Twistor

by Cramer, John; Wolfe, Gene;

  As they reached the foot of the stairs, Vickie heard the crunching sound of tires on the gravel driveway outside. Saxon followed her to the back door, muttering as he went. 'What's that sound? Are the men coming back? They like to hurt me. Vickie, I feel afraid.' He looked afraid, too. She heard the sound of the electric door opener working in the attached garage.

  She fumbled with the big key ring, searching for a key that would match the deadbolt lock. Finally she found it and they walked into brilliant sunlight. She turned and closed the door quietly. As she did, she heard a key snick in the lock of the door leading from the house to the garage. She looked around. There were high walls on both sides, blocking access to the front yard and running downhill to Lake Washington. She led Saxon that way.

  'We're outside now,' he said. 'It's good to be outside. There is sunshine and water. We can swim in the water. It's cold and wet. When you wet the bed, first it's warm and then it gets cold. But I didn't wet the bed. Joyce did it.'

  Victoria wondered who 'Joyce' was. She saw a boat dock on the lakefront and an inboard motorboat nestled against a piling. As they reached the dock, she could hear shouting from the house.

  She helped Saxon into the boat, undid the front mooring rope, and climbed in herself. Shadow leaped to the seat beside her. Saxon sat erect in the rear seat, still talking to himself. 'We're going for a boat ride. I like boat rides. I went on a big boat once. It was the Queen Elizabeth II. The food was good. I screwed five different women. There's something about a boat trip that makes them want to fuck. It was nice.'

  Fumbling with the ring of keys, Vickie found one that might fit the boat ignition. It did fit. She started the engine, let it idle quietly, and eased the boat away from the dock. There were more shouts from the house, and two men emerged from the back door. There were guns in their hands.

  The boat lurched and stopped. Victoria looked back. A rope at the stern was still tied to the dock! Leaving the engine to idle, she crawled over the front seat to the rope, only to find that at this end it ran through a bracket eye with a loop secured by three crimped metal rings. It could not be untied. She would have to get off the boat, and there was simply not enough time. The men were hurrying down the long back yard toward them now at a dead run.

  She felt something and looked down. Shadow was at her side, offering her the little red knife. She took it and sawed at the rope. It gave a little. She sawed harder. The rope parted, and they were idling slowly away from the dock.

  Vickie vaulted the seat, grabbed the wheel, gunned the engine, and they were off. At least now she couldn't hear Allan's ramblings over the sound of the engine. Sounds of gunfire came from behind them. She steered from side to side to spoil their aim. Looking back, she saw the two men, legs spread, arms locked and extended, firing at them from the dock. Bullets made splashes on the water beside the boat. Shadow had joined her in the front seat now, and seemed to be enjoying the ride enormously.

  Soon they were out of range. Vickie, with Shadow on her lap, steered the boat straight across Lake Washington at top speed, heading for Kirkland, a suburban town on the east shore. She picked the target of the old Lightship Relief to steer for, a red-painted relic permanently anchored near the Kirkland pier. When she was close enough, she slowed the boat to a crawl and edged up against the Moss Bay Public Pier, then tied up the little boat at the broad dock. As she was climbing out with Shadow to stand on the pier, she looked back at Allan Saxon. He had not moved since they left the Laurelhurst dock.

  The bullet's exit hole was like a red rose decorating his broad forehead, the red and gray stem of the flower branching down his face.

  Flash looked at David's list. There was a check mark by every item. It had all worked out pretty well. First, George had driven to the Aurora branch post office, and Flash had mailed the fat envelope containing the latest installment of juicy and incriminating items from Pierce's files to Agent Bartley of the FBI. Then they'd hit the discount stores. At Price Savers he'd purchased four compact and powerful gasoline-powered electric AC generators. At Pay'n Pack he'd added two rolls of duct tape, several short plastic garden hoses, a coil of rope, and many coils of wire. At K mart he'd bought some dryer ducting and four two-gallon plastic gasoline containers carefully measured to be within David's specifications. He filled the gas cans with regular.

  David's apartment was the agreed-upon rendezvous point. They'd returned there with the loot, and the three of them had lugged it inside. After the hauling was done, George and Rudi had to return to the U. George said he was scheduled to present an astrophysics seminar on 'the more mundane world of quantum cosmology.' They promised to return later with Paul.

  All the stuff occupied a good fraction of David's living room. Flash began the lengthy process of stripping down the generators, removing all unnecessary parts, bases, shock mounts, mufflers, and gas tanks to make them as compact as possible. Then he packed most of the other items into compact bundles of carefully measured dimensions.

  Later, as Flash was finishing up, he happened to check his watch. It was 5:33 P.M. He decided to catch the evening news and flipped on David's wall-mount TV flatscreen. The lead news item, already in progress, surprised him.

  The announcer was doing a voice-over of a scene showing a white-draped figure being loaded into an ambulance. He was saying that Professor Allan Saxon had been killed while he and his student, Victoria Gordon, were escaping in a motorboat from kidnappers holding them in a house in the Laurelhurst area of Seattle. One of the kidnappers, a Seattle private investigator, had also been killed, and three other men had escaped. The police had apprehended one of the kidnappers, a large one-handed man, a few hours later. Miss Gordon had provided digital recordings relating to the kidnapping and murder and was now assisting the police and FBI in apprehending the remaining fugitives. Flash cheered.

  The coverage switched to a downtown fire. He tried other channels. The kidnap/murder was covered on other local stations, but none provided any new information. On CNN, however, there was a report of an FBI raid on the San Francisco headquarters of the Megalith Corporation. The camera showed workmen carrying boxes of seized files and laser disks out of an office building. The voice-over said that several Megalith executives had been arrested or were being held for questioning.

  Flash stared at the wall screen for a long time after that, not seeing the picture.

  'Flash! Wake up!' the voice said.

  Flash sat up in bed and looked around. The Venetian blinds were closed tight, the curtains were drawn, and the room was dark. He could see no one in the dimness. Then he noticed a faint, glowing sphere floating near the headboard. 'David?' he called.

  'Yes, it's me,' David said. He sounded out of breath.

  Flash yawned. 'What time is it, anyway?'

  'It's seven thirty-five,' said David. 'The sun's been up for almost an hour. Flash, what happened? Is Vickie all right?'

  Flash told him that Vickie was fine. He described what he'd seen on the TV news the previous evening, including the Megalith arrests.

  'That's wonderful!' David sounded relieved. He told Flash what had happened at the house in Laurelhurst.

  'I was expecting you to show up again yesterday,' Flash said. 'Paul Ernst and his wife came over, and later George and Rudi showed up again. We waited for you a long time. They helped get the stuff ready, and they didn't leave 'til after midnight. I talked to Vickie on the phone last night, but I haven't seen her yet. She's still busy with the police and the FBI. They're still looking for two of the kidnappers. Oh, and she asked about you. Said to tell you to hurry home. Why'd you take so long getting back here?'

  'I got lost trying to find my way back to the treehouse,' David admitted sheepishly. 'I've been using the twistor unit to navigate, peeking into your universe to look for landmarks and read street signs for orientation. But the damn thing blew a transistor while Shadow was untying Vickie. Without Shadow or the twistor unit to help, I wasn't sure where I was. I walked west and a bit south, hoping to find a
place that looked familiar. That didn't work. It got dark, and I still hadn't found the treehouse. When I saw a big animal in the bushes, I climbed a tree and stayed there for a while. Had to fire a warning shot to discourage the critter from joining me up there.

  'I was lucky there was a nearly full moon last night. If it hadn't been for the bright moonlight, I might still be wandering in the woods. Finally I stumbled on a creek that looked familiar and followed it back to the spring we've been using. I didn't get back to the treehouse 'til very late. I was damn lucky to find it at all.'

  'Did you get the twistor thingie fixed OK?' Flash asked.

  'Sure,' David said, 'otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you, would I? It only took a few minutes to put in a new power transistor. Then I gave up for the night and went to bed. I didn't sleep very well, though, and as soon as there was a little daylight I went back to the Laurelhurst house. There were police barriers in the yard and all over the house, and there was a patrol car outside. But no one was inside. So I hiked over here to find out what'd happened.'

  'Glad you're back,' said Flash. He called Paul to tell him the situation. Then he dressed and showed David the loot they'd collected yesterday. There was much work yet to do.

  David and the children pulled on the Indian-style travois, dragging the last load of equipment up to the base of the tree. The equipment made quite a large pile. They had spent most of Wednesday moving the generators and gasoline. David thought ruefully that if he'd been more patient and clever, he and Flash and the others might have been able to set up a transfer site closer to the university. But any place near the university seemed to be several stories above ground level here, while his apartment had the convenient advantage of being at ground level in this universe. The brute-force approach had won out.

  Bringing the bulky electric generators through the twistor field had posed a difficult technical problem for David. Even stripped of nonessentials they were too big to pass through the small twistor field in one piece. David had solved the problem last night by constructing a powerful booster amplifier using some of Sam's large high-frequency power transistors. This unit was energized by many batteries, some newly acquired from Sam's shop, all soldered together in a makeshift series-parallel configuration. For the field itself, David had carefully wound a new set of half-meter twistor coils, consuming most of his stock of insulated wire in the process.

  Then, connecting the booster amplifier to his portable unit, David had run long power co-ax leads to the new coils, now forming a white inverted cup in the center of a clearing, held in place by a crude tripod of cut saplings. He'd set the drive unit for a half-meter field diameter, the largest field the booster amplifiers would handle. Flash had suspended one of the AC generators by a rope from a wooden plank between chairs on David's deck. They had measured everything several times to get the height right. Then David pushed the TWIST button. The generator appeared and dropped a dozen centimeters to the ground, falling into the pile of leaves David had arranged as a catcher. At the arrival of the first generator, the children clapped with excitement and danced around.

  Flash had set up the next load, and the operation was repeated six more times. Finally all of the generators, their gas tanks, and miscellaneous small parts had been successfully transferred. Then, one by one, they had brought across the containers of gasoline.

  Now it was all collected here at the base of their tree, and they sat resting, leaning against the pile before the final work of hauling it up to the treehouse.

  'David, look at that,' said Jeff. David turned to look where the boy was pointing. The treebird was waddling across the ground, leaving a brightly colored line in its wake. But no, it wasn't their treebird, for with an outraged screech that creature dived from high in their tree. As it passed over them, a trail of colored excreta intersected their resting place. David felt wetness on his arms.

  'Ugh,' said Melissa, 'the nasty thing. It messed on us.' Jeff giggled, then looked unhappily at the bright colors decorating his jeans.

  'It's marking its territory,' said David, wiping at his shirt front, 'and it must consider us part of its territory.' He walked to the cistern and began soaking a rag for the cleanup.

  The diving treebird threw its body, all four claws forward, at the green intruder. The invader ceased its waddle and jumped aside at the last moment, barely avoiding the clawed onslaught.

  'Damn,' said David, realization dawning. 'We rubbed out the treebird's border line when we dragged all this stuff across it. I'll bet they're genetically programmed not to cross a border line, but when one is erased, invaders can enter. I'm afraid there's going to be a fight for possession of this tree.' He wiped with the wet rag at the colorful mess on their arms and clothes. It came off their skin readily enough, but on their clothes the water only seemed to spread the colorful blotches.

  The battle for dominance and possession was now reaching its peak. The green shapes circled, foreclaws extended, feinting and screeching. Their own treebird was slightly larger than the intruder, allowing them to distinguish one from the other. The children cheered for their bird whenever it scored a hit on the intruder. David noticed that, despite the menacing foreclaws each opponent thrust at the other, the battle was made up more of posturing and threats than of wounds. A few green feathers were detached, but this was clearly a conflict ritual, not a fight to the death. The birds continued to circle and squawk and strike for a long time.

  Finally, after a hit from their treebird produced a puff of green plumage, the intruder became discouraged and retreated into the forest. The winner waddled in a triumphant victory dance along a complete circuit of the border line, reasserting his dominion over his own true territory. Then he flew to a high branch, trumpeted out a raucous victory call, and resumed his duties of grooming his tree.

  David and the children, now rested, entertained, and colorfully decorated, began the final work of moving their loot into the treehouse.

  The generators, containers, and other items occupied a considerable area of the treehouse floor. The familiar smell of gasoline was everywhere even though the gas containers were tightly sealed. Much assembly work remained to be done, but it could not be done in semi-darkness and must wait until morning. There was only one candle burning at the moment. David had used up most of their supply of candles last night while he was building the amplifier, and there had been no time to make more. It would have been clever, he thought, with the wisdom of hindsight, to include a gasoline lantern on Flash's list.

  'David,' Melissa said in a tone of voice that David had heard before on occasion, 'today's Wednesday, isn't it?'

  'Yes, I believe it is,' said David.

  'Then it's the day for our story,' said Melissa, triumphant.

  'Yeah, it's story time, David,' said Jeff.

  'All right,' David said, 'I can't do any more work tonight anyhow. Do you remember what happened last time? You kinda dozed off at the end. Ton figured out how to make the Pricklance work by poking it through the Urorb, and he used it to send a note to Princess Elle.'

  Both heads nodded. 'I wasn't really asleep,' Melissa said.

  'OK,' said David, 'now settle down in your sleeping bag and I'll tell you what happened next.'

  'In the morning, when Ton could use the light from the Urorb to read, he again studied the old book. Now that he understood how to use the Urorb and the Pricklance, the part about the Surplice made more sense. One was supposed to wear the Surplice like a coat. The user put it on, visualized the place where he wanted to go with the Urorb, extended the Pricklance through the Urorb, and . . .

  'He read the words again. There was something missing. The text said that the golden sash of the Surplice must be tied to the base of the Pricklance. Ton turned the ruglike object over and over, searching for pockets or hidden recesses. There were none. And it had no golden sash, although there were loops where one might have been attached.

  Ton put on the Surplice, tying a length of rope around the garment in place of the sash
and tying one end of it to the Pricklance. He focused on his mother's kitchen and followed the book's directions. Nothing happened.

  'Ton was very disappointed. He had almost believed that his problem was solved, that the Surplice would provide a way of escaping this underground prison and returning to his home. But one crucial ingredient was missing. There was still no way out. Miserable, Ton lay on the Surplice and wept. And after a while he fell into a deep sleep.

  'He dreamed. He was back at the cottage of Zorax, cleaning up the residues of a particularly messy experiment. The old man was sitting in the corner, and he was laughing to himself. That was odd, for he almost never laughed. Zorax was holding something. Ton knew better than to look around, for that would surely bring a beating, but in the corner of his eye Ton thought he could discern the yellow glint of gold—

  'Suddenly Ton came wide awake. The dream was very vivid. It had seemed so real . . . Then he remembered that the scene had actually occurred about a month ago, just after Zorax had been away for several days. He remembered some of the event. But had there been a golden object in Zorax's hands? Ton could not remember. He certainly had not noticed it at the time. Still, it could be true . . . '

  David glanced across at the children. They weren't sleeping. They looked quite wide awake and interested. He, on the other hand, felt bone tired and rather drowsy. He yawned, then continued the story.

  'Ton picked up the Urorb and concentrated on the cottage of Zorax. It was empty, as before, but it was now day in the outside world, and he could see well enough inside from the daylight coming in through the greased parchment of the windows. He surveyed the room. Where would the old man have kept the scarf? In the dream, Zorax had been sitting near the fireplace. Ton looked there. The fireplace was constructed of rough stone, and there was a long shelf above the hearth. Several niches were cut at odd places in the broad upper part.

  'Ton examined the shelf. There was a clutter of miscellaneous objects there: vials, crystals, a brass coin inscribed with an incredibly ugly face, a dried toad, papers, the paw of an animal – perhaps a fox – an iron rod like a great needle, pointed on one end and with a circular hole at the other, books and papers in an unstable stack, a half-eaten apple, and many other objects that Ton could not readily identify. Then he studied the niches. One held a cracked black sphere; in another there was a human skull.