by John Varley
"A little of both, these days. I was always a tinkerer, but I made my reputation in pure physics, in mathematics. A "physicist," these days, is usually more engineer than scientist, to my way of thinking. While I've never been afraid to get my hands dirty, I tired of weapons development. I .have no interest in building a more powerful laser or a smaller fusion bomb.
If you weren't already in such trouble, I'd feel honor-bound to warn you away from me. I'm a terrible security risk. Being seen with me is enough to get you kicked out of almost any government job."
"That's no problem anymore."
"Indeed. At any rate ... they wanted me to work on a larger particle accelerator. I decided not to. I kept thinking of Newton, of Rontgen ... men like that. Men who did the basic thinking that led to gigawatt particle accelerators."
"You don't think those accelerators are worthwhile research tools?"
"On the contrary. I keep abreast of all the results. It may very well be that the breakthrough I'm looking for will come from Batavia, or Stanford. But I don't really think so.
I think it will come from the most unexpected place, as so many breakthroughs do.
Something as simple as Wilhelm Rontgen accidentally exposing a photographic plate and discovering X rays."
"So what is it you're looking for? What is your basic research?"
"The nature of time," he said, and leaned forward. "And now that you've examined my bona fides, I think it's your turn."
I took another sip of the whiskey, and started to tell him.
It took most of the morning. I went into great detail, much more than I had been willing or able to before the Board.
He asked very little, but took a lot of notes. A few minutes into the story he asked if I minded being recorded. I said I didn't care. He didn't turn anything on, so I assumed he'd been doing it right along.
At lunchtime he led me into the kitchen. I talked while he prepared a salad and some cold-cut sandwiches. We ate them, and I continued to talk.
And finally I was through. I looked at the glass of whiskey and saw it was still half-full.
I've got to say, that made me proud.
To be honest, I had expected an uncritical reception. The little I knew about Mayer was from a few comments Roger Keane and Kevin Briley had made after the night of that press conference, to the effect that he was the "local crackpot," who showed up at air crashes and other disasters all over California and much of the west. I had expected a sympathetic ear, one as eager to fall for my "evidence" as a grad student in astrology looking at one of Uri Geller's spoons.
So what did Mayer do? He grilled me unmercifully for two hours. If the bastard had been running for California Attorney General, he'd have had my vote.
He went at me up, down, and sideways. He had me sketch the stunner Louise had taken from me. He tore at anything that looked inconsistent -- and let's face it, that included the whole unlikely story. He wanted to see physical evidence. I'd brought it with me, and laid it out before him: Louise's clothes, the glass she had handled, a photo of the fingerprints obtained from it, ten grainy blowups of her face from various angles, photostats of the autopsy reports, a watch I'd stolen that was still off by forty-five minutes because I'd kept winding it, a Vicks inhaler, and an empty package of Clorets.
He sniffed the inhaler, and wrinkled his nose. The smell was faint by now, but it was still foul. He fingered the material of her skirt, poked at her abandoned underwear with a penal eraser.
"We can run some tests on this cloth," he said. "Though I doubt it would tell us anything.
Tell me, Bill, would you object to telling this story again, under hypnosis?"
I Laughed.
"I'd try anything, Arnold, but I don't think that"ll do you any good. I've tried it before, and I can't be hypnotized."
"When I count three, you will wake up, refreshed. One, two, three."
I sat up. I felt great. Naturally, it hadn't done them any good, I'd just told the story again as I had before ...
Son of a bitch.
"You did it," I said, awed. "You put me under."
I was talking to one of the two other people in the room, Docto Leggio who Arnold had called after I agreed to try hypnotism. He was a medical doctor.
"I remember everything," I said, still a little stunned "I was just going along with the joke ... "
Leggio laughed.
"That's the only way to make it work, Mister Smith. You were a good subject. Your memory is excellent."
I looked at Mayer.
"And I told it just the same way, didn't I?"
He nodded, grudgingly.
"We obtained more detail ... but, yes, you never wavered."
The doorbell rang its little five-note theme again. Leggio was shaking hands with me as he got ready to leave, and so was the, other new arrival, who I hadn't talked to at all because she'd arrived while I under and Leggio hadn't asked me to talk to her. She was Frances Schrader, and she had a doctorate in biochemistry and a talent for pencil sketching. Damn, the doctors were getting so thick around that place I could hardly walk.
Leggio and Schrader left, and in came a new fellow lugging some heavy equipment.
While he was opening it and setting it up, Arnold introduced us. The man was Phil Karakov, and he was a polygraph expert.
I sighed, sat down, and let them hook me up.
"I can't shake anything in his story," Karakov said, at last.
Mayer didn't seem to be listening closely. I was feeling relief that I'd passed the lie detector as well as the hypnotic examination, and here was Mayer, gazing out the window at the sun setting over the orchard.
"Thank you, Phil," he said. "I'll let you know what becomes of this."
Karakov packed up his equipment and left. Mayer continued to stare out the window.
Then he picked up the sketch Frances Schrader had made, looked at it, and tossed it to me.
It was very good. Leggio had made me recall things about the stunner that I hadn't been able to get at before. Schrader had worked with me looking over her shoulder, erasing and filling in details as Leggio pressed me to look deeper into my mind. There were two views, one much better than the other. The first showed what I'd seen on the outside. The second showed the inner workings, which I'd only seen for a second before I got zapped. , Mayer seemed finally about to say something, when his trick doorbell rang again. He frowned, got up, and went to the front door. He was back soon.
"No one there," he said. "That's never happened -- "
It rang again. He looked like he'd bit into something sour, but once more he went to the door. He was gone longer this time. While he was gone, the damn thing chimed three more times.
"I looked all around. It must be malfunctioning. I disconnected it, so it shouldn't give us any more It rang again. He was about to say something nasty, when his Edison phonograph started to play. It was some Scottish ditty, scratchy as hell. While we were still staring at that, his hifi came on at full volume with something that must have been Wagner. As he hurried to shut it off, the Xerox machine started to run. It was .spewing paper all over the place. I could see his computer terminal had lit up. All the lights in the house dimmed, then came on very bright.
I was on my feet by then. I wouldn't have been surprised if a fleet of toy cars had come through the kitchen door, followed by a vacuum cleaner. Steve Spielberg, where are you now that we need you? Then every pane in Mayer's glass wall blew out into the vegetable garden.
19 Lest Darkness Fall
We were looking down an infinite tunnel.
There was a sound. I'd heard it before: the low rumble as I stood in the hallway outside my hotel room. This time it was much louder. The floor started to shake, and two points of very bright light appeared somewhere along the length of that impossible tunnel.
The tunnel wasn't even there, really. I could see the trees of the orchard right through it.
There were odd shapes that I didn't like to look at, so I focused on the brig
ht lights.
The lights started to take on the shape of humans. Then the perspective went all crazy and a high wind began to blow. Papers were swirling around us, and everything in the room got shiny, like it had been in my hotel room when I opened the door. I looked at my hand; it was shiny, but not cold. I looked back at the tunnel. One moment the lights were a hundred miles away, and the next they were in our laps, only to flicker into the distance again.
Then it was over. Louise was standing in the ruins of Arnold's windows. She was wearing the black commando outfit she'd had on that night in the hangar. Standing beside her was something else. I didn't know what to make of it at first. It was humanoid, it had a face and two arms and two legs. Parts of it looked like the robot from Star Wars, and parts looked more like Gumby, that little clay cartoon figure. It moved fluidly and didn't seem to have any seams. But it was big, and built like a weightlifter.
There was no doubt in my mind. This wasn't a human being in a funny suit. This was an alien creature, or a robot, or something I'd never seen before.
Arnold Mayer got his voice back first.
"I presume you are Louise Ball," he said.
"Baltimore, actually," she said, coming into the room. "From a long line of Marylander-
Columbians." She reached a chair a few feet from the one I'd been sitting in, tilted it to dump the pile of books and papers onto the floor, and sat.. "My companion is Sherman."
"Pleased to meet you, Doctor Mayer, Mister Smith," Sherman said. He continued to stand near the ruined glass wall.
"He's a mechanical man," Louise went on. "A robot, if you wish. He's at least as smart as either of you, and he's a hundred times as strong and a thousand times as fast. I named him after a tank used in the First Atomic War."
"Is that a threat?" Mayer asked.
"Take it however you want. You've got something I want-"
"Are you really from Maryland?" I asked.
She looked at me, and I thought I saw some sympathy there. At least I hoped I did. She'd come into my life and left it in ruins. It would have been nice if she'd felt some remorse for it.
"My forebears are. You're probably one of my great-granduncles or something, fifteen thousand times removed. But at this point the race hasn't started to differentiate into distinct ... " She looked away, and rubbed her forehead.
"This isn't relevant," she went on, and turned back to Mayer. "You have something I want. Something I have to have. I intend to get it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Mayer said.
"You're lying. Sherman, where is it?"
"I don't know, Louise," the robot said, in a voice deeper and more threatening than it had used in its earlier friendly greeting. "I'm not getting a reading."
"Well, probe the room."
If he did "probe the room," he did it quickly. Without a pause, he pointed to the mantelpiece covered with picture frames.
"There is a safe hidden behind the central picture," he said.
Louise stood, pointed her finger at the picture. It swung away on hinges. She made some complicated motions, and I saw the dial spin back and forth, then the door swung open.
"How did you do that?" I asked.
"Magic," she said. She went to the safe and started throwing its contents onto the floor.
Mayer took a step in her direction; Sherman made a throat-clearing noise and wagged a warning finger. It was enough for Mayer; it probably would have been enough for me, too.
That bastard was huge.
Gold coins and stock certificates were soon scattered around Louise's feet. She came up with an old army Colt .45 and tossed it to Sherman, who shredded it. What I mean is, he threw the ammo clip about a mile into the dark, and rubbed the gun between his hands until it fell in a shower of metal chips. I felt a drop of sweat trickle down my back.
"It's not here," she said, retuming to her chair but not sitting down. "Shall we start tearing this place apart brick by brick?"
"If you must," Mayer said. I had to hand it to him; the old guy didn't seem afraid. He stood his ground.
"It's in his desk," Sherman said, and Mayer's face fell. More magic, I guess. There was no doubt in Sherman's voice.
"The desk is locked," Mayer said. "I don't have the key."
"We don't have time for games, Doctor," Louise said.
"Sherman, open it."
Sherman went around the desk.
"Excuse me," he said to Mayer, and gently moved him out of the way. Then he looked at the computer terminal. He seemed undecided about something. Then he shrugged.
"Pardon me," he told the terminal, and picked it up and set it gently on the floor. I thought I caught Louise about to laugh; amn if I didn't almost laugh myself. I'm glad I didn't. It probably would have sounded hysterical when Sherman opened the desk. He took hold of the top edge and peeled it like a cardboard box. The top three drawers lay exposed, and in the middle one was something that looked awfully familiar.
"You've got it!" I shouted. "You had it in your desk all this time, and you made me go through the damn story over and over-"
Words failed me. I forgot about Louise in her commando duds, forgot about Sherman the android tank, forgot about everything but the stunner Louise had stolen from me that night, and which she was now lifting from Mayer's desk drawer.
"Don't be silly, Bill," she said. "This is another one. It isn't even burned. Take a look."
And she tossed it to me.
I looked at it. She was right. This one was intact. I turned it over in my hands, noted the position of the trigger and of a little switch on the side. It occurred to me that I was holding a powerful weapon.
I looked up at Louise, and a stunner materialized in her hand, Kointed at my forehead. One moment it was in a holster on her hip and the next it was in her hand.
"You wouldn't shoot me, would you, Louise?"
She gave me an odd look, then an odd smile, and the weapon was back in its holster. I'd heard a whirring sound that time, but I still didn't see how it was done.
"You're right," she said, and turned away. "Sherman, if he tries anything funny, shoot to disable."
"Right."
So much for undying love. And I was no fool; I put the stunner on the remains of Mayer's desk and went back toward my chair. Louise was already sitting, but I was too agitated to do anything but stand.
Louise had her elbows on the chair arms, and was massaging her forehead with the tips of her fingers. She looked very tired. She spoke without looking up.
"Sherman, there's something wrong with that stunner. Will you take a look?"
The robot picked it up, turned it over in his hands, then did something that made it split into two halves. There wasn't anything inside. It was just a plastic shell.
"I thought it felt light," she said, when he showed it to her. She looked at Mayer. "Doctor Mayer, I want to know -- "
"I prefer not to be called Doctor," Mayer said.
"Doctor Mayer," Louise said, pointedly, "this stunner belongs to me. One of my people lost it. I'd like to know where you got it: "Where did you lose it?"
"I'm asking the questions here."
"And maybe I'm not answering them."
Louise sighed. "Why don't we dispense with the melodramatic talk, Doctor?"
"That cuts both ways," Mayer said. I looked at him again. He was calm on the outside, but now I saw he was smouldering underneath. I guess I would have been, too, if somebody'd just ripped my desk apart. On the other hand, there was Sherman, and I thought Mayer was making a very dangerous stand "I lost the stunner about a week ago," Louise said. "In 1955."
"And I found it thirty years ago. Also in 1955."
Louise glanced at Sherman.
"I think he's lying," the robot said. Louise nodded, and gestured for Sherman to go to Mayer. As the robot did so, Mayer lost a little of his composure.
"Are you going to torture me?" he asked.
"Depends on how melodramatic you want to get." Mayer made an involuntar
y move away as Sherman took him by the arm The robot encircled Mayer's wrist with his huge metal hand, and waited, just holding it there.
"Did you find it youself?" Louise asked.
"Yes," Mayer said. Sherman shook his head.
"Who did find it?"
Mayer looked down at Sherman's hand, and then I did too, and I'll bet we both had the same thought at the same time: polygraph. Or the far-future equivalent, which I was willing to bet was better than the one used on me earlier that same day.
"That's right," Louise said, making me wonder if mind-reading was one of her many talents. "Now, we can play twenty questions and a lie will tell me as much as the truth, but it takes a while to zero in on it that way. We don't have a lot of time, but we do have some drugs that will make you tell all in about ten seconds though they tend to use up brain cells-
and we do have a heartless machine who can cause you a lot of pain if I give him the order."
I don't know if Mayer caught it, but Sherman gave Louise a quick glance. I couldn't swear to it -- I didn't know much about reading a robot's expressions -- but I thought he looked hurt.
Heartless, indeed. Sherman tank, my ass. A robot who had apologized to a computer terminal, presumably on the principle that it might be a distant ancestor? So I decided Louise was pulling some sort of bluff. I guess I should have told Mayer about it. I didn't, f wanted to hear his story at least as badly as Louise did. Maybe more.
I'd figured out why he hadn't told me about the stunner in his desk. L think he would have shown it to me if Louise hadn't interrupted us. He was simply doing what any good scientist would do, attacking my story, getting me to draw what I'd said I'd seen with no prompting from him.
Still, I was pissed off. I sat back and waited to see what he'd do.
"I thought you had all the time in the world," Mayer said.
"We did, once. Now we've only got a little, and you're using it up at a faster rate than you can imagine."
"Can't you tell me anything about-"
