Perchance. Michael Kurland

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Island Free State?”

      “She goes—somewhere else, Dr. Faineworth, not of this world. That is clear, and I agree with you. The only possible point of dissent is whether we can exploit this—elsewhere—for our own benefit. And on that point I remain unconvinced. The girl goes, yes; but can we follow? You don’t know, and I don’t know.”

      “Elsewhen,” Dr. Faineworth said.

      “Pardon?”

      “I rather think it’s not ‘elsewhere,’ Edbeck, but ‘elsewhen.’”

      Edbeck smiled incredulously. “She travels into the past? Is that what you’re saying?”

      “Perhaps. But more probably she goes, let us call it, sideways in time.”

      Delbit’s head jerked up at that, but he quickly lowered it again and resumed his carefully edited transcribing of last night’s dream.

      “Don’t have sport with me, Dr. Faineworth. Just because my scientific knowledge is not as strong as yours does not mean I am an innocent gull.” Edbeck shook his head. “I do not swallow raw fish, my medical friend.”

      “Come, come, Edbeck, do not allow your thoroughly admirable skepticism to get in the way of your even more admirable cupidity. There’s nothing intrinsically strange about the suggestion, once you accept that she came from somewhere else. And we have empirical evidence of that; we’ve seen her go back and forth three times. I’m giving you my theory as to where she goes. If I’m wrong, then we’ll soon know. But still, as you say, she goes somewhere. And soon we shall find out where that somewhere is.”

      “A forest,” Edbeck commented, looking unconvinced. “Of use to us only if the market for raw lumber were to suddenly increase.”

      “That is merely a part of her illness,” Faineworth said. “This cycling back and forth between here and some primitive forest.”

      “You believe so?”

      “Obviously. The girl does not come from a forest; so much is evident. The same brain damage that gave her amnesia brought her here, and causes her to cycle between this, ah, reality and that forest. And, Edbeck—”

      ”Umph?”

      “—that amnesia, that brain intrusion, is induced.”

      ”You think so?”

      “No, no, my petulant friend. I know so. Such is my specialty. Such is my training. It is what I myself have been trying to do for these past twenty years. I can at least recognize an external intrusion, even though I cannot as yet create it. And I’d give a considerable part of my fortune to discover who did create it, how they accomplished it, and where they learned the trick.”

      Edbeck thought that over for a few seconds, and then suddenly sat up. “The devil you say! You mean someone else did that to her?”

      “Just so. The tests show it. Clever, whoever did this. Deucedly clever. Sections of her memory are, effectively, blocked off. And there are now built in, let us call them, signposts warning her not to approach. ‘Calla’ and ‘Nimber,’ for example, are two concepts she is not even to explore. So they mean something important to whoever did this to her. And so they will to her when she has her memory. It’s a fascinating technique—quite beyond anything we can do. Believe me. If anyone in this country—or this planet—were using such techniques, I would be aware of it.” Faineworth slapped his hand firmly on the desk. “One more sign that she’s from another, ah, place.”

      “Well, wherever it came from, if it’s beyond our skills—”

      Yes, Delbit silently agreed.

      “We could not do it, Edbeck, my friend, but we can undo it. That is a different sort of problem.”

      “We can?”

      “Most assuredly. But we are not going to for the moment.”

      “We’re not?”

      “No. For then she would fly away, untethered. We must first find a way to tether her to us before we restore her memory.”

      “Ah. And how do we do that?”

      Dr. Faineworth reached over to the floor by the left side of his desk and lifted a cardboard box onto the desktop. “My newly designed cerebral monitor,” he said, pulling out a thick leather helmet. It looked much like the one Delbit wore for his dream-interloping, but it was larger and had a great bundle of wires coming from the top instead of the mere twelve that Delbit’s carried.

      “The helmet connects to a recording device that is being made for me now,” Dr. Faineworth said. “Sixty simultaneous outputs. When I get it, sometime tomorrow, the girl gets hooked up and stays hooked up until the next time she disappears. And I think I have determined how to induce her to disappear.”

      “How?”

      Dr. Faineworth separated a white wire and a red wire from the bundle going into the helmet. “These two wires here,” he said.

      “Ah,” Edbeck said, nodding wisely.

      Delbit took a deep breath.

      “Then, once we have induced her to disappear, we look at the readings. Then we adjust the apparatus to give us more of what seems to be the most interesting.”

      “Then she comes back, and we do it again!” Edbeck said, clapping his pudgy hands together.

      “Precisely. And after the third or fourth time, we should have it pegged. Just what she’s doing and how she’s doing it.”

      “It won’t damage her, will it?” Edbeck asked.

      Faineworth considered. “Not irreparably. Possibly not at all. We can only find out through making the experiment.”

      “Slipping sideways through time, eh?” Edbeck pursed his lips. “Faineworth, just what does that mean?”

      Delbit, feeling as though his ears were burning, got off his stool and walked across the room to the door. He had two excuses ready for leaving, lunchtime and going to the bathroom. Would the doctor stop him? Would the doctor see through his excuse? Delbit felt as though the truth were written on his face.

      Dr. Faineworth launched upon an explanation of alternate universes, waving a finger at Edbeck, and Delbit passed unnoted from his sight. Delbit climbed the stairs and, drawn by some unexamined emotion, approached the girl’s cell. “Got to ask Exxa some questions,” Delbit mumbled to Fenton, when he reached the closed ward. Fenton, unquestioningly, unlocked the girl’s door and Delbit passed inside.

      “Yes?” The girl was sitting on the side of her cot, and she looked up as Delbit entered. It was the first time he had seen her—outside of her dreams—since the day Dr. Faineworth had introduced them.

      Delbit closed the door. “You’ve got to get out of here,” he said urgently, after making sure that Fenton had moved away from the cell.

      “You’re the boy—” the girl said, pointing a slender finger at him. “And you—” She paused thoughtfully, and then smiled. “My dream СКАЧАТЬ