Twistor (22 page)

The balding man reached into his inside suit pocket and started to withdraw something, then stopped and replaced it. Glancing at the agent, he reached into the side pocket of his trousers, removed a new-looking wallet, and placed a Washington State driver's license and a VISA card on the counter.

A few minutes later he was driving south on Interstate 5. He felt satisfied. Now he had the truck and the uniforms, so everything was ready. Tomorrow morning they'd be ready to put Broadsword's plan into action.

15

Wednesday Morning, October 13

Vickie looked up from the console as David walked into the laboratory at 7:32 Wednesday morning. He was carrying two large white bags from the HUB, each bearing the image of a sled dog on its side. He set one bag aside and opened the other, producing two large glazed doughnuts and two capped Styrofoam cups of coffee.

She was glad to see David. It had been a long night. Her stomach and peripheral vision told her that she had already had too much coffee, but she joined David at the table and picked up one of the doughnuts. She was feeling more optimistic about her prospects for a thesis. Much of the data she needed was safely salted away on laser disks.

'How'd it go?' asked David, then took a bite from his doughnut followed by a swallow of coffee.

'Better than I'd expected,' said Vickie. 'I got most of the way through the schedule of measurements. There are only a few things left for you to do. I did the modifications to the coils and ran some tests. We can get to the new frequencies OK. But about two A.M. I noticed the number-four driver was overheating. I was able to fix it, though. It's written up in the logbook.

'Oh, and by the way. I borrowed Sam's special number-three toolbox with all the nifty little portable tools in it. It's over by the console now. I left him a note saying where it is. To fix the overheating problem I needed to drill a hole to install a bigger heat sink. Sam has this neat little self-powered drill that just fitted into the available space and saved me about an hour in disassembly time.
If
you're heading in that direction, take it back to him and say thanks.'

'Sure,' said David. He walked over and picked up the logbook. 'Yeah, I see that you've done most of the menu. We'll have lots of laser disk-loads of data to analyze after the hardware leaves. All I have left to map are those four oddball resonances that show up on the power meter but don't pop.'

'David,' said Victoria, feeling anxious again, 'do you honestly think that I can get a thesis out of this mess, with the equipment leaving? What if we discover that something wasn't working, and we need to do it over again?' Saxon was being such a bastard, she thought.

'Look,' said David, 'any experimental physicist in the world would sacrifice one or more important items of his anatomy to be the discoverer of the effect we've got here. Vickie, it's important! Don't worry about your thesis. Allan can't suppress that, not with Paul and me on your side. Sometimes professors do stick together, but they're pretty careful not to allow graduate students to be mistreated. You'll get your Ph.D., OK. But don't count on its being widely circulated for a while. I'd be willing to bet you that after your thesis goes to the library, Allan will check out all the copies and lock them up in his office for a long time.'

'How are you coming on those papers we worked over last Sunday?' asked Vickie, getting up from the table. Sunday had been a nice day, she thought.

'That, at least, is going very well,' said David. 'I incorporated your suggestions, and I found a better way of explaining the twistor field rotation, the part I was having trouble writing. I've got a final draft of the hardware paper on disk, and I'm just about done with the one describing our measurements. But remember, those may never see the light of day as journal publications. At best, they're going to be delayed getting into print. Allan will see to that.

'
Vickie, whatever you do, keep out of the conflict, don't take sides in this paper business!' David warned. 'It would be better if you didn't tell him you'd helped in writing them, beyond looking over the final result. I'm going to keep the issue of journal publication strictly a matter between Allan and me. What I want to avoid at all costs is getting your thesis held hostage to the suppression of those papers. If you ever hear me tell Allan that I don't give a damn whether you get a Ph.D. or not, that's what I'm up to. We can't allow him to find out that your thesis would be a useful bargaining chip for manipulating me.'

Vickie shook her head. 'Politics!' she muttered, putting on her backpack. She turned and surveyed the equipment. 'Guess this will be the last time I see this kludge,' she said, 'if it's actually leaving this afternoon. Goodbye, Kludge! Thanks for the thesis data!' She walked around it once, trying to commit every contour to memory. She would miss it, she decided, but at least she would still have David.

'Don't forget about tonight,' said David. 'Remember, I'm picking you up at six-thirty.'

Vickie smiled. 'I hadn't forgotten,' she said. She brushed his lips with hers as she walked past him to the door.

David sat back from the computer console, once more feeling frustrated. On Monday he'd talked at length to Weinberger about Saxon's plan to move the equipment, but that hadn't changed anything. He'd considered going higher in the university administration, maybe to the Graduate School dean or the provost. But without the support of the chairman, that seemed pointless, and he had decided that for the moment his time was better spent taking data. He could take up that fight again when he had no hardware to worry about.

He consulted the logbook. All the measurements on the list had been completed. He knew he had only about
another
hour to work before he had to halt the data taking. Sam was coming around at one P.M. to help disassemble things and get the equipment boxed and ready to move.

Now he was following up some new ideas on how to fill his remaining time. He was doing some final calculations of field settings for a range of field diameters from as small as a few centimeters to as large as five meters, about the largest their power supplies could handle. Five meters was big, he mused. At that diameter the twistor transition would take out the coils, the supplies, the console – the whole bloody works. He smiled ruefully. Another 'accident' would certainly solve the argument about what to do with the hardware. Now that the pressure to get data for Vickie was off and he had more time to reflect on the gross injustice of the present situation, his anger was rising.

Purposefully, he moused the five-meter settings into the control program. The control panel appeared on the screen. He clicked the COUNT DOWN option and moved the cursor to the control labeled
His hand hesitated on the mouse switch. No, he told himself, I can't do that. There would be hell to pay if I did. I'd agreed to do these last few measurements and have the equipment ready to move by four this afternoon. Still, it was tempting . . . He took his hand from the mouse, got up from the console, and took a deep breath.

I've been working too hard, he thought. He looked at his watch. It was 10:48 A.M. Coffee time, he thought. He picked up his cup and moved toward the door.

Allan Saxon and his Seattle lawyer, Dan Marcus, were escorted by Martin Pierce into a well-appointed conference room just down the hall from Pierce's office. Saxon was frustrated. His attempt in the waiting room to interest Darlene in an evening liaison had met a surprisingly cold rebuff. He seated himself in one of the leather chairs around the polished lozenge-shaped table. Two people that Saxon had never seen before were seated at the table.
Pierce
performed the introductions. They were from the Megalith legal staff.

'Well, Allan,' Pierce began, 'we have a new proposition for you.' He put his hand on his copy of the thick document that Darlene had placed before each of the participants. It was a new contract that Megalith was proposing would replace their old agreement. He proceeded to thread delicately through the complexities of the massive legal instrument.

Saxon was puzzled. On the surface the terms of this overcomplicated contract were more favorable than he had anticipated, far more generous than those he and Pierce had discussed a week earlier. He looked speculatively at Pierce, droning on and on about the benefits of the new arrangement. What was the devious son of a bitch up to?

Saxon had thought a lot about the bugging incident. Megalith certainly had the resources to set up an operation like that. In all probability Martin Pierce now knew almost as much as he did about the twistor effect. And Pierce wanted it. Saxon smiled and began to leaf through the contract. Now he knew what he was looking for. Somewhere in the bowels of this turgid document were words that would transfer all rights to the twistor effect to the Megalith Corporation. He would find them and nullify their effect.

It was going to be a long day.

Melissa sat looking around her father's office and finding little that interested her. She was becoming bored. It was supposed to be a special day. Her third-grade class had been canceled this morning so the teachers could have a meeting. Daddy had taken her and Jeff to the children's department of the University Bookstore, bought them each a book, and then brought them to his office to help him work. He'd said they would visit David soon, but now he was busy at his computer terminal. She and Jeff had
been
told to look at their new books. Daddy was very busy with whatever he was doing, and his back was turned.

She nudged Jeff, put a finger to her lips, and pointed to the open door. She whispered in Jeff's ear, 'Let's go and see David now!' He nodded, smiling. Quietly they tiptoed outside. Melissa brought her new book to show David the pictures of dinosaurs. They were like the dragons in some of his stories. They walked quietly down the hall to the stairway. On the first floor they found David's lab door. It was unlocked and they opened it. They were going to jump inside and say 'Boo!' to surprise him, but he wasn't there. 'His coat is here,' said Melissa. 'I'll bet he'll be back soon.' She put her book on the table by the door. Then she heard David's voice in the hall, talking to someone. 'I know!' she said. 'Let's hide and jump out and scare him when he comes in!'

'Yeah!' said Jeff. 'Let's scare him!'

Melissa led the way to the control console. Together they crouched in the knee space beneath it. It was like a little house.

'This is fun!' said Jeff, and giggled.

David, returning to the laboratory with a full cup of coffee, saw three men in gray coveralls walking to the door of his lab. 'Can I help you?' he asked. He noticed that the coveralls had the words WESTERN VAN LINES stenciled in blue on front and back.

The man in the lead, about forty and going bald, consulted a clipboard. 'We're looking for a Dr D. Harrison in room 101.'

'I'm Harrison,' said David.

'We're here to move some equipment,' said the balding man.

David opened the door to the laboratory. 'Here's the equipment in question, but the arrangement was to move it late this afternoon, at about four. I'm not done with it yet. You'll have to come back later.'

The
three men followed David into the laboratory, and he noticed that one of them, a very large fellow with a coarse face and large hands, had closed the door behind him and was locking it. 'I'm afraid that's impossible,' said the leader. 'We have a very tight schedule, and our orders are to move it now.'

David frowned and put his cup on the table. 'Look, I'm sorry about your orders and your schedule, but I've got a schedule of my own. And I haven't finished. This equipment will not be ready to move until four P.M. You'll just have to come back then. If you have any complaints, I suggest you take them to Professor Saxon, who arranged for this stupid move in the first place.' David's rising irritation turned to amazement as he realized that the big man was now pointing a large black gun in his direction. He identified it as one of the new laser-aimed weapons that the police favor, and noticed that the guide beam from the gun was making a small red laser spot on his chest.

'If you wanna leave this lavatory alive, turkey,' the big man said, 'just hold it right there.'

'We have to move this equipment now,' the balding man said calmly. 'We have our orders. Cooperate with us, and you won't get hurt.'

Bugs first and now guns! David's mind was racing. This wasn't about a simple move of the hardware from the UW campus to the Bellevue. Saxon wouldn't need to send movers with guns. What the hell was going on here? Who could be behind this? Spies? The CIA? The KGB?

David took a few steps backward. He felt a controlled but rising sense of intense anger and resentment at the injustice of it all. Then it occurred to him that the computer still held the five-meter field settings. 'OK!' he said and spread his hands. 'Look, if you're that set on moving the stuff a bit early, that's fine. I'll have to get the stuff ready. It will be severely damaged if it isn't shut down properly. I'll have to activate the automatic shutdown procedure. OK?' David pointedly turned his back on
them
and walked over to the console. He could almost feel the red laser spot on his spine as he walked.