The entity, p.43
The Entity, page 43
There was no need to ask who. Dr. Cooley felt the tension in the room. Perhaps it came from Carlotta. A nearly palpable, almost electric tension.
“How long ago?”
“A few minutes ago. At the window.”
Dr. Cooley walked to the window. In the translucent glare, vague forms of dirt and surface bubbles stretched out like arms over the glass. She closed the draperies.
“It certainly must be difficult to sleep here,” Dr. Cooley said sympathetically. “The light coming through these windows makes very strange patterns.”
“I didn’t see him. I sensed him.”
“What did he want?”
“It’s different now, Dr. Cooley—”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m afraid, Dr. Cooley. I’m afraid for all of us.”
26
With less than forty-eight hours of tenure remaining, Dr. Cooley put in an urgent appeal to Dean Osborne’s office for a one-week extension. It was submitted in memo form and personally delivered to Dean Osborne’s office by Joe Mehan. One hour later she received the dean’s reply—similarly formal, and on university letterhead. It stated that the fourth floor had to be vacated on schedule, to be overhauled and used for a National Science Foundation study on the effects of ultraviolet radiation on the retina of reptiles.
Somewhere in the night of May 23, Kraft dreamt that he saw blasted landscapes, twisted, forbidden tree-like forms, rolling clouds of some noxious gas—
Where had he seen those before? Those were the images Carlotta had recorded in her dream book.
“These dreams are very important,” Kraft whispered to Mehan. “It shows there is a contact being made.”
“Nonsense. It’s just that you’ve become so involved.”
“Maybe, but it also indicates a proximity—”
“I dream about my work all the time,” Mehan said, lying back down on the cot.
Overhead, without images, the blank, silent screens of the monitors stared back.
Images of dark bird-like forms, which were not birds, floated in an unreal sky, high and far away in Kraft’s imagination. He so much wanted to see that strange, frightening world that Carlotta had seen. He almost felt it, forbidden, annihilating, but totally fascinating.
But in the night the scanning devices showed nothing. The hologram camera remained an idle statue. The tape ran endlessly, wasting miles of expensive material. Thermovision maps showed only the same living quarters, over and over, and the only change was Carlotta’s form as she paced the floor, or stopped to write in the log book.
* * *
Time rushes like a wind. At one moment we are young, afraid of the dark, and then we are grown up, and the darkness is still with us. No adult comes to tell us it will be all right. No adult can soothe us with half-truths and stories. And yet, do we ever truly leave this darkness? Are we ever truly free?
As Kraft fell back into sleep, the lasers pointed at empty walls, empty halls, empty rooms. The ion concentration of the rooms was remarkably stable. There was no change anywhere.
But Carlotta gazed at the clock.
12:43 a.m.
Tonight he is back. How is it that no one else knows it? They run around making their tests as though everything were normal. Maybe the doctor was right—I am insane. Yet how could that be, since others have also felt his power?
Carlotta’s mind began to fill with strange images, first of Pasadena, of the estate, and then it transformed as she began to dream, into a stranger landscape, a landscape she had never visited, blasted and twisted as though by some cataclysm of long ago, and it was bleak, unbearably frightening.
The day passed. Everyone felt a kind of charged anticipation in the air. Though everything they did was the same routine.
“I felt him last night, Mr. Kraft,” she finally whispered, late in the afternoon.
“Yes, I know,” Kraft said. “Dr. Cooley told me.”
“He was outside.”
“Outside? You mean, in the air? Outside the building?”
“No—outside, outside the world. He wants to come into the world where I am. He wants to destroy us all.”
“You don’t think he could be contained by anything we do?”
“Not anymore. He’s the strongest thing on earth.”
Later in the evening, Dr. Cooley examined the log book. Carlotta’s premonitions fit the classic symptoms of precognition.
No one slept well that night.
Then, on the morning of May 24, just before sunrise, Mehan heard a tiny beep. He opened an eye. On the monitor a red light flashed softly. Waking quickly, he walked to the screen, pressed a button, and saw only an empty bedroom.
“Please,” he heard Carlotta’s thin, static-ridden voice say, “come help me—Mr. Kraft—Mr. Mehan—”
Mehan padded rapidly across the corridor, pulling a laboratory coat over his pajamas. He knocked. There was no response. He heard Carlotta’s voice whimpering far away inside, as though smothered. He took a key from his pocket and pushed the door open.
There was no one in the bedroom. The living room was empty. Mehan turned and went rapidly into the kitchen. It was cold. Carlotta was not there.
“Mr. Kraft—Mr. Mehan—” came her plaintive voice.
Mehan knocked at the bathroom door.
“It’s me—Joe Mehan. Are you all right?”
He opened the door a crack. Carlotta was wrapped in her red robe, huddled at the makeshift corner of the room, where the tub had been placed under the window.
“He came for me,” she whispered.
“Just now?”
“Yes. I ran away.”
“All right. Take it easy,” Mehan said, wiping his lips nervously. “Let’s get out of here.”
They went into the observation room. Dr. Cooley, answering Kraft’s call, came quickly down the corridor. Carlotta tried to explain what had happened.
“He threatened me—all of us—”
“Threatened?” Dr. Cooley asked.
“There was hate in his voice—”
“Against me? Against Gene?”
“Against everybody.”
“What was he going to do?” Mehan asked gently.
“I don’t know. He’s afraid of being trapped by you.”
Kraft and Dr. Cooley exchanged glances.
“Did you know that we had a method of trapping him?” Kraft asked.
“No.”
“Did anybody mention that to you? A student?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Because it is true,” Kraft said. “We have engineered something. We are trying to work out a way so that it is not dangerous to you.”
“It involves super-cooled helium,” Mehan said, in a confidential whisper.
“If you try to trap him, he’ll kill you,” Carlotta whispered in a low voice.
“Assume that the entity or apparition exists independent of its perceivers,” Kraft lectured the class. “Then the next step is to determine the question as to whether it retains any physical properties, other than causing light transformations, aural phenomena, and tactile phenomena. In other words, has it a form? Is it composed of atoms and molecules? Does it exist of material in the way that objects or gases exist, does it exist in the form of energy the way that radio waves or light exist, or does it exist purely on the psychic plane, in which it is sensible only to the human mind, but not to scientific observation?”
The students, silent, were crowded into the small rampart over the living quarters. Down below, in a peculiarly brilliant light—the simulated morning light streaming in horizontally into the living room—Carlotta was speaking earnestly with Dr. Cooley.
“The monitors, which I have explained, will quickly analyze the electromagnetic or thermoionic properties of the entity. Assuming we can even get a piece of it,” Kraft added, “the question of whether it physically has form will be answered by the equipment that Dr. Cooley is now explaining to Mrs. Moran.”
A tiny light went on. Kraft had pulled open a double black door. Inside, illuminated by a small violet light, was an enormously complicated tangle of wires and copper tubing, equipped with trembling dials that read the temperature and pressure of cannisters packed and shielded in so much casing of metallic alloys that they were no longer visible.
“Whatever this entity is,” Kraft continued, “the related cold spots suggest that it possesses properties similar to that of a heat sink, absorbing thermal energy in the proximity environment. Anything that consumes or absorbs heat is defined as endothermic and the most efficient and practical method of immobilizing it or rendering it inactive would be to supercool it.” Kraft pointed to the dial of the assembly, and in a voice hushed with drama, said: “Liquid helium. Four hundred and fifty-eight degrees below zero. The coldest substance known to man. Except for the absolute zero of outer space itself.”
“You would suffer burns and immediate loss of whatever part of you came into contact with the liquid helium. Forget about frostbite and gangrene.”
The picture of an arm dropping from a shoulder, smashing into frozen crystals, flashed through their minds. Several class members edged closer to the rampart railing.
“The rationale behind using liquid helium is this,” Kraft explained. “We want to put a handle on this phenomenon in any way we can. We know that by spraying any material substance with liquid helium, we will immediately bring its temperature down so low that its molecular and atomic activity will nearly cease. In which case it will be frozen.”
The students seemed stunned by the implications of what Kraft was telling them. Suddenly it was becoming so real, so tangible, and not theoretical at all. It was like a door opening, a frightening door where no one could see what was on the other side.
“And if nothing happens?” a student finally asked.
“Then it suggests that the apparition is not composed of physical matter as we understand it.”
“Another possibility,” Mehan interjected, “is that this entity can move in and out of our space-time framework, thereby eluding any physical attempt to restrain it.”
Slowly, inexorably, the students turned their heads to look down below them. Carlotta now was looking up, not able to see them, but Dr. Cooley was pointing out various places on the rampart in the darkness above. Their conversation was very serious and intense, and Carlotta looked nervously at Dr. Cooley from time to time.
“This is incredibly dangerous,” whispered a young lady. “What about Mrs. Moran?”
“The helium and a secondary liquid are both sprayed by high-intensity jets which are fixed to the outer wall below, roughly above Dr. Cooley’s head. These jets will fire in only one direction—into the corner. As soon as Mrs. Moran is removed from the target area, two double-paned doors of tempered glass, with a vacuum between the panes, will slide into place, shielding her. That way she will be protected from direct and indirect effects of the spray.”
“Do you really think you can maneuver the apparition into such a small area?” asked a student.
“Well,” Kraft said. “It has a kind of intelligence. Our hope is to outwit it.”
“You mean, use Mrs. Moran as bait?”
Kraft blushed.
“Yes.”
Down below, Carlotta looked at the area over Dr. Cooley’s head. She could not see the jets, installed into the steel ribs of the wall structure, but she retreated nervously from the area. Evidently she was mollified by Dr. Cooley’s assurances, because she soon sat down again, at first jittery, and then even smiling as the two women talked.
The students watched, almost afraid to breathe. It was so quiet they could hear Carlotta talk in an undertone to Dr. Cooley.
“I’m not afraid,” Carlotta said. “I’m not afraid. If you can catch the bastard, I’m not afraid.”
But Dr. Cooley worried. She had never handled liquid helium before. She insisted that a test shot be made.
Inside a tiny laboratory on the fifth floor, Kraft turned off all but a single high-intensity lamp. He wheeled a canister and its controls into place over a black, bakelite desk. Mehan, his hands and arms heavily shielded by reinforced pads, held a brass-like nozzle a foot away from his chest. Dr. Cooley placed a hamster, a red rose, and a small cloud of ammonia, steaming upward from a white chunk, into the target area.
“Let us assume that this area is the living room,” Dr. Cooley said. “We will have shielded Mrs. Moran from the target area.”
She nodded to Mehan and stepped back.
There was a small hiss, then a muffled roar, like the unbending of violently twisted metal. Only a thin vapor emerged, spread rapidly, dripping, expanding, then billowing suddenly into a steam-like cloud. The desk was obliterated with a freezing draft of air that pushed Kraft’s hair back on his head.
“Jesus,” he stammered. “Are you all right, Dr. Cooley?”
“I’m fine. How about you, Joe?”
“Okay, over here. Let’s wait a minute for it to warm up.”
“Is that thing off?” Kraft asked.
“Secured and locked.”
“Put it back into its shielding,” Dr. Cooley said.
Gingerly, Kraft touched the rose. He licked his fingers.
“It burns,” he complained.
“Don’t touch it for several more minutes,” Dr. Cooley advised.
Mehan brought a pincers to the worktable. The steam was dripping a cold water down the sides of the desk, coating the hamster, frosted white, the tail rigid and curved, like a piece of white metal on the black surface.
“My God,” Kraft whispered. “Frozen solid.”
“Do you see here?” Dr. Cooley said. “The water in the cells burst in seconds.”
“What a horrible way to die,” Mehan said softly.
“No, it was anesthetized. And the death was instantaneous,” Dr. Cooley said.
She reached for the flower. When she touched it, it shattered delicately, making a sound like a musical crystal. Like green and purple snow, the stem and petals fell as powder.
Mehan whistled softly.
“Notice the ammonia cloud,” Dr. Cooley whispered.
“Where is it?” Mehan asked.
“It’s that white rock on the desk.”
Ammonia vapor rose rapidly as the temperature began to rise to normal again, noxiously, crumbling, hissing, spitting pieces of solid ammonia.
“Jesus—I’ve never seen it solid,” Kraft said.
“Don’t get near it,” Mehan cautioned.
As the temperature of the chunk continued to rise, it spit more ferociously, bucked and heaved, nearly rose up from the table, and vaporized into a vertically rising stream of gas.
“Phew, that stinks,” Kraft said.
“The problem is this,” Dr. Cooley said: “Are those glass shields really going to work fast enough to protect Mrs. Moran?”
“And is that vacuum between the panes really going to be perfect enough to keep the cold out?” Mehan added. “I don’t want her hit by exploding glass.”
“Then we should test out the glass,” Kraft said.
They did so, that afternoon. The vacuum-separated panes held perfectly. They tested the apparatus that slid the shields into place. It worked within a second and a half. Kraft thought that was too slow. He replaced the ball bearings on the shielding apparatus, and found that the walls would slide into place within half a second. He doubted the glass shield could take the strain of being slammed into position much more often, so he tested them only once more. He figured they would only work once more and that was when the helium would be sprayed into the corner of the living room.
To aid Carlotta in remembering the position of the shields, Kraft placed red tapes along the carpet and the wall. He was secretly tormented that Carlotta would be hit by the barreling shield. The force would crush her.
But there was no reason to be worried. The laser-generated diffraction patterns were surprisingly stable. The helium cannisters were placed on a moveable dolly on the catwalk, to provide easier access in case the apparatus had to be moved suddenly. For the moment, however, the jets were loosely positioned in clamps, pointing uselessly at the living-room corner, angled down from above.
The day moved onward and nothing happened. Soon, Kraft mused, in the grip of an overwhelming despondency, they would be faced with the task of disassembly. It would be a wake—but worse.
Dr. Weber picked up the telephone and dialed. He squinted out the window at the sunlight gleaming off the metal roofs and ducts of the medical complex.
“Graduate school? Dean Osborne, please. This is Henry Weber.”
For an instant Dr. Weber tapped his fingers impatiently on the desk. Then he looked across the stacked papers to Dr. Balczynski, who sat there, tight-lipped.
“Hello, Frank. How are you?” Dr. Weber said jovially. “Fine. Just fine. Dr. Balczynski is here with me, and he informs me that they’re moving in some pretty dangerous equipment up there . . . liquid helium and God only knows what else . . .”
Dr. Weber listened for several seconds. Dr. Balczynski crossed his legs, watching Dr. Weber.
“Nobody in that senate meeting really thought they were going to subject her to anything like this. It’s one thing to ask questions, or roll dice down a plank, but when you take risks like that—”
