant something lacing its way up his spine. If he was going to tell the truth, or at least as much of it as he could get away with, he had to do it now.

  “I was home,” he said quietly.

  “Home.”

  “Yeah. All day. I didn’t go out.”

  Dan stared at him for a long moment before leaning forward in his seat and planting his elbows on the table, his gaze turning intense.

  “You were home all day.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “Not that I know of. I never left the apartment.”

  “Not even a quick run out to the store? Nothing like that?”

  “No. I was in all day.”

  Dan stared at him, then sighed and leaned back.

  “Well, I find it difficult to believe that, because your car was seen at a liquor store where a man was assaulted.”

  “My car?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  Dan’s brows knitted.

  “Sorry?”

  “How do you know it was my car?”

  “The clerk saw it.”

  “At the liquor store.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible, since I wasn’t there.”

  “What if I told you we have the video surveillance footage from the store?”

  “Do you?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Why? You didn’t answer mine.”

  “What are you, a smartass?”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Look – “

  “Please, just tell me. Am I under arrest or not? Because if I am, I’m going to want a lawyer before I’ll say anything more, and if I’m not, then I’d like to leave.”

  Dan stared at him a long moment, then sighed.

  “Look. If it was you who assaulted the guy, I don’t think you’d get in much trouble. The guy was an ex-con who’d just got out after doing time for sticking up a liquor store. The weapon he was hit with belonged to him, not whoever assaulted him. And the very fact that he was carrying it was a violation of his parole, so he was already committing a felony by the time he walked into the place. For all we know, the guy who took him down prevented something nasty from happening. We just want to find out, that’s all.”

  John stared back at him for a long moment, and Dan thought he could see the resolve and fear begin to crack, to soften slightly.

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean all you wanted to ask me?”

  Dan saw he was losing the guy, he was shutting down. And there was nothing he could do to reverse that.

  “Okay,” he said at last, “We’re done here.”

  He rose, reaching into his uniform pocket to extract one of his cards and place it on the table before where John sat.

  “Here’s my number. If you think of anything you want to tell me, just give me a call, okay?”

  John nodded and reached out to pluck up the card, and stared down at it a moment.

  “Officer?” he said, quietly.

  “Yes?”

  John remained silent, his expression one of a man quickly trying to process an avalanche of random thoughts.

  “Nothing,” he said at last. “Sorry.”

  He rose and shoved the card into his pocket.

  “And if I think of anything I’ll call you.”

  Dan nodded and allowed himself a small smile.

  The guy was scared, that’s what it was, Dan told himself. And who could blame him? And really, he wouldn’t be in that much trouble if he just fessed up about it. And he really had done everyone a favor, maybe really stopped something worse from going down. Hell, Dan would probably be able to ease him through how to explain what he did so it looked like it was self-defense. But that wasn’t up to him. He was supposed to be neutral, not take sides, even if one of the sides was occupied by a real scumbag like Peter Morales.

  “We’ll be in touch if we have any further questions, all right?”

  John nodded and moved from behind the table. Dan stepped over to open the door and stand aside, allowing John to pass him and enter the drably painted hallway beyond.

  He did it, Dan thought to himself. This was his guy. But was it worth it to upset the guy’s life when all he’d done was a big favor for everyone? He’d tell the Lieutenant he’d gotten nothing out of him, said he wasn’t there, and raise the speculation of a fake license plate on the car, or maybe a bad memory or lousy eyesight on the part of the clerk. And that would be that. Case closed for lack of evidence.

  But he couldn’t help wanting to know what it had all been about. How had this guy known about Morales. And what was that about him jumping across the room just as the store’s video security system went down?

  It was a puzzle, Dan told himself yet again. One he would very much like to unravel. But there were other cases to deal with and not much time to do it. Maybe he’d come back to this one sometime, just poke around it a bit, see what turned up. After all, it had an element of creepy, and he was so fascinated by creepy.

  He turned to snap off the lights before he stepped out and closed the door.

  3

  Revealed

  Dr. Vernon Jenkins, Professor of Physics at the large, exclusive, New England-based Ivy League university, stepped up behind the podium in front of the mas
sive screen still displaying the projected logo of the conference, even before the moderate applause had begun to die away. The fact that he had been allowed to speak on the final day, immediately after the expansive and elegant lunch, was a mark of his status within the physics community. Like anyone else, scientists liked to save the best, most exciting presentations for a big finish. In a way it was almost as political as a carefully structured fund-raiser, though its purpose was to be a forum for the first public presentation of scientific principles and discoveries that had reared their heads throughout the prior year, and had been toiled over to the point where, if they could not be proven, at least provide a tantalizing hint that they were possible. It was at this same conference many years ago that Stephen Hawking had first admitted publicly that his early postulations about the basic nature of black holes had been in error. He had then stunned and confused the assembled experts and researchers with a disjointed, rambling and not-quite-sensible explanation for what he then believed was actually happening within the super-massively dense, mysterious objects scattered throughout space. The applause that followed that lecture had been hesitant, at best.

  Vernon expected a similar reaction to what he was now about to disclose. But that was the nature of science. New principles are discovered, pored over, picked apart, subjected to complex study. Then new formulas are written to explain the mechanics behind the new idea and, invariably, those members of the scientific community who had focused their own studies on earlier principles will balk, challenge, even complain until eventually the evidence is collected to either support the new theory or discredit it irretrievably. What he was about to present would surely end in many loud arguments.

  He let the applause die down to a bubbling, expectant silence, then began.

  “Some time ago,” he said, hearing his own voice magnified by the microphone and echoing dully off the distant walls of the large room, “I was standing in an art gallery, staring at a painting. I like paintings. In a way I think of them as organized, aesthetically improved versions of the world around us.