Hidden Variables (27 page)

"I told you, it wasn't the sort of thing they would accept," said Jack gently. "I found what I thought I would find—the faucet of the outside shower still turned on, as it was at the moment when Mahler died. And all around the shower, forty feet in all directions, the marks of a big splash in the sand. A few hundred gallons hitting all at once makes a big spread, much bigger than you'd ever get from the same amount coming down in a slow trickle. I thought that's what I'd see, when I first had the chance for a good look at this. Remember, the police found it thirty feet from the shower."

He pulled a thin blue notebook from his pocket, wallet size, and handed it to me. I opened it and stared at the pages.

"What's it say?" asked George.

I shook my head. "I don't know. It's unreadable, all you can see is a lot of runny blurs. This could say anything at all."

"Aye, true enough," said Jack. He sighed. "That was Mahler's notebook, the one where he kept the details of all his experiments. It was over near the air mattress, where he'd left it when he went in for a swim. When the super-water smashed him, the book got thoroughly soaked by the splash, even though it was thirty feet away. It's a great pity, but as I told you Mahler's notes were all kept in ink. It ran so much that I've only been able to make out odd words of it, here and there. But if I ever do decipher it, the whole thing, I'll know Mahler's secret of slippery water, and that will make me rich. I can't see Vic Lakman ever talking about it, or working on it again."

"Hold on," said George suddenly, while the rest of us were still staring at the water-run pages of the notebook. "We've not been watching what we were doing here, and Jack has taken all the tricks so far. If we don't watch out he'll take the lot."

"Too late, I'm afraid," said Jack quietly. He laid the rest of his cards, face up, on the table. "I think you'll find these are winning cards for the last three tricks. Let's see, shooting the sun like this takes my score down by fifty-two points, right? I think that puts me nicely in the lead, just ahead of George."

He stood up and picked up the blue notebook, weighing it in his hand and looking at it thoughtfully.

"Aye. Might be a good time for me to call it a day, and maybe have one more look at this before I turn in. Drive carefully, all of you, and I'll see you all next week."

He turned back for a second in the doorway. "Aye, and don't any of you take chances when you're in the shower. After all, you never know when some smart man will re-discover Mahler's invention."

AFTERWORD: THE SOFTEST HAMMER.

The "slippery water" described in this story is real enough. It's made by adding a polyethylene oxide polymer to ordinary water to reduce the viscosity, and that allows more water to flow through a hose—not a thousand times more, but perhaps twice as much.

The writers' group is real, too. It's called the Vicious Circle, a moveable feast where every Wednesday night George Andrews, Peter Altermann, Dave Bischoff, Ted White, Steve Brown, Paul Halpine, Rich Brown and other regulars meet to read and comment on each other's stories. Criticism is severe—we argue that encouragement and stroking are readily available from family and friends. What we aim to do is to make any subsequent disparaging comments from editors and reviewers seem mild by comparison.

When I first wrote this story I had the whole writers' group in there, but I was forced to omit some people when I sent it out for submission to a magazine. No reader could be expected to keep track of a dozen different characters in a story of less than five thousand words.

I was going to apologize here to those who have been left out of the published version. After some thought, I have decided that my apologies must go to those who were left in.

HIDDEN VARIABLE

The beginning of the Scorpio meteor shower was estimated for 19.00 hours. Already there had been a couple of bright flares far below in the Earth's atmosphere, as early members of the shower signalled their arrival.

Jose Perona had trained the big scope downwards, turning it from its usual work of planetary observation. From the synchronous station, twenty-two thousand miles above the equator, he could easily see the lights of Quito, geometrical patterns of white points beneath them. After a few minutes he grunted and turned to his companion.

"What do you think, Mackie? That's the fourth meteor I've seen burn up in two minutes down there."

Mack Johnson glanced over at the wall display. He frowned. "Still over an hour to go, if that 19.00 hour estimate is any good. Where did it come from?"

Jose had pushed himself lightly from his seat by the telescope and floated over to the computer console. He made a rapid data entry and looked at the display console before he replied.

"Pretty old data. The Scorpio's are a long-period group—ninety years since they were here. I bet we're seeing some spreading in elements, even though Outer Station has been tracking them for a month now. We'd better assume we'll need the screens up early."

Mack Johnson sighed. "That's going to make us unpopular, I know for a fact that Lustig has an X-ray observation going that he'd like to hold for another two hours. All right, better safe than sorry."

He picked up the phone and accessed public address. "Attention, all personnel. The Scorpio shower seems to be here early. The Wenziger screens will be switched on five minutes from now. Repeat. The Wenziger screens will be switched on in five minutes. Secure all external materials and prepare for communication blackout."

He disconnected and grimaced. "I give us thirty seconds, Jose, then listen to the complaints come in. I bet that interrupts a hundred experiments up here."

Even as he spoke, the phone had begun to buzz angrily. He ignored it and coded in an Earth-link circuit. The Quito station cut in at once. They could see the com technician turning back from the window to face their communicator screen.

"Been expecting you," he said. "I've been watching the shower start—it's early, right?"

"Looks like it." Mack nodded. "We'll be cutting in the Wenziger's in about four minutes. The shower is supposed to last about fourteen hours. We'll talk to you again when we're shielded by Earth—six and a half hours from now, maybe a little more. Anything need saying that can't wait?"

The technician shook his head. "I have a pile of messages, nothing urgent. Talk to you again when you switch off the Wenziger's."

They cut the connection and began the final count-down and turned on the Wenziger screen. Everything went dead on the display, instantly. Mack leaned back in his seat and looked again at the phone. The complainers had all given up their efforts to reach him.

"Ever wonder what would happen if the Universe were to end while we've got the Wenziger's on?" he said. "Think we'd know about it?"

Jose shrugged. "Not until we came back out again.
Nothing
gets through, if the theory's right. Perlman tried a neutrino detection experiment a couple of years ago, and he thought a couple of those were penetrating the screen, but he couldn't get the same result when he tried it again." He switched off the dead displays. "Won't need these 'til we come out again. You know, there's a funny thing about these Wenziger screens."

Mack was running through all the input receiver systems. There was nothing but thermal noise on any of them.

"Funny thing?" He turned back to face Perona. "The whole idea of the screen's funny to me. I had years of the theory in school, and I still don't understand any of it. Just be thankful we have 'em, that's all—we'd have fried in that last solar flare without 'em."

"Yeah. Sure. I don't know how they work, either. But there's still something funny about them," Jose persisted. "They have the wrong name."

"Wenziger? What's wrong with that?"

They had settled back in their seats, secure in the knowledge that there would be—could be—no incoming or outgoing signal until the screens were switched off.

"Back when we had the theory, back when I was in school, we had to do a paper on the screens." Jose shrugged. "I was keen in those days. I went back to the original reference papers. Couldn't understand them, but I'll tell you one thing.
None
of those original papers was by Wenziger. Not one."

Mack was frowning, running his fingers over the channel selectors. "That's dumb. You must have missed something. I think I even remember reading papers by Wenziger in my physics course—long time ago, now, but I remember the name."

"Yeah, Wenziger was a physicist. But all the papers with the theory in them were by Nissom."

"
Laurance
Nissom?"

"How many others do you know?"

"None. But if that's true, why are they always called the Wenziger screens?"

Jose Perona was smiling smugly. "My question, let me point out. I told you there was something funny about the Wenziger's. All right then, Mackie, stop fiddling with those keys and listen. I'll tell you how they got their name—even a lump like you ought to know this one.
Nissom
named 'em that . . ."

* * *

It was dark when he reached the wall; pitch-dark, moonless, with stars hidden by a heavy overcast. He squatted down and felt carefully for his first marker, a sticky blob of resin dabbed on the smooth stone surface. He felt his way down from the resin patch to the groove at the base of the wall, then traced a line outward to the small pebble of his second marker.

The darkness was complete. Everything had to be done by touch, by carefully rehearsed and precise movement. Slowly, carefully, measuring a line down past his braced fingers, he pushed the length of sharpened piano wire into the soft soil beneath the pebble.

After five time-consuming failures, he on the sixth attempt felt a faint pulse returned along the stiff wire. He had struck the coaxial cable that took the signals from the eyes on the top of the wall back to the house.

He straightened up, breathed deeply, and carefully brushed the loose earth from the knees of his trousers. The high wall, invisible, loomed beside him. He knew its exact height and the shape of the concave overhang that led to its top. The surface, cold in the summer night, felt smooth and seamless to his outstretched hand.

He placed his back square to the wall to give him direction, then using the lights of the distant house as a second guide he walked ten measured paces away from the wall. He bent forward. Plunging his hands through the upper branches of an azalea bush, he felt his way down to the cache hidden at its base. One by one, he pulled objects out from it and carried them back to the base of the wall.

Ten trips, and he had the whole collection. He ran his hands over them slowly, noting their exact positions.

They made a strange assortment, a rusting and jagged heap of junk on the dry earth. He picked up the heaviest one first, a four-foot length of thick iron pipe scavenged from the boiler room. The rope tied around its jointed end was old and frayed, a discarded clothesline from the garden shed, but he had tested it carefully and knew it would be strong enough. Placing his foot on the rope end, he swung the pipe around and with a grunt of effort hurled it upwards and over the wall. There was a heavy thud as it struck the earth on the other side.

He waited a full minute, looking back towards the big house for signs of extra activity there. All remained quiet; but that was little reassurance. If the eyes on top of the wall were also tuned to thermal wavelengths, a cold object would pass where a man could not.

He bent to pick up his second find, a massive iron wheel from a derelict washing machine. He secured the end of the rope tied to it, then it too went over the wall to join the iron pipe.

One by one, the roped objects were thrown up and over. He fingered the final one for a few seconds before he swung and heaved. It was a heavy bronze statue of Mars, God of War, clad in helmet, armor, and massive metal leggings. He had seen and hated it every day in the library. Removing it that afternoon had been a pleasure.

Ten lengths of rope trailed upwards from his feet into the darkness. He picked up the whole bunch and began to twist them together into a single braided cable, turning until each one merged with its companions. Then he began to climb, feet braced against the wall. When he reached the top he paused and looked back at the house. Still no sign of increased activity.

He peered down. This was the unpredictable part. He had not been able to determine what lay outside and now he would have to jump blind. A ten-foot drop onto sharp fencing would end everything.

Bracing himself, he pushed off hard with his hands and dropped into the darkness.

* * *

"Come on in, Wenziger. I'll be through here in a minute."

The man behind the desk nodded his visitor to a chair and went on with telephone dictation. His jacket was off and his shirt sleeves rolled up, to reveal strong and tanned forearms. A cigarette, lit but unsmoked, smoldered in the gunmetal ashtray in the middle of the big desk. The man who had entered the room received no further attention from him until a full page of dictated memorandum had been completed.

"Right," he said at last, dropping the telephone back onto its stand. "That should hold them for a day or two. You heard, did you, that our bird has flown?"

The other man nodded. He had been patiently sitting, knees together and heavy briefcase resting on his thighs. In contrast to the relaxed and casual man behind the desk, the newcomer was stiff and formal. He looked pressed and polished, from the shining surface of his black shoes, past the charcoal-grey suit to the glistening top of his bald, domed head.

"I was told as I came to the outer office. In view of this, General, perhaps our meeting will not be necessary?"

His voice was soft and husky, with a faint trace of an accent. Not quite German, somewhere a bit farther east.

The man behind the desk picked up his neglected cigarette and inhaled a long drag.

"Like hell. We need to talk
more
now. They had Laurance Nissom in a maximum security hospital and he got out. Before this he could have been just a kook. Now I need to know all about him." He tapped the thick dossier on the desk in front of him. "Lots of stuff in here, but nothing about this new work. Did you get through the stuff I sent to you?"