They put us in the same cell, and kept us there until noon. It was nice and quiet and we slept well. No video—not in a local jail like that.
I woke up around ten, feeling a little rocky but not too bad, and called a guard, who brought us breakfast and, for an additional ten bucks, a morning newspaper, one of the tabloids. I opened it out and saw the headline— “Monster Kidnaps Girl At Mad Scientist’s Command!”
I blinked, and looked at the photo of Bo standing there in the street holding Sheena Dubois and looking stupid, with me crouched just behind him. It was easily the worst picture of me ever taken—I looked completely demented.
I started reading.
“Dr. Ryan Tewary, famed scientist and inventor who suffered brain damage in a laboratory accident two years ago, appears to have been the instigator of a wild late-night rampage by the monster known as Genex HW 244-06…”
I resented that; it wasn’t brain damage, just nerve damage. I wondered if I should sue for libel.
The whole article was quite something—the writer seemed to alternate between describing Bo as a blood-crazed monster running amok and a poor, pitiful, misunderstood creature who just wanted a little love.
I, on the other hand, was consistently described as a lunatic.
I was just folding the paper when Bo stirred.
“Good morning,” I called.
An eye curled around in my direction and opened.
“It wasn’t all a bad dream after all, was it?” he asked.
“Afraid not,” I said, thoughtfully sitting on the newspaper. He was clearly not ready to deal with it.
The guard heard his voice, I guess, because he came back and said, “Hey, Bo, your agent’s on the phone, and I told her you weren’t awake yet, but I can’t get her to take no for an answer. You want to come talk to her?”
He blinked, and sort of shrugged, and said, “Sure, I guess so. I wonder how she knew where to find me, though?”
I bit my lip and didn’t say anything, and Bo followed the guard down to the phone.
He talked for a long time, while I ate my breakfast and read the funnies.
When he came back Bo was clearly puzzled.
“What’s up?” I asked, as the guard let him back into the cell.
“She says it was a great stunt,” he said slowly, “And why didn’t I tell her what I was going to do, and will I take two mil for the rights to my life story, and do I want to play myself? Oh, and there are some other offers, too.” He looked at me. “Rye, what’s she talking about?”
I showed him the newspaper. He sat down on his bunk to read it.
He made an unhappy noise when he got to the paragraph about thoughtless genetic engineers failing to consider the sex drives of their creations, but other than that he didn’t say anything.
“They make me sound like a real freak!” he said when he’d finished it.
I just nodded.
“You know what my agent said, on the phone? She said they wanted to make a movie about me. They even have the advertising campaign worked out.”
“Really?” He didn’t sound pleased about it, so I didn’t say anything more than that.
“Yeah,” he said. He stood up and struck a dramatic pose. “They made him a monster,” he declaimed, “But his heart was human—until an uncaring world drove him to acts of monstrous defiance!” He turned and spat at the sink. “What a lot of garbage!” he said, in his usual tones. “I mean, they’re really making me sound like I’m a complete psycho, or something.” He shook his head sadly.
“It’s a lousy world,” I agreed.
“They must’ve seen the article,” he said, picking up the tabloid and starting to read through it again.
He was just finishing it for the third time when the guard came to let us out.
“Noon,” he announced. “Use the pay phone out front if you need to make any calls.” He took the breakfast tray, and then herded us out of the little cell block.
We collected our belongings, such as they were, and headed for the front door. As we approached, though, we both slowed down.
The doors of the station were glass, and we could see the little crowd out front, waving their home-made signs about.
“Outlaw Monsters!” said one. “End Genetic Experiments NOW!” said another. “Make our streets safe!” said a third. All in all, there were maybe twenty or thirty people milling about in an angry, unsettled way.
We stopped, our noses to the glass, and stared. Bo’s eyes drooped in dismay.
Something caught my eye, and I pointed off to one side, where a smaller group stood, a little apart from the rest—three or four young women who weren’t carrying any signs or marching about. They were standing and staring at us. They didn’t look as hostile as the others.
“I wonder what they’re doing here,” I said. “They don’t seem to be part of the demonstration.”
Bo shrugged. “Just curiosity seekers, probably,” he said. “I am in the movies, after all.” He snorted derisively.
I nodded.
A sky-blue limo pulled up just behind the smaller group. A door opened, and a plump dark-haired woman got out and stood there, looking at the protestors. Bo pointed and said, “That’s Jenny, my agent. I asked her for a lift. Can we drop you somewhere?”
“Thanks,” I said, “I could use a ride.”
We both looked out at the mob again, and I said, “I don’t think they’ll hurt us, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to leave, either.”
Bo agreed.
“I guess we’d better just make a dash for it,” I said.
He agreed again, and opened the door.
We didn’t run, but we walked quickly. None of the demonstrators touched us, but a few of them yelled insults, most of them obscene.
We were almost to the limo when one of the smaller group, a cute little brunette, jumped forward and grabbed Bo’s tentacle.
“Bo,” she said, “You can eat me if you like—and I’ll eat you right back. I’ve never made it with a movie monster.”
Bo’s mouth fell open; so did mine.
Three other girls were right behind her, making similar offers either verbally or with body language.
Jenny was in the car, motioning for us to hurry up. The motor was running. I got into the limo and pulled Bo in after me.
Two of the girls managed to climb in before the door closed. We pulled away from the curb as they climbed onto Bo’s ample lap.
He stared at them for a minute, then grinned and threw a tentacle around each. They cuddled up to him, squealing, and the tentacles slipped down a little lower.
I told the driver where to drop me off.
Jenny the agent ignored everything, and just sat staring at the street ahead.
A few minutes later the car pulled over to the curb and I reached for the latch. Then I paused. I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “They’re just using you. They just want to try something kinky. They don’t really care about you.”
He looked up from the brunette’s cleavage and asked, “So what?” Bo grinned at me. “Hey, Rye,” he said, “True love would be nice, but up until now I’ve had nothing at all. Kinky sex has to be a heck of a lot better than nothing.”
I didn’t know what to say. I climbed out of the car and closed the door. As I was about to step away, the window slid down and Bo’s eyes emerged.
“Hey, Rye,” he said, “Thanks for everything! You were right—I just needed to be more forceful!”
He waved a tentacle as the car pulled away.
GREAT MINDS, by Edward M. Lerner
“It’s very much as I expected,” the intruder said without preamble.
Entering my cozy den, I had encountered him seated in my massive leather wingchair, shoes up on my broad mahogany desk, savoring one of my Cuban cigars. A snifter of brandy r
ested on the leather blotter, within his easy reach. The aroma was Napoleonic.
As I was unsurprised to find him. “Please, don’t get up.”
“You’re very gracious.” He grinned. The smile was world-famous: toothy, and slightly off-kilter. I saw it every morning in the mirror. Not that there weren’t differences. There always were: in haircut, clothing style, glasses instead of contacts, whatever. I found his sideburns curiously short. “I mean considering.”
Considering, as we both knew, he was here to take my life. Leather squeaked as his feet swung from the desk and he straightened his posture. Getting down to business. “The greatest minds of the millennium could not reach a common understanding what the math meant.” Meaning: He couldn’t have been expected to figure it out.
He was a whiner, a self-justifier—for which I was grateful. That character flaw was the only reason I was still here. He was also wrong. Proof by counterexample: I had decided I would solve the puzzle. Eventually, he had made the same choice. And, in our own times, in our respective ways, each of us had been successful.
His over-rehearsed rationalization tumbled out. “Bohr, Heisenberg, Einstein, Pauli, von Neumann, Schrödinger, Planck…them and more. Giants. You know the list. They never agreed on the physical significance of the math. Who was I to hope to understand the reality underlying the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics?”
Meaning: He lost hope, and somehow it became justifiable that I should pay the piper.
“And so for a long time, I gave up. I denied the problem. My career went another way.” He paused for a sip. “But for years, for decades, I could not help but wonder. Every day, billions of transistors demonstrated some underlying truth to the theory. Quantum mechanics describes something. I had to know what.”
His non-smoking hand, when not busy with the consumption of my best brandy, darted from time to time to pat something unseen in his coat pocket. It seemed to give him confidence.
“And so you returned to physics.” I had never left it.
He admired the many plaques and photos gracing the darkly paneled walls of the room. “And so I realized, I decided, what you had much earlier. The Copenhagen Interpretation—that certain physical specifics go beyond being unmeasurable, that to even inquire about them represented a misunderstanding of the physical universe—was, if true, an explanation inherently unprovable.
“What was provable, if true, was another explanation altogether: the Many Worlds Interpretation. If I could detect other universes, show that events happened in all possible ways, not just in whatever random way ‘the wave function collapsed’ without cause or explanation in ours, the great QM debate would be resolved. But among the myriads of myriads, for which other universe would I aim? And what evidence of that other place would be unambiguous?”
His nervous pocket-patting was growing more frequent. If my suspicions about the device in that pocket were correct—and who better than I to understand my visitor’s thinking—I did not have much time. “And then you realized…if MWI were true, there must be other universes in which another you”—such as me—“had stayed the course.” My eyes followed his to the Nobel Prize certificate and medallion in their softly illuminated, velvet-lined display case.
Because you got greedy. You saw you need not settle for fame beginning at age fifty-five—my present age, hence your own. You could do better. Much better. By switching places, you could seize the fruits of fame from another you who had proven the MWI years earlier.
Do you think you are the first me to have had that realization?
Below his line of sight, I clicked my heels twice. The radio beacon thus triggered activated the mechanism hidden within my/his chair.
* * * *
There are universes without number. Among the myriads is one where a different quantum outcome was enough to change the career of an unknown microbe. Newton died there in the great plague of 1665, at age twenty-three. The development of physics was, as a result, greatly impeded. Onto that parallel, low-tech plane of existence now materialized a new occupant.
I am not a cruel man. I sincerely hope my recent visitor—and the dozen earlier versions of me—enjoy their opportunity to make real advances in physics.
THE MAN WHO EVOLVED, by Edmond Hamilton
There were three of us in Pollard’s house on that night that I try vainly to forget. Dr. John Pollard himself, Hugh Dutton and I, Arthur Wright—we were the three. Pollard met that night a fate whose horror none could dream; Dutton has since that night inhabited a state institution reserved for the insane, and I alone am left to tell what happened.
It was on Pollard’s invitation that Dutton and I went up to his isolated cottage. We three had been friends and room-mates at the New York Technical University. Our friendship was perhaps a little unusual, for Pollard was a number of years older than Dutton and myself and was different in temperament, being rather quieter by nature. He had followed an intensive course of biological studies, too, instead of the ordinary engineering courses Dutton and I had taken.
As Dutton and I drove northward along the Hudson on that afternoon, we found ourselves reviewing what we knew of Pollard’s career. We had known of his taking his master’s and doctor’s degrees, and had heard of his work under Braun, the Vienna biologist whose theories had stirred up such turmoil. We had heard casually, too, that afterwards he had come back to plunge himself in private research at the country-house beside the Hudson he had inherited. But since then we had had no word from him and had been somewhat surprised to receive his telegrams inviting us to spend the weekend with him.
It was drawing into early-summer twilight when Dutton and I reached a small riverside village and were directed to Pollard’s place, a mile or so beyond. We found it easily enough, a splendid old pegged-frame house that for a hundred-odd years had squatted on a low hill above the river. Its outbuildings were clustered around the big house like the chicks about some protecting hen.
Pollard himself came out to greet us. “Why, you boys have grown up!” was his first exclamation. “Here I’ve remembered you as Hughie and Art, the campus trouble-raisers, and you look as though you belong to business clubs and talk everlastingly about sales-resistance!”
“That’s the sobering effect of commercial life,” Dutton explained, grinning. “It hasn’t touched you, you old oyster—you look the same as you did five years ago.”
He did, too, his lanky figure and slow smile and curiously thoughtful eyes having changed not a jot. Yet Pollard’s bearing seemed to show some rather more than usual excitement and I commented on it.
“If I seem a little excited it’s because this is a great day for me,” he answered.
“Well, you are in luck to get two fine fellows like Dutton and me to trail up to this hermitage of yours,” I began, but he shook his head smilingly.
“I don’t refer to that. Art, though I’m mighty glad you’ve come. As for my hermitage, as you call it, don’t say a word against it. I’ve been able to do work here I could never have done amid the distractions of a city laboratory.”
His eyes were alight. “If you two knew what—but there, you’ll hear it soon enough. Let’s get inside—I suppose you’re hungry?”
“Hungry—not I,” I assured him. “I might devour half a steer or some trifle like that, but I have really no appetite for anything else today.”
“Same here,” Dutton said. “I just pick at my food lately. Give me a few dozen sandwiches and a bucket of coffee and I consider it a full meal.”
“Well, we’ll see what we can do to tempt your delicate appetites,” said Pollard, as we went inside.
We found his big house comfortable enough, with long, low-ceilinged rooms and broad windows looking riverward. After putting our bags in a bedroom, and while his housekeeper and cook prepared dinner. Pollard escorted us on a tour of inspection of the place. We were most interested in his laboratory.
It was a small wing he had added to the house, of frame construction outside to harmonize with the rest of the building, but inside offering a gleaming vista of white-tiled walls and polished instruments. A big cube-like structure of transparent metal surmounted by a huge metal cylinder resembling a monster vacuum tube, took up the room’s center, and he showed us in an adjoining stone-floored room the dynamos and motors of his private power-plant. Night had fallen by the time we finished dinner, the meal having been prolonged by our reminiscences. The housekeeper and cook had gone. Pollard explaining that the servants did not sleep in the place. We sat smoking for a while in his living-room, Dutton looking appreciatively around at our comfortable surroundings.
“Your hermitage doesn’t seem half-bad. Pollard,” he commented. “I wouldn’t mind this easy life for a while myself.”
“Easy life?” repeated Pollard. “That’s all you know about it, Hugh. The fact is that I’ve never worked so hard in my life as I’ve done up here in the last two years.”
“What in the world have you been working at?” I asked. “Something so unholy you’ve had to keep it hidden here?”
“A mad scheme,” Pollard chuckled. “That’s what they think down in the village. They know I’m a biologist and have a laboratory here, so it’s a foregone conclusion with them that I’m doing vivisection of a specially dreadful nature. That’s why the servants won’t stay here at night.
“As a matter of fact,” he added, “if they knew down in the village what I’ve really been working on they’d be ten times as fearful as they are now.”
“Are you trying to play the mysterious great scientist for our benefit?” Dutton demanded. “If you are you’re wasting time—I know you, stranger, so take off that mask.”
“That’s right,” I told him. “If you’re trying to get our curiosity worked up you’ll find we can scram you as neatly as we could five years ago.”
The Mad Scientist Megapack Page 28
