Polar Shift

"Good morning," Austin said.

The man removed his cap with the attached dreadlocks and took his sunglasses off. "Damn, this thing is hot!" he said. He gri

The sun gleamed off the bizarre tattoo on the sweaty scalp.

Austin leaned on his oars. "Hello, Spider," he said.

"You know who I am?"

Austin nodded. "The Bob Marley disguise had me fooled for a second."

Barrett shrugged. "It was the best I could do on short notice. A guy was selling them at a souvenir booth near the boat rental place. It was either this or Elvis."

"Good choice. I can't see you singing 'Hound Dog,' " Austin said. "Why the need to go incognito?"

Barrett pointed to a bandage that was wrapped around his head. "Someone is trying to kill me."

"Why?"

"Long story, Kurt."

Austin decided to take a stab in the dark. "Does this have anything to do with extra-low-level electromagnetic transmissions?"

It was obvious from the look of astonishment on Barrett's face that the comment had struck home. "How'd you know about that?"

"That's about all I do know."

Barrett squinted at the sparkle on the river. "Pretty."

"I think so, but you didn't come here for the scenery."

"You're right. I came by because I need a friend."

Austin swept his arm around. "You're in friendly waters here. If it hadn't been for you and your boat, I would have been killer whale bait. Come back to my house and let's talk about it."

"That's not a good idea," Barrett said with a furtive glance over his shoulder. He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a black box about the size of a pack of cigarettes. "This will tell us if there's any electronic surveillance in the area. Okay, it's clear right now, but I'd rather not take any chances. Mind if we row? I'm enjoying myself."

"There's a place we can pull off not far from here," Austin said. "Follow me."

They rowed another eighth of a mile and pulled the sculls up onto a low bank. A kind soul had placed a picnic bench in the shade of the trees for the benefit of passing boaters. Austin shared his water bottle with Barrett.

"Thanks," he said after gulping down a couple of swallows. "I'm way out of shape."

"Not from what I saw. I was flying right along when you caught up with me."

"I was on the rowing team at MIT. Rowed practically every good day on the Charles River. It's been a long time," he said, smiling at the memory.

"What was your major at MIT?"

"Quantum physics, specializing in computer logic."

"You wouldn't know it from the biker look."

Barrett laughed. "That's for show. I was always a computer geek. I grew up in California, where my parents were both university professors. I went to Caltech to study computer sciences, then on to MIT for my grad work. That's where I met Tris Margrave. We put our heads together and came up with the Bargrave software system. Made a zillion bucks on it. We were doing fine, enjoying ourselves, before Tris got involved with Lucifer."

"Lucifer? As in the Devil?"

"Lucifer was an anarchist newspaper published in Kansas back in the eighteen hundreds. It's what they used to call 'matches' years ago. It's also the name of a small group of neo-anarchists Tris has been involved with. They want to topple what they call the 'Elites,' the unelected people who control most of the world's wealth and power."

"Where do you fit in?"

"I'm part of Lucifer. That is, I was."

Austin eyed Barrett's head tattoo. "You don't strike me as a conventional person, Spider, but don't you and your partner control a considerable amount of the world's wealth?"

"Absolutely. That's why we're the ones to carry on the fight. Tris says men of wealth and education-those that had the most to lose-started the American Revolution. Guys like Hancock, Washington and Jefferson were well-off."

"What's Margrave's role in Lucifer?"

"Tris refers to himself as Lucifer's driving force. Anarchists don't like the idea of following a leader. It's a loosely organized group of a hundred or so like-minded people affiliated with some of the more active neo-anarchist groups. A couple of dozen of the more violence-prone guys call themselves 'Lucifer's Legion.' I was more involved in the technical than the political side of the project."

"What makes Margrave so driven?"

"Tris is brilliant and ruthless. He is guilty about the way his family made its fortune off of slavery and rum-ru

"Which is?"

"We were going to mess up the Elites' empire, so they'd cave in to our wishes and relinquish some of their power."

"That's a pretty tall order," Austin said.

"Tell me about it. We gave them a taste of what would happen a couple of weeks ago in New York. We shut down the city for a time during a big economic conference, hoping to get them to deal, but it was like an elephant being stung by a bee."

Austin raised an eyebrow. "I heard about the blackout. You were responsible for that?"

Barrett nodded. "It was just a sample to show them we could cause chaos. Our long-range plan is to cause massive communications and economic disruption around the world."

"How were you going to do that?"

"By using a set of scientific principles to temporarily foul up their communications and transportation systems and cause general economic chaos."

"The Kovacs Theorems."

Barrett stared at Austin as if he had just sprouted a second head. "You've been doing your homework. What do you know about the theorems?"

"Not much. I know that Kovacs was a genius who came up with a way to use extra-low-frequency electromagnetic transmissions to disrupt the natural order of things. He was worried that in the wrong hands, his theorems could be used to alter weather, cause earthquakes and other sorts of mischief. From what you've told me about your Lucifer pals, his fears seem to have been borne out."

Barrett winced at the mention of "pals," but he nodded in agreement. "That's about right, as far as it goes."

"How far does it go?"

"We were trying to cause a polar reversal."

"A shifting of the north and south poles?"

"The magnetic poles. We wanted to knock out communications satellites. Mess up commerce, and throw a scare into the Elites. Strictly low-end stuff."

Austin's jaw hardened. "Since when are killer waves, ship-swallowing whirlpools and the loss of a cargo ship and crew considered low-end?"

Barrett seemed to draw into himself. Austin feared his sharp comment may have shut off further communication. But then Barrett nodded in agreement.

"You're right, of course. We didn't think of the consequences, only the means."

"What were the means?"

"We built a fleet of four ships, each carrying a device modeled on the Kovacs Theorems. We concentrated the beam at an oblique angle into a vulnerable spot on the ocean floor. The power in each ship is enough to light a small city, but it's feeble when compared to the great mass of the earth. That's where the theorems come in. Kovacs said that at the proper frequency, the transmissions would be amplified by the very mass they were trying to penetrate, in the way a tuba amplifies the sound of air being blown through pursed lips."