by Greg Bear
After a time, Tuthy suspended his disbelief and stared in open-mouthed wonder at what the boy was recreating on the monitor.
“I think you’re wasting your time, that’s what I think,” Hockrum said. “I needed that feasibility judgment by today.” He paced around the living room before falling as heavily as his light frame permitted into a chair.
“I have been distracted,” Tuthy admitted.
“By that boy?”
“Yes, actually. Quite a talented fellow—”
“Listen, this is going to mean a lot of trouble for me. I guaranteed the study would be finished by today. It’ll make me look bad.” Hockrum screwed his face up in frustration. “What in hell are you doing with that boy?”
“Teaching him, actually. Or rather, he’s teaching me. Right now, we’re building a four-dimensional cone, part of a speaker system. The cone is three-dimensional, the material part, but the magnetic field forms a fourth-dimensional extension—”
“Do you ever think how it looks, Peter?” Hockrum asked.
“It looks very strange on the monitor, I grant you—”
“I’m talking about you and the boy.”
Tuthy’s bright, interested expression fell into long, deep-lined dismay. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I know a lot about you, Peter. Where you come from, why you had to leave … It just doesn’t look good.”
Tuthy’s face flushed crimson.
“Keep him away from here,” Hockrum advised.
Tuthy stood. “I want you out of this house,” he said quietly. “Our relationship is at an end.”
“I swear,” Hockrum said, his voice low and calm, staring up at Tuthy from under his brows, “I’ll tell the boy’s parents. Do you think they’d want their kid hanging around an old … pardon the expression … queer? I’ll tell them if you don’t get the feasibility judgment made. I think you can do it by the end of this week—two days. Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Tuthy said. “Please leave.”
“I know you’re here illegally. There’s no record of you entering the country. With the problems you had in England, you’re certainly not a desirable alien. I’ll pass word to the INS. You’ll be deported.”
“There isn’t time to do the work,” Tuthy said.
“Make time. Instead of ‘educating’ that kid.”
“Get out of here.”
“Two days, Peter.”
Over dinner that evening, Tuthy explained to Lauren the exchange he had had with Hockrum. “He thinks I’m buggering Pal. Unspeakable bastard. I will never work for him again.”
“I’d better talk to a lawyer, then,” Lauren said. “You’re sure you can’t make him … happy, stop all this trouble?”
“I could solve his little problem for him in just a few hours. But I don’t want to see him or speak to him again.”
“He’ll take your equipment away.”
Tuthy blinked and waved one hand helplessly through the air. “Then we’ll just have to work fast, won’t we? Ah, Lauren, you were a fool to bring me here. You should have left me to rot.”
“They ignored everything you did for them,” Lauren said bitterly. “You saved their hides during the war, and then … They would have shut you up in prison.” She stared through the kitchen window at the overcast sky and woods outside.
The cone lay on the table near the window, bathed in morning sun, connected to both the mini-computer and the Tronclavier. Pal arranged the score he had composed on a music stand before the synthesizer. “It’s like Bach,” he said, “but it’ll play better for them. It has a kind of over-rhythm that I’ll play on the dup part of the speaker.”
“Why are we doing this, Pal?” Tuthy asked as the boy sat down to the keyboard.
“You don’t belong here, really, do you, Peter?” Pal asked. Tuthy stared at him.
“I mean, Miss Davies and you get along okay—but do you belong here, now?”
“What makes you think I don’t belong?”
“I read some books in the school library. About the war and everything. I looked up ‘Enigma’ and ‘Ultra.’ I found a fellow named Peter Thornton. His picture looked like you. The books made him seem like a hero.”
Tuthy smiled wanly.
“But there was this note in one book. You disappeared in l965. You were being prosecuted for something. They didn’t say what you were being prosecuted for.”
“I’m a homosexual,” Tuthy said quietly.
“Oh. So what?”
“Lauren and I met in England in l964. We became good friends. They were going to put me in prison, Pal. She smuggled me into the U.S. through Canada.”
“But you said you’re a homosexual. They don’t like women.”
“Not at all true, Pal. Lauren and I like each other very much. We could talk. She told me about her dreams of being a writer, and I talked to her about mathematics, and about the war. I nearly died during the war.”
“Why? Were you wounded?”
“No. I worked too hard. I burned myself out and had a nervous breakdown. My lover … a man … kept me alive throughout the forties. Things were bad in England after the war. But he died in l963. His parents came in to settle the estate, and when I contested the settlement in court, I was arrested. So I suppose you’re right, Pal. I don’t really belong here.”
“I don’t, either. My folks don’t care much. I don’t have too many friends. I wasn’t even born here, and I don’t know anything about Korea.”
“Play,” Tuthy said, his face stony. “Let’s see if they’ll listen.”
“Oh, they’ll listen,” Pal said. “It’s like the way they talk to each other.”
The boy ran his fingers over the keys on the Tronclavier. The cone, connected with the keyboard through the mini-computer, vibrated tinnily.
For an hour, Pal paged back and forth through his composition, repeating and trying variations. Tuthy sat in a corner, chin in hand, listening to the mousy squeaks and squeals produced by the cone. How much more difficult to interpret a four-dimensional sound, he thought. Not even visual clues …
Finally the boy stopped and wrung his hands, then stretched his arms. “They must have heard. We’ll just have to wait and see.” He switched the Tronclavier to automatic playback and pushed the chair away from the keyboard.
Pal stayed until dusk, then reluctantly went home. Tuthy sat in the office until midnight, listening to the tinny sounds issuing from the speaker cone.
All night long, the Tronclavier played through its pre-programmed selection of Pal’s compositions. Tuthy lay in bed in his room, two doors down from Lauren’s room, watching a shaft of moonlight slide across the wall. How far would a four-dimensional being have to travel to get here?
How far have I come to get here?
Without realizing he was asleep, he dreamed, and in his dream a wavering image of Pal appeared, gesturing with both arms as if swimming, eyes wide. I’m okay, the boy said without moving his lips. Don’t worry about me … I’m okay. I’ve been back to Korea to see what it’s like. It’s not bad, but I like it better here … With you and Lauren.
Tuthy awoke sweating. The moon had gone down and the room was pitch-black. In the office, the hyper-cone continued its distant, mouse-squeak broadcast.
Pal returned early in the morning, repetitively whistling a few bars from Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto. Lauren let him in and he joined Tuthy upstairs. Tuthy sat before the monitor, replaying Pal’s sketch of the four-dimensional beings.
“Do you see anything?” he asked the boy.
Pal nodded. “They’re coming closer. They’re interested. Maybe we should get things ready, you know … be prepared.” He squinted. “Did you ever think what a four-dimensional footprint would look like?”
Tuthy considered for a moment. “That would be most inte
resting,” he said. “It would be solid.”
On the first floor, Lauren screamed.
Pal and Tuthy almost tumbled over each other getting downstairs. Lauren stood in the living room with her arms crossed above her bosom, one hand clamped over her mouth. The first intrusion had taken out a section of the living room floor and the east wall.
“Really clumsy,” Pal said. “One of them must have bumped it.”
“The music,” Tuthy said.
“What in HELL is going on?” Lauren demanded, her voice starting as a screech and ending as a roar.
“Better turn the music off,” Tuthy elaborated.
“Why?” Pal asked, face wreathed in an excited smile.
“Maybe they don’t like it.”
A bright filmy blue blob rapidly expanded to a yard in diameter just beside Tuthy. The blob turned red, wriggled, froze, and then just as rapidly vanished.
“That was like an elbow,” Pal explained. “One of its arms. I think it’s listening. Trying to find out where the music is coming from. I’ll go upstairs.”
“Turn it off!” Tuthy demanded.
“I’ll play something else.” The boy ran up the stairs. From the kitchen came a hideous hollow crashing, then the sound of vacuum being filled—a reverse-pop, ending in a hiss—followed by a low-frequency vibration that set their teeth on edge …
The vibration caused by a four-dimensional creature scraping across its “floor,” their own three-dimensional space. Tuthy’s hands shook with excitement.
“Peter—” Lauren bellowed, all dignity gone. She unwrapped her arms and held clenched fists out as if she were about to start exercising, or boxing.
“Pal’s attracted visitors,” Tuthy explained.
He turned toward the stairs. The first four steps and a section of floor spun and vanished. The rush of air nearly drew him down the hole. Regaining his balance, he kneeled to feel the precisely cut, concave edge. Below was the dark basement.
“Pal!” Tuthy called out.
“I’m playing something original for them,” Pal shouted back. “I think they like it.”
The phone rang. Tuthy was closest to the extension at the bottom of the stairs and instinctively reached out to answer it. Hockrum was on the other end, screaming.
“I can’t talk now—” Tuthy said. Hockrum screamed again, loud enough for Lauren to hear. Tuthy abruptly hung up. “He’s been fired, I gather,” he said. “He seemed angry.” He stalked back three paces and turned, then ran forward and leaped the gap to the first intact step. “Can’t talk.” He stumbled and scrambled up the stairs, stopping on the landing. “Jesus,” he said, as if something had suddenly occured to him.
“He’ll call the government,” Lauren warned.
Tuthy waved that off. “I know what’s happening. They’re knocking chunks out of three-space, into the fourth. The fourth dimension. Like Pal says: clumsy brutes. They could kill us!”
Sitting before the Tronclavier, Pal happily played a new melody. Tuthy approached and was abruptly blocked by a thick green column, as solid as rock and with a similar texture. It vibrated and ascribed an arc in the air. A section of the ceiling four feet wide was kicked out of three-space. Tuthy’s hair lifted in the rush of wind. The column shrank to a broomstick and hairs sprouted all over it, writhing like snakes.
Tuthy edged around the hairy broomstick and pulled the plug on the Tronclavier. A cage of zeppelin-shaped brown sausages encircled the computer, spun, elongated to reach the ceiling, the floor and the top of the monitor’s table, and then pipped down to tiny strings and was gone.
“They can’t see too clearly here,” Pal said, undisturbed that his concert was over. Lauren had climbed the outside stairs and stood behind Tuthy. “Gee, I’m sorry about the damage.”
In one smooth curling motion, the Tronclavier and cone and all the wiring associated with them were peeled away as if they had been stick-on labels hastily removed from a flat surface.
“Gee,” Pal said, his face suddenly registering alarm.
Then it was the boy’s turn. He was removed with greater care. The last thing to vanish was his head, which hung suspended in the air for several seconds.
“I think they liked the music,” he said, grinning.
Head, grin and all, dropped away in a direction impossible for Tuthy or Lauren to follow. The air in the room sighed.
Lauren stood her ground for several minutes, while Tuthy wandered through what was left of the office, combing his hand through mussed hair.
“Perhaps he’ll be back,” Tuthy said. “I don’t even know …” But he didn’t finish. Could a three-dimensional boy survive in a four-dimensional void, or whatever lay dup … or owwen?
Tuthy did not object when Lauren took it upon herself to call the boy’s foster parents and the police. When the police arrived, he stoically endured the questions and accusations, face immobile, and told them as much as he knew. He was not believed; nobody knew quite what to believe. Photographs were taken. The police left. It was only a matter of time, Lauren told him, until one or the other or both of them were arrested.
“Then we’ll make up a story,” he said. “You’ll tell them it was my fault.”
“I will not,” Lauren said. “But where is he?”
“I’m not positive,” Tuthy said. “I think’s he’s all right, however.”
“How do you know?”
He told her about the dream.
“But that was before,” she said.
“Perfectly allowable in the fourth dimension,” he explained. He pointed vaguely up, then down, then shrugged.
On the last day, Tuthy spent the early morning hours bundled in an overcoat and bathrobe in the drafty office, playing his program again and again, trying to visualize ana and kata. He closed his eyes and squinted and twisted his head, intertwined his fingers and drew odd little graphs on the monitors, but it was no use. His brain was hard-wired.
Over breakfast, he reiterated to Lauren that she must put all the blame on him.
“Maybe it will all blow over,” she said. “They haven’t got a case. No evidence … nothing.”
“All blow over,” he mused, passing his hand over his head and grinning ironically. “How over, they’ll never know.”
The doorbell rang. Tuthy went to answer it, and Lauren followed a few steps behind.
Tuthy opened the door. Three men in gray suits, one with a briefcase, stood on the porch. “Mr. Peter Thornton?” the tallest asked.
“Yes,” Tuthy acknowledged.
A chunk of the doorframe and wall above the door vanished with a roar and a hissing pop. The three men looked up at the gap. Ignoring what was impossible, the tallest man returned his attention to Tuthy and continued, “We have information that you are in this country illegally.”
“Oh?” Tuthy said.
Beside him, an irregular filmy blue cylinder grew to a length of four feet and hung in the air, vibrating. The three men on the porch backed away. In the middle of the cylinder, Pal’s head emerged, and below that, his extended arm and hand.
“It’s fun here,” Pal said. “They’re friendly.”
“I believe you,” Tuthy said.
“Mr. Thornton,” the tallest man continued valiantly.
“Won’t you come with me?” Pal asked.
Tuthy glanced back at Lauren. She gave him a small fraction of a nod, barely understanding what she was assenting to, and he took Pal’s hand. “Tell them it was all my fault,” he said.
From his feet to his head, Peter Tuthy was peeled out of this world. Air rushed in. Half of the brass lamp to one side of the door disappeared.
The INS men returned to their car without any further questions, with damp pants and embarrassed, deeply worried expressions. They drove away, leaving Lauren to contemplate the quiet. They did not return.
S
he did not sleep for three nights, and when she did sleep, Tuthy and Pal visited her, and put the question to her.
“Thank you, but I prefer it here,” she replied.
It’s a lot of fun, the boy insisted. They like music.
Lauren shook her head on the pillow and awoke. Not very far away, there was a whistling, tinny kind of sound, followed by a deep vibration.
To her, it sounded like applause.
She took a deep breath and got out of bed to retrieve her notebook.
Through Road No Whither
Back in the early nineteen eighties, John Carr was working for Jerry Pournelle, helping with Jerry’s editorial duties on a number of paperback anthologies. Jerry was working a half-dozen enterprises at once—writing excellent bestselling fiction with Larry Niven, consulting with the Reagan administration, and later the Bush Sr. administration, on space business and space defense policy, and writing a very influential column on personal computing. John Carr served Jerry as a general factotum. Through John, I learned that Jerry was buying stories for an anthology to be published by Jim Baen called Far Frontier.
Now, let’s backtrack for a moment. James Patrick Baen had been editor of Galaxy magazine for a number of years, and had purchased two of my stories. He later started Baen Books, a successful publishing enterprise to this day. Jim and Jerry were good friends, simpatico in both politics and business—conservative and ambitious, respectively—and they roped in anybody who seemed likely to be able to deliver interesting ideas. John sometimes did the roping.
Anger at the cruelties of history is often a useless emotion, but “Thru Road No Whither” seems to have struck a cord. It’s been reprinted a number of times—most notably, in Gregory Benford’s and Marty Greenberg’s anthology, Alternate Hitlers.
Perhaps justice knows no boundaries. Engage in evil and depravity, and a force or presence might enact vengeance unto the nth generation—across all time, and all timelines.
Needless to say, this contradicts the conclusions I’ve drawn in “Dead Run” and in my novels Queen of Angels and Slant. I’m not much for punishment as a way of adjusting our bent and broken emotions. But sometimes, the sheer immensity of historical depravity overcomes even my gentle sensibilities.
