Twistor (30 page)

'
You do?' Paul said. He looked at her closely, wondering where that left Saxon's efforts to rebuild the equipment.

'It would be nice,' she went on, ignoring his question, 'to have some of the special circuits that were in the old hardware, but I can make more. I think we can do it ourselves with a few thousand dollars, some circuits from the junk pile, a little borrowing from the stock in the electronics shop, and a few weeks of work. Maybe in less time than that, if I can recruit some help.'

Paul was surprised. 'How is that possible?' he asked. 'All that hardware . . . ' He recalled David's laboratory tour. Half of the room had been filled with complicated apparatus.

'Remember,' Vickie said, 'David and I were trying to do something much more difficult when we built up the experiment the first time. We had to spend time and money on systems that didn't work as expected or that, in retrospect, weren't actually needed. The bulk of the cost was for vacuum systems, cryogenics, and superconducting magnets that are not needed for producing the twistor effect. I now know exactly what we want to do, and I've got tons of data from a working twistor field to tell me how to do it better. I think I can design a second-generation twistor machine that will be
simple
and cheap. We don't need Allan, and I absolutely refuse to work with the bastard.'

'But what about his company in Bellevue?' asked Paul, feeling desperate. 'Isn't it likely that Saxon and his people will have a working twistor machine even sooner?' He had to find a way of convincing Vickie to work with Saxon. Surely that would be the fastest way to get the apparatus rebuilt.

Vickie smiled ruefully. 'Allan doesn't know it yet, but he's going to have one hell of a time rebuilding the twistor hardware with what he knows,' she said. 'He never took the trouble to understand the basic principles of the field-rotation trick we used. And it is not obvious, Paul, even if you know what to look for. Now all the twistor programming and hardware are gone away to never-never land and there aren't any other records. After that bugging incident, David and I decided to archive all of our CAD files of shop drawings, circuit diagrams, and board layouts, all of my design calculations, and all of the control programming.

'On Tuesday I put everything one would need to rebuild the twistor apparatus on a single encrypted laser disk. I trashed the hard copies and cleared the files from the hard disks of the HyperVAX and the CAD design computer. For good measure, I got Sam to show me how to do a 'Hard Disk Optimize,' which would make it much harder for even a VAX expert with exclusive use of the system to reconstruct those files from leftover blocks. That one little laser disk is the key to rebuilding the twistor hardware, and it's stored away in a safe place. And only I know the decryption key.'

'Vickie, aren't you being rather stubborn?' asked Paul. 'Perhaps cooperation would be the best course.'

'Paul,' she said, shaking her head, 'remember Allan's little speech in Weinberger's office, how he clearly enjoyed bending the truth to serve his ends? My grandmother once told me that the best way to coexist with
a
snake is to keep your distance.' She smiled grimly.

Paul looked at her appraisingly. 'You're a hard lady,' he said. 'I think Saxon's in for a surprise.'

Allan Saxon crossed the Evergreen Point floating bridge over Lake Washington at a leisurely pace, matching the speed of his BMW to that of a pretty girl who water-skied the calm water in the lee of the bridge. He waved at her, feeling good. It had been a shock to return to Seattle and learn about the 'incident' at his laboratory. The quantity of blood on the floor and the great wood sphere presented a puzzle. His new investigations of the twistor effect would have to proceed with caution until that mystery was solved.

He perceived the heavy hand of Martin Pierce in the maneuver with the fake movers. The trick should have worked, but it clearly hadn't. The scenario that Paul had presented this morning was bizarre, but there was a certain logic to it. Harrison must have used the twistor apparatus to move himself and the equipment out of reach. About now Pierce must be feeling very angry and frustrated. Saxon smiled.

The loss of the equipment would set back his plans. But one must land on one's feet. His questioning by the FBI last evening and his confrontation with Paul and Vickie in the chairman's office this morning had both gone remarkably well. Now he must set his business associates to work on the 'rediscovery' of the twistor effect. Steve and the others were not as sharp as Harrison and Vickie, and it might take them some time. But knowing that the effect existed was a very significant advantage, and with Harrison out of the picture and Vickie without departmental resources for a rebuild, his company had the inside track.

And yes, with any luck Vickie might be induced to contribute her knowledge to the project. She was anxious to rebuild the twistor apparatus. With that fool Harrison
out
of the way and with her desire to rescue him. Saxon was confident that she could be induced to cooperate. He smiled. Yes, she would cooperate . . .

The balding man sat in the back seat of the black car, a scrambler phone in his hand, as they paced Saxon past the bridge exit and east along the 520 freeway. 'His usual route,' he said into the phone, is to turn south off 520 at the 148th Avenue exit and then continue south to Northeast Sixth Street. Get the "Road Closed" signs ready. He should be turning on Sixth in about five minutes.'

'That's a roger, Mandrake,' came a voice from the phone.

He glanced sideways at the other passenger in the broad back seat of the car. The large man's massive right arm was bandaged and supported by a tan sling. The hand region looked unnaturally short and was swathed in white bandages. The man's coarse features were frozen in a grimace of outrage, his yellow teeth tightly clenched.

The flagman, wearing white coveralls and a yellow hard hat, waved the red flag back and forth slowly as Allan Saxon's BMW rounded a curve on the wooded road and approached him. Construction barriers blocked both lanes of the road, forcing the car to stop. Saxon lowered the window. 'What's the trouble?' he asked. The man smiled, nodded, and pointed the shaft of the red flag in Saxon's direction. From an inconspicuous orifice in the rounded end of the shaft, a cloud of fine droplets emerged and struck Saxon full in the face. 'Oysters?' he said, a puzzled expression on his face. Then he collapsed across the steering wheel.

The flagman reached a gloved hand through the open window, turned off the ignition, and opened the driver-side door. Saxon tumbled out onto the ground. Just then, a large black car rolled up and two men got out. Not a word was spoken as together they lifted Saxon and
dumped
him unceremoniously in the plastic-lined trunk of the black vehicle. Folded road-block signs followed. The two men reentered the black car, the flagman closed the trunk, and the car turned around and sped back up the road.

The flagman stripped off his coveralls, revealing a tweed coat and neatly pressed slacks underneath. He unscrewed the tiny CIA-issue cylinder of nonlethal nerve gas from its socket in the flag handle, sealed it in a zip-lock plastic bag, and dropped it into his coat pocket. The coveralls and hard hat he stuffed into a canvas airline bag along with scrambler phone and flag.

He opened all the doors of the BMW and waited while the residual fumes cleared. Then from each of his nostrils he extracted a filter plug. He sealed them in another zip-lock bag that went into the same coat pocket. He climbed into the BMW, started the engine, and turned it around, then drove back down the wooded road, heading for Seattle. Saxon's BMW would soon be back in its usual slot on the A level of the central campus underground parking garage.

Melissa was sure she wasn't lost. But she was kind of turned around, and the trees all looked the same. She tried to remember how she had come here . . .

This morning had been fun. After climbing down from the treehouse, they'd gone exploring together in the forest. They'd seen many peculiar insects and some very strange birds that were eating berries in a bush. They could hang in midair when they were eating, and they all had two pairs of wings. David had said there must be two kinds of birds here: those with four wings like the berry eaters, and those with four legs like the treebirds.

They had collected berries and mushrooms into plastic bags for the food supply. David had brought the big black gun along. For protection, he said, against big animals.
But
the only animals they'd seen were the birds eating
berries,
some other birds high in the trees, and a few of the shy six-legged squirrels that could change color.

The problems had come after lunch. David had set up a work table under the tree and had begun to work with some papers and things. She and Jeff had an argument then, and David had yelled at her. It was so unfair! It had been Jeff's fault . . . he was being a brat, but David had blamed her. She was the oldest, he'd said, and should have better judgment. So she had decided to go off by herself in the forest to collect some more of the sweet pink berries they'd been eating since this morning. She'd left without telling David and picked a time when Jeff wasn't watching.

She had found quite a lot of the berries, two plastic bags full. And she'd seen some interesting rabbitlike creatures. But now she realized that she didn't actually know quite how to get back to the treehouse. A knot of fear tightened in her stomach. What if she had to spend the night outdoors? She remembered David's warning about the dark things that flew at night and the large bearlike creature he'd seen last night at the base of their tree.

Taking a deep breath, Melissa looked around. She mustn't panic. She was pretty sure the treehouse was in this direction, but the brown-orange forest floor didn't look quite right. She walked on. Then through the trees she saw a sparkle of reflected light, something that was silvery. She walked toward it.

It was a small pool of water. Cold, clear water was trickling from some green mossy rocks on one side of it, and on the other a small stream ran down the hill. The forest here was very still and quiet except for the small sounds of running water.

Melissa knelt next to a big rock beside the pool, studying the ripples on its surface, then looking down into its clear depths. Small jewel-like swimming insects scurried about in patches of sunlight near the pool's edges, but its center was clear and deep. She reached out and dipped
her
hand there, bringing to her mouth a cupped palm of cold water. She was thirsty, she realized. The cool water tasted wonderful. She drank more.

She recalled getting a drink of cold water from the refrigerator at home and felt suddenly very sad. Mother had told her never drink out of the bottle, always get a glass. She thought of her mother then, and her father. They'd be upset now because she hadn't come home last night. Mom always wanted her in the house before dark. They must think that she and Jeff had run away or were lost or kidnapped or even dead. She pictured her mother in the back yard, calling and calling for Melissa, and no one came. A tear slid down her cheek and dropped into the water.

She studied the ripples in the pool. As the reflection cleared she saw another face in the water. She looked more carefully. It was the face of a small brownish creature, reflected in the water. It must be behind the big rock at her side. Melissa drew a quiet breath and kept very still as she watched the creature. It sat at the water's edge and drank, lapping up the water with its pink tongue. Then its light brown forepaw darted into the water and emerged with a wriggling minnow held between tiny fingers. Through the ripples Melissa could make out that the creature delicately placed the minnow into its mouth. She giggled.

When the ripples cleared again, the creature's calm violet eyes were looking directly at her in the water. It stared at her for a long time. She noticed that it had big pointed ears, brown fur that now looked darker than it had before, and a long, flexible, bushy tail. And it had six legs – or perhaps four legs and two arms was more correct. It stood on the four back legs rather like a cat, but its body was longer and curved upward near the front, where the other two legs were more like arms ending in little six-fingered hands. It flicked its ears forward in a funny way, making Melissa laugh again. Then the creature
scampered
around the rock and ran slowly toward the forest to disappear behind a tree.

Without thinking about anything but the little animal, Melissa followed it. It ran from tree to tree. She noticed that it was an orange-brown now, close to the color of the dead leaves on the forest floor. It did not seem afraid, but it always kept a short distance ahead of her. The woods looked more familiar here. The little animal's fur changed to a lighter shade of brown as it climbed a tall tree. Melissa walked all around the tree, but could see no sign of the animal. However, very high up in the crotch of one of the larger branches was what might have been a nest.

Finally, Melissa gave up searching for the little creature and looked around her. She was in a part of the forest very near the treehouse, she realized . . .

Melissa, feeling very excited, walked up to David with two plastic bags full of pink berries. He was sitting on a big rock, working at the table he'd made from a piece of plywood and some branches. She saw that he was staring at a large piece of white paper with lots of colored lines drawn on it. It was unrolled on the tabletop, and he'd put rocks at the corners to hold it down.

David suddenly smiled and quickly copied something from the big drawing to a pad of paper in his lap. Then he frowned. 'Damn,' he said, and drew a line through what he'd just written. Looking up, he seemed surprised to see Melissa there. 'Hi,' he said. 'What's up?'

He didn't seem to be mad at her anymore, and he hadn't noticed that she'd been gone, she thought. Good. 'David,' she began, 'I saw a new animal in the forest!' As she talked, she added the pink berries she'd collected to their small store of food.