The Quy Effect

by Arthur Sellings

  “Great? Great? Let me tell you”—Maddox broke off at a glare from the sister.

  “You mustn’t excite the patient,” she told him. “Are you a relative?”

  “If I ever thought that I could be related to that son of a—” Maddox stopped and coughed. “Don’t worry about your patient, sister. I’m the only one who’ll need treatment—for blood pressure.”

  “If he gets too excited,” Quy said, “I’ll just push the button.”

  The sister sniffed, glared again and departed.

  “Come and sit down, my dear chap,” said Quy. “They put armchairs in the private rooms, I’ll say that for them, not those horrible hard old things in the general ward. You might as well get value for your money, eh?”

  “My money?”

  “Well, the company’s.”

  “If you think the company’s going to pay a penny for your comfort, you must be raving mad. Have you seen the factory?”

  “Not since last night. It was all right, the last I remember of it. But I gather there was an explosion. I see there’s a bit about it in the papers. Well, I’m sorry if my little research hut got damaged, but the insurance will take care of that. You are insured, of course?”

  “Yes, we’re insured, Quy. But it wasn’t just a matter of your research building. Half the factory is demolished, and the other half won’t be fit to work in for weeks. Our stockroom doesn’t exist any more and its contents are a hundred percent write-off. We may be insured, but our customers can’t fill in the circuits of their computers and radios with insurance money. They need components, and they’ll get them elsewhere.”

  “Well, I can’t hold myself responsible for your company’s insurance cover or the efficiency of its service department. I wasn’t hired for that.”

  “I’ve been busy searching my brains, since I was hauled away from a cosy fireside late last night, for the reason you were hired.”

  “Always a joker, eh, Maddox? Well, you haven’t got a thing to worry about. That last sample did the trick.”

  “It certainly did,” Maddox said grimly.

  “Pah! That was only a regrettable side effect. I just overloaded it, that’s all. Maybe I did get a bit. carried away—in more ways than one, eh?—but I’d been working solidly for forty-eight hours. Don’t you see the mere fact of the blowout shows that it was a success? If it hadn’t been, the thing would simply have given up at the first few watts through it—the same as the others.”

  “With successes like yours, who wants failures?” Maddox waved a weary hand. “All right, I get the point. That particular sample must have been taking a lot of power before it blew out. But it didn’t just blow out—it blew up. Maybe you were using too small a section for the load you put on it, but the whole idea behind this misbegotten venture was to find a superconductor that would work—and be safe. That means it would have to have a capacity way above normal working.”

  “I was using a strip twenty centimeters by five by one. I put fifty thousand volts through it.”

  “You what! At what amperage? No, don’t tell me, otherwise I’ll be pushing that button right now.”

  “That’s the point. I was working it far beyond any required tolerance.”

  “But it exploded.”

  “So does a boiler when it’s overheated. Does that mean we have to scrap boilers?”

  “You can fit a safety valve to a boiler.”

  “And you can fit a cutout to this.”

  “Cutout!” Maddox snorted. “And how do you measure when you’re approaching the danger point? What do you measure it in?”

  “Details,” Quy said contemptuously. “I can easily iron out the bugs in it.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Maddox told him flatly. “As from this moment any connection between you and Hypertronics is severed.”

  “I’m not sure that a contract can legally be either made or terminated on the Lord’s day,” Quy said calmly. “I’ll have to get advice.”

  “You’ll have to get advice, all right. We had an extraordinary meeting of the board this morning. We agreed that the only satisfaction we could salvage from the wreckage was to sue you for willful damage to the tune of around a million pounds. The writ will state the exact amount.”

  “A million! That’s a good one. I haven’t got a million farthings.”

  “Then we’ll bankrupt you. And let me say that nothing could give me greater pleasure.”

  “What a nice loathsome commercial mind you have, Maddox. You’re forgetting one small detail.”

  “I am, am I?”

  “Yes,” said Quy cheerfully. “I’ve been bankrupt for years. In fact, I’ve been bankrupt more times in my life than you’ve chased a secretary round a filing cabinet.”

  “You’re not going to rile me, Quy. And you’re not going to mitigate the pleasure of Hypertronics in general, and me in particular. We’re going to sue you. We’re going to show you up for the maniac you are. We’ll hire a team of investigators to check on those credentials you gave us, for a start. Don’t think we can’t get back at you somewhere. You’re forgetting one small detail, too. Maybe you are a man of straw—”

  “Ooh, we’re full of lovely commercial phrases.”

  “This isn’t just a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. If we can prove false pretenses—and I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to—it won’t be just a case for the civil courts, but for the criminal ones. And you won’t be able to wriggle out of that—you’ll go behind bars.”

  “Now, wait, Maddox. You’re being a bit too hasty now.”

  “I thought that would make you change your tune.”

  “Not at all. It’s about time you changed yours. Can’t you see the possibilities in this? Whatever false pretenses you think you can prove around the edges—and you’ll have a hard job proving to any court that a man’s selling himself is a crime—the central proposition I came to you with was a perfectly valid one. It was that you would finance me in research into superconductors at ordinary temperatures. My starting point was the BCS theory, bucked up by Fritz London’s speculations and the further theories of Little of Stanford. The program was impeccably based.”

  “I’ve heard it all before, Quy, I might as well tell you that the board were getting mighty suspicious of you weeks before all this—when you put in those inflated figures for outside computer work.”

  “Inflated? You’d better he careful how you choose your words. Those computer programs were completely necessary and the figures were true ones.”

  “They were also well above your authorized budget for the project. So we had Curtis check all research details available, past and present, in the field. And he couldn’t find that you were doing anything that hasn’t been duplicated elsewhere, in some form or another.”

  “Duplication! My god, Maddox, duplication has been the keynote in science ever since Leibnitz and Newton discovered calculus simultaneously. And for all the ages before, probably. Probably a dozen people scattered through the world invented the wheel at the same time. Don’t talk to me about duplication. I’ve had enough credit snatched from me before by duplication.”

  He laughed hollowly.

  “And now, I turn up with the answer first, and all you can do is threaten lawsuits! It worked, Maddox, can’t you get that into your head? I was breaking new ground. I knew I was getting close to it. Perhaps I was too busy to keep your office properly informed, but I didn’t want any holdups. How else do you think an explosion that size could have happened unless that little bit of material of mine had absorbed everything I’d fed it up to that point? And then broken down and released it all in one go? Come on, you tell me. You’re a scientist—or you were one before you got bogged down in the commercial details. You tell me.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “Oh no, it isn’t. You’ll have to prove just what form my alleged willful destruction took. And in so doing I fancy that you’d only prove my case for me. And, if it comes to lawsuits, let me remi
nd you that I have a contract with Hypertronics, and I haven’t given you the slightest grounds for tearing it up. Furthermore, on a level to which I must confess I would hesitate to stoop, unless—” he fixed the other with a beady eye—“I was forced to, let me point out that I was a workman for the company and, as such, entitled to the protection of the various Workmens’ Compensation Acts.”

  “You’re stark, staring mad!”

  “Am I? I think I’m a reasonable man, if you handle me properly. I don’t want to force the issue. All I want is my job and my laboratory back. So you’d better get the salvage squads onto that little job as top priority. And the necessary allocations out of the insurance money. Because as soon as I can escape from this boneyard I’ll be presenting myself at the Hypertronics gates.”

  Maddox got to his feet, his face twitching. By the time he reached the door, he seemed to have regained control, if barely.

  “You’ll be wasting your time. They’ll be barricaded.”

  “In that case,” said Quy sweetly, “I’ll bring a battering ram. Or a ballista.”

  Four

  The sister came in at nine o’clock that evening. Quy was hunched up in bed, his left arm stiff in its sling, the other clutching his skinny knees. His face drawn in the small circle of light from his bed lamp, he stared gloomily out of the window into the darkness beyond.

  “Mr. Quy. Now come along. I told you half an hour ago it was lights out. You must get some rest.”

  “I don’t want rest, Leave me alone, woman, I’m thinking.”

  The sister sniffed. “Some pretty unpleasant thoughts, too, by the look on your face.”

  He turned his head, leering. “I think I’m pregnant, sister.”

  “I think you’re crazy.”

  “A seventy-year gestation with a monster inside me. And it’s stuck. You’d look pretty pained, too. What do you recommend, sister—a cesarean?”

  The sister made a grab for his pillow and jerked it back. She held up the pill triumphantly. “I thought so! I’ll settle you, my lad.”

  She came back with a pill as big as his eyeball.

  “Try hiding this under your tongue.” She opened his jaws and thrust the pill in, clamping back his lower jaw. “Now swallow, you old bastard.”

  His eyes popped, but a massive involuntary gulp took place.

  “That’s better,” said the sister. “I’m going off duty now. If I get a single adverse report on you tomorrow, Plan A goes into operation. And that’s only Plan A. Goodnight, Mr. Quy.”

  “You saboteur! You—you miscegenated daughter of a Limehouse pox-doctor. You—”

  But his invective was addressed to a blank door and already his old lids were heavy.

  He woke to a gentle but persistent shaking of his good shoulder. It was the redheaded nurse. He tried to sit up, but winced in pain.

  “What time is it?” The day was bright outside the window.

  “Eleven o’clock.”

  “Gawd, has there been a revolution in the hospital world? I thought your day started in the middle of the night.”

  “Sister’s special orders, Mr. Quy.”

  “Don’t mention that crab-faced hag to me.”

  “We’re forbidden to hear blasphemy against sisters and matrons. Even when we do the blaspheming. Sister’s all right. She’s got a heart of gold, really.”

  “Brass, you mean.”

  “Anyway; Mr. Quy, I didn’t wake you up to discuss Sister. You’ve got a visitor. Shall I send him in, or is there anything you want first?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the bedpan, for instance.”

  “You’re the essence of tact. I’ll decline your generous offer. Send him in.”

  She ushered in a tall, fair-haired boy before departing.

  The boy’s eyes followed her. He turned back, grinning.

  “They’re looking after you, then, AQ. Can I put my name down?”

  “You keep your mind on your studies,” the old man said. “How are you, Alan, my boy? Come and sit down on the bed.”

  “You’re stealing my lines. How are you?”

  “Fine. Just a small failure of a minor strut. It’s a self-repairing mechanism.” He glared sharply at the boy. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

  “I took the day off. Couldn’t let an opportunity like this slip by. Almost as good as a grandmother’s funeral.”

  “That’s no excuse. You must keep up with your classes.”

  “Father says you never cared at all whether he attended school or not.”

  “Did he now?”

  “Well, he implied it. Part of the speech when I get bad marks, about how much better opportunities I’ve got than he ever had, and all that jazz.”

  “We-ell, maybe I didn’t care much. I was probably a bastard of an old man to him. But I couldn’t help it.” He sighed. “I always had a system of priorities that most people wouldn’t agree with. And top of that list was my work. When I wasn’t working, I was dreaming—which is probably the most important kind of work of all. I’ve gone through my life on dreams and hunches. I couldn’t analyze things, in a laboratory or in myself. If you analyze things you break them down. Build, boy, build, that’s what you’ve got to do. My hunch about your father told me that I’d pupped a conformist. There’s nothing wrong with that. The world’s full of conformists. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be anybody to support people like me.

  “I’m blathering on, boy. And misleading you. Of course you’ve got to analyze, separate the strands of a problem. But you’ve got to be ready to weave them together again in a new pattern. Creative analysis?—no, that’s not the right word. To hell with it. You just obey your father. He hasn’t done badly for himself. Nor for his family. You haven’t reached the age of making decisions yet—not the ones that matter. I know he thought I never went to school. I didn’t, more often than I could help—but I was reading, testing things all the time. I didn’t get the chance of a university, or even a grammar school. If I had, I should probably have grabbed at them with both hands.” He sighed again, more heavily. Then he chuckled. “But, on balance, I’m glad I didn’t get the chance. I wouldn’t have got to where I have today.

  “And where am I today? A bloody old wreck, a failure, lying in a hospital bed. Is that where? Not on’ your life, son. I’m on the threshold of something big at last.”

  “Are you, grand-dad? I knew it! As soon as—”

  “Grand-dad!” the old man shrieked. “How many times do I have to tell you—”

  The boy bit his lip. “Sorry, AQ, I forgot in my excitement. When they told me you’d blown yourself up, I knew that you must have been doing something way out.”

  “Hrrmph. Equating violence with importance isn’t worthy of you. But we’ll let that pass. This was violent And it is important. The only snag is—I don’t know yet what I’ve stumbled on.”

  “You don’t stumble on anything, AQ.”

  “Schmooze will get you nowhere. But, there again, you’re right. Nobody stumbles on anything. You’ve got to be looking, even if you don t know what you’re looking for.” His watery old eyes lost focus, and remained so for a full minute. They snapped back startlingly. “What do you know about superconductivity?”

  “Er—it takes place when metals are cooled to absolute zero. Isn’t that right?”

  “Well, partly right.”

  “Is that what you’ve been working on? I bet that’s a marvelous plant, isn’t it? Just how do you get down as low as that?”

  “Hold on! Who said I’ve been working on low temperatures? That was the whole point of the work. And it wasn’t on metals. But since that was how superconductivity was discovered, and metals are the only substances it’s been induced in up to now, let me give you a brief history.

  “It started about sixty years ago when a Dutchman called Onnes liquefied helium—the only gas nobody had succeeded in liquefying up to then. And you’re wrong about absolute zero. Kelvin maintained that at absolute zero metals would bec
ome perfect insulators, not superconductors, because their electrons, instead of being movable without friction—which is what happens in superC—would become welded to their atoms and be immovable. Since nobody’s got to absolute zero yet, nobody’s proved it or disproved it. It’s irrelevant to our main point, anyway, except that it’s typical of the speculations that people came up with. They discovered all kinds of odd effects down there—and they got so bloody wrapped up in it that they didn’t start wondering about whether superC could happen at more normal temperatures.

  “At least, not for years, until about twenty years ago, when a scientist called Fritz London fancied that the same subatomic setup which occurred at very low temperatures might be discovered in large organic molecules like protein. Unfortunately London died before he had a chance to do much practical work on the idea. Then a Dr. Little of Stanford University picked it up several years later. He actually hypothesized the shape the superconducting molecule would have to be—a long chain of carbon atoms which he called a spine, with alternating single and double bonds along it, projecting from which would be molecules of diethyl-cyanine iodide, which is highly polarizable and—”

  “AQ—”

  “—therefore capable of transmitting electrons freely—” He shifted testily. “Yes, boy, what is it?”

  “You’re leaving me behind, AQ. Diethyl-cyanide what was it?”

  “Cyanine iodide. It’s a dye used to sensitize photographic emulsions. Sorry, lad, I’m using you to go back over the steps I followed to see if I could get a clue. The real point is that Little’s hypothetical molecule was ferociously complex, like the genetic molecule DNA, only more so. It meant engineering a molecule to specification—a molecule that, unlike DNA, doesn’t exist in nature.

  “Briefly, I thought I could simplify the specification. Still complex, but attainable. I sold the research program to an electronics firm. Thirty years ago you couldn’t have sold any organic chemistry idea to those lads—except maybe a new plastic for an insulator. But since Philips in Australia bred living crystals for transistor work, it’s easier. I chose too small an outfit, that was the trouble, blast them.”