The Transvection Machine

by Edward D. Hoch

  “The mission bothers you, Euler,” Gloria said, rolling over on the bed to face him. “You afraid.”

  “No, not really.”

  “You afraid Crader?”

  He shook his head. “Axman says Crader is taken care of, but he didn’t explain how.”

  She giggled—a soft lilting sound he’d come to love. “I know about that. I know about Crader.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Genet tells me. While Crader was here at house yesterday, explosive wafer was hidden in lining of the flightcase he always carries with him. Axman will set off by radio waves, and Crader is no more.”

  Frost thought about that. Well, was it so different from his attempt on Defoe’s life? Crader was the enemy, opposing their cause. So why did it bother him?

  Was it because he knew the man, had talked to him?

  He dozed finally, sinking into a troubled sleep, dreaming he was on trial before a jury of machines, with a machine judge to pass sentence. When finally he awakened, his body cold with sweat, he wondered if it had been a dream at all.

  15 BONNIE SIMMONS

  THE DAYS AT SALK Memorial were no longer pleasant interludes of adventure for Bonnie Simmons. She knew from the looks the others gave her that her days there were numbered. Even the training program which had equipped her to work on computerized surgery would not weigh heavily enough in her favor. A cabinet member—one of the twenty or so most important men in the country—had died while in her care. That was something which would follow her throughout her professional career, unless she could somehow show that what happened was in no way her fault.

  She’d thought for a time that Dr. Groton might be able to help her, and certainly she would not have minded bestowing a few favors in return for his help. But then that detective, Jazine, had entered the picture. He was a handsome devil, but he hadn’t pursued his advantage with her. He seemed to be holding back, perhaps because he considered her as a suspect. And Groton had all but abandoned her, not even speaking when they passed in the hall of the hospital the morning after the scene in her apartment.

  For a time she considered leaving Salk Memorial on her own, perhaps moving to California, where there were new one-thousand-bed hospitals opening almost every month in the massive retirement cities. They needed nurses there, and she understood the pay was better than in the east. Perhaps she could even change her name and start over.

  But if she changed her name, what of her nurse’s training, her license, her references? Who could she write to for a reference, living in California under the name of Jane Doe? Certainly not Dr. Groton or Salk Memorial.

  She’d thought about Vander Defoe often in the days since his death, seeing him again under her hands, with the blood suddenly spurting against the automated scalpel. She’d gone over it in her mind in every detail of the preparation, every bit of their conversation as she remembered it. Vander Defoe, wheeled into the operating room from the emergency ward, his mind still sharp even after the spinal they’d given him. The motorized lift to place him on the operating table, the records projector that she’d focused on the wall above his head. Their conversation, the signal light on the machine, the beginning of the operation. And then—what? She hadn’t worked a computerized operation since the tragedy, since all such surgery had been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. Instead, they’d consigned her to operating room data processing, a boring task that hardly needed the qualifications of a trained nurse. Working over the reels of magnetic tape with their tiny punched symbols was hard on the vision, and she was forced to remove her soft contact lenses every hour or so to bathe her eyes.

  It was during one of these breaks in her routine, staring out the window at the landscape blurred by her uncorrected vision, that a thought came to her. It had to do with action and reaction, not exactly like the work that made her eyes tired, but action and reaction nevertheless. She replaced her lenses and went down the hall to the operating room.

  The machine she remembered so well from that day stood bleak and lonely now, hardly visible in the dark of the windowless room. She switched on the radiant ceiling and walked over to it. Her hand went out to touch the icy smoothness of its stainless steel body.

  It was sleeping now, unprogrammed, waiting for the operating instructions which might never come. She felt sorry in a way, because, for those brief months, the machine had been almost a part of her. She would not believe it was the machine’s fault that Vander Defoe had died, any more than it was her own fault. In a moment of passion she’d come close to cursing it when Earl Jazine had questioned her the first time, but now with the passing of more time the conviction was growing in her that the cause of Defoe’s death lay elsewhere.

  She gripped one of the machine’s dangling arms, moving it slowly back and forth. This was the laser scalpel arm, she knew, empty now, but only resting. This was the arm that had sliced through the skin with its laser beam and then directed its steel scalpel at the insides of Vander Defoe’s helpless body. But how easily it moved! A breath of air could almost set it in motion, though of course there was no moving air in the operating room. Even the atmosphere conditioning was carefully baffled.

  Suppose something had moved the arm. Not air, not another person, certainly not Bonnie herself. But suppose … Action and reaction. What was it she’d thought originally? That Vander Defoe had …

  “Nurse Simmons?”

  She turned, startled at the sound of her name. She hadn’t wanted to be found here, where she no longer belonged. “Yes? What can I …?”

  She saw the steel scalpel flash in the light, and she opened her mouth to scream.

  But it was too late for screaming.

  16 EARL JAZINE

  CRADER HAD SAID LITTLE to explain his excitement, or the reason why Jazine had to return to Washington by rocketcopter and find Hubert Ganger. But Jazine had learned long ago that his superior’s hunches usually paid off. If he thought Ganger was still in Washington, he had some reason for thinking so.

  Jazine took Mike Sabin with him, and the young man was filled with gratitude. He knew the information he’d given Crader about the Chinese girl had been valuable, and had set off this whole chain of events, and if he didn’t quite understand it, he still seemed more than willing to follow Jazine’s lead.

  “I want you to get over to Ganger’s apartment, Mike, and keep an ear on it. Set up an electronic sound field and move in the minute you hear anything. Arrest anyone who enters the place.”

  “If he’s there, I’ll get him for you!” Sabin said, pleased with his newly assigned responsibility.

  Alone, Jazine headed for Gretel Defoe’s place. It was the other likely possibility in his search for Ganger, but it proved a dud. There was still no one home.

  It was while standing in front of Mrs. Defoe’s apartment that a sudden question hit him. He wondered why he hadn’t thought to ask it before. Mrs. Defoe had told him she heard the news of her husband’s death on the video news and went right to the hospital. She said she’d seen Nurse Simmons, but nowhere in her testimony had Bonnie Simmons mentioned seeing her. It might have been simply an oversight, or it might mean something. He decided it was worth a drive to Salk Memorial.

  A hospital on a late afternoon in October is always a busy place, with the early evening darkness placing a special strain on drivers who tried to negotiate rush hour traffic in their little electric cars. This afternoon was no exception at Salk Memorial. A rocketcopter was unloading three accident victims as Jazine arrived, and it took him a few moments to find a nurse with time to answer his question. “Where can I find Nurse Simmons?”

  “Try operating room data processing,” she told him without looking up. Her hands were busy spraying liquid stitching on an ugly wound.

  But the data processing room, when he reached it, was empty. He sighed and looked around, then started down the hall toward the computerized surgery room. Perhaps she was still working there, although he doubted it.

  The room
was unlocked when he reached it, but in darkness. He stepped inside and switched on the radiant ceiling. The surgery machine was still in place. Beneath it, on the operating table, Bonnie Simmons sprawled bloody in death. Her throat had been cut with a scalpel that now dangled from one of the machine’s tentaclelike arms.

  Jazine drew a sharp breath and stepped closer. When he saw there was nothing he could do for her, he reached up and pressed the red alarm button above the table. After a moment the door opened behind him and Dr. Groton rushed in, his face white with fright.

  “This room’s not in use,” he barked. “What in hell are you doing here?”

  Jazine stepped aside so that Groton could see the body on the table. “It was used by somebody, doctor. And you were the first one here again, just like the other time.”

  Jazine called Carl Crader on the vision-phone and told him what had happened. Crader simply sat and stared, and finally asked, “Any chance she was killed by the machine, Earl?”

  “None, chief. They’d disconnected its power source because it wasn’t in use. Apparently our killer didn’t know that, though. He tried to rig it to look like the machine.”

  “Any strangers around the hospital?”

  “They’re so busy they could have an army of strangers without knowing it. Anyone in a sterile smock can walk the halls without question.”

  “What about Groton?”

  “He’s a possibility. I’m questioning him.”

  Crader sighed and rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Keep on top of it, Earl. And find Ganger!”

  “Think he might have had a hand in this?”

  “It’s not impossible. Somebody was scared of Bonnie Simmons. I only wish to hell we knew why.”

  Jazine broke the connection and went back into the operating room. The local police had finished making their holograms, and had vacuumed the room for clues, but there was nothing. Jazine answered some questions, filled out the necessary forms stating his government connection, and then went in search of Dr. Groton.

  He found the man in the staff lunchroom, sitting alone over a warming-cup full of black coffee. He looked up as Jazine approached and said, quietly, “You won’t believe this, but I loved her.”

  “Sure you did!”

  “All right—it happens to be true! My first marriage was a disaster that I’m still paying off. My present marriage isn’t much better. With Bonnie I felt like a new man. I felt young again.”

  “That’s why you were trying to blackmail her?”

  He sighed and stared down at his coffee. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but there was no blackmail involved. Bonnie was meeting me quite willingly yesterday when you happened to catch us together.”

  “Then why did you slug me?”

  “I told you—I was startled. I thought you were a mugger.”

  “Or a detective hired by your wife?”

  He shrugged. “That too.”

  “You hadn’t offered to cover up Bonnie’s delay in pressing the alarm button?”

  “All I can say is that I wasn’t forcing her to come with me. I loved her, and I think she was beginning to love me.”

  “And you have no idea who killed her? It couldn’t have been a rejected suitor?”

  “I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Your face was pretty white when you came through that operating room door,” Jazine reminded him.

  “Naturally it was! I knew the room hadn’t been used since Defoe’s death. I couldn’t imagine who’d be ringing the alarm button.”

  “But you always seem to be first on the scene, don’t you?”

  “My office is just below the operating room, by the stairs. If the floor nurse is away from her video monitoring console, which she usually is, then I’m the closest one if the alarm sounds.”

  “Did you see anyone go up those stairs before the killing?”

  “No. My back is to the hall when I’m at my desk, and of course there are other ways of getting up there.”

  “But you’ll admit that Bonnie’s killer must have been someone from the hospital?”

  “Not at all. In fact, it’s more likely that someone from outside the hospital would have looked for her, and found her, in that operating room. Everyone from the hospital knew she didn’t work in there any longer, and that the room was not in use.”

  “Any idea what she was doing there?”

  “None. Maybe the killer lured her. I don’t know.”

  Jazine pressed the coffee dispenser in the center of the table and waited while his warming-cup filled. “Did she have any ideas about Defoe’s death?”

  “Nothing she didn’t tell you. She had pretty much decided the machine wasn’t to blame.”

  Jazine was sipping his coffee, letting his eyes roam about the big, sterile lunchroom, when his gaze settled on a familiar figure just coming in the door. He could hardly believe it, but there was no mistaking the slim man with the close-cropped blond hair and beard. It was Hubert Ganger, wearing a green hospital smock over his street clothes.

  “Excuse me,” Jazine said, and left the table with a rush.

  Ganger turned and saw him coming. He sprinted for the door, but Jazine was on top of him, grabbing him around the middle and wrestling him to the floor amidst a clatter of toppling trays. A nurse screamed and two doctors tried to separate them, but Jazine clung to his prey. “Let me go!” Ganger gasped out.

  Jazine got one hand free and showed his identification. “CBI—this man is my prisoner.” Then, to Ganger, he said, “Come on. There’s somebody in New York who wants to see you.”

  Carl Crader had already gone home for the day to the suburban apartment he shared with his wife. Their three children were grown and married, scattered in various locations around the world, and Jazine knew that Crader liked to spend as much time as possible with his wife. But when he learned that Ganger had been taken into custody and flown to New York, he made immediate arrangements to return to the office by rocketcopter.

  The old World Trade Center buildings took on a special life of their own at night, towering above everything on the south end of Manhattan, glowing with lights like a beacon for atomic liners. Though the CIB offices were mainly empty, Judy had come back to work from her nearby apartment, and Mike Sabin had flown in with Jazine and their prisoner. Sitting in Carl Crader’s office, awaiting his arrival, Jazine felt again the magic of the place at night.

  “Great view with all the lights,” he said. To the west, beyond the towers of New Jersey City, the flares of the mail rockets curved in gentle arcs toward the earth.

  “It’s something at night,” Judy conceded. “By day it’s only towers and people and machines. After dark it comes alive. It becomes a thing—all one, connected in its parts.”

  “Rocketcopter coming in,” Mike Sabin called from the other window. “It must be the chief.”

  Carl Crader descended the spiral staircase, looking tired but alert. He glanced at the chair where Hubert Ganger sat, and then asked Jazine, “Where did you find him?”

  “Salk Memorial. I tackled him in the lunchroom. He was sneaking around in a doctor’s smock.”

  Carl Crader nodded, showing no surprise on his wrinkled face. “Suppose you tell us about it, Ganger.”

  “I have nothing to tell. This man arrested me without cause, and I intend to press charges for false arrest and abduction.”

  “Please—you’re wasting time. Shortly before Earl recognized you at the hospital, a girl was murdered there. Her name was Bonnie Simmons and she was the nurse who handled Vander Defoe’s ill-fated operation. If you were involved in Defoe’s death, that would give you an excellent reason for returning to the hospital to kill Nurse Simmons.”

  “I never even met the girl!”

  “People often kill strangers. Mrs. Defoe met her, apparently, after her husband’s death.”

  “Then ask Mrs. Defoe! Don’t ask me!”

  “What were you doing there?” Crader pressed.


  “I’m damned if I have to tell you! It was personal business.”

  “Did it concern the transvection machine?” Jazine interrupted. “I’ve suspected for some time, chief, that Ganger might have used it to transvect himself into that operating room and kill Defoe. Maybe he had some secret apparatus there which had to be removed. Maybe Bonnie Simmons caught him at it and he killed her.”

  Hubert Ganger looked scornful. “And then remained at the hospital a couple of hours till you caught me, wise guy? Not a chance! Besides, I thought we went over all this at my apartment the other day. The transvection machine isn’t magic—it needs two terminals. In order for me to have rigged something in that operating room, I’d have had to know about the surgery days in advance.”

  Carl Crader cleared his throat. “I’m willing to accept the fact that the transvection machine wasn’t used to kill Vander Defoe. But I’m not willing to accept the fact that it isn’t magic. In fact, magic is just what it is, Ganger, and you know it. The transvection machine never existed. It’s been a gigantic fraud from beginning to end.”

  Earl Jazine opened his mouth and stared at Crader in disbelief.

  17 CARL CRADER

  HE WOULD RATHER HAVE had the confrontation come at a more suitable hour—perhaps ten in the morning, when he had his wits about him. But those things couldn’t be planned, and now, facing Ganger across his desk at an hour approaching midnight, he knew it was the right moment. “Do you want to tell us about it?” he asked the bearded man.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ganger replied, but there were drops of moisture on his forehead. “Defoe took over my invention. I don’t know what he might have done with it.”

  “But you know there never was an invention—only a fraud of an especially clever sort. You knew Vander Defoe couldn’t make the transvection machine work, so he must have been continuing the fraud.”