LIFTER

by Crawford Kilian

  “You mind your homework,” Gibbs told her. The Awkward Squad would have withered under his glare, but Diane just grinned at us.

  “You’ve been having yourself quite a time lately,” Gibbs wen ton. “Are you feeling okay about it all?”

  “Well, sir, I’m busier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  “I believe it. You getting enough sleep?”

  “Oh, sure. After a practice like today, I don’t have any trouble getting to sleep. Just trouble waking up.”

  “Well, we’ll take it easier on you tomorrow. I want you good and rested for Friday. What else have you been up to?”

  I nearly twitched, as if he’s revealed my guilty secret. “Gee, I don’t know. Hiking some. Reading a lot. Working, of course. I haven’t had an electronics project since the biofeedback device.”

  “You’re not jamming the radar out at the base?” Gibbs smiled.

  “No, sir. Bobby Gassaway may think I am, though.”

  “I know. It’s all over his report. Did you know the air force has been asking questions about you?”

  “Well, they’ve been asking me, so I guess it figures they’d be asking other people. Did they talk to you, sir? Mr Borowitz and Mr Randall?”

  “Those are the names, all right. They came around to see me a couple of nights ago. I couldn’t tell them much.”

  “They were in the stands this afternoon.”

  “I saw them. And the cameramen they had with them.”

  “I thought you said they were scouts from San Carlos.”

  “I saw the cameras first. Built my hypothesis on them. Then I saw the two gentlemen, so I had to revise the hypothesis. I think it’s pretty robust now. They’re really interested in you, Stevenson.”

  “Well, sir, I think it’s all pretty silly when it isn’t being kind of scarey. If they think I can fool their radar, they’re crazy.”

  “I agree. Any hypothesis on why this should be happening to you?”

  “No sir, except coincidence.”

  Gibbs shifted his weight in his easy chair and steepled his fingers. “Coincidence. Coincidence of what?”

  “Oh, of, you know, Bobby Gassaway’s thing about UFOs and the sightings.” That had been close; I’d been thinking, of course, of the coincidence of the sightings and my newly acquired abilities. My answer didn’t completely make sense, but Gibbs let it pass with a frown.

  “And you’re not involved with any project that might, for instance, accidentally interfere with radar.”

  “Sir, if I was I’d sell it to the air force for sixty million dollars, not try to hide it from them.”

  Gibbs smiled. “And Pat Llewellyn’s not using any electronic devices, either, I take it?”

  “No, sir. I’d know if she was.”

  “You two seem to have hit it off pretty well.”

  “I guess so. She’s a great girl.”

  “She’s not stupid. By the way, how’s she feeling?”

  “Not too great, I guess. I called her just before we left school, and she’s been sleeping most of the time.”

  “Next time you talk, tell her I asked after her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She’s changed a lot since she came to Terry High.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Not quite so prickly.”

  “Not like that first day, no, sir.”

  We chuckled a little, and Flora called us in for dinner.

  The family and I sat down in the dining room while I wondered what Gibbs was after. He must be really mystified by having air force intelligence agents dropping in on him, and asking questions about his weird and wonderful new running back.

  My worries were soon buried under an avalanche of first-rate food: ham, baked potatoes, broccoli, home-baked rolls, and a small mountain of tossed salad. The conversation was easy and domestic, with the girls chiming in whenever they liked but not interrupting. I thought I could have gone on eating all night, but Letitia finished me off with a huge slab of apple pie smothered in vanilla ice cream. Two more bites and I’d have slid into a catatonic trance; as it was, I just barely managed to waddle back into the living room with Gibbs. Flora and Diane cleared the table and filled the dishwasher, while Letitia joined us with a pot of coffee.

  “I hear you’re a science-fiction reader,” she said, pouring me a cup. “What are you reading these days?”

  “Mm, well, Frank Herbert,” I said, a little surprised. “And some old Heinlein.”

  “Hard-science stuff,” she said with a smile. “I like Le Guin better.”

  “Letitia is a big fan,” Gibbs said dryly. “I can take it or leave it.”

  “Mostly leave it. John has no imagination.”

  “I have too much imagination. With most of that stuff, you can see all the holes in the science and that spoils it for me.”

  “He must be really boring to have as a teacher,” Letitia said sympathetically.

  “Oh, not exactly,” I answered with a nervous smile. But the turn in the conversation gave me an idea. “Actually, I’ve been working on a science-fiction story.”

  Gibbs’s eyebrow rose. “First I’ve heard of it.”

  “What’s it about?” Letitia asked. Flattered silly by so much attention from a beautiful woman, I gathered my wits for a few seconds.

  “It’s about a guy who discovers a, a new source of energy. It’s cheap, it’s really efficient, it doesn’t pollute, and uh, just a matchbox full of it will run a car for a lifetime.”

  Gibbs looked just the way he did in class when you tried out a wrong answer on him. “What’s the source of the energy?”

  “He, uh, doesn’t know. He only knows that when he puts this gadget together, it works. He can heat his home, run his lights, and it’s like something for nothing.”

  “Very nice. What else?”

  “Uh, well, the trouble is, he’s afraid it might be misused if he announces it. Somebody might build bombs out of it, and it’s so cheap and easy that almost anybody could do it. Besides, he’s afraid the army or the energy corporations will go after him to get the secret. So he decides to bury the whole idea.”

  “That’s the whole story?” Gibbs looked disappointed. “Wait. First, what kind of person is your hero? A scientist?”

  “Sort of, uh, an amateur or a student. I don’t know yet for sure.”

  “But he’s figured out this new source of power.”

  “Stumbled on it, really.”

  “Can he work out the implications?”

  “Sir?”

  “Can he work out the physics, the chemistry of this new energy source? How does it fit into what’s known already?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s what bothers me about this kind of writing. You never get to find out what’s really interesting. Like they tell you the hero uses a space warp to get somewhere, and all he does when he gets there is shoot holes in little green men. I want to know about that space warp, not about green men. Now, if you’ve got this new source of energy, and you’re not just telling fairy tales, it’s got to have a physics and chemistry and a whole set of properties. The way you describe it makes it sound like Aladdin’s lamp.”

  “Okay, sir. Let’s say it’s antigravity, and it’s a property of matter that we haven’t even suspected yet, like Aristotle never suspected electromagnetism. You can get work out of gravity, and you can get work out of antigravity.”

  “And why haven’t we discovered it yet?”

  “Gee, do I have to explain everything, Mr Gibbs? I mean, in this kind of story the gimmick is just a way to have fun.”

  “Right, so do a good job of it.”

  “Okay. Let’s say it’s a quantum-physics phenomenon, something that’s observer-dependent. Just like quantum physics seems to need an observer before anything happens. This antigravity thing needs somebody to expect it to happen. And then it does.”

  Gibbs looked bleak. “Unpersuasive, Stevenson.”

  “Well, sir, Aristotle could sit
in this room for years and never touch the button that turns on your stereo. And if I told him he could get music out of the air by doing something as arbitrary as pressing a button on a metal box, he’d be unpersuaded, too. And since he wasn’t big on experiment, he’d write me off as a nut case and never press the button.”

  “Arguments by analogy are always pretty shaky. Well, now work it out. What happens if your hero stops thinking about his antigravity gadget? Does it stop working?”

  “I guess so.”

  “So if he’s asleep, or distracted, it stops?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Gibbs shook his head. “I don’t buy it. A phenomenon that needs somebody thinking about it - it’s just another name for magic.”

  “Or another name for a whole range of phenomena that occur only in the presence of a field of consciousness.”

  “More gobbledygook. A lot of psychologists like to argue that consciousness itself doesn’t exist. But work on it, Stevenson, if you can develop the details, it might be fun.

  “Tell me what you think about the plot, sir. D’you think the hero should keep the discovery a secret?”

  “It’s not exactly a new plot in science fiction, is it? Could he keep it a secret? What’s to keep somebody else from discovering it?”

  “Oh, let’s say you have to be in this special state of mind to blend yourself into the consciousness field.”

  Gibbs sat back, his bad leg stretched out to the fire, and drank his coffee. “Let’s consider some of the consequences of this mind-powered antigravity before you get yourself all tied up in knots. A source of power. Controlled mentally. Anybody else can learn to use it, too, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Once they know how.”

  “And then you can make your car run without gas, that kind of thing?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You say goodbye to the oil industry, all right. And nuclear power, and hydro-power. No more coal mines, except maybe to supply the chemical industry. You need a way to transmit this power?”

  “No, sir. It’s everywhere; you just have to tap into it.”

  “Like Nikola Tesla turning the whole planet into a battery. It’s all too easy. You should give this gadget some drawbacks, like any other energy source. Otherwise you end up with some half-baked Utopia.”

  “That’s easy, sir. It makes a terrific weapon. Like I said. So you could blow things up really easily. It gives people plenty of mobility, so armies or refugees or anybody could go almost anywhere they felt like.”

  Gibbs snorted. “With so much power, who needs mobility? Who’s going to bother to stay in an army?”

  “So we’re looking at social collapse,” I said. “Something like anarchy.”

  “Dictatorships think we’re something like anarchy, letting people do what they damn well please. Other people always look disgraceful when they have more freedom than you do.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t have full-size armies,” I countered, “but even two or three guys could pack a wallop. Right now, we get some psycho maybe once or twice a year, a guy with a gun complex who murders twenty-five people in a restaurant or something. What if the psycho had this gadget, and he could blow up a small town?”

  Gibbs didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said: “If we thought that was too high a price to pay for the gadget, we’d find a way to discourage people from blowing up towns. Or we might find that losing a couple of towns a year was just a nuisance compared to the benefits.”

  “Oh, John!” Letitia signed. I could see that being Mrs Gibbs wasn’t always fun.

  “We kill sixty thousand people on the highways because that seems to be an acceptable price for the convenience of automobiles. If we made cars safe, they might be too expensive to be convenient. Why should we consider this gadget to be any differently?”

  “If they all got killed in one town, sir, on one day, we might try to do something about it.”

  “Touché,” Letitia said. “I’d love to read your story, Rick, when you get it finished.”

  I shook my head. “After all this, ma’am, I don’t know if I should even get started on it. I hadn’t worked out all the implications.”

  “We never do,” said Gibbs.

  “You should think about your hero,” Letitia said. “Make him a certain kind of person, and the decision should come out of his personality.”

  “Science fiction isn’t interested in character and personality,” Gibbs announced. He looked at the fire for a moment. “Might be interesting, though, if you made your hero a guy who can’t stand secrets. A regular busybody who wants to find out everything, and then he’s got a secret he’s afraid to let out.”

  “That’s an idea,” I agreed, feeling my skin prickl. “Maybe you should write the story, Mr Gibbs.”

  “Ha! That’s one thing I can’t do. No, it’s your story, you work it out.”

  It could drive you wild, the way Gibbs refused to do your thinking for you. I was glad when he changed the subject.

  “I’m going to leave you alone a little in practice tomorrow. Today you looked like you were trying too hard to live up to your image. Like the centipede thinking about how to walk. Just relax and be part of the team.”

  “I’ll sure try , sir.”

  “There you go again, Don’t try. Just do what you’re supposed to do. We’ll work on plays that don’t put all the pressure on you, and then when it’s your turn to carry the ball it won’t be any big thing. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good.”

  We chatted about the team, and school, and then it was time to leave. The girls popped out in their pyjamas to say good-buy, and Letitia told me to come back again soon. Gibbs just stood there, smiling and looking inscrutable as I thanked everyone in sight and left.

  It was a cold, dry night, with a breeze that stung my eyes but tasted good. I walked back toward the school, where Brunhilde was parked. Gibbs reaction to my phony story had given me a lot to think about. He knew I was up to something; he didn’t know what it was, but he wasn’t going to pry it out of me and tell me what to do about it. He was treating me like an adult with a mind of my own, and it was driving me bananas.

  As I unlocked Brunhilde a motion flickered in the corner of my eye. I glanced down the street and saw someone, just a shadowy figure, paused by a tree half a block away and then turn casually away.

  Great. They only had to tail me while I was away from the bug taped to Brunhilde’s bumper. A very thoughtful saving of taxpayers’ dollars. Still, it made me uncomfortable and annoyed to think that they were still following me when I was being totally straight and boring.

  The evening wasn’t that old, so I drove over to Pat’s. As usual, the house stereo was playing the rock version of the Battle of Stalingrad, in Dolby. Morty let me in with a big hello, the only kind that was audible over the noise, and told me Pat was doing homework down in the basement rec room. I went downstairs and found her there - with Angela Battenbury.

  “How are you guys feeling?” I asked as I settled into one of the ratty armchairs. What a contrast from the Gibbses’ lounge room! Cheap panelling, a couple of couches and chairs, a broken TV set in the corner. Pat and Angela were sitting at a card table with physics and chemistry texts piled up in front of them.

  “I think we’re better,” Pat said. “But far from great.”

  She was right. Both of them looked a little haggard - dark circles under their eyes, pasty complexions, their hair looking ratty and neglected.

  “What have we missed in school?” Angela asked.

  “Judging from what you’re working on, not much. You look like you’re ahead of me in physics. It’s been a really dull week.”

  “I hear you were having trouble in practice,” Pat said.

  “Boy, your spies are everywhere.”

  “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Pat hissed. “They say you volunteered to be a tackling dummy.”

  “Something like that. Gibbs thinks I’m feeling the pressure too much.”


  “I believe it. You can really get uptight about that jock stuff.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped. “Think I like getting nailed? Well, I don’t.”

  “See, that’s just what I mean. I make one little comment and you get all upset.”

  “How come when a girl gets upset she’s in touch with her feelings, and when a guy gets upset he’s a jerk?” I asked.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” Pat confessed. “Maybe jerkiness is close under the male surface.”

  “When you’re shallow,” said Angela, “everything is close under the surface.”

  “I liked you guys better when you were too sick to talk,” I said. “I could get this kind of flak at home from Melinda. No, actually I’m glad you’re so obnoxious. It shows you really are getting well. Want a ride to school tomorrow?” I asked Pat.

  “If I go. Morty thinks I should stay home another day. He says it’s better than collapsing halfway through school and staying out for another week.”

  “Well, I’ll call just before I leave. I’ve missed you, y’know.”

  “Is that why you’re already getting up to go?”

  “I’m bushed. Playing football is a great way to learn how to fall asleep early. You guys get some sleep too.”

  “Don’t worry,” Angela laughed hoarsely. “We’ve been sleeping all day. Sleeping our lives away.”

  They walked me back upstairs. Angela turned down my offer of a lift home, saying her dad was coming by for her in a few minutes. I gave Pat a little kiss on the cheek as I stepped out the door, and she wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me.

  “Unclean, unclean!” she moaned, and kissed me hard. “Why should you be healthy when we’re sick, sick, sick?”

  “Serve you right if I come down with the galloping crud in the middle of the game Friday night.”

  “Isn’t that what they call the San Cristobal team - the Galloping Crud?”

  “The crud will be me if I don’t get home and rest up. ‘Bye. ‘Bye, Angela.” Angela grinned at me, eye to eye; she really was tall.

  As I got back into Brunhilde, I saw somebody get into a parked car down the street, heard him turned on his engine, and watched him sit there, idling. When I pulled away from the kerb, he followed me home. Maybe they didn’t trust the bug after all.