CHRYSALIS Read online

  “Pretty lurid,” Amanda said.

  “Comic book art,” Juan Marie said. “Very bold, very graphic, very garish. Note the use of primary colors.”

  “I’ll turn you back to Melissa, now,” Mei Ling said. “Melissa will tell you what she and Terry discovered about the transparencies, and also why the comic book cover and the clipping may be important. Melissa?”

  “Terry is the shy member of the team, and doesn't talk much,” Melissa began cheerfully, “and so I’ll try to explain as best I can what he and I have come up with so far. We reasoned that since the transparencies behaved like still photographs, we would treat them as such. The first thing we did was to measure the elapsed time between picture changes, and that turned out to be, on average, twenty-two minutes and twelve seconds. Rapid flickering is going on between the transparency changes, indicating very rapid motion during the twenty-two minute period, but we’ve not yet been able to slow the motion enough to be able to see it. Terry is working on it, however, and we expect to be able to see something very soon.

  “What we have to show you now is a computer enhanced transparency, transparency number one. We have two hundred and fifty-four transparencies, with a new one every twenty-two minutes. We’ve not enhanced all of them, but we have what we believe is a fair representative sampling. Transparency number one appeared in the darkened bedroom, but darkness had no effect on the quality of the transparencies, not after Terry got through with them. Terry?”

  Terry did some things with his console and a picture appeared on the screen, a picture the reverse of what they’d been seeing live these past eight hours. What had been a prominent bedroom superimposed with transparencies was now reversed, with the transparencies now solid and full color, and the bedroom a transparency.

  “I asked Terry how he did it,” Melissa laughed, “and he said, 'Negative pixels'.”

  “That's more than I ever got out of him,” Thorstenssen smiled, and the staff smiled with him, but it was a tentative smile, a nervous smile, for the picture on the screen was not what anyone would have thought likely, or even possible.

  Superimposed on the transparent bedroom was a full color drawing of a night scene. In the background were rows of yellow volcano cones, spewing yellow clouds of gas, and in the foreground were two men with shovels, standing by an open grave. In the grave lay a large black dog with a stake through his side, and one of the men was pushing at the stake with his shovel. The drawing was enclosed in a rectangle drawn with a heavy black line. Inside the rectangle, the figures were drawn boldly, and colored garishly, each figure contained within its sharp, black holding line. Above the figure of the man pushing on the stake was a balloon, and in the balloon were the neatly lettered words, THAT'S GOOD.

  “My God,” Thorstenssen exclaimed, “it's the comic book cover!”

  “Yes, Professor,” Melissa said nervously, “it is, or very nearly. The positions are different, and the man is pushing on the stake instead of shoveling dirt on the dog, but it’s obviously the same men and the same dog, and the same scene, perhaps a few minutes earlier. And now, transparency number two, twenty-two minutes later.”

  The picture changed, but the scene remained essentially the same. The two men were still in the panel, the yellow volcano cones were still in the background, but in this scene one of the men was patting down the mounded earth of a grave with his shovel, and the words in the balloon were, OLD BO LOVED THE RAIN.

  “We skipped ahead a couple of hours, Professor, and pulled this one at random. In sequence, this would be panel number nine. Terry?”

  The next picture came up and was another full color drawing, this time of a very tall, very thin bald headed man with no eyebrows, dressed in a black and silver uniform, standing in front of a large wall map. The man had an exaggeratedly evil grin on his face. In the foreground stood two disreputable men, recognizable as the men in the first two panels, who were looking at the bald man in the silver uniform.

  This drawing, like the first two, was enclosed in a rectangle drawn with a heavy, black line, and inside the rectangle, as before, the figures were drawn boldly and colored garishly, each figure contained within its sharp, black holding line. Above the figure of the silver uniformed man was a balloon, and in the balloon were the neatly lettered words, WELL DONE, LADS. THE HOUND IS LAID TO REST?

  “It's a series of cartoons!” Thorstenssen exclaimed, wondering greatly.

  “It’s more than that, Professor,” Melissa said. “It's a story. The next panel is number ten, again twenty-two minutes later.”

  The screen blinked and the next rectangle showed the same figures, from a different angle, one of the disreputable men the featured figure in the panel, with the bald headed man in the background. The disreputable looking man had very bad teeth, and a balloon above his head had the words, AS RESTFUL AS MAY BE, YOUR GRACE.

  “Is it all like this, Melissa?”

  “It’s all like this, Professor. You’ll note that while there was a twenty-two minute transmission delay between panels nine and ten, it is clearly depicting a much shorter time period, for in panel number nine a question is being asked, and in panel number ten the answer is being given. We have no idea what this means.”

  “Nor do I, Melissa,” Thorstenssen grunted. “What else do they show?”

  “The two hundred and fifty four transparencies seem to constitute a story, which seems to be proceeding logically and inevitably to a conclusion. I say seems to be because we’ve neither looked at nor enhanced all of the panels, though we intend to do so as time permits. We’ve looked at enough of them, however, with and without enhancement, to have a fairly clear idea of what’s going on in the story. There’s a series of panels portraying a hell's landscape, purporting to be New Jersey, in which the entire state seems to consist of sulfur spewing volcanoes. There’s a city at the bottom of Lake Champlain, with magic emeralds and a medusa who turns men into animals when she tires of them. It's a comic book world, Professor. And there’s more. Terry, put up the Shallcross transparency, will you?”

  The Shallcross panel showed a young man in the foreground, looking, with an astonished expression on his face, at a slightly older man in the background. The balloon above the young man's head said, BUT WE ARE THE RESCUE SQUAD, SIR! JACK PEARLMAN AND JIMMY SHALLCROSS, SEVENTH REGIMENT, US MARINES!

  “You’ll note, Professor,” Melissa said calmly, though she was as shaken as the others by the panels, “that the Jimmy Shallcross named in the clipping was with the Seventh Regiment, US Marines when he died. When we saw this, we immediately tried to do a computer analysis of the photograph on the dresser in the bedroom, but the angle was too severe, so we don’t know if the Jimmy Shallcross in the comic book is the same as the Jimmy Shallcross of the clipping. My feeling is that it is.”

  “I have the same feeling, Melissa,” Thorstenssen said.

  “Take a good look at the man in the background of the panel,” Melissa continued. “He looked familiar, and well he should, for we’ve been looking at him on the monitors for eight hours. We ran a computer analysis, comparing the drawing with the face of the man on the floor, and the points of similarity are so striking that it’s our position they’re the same man. And now, two recent panels, one transmitted about six hours ago, the other about thirty minutes ago.”

  The first panel up showed a strikingly beautiful red-haired woman with deep green eyes standing on a landing platform, looking up into the sky at three small aircraft in the distance. The balloon said, JUST WANTED TO SHOW YOU GUYS I CAN FLY A LITTLE.

  The second panel showed the same woman, nude, plunging a hypodermic needle into the back of a nude man. What caught the attention was not the nudeness, but the looks on the faces captured by the artist. The woman had a look of absolute ferocity, w hile the man's face betrayed surprise, shock and the realization of quick and impending death.

  “The story is turning ugly,” Thorstenssen said.

  “The Out-Time is a comic book world, Professor,and the comic
book is the one on the floor of the bedroom. We may also be seeing a dream world, the dream world of the man on the floor, for we’ve found a panel with him in it, and people almost always appear in their own dreams.”

  “You may be right, Melissa,” Thorstenssen said doubtfully. “If it’s a dream world, then the dream is that of the man, and the dream world he inhabits is the world of the comic book, in which case the question becomes, is the dream generating the comic book world or is the comic book world generating the dream? In any event, I’m not yet prepared to believe the evidence supports such a sweeping conclusion.”

  “The senior technical staff has drawn some rather firm conclusions, Professor Thorstenssen,” Melissa said, disagreeing with him. “If the Out-Time is a comic book world, as it certainly seems to be, then the question is, when did the story start, and when and how will it end? All stories end, Professor, and when it does the question becomes does the Out-Time also end, and if it does, what happens to the man on the floor, what happens to 14LQ638, what happens to us if our portal is still there?”

  The staff of the Institute took its cue from Professor Thorstenssen, and since he sat silently in his seat, so did they. When he stood, finally, so did they.

  “Anybody have any ideas?” he asked of no one in particular, and when no one did he said, “Well then, I suggest somebody have some.” He left the screening room at a rapid pace, trailing Amanda and Juan Marie in his wake. “Come, Melissa,” he called, and Melissa joined the small parade down the hall.

  He led them into his office where he took a seat and tapped his fingers impatiently on his desk.

  “Now you see the value of my thinking,” Juan Marie said. “I didn’t know at the time that a fateful comic book lay on the floor, but it’s clear I must go to Cleveland, and at once!”

  “Somebody should go,” Amanda agreed, “though whether it should be Juan Marie is another question.”

  “Who else?” Juan Marie demanded. “Everyone here is very busy, everyone but me. Therefore, I’m the most easily spared. The comic book must be retrieved, if only in order to determine where we joined the story, what the story is about, and when and how it will end.”

  “Which may or may not be important,” Thorstenssen grunted.

  “It may or may not be important,” Juan Marie agreed, “but if it is important, then it must be done, and quickly! Further, there’s another question to be answered, which is, are the transparencies visible to the naked eye, or visible only through the mechanical device of the portal camera? This too may be important.”

  “Or not important.”

  “Or not important,” Juan Marie agreed again, with a smile. “Naturally, I save my best reason for last. The man on the floor has been unconscious for ten hours. Surely he requires assistance. Upon my arrival, I shall summon the health authorities and we shall see if the transparencies persist in the absence of the man on the floor.”

  “That’s a very good reason, Juan,” Amanda said.

  “A very good reason,” Thorstenssen said, “though it will be noted the transparencies started without him. But clearly it is time to insert our observers. Who is scheduled to be first in, Amanda?”

  “Tomas.”

  “Can we spare him?”

  She hesitated. She didn’t want Juan Marie to go, but if that’s what he wanted, then it was not her place to decide. “He’s helping Terry with the enhancements,” she evaded.

  “Yes, I know he is. Can we spare him?”

  “Not if we want the panels enhanced quickly. Tomas is almost as good as Terry. Fiona is scheduled to follow Tomas, but she’s busy at the moment designing an atmospheric probe to be sent through the portal to see if there’s anything unusual in the air, perhaps something associated with the transparencies.”

  “Very good point, that,” Thorstenssen said, looking gravely at Juan Marie. “There’s a man unconscious on the floor. Suppose we popped you through the portal and you were overcome with noxious fumes. They used fossil fuels then, and that room could be filled with carbon monoxide or combustible natural gas. Remember, an elderly woman was seen unconscious as well.”

  “And a younger woman and some health workers totally unaffected,” Juan Marie said calmly. “No, my friend, if there’s something untoward in the atmosphere of the bedroom, it isn’t noxious.”

  “Well taken,” Thorstenssen conceded. “Still, something in that room caused two people to lose consciousness.”

  “If there’s potential danger from the transparencies, Professor,” Melissa said, “why not just withdraw the portal?”

  “We cannot do so, Melissa,” he said, “until we know if the transparencies will return with it. We don't know what they are, we don't know what they mean. I have no wish to bring home an alien and dangerous organism. And how we shall determine what the damned things are, I confess, is at the moment a complete mystery.”

  “How you determine it,” Juan Marie exclaimed triumphantly, “is by sending me through the portal! Consider! I arrive in the bedroom. I stand directly in front of the camera, indeed, I hold my hand over the lens. If the transparencies are no longer visible, then that shall prove they’re part of the room, part of 14LQ638! In any event, whatever the result, I notify the health authorities, recover the comic book, and return, all within the space of a very few minutes! I shall even raise the window shades so that Mei Ling can get accurate readings on the sunlight!”

  “Well done, Juan Marie,” Thorstenssen laughed, “but it’s not as easy as that. Your plan has merit, if only the merit of doing something, and I’m a firm believer in the utility of doing something. You’ve convinced me, and you shall go to Cleveland, if neither Amanda nor Melissa has objection.”

  Juan Marie hugged Amanda and Melissa, and exclaimed, “Of course they could have no objection! How could they? They are happy for me.”

  “You must have inoculations,” Amanda said, still uneasy, and Juan Marie dismissed the objection with a languid wave of the hand.

  “I’m a journalist, obliged to travel all over the world, and am therefore inoculated against every known disorder, and I suspect a very large number of unknown ones as well. Come,” he said, extending a hand to Amanda, “take me to this portal!”

  “Not so fast,” Thorstenssen said. “This isn’t the same as stepping into a taxi. When you step into the portal, amigo, you’re stepping into a black hole, or rather, the black hole rises to surround you. You’re inside the event horizon, inside the singularity, and you become a stream of discrete atoms which are now a form of pure energy. When these atoms reach the receiving portal, the atoms are reconstituted into whatever was sent through the sending portal, in this case one Juan Marie Albergest, whom I want very much to get there and back without untoward incident.”

  “Thank you very much, my friend,” Juan Marie said softly.

  “I’ll explain briefly how it happens. As the sending portal deconstructs you into your constituent atoms, it automatically constructs a record of every atom in your body, and the relation of each atom to every other atom. The record is then sent ahead to the receiving portal, where the energy stream is reconstructed in accordance with the record. The whole process takes about two minutes, though to you it will seem instantaneous.”

  “There have been occasions, Juan,” Amanda said, “when a faulty instruction has caused the procedure to fail. In those cases the traveler is not recovered.”

  “Very euphemistically put, sister,” Juan laughed. “You’re saying it’s possible I may die.”

  “Not likely, but possible. The odds are quite small, but it’s a possibility, and you should be forewarned.”

  “Thank you. But I shall not be dissuaded. Whatever would you think of me were I to do so? Besides, life is a risk, however small the odds, and I shall never get another chance to walk an alien world.”

  They led him to the portal room, Juan chatting amiably, and when they reached the cabinet Thorstenssen said, “Make it as quick as you can. To get back, walk into the portal field.
Orient yourself when you arrive. You won't see anything, there’s no portal cabinet, there’s no camera visible in the bedroom.”

  “So that I shall not be able to put my hand over the lens?”

  “No,” Thorstenssen smiled, “you will not be able to put your hand over the lens. But you will be able to call the authorities and retrieve the comic book. Now into the cabinet with you before I change my mind. Amanda, notify the staff so that no one will be startled when Juan appears in the bedroom.”

  Juan Marie kissed his sister on the cheek and shook Thorstenssen's hand. He stepped into the portal cabinet and Thorstenssen booted up the big mainframe.

  “Lock on,” Thorstenssen said, punching in the pre-selected codes.

  “Lock on, green lights running,” Amanda confirmed, hitting the response codes.

  “Power coming up,” Melissa said, “climbing through thirty percent, now through forty percent.” At full power she said, “Power up and full, holding steady, zero fluctuation.”

  “Here we go,” Thorstenssen said tautly.

  Juan Marie became a stream of energy, hurtling through space-time, at an angle of fourteen point six three eight degrees from the vertical of the space-time right triangle, toward coordinate 14LQ638, where he’d be collected in the singularity at the center of the receiving black hole, reconstituted according to instructions, and emerge smiling and unscathed in the bedroom of an old wood frame house in Cleveland, Ohio, in the year 2008 of a universe not his own.

  “Thirty seconds,” Melissa said, counting off the time from departure. “Forty.”

  “Repeater,” Thorstenssen said calmly.

  Amanda flicked a switch and a small monitor blinked on, repeating the picture of the bedroom showing on the main display monitors.

  “One minute ten,” Melissa said.

  “Data indicates energy stream now entering singularity and being processed,” Amanda said, knowing that for all practical purposes her brother had temporarily ceased to exist.