Analog SFF, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Which reminds me: catch me in any big lies yet? You're right, so far I've only lightly varnished the facts, although in real life, Tara suggested that the sole fell out of a delivery truck restocking the nearby Whole Foods and some doggy grabbed it and redirected the delivery. But where's the magic in that? Back to the fictional fiction! ]]

  The door opened and Abraham stepped out, took one look at the now barely flopping creature, and paled so much he could pass for a white man who should really get out in the sun more.

  "Is that what I think it is?” he asked in a choked voice.

  "I'd go with fish,” I suggested.

  "I meant a—a non-local flounder. Tara?"

  "You've been hanging around Yanks too long, Abe. ‘Tis a sole, but definitely non-local."

  "Could someone have dropped it here? By accident?"

  We all glanced up and down the street, perhaps looking for a fisherman searching his creel because it felt too light. “Not too likely,” I said.

  Abe wrung his hands, which I'd read about but never seen anyone do in real life. What was the big deal? First Page freaked and now Abe. Never seen him rattled before either, but he'd been acting funny lately, excited all last week over something he wouldn't talk about, and since Monday he'd been looking bummed. But not this bummed.

  "Damn,” he whispered after chewing his lower lip pretty good. “This might mean—never mind."

  As he moseyed back into the store, Tara placed her delicate hand under the flatfish, which had ceased even twitching, and scooped it up, very casually. “I'll see if Whole Foods will bestow some wrapping paper. I've a friend in the seafood department. Page, would you have sufficient room in your fridge for this if I promise to make the wrapping airtight?"

  "For you, sure."

  "I'll fetch your crutches,” I offered, unsure if she could manage them and still tote the fish.

  "Don't bother dear, I can hobble the three blocks. But thank you. Thank you both. And I'll be wanting fresh coffee on my return."

  Mr. Fins tucked under one arm, she walked off with that weird limp of hers, as though different things were wrong with each leg. I almost ran after her to help out, but Page gave me the look and we both returned to work. I tooled over to see if any Regulars were falling behind in their daily caffeine overdose.

  Got four orders of the respective usuals and got some of the usual treatment. Dusty raised a dyed eyebrow at me; Serge smiled warmly and returned to fiddling with the GPS menu on his iPhone G6. But then Professor J failed to make his usual odd joke and asked about the “commotion” instead, complaining that he couldn't get word one out of Abraham, who was still looking worried and upset.

  "Live fish on the stoop,” I said. “Dead now, I guess. Don't think it was trying to bother anyone."

  "It bothered me,” Dusty muttered. “Gross."

  Now it was J's turn to look worried. "Live, you say?"

  "Until a few minutes ago. Apparently from pretty far away."

  "Oh, Christ.” His expression changed. The worry stayed, but he also looked angry. Was there some national I Hate Gills Day I didn't know about?

  I tried to raise one eyebrow the way Dusty can, but of course they both lifted. “What makes that your problem, Professor?” Which sounds rude, but I didn't ask it rudely.

  "There's a, um, possibility a practical joke was involved. At my expense.” Was the man actually blushing?

  "Why play jokes aimed at you on our front step?"

  His blush deepened. “You wouldn't believe me. Hell, sometimes I don't believe me."

  I opened my mouth to answer but got distracted. Abraham had done something unheard of for a Regular. He'd up and left the store, abandoning his steaming large-java-extra-cream on the table. I stared at the slowly closing door, the full mug, then looked down again at the professor. “Try me,” I suggested.

  He glanced over at Dusty, who seemed uninterested in anything outside herself, which I'd learned could be an optical illusion. “All right,” he sighed. “It'd be a relief to tell someone. Amy, do you believe in leprechauns?"

  He didn't notice, but that got Dusty's gothy attention. Serge, far as I could tell, remained wrapped up in his new toy. I squinted into J's blue, blue eyes looking for a sign the man was “winding me up,” as Abraham might put it, but all I saw was blue sincerity.

  "Can't say as I do."

  "Nor do I. Not as most people think of them. Did you know I was once a field archeologist?"

  I gave my forehead two I-have-brains taps. “I figured as much since that's what you used to teach and what you write all those books about. You saying you dug up some leprechaun fossils?"

  He dug up a mini-smile. “Hardly fossils; I'm no paleontologist. But I am an amateur entomologist."

  "That's news to me,” I admitted, looking around to make sure no one desired my services; Page was manning the register, and no customers were shooting up flares. “But I don't get the connection."

  "How could you? Perhaps I've said too much already."

  "Care for triple sugar in your coffee from now on if you clam up?"

  [[ HGTV syndrome strikes again, right? Clam up! ]]

  He sighed. “An effective threat. Very well. Twenty years ago, a former student living in Ireland wrote me about finding some old oak piles and sticks half buried in a dried-up lakebed. He'd thought he'd found the ruins of a crannog, a sort of artificial island used as a dwelling."

  "Built by Picts; I know about crannogs. My mom's so Scottish I'm surprised she doesn't wear kilts."

  My wit went right under his head. “Splendid,” he said. “A fellow gravedigger and I rounded up a herd of undergraduates and went on a teaching dig in Eire.” He licked his lips and then continued.

  "At the site, which certainly did suggest Pictish ruins, I noticed holes tunneled into the loam, too small for rodents but a bit oversize for your average Irish earthworm. I was curious. So as my team did some preliminary excavating, I concentrated my shovel-work on exploring one of the tunnels."

  "And you found?"

  He winced. “Nothing I could've expected. Five feet down, my tunnel leveled off and veered into a spot where dozens of other tunnels converged. And that's where I found it."

  "I'll bite. You found what?"

  "Something akin to a European beehive, but larger and coated with wax. I'd never seen or heard of such a thing and should have brought it, intact, to a laboratory for careful study. Instead, I made the mistake of cutting it open."

  "And little guys dressed in green popped out?” I grinned.

  "Hardly. Huge green fuzzy insects, rather beelike, flew out. At least five hundred of them."

  "Whoa."

  "They buzzed me and my students and I was sure they intended to attack. Instead they all landed on their hive, dug their feet into the waxy coating, and flew away with it. But I did get a glimpse of what was inside, thanks to my, um, premature dissection."

  "What?"

  "Well, honey, for one thing. The stuff kept dripping out. But the main feature that caught my interest,” he paused to wet his lips again, “was tiny little . . . furniture."

  I didn't know whether to gasp or laugh. “Professor, are you trying to tell me leprechauns are bugs?"

  "I didn't put it together until later. Consider the folktales about the little people. Dressed in green? Check. Pot of gold? Check, if you take gold as a metaphor for honey. Small? Check. Clever? Double check. Their furniture was peculiar but marvelously crafted. Elaborate. And then there's the matter of pranks. They flew off, but it turned out they didn't forget me. Or forgive."

  "How do you know?"

  "I didn't at first. But little things kept going wrong. My car keys would vanish and show up days later embedded in an ice cube in my freezer. Thought some students were playing games. Then one day I opened a banana and it was filled with Solenopsis. I mean the fruit was gone, and the peel stuffed solid with live red ants. After I dealt with the escapees and a few bites, I examined the peel through a low-power microscope. Ca
n you guess what I found?"

  "A Chiquita label?"

  "Very, very small stitches."

  "Huh.” I looked at him hard, but he seemed perfectly serious. “So what'd you do about all this?"

  He glanced around the room, maybe to certify that no one but me was listening. He finally noticed Dusty was on board, but he only shrugged and spoke in a lowered voice. “My former student got me some names of Irish old-timers who reputedly were experts in, er, folk remedies. I hoped they'd know a cure for my situation. If there was a cure, I assumed Ireland would be the logical place to look for it."

  "I suppose."

  "Three of the herbalists just laughed me out the door, but the fourth was something else. All tattooed like a Pict himself. He gave me a—an amulet to wear.” Professor J yanked on a silver chain around his neck and out popped a copper cage barely big enough to contain a dime. But rather than spare change, it held two green shells, or perhaps one broken shell. He hurriedly stuffed the cage back into his shirt.

  Dusty leaned closer to him. “What kind of shells were those?” she demanded.

  "I suspect they're carapaces, if you must know. From a Queen leprechaun. It's been two decades now and the practical jokes haven't stopped and have even followed me to two other continents and back. But ever since I've worn this, the pranks have, um, kept their distance."

  I nodded thoughtfully. “So that's why you thought the fish had something to do with you."

  "Yes, indeed. Look, I know how mental all this sounds, but have you any idea how many species coexist with us on Earth that remain undiscovered?"

  "How could I?"

  "Exactly.” He took a long final sip of coffee, set the mug down, and walked out of the store without another word.

  I watched him through the big front window until he'd passed beyond my view, trying to convince myself he'd been pulling my leg big-time. And then it was probably just the power of suggestion, but I could've sworn I saw a green blur flying past the glass, headed in his direction.

  This was turning out to be an unusual day.

  [[ Now that I've heard myself say it out loud, I realize that last line was a clunker. So sue me. But tell me, have I lied about what the Professor said?

  Wrong! I reported exactly what he told me, almost word for word. But remember that Professor J is the one with the freaky sense of humor and I suspect he was leg-pulling especially hard that day. But yeah, I did see a green blur after he took off. Shows you how gullible I am. Got to rest for a minute. ]]

  [[ I'm so thirsty. The thought of food makes me queasy now, but I'd kill for a sip of water. I'm at a real bad point in my numb-pain cycle and the concrete under me keeps getting damper. Feels like my leg bones are ready to snap from all the weight on them—can't afford to think about it. Thank God my head and chest are free. Maybe if I focus harder on the reading I'll forget this nightmare, at least for a while. Okay, I'm summoning up my audience again. ]]

  Next morning, we opened the store as usual, but when Tara showed up twenty minutes later, she found two fish on the front step—another sole and something a bit larger she called a “rainbow runner.” Tara said the runner must've come from waters way farther south than our latitude. Page looked sick when she heard about it.

  I had a hunch the Regulars would be short two members this morning—Abraham and Professor J—and I was almost right. Both came to the party after all, but only stayed long enough to hear about the latest finny delivery. J muttered something about “not a coincidence” along with a flashflood of swears. He was gone before you could say “lucky charms.” And for the first time ever, he took off in a car.

  Abe pretty much flipped and practically ran from the store. Page, bless her heart, asked me to chase him down and find out what was wrong—a genuine sacrifice for her because the store was busy at the time and she needed all hands on deck.

  [[ Gad, I really overdid the nautical bit. ]]

  I'm no sprinter, so it took me four blocks to catch up to him. By catch up, I mean using what little breath I had left to yell, “Hold up, doctor, please!” from nearly a block away. Abe stopped, whirled around, and frowned at me as I waddled up to him.

  "Thanks,” I panted, “for waiting."

  "What is it, Amy?” He sounded annoyed.

  "Page and I—” gasp, wheeze “—sorry, my lungs are such wimps. Page and I are worried about you. What's got you in such a rush to castle?"

  For a moment I thought he would take off again. “My dear, just being near me may be more dangerous than you could imagine. So I thank you for your concern, but you must scurry off. Now."

  "Why?” Were the Bee Folk after him, too? “Don't see anything scary.” Unless free fish deliveries turn scientists into axe murderers. “And I wouldn't feel right about taking off if you aren't safe.” Oh, I'm glib with the paler lies.

  He bared his teeth and it was no smile. “I can outrun you despite my age."

  "Yeah, but I know where you live.” We'd had chess matches at his house.

  His eyes darted around. “Touché. Let's strike a bargain. Will you promise to keep a secret?"

  "Absolutely.” I put on my trustworthy face.

  "Very well. If I explicate the menace then you'll leave?"

  "If there's nothing I can do to help."

  "There isn't. And truth to tell, I really should inform someone outside my, ah, inner circle about this, in the event that the consequences are more . . . widespread than I've envisioned. The problem has arisen due to my work."

  I told you he's a talker. “Never realized theoretical physics was so risky."

  One side of his mouth twisted. “Our project has advanced far beyond the purely conjectural. We recently assembled a construct, a device if you will, that appears to confirm our latest theories."

  "What theories?"

  Despite whatever spooked him, he got more animated as he burrowed into the topic. “Our starting point was to reject the Big Bang hypothesis for the creation or recreation of our universe. We found an alternative in the logical ramifications of the accepted astronomical observation that celestial entities, such as stars and galaxies, appear to be traveling faster the farther they are from our telescopes, and receding. Assuming sufficient space, we posited a mass-to-energy conversion as these entities approach light-speed, thus creating a de facto spherical border to our space-time. While it is possible that the cosmos will terminate in a permanent useless state, we found the idea inelegant. So we further posited that the border's converted energy returns to the universe as a whole where it condenses into free matter."

  "You're talking Steady State?"

  "Quite, but not as Gold, Bondi, Hoyle, or Fagerquist envisioned it. I'm pleased you're familiar with the term, although I prefer ‘continuous creation.’”

  "So what kind of machine could—"

  "Kindly attend. Next, we asked ourselves how the energy might return. After considerable thought and calculation, I proposed that at the transformation border, the cataclysm is so intense that it opens a rift into an extraneous set of dimensions and forces the converted matter into that extra-universal space. I further suggested that an alien plenum would be unable to interact properly with this energy and the resulting stresses would gradually, ah, rematerialize the energy. Assuming the extra dimensions could not retain matter whose structure reflects our reality, the condensate would fall back into our space. I named this cycle the TavProcess."

  Grab your buckets, girls, it's raining matter. “That's a pretty neat concept, Doctor. But where's the danger?"

  He flashed me a stern look. “Patience. If the Tav Process is valid, we must consider how the returning matter would be distributed."

  "If we must."

  "Then let us reason. If the material simply returned to its exit point, our universe would eventually become nothing but a vast hollow sphere with something of an oscillating skin; thus violating our continuous creation hypothesis. Should the material reenter at only one point, it would surely become a black hole of co
smic proportions, once again violating our central concept."

  "I get you, but wouldn't that be a cool way of getting everything together for the next Big Bang?"

  For a second, he looked startled but approving. “A worthy notion; as I have often remarked, you may not be exercising your full potential in your current vocation. Nevertheless, we do not abandon a traditional theory to explore alternatives only to scamper back to it at the first hint of a new wrinkle. Besides which, what would induce your cosmic black hole to ‘bang'?

  "So we presume the two realities are aligned, or misaligned, such that the returning matter has a widespread distribution, thus suggesting a possible means of testing the entire model."

  "This, I gotta hear."

  "So you shall. If the Tav Process has been occurring eternally, or even for a few paltry quadrillion millennia, every particle in our universe must, perforce, have gone through our theoretical hyperspace many times."

  "Wow. Talk about your big picture, but I can see that."

  "Then wouldn't it be reasonable to expect the particles to show a cumulative effect from so many passages?"

  I shrugged. “How should I—oh, heck, grind me a pound of that one too."

  He looked baffled for a moment, then continued. “And given sufficient time, Amy, wouldn't every particle extant have also repeatedly been encapsulated within black holes, and freed once those black holes have reached the transformation barrier?"

  His perspective was dizzying, but I just nodded.

  He leaned closer to me. “Finally, consider entanglement. Do you know what I mean by ‘entanglement'?"

  "Sure, I've taken physics courses.” Yeah, Physics One in high school and Physics for Liberal Arts Ignoramuses in college. “That's when two subatomic doodads can affect each other even when they're in different time zones."

  He snorted. “Amusing, but sufficiently near the mark. I've a colleague who specializes in entanglement, and she believes that conditions within a black hole generate a prodigious number of entangled entities—your doodads. She suggested that such entities might remain entangled throughout the Tav Process. And furthermore, that the connection between doodads is and has always been within the hyper-universe."