The Man in Two Bodies (British crime novel): A Dark Science Crime Caper

by Stanley Salmons

  I needed two tries to get the copper sheet back in place but I was beginning to get the hang of this.

  “Aluminium next. Also 100%,” I announced.

  I managed to flick it over in one. Again it landed right between the glasses, and again a minute and a half went by without anything happening. So it went on. Methyl meth- acrylate, nickel-cobalt-chromium, magnesium alloy, galvanized steel, titanium. It was a strange collection of materials. I don’t know what the old practical had been about, but I suppose it might have had something to do with corrosion resistance. PTFE, tungsten-chromium-vanadium steel, 360 stainless steel, brass, beryllium-copper, high-density polyethylene…

  Nearly an hour and a half went by, and it wasn’t so exciting any more. Nothing was happening, at least nothing that we could see. Rodge was getting bored too. He was half-sitting on the bench.

  “We’re already up to number thirty-five,” I said. “Two more to go. I suppose we might as well finish the run.”

  “Yep, might as well. What’s next?” he asked, without much interest.

  I looked into the cage and back at the list.

  “Molybdenum-coated steel,” I said.

  I jerked the sample into place with what was now a practised flick of the nylon. And suddenly Rodge was on his feet and I was all attention.

  A wisp of steam or smoke had come off the sample sheet, and as I looked a circular patch in the middle started to glow red. The circle expanded, getting white hot in the middle, and then quite suddenly it all faded. The white turned to red and the red turned to black. I blinked my eyes. I couldn’t see much because I had a whacking great after-image on my retina and wherever I looked it was still there drifting around in the centre of my vision. I could smell it, though; it reminded me of the time I’d helped a friend get his car repaired in a welding shop.

  Gradually my sight returned to normal. Now I could see that there was a hole in the middle of the sample where it had melted right through. I looked for the glasses and the spiders, but there was no sign of them. And then I noticed that actually there was something: a few glistening greyish-white blobs where the first spider had been. They were tiny and the only reason I’d seen them was that the light was coming in that direction and happened to catch them. It struck me as odd. If the matter waves had been absorbed why was anything at all left behind? I was just about to mention it to Rodge, but he spoke first.

  “Well, that was impressive, wasn’t it? I didn’t see when they disappeared but the whole thing lasted less than ten seconds, so we’re certainly looking at more than one part in a hundred thousand absorption. Other steels didn’t do it, so it must be the molybdenum. What do they use that for?”

  “I was wondering about that myself. Molybdenum’s very hard and it’s resistant to corrosion. I suppose they could use it as some sort of protective coating.”

  “Well it certainly makes a heck of a difference to the absorption. Put a tick by molybdenum, then. How many samples left, Mike?”

  “Only one. But that sheet’s pretty mangled. I’m not sure I can get it back into the rack.”

  “Well, it’s not worth setting it all up again, is it? It wasn’t a comprehensive test anyway. We’ve got the answer we wanted, which is that most materials don’t absorb matter waves, but there are at least some that do.”

  I was looking at the copper sample on the end of the rack and then my eyes shifted to the copper mesh of the cage and a thought struck me.

  “Rodge… would it work the other way round? I mean, if a material doesn’t absorb the matter waves passing back and forth could you establish the resonance with a sheet of it actually in the way?”

  He had a shocked, alert expression, and I knew he’d latched on. I continued:

  “I mean, we know now that copper doesn’t absorb, so if that was true I suppose you could establish the resonant image, or whatever you call it, outside the cage.”

  A slow smile was spreading over his face.

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “I can’t see why not…” He looked at me, and there was something new in his eyes. “That’s a great idea, Mike! We should try it.” He sized up the distance. “About 10 feet. Assuming a linear relationship, we need about five times the dollop of energy. That’s easy, there’s loads of reserve. We can increase the voltage or the duration. Duration’s the easiest. I just have to replace the timing capacitor in the driver to the relay. It won’t take long. You could take your bits and pieces out of the cage while I’m doing it. Let’s power down.”

  So while I was cutting the ends off thirty-seven lengths of nylon and pulling them back into the cage, and unstrapping the dowel from the roof of the cage, and generally tidying things up, he was working inside the cabinet that housed the relay. I was beginning to flag a bit now; it had been a long day. But Rodge was all fired up and it had been my suggestion, after all, so I couldn’t very well say, “Cheerio, I’m off.”

  After a bit he closed and latched the cabinet door and straightened up.

  “Right. I’ll go and find another glass and another spider,” he said.

  I was on the point of saying, “Does it have to be a spider, Rodge?” when I managed to stop myself; I didn’t want to sound like a wimp. All the same I was hoping he’d be content with a nice small one. I knew it was a pretty forlorn hope and, sure enough, the one he came back with was even bigger and hairier than the first. It was frantically climbing up the inside of the glass, dropping off, and climbing up again. I bit my lip and kept well clear. If he noticed, he didn’t comment. He set it all up on the table as before, but without the juke-box, of course.

  In fact the juke-box was on the bench outside now, so we switched on the power supplies and while they were stabilizing we had a closer look at the melted sample. The hole was a couple of inches across. Rodge put his finger in the hole and ran it around the edges.

  “It’s completely smooth,” he said. “Look, the steel’s melted back over the edges. But there’s nothing like enough there to account for the size of that hole. Some of it must have vaporized.”

  “Bloody hell. It must have got incredibly hot, incredibly fast.”

  “Yes. It must have.”

  We took up our positions.

  “Same procedure as before, Mike. The circuit breaker will probably sound different, but that’s about all you’ll notice.”

  I nodded and went through the motions. I was concentrating hard, trying not to think about that spider, which was still climbing up and sliding down inside the glass. When everything was set I looked up at Rodge and he nodded and I pressed the red button. The relay went ker-lonk, and almost simultaneously there was a mighty crash of breaking glass. I nearly jumped out of my skin—and then I went rigid. The floor outside the end of the cage was littered with broken glass and that huge spider was running across the floor. I opened my mouth but no sound came out. It was like one of those awful dreams where you’re trying to escape but you’re running up a pile of loose sand, your feet are sliding back and you’re not going anywhere. Somewhere in the distance I could hear Rodge’s voice saying, “Mike, just detune and bring the power down… Mike!” Then he pushed me out of the way and swivelled the big knob and pulled back on the sliders and suddenly all the glass was gone, and the spider with it. It had tidied up like something out of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And I was Mickey Mouse.

  I swallowed with difficulty and did my best to get my voice under control.

  “Sorry, Rodge. Sorry. I should have put something outside the cage—a table or something—for it to project onto. Didn’t think of it.”

  I couldn’t look at him. My nerves were still screaming.

  “No problem,” he dismissed my apology. “Even when the glass was in pieces each part kept its relationship to the original. It was just a matter of killing the resonance.”

  I looked inside the cage. The spider was there, inside the glass, still climbing up and dropping down as if nothing had happened, as if it, or some resonant echo of it, hadn’t just been making
a bid for freedom across the floor of the lab. I took a deep breath, and then the implications of what we had just done crashed in on me. I looked at Rodge and he looked at me. I could see from his face that the same thought had occurred to him.

  If you can do that with a spider, then why not with a mouse? And if with a mouse, why not with a man? And if you can set up a resonant image of yourself ten feet away on the other side of the copper mesh wall of a cage, then why not forty feet away, on the other side of the wall of this building? Or a hundred feet? Or a mile?

  At that moment I wondered how long it would be before it was Rodge sitting in that cage waiting for me to press the big red button.

  14

  Soon after that Rodge came to live in my flat. The way it happened was this. I got over to the lab that day at about three-thirty. True, it was a bit earlier than usual, but not by much. Rodge wasn’t there so I carried on with the modifications we were making to the equipment. If we were going to project resonating objects to different distances we needed much finer control of the dollop of energy. We decided to adjust the voltage in a series of precise steps. Within each step we’d get fine adjustment by controlling the pulse duration digitally. That way we could set any energy level throughout the range with great precision. I’m pretty handy with digital circuit design, so that part was my job.

  Rodge came in about half an hour later. He was white with anger and he kept walking this way and that running his hand through his hair and hissing, “Bastard, bastard…” It took me completely by surprise. I was still holding the soldering iron, poised over the circuit board.

  “What’s the matter, Rodge? Where have you been?”

  He looked at me for a moment, then sat heavily on a stool at the bench where I was working.

  “I’ve been to see my bank manager—” his lip curled as he added, “—at his invitation. He read me the riot act. I know the overdraft has got too large, I know that. But it’s only a matter of time before I start to pay it off. He won’t wait any longer. He’s ready to send the bailiffs in. Says he’s warned me countless times and his patience is at an end. God, he’s obnoxious! You know,” he laughed derisively, “he kept saying ‘Sir’, but he treated me like something the dog left on the carpet.”

  I knew that would bug Rodge even more than the threat of legal action.

  “Hell. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, God knows I don’t live extravagantly. But I’ve got to pay rent and put bread on the table.”

  He put his elbows on the bench and buried his head in his hands. He was usually so controlled. I hated to see him like this. I thought quickly.

  “Look, Rodge. Why don’t you give up your flat and come in with me? My place isn’t large but we could manage. At least there’d only be one lot of rent to pay. We can come to some arrangement about the food. You know, just while you’re going through this difficult patch.”

  He looked up at me slowly. There was a look of distant hope in his eyes.

  “Really, Mike? It would solve a lot of problems. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  I stuck the soldering iron back in its stand and switched it off.

  “We’ll leave this for now. Come on, we’ll do it right now. I’ll help you shift your gear.”

  You could say that was my first big mistake. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do.

  *

  Although it was busy in the lab—and remember, I was still trying to keep up with the M.Sc. course—I saw Suzy as much as I could. Usually we’d meet up at lunchtime and have a pizza or a sandwich together. At the weekend we’d take in a film or go to a restaurant or a club. The trouble was, it wasn’t going any further than that. We seemed to enjoy each other’s company—well, I was certainly enjoying hers. And I admit I was also enjoying the envious stares of other blokes as we walked along the street; nothing surprising there because she is good-looking, and no question. I could sense there was some sort of problem, though, and eventually I found out what it was. As I recall, it was a Saturday evening, and we were having a coffee after going to the cinema.

  “It’s nice to be getting out again,” she said. “You know, Mike, I’d cut myself off socially before you came along.”

  “Why on earth would you do a thing like that?”

  “Oh, I’d been going out with this fellow—we’d been together a long time. Then suddenly it all got unpleasant and ended. I was very upset—I don’t really want to talk about it. To be honest, I still feel pretty bruised. I know it’s all over with him, but these things take time. I hope you don’t mind, Mike. You know, just taking things slowly the way we are?”

  “No, sure, I understand.”

  She put a hand over mine and gave it a little squeeze.

  “You’re very kind, Mike. You know, I feel really comfortable with you.”

  I felt a bit better about it, now that I knew what the problem was. If she wanted to take things gradually it was all right with me; I liked her far too much to want to rush in and spoil things. I can be as patient as a cat waiting by a mouse-hole if I want to be. My main worry was that it would start to get platonic. I mean, I was glad she felt comfortable with me but I wanted more from our relationship than that. And then there was the way she’d kiss me goodnight. She’d bob up and peck me affectionately and run off. I had this urge to cup my hand around the nape of her lovely neck and bury myself in those full lips. Instead I’d be left standing there, running my tongue over my lips, savouring the taste of her lipstick. My chest ached with longing for her. I fantasized about her pressing that shapely body hard against me. But if she needed more time, what could I say? I was suffering, yet happy to be suffering. All a bit weird, really.

  Now that she trusted me, I thought it might help if I invited her round to the flat. I offered to cook dinner and she agreed to come. I told her it wouldn’t be anything fancy, and it wasn’t, but I did my best to present it nicely. I already knew she liked New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc so I bought a bottle and planned the meal round that. We had avocado for starters with a raspberry vinaigrette. Then I served up farfalle with smoked salmon and a side salad. My pastas are pretty good, even though I say so myself, and she really enjoyed it. I’m not into desserts so I just did a fruit salad with some ice-cream. That suited her fine, because she isn’t a big eater. We were just finishing dessert when Rodge came back from the lab. I introduced them and Rodge kind of nodded hello, much the same way he’d done to me when I first walked in on him about a month ago.

  “Do you want something to eat, Rodge?” I offered. “There’s another avocado in the bowl, and there’s some smoked salmon left over.”

  “No thanks, I ate on the way home,” he said.

  “Glass of wine, then?”

  “Yes, all right.”

  We chatted a bit and then Rodge went off to the lounge, leaving Suzy and me together in the kitchen. He said he had some calculations to work through. I thought he hadn’t gone out of his way to be nice to Suzy, but she didn’t seem to mind. In any case, she said, it was time she was getting back. We called a cab; she wouldn’t let me take her home. She thanked me a lot for the dinner and said how delicious everything had been and she knew I’d gone to a lot of trouble and it was really sweet of me. The peck she gave me was fractionally longer than before.

  15

  Rodge and I were doing a lot of experiments now, using the new, precise control we had over energy. We used ordinary objects—there was no need to use spiders, thank God. We projected the resonating object up to twenty feet, but that was all we could manage inside the lab. Over those distances it seemed to be proportional to power—if you doubled the power, you doubled the distance—but they were short distances, so you couldn’t really tell for sure. To make progress we needed to project much further. We knew we could project through the wall because we’d tried it. The trouble was, the object disappeared; we hadn’t the first clue where it had landed up. It could be on the other side of the wall or half a mile away for all
we knew.

  Eventually Rodge said, “There’s only one way to do this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have to get in the cage. If I’m projected I’ll know exactly where I am, and we can measure it up afterwards.”

  Well, I was half-expecting it, like I said before, but I was still a bit taken aback.

  “That’s a bit drastic, isn’t it? Is it safe?”

  “Well of course it isn’t safe. It’s bloody dangerous. Mind you, the spider seemed all right, but then it’s a pretty low life-form.”

  I could say amen to that.

  “I’ll get in touch with Tom Mayhew again. I think he’s still at Queen’s. See if he can lend us a rat.”

  Obviously Rodge wasn’t going to tell Tom Mayhew what we were really up to or say anything about his plans to go inside the cage himself. So he said it was an extension of what they’d done when they were working together before, with a mixture of different wavelengths applied simultaneously. That was fairly near to the truth. It was totally illegal, of course, because we weren’t licensed to work with animals, but eventually Tom agreed to help us out provided his rat wasn’t harmed and he could return it to the colony afterwards. Of course we couldn’t guarantee that but we gave him what assurances we could. In the end he really came up with the goods: he brought us a rat he’d trained. It had learned a maze and how to get food by responding to different signals in some sort of apparatus. Afterwards he’d be able to check its behaviour and see if it remembered the tasks. As a test subject it couldn’t have been better.