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"Will that do it?" Taki's voice asked on the audio circuit.
"There's only one way to find out, isn't there," Kevin answered.
Sir Real produced another piece of metal from the accessories attached around its waist an
improvised key-blank, formed from a rectangular-section bar, with a cross-piece to turn it.
Kevin guided the bar into the lock, steering it carefully past the struts that were propping up
the pins. The struts and the blank, in effect, together formed a composite key. Kevin moved
out of the way to one side, giving Taki room to apply force to the crosspiece. The lock's
circular faceplate, looking to Kevin like the door of a bank vault, started to turn.
"I don't believe this!" Kevin exclaimed. "Taki, I think this is actually going to work!"
"See. Didn't I tell you to trust me?"
"How come you know so much about this kind of stuff?" Kevin asked.
"You would too if you had to live with a paranoid sister who locks up everything movable in
closets and boxes. You have to learn about things like this, to get things you need."
"Why does she lock everything up?"
"I told you, she's paranoid. She thinks I'd take it."
There was a solidclack as the lock disengaged. "Jackpot!" Kevin said. "Now let's see if we
can open it."
"Huh, what's this 'we'?" Taki said, scooping him off the ladder and transferring him to one of
Sir Real's belt hitches. "What's a pipsqueak like you going to do? This is the real man's
department."
"Was that meant to be a pun?" Kevin groaned, clinging on while the larger mec backed down
the ladder to the floor.
"No but it's not bad, is it?"
"No, not bad. Just terrible."
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"I knew you'd like it."
They reached the floor. Sir Real set Kevin down and then shifted the ladder aside. Above
them, the front of the file cabinet towered like a windowless gray skyscraper. From the handle
of the lower drawer, a length of cord dipped across the floor like the cable of a suspension
bridge and ran through a clothesline pulley secured to the leg of the bench standing a few feet
away.
"Okay, then, let's see this great Samson act," Kevin said.
Sir Real picked up the free end of the line and took in the slack through the pulley. Then it
turned to face the pulley, the line running through one hand and around its back to the other. It
drew the line taut and leaned against it experimentally. "I need something to push back
against," Taki said.
"There's the edge of the carpet just a short way back."
Sir Real looked back over a shoulder; then, paying out line as it went, moved backward until it
could brace a foot. The mec crouched, took the strain, and then slowly straightened, using its
legs and back. Above Kevin, the immense face of painted metal crept outward.
"You've cracked it! It's moving!" Kevin exclaimed. Taki paused to take in slack and then
repeated the maneuver, pulling the drawer out another half inch.
Kevin wondered how much more they might have been able to achieve if they'd had more than
a day to prepare. People were always making a fuss over there never being enough time to do
things. Kevin had his own theory about that. Being God, knowing everything and existing
forever, had to be a pretty boring way to exist, it seemed to him. It would be like reading a
book that you already knew every word of. What made books fun was the
uncertainty wanting to know what happens in the part that you haven't got to yet. God must
have gotten pretty tired of being God, Kevin thought. And so He had invented time to make the
Universe more interesting.
Back in Kevin's own house, Eric sat down in the dining room with the plate of roast that
Harriet had left for him, and read over his notes for the presentation he would be giving
tomorrow. He had been through the routine many times before, and had no delusions that
anything much was likely to change as a result of it. The minds of the orthodoxy were closed on
the subject. Nobody questioned basics these days. What passed for science had degenerated
into a competition of devising pretexts to attract funding from political bureaucracies. Who
cared if an experiment performed a century ago had been accorded the wrong
interpretation particularly if it meant that a huge part of the theoretical work going on today,
apart from creating platoons of jobs and helping to keep the paper mills busy, was largely a
waste of time?
Eric was one of the few who cared. He cared because in his view, most of what was going on
wasn't science at all. Science meant having an open attitude to what might or might not be, a
simple, sincere desire to know whatwas. When no further examination was permitted of what
had been decided was true, and inconvenient facts became non-subjects, then science had given
way to fundamentalism. The spectacles featured in the news documentaries and
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magazines bigger accelerators, faster computers, fancier satellites were orgies of
technology: maybe more refined and polished than what had gone before, but still essentially
more of the same. Nothing was being discovered that was radically new. And whenever official
eminences proclaimed this to be because there was little new left to be discovered, as
happened periodically through the centuries and had once again become fashionable, it was
invariably a sign of science in trouble and due for an overhaul.
"Ah, yes it is. I thought you were back." Vanessa came through the doorway from the kitchen.
"You found your dinner?"
"Mm. Harriet left it in the microwave."
"Is it okay?"
"Just fine."
"I thought you'd be back earlier."
"So did I. We ran into a bit of a snag with feedback resonances." Eric indicated the rest of the
house with a vague motion of his head. "Is Kevin around, or did he go over to Taki's?"
"He must have gone to Taki's," Vanessa said. "I'm pretty sure he's not here. How about you?
Have you decided whether you'll be staying till tomorrow, or will you be traveling tonight?"
"Oh, it's getting late now. I'll leave it until morning. Do you still want me to use the Jag?"
Vanessa nodded. "I would. There are a couple of boxes of things down by the back
seat brushes, paints, and craft things. Do you mind if I leave them there? Thelma left them
when she was here the other day. I'll be seeing her again next week."
Eric shook his head as he ate. "No problem. I'll only be taking one bag. You sure you'll be
okay with the Jeep?"
"I'll use the van if I need to go anywhere far."
"Um. I think Doug's borrowed it again doing more work on his house over the weekend, or
something."
"Oh, if I get stuck I can always call Harriet. I'll manage somehow." Vanessa looked around,
remaining in the doorway. "Well, there's something I need to finish in the den. I'll leave you to
your dinner."
Eric nodded as Vanessa turned away. Her footsteps receded across the kitchen and out the far
side. Eric carried on eating in silence. Just for once, it would have been nice if she'd offered to
get herself a coffee, sit down with him, and talk about something, he thought to himself.
Kitchens, dinners, which car to use, and boxes in the back. Vanessa had hoped this
relationship might include some recognition of her worth as a scientist. Instead, she was
supposed to become a full-time version of Harriet. Eric had done a smooth job of enticing her
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away from Microbotics and its realities of the kind he would never be able to deal with. She
was expected to become part of this dream world that he had created to escape into, to be an
accessory a complement to his life, but no more. She sat down in the den, picked up the
phone, and tapped in Payne's number. Well, Eric had picked the wrong person, she told herself [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]