Mash Up

by Gardner Dozois

  This silenced the room as effectively as the air being sucked out into a vacuum. Evanson had just gone someplace he definitely was not supposed to go. Ben couldn’t tell whether this meant he’d won the exchange, or lost it. He reached for the lighter and managed to grip the arm of his chair instead.

  Evanson glared at Ben, Rebecca and Charlie, in turn. “All right,” he said, after a moment. He returned his glare to Ben. “Since we have to have flames here, and you are not able to follow directions, I want to be certain that you don’t have another accident with fire. So you, Dr. Patton, are on medical leave.”

  “What?” Ben said. “That’s completely ridiculous. You can’t do that.”

  “I certainly can,” Evanson said. “I can’t fire you, but this will keep you out of the building. For your own good. And for everyone else’s.” Evanson smiled. He was back on top. “Now get out.”

  * * *

  Ben didn’t waste time poking up a fire in the hearth at home. He ran up to the library instead, turned on the gas fireplace there. Hestia uncurled with the blue flames and her face wrinkled with concern.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Ben paced in front of the fireplace, flicking his lighter open and closed. Open. Closed.

  “Ben? You’re frightening me.”

  Open. “Evanson put me on medical leave.” Closed. “Won’t let me back into the building.” Open. Flick.

  Hestia turned to look through the small window of flame Ben opened above the lighter. She stared at him from the flame, then shifted to look back through the fireplace. “On what grounds?” she asked.

  “Says I’m a danger to myself as long as there are open flames in the building,” he said. He held up the stub of his left hand and passed it through the flame on the lighter. The plasma bent around the flesh, heating it but not letting him touch her. He so wanted that, regardless of what it might do to him. What it would do.

  The line on her brow grew deeper and she didn’t contradict him. “How long are you on leave?” she asked.

  “It’s open-ended. Till I’m better, but it’s his definition of ‘better.’” He closed the lighter, stopped pacing and faced the fireplace. “That’s not the worst though,” he said. “If permission comes through from Helmholtz to do the testing, I’m not going to be on the team.”

  Plasma was a difficult state of matter to work with. It had to be managed. It had to flow to where you wanted it to go, lead to the places it needed to work, continue to do the work it’s needed to do. Ben and his team had been working with plasma for years, using his and Hestia’s equations to manipulate the matter. Their latest project manipulated plasma into something approximating a force field – something long possible in theory but too expensive before now to be practical.

  If Ben’s and Hestia’s math worked, then the plasma window could be stabilized and maintained with a minimum of energy. And with it, if their work was correct, he could change the plasma state that Hestia lived in and break her out of Hell.

  At least that was the theory. But he had to be there or she couldn’t reach the flame.

  If he wasn’t on the team, he wasn’t going to be there. He wasn’t going to be there for her.

  “Oh, Ben,” Hestia said. She kneeled and reached toward him. “I’m so sorry. You worked so hard on this. It must be such a disappointment for you.”

  It was just like her to think about him first. She was trapped in eternal flame and yet here she was, more worried that he was disappointed.

  He stared at her, struck dumb with the longing to run his hand through her hair or to just put his arms around her. Just to hold her hand. He looked down at the stump. “I can appeal,” he said. “I will.”

  Hestia smiled. “Don’t worry, love,” she said. “Everything will work out.” She gazed at him as the fire burned around and through her.

  * * *

  Ben spent the next day cleaning, candles lit in each room so Hestia could follow him around. It meant the house was spotless when the police detectives came to call.

  There were two of them when he opened the door, an Angie Martinez and a Kyle Hanson. As they stood on his porch Ben wondered which one of them was supposed to be the good cop, and which was supposed to be the bad cop, and if they ever changed up the roles just for the fun of it.

  “May we come in, Dr. Patton?” Martinez asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Ben said. He pushed open the screen door to let them in.

  “What did Evanson tell you I did?” Ben asked, after he had offered them something to drink, which they refused, and then offered them a seat, which they accepted. They sat in the living room, a fire going. The fire appeared to make the two detectives uneasy. Ben vaguely wondered if one or the other might catch a glimpse of Hestia in there. He doubted it. No one else ever did.

  “Why did you bring up Bradley Evanson, Dr. Patton?” Martinez asked.

  “Well, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Ben said. “He put me on medical leave yesterday for very specious reasons, and now the two of you are here. I’d guess he told you I set a trash bin on fire, or something ridiculous like that.”

  “Do you like fires, Dr. Patton?” asked Hanson.

  “Well… you know. Occupational hazard.” He paused, but they didn’t get the joke. “My work is in plasma engineering. Fire is a plasma, so… yeah. I like fires.”

  “So much so that you were charged with arson in high school,” Hanson said.

  “Charged, yes,” Ben said. “And if you know I was charged then you also know the charges were dropped. It was an accident.”

  “Was that when that happened?” Martinez asked, pointing to his stump.

  Ben looked at the two of them. “All right, I’ll bite,” he said. “What is this about?”

  “Dr. Patton, we are here about Bradley Evanson,” Martinez said. “But not about him accusing you of setting fire to a trash can.”

  “Okay,” Ben said. “Then what is it?”

  “His house burned down last night,” Hanson said. “With him in it.”

  “Oh my God,” Ben said, shocked. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s not dead,” Hanson said. “But having third-degree burns on eighty percent of your body is not ‘all right.’”

  “Dr. Patton, where were you last night, between 10pm and 2am?” Martinez asked.

  “I was here,” Ben said.

  “Anyone with you?” Martinez asked.

  Not anyone you would believe in, Ben thought.

  “No,” Ben said, instead. “I was reading until almost eleven, checked e-mail and read news online until about midnight, and then I went to sleep. You could check my web browser history.”

  “So, no one, then,” Martinez said.

  “No,” Ben repeated. Both detectives made notes.

  Ben fought the urge to look over at Hestia, and then remembered what she had said the night before.

  Everything will work out.

  Ben gave in and looked over to her. She was smiling.

  “Sorry, guys,” Ben said, turning his attention back to the detectives. “I don’t think it’s smart for me to talk to you any more without a lawyer present.”

  “You’re probably right about that,” Hanson said.

  * * *

  The police investigation into Ben turned up nothing because there was nothing to turn up. Ben had been at home, and he was neither foolish nor crazy enough to hint that he hadn’t been alone, because of the nature of whom he had been with. A small but unquiet part of Ben wanted to ask Hestia what she knew of Evanson’s fire, but the rest of him overruled that part. The rest of Ben thought it was best to leave certain things unanswered.

  A week after Ben was cleared, Charlie, unwillingly thrust into Evanson’s vacant role, asked him to come back to work. He did, and then wished he hadn’t after the reception his coworkers gave him. Cleared by the police or not, the coincidence of Evanson burning in a fire after confronting Ben was enough to give almost everyone the creeps. Even Charlie avoide
d him unless there was something directly related to work.

  Only Rebecca continued to be openly friendly with Ben; if anything, Ben noted, she seemed friendlier than usual. He assumed it was her compensating for everyone else being a bit of a dick. Even so, Ben spent most of the time shut up in his office, absorbed in paperwork for the tests.

  Which is why when Rebecca knocked on his door that afternoon, Ben flinched.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” She leaned against the door with a tablet cradled in her arms.

  Ben smiled up apologetically. “It’s all right,” he said. “Just focused. You know.” He rubbed his eyes and stood. His back cracked as he straightened. “What’s up?”

  “Came to give you word that all five of the polymer casings are finished and ready for testing,” she said.

  “That’s great,” Ben said. She could have emailed that to him, actually. She must have just gotten the memo as she was on her way to somewhere else.

  Rebecca grinned and stepped farther into the room. “I thought a little celebrating was in order,” she said.

  “Celebrating?” Ben said “Oh. Yeah… that sounds…” His brain finally registered that her hair was down. He’d only ever seen it in a bun at the base of her neck. “Uh. So the team is going out?”

  A flicker of disappointment went across her face that even Ben could read. She’d been flirting. With him.

  Ben could have smacked himself on the forehead. This was his problem; between work and the fact that almost all his attention was given to Hestia, his ability to read women’s interest in him was remedial at best.

  “Sure. We can get something together with the team,” Rebecca said. Her voice was flattened.

  Ben opened his mouth to respond and then noticed that his thumb was on the lid of the lighter, which was in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, confused. He had no memory of taking it out.

  Do you like fires, Dr. Patton?

  Ben set the lighter on the desk.

  He stepped away from it.

  He stepped toward Rebecca.

  “It doesn’t have to be the whole team,” he said. “It could be just the two of us. If that’s all right. I mean… Did you have something in mind?”

  Rebecca smiled. “I did. There’s a new bar. Dante’s Inferno.”

  You have got to be kidding me, Ben thought at the name. He put his hand in his pocket for the lighter.

  It wasn’t there. A panic went through him and he almost turned to the desk.

  Almost.

  “That would be… that would be great,” he said to Rebecca. She beamed.

  * * *

  “Everything looks stable. Stable is good.” Ben scanned the numbers pouring over the console in the Helmholtz control room. They had been prepping for the trial since they arrived in Colorado – since before that, really – and he had the jitters that came from a combination of too much caffeine and straight up nerves.

  Rebecca nodded from where she stood by her own bank of instruments. “Everything’s green across the board here, too,” she said. “We’re a go.”

  A video feed showed the center of the chamber, where the plasma stabilizer stood. There was a heavy tinted window in the airlock to the test chamber, but Ben had covered it because he didn’t want to chance Hestia appearing early. He had to be able to see the glow of the plasma for her to use it. She didn’t show up in video, so until he knew he could keep the plasma stabilized, it was all video.

  If the plasma stabilized. If Hestia even existed.

  Ben shook his head to clear it. “Ready infusion on my mark. Three, two, one. Now.”

  “Infusion commencing,” Rebecca said.

  The numbers flickered on the screen and the software converted it into a graph that showed pressure and density. Ben shoved his hand in his pocket, running his thumb over the smooth case of his lighter, and watched the video monitor.

  Inside the chamber, the plasma flow they were inducing stood between two columns of Rebecca’s polymer casing. It almost looked like glass, it was so stable, but glass did not glow like this.

  The plasma rippled. A spark caught at the edge of one of the polymer casings. Ben shifted his gaze to the numbers. “Shit,” he said. “We’re losing stability.”

  “Got it.” Rebecca glared at the screen, where the casing now had an obvious flame in it. “We should shut down.”

  “It might burn itself out,” Ben said. The numbers were starting to trend upward again. “Give it a second.”

  “I don’t think—” Rebecca began, and then was cut off as the entire casing erupted into flame and the plasma spilled outward in a gout of fire. Rebecca slammed a hand down on the shut-off control.

  Ben yanked on the suppression switch, and held his breath as oxygen sucked out of the testing chamber. The plasma writhed, turning the top layer of the heat-resistant tiles inside into bubbling puddles. He cursed and entered a command for a purge cycle. The remaining polymer casing tilted toward the ceiling. The plasma melted the edges of it and the column collapsed inward, plugging the flow.

  The last of the air hissed out of the chamber and the flames went out. The floor still glowed red-hot where the plasma had danced.

  Ben let out a heavy sigh of relief.

  “Okay, so,” he said. “That was not good.”

  Rebecca gave a shaky laugh. “I thought it wasn’t going to shut down there for a second,” she said.

  “No kidding,” Ben said. He ran his hand through his hair and was surprised that his scalp was damp with sweat. “Let’s get this cleaned up and figure out what went wrong.”

  “I’ll run a check on the numbers while we wait for it to cool,” Rebecca said. She leaned against the instrument panel and let her head drop forward. “And then I need a really stiff drink.”

  * * *

  “You have the nicest ass,” Rebecca whispered in Ben’s ear, then her mouth moved to nibble at his ear lobe.

  Ben gasped and fumbled with the lock for his hotel room door. Words were not high on his list of abilities at the moment.

  He pressed the plastic card to the lock, and twisted the knob as Rebecca ran her hands down his spine to cup his buttocks. She squeezed and he let out a low groan.

  Shouldering the door open, he turned and wrapped his left arm around her to pull her close. Rebecca kissed him. She giggled as they collided with the wall, but did not stop kissing him. The door swung shut, leaving the room lit only by the lights from downtown Denver.

  Ben slid his good hand up the back of her shirt and paused with his fingers on the bra strap. He pulled back a little to look at her, to be certain she was okay with it.

  Looking through her eyelashes, Rebecca said, “Let me know if you need help with that.”

  He grinned. “I’m pretty good at doing things with one hand,” he said. With the long practice of dressing with only one set of working fingers, he undid the catch on her bra. First time he’d done that since high school. Thank God the design hadn’t changed any.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, tilting her head back to expose her long neck. Ben kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. Her hair smelled of lavender and smoke from the bar.

  Rebecca brought her head forward and found his belt buckle. She glanced over his shoulder. “Hey. You have a fireplace. Can we light it?”

  Lifting his mouth from her neck, Ben looked back at the fireplace. He’d picked this hotel so that Hestia could travel with him.

  “Not now,” he said. “I think I’ve had enough fire for the day.”

  * * *

  Ben rolled over, which allowed the morning light to glow redly through his eyelids. And a piece of paper tickled his nose. He opened his eyes to an empty bed and a note. Sitting up, he ran his hand through his hair before picking up the note. A scrawl he had seen in notation on so many of his documents staggered across the back of the room service menu.

  Morning, Ben.

  I needed to go back to my room for clean clothes. See you at the
lab? Going over early to check the next casing.

  --Rebecca

  P.S. Thanks for letting me spank you. Such a nice ass.

  His cheeks burned just at the memory, but it also lit other parts. Lord. He should not feel this good considering everything that had gone wrong in the first trial. Rebecca thought it was not a flaw in the polymer itself, but a piece of foreign matter stuck to the casing. That was a huge relief, if it was true. He wouldn’t know until the next trial. Speaking of…

  Ben crawled out of bed and dragged his pants on. Crouching in front of the fireplace, he flicked the switch to turn it on. With a whoomp, the gas caught and Hestia flickered into view.

  She lay curled on her side, with her back to him. A livid welt ran down her side and wrapped around to her hip. It looked as though she had been dragged across a floor.

  Ben fell forward on his knees. Did they know? Did they know that he was trying break her out?

  “Hestia?” he called to her.

  She lifted her head. With a groan, she pushed herself upright.

  “Who did this to you?” he asked.

  Hestia turned to face him. Her right eye was blackened. The scrapes on her back covered her arms. “Where have you been?”

  “I—” He had been having sex. No more than five feet away from her – except she wasn’t really here, she was in some other dimension.

  She was in Hell.

  Ben flushed with an emotion that lay somewhere between shame and regret, immediately leavened by something that was almost defiance. “I was with Rebecca,” he said. “The trial didn’t—”

  “I know!”

  “I… Oh, shit.” Ben shook his head, but all he could see was the plasma writhing in the video. “No. No, you weren’t supposed to manifest if I couldn’t see the fire. That’s why I used the video to monitor it.”

  “Well, I was,” Hestia said. Her voice was broken and small.

  “I am so sorry,” Ben said.

  “Why didn’t you come to me?” Hestia asked. “Why didn’t you call me when it was finished?” Her face crumpled and for the first time since he had known her, Hestia wept. Tears hissed into steam. “I thought something had happened to you,” she said. “I thought you had been killed.”