Dream thief

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  He turned once more to the scan he had unrolled-the one from the night of his first blackout three days ago. He pulled the tape through his hands and examined it closely. It was no different from all the others.

  He spied the yellow plastic cover of the log book on the corner of the console and pulled it to him. On top of the log book lay a piece of green graph paper on which was plotted the averages Spence had requested for the last three sessions. Kurt must have come in and finished it while he was out. He glanced at the graph of the averages and then opened the log book and traced up the columns to the session of the fifteenth. He found no irregularities in any of the figures or information. He closed the book with the sinking feeling that all was in order and only he was out of sync.

  He threw the book down on the console and leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head. If an answer existed to his problems it would have to exist in some form in the hard data before him. Somewhere in the miles of tape, or in the figures in the book, the key to the locked room of his mind could be found. Of that he was certain. His faith in the scientific method stood on solid, unshakable rock.

  On a whim he swiveled to the data screen at one end of the console. The wafer-thin, half-silvered glass shone smooth as polished stone. "MIRA," said Spence, "Spence Reston here. Ready for command."

  A mellifluous female voice said, "Ready, Dr. Reston," Spence uttered the simple command: "Compare entries for PSG Seven Series LTST five-fifteen to five-eighteen for similarties. Display only, please."

  He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. Instantly the wafer screen flashed to life and the results began filling the screen. It seemed there were many similarities between one night's scan and the next in terms of basic numerical components. All of the information gathered during a scanning session was translated into numbers for purposes of data storage and retrieval. They were all alike in many ways, and yet all different.

  The command was too broad. That much he could see, but he did not know how to narrow the question because he did not know precisely what he was looking for. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at the screen. Just what did he hope to find?

  After several minutes of hard thought he stood and began pacing the cramped confines of the booth. Compare and contrast, he thought. That's where you start on a fishing expedition of this type. Compare and contrast.

  He had already compared and that had not shown him anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps contrasting the same information would produce something. He turned to the screen and said, "Contrast PSG LTST entries for five-fifteen to five-eighteen. Display only, please."

  The numbers vanished and in their place the screen began printing: Zero contrast within normal range of variability ± 3%. In other words, dead end.

  Spence glanced at the digiton above the console. In a few minutes Tickler would arrive to begin the session. He did not want Tickler to find him here like this playing detective. A silly thought he knew-1 have a perfect right to examine the data of my own experiment, for goodness sakes-but he preferred that Tickler should know nothing about his inquiry.

  Judging he had time for two more stabs in the dark, he said, "Compare PSG LTST Seven Series entries five-fifteen to five-eighteen for similarities of less than one percent variability. Display only, please." He nodded with satisfaction; by decreasing the percentage of variability he had narrowed the question significantly.

  In moments MIRA came back with its findings. The message read: Zero comparison. Spence frowned again. There were apparently no great similarities or differences in any of the scans – beyond the normal range of his individual sleep pattern.

  With a sigh he kicked back his chair. This kind of blind fumbling was useless. Unless he knew what he hoped to discover, no amount of random searching would help. "Thank you, MIRA. That is all for…"

  He stopped in mid-sentence. It occurred to him that he had not compared all of the scans, only those from the fifteenth to the eighteenth-the two dates encompassing his blackouts.

  "MIRA, compare all PSG LTST Seven Series entries. Display entries with similarities of less than one percent variability."

  There was a slight hesitation; the wafer screen went blank. He imagined he could hear the chips crackling with speeding electrons as MIRA wracked her magnetic memory.

  Spence sat on the edge of his chair and watched the clock tick away the seconds. Any moment Tickler would come walking in. Hurry! Spence muttered. Hurry!

  Then the words appeared. He read the message as it came up: PSG LTST Seven Series entries with less than 1% variability = 3/20 and 5/15.

  Jackpot! Spence jumped out of his chair and stared at the screen in disbelief. There it was; an anomaly too large to exist, its very presence an impossibility. If he had discovered it any other way he would have chalked it up to a computer glitch. But he had a strong suspicion that it was no glitch. He had uncovered a vital bit of information-stumbled blindly over it, more like-but there, spelled out in fluorescent orange, was the evidence.

  He picked up the yellow log book and paged through to the entry of 3/20. He pulled the sheet and placed it next to the entry of 5/15. They were not at all similar. Each entry in Tickler's neat, precise hand was slightly different-not enough to vary a great deal, but enough for Spence to see that they were both unique.

  Apparently, MIRA had glitched after all. There was no similarity between the two scans.

  Spence heard the swoosh of the panel opening and Tickler's quick footsteps entering the lab. He said, "That is all, MIRA. Thank you."

  "Good evening, Dr. Reston."

  "Good evening, Tickler." Spence turned and forced what he hoped was a casual smile.

  "Are we ready to begin our session?" Tickler's small, weasel eyes glanced from Spence to the wafer screen above the terminal.

  "Oh, I meant to tell you about that. I am canceling the session this evening." Spence surprised himself with that announcement.

  "I don't understand, sir. I've prepared everything-we're all ready. If you-"

  "Never mind. It can wait. I have something else for you to do tonight. You and Kurt, that is. I want you to run averages for the last two weeks. I think a curve may emerge that we may want to explore. That should take you most of the session, I think."

  "But-pardon my asking-what are you going to do?"

  Spence could see that Tickler was upset. The inflexible little man did not bend easily to the unexpected.

  "I'm going to a function at the director's suite. I imagine it will be rather late when I get back; so when you finish you can go. I will expect to see you tomorrow first shift." Spence turned to leave. Tickler's jaw pumped the air in silence. "Yes? Was there something else?"

  Tickler shook his head. He had recovered himself. "No, I imagine we can handle it from here," he snapped.

  "Good night, then," said Spence, stepping from the booth. He smiled a devious smile to himself as he crossed the lab to his quarters. A quick change and he would still make the party in plenty of time.

  11

  … SPENCE DONNED A CLEAN, informal, nonregulation jumpsuit and struck off for the director's quarters. He was pleased with himself for remembering the party at the last second-it was perfect. He wanted to get away from the lab and out of Tickler's presence to think about his discovery. What exactly, if anything, did it mean?

  At the time it had seemed electrifyingly significant. Now, as he hurried along the crowded trafficways of Gotham flowing with the changing shifts, his startling revelation seemed a little on the trivial side. There were at least a dozen different ways of accounting for the match up of the two entries. Spence ticked them off one by one as he dodged and elbowed his way to the Zandersons'.

  By the time he arrived at the buff-colored portal he had convinced himself that his discovery lacked any real bones. It would never stand up. There had to be more, something else that would tell him what this bare shred of fact meant. What that something was he had no idea.

  "Spencer! I'm
so glad to see you. Come in!" Ari beamed at him over the threshold as the panel slid open. Spence shook himself out of his reverie and returned her smile.

  "I hope I'm not too late." She drew him into the room which was humming with the conversation of the guests. Several turned to regard the newcomer with frank, disapproving glances; most ignored his entrance.

  "I think some of your guests are sorry I bothered to show up at all."

  "Nonsense, silly. You just haven't been properly introduced. Come along. Daddy will want to do the honors."

  Ari steered him into the gathering and around conversational cliques to where her father held forth at a buffet, urging tiny sandwiches on doubtful patrons. He was surrounded by women-the wives of faculty and fellows, decided Spence-who tittered politely at his jokes while they picked among the delicacies offered on the board.

  "Daddy, look who's here." Ari took her father's arm and expertly wheeled him around to face Spence. "Dr. Reston! Good of you to come."

  "Kind of you to invite me."

  "Here, get yourself a plate and dig in. The rumaki is delicious." "Thank you, maybe a little later, I-"

  "Daddy, I told Spencer that you would introduce him to some of the others. Won't you, please?"

  "Oh, of course. I'd be delighted to. Look-there's Olmstead Packer, head of High Energy. Come along. Who's that with him? Another new face, I believe." Director Zanderson piloted them both forcefully ahead through the standing clusters of socializers. Spence bobbed along in his wake. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ari disappear into a knot of partygoers with a plate of hors d'oeuvres. He abandoned himself to his immediate fate.

  "Tell me, Dr. Reston, have you thought any further about the research trip?"

  "Why, yes. I've considered it-"

  "I'm not pressing, not pressing. Oh, here we are. Gentlemen!" The director broke in on the two men, clapping a hand on a shoulder of each. "I'd like you to meet Dr. Reston, BioPsych."

  Before any further introductions could take place, the man previously identified as Packer thrust out a hand and said, "Glad to meet you. I'm Olmstead Packer and this is my colleague Adjani Rajwandhi."

  "I'll leave you gentlemen to become better acquainted. Don't forget to go by the buffet, now. Don't be bashful." The director left Spence in the care of his new acquaintances and plunged back into the swirl.

  Olmstead Packer laughed heartily and said, "There goes a dynamo! A roly-poly dynamo. Why, if we could harness that energy-just think!"

  "These HiEn bookworms!" remarked Rajwandhi. "They cannot stand to see anything without an outlet in it. They think all the world is a power grid."

  "Not true, Adjani. Not true at all. The universe is one big reactor, and we're all subatomic particles bounding around in our random orbits." Packer smiled broadly.

  Spence took to the big, red-bearded cherub immediately. With his kinky red hair that looked like rusty steel wool and his droopy-lidded brown eyes he appeared an almost comic figure always on the verge of laughing out loud.

  Adjani, on the other hand, was a slight mongoose of a man who looked at the world through keen eyes, bright and hard as black diamonds. He had about him an air of mystery which Spence found intriguing and slightly exotic.

  "Dr. Rajwandhi is a fellow of my department-" began Packer.

  "But not of your discipline!" interrupted Adjani.

  "No-sadly not of our discipline."

  "What project are you attached to, Dr. Rajwandhi?" asked Spence politely.

  "To my colleagues I am just Adjani, please. I am currently assigned to the plasma project. This is under Dr. Packer's supervision."

  "You flatter me, Adjani," roared Packer, his teeth flashing white from out of the auburn tangle of his beard. He said to Spence, "Adjani here is under no one's supervision. The man has not yet been born who can keep up with him, and he does not know how to take direction."

  "Can I help it if God granted me full measure of what other men possess only in part?"

  "You'll get no argument from me, snake charmer. I'll sing your praises from here to Jupiter and back." Turning once more to Spence he explained, "Adjani is our Spark Plug-and the best in the business."

  Spence looked at the slim Adjani with new respect. A Spark Plug, as they were called, was a member of an elite group of men and women so gifted as to be completely expert in numerous fields of study-as many as five or six. Whereas most scientists and theoricians were specialists, training their professional vision to ever narrower bands of the scientific spectrum, those like Adjani-and there were very few of them-worked in reverse, enlarging the scope of their knowledge wider and wider. In effect, they were specialists in everything: physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, metallurgy, psychology, and all the rest.

  Most often they were employed as systematicians-men who could view the overall course of a project and draw valuable information from other areas of study and bring it to bear upon a particular problem. They acted as catalysts of creativity-spark plugs-providing those quick, dynamic bursts of creative insight for projects that had grown too complex to rely on the accidental cross-pollinization of ideas from other disciplines.

  They were the "connection men," making much needed connections between the problem at hand and useful data from areas unrelated to the project which nevertheless offered possible insight or solutions to stubborn problems. And connection men were in great demand. Science had long ago realized that it could no longer afford to wait for chance to match up and germinate the ideas from which scientific breakthroughs were born. The system, if it was to remain healthy and viable, needed help; the scientific method needed the boost that geniuses like Adjani could give.

  So, Spence was duly impressed. He had never met a spark plug; there were not many of them, and the discipline was still too new to have penetrated into all branches of study. Mostly, connection men were snapped up by the bigger and more lavishly funded programs like high energy or laser physics.

  "I'm glad to know you, Adjani," said Spence, and he meant it.

  Olmstead Packer fixed on Spence with keen interest. "Tell us about yourself."

  "Me? I… ah… " Spence could not think of a thing to say. "I'm new here. This is my first jumpyear."

  "I thought so. This is Adjani's first jump, too. I had one devil of a time trying to get him up here. Cal Tech had their claws in him and didn't want to let him go. You're not from Cal Tech, are you?"

  "No-NYU. Why do you ask?"

  "Oh, it just seems that I remember a Dr. Reston from Cal Tech-but it couldn't be… Why, that was years ago, now that I think of it."

  "It's not an uncommon name." Spence could not bring himself to admit that Packer was talking about his father. Dr. Reston-the professor Spence had never known; he did not want to discuss his father's breakdown.

  "Did you attend Cal Tech?" asked Spence.

  "Stanford," replied Packer proudly. "Though most of my time was spent at JPL. You are engaged in the LTST sleep study, correct?"

  "Why, yes-"

  "Fascinating work," said Packer.

  "And vital," said Adjani. "If we are ever to probe beyond our solar system we must understand the delicate psychological balance between sleep and mental well-being. Can the sleep state be prolonged indefinitely? Is it a function of certain chemical interactions within the brain? Can individual sleep patterns be molded to the changing demands of space flight? Very interesting. Very important questions you are working on, Dr. Reston."

  "My friends call me Spence." Now it was Spence's turn to be flattered. Adjani, true to his calling, seemed to know intimately the nature of his work.

  "Tell me, Spence, do you think we'll be able to put our crews to sleep for, say, a year or two on a trip between stars?"

  "That's a tough one." Spence puffed out his cheeks and let the air whistle through his teeth. "It is not entirely out of the question. Though I admit right now it looks like a long shot. This is still virgin territory we're exploring, you understand. Our expectations are likely to run beyond
our abilities for some time to come."

  "You are a pioneer, Spence. And a cautious one. That is good." Adjani smiled at him. "Packer asked the question with ulterior motives, I surmise."

  "Oh, how so?" Spence raised his eyebrows and regarded Packer with mock suspicion.

  "See! What did I tell you? He's a quick one all right. Yes, I admit it. I had something in mind and I though I might get a little comfort from your answer."

  "Olmstead is leading the research trip this year since he's taking sixteen of his third-year students with him. He dreads the flight."

  "It isn't the flight I mind. It's my third trip to Mars and I get so bored. Five weeks is a long time to occupy oneself aboard a bucket-I wouldn't mind a long nap."

  "It would not take five weeks if you and your HiEn theorists would stop theorizing and perfect the plasma drive," jibed Adjani.

  The big physicist pulled a hurt face and shook his head wearily. "See, Spence? See what I have to put up with? Now it's my fault that we have no plasma drive. Just between you and me, Dr. Reston, I think Adjani is a saboteur sent from Cal Tech to disrupt our experiments. They would like to be first to patent the plasma-ion drive."

  "I've been thinking about coming along on the research trip myself. Director Zanderson has asked me."

  "Then you must come, by all means," said Adjani.

  "Not so fast. Do you play pidg?" Packer fixed him with a hard look.

  "After a fashion, yes. I've not had a great deal of zero-G experience. But I like the game."

  "Fine. That settles it. You must come and you must be on our team. The faculty and students always have a pidg tournament during the Mars cruise. It has become something of a tradition, and an object of intense competition. The only trouble is, not many of the faculty indulge in the sport."

  "They lose consistently," remarked Adjani.

  "I really haven't made up my mind. I have so much to do here…"

  "If Zanderson has suggested you go, I would think seriously about it. He does not extend the invitation to everyone. You are fortunate to have it come so soon."