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By Root 400 0

then gave up the game and nodded. "It started out as a theoretical weapons project in the last days of the war. But," he insisted defiantly, "it was a peaceful use we put it to! One of our office juniors, a very clever young man, a PhD from CalTech, suggested that if we aimed an infra-red laser beam at the event horizon at a certain angle, it would come out as a gamma-ray beam, which we used to heat a tank of mercury... we tried water first, but it flash evaporated and fused the rock around the tank to glass." He licked his lips nervously. "The hardest part was designing a turbine system that would work with evaporating mercury. We lost a lot of men to heavy metal poisoning..."

Realization dawned on Mativi. "You were one of the researchers in Lissouba's government."

"You think I could have got away with living in the old People's Democratic Republic with a physics degree without being a weapons researcher?"

Ngoyi laughed hollowly. "Dream on, brother. But this is peacetime now. The technology is being used to power the houses of five million people —"

"Uh-uh. There's no sidestepping the Laws of Thermodynamics. You only get out less than what you put in. You're only getting power out because you're sapping the angular momentum of what's inside the container. I'll lay a bet that what's inside the container was created illegally using the Lubumba Collider that President Lissouba convinced the UN to build to 'rejuvenate the Congolese economy' —"

Ngoyi squirmed. "He also said scientify the Congolese economy. He actually used the word 'scientify'."

Mativi nodded. "In any case, that angular momentum was put into the container by gigawatts of energy pumped into the Collider from the city power grid. Effectively all you're doing is using up energy someone stole and stored fifteen years ago. It's no more a power source than a clockwork doll is, Jean-Baptiste. You have to wind it up to watch it go. And all you'll be left with, in the end, is a non-rotating very heavy lump of extremely bad shit."

"Well, I must admit," admitted Ngoyi ruefully, "the amount of juice we can squeeze out of it is getting smaller every year."

The tractor in front suddenly rumbled to a halt in a cloud of dust big enough to conceal a herd of rhinos. A wall of immobile metal barred the carriageway, and three lanes of drivers performed the peculiarly Congolese manoeuvre of stepping on their brakes and leaning on their horns simultaneously. One of them shrieked suddenly in dismay when a length of caterpillar track resembling a chain of house facades clipped together with traffic bollards slammed down on to his bonnet and crushed it flat, before slapping his saloon into a cabriolet. Paint flakes flew everywhere. The car was a steel one, too - an old Proton model produced under licence in Afghanistan. Mativi hoped the driver had survived.

Troopers poured out of the four-by-fours, ignoring the barrage of horns. They were staring at the side of the tractor. Some good Catholics were even crossing themselves.

Mativi put the handbrake on and left his car. Someone hooted at him. He ignored them.

One whole side of the tractor had collapsed into the asphalt. The torsion bars of the vehicle's suspension, each one a man's waist thick and made of substances far, far stronger than steel, had snapped like seaside rock. The load on top of the tractor had slumped sideways underneath its canvas blanket.

Now that he was outside the car, he was aware of a hissing sound. The sound was coming from a hole punched in the canvas cover.

Some of the troopers were walking up towards the load. Mativi danced out on to the grass verge, waving his arms like an isangoma.

"No! Non! Get away! Tres dan-gereux!"

One of the men looked at Mativi as if he were an idiot and took another step fonvard. His sleeve began to rustle and flap in the direction of the hole in the canvas. Then his hand slapped down on to the canvas cover, and he began to scream, beating on his hand, trying to free it. His comrades began to laugh, looking back towards Mativi, enjoying the joke their friend was having