Peel raised one eyebrow, as if to say, Show me what, sir?
Bascomb-Coombs smiled. "Doesn't look like much, does it? But the real works are elsewhere, of course, at Lord Goswell's computer facility in Chelmsford. We are hooked into it telephonically, and to answer your question, yes, quite undetectably. I can do from here what I can do at Chelmsford, and nobody will be the wiser."
"If you'll excuse my ignorance, Mr. Bascomb-Coombs, just what is it exactly that you do? I mean, I know about the device, what Goswell has told me of it, and I have seen the results, which are certainly quite impressive, but I'm not up to speed on how it works exactly."
The scientist laughed. "And I doubt seriously I could explain it to you. Turner's Dictum is that "A thing can be told simply if the teller understands it properly," but I'm not sure I entirely understand it myself. And please do not take offense, but I doubt that you have the mathematics and physics to comprehend it if I did have it all. At this stage, my computer is rather like a kitchen match. I can use it to light a fire handily, but I'm not totally conversant with the chemical processes that make it work."
He smiled, and Peel smiled back. Had the man just called him stupid?
"I'll give you a basic lesson, if you want. You are somewhat familiar with ordinary computers?"
"Somewhat."
"Then you know that most computers are Turing engines that use Boolean logic based on binary operations. You have zeros and ones — quantum bits of information called Qubits — and these are the only choices. It is either one or zero, period. In a quantum computer, however, one can get superposition of both at the same time. It doesn't seem reasonable on the face of it, but in quantum parallelism one can use all the possible values of all input registers simultaneously."
Peel nodded, as if he had a fucking clue what the man was talking about.
Bascomb-Coombs went on: "Using Shor's quantum factorization algorithm, one can see that factoring a large number can be done by a QC — quantum computer — in a very small fraction of the time the same number would take using ordinary hardware. A problem that a SuperCray might labor over for a few million years can be done in seconds by my QC. So for a practical matter like code breaking, the QC is vastly superior."
Peel nodded. "If so, why isn't everybody using these QCs?"
Bascomb-Coombs laughed again. "Oh, they would much like to! But it isn't something one whips up in an old mayonnaise jar out in the woodshed. The problem is that the coherent state of a QC is usually destroyed as soon as it is affected by the surrounding environment. What this means is, as soon as you turn it on and try to access it, you destroy it. A bit of a trick to get around that. They've tried all kinds of things over the years: lasers, photon excitation, ion traps, optical traps, NMR, polarization, and even Bulk Spin-Resonance-quantum tea leaves, this last.
"Wineland and Monroe worked out the single quantum gate by trapping beryllium ions. Kimble and Turch polarized photons and did the same thing. NTC had some early success with nuclear magnetic resonance, and Chuang and Gershenfeld applied Grover's algorithm for a 2Q model, using the carbon and hydrogen atoms in a chloroform molecule. But the problem has always been multiplicity and stability. Until my unit."
"How did you manage that, if it is so hard?"
"Because I am smarter than they are," he said. It didn't sound like bragging and, given the results, apparently it wasn't.
"I lost you back when I said 'Qubits,' didn't I?"
"Before that, I'm afraid," Peel admitted.
Bascomb-Coombs smiled. "Don't feel bad, Major. There aren't a handful of physicists in the world who would understand how I've done what I've done, even with the working model in front of them. Your talents lie elsewhere. I shouldn't want to try and knock you about in a dark alley nor go against you on a battlefield."
Peel acknowledged the compliment with a nod. "Quite."
"Anyway, what it all means is that I've got a computer that can do wondrous things, and picking locks is at the top of its list. Short of pulling the plug and removing it from any incoming communications, there isn't a computer on earth I can't break into. Money means nothing when you can enter any vault at will. Military secrets are at our beck. Nobody can hide anything from us."
"Really? Then why aren't you king of the world?"
The man laughed yet again. "I like you, Peel, you are so refreshing after years of mealy-mouthed scientific types. The simple answer is, the computer isn't perfect yet. It has a few glitches, and now and again, it goes down. Somewhere about half the time I use it, actually. So I am loath to waste my up time on frivolous things like money and power — at least until I get it more stable. That's where I'm spending my energies, on the system. Because Goswell owns the physical unit and has it quite well guarded, I can't turn down his requests just yet. But the time is coming. And I'll need men with your skills with me."
Peel thought about the million euros in the Indonesian bank. He was already richer than he'd ever expected. His father, title notwithstanding, had been a land-poor duffer who'd lost even that before he died. A million euros was nothing to sniff at, but if he stuck with this strange character, the chance of more was distinctly possible.
"I am at your service, Mr. Bascomb-Coombs."
"Oh, do call me Peter, Terrance. I'm sure we're going to get along just fine."
Chapter 14
Ruzhyo rode the underground train through the SeaTac airport toward his gate. He was booked on a British Airways 747 to London. He had taken a bus from Mississippi to New Orleans, a Stretch-727 from there to Portland, and a Dash 8 from there to here. Had anybody been able to follow him to Mississippi, they would have seen a similar travel pattern from Las Vegas to Jackson: He had rented a car and driven to Oklahoma City, then caught the first of three short commercial flights south-eastward from there. A pursuer might have expected him to continue east or south, to Miami, say, and instead, he had reversed his direction. Once in London, he would fly to Spain or Italy, from there to India or Russia, and from there, home.
If you were being chased, it was not wise to run in a straight line, especially if the hounds were faster than you.
The train was full, and when it stopped again to load more passengers, Ruzhyo got up from his seat and offered it to a young and very pregnant woman carrying two bags. He and Anna had wanted children, but that was not to be.
The woman thanked him and sat. He held onto a railing and watched the wall pass in front of the windows.
The train stopped, the passengers alighted, and Ruzhyo headed for his gate. He was hours early, but he had nowhere else he wanted to go. He would find a sandwich shop; a bathroom to attend to his needs; a place to sit and perhaps to sleep. In the military, one learned to sleep whenever the opportunity arose, and sleeping in a comfortable chair was easy.
The flight to Heathrow was a direct one, only nine or ten hours, and he was booked in the center cabin, as would be a man traveling on business. He wore a medium-price suit, a pale blue shirt and tie, and carried a briefcase full of magazines and blank paper to augment the image. He was just another corporate wheel in the machine, nobody to look twice at.
British Airways wasn't as bad as some, certainly much better than any of the Russian or Chinese internal airlines. His last flight on the English carrier had been dull enough, save for the touchdown. The big jet hit the runway hard enough to deploy the oxygen masks and to shower passengers with luggage from the overhead bins. No one had been hurt, but it had been something of a surprise. Perhaps they had been letting the stewardess practice her landings. Or maybe the pilot had fallen asleep.