Chapter Four

Eugene, Oregon

April 11, 2275

"My help?" I ask.

I turn from Dr. Peaceman to my grandpa, and he offers one of his crinkled grins, though it looks strained around the edges. His baggy eyes carry a hangdog droop that tells me he's not sleeping.

"Pull up a chair, Marty," he says, "This may take a while."

I take a seat beside him, and Dr. Peaceman sits across from me. There's a coffee urn on the oak boardroom table, and she pours herself a mug and holds it to her broad pink lips. Her green eyes meet my own and seem to twinkle with mischief through her glasses and the rising steam. I tug nervously at my tie. She's gorgeous and looks smart too--and if she's from Vault City, she may even be Vaultstock. But she also represents the NCR. She's the enemy.

"Well, shall we begin?" President Cage asks pleasantly.

"Yes, lets," Dr. Peaceman says and leans to her side. I hear the hearty clicks of a briefcase unlatching, and she rises with three heavy manila folders. As she stands to slide one to me, my grandpa and the president, I note her blue vaultsuit is slightly unzipped, displaying a tantalizing view when she bends forward. I try not to be too obvious as I crane my head for a better peek, but my grandpa elbows me in the ribs. Reluctantly, I turn my attention to my folder.

The cover is blazoned diagonally with the single red word, "SECRET," over the two-headed bear crest of the NCR. Opening to the first page, I read: PROJECT OSIRIS. Wasn't that name from Greek mythology?

Dr. Peaceman remains standing as she addresses us. "Under 'CORTA,' the 2269 Californian-Oregonian Research Trade Agreement, I am sharing with you this scientific data, though I advise that this is classified and should not be shared with your nation's general public."

"Go on," my grandpa urges.

Dr. Peaceman gives me a knowing smile. "Director Polakowski, what are your thoughts on the VED Theory?"

I stare at her and say, "Excuse me?"

"The Vacuum Energy Displacement Theory. What are your thoughts on it?"

My opinion of her drops a few pegs. I understood her the first time, but she may as well have asked me my thoughts on Grognak the Barbarian for all its scientific relevancy.

"It's a hypothesis, not a theory," I say more sharply than I intended. "It's also bunk."

She's unfazed. "I read your paper on it. It's part of CORTA's library."

"I was sixteen. When I was thirteen, I tried to detect ghosts on a tape recorder. Have you read that paper too?"

"I have." Her smile wrinkles her button nose. "I found it adorable, but that's not why I'm here. I represent a Vault City-based laboratory working under contract for the NCR government. We are very interested in VED, both in your work on the theory and the work of your father."

Even without looking, I can almost feel my grandpa bristle beside me. He's a gentle, loving man, but unsurprisingly has few nice things to say about his daughter's murderer. I scowl at the girl; cute redhead or not, she's tearing open old wounds.

"Dr. Manfredi is no father to me," I say curtly. "Notice we don't share last names."

She pauses, her expression somewhat pensive. "Yet you still carried on his research," she says.

She's got me there. That's still a sore spot between my grandfather and me.

"Carried. As in past tense," I say.

At the end of the table, our president raises his frail hand as if he were an octogenarian schoolboy. "Oh, dear," he says. "I hate to be a bother, but my field is botany, not physics. Would someone be so kind as to tell me what this 'VED' is?"

"Your packet explains it better than I can," Dr. Peaceman begins, "but--"

"It's baloney, Mr. President," I say, cutting her off. "My fa--Dr. Manfredi came up with a hypothesis for exploiting flaws in Planck-scale spacetime spin geometries. Conceivably, it'd allow the creation of temporal displacement wormholes. For a while I tinkered with it. It looks fancy on paper, but it makes a whole heap of unfalsifiable assumptions. Oh, and to test it, we'd need a particle collider the size of the Solar System."

"Project Osiris is not quite so ambitious," Dr. Peaceman replies dryly. "We're more interested in a lower-scale application. Namely, energy."

"Energy," I repeat. It's stupid, but I'm a little disappointed. A time machine would have been neat.

"We are facing a crisis, gentleman," she says, maybe overly dramatically. "We've accomplished much in the last two hundred years, but fossil fuels are depleted, uranium is rare and microfusion cells are getting harder to recharge or rebuild. In a few decades, too many parts will wear out, and we'll slump into another dark age--one of which we may never recover."

"But a workable VED generator--" I protest.

"Read the packet. It explains everything." A bit of impatience bordering on mania slips into her tone. "You 'tinkered' with your father's work? Well, the Project Osiris Team has tinkered with yours. A vacuum-energy generator is feasible with current technology, and once it's complete both our nations will be drawing clean, cheap, unlimited energy literally out of nowhere."

"Background quantum fluctuations, actually," I mutter.

Aside from periodic summary pages, the packet's comprised of research papers, diagrams, preliminary experiment results and a few photographs of half constructed machinery.

"All right, I'm a little impressed," I say. "But what does it have to do with me?"

"You're not going to like this, Marty," says my grandpa.

"We'd like to have copies all of your and your father's notes on VED . . ." Dr. Peaceman says.

"You can have them. I don't care," I say quickly.

". . . and the honor of your presence."

"Well, I'm here, so--wait, you don't mean . . . ? No, oh no!"

"They need you in Vault City," the president says, giving me a saggy grin.

My nerves jam up. I feel clammy. I've never been outside the Republic, and I imagine myself lost in those southern badlands where bandits, ghouls and supermutants roam around killing and eating each other. And that's not to mention whatever hidden crooked plots the NCR has cooked up.

"But . . . but I'm the Director of the Advanced Weapons Lab!" I cry. "And today I was nearly assassinated! It's too dangerous! And I'm too important! Auntie Am said so!"

I glower at the foreign witch. "I know what this is! This is a trap! You want to lure me down there so your goons can put the screws to me, force me to spill what I know about lasers and robots!"

"Marty, calm down," my grandpa says, putting a hand on my shoulder. "If we thought for a moment that's what they intended to do, you know I'd never let you go."

"But why me?" I ask.

Dr. Peaceman pushes up her glasses and sighs. She gives me a placating smile, revealing teeth and emphasizing her overbite. Her hands she clasps in front of her as if reassuring a child.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Because you're brilliant, Director Polakowski. With the possible exception of your father, no one's more familiar with VED than you. The head of our project has requested that you be assigned as a technical adviser. We wouldn't dream of harming you. We're not like that." Her smile grows warm and almost pleading. "And I may be biased, but I think you'll like Vault City. It's not too different than this University."

Except it's under the paw of the two-headed bear, I think. Vault City used to be like the Republic of Oregon, with its Vaultstock citizens benevolently ruling over the poor, unfortunate Worldborn. Now it was just another dot on the NCR's ever-expanding map.

My grandpa coughs. She seems to take this as a cue, saying, "Anyway, I'm sure you all have things to discuss. Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, thank you for accepting my proposal. And Director Polakowski, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot, but I hope to win you over yet."

When I say nothing, she turns and leaves. The guards close the door behind her.

"I won't go," I say.

"I'm afraid you have to," my grandpa says. "She made us an offer we can't refuse."

"And what's that?" I snap.

"The NCR's agreed to help us with our Wolf problem," the president explains, as if it's the most sensible solution in the world. "One of their mechanized companies is already on its way."

I stare at the old fool in horror. "Don't you see what they'll do? Oh, they'll get rid of the Wolves all right, and then they'll raise their flag over Villard Hall!"

My grandpa sighs. "We hope that doesn't happen. But even if it does, that's better than the Wolves busting through the gates and butchering us. And believe me, without NCR intervention, that's what'll happen. We can't win on our own."

In my darker moments I've thought the same thing, but hearing him say it is like a punch in the gut.

"All right, we may not be winning," I admit. "But we're also not losing, either. Just today, Valerie--I mean Lieutenant Mauritius defended Fort Kiger. We're holding the line!"

"That's not enough, Marty," my grandpa says sadly. "We might kill ten of them for every one of us, but that matters little if they outnumber us a hundred to one. And every year they get more organized and more migrate south."

"So we're going to be a puppet state like Vault City?"

"We'll try to protect our autonomy, but if we can't win against the Wolves, the NCR are . . ." My grandpa trails off and chuckles bitterly. He's not as old as the president--and he's certainly aged better--but seeing him now, he looks downright feeble. He shakes his head and continues, "A United States president once advised that a nation should, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick.' That's the NCR, Marty. They're huge; their standing army is bigger than our entire population. They could have crushed us decades ago, and some of them wanted to. But that's not their way. They act friendly and wait for an opportunity to move in. And I'm afraid that opportunity has come."

I'm speechless. I never realized we were so helpless. With my ideas of bombing the NCR with dirigibles, I never concerned myself with the bigger picture, but I see now that such an attack would only make them really sore at us. And then they'd just build dirigibles of their own. And they could build a whole lot more than we can. Even with lasers, we'd lose.

The president's shrug is surreal, like seeing an actor briefly wink out of character. "Things change," he says placidly. "There's nothing to be done for it."

"So you're going to ship me south to help them make a perpetual motion machine?"

"Marty," my grandpa says, "we'd send you to them if they wanted you to catch moonbeams in a butterfly net. And stop worrying! The NCR's civilized, even if it is run by Worldborn. And you're safer there than here, anyway. The Wolves don't have agents in California."

"Well, I guess so," I say uncertainly.

"So, will you go without making a fuss? Will you make us proud?" my grandpa asks.

I fumble a bit as I light a cigarette. I take a deep drag. It's lousy I don't have a choice, but I guess my grandpa makes some good points. And it makes sense the NCR would want someone as smart as me on their team. And that Dr. Peaceman girl is a cutie.

I exhale and say, "Ah, shucks, I'll go. I'll show them what an Oregonian scientist can do!"

"That's my boy," he says and then sighs. "And I'm sorry, Marty, that you have to be dragged into this. Try to think of it as a vacation."

My walk back to the Advanced Weapons Laboratory is a long one. It's late enough that my scientists and technicians have already gone home, so when I unlock the barred glass doors to Cascade Hall and enter the massive front chamber of the workshop, I'm all alone. The lights are off, but the overcast full moon shines enough through the windows that I can make my way to my rooms in the back.

Along tables and shelves, the parts and half-assembled chassis of protectrons, sentry-bots and various laser weaponry give mechanical contours to the shadows. I stop by the battered octopus shape of Mr. Virgil and pat his metal skin. I'm taking him with me, of course. We'll have an adventure, though hopefully not like the one earlier this afternoon.

I brush my teeth, rinse and gulp down two diazepam tablets to take the edge off. I change into my pajamas and then go lie in my bed and amuse myself with one of my Cat's Paw magazines.

I suppose, in a roundabout way, it's my fault I'm being exiled. When I was a teenager, I wanted to know who I was, where I came from. I'd been told my father was just a scientist who strangled his wife and ran away, but that wasn't enough. I dug into the work he left behind and came across his notes on Vacuum Energy Displacement.

Wormholes. Time travel. And the math worked. I felt like I'd unearthed a lost treasure, and for the first time I saw my father as a something other than a nebulous monster. I built on his work and wrote my own paper. This was my calling. I grew obsessed.

When my grandparents found out, they were disappointed. In their eyes, I'd betrayed them by respecting the work of their daughter's murderer. I felt pretty lousy after that and dropped the research. It was crackpot theory anyway, an intellectual sand trap. Soon after, I changed my last name to that of my mother's.

But now that research is coming back to bite me. If I'd never found those notes and wrote that paper, this lady would never have showed up, and I could stay sequestered in the Republic until I died a senile old coot like our president.

I'm too distracted to enjoy the magazine, even though one of the girls looks like Valerie. Today's been rough. I feel restless.

A little scotch does the trick, especially mixed with my nerve pills. Soon I'm nestled in my sheets and falling asleep. Tomorrow is another day.

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