by Timothy Zahn
"In other words, you're a walking time bomb."
Garwood winced at the harshness in Davidson's voice. "I suppose you could put it that way, yes. That's why I didn't want to risk staying at Backdrop. Why I don't want to risk riding in that plane."
The major nodded. "The second part we can do something about, anyway. We'll scrap the plane and keep you on the ground. You want to tell us where this Backdrop Project is, or would you rather I get the directions through channels?"
Garwood felt a trickle of sweat run between his shoulderblades. "Major, I can't go back there. I'm one man, and it's bad enough that I can wreck things the way I do. But if Backdrop finishes its work, the effect will spread a million-fold."
Davidson eyed his warily. "You mean it's contagious? Like a virus or something?"
"Well... not exactly."
"Not exactly," Davidson repeated with a snort. "All right, then, try this one: do the people at Backdrop know what it is about you that does this?"
"To some extent," Garwood admitted. "But as I said, they don't grasp all the implications—"
"Then you'd agree that there's no place better equipped to deal with you than Backdrop?"
Garwood took a deep breath. "Major... I can't go back to Backdrop. Either the project will disintegrate around me and someone will get killed... or else it'll succeed and what happened to your cigarettes will start happening all over the world. Can't you understand that?"
"What I understand isn't the issue here, Doctor," Davidson growled. "My orders were very specific: to deliver you to Chanute AFB and from there to Backdrop. You've convinced me you're dangerous; you haven't convinced me it would be safer to keep you anywhere else."
"Major—"
"And you can damn well shut up now, too." He turned his face toward the front of the car.
Garwood took a shuddering breath, let it out in a sigh of defeat as he slumped back into the cushions. It had been a waste of time and energy—he'd known it would be right from the start. Even if he could have told Davidson everything, it wouldn't have made any difference. Davidson was part of the "not-me" generation, and he had his orders, and all the logic and reason in the world wouldn't have moved him into taking such a chance.
And now it was over... because logic and reason were the only weapons Garwood had.
Unless...
He licked his lips. Maybe he did have one other weapon. Closing his eyes, he began to concentrate on his formulae.
Contrary to what he'd told Saunders, there were only four truly fundamental equations, plus a handful of others needed to define the various quantities. One of the equations was given in the notes he hadn't been able to destroy; the other three were still exclusively his. Squeezing his eyelids tightly together, he listened to the hum of the car's engine and tried to visualize the equations exactly as they'd looked in his notebook...
But it was no use, and ten minutes later he finally admitted defeat. The engine hadn't even misfired, let alone failed. The first time the curse might actually have been useful, and he was apparently too far away for it to take effect. Too far away, and no way to get closer without crawling into the front seat with the soldiers.
The soldiers...
He opened his eyes. Davidson was watching his narrowly; ahead, through the windshield, the lights of a city were throwing a glow onto the low clouds overhead. "Coming up on I-57, Major," the driver said over his shoulder. "You want to take that or the back door to Chanute?"
"Back door," Davidson said, keeping his eyes on Garwood.
"Yessir."
Back door? Garwood licked his lips in a mixture of sudden hope and sudden dread. The only reasonable back door was Route 45 north... and on the way to that exit they would pass through the northern end of Champaign.
Which meant he had one last chance to escape... and one last chance to let the genie so far out of the bottle that he'd never get it back in.
But he had to risk it. "All right, Major," he said through dry lips, making sure he was loud enough to be heard in the front seat as well. "Chi square e to the minus i alpha t to the three-halves, plus i alpha t to the three-halves e to the gamma zero z. Sum over all momentum states and do a rotation transformation of one point five five six radians. Energy transfer equation: first tensor is—"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Davidson snarled. But there was a growing note of uneasiness in his voice.
"You wanted proof that what I know was too dangerous to be given to Saunders and Backdrop?" Garwood asked. "Fine; here it is. First tensor is p sub xx e to the gamma—"
Davidson swore suddenly and lunged at him. But Garwood was ready for the move and got there first, throwing his arms around the other in an imprisoning bear hug. "—times p sub y alpha e to the minus i alpha t—"
Davidson threw off the grip, aiming a punch for Garwood's stomach. But the bouncing car ruined his aim and Garwood took the blow on his ribs instead. Again he threw his arms around Davidson. "—plus four pi sigma chi over gamma one z—"
A hand grabbed at Garwood's hair: the soldier in the front seat, leaning over to assist in the fray. Garwood ducked under the hand and kept shouting equations. The lack of space was on his side, hampering the other two as they tried to subdue him. Dimly, Garwood wondered why the driver hadn't stopped, realized that the car was now slowing down. There was a bump as they dropped onto the shoulder—
And with a loud staccato crackle from the front, the engine suddenly died.
The driver tried hard, but it was obvious that the car's abrupt failure had taken him completely by surprise. For a handful of wild heartbeats the vehicle careened wildly, dropping down off the shoulder into the ditch and then up the other side. A pair of close-spaced trees loomed ahead—the driver managed to steer between them—and an instant later the car slammed to a halt against the rear fence of a used car lot.
Garwood was the first to recover. Yanking on the handle, he threw the door open and scrambled out. The car had knocked a section of the fence part way over; climbing onto the hood, he gripped the chain links and pulled himself up and over.
He'd made it nearly halfway across the lot when the voice came from far behind him. "Okay, Garwood, that's far enough," Davidson called sharply. "Freeze or I shoot."
Garwood half turned, to see Davidson's silhouette drop over the fence and bring his arms up into a two-handed marksman's stance. Instinctively, Garwood ducked, trying to speed up a little. Ahead of him, the lines of cars lit up with the reflected flash; behind came the crack of an explosion—
And a yelp of pain.
Garwood braked to a halt and turned. Davidson was on the pavement twenty yards back of him, curled onto his side. A few feet in front of him was his gun. Or, rather, what had once been his gun...
Garwood looked around, eyes trying to pierce the shadows outside the fence. Neither of the other soldiers was anywhere in sight. Still in the car, or moving to flank him? Whichever, the best thing he could do right now was to forget Davidson and get moving.
The not-me generation. "Damn," Garwood muttered to himself. "Davidson?" he called tentatively. "You all right?"
"I'm alive," the other's voice bit back.
"Where did you get hit?"
There was a short pause. "Right calf. Doesn't seem too bad."
"Probably took a chunk of your gun. You shouldn't have tried to shoot me—there are just as many people out there who hate guns as hate smoking." A truck with its brights on swept uncaringly past on the interstate behind Davidson, and Garwood got a glimpse of two figures inside the wrecked car. Moving sluggishly... which took at least a little of the load off Garwood's conscience. At least his little stratagem hadn't gotten anyone killed outright. "Are your men okay?"
"Do you care?" the other shot back.
Garwood grimaced. "Look, I'm sorry, Davidson, but I had no choice."
"Sure. What do a few lives matter, anyway?"
"Davidson—"
"Especially when your personal freedom's at stake. You know, I
have to say you really did a marvelous job of it. Now, instead of your colleagues hounding you for whatever it is those equations are, all they have to do is hound us. All that crap about the dangers of this stuff getting out—that's all it was, wasn't it? Just crap."
Garwood gritted his teeth. He knew full well that Davidson was playing a game here, deliberately trying to enmesh him in conversation until reinforcements could arrive. But he might never see this man again.... "I wasn't trying to saddle you with this mess, Davidson—really I wasn't. I needed to strengthen the effect enough to stop the car, but it wasn't a tradeoff between my freedom and all hell breaking loose. You and your men can't possibly retain the equations I was calling out—you don't have the necessary mathematical background, for one thing. They'll be gone from your mind within minutes, if they aren't already."
"I'm so pleased to hear it," Davidson said, heavily sarcastic. "Well, I'm certainly convinced. How about you?"
To that Garwood had no answer.... and it was long past time for him to get out of here. "I've got to go, now. Please—tell them to leave me alone. What they want just isn't possible."
Davidson didn't reply. With a sigh, Garwood turned his back and hurried toward the other end of the car lot and the street beyond it. Soon, he knew, the soldiers would be coming.
II
"...one... two... three."
Davidson opened his eyes, blinking for a minute as they adjusted to the room's light. He swallowed experimentally, glancing at the clock on the desk to his left. Just after three-thirty in the morning, which meant he'd been under for nearly an hour... and from the way his throat felt, he'd apparently been talking for most of that time. "How'd it go?" he asked the man seated beyond the microphone that had been set up in front of him.
Dr. Hamish nodded, the standard medical professional's neutral expression pasted across his face. "Quite well, Major. At least once we got you started."
"Sorry. I did warn you I've never been good at being hypnotized." A slight scraping of feet to his right made Davidson turn, to find a distinguished-looking middle-aged man seated just outside his field of view there. On the other's lap was a pad and pencil; beside him on another chair was a tape recorder connected to the microphone. "Dr. Saunders," Davidson nodded in greeting, vaguely surprised to see Backdrop's director looking so alert at such an ungodly hour. "I didn't hear you come in."
"Dr. Hamish was having enough trouble putting you under," Saunders shrugged. "I didn't think it would help for me to be here, too, during the process."
Davidson's eyes flicked to the notepad. "Did you get what you wanted?"
Saunders shrugged again, his neutral expression almost as good as Hamish's. "We'll know soon enough," he said. "It'll take a while to run the equations you gave us past our various experts, of course."
"Of course," Davidson nodded. "I hope whatever you got doesn't make things worse, the way Garwood thought it would."
"Dr. Garwood is a pessimist," Saunders said shortly.
"Maybe," Davidson said, knowing better than to start an argument. "Has there been any word about him?"
"From the searchers, you mean?" Saunders shook his head. "Not yet. Though that's hardly surprising—he had over half an hour to find a hole to hide in, after all."
Davidson winced at the implied accusation in the other's tone. It wasn't his fault, after all, that none of the damned "not-me" generation drivers on the interstate had bothered to stop. "Men with mild concussions aren't usually up to using car radios," he said, perhaps more tartly than was called for."
"I know, Major." Saunders sighed. "And I'm sorry we couldn't prepare you better for handling him. But—well, you understand."
"I understand that your security wound up working against you, yes," Davidson said. "If a fugitive is carrying a weapon, we're supposed to know that in advance. If the fugitive is a weapon, we ought to know that, too."
"Dr. Garwood as walking time bomb?" Saunder's lip twitched. "Yes, you mentioned that characterization of him a few minutes ago, during your debriefing."
Davidson only vaguely remembered calling Garwood that. "You disagree?"
"On the contrary, it's an uncomfortably vivid description of the situation," Saunders said grimly.
"Yeah." Davidson braced himself. "And now my men and I are in the same boat, aren't we?"
"Hardly," Saunders shook his head. The neutral expression, Davidson noted, was back in place. "We're going to keep the three of you here for awhile, just to be on the safe side, but I'm ninety-nine percent certain there's no danger of the same... effect... developing."
"I hope you're right," Davidson said. Perhaps a gentle probe... "Seems to me, though, that if there's even a chance it'll show up, we deserve to know what it is we've got. And how it works."
"Sorry, Major," Saunders said, with a quickness that showed he'd been expecting the question. "Until an updated security check's been done on you, we can't consider telling you anything else. You already know more than I'm really comfortable with."
Which was undoubtedly the real reason Saunders was keeping them here. "And if my security comes through clean?" he asked, passing up the cheap-shot reminder of what Saunder's overtight security had already cost him tonight.
"We'll see," Saunders said shortly, getting to his feet and sliding the pad into his pocket. "The guard will escort you to your quarters, Major. Good-night."
He left the room, taking the tape recorder with him, and Davidson turned his attention back to Hamish. "Any post-hypnotic side effects I should watch out for, Doctor?" he asked, reaching down for his crutches and carefully standing up. He winced as he put a shade too much weight on his injured leg.
Hamish shook his head. "No, nothing like that."
"Good." He eyed the other. "I don't suppose you could give me any hints as to my prognosis here, could you?"
"You mean as regards the—ah—problem with Dr. Garwood?" Hamish shook his head, too quickly. "I really don't think you're in any danger, Major. Really I don't. The room here didn't suffer any damage while Dr. Saunders was writing down the equations you gave him, which implies you don't know enough to bother you."
Davidson felt the skin on the back of his neck crawl. So Garwood had been telling the truth, after all. It was indeed pure knowledge alone that was behind his walking jinx effect.
He shook his head. No, that was utterly impossible. Much easier to believe that whatever scam Garwood was running, he'd managed to take in Backdrop's heads with it, too.
Either way, of course, it made Garwood one hell of a dangerous man. "I see," he said through stiff lips. "Thank you, Doctor. Good-night."
A Marine guard, dressed in one of Backdrop's oddly nonstandard jumpsuit outfits, was waiting outside the door as Davidson emerged. "If you'll follow me, Major," he said, and led the way to an undistinguished door a couple of corridors away. Behind the door, Davidson found a compact dorm-style apartment, minimally furnished with writing desk, chair, and fold-down bed, with a closet and bathroom tucked into opposite corners. Through the open closet door a half dozen orange jumpsuits could be seen hanging; laid out on the bed was a set of underwear and a large paper bag. "You'll need to put your clothing into the bag," the guard explained after showing Davidson around the room. "Your watch and other personal effects, too, if you would."
"Can I keep my cigarettes?"
"No, sir. Cigarettes are especially forbidden."
Davidson thought back to the car ride, and Garwood's disintegrating trick. "Because that effect of Garwood's destroys them?" he hazarded.
The Marine's face might have twitched, but Davidson wouldn't have sworn to it. "I'll wait outside, sir, while you change."
He retired to the hallway, shutting the door behind him. Grimacing, Davidson stripped and put on the underwear, wondering if it would help to tell Saunders that he'd already seen what the Garwood Effect did to cigarettes. The thought of spending however many days or weeks here without nicotine... Preoccupied, it was only as he was stuffing his clothes into it that
his mind registered the oddity of using a paper bag instead of the usual plastic. A minor mystery, to go with all the major ones.
The Marine was waiting to accept the bag when he opened the door a minute later. Tucking it under his arm, he gave Davidson directions to the mess hall, wished him good-night, and left. Closing the door and locking it, Davidson limped his way back to the bed and shut off the nightstand light.
Lying there, eyes closed, he tried to think; but it had been a long day, and between fatigue and the medication he'd been given for his leg he found he couldn't hold onto a coherent train of thought, and two minutes after hitting the pillow he gave up the effort. A minute after that, he was fast asleep.
—
The jumpsuits hanging in the closet were the first surprise of the new day.
Not their color. Davidson hadn't seen any other orange outfits in his brief walk through Backdrop the previous night, but he'd rather expected to be given something distinctive as long as he was effectively on security probation here. But it was something else that caught his attention, some oddity in the feel of the material as he pulled it off its wooden hanger. Examining the label, he quickly found the reason: the jumpsuit was one hundred percent linen.
Davidson frowned, trying to remember what Garwood had said about the potential targets of his strange destructive power. Engines, plastics, televisions, had been on the list; modern conveniences had also been there. Did synthetic fibers come under the latter heading? Apparently so. He pulled the jumpsuit on, fingers brushing something thin but solid in the left breast pocket as he did so. He finished dressing, then dug the object out.
It was a plastic card.
Frowning, Davidson studied it. It wasn't an ID, at least not a very sophisticated one. His name was impressed into it, but there was no photo, thumbprint, or even a description. It wasn't a digital key, or a radiation dosimeter, or a coded info plate, or anything else he could think of.
Unless...
He licked his lips, a sudden chill running up his back. Engines, plastics, televisions... He'd been wrong; the card was a dosimeter. A dosimeter for the Garwood Effect.