Time Travel Omnibus, page 304
Surely the prosecuting attorney, with his staff of toxicological experts, must realize that—
And in short, your honor, I must respectfully request that the case be dismissed for lack of evidence and proof of casus mortis—
Galloway never even found out that his neuro-gun was a dangerous weapon. But Vanning haunted the sloppy laboratory, avidly watching the results of his friend’s scientific doodling. More than once he had acquired handy little devices in just this fashion. The trouble was, Galloway wouldn’t work!
He took another sip of Martini, shook his head, and unfolded his lanky limbs. Blinking, he ambled over to a cluttered workbench and began toying with lengths of wire.
“Making something?”
“Dunno. Just fiddling. That’s the way it goes. I put things together, and sometimes they work. Trouble is, I never know exactly what they’re going to do. Tsk!” Galloway dropped the wires and returned to his couch. “Hell with it.”
He was. Vanning reflected, an odd duck. Galloway was essentially amoral, thoroughly out of place in this too-complicated world. He seemed to watch, with a certain wry amusement, from a vantage point of his own, rather disinterested for the most part. And he made things—
But always and only for his own amusement. Vanning sighed and glanced around the laboratory, his orderly soul shocked by the melee. Automatically he picked up a rumpled smock from the floor, and looked for a hook. Of course there was none. Galloway, running short or conductive metal, had long since ripped them out and used them in some gadget or other.
The so-called scientist was creating a zombie, his eyes half closed. Vanning went over to a metal locker in one corner and opened the door. There were no hooks, but he folded the smock neatly and laid it on the floor of the locker.
Then he went back to his perch on Monstro.
“Have a drink?” Galloway asked.
Vanning shook his head. “Thanks, no. I’ve got a case coming up tomorrow.”
“There’s always thiamin. Filthy stuff. I work better when I’ve got pneumatic cushions around my brain.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“It is purely a matter of skill,” Galloway hummed, “to which each may attain if he will . . . What are you gaping at?”
“That—locker,” Vanning said, frowning in a baffled way. “What the—” He got up. The metal door hadn’t been securely latched and had swung open. Of the smock Vanning had placed within the metal compartment there was no trace.
“It’s the paint,” Galloway explained sleepily. “Or the treatment. I bombarded it with gamma rays. But it isn’t good for anything.”
Vanning went over and swung a fluorescent into a more convenient position. The locker wasn’t empty, as he had at first imagined. The smock was no longer there, but instead there was a tiny blob of—something, pale-green and roughly spherical.
“It melts things?” Vanning asked, staring.
“Uh-huh. Pull it out. You’ll see.”
Vanning felt hesitant about nutting his hand inside the locker. Instead, he found a long pair of test-tube clamps and teased the blob out. It was—
Vanning hastily looked away. His eyes hurt. The green blob was changing in color, shape and size. A crawling, nongeometrical blur of motion rippled over it. Suddenly the clamps were remarkably heavy.
No wonder. They were gripping the original smock.
“It does that, you know,” Galloway said absently. “Must be a reason, too. I put things in the locker and they get small. Take ’em out, and they get big again. I suppose I could sell it to a stage magician.” His voice sounded doubtful.
Vanning sat down, fingering the smock and staring at the metal locker. It was a cube, approximately 3x3x5, lined with what seemed to be grayish paint, sprayed on. Outside, it was shiny black.
“How’d you do it?”
“Huh? I dunno. Just fiddling around.” Galloway sipped his zombie. “Maybe it’s a matter of dimensional extension. My treatment may have altered the spatio-temporal relationships inside the locker. I wonder what that means?” he murmured in a vague aside. “Words frighten me sometimes.”
Vanning was thinking about tesseracts. “You mean it’s bigger inside than it is outside?”
“A paradox, a paradox, a most delightful paradox. You tell me. I suppose the inside of the locker isn’t in this space-time continuum at all. Here, shove that bench in it. You’ll see.” Galloway made no move to rise; he waved toward the article of furniture in question.
“You’re right. That bench is bigger than the locker.”
“So it is. Shove it in a bit at a time. That corner first. Go ahead.”
Vanning wrestled with the bench. Despite his shortness, he was stockily muscular.
“Lay the locker on its back. It’ll be easier.”
“I . . . uh! . . . O.K. Now what?”
“Edge the bench down into it.”
Vanning squinted at his companion, shrugged, and tried to obey. Of course the bench wouldn’t go into the locker. One corner did, that was all. Then, naturally, the bench stopped, balancing precariously at an angle.
“Well?”
“Wait.”
The bench moved. It settled slowly downward. As Vanning’s jaw dropped, the bench seemed to crawl into the locker, with the gentle motion of a not-too-heavy object sinking through water. It wasn’t sucked down. It melted down. The portion still outside the locker was unchanged. But that, too, settled, and was gone.
Vanning craned forward. A blur of movement hurt his eyes. Inside the locker was—something. It shifted its contours, shrank, and became a spiky sort of scalene pyramid, deep-purple in hue.
It seemed to be less than four inches across at its widest point.
“I don’t believe it,” Vanning said.
Galloway grinned. “As the Duke of Wellington remarked to the subaltern, it was a demned small bottle, sir.”
“Now wait a minute. How the devil could I put an eight-foot bench inside of a five-foot locker?”
“Because of Newton,” Galloway said. “Gravity. Go fill a test tube with water and I’ll show you.”
“Wait a minute . . . O.K. Now what?”
“Got it brim-full? Good. You’ll find some sugar cubes in that drawer labeled ‘Fuses.’ Lay a cube on top of the test tube, one corner down so it touches the water.”
Vanning racked the tube and obeyed. “Well?”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing. The sugar’s getting wet. And melting.
“So there you are,” Galloway said expansively. Vanning gave him a brooding look and turned back to the tube. The cube of sugar was slowly dissolving and melting down.
Presently it was gone.
“Air and water are different physical conditions. In air a sugar cube can exist as a sugar cube. In water it exists in solution. The corner of it extending into water is subject to aqueous conditions. So it alters physically, though not chemically. Gravity does the rest.”
“Make it clearer.”
“The analogy’s clear enough, dope. The water represents the particular condition existing inside that locker. The sugar cube represents the Workbench. Now! The sugar soaked up the water and gradually dissolved it, so gravity could pull the cube down into the tube as it melted. See?”
“I think so. The bench soaked up the . . . the x condition inside the locker, eh? A condition that shrank the bench—”
“In partis, not in toto. A little at a time. You can shove a human body into a small container of sulphuric acid, bit by bit.”
“Oh,” Vanning said, regarding the cabinet askance. “Can you get the bench out again?”
“Do it yourself. Just reach in and pull it out.”
“Reach in? I don’t want my hand to melt!”
“It won’t. The action isn’t instantaneous. You saw that yourself. It takes a few minutes for the change to take place. You can reach into the locker without any ill effects, if you don’t leave your hand exposed to the conditions for more than a minute or so. I’ll show you.” Galloway languidly arose, looked around, and picked up an empty demijohn. He dropped this into the locker.
The change wasn’t immediate. It occurred slowly, the demijohn altering its shape and size till it was a distorted cube the apparent size of a cube of sugar. Galloway reached down and brought it up again, placing the cube on the floor. It grew. It was a demijohn again.
“Now the bench. Look out.”
Galloway rescued the little pyramid. Presently it became the original workbench.
“You see? I’ll bet a storage company would like this. You could probably pack all the furniture in Brooklyn in here, but there’d be trouble in getting what you wanted out again. The physical change, you know—”
“Keep a chart,” Vanning suggested absently. “Draw a picture of how the thing looks inside the locker, and note down what it was.”
“The legal brain,” Galloway said. “I want a drink.” He returned to his couch and clutched the siphon in a grip of death.
“I’ll give you six credits for the thing,” Vanning offered.
“Sold. It takes up too much room anyway. Wish I could put it inside itself.” The scientist chuckled immoderately. “That’s very funny.”
“Is it?” Vanning said. “Well, here you are.” He took credit coupons from his wallet. “Where’ll I put the dough?”
“Stuff it into Monstro. He’s my bank . . . Thanks.”
“Yeah. Say, elucidate this sugar business a bit, will you? It isn’t just gravity that affects the cube so it slips into a test tube. Doesn’t the water soak up into the sugar—”
“You’re right at that. Osmosis. No, I’m wrong. Osmosis has something to do with eggs. Or is that ovulation? Conduction, convection—absorption! Wish I’d studied physics; then I’d know the right words. Just a zoot stoop, that’s me. I shall take the daughter of the Vine to spouse,” Galloway finished incoherently and sucked at the siphon.
“Absorption,” Vanning scowled. “Only not water, being soaked up by the sugar. The . . . the conditions existing inside the locker, being soaked up by your workbench—in that particular case.
“Like a sponge or a blotter.”
“The bench?”
“Me,” Galloway said succinctly, and relapsed into a happy silence, broken by occasional gurgles as he poured liquor down his scarified gullet. Vanning sighed and turned to the locker. He carefully closed and latched the door before lifting the metal cabinet in his muscular arms.
“Going? G’night. Fare thee well, fare thee well—”
“Night.”
“Fare—thee—well!” Galloway ended, in a melancholy outburst of tunefulness, as he turned over preparatory to going to sleep.
Vanning sighed again and let himself out into the coolness of the night. Stars blazed in the sky, except toward the south, where the aurora of Lower Manhattan dimmed them. The glowing white towers of skyscrapers rose in a jagged pattern. A sky-ad announced the virtues of Vambulin—“It Peps You Up.”
His speeder was at the curb. Vanning edged the locker into the trunk compartment and drove toward the Hudson Floatway, the quickest route downtown. He was thinking about Poe.
The Purloined Letter, which had been hidden in plain sight, but re-folded and re-addressed, so that its superficial appearance was changed. Holy Hutton! What a perfect safe the locker would make! No thief could crack it, for the obvious reason that it wouldn’t be locked. No thief would want to clean it out. Vanning could fill the locker with credit coupons and instantly they’d become unrecognizable. It was the ideal cache.
How the devil did it work?
There was little use in asking Galloway. He played by ear. A primrose by the river’s rim a simple primrose was to him—not Primula vulgaris. Syllogisms were unknown to him. He reached the conclusion without the aid of either major or minor premises.
Vanning pondered. Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Ergo, there was a different sort of space in the locker—
But Vanning was jumping at conclusions. There was another answer—the right one. He hadn’t guessed it yet.
Instead, he tooled the speeder downtown to the office building where he maintained a floor, and brought the locker upstairs in the freight lift. He didn’t put it in his private office; that would have been too obvious. He placed the metal cabinet in one of the storerooms, sliding a file cabinet in front of it for partial concealment. It wouldn’t do to have the clerks using this particular locker.
Vanning stepped back and considered. Perhaps—
A bell rang softly. Preoccupied, Vanning didn’t hear it at first. When he did, he went back to his own office and pressed the acknowledgment button on the Winchell. The gray, harsh, bearded face of Counsel Hatton appeared, filling the screen.
“Hello,” Vanning said.
Hatton nodded. “I’ve been trying to reach you at your home. Thought I’d try the office—”
“I didn’t expect you to call now. The trial’s tomorrow. It’s a bit late for discussion, isn’t it?”
“Dugan & Sons wanted me to speak to you. I advised against it.”
“Oh?”
Hatton’s thick gray brows drew together. “I’m prosecuting, you know. There’s plenty of evidence against MacIlson.”
“So you say. But peculation’s a difficult charge to prove.”
“Did you get an injunction against scop?”
“Naturally,” Vanning said. “You’re not using truth serum on my client!”
“That’ll prejudice the jury.”
“Not on medical grounds. Scop affects MacIlson harmfully. I’ve got a covering prognosis.”
“Harmfully is right!” Hatton’s voice was sharp. “Your client embezzled those bonds, and I can prove it.”
“Twenty-five thousand in credits, it comes to, eh? That’s a lot for Dugan & Sons to lose. What about that hypothetical case I posed? Suppose twenty thousand were recovered—”
“Is this a private beam? No recordings?”
“Naturally. Here’s the cut-off.” Vanning held up a metal-tipped cord. “This strictly sub rosa.”
“Good,” Counsel Hatton said. “Then I can call you a lousy shyster.”
“Teh!”
“Your gag’s too old. It’s moth-eaten. MacIlson swiped five grand in bonds, negotiable into credits. The auditors start checking up. MacIlson comes to you. You tell him to take twenty grand more, and offer to return that twenty if Dugan & Sons refuse to prosecute. MacIlson splits with you on the five thousand, and on the plat standard, that ain’t hay.”
“I don’t admit to anything like that.”
“Naturally you don’t, not even on a closed beam. But it’s tacit. However, the gag’s moth-eaten, and my clients won’t play ball with you. They’re going to prosecute.”
“You called me up just to tell me that?”
“No, I want to settle the jury question. Will you agree to let ’em use scop on the panel?”
“O.K.,” Vanning said. He wasn’t depending on a fixed jury tomorrow. His battle would be based on legal technicalities. With scop-tested talesmen, the odds would be even. And such an arrangement would save days or weeks of argument and challenge.
“Good,” Hatton grunted. “You’re going to get your pants licked off.”
Vanning replied with a mild obscenity and broke the connection. Reminded of the pending court fight, he forced the matter of the fourth-dimensional locker out of his mind and left the office. Later—
Later would be time enough to investigate the possibilities of the remarkable cabinet more thoroughly. Just now, he didn’t want his brain cluttered with nonessentials. He went to his apartment, had the servant mix him a short highball, and dropped into bed.
And, the next day, Vanning won his case. He based it on complicated technicalities and obscure legal precedents. The crux of the matter was that the bonds had not been converted into government credits. Abstruse economic charts proved that point for Vanning. Conversion of even five thousand credits would have caused a fluctuation in the graph line, and no such break existed. Vanning’s experts went into monstrous detail.
In order to prove guilt, it would have been necessary to show, either actually or by inference, that the bonds had been in existence since last December 20th, the date of their most recent check-and-recording. The case of Donovan vs. Jones stood as a precedent.
Hatton jumped to his feet. “Jones later confessed to his defalcation, your honor!”
“Which does not affect the original decision,” Vanning said smoothly. “Retroaction is not admissible here. The verdict was not proven.”
“Counsel for the defense will continue.” Counsel for the defense continued, building up a beautifully intricate edifice of casuistic logic. Hatton writhed. “Your honor! I—”
“If my learned opponent can produce one bond—just one of the bonds in question—I will concede the case.”
The presiding judge looked sardonic. “Indeed! If such a piece of evidence could be produced, the defendant would be jailed as fast as I could pronounce sentence. You know that very well, Mr. Vanning. Proceed.”
“Very well. My contention, then, is that the bonds never existed. They were the result of a clerical error in notation.”
“A clerical error in a Pederson Calculator?”
“Such errors have occurred, as I shall prove. If I may call my next witness—”
Unchallenged, the witness, a math technician, explained how a Pederson Calculator can go haywire. He cited cases.
Hatton caught him up on one point. “I protest this proof. Rhodesia, as everyone knows, is the location of a certain important experimental industry. Witness has refrained from stating the nature of the work performed in this particular Rhodesian factory. Is it not a fact that the Henderson United Company deals largely in radioactive ores?”
“Witness will answer.”
“I can’t. My records don’t include that information.”
“A significant omission,” Hatton snapped. “Radioactivity damages the intricate mechanism of a Pederson Calculator. There is no radium nor radium by-product in the offices of Dugan & Sons.”
