Heaven's Gate Read online

  He ran through the last set of equations he’d written, feeling they were somehow familiar. He’d never been able to recreate the series he’d been working on when the call came from the hospital; when he had finally returned to work, his desk had been cleared off by a well-meaning teaching assistant, much to his dismay.

  Actually, devastation would have been a more accurate description of his reaction. If Lucas hadn’t pulled him out of reach of the hapless assistant, Michael would have strangled her.

  Tonight, though, it seemed like his memory was sharpening, and the numbers and variables began to flow again, bringing him closer and closer to the formulation he’d previously attempted. When he began to reconcile the two sides of the equation, he could feel the adrenaline kick in, his mind working faster.

  You are so close.

  Michael froze, his mechanical pencil poised on the paper.

  It was the voice again. The voice in his head that always spoke up when he did his best work, the voice he hadn’t heard since the night Elise died. That year in high school physics, when he’d first heard it in his head, he’d fancied it was the voice of Einstein himself, choosing Michael, of all people, to finish his great work of unification. Later, he’d known that was pure imagination and that the “voice” he heard was his own inner fan club, encouraging him to pursue the intellectual work that only a few of his friends could even begin to understand. Hearing it again tonight, he smiled.

  “I’m right where I need to be, aren’t I?” Michael asked the empty lab.

  No answer came back to him, but as he turned his attention again to the numbers, the edge of his vision caught the Kirlian photograph he’d already pushed aside. There was something about it . . .

  There . . .

  Michael unfocused his eyes and let his peripheral vision scan the photo, trying to see the big picture of the aura, instead of the details he usually picked out. Then it struck him what was different about the photo. Under the intense light of his halogen lamp, there seemed to be an anomaly—a disturbance—along the edges of the magnetic aura, something he hadn’t picked out before.

  Yes, the big picture, his inner voice said. Look at the big picture.

  Michael held the photo away from him, testing to see if the anomaly was only a trick of the lamp.

  It was still there.

  And suddenly, Michael knew what he was seeing.

  He quickly spread out the stack of Kirlians, searching for the same anomaly in each one, finding them exactly where he suspected he would—not in the aura itself, but in the background.

  He spun in his chair to face his computer screen and rapidly typed in the commands to access the results of the data analyses of the photographs. He frantically scanned the long columns of numbers until he found what he was looking for—a recurring, tiny blip of data that surfaced away from the main body of the aura measurements. Continuing to scroll through the reports, he found it repeated at the same point in every analysis, virtually buried in the background of the numerical sequences. All this time, he and Lucas had focused on the auras themselves, not the area beyond them. The area beyond in the black background.

  The black background with the anomaly that looked and behaved like the faintest echo of a wave.

  The wave of an eleventh dimension.

  Suddenly, the numbers and variables he’d already worked a thousand times seemed to reassemble themselves in new combinations, in sequences that now displayed a simple elegance that explained the anomalies in the data and photographs. And then his brain took off, and Michael was barely able to keep up with the equations pouring from his pencil.

  Chapter Two

  “I gotta tell you,” the bleary-eyed, shaggy-haired man confided to the woman on the other side of the table as he finished off his third beer, “some of those readings were just freaking bizarre.”

  Lifting his empty glass, he nodded at the waitress at the bar for another drink. It was the end of one more long week working the Strings Project in Carilion’s lab and he wasn’t planning to get up tomorrow till at least noon. The beer was cold, the booth was cozy, and the woman sitting across from him was hanging on his every word.

  Of course, that was her job—Phoebe Dauwalter was the science editor for World, arguably the most influential magazine on the planet, and he was giving her the scoop that would land her in the ranks of immortal journalists, and himself, Dr. Lucas Scranton, in the pop-culture world of the obscenely rich and famous.

  He smiled to himself, waiting for his beer. He’d always wanted to be a physics rock star, kind of like that mathematician in the film Jurassic Park. Only he had something even bigger than reconstituted dinosaurs to tell the world about: he was part of the team that was a step away from formulating the physics theory that was going to blow away every other physics theory known to man. The theory that had eluded the world’s greatest scientific minds for centuries.

  The One Theory.

  When the One Theory was announced, the world was going to become a different place.

  And he, Lucas Scranton, was going to be right there in the spotlight to help explain to every man, woman, and child how their fundamental understanding of the universe had just gone the way of the dodo. Scrap all the equations and theories that had described the world as it had been known—a world governed by the laws of relativity and quantum mechanics. Instead, there was a brave new universe of untapped, mind-boggling energy and dazzling discoveries out there, just waiting to be unleashed.

  Just waiting until his partner, Dr. Michael Carilion, fit the last pieces of the unification puzzle together into a perfect, unprecedented One Theory.

  Until then, the media frenzy that Phoebe Dauwalter’s article would cause would have to satisfy his rock star ambitions, Lucas conceded. Maybe he could still do The Tonight Show, though. Then, later, after the One Theory was finally published, a PBS special, at least.

  “But the content of these readings really don’t figure into the Strings Project itself, isn’t that what you said, Dr. Scranton?”

  Dauwalter’s voice broke into his reverie. He shook his head, trying to clear away some of the booze-induced haze, and asked her to repeat the question.

  “The readings from the medium—their actual content—aren’t important to the scientific calculations themselves, are they?” the editor asked, shuffling back through the notes she’d taken during their conversation. Apparently finding what she was looking for, she underlined something in her little notebook, then pinned her green eyes on his with an intensity that burned right through Lucas’s beer buzz.

  Man! Lucas thought, mesmerized by the face across the table. Not only was the woman gorgeous, with her sleek black hair and high cheekbones—not to mention those emerald eyes of hers—but there was an aura of determination about her that Lucas found irresistibly attractive. He shifted in his seat, suddenly aware that he wasn’t nearly as mentally, or physically, worn out as he’d thought he was. Maybe this meeting would turn out to be the perfect ending to a long week, after all. A slow smile tipped the corners of his lips as he tried to remember where they were in their conversation.

  The woman returned his smile with one of her own, then read back to Lucas the comment he’d made earlier. “It wasn’t the content of what the medium was doing that you were interested in, but the physical phenomena that occurred during the reading. Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said, accepting the refilled glass the waitress handed him. “Thanks.”

  He took a quick sip of the cold beer and watched a thin trail of condensation drip from the bottom of his glass onto the top of the small table. When he set his drink down, he hoped that Ms. Editor couldn’t tell it was taking a real effort for him to keep the conversation on the Strings Project, and not on what plans she might have for later in the evening.

  “Our lab protocol focused on gathering data from the radiation fluctuations that our equipment recorded when the medium was working,” he slowly explained. “We also ran continuous multi-wavel
ength cameras that filmed the auras around her, so we could match up the video, data, and audio streams to identify when and how the auras shifted.”

  He drew a finger through the puddle of water that had pooled next to his beer and looked directly into Phoebe Dauwalter’s emerald eyes. “The idea is to investigate the interactions of the human body’s magnetic field with other sources of . . . input, for lack of a better word.”

  “Input?” the editor asked.

  “Like I said, for lack of a better word . . . at this point.”

  The woman’s smile faded and Lucas thought he could feel, rather than see, her withdrawing from the conversation.

  Lucas gave himself a mental kick in the head.

  He couldn’t blow this interview. He needed to give her the right words—not “input,” but “information.” He had to tell her exactly what he and Michael suspected was the real source of energy flux, or else she was going to walk out of this bar, convinced she’d wasted her evening on some self-important junior researcher who had delusions of grandeur.

  Lucas couldn’t blame her. Half the time, he’d have to admit that even to his own ears, the whole thing still sounded more like science fiction or fantasy than hard scientific investigation.

  Yet, despite his intention to give this woman the scoop of her career, Lucas was having trouble spelling it all out for her. He briefly wondered if it was some crazy kind of guilt kicking in. He’d spent the better part of the last three days rationalizing why he should tip off the World to what was going on in Michael’s lab, despite his partner’s demand that they keep the Strings Project under wraps a while yet.

  “We are at a crisis point here, Michael,” Lucas had reminded his partner again just yesterday. “The whole program is on the verge of collapse. The money’s almost gone. And we had two more lab assistants leave for other assignments with a lot more job security than we can offer right now.”

  “This isn’t about job security, Lucas,” Michael had sighed, his hands twisting and turning that old Rubik’s Cube that never seemed out of the man’s reach. “If our people can’t see that, see what we’re trying to accomplish here, then maybe they’re better off somewhere else, anyway.”

  “But we’re not better off,” Lucas had pointed out for what had seemed the hundredth time. “We need these particular assistants, and we need them right now. Otherwise, we’re going to have to train new personnel to bring them up to speed, and we can’t afford that, Michael. Not now.”

  For a moment or two, Michael had continued to twist the cube in silence.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?”

  Lucas had started to protest, but Michael cut him off.

  “The team is questioning my ability, aren’t they? They’re not convinced I’ve put Elise’s death behind me. They’re wondering if I can still lead this team.”

  Lucas hadn’t answered Michael. He hadn’t confirmed his partner’s fears, though Michael had to know that his erratic behavior after Elise’s murder had severely handicapped his team’s confidence in his leadership. Instead, Lucas had faulted the failing money for the impasse they were rapidly approaching with the program.

  And yet, if Lucas was truly being honest with himself, he also knew that all those justifications paled in comparison to the personal benefits he envisioned for himself as the physicist who broke the story.

  He wanted to be a pop culture icon.

  He wanted to be rich and famous.

  Marshalling his thoughts, he tried again to explain to the science editor.

  “The physical data clearly demonstrates that something is affecting the medium’s aura during a reading,” he said. “Our theory is that some energy source of an as-yet-unknown origin is making itself felt in these experiments.”

  He lifted his glass in declaration.

  “Our hypothesis is that the source has its origin in the eleventh dimension. And once we find the eleventh dimension, we not only have the source, we’ve also got the One Theory of Everything.”

  Dauwalter’s eyes searched his. He couldn’t be positive, but he was fairly certain he saw the pupils of her eyes dilate. He’d recaptured her interest.

  “Because then you’ve resolved the two problems of string theory?” she asked, her voice in a low whisper.

  Lucas smiled. The woman had done her homework. She was sharp, intelligent, driven, and she understood his language.

  And he liked her voice when it sounded like that. And he really liked the intensity of those green eyes of hers when he had her complete attention.

  Yes, meeting Phoebe Dauwalter for a beer tonight had been an excellent idea.

  Maybe Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show wasn’t enough, Lucas considered. Maybe he should be thinking the Today Show, too. With Phoebe Dauwalter breaking this story, he and Michael were on their way to becoming the newest stars in the physics firmament.

  He returned his attention to the editor. “You hit the proverbial nail on the head, Ms. Dauwalter. Make the mathematical model that pinpoints the eleventh dimension, find proof of the same, and bang! Unification. And right now, Dr. Carilion and I are in the home stretch.”

  Chapter Three

  For a split second, Phoebe stopped breathing.

  Was it really possible?

  Was this half-drunk junior researcher and his team truly closing in on the One Theory of Everything?

  Yes, she’d heard a few whispers in the last year that there was a high-powered physics project going on at the local university, but she’d never been able to ferret out any details. Finally, she’d given it up as somebody’s pipe dream for more funding. Even while she was driving to the bar to meet Dr. Lucas Scranton tonight, she had convinced herself that her boss, Drake Lamont, the owner of the World, must have misunderstood the phone caller, and that rather than a big breakthrough, the physicist had only background information to share.

  Now, however, the thought that the most sought-after formulation of physical laws since Einstein published his work on relativity was going to be unveiled right here in town was mind-bending. What were the chances that the search for the Holy Grail of physics was about to succeed right under her journalistic nose? And that she, Phoebe Dauwalter, science editor for the World, would be the reporter to announce it?

  “Are you saying,” she asked slowly, carefully choosing each word, “that you have evidence of the eleventh dimension?”

  Scranton leaned across the table and answered her question with a whisper. “It’s at the tip of our fingers, Ms. Dauwalter. The ‘input’ I mentioned is actually hard data.”

  “Wait a minute,” Phoebe said, abruptly leaning back in the booth.

  Scranton blinked and Phoebe noticed his eyes drifting down her chest.

  Phoebe studied the man sitting opposite her. He was definitely drinking too much, but he clearly knew his science, and she’d noted that his body language was screaming high-voltage tension when he had first walked over to her table an hour ago. She’d figured then that he was nervous about breaking the story because he knew how big it was and what it could mean for his career, not to mention the worldwide scientific community.

  She’d also guessed that he was well aware of the professional repercussions he would suffer from his colleague, Dr. Carilion, when the physicist found his well-guarded project splashed across the pages of World.

  Yet Scranton was the one who had called in, and he had kept his interview appointment. It wasn’t Phoebe’s problem if the man was jeopardizing his relationship with his partner or his position on the research team. Phoebe was just doing her job, taking the opportunity that had fallen in her lap—an opportunity that, if she played her cards right, might just launch her into the stratosphere of celebrity journalists and give her a crack at that Pulitzer. Maybe that’s what Scranton figured he was doing, too—taking a once-in-a-lifetime shot at making all his dreams come true.

  From across the table, Phoebe watched Scranton carefully, registering the moment his interest slipped from professional to personal. Hi
s reaction to her didn’t surprise her. As a matter of fact, she’d been waiting for it. In her eight years of working in the media, she’d already turned down her fill of proposals—indecent and otherwise—from colleagues and the people she interviewed.

  Instead of viewing her looks as an obstacle, though, Phoebe had put them to work along with her journalistic talents and quickly ascended the ladder of her profession, landing a job with World as the magazine’s science correspondent at the ripe old age of twenty-six. Thrilled with her success and determined to please her new boss, Phoebe had devoured every scientific journal she could get her hands on, intent on mastering two things—the newest developments in research and a clear idea of where that research was headed.

  As a result, her hard work and intuition had produced a goldmine of important features that had earned her not only the admiration and respect of her journalistic colleagues, but promotions at the magazine as well. Within two years, she’d landed in the editor’s chair and set her sights on her next objective: a Pulitzer Prize. That was why, just a few hours ago, when Drake had passed along to her Scranton’s phone message, her heart had almost stopped when she saw the words “One Theory of Everything” scribbled on the note.

  With a story like that to break, the Pulitzer was only a breath away.

  Now, after almost an hour with the physicist sitting at the other side of the little table, Phoebe was thinking that her excitement had definitely been premature.

  So far, Scranton hadn’t revealed the big breakthrough he’d hinted at in his message, and the stories he was telling her about a medium in the lab were pretty incredible, if not downright unbelievable, and completely useless for her purposes. He’d told her about readings that located family heirlooms lost for generations and double-blind experiments that revealed heart-wrenching personal information. The medium had even foretold the accidental death of a relative of one of the lab employees; Scranton said his colleague was so shaken when her uncle died in a car crash a week later that she refused to return to work until the medium experiments were finished.