Twistor

by Cramer, John; Wolfe, Gene;

  David felt a sense of satisfaction. The children had been adequately fed, and he'd had enough also. He'd built a cook fire on the forest floor. At first he'd been very careful with the fire, concerned that a larger oxygen fraction in the air or combustibles in the wood might make a fire in this world more dangerous and harder to control. He remembered that some archaeologists had found air bubbles in eighty-million-year-old amber that had a very high oxygen content. But the fire was very Earth-normal, so David had proceeded with dinner. They had dined on their small supply of instant soup, Vickie's peanut butter, and selections from David's sack lunch. He'd set the CCD camera to make stills of them all sitting together at their first dinner.

  David had also sampled some 'experimental' items: nuts, berries, several mushrooms, and some tuberous roots they'd found growing in the forest near the tree-house. He had made careful notes on where the various items had been found, their appearances, and their flavors. Several items he had rejected after a tiny taste. His small taste samples indicated that one of the nut varieties was quite delicious. A variety of pink berry was very sweet and tasty. One of the mushroom types looked exactly like the morels that grew in the Cascade forests near Seattle. Fried with a dab of peanut butter, it tasted truly wonderful. Nevertheless, he limited his intake to small amounts consumed at fifteen-minute intervals, and he'd refused the children's requests to share in these 'snacks.' He explained that explorers had to be extremely careful about poisonous plants.

  Now they were all in their beds. David had decreed that they must be in bed by sundown. The children had not been happy with the early bedtime. Melissa suggested that they sit down below around the cook fire and sing songs, as her family often did on camping trips. David had rejected this suggestion because of the possibility of dangerous animals. She was unhappy and suggested that a high priority should be given to the making of lamps and candles so they could work in the treehouse in the evenings. He complemented her for having a good idea. Some of Sam's tools did have rechargeable batteries, and there was a small solar recharger in the toolbox, but candles seemed a better solution to the problem of illumination. If there was any way to make the twistor apparatus work, the small power tools were going to be needed for that purpose.

  'David, what's today?' Melissa asked from the cot.

  He paused. It took a few seconds to realize that it was still the same day that had begun so uneventfully only twelve hours ago. Today is Wednesday, October thirteenth,' he said. David remembered that by now he should have picked up Vickie and taken her to the Ernsts' for dinner.

  Then it's time for our story!' said Melissa triumphantly. 'You always tell us a story after dinner on Wednesdays.'

  'Yeah, David,' said Jeff. 'You were going to tell us what happened to Ton.'

  David sighed. It had been a long day, and his mind was numb. But the weekly story was a link with their normal existence. It should help them to make the difficult adjustment to life in this new world.

  'OK,' he said, gathering his thoughts, 'I'm sure you recall what happened last time. Ton had been kidnapped by corsair pirates and sold as a slave to Zorax, the evil magician. Zorax had sent Ton into some dangerous underground ruins to fetch some things he'd called "mementoes." But when Ton had done it and had wanted to be pulled out along with the objects he'd fetched, Zorax became angry and made an explosion that closed the opening. Ton was trapped underground.'

  'Yeah!' said Jeff, 'What happened after the 'sploshun?'

  'After the explosion,' said David, 'there was much crashing and banging and sounds of cave-in along the passages, and Ton was left in utter darkness. There must have been much dust in the air, because his eyes stung and he coughed a lot. He pressed his face low near one corner of the passage where the air was better, and he waited. It became so quiet that he could hear only his own heartbeat. After a while it became easier to breathe. But there was no light at all. Ton was lost in total darkness. And he was scared, very scared.

  'But he remembered that his father had once told him that when you are in a difficult situation, the first thing to do is to take inventory.'

  'What's enden-tory?' asked Jeff.

  Melissa grunted in annoyance.

  'Taking inventory,' said David, 'means making a list of everything you have that you might be able to use. Like we did today when we took everything out of Sam's toolbox and the supply cabinet.'

  'Oh,' said Jeff. Melissa snorted.

  'Feeling around in the dark,' David continued, Ton tried to find the things he had brought from the passage. His hand bumped against something smooth. It was the leather bag. He sat in the darkness and undid the thong that held it closed, then opened the top. A faint glow was coming from the bag. He reached inside, and his hand encountered something hard and cool and smooth. As his fingers touched the object, the light from the bag became much brighter. He lifted the object out. It was a crystal sphere, and it glowed brightly with its own internal light. Lifting it to eye level, Ton could see fuzzy blobs of white and blue and green, but his eyes couldn't quite focus on what was there. As long as the sphere was in contact with his hand, it gave a bright light, but if he put it on the floor and moved his hand away, the light dimmed. Taking the sphere and holding it higher, he looked around. He was still in the passage, which now was littered with rocks and large dressed stones that had fallen from the ceiling. On the floor were the other "mementoes" for Zorax, the roll of carpet and the corroded old weapon. And there was also the small leather-bound book that he had taken from the skeleton. The basket, with the rope still attached and leading upward, was resting on the floor. Ton pulled on the rope and it came free, its upper end frayed and burnt.

  'He rolled up the rope, perhaps five meters of it, and placed it and the rest of the "mementoes" in the basket. He retraced his steps backward down the passage. It soon became clear what had made the cave-in sounds after the explosion. There were many places where the roof had fallen in, partially blocking the passage. As for the side passages, all of the heavy stone doors had fallen during the cave-ins, completely sealing them. Ton continued down the central corridor, and just beyond the second passage on the right he found that the main passage was completely blocked. The tomb that he had entered was sealed, perhaps forever.

  Ton searched the passage desperately. It was now clear that he was trapped deep underground with no food or water and no way out. He was going to die, soon and unpleasantly. Years from now someone would perhaps find his bones in the tunnel and wonder who he had been and how he had come to be trapped here.

  'He lay down on the littered floor and cried in the darkness. It wasn't fair. He had been kidnapped and beaten and enslaved and stripped naked and sold and badly treated and now left to die, and none of it was his fault. He wept bitterly for a long time and at last fell asleep.

  Ton came awake suddenly. Groggy, he reached for the dim sphere, and when the light came to full brightness he could see that nothing had changed. He decided that he felt better, and sitting on the floor of the tunnel, he began to examine his few possessions. The thin corroded weapon had an inscription written along the shaft, but in an unfamiliar script and language. The hilt was functional and unadorned, but showed signs of having once been gilded. Ton, the armorer's apprentice, selected a piece of sandstone from the floor and polished the weapon. The corrosion, probably the remains of a decayed scabbard, came away easily, leaving the rounded shaft bright and shining.

  'Next, Ton unrolled the rug. Parts of it were folded over and sewn to the coarse undersurface, but the main part made a rectangle a bit less than a meter wide and about a meter and a half long. Its woven design was intricate and rather beautiful, but the colors had been dulled by time. Ton found a flat level space on the floor and smoothed the rug on it, then seated himself on it. If he was going to die here, he might as well be comfortable.

  'Finally, he placed the leather-bound book in his lap and examined it. He found that if he held the sphere against his chest with his chin he could grasp the book with bot
h hands and have sufficient light for reading.

  'And so Ton began to read. The pages were handwritten in a thin spidery scrawl, and fortunately were in Ton's native language. But there were many difficult and unfamiliar words. It took him some time to get the drift of the text, but with persistence the general content of the book became fairly clear. This was a book about magic, or, more specifically, about how certain magic objects or talismans were used. Much of the writing was obscure and confusing, but Ton became convinced that Zorax's "mementoes" were among the talismans discussed in the book. There was much discussion of something called the "Urorb." Ton concluded this was probably the very sphere that presently was nestled under his chin. Apparently it could be used not only for making light but also for "farscrying," whatever that was. There was something called the "Surplice" which sounded like the rug he was sitting on, but was apparently intended to be worn like a loose coat and was used for "farwending." The description of how to do this was very involved and confusing. And there was the description of a weapon, probably the swordlike object, called the "Pricklance," which was used for "farpiercing." This also involved the use of the Urorb in some way. That was about as much as Ton was able to comprehend from the writing. The remainder of the book dealt with words, objects, and concepts of which he had no grasp at all. Finally Ton put down the book and released the Urorb, for his neck was getting quite stiff from holding it for so long.

  'Lying on his back, he held up the shining sphere and gazed into its depths. The book had said something about fixing a place in the mind for "farscrying." He thought of his home, of his mother and father and what they must have gone through when he was kidnapped.

  'Suddenly Ton realized that he was looking into his mother's kitchen, and that she was putting bread into the oven. He felt very happy to see her and called out to her. But she showed no sign of hearing him. Her eyes looked red, as if she had recently been crying. He found that he couldn't watch his mother for long without feeling very sad and homesick. So he began to experiment with the Urorb.

  'He soon found that by concentrating on any place he knew well, he could produce a view of it. For a while he was fascinated by this, but soon the growing hunger pangs in his stomach brought him back to reality. Farscrying was a powerful trick, but it didn't get him any food or water or any way out of his predicament. He was still trapped.'

  Hearing deep, regular breathing, David peered through the dimness. Melissa and Jeff were both sound asleep. Too bad, thought David. Just when the story was getting interesting.

  He stood, stretched, and walked to the door-hole. He unfastened the branches that held the batting in place and moved it aside. Leaning out through the door-hole, he inhaled the rich night smell of the forest and savored the touch of cool breeze on his cheeks. It was quite dark now, and his dark-adapted eyes could make out patches of stars through gaps in the forest canopy. One star seemed bright. Very bright. Venus? No, it wasn't a planet. It was quite distinctly twinkling. Sirius? Canopus? Perhaps Arcturus? No, it had a soft yellow color, probably G- or K-class.

  He tried to recall the brighter stars he'd memorized when, as a teenager, he'd mapped the Illinois skies with his homemade reflector telescope. He was sure that there was no such star in Earth's northern hemisphere. Interesting. Perhaps some of Sol's neighbors were closer in this universe. The four-plus light-years to Alpha Centauri had always seemed an unreasonably large distance.

  The door chimes sounded, and a hollow-eyed Elizabeth Ernst hurried to the door. Her children had been missing for over ten hours. Through the viewer she saw two large men in dark suits. She opened the door.

  'Good evening,' said the taller of the two, ' I 'm Agent Bartley of the FBI. This is my associate, Agent Cooper.' Both men presented her with wallets containing picture IDs. 'We've been assigned to investigate the disappearances,' Bartley continued. 'We'd like to ask a few questions about your children.'

  'Come in,' said Elizabeth, and introduced herself. She led the agents to the dining room, where a dejected Paul and a worried Victoria Gordon were seated at the dining table. A platter of broiled salmon was in the middle of the table, and on their plates was food that had just been served. Elizabeth performed the introductions and invited the two men to sit down. They did so but declined Elizabeth's offers of food or coffee.

  'Agent Bartley and I met this afternoon,' Vickie said. 'We talked for about an hour.' She took a bite of salmon.

  Bartley nodded and produced a brightly colored children's book from his briefcase. 'Do any of you recognize this book,' he asked.

  Vickie shook her head. ‘No,' said Elizabeth.

  'She hasn't seen it,' Paul said. 'I only bought it this morning. It's about dinosaurs. Melissa said she wanted to show it to David—' Paul stopped talking abruptly and put his head in his hands.

  Elizabeth looked at him with concern. She was worried about Paul. He'd never been able to deal very well with strong emotions. 'Where did you find the book?' she asked, turning to Bartley.

  'It was on a table near the door in the laboratory room, ma'am,' he said. 'The fingerprints on it match the school prints of your daughter.'

  'What about the blood?' Paul asked in a strained voice.

  'The red substance found on the floor of the laboratory is definitely human blood,' said Bartley. 'The lab analysis confirmed that. But we have no matches. We checked Dr Harrison's blood group and also those of your children. The blood in the laboratory came from someone else.'

  Paul looked relieved. Elizabeth noticed that he was drumming his fingers on one knee, a sign of tension.

  'Now, Professor Ernst,' Agent Cooper said, 'would you please tell us what happened this morning?'

  Paul recounted for them how he had taken the children first to the bookstore, then to his office. 'I was working at my terminal and they were sitting reading their books quietly,' he said. 'Then I looked up, and they were gone.

  'I wasn't worried at first.' The fingers drummed. They've been to Physics Hall with me many times before. They know their way around, and it isn't a particularly dangerous place. I thought at first they'd just gone to the restroom or were visiting with one of my colleagues down the hall. But when they didn't return, I became concerned and began to look around. I started on the third floor. Then I got one of the secretaries to check all the women's restrooms. Finally, I thought of David. Since he's a great friend of theirs, it occurred to me that they might have gone to his laboratory. I'd taken them there just last week, and he showed them his experiment and gave them each a balloon—' At the word 'balloon' Paul's voice broke, and he was quiet. The finger drumming continued, faster.

  'David Harrison is a good friend of the whole family,' Elizabeth said, covering the pause. 'For the past six months he's been our regular guest for dinner on Wednesday evenings. He brings a good bottle of wine and we have dinner. He and Paul talk physics, and after dinner he tells the children fairy tales.' Agent Cooper's face assumed an expression that might have been a smirk, and he wrote something in his notebook.

  'What happened when you went to Harrison's lab, sir?' Bartley asked.

  Paul cleared his throat, his hand quiet. 'Professor Weinberger was there with some campus police officers. Vickie was there too, and she showed me what they had found. The big wooden sphere, and all that blood . . . ' He paused for a moment, then continued. 'I was very concerned for David, but I didn't connect it with Melissa and Jeff until Sam, uh, Mr Weston told me that he'd seen the children heading for David's lab a bit earlier. I guess the book clinches it.' He shook his head, then stared at the table. The fingers drummed again.

  Elizabeth looked directly at Agent Bartley. 'What do you think happened to them?' she asked firmly. She wanted the official view. She was not secure with the 'twistor field' explanations Paul and Vickie had been telling her.

  There was a trail of blood, ma'am,' said Bartley, consulting his notebook. 'It led to the loading area behind Physics Hall. We established that a van had been observed parked there with the motor runn
ing. We've located the van and traced it. It was rented yesterday by an individual using stolen identification. The van contained bloodstains that match those in the physics laboratory. It was abandoned in a parking area behind the drugstore in the U-Village Shopping Center. A witness at the Goodwill collection station there saw four men in movers' coveralls leave the vehicle and drive away in a car. She did not recall seeing any children with them, but that doesn't prove anything. There may have been others involved who took them before the van was abandoned.

  'Our other lead is the listening devices that were found in the laboratory a few days ago. Mr Weston gave them to us. We've identified them as a commercial product, and we're tracing them back to the supplier. In summary, Mrs Ernst, we believe Dr Harrison and your children were kidnapped by the four individuals seen in the physics building.'

  Paul suddenly looked up, an expression of disbelief on his face. 'Kidnapped? That's absurd! What about the sphere? They went through the twistor transition. You can't just leave them there! We've got to get them back, if they're still alive!'

  Agent Cooper raised an eyebrow. 'We have no information about any "twisted condition," Professor Ernst,' he said. 'What are you referring to, sir?'

  Paul looked wildly at the agent, his fingers drumming hard. Elizabeth wondered what he would say next. 'Dr Harrison and Miss Gordon have been working on a device that makes things . . . it converts . . . ' He stopped abruptly and for the first time looked directly into Agent Cooper's wide blue eyes. Then he looked down at his rhythmically moving hand for a moment. 'Never mind . . . ' he said finally. 'The physics . . . it's complicated. You . . . wouldn't understand.'