Reflex (21 page)

The resulting transformation was completed by the hanging of four framed prints: two large landscapes, a watercolor by Winslow Homer, and a flat print of Wesselmann's
The Great American Nude.

He'd seen the Homer before, in a book. It was one of his Key West paintings, three black men hauling the anchor up on a schooner, sails ready to hoist. He'd also seen the molded plastic original of the
Nude
at the National Gallery. It was an odd work, very few colors depicting a very tan blonde with extreme patches of white skin around her breasts and hips, two-tone nipples and a slight cluster of pubic hair. There was the barest hint of a belly button and the head was a simple oval outlined in yellow, a brief line to define the chin, and two red lips around an area of undefined white teeth.

The nipples, the mouth, and the groin were the most detailed parts of the work. Even the tan line screamed, "usually covered." Yet there was no personality, no real individuality, no sense of person.

Great American?
Typical
American male view.
He wondered if Wesselmann had intended this a reflection on objectification or if the piece merely displayed the artist's own views. He hoped it was intentional but thought the piece dated to the mid-sixties when sexism was more part and parcel of the world's fabric.

When the staff had finished, Dr. Conley came back in, rolling the computer station they'd previously used to reprogram Davy's implant. He left it outside the radius of Davy's ankle-constrained range and handed the plastic paddle on its telephone cord to Davy.

"If you would be so kind as to hold this over your—that's right. You remember." He plugged the unit in and began whistling quietly to himself.

Davy wanted very much to see the monitor's face, but it was not only turned away from him, it had privacy flaps extending forward along its sides and top, screening its contents from anyone not directly before it.
What's the parameter range? Could I set the delay to so high a value that I'd have time to jump away and get the damn thing surgically removed?
And
I wonder
where
they keep the computer when it's not right here?
And finally,
where do they keep that portable transmitter that Hyacinth Pope (aka Ms. Minchin) used when they were welding?
With that in his possession, he should be able to go anywhere.

Dr. Conley completed his adjustments, shut down the computer, and accepted the wand back from Davy. He said, "Excuse me, please. I'll be back in a moment." He rolled the computer to the door where it was taken by somebody unseen. Dr. Conley returned and sat down at the table. Davy joined him, kicking the chain across the floor pointedly.

"Since you've shortened my 'leash' you'll be able to unlock this, won't you?"

Conley looked at his watch. "Another fifteen minutes should do it."

Davy frowned. He'd expected a yes or a no—not this delay. "Does the device take time to accept your programming?"

Conley explained, "Mr. Simons will be airborne in fifteen minutes. He is a very cautious man. When he is on site, you will wear the restraint. And—" He paused, pursing his lips. "We want the implant programmer off site, too."

Shit!
Davy sat back and tried not to let his disappointment show. "What's my new interval on the pukometer?"

Conley tilted his head down and looked at him for a moment, silent, over the frames of his glasses. He pursed his lips and said, "I think this will work if I'm as direct as Mr. Simons. There are things I can't tell you but I won't lie to you. If I can't answer a question, I'll just say so—I won't make something up. I'm a scientist and as such, I'm uncomfortable with lies."

Science without virtue...
He thought about asking Conley how he felt about vivisection.

Conley pushed his glasses back up and continued. "First of all, you should know that I've completely removed the delay interval. You leave the range of the field and the governor will go full on, no warning, immediate convulsions. You've shown us that you can do much with little. In fact, that's why Mr. Simons has decided to remove himself. Even with no interval, he's decided you are too dangerous to be in striking range."

Now
that
is too bad.
Davy smiled, pointedly. "Aren't you worried? For yourself, that is."

Conley licked his lips. "Frankly, yes. But I accept the risk."

"Because of the pay? I forgot—Mr. Simons deals in all sorts of motivations, doesn't he? What is his hold on you?"

"You are correct that it is not my salary," Conley said. "Among other things my motivation is this chance at new science. Because of the phenomenon—your ability has no precedent and its implications for physics are staggering."

Now why doesn't that reassure me said the guinea pig?
"Is that your religion, then? Physics?" Davy felt a reluctant tug of curiosity. He'd read everything he could of speculations as to how teleportation would work. There'd been a surprising amount of work done on it for something that most people were sure was impossible. The recent physics of the past decade involving quantum teleportation did not seem to apply. He was fairly sure that his being wasn't destroyed and recreated every time he jumped. If that were the case, then why would manacles restrain him? "And what do you make of this phenomenon?"

Conley opened his mouth for a moment but nothing came out. He shut it and licked his lips. "I don't know. That's the short answer. I
suspect
a great deal, though. What have you decided?"

"Berthold rays," said Davy, with a serious face.

Conley raised his eyebrows. "A simple, 'I don't know' would suffice."

Davy went on. "Poincaré non-Euclidean pocket universes. Zero-point vacuum holes. Quantum tunneling. Enthalpic reversal. Gravitational distortion by strange matter stars. Violations of causality. Imaginary rest mass. Scarlet women. Ragtime. Jungle instinct. Mass hysteria."

Conley looked over his glasses at Davy again. "Just so. Do you always babble like this?"

Davy said impassively, "The idle brain is the devil's playground."

"How do you teleport? Not the physics of it—the act of volition—what do you do that causes the displacement?"

I'm certainly not telling
you. He lied. "I struggle very hard to stay where I am... and fail."

Conley looked back over his glasses. "Is
this
cooperation?"

Davy relented slightly. "I don't really know how I do it." He pointed across the room. "If you were to go across the room to the light switch, you wouldn't think about it—you don't think about all the individual movements necessary. In fact, if you actually tried to micromanage all the actual muscles, you'd probably fall right over. You just do it, correct? You don't think about it. It's something like that."

Conley stood up. "Wait a moment, please." He left the room and came back almost immediately with the key to the padlock which he put on the table before Davy.

Davy picked it up slowly. "Mr. Simons must be airborne."

"Quite. You may wish to get dressed. We'll take a walk."

Davy unlocked the ankle restraint. "Dressed?"

Dr. Conley walked to the wardrobe and opened it. There were hanging shirts, pants, two suits. He walked to the bureau and pulled open the top drawer revealing briefs, socks, and pajamas.

"You've lost a little weight, I believe, but if anything doesn't fit, tell Abney, the butler. He'll take care of it."

"Not Ms. Pope?"

Conley shook his head. "Hyacinth is reserved—how did Mr. Simons put it? She's the stick, but hopefully, she'll remain unused. She's accompanying Mr. Simons on other business." He held his hand out. "The key, please."

Davy put it on his palm and started to give him the lock as well. "No. Not the lock. Keep it open, with the restraint. You'll be needing it. But rarely, I hope." He went to the door. "Ten minutes?"

Davy nodded and Conley left.

He thought about jumping again—to Adams Cowley, but the last attempt was too fresh in his mind. He gagged reflexively and closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When the nausea had passed, he tore off the Velcroed pajamas and threw them into the bathroom trash can.

The bureau seemed to be stocked from a Lands' End catalog and yielded a pair of jeans, new, yet washed several times to softness, crew socks, gray briefs, and a white polo. He added a navy oversized crew sweater and was trying to choose between the leather deck shoes and a pair of white court tennies when Conley stuck his head back in, his lab jacket gone and a fleece sweater over his arm.

"Where are we walking?"

"The beach. And on the way back we might try an experiment."

Davy picked the tennis shoes. They'd gotten the size right, even accounting for his triple-E width and high instep.
Well, they had the shoes I was wearing when I was snatched.

Moving without chains felt odd and, again, he had trouble at the threshold of the door, but Dr. Conley walked on without pause, and Davy caught up in a few strides.

This time they turned away from the elevator and found, at the end of the hallway, a broad stair with carpeted steps and an elaborate oak railing leading down two flights to the next floor.

"First I need to show you something." Conley led the way to a room that must have been right below Davy's quarters. He opened the door and gestured Davy to precede him into the room.

At one point, Davy supposed, it had been an elegant bedroom, but the furniture was gone and the once-pristine oak floor was scuffed and gouged. What dominated the room was a column, four feet on a side, of gray, rough-finished concrete, going from floor to ceiling.

Conley spoke. "So, the transmitter and a battery backup are encased in the middle of that, though there are wave guides that project above. It's on house power and it's radio controlled from
off site.
You manage to interrupt the power supply and a day or two later, when the battery runs down, your implant is going to activate. You interfere with radio transmission or reception by messing with the wave guide and the implant will activate. The concrete is reinforced with a triple grid of one-inch rebar and you couldn't get it open without explosives. And that would probably wreck the transmitter and—"

"My implant would activate." Davy felt his stomach clench. His tentative plan had been to find the transmitter, take it, and escape. "I'm surprised the floor supports the sucker."

Conley pointed down and drew an imaginary line across the floor. "There's a load-bearing wall that cuts across, right beneath it. That's why they chose your particular room." He studied Davy's face. "I'm not trying to rub your nose in it or anything. I just think it's important for you to understand the situation, so that you don't do anything..."

"Stupid?" suggested Davy.

Conley's lips twitched. "Ill-advised." He led the way back out of the room.

They went down another floor and then they were walking down the hall and turning, again, past the kitchen, past the laundry room, to the courtyard.

The sky was cloudy and the glare was worse than no clouds as the brightness came from all parts of the sky. He blinked as they stepped off the porch but the crisp, salt air felt wonderful in his nose. It couldn't have been more than sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

The chain was still there. Someone had coiled it neatly upon the top of the concrete weight, but the padlock and restraint were gone. Davy had no doubt they would appear again if his captors thought it necessary.

Conley pulled his fleece on without stopping, pushed open the iron gate at the end of the courtyard, and walked out. Davy followed. Beyond the shelter of the walls, the wind was brisk.

"Did they just push the output up?" he asked.

Conley glanced at him sideways. "You refer to the radio signal?"

"Yes."

"We've changed things a bit. We won't be using that device you saw Ms. Pope use. Unrestrained, you could snatch it and go. But, no, we haven't just increased the gain." He licked his lips. "That signal is a relatively simple digital key transmitted redundantly on three different frequencies to minimize the chance of accidental signal loss. To prevent you from being able to take a transmitter and run, we've split up the key between two different synchronized transmitters."

Davy saw the garage he'd glimpsed earlier and a gravel drive that led around the house to his left. Conley turned to the right down a gravel path that led away from the garage, driveway, and house to a raised boardwalk snaking into tall sand dunes.

Conley said, "So, to our east, we have a transmitter, and to our west." He stopped and stepped off the boardwalk, crouched, and drew two intersecting circles, like a Venn diagram, in the sand. Conley rested his finger in the common lens shaped intersection. "We're here, where the two signals overlap in sufficient strength and the key is—" he meshed the fingers of both hands together "—complete. If you were to go toward either transmitter, you'd enter a zone with only a partial key." He dropped one hand, leaving the other out with gaps between the fingers. "And the implant would trigger."

Well, scratch
that
notion.
Davy felt a reluctant admiration for the arrangement.
These people are not stupid.
"How do you know we're not about to walk into a V-zone?"

Conley frowned. "V-zone?"

Davy opened his mouth and mimed sticking his finger down his throat.

The corners of Dr. Conley's mouth jerked up briefly. "Ah. The Veeee-zone. We had someone out here with a meter, checking. If we stay on the boardwalk, we're fine, and I'll show you the limits and bounds, once we're on the beach."

"Will I still get a boundary warning, when I approach the edge?"

Conley pursed his lips. "We
think
so."

The boardwalk rose on pilings now, lifting over to the tops of a dune, then stretched over an expanse of salt marsh and open estuary. Their feet thumped hollowly on the planks.

"That is, we're not sure what the device will do since you will be moving toward a region of
stronger
field strength in one key, even as the other drops. We think, however, that you'll have the same incremental increase in nausea and perhaps the tingle in the throat. We hope so."