“The Titcher are a sentient race that has the ability to open gates and invades through them, colonizing the world beyond,” Weaver said, looking at the screen that showed about half the Cabinet. “The Mreee have been fighting them for about fifty years. They have three gates, including the one that connects to us. One that the Titcher opened, one that was opened by the Nitch and the one that they opened, using technology that the Nitch sold them, to us. Nyarowlll is something like a natural scientist; they haven’t really separated out physics, biology and chemistry yet. She’s the closest thing they have to an expert on gate technology and alien technology. She wasn’t really willing to discuss the military situation but it seems the Titcher are well established on the Mreee’s world and they are trying everything they can to stop them. The weapons they get from the Nitch are apparently really powerful, but the Titcher forces, once they’re established, produce immense fighting biologicals and millions of those dogs and thorn-throwers. I think we’ve only seen what they can fit through a gate.”
“And if they overrun the Mreee?” the national security advisor asked. “Then they’ll be attacking two gates?”
“That’s right, ma’am, but that’s not all,” Weaver said. “I was asking Nyarowlll about gate tech and she was puzzled by our experience. They’ve only been able to open a couple of gates and it takes the tech they get from the Nitch who are getting it from… I can’t even begin to pronounce it, ma’am. From the Fivverockpit. But the point is, she didn’t know why ours were just opening and they’d only had contact with the Nitch and the Titcher before.”
“We’ve had two more open,” the President said. “One in south Georgia that is spouting out lava and another in Boca Raton that is just a disaster.”
“Excuse me?” Weaver said.
“Everyone within fifty miles of Boca Raton is dead or hopelessly insane,” the director of Homeland Security said, painfully. “Everyone. Millions of people. We have no idea why or what is causing it.”
“And before you ask, no, you are not going to Boca Raton,” the national security advisor said. “There’s a line you just can’t cross. A recon plane that was sent in crashed, anyone crossing the line goes insane. And it’s a line from the reports we’re getting. There should be a file there called Enigma Site; see if you can find it.”
Weaver moved around the Top Secret files scattered, against regulation, all over the desk at the communications center and found the one marked Enigma. He opened it up and looked at the satellite photos.
“All there is is a gray blotch,” he said.
“Indeed,” the national security advisor replied. “A gray blotch that is some sixty meters wide, appears to be about one hundred meters high and does not cast a shadow.”
“Nobody is coming out except those at the very edge,” the Homeland Security director continued. “And all we can do with them is put them in straightjackets and sedate them. Psychiatrists hold out hope that with heavy medication they can get some of them back to a semblance of normal. But it’s only a hope.”
“Are they saying anything?” Weaver asked.
“Just ravings about formless shapes and huge shambling mounds,” the national security advisor said. “And most of them aren’t even saying that. Just screaming.”
“Jesus,” Weaver muttered. “Well, trading with Mreee is going to be hard. We might be able to get some weapons from them, thirdhand from the Fivverockpit, but I’m not sure they’ll be worthwhile. I’m not sure, frankly, what they can give us. They don’t have many of those teleportation belts and not nearly enough of the weapons. But we’ve got all sorts of knowledge that would help them and that they really need. And I submit that ensuring that we don’t have one more gate spitting Titcher is probably worth whatever we give them.”
“Any idea why the gates are opening, yet?” the President asked. “Or where they will open?”
“No, sir,” Dr. Weaver admitted. “But I’ve been running around from one fire to the next and haven’t really been able to give it much study. That’s next on my list.”
“When did you sleep, last, Doctor?” the national security advisor asked.
“Sleep?” he said. “A couple of days ago. But I’m okay, I can go for a while without it. I’ll probably get some tonight.”
“Okay, we’ll talk tomorrow,” the President said. “Let’s hope that another gate doesn’t open between now and then.”
The lab was now in a trailer and Garcia was installed in front of a computer, looking at random scrabbles of white on black that Weaver recognized as particle tracks.
“Talk to me, Garcia,” the doctor said, collapsing onto a computer chair.
“The gate seems to be generating one boson every forty-seven minutes,” Garcia said. “If they’re what is causing the gates we should have over a hundred of them by now. But the readings from Eustis show that while there’s some muon emissions, there’s no boson formation.”
“Nyarowlll said that gates can only form at ‘thin’ spots,” Weaver said. “Although they can open to them from anywhere. I wonder what ‘thin’ spots means? Is that where the bosons are stopping?”
“They’ve been increasing in mass as well,” Garcia said. “And they seem to be generating in random directions except that some seem to be following the same path as previous bosons.”
Weaver spent a little time figuring out how to pull up the course tracks on his own system, then studied them for a while. There was a pattern there but he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination. He pulled up a pattern recognition program and fed a couple in and after a while it spat out some equations that he recognized as fractal generation. Taking the course tracks as shown and entering the equations gave him a complex fractal pattern for each of the bosons. Each was different but it spread out widely and in an apparently, but not truly, illogical fashion. Last he brought up a terrain mapping program and overlaid some of the fractals on it.
“Got it,” he said.
“What?” Garcia asked, yawning. “You know it’s two o’clock in the morning, right? And you’ve been working on that for four hours?”
“I guess,” Weaver said. “The thing is we can determine where the bosons are going, now, and when they’ll arrive at various points on their travels. And I think I can determine, based on what limited data we have, where they’ll stop.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Garcia asked, sliding his chair over.
“No,” Weaver said. “Look at this track, A-4, generated about an hour after you got the instruments up; thanks by the way.”
“No problem,” Garcia replied.
“Zig, zag, zag, seventeen degree skew turn, zag, increase in size of moment by a fraction and repeat. Run that through the equation, superimpose and, voila, passes perfectly through Eustis, Florida, after going in a vaguely circular direction past Sanford and Daytona Beach. Doesn’t quite match up with Jules Court but damned close, close enough for these instruments and this map.”
“What about the rest of them?” Garcia asked.
“I’m mostly backtracking at this point,” Weaver said. “I think the Boca Raton boson was B-14. And am I imagining things or are they increasing in mass?”
“They’re increasing in mass,” Garcia said. “Or charge, not sure which at the moment.”
“Charge,” Weaver said. “Now it’s starting to make sense.” He brought up the computer again and started plugging in numbers, pulling them up from the data from the instruments. “I need to do a field experiment. Go find somebody with a Humvee.”