“Hand me those wire cutters,” Fixie said from inside a crawl space in the wall of the mat-trans chamber.
Doc grabbed a rusty pair of wire cutters from a battered metal toolbox on the floor. “Here they come.” He pushed them into the crawl space as far as he could; Fixie, who was on all fours, contorted himself to reach back and get them.
“Thanks, Theo. I’ll need the pliers next.”
“Coming right up.” Doc liked Fixie and didn’t mind playing second fiddle to him. Of the shifters he’d been spending time with, only Fixie had a remotely genuine personality.
“So are you sure about this?” Fixie asked from the crawl space. “You really want to fix this device and hand it over to Exo or Ankh?”
Were the questions a test? Doc couldn’t be sure they weren’t, though he had a gut feeling that Fixie was trustworthy. “Do you really think you can fix it? That you can finish Hammersmith’s work?”
“What if I do?” Fixie asked. “Would that be in the best interest of the people of the Shift?”
Doc pushed the pliers into the crawl space. “I do not think we have much choice, do we?”
Fixie chuckled. “Let’s just say I know a lot more about this gear than they think I do.” He reached back for the pliers. “Though it’s true that our old friend Union really did a number on the place.”
“Hammersmith’s number one assistant who trashed the joint,” Fixie replied. “I’ve been repairing it on the sly ever since, in dribs and drabs from detailed plans that Hammersmith drafted.”
“But Ankh said nothing in here had been touched since Hammersmith left.”
“He doesn’t know everything that goes on, though he likes to act as though he does.” Something clanked in the crawl space, and Fixie cursed softly. “I’ve been sneaking in here for months, setting things to rights.”
“So you can hand control over to Exo or Ankh?” Doc asked.
“So I can make this gear work the way Dr. Hammersmith intended. He created the Shift, you know, but he never meant to.” Fixie backed out of the crawl space, then stood and dusted himself off. “He wanted to turn the area into a Garden of Eden.”
“And that’s what you want, too?”
Fixie shrugged and dropped the pliers and wire cutters into his toolbox. “It wouldn’t hurt, would it?” He smiled and reached for a screwdriver. “It would sure beat what we’ve got now.”
Doc frowned. “You really think you can do it?”
“Do I understand everything Hammersmith set up here? Heck no.” Fixie swept the screwdriver in a circle, encompassing the room. “But can I get everything running again, and implement the changes mapped out in his plans? Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Then what?” Doc asked.
“Transform the Shift into paradise,” Fixie said. “Then destroy this equipment so no other idiot can get in here and ruin it.”
Doc nodded slowly. “If you can finish without Exo or Ankh interfering.”
“Good thing there are two of us in the picture now.” Fixie winked, then turned and headed across the cluttered room.
“If they do not get us before you finish, they will get us after,” Doc said. “Unless you have an escape plan of some kind.”
“Not yet. Though if we didn’t have all this torn apart, we’d be fine. This used to be a matter-transfer system.”
Doc knew all too well about the mat-trans, though he decided to keep playing his cards close to his vest. And he didn’t want to tip his hand by asking Fixie how he knew what it was.
“I had heard rumors about some sort of matter-transfer device but doubted its existence.”
“If it was still in one piece, we could supposedly just zap our way out of here,” Fixie said. “But we need to use it to make paradise instead.”
“Right.” Though Doc didn’t understand exactly how Hammersmith had converted the mat-trans to transform the local landscape, it did seem logical that it worked. Mat-trans tech juggled matter and energy, turning one into the other and back again. If it could reconstruct a human body from a beam of particles, why not use it to convert other matter into different forms, as well?
“If only we had some kind of weapons.” As Doc looked around the room, he took in the scattered tools and piles of junk. “Perhaps we could convert some of the contents of this chamber to that purpose.”
“Mebbe,” Fixie said, “but I think we ought to focus on getting this equipment up and running.” He went to a panel in the wall at eye level and loosened the screws in the corners. “First priority is solving the power-flow problem.”
Doc approached and watched over his shoulder. “You said the power source is intermittent?”
Fixie nodded as he pulled the panel off the wall. “There’s a nuclear reactor that powers this whole complex, but there’s a problem with the core. I haven’t figured out how to fix it, so I’ve been hooking this room up to a different source—a special high-yield nuclear battery backup. Once I switch over, we should have a steady, dedicated power flow to the mat-trans.”
“This will be up and running then?” Doc asked.
“I didn’t say that.” Fixie used the tip of the screwdriver to nudge apart some colorful wires in the space where the panel had been. “We’ve got a bigger problem, actually. The transmitter.”
“What about it?”
“It’s failing, too. Exo’s people have been trying to ‘fix’ it, but they’re clueless. We need to undo what they’ve done, which is the tricky part.”
“Why is it tricky?” Doc asked.
Fixie looked back at him. “Because it’s under armed guard.”
“But we have a mandate to repair the equipment, don’t we?”
“This equipment.” Fixie pointed at the floor. “But the transmitter’s handled by a separate team. Less possibility for one person to take control of all the components that way, I guess.”
Doc nodded. Though his tendency, in past adventures, had been to let others take the lead, his attitude had shifted in recent days. He’d begun thinking in a more proactive way.
Reaching down, he patted the razor blade in his coat pocket. “I suppose we’ll have to prove them wrong about that,” he said calmly.