Читать книгу Alienist - Laurence M. Janifer - Страница 13

CHAPTER SEVEN

I mean, of course, that nothing happened involving Folla, or other dimensions, or other spaces. In fact, the Hell of a lot happened, and I was right in the middle of most of it.

Not the shooting, though. I was out of range for that, and I would have heard about it eventually, I suppose, but in fact I got the news about as fast as anybody did, except the victim. Until then, I was working with Master Higsbee on the idea of other spaces. The math for such a concept had been worked out before the Clean Slate War, “as a theoretical exercise, Gerald,” he said. “You must remember that the ancients had no idea anything existed that was completely unmeasurable.”

“If you can’t measure it, it isn’t science,” I quoted.

“Exactly,” he said. “A silly attitude, but quite typical of the time. The saying spread so widely and rapidly that we have, today, no idea who originated it. People seemed to like it.”

“Well,” I said, “they had some excuse. Even psychology works better when you can put the numbers in—that’s what Psychological Statics is all about.”

“Ah,” he said. “You enjoyed your talk with Euglane?”

I nodded. “An interesting fellow. It was while we were talking that this other-spaces notion bit me.”

“You were bitten well,” the Master said. “It is an idea too long laid aside, Gerald. Such other spaces would be wholly intangible—not even detectable as forces, particles or waves or whatever the ancients called such things—I don’t recall.”

“Wavicles,” I said.

He shrugged. “To be sure. Deciding that a compromise is an object. Typical.”

“Well—”

“An object that cannot be detected in any way cannot be measured,” the Master said. “Therefore, it was not science; therefore it could not exist.”

“We can’t measure space-four,” I said. “But the ancients didn’t know there was a space-four. They have some excuse.”

“They knew that Cantorian infinities existed,” he said. “Cantor, Dedekind, many others lived and died before space flight. Such infinities are not mensurable in any usual sense; they can be measured in terms of each other, but not in terms of any objects themselves not infinite.”

“Well,” I said, “they were the ancients, after all.”

“They were a strange collection of people,” he said. “But let us leave them, and apply ourselves to something more interesting—to this idea of other spaces.”

We discussed it up, down, and sideways, and kept running up against the central puzzle: how in Hell could we contact anything that existed in the ninety per cent of the universe that was, for us, nothing at all except a passageway for forces? We came up with some notions, many of them complicated and all of them too silly to bother you with—but if you don’t hunt for all the notions, silly or not, you are not going to find the good ones.

And a few weeks went by. And I did other things—renewed an acquaintance here and there, went to a meeting of a club I’m a member of—spun time out, in other words, in the company of my friends and neighbors. And then, early one evening, Euglane called me.

I was, in fact, dressing for dinner, and looking forward to it, since a rosebud named Gjenda Cass, an expert in some arcane aspects of physical chemistry (which was not, for me, her major attraction, but I have no prejudice against physical chemists), had agreed to share it with me, and had suggested a restaurant I’d never tried.

“It’s rather a new idea, Knave,” she’d said, “and I think you’ll like it.”

I am all for new ideas, or at any rate some of them, and I was looking forward to suggesting to Gjenda some rather old ideas of my own, later on in the evening. I was putting some plain black studs into a lovely and expensive off-white shirt when the phone blipped at me.

I went and got it, keyed in Remote and said: “Hello?” as I put in another stud.

“I need you,” a voice said. Not, unfortunately, Gjenda’s.

“Euglane?” I hadn’t heard from him, nor had I called him; Master Higsbee and I had been off on another track, and I assumed that, if Euglane had any news about other dimensions, alien beings or the like, he’d be in touch. Until something happened, I wasn’t on any deadline.

“I dislike to ask it, Knave,” he said, “but I need to see you as soon as possible.”

His voice was still pleasant, just a bit gruff, but there was a lot of strain in it. “What’s happened?” I said.

He made an odd sound. In a human being I’d have called it a moan, and maybe it was one. “Death and destruction,” he said. “I am at home. You remember the address?”

Euglane hadn’t struck me as the kind of person who was given to random hysteria. I checked my watch. All right. “Give me forty minutes,” I said, and hung up without waiting for a reply.

Damn. There was just time to find Gjenda at home, I hoped, and I got back on the phone. Gjenda answered, and she did not take it well, and I was in too much of a hurry to smooth things over.

Well … perhaps some other time, physical chemistry.

Thirty-six minutes later—dressed in a casual jumper, with my dinner clothes still lying around my hotel room—I rang the little bell-announce, and Euglane opened the door just as quickly as before. I wondered briefly if he hid himself right behind the damn door when he was expecting visitors—twice I’d been early, and twice there’d been no delay at all. But probably not; call him speedy and hospitable.

His arms were fully extended—relaxed—but his legs weren’t; when tightened up he had rather short, almost stumpy legs, capable of carrying him nicely upright. He didn’t look much different, if you passed the eyes, which were wide and staring, and didn’t notice the fact that he was breathing just a bit raggedly.

I said: “What’s happened?” and stepped inside. He shut and locked the door behind me, and leaned against it, facing me in the entry hall.

“His name is Harris France,” he said, “and I’m horribly afraid that he’s killed someone.”

I nodded, and went on into the big living room I’d seen before He followed me, and when I sat down on the same couch he sat down in the same big chair. He twined his arms over his head. I nodded again.

“Let’s take it a step at a time,” I said. “It will make more sense that way. Who is this Harris France, who do you think he’s killed, why do you think so, and why aren’t you sure?”

That seemed an exhaustive enough list to start with; it left out only the question: Why me? which could wait a few minutes. Euglane stared at me, his arms twining and untwining. Nervousness? Panic? Worry?

“Of course you’re right,” he said. He let his arms fall. Far down by the carpet, his hands clenched and unclenched. “I’ll try to—I have a patient, whose name is Harris France. He presented with symptoms of—well, never mind, never mind. We’ve been working for six months. Almost exactly six months. Progress has been slow; he has some—intractable beliefs. Apparently intractable. They interfere with his perception of the normal world, and—Knave, this isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“In order to get anywhere,” I said, “it is necessary to start from somewhere. I’ve got to find out where the somewhere is.”

“Right,” he said. “Right. He came here this afternoon. Not his usual appointment, but he called and said he had an emergency. I was able to clear an hour. He told me that his companion was lying dead in their home.”

“He killed his companion?” I said.

The arms went up, twining again. “He doesn’t know,” Euglane said. “He told me he felt sleepy—it’s an escape for him, it’s been happening for a month or more now. He went to his bed and lay down, and remembers nothing. He thinks he slept about three hours. That would not be unusual. When he woke and went into his living room, he found her body. He told me she had been killed by a beamer, fired from a distance of between four and eight feet, tightest focus and maximum power. The beam had gone through her heart. He knows little more. He called me, he says, within minutes—when he was able to function at all. The shock was massive.”

“He noticed a good deal, for a man in a state of shock,” I said. “Weapon, range, focus, power. He must have spent some time examining the body.”

“He would recognize such things rapidly,” Euglane said. “He’s a Detective-Colonel with the Homicide detachment of the police.”