Vickie smiled. 'I hadn't forgotten,' she said. She brushed his lips with hers as she walked past him to the door.
David sat back from the computer console, once more feeling frustrated. On Monday he'd talked at length to Weinberger about Saxon's plan to move the equipment, but that hadn't changed anything. He'd considered going higher in the university administration, maybe to the Graduate School dean or the provost. But without the support of the chairman, that seemed pointless, and he had decided that for the moment his time was better spent taking data. He could take up that fight again when he had no hardware to worry about.
He consulted the logbook. All the measurements on the list had been completed. He knew he had only about another hour to work before he had to halt the data taking. Sam was coming around at one P.M. to help disassemble things and get the equipment boxed and ready to move.
Now he was following up some new ideas on how to fill his remaining time. He was doing some final calculations of field settings for a range of field diameters from as small as a few centimeters to as large as five meters, about the largest their power supplies could handle. Five meters was big, he mused. At that diameter the twistor transition would take out the coils, the supplies, the console – the whole bloody works. He smiled ruefully. Another 'accident' would certainly solve the argument about what to do with the hardware. Now that the pressure to get data for Vickie was off and he had more time to reflect on the gross injustice of the present situation, his anger was rising.
Purposefully, he moused the five-meter settings into the control program. The control panel appeared on the screen. He clicked the COUNT DOWN option and moved the cursor to the control labeled His hand hesitated on the mouse switch. No, he told himself, I can't do that. There would be hell to pay if I did. I'd agreed to do these last few measurements and have the equipment ready to move by four this afternoon. Still, it was tempting . . . He took his hand from the mouse, got up from the console, and took a deep breath.
I've been working too hard, he thought. He looked at his watch. It was 10:48 A.M. Coffee time, he thought. He picked up his cup and moved toward the door.
Allan Saxon and his Seattle lawyer, Dan Marcus, were escorted by Martin Pierce into a well-appointed conference room just down the hall from Pierce's office. Saxon was frustrated. His attempt in the waiting room to interest Darlene in an evening liaison had met a surprisingly cold rebuff. He seated himself in one of the leather chairs around the polished lozenge-shaped table. Two people that Saxon had never seen before were seated at the table. Pierce performed the introductions. They were from the Megalith legal staff.
'Well, Allan,' Pierce began, 'we have a new proposition for you.' He put his hand on his copy of the thick document that Darlene had placed before each of the participants. It was a new contract that Megalith was proposing would replace their old agreement. He proceeded to thread delicately through the complexities of the massive legal instrument.
Saxon was puzzled. On the surface the terms of this overcomplicated contract were more favorable than he had anticipated, far more generous than those he and Pierce had discussed a week earlier. He looked speculatively at Pierce, droning on and on about the benefits of the new arrangement. What was the devious son of a bitch up to?
Saxon had thought a lot about the bugging incident. Megalith certainly had the resources to set up an operation like that. In all probability Martin Pierce now knew almost as much as he did about the twistor effect. And Pierce wanted it. Saxon smiled and began to leaf through the contract. Now he knew what he was looking for. Somewhere in the bowels of this turgid document were words that would transfer all rights to the twistor effect to the Megalith Corporation. He would find them and nullify their effect.
It was going to be a long day.
Melissa sat looking around her father's office and finding little that interested her. She was becoming bored. It was supposed to be a special day. Her third-grade class had been canceled this morning so the teachers could have a meeting. Daddy had taken her and Jeff to the children's department of the University Bookstore, bought them each a book, and then brought them to his office to help him work. He'd said they would visit David soon, but now he was busy at his computer terminal. She and Jeff had been told to look at their new books. Daddy was very busy with whatever he was doing, and his back was turned.
She nudged Jeff, put a finger to her lips, and pointed to the open door. She whispered in Jeff's ear, 'Let's go and see David now!' He nodded, smiling. Quietly they tiptoed outside. Melissa brought her new book to show David the pictures of dinosaurs. They were like the dragons in some of his stories. They walked quietly down the hall to the stairway. On the first floor they found David's lab door. It was unlocked and they opened it. They were going to jump inside and say 'Boo!' to surprise him, but he wasn't there. 'His coat is here,' said Melissa. 'I'll bet he'll be back soon.' She put her book on the table by the door. Then she heard David's voice in the hall, talking to someone. 'I know!' she said. 'Let's hide and jump out and scare him when he comes in!'
'Yeah!' said Jeff. 'Let's scare him!'
Melissa led the way to the control console. Together they crouched in the knee space beneath it. It was like a little house.
'This is fun!' said Jeff, and giggled.
David, returning to the laboratory with a full cup of coffee, saw three men in gray coveralls walking to the door of his lab. 'Can I help you?' he asked. He noticed that the coveralls had the words WESTERN VAN LINES stenciled in blue on front and back.
The man in the lead, about forty and going bald, consulted a clipboard. 'We're looking for a Dr D. Harrison in room 101.'
'I'm Harrison,' said David.
'We're here to move some equipment,' said the balding man.
David opened the door to the laboratory. 'Here's the equipment in question, but the arrangement was to move it late this afternoon, at about four. I'm not done with it yet. You'll have to come back later.'
The three men followed David into the laboratory, and he noticed that one of them, a very large fellow with a coarse face and large hands, had closed the door behind him and was locking it. 'I'm afraid that's impossible,' said the leader. 'We have a very tight schedule, and our orders are to move it now.'
David frowned and put his cup on the table. 'Look, I'm sorry about your orders and your schedule, but I've got a schedule of my own. And I haven't finished. This equipment will not be ready to move until four P.M. You'll just have to come back then. If you have any complaints, I suggest you take them to Professor Saxon, who arranged for this stupid move in the first place.' David's rising irritation turned to amazement as he realized that the big man was now pointing a large black gun in his direction. He identified it as one of the new laser-aimed weapons that the police favor, and noticed that the guide beam from the gun was making a small red laser spot on his chest.
'If you wanna leave this lavatory alive, turkey,' the big man said, 'just hold it right there.'
'We have to move this equipment now,' the balding man said calmly. 'We have our orders. Cooperate with us, and you won't get hurt.'
Bugs first and now guns! David's mind was racing. This wasn't about a simple move of the hardware from the UW campus to the Bellevue. Saxon wouldn't need to send movers with guns. What the hell was going on here? Who could be behind this? Spies? The CIA? The KGB?
David took a few steps backward. He felt a controlled but rising sense of intense anger and resentment at the injustice of it all. Then it occurred to him that the computer still held the five-meter field settings. 'OK!' he said and spread his hands. 'Look, if you're that set on moving the stuff a bit early, that's fine. I'll have to get the stuff ready. It will be severely damaged if it isn't shut down properly. I'll have to activate the automatic shutdown procedure. OK?' David pointedly turned his back on them and walked over to the console. He could almost feel the red laser spot on his spine as he walked.
'OK, you can shut it down,' said the leader. 'But be quick about it!'
<
br /> The shutdown is very quick,' said David through clenched teeth. 'It only takes a few seconds. Look, there are dangerous high voltages here. Please stand back against that wall until everything is safely off.' He reached across the console, moused the cursor to the control on the computer screen, and clicked. Then he backed slowly away from the console, moving at a leisurely pace along a path that would take him well outside the field volume and away from the windows. Those might implode from the vacuum produced when the transition hit. The synthesized voice of the control program began the down-count: 'Five!. . . Four! . . . '
Crouching under the control desk, Melissa heard men's voices in the room. They sounded angry, and Melissa was uncertain about when they should surprise David. When she heard David's computer saying numbers, she decided that the time had come for the surprise. When the computer said 'Three!' she and Jeff jumped out from under the console yelling 'Surprise, David! Surprise!'
David saw the children. The realization of what was about to happen came to him like an electric shock, and his time sense slowed down. As the computer said 'Two!' he began to move with agonizing slowness across to the console. He knelt slowly to pull the two children to him. He saw them turn to look at him, delight on their faces. They squirmed and giggled. Did he have time to get them out?
'One!' said the control computer.
Melissa squirmed away from him, and David wasted a critical split second in pulling her back again. With the children in his embrace, he turned away from the console. Was it too late? He hesitated for another split second as he estimated the position of the field boundary and considered the consequences of being half in and half out of the field sphere.
'Activating!' said the computer.
The large man was keeping his gun aimed in the general direction of the Harrison turkey when some little kids jumped out from under the messy desk. Reflexively he stepped forward and brought up his laser-guided automatic, now extended at arm's length and projecting its target spot on the area of Harrison's heart. He was the muscle, and he had the gun. Nobody was getting away with any tricks on his watch.
'Activating!' said that computer voice. His gun hand suddenly felt numb.
Abruptly, he wasn't looking at the Harrison turkey any more. His arm gave the appearance of pressing deep into a smooth wooden surface. As he pulled it away, he saw that his hand was missing at the wrist. It looked all smooth and white and bloody. He could see the bones of his arm cut off clean and white, and the blood now pulsing from the severed arteries. He screamed a great animal release of anger and fear and protest. He'd been in control, goddammit! He'd done it right. He hadn't screwed up. This couldn't happen!
The balding man stared around the room in disbelief. There was a strong cedarlike smell in the air. The floor supports made ominous groaning noises. Where the apparatus stood an instant ago there was now an enormous reddish wooden ball that reached almost to the ceiling and was sunk into the floor. Its sides were smooth, as if polished. The large man beside him made animal noises, and with each heartbeat blood spurted from a stump at his wrist where his hand had been. There were streaks of the bright red arterial blood down the side of the sphere, and a puddle was forming on the floor.
The balding man felt growing shock and numbness spreading across his mind and battled against it, clinging to clarity. He pressed a blood-soaked handkerchief into the big man's remaining hand to hold against the wrist stump. Then he snatched a piece of clear plastic tubing from a work table by the wall and tied it around the man's forearm, slowing the flow of blood. He looked at the quantity of blood on the floor and shook his head in dismay, then turned to the object that now dominated the room.
He tapped the wood of the sphere with his fist. It sounded very solid. Maybe somehow Harrison and the apparatus were inside. He walked around it, looking for a way in. Copper tubing on the floor leading up to the wooden surface was spraying water, and heavy electrical wires were making blue-green sparks. It didn't look planned, somehow. His mind racing, he backed to a corner, removed the small camera from his pocket, and panned across the scene, snapping four pictures in quick succession.
It's blown, his mind said, it's blown, it's blown . . . 'It's blown!' he said aloud. 'Execute retreat mode. Let's get outta here!' Shakily he herded his men to the door.
What can I tell Broadsword, he thought as they ran for the truck. Despite his fears, there was no interference outside. The driver waited calmly, the truck engine idling. What kind of shit storm did we blunder into, he wondered. Was this some kind of a setup? With little kids? Guys that disappear? Giant wood balls? Cut-off hands? This is no fucking ordinary job!
PART 3
The knowledge we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order and without inventory; we ought to know what we possess and to be able to make it serve our own needs.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz
(1646–1716)
16
Wednesday Afternoon, October 13
It had suddenly become dark and quiet. David felt the delayed adrenaline rush accelerate his heartbeat to a driving thump. The only light was the fading afterglow of the computer monitor screen. The dominant sound was the descending whine of the turbopump spinning down. They were still in the lab, and the power was off! Those new settings must have overloaded the circuits, blown a breaker, and shut down the vacuum system. But this was the middle of the morning, so why was there no light coming through the windows?
The twist! They'd been inside the twistor field when the transition hit. They were on the other side of the twistor transition! The CCD camera had shown only darkness and distant stars on the other side of a transition. They should be breathing vacuum, suffocating in the blackness of empty space. How could they still be alive? Where were they! His mind raced, cycling on emptiness and paradox without a reference point.
David drew three deep breaths, shook himself, and studied what his senses were telling him. He was still crouched near the control desk with his arms around Melissa and Jeffrey, who squirmed closer to him. The cold, hard, concrete slab floor of the laboratory was still beneath him, but he could feel the floor shake slightly, accompanied by small grinding noises. The control console still pressed against his shoulder. There was a strong organic smell like cedar in the air. He could hear his own breathing and that of the children. The darkness was now oppressive and solid, like a wall.
'Are you kids OK?' he asked. His voice rang with a hollow echo that was new.
'What happened?' asked Melissa. 'Did those men do something? Why are the lights out?'
'W-we were gonna surprise you, David!' said Jeff.
'I certainly was surprised, Jeff,' David was relieved to hear their voices. They were OK. Releasing the children, he said, 'I want you two to stay right here until I get us some light. Don't move, now!' He followed the top edge of the desk with his hand and found the middle drawer. Opening it, he found a paper matchbook that he remembered putting there. He struck a match, stood up, and looked around. 'Holy shit!' he said.
The light revealed that they were near the center of a brownish dome. It surrounded them on all sides and curved down to meet the concrete floor, which was now a gray circle. The twistor apparatus stood at the approximate center of the circle. David cautiously walked to the nearest wall and felt it. It was smooth, cool, and just a bit sticky, and it smelled strongly of something that was not quite cedar. He could see wood grain in the surface. It was polished wood, like a fine piece of furniture. David turned and looked back, surveying what was left of the laboratory room. He could feel the match burning close to his fingers, but just before he shook it out he noticed a rectangular object next to the desk beside the console. Sam's number-three toolbox! He'd forgotten to return it. He walked through the dark, the remembered view of the room guiding him almost like seeing until his toe touched the box. Bending in the dark, he released the clips and opened it. Inside, his hand encountered a familiar shape. He lifted out the big fluorescent-tube flashlight and sw
itched it on.
The polished curve of the wall mirrored the light, giving the impression of a tiny upside-down human shape some distance away, shining a light in his direction. He propped the light on the console and lifted the toolbox to the flat surface next to the sack lunch he had bought at the HUB this morning. Then he sat on the desk and motioned the children over. They climbed up on the desk beside him, and for a long time they were silent, taking it all in.
'Everything looks different,' said Melissa, her voice pitched higher than usual. 'What's that funny brown thing?' She pointed at the wooden wall. 'Where did it come from? Was there an earthquake? Are we trapped, David?'
David's mind was turning over the problem of why they had breathable air and how long it would last. They might very well be trapped. I have to keep myself and the children calm, he thought, and at least give the impression that nothing is seriously wrong. 'No, Melissa, it wasn't an earthquake,' he said. 'I think we're in no immediate danger. We're in a different place than we were. We're surrounded by wood. I don't know why yet. That's one of the things we'll have to find out. The first thing I need to do is examine that wall around us.'
He pointed the flashlight at the wall and walked toward it. Immediately the children stood, about to follow him. He turned back to them. 'I want you two to sit here quietly and watch while I get things in order,' he said.
'Can't we look too?' Melissa asked.
'It's dark in here,' David said, 'and it could be dangerous. Just let me check it out first, then you can look too.'
Melissa turned to her brother. 'Sit down,' she told him. 'We have to wait for David here.'
'I know,' said Jeff, sitting down again. Melissa seated herself beside him.
David walked for a distance along the curved wall, holding the flashlight close and studying the wall's shiny surface, occasionally tapping, feeling, or smelling it. It looked like normal wood from a fir tree, a soft wood but very smooth and regular, with occasional color variations. It sounded very solid, very thick. He wondered just how thick it was and what could be outside – if there was an outside. Could a universe be solid wood? Nonsense, he thought, it would go into gravitational collapse.
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