Ragnarok 03 - Resonance by John Meaney Read Free Book Online Page B

surprised Lucas by referencing C.P. Snow, whose once-famous 1954 lecture Lucas knew of by chance and expected no one else to have heard of, not these days.
    Snow had talked about two cultures, how people educated in the humanities were proud of their ignorance of, say, the second law of thermodynamics, which was the same as a scientist not knowing about Shakespeare. ‘Although he later amended that,’ said Case, ‘to the equivalent of not being able to read.’
    There were chuckles from his no-doubt biased audience, as he continued to criticise Britain’s Ministry of Computation for its short-sighted views on commercial quantum crypto – and criminal cryptanalysis – before stepping everybody through mathematical formulations of the latest advances, together with a demo of working software.
    Someone asked, when the time for questions came, why Case and his team had not used open source technology; his reply mentioned client requirements, which seemed to satisfy. Lucas wondered if he was the only one to realise what that really meant: this was defence-funded work, with mathematical models – but not the working code – publicised here as part of a deliberate effort to spread anti-criminal techniques to the wider technical world.
    The talk finished with another scathing anti-anti-science remark, about the famous quantum scenario that was theSchrödinger’s cat paradox – because a real cat is alive or dead, no middle ground, which is exactly the point – and how few people grasped the significance.
    â€˜Present company excepted, of course,’ Case concluded. ‘You understand that subatomic particles are weird, but the real mystery is how they behave in a non -quantum way in large numbers.’ He held up his qPad. ‘Except in these.’
    For decades, researchers had been entangling larger and larger collections of particles, which meant that qPads and qPins were an advance that people should have seen coming, although investors had spectacularly failed to do so. It was a steady advance, unlike graphene, say, whose discovery – as far as Lucas knew – came from nowhere, luckily for him.
    Or I couldn’t have sent a message six centuries ahead .
    Unless he and Gus had deluded themselves, and consigned a memory flake to simple destruction. That would be a shame, since it had contained perhaps the last uncorrupted copy of observational data from the gamma-ray burster event. All other copies around the globe had been subject to cyberattack – hence, presumably, Gus’s newfound interest in crypto and leading-edge countermeasures.
    But Lucas had just found his own reason for being here.
    Jacqui Khan’s applause, as the lecture ended, seemed half-hearted. Lucas wondered if commenting on this was the best way to begin a conversation; then he stopped second-guessing himself and allowed the words to flow.
    â€˜You don’t look entirely happy with the talk.’
    â€˜There’s a difference between assuming specialist knowledge and, well, not talking down to people. He didn’t get it right for me, but then I’m no physicist. More computers-by-way-of-psychology.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m Jacqui, by the way.’
    â€˜Lucas.’
    When they shook, it was like completing a high-voltage circuit.
    â€˜I could tell you my opinions,’ he finally went on, ‘over coffee.’
    He no longer cared about the conference, and was willing to bet that she didn’t either.
    â€˜An excellent idea,’ she said.
    Because the real conversation was occurring far below the verbal level, and some important conclusions had already been reached. They were both smiling as they left the conference centre and came out onto the pavement – sidewalk – in downtown Denver.
    â€˜Have you been there yet?’ She pointed to the Rockies, visible through a gap between buildings. ‘Or are you local?’
    Most