Read The Nemesis Program (Ben Hope) for Free Online Page B

destruction that he wanted to forget he’d ever learned, he didn’t know much.
    ‘That’s what I thought,’ she said. ‘Then I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a guy called Tesla? He was the subject of Claudine’s research, ever since I first knew her.’
    ‘Of course I’ve heard of him,’ he said defensively. ‘First to experiment with electricity, back in the nineteenth century. Made dead frogs’ legs dance about by passing current through them. I don’t see what—’
    ‘That was Galvani, Ben,’ Roberta interrupted impatiently. ‘I’m talking about the great Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla, born 1856. Actually I’m not surprised you didn’t know about him,’ she added after a beat. ‘I mean, everyone’s heard of the Marconis and Faradays and Edisons of this world, but Tesla’s the pioneer genius who somehow wound up forgotten. Which is pretty incredible, considering he came up with the principles behind wireless communication, remote control, radar, sonar, robotics, neon and fluorescent light, and foresaw the internet and cell phones as early as 1908. Not to mention his work on—’
    ‘I get the picture,’ Ben interrupted, knowing she was liable to launch into a whole science lecture if he didn’t break her stream.
    ‘I don’t know that you do get it,’ she said. She paused a moment. Gazed across the park, where the young mother was still pushing her son to and fro on the swing. The child was howling in delight as the swing’s arc carried him higher and higher.
    ‘Look at that,’ Roberta said, pointing. ‘That kid’s mother can’t weigh more than a hundred and five pounds soaking wet. She’s even smaller than I am. But see how little force it takes, at just the right moment, to make the swing go up high in the air.’ She looked round at Ben. ‘ That’s what Claudine’s research was about.’
    ‘About shoving a kid back and forth on a swing?’
    She tutted. ‘Don’t be so obtuse, Hope. It’s about the principle of resonance, the idea that tiny forces, precisely enough timed and placed, can accumulate to create massive energies.’
    ‘You’re going to have to be more specific.’
    ‘Okay, let me put it another way. The Earth’s vibrations have a periodicity of about an hour forty-nine minutes. In other words, if I were to hit something solid against the ground right now, it would send a wave of contraction through the whole planet that would return to the same point one hour forty-nine minutes later in the form of expansion. Follow me?’
    ‘Oh, absolutely,’ he said.
    Missing his sarcasm, she went on: ‘So you see, the Earth, like everything else, is in a constant state of vibration, ever expanding and contracting. Now imagine that at the exact moment when it begins to contract, I detonate a ton of high explosive in the exact same spot. That would accelerate the contraction, so that one hour forty-nine minutes later there would come back a wave of expansion that was equally accelerated. Now, if as that expansion wave began to ebb I set off another ton of explosive, and I kept repeating that pattern again and again … eventually, what do you suppose would happen?’
    Ben looked blank.
    ‘It’s obvious, if you think about it. Given time, Tesla calculated that he could build up enough of an energy wave to split the Earth.’
    ‘Split the Earth,’ Ben repeated in a flat tone.
    She nodded matter-of-factly, as if splitting the Earth were all part and parcel of a scientist’s everyday routine. ‘That’s the idea. See? Small input, big effect. Pretty much all of Tesla’s work was based on those principles, and that’s what Claudine was interested in. She was talking about it when I first met her, and she was still talking about it the last time we had a conversation on the phone, which was about five months ago.’
    ‘I still don’t understand where this is leading, Roberta.’
    ‘Let me explain a little more, okay? In the late nineteenth century Tesla invented a