I laughed. “That’s a philosophical position itself, Smith, and a debatable one.”
“True, but it fits in Spieler’s case. Did you see the paper he did for a philosophy seminar?”
I indexed the viewer to the fourth appendix. “Machiavelli, Nietzsche and Mao Tse-tung: Psychophilosophical Applications to Intercorporate Politics.” I whistled.
“Freddy got an A-plus on that one,” said Smith.
“Have you read it?”
“Yep. Bright boy.”
I returned to the factual resume and read the last item on the list.
Founded Spieler Interstellar, Aug. 2003.
Initial Capitalization, $20,000. Current value, $150,000,000,000. “A heavyweight,” I said.
“I’d say he knows what he wants now,” said Smith. “Even if he’s still having trouble with who he is.” Smith frowned, dissatisfied with his conclusion. “Or better yet, what he thinks he wants.” He looked at me. “Like to meet him?”
“Spieler?”
“The horse’s mouth himself. Saturday night. And bring Dolores. I’ll pick you up about six-thirty.” He looked around the room. “Where is Gladstone, anyway?”
“At school probably.”
At school. It suddenly dawned on me. Neither Dolores nor I had let Smith in.
“How did you get in here, Smith?”
He blushed, looking guilty, and smiled. A friendly smile, for a burglar.
The rest of the week, I concentrated on my own work, building the Big Gate. Most of the construction started by Norton- ran under its own momentum. By Thursday afternoon, I was actually playing with a drafting screen. Not working, just toying, trying to set up what I would need for a controlled-laser reactor.
The two and a half years since I finished my dissertation could have been a decade. It worked to my advantage. Most of the engineering problems I envisioned, and a few I missed, someone had already solved. One or two solutions even reflected suggestions in my dissertation. Those things are actually read sometimes.
The lasers themselves gave me the most trouble. Most laser applications use a constant beam of pulsed light. For that reason, a laser-induced fusion reaction was once thought impossible. For a lone beam to heat a pellet of solid heavy hydrogen and implode it at thermonuclear temperatures, it has to produce more than a billion joules. Otherwise the laser consumes more energy than the reaction produces. Billion joule lasers are theoretically possible.
In the last century, when lasers produced only about a thousand joules maximum, Emmett and Nuckolls at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory developed the idea of multiple lasers, focused on a hollow ball of frozen hydrogen. In a billionth of a second, a ten thousand joule multiple laser can heat the ball to a hundred million degrees Celsius. The hydrogen boils, escaping at a thousand miles a second. Escaping, it implodes the ball. Action-reaction. Remember Newton?
The ball’s density is now a hundred times that of lead. The nuclei fuse, releasing nuclear energy like a collapsing star. Liquid lithium around the implosion chamber transfers the energy to the heat exchanger and from there to the generators.
A hundred implosions a second in a hundred chambers can produce ten billion watts, enough for the Big Gate and my toaster, too.
After I got the specs on both the General Electric and Westinghouse multilasers, I remembered Parry called Fenton Laser Products.
Parry was out. I left word for him to call me. Before I went home, I checked with Captain Wilkins. The two spacecraft still hung in an orbit matching ours. Neither showed any sign of life. Our work crews came and went, finishing the Big Gate focusing ring, unmolested. The longer the ships did nothing the more Captain Wilkins worried. He kept complaining to me about being defenseless. He would complain and eye me, somehow holding me responsible for this threat to his station.
“Do you realize, Dr. Collins,” he said, eyeing me, “that we don’t even have a handgun aboard, much less anything useful?”
What did he expect me to do? Order up a nuclear cannon? Space stations are the most vulnerable of man’s creations. Even if we had a cannon, the recoil would probably knock us out of orbit.
“Sorry.”
He grunted.
Parry returned my call that evening.
“Ah, Dr. Collins,” said Parry after Dolores called me to the screen. I could see the corner of a stag-hunting picture behind his head. “I’m sorry I missed you on the station. Rather convenient, being able to return home each evening.”
“Yes.”
“I remember when I first met Dr. Norton. He made it back infrequently. How can I help you?”
I told him I needed information on Fenton’s multilasers. He listened, absorbing my technical questions without taking notes, nodding occasionally.
“I see. We do have several units that would fit your requirements.” He listed them, reeling off specifications faster than I could jot down the figures. A good salesman knows his product. So does a good industrial spy. “But may I make a suggestion?”
“Sure.”
“Try our FLP-Four.”
“Four? You just said the Four was superseded.”
“In most applications, yes. Frankly—and I would not wish this information spread around—” He paused, waiting for my assurance of confidentiality.
“Mum’s the word.”
“Our later models, Five through Nine, will soon be obsolete. One of our technicians, using the basic design features of the FLP-Four, has developed a million-joule unit. It requires little more power than the Four, which produced only ten thousand joules.”
“Sounds good.”
“It is good. As a matter of fact, the man who developed it did so by accident.”
“Serendipity?”
“No. More an accident. It killed him. He died shortly after his work was complete. His heirs are becoming difficult. They threaten legal action. They claim the man developed these modifications after leaving our employ, that the modified device is theirs. The claim is utterly groundless, but—” He pursed his lips, his expression asking sympathy.
“Annoying,” I suggested.
“Exactly. We would rather throw the device on the open market, unpatented, than submit to this extortion. Your request comes at an advantageous moment. If you purchase FLP-Fours, which cost considerably less than Nines, I can supply you with modification information that will produce more power, cheaper. Merryweather Enterprises will save money—always a happy prospect—and you will be credited with the innovations responsible for the savings.”
“Why me?”
“The man’s heirs. I assure you, all work was done in our laboratories on our time. These heirs are scoundrels. The man himself was once caught stealing from the company. Who knows how often he escaped detection? Should a thief’s heirs benefit by his skullduggery, Dr. Collins?”
“I suppose not.”
“Of course not.” Parry sounded genuinely indignant. “Your use of the modifications will appear independent of ours. Great minds, after all, do run in similar channels. An idea whose time has come, comes, despite thieves or their heirs. This will show them that anyone can make this laser without us and that the potential profits are not, as they currently believe, astronomical.”
“I feel as if I’d be stealing the fruits of another man’s work.”
“Nonsense. The man was a scoundrel. His heirs are scoundrels. Probably his whole bloodline is tainted. He is dead. One cannot steal from the dead.”
Somewhere, there was a hole in Parry’s argument. “How soon can you get the information to me?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Fine.” I said good-bye and hung up.
“Dolores,” I called into her closet. I heard some papers shuffle.
“Yes, dear.”
“Can you steal from a dead man?”
“No, dear.” Maybe Parry was right.
“Just from his heirs.”
“Oh.”
I called Smith. His new number, unlisted to avoid Harold,
showed a Newport Beach prefix.
He came on the screen with the phone in tight focus. A pillow showed on either side of his head. Apparently the phone rested on his stomach.
“Sorry I woke you.”
“You didn’t. What’s up?”
“I just talked to Parry.” I repeated the conversation, including Parry’s improbable reason for giving me credit for the FLP-Four innovations. As I finished, the picture on Smith’s end bounced, as if someone had jostled the bed.
“Are you alone?”
“More or less.”
“Who’s there?”
“A friend. Here’s what I want you to do,” said Smith, continuing before I could say anything about his friend. “Check Parry’s information. If it’s good, use it. He’ll want something in exchange, probably something he already knows, like that phase-shift business. Give it to him. He knows anyway. Be reluctant, but give it to him. Then he’ll have you.”
“He will?”
“The next time, he’ll ask for something big.”
“The tachyon conversion.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give that to him, too.”
“No. You’ll balk.”
“Good. I wondered whose side you were on.”
“You’ll balk, then you’ll give it to him. Let him threaten first. He’ll say if you don’t come across, he’ll tell Merryweather you’re not a boy genius.”
“Mr. Merryweather probably knows that.”
“He’ll have proof. Phase-shift was a secret. He can prove he knows the solution. Cooperate or else, he’ll say.”
“I’ll cooperate.”
“Yes. Give him rigged figures. While he’s checking them out, we might have enough time to stop them altogether.”
Give him rigged figures. Smith threw off the phrase as if all I had to do was change a number here or a number there. Rigging figures on an engineering project is harder than developing the real figures. They have to look good to a trained eye but be wrong.
“Smith, do you have any idea how hard it is to rig figures?”
“No.”
“It’s hard. You don’t just tear out the multiplication tables, change a few numbers and hand them to Parry. They have to be convincing.”
“You’re young and eager. You’ll think of something.”
“Not that eager.”
“Just do it and quit your bitching.”
“You seem pretty sure about all this.”
“I’ve dealt with people like Parry all my life. Keeping one step ahead of them is my job.” He paused. The camera shook again. Someone said something off-camera. Smith nodded, then returned his attention to me. “Or it was my job, before I retired. See you Saturday, Roberto. I’ve got to go feed the pigeons.”
He hung up.
“The next morning, Parry’s specifications waited on my desk. I called Hilda at the Merryweather computer center. Grumbling, she set up a computer model of Parry’s FLP-Four and laid in the modifications. According to the computer, Fenton’s laser would produce considerably more power than Parry indicated. A reactor, using Fenton’s lasers, would easily produce three times the power of our original design, or more. I was impressed. The power curve ran off the scale. When I noticed it, Hilda frowned, thinking I would want a rerun of the entire program. Her frown—like a Pekingese about to be kicked—stopped me. I was satisfied. The reactor would power the Gate.
If Fenton’s equipment lived up to the figures by half, I would have no complaints. I thanked Hilda. She looked relieved.
I ordered Fenton’s lasers and put Bernie Mitchel in charge of modification. As soon as word got to him, he called me.
“Bob,” said Bernie, frowning, shaking a piece of paper at me on the screen, “what the hell is this?”
“I put you in charge of laser modification.”
He laughed. “So I see. Got a minute?”
“Sure. What for?”
“I want to tell you everything I know about lasers. First, it’s light. Second, my dentist has one. Third, he knows more about it than I do. Fourth—”
“You’re a bright boy,” I said, remembering his comment when I hesitated over taking the Merryweather job. “You’ll learn.”
“Bob.”
“Engineering’s engineering,” I reminded him.
“All right, maybe I deserved that, but seriously—”
“Seriously, I want this job done right. That’s why I want you to do it.”
He looked over the reassignment sheet in his hand. “It says here modifications.”
“You’ll get all the details.”
“Where’d you get the modifications?”
I hesitated. The idea of lying to Bernie, my engineering mentor, bothered me. First, I had never lied to him. Second, he knew my capabilities better than anyone. If I claimed to have developed the modifications myself, he would take one look and know I was lying. “The muses spoke.”
“Muses?”
“Just do it, Bernie. It’s important.”
Friday evening, Rodriguez reported completion of the focusing ring ahead of schedule. I told the girl in accounting to give the construction crew bonuses.
Saturday, I read over the week’s work reports. Burgess was expecting the Master Toole integration computer any day. The integration, modulation and acceleration equipment would be ready to plug in by the middle of April. All it needed, his report pointedly reminded me, was a socket. I dictated an over-all status report to Mr. Merryweather and went home.
Smith arrived at six-thirty, dressed to kill. He had on a polka-dot tri-tie, one of those three-bladed bowties—two blades horizontal, and one hanging vertical—that pass for fashionable. It did make me feel self-conscious about my cravat. He grinned, exhibiting himself in general and his tie in particular.
“Like it?”
“Beamy,” said Dolores, poking at her hair in front of the hall mirror.
“She never says I’m beamy,” I complained.
Smith looked me over. From his expression, I expected him to say, “You aren’t.”
“You’ll do.”
“You look just fine, Bobby,” said Dolores.
“Thanks again.”
“You’ll do.” Smith glanced at his watch. “Let’s go. We have to pick up my date.”
“Date?” said Dolores arid I simultaneously.
Smith’s description of his date, delivered while weaving through traffic to her apartment, grew in extravagance the longer he talked. We were, under no circumstances, to make fun of her hunched back. Dolores protested, asking what kind of people Smith thought we were.
“You’re OK,” answered Smith. He nodded toward me in the back seat. “It’s him I’m worried about. Any man who chews up space station commanders and spits them out would make fun of a wooden leg.”
“Wooden leg!”
Prosthesis, actually, Smith explained. His date received a horrible injury during the National Karate Championships. Unfortunately, one of her best tattoos went, with the leg.
By the time we pulled up in front of a tall apartment building in Surfside, our picture of Smith’s’ date was awesome. A hunchbacked little old lady with a wooden leg and tattoos, practicing karate.
“Back in a minute,” said Smith, popping the car door. “I have to get peg-leg.”
Dolores got out and moved to the cramped back seat, plopping down next to me.
“Dolores.”
“Hm-m-m?”
“I think Smith is pulling our wooden legs.”
“Nothing gets past you, does it, Bobby?”
Peg-leg, otherwise known as Pamela Rysor, the receptionist at the Merryweather Building, looked stunning. Her black skirt, ankle-length, was slit to mid-thigh. She showed more sternum than an anatomy class skeleton. A single strand of pearls circled her throat. I was transfixed watching her get in the car.
“Hi, Mr. Collins.”
The way she said it, more breath than voice, made Dolores pinch me.
I introduced Do
lores. Smith got in.
We picked up the San Diego Freeway northbound. Smith punched the exit we wanted into the Guide computer and got in the Guide lane. It surprised me. The way Smith normally drove, I expected him to stay in manual all the way. The bullethole in the rear window whistled above fifty.
“Smith.”
“Hm-m-m?” answered Smith, chatting quietly with Pamela in the’ front seat.
“What are we going to do tonight?”
“Have fun, buddy boy.”
“Dancing, singing—that sort of thing?”
“Sure.”
“What about Spieler?”
“Is he a baritone or tenor?”
“Seriously.”
“I’m serious. He can join us if he wants to.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“What would you do in his position? He undoubtedly knows your face and, by now, mine. We show up at his club, singing, dancing, whatever. Would you be curious?”
“Sure, but—”
“But what?”
“There’s a difference,” I told him, “between looking in the horse’s mouth and being in it.”
The Guide signaled Hollywood Boulevard. Smith returned his attention to the road and switched to manual. Behind us, a white van pulled out of the Guide lane. I had noticed it near Pamela’s. We stopped at a signal and turned onto Hollywood Boulevard. The van followed.
“Smith.”
“Yep.”
“Someone’s following us.”
“The white van, you mean.”
“Yes. Who is it?”
“Search me.”
We neared the address of Spieler’s Club. Smith started to park. The van started to park. Smith pulled out and circled the block.
The van followed. Smith parked again. The van, unable to find a parking space behind us, passed. A man in the passenger seat glared at us. Neither Smith nor I recognized him. They parked a half-block in front of us, remaining inside.
“They’re waiting to see if we stay put,” said Smith.
“Are we?”
“Sure. I came to dance, not play hide-and-go-seek.”
XI
A violaphone honked, backed by bass, piano and saxophone—all throbbing, squealing and electrified. We pushed our way through the bobbing bodies toward a table. The walls, floor and ceiling looked like giant projections of tinted amoebas, dividing and multiplying. So did most of the people. A girl, her face reduced to a blinking trance—but frenzied, definitely frenzied—grabbed my hand.
Stargate Page 12
