New Writings in SF 20 - [Anthology] Page 5

  And what had Horstman learned? Apart from a minor deviation in battle history, which was irrelevant, Horstman had learned that the enemy really did have a small-calibre sonic weapon projectile, the so-called Jericho Effect. He had heard it, seen it, touched it, examined it and suffered from it. What more experience did a man need to convince him of the reality of a legend ?

  Now Horstman was going to be given all the facilities he needed to make a sonic weapon of his own. He could do it, of course, because of his native ability and because it is always easier to re-invent something known to exist than it is to walk the perilous tightrope of the unsupported pioneer. Yet his truth was at pathetic variance with the fact that the enemy’s progress in sonic weaponry had actually stayed at the humble level of the bugle.

  Around the ruins of the building where Horstman’s ‘room’ had been, a solitary sapper was recovering the mangled TV pickups and searching the rubble for an image-intensifier which might still be intact. Some engineers were engaged in unloading heavy digging equipment and a crane, with which to recover the very large electromagnetic sound transducer which had literally been buried under the concrete raft on which the ruin had been carefully constructed. Later they must dig up seven more transducers from the centre of the township and decide on the economics of recovering the ten kilometres of heavy power cable which led to the control blockhouse out of sight beyond the hill.

  So much for the hardware of the myth. That part was easy. Far more difficult was the human contact follow-up—the constant editing of reports and rumours and personality to sustain a legend. Ahead of her were countless hours of living and talking about a lie as though it was the truth. In doing this she would be forming human relationships which would engender personal friendships and trust and yet could, never have any basis firmer than a wanton and brutal deception.

  Longingly Early looked back towards the smoke which showed where the uncomplicated Saltz and his uncomplicated band of brigands filled their uncomplicated stomachs and told crude jokes which contained no element of deception save the occasional human weakness of boasting. The little animal which lived deep in Early clawed out piteously for release from the cage of obligation and was silenced by something called the right of necessity caused by involvement in total war.

  Patiently she started checking through her notes to see if there was anything she had missed.

  * * * *

  Early was flushed when she arrived at Maidment’s office. The imperative words of his summons warned of trouble and the tone of his voice on the phone had hinted at a more than usual urgency. Had she not known him better she would have sworn that Maidment was seriously worried.

  ‘Sit down, Early.’ He seemed unusually preoccupied. ‘I gather you’re having some remarkable success with Horstman.’

  ‘Surely. It’s all in the reports.’

  ‘I’ve not read the latest crop. I’ve had other things on my mind.’

  Early examined him curiously. Under his habitual coolness she could detect a tenseness which was foreign to his usual composure.

  ‘Something wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. But let’s start this thing from the beginning. How far has Horstman’s work gone?’

  ‘A long way. He’s already got his sonic maser working.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Maidment made an arch with his fingertips and leaned back in his chair, a picture of relaxed attention. Knowing him, Early was not deceived. There was the movement of a slight pulse in his neck which betrayed his agitation. In a way she felt almost let-down to know that there was perhaps something normal and human inside that cultivated exterior. Frowning, she scanned her notes.

  ‘He’s come up with a device which can produce a continuous beam of coherent sonic energy. It produces a tight band of longitudinal sound waves at a frequency of eleven kilohertz, with a beam diameter of about two millimetres and a cone angle of better than a milliradian. The beam power so far developed is around two kilowatts continuous, or in excess of a hundred kilowatts in Q-spoiled pulsed operation.’

  ‘And you’re quite sure of those power figures ?’

  ‘The decimal places are to be the subject of independent verification, but I’m quite sure of the overall picture.’

  ‘But do you know what the overall picture means?’

  ‘Yes. It means that he can comfortably chop down an oak tree with it at thirty metres distance. I’ve seen it demonstrated.’

  ‘Damn the oak trees! I was speaking about the speed of development to high power levels.’

  ‘You mean it’s too slow?’ She was puzzled.

  ‘Of course not. I mean it’s incredibly fast. Far faster than it ought to be in the circumstances. Hell, he’s got through five years’ work in six months!’

  ‘He’s been driving himself and everyone like a fanatic, but he didn’t waste time proving his theory. He plunged straight into production of this power device like it was already the state of the art. Wasn’t that the sort of progress you hoped to make when you set up this project?’

  ‘Only in theory. In practice, I’m a realistic. I’d have settled for a proved working hypothesis in twelve months. And that on the assumption that nothing had gone wrong in the interim.’

  ‘Nothing has gone wrong that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Forget it for the moment. Exactly what is this hardware that Horstman’s produced?’

  ‘In essence, a sonic laser. Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.’

  ‘Elaborate.’

  ‘The device depends on the principle of producing Lamb waves in a thin section of a nickel-chrome alloy. The alloy terminates in carbon-fibre end pieces having different sonic propagation velocities to the metal. These function to form a Fabry-Perot resonator in the alloy by reflection and also act as an analogue of Brewster-angle -windows by diffracting shear and Rayleigh waves out of the system into an attenuator. The whole thing is pumped by magnetostriction, the frequency of the pumping energy being critically tuned to the ‘cavity’ resonance. The main problem is to get the heat away fast enough to stop the nickel-chromium ‘cavity’ going above Curie point.’

  ‘All this in six months ? And he got that far on a prototype test rig?’ Maidment’s voice ran a little higher than usual. ‘Early, if anyone but you had told me, I’d not have believed it.’

  ‘He took off on the development like he’d been making them for years. Frankly he’s caused a rare stir among the theory boys, because such intensities of sound can’t be carried wholly by molecular vibration of the air. It looks as if there’s a whole new mechanism of sound-wave propagation involved. My guess is that sound waves are going to become respectable members of the electromagnetic spectrum, including the ability to be propagated through vacuum if the source is of sufficient intensity. But the point is that Horstman acted as if he’d been sure of this from the very first.’

  ‘Slow down, Early! You’re beginning to go at the same pace he is.’

  ‘Is that bad? It’s certainly getting results. His next step is to experiment with the coupling of high-intensity sonics and cryogenics. He has a theory that he’s going to find something called super-sonicity. The theory looks so sound that Melchior himself is coming over from Geneva to discuss the project. Given another twelve months, Horstman reckons to have cracked the problem of trapping sound in stasis. And if that can be done at one end of the electromagnetic spectrum, then it’s only a matter of time before the same principle can be applied right through.’

  Maidment hit the desk with a hard blow that made her wince.

  ‘Early, will you kindly shut up! Can’t you see I’m thinking?’

  She smiled tiredly. ‘Sorry! I guess I’m still trying to use the results to justify what we did to him.’

  ‘He wasn’t intended to lose that leg, you know. It wasn’t part of the plan.’

  ‘But it was part of the risk?’

  ‘True. But twisting his leg was the only thing we could think of to cement the atmosphere of authenti
city out there on the field. You don’t find anyone living out in no-man’s-land in this war who could possibly run.’

  ‘So the end has justified the means?’ Early was critical and unconvinced.

  ‘Development-wise, it seems to have—but I’m hanged if I can explain how it managed to do so. Logically it should have blown-up in our faces.’

  ‘Explain that to me,’ said Early.

  ‘As an exercise in Tactical Intelligence, it’s been a classic case of incompetence. You don’t know it yet, but we missed something—something vital. After all the detail coverage and continuity we put into the job, we still left a flaw in the fabric wide enough to drive a tank-transporter through.’

  ‘If we did,’ said Early, ‘I’m sure I don’t know where.’

  ‘You would if you’d re-run the records as frequently as we have. When Horstman was examining the clip of five bullets, he took one out and split it open. Then we turned on the transducer. But do you know what he did with the other four bullets ? We missed it at first, because the room was falling to bits and the TV pickups were on the blink— but he put the other four in his pocket.’

  Early scowled. ‘You mean he’s had those bullets all this time ?’

  ‘Yes. And it’s a fair bet that he’s tried the experiment again, under controlled conditions. When they failed to work he’d have wondered why. If he’s the type of man I think he is, it shouldn’t have taken him long to work out that he’d been taken for a ride and a pretty nasty ride at that.’

  Early shook her head. ‘It doesn’t seem very likely. He’s given no sign of it. Yet if he suspected you, he must also have connected me with the duplicity. And he lost his leg because of it...’ Words failed her as the enormous implications made themselves apparent.

  ‘Precisely!’ said Maidment. ‘So why didn’t he blow the whole dirty scheme apart and expose it for the rotten deal it was? Why hasn’t he taken your forged reports on the enemy’s Jericho Effect and stuffed them down your pretty little throat? And why did he go ahead like a man possessed and produce this sonic maser? According to my calculations, he should have lost his motivation. If I’d been in his position I’d have come up here and taken a few individuals very precisely apart—leg or no leg.’

  ‘He may not have had the bullets,’ said Early, clutching at straws. ‘He could have lost them somewhere.’

  ‘Not a chance. We’ve had every centimetre of the field searched and we’ve accounted for every bullet save four. Besides which, the doctor at the hospital remembers that some ammunition was given to Horstman with his effects when he was discharged.’

  ‘So I’ve spent all this time on follow-up making a damn fool of myself?’

  ‘More than that, Early. You’ve been exposed to a hell of a risk. Remember Horstman’s considerable intellect and the even more considerable incentive we’ve given him for revenge, he could easily be plotting something very nasty. That’s why I want to pull you off the project. I’d hate to have to strain bits of homogenised Early out of the blasted oaks. Besides which, I can’t afford to place at risk the only member of my staff who really understands the technical paperwork.’

  She shook her head. ‘Horstman’s not vindictive. He’s quite a kind and wonderful character when you get to know him. I think you’re worrying about nothing.’

  ‘I’m not wrong about the bullets, Early. They’re fact.’

  ‘Well, I still think I should stay with him.’

  The impasse was broken by the telephone ringing. Maidment listened gravely.

  ‘Here? Very well, I’ll see him. But provide him with an escort and have the escort remain outside until he leaves.’

  He dropped the receiver back on its rest and turned to Early.

  ‘That was the guard commander. Horstman’s at the gate. He knows you’re here and he wants to see us both. Looks as though this is the showdown.’

  Early bit her lip. ‘It had to come sometime, so I suppose it’s better we get it over now. God, I feel rotten about this! He’s too damn nice ;..’

  Horstman’s entrance, at least, was undramatic. If he was angry, he showed no sign of it. In his face they could read little but shrewd appraisal. Though his limp was apparent, the prosthetic limb was obviously effective and he moved easily and with confidence.

  ‘Ah, so there’s my Early!’ He glanced at Maidment. ‘You know, she’s been such a great comfort to me. When I couldn’t find her this evening, I guessed she might be here.’

  ‘A rare piece of deduction,’ said Maidment, exploring the situation carefully.

  ‘Not really!’ The scientist looked merely sage. ‘Your people have been making so many inquiries about me recently, it was only natural you’d involve Early. She is one of your Tactical Intelligence staff as well as being with WarTech, isn’t she ?’

  ‘She is.’ Maidment was trying to decide whether or not Horstman was armed. He came to no definite conclusion. ‘Well, what do you wish to see us about, Doctor Horstman?’

  ‘About these.’ Horstman put three glass-tipped cartridges on the table. ‘I think you’ve been looking for them. I don’t have the fourth or fifth. I’m sure you appreciate why.’ His face was suddenly concerned.

  ‘So you do know about the bullets?’ asked Early. ‘That they’re...’

  ‘Dummies ? My dear Early, I’ve known for months. But I didn’t dare to say—in case he took you away from me.’

  ‘And what happened out there on the field—do you know that was all fake too—that the whole thing was nothing but a trick?’ She ignored Maidment’s cautioning frown.

  Horstman nodded gravely. ‘The first realisation was a brutal shock, I must admit. But any man who knowingly puts himself in the hands of professional liars takes full responsibility for his own disillusionment.’

  ‘You mean—you don’t mind?’ Early’s incredulity made her voice come out all ragged.

  ‘Mind? Like hell I minded!’ He glanced down to where his natural leg once used to be. ‘But if that’s all I lose in this war, I can’t complain. Millions have fared worse. I suppose it’s something of a compliment to have been worked over by the most professional team of constructive liars in the business. You see, I began finally to appreciate the point of what you were attempting to do—stimulating emission of inspiration. It’s rather clever, really. And that brings me to the real reason behind my visit here this evening.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Maidment and his voice carried no trace of emotion of any kind.

  Horstman hesitated for a long second before replying.

  ‘I was wondering if you could re-create the precise conditions of those last ten minutes out in the field ... because I’d like to go over them again.’

  Early could sense that Maidment behind the desk went almost rigid with disbelief. She continued to listen, but Horstman’s voice seemed to be coming to her from a great distance and she had to concentrate in order to follow the sense.

  ‘... and just before I broke that bullet... I had the whole concept quite clearly ... I was on the edge of a discovery so immense that the sonic maser and the stasis problems are almost without consequence ... I lost it when you started that transducer ... but for the moment I could see clear through to Jericho.’

  <>

  * * * *

  MICROCOSM

  by Robert P. Holdstock

  Weinshenk was apparently in two places at the same time. Both were prisons and in both he was dying. The trouble with alien planets will be their alienness.

  * * * *

  Weinshenk, behind closed eyes, began to marvel that he was still a living, thinking, rational being. Because by all the odds he should have been dead.

  He should have died on a far-away planet (what was it called...? Aurigae Sam II—affectionately named after Weinshenk himself). He should have died beneath an alien sun, a tiny, intensely white sun, nourishing that tiny, intensely dead (or so they had thought) planet. Aurigae Sam II. After Sam Weinshenk, the bravest man in the Universe. The only man who would
venture on to the surface. If you please, the most foolish man in the world!

  He remembered the voices of his friends. Don’t panic, Sam. We’ll get you back. Chin up, kid. You look great and if you feel rough ... well, it’ll pass. Earthfall in a matter of days. Stick with it Sam, boy. Don’t give up now.