His death wish surpassed that of any mortal. And yet it bestowed upon him-and only him-the power of flight between the stars.
He was Virgil Grissom Kinney, and he was insane beyond hope.
Caged and bound in a madhouse he festered like a scorned, feared animal. In an age when madmen were almost unknown, he was a ranting exception. Sometimes he raged against his restraints with muscle-tearing fury. Other times he retreated into catatonic silence, conducting a silent, internal war.
Drugs, nutrition, therapies from Freud to Szasz to Bhodhota all proved useless.
Virgil Grissom Kinney wanted only one thing from life.
Death.
At a time when people left one another alone to do as they pleased, no one would have cared or interfered if Virgil wanted only to kill himself, yet in an era without police or prisons, Virgil Grissom Kinney lay locked behind padded walls, screaming without sound, tortured without pain.
“You’ve never seen a bad paraschiz, have you?” the MentTech asked.
The woman walking beside him adjusted the white labcoat thrown hastily over her shoulders.
“Only in history scrims,” she said.
“Then listen carefully. Treat him exactly as you would a feral genesplice you might encounter in an alley. You don’t have any way of knowing who he thinks you are or why he suspects you’re speaking to him, so never start up a casual conversation. If he thinks you’re the Horned God, you could be talking about the weather and he’d read hidden meanings into it. Never stare him in the eye. Never touch him. And most important-”
“Yes?” The woman’s face lost any color it had.
“If and when he speaks, you listen.”
She nodded gravely. The corridor they walked down radiated a soothing, cool blue glow. The woman drew no calm from the psychological color cue. She strode toward an appointment with the destiny of the human race and saw little pleasure and even less comfort in the knowledge that Earth’s best hope was entombed in an asylum.
“One more thing,” the huge orderly added. “If he frightens you, tell him so. Be firm and polite and exceedingly honest.”
“Straight,” she said in agreement.
He touched his scan finger to the lockscrim. “And never turn your back on him.”
She swallowed. Her throat scraped like sandpaper against brick.
He had spent so many years in the same creme-white room that he thought he could detect sounds through the soundproof padding.
The familiar footsteps of the orderly intermingled with another lighter set.
Two sets of footsteps, Virgil thought. Mad images and personalized symbols trickled through his fragmented thoughts like rain through desert sands.
Marsface is coming here. He still favors the right leg I bit so long ago. He clumps and slides beside a pair of feet that move lightly and quickly.
He twisted about to face the door. Wrapped more than snugly in gauze bandages that restrained him from head to toe, Virgil Grissom Kinney squirmed on the floor with all the grace of an arthritic caterpillar. His psychotic mind picked through an alien host of archetypes in a frenzied effort to make sense of his narrow world.
The other walks on soft, quick feet. Sent by Master Snoop. Master Snoop knows I’ve figured the way out. The machinery inside the ceiling is up there watching me. Master Snoop never slumbers. The wires in my head spy for him.
Kinney rolled about to stare at the blank wall. Indirect lighting bathed the room in a soft, soothing golden glow. A slender trapezoidal shadow suddenly cut across the surface of the padding. Silently, the room’s only door opened inward.
Mental Health Technician William Bearclaw entered, scrimboard in hand. His short black hair crested in a delta-sweep cut that was three years out of style. Tall and husky, he ducked his head to clear the lintel of the thickly padded doorway.
Virgil had no knowledge of styles, fads, or even dates. He only saw madness and tried to make sense of it.
Marsface. I knew it, didn’t I? Same Marsface-head like a red planet with its ridges and craters and mole-mountains, a nose like Olympus Mons.
Virgil stared at the other visitor, puzzled.
Though tall, she stood a head shorter than Bearclaw; high heels plus long black hair piled up Grecian style failed to bring her up to his height. A single thick rope of hair extended from the plaits to wrap once around her neck. The roughsects hair-style had grown in popularity from its origin in a small sado-masochistic sex cult to its fashionable apex in polite society. The roughsects, seeing their style embraced by outsiders, had long since abandoned it for new coifs, which were also working their way up the fashion escalator in competition with other bizarre looks.
Kinney peered at the woman, his impressions filtered through the dark glass of insanity.
Death Angel doesn’t look the way he’s supposed to. Where is the scythe? Death Angel disguises as a woman. Master Snoop’s trying to screw me up. It won’t work. I know how to get out and I don’t need them.
He listened to them as carefully as he could, weighing every nuance.
They’re speaking in their Language again. Got to concentrate and break their code.
Bearclaw, though he used the proper term of address required by devoir, spoke to her with casual authority. “Yes, tovar Trine, you can see the lengths we had to go through to restrain him. A man can kill himself against a padded wall if he keeps pounding it continually. Dies of exhaustion and dehydration.”
Delia Trine observed the form wrapped from head to toe in gauze that had once been white. Two tubes, mercilessly transparent, extended from the overlays of cloth around his crotch. The wastes they carried away both displayed sickeningly unhealthy colors.
The woman took a deep breath, tried to calm her stomach’s reaction to the sight. The vaguely rotten odor from the bandages did not help.
“What is his specific class?”
Bearclaw did not need to scroll through the scrimsheet in his hand. “Psychotic. Paranoid-schizophrenic. With a good dose of manic depressive, though I’ve never seen him manic in this place.”
“Any record of treatment with Duodrugs?” She knelt down to take a closer look at the prisoner’s face, to gaze coolly into Kinney’s green eyes, practically the only part of him not wrapped in restraining sheets.
Bearclaw cleared his throat loudly.
She realized that she was staring, and stood quickly. A shudder raced through her.
She had never seen eyes that glared with such furious intensity.
The MentTech shook his head. “Duodrugs have no effect on him. The Pharmaceutics are mystified, but I think Virgil here has a highly compartmentalized multiple personality. We can drug one or two of them, but he always has one that surfaces unaffected.” His expression grew concerned. “Don’t tell anyone that, though. He’s never displayed any symptoms of that. Drugs are supposed to affect the physical brain, anyway, not the mind.”
Kinney lay near the center of the room-on his side-looking like the huge, stained cocoon of some mysterious creature that might suddenly break free to attack with terrible fury and unfathomable insect logic.
His gaze returned hers, sharp and startlingly alert. A curl of sweaty, greasy blonde hair looped out from under his bandages to hang over one eyebrow. Kneeling again and trying not to stare, Delia tucked the stray hairs back under the wraps with her long, blood-red fingernails.
Virgil strained, trying to roll back from her. To his tortured mind, the simple gesture set off a wave of terror.
What’s she trying? To claw inside my head? I want to die with my brain inside. Must map my escape but don’t think about it. Think about death to hide my plan. Death death death to the Master Snoop.
He glared back at the woman.
Death Angel’s midnight hair wraps a snake around her ivory throat. Isn’t she afraid they’ll strangle her? Stupid-Death Angel has no fear of her master. I haven’t heard her upstairs before, have I? Think, stupid, think.
Bearclaw knelt beside the woman. “If this were the twenty-first century,” he said, “Virgil would’ve been declared certifiably insane. He’d have been put in an institution against his will.”
Trine frowned as she stood. “He’s not quite part of the joy division here, is he?”
Bearclaw nodded and rose. “It’s a fine line, isn’t it? Because his insurance policy had an insanity care clause, he was put away morally and legally.”
“So the difference between the way the Fets might once have treated him and the way he’s being treated now is his signature on some old scrim.” The woman tried not to watch Kinney’s eyes as they gazed mutely up at her.
The MentTech smiled. “The difference between DuoLab and the Fetters is that if Virgil’s bill isn’t paid, he’s out on his retro.”
“Who funds his upkeep?” she asked.
“Paid in advance by Tri-World Life, for life plus rejuvenation. The circumstances are unu-”
“Could I have a gurney brought in now?”
“Yes, tovar.” Bearclaw scribbled the instruction onto his scrimsheet. The dispatching computer acknowledged with a green glow on the upper bar of the notepad.
Trine folded her arms and considered her find. “He’s never tried to use a seppukukit?”
Bearclaw shook his dark head, pulling a viewscrim from the file folder to hand to her. “Here’s his file. You’ll see that his personality doesn’t run in those directions. Quiet and private is not the way he wants to die. He wants to go down in flames. Are you sure you can use him?”
Without answering, she held out her hand to receive the thin viewscrim. She slipped it into her notebook, frowning at a thought. “Who put him away here in the first place?”
“The perpetual care clause was activated by his insurance company when his last suicide attempt demolished about a kilauro worth of property and killed a family of four tourists.” Noticing the curious expression growing on Trine’s angular face, he added, “He’s a threat, tovar. A genuine threat. He’s not an intentional murderer. It’s just that when he tries suicide, innocent people are in harm’s way.”
“Does he talk about it?”
Bearclaw’s black eyes gazed back at hers. “We’ve never been able to get him to say a word.”
She nodded. “The Brennen Trust has a place for him.”
“I can’t imagine where, tovar Trine.”
She smiled with studied warmth. “Glad to be rid of him?”
The big man said nothing.
Green eyes watched the exchange with uncomprehending panic. Bandaged ears strained but heard only the rush of blood.
Death Angel and Marsface leave me without devouring my soul. No death today, but beware of tricks. I’ll have to meet the man in the nightsheet on my own terms. Cleanse myself with fire. If only I could touch my pain. Crush my brain. Aladdin sane.
Virgil closed his eyes.
Virgil’s eyes opened in a different room. His body trembled and sweated within its constraints.
I’ve made it! It worked and I didn’t even have to think about it! Free! Almost. Why did I bring the sheets with me? Stupid- they were too close to you. I’ll get out, though. Did Master Snoop follow me? Can’t tell. Too noisy. Is this the Control room? Did I escape right into their clutches?
“He’s awake, Dee.” The graying Pharmaceutic sat near a bank of indicators flashing red, turquoise, yellow, and orange.
Delia Trine needed no brain wave analyzers to see Kinney open his eyes. He lay at the center of the lab on a wide table with raised edges, white and mummylike against soft black sudahyde. Wires from the electrodes on his head emerged like vines from under his wrappings to drape over the couch and flow into the equipment surrounding him. The few sections of wall that lacked machinery displayed soothing mahogany-toned fauxwood paneling.
Virgil shuddered, his gaze darting about to see the others.
Lights. Sounds. Operators. I escaped, all right. Right up into the ceiling with Master Snoop. Death Angel, too. They wouldn’t let Marsface in here, though-he’s just a tool. Damn.
The woman whispered toward the Pharmaceutic. “Lock the eyetrace on his gaze, Steve. I don’t think he’s a paraschiz as DuoLab thought.”
Ignoring what Bearclaw had told her, she deliberately pinioned Kinney’s abstracted stare with a stern glare of her own. “Virgil Grissom Kinney,” she said in a level tone. She waited for the eyes to focus on her before she continued. “Good. Virgil, I’m going to give you something you were never given at DuoLab. I’m going to give you a choice. Do you remember what a choice is?”
The pupils of Kinney’s green eyes constricted slightly. Death Angel hovers over me as I lay in my coffin. Soft, stupid coffin with no lid. Red lips move cunningly. I can almost break her code. She wants something. I’ll agree, go along with it for now. The roar hasn’t been broken yet. Break the roar and I can crack her code. Easy, easy. Take it easy.
He nodded slowly. His gaze narrowed into something less fearful, something more focused.
The woman watched his reactions the way a cat observes the motions of stalked prey. “Good,” she said, straightening up. “Virgil, they tell me you like to kill yourself.”
She knows about them! She must-she’s one of them. Remember that. He twitched in amazement. The roar is quieter now. Words pass through Master Snoop’s jamming with greater frequency.
“I’m going to offer you a choice,” Trine continued. “I have two IVs here.” She gestured toward a cart on which lay a pair of clear plastic sacks filled with opaque gray liquid, one labeled with a skull and crossbones, one with a bright yellow happy face. “This one”-she picked up the death’s head bag- “is a poison that will kill you in a matter of seconds. This other”-she showed him the smiling bag-“will help you overcome your… predicament. Blink your eyes once for poison or twice for salvation.”
His mouth opened slightly, teeth pressing against his lower lip.
“Fuh-”
“What?” She leaned closer to him, picking up a pair of bandage scissors and delicately snipping away the gauze from his throat and jaw. Saliva drooled across his cheek.
“Fff… Fuh-false dichotomy.”
She laid the scissors aside and frowned.
The Pharmaceutic smiled. “I think that means he doesn’t want to play.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she said to Virgil. “I’d have switched labels to make sure you’d get this one.” She held up the bottle with the happy face. “The other’s just colored water.”
She pulled an IV stand over to the table. “I’m injecting this into you, false dichotomy or not. The Brennen Trust bought out the premium on your insurance policy. We’ve bailed you out for a reason and we want a return on our investment. Or would you prefer to remain wrapped and strapped forever?”
Virgil lay absolutely still, every muscle locked in rigid tension. What’s the dance she’s treading? I thought I had her code. Maybe all I have is her cipher. Yes. Cipher to know what she’s saying, no code to know what she means. If I could get out of my room, maybe I can escape from this one, too. Three, four, five times I’ll try.
Slowly, his gaze never leaving hers, Virgil nodded as far as his swathing allowed. Then he stopped, reconsidered the question, and shook his head slowly from side to side.
“Fine,” Trine said. “Steve, you can take it now.”
The Pharmaceutic brought a needle kit over to Virgil’s side. He wore an impeccably benign smile. The IV package unsealed with a crackle of plastic. In the corner of the room, a videoscrim panel fluxed to zoom in on the operation.
The only patch of Kinney’s flesh other than his face to lay open and exposed was the injection port in his left wrist surgically sewn and laser welded to skin and vein. The old man pushed the blunted needle into the plastic valve. It clicked bayonet-style into place.
Steve draped the tubing through the flow regulator and switched it on. The murky gray serum trickled slowly toward Virgil’s arm. The electroencephalograph and brain wave topograph registered the imperceptible changes in Kinney’s brain. These appeared as shifting colors on an output scrim visible only to the Pharmaceutic.
It’s not working, Virgil thought. Whatever they’re trying is failing. I don’t feel any different. Should I gloat? No. Play along. How should I act, though? I need to find something to finish Master Snoop and Nightsheet once and for all. Something big. Straight, straight.
Trine bent over the side of the table. She spoke quietly to Kinney while the Pharmaceutic administered the serum.
“What you’re getting, Virgil, is a mixture of saline solution, ribonucleic acid, and picotechs. The RNA is memory juice. Practically every living thing has it. The picotechs are tiny machines that carry the second and more important component of memory. All this came from a man who worked for the Brennen Trust before he died.” Her voice paused for just an instant. “We want to know why he died, but you probably won’t be able to tell us that right away. When he died, though, he possessed skills and knowledge that take a long time to learn. We’re cutting corners this way because we’re in a hurry.”
Virgil nodded nervously, a trickle of sweat running down his brow. Beneath his bandages, his muscles tightened rigidly.
They’re filling me up with machines that carry someone else’s mind! Maybe I can get him to help me. I don’t hear him, though. And now the roar is coming back. I’m losing her cipher. Down. Back. Focus. They’re trying to make it hard for me. I’ll get out, though. There! Less roar and her cipher’s broken again.
“It’s the picotechs,” she continued, “that make the process work. They were in this other man’s bloodstream and brain, recording his unique electrochemical patterns. They’ll reproduce them at similar sites in your own brain. Instant memories. No need to go to school.”
Deep inside Kinney’s body, machines no larger than a molecule sought out their topologically programmed locations. Picotunnelers bored through the blood-brain barrier, admitting the rest of the invaders. Picosculptors attached to low-activity areas of Kinney’s cerebrum, reshaping neural connections, synapses, and electrochemical order to simulate those of a man now dead. Picogenerators duplicated the peaks and valleys of another brain’s unique electrical field. Picolocators awaited their particular strand of RNA to pass by in the blood-stream. When they did, they mated with the strands; mated chemically, topographically, electrically-more intimately than the minds that created them could imagine.
Impossible to see with anything less powerful than an atomic force microscope, the picotechs were simple. Individually, each one was a mere molecule with an unique topography and electrical charge. Collectively, they possessed the power of a god.
They used part of Virgil Grissom Kinney’s brain to create a mimic of another man’s mind. Synapse by synapse, picovolt by picovolt, a stranger began to form in Kinney’s mind, undetected. Silently, another man’s memories crept into Kinney, quiescent and patient.
Trine slipped the top of the scrim into her clipboard and signaled the first page. She glanced at Kinney.
“While we’re doing this, I’d like you to answer a few questions and listen to some things so that we can make sure everything is working properly. Straight?”
Virgil nodded.
“Straight. Shake your head only if you don’t remember any of the following.” She scanned the page a moment before reading. “Virgil Grissom Kinney. Age thirty-four.”
Kinney’s eyes widened.
With a compassionate gaze, she said, “You didn’t know that, did you? It’s March seventh, twenty-one-aught-seven. You’ve been interned for eleven years, ever since you tried to kill yourself by flying into the PacRim Pyramid. Do you remember that?”
Kinney’s blond eyebrows knotted in thought. He shook his head as best he could beneath his bandages.
Trine scrolled to another page. She held her voice at a professionally flat level. “June twelfth, twenty-ninety-four. After the funerary processing of your wife Jenine, you piloted your flyer over downtown St. Frisco toward the PacRim Pyramid. Instead of hitting the side of the building, you flipped into a power dive toward Market Street. Your crash killed four people. You would have done even worse during a workday.”
Virgil stared blankly, slowly shaking his head. “They were clones,” he offered weakly.
She glanced at the scrim “Two clones-a direct, a sexflip, and their two natural-born children. The primogenitor sued for loss of lineage and Tri-World Life paid off. Then they sent you here.”
Virgil nodded. Softly, Delia said, “You don’t really want to die, do you?”
The Pharmaceutic gazed at the indicators. “Galvanic response shooting up,” he whispered to her. “That’s a key question.”
She nodded without shifting her eyes. “If you don’t want to die, why bother trying? Publicity hound?”
Virgil lay mute, his gaze indecipherable.
She leaned closer. “Not likely-three of your attempts were made in wilderness areas. You managed to be found barely alive each time.” A strand of her ebon hair fell from around her neck. Virgil watched it sway in time to her words. “You are here because I think your conflicting dichotomy of a death wish and death aversion combined with astonishingly good luck is a mix we can use to our mutual benefit.” She turned toward the Pharmaceutic. “Begin sublimins, Steve.”
The gray man muttered a series of commands to the lab computer.
Gazing more intently at Kinney, Trine said, “You earned a degree in nexialism from Mises University, which means you know a little bit about everything. That will help, because I’m going to give you and your new memories a refresher course in physics. Keep in mind the following nexus: physics is the economics of efficient atomic interaction, and multi-dimensional mathematics is the topography of cosmology.”
She pulled up a chair to sit beside Virgil. “Now, all sub-atomic particles are composed of combinations of just two bounded energy quanta, one positive, one negative. Their overall sum determines the mass of the particle, its charge, and whether it is matter or anti-matter. Their topographical interaction determines such aspects as charm, spin, strangeness and…”
Kinney lay upon the cool black sudahyde couch, his yellowed bandages looking whiter in contrast. His chest rose and fell in short whiffs and exhalations. The room smelled of formaldehyde and disinfectant. Through his narrow field of view, he gazed at the silent bank of instruments against the wall.
Three days. Three days and I still don’t understand her code. I’ve got her cipher all figured out-the physics of space travel.
So play along. Go along with them until you find out how they-
A door opened somewhere. Kinney twisted about to see Trine step through. She wore a light aqua lab coat over a charcoal suit.
Here she comes again. Death Angel dressed to fill. Fill my mind like a cupcupcup…
“Good morning, Virgil.” She pulled a tall stool over to sit beside him. “I hope you’re feeling better today, because we have a lot planned. I’m going to remove those ratty bandages. It’s time you got out of the things for good.” She smiled encouragingly.
Virgil simply stared.
“However,” she continued when she realized he would not return her smile, “it can be physically dangerous to you in your atrophied condition. So let’s proceed slowly, all right?”
Large bandage scissors went to work on his head, guided by Delia’s graceful, strong fingers.
“How long has it been since they changed these?” she muttered. “A month? Two?”
Kinney shrugged, or tried to. “Maybe a year.” His voice was weak, creaky.
Trine’s hand inadvertently withdrew from him. Regaining her composure, she continued to snip away. “Nice to hear you speak.”
She pulled the clipped gauze from around his head. A shock of sweaty, oily yellow hair clung to the fabric. She tugged gently. Most of the hair remained on his head, though some stuck wetly to the greasy fabric.
She frowned. “At least you’re not completely depilated. A good wash and it should be back to normal.”
“Thanks.” Virgil basked in the warm feeling of her hand against his skin. So long since a touch. Maybe she’s not working for Master Snoop. Could she be a free agent? Maybe Master Snoop and Nightsheet aren’t conspiring anymore. Maybe they’re enemies again. I need more information. Listen. Hold back the roar.
His right arm fell limply to the couch. Deathly white, translucent, and almost entirely devoid of muscle, it looked like a skeleton wrapped in a thin coating of papier-mâché.
Delia shook her head. His other arm looked just as bad. Worse-a hideous burn scar ran its length.
“Why didn’t they fix that?” she muttered, continuing to snip down his torso.
Kinney’s chest, freed from restraint, heaved to suck in great gulps of air.
“Don’t,” she said. “You’ll hyperventilate.” She held the scissors at a fixed angle and ripped them through the cloth around his waist, thighs, and legs. Pulling the fabric away, she gazed at the naked form beneath.
Her crimson lips formed a gentle smile. “Well, you’re a real blond, all right.”
His sudden bark of laughter startled her. Jumping back from the couch, she watched in amazement as his arms waved heedlessly about, bouncing off the sides of the couch before coming to rest on his flat stomach, the only part of him that had any musculature at all.
After waiting a moment for him to calm down, she said, “Hold still, Virgil.” She put down the scissors and laid a hand on his narrow thigh. “This may hurt.” Her long fingers grasped the waste cycling tube that snaked between his legs up into his rectum. With a gentle-but-firm tug, she twisted and removed it.
Virgil moaned, hovering somewhere between pain and relief.
She deflated the urine catheter. “You go on light solids and muscle food tomorrow. And you begin your training.”
“And if I don’t want to?” A sneer flashed palely across Virgil’s lips.
She pulled out the catheter with a smooth, firm motion.
He screamed.
“Then,” she said, “I guess we’ll have to wrap you up again.”
He whimpered, doubling over to clutch at his savaged member.
Somewhere deep within Virgil’s searing pain rose one coherent thought. It echoed over and over in his mind, creating its own nearly infinite loop.
The roar’s coming back.
As he folded in on himself, so did his thoughts. He fought the urge.
Nightsheet drags me down down down. Master Snoop shrieks in joy at the burning in my center. Back. Down. Don’t. Don’t back down.
He forced his eyes open, forced his reverberating mind to focus on the woman in the aqua coat. The color soothed him. The red noise subsided in his mind.
“What’s your name?” he asked after a few moments. “What’s your true name?”
She tilted her head a bit in curiosity at both his question and his quick recovery from physical pain.
“My name’s Dee.”
“Dee? The necromancer?”
She shook her head, smiling. “That’s my first name. Short for Delia.”
“What’s the rest?”
“My name is Delia Trine.”
Death Angel bares her fangs in a glee without hunger. I cracked part of her code. Good. Press on.
“Did you spring me just to give me that physics lesson?”
Delia thought it remarkable that he adjusted so well to sudden change. She suspected that the braindump from Jord might be aiding in his stabilization.
“Actually, Virgil, you’re here because the Brennen Trust made a mistake. A fatal mistake with a man named Jord Baker. You’re going to help us find out why he died. We’ve given you some preliminary theoretical data on a new concept of interstellar travel. The RNA-PT injection and subliminal instructions-”
Aha! Virgil smiled at the confirmation of his suspicion.
“-have stored inside your brain everything Jord Baker knew up to the point of his death. When we begin training, you’ll remember things you never knew before. You may be experiencing memories right now as you listen.” She paused. Virgil looked up at her and shrugged weakly.
“Well,” she said, “your mind needs to recall the information and refile it. That may take some time.” She slid the stool closer to the table and sat near Virgil’s naked form.
“Are you cold?” she asked.
He shook his head. His long golden hair had dried to a stiff, dull mess. His eyes watched her with relentless intensity.
She took a deep breath. “Here’s the whole story. Jord Baker was a test pilot for the Brennen Trust’s spacecraft division. He was testing out a teleportation craft when he killed himself. We can’t figure out why. We’ve-”
“Teleportation?” Kinney asked. He searched his memory. His, and what fragments arose of Jord Baker’s.
Trine nodded. “It’s a method that could make every other form of space travel obsolete. It was just ten years ago that Ernesto Valliardi developed a mathematically provable theory of pandimensional translocation. Without a device that could generate the field collapse, though, the theory was nothing more than a curiosity. Until two years ago. That’s when Brennen Trust researchers, using portions of Valliardi’s research to develop a multidimensional method of non-destructive metallurgical testing, accidentally teleported a small steel pellet three meters across their lab. It appeared in midair and exploded.”
She leaned on the soft sudahyde. “If it had appeared in something more solid, the blast would have left nothing but a crater where the building stood.” Her grin was almost feral with joy at retelling the tale. “It seems that if the nucleus of a teleported atom appears within the same space as that of an atom at the destination, they mutually annihilate.” She lowered her chin onto her clasped hands. “The resulting explosion was still big enough to kill a dozen people in the lab. Including Grigori Felitsen, the inventor of the process. Computers and video captured all the info, though, and we refined the process in hard vacuum at Brennen Orbital.”
Virgil nodded. Thoughts began to rush to him without summon. Topological images of six- and twelve-dimensional space flickered at the edges of his consciousness. Mental constructs of an intricately folded universe made sense to him even though he had never studied anything more complex than calculus.
Can this, he thought, be what Master Snoop feels, sucking the minds of all around, a constant flood of incoming knowledge, sights, sounds, facts, ideas?
Delia continued, noting Virgil’s facial reactions with professional excitement. Her gaze also drank in the rest of his form. She noted that his flesh responded to the rush of knowledge by pricking up the blond hairs on his arms, shoulders, and legs.
“Finally,” she said, “Brennen engineers built a small ship that could teleport by remote control. The most important aspect of the Valliardi Transfer is that it requires no receiving station.”
“It’s not teleportation, really.” Virgil frowned in amazement at the authoritative manner of his speech. “It’s a concept in many-dimensional theory. Every point in a lower-order dimension is in contact with a point in any higher-order dimension.” His frown transformed itself into a weak grin. “It’s all coming back to me.”
Delia sat up and smiled. “See if this jogs more memories: Every point on a one-dimensional line can be reached from a two-dimensional plane without crossing any other linear point. Any point on a plane can be touched from three-dimensional space without passing through any other point on the plane. And so on up the dimensional ladder.”
“I know,” Virgil said. “I know it without knowing how I know it!”
Delia nodded with enthusiasm. “Jord understood the fundamentals of dimensional topology, though Valliardi’s Proof was too much for him. He could push the right buttons, though, and was the finest test pilot we had. After a dozen successful robot flights, he performed the first human test. He traveled from lunar orbit to Jupiter in an instant.”
Kinney rolled over on his side, his skin sliding over the sudahyde without adhesion. His own enthusiasm began to grow, unaided by the dead man’s memories.
“You mean,” he said, “that you’ve developed instantaneous teleportation?”
“Almost. The trip took only a subjective instant for him. For us, it was as if he’d disappeared for over half an hour. When he reached Jovian orbit, a laser beacon switched on automatically. It was another half an hour before we received that beam, so we know that he was literally outside the universe for that length of time.”
Virgil’s stare turned solid. “Where was he?” Half an hour away from Master Snoop? Away from Nightsheet? Time spent out from under the prying eyes of God?
Delia gently brushed her long fingernails against the coil of black hair wrapped around her neck. “Nowhere, apparently. The experiment turned out to be the vindication of Einstein. Even if we use the Valliardi Transfer to travel instantly from here to there, the traveler is still out of the universe for exactly the length of time it would take for light to travel that distance. It would take you an instant to transfer to Alpha Centauri, but when you arrived, the universe would be four years older. Or you could transfer to the center of the galaxy like that”- she snapped her fingers-“and the rest of the universe will have aged twenty-six thousand years.”
Virgil stared at her. “A one-way time machine,” he whispered in awe. Unconsciously, his thin, bony fingers reached down to touch below his waist.
Delia gazed in puzzlement at the swelling flesh Virgil grasped in his hand.