by Ward Wagher
“It can’t be too soon for me,” she declared.
Seb Sylvester caught up with them as they headed to exit door. “Hey, guys, what’s going on?”
“We’re done for the day,” Larry said. “What have you been doing?”
“The committee reviewed my Master’s Thesis today,” he said.
“And how did that go?” Maggie asked.
“Better than I expected. Fluffy wants me to take a couple of courses in the spring session, but then I’ll be done. I can’t wait to get out of here.”
“I understand,” Larry muttered.
“Hey, let’s all eat together, tonight,” he said suddenly.
“What’s it like out there, Seb?” Larry asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been inside all day.”
“Well, let’s see what the weather looks like before we make that decision,” Maggie said. “I don’t want them to find my body in a snowdrift come spring.”
“It would be peaceful,” Larry said.
She slugged him on the shoulder.
“Ow! That hurt.”
“It was supposed to,” she said.
They stepped out into a still, cold, late afternoon. The sun had set, and there was an orange glow in the western sky. The sun had been out during the day and had melted some of the ice and snow from the shoveled sidewalks. It was getting colder, now, though.
“This looks good,” Maggie said. “Where do you want to eat?”
“There’s a little place a block over that does Italian,” Seb said. “We could give that a try.”
Maggie looked at Larry and shrugged.
“Sure,” he said. “Lead on, oh, Sebster.”
“Ha!” he responded. “Your sense of humor hasn’t improved any, this afternoon.”
“It wasn’t very good in the first place,” Maggie said.
“Thank you very much,” Larry said. “Let’s go, before we freeze to death.”
The diner was small, and warm, and fogged with aromas of garlic and pork. The proprietor led them to a cramped table in the back, where they would not receive the blasts of frigid air from the door. They each had enormous plates of spaghetti with pork in a heavy tomato sauce.
“This is really wonderful, Seb,” Maggie said. “How do you find these places?”
“Oh, I like to explore, and try new eateries.”
“Well, I, for one, certainly enjoy it.” She took a sip of her tea and speared some more of the pasta.
Seb hadn’t said much during the meal. He finally spoke up as they were walking back to Maseeh Hall.
“I don’t understand why you two have been so stubborn about sticking it out here. I mean, all the weird stuff that’s been happening to you. I would leave.”
“Don’t think we haven’t thought about it, Seb,” Larry said. “It has been one thing after the other. We even had Fluffy trying to jump into the mud puddle with us.”
Sylvester snorted. “Fluffy is a great professor and advisor, but sometimes he really gets in the way. But, both of you have a patron who has promised you positions. You could just go ahead and leave.”
“We could, but everyone is really counting on us having our degrees,” Maggie said.
“Uh, it’s nice to stand around talking,” Larry said, “but I don’t want to freeze while we are debating the world’s problems.”
“Oh, sorry,” Seb said. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Riddle of the day,” Maggie said as she walked into the lab where Larry was laboring.
“Okay, I’ll bite.”
Larry was in the process of adjusting the Osiris Cells for another round of experimentation. This fussy process involved using micrometers to adjust the position of the devices while the computer used laser collection implements to measure the distances.
Larry stood up from where he had been leaning over the equipment and turned to the thin redhead. She had an expectant look on her face, so he knew she was setting him up for something.
“What’s the difference between February and January?” she asked.
“Twenty-eight days?”
“No, silly. Have you looked outside?”
He stopped and put his hands on his hips. “All right. You have completely lost me, Mags. What is the difference between February and January?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
Her triumphant laugh echoed through the lab as she walked out again. Larry palmed his forehead and returned to work. When the winters here lasted into May, he supposed there really was not much difference between February and January. But, Maggie seemed to enjoy the inane riddles. Truth be told, her odd sense of humor helped break up the endless snowy days of the winter in the northeast.
Over the winter months, Larry had been gradually teasing out the secrets of the practical application of gravitics. He already had enough to complete his dissertation. Each week he delivered a report to Fluffy Pournelle, who frowned, but accepted them. Larry had thought ahead a little bit and structured his reports so that he could simply copy them into the dissertation document and save time. His reports to Arthur Winkleman were more detailed.
He was confident that, with development, his work would result in a type of gravitic field that would provide a lifting force to self-powered objects, such as aircraft or spacecraft. This would revolutionize the field. Moreover, he now had glimmerings of a discovery that would irreversibly change human civilization.
These adjustments were tough to complete, and he continued worrying at them. Maggie came in a few hours later when he was still working. She stood and watched for a while. After a bit, he looked up.
“What’s up, Mags?”
“You aren’t talking, Larry.”
“Of course, I’m talking.”
“But, you aren’t talking to me about your research. What’s going on?”
“You’ve seen the reports I’m sending to Fluffy, right?”
She nodded. “And I’ve seen what you’ve been sending to Arthur. And, those have a lot more detail.”
He scraped his teeth over his lower lip. “I’m giving Fluffy only the minimum I need to survive the doctoral review. That’s what’s going into the dissertation.”
“That makes sense. I wouldn’t tell Fluffy much either, the way he’s been.”
“And I think Arthur will have a very marketable technology when we’re done,” he said.
“But, what aren’t you telling me?” she asked.
“You’re being persistent.”
‘And you’re being obscure. What’s going on?”
He now scraped his teeth over his upper lip. He slipped into his chair and started typing at the computer.
“Come over here, Mags. I want to show you something.”
She moved over next to him and peered at the screen. “What am I looking at?”
“I’m modeling some side effects that I’ve noticed of the gravitic fields.”
“But, what is it?” she asked.
“I think I can create a singularity,” he said.
“What?” She stepped back quickly. “That isn’t supposed to be possible. Everybody knows the Osiris Cells do not generate that kind of power.”
“That’s the conventional wisdom,” Larry responded, “and you remember Fluffy’s famous saying.”
“Always be suspicious of the conventional wisdom,” she repeated mechanically. “He’s in love with that statement. He says it all the time.”
“In this case, I think he’s right,” Larry said quietly.
“Wouldn’t that be really dangerous?” she asked. “I mean, we’re talking about a black hole. That could swallow us all up and destroy the Earth.”
“There are other classes of singularities besides a black hole. This one is at the quantum level. I think it simply dissipates when we removed the power.”
“But you don’t know that, for sure,” she pushed back.
“You’re right. I don’t know that for sure.”
“This scares me,
Larry.”
“I am debating whether or not I even want to test it. I was going to run some tests to get background data, but…”
“But what?”
“But, this scares me, too,” he admitted.
“It should! How do you really know what would happen?”
“That’s exactly it. I do not know. I think the singularity would maintain coherence only so long as I had power flowing through the cells.”
“All right. I think we should focus on getting your dissertation together,” Maggie said. “Mine is done. Dean Wrathful has promised me it will be approved. Apparently, he’s not even going to assemble a review panel.”
“It’s funny, but we never heard from any of the students after Fluffy insisted they wanted to use the lab.”
“And Archie Larch swore he had never asked to use it,” Maggie added.
“I really think we need to keep this quiet though,” Larry said. “I don’t know how Fluffy would react, let alone the dean. If they were convinced I was playing around with black holes, they would throw me out of here.”
“They might throw you in the Charles River, too,” Maggie said darkly.
“That thought has crossed my mind. I really do not want to go out with a piece of scrap iron tied around my ankles.”
She walked back over and wrapped her arms around him as he sat in the chair. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, either, Larry.”
She turned and quietly left the lab, leaving a bemused Larry Berthold.
§ § §
“What can I do for you, today?” Fluffy Pournelle asked the student who was sitting across from him in his office.
“Just some concerns about MIT,” the student answered. “I want my degree to be worth something over the years. And that means the school must survive and flourish.”
“That represents some unusually clear thinking,” Fluffy said. “The continuation of this place is something we all worry about. I don’t know if you realize it, but it is very hard to operate a research institute on a shoestring. And our shoestring is thinner than most.”
“But, this is a prestigious school.”
“And it is located in a backwater. Look around you.” Fluffy waved an arm around. “This whole town is falling down around us. There is no money to fix things. The only reason the school keeps going is that a few graduates care enough to give us money to keep going. The allotment from Cambridge isn’t enough to do it.”
“But, surely the town council recognizes that MIT is a net contributor to the economy.”
“We put a new roof on Masseeh Hall last year,” Fluffy said. “That consumed most of the allotment. The main buildings need new roofs, and that will take about four years’ allotments. All the council sees is money disappearing down a rat hole. They don’t see the return.”
“I wonder if part of the problem is some of the students,” the visitor said.
“Would you care to explain that?” Fluffy asked.
“It’s just that we have some students who are working on blind-alley projects.”
Pournelle folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. He glanced out the window at the day’s snow flurries, and then looked back at the student sitting across from him.
“You would be speaking of our friend, Mr. Berthold?”
“Well, yes. Him among others.”
“What others?” he demanded.
The student stammered. “Well, I guess it’s mainly Larry Berthold. He’s been hunting for the solution to the math problems around gravitics. Everybody knows those will never be solved.”
Pournelle leaned forward and placed his hands flat on the desk. “Everybody doesn’t know those problems will never be solved.”
“But, but, people have been fighting this for centuries.”
“There is a physical phenomenon that has been known for a long time,” Pournelle said patiently. “It is measurable and well known. Unfortunately, the math is ambiguous and obscure. It is true Mr. Berthold has not solved the math, but someday someone very much like him will solve it.”
“But, he hasn’t solved it. He is sitting in his lab playing with the Osiris Cells he conned the Paladin into donating. He is writing his doctoral thesis on that. It’s a big nothing, Dr. Pournelle.”
“Enough!” Pournelle said. “If you are planning to finish your program this spring, you might, perhaps, want to concentrate on that. Let me worry about what Lawrence Berthold is doing. That’s my job.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Now, get out of here before I assign another class to you.”
The visitor scrambled to leave.
Pournelle stared at the door for a while after his visitor exited. Finally, he snorted and turned to his computer. He whistled tonelessly through his teeth as he studied Larry’s weekly reports. The boy was making amazing progress. His concern at the moment was the details that Larry was obviously leaving out. Larry had apparently discovered something else, and he wasn’t communicating that.
The agreement that Dean Rathgille had signed with Arthur Winkleman meant that any intellectual property Berthold developed would belong to the man from Indianapolis. It appeared that Winkleman was prepared to be generous in his donations, but it still rankled. If Berthold managed to develop a working anti-gravity device, it would transform the whole planet’s economy. The wealth would be unimaginable. Pournelle was personally a modest man, but the possibilities of what MIT could do with the royalties from Berthold’s work awoke the greed in him. And, he was frustrated because he knew he could do nothing about it.
He sighed and wished he could have a rational conversation with Chester Rathgille about it. It wasn’t that he disliked the dean, it was just that the man was an idiot. He knew he had a reputation for not suffering fools gladly. The real problem was that he did not suffer fools at all. And, the dean was a fool of the first order.
He pushed himself to his feet and walked ponderously to the door. Berthold had not endeared himself to the students or the faculty. In fact, Pournelle had often felt like strangling the boy, himself. Yet, Berthold was finally accomplishing something in the lab, and the scientist in Pournelle wanted to see him succeed. He hated problems like this.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Larry glanced at the clock on his computer display and rubbed his eyes. He had been hammering away on the dissertation for six hours. He glanced over to where Maggie was curled up in a blanket on his ratty sofa. With a sigh, he committed the text, slipped over to hre, and shook her shoulder.
“Time to go home to bed,” he said quietly.
She stirred and pulled the blanket closer with a slight grumble.
He shook her again. “No, no, girl. Time to go climb into your bed at home.”
Her eyes squinted open, then opened wide. She quickly sat up. “What time is it? How long was I out?”
“It’s two o’clock,” Larry said.
“No! I gotta get out of here.” She jumped up. “I can’t believe I fell asleep. What have you been doing?”
“I’ve been working on the dissertation, Mags. Which you were helping with until you crashed at eleven o’clock.”
She scratched her head. “Well, I guess I’d better go to bed.”
With that, she stumbled out of Larry’s flat to go back to hers. Larry looked at his computer and then decided it was a good time to quit for the night, anyway. He stepped over to lock his door and turned off the lights. He was asleep within about thirty seconds.
He was awakened an hour later by someone pounding on the door. He roused briefly and thought perhaps one of the students was pranking him. The pounding continued, and he threw off the overs and walked carefully to the door. He had no desire to stub a toe on something. He opened the door to Mrs. Willow.
“Young Mr. Berthold, you must come quickly. Margaret has been hurt.”
“Oh, no! Not Maggie. He started forward and was stopped by Mrs. Willow’s hand on his chest.
“You must put some clothes on first, Mr. Berthold. I
will wait.”
Larry pulled on his jeans and a sweatshirt. He normally slept with his socks on, and so was able to pull on his shoes quickly. He slammed the door behind him when he stepped out into the hall. Mrs. Willow stopped him again.
“Now what?”
“You must lock your door.”
“Maggie’s been hurt and you’re telling me to lock the door? What’s wrong with you?” He fumbled his key in the lock but managed to set the tumblers on the first try.
The old woman turned and bustled down the hall with him trailing her. “Events are in motion, Mr. Berthold, and I cannot perceive them. But, this is very serious.”
They came to the stairwell, and Mrs. Willow quickly climbed the steps to the next floor. Larry followed and was panting when he got to the top of the stairs. The old lady did not seem winded. Then he looked down. Maggie lay at the bottom of the next flight of stairs looking like a bundle of old clothes that someone had abandoned.
“Oh, Maggie!” Larry cried out as he dropped to his knees.
Mrs. Willow grabbed his arms and pulled him back. “You must wait, Mr. Berthold. The doctor is coming. She should not be moved.”
“But, what happened?”
“It appears that Margaret has fallen down the stairs,” Mrs. Willow patiently explained.
Larry started weeping. “Oh, Maggie, you can’t die. Please don’t die!”
He felt a pair of heavy arms sliding around him. “Do not weep, Mr. Berthold. Everything will be all right.”
“But how can you say that? Maggie might even be dead.”
“She is not dead.”
Two constables came up the stairs followed by a woman carrying a medical bag.
“Please step back, everybody,” one of the constables said. “What happened here?”
“I discovered the girl here,” Mrs. Willow said. “I think she fell down the stairs.”
The med tech opened her box and rummaged through it. She pulled out a diagnostic machine and attached it to Maggie’s arm. She watched the display and shook her head.
“We need to get her to the hospital, although I don’t think there is much we can do.”