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“Reasonable doubt,” Haviland said. “Let’s think about what it means in this case. Jacob Kelley held the gun. This we can prove. He was angry at Mr. Vanderhall and wanted revenge. This we will also prove. You will hear how Mr. Vanderhall attacked Mr. Kelley’s wife. You will hear about Mr. Kelley’s history of violence and rage, especially when those he loves are threatened. And finally, you will hear about how Mr. Kelley followed his victim to an underground bunker and there shot and killed him. I submit to you that there is no reasonable doubt in my mind, nor will there be in yours once the evidence is presented, that Jacob Kelley”—out came the pointing finger, yet again—“with full control of his senses, did intentionally and willfully take the life of a fellow human being.”

Haviland sat down, nodding and looking pleased with himself. The gesture looked choreographed to me, and I hoped it did to the jurors as well.

“Thank you, Mr. Haviland,” the judge said. “Mr. Sheppard?”

Terry rose to his feet ponderously, as if suffering from painful joints. “Mark this day on your calendar,” he said. His voice had suddenly grown a Texas drawl that hadn’t been there before. “This is the day when a defense attorney agreed with the prosecution. Everything Mr. Haviland said was correct.”

He bent at the waist as if he were going to sit down. Despite my determination not to show my feelings in the courtroom, my jaw literally dropped open, and for a split second I thought that was all he was going to say. Then he straightened, and with a twinkle in his eye, he said, “Well, almost everything.

“The part about my client killing Mr. Vanderhall wasn’t true, but we’ll go into that in a bit. For the rest, Mr. Haviland pretty much nailed it. I am going to cover a lot of science in my side of the testimony, and some of it can get a bit complicated. The difference is that, unlike Mr. Haviland, I think you can handle it.

“Mr. Haviland seems to believe that you’re not smart enough to understand science. He wants to spoon-feed you only the bits he thinks you can grasp. Personally, I find that kind of condescension offensive, but he’s entitled to his opinions. What he’s not entitled to do is withhold from you all the facts of the case. He’s not entitled to decide that there are some facts you’re not qualified to understand.

“Mr. Haviland apparently thinks that the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who can comprehend the really difficult things and those who can’t. And he’s already decided that you’re in that second category. Well, I think that you can understand the evidence in this case. I’m going to give it all to you, not just the parts Mr. Haviland thinks you can follow.

“At the end of the day, I think you’ll agree with me that not only is there reasonable doubt that my client was responsible for Mr. Vanderhall’s death, but there is good reason to believe he had nothing to do with it at all.”

CHAPTER 3

UP-SPIN

Elena clutched the gyroscope and stared Brian down. I couldn’t think of any scientific explanation for what Brian had just done. A gyroscope stays upright because of its angular momentum. Ideally, it would never fall, since the torque that gravity supplies is not sufficient to offset its gyroscopic inertia. In real life, however, friction gradually erodes the rotation, causing it to precess more and more, until finally the rotation degrades and gravity takes hold.

This left one of two options. Either Brian had managed to eliminate any appreciable friction from our tabletop—not to mention air resistance—or he had a way to inject more energy into the system without touching the gyroscope, thus overcoming the effects of the friction. I couldn’t think of any way he could do either of those things.

“Okay, I give up,” I said. “How did you do it?”

Brian looked grave. “They showed me. The quantum intelligences.”

“I see. The little fairies are spinning the gyroscope?” I tried not to let the cynicism creep into my voice, but it was hard.

“Of course not,” he snapped. “It’s ground state energy. The energy of a single particle’s spin. It never stops. It’s an infinite source of power.”

I hesitated, finding it hard to believe, but at the same time hard to discount the evidence of the gyroscope. “So you took a feature of the quantum world and made it apply in the larger world,” I said.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Brian said quietly. “Gonna change the world.”

“If it were real, that would be a technology worth trillions of dollars,” I said. “Is that why you’re here? Are there people chasing you, trying to get this from you?”

“They’re chasing me,” he said, “but they’re not people.”

I threw up my hands. “You’d better start talking sense.”

“One more example, then,” he said. He reached under the table, and suddenly there was a Glock 46 in his hand, the barrel pointing at Elena.

I was on my feet in an instant, my chair toppling over behind me. I held my hands up, palms out. “Put it down,” I said. “Brian, listen to me.”

Elena stared into the gun’s barrel, motionless, hardly breathing. “Don’t do this,” she whispered.

“It won’t hurt you,” Brian said. “The bullet will just diffract around you.”

“You’re talking crazy,” I said. “Look at me.” He didn’t move. “Look at me!” I shouted. He looked. “It’s a bullet, not an electron,” I said. “If you pull the trigger, it will kill her. You don’t want that.”

He stood. “You won’t believe me unless I show you.”

I started to ease around the edge of the table toward him. “I do believe you,” I said. “Let’s just sit down, and you can tell us all about it.”

“No, you don’t. You call them fairies and make fun of me. But they’re real, Jacob. I’m not going to hurt anybody. I just want to prove it to you.”

“Point the gun somewhere else, then,” I said. “Point it at me.”

“It won’t hurt her,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

I grew up in South Philadelphia, no stranger to violence. My father was a petty thief and a drunk who died in prison before I was two. I had two uncles, my mother’s brothers, who took an interest in my life. They were boxers, mostly the illegal, no-holds-barred type, and they taught me how to fight. I was red-haired and freckled in a mostly Italian neighborhood. I did well in school, though I tried to hide it. I learned early in life that on the street smart didn’t matter for much. I was only as good as my fists.

Besides, it felt good to fight. I was angry all the time, angry at my mother for drinking instead of working, angry at the men she brought home, angry at my father for dying, angry at my teachers for telling me how much potential I had if I would only apply myself. Striking out with my fists relieved some of that pressure, put me in control. Nobody could tell Uncle Sean and Uncle Colin what to do, and I wanted to be just like them.

By the time I was thirteen, I was boxing in kids’ leagues, but it was just a sport, with gloves and rules and manners. I was bigger than most kids my age by then, and I was constantly getting cited for punching too soon, or too late, or in the wrong part of the body. They weren’t the rage-fueled battles that my uncles’ matches were, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of blood.

By that age, I knew my uncles were owned men. They were deeply in debt to bosses in suits who quietly ran the books and manipulated the outcomes. They couldn’t stop fighting, not if they wanted to stay alive. Even so, I knew that was my future. It was the only thing that mattered that I was good at. One day, the bosses would own me, and I’d never get out either.

Then when I was fifteen, Uncle Sean was killed, and everything changed. An opponent kicked him repeatedly in the head when he was down, hard enough to push his brain stem out through the base of his skull. He died on the floor of the ring in vomit and sawdust. No one even called the hospital. The bosses disposed of his body quietly; I don’t know how. I aged ten years that month, and suddenly the thought of staying in that neighborhood and that life was unbearable.