The Transvection Machine

by Edward D. Hoch

  “You could look at it that way,” Tromp agreed. “And I’ve already told you about his relationship with Mrs. Defoe.”

  “Yes.” Crader was playing with a piece of flexible circuitry which had somehow found its way onto his desk. “Well,” he said, “could you let me know if the president decides to appoint Ganger to a government position? It might affect the course of our investigation.”

  “Of course. I’ll keep you informed.”

  “Thanks, Maarten.”

  Crader broke the connection and sat staring at the flexible circuit. It was a type found in most computers these days, and he remembered that Judy had brought it in one day in connection with another case. Such a simple component—a bonding of metal and plastic—to cause such upheaval in the world. The computer had become the machine of the twenty-first century, the machine to rule men’s lives and single out their destinies. The computer recorded births and corrected childhood examination papers, issued driving licenses and mated lovers. It corrected income taxes and captured criminals, waged warfare and then performed operations on the wounded. Killed and saved, dominated and emancipated, almost in the same flicker of a circuit. Who was to decide whether they were good or bad? For Crader, there was no decision to be made. They provided his livelihood.

  He tossed the circuit across the desk and thought about possibility number four—the most difficult of all. The killing of Vander Defoe might have been ordered by President McCurdy and carried out by Maarten Tromp, just as the Russo-Chinese had charged in their propaganda telecast. Certainly he did not doubt for a moment that Tromp would obey the president’s every wish, even as far as murder. He could not honestly see a motive for such an act on McCurdy’s part, but it would be worth looking into. And it might help explain why no surgeon had been found to operate on a cabinet member. Remembering the video cassettes he’d observed in Tromp’s office, he pressed the buzzer for Judy.

  “Yes, Mr. Crader?” She came promptly to the door, wearing one of her better miniskirts over a blue body stocking. He wondered if she had a date that evening.

  “Judy, phone up the video place and get me a cassette titled Stage Illusions of Twentieth-Century Magicians, will you? That’s a good girl!”

  She glanced at him a bit oddly and then retreated. By now she was accustomed to his most bizarre requests, but there was always something new to surprise her.

  Earlier in the day he’d studied holograms of the death scene, and he’d been struck by its resemblance to one of those stage settings of the old-time magicians. The great stainless steel tank that was the guts of the surgical computer’s in-hospital terminal could just as easily have been some unique device for sawing a lady in half. It made him think of Tromp’s video cassettes, and he decided to have a look at that one. It was probably a blind alley, but cases had been solved on less. He’d worry later about what to do if the president and Tromp really were involved.

  Judy reappeared in twenty minutes, carrying a plastic cassette. “Looks interesting,” she observed, showing him the cover illustration of a scantily clad girl assistant about to be decapitated by a gaudy green guillotine while a smiling magician stood by her side.

  “We’ll see,” he said with a grunt. “Have a chair and watch this with me.”

  He dropped the cassette into its slot in the EVR unit and snapped on the television. After a moment the tape came into focus, showing the opening credits and then going into a somewhat drab narration of famous stage illusions of the past century. They watched levitations and vanishings, saw a woman cut in two and another lose her head, all to the accompaniment of stagey musical effects and occasional puffs of pinkish smoke. A handsome Chinese girl entered one cabinet and almost immediately exited from another across the stage, an elephant wearing a fringed cloak walked behind a picket fence and vanished in the traditional smoke puff, a magician was locked inside a trunk from which he freed himself in seconds.

  “What ever happened to magicians?” Judy asked, marveling like a child.

  “The world grew up,” Crader told her. “What wonder is left in a rabbit from a hat when newspapers come from video screens and men travel to Venus in a few days’ time? Would anyone believe a woman sawed in half when we have computers to sew her back together again?”

  “It’s a shame,” Judy decided as the tape came to an end. “Those must have been lovely days, back then.”

  “They were, in a sense. In this past century we have entered an age of technological compulsiveness. Our society today meekly submits to each new product or invention and accepts it without question, whether it’s an actual improvement or not. The machine is king, and man is its servant. I can’t help thinking it started out the other way around.”

  “You’re being cynical again,” Judy cautioned.

  “Not really. I have no choice but to support the system, not as long as I’m director of CIB.”

  She lifted the cassette from the EVR unit. “Did this help you? Do you think a magic trick was used to kill Defoe?”

  “No.” Crader sighed. “It was a wild idea, and I thought I should check it out. But there’s nothing on the tape—nothing but memories of a simpler life Send it back, and get me a warming-cup of coffee.”

  The problem remained. If the president and Tromp were not implicated, there were still three other avenues of investigation open. Jazine had questioned the hospital staff, and he was still in Washington running down leads back to Defoe’s widow and former partner. Crader had a feeling, based on his conversation with Tromp, that Hubert Ganger might emerge as a prime suspect, but the other possibility—that of a revolutionary group—could not be ignored.

  He flicked the buzzer again. “Judy, get me Mike Sabin from the records section. Tell him I need to see him, and to bring any information he’s got on a Venusian exile named Euler Frost.”

  He waited ten minutes before Mike Sabin arrived, carrying a microfilm card and a hand projector. Sabin was tall and boyishly handsome, one of the younger agents of CIB. He’d not yet qualified for field work, but Crader admired the job he was doing in the records section.

  “How are you, Mike?” he asked, holding out his hand.

  “Fine, sir.”

  “Have a seat.” Crader took another sip of coffee. “Mike, we’re working on Vander Defoe’s death. Earl Jazine is handling the Washington end and I’m following up some leads here. The president’s people seem to think an exile named Euler Frost might be somehow involved. Do we have anything on him in our files?”

  Mike Sabin inserted the microfilm card into his hand projector and flashed it on the wall. “Frost has been on Venus for the past ten years, since he was exiled at the age of nineteen. That was long before my time, but I gather from the records that he was involved with some nutty revolutionary group opposed to all machines and computers.”

  Crader nodded. “I can give you some later information for the files. He escaped from a prison on Venus sometime over a week ago. There’s reason to believe he may be back on Earth.”

  “You want me to check with the Federal Security Bureau, sir?”

  “No. Right now I’m interested in anything you might have on this group to which he belonged. What happened to it?”

  Sabin adjusted the card with a few flicks of the projector switch and the wall was filled with a new record sheet, headed Subversive Group W-544-29. “Unfortunately, sir, the group has grown in both size and importance during the past decade. When Frost was involved with them, they were simply a nameless, loosely organized confederation of misfits from various parts of the world, most active in Paris and the Middle East. There’s some evidence their headquarters at the time was on the small man-made island resort of Plenish, in the Indian Ocean. After the arrests in which Frost was picked up, the group went underground for a time. When they emerged it was with newer, more radical leadership, more money, and a name—HAND.”

  “Yes,” Crader mused. “HAND. I’ve heard of them.”

  “It’s an acronym standing for Humans Against Neu
ter Domination. They advocate the destruction of all robot factories, the burning of computers, the bombing of electronic relay systems. They want to keep only those simple machines which are useful to man without trying to dominate him.” The young man chuckled. “They’re even against the electric car, and automobiles in general. You’d think they’d be pleased that the cars stopped polluting the atmosphere, but that’s not enough for them. In their literature they point out the fact that the automobile killed vastly more human beings in its first hundred years than all the wars ever fought by the USAC, since revolutionary days.”

  “It is an impressive statistic,” Crader admitted. “Who are the leaders of HAND, and where is their headquarters now?”

  “That’s all very vague. They could still be on the island of Plenish, but nobody seems certain. The leader of the American branch seems to be a mystery man named Graham Axman. He’s said to live somewhere in the Washington area, but we know nothing else about him.”

  Carl Crader grunted. It seemed like a dead end. “All right,” he said at last. “Can you handle some investigation work for me while Jazine’s away in Washington?”

  The young man brightened considerably. “Certainly, sir!”

  “Fine. Here’s what I want. The spaceship from Venus landed outside Washington, so if Frost is back, he came down in that area. I want you to start checking the jet flights and the sea-rail routes for a man answering Frost’s description. Better yet, get a hologram of him from Maarten Tromp at the New White House. Chances are he wouldn’t bother to disguise himself too much if the word wasn’t yet out about his escape.”

  “I’ll get right on it, sir,” Sabin said. “I’m thankful for the opportunity to do some outside work.”

  He started for the door, anxious to begin the assignment, and Crader had to call him back with a smile. “Don’t forget your projector, Mike.”

  Carl Crader spent the evening scanning dispatches from the world capitals. The Russo-Chinese had reiterated their charges that Vander Defoe’s death was in the nature of a purge, and one or two of the left-leaning commentators in other countries had taken up the cry. For the most part, however, the video-print dispatches reflected a calmer editorial opinion, recognizing the genius of the man who’d had so much to do with the development of the transvection machine, and expressing sorrow at his tragic passing.

  Reading the reports, Crader decided it was time he inspected one of these wonderous transvection machines. In the morning he arranged to visit the government laboratory in Queens, where a small test unit had been set up. Some months back, a monkey had been transvected by Vander Defoe from a machine in Boston to this one in Queens, and the experiment had been impressive enough to interest the president. That had led in turn to the Venus experiment and Defoe’s appointment to the cabinet post.

  The transvection machine itself, when he finally faced it, was crushingly unimpressive. This was merely a table-top model, mounted on a large metal box, and it consisted of nothing more than a vaultlike interior about the size of an early television set. There was a thick metal door that swung shut, and a panel of photoelectric cells that covered one wall of the interior. From the outside ran perhaps a dozen flexible lengths of tape cable, connecting the device to a computer terminal complete with electronic typewriter for automatic input.

  “The box itself isn’t much,” Crader commented.

  His guide, Professor Van Dyke of the government research center, was quick to agree. “Oh, Vander Defoe was a clever one all right, no doubt about that. To tell the truth, I was one of the original scoffers. He never would tell us just how it was done, and without the details, I just couldn’t believe it would work. He’d convinced some others by transvecting a cigar box from one room to the next, but I wanted more proof. He finally suggested the test that we used.”

  “The monkey test?”

  Van Dyke nodded his bald head. “I had a pet monkey here in the lab—still have, in fact. I’ll get him for you.” He disappeared out of the room and returned after a moment with a large, curly-tailed Rhesus monkey. “This is Sam. Careful—he has been known to bite.”

  Crader backed up a step, studying the catlike face of the beast as it eyed him uncertainly. “Where does he come from?”

  “The Rhesus monkeys were originally natives of India. In fact, a century ago, more Indian people suffered monkey bites than snake bites. It had something to do with the Hindu religion protecting the monkey, but I never quite understood it. Now, of course, with India almost completely urbanized, these fellows are mainly found in minizoos and animal sanctuaries.”

  “And Sam here made the trip from Boston to New York?”

  “Correct.” He brushed the fur from the monkey’s ear and showed Crader a five-digit number. “It was all very official. We even tattooed a serial number on Sam’s ear. I loaded him in his traveling basket myself and Defoe flew up to Boston with him. I worked the controls on this end, following Defoe’s instructions. We were connected by closed-circuit video, of course, and there were several scientists in the audience in each city. Well, at a given time Vander Defoe placed Sam in his transvection machine at Boston University. Within five seconds, Sam was back here in the lab, in this machine. I took him out myself.”

  “Amazing,” Crader agreed. “I understand he later did the same thing with a girl?”

  The professor nodded. “From Washington to Calcutta. The president’s top adviser, Maarten Tromp, witnessed that one.”

  “So you’re a convert to the transvection machine?”

  Van Dyke shrugged. “I suppose you’d call me that, even if I can’t explain all of the damned thing. I never touch the machine unless Vander is here. It’s really his baby.”

  “Just how much of it can you explain?”

  “Well,” he began, patting the monkey gently, “everything consists of individual atoms, as you know. Defoe—or his former partner, Ganger—apparently hit upon a method of breaking down these atoms for transportation through the air like radio or television waves, reassembling them on the other end.”

  “Could the system work in outer space?” Crader wanted to know. “Say, between Earth and Venus?”

  “I know about the experiments, of course, but I don’t know exactly how to answer your question. Radio and television waves can pass through the ether, so I suppose there’s no reason why atomic particles couldn’t. Still, there could be complications because of the time and distance involved. A transvection from Venus would take several minutes, depending upon the location of the planets in their orbits. If a few atoms went astray during so lengthy a journey, it could prove fatal to the traveler.”

  Carl Crader looked again at the monkey, and watched its long tail curl about the professor’s arm. “Thanks very much,” he said. “You’ve helped me a great deal.”

  He left the laboratory and headed back to his office, with the growing conviction that Vander Defoe had been a very clever man.

  Judy was waiting for him with a message from Mike Sabin. “He was trying to contact you on the paging system. A man identified as Euler Frost boarded a sea-rail in Baltimore on Tuesday—the day after Secretary Defoe was killed.”

  Crader grunted. “That young Sabin does good work. And where has Frost gone to?”

  “A resort island called Plenish. It’s in the Indian Ocean.”

  Crader wasn’t surprised. Things were tying in nicely. “Arrange passage for me to Plenish, Judy.”

  “By rocketjet?”

  He considered for a moment and then said, “No, by sea-rail. The journey will give me time to think.”

  She bit at her lower lip. “Don’t you think Earl or somebody should go with you?”

  “Earl’s still in Washington.”

  “It could be dangerous. …”

  “For an old man like me?” he finished the thought for her.

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I guess I can still take care of myself, Judy. But thanks for your concern.”

  “The president wou
ldn’t like your going off like this.”

  “That’s why we won’t tell him, will we?” He grinned and waved her away.

  The sea-rail was a combination of anachronisms from the twentieth century, made possible and profitable by the technology of the twenty-first. To say that it was a railroad running on water was a simplification, but perhaps closer to the truth than any other description. The perfection of gyroscopic ocean platforms which could float on the waves and support a weight without appreciable movement, had led to the first sea-rail in the year 2034, and since then they had multiplied and extended their routes until they now circled the globe.

  Basically, there were three rails, forming a triangular tunnel through which the rocket train was propelled. Since one rail held the train at the top, jumping the tracks or derailing in any manner was impossible. At most points the sea-rail was high enough above the water to allow passage of ships beneath it, and where it dipped down close to the surface there was usually a section of track that could be swung open like a gate. As a mode of transportation, the sea-rail was almost completely safe. The only fatal accident had occurred some years back when an opened section on the Jamaica run had failed to shut properly and the rocket train shot through a caution signal to plunge into the ocean. That was, coincidentally, the accident in which Vander Defoe’s first wife died.

  The most heavily traveled sea-rail route was the one which crossed the Atlantic from Baltimore to Brest, on the coast of France. Another route ran south from Florida, stopping at all of the major Caribbean resort islands. The Pacific route stopped at Easter Island, where the great sun mirrors had created a lush tropical paradise that could rightly be advertised as Earth’s most perfect climate. Then they angled northwest to Japan and southwest to Australia, on to the Indian Ocean, and through the Red Sea and the Mediterranean to Europe.

  The great advantage of the sea-rail was that it could rise from the water’s surface and run easily across land, as it did in Egypt and Panama. And of course, it was fast. The Baltimore-Brest run took just over six hours, about the time jet aircraft took to cross the Atlantic back in the 1970s. If the sea-rail was slower than the rocketjets of the twenty-first century, it was also far less expensive.