The Practice Effect

by David Brin

  There was a commotion at the back of the lab. Dennis nudged his associate. “Come on, Rich,” he said. “Get up. They’re here at last.”

  Escorted by Bernald Brady, the lab Director approached the zievatron. With Flaster walked a short, stubby man with dark, intense features, who Dennis realized must be the new Science Minister of Mediterranea.

  As he was introduced, Boona Calumny seemed to look right through Dennis. His voice was very high.

  “So this is the brave young fellow who’s going to take over your wonderful work here, Marcel? And he’s starting right off by stepping through into that wonderful new place you’ve found?”

  Flaster beamed. “Yes, sir! And we certainly are proud of him!” He winked conspiratorially at Dennis. Dennis was starting to realize just how badly Flaster wanted a success to show for his tenure at S.I.T.

  “You’ll be careful in there, won’t you, my boy?” Calumny’s finger pointed at the airlock. Dennis wondered if the man really understood what was going on.

  “Yessir, I will.”

  “Good. We want you to return hale and hearty!”

  Dennis nodded pleasantly, automatically translating the politician’s remarks from Executivese to English. He means that if I don’t come back there’ll be some nasty paperwork to fill out.

  “I promise, sir.”

  “Excellent. You know, bright young men like you are hard to find these days!” (Actually, you squirts are a dime a dozen, but you’re helping my buddy out of a jam.)

  “Yessir,” Dennis agreed again.

  “We have a real shortage of daring, adventurous types, and I’m sure you’ll go far,” Calumny went on. (We’re a bit low on meatheads this month. Maybe we can use you for a few more suicide missions if you come back from this one.)

  “I expect so, sir.”

  Calumny gave Dennis a very democratic handshake, then turned to whisper something to Flaster. The director pointed to a door, and the minister waddled out of the lab. Probably to wash his hands, Dennis thought.

  “All right, Dr. Nuel,” Flaster said cheerfully, “hoist your little alien friend and let’s be off with you. I expect you back in under two hours … less if you can control your inclination to explore. We’ll have champagne chilled by the time you return.”

  Dennis caught the pixolet in a midair glide from Rich Schwall’s hands. The little creature chirped excitedly. After all the crates were loaded ahead of him, Dennis stepped over the airlock’s combing.

  “Beginning closure procedure,” one of the techs announced. “Good luck, Dr. Nuel!”

  Schwall gave him thumbs up.

  Bernald Brady came forward to guide the heavy door. “Well, Nuel,” he said lowly as the gears slowly turned, “you checked everything, didn’t you? You poked through the machine from top to bottom, read the biology report, and didn’t need to consult me at all, did you?”

  Dennis didn’t like the fellow’s tone. “What are you getting at?”

  Brady smiled, speaking softly so only Dennis could hear him. “I never mentioned it to the others, since it seemed so absurd. But it’s only fair to tell you.”

  “Tell me about what?”

  “Oh, it could be nothing at all, Nuel. Or maybe something pretty unusual … like the possibility that this anomaly world has a different set of physical laws than hold sway on Earth!”

  By now the hatch had half closed. The timer was running.

  This was ridiculous. Dennis wasn’t going to let Brady get to him. “Stuff it, Bernie,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t believe a word of your blarney.”

  “Oh? Remember those purple mists you found last year, where gravity repelled?”

  “Those were different entirely. No major difference in physical law could endanger me on Pix’s world—not when the biology is so compatible.

  “But if there’s something minor you haven’t told me about,” Dennis continued, stepping forward, “you’d better spill it now or I swear I’ll …”

  Strangely, Brady’s antagonism seemed to fall away, replaced by apparently genuine puzzlement.

  “I don’t know what it is, Nuel. It had to do with the instruments we sent through. Their efficiencies seemed to change the longer they were there! It was almost as if one of the thermodynamic laws was subtly different.”

  Too late, Dennis realized that Brady wasn’t just egging him. He really had discovered something that honestly perplexed him. But by now the hatch had closed almost all the way.

  “Which law, Brady? Dammit, stop this process until you tell me! What law?”

  Through the bare crack that remained, Brady whispered, “Guess.”

  With a sigh the seals fell into place and the hatch became vacuum tight.

  In the zievatronics lab, Dr. Marcel Flaster watched Brady turn away from the closed hatch of the anomaly machine. “What was that all about?”

  Brady started. Flaster could have sworn the fellow grew even paler than normal.

  “Oh, it was nothing. We were talking. Just something to pass the time while the hatch closed.”

  Flaster frowned. “Well, I hope there won’t be any surprises at this late stage. I’m counting on Nuel to succeed. I need Flasteria badly with my confirmation hearings coming up next month.”

  “Maybe hell manage to pull it off.” Brady shrugged.

  Flaster laughed. “Indeed. From what I’ve seen around here, he’s sure to succeed. In the last few days he’s really got this place humming. I should have brought that young fellow back into this lab months ago!”

  Brady shrugged. “Nuel might succeed. Then again, maybe he won’t.”

  Flaster smiled archly. “Ah, well. If he fails, we’ll just have to send somebody else, won’t we?”

  Brady swallowed and nodded. He watched the lab Director turn and walk away.

  I wonder if I did the right thing? Brady thought, giving Nuel the wrong modules for fixing the return mechanism.

  Oh, he’ll figure it out eventually and fix them up. All he has to do is swap the right chips around. I made it look like a factory error so they’ll never trace it to me—though he’ll probably suspect.

  By the time he’s fixed the modules, I’ll have had time to work on Flaster. And Nuel’s stock won’t be so high when the delay stretches into weeks, whatever his excuse!

  Brady felt a little guilty about the stunt. It was kind of a nasty trick to play. But all indications showed that Flasteria was a pretty tame place. The robots hadn’t seen any big animals, and anyway, Nuel was always talking about what a champion Boy Scout he had been. Let him camp out in the wild for a while, then!

  Maybe he’d even figure out what had been happening to the robots, too … that strange alteration in their efficiency profiles.

  Oh, Nuel would come back in lather, all right. But by then he, Brady, would have had a chance to win his way back into the Director’s good graces. He knew, by now, what buttons to push.

  Brady looked at his watch. Gabriella had made a luncheon date with him, and he didn’t want to be late.

  He straightened his tie and hurried out of the lab. Soon he was whistling.

  5

  “Which law? you sonova—” Dennis pounded on the door.

  He stopped. It was useless. By now the sending probe had activated. He was already on the anomaly world—already on …

  Dennis stared at the blank door. He felt behind himself and sat heavily on one of the crates. Then, as his situation soaked in, he suddenly found himself beginning to laugh! He couldn’t stop. His eyes filled as he gave in to the giddy feeling.

  No one had ever been as cut off as he was, cast from Earth to a faraway world.

  People might read about adventures in faraway places, but the truth was that most, at the first hint of anything truly dangerous, would dig a hole and cry out for Mother.

  As an initial reaction, then, perhaps laughter wasn’t bad. At least he felt more relaxed afterward.

  From a crate nearby, the pixolet watched, apparently fascinated.

&
nbsp; I’m going to have to come up with a new name for this place, Dennis thought as he wiped his eyes. Flasteria just won’t do.

  The initial crisis of isolation had passed. He was able to look to his left, to the other door, the only one that would now open—onto another world.

  Brady’s talk of a “different set of physical laws” continued to bother Dennis. Brady had probably just been trying to get to him. Even if he was telling the truth, it would have to be something pretty subtle, since biological processes were so compatible on both worlds.

  Dennis remembered a science-fiction story he had once read in which a minute change in electrical conductivity resulted in a tenfold increase in human intelligence. Could it be something like that?

  Dennis sighed. He didn’t feel any smarter. The fact that he couldn’t remember the story’s title sort of refuted that possibility.

  The pixolet glided from its perch to land on his lap. It purred, looking up at him with emerald eyes.

  “Now I’m the alien,” Dennis said. He picked up the little native. “How about it, Pix? Am I welcome? Want to show me around your place?”

  Pix squeaked. It sounded eager to be off.

  “Okay,” Dennis said. “Let’s go.”

  He strapped on his tool belt, with the needlegun holstered to one side. Then, taking an appropriate “explorerlike” stance, he pulled the lever to unlock the far door. There was a hiss of equalizing pressure, and his ears popped briefly. Then the hatch swung open to let in the sunshine of another world.

  2

  Cogito, Ergo Tutti Fruitti.

  1

  The airlock rested on a gentle slope of dry, yellow grass. The meadow fell away toward a green-rimmed watercourse a quarter mile away. Beyond the stream, rows of long, narrow hills rose toward whitecapped mountains. Swards of yellow interspersed unevenly with carpets of varitone green.

  Trees.

  Yes, they looked like real trees, and the sky was blue. White cirrus clouds laced across the almost cyan vault overhead.

  For a long moment it was eerily, unnaturally quiet. He realized he had been holding his breath since opening the door. It made him feel lightheaded.

  Inhaling, he tasted the crisp, clean air. The breeze brought sounds of brushing grass and creaking branches. It also brought odors … the unmistakable mustiness of chlorophyll and humus, of dry grass and what smelled like oak.

  Dennis stood in the airlock’s combing and looked at the trees. They sure looked like oak. The countryside reminded him of northern California.

  Could this place actually be Earth? Dennis wondered. Had the ziev effect played another trick on them all and given them teleportation rather than an interstellar drive?

  It would be amusing to hitchhike to a pay phone and call Flaster with the news. Collect, of course.

  Dennis felt a sharp stab as tiny claws bit into his shoulder. The pixolet’s wing membranes snapped wide with a sound like a shot, and the creature soared off over the meadow, toward the line of trees.

  “Hey … Pix! Where are you …”

  Dennis’s voice caught in his throat as he realized this couldn’t be Earth. This was where Pix came from.

  He began noticing little things—the shape of the leaves of grass, a huge, fernlike plant by the riverside, a feeling in the air.

  Dennis made sure his holstered sidearm was unencumbered, and his boot cuffs well covered by his gaiters. The dry grass crunched beneath his feet as he stepped out. Tiny, whining insect sounds filled the air.

  “Pix!” he called, but the little creature had flown from sight.

  Dennis moved cautiously, all senses alert. He guessed the first few moments on an alien world could be the most dangerous of all.

  Trying to watch the sky, the forest, and the nearby insects all at once, he didn’t even notice the squat little robot until he tripped over it and fell sprawling to the ground.

  Dennis instinctively rolled away into a crouch, the needler suddenly in his hand, his pulse pounding in his ears.

  He sighed as he recognized the little Sahara Tech exploration drone.

  The ’bot’s cameras tracked him with a barely discernible whir. Its observing turret slowly turned. Dennis lowered the needier. “Come here,” he commanded.

  The robot seemed to consider the order for a moment. Then it approached on spinning treads to halt a meter away.

  “What have you got there?” Dennis pointed.

  The robot held something in one of its manipulator grips. It was a shiny bit of metal, with a clawed pincer at one end.

  “Isn’t that a piece of another robot?” Dennis asked, hoping he was wrong.

  Compared with some of the sophisticated machines Dennis had worked with, the exploration ’bot wasn’t very bright. But it understood a basic vocabulary. A green light on its turret flashed, indicating assent.

  “Where did you get it?”

  The little machine paused, then swiveled and pointed with one of its other sampling arms.

  Dennis got up and looked, but he saw nothing in that direction. He moved cautiously through the tall grass until, at last, he came to a flat area partly hidden by the weeds. There he stopped and stared.

  The clearing looked like a wilderness parts store … a Grizzly Adams wrecking yard … a rustic electronics swap meet.

  One—no, two—S.I.T. robots had been rather tactlessly disassembled; their parts lay in neat rows among the clumps of grass, apparently ordered and sorted by size and shape.

  Dennis knelt and picked up a camera turret. It had been ripped out of its housing, and the pieces had been laid out on the ground, like merchandise for sale.

  The trampled mud was strewn with scattered bits of straw, wire, and glass. Dennis looked closer. Here and there, mixed in among the tread marks and the torn pieces of plastic machinery, were faint but unmistakable footprints.

  Dennis looked down at the neat rows of gears, wheels, panels, and circuit boards—at the faint marks in the clay—and all he could think of was an epitaph he had once read in a New England cemetery.

  I knew this would happen someday.

  Dennis had always felt he was somehow destined to encounter something really unusual during his life. Well, here it was in front of him—tangible evidence of alien intelligence.

  The comforting Earthlike Gestalt finished evaporating around him. He looked at the “grass” and saw it wasn’t like any grass he had ever seen. The line of trees was now a dark, unknown forest filled with malign forces. Dennis felt a crawling sensation on the nape of his neck.

  A clicking sound made him whirl, the needler in his hand. But it was only the surviving robot again, poking through the pieces of its disassembled fellows.

  Dennis picked up an electronics board from the ground. It had been pried out of its housing by main force. It could easily have been separated with just a twist, but it had been roughly sheared away, as if the entity doing the dissection had never heard of threaded sleeves or bolts.

  Was this the work of primitives, then? Or someone from a race so advanced that they’d forgotten about such simple things as screws?

  One thing was certain. The being or beings responsible didn’t have a high regard for other people’s property.

  The robots had been made mostly of plastic. He noted that most of the bigger metal pieces seemed to be missing entirely.

  Dennis suddenly had a very unpleasant thought. “Oh, no,” he murmured. “Please, don’t let it be!” He rose with feeling of numb dread in the pit of his stomach.

  Dennis walked back to the airlock. He rounded the corner and stopped suddenly, groaning out loud.

  The access panel to the zievatron return mechanism lay ajar. The electronics cabinet was empty; its delicate components lay on the ground, like pieces on display on a store shelf. Most were clearly broken beyond repair.

  With an eloquence borne of irony, Dennis simply said “Argh!” and sagged back against the wall of the airlock.

  Another epigram floated around in the despair that se
emed to fill his brain—something a friend had once said to him about the phenomenology of life.

  “I think, therefore I scream.”

  2

  The robot “peeped” and played the sequence over again. Dennis concentrated on the three-day-old images displayed on the machine’s tiny video plate. Something very strange was going on here.

  The small screen showed shapes that looked like blurry humanoid figures moving around the zievatron airlock. The beings walked on two legs and appeard to be accompanied by at least two kinds of quadrupeds. Beyond that, Dennis could hardly make out any detail from the noisy enlargement.

  The miracle was that he could see anything at all. According to its inertial recorder, the robot had been on a distant ridge, several kilometers away, when it detected activity back at the airlock and turned to photograph the shapes clustered about the zievatron portal. At that distance, the robot shouldn’t have been able to see anything at all. Dennis suspected something was wrong with the ’bot’s internal tracker. It must have been closer than it thought it was at the time.

  Unfortunately, this tape was almost his only source of direct information. The records of the other ’bots had been ruined when they were so rudely disassembled.

  He skimmed over the robot’s record to a point about three days ago, when it all seemed to have begun.

  The first to arrive at the airlock was a small figure in white. It rode up upon the back of something like a very shaggy pony—or a very large sheepdog. Dennis couldn’t decide which simile was more appropriate. All he could make out about the humanoid was that it was slender and moved gracefully as it inspected the zievatron from all angles, hardly touching it at all.

  The figure in white sat before the airlock and appeared to begin a long period of meditation. Several hours passed. Dennis skimmed the record at high speed.

  Suddenly, from the forest verge, there erupted a troop of mounted natives charging toward the airlock on shaggy beasts. In spite of the blurriness of the image, Dennis could sense the first intruder’s panic as it bounded to its feet, then hurriedly mounted and rode off, bare meters ahead of its pursuers.