by Ward Wagher
Besides the four local constables, who were trying to investigate the crime, President Fledarman and Provost Fitcher were both trying to give orders. The college janitor was trying to clean up the mess. Finally, one of the town constables held up a hand.
“All right, let’s just hold it everybody!” he shouted. “In case you did not realize it, we have a crime scene here, and this herd rumbling through here is likely destroying evidence. I want everybody out. Mr. Berthold, if you would wait in your office, we will follow up with questions after we investigate. When we get done we will report to the college. Clear? All right. Let’s clear the room.”
There was some muttering as the group moved out of the lab. Larry slipped into his office, wondering what he was going to do next. Maggie rolled in and spun her wheelchair around when Fitcher stepped into the office. He pointed his index finger at Larry.
“When this is over and done with, you and I are going to have a conversation, young man. This kind of thing is completely unacceptable at my college, and I won’t have it.”
After he left, Larry looked at Maggie. “Once again I get blamed for everything.”
He stared at Maggie.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re supposed to say something optimistic and make me feel better.”
She shook her head and looked down at her lap. “This one has me at a complete loss. I can’t believe this is starting to happen again.”
Larry dropped into his chair and held his head in his hands. “I think we’re in big trouble, Mags.”
“Did you get a note off to Arthur?”
“Yes. I guess we need to wait and see how he reacts. He will probably blame me, too.”
She looked up at him with tears running down her face. “Larry, I’m afraid. I don’t want to get hurt again. And if something happened to you, I wouldn’t want to stay alive.”
“I’m not worried about me,” he said, “I’m worried about you.”
“Where did Seb go?” she asked suddenly.
“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I thought he would come to the office with us.”
“The provost probably frightened him off,” she said, thinking out loud. “He’s a little skittish.”
“Well, I wish the police would get done in the lab, so I can start cleaning things up. We’re going to have to put together a list of things we have to buy.”
“Which is probably everything,” Maggie said. “It looks like whoever did it, pretty well trashed the lab.”
“I think so, too,” Larry said. “I’m glad we got the apparatus on its way to St. Louis. I have the design backed up, but I’d hate to have to build the thing again. I went to bed last night thinking about the next experiments and how to approach building the gear for it.”
One of the constables tapped on the door. “Mr. Berthold? Got time for a few questions?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Okay, first of all, are you responsible to lock up the building each night?”
“No, Sir. We have automatic locking mechanisms on the doors, and they are kept locked at all times.”
“Do you routinely check the doors to see if they are locked?”
Larry shook his head. “No, we have a campus watchman who checks the doors at least twice every night.”
“I see,” the officer said. “And, do you lock the interior doors to your office and lab when you leave each day?”
“Not as a rule,” Larry said. “I asked the provost and he said I didn’t need to worry about it. This seems to be a quiet town.”
“It is a quiet town, but we don’t like to tempt people. Who else has access to the building?”
“Let’s see,” Larry thought for a few moments. “Besides me, Maggie, Seb Sylvester, the provost, probably the president, and whoever else they might designate.”
“So, you don’t control access?” the officer asked.
“No. The building belongs to the college, and so they control it.”
“Any ideas on who would do something like this?”
Larry shook his head. “The past year has been one weird thing after another.”
“Would you like to tell me about it?”
Larry took about fifteen minutes to recount his experiences in Cambridge, and around the continent. The police officer was a good listener and was able to tease out further details that Larry had forgotten. He finally snapped the cover over his tablet and returned to the lab. An hour later, the police cleared him to return to the lab, and he and Maggie began the process of picking up the pieces.
§ § §
“When this gets done I’m going to owe you a lot of favors,” Arthur Winkleman said.
“Let’s just hope everyone is still alive to collect on the favors,” Jasper Wilton replied. “What can my people do that the police in Urbana cannot do?”
They were talking over a phone link after Larry’s message of the destruction of the lab in Urbana. Arthur had immediately called Jasper since the other man had taken charge of the investigation.
“You can get to the bottom of it. The police in Urbana are constabulary. They are not experienced in solving the crime. They spend their time keeping students off the grass.”
“I think you are underestimating them, Arthur,” Wilton said, “however, I will get a couple of people down there in a couple of hours. You are right; there is too much that doesn’t make sense.”
“I appreciate it,” Winkleman replied. “This has gotten me completely flummoxed.”
“Do you regret getting involved with Berthold?”
“Absolutely not!” Winkleman exclaimed. “He just delivered a working anti-gravity solution. The engineers at Gateway are tearing into it. This is going to revolutionize our industry, not to mention transportation.”
“You hadn’t told me about that, Arthur,” Wilton said. “Is this confirmed?”
“I saw it work. The technicians are very excited about it. I don’t think there is any question the boy achieved a breakthrough. And I don’t think he’s done.”
“In that case, I really need to get moving. I should have boots on the ground sometime this afternoon.”
“I really appreciate this, Jasper. I would really like to find out who this mysterious group is that has been hampering progress.”
“Frankly, so would I. Your physicist’s projects are giving me ideas for things I want to do, and I would like to keep him around.”
“It’s more than that,” Winkleman commented. “Lawrence and Margaret are under my protection. I am obligated.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Wilton replied. “I only hope we all don’t regret it.”
“I may regret the ultimate ends, but I would never regret taking them under my wing.”
“Arthur, you are probably too honorable for your own good.”
“Come on,” Winkleman said, “how can anyone be too honorable? That just doesn’t make sense.”
“I hear ya. But, still, we may have bought ourselves a silo full of trouble.”
“So, we may. But, Jasper, what would you have done any differently?”
Wilton pause, finding nothing to say.
“That’s what I thought,” Winkleman said. “Just find this miscreant for me.”
“We’ll do our best, Arthur.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
“I don’t understand why one of Jasper Wilton’s minions is involved in this problem,” David Fitcher complained. This is a private matter for the college.”
“You had four students guilty of criminal destruction of property. That takes it beyond a private matter.”
Davis Broadbeam had flown into Urbana the afternoon before and was already wrapping up the investigation. Larry’s video pickup had recorded the activities of the four students who spent a couple of late-night hours in the lab destroying the equipment. Both they and the college were shocked at their arrest.
“I still think we could have handled this internally, and avoided the bad publicity,” the provost
said.
“Except that when they destroyed material that Arthur Winkleman contributed to the lab, he decided it required official action.”
“I wish I had never heard of Larry Berthold,” Fitcher declared. “There has been nothing but trouble since he arrived.”
“What other trouble has he been involved with, might I ask?” Broadbeam said.
“Oh, nothing actionable. He simply has not fit in well with the faculty or the students.”
“Excuse me, but classes have not even started. How can you say that about the students?”
The provost stopped for a moment. “It is just that I know how these things work. Someone who doesn’t fit in invariably does not get along well with the student body.”
“How does he not fit in?”
“Why are you interrogating me? I’m not the one who wrecked the lab.”
“Please, Dr. Fitcher, I am trying to get to the bottom of everything that happened. With what those students told us, it is all the more serious, and is potentially a threat to the Palatinate.”
“What Palatinate?” Fitcher snapped. “Oh, I know my friend Arthur is the Paladin, but what has really changed. And why should we be worried about a group of environmental wingnuts?”
“It is more serious than them simply being unhinged. They are members of the Man-Free Planet organization. They are dedicated to eliminating mankind from the Earth entirely.”
Fitcher waved a hand. “They are just a fringe group, Davis. Nobody takes them seriously.”
“Besides what we caught these students doing, there is evidence the group has been involved in murder and attempted murder. No, we must take them very seriously indeed.”
“These four students are all from the Palatinate,” Fitcher said. “One of them was even from here in Urbana. I have no idea where they could have come across this ideology.”
“They found it on the Global Net,” Broadbeam said. “There is a thriving community of people from this cult. We have been watching them for a while.”
“And what will we do with the students?”
“Restitution and fines,” Broadbeam said. “We really do not have a means of incarcerating people for the long term. And exiling them probably wouldn’t work in this case.”
Fitcher shrugged. “I suppose I am going to have to agree with you, Davis. I don’t like the incipient negative publicity, but these people do seem to be dangerous.”
“Thank you, Dr. Fitcher. I will also need to contact the police in Cambridge and give them this information. It may help them solve a murder there.”
“They killed someone?” Fitcher asked in shock.
“Yes, they did. And apparently attempted to kill a couple of other people. We need to get this stopped.”
Fritcher bit his lower lip and nodded. “We do not need any other activities like this going on in Urbana.”
Broadbeam left the provost’s office and walked across campus. This mess had been relatively easy to clean up, and that left him uncomfortable. Most crimes were fairly easy to solve. Occam’s Razor had a direct application. Larry Berthold’s video recording of the crime had been invaluable and allowed them to wrap things up in a hurry. But, he wasn’t quite sure they had solved every aspect of the issue. Some of the items Larry had related to him were very strange. Davis would ponder further on this.
§ § §
“What did Arthur say about replacing the lab?” Maggie asked.
“He said he would have someone on it immediately,” Larry replied. “It might take a while because he cannot source everything within the Palatinate. Some of it comes from the United Kingdom.”
They sat at the kitchen table in their little concrete bungalow and worked their way through dinner. Both had become attached to their first home and enjoyed the time they spent there together.
“I didn’t know they had any industry worth talking about,” she said.
“Apparently they have a high-tech sector that is pretty solid. Several pieces of the test equipment came from there. There is a supplier in Saint Louis, but we cleaned him out when we first built the lab. The new stuff has to come from across the Atlantic.”
“By sea?”
Larry shook his head. “I think Arthur chartered a plane to bring it. The Osiris cells are made in Saint Louis. The computers come out of Indianapolis. I think we will have enough to get set up again, while we’re waiting on the Brits to get the stuff put together.”
“They don’t have it in stock, either?”
“There is not a huge demand for this stuff, Maggie. It’s kind of weird, but there are maybe three labs in the whole world that use this kind of equipment.”
She put her fork down and frowned. “So that’s us and who else?”
“There is us. Obviously, the Brits are doing something, since they are manufacturing the equipment. There’s some guy out on the west coast who responded to my prospectus. At the time, Arthur came calling, plus this guy sounded kind of strange.”
“What about MIT?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. I was the first student in fifty years to explore these areas, and you saw the kind of welcome I got for my troubles.”
“Do you think this had something to do with your gravitics work?”
“This nutty group those four students belonged to certainly had a problem with it. Even that doesn’t make sense.
“But, why would somebody object to that?” She grabbed for the pencil that normally was in her hair, but now absent for some reason. She began twirling her hair with her finger.
“I have no idea, Mags. It really doesn’t make any sense. Well, it does, but in a really off-the-wall kind of way. They want all the people on Earth do die off so that the biosphere can return to its pristine state – whatever that might be. I guess raising the level of technology kind of goes against what they want to do.”
“I’m really glad you had the presence of mind to set up that vid pickup,” she commented.
“I just hope that this stops that group. They are scary.”
“We’re going to have to watch out all the time, aren’t we, Larry?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Arthur wanted to send his two watchdogs here to keep an eye on us. I think I managed to talk him out of it.”
“And, I have mixed feelings about that,” she stated. “Alex and Brad are comforting to have around, but it gets a little suffocating.”
“My feelings exactly,” he said. “I hated having people stare at us when those guys were chauffeuring us around.”
They continued working on the casserole that Maggie had baked. Larry insisted on sharing the cooking since Maggie was a full-time professor at the college. He suspected that when classes started, she would be carrying home a lot of work each night. Larry developed the habit of logging into the lab equipment from home for an hour or so after supper, although he skipped it quickly enough when Maggie wanted to talk.
He decided the marriage was coming along. He tried hard to give Maggie her space, and as a result, their fights now involved household items, or what to do on weekends. She no longer complained about him crowding her.
He decided the lull from waiting on the new equipment was a good time for him to think about next steps in the lab. While Maggie had been horrified that he was thinking about creating an artificial singularity, Arthur had encouraged him. By creating it from the outside-in, with the Osiris cells, he was convinced it would be something ephemeral. It would simply disappear once he removed the power. There would be no mass at the center that would turn it into a black hole of the stellar variety. Something like that would require more mass than the entire Earth and would be impossible to create. But, he intended to query a few other scientists about it before proceeding with the experiment.
Along the side, Larry also continued to chew on Clenèt’s math, like a dog worrying at a bone. The equations pointed to the possibility of an artificial singularity, just as it seemed to support grav based fusion. But, the math did not hold up. Even so, he was
convinced he could construct an artificial singularity and the engineering to do it was clear in his mind.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Maggie asked.
“Just thinking about next steps in the lab.”
“You and Arthur have talked about this, then?” she continued.
“Yes. I think there may be several viable applications of gravitics technology. And, incidentally, the project we just delivered to Gateway in Saint Louis will likely make us wealthy.”
“What would we do with the money?”
He laughed. “I don’t know but figuring out what to do with the money would be an interesting challenge.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“Since when have you started using security people?” Jasper Wilton asked when he walked into Arthur Winkleman’s office. “You haven’t done that before, or I haven’t noticed.”
“Good to see you again, Jasper,” Winkleman said, as he rose from his chair.
After they shook hands, he motioned Wilton into the chair across from his desk.
“I have never been this paranoid before,” he said as he looked at his guest. “And, I am forgetting my manners. May I get you some coffee and Danish?”
“I just came from lunch at the Wabash Club. They topped me off pretty well.”
Winkleman grinned. “They do a nice luncheon at the club. I need to get over there more often.”
“I thought you ate there a couple times each week, Arthur.”
Winkleman shrugged. “I find myself eating at my desk more and more. I have been very busy for the past year.”
“You’re eighty-five years old,” Wilton said. “You ought to take the time to slow down and smell the flowers occasionally.”
Winkleman glared at his guest. “This coming from the man who shanghaied me into accepting the Paladin’s sword. It’s not that big a deal, Arthur, he mimicked. It’s really just a part-time job, he said. Sorry, Jasper, I don’t have a high opinion of your sincerity when you say things like that. Besides, I’m eighty years old. And you are a jerk.”