Hendrix - The Labyrinth Key

Contents

PRELUDE:
INCANDESCENT BLISS

ONE
DOUBTING THOMAS JEFFERSYNTH

TWO
CHIMERICULTURE

THREE
MUTUAL ASSURANCES

FOUR
GDELIAN LOVE KNOT

FIVE
UNDULATIONS

SIX
CONFESSIONS AND CONUNDRUMS

SEVEN
PENETRANCE

EIGHT
SYMMETRY

NINE
GETAWAYS

TEN
THE FLOUR OF HIS BONES

ELEVEN
SEMPERIUM

TWELVE
INFINITE REGRESS OF GODS AND MACHINES

THIRTEEN
DIAMOND-SILK COCOON

FOURTEEN
SCARED SACRED

FIFTEEN
ANOTHER PATH, IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE

P RAISE FOR H OWARD V. H ENDRIX AND THE LABYRINTH KEY

HOWARD V. HENDRIX CAN BE CLAIMED AS ONE OF OUR VERY BEST.

Locus

Hendrixs sentences have punch, his plots have points, and he knows his sciencewhat more can one ask of cutting-edge science fiction?

G REGORY B ENFORD , Nebula Awardwinning
author of Timescape

Stephen Hawking meets Tom Clancy! Quantum physics and international intrigue combine in the best novel yet by the finest new SF writer of the last decade.

R OBERT J. S AWYER , Hugo Awardwinning
author of Hominids

If Robert Ludlum or Eric Ambler had written a science fiction novel, then it might have resembled The Labyrinth Key. An intriguing thriller, its also first-rate speculation: a masterful blend of genres. If you are searching for a thought-provoking novel, this shouldnt be missed.

A LAN S TEELE , Hugo Awardwinning
author of Chronospace

With the hip fecundity of Neal Stephenson, the speculative acuity of John Brunner, and the suspense-building audacity of John LeCarr, Howard Hendrix fashions a science fiction thriller thats truly twenty-first century in its tone, subject matter, and style. Hopping from exotic real-world locales to even more outr virtualities, this tale will keep readers guessing till its climax.

P AUL D I F ILIPPO , author of Fuzzy Dice
and A Mouthful of Tongues

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to my agent, Chris Lotts, of the Ralph Vicinanza Agency, for his guidance in keeping the business side of my writing life going. To Steve Saffel at Del Rey, for his extensive editorial comments, questions, and suggestions on the manuscript of The Labyrinth Keyand his valiant attempts to help me wear my research and learning more lightly. To David Brin and Jack McDevitt, for instructive feedback from gentlemen wise in the ways of storytelling.

To Joe Miller, Brad Lyau, and Takayuki Tatsumi, for Fermi Paradox solutions and bwana intellectuals and hypercultural chimeras. To George Slusser, Colin Greenland, Gary Westfahl, and K. Y. Wong, for Eaton Conferences in Riverside, London, and Hong Kong over the years. To Stephen Kearney, for the Fahrney devices. To FBI Special Agents Thomas Anzelmo and Timothy Lester of the Sacramento field office, for clarifying my understanding of the FBIs Legal Attach (legat) program.

To Richard Bagley of Southern California Edison, for the private tour of the powerhouse inside the mountain. To Chris Garcia of the Computer History Museum in Moffett Field, for Pierce codes and tonal keys. To Eugene Zumwalt for fly-fishing lessons. To Cory Doctorow of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, for pointing me to the work of Edward Felten at Princeton regarding the flaws in digital watermarking and the complexities of digital rights management.

And to the readers of my previous novels, who might like to know that Mei-ling Magnus in my second novel, Standing Wave, is the mispronounced namesake and niece of Lu Mei-lin here (ah, the things that end up on the cutting-room floor.).

PRELUDE:

INCANDESCENT BLISS

S HA T IN

Dr. Jaron L. Kwok stood in his favorite red silk robe, glancing out the rain-streaked window of his tenth-story room in the Royal Park Hotel. A lit cigarette smoldered between his fingers, its ash lengthening, forgotten.

In the distance, green tree-covered mountains hung in the mist, behind high-rise New Territory apartment blocks, white-painted concrete eroding to gray. On the nearer side of the Shing Mun River stood the Sha Tin town park, where he had strolled thoughtlessly the day he arrived in Hong Kong, too jet-lagged to do any work.

Turning away from the tall, narrow gap in the thick curtains, Kwok paused while his eyes adjusted slowly to the watery half-light of the room. His gaze lingered on the mess of papers, reports, and scribbled notecard arcana scattered about the bed, then turned to the laptop, virtuality visor, and bottle of Scotch on the nightstand. He cleared a space for himself on the bed. Lying down, he pawed through the masses of hardcopy until he was half buried in paper, a caddisworm cocooning and encasing itself in the detritus of its underwater environment. Disappearing back into his obsessions, his infojunkie tendencies, as Cherise once called them.

Glancing at the bottle of Scotch and the plughead paraphernalia that sat on the night table, then at the cigarette in his hand, Kwok sighed. All the old, bad bachelor habits. All the things he had been, before he met Cherisebefore she loved him, and he cleaned up his act, thinking that was what she wanted.

Was that the way love was supposed to work?

He flicked the ash from his cigarette.

Never been much good at being what other people expect me to be, he thought, drawing deeply on the cigarette, his stare fixing on the ashen orange glow of its tip. No good at all at becoming what other people expect me to become. Not even for Cherise.

He hadnt expected Cherise to be so thoroughly repelled by his decision to take an assignment with the National Security Agency.

He hadnt seen their breakup coming, as much as he should have.

Theirs was still a virtual divorce: not yet final by the letter of the law, though the marriage had long since ended in spirit.

He slugged back a mouthful of the Scotch, felt it burnpeat and asphalt at the back of his throatthen slide numbingly away. He recapped the bottle loosely, dropped it on the bed beside him, and took a drag on his cigarette. Chewing smoke before exhaling, he sat updislodging papersand absently opened the matte black laptop. The screen saver showed a sixteenth-century painting of a grim-faced nobleman, pointing with his left hand at an image of a labyrinth cut into the surface of a parapet, yet looking away from the very thing at which he was pointing.

Kwok brought up the icon for his virtual environment and clicked on it. Propping the virtuality trodeshades up onto his temples, he lay back on the bed. Shifting the shades down over his eyes and clicking them into place, he said a silent prayer of thanks to his masters at the Puzzle Palace. His gear was a plugheads dream-machine: a complete DIVE maskan electrode-ensemble virtuality visor, with prototype binotech implantswirelessly connected to the net via a microkernel in the laptop. Top-line tools of the trade, made available to him for use in service to the NSA.

As his latest virtuality began to cycle up, Jaron couldnt help wondering if what he was doing was in their service anymore. Glancing through the piles of research mounded on and around him, he mused that the obsessions that had led him here had changed. Once upon a time, the quantum crypto race between China and Americathat great and secret struggle of cybertage and infowarhad powerfully fueled his fascinations.