Twistor

by Cramer, John; Wolfe, Gene;

  He'd set his watch alarm for five-thirty, rousing the children at first daylight to come out with him on this 'energy hunt.' Jeff, still not quite awake, and Melissa, with Shadow in her lap, had sat against a tree and watched without comment as David had gone through a strange ritual, climbing a short distance up one tree trunk, sighting through the fuzzy sphere that formed in the coil cup of the new twistor device, then climbing another tree and sighting again.

  He'd moved erratically through the forest in this way, mapping the location of Physics Hall in another universe and finally zeroing in on the electronics storeroom in the basement. The location he needed was, unfortunately, out of reach. It was too high above ground level to be reached from below, too far down to be reached from a high branch, too far away from any tree trunk. David considered collecting enough rocks and wood to build a tower under the spot, but then he had a better idea.

  He'd marked the location, then returned to the tree-house for a big roll of the heavy electrician's wire. He had secured a length of it from an overhead branch, then fashioned a sort of sling seat that allowed him to lower himself from the branch to any desired elevation. He attached a guy wire to his waist, to be pulled on by Jeff and Melissa until he was at the proper location. He'd worked with Melissa and Jeff, showing them how to pull the wire tight, how to stop him from swinging back and forth. He tried to make it seem like a game. His strategy worked, up to a point. The children were enthusiastic about pulling him around as he dangled from a tree branch, but their actions were, not coordinated. They kept bumping into each other, and they were too easily distracted. They moved him in random directions to random places that bore no correspondence to his shouted directions, not at all where he wanted to be.

  It was damned frustrating. He was so close. Through the twistor sphere he could see the shelves of batteries and electronics components in the storeroom. But his position was wrong. What he needed was still far out of reach. He looked up at the branch from which he hung suspended. Shadow sat on it, looking down at him with an expression of amused curiosity. David turned to the children below him. The problem lay in coordinating their pulls on the guy wire. He thought for a moment. Perhaps there was another approach. 'OK, listen,' he called to them, 'we're going to try something else. Melissa, you let Jeff hold the wire all by himself. I've got another job for you.'

  'OK, David!' she called back. She let go of the wire she was holding and stepped back.

  'Good,' said David. 'Now, Jeff, I want you to pull the wire tight and bend it around the base of that bush over there. Hold the wire and walk around the bush until you can feel it begin to pull, just a bit. Now I want you to pull back on it, hard. Melissa, help him pull . . . that's right!' The wire from his waist to the bush stiffened, and the wire supporting him from above swung out to a large angle with the vertical. 'Now walk back the other way around the bush,' he called to Jeff, 'so the wire winds around it and friction holds me here. That's good, Jeff. Stay right there.' David was now hanging about a meter from where he needed to be.

  'OK, now Melissa, get that extra length of wire on the ground over there and bend it in half.' She walked to where an extra piece of wire lay on the ground and picked it up, bending it double. 'Fine!' he called to her. 'Now hook it over the wire that goes up to me. Right. Now pull sideways. No, sideways the other way! That's right! Just a little more. Good! Try to keep me right here.'

  Her sideways force on the guy wire moved David in the correct direction, bringing him to the desired spot. He hooked a leg over the guy wire and levered himself the last few centimeters. He sighted through the fuzzy twistor sphere, then shifted it slightly. He could see that it was positioned directly over several black-and-gold Duracell D cells. He held his breath and pressed the TWIST button. Black-and-gold shapes plummeted to the ground, making a soft crunch when they hit the leaves below.

  The children, seeing the batteries tumble into the leaves, dropped their wires and ran over to find them. The wire from David's waist snaked around the bush, and David swung helplessly back and forth in a long pendulum arc, cursing as he swung.

  'No, dammit!' he called down to the children as a swing placed him momentarily over their heads. 'Never mind the batteries,' he shouted, 'leave them there! Go back to the wires!'

  Jeff ran back, grabbed his wire, and was immediately pulled off his feet as David swung away from him. Melissa came to help, and together they managed to bring David to a stop. Positioning David was easier the second time. Jeff and Melissa, working together, used the bush as a bollard and pulled David out to the appropriate angle, then bent the wire sharply around the bush base. Then Melissa pulled sideways with the doubled wire and moved David the last small distance.

  More disks of shelf-wood, black-and-gold batteries, and chopped-off pieces of batteries cascaded into the leaves. Then under David's directions they shifted positions, and he went to work on Sam's stock of power transistors. It was exhausting work. By the time the point of diminishing returns had been reached, certain areas of the electronics storeroom resembled a war zone. David left a scrawled note of apology amid the devastation, then lowered himself to the ground to collect the loot.

  He looked at his watch. It was still early. Maybe they should visit some other establishments as well, now that they'd established the technique.

  Sam Weston was furious as he surveyed the wreckage of the electronics shop storeroom, discovered when he arrived this morning. In his year with the physics department he'd learned to live with the Monday messes left in his shop by the weekend forays of graduate students and professors trying to fix or improve their equipment or to scrounge for parts.

  But this was different. Over the past weekend the shop had been vandalized. The stock of batteries was nearly gone. And most of those batteries that were left had been sliced to pieces. Big holes had been cut in some of the wooden shelves. The power transistor stock had been singled out for particular mayhem, with whole drawers of the biggest transistors gone and cavities cut in other drawers. Drawers containing some types of integrated circuit chips and power resistors had been similarly vandalized. But the capper was that the vandals had the audacity to leave a crudely forged note in the mess bearing the signature of the vanished David Harrison and saying that he'd 'had to borrow a few things.'

  The campus police officer surveyed the destruction and made notes in his book. 'Maybe this is some new student fad,' he said to Sam. 'The Radio Shack store and the Safeway over in U-Village reported some similar problems early this morning. At the Safeway some canned goods had been stolen. Mostly small cans, for some reason. There were big holes cut in their shelves too, and a lot of the cans had been cut in half and dumped. A real mess.'

  'You think it might've been the same people?' Sam asked.

  'Mebbe so,' the policeman answered. 'The vandals, whoever they were, went after batteries at both places. And a nice king salmon in the Safeway meat department had several big round pieces cut out of it, but the rest of the fish was still there, hardly disturbed. No sign of how it was done. It's a twenty-four hour store, but none of the employees saw anything suspicious 'til they noticed the mess about seven-thirty A.M.'

  'Real weird,' said Sam.

  'Yeah,' the policeman answered. 'Whatever you've got, Mr Weston, it's goin' around.'

  After the policeman left, Sam sat at his desk staring at the note and considering the strange events of the previous week. He glanced at the smooth, knife-sharp edges of the holes in the shelves. Like the wood sphere in Vickie's laboratory. David and the children, then Vickie and Professor Saxon had disappeared. Then his shop had been raided. Was this vandalism a coincidence, or could there be a connection? Couldn't hurt to play it safe, he decided.

  He took the departmental truck to Central Stores for more batteries, then to Radar Electric for replacement ICs and transistors. When he returned to the shop, he repaired the damaged shelves with new plywood. The new supplies he elevated on empty cardboard boxes so that they were well above the level of the new she
lves. On top of the pile of batteries he left a note addressed to David, asking if there was anything else he needed. He was like a little kid leaving notes for the Tooth Fairy, he thought.

  David sat at the big worktable inside the treehouse, the loot from the morning's raids making several large piles before him. He felt a bit guilty about what he'd done to Sam's storeroom. His control had been poor, and he'd made rather a mess. But they had batteries now.

  The treehouse was now illuminated by the portable fluorescent-tube flashlight suspended over the worktable. At his elbow sat Shadow. The creature seemed to be fascinated by the useless beige telephone that still sat on the worktable. He held the receiver in his hands, turning it over and over, sniffing it, and poking at the holes in the earpiece with a tiny finger.

  'Shadow's amazing,' David said to Melissa. 'He gives the impression of understanding English. He seems smarter than the gorillas and chimps I've seen. You know, there are supposed to be biological limits on how intelligent an animal of a certain size can be. Our intelligence is supposed to be because of our big brains. But I'm not sure those rules work in this universe. I noticed when I was butchering the bear that a bullet had blown a big hole in its skull, so I poked around inside. The bear's brain case and the stuff inside were really small compared to those of an Earth bear, and its nerve structure, if that's what I was looking at, looked very odd. I'd bet Shadow's nervous system is similar. Maybe that's how there can be so many smarts in this guy's tiny little head.' He stroked Shadow.

  'The bear wasn't smart to poke his head in our tree-house,' said Melissa. 'But you're right about Shadow. He understands English. Watch this.' She turned to the small brown creature. 'Shadow, bring me the number-two battery there.' She held up two fingers and pointed to the line of black-and-gold D cells along the edge of the table.

  The small brown head raised and rotated clockwise. The oversize ears pricked up sharply. Shadow put the telephone receiver back into its cradle and walked, centaurlike, over to the line of batteries. He selected the second battery in the line and brought it to Melissa.

  She smiled, patted the little head. Then she gave him David's little red Swiss army knife, with the knife blade out. A bluefly buzzed nearby. Shadow struck lightning fast with a tiny finger and thumb, snaring the blue shape out of the air. With David's knife he sliced off the insect's abdomen and popped it into his pink mouth. Catches on fast, David thought.

  Then Shadow jumped, knife in hand, to the next table, where he delicately sliced a hunk from the pink-red sphere of king salmon meat lying there. He put the knife on the table and held the small slice of salmon in his delicate little hands while he ate it.

  David had recorded the events with the CCD camera. 'Hmmm,' he said as he recaptured his knife and wiped it off, 'that gives me an idea.' He picked up the twistor unit, placed it between his knees, and put a cut-out circle of shelf-wood, one of many on the table, into the cup. Then he lifted Shadow and put him on the wood surface in the cup. 'Yes,' said David, 'he fits nicely. Stay there, Shadow.' He lifted the twistor cup to eye level with Shadow balanced in the bowl, flicked the switch on, and pressed the right button. Shadow's image darkened, and he could be seen within a fuzzy sphere. David pressed the left TWIST button. Shadow disappeared, to be replaced by a wooden sphere. David removed the wooden sphere from the cup and put it on the table.

  'Oh!' said Melissa, 'David! Where's Shadow? Did you turn him into a ball? What did you do to him?'

  'Don't worry,' said David, 'he's perfectly all right. He's presently inside an air-filled cavity in the big wooden sphere in my laboratory, back in the "normal" world. Watch!' He pressed the right PEEK button and a dimmed image of Shadow appeared in the cup. David adjusted the position of the field slightly to match the walls of the wooden cavity in the other universe, and pressed the TWIST button.

  Shadow was in the cup once more.

  'How'd you like our universe, Shadow?' David asked, grinning. Shadow's big violet eyes looked at David. David had the distinct impression that the shadow-kitten was amused, too. It looked closely at David's thumb as he placed the little creature back on the worktable.

  'Now, Shadow,' David said, turning to the telephone instrument on the table, 'it's about time a smart guy like you started getting a real education. Come over here. You're going to learn how to dial the operator.'

  Vickie squirmed against the ropes once more. Her arms and legs were tied securely to the straight-backed wooden armchair and there was a rubber gag in her mouth. She was very frightened.

  For most of the past week the Mandrake person, always wearing the ski mask, had come to her little room to ask her questions. He had been pleasant and professional, and she almost liked him. Then this morning he had come in with the large man. He was carrying a little black case. He had put the case on the table beside the bed and opened it. Inside was a hypodermic syringe.

  The large man had held her arms, and Mandrake had explained that his employers had ordered the use of neurophagin. Vickie had begun to scream at them. The big man had silenced her with a foul-tasting rubber gag. It had been like an obscene rubber tongue intruding into her mouth. Mandrake had expertly filled the syringe and approached her.

  When she had judged the moment was right, she had kicked him in the knee, then the crotch, then struck hard against the hand holding the syringe. The plastic tube had crashed hard against the wall and broken open, leaking amber fluid on the floor. Mandrake had collapsed to his knees and remained there for a minute or so. Finally he had risen, apparently still in pain, and had struck her hard in the face twice. He was very angry. That was the last of their neurophagin supply, he raged, and it would take half a day to get more. They had tied her to this chair, gagged and helpless. Mandrake had collected the broken syringe parts in the black bag and the two had left, locking the door behind them.

  Now her mind kept endlessly cycling over the same ground, looking for a tool, a gimmick, a way out.

  Rash sat at the teakwood desk by the big deck window, a book in his lap, waiting for David's Macintosh III to decrypt another Megalith document. He looked out the broad window across the Lake Washington Ship Canal at the towers, peaked rooftops, and squat rectangles of the university in the distance. He wondered where Vickie was now and what was happening to her. He was really worried. For the past five days he had been using David's Flat-Mac to decrypt a large number of the Megalith files that he had brought with him. David's machine, a small briefcase unit with a hi-res color flat screen built into its lid, had ten times the memory of Vickie's Mac and a much faster CPU. But this was still slow going because the decryption algorithm took lots of CPU time, and there were so many of Pierce's communications to sort through.

  The degree of corporate ruthlessness the files revealed was very disturbing, painting a picture of a high-tech rogue corporation that routinely used theft, fraud, and violence to achieve its goals. And they had Sis . . .

  At the end of each day Flash had made hard copies of the previous day's decrypted files with David's laser printer. Then he'd taken the number 9 bus to the Broadway post office and mailed them to the Seattle office of the FBI. That was his insurance in case he was nabbed by the kidnappers before he was finished. When the decrypting and printing of all the files was complete, he planned to take them personally to FBI headquarters and confess his recent hacking of Megalith. He was very worried about his sister, but he couldn't think of a better scheme to help her.

  The program signaled completion and Flash studied the newly decrypted document. It indicated that the day after David and the children had disappeared, Pierce had arranged for Megalith to very indirectly lease a house in Laurelhurst for $4,500 per month. There was an inventory of furniture and even a boat. It sounded quite fancy.

  Why would Pierce do that, Flash wondered. Could they be holding Vickie there? Perhaps he should go out and phone in an anonymous tip to the police . . . Couldn't do it on David's phone or they'd backtrack him. He looked at the little time display in the upper right corn
er of the Mac's display. A little after eleven. In maybe an hour he'd make another trip to the post office and use a pay phone at the same time.

  Rash started the program decrypting another of Pierce's files and turned back to the book in his lap. In the three days he'd been here, while he was waiting for the computer to complete decryptions, he'd read through a good chunk of David's collection of hard science fiction hardbacks. He'd done one Niven, a couple of Benfords, a Brin, two Bears, and a Hogan. Now he was working on Shadow of the Torturer, the first volume of Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. Nice stuff. He couldn't understand why some people thought it was a fantasy, though.

  There was a sound from the bedroom, then another. Flash crept across the carpet and peered through the door, his head low in the door frame. A small brown animal stood on the walnut dresser next to the telephone. It had four legs and two arms, like a miniature centaur. A voice that sounded like David's said, 'Shadow, pick up the receiver.' The creature responded by lifting the telephone receiver and placing it carefully on the dresser, mouthpiece up. The dial tone from the receiver made it back away. Distracted, it walked across the dresser and sniffed at the bottle of after shave standing there. 'No, Shadow, come back,' said the voice, 'back to the telephone.' The creature stood for a moment, then walked back across the dresser to the telephone instrument. It still seemed wary of the dial-tone sound. 'That's right, Shadow,' said the voice, 'push the "0" button. Push it now. That's a good fellow. Go on, push it now . . . '

  Almost reflexively, Flash called out, 'David, is that you?' The little animal jumped off the dresser, scrambled behind it, and peered up from underneath with large violet eyes. Flash noticed that now it looked the same gray color as the bedroom carpet.

  A dim sphere that was hanging in midair near the creature moved toward him and flickered. 'Flash!' said David's voice. 'What the Hell are you doing in my apartment?'