Again, Dangerous Visions Part 55

The bodies were dragged out. Lukas was sick, seeing what had happened to Herkie. But Pete Santini was all in one piece, except for the lack of an ear and a hole underneath it.

The woman at his elbow whispered, G.o.d!" and Stoner nodded.

"You ran them off the road!"

"They robbed me, I chased them. But I was behind when-h.e.l.l. Are you sure you called my lawyer?" As Lukas spoke, the trooper's face swung out of the 500-watt glare, to get its forehead wiped. Nothing subtle about these guys. Bare bulbs, handcuffs, and threats.

The jowly face came back. Robbed, h.e.l.l. We found no stolen goods in the car."

"Then look again. A hologram projector and two filters. Burned maybe." Hadn't all this sort of stuff gone out with Jack Webb?

"Who'd bother with those those?"

"Read the papers much?"

"Don't get wise, kid."

"Look, my name's Peter Lukas. I'm all over Section Two of last Sunday's Times. Read Times. Read the G.o.ddam thing and leave me alone." the G.o.ddam thing and leave me alone."

Whap. They even had nerve enough to hit him. Everything had a phony ring. Should they be working him over before Jack Adams got here? Or at all? And what were Stoner and that skinny b.i.t.c.h doing, watching from the back of the room?

"What sort of blowup is this? You guys act like a Grade B movie."

Whap, again.

Lukas was getting mad, which was not good; not with his temper. They might wring some sort of incriminating statement out of him if he blew. Or he might just get up out of his chair and kick that big b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the teeth, and get shot for it. These guys were out to get get him. Why, he didn't know. Better shut up, shut up, shut up until Jack Adams gets here. him. Why, he didn't know. Better shut up, shut up, shut up until Jack Adams gets here. If they'd even called him If they'd even called him.

"Look kid. You admit you were chasing them when they went over. You admit they were friends, so why would they rob you? I say you all got ga.s.sed and were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around and started racing and you got serious and ran them off. It reads like manslaughter. Unless you-"

The trooper was about to go on, but glanced up frowning against the glare, nodded and backed away. Bootsteps retreating, scuffling in the room, door opening, figures going out, door closing. Two people were left. Stoner and the woman.

She came over, stretched to reach the spotlight rather than walking to it, turned it off, backed away.

"What's the matter, honey? Afraid of the big bad killer?"

"Yes, frankly." Not a glimmer of expression in her voice, or on her face. Ice.

Stoner shuffled over with two chairs, put one facing Lukas and one facing away. He straddled the backward one, rested his chin on it, took off his hat and smiled. The woman sat in the other, legs tightly crossed.

"I sort of got you into this," Paul Stoner said. I can get you out. If you cooperate. I had a better scheme but you messed me up."

"I was wondering where you figured in this. So you put Pete and Herkie up to-?"

"Yes."

"Baby, you're lucky I've got these cuffs on."

"I suppose so." Stoner's eyes were watering. He fumbled in his coat, drew out a bottleful of white pills. All Dr. Osborn here wants is a look at Nereid Nereid's projector."

Lukas' control was slipping again. Who do you think you are? Rob a guy, frame him, blackmail him? And get people killed."

Stoner gulped, replaced the cap, replaced the bottle. I am am the CIA, looking after the best interests of the country." the CIA, looking after the best interests of the country."

"Screw the CIA." Stoner smiled that sleepy smile of his, while the angular Dr. Osborn only blinked.

Lukas waited for the man to say something more, but no. He just sat and looked. He was done, it seemed. So I do what you say or I'm up for manslaughter?"

"Now you've got it." Stoner stretched over to the desk, picked up the key to Lukas' handcuffs. you've got it." Stoner stretched over to the desk, picked up the key to Lukas' handcuffs.

Only the three of them went up to the studio. Two of the crewcut German Shepherdy-looking men waited downstairs, two more outside. It was the next morning.

Cidi Osborn walked to the middle of the room, hands on hips, and looked around bleakly. The studio was twenty by fifteen, the entire upper story of Lukas' cottage. It was old, wooden, creaky, and poorly lit. It stank of plating solutions and fried onions. It was a mess. The back third of the room was more or less filled with Bolger equipment, which stood out to her like a diamond in a toilet bowl. Lukas, his world, his manners-were all things she actively hated. And he knew it.

A step away, arms folded across his chest, Lukas was thinking the same sort of thoughts about her. And she knew it.

Paul Stoner, whose mind ran to generalities from time to time, saw them as art versus science, fire versus water, everything versus everything else. It made him uncomfortable. He would be more than happy when this job was done.

"All right. Nereid Nereid." Lukas stepped to the back of the room, picked a labeled hatbox from two dozen like it, carried it to the tank, opened it. He took out the projector and snapped it into place.

Then he stepped to the console, brought up power, and they waited while the thing warmed up. In two or three minutes, Nereid Nereid took shape within the tank. Shall I plate it?" took shape within the tank. Shall I plate it?"

"No, thank you. This is all I need. For now. Thank you."

Lukas went over to the side of the room, his face a stone. The CIA man took a seat on the bench opposite. Cidi worked.

There was no loudly ticking clock in the room, so Lukas had to suppose he was making it up. Time and more time. He felt like a patient in surgery. She even looked like a doctor, as she bent over the holotank with her optical micrometer, measuring Nereid Nereid. And Nereid Nereid was him. He imagined her dispa.s.sionately measuring his fingernails with that mike, weighing the dirt underneath, learning more about him than even he knew-or would ever know. was him. He imagined her dispa.s.sionately measuring his fingernails with that mike, weighing the dirt underneath, learning more about him than even he knew-or would ever know.

There was no loudly ticking clock in the room, so Cidi imagined it was her pulse. She felt like a thief. Like someone copying homework. While he stood there watching. She kept telling herself that you can't rob an animal, hut it wasn't working.

Other things weren't working. Even while measuring the hologram she knew it wouldn't be enough. Sure, she could duplicate this particular shape, complex though it was. She could see all the internal curves now, and trace them back to their source geometries. But everything was so random. She doubted any correlations would come out of this.

After four pages of notes and measurements, she no longer doubted, she knew. Paul."

"Ah?" He came over, stretching a sleepy knee between paces.

"It's not going to work. I know what but not how. I've got to see him work."

Lukas laughed; the room rang. So they couldn't couldn't reduce him to a punched card, after all. And somehow he didn't think watching him sculpt would help that skinny broad much either. So when Stoner asked him, he consented. He shouldn't have. reduce him to a punched card, after all. And somehow he didn't think watching him sculpt would help that skinny broad much either. So when Stoner asked him, he consented. He shouldn't have.

Lukas sat in the leather armchair facing the tank, a microphone in his hand, a vocoder in his lap. A cord ran from it to the TST that filled one wall. "Heyyy..." sung not said, brought a sheet of fire dancing into the Bolger tank. He chuckled. "Just warming up." The words flickered through the tank, like bubbles in an animated beer sign.

"Roouunnnd," he codeworded. He got his sphere. Then, "Woomb," and the sphere went flaccid and hollow. "We need wings. Wings, are like-aaarms that are-flat. Dig? Tankie, do you dig?" Little green light. "Okay. Winngs. Good. Now, biig wiings. Clooverleeaf, at the bottom. And-d.a.m.n." He waited for the green light. "And a faace right. And-another face left."

The tank was warming up, the light went green almost as soon as the words left his lips. Inside, a totem of monstrosities grew, a three-dimensional doodle. It got more and more complicated, more and more grotesque. And bigger. Now it had arms and legs, a sausage man of little things and shapes.

It was hard to look at the thing. Lukas must have had thirty percent of the tank's volume supporting an image. That's a lot of light, a lot of power. It dazzled. The room grew hot. The tank's fans speeded up.

He kept on going, his words coming faster and faster. Some were sung, some said, some whispered. He was sweating, oblivious to Stoner and the woman. The room began to smell: of insulation, old wooden house, food, of Peter Lukas.

He was chattering now. There was danger of blowing the breakers and losing the whole thing. They didn't know it but Lukas had long since put junipers around them.

He stopped. In the glow of the monstrous shape of shapes, his own face was fanatically outlined, eyes wide, lips parted, pressed right against the mike. He strained forward in the chair. Then he said, Aaand noowww," and heaved himself from the chair.

He walked over to the tank, stared into the dazzle. "That bubble should come off," he muttered to the mike, "on the upper left limb. Just the bubble. There's-something underneath. Only it's hidden. Take off the next, too. Make it lighter, lighter. Level off between and keep that twist, that's probably her hand. Her hand. But make it lighter. Just run from point, to point..." He never stopped talking.

Cidi watched, fascinated. This was sculpture, the art of paring away. Lukas had merely been making his raw material before. What he did now was what counted. But the very idea of just "paring away" overshadowed everything he did. Like derivation derivation, she thought, wasn't it the physical equivalent of mathematical derivation?

The convolutions smoothed under his hands, his pleadings to let the shape out, uncover it, make it lighter. Hours came and went.

He was reeling before the tank, eyes glazed, clothes sweat-soaked. She stood beside him, listening, watching. Paul Stoner stood at the back of the room feeling nauseated, afraid of what was going on. The shape in the tank-the thing in the tank was Cidi Osborn.

Peter Lukas pa.s.sed out at four-thirty in the afternoon. His eyes were so bloodshot and dry that the lids would not slide down to cover them. The tip of his nose was blistered. There was dried blood on his lips, a spray from a throat that hadn't been silent for eight hours straight.

While Paul Stoner repaired the man, Cidi Osborn pumped thirty pounds of electrolytic nickel into the tank's hopper, and plated out a permanent cast of her own effigy. She tried not to look at it. Even though she'd seen it coming at her for hours, she tried not to look at it.

It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. It stimulated odd thoughts about G.o.d and mathematics. Cidi Osborn was a Madonna, but in her arms she carried not a Christ but a void. She knew what it meant but didn't care. She was shattered but didn't care. She would never be the same, but it didn't matter. Because Cidi Osborn knew how. She knew how he did it.

Paul Stoner woke Lukas up around nine o'clock, and offered him a badly made sandwich. "Do you go through this every time?" he asked.

"Yes." They were downstairs in his bedroom.

"She got what she wanted, you know. She worked over that thing you made. She got that statue to float float. It's completely insensitive to gravity." Stoner had his jacket off, was looking paunchy, tired, ready to go home.

Overhead, Lukas could hear the tank humming, cooling off, and an occasional footstep. He sighed, got up. "Let's go see."

Cidi was sitting in his chair. She had not used the microphone or vocoder, but had subst.i.tuted her own keyboard. It lay on the floor beside her now. Floating in the middle of the room, tethered by a piece of clothesline, was a solid nickel statue. It was the same that Lukas had left.

But it was better.

The thing was esthetically blinding. It wasn't anything as crude crude as a Madonna embracing a void, but it was that idea, distilled, quantified, purified. as a Madonna embracing a void, but it was that idea, distilled, quantified, purified.

She waved him over with her notebook, nodding to the half-filled page where she'd been working. In her absorption she had forgotten who Lukas was, or how he'd feel. "Start with any basic contour," she said, "and take successive derivatives of all points on its surface until it resembles a Steininger Series. Any point that doesn't fit-well, just remove it. See? That's what you were doing, Lukas, only you didn't know it, by paring away. Your instincts must be mathematical."

But he ignored the notebook, her voice, herself. He walked slowly around the statue. There was simply nothing else to do, she'd said the last word. It was perfect. No one who disagreed could be right: beauty was no longer in the eyes of the beholder. The most elusive thing in the world had been quantified.

He said, I suppose you could start with anything else, and make it perfect too. Nereid Nereid even." even."

"Perfect?"

"Esthetically."

"Oh." A shrug. "I could null it to gravity, yes. And, as a side effect I suppose-"

"Side effect," Lukas murmured.

Cidi bit a lip. After all, she wasn't completely insensitive. "It's a high price to pay," she said slowly, "even for an interstellar drive."

Peter Lukas shuffled out of the studio like a tired old man. No, not the studio, the laboratory. There weren't any studios, anymore. He went down to the kitchen, opened a beer, leaned against the sink.

When every new idea is born an old one dies. But dies hard.

As they came down past the kitchen, Paul Stoner saw him there, staring at the floor. He said goodbye but Lukas didn't look up. Paul shrugged and went on. He'd have been more sympathetic if it wasn't so late. He felt a little foolish as he loaded Cidi, her statue, and all four of his agents into the Plymouth. Four professional protectors. He should have known better than to expect Lukas to react with his usual violence. Shattered men aren't violent.

"Everybody in?" A mumbled chorus of a.s.sent. He poked the engine to life and they started down the mountain.

They were almost out to Eighty-seven when one of the German Shepherd types in the back seat said, "Paul?"

"What?" He was irritated, busy, trying to keep the bulky sedan somewhere near the center of Lukas' impossible drive.

"I think he's coming after us."

In the rearview mirror a single light came charging. Paul Stoner tried to stop. The brakes weren't equal to it; not on this grade, not with this load. Paul licked his lips. What was that maniac going to do, ram them? The slightest nudge would put the underpowered sedan over the edge. But on a bike? He'd kill himself. No. They'd killed him already; he wouldn't care. So Paul said, "Shoot him!"

They tried. But the cycle leaped down at them like a wild animal, and was just as hard to hit. There were one or two shots at first, carefully aimed. As the avenging headlight grew brighter the shooting deteriorated into a panicked volley. The car filled with the stink and sound of pistols.

Ahead was the final turn. Behind was Lukas. In the back seat, hugging the weightless, Christless Madonna in her lap, Cidi Osborn began to laugh.

Afterword.

If you want to build something really nice, what blocks do you use; dreams or facts? Could genuine effort with either lead you to the same place? It's certain that no living painter has escaped the influence of the photograph; nor any sculptor the handiness of power tools or the pervasive rectangularity of the machine age. But could someone like Cidi actually work the thing backwards and discover something of the universe in a statue?

Yes, I think it's going to happen. For a while the romantics among us will run these people over cliffs and such, but how long can you hold something like weightlessness down?