“You know, Jon. You’re a really sweet guy.” She stepped closer and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow,” she whispered before she turned away and walked toward her car.
As her car pulled out of the driveway, Jon touched the side of his face with his hand. He stood perfectly still and watched Lettie’s car vanish into the night. “Wow!” he finally exclaimed.
When he climbed into his car he could see into Harry’s living room window. Harry was pacing back and forth, staring down at the floor. Lettie’s right, Jon thought. He’s a bright guy. He’ll come up with something.
Chapter Eleven
Jon Graeme slaved away all morning trying to make up for the time he had missed on the previous day. He was so busy in his small office that he barely had time to think about Harry. But Lettie’s kiss on the cheek stayed on his mind and kept resurfacing again and again throughout the morning.
Shortly after eleven a.m., he received a call from Harry. He did not say so much as hello.
“It didn’t work, Jon. I got all sixteen of ’em fired up and it didn’t do what it was supposed to do.”
“How were you able to get around their power requirements?”
“I didn’t get around them—I satisfied them. I don’t think I better tell you anymore, or the power company might make you the star witness for the prosecution.” Harry sighed loud enough for Jon to hear it over the phone. “I’ve got a big, big favor to ask of you, Buddy. And let me say up front, if you refuse, I won’t hold it against you.”
The line went quiet before Harry continued.
“I want you to stop by my office at work, fire up my PC and launch an executable for me.”
It was Jon’s turn to pause before replying. Harry’s request could result in his termination. He must be onto something very important to even consider such a request.
“On one condition,” Jon said finally. “You have to tell me what I’ll be doing when I launch that executable.”
“You’ll be allowing me to connect my PC cluster to Little Moe.”
“Why do you need to connect to Little Moe?”
“Because, like Big Moe, Little Moe has a superconducting loop—and that is what I’m missing in my PC cluster.”
Jon was aware of the superconducting loop in Little Moe. It was one of the first ever installed in the U.S. It was called a SQUID—a Superconducting Quantum Interference Device. It consisted of two Josephson’s Junctions connected by an inductor. In many ways it was analogous to a solenoid. It created a controlled magnetic field which provided an unimpeded flow of electromagnetic force without any additional voltage.
“Why do you need a superconducting loop?”
“Because it’s the only design feature that I didn’t factor in when we built our Beowulf cluster. It’s just a theory at this point, but the connection I made during the installation of Big Moe was, I think, possible because of the loop’s incredible sensitivity to magnetic fluctuations. Plus, there are unpredictable quantum mechanical effects that even the bright boys in engineering won’t own up to.”
“But it’s just a theory, right?” asked Jon. “I mean, you don’t really know for sure, do you?”
Harry paused a moment. “Right … it’s just a theory. Or, better yet, a guess.”
“What’ll you do if it doesn’t work?”
He thought he heard Harry chuckle, but it might have been a snort.
“Well, I guess I’ll bridge that cross when I come to it.”
Jon smiled at Harry’s skewed aphorism. For Harry, the English language was foreign. He was famous for his mixed metaphors and his scrambled aphorisms.
“Okay. Just give me the name of the executable and the folder it’s in. I’ve got to visit your section of the building, anyway. I’ve got some documentation questions for a guy in an office near yours, so I can just duck into your office on the way.”
“How long will it take you?” Harry asked.
Jon glanced at his watch. It was just past eleven. “With luck, I’ll launch your executable at about 11:30.”
“Good luck. I’ll be waiting,” said Harry before he hung up the phone.
Jon sat for a moment, still holding the dead receiver to his ear. Jeez, he said to himself. What have I gotten myself into?
Fifteen minutes later, Jon had secured a temporary security pass and was walking down the main corridor of the Advanced Programming Division. He paused in front of a drinking fountain near Harry’s office and looked carefully about. There was no one else in the corridor.
He ducked into Harry’s office and immediately toggled the rocker switch to boot up Harry’s PC. It seemed to take forever to connect to the network, but finally the password screen popped up and Jon typed in the password Harry had given him.
Jeez! he thought, What’ll I say if someone walks in on me?
Jon accessed a folder called HSALE and launched an executable named saleconn.exe. A series of messages flashed across the screen, too fast for Jon to read. Finally, a message displayed that said “Connection Successful.” As Harry had instructed, Jon turned off the monitor and headed for the door. He breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the empty corridor. When he left Harry’s office, he shut the door tightly behind him. His watch said exactly 11:29.
Jon wasn’t able to break for lunch until after twelve. After the cashier rang up his lunch order, he carried his tray into the main dining area and spotted Lettie sitting by herself at a table in the back area. She did not notice him as he approached. She looked distracted, deep in thought. She sat rigidly upright at the very edge of the chair with her head turned downward, but not enough to prevent Jon from seeing the frown on her face.
“Mind if I join you, Lettie?” Jon asked.
She had been staring off in another direction. Her head jerked around sharply and she flinched.
“I’m sorry,” said Jon. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
When she saw that it was Jon, she smiled. “I’m sorry. You kind of caught me off guard. Have a seat.”
Jon sat down at the table and there was an uncomfortable silence. He could tell that she was holding back a million questions.
Finally Jon broke the barrier. “You look really troubled. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“It’s that creep,” Lettie said in a low voice, her eyes stealing furtive glances around her. “Every time he comes near me, he snickers. He’s got something planned, I just know it. I feel like there’s a sword hanging over my head that could fall at any time.”
“Lettie, everyone around here knows your work is absolutely first rate. Ludwig would have a hard time cooking up anything that would reflect badly on you.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said. She clearly wasn’t convinced.
“He’s just bluffing. He’s your typical bully—if you stand up to him, he’ll back down.”
“I’ve decided one thing: I’m not going to let him force me out of here. If he wants a fight, I’ll give it to him.”
“That’s the spirit! And don’t forget, if you ever need my testimony to back you up, you’ve got it.”
“Jon, you’re such a great guy.” She paused before asking cautiously, “Are you going over to Harry’s tonight?”
“I think so. Want to come?”
“I don’t know. He kind of made me feel like an intruder yesterday.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to.” Jon looked down at his feet, worried that his glib answer wouldn’t be enough. After a long, uncomfortable silence, he put his hands in his pockets and tapped his left foot, eyes still avoiding Lettie.
“It was like I was invisible or something.”
“You know how Harry is—”
Lettie interrupted him. “Can we talk about something else besides Harry?”
“Like what?”
To Jon’s surprise, the worry lines disappeared from Lettie’s face and she appeared much younger.
“Like you, Jon. Let’s talk about you. What’s the last
book you read, what’s the last movie you saw that you really liked?”
While he mistrusted the sudden change in her mood, he didn’t second-guess it. It was more than he could hope for. For the first time, the two of them had a lengthy conversation about something other than work or Harry Sale. They became animated and jabbered away like old friends, as though talking about this and that was the most natural thing in the world for them.
“Oh my God,” Lettie said, out of the blue. “It’s nearly one thirty. I’m late!”
They both got up from the table. “See you soon!” Lettie said, as she walked away. “Give me a call later if you can.”
At the end of the day, Jon drove over to Harry’s place. The living room drapes were open and Jon could see inside. Electrical cables were running everywhere. At least three originated from outside of Harry’s condo. One snaked over to the garage and the other two ran off toward the basement. There was no sign of Harry anywhere.
Jon knocked on the door for a good five minutes with no answer. Finally he went over to the window and pressed his nose against it.
“What the hell is going on,” he said under his breath.
Jon didn’t get an answer until he arrived home. As soon as he entered his kitchen he saw the blinking red light on his answering machine. When he punched the replay button a tinny reproduction of Harry’s voice sounded.
“Thanks for all the help, pal. After you helped me connect this morning, the PC cluster worked. Now I’ve got an even bigger question, but I know where I can get the answer. I’m off to Tartan’s Crag. I’ll call you when I get back.”
Jon replayed the short message several times. With each successive replay a feeling of apprehension grew in him. There was no doubt in his mind that Harry was headed for serious trouble.
Chapter Twelve
Harry Sale was only five hundred feet from the peak of Tartan’s Crag. There was urgency in his gait. Instead of the sneakers he had worn the last time he was here, he was wearing climber’s boots. He carried a rucksack filled with climbing gear and a huge coil of rope hung from his shoulder. When his Beowulf cluster had connected to Little Moe, it was almost as though a beacon had rung out, calling him back here.
Approaching the cave where it all began, he felt his resolve intensify. His need to discover what had happened to him drove aside any other considerations. Just before the entrance to the cave, he unclipped a large flashlight from his belt and flicked it on. The yellow-white light lit up his stony path.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he approached the lip of the chasm and shone the light down the vertical shaft. Its depths disturbed him. He could not see the bottom. It seemed to narrow down into infinity, causing him to swallow hard and reconsider the wisdom of his plan.
His ears pricked up when he heard a humming sound. The noise drifted up from miles below, the faint, mechanical murmur of a machine clicking on. Moments later, Harry felt a sudden draft of air on his face. Something from below was ascending toward him. Panic flooded him and he backed away from the edge of the pit. But his resolve quickly returned. He un-slung the rucksack and the coil of rope and stood ready, flashlight in one hand and a mountaineer’s pick in the other. He stood poised like a cat ready to spring.
After several minutes, Harry could see something rising rapidly toward him. Even from a distance he could tell that that the form was nonthreatening. When it reached the top, he saw that it was a small circular platform with a raised guardrail. The platform almost reminded him of a rubber raft, though its tubular sections were metallic.
At first nothing happened, but then a section of the containing rail dropped open, an obvious invitation to climb aboard. For an instant, Harry thought about retreating, but he was not one to turn his back on a question that needed answering. He stepped cautiously onto the platform. Once he stood in the middle, the containing rail snapped back into place and the descent began.
At first the descent was slow, but after several minutes of gradual acceleration it felt like he was plunging down the biggest loop of the Coney Island roller coaster. His heart was in his throat and his ears were popping. He gripped the guard rail so tightly that his knuckles ached. And still its speed increased. It seemed that the machine had lost control and that he was plummeting in a deadfall. The blackness that surrounded him and the chilling blast of subterranean air added to his feeling of jeopardy. He deliberately pictured his father. If he was indeed falling to his death, he wanted his last thoughts to be of him.
But just at the moment he gave up hope of surviving the freefall, the platform began to slow. It was floating, as though gravity itself had been suspended. When it stopped, he found himself in a dank, eerily lit tunnel. A pulsing light, which seemed to have no source, illuminated the narrow passage with a diffused green sheen. It was sufficient to illuminate the way through the tunnel, but not enough to reveal details.
As he followed the natural path through the cave, he realized his mouth was completely dry. He should have brought the rucksack, he realized. He had descended the shaft totally unprepared, without so much as a drop of water. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
Several minutes later, he reached the end of the cave and found himself caught in a cul-de-sac. A feeling of claustrophobia began to creep over him, but before he could even consider the implications of being trapped thousands of feet below Tartan’s Crag, the light in the cave grew suddenly brighter and he saw deep grooves in the side of the wall. Inside them was a conveyance of some kind. It looked almost like a bobsled, with a single seat placed in the middle. Harry examined it, taking in every element of its design. The seat looked as though it had been custom built for a man exactly his size.
What am I getting myself into? he thought, climbing into the seat. He saw a cushioned bar to his right that was obviously designed to swing down in front of him as a safety guard. He pulled down on it. When the bar was locked into place, he could feel the sled begin to move.
His ride on the sled paralleled his ride on the platform. At first the acceleration was gradual, but soon the mass of his body was pressed back against the seat. In the total darkness of the narrow tunnel, it was impossible to judge exactly how fast he was going. But the increased weight of his own body against the back of the seat convinced him that he was traveling hundreds of miles an hour. He began to count the seconds off in his mind, so that he could at least make a guess of how far the conveyance was taking him.
He gave up counting when he passed five hundred. A sudden lurch of acceleration pressed against him, like a large hand jamming into his chest. It almost knocked the wind out of him. For an instant he thought something had gone wrong with the sled and that it had spun out of control. But before his panic grew, the sled began to slow. Inside half a minute it almost seemed to be floating, as though there was no resistance whatsoever.
When the sled finally came to rest, Harry was in total darkness. He held his hand up to his face but could not see it, even when it brushed against his nose. He took a deep breath and then sighed. What should he do next?
Harry became aware that an ambient light was glowing around him. It was decidedly odd, for it did not seem to originate from any special source. It was truly ambient. The entire subterranean atmosphere, collectively and point by point, seemed to be generating light, as though energy were being produced out of thin air to create a shimmering haze of soft, white illumination. He climbed out of the sled and looked upward at the brightening haze. Even as he watched, its eerie radiance grew, changing from a dusky half-light to a dazzling brightness. He could see now that he was facing the grooved tracks of the conveyance that had brought him here. Slowly, he turned around to see what was behind him and found that he was standing at the end of a small ancillary passageway that connected to a vast underground arcade. Its vaulted ceiling stood hundreds of feet high and its gray metallic floor was as smooth as glass. It extended for miles and miles, as far as he could see.
Machinery of every conceivable size and shap
e dotted the landscape in all directions. At least, he thought it was machinery. It was unlike anything he had seen in his life: huge ceramic pods surrounded by halos of light and machine-tooled shapes of intricate complexity. Some had moving parts that whirled about so fast they seemed almost invisible. Harry instinctively moved away from them. They reminded him too much of the spinning blades of a helicopter.
On the center strip of this gigantic arcade, row upon row of black crystalline slabs stretched as far as he could see. Strange patterns danced across their surfaces, like phosphorescent creatures of the deep suddenly surfacing and then disappearing again.
Harry walked onto the center strip of the arcade, which formed a clear pathway directly through the center of the crystalline slabs.
The sounds of his footsteps were disconcerting. They were muted, as though a dampening field had swallowed up their sound. He stopped for a moment and realized that he could not even hear himself breathing. All ambient sound was either absorbed or neutralized.
After he had walked for more than twenty minutes, the arcade ended in a cul-de-sac. The two parallel lines of the black slabs converged at a huge, quasi-geodesic dome. Its tetrahedral elements were asymmetrical, as though portions of them had somehow been folded in on themselves. The structure was opaque, its surface color vaguely similar to the crystalline slabs. In front of it was a bench that seemed to be made of the same obsidian material. But when he seated himself upon it, he found that the surface was soft and yielding and instantly conformed to his contours like memory foam.
Harry felt a tingling and heard a series of tones that were dissonant yet oddly musical. As he listened to the tones, their frequency grew higher and higher until they seemed to fade into the ether. For a brief moment, Harry felt he was no longer on the obsidian bench and that he had been transported to some unknown place. It was an ecstatic sensation, as though he were floating through space. There was also a sense of incredible spaciousness, of limitless possibility.
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