Metered space, p.4
Metered Space, page 4
CHAPTER FOUR
I PULLED ON MY CIGARETTE AND INHALED. I VISUALIZED the smoke as it rushed into my lungs, where thousands of blood vessels waited to absorb it. For the first time since I was ten, when I sneaked a puff behind my mother's house, I found the whole exercise disgusting.
The appalled look of the Thrittene, however, was worth the risk of choking to death. They'd turned a golden tobacco hue, and the room filled with sounds that resembled churning stomachs. When they started to turn a deep shade of gray, I puffed a couple more times then searched for somewhere to snuff out my cigarette. When I couldn't find an ashtray, I used the heel of my shoe then stuffed the butt in my pocket. The sounds deflated like a sigh.
Trebor, dressed in white again, glided to me.
"Kindly refrain from leaving without warning, Jack Meter," he said. "It is most annoying. We had not finished giving you instructions."
"You've been waiting for me all this time? I'm flattered."
"Time?" Trebor said. "Why, you have only been gone for two or three of your minutes, at the most."
"What do you mean? I was gone at least a couple of hours."
Leinad surged up beside Trebor. His eagerness was painful to watch. "Did the telecarb take you where you wished to go?"
"Wait. Trebor, are you telling me time doesn't flow at the same speed here as in other worlds?"
"That is correct," Trebor said. "I thought you understood that, Jack Meter. Every world runs on a different time thread."
I found the whole idea a bit disconcerting. I would have to think about the possible repercussions on my case, but not right this minute. First, I had to test my theory and find out if the Thrittene were missing a telecarb. I knew it was a shot in the dark, but my instincts had served me well in the past.
"You have not answered me, Jack Meter," Leinad said.
"Yes. Your gizmo works very smoothly. It took me home and back, no problem. It's amazing, a marvel of engineering. I can't believe you whipped that up in an evening."
Leinad's chin puckered into a frown. "Oh, no. Its development took years of study and experimentation."
"Really?" I made my voice sound as naive as possible. "I'm sure I wouldn't understand how you developed it, anyway. I'm more interested in how you went about testing your device. I have no choice but to put my trust in you, Leinad, and in your telecarb. But I don't know you, see, and I can't tell if you're good at what you do or if you're just a hack.
"How can I be certain the telecarb won't conk out on me? I'd hate to be stuck in some boonies world and have to call a repairman. From what you told me, you couldn't even come get me. So, what I want to know is — am I wearing the first one of these babies?"
"Of course not," Leinad said in an offended tone. "I do not know what a 'hack' is, but I surmise you mean someone who is incompetent. I assure you, the telecarb has been thoroughly tested. We have been researching a means of traveling to other worlds for at least ten years in your measure of time. You will be safe."
"But you told me you'd begun to be aware of other worlds only five years ago." I paused. "In my measure of time, of course."
Leinad turned crimson. Trebor shuffled behind me. I ignored him and moved closer to Leinad, who shifted back a few inches.
"Like any scientist," I continued softly, "you developed prototypes, didn't you? Where are those prototypes, Leinad?" My voice was so sweet, I was making myself sick.
His body color changed to puce. "I destroyed them, of course."
"All except one, maybe?"
Yowls filled the space between the two of us like a heat wave. Leinad swelled to twice his size, but his head moved to the middle of his chest. Trebor came around and faced me as well. I stood my ground.
"You tricked me," Leinad boomed.
I shrugged. "Whatever works. How about leveling with me this time?"
Leinad suddenly deflated and melted into the floor.
"We are pleased." It was Nasus, moving around me to stand beside Trebor. I'd totally forgotten about her, she'd kept so quiet. "We will tell you what we know."
"You were testing me."
Nasus inclined her head. "In a manner of speaking. We needed to assure ourselves of your competence. We expected it would take you longer to discern the truth."
I raised my eyebrows at Trebor. Without a word, he drew nearer to Nasus and slowly merged into her. She lost some of her magenta and became more substantial, more concrete. Leinad reappeared from the floor and merged into the other two. The resulting shade was really ugly.
I'm getting blase, I thought, or punch drunk. Merging aliens didn't faze me one bit.
"Would you quit doing that splitting and merging? It's very annoying."
"We are stronger when we are one, Jack Meter," Nasus said, her sultry voice mixed with Trebor's high-pitched tone and Leinad's slightly nasal inflection. "What one does, the others feel. Yet, we are also separate individuals."
"Interesting, Nasus, but it doesn't impress me anymore. I'm not here to discuss our cultural differences. You've had your little fun. Now you'd better get straight with me, or the deal is off. You can fix yourself another PI. I find I can live with myself after all."
"Are all private detectives as difficult as you?"
"You haven't seen anything yet, baby. I want to know about these prototypes and who has them. My bet is that they disappeared along with that 'Portal' of yours. Right?"
The Thrittene combination smiled and shook its head.
I sighed. If I'd been in my office, I would've leaned back in my chair, plunked my heels on my desk and looked jaded. Those were the props of my trade. I missed them.
I blinked—and I was in my office, sitting at my desk. Damn that telecarb. I'd have to be more careful what I wished for. I thought of Nasus, and her old magenta self was in front of me again, flanked by Trebor and Leinad. She looked annoyed.
"You left us again, Jack Meter. We are displeased."
I had been gone only a few seconds. With the time difference, they shouldn't have even noticed my absence. Unless...
"Ah, you do keep track of me."
"The telecarb possesses a beacon that permits us to know on which world you are," Leinad said. "We do not intend to make the same mistake twice, Jack Meter."
"Then I was right. You lost a telecarb."
Nasus nodded once. "What we told you is partly true. We did experience a storm and became aware of other worlds. Yours had the simplest dimensional structure, and our scientists began to research a way to communicate or even, if it were possible, to travel back and forth.
"As you surmised, we built several prototypes, most of them unsuccessful. The last two were most promising. Ener, our chief researcher, grew impatient with the restrictions we had imposed on him. One day he disappeared with the latest version of the telecarb. Since then we have experienced problems with cohesion."
"You mean there are no Portals?"
Nasus made an impatient gesture. "Of course, there are Portals."
"But none has been stolen."
"No."
"You think Ener stole the telecarb?"
Leinad shook his head, which had sprouted out of his chest again. "We think Ener contacted someone from your world, someone brilliant who had the intelligence to understand the links between our worlds and how to use the tele-carb. That someone stole the traveling device from Ener and is now using it along with the telecarb."
"How could the telecarb be stolen?" I plucked at mine and it slipped through my fingers. "I can't even grab enough of it to take it off."
"Your telecarb is connected to your neurological system. The stolen device is a portable model. The wearer can take it off at will."
"Someone else has your telecarb. What's the connection with your cohesion problem?"
Leinad changed from blue to crimson. "It was only a prototype. Untested."
"You mean it has bugs."
"Just like yours, the stolen telecarb is part of our world," Nasus said. "Since it is made of the same matter as we, its malfunction resonates back to Thrittene. We thought that if you found the thief we might then ask you to retrieve the telecarb."
"You think Ener is dead."
Nasus nodded. "So far, none of us has survived outside our world, Jack Meter. We felt Ener's death the way you would have felt the severance of one of your limbs. We did not die of it, but we felt the pain."
"The telecarb we gave you can only follow the trace left by the prototype," Leinad interrupted. "They could not be synchronized. You can transfer anywhere but where the thief already is. This includes psychological space."
"What the hell is 'psychological space?'"
"It is the space that you regard as yours. For instance, you may consider that you inhabit your entire apartment even though you can occupy only one room at a time. Once you are in visual range of the thief, however, the telecarb will adjust itself and will function again."
"You mean I can't use my telecarb to find the thief but once I find him I can use my telecarb?"
Leinad beamed. "Exactly."
"Well, gee, thanks for nothing."
"These sarcastic asides are very unproductive, Jack Meter."
"Anything else?"
"If the telecarbs are in direct physical contact with each other," Leinad continued, "neither can operate. Beyond that, I cannot say. You will have to experiment." He hesitated then continued. "We have another worry, Jack Meter. We suspect the defective telecarb may create havoc in all the other worlds, even yours."
"You mean all the worlds I may visit will have started to lose cohesion?"
"They may experience different problems than ours, based on the particular characteristics of each world."
I raked my fingers through my hair and scrubbed my chin. All of a sudden, it was too much. I needed to distance myself from the steady stream of information and sensations that had assaulted me for the past few hours. I needed to get my emotions and my brain churning in the right direction. My stomach growled. Low blood sugar, I thought, that's what it is.
I saluted Nasus. "I'll keep in touch," I said; and before they could protest, I thought about my kitchen and left. I landed in front of the sink. A wave of dizziness overtook me, and I clutched at the counter to stay upright. I sucked in a deep breath; the stars in front of my eyes faded slowly. My stomach growled again. I needed nourishment fast, before I fainted from hunger.
I walked to the pantry and checked its meager contents. It was nearly empty. No wonder—I hadn't prepared a meal since Annie died, unless I counted opening a pizza box or eating baked beans out of the can.
I winced at a sudden flash of memory: Annie, in her apron and nothing else, trying to scramble some eggs for me the morning after we'd met. We never did eat that day. The next morning we ended up throwing out the congealed eggs and going out for bagels and espresso, Annie's favorite breakfast. She always said she needed her caff-carb fix to get her started in the morning.
As if to punish myself even more, I walked over to the CD player and put on Carmen. That well-stacked, sensual, clever Gypsy always reminded me of Annie.
I used a lone can of tuna, some tomato juice and pasta to make a marinara dish. The brainless ritual of stirring sauce and the familiar music had a soothing effect, and I started thinking again.
I went back to Leinad's story and tried to sort out the facts. The time factor confused me. Leinad had said they were running out of time, but was he talking about their time or mine? Did that mean that the damage would occur at a different pace in the other worlds than in theirs?
The telecarb's limitations were also worrisome. Since I couldn't land where the thief was, I'd have to follow his trail, get to know his thinking processes and try to anticipate his moves. But with his telecarb, he could duck and run as soon as he saw me. Then, I'd have to start looking for him all over again. Before I confronted him, I'd have to find a way to get the telecarb away from him. If it was a him.
I finished my food and dumped the dishes in the sink with the others. Johnson still hadn't repaired the plumbing; I could hear the damn drip over the soprano's voice.
I turned off the CD, suddenly eager to get going. The faster I found the stolen telecarb, the faster I could start looking for Annie's files.
I glanced at the telecarb and wished it to transport me to the first place the thief had gone after he'd left Thrittene.
* * *
I stood in what looked like the inside of my computer. The walls appeared to be made out of integrated circuits, the lighting came from fluorescent wires above me, and coils and capacitors rose at waist level. The black and white floor tiles added a dizzying effect to the decor.
I turned at the sound of a machine-like hum. A white box on wheels was coming out between two cathode-ray tubes. It had two retractable arms with what looked like a mechanical hand with opposable thumb on each end. On top of the box, something like a memory chip with a lens in its center focused on me. In the middle of what I took to be its body, the box had a receptacle with a series of holes. If the computer analogy held, I'd have said this box had a female connector.
"Where the hell am I?" I muttered.
"You are on Tekhne," the box said in a flat voice. "Do you wish to recharge?"
"No, thanks."
"If you are not here to recharge then you wish to converse." She pointed to the darkest corner of the room, where I could see a vague shape if I squinted real hard.
"Who's that?"
"Version One-point-O-one-F."
"That's its name or its prison number?"
"All come here to recharge or to converse with One-point-O-one-F. If you will not recharge then you exchange data." She leaned closer. "Although I am not certain he will make sense. His interface capability is degenerating."
The decoder in my brain seemed to work well enough for me to understand her words, but I was damned if I knew what she was talking about. She'd lost me at her first recitation of numbers.
I glanced at the glum corner into which the black and white floor tiles faded. The lines twisted and rolled, until I felt like I was falling into a picture from Escher. I shook my head and scrunched my eyes, and the room righted itself.
"What was that all about?"
"Not sufficient information to respond. The phenomenon is worse around One-point-O-one-F."
I turned to the box. "What's your name, sweets?"
She rolled backward between the tubes. "I do not know 'name.' My designation is Version Four-point-two-O-seven-M. Call if you wish to recharge," she added before she disappeared.
"Hey, I wasn't finished with you," I said to the empty space. She didn't come back, so I walked over to One-point-whatever in the corner, who seemed to be leaning on a coil.
This box was black and had pins instead of holes in its chest, so I figured that was why the female box had called it a "he." He was about half the size of the first box, and his body was scuffed and his lens scratched. He gave me the impression of being much older. I moved beside him and rested my elbows on the coil.
"Forgive me," I said, "but I didn't want to recharge." I winced. Talk about an insane icebreaker.
He lifted his head and stared at me.
"Another one of you?" he asked listlessly.
I suddenly paid close attention. Good old Scratchy here had given me my first hint of a clue. Another human had passed by here. Since I'd asked my telecarb to take me on the thief's trail, I now knew my thief was human.
"One of us?"
"From the Decimal System. Which is totally ineffective. I would have never thought." He shook his head. "How could it have been done?"
"You've talked—conversed — with somebody like me before?"
"More than compared data. Shared. Then, he stole them."
Another piece of the puzzle. Scratchy was talking about a male thief from Earth.
"You'll have to be a bit more specific."
He gave me a blank stare. I took this for an expression of contempt.
"What is your interest in this matter?"
"Maybe we can help each other. I'm after a thief myself."
He hung his head. "It is too late now. The end of our world as we knew it. The Operating Manual foretold that when they were gone the end of Tekhne would be near."
"When what are gone?"
"Our future generation. The Neurochips."
For some reason, I knew this downtrodden, depressed, scuffed male Tekhne wasn't talking about snack food.
"Listen, I'm trying to catch up with this guy, so whatever you can tell me would be useful."
"If we had our Neurochips then we would perpetuate. Now, we are doomed. The Neurochips are the latest Tekhne-eugenics advance for our race. I grew them myself. With them, our world would have attained a higher consciousness, an unimaginable analytical power. They would have become the core processing unit." He shook his memory chip from side to side. "They were in the final phases of testing."
"You mean he stole your kids?"
He looked at me without understanding. That's the problem with communicating with other races, I thought. There are no common points of reference.
"This man," I tried again, "did he abscond with your next generation?"
"They were our future." For a fleeting moment, his immobile face darkened and the iris of his lens tightened, managing to impart an emotion close to despair. "But they were not ready. If he uses them, he may not only destroy them but himself as well. I have used special capacitors.very dangerous."
I showed the guy my telecarb. "Did the person who stole the Neurochips wear a gizmo like this around his wrist?"
"Yes." Scratchy lifted his eye to stare behind me. I turned around and saw a tall white female box and a short black male box on coasters. They obviously hadn't come here to recharge, either.
"I'll leave you to your friends, then. See you."
Scratchy ignored me completely. I was about to wish myself somewhere else when Version Four-something rolled to my side.
"May I ask you something?" she said after a moment of hesitation.
"Sure, sweets. I may even answer you."
"Who is your father?"
I frowned. "I never knew my father. He didn't stick around when he found out my mother was pregnant."
