The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell

Chapter 25

I worried at a fingernail with my incisors, waiting for something to go wrong. Slakey had been one step ahead of us every time so far—and not one of our operations against him had ever succeeded to any measurable degree. We had avoided disaster only through heroic efforts and last—minute leaps. It did not seem possible that on this occasion everything had worked according to plan. I had both hands around the TI; I kept it with me at all times. Now it sat on my lap as the shuttle eased into Special Corps Prime Base. I looked at the needle, as I had hundreds, thousands of times before, and it was up against the red post that read full.

Full of Professor Justin Slakey? It had better be.

It was an expectant crowd that assembled in the laboratory. Even Berkk was there, fully recovered from the brain operation and now enjoying some much deserved R and R. The talking died away and a hushed silence prevailed when I presented, almost ceremoniously, the TF to an expectant Professor Coypu.

"Is he in there?" I asked.

"I don't see why not." He tapped the dial. "Reads full. We'll see. But of course there remains the major problem. How do we get Slakey Out of this TI? I can't feed him into another machine—there would still be no way to access him. I need a human host. You will remember what that is like, Jim, when you used my brain and memories to build a time machine."

"I let you take over my own gray matter. It was not nice. And you left me a note saying it was the hardest thing you ever did, to switch the TF off after you had built the temporal helix. To literally commit suicide."

"Exactly. We need a volunteer to be plugged into this TF so that a madman can control his brain and body. And Slakey will not want to leave once he is there. Not too tempting a prospect. So—with those facts in mind, who will volunteer?"

This got a very impressive silent silence as everyone present thought hard about it. I realized that I had better volunteer again, better me than my wife or sons. But as I opened my mouth Berkk spoke up.

"Professor, I think you have your man. I owe you people an awful lot, owe Jim who got me out of the rock works, owe Angelina who got us out of that hell in Heaven. I was dying down there with the others. I owe my life to you both and I don't want to see you or your sons, or Sybil, letting this nutcase near their gray matter. Just one question, Professor Coypu. Are you sure you can get him out—and get me back in when it is all over?"

Coypu nodded furiously. "Can be done, no doubt, just blast him out with a neural charge if I have to."

"Wonderful—what will happen to the me in there if you do that?"

"Interesting thought. A neural blast cleans everything out and sets the synapses back to neutral. But—not to worry. We'll make a recording of you in a different TF. This technique works quite well, as Jim will tell you. So whatever happens with Slakey, in the end we will get yourself back inside yourself."

"All right." He rose to his feet slowly, his face very pale under the dark scars. "Do it quickly before I have a chance to change my mind."

Quickly really was very quick with Coypu. He must have been holding a psycho blaster in his lap because there was a loud humming and Berkk folded. Angelina and I were there to catch him before he hit the floor.

A padded operating table rolled out of the massed machinery and we placed him gently on it. Coypu got to work. He took an empty TF from the shelf and plugged it into the back of Berkk's head. Worked the controls and nodded happily.

"There. This very brave young man can now go back on the shelf. If Slakey causes trouble I will then zap him Out of the neurons and get Berkk back with this. Now—to work."

He seized up the Slakey TF and placed it onto the workbench, then slipped a multiganged plug into the TF's socket. He ran an electronic check of the contents before reeling out the contact and connecting it to Berkk's head.

"Wait," I said. He stopped. "How about securing Berkk's body in place so he doesn't hurt himself—or us."

"I will have him securely under electronic control—"

"Slakey has never been under control in the past. So let us be sure and take no chances now."

Coypu threw a few switches and padded clamps hummed out from below the table. I locked them securely into place on ankles and wrists. Found a large belt and secured that around his waist and nodded to Coypu. He put the final connection into place, then threw some more switches as he swung a microphone down in front of his mouth. "You are asleep. Very much asleep. But you can hear me. Hear my words. You will not wake up. But you will hear me. Can you hear me?"

The speaker rustled a bit and there was a sound like a sigh. Then the words, almost inaudible: "I can hear you."

"That's very good." He turned up the amplification a bit. "Now, tell me—who are you?"

I don't know why they are called pregnant silences, perhaps because they are pregnant with possibilities. This one had all kinds of possibilities. The loudspeaker rustled again. "My name is… Justin Slakey..

Who can blame us for shouting with joy. We had done it!

Not quite. Berkk, or his body, was writhing and fighting against the bonds. He bit his lips until they bled. Then his eyes opened.

"What are you doing to me? Are you trying to kill me? I'll kill you first..

The writhing stopped and he dropped back heavily as Coypu let him have it with his handy psycho blaster.

It was not going to be easy. Even with James helping, a far more skilled hypnotist than Coypu, it was impossible to exercise any control over Slakey. Just about the time they would hypnotize one Slakey another would take over. And all the subsequent thrashing about wasn't doing Berkk's body much good, what with fighting against the restraints, chewing on his lips and so forth.

"Time for some professional help," Coypu said. "Dr. Mastigophora is on his way. He is the leading clinical psychosemanticist in the Corps."

"Super—shrink?" I asked.

"Absolutely." Dr. Mastigophora was lean to the point of emaciation, all sinew and leather, carrying an instrument case and sporting a great growth of gray hair. "I assume that is the patient?" he said, pointing a long and knobby finger.

"It is," Coypu said. Mastigophora glared around at his auclience.

"Everyone out of here," he ordered as he opened his instrument case. "With the single exception of Professor Coypu."

"There is a physical problem with the patient," I explained. "We don't want him to hurt the body, which is only on loan."

"Up to your mind—swapping tricks again, hey Coypu? One of these days you will go too far—" He looked at me and scowled. "I said out and I mean out. All of you."

As he said this he sprang forward and seized my wrist and applied—a very good armlock. Of course I let him do it since I don't beat up on doctors. He was strong and good enough—I hoped—to handle Berkk's body in an emergency. I left with the others as soon as he let go.

A number of hours passed and we were beginning to yawn and head for bed when the communicator buzzed. Angelina and I were wanted in the lab.

Coypu and Mastigophora were slouched deep in their chairs. trying to outmatch each other in looking depressed.

"Impossible," Mastigophora moaned. "No control, can't erect blocks, can't access, terrible. It's the multiple personality thing, you see. My colleague has explained that Professor Slakey has in some unspecified manner multiplied his body, or bodies. His brain or brains or personality is in constant communication or something like that. It sounds like absolute porcuswinewash. But I have seen it in action. I can do nothing."

"Nothing," Coypu echoed hollowly.

"Nothing?" I shouted. "There has to be something!"

"Nothing…" they intoned together.

"There is something," Angelina said, ever the practical one. "Forget Slakey and get back to looking into the guts of your interuniversal machine. Surely there has to be some way to get it working again."

Coypu shook his head looking, if possible, even gloomier. "While Dr. Mastigophora was brain—draining I tackled the problem again. I even stopped all the other projects that were running in the Special Corps Prime Base Central Computer. In case you didn't know it, the SCPBCC is the largest, fastest and most powerful computer ever built in the entire history of mankind." He turned on the visiscreen and pointed. "Do you see that satellite out there? Almost a third the size of this entire station. That's not a satellite—that's the computer. I had it working flat Out on this problem and this problem alone. I used the equivalent of about one billion years of computer time."

"And?"

"It has tackled this question from every point of view in every way. And the conclusion was the same every time. It is impossible to alter the access frequencies in the interumversal commutator."

"But it happened?" I said.

"Obviously."

"Nothing is obvious to me." I was very tired and my temper was shredding and all this gloom and doom was beginning to be very irritating. I jumped to my feet, walked over to the shiny steel control console, looked at its blinking lights and tracing graphs. And kicked it. I. hurt my toe but at least I had the pleasure of seeing one of the needles on a meter jump a bit. I started to bring my foot back for another kick. And froze.

Stood there on one leg for long seconds while my brain raced around in circles.

"He has just had an idea," Angelina said, her voice seemingly coming from a great distance. "Whenever he freezes up like that it means he has thought of something, had an inspiration of some kind. In a moment he will tell us—"

"I'll tell you now!" I shouted, jumping about to face them and neatly clicking my heels in the air as I did. "Your computer is absolutely right, Professor, and you should have more respect for its conclusions. Those universes will always be in the same place. As soon as we realize that, why the answer becomes obvious. We must look for the real reason why you cannot access those universes. Do you know what that is?"

I had them now, professorial jaws gaping, heads shaking, Angelina nodding proudly, waiting for my explanation.

"Sabotage," I said, and pointed at the control console. "Someone has changed the settings on the controls."

"But I set them myself," Coypu said. "And I have checked the original calculations and conclusions over and over again,"

"Then they must have been changed too."

"Impossible!"

"That's the right word for it. When all the possibilities have been tried—then it is tune to look to the impossible."

"My first notes, I think that I still have them," he said, stumbling across the room and tearing open a drawer. It fell to the floor and spilled out pens, paper clips, bits of paper, cigar butts and empty soup cans, all the things we leave in desk drawers. He scrabbled among the debris and pulled Out a crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it and held it up.

"Here. My own writing, my first calculations, the beginnings of determining the locations and settings. This could not be changed." He stamped over to the controls, flickered his fingers across the console keys, pointed a victorious finger at the equation on the screen. "There you see—the same as this."

He looked at the paper, then at the screen, then back to the paper until it looked like he was watching an invisible PingPong match.

"Different…" he said hoarsely. I must admit that my smile was a bit smug and I did enjoy it when Angelina gave me a loving hug and a kiss.

"My husband the genius," she whispered.

While Coypu hammered away at the computer, Dr. Mastigophora went to look at his patient.

"How is he?" I asked.

"Unconscious. We had to use the psycho blaster on him, paralyze his entire body as well as the brain. Nothing else seems to work."

"There it is! Hell!" Coypu shouted and we turned to look at his screen which showed a loathsome red landscape under a redder and even more loathsome sun.

"Hell," he said. "And Heaven. They are all there still. It was the calculations, the primary equations… changed, just slightly, just enough to make the later calculations vary farther and farther from the correct figures. But—how did it happen? Who has done this?"

"I told you—a saboteur. There is a spy in our midst." I said, very firmly.

"Impossible! There are no spies in the Special Corps. Certainly, none here in Prime Base. Impossible."

"Very possible. thinking about it in great detail and, unhappy as I am to say this, I can identify the spy."

I had them now. Even Angelina was leaning forward, waiting for further revelation. I smiled serenely, buffed my fingers on my shirt, turned and pointed. "There's your spy."

They all turned to look.

"The spy is none other than my good companion from the rock mine—Berkk."