Science Is Magic Spelled Backwards and Other Stories

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Later, I was sitting in a dim corner of the canteen during my coffee break when McCree showed up with a large tablet. He turned it on and set it in front of me showing a statistical tabulation.

  “Last Tuesday, when you couldn’t get tickets, the odds against the Ravens inviting you to a private party were nine thousand five hundred fifty three to one—assuming you did something else to attract their attention.”

  I scanned the tabulation and his notes, seeing he had made the assumptions I would have made. I wanted to kiss him. No, I wanted him to kiss me. But I told my heart to shut up, and I listened.

  “The odds were still over a thousand to one after the concert,” he said. “I guesstimated the number of cars on the street and looked up the number of cabs working, then figured the mean-free-path of the two cars, and all the routes we could have chosen. It could have happened once, Mavrana, but if you make a habit of this sort of thing, the odds go up steeply....”

  His tentative ending was a probe. I don’t know why I said it—I never seemed to be myself around McCree—but I blurted, “Yeah, it’s the story of my life. My mother claims she’s a witch, and she makes all these things happen to me!”

  “Mavrana, be serious!”

  “I am.” He believed me, and his gaze changed subtly. Somehow, I had gone from fascinating woman to interesting experiment. “Look,” I said, “I’m due back in the hot seat. I want to take this home and really read it. Send it to me, OK?”

  “Take the tablet. It’s mine, not company property. Give it back when you’re done.”

  As I passed my office, I dumped his tablet on my desk, wondering why I was fleeing McCree. He wasn’t credulous—but he wasn’t scornful either. That was chilling.

  It was a singularly uneventful morning in the pit. I had made arrangements for the Ravens’ visit that morning, when I arrived. At my two o’clock break, I made sure they were met at the gate and given our best tour guide. I couldn’t show them around myself—the insurance law required me to be within two minutes of the hot seat at all times.

  The guide was explaining that point just as he brought the Ravens into the hotbed. I relinquished my seat to my number two, and went to greet them. Phil scooped me into his arms and gave me a kiss on the cheek. So did the other Ravens, as if I were a long lost cousin, not a near stranger.

  In the time it took me to recover, aware of the eyes on me, Art said, “This looks just like the auxiliary control room out on the edge.”

  He meant the backseat, so I said, “Yes, in case of ultimate disaster—a meltdown or major contamination—we could retreat past four more safety containments to the outer control you saw on your way in. It’s identical to this one in capability, except that their view of the pit is on screens. Here we have direct vision—a bit of a luxury.”

  They crowded around the window, and that’s when it happened.

  A deep rumble, as if a truck were passing—but it grew to sound like a large freight train. Then the ceiling shook. With a loud report, a jagged crack appeared across the inner glass of the window and water began to leak from between the panes—radiation, too, no doubt but I couldn’t hear the counters over the roar.

  Another crack on the outer pane spurted water in a shower down into the pit, but you could barely see it for the billowing clouds of steam.

  The Ravens tumbled back from the window, tangling with two of my desk men. Everyone was bewildered, paralyzed by the shock. I, however, had just come from the west coast. “Earthquake!” I shouted over the din and leaped into the hot seat, yelling, “Dan, bluephone for a complete shutdown. Max, yellowphone the Mayor an evacuation alert. Jill, redphone the grid we’re going offline. Ken, what have you got?”

  Ken flashed me his display, the flowchart for the whole plant. It showed line ruptures, valves opening to dump working fluids into containment, and other valves shutting down—but if those readings were correct, there wouldn’t be any steam in the pit. My own monitors showed radiation rising in the hotbed. “Louanne, prepare to evacuate us to the backseat.”

  Frantically disciplined activity broke out as automatic commands seemed to issue themselves. Emotionally, I hadn’t yet assimilated the fact that an earthquake—of better than five on the Richter scale—had just torn apart a plant on a seismically stable site.

  Down in the pit ponderous machinery had begun to move along overhead tracks. The Pot was being shut down, but it would take hours to douse that sun, and we were losing coolant like crazy. The emergency crews were down there working, men and women paid, to stand by on the off chance they’d have to risk—or give—their lives to contain an accident.

  I picked up the orange phone as my colleagues began to herd the Ravens out our emergency exit to the backseat despite the trembling floor. “This is an all-out Alert.” I shoved my ID tag onto the plate and the phone glowed. Machinery was set in motion to bring every possible expert into our problem, either in person or on a conference line.

  Then I called the President. Of the United States, that is. And it was no drill. I’d never actually done that before. I got him on his cell phone.

  I was the last one out of there. The floor had stopped shaking.

  My radiation tag had taken on a sickly color, but I had no time to worry about it.

  In the backseat, the readouts made more sense. Somehow, the main server had been damaged but the backup was working. God help us.

  As we completed our first emergency drills, the executive conference was convened in the deep bunker. I’d sent the Ravens to the infirmary because the Plant was now under strict quarantine. Nothing would leave until this was over.

  I was the first to report. Standing up with all those hard eyes on me, I was more nervous than I’d been during my first solo in the hotseat. After me, damage control, Pot management, and power disbursement reported—and none of them was critical of my actions.

  Doctor Howard Conwell, the ultimate authority in charge of the entire operation, said quietly, “Well done, all of you. So far, no stray radiation has been detected offsite. Our job is to see that none ever is. Clear?”

  We all nodded. I didn’t envy Conwell his job. He would have to stand accountable, for everything we had done and explain it all to the President. For the first time, I realized that his was the job I had been ultimately aiming for. I wasn’t too sure I wanted it anymore.

  In the backseat, a tense hush had fallen. We had all changed into fresh hotsuits, and been treated by the duty physicians. I had reached my exposure limit, but was still just barely safe.

  What it came down to, three grueling hours later, was one tertiary backup valve. The two others that were supposed to do the job had been ruined by the quake. And the third one had not functioned. We didn’t know why. Conwell had not yet ordered a suicide mission in there to ascertain why.

  A quiet voice said at my elbow, “There’s somebody here who insists on seeing you.”

  It was McCree. Behind him, flanked by Phil and Art Raven, stood my mother. She beamed pleasantly, “And look who I found!” she said gesturing to the Ravens. “Just when I needed them.”

  As I stared at the three of them, it all came into focus. The earthquake had produced the exact damage we had drilled to handle in my earthquake scenario. And I remembered mother saying, “What do I have to do, trigger an earthquake under Sterling Bridge before you’ll admit the obvious?”

  McCree said “She was just applying for admittance at the main gate when the quake hit. Your ‘all-out’ sealed her in. I haven’t had time to run a probability calculation on that one.”

  Mama said, “Mr. McCree has been nice enough to explain your problem to me. I want to help.”

  A bubble of hysterical laughter formed under my diaphragm.

  McCree added, “If it might head off a dirty accident, it ought to be tried.”

  “Dirty” was absolutely the most powerful expletive in our jargon. “Do you have any idea what kind of help she’s offering?” I asked tightly.

  “I’ve explained t
he nature of my craft to him,” answered Mama. She was in one of her distant-calm moods, as if not quite connected into reality. It wasn’t drug induced; she never used mooders.

  “I think we ought to discuss this in the conference room.”

  McCree objected. “There’s no time! Proceed on my personal authority.”

  “I can’t! Redlaw is in effect now, and I’m in the hotseat. I can’t—and won’t pass the buck.”

  “Look—what harm can it do?” asked McCree. “All she wants is a couple of square feet of space and a moment or two of silence.”

  I met Mama’s eyes. McCree had the right attitude—scientific curiosity, not—fear. God, I admire that man! “All right,” I said with a shrug. “But if the valve suddenly starts to work, it won’t have proved anything.”

  “No,” he agreed readily, “but it would be another wild improbability to add to the list. Besides, I’d like to see what’s going to happen—wouldn’t you?”

  No. The feeling washed over me as I said, “Why not?” Somehow, I knew what was going to happen. And if it did, then maybe I’d have to abandon my whole model of the universe.

  I issued orders to clear a space in the middle of the floor. “Go ahead and do your thing,” I said to my mother, “but don’t be surprised if we have to interrupt you with reports. Our work can’t be delayed.”

  “I do understand,” she said. “Just show me which of these screens depicts the valve in question.”

  McCree pointed to the main monitor that replaced the window. “It’s here,” he said, touching the spot where colored lines crisscrossed. The valve marked ought to have dumped the hot coolant into containment and let cold fluid into the system. “If it doesn’t respond within the next hour, Conwell is going to order the suicide crew in to fix it.”

  I glanced at the creeping temperature readouts. We might have an hour left at that—then again, we might not.

  “And where is the control for that motor-valve system?” asked Mama.

  My hand went to it automatically. McCree said, “Dan Ackers there has one, and Mavrana has the master control.”

  “Good. When I give the word, I want both of you to work your controls to signal the valve open. And the valve will open.”

  She was dressed in a dark blue business suit with a light yellow blouse. As she spoke, she took the jacket off, rolled up her sleeves and stepped out of her plain navy pumps. From her leather handbag, she took a silver ring and put it on her right index finger. Laying aside her glasses, she turned to the Ravens. “Now, as I explained before, give me an A-note.”

  Phil hummed the note, and Art joined, and the two of them took turns breathing to sustain the note.

  Mother paced out her working space, then stood to face each of the cardinal compass points in turn, gesturing. Her face had smoothed to look ten years younger, and her eyes were half closed. In that state, she began to turn in place, her arms crooked outward at shoulder height. I knew it must hurt her arthritis.

  As she turned, her body seemed to blur, as if she were surrounded by a transparent cape. I blinked the illusion aside, and scanned the instruments tripping the valve switch again. But none of the indicators changed.

  Everyone was staring fixedly at mother, abstract expressions on their faces. The Ravens had their heads together, eyes closed in concentration, oblivious to their surroundings. Mother spun like a corkscrew, also oblivious. Two minutes and thirty-five seconds had passed when mother began to Sing. It was a word that sounded like all vowels, enunciated not with the mouth but with the gut. I felt my bones vibrating, and my brain tingling.

  Then she was still, the ringed finger pointing at me. “Signal and the valve will function.”

  I wanted to laugh it away, but McCree was staring at me intently. I tripped the valve control again, and mother jerked around to point at Dan. “Signal—now!”

  His eyes had dilated and he seemed to be staring at the end of her finger. But his hand moved to the control.

  I was afraid to look at the main screen.

  Mother moved to the Ravens, put one hand on a shoulder of each of them and brought them out of their trance, cutting off the A tone so suddenly everything changed.

  McCree whispered reverently, “Dear God!”

  On the main screen, the readout had shifted colors and symbols to show the valve was open. Coolant was moving.

  I didn’t believe it. It was just the computer readout. I flipped the displays until we were watching the pit. The plume of steam from the safety bleeder was waning. As we watched, it stopped. That had to mean the pressure was down and the coolant was being dumped—at last—into the pressure container designed to hold it.

  In the awed silence, Jill said, “The temperature at the periphery has stopped rising.”

  At intervals during the next half hour, she reported as the other temperature monitors leveled off. It would be days until the actual pile temperature would go down, but we knew we’d won when the last of her monitors leveled.

  The cheer was deafening.

  At the executive conference that night, Conwell said, “You’re all to be commended to the United Nations for preventing even a single death or injury during the worst fusion disaster in history.” What he meant was that, because of our efficiency, his neck wasn’t on the chopping block.

  As soon as I could, I confronted Mama. “I’m still, not convinced—so what are you going to do next time, bring a meteor down on top of us?”

  She looked shocked. “Mavrana, you can’t think that we caused the earthquake?”

  “I recall that you said you would.”

  “That was just to plant the idea in your mind to drill them for it. Our astrologer and three of our best psychics predicted it just after they built the plant, so our group has been working hard to prevent a real disaster.”

  Relieved and exasperated, I threw my hands up and walked away. Later, McCree brought in a printout of the probability estimates for this long chain of events. When I saw the actual figures in cold print, something snapped. In the scientific view of the universe, improbable events just do not happen in such long chains just for the convenience of man. There has to be some relationship between science and magic—and I’m going to find it.

  The search will be quite a lot of fun since McCree has agreed to work with me, even after hours.

  EVENT AT HOLIDAY ROCK

  Most people say it was a coincidence, but I know differently, and I think it’s time I told the whole story.

  It was just three years ago today that it happened. At the time, I, Charlie Collins, was Chief Musician at the Rock, and I was scheduled to play the last Sunset Concert before they closed the new dam and inundated all of Boiling Rock Basin and most of Holiday Rock with it.

  That would be an awesome sight. It never rained in Boiling Rock Basin, but the Basin was really a huge tilted plane, walled by mountains that funneled the northern runoff into the South Sea on Hobart’s Hearth. Offworld tourists would sit in hoverbubbles to watch the first rain of winter when the Rock was closed, and a hundred-meter-high wall of water would come crashing down that tilted funnel. The engineers who built the dam across Sluice Gap Narrows swore the thing would stop any wall of water the north country could throw down—but I had my doubts.

  The day of my last concert, the fire-blue sky was as starkly bare of clouds as ever. I stood at the foot of the Rock, blinking away tears of nostalgia and trying to imagine how high on the two-hundred-meter columns of the Rock the water would come. Looking up at the spires, resplendent in heat shimmer and their natural rainbow colors, I tried to imagine what the long-dead alien builders would have thought of us for drowning their one surviving artifact.

  I was in no hurry to go into the control room. The tourist buses were bringing my last audience, the most distinguished group I’ve ever played to: two hundred Heads of State, Personages, Personalities, and Influentials.

  They straggled across the blue, red, and black drystone toward the arena, making tourist noises at the a
wesome columns and sweating in the dry desert heat, envying their native guides’ dry foreheads. With them came troops of reporters, followed by teams wrestling with the best professional recording gear available anywhere in the galaxy—none of the usual pocketcorders the amateurs dragged along, but real professional equipment in professional hands. And this last time, I wanted to be in absolute top form.

  I’d always wanted to be a legitimate musician, but I didn’t have the money to go to study at offworld conservatories. I was twenty-two then, and I calculated I’d be sixty-three before I’d have the money. So I was determined to be noticed at this last Sunset Concert.

  The cliff shadows were creeping toward the arena where the dignitaries and reporters were jostling for seats. I licked dry lips and crossed the expanse of crushed black stone to the base of the Rock. The tremendous pillars of stone that buttressed the Rock rose directly, in sheer massiveness, out of the flat gravel base. It was like walking between the feet of some god-sized statue hewn from wind-carved stone.

  As I moved into the dim tunnels, the grim tension drained out of me, replaced as always by quiet awe. I had to pause one last time at the Inscription Room. I had spent more time there than any offworld scholar doing a paper on the Rock.

  Each of the four Inscriptions is a short message followed by a long, intricate musical score. “Those who sit, silently, attentive to every note of the Sunset Concert will experience good luck for a time proportionate to the degree of their concentration. Those who think of other things will experience bad luck and failure for a similarly proportionate time.”

  We only play the Rock at sunset, but the aliens had other appointed times. “Those who dance to the Dawn Concert will have long lives and good health in proportion to their skill. Those who sit at the Dawn Concert will die young.”

  The Midnight Concert was for those who would know God and the Noon Concert for those who would marry and establish a dynasty. Standing among the ornately carved pillars of the Inscription Room, vibrating with echoes of the Rock’s sepulchral tones, it was easy to believe that hearing this instrument could be a blessing or a curse, as you willed it.