The Prophet of Queens Read online

  “Done,” Tia said. And composure regained, she hopped from the trailer, rolled the tailgate shut, and brushed herself off.

  Ariel asked, “Any word on your fellowships?”

  Tia avoided her eyes. “Those wheels grind slow, you know.”

  After receiving notice from TPC, Tia had sent proposals to MIT, her alma mater, and to other big science schools. But with endowments drying up, it was a tough sell.

  She asked Ariel, “How about you? When do you start?”

  “Soon as I get there. Sallie Mae’s on my case.”

  Speaking of slow grinds. Ariel had gone to college on a partial scholarship, making up the difference with loans and working part time. Her parents wouldn’t help, all but disowning her. Tia and the others were more fortunate—especially Max, who came from Old Boston money.

  Ariel said, “Don’t worry. With your qualifications, something good will turn up.”

  Tia said nothing.

  Stan was ready with Ariel’s bed, and as they helped him lug out the mattress, Ariel raised the question Tia and Stan had been mulling all morning.

  “If the electromagnets weren’t out of alignment, what the heck caused what I saw?”

  Tia nodded toward TPC. “The collision chamber is less than three miles away.”

  Ariel turned toward the tower in the distance. The collision chamber lay directly beneath it, far underground.

  “Sometimes during runs,” Tia told her, “colliders encounter tiny leaks in the beams as they whiz past the collision chamber.”

  Stan added, “They’re usually of no consequence. But they can throw off a radiation cone.”

  Radiation cone: a concentrated beam of energy, like a magnifying glass focusing sunlight.

  “…The farmhouse sits square in the cone zone, and we think that’s what you experienced yesterday. A cone distorted the atmosphere in front of you, causing the noises you heard.”

  Ariel pulled up, bringing everyone to a stumbling halt.

  “Radiation?” Her pale cheeks went rosy. “Ionized radiation?”

  There were many types of radiation spanning the vast electromagnetic spectrum. From harmless non-iodized varieties—radio waves, light waves, ultraviolet waves—to increasingly lethal frequencies, such as x-rays and gamma rays. Ionized radiation.

  “No-no,” Stan assured. “Non-iodized. Entirely safe.”

  Ariel did not appear convinced, and he added, “Trust me, we’ve no risk of getting Curiéd.”

  Tia winced to recall the fate of famed radiology pioneer, Madame Marie Curie. Her unwitting exposure to X-rays had resulted in fatal aplastic anemia. Ariel also caught the reference, face souring.

  They got back to work.

  “Whatever happened here yesterday,” Tia said as they loaded the mattress, “I agree, it poses no threat. Surely no black hole. But I’d like to see for myself.”

  She nevertheless doubted the situation would repeat. Too many variables. And best it didn’t, it would only prolong their farewell.

  Tia stole a look at Ariel. After all this time, Tia still bristled to know the torment the poor girl once endured over her appearance. A victim of ignorance, superstition, and unusual genetics. Before Ariel’s makeover, people regularly mistook for albino. In fact, she was leucistic. An even rarer condition. The distinction, Tia came to learn, was that leucistics weren’t entirely devoid of melanin, the pigment responsible for skin and hair color. Ariel’s complexion beneath her makeup wasn’t pink, it was very pale. Lustrous, in fact, like fine alabaster. And her hair, brows and lashes weren’t white, but platinum.

  But her most remarkable feature, now hidden by blue contacts, were her eyes. Listed on her driver’s license as blue, they were actually a radiant bluish silver. Unlike anything Tia had ever seen. Mesmerizing. Yet sadly, in the view of some, ominous and disturbing.

  Tia’s thoughts drifted back to when first she met Ariel, late spring three years ago…

  New to TPC at the time, Tia had stuck her neck out to lease the farmhouse on her own. She was pressed to find roommates, trolling TPC’s website for prospects, and had attracted two fellow new-hires, Stan and Max, but needed a fourth to meet rent.

  At last, another response straggled in, submitted by an A. Silva. A new UPenn grad just accepted into TPC’s program. Tia had green-lighted “him” sight unseen.

  A few nights later, Tia was alone in the house reading when she heard a tepid rap at the door. There, standing downcast in the porch light, was a slender wraith in a long-sleeve blouse and ankle-length skirt, gleaming hair piled atop her head. One suitcase. The girl spoke in a soft, faltering voice, faint lilt.

  “I’m, I’m Ariel Silva, here about the room.”

  For the briefest moment, Ariel raised her eyes, and Tia froze, fearing the girl was blind. She recovered to invite her in, taking her suitcase—surprisingly light—offering her a seat on the couch. Tia tried to make small talk, getting only “yes ma’ams/no ma’ams” in return, despite asking to be called by name. Finally, Tia showed Ariel around the house and made her comfortable in her room, where she remained even after Max and Stan returned from town.

  Ariel had to have heard them arrive, but came out only when invited, eyes down. She seemed even more ill at ease in the presence of the opposite sex, addressing the men in a mumble as “sir.” Max, being the ass he was, instantly sized her up for a rube. And from that point forward, he held her in contempt.

  Until, that is, a few months later when Ariel underwent her transfiguration.

  Chapter 32

  Friday, October 5, 9:12 am, Talawanda

  They were finishing Ariel’s trailer as Max drove in. He strolled over with pastries and coffee.

  “Gorgeous day,” he said, nodding to see everything packed. “Let’s eat outside.”

  Despite their imminent departure, he sounded cheerful. Were his pupils dilated?

  Ariel went with Tia and Stan to wash up, returning to see Max on the far side of the big oak, spreading a blanket. She was aghast. Though opposite from where the vortex had appeared, it was too close for comfort. As if the tree could shield them from radiation, or the myriad other threats a singularity might pose. And to her chagrin, Tia and Stan didn’t hesitate to join him.

  She bit her lip and took the corner of the blanket farthest from harm’s way, hoping against hope the vortex would reappear to give them all a fright and show Max up. Though her friends slighted her concerns, Ariel was certain what she’d seen was no mirage. If not an actual black hole, could it be a nascent black hole? A pre-black hole? In which case, might today’s power boost push it past tipping point into a full-blown black hole? Or make it unstable or explosive? No telling what might happen should it appear again. Nor even where it might pop up.

  Ariel fretted as the clock ticked and the others sat comfortable in their physics, nibbling coffee cake, chatting as if on a picnic. She felt marginalized. At last, when time drew near, she excused herself to chain Newton, then headed for the tree, taking shelter behind. She crouched with her back to her friends, peeking out at the spot where the cloud had formed yesterday.

  The others joined her, paying her fears some credit, at least. They stacked their heads atop hers like a totem pole, and she told them where to look—toward the house, twenty feet from the tree under its outstretched limbs, five feet in the air.

  Stan raised a wristwatch thick with technology, and began a countdown, and Ariel’s pulse quickened. When he reached zero, she clenched and held her breath.

  Nothing. An occasional brown leaf spiraling earthward.

  A minute passed, and everyone raised up. Max paid Ariel an I told you so glance, and she exhaled—only to contract again as Newton began to growl. Suddenly she felt woozy, neck and arm hairs bristling.

  “Did you feel that?” she asked the others.

  “What?” they replied.

  Then out of clear skies came rumbling thunder. Newton went wild at the end of his chain, yet soundlessly. The thunder sharpened to a piercing trill,
warbled, died off, and an inky swirl materialized midair. Same spot as before, but from the opposite vantage point. Quickly the swirl expanded into an angry, two-foot knot.

  Stan and Tia gasped, and Max muttered, “Holy shit.”

  If not a budding black hole, a damn-compelling facsimile. Like staring down the funnel of some cosmic tornado, ominous in its hush. Ariel’s sense of vindication gave over to fear, and she glanced at the others to see gawking statues.

  To her astonishment, Max straightened and left the protection of the tree, heading for the vortex. The others cried their objections, but he paid no heed, approaching to within feet.

  Ariel shot Tia and Stan anxious looks, and Stan raised his watch, punching buttons, fanning its dial at the whirling cloud.

  “No radioactivity,” he reported with surprise, “At all. Not even normal background count.”

  They waited. And seeing Max none the worse for whatever else he was exposed to, they crept out to join him. He held his phone to the vortex, taking video.

  Tia whispered as if shouting might upset a delicate balance, “For God’s sake, don’t touch it.”

  Were it a singularity of some kind, even brushing against it could well prove fatal.

  “Interesting,” Max said. “My phone’s got no signal bars. Zero reception.”

  The others checked theirs. Same, and yet a signal tower was visible on a nearby foothill.

  Stan edged behind Max, poking his watch again. “Heavy electrical disturbances,” he said.

  Max raised his palm to the vortex and moved it in a circle, as if testing the burner of a stove. “Nothing. No heat or cold, no suction or breeze.”

  The vortex continued unchanged, gyrating clockwise. Stan took more readings, Tia spoke into her phone recorder, and Ariel switched her phonecam to video. TPC would need all the data possible to confront this worrisome development.

  Feeling braver, Ariel began to circle the whirlpool at wide berth, and noticed something odd. It shifted in aspect, from round to oval.

  “Are you seeing that?” she asked.

  Max looked over. “What?”

  “It’s starting to flatten, like a disc turning sideways.”

  “No change here.”

  Ariel pressed on. From her perspective, the vortex continued waning until the ninety-degree mark, where it shrank to a thin line. One step more, and it vanished altogether, invisible edgewise.

  She advanced again, and the line reappeared, waxing as she reached one-eighty-degrees—same spot where she’d stood yesterday when first encountering it—back to a full circle once more. Her friends stayed on the other side, oak tree behind them, TPC tower looming in the distance.

  Max dropped to a knee, inspecting the vortex from beneath.

  “You’re right,” he said, “it’s two-dimensional, I can—”

  The shrill whine returned to drown him, and Ariel’s heart raced again as she realized, power boost. The final test of TPC’s capacities before the inaugural smashing tomorrow.

  At this moment, massive volts of energy were driving the accelerator to its limits, propelling beams around the vast tunnel in opposing directions, ever faster toward the speed of light. No telling what the added power would do to the vortex, and with Max, Stan and Tia in arm’s reach of it on the opposite side.

  Ariel’s warning cry was lost in the din. Before she could snatch another lungful of air, the whine ceased, and deathly silence prevailed once more. As if eternity had paused to observe.

  And then Ariel felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. Opening like an iris dead-center in the swirl was an aperture, empty as space itself, compressing the vortex outward.

  A black hole.

  She fell to her knees shrieking, girding for the cold vacuum about to engulf them. But the others appeared clueless, calling out to her and rushing over.

  “What happened?” Tia cried.

  Hadn’t they seen? Voice failing, Ariel pointed to the vortex.

  The hole had swollen to the size of a beach ball. The others turned, and gaped.

  Max sputtered, “I-I know what it looks like, but it can’t be.”

  Peeling Ariel’s fingers from his arm, he headed for the hole, the others begging him to stop. He pulled up scant feet away to call back, “An event horizon of some sort, I’m guessing. It’s a bottomless pit in there.” He began to circle, only to brake and cry, “There’s no opening on the other side.” He completed his circuit to report, “I’ll be damned, the hole doesn’t penetrate!”

  Stan and Tia helped Ariel to her feet, and they edged beside Max, gazing into the void. Ariel felt dumbstruck. It was like staring out a porthole-in-the-air into deep space. The blackest black. Absolute nothingness wrapped in a coil of cloud, roiling and pulsing with power. What secret of the universe had they stumbled upon? Surely the boost phase had reached maximum velocity by now. Yet despite the appearance of the aperture, the vortex seemed no more a threat.

  Ariel leaned in for a closer view, and abruptly the hole snapped shut, everyone jumping back. Then the vortex dissolved, the whine arose and changed to thunder, fading away, and it was over.

  They stared into empty air as normal sounds returned. Birds, a car out on the road, Newton.

  Tia gasped, “What the hell was it?”

  “That hole wasn’t there yesterday,” Ariel said. “At least, not the side I was on. Tell me it isn’t a black hole?”

  For once, Max was speechless.

  Stan removed his glasses and mopped his face. “Some form of singularity, possibly, but no black hole. Or white hole, for that matter. Either would be lethal, especially at this proximity. Perhaps something in-between.”

  Tia rolled the idea around. “A less-risky type of singularity…”

  Ariel wasn’t as knowledgeable about this realm of astrophysics, but understood it in general. Singularities were contact points in the boundaries, known as “membranes,” that separated this universe from others. Perhaps infinite others. A connection to different dimensions. Some singularities were lethal, the most dangerous being black holes and white holes—full-blown breaches in the membranes. Each represented opposite ends of the singularity spectrum. Black holes sucked material out of a universe, white holes, in.

  And bubbling within the cosmic soup between lay a range of singularities thought more stable. These “in-between” singularities included such things as wormholes—safe passageways connecting one universe to another. There were also singularities known as “inter-dimensional aneurisms.” Weak spots in the membranes, more dangerous than wormholes. Ariel knew next to nothing about aneurisms, but had heard banter about them in the TPC lunchroom: Disruptive Singularities, Catastrophic Point Singularities, Symmetry-breaking Singularities, and on.

  Max found his voice. “Whatever we’ve got here, we’ve seen it full power now and it hasn’t harmed so much as a blade of grass. No reason TPC should halt the tests.”

  “Keller has to make that call,” Tia said. “He needs to see our videos—assuming the vortex didn’t distort our recordings.”

  They grouped around their phones, relieved to see the videos intact, in chilling high-def. Even on a small screen, the images were astounding.

  Stan said, “I can’t wait to see Keller’s face when he sees these.”

  Tia replied, “I’m not running that gauntlet at the gate. I say we email them to him.”

  She got no argument, and Stan added, “Then we should put together a proper presentation, at least. This could be a historic footnote.”

  It wouldn’t hurt their résumés.

  Stan and Tia went to fetch laptops, and Ariel and Max returned to the blanket. Max sat with bunched brow, fixated on the spot where the vortex had appeared.

  Ariel asked, “What are you thinking?”

  No answer. Preoccupied or ignoring her, she couldn’t tell. She was used to his fugues, he was often in his own world, a world apart from her, Tia, and Stan. Max had an affliction that he kept in check with meds. But it wasn’t just his disorder
separating them, he had loftier aspirations.

  Tia and Stan returned, and Ariel helped them transfer the videos to their laptops. Together they composed an account of what they’d witnessed: The strange sounds that prefaced the encounter, GPS coordinates where the anomaly materialized, and other detailed descriptions and observations to assist Keller in their absence. All without benefit of Max, who remained distant.

  Stan was ready to send things off. “If I know Keller,” he said, “he’ll have a full crew out here next run. A shame we’re going to miss out.”

  “Keller will come himself,” Tia said. “He won’t know what to make of this.”

  As if she’d struck some tripwire, Max came bursting out of his stupor, startling the others.

  “Exactly,” he cried. “For all we know, this is the find of a lifetime.” He stabbed a forefinger at the empty spot under the tree. “What if it is a singularity? We’re going to just hand it over to Keller like a farewell gift? After he canned us?”

  Their last hours together, and Max was going to ruin it with one of his tantrums.

  “We should be the ones investigating this,” he insisted. “It’s our discovery.”

  “No,” Tia came back hard. “It’s Ariel’s discovery.”

  Max blinked and took a breath. “Okay, yes. It’s Ariel’s discovery. And she’s leaving here empty-handed, going nowhere, just like you and Stan.” He exhaled. “I don’t know what that thing is, but I know this. Minimum, it means white papers. Publication in all the journals. What would that do for your job prospects?”

  No one said anything, his words resonating. None of them had published a thing since coming here, counting on TPC’s experiments for material.

  He continued, intense. “If Ariel’s right, if this is some kind of singularity…”

  He regarded them each in turn:

  Stan. “No more groveling for a TA, you’re looking at a full professorship.”

  Tia. “You’ll have your pick of grants.”

  Ariel. “And to hell with that crap in Ohio, you’ll launch a whole new branch of research. You can write your own ticket.”