Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(5)

Jack paused to remove a chess set from the box, setting it on the floor between them. Mark watched closely as Jack removed several pieces, arranging them into an endgame in which each side had four pieces.

White had its king trapped on the first row by the black rook and black had its king similarly limited to movement on the eighth row. Black had another rook and pawn while white had a queen and pawn remaining.

Jack spun the board so that Heather played white.

“What are the odds white wins?” he asked.

“Whose move?” Heather asked.

“White.”

“Checkmate in one move.”

“What are the odds of white winning?”

“One hundred percent,” Heather said.

“Show me.”

Mark saw Heather glance at him and shrug, as if to say, This is too easy. “If you insist.”

As she reached for the white queen, her hand accidently touched the white pawn. Heather froze, then reached for the queen.

“You touched the pawn. By rule, you must move it.” Jack grinned.

“Accidental touches don’t count.”

“You touched the pawn and lingered. That counts as an intentional touch.”

Heather frowned. Mark could tell she was confused about what had just happened. A winning move had just become a losing move. She had reached for the queen, but something had distracted her. Mark saw a light dawn as she swung toward her friend.

“Jennifer!”

Jack laughed. “Before you get angry with Jennifer, I want you all to think about what just happened here. The most talented savant mind on the planet just calculated the odds of winning a simple chess endgame at 100 percent, an absolute certainty. But she lost. Why?

“I prearranged for Jennifer to nudge Heather’s subconscious when she least expected such interference, forcing her to accidently bump the white pawn. I did it to teach you the most important lesson you’ll ever get. Before I let you off early today, I want to burn this into your minds.

“Don’t trust anyone, not even your best friends. Love them, but never trust them completely. At critical times, they can be influenced to do things you don’t want. Mark would throw away his life to save Heather, even though she’d hate him for it. Heather would do the same for him. In your own ways you would all betray each other, just like Jennifer betrayed Heather in this little game.”

Mark’s face clouded. “Wait just a minute! Jennifer didn’t betray her.”

“No,” Jennifer said, giving Mark a thankful look. “I didn’t.”

“Oh, you had good reason,” Jack continued. “I manipulated you by telling you it was a critical part of the lesson I’m teaching, but you still betrayed her by making her lose. Given the right reasons you would all do the same. Remember it.

“And remember this. No victory is certain. No situation is hopeless. When you find yourselves in a hopeless situation, change the rules.”

“You mean cheat,” Mark said.

Jack grinned. “Like the devil himself.”





President Leonard Jackson stared across the conference table at Dr. Rodger Dalbert, the scientist meeting his gaze with an unflinching calm that belied the nature of the briefing he had just presented. No one on the National Security Council spoke, an event almost as unusual as the subject of the briefing. But maybe it was a sign that they’d begun to get used to his leadership style. At least, that’s how he chose to interpret it.

“So let me get this straight,” President Jackson said. “Dr. Stephenson rejected our request for his help in return for my commuting his sentence to time already served.”

“That is correct. He wants a full pardon, a public apology from you, as president of the United States, for the grievous errors that resulted in his imprisonment, and full reinstatement of his security clearance. In addition he wants to be appointed special scientific envoy to CERN and to be placed in charge of the November Anomaly Project.”

The secretary of state hissed. “Pretentious bastard.”

President Jackson held up his hand to quiet the expressions of outrage that echoed around the table.

“There’s one other thing,” Dr. Dalbert continued, fanning out several pages filled with scribbled notes. “You may recall that on my initial visit to Dr. Stephenson’s jail cell a week ago, I left him with a number of papers describing the measurements taken by the ATLAS detector. At the end of my subsequent visit yesterday, after making all his demands, Dr. Stephenson handed me these pages filled with handwritten equations.”

“And?” the president asked.

“And they are nothing short of incredible. I have run these by the top scientists on the ATLAS program and they were stunned. Given rudimentary information and with only pencil and paper, Dr. Stephenson produced a mathematical model of the anomaly that is far more accurate than the project physicists have been able to generate using all their supercomputer simulations. And he did it in less than a week.”

The president leaned forward so that his palms pressed flat on the table. “Are you going to tell us what the paper predicts?”

“The anomaly is gradually spiraling into instability.” Dr. Dalbert took a deep breath. “We have nine months, two weeks, and three days until it reaches the tipping point.”

“Which means?”