Twistor (23 page)

'OK, you can shut it down,' said the leader. 'But be quick about it!'

The shutdown is very quick,' said David through clenched teeth. 'It only takes a few seconds. Look, there are dangerous high voltages here. Please stand back against that wall until everything is safely off.' He reached across the console, moused the cursor to the
control on the computer screen, and clicked. Then he backed slowly away from the console, moving at a leisurely pace along a path that would take him well outside the field volume and away from the windows. Those might implode from the vacuum produced when the transition hit. The synthesized voice of the control program began the down-count:
'Five!
. . .
Four!
. . . '

Crouching under the control desk, Melissa heard men's voices in the room. They sounded angry, and Melissa was uncertain about when they should surprise David. When she heard David's computer saying numbers, she decided that the time had come for the surprise. When the computer said
'Three!'
she and Jeff jumped out from under the console yelling 'Surprise, David! Surprise!'

David saw the children. The realization of what was about to happen came to him like an electric shock, and his time sense slowed down. As the computer said
'Two!'
he began to move with agonizing slowness across to the console. He knelt slowly to pull the two children to him. He saw them turn to look at him, delight on their faces. They squirmed and giggled. Did he have time to get them out?

'One!'
said the control computer.

Melissa squirmed away from him, and David wasted a critical split second in pulling her back again. With the children in his embrace, he turned away from the console. Was it too late? He hesitated for another split
second
as he estimated the position of the field boundary and considered the consequences of being half in and half out of the field sphere.

'Activating!'
said the computer.

The large man was keeping his gun aimed in the general direction of the Harrison turkey when some little kids jumped out from under the messy desk. Reflexively he stepped forward and brought up his laser-guided automatic, now extended at arm's length and projecting its target spot on the area of Harrison's heart. He was the muscle, and he had the gun. Nobody was getting away with any tricks on his watch.

'Activating!'
said that computer voice. His gun hand suddenly felt numb.

Abruptly, he wasn't looking at the Harrison turkey any more. His arm gave the appearance of pressing deep into a smooth wooden surface. As he pulled it away, he saw that his hand was missing at the wrist. It looked all smooth and white and bloody. He could see the bones of his arm cut off clean and white, and the blood now pulsing from the severed arteries. He screamed a great animal release of anger and fear and protest. He'd been in control, goddammit! He'd done it right. He hadn't screwed up. This couldn't happen!

The balding man stared around the room in disbelief. There was a strong cedarlike smell in the air. The floor supports made ominous groaning noises. Where the apparatus stood an instant ago there was now an enormous reddish wooden ball that reached almost to the ceiling and was sunk into the floor. Its sides were smooth, as if polished. The large man beside him made animal noises, and with each heartbeat blood spurted from a stump at his wrist where his hand had been. There were streaks of the bright red arterial blood down the side of the sphere, and a puddle was forming on the floor.

The
balding man felt growing shock and numbness spreading across his mind and battled against it, clinging to clarity. He pressed a blood-soaked handkerchief into the big man's remaining hand to hold against the wrist stump. Then he snatched a piece of clear plastic tubing from a work table by the wall and tied it around the man's forearm, slowing the flow of blood. He looked at the quantity of blood on the floor and shook his head in dismay, then turned to the object that now dominated the room.

He tapped the wood of the sphere with his fist. It sounded very solid. Maybe somehow Harrison and the apparatus were inside. He walked around it, looking for a way in. Copper tubing on the floor leading up to the wooden surface was spraying water, and heavy electrical wires were making blue-green sparks. It didn't look planned, somehow. His mind racing, he backed to a corner, removed the small camera from his pocket, and panned across the scene, snapping four pictures in quick succession.

It's blown,
his mind said,
it's blown, it's blown
. . .
'
It's blown!' he said aloud. 'Execute retreat mode. Let's get outta here!' Shakily he herded his men to the door.

What can I tell Broadsword, he thought as they ran for the truck. Despite his fears, there was no interference outside. The driver waited calmly, the truck engine idling. What kind of shit storm did we blunder into, he wondered. Was this some kind of a setup? With little kids? Guys that disappear? Giant wood balls? Cut-off hands? This is no fucking ordinary job!

PART
3

The knowledge we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order and without inventory; we ought to know what we possess and to be able to make it serve our own needs.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz

(1646–1716)

16

Wednesday Afternoon, October 13

It had suddenly become dark and quiet. David felt the delayed adrenaline rush accelerate his heartbeat to a driving thump. The only light was the fading afterglow of the computer monitor screen. The dominant sound was the descending whine of the turbopump spinning down. They were still in the lab, and the power was off! Those new settings must have overloaded the circuits, blown a breaker, and shut down the vacuum system. But this was the middle of the morning, so why was there no light coming through the windows?

The twist! They'd been inside the twistor field when the transition hit. They were on the other side of the twistor transition! The CCD camera had shown only darkness and distant stars on the other side of a transition. They should be breathing vacuum, suffocating in the blackness of empty space. How could they still be alive? Where were they! His mind raced, cycling on emptiness and paradox without a reference point.

David drew three deep breaths, shook himself, and studied what his senses were telling him. He was still crouched near the control desk with his arms around Melissa and Jeffrey, who squirmed closer to him. The cold, hard, concrete slab floor of the laboratory was still beneath him, but he could feel the floor shake slightly, accompanied by small grinding noises. The control console still pressed against his shoulder. There was a strong organic smell like cedar in the air. He could hear his own breathing and that of the children. The
darkness
was now oppressive and solid, like a wall.

'Are you kids OK?' he asked. His voice rang with a hollow echo that was new.

'What happened?' asked Melissa. 'Did those men do something? Why are the lights out?'

'W-we were gonna surprise you, David!' said Jeff.

'I certainly was surprised, Jeff,' David was relieved to hear their voices. They were OK. Releasing the children, he said, 'I want you two to stay right here until I get us some light. Don't move, now!' He followed the top edge of the desk with his hand and found the middle drawer. Opening it, he found a paper matchbook that he remembered putting there. He struck a match, stood up, and looked around. 'Holy shit!' he said.

The light revealed that they were near the center of a brownish dome. It surrounded them on all sides and curved down to meet the concrete floor, which was now a gray circle. The twistor apparatus stood at the approximate center of the circle. David cautiously walked to the nearest wall and felt it. It was smooth, cool, and just a bit sticky, and it smelled strongly of something that was not quite cedar. He could see wood grain in the surface. It was polished wood, like a fine piece of furniture. David turned and looked back, surveying what was left of the laboratory room. He could feel the match burning close to his fingers, but just before he shook it out he noticed a rectangular object next to the desk beside the console. Sam's number-three toolbox! He'd forgotten to return it. He walked through the dark, the remembered view of the room guiding him almost like seeing until his toe touched the box. Bending in the dark, he released the clips and opened it. Inside, his hand encountered a familiar shape. He lifted out the big fluorescent-tube flashlight and switched it on.

The polished curve of the wall mirrored the light, giving the impression of a tiny upside-down human shape some distance away, shining a light in his direction. He propped
the
light on the console and lifted the toolbox to the flat surface next to the sack lunch he had bought at the HUB this morning. Then he sat on the desk and motioned the children over. They climbed up on the desk beside him, and for a long time they were silent, taking it all in.

'Everything looks different,' said Melissa, her voice pitched higher than usual. 'What's that funny brown thing?' She pointed at the wooden wall. 'Where did it come from? Was there an earthquake? Are we trapped, David?'

David's mind was turning over the problem of why they had breathable air and how long it would last. They might very well be trapped. I have to keep myself and the children calm, he thought, and at least give the impression that nothing is seriously wrong. 'No, Melissa, it wasn't an earthquake,' he said. 'I think we're in no immediate danger. We're in a different place than we were. We're surrounded by wood. I don't know why yet. That's one of the things we'll have to find out. The first thing I need to do is examine that wall around us.'

He pointed the flashlight at the wall and walked toward it. Immediately the children stood, about to follow him. He turned back to them. 'I want you two to sit here quietly and watch while I get things in order,' he said.

'Can't we look too?' Melissa asked.

'It's dark in here,' David said, 'and it could be dangerous. Just let me check it out first, then you can look too.'

Melissa turned to her brother. 'Sit down,' she told him. 'We have to wait for David here.'

'I know,' said Jeff, sitting down again. Melissa seated herself beside him.

David walked for a distance along the curved wall, holding the flashlight close and studying the wall's shiny surface, occasionally tapping, feeling, or smelling it. It looked like normal wood from a fir tree, a soft wood but very smooth and regular, with occasional color variations.
It
sounded very solid, very thick. He wondered just how thick it was and what could be outside – if there was an outside. Could a universe be solid wood? Nonsense, he thought, it would go into gravitational collapse.

'Can we look now?' Melissa asked.

'Not yet,' said David. He returned to the table and began lifting items out of the toolbox and placing them on the desk. They cast long shadows in the bluish light of the fluorescent flashlight. 'We'll take a quick inventory,' he said. 'We need to know how we're set for tools and food.' He put the electronics tools in one pile, the mechanical tools in a second pile, food items in the third, and miscellaneous items in the fourth. He was slightly relieved when he found a small oxyacetylene torch in the toolbox. If the air became unbreathable, the extra oxygen in its small cylinder would help for a while. Finishing with the toolbox, he walked to a shadowed gray cabinet across the room and collected tools and other objects to add to the piles.

David was thankful that Melissa and Jeff were so well behaved and cooperative. He wondered how long that would last. 'Well,' he said finally, 'our food situation isn't too bad. Vickie and I sometimes do all-night experiment runs here, so we keep some food in the cabinet. We have powdered milk, instant coffee, tea bags, Tang, sugar, salt, a full jar of roasted peanuts, some packets of crackers, and six envelopes of dried soup. Sam had some freeze-dried stew stashed in his toolbox. And Vickie even left us with a big jar of peanut butter. This plastic carboy has de-ionized water in it. The water will taste flat, but we can drink it. And I hadn't eaten my lunch yet, so we have that too, a couple of sandwiches and an apple. We have enough to eat for a while, if we take it easy. You two can help.'

'What can we do?' asked Melissa.

'Did you ever go on hikes in the mountains with your dad?' David asked. This was a far cry from a day hike in
the
Cascades, he thought, but it might give them a more familiar frame of reference.

'Yeah!' said Jeff. 'We took a lunch, and we saw a baby bear once, but Dad wouldn't let us play with it. And we saw lotsa deers, too, but they ran away.'

'Well, this is going to be kinda like that,' said David. 'We've got to be sure that we eat something at every mealtime. But not too much, no more than we absolutely need. We'll wait for a big meal until we find other sources of food, OK?' The children nodded, and David added silently to himself,
if we don't suffocate first and if there are any other sources of food.