Cineverse - Bride Of The Slime Monster Part 8

"Quick, Roger!" Dr. Davenport shouted over her shoulder. "We must get to the main computer!"

Roger nodded as he ran after her through the endless white corridors. Each door they pa.s.sed was posted with a large, neatly lettered sign: missile a.s.sembly; fourth di- mension LAB; ROCKET-TESTING STRIP; ANTIMATTER GENERATOR. Roger really didn't know what help he could be. What did he know about computers?- especially the kind in fifties' monster movies, with all those tape reels and flas.h.i.+ng lights. Heck, he had his own desktop computer at work, and, except for the word processing program, he never could figure out how to do anything on it.

Still, he had survived worse things in the Cineverse than computer illiteracy. He followed Dee Dee through an opaque gla.s.s door marked main computer.

The room was filled, floor to ceiling, with all sorts of metal hardware. Every inch of s.p.a.ce was crammed with gauges, dials, switches, tape reels, and yards and yards of flas.h.i.+ng lights, all of it gleaming dully beneath the overhead fluorescents. The sirens were even louder in here. A short, stocky man in a white lab coat ran back and forth across the room, punching a b.u.t.ton here, throwing a switch there. All his efforts had no discernible effect. The sirens continued to wail.

"Professor MacPhee!" Dr. Davenport called over the incessant "Aaoogahs." "What's wrong?"

The professor spun to face the newcomers. His round face, neatly bisected by a severely trimmed mustache, nodded distractedly at Dr. Davenport.

"What's wrong?" He laughed harshly. "What isn't wrong?'' He waved at the bank of lights to his left. "I guess I realized something was amiss when I first noticed we were getting the Ittelson Effect on our Boatner Board!"

Aaoogah, aaoogah! went the sirens. Red lights flashed on one wall, green lights on another.

"I see," Davenport replied. "But did you try-"

"The Carver Switch?" MacPhee nodded unhappily. "It's the first thing I thought of, what with the possibility of reversed impedance in the Aldridge circuits. But, when all the polarities checked out negative, I was forced to do a reading on the Bollesometer."

"That only made sense," Davenport agreed. "It's a central concern of Young's theorem-"

"Yes, but the reading was totally in the red zone!" MacPhee replied hoa.r.s.ely."Over one thousand bolles per second?'' the doctor asked incredulously.

MacPhee nodded. "I'm afraid we're going to prove Young's theorem by blowing up the Inst.i.tute." Yellow lights flashed on the computer's upper reaches, while white lights blinked near the floor.

Aaoogah! the sirens reminded them. Aaoogah!

"Not necessarily!" Dee Dee disagreed. "You remember the work done by Dr.

Nordstrom of Helsinki-"

"But that's even more highly theoretical than Professor Young's work!" MacPhee objected.

Dr. Davenport looked at both MacPhee and Roger, her jaw set very stern and square.

"Well, I think we're going to prove both of those theorems now, one way or the other.

Are you men with me?"

Both men hastily agreed. Roger, as usual, had no idea what was really happening, but in this particular case, he decided that ignorance might be preferable.

Aaoogah! Aaoogah! the sirens screamed. Blue lights rippled across the computer's midsection, crisscrossing the orange lights that flickered around the tape reels.

"Then let's get to work," Davenport commanded. "Once we get the bolles vibrations down to an acceptable level-"

"Under one twenty?" MacPhee asked.

"It'll probably be safe at one fifty, but we'll get it down below one hundred if we can." She slapped both men on the back. "Roger, you'll have to set the Carver Switch to three point six. That's the most the system can take after we've reversed the Aldridge nodules. And when I say 'now,' slowly pull the lever down to zero. Professor MacPhee? It's up to you to man the Fernstetter."

"But that means-" the professor began.

Davenport cut him off abruptly. "That I'll have to override the Roberts Drive?

Somebody's got to do it, and, after all, I'm the one who built this baby." She nodded to both of them one final time. "Of course, I don't have to tell either of you the consequences of failure."

"I know," MacPhee replied, his voice barely above a whisper. "Total Bowkerization."

"To your stations," Dee Dee ordered.

Roger was about to ask where and what a Carver Switch was, when he saw the large cardboard sign to his left with four-inch-high letters: CARVER SWITCHHe walked quickly over to the sign and set the k.n.o.b beneath it to 3.6. MacPhee, in the meantime, had grabbed a steering wheel beneath a sign that read fernstetter. Dr. Dee Dee Davenport was on the far side of the room, rapidly punching b.u.t.tons. Above her head was a large half-circle meter with a sign that read bollesometer. The indicator in the meter was well into the red zone; over a thousand bolles!

But the narrow pointer on the meter was starting to fall, edging from red to white.

"The Carver Switch is doing its job!" Davenport shouted triumphantly. "Now, if we can only control the vibration effect-"

Aaoogah! Aaoogah! the sirens reminded them. The flas.h.i.+ng red lights turned to green, but the blinking green lights changed to red.

That's when the room began to shake. Roger looked up from the trembling switch he still held with his sweating palm. Should this be happening? The Bollesometer was reading less than 300!

Dr. Davenport was nonplussed. "Professor! Double the ratio! And Roger, start turning that dial-NOW!"

The vibrations became even worse, as if the computer control room were at the center of an earthquake. Roger's hand was so damp with sweat that it almost slipped off the k.n.o.b. But he gripped the Carver Switch with all his might, blinking back the perspiration that fell into his eyes, doing his best to make sure the dial continued its slow, steady descent.

"Now, Professor!'' the doctor ordered. "Go to maximum thrust!"

The Fernstetter made a high, whining sound as MacPhee pressed down on the steering column. Roger took a deep breath and turned the Carver Switch as far as it would go, all the way to zero.

Aaoogh-The sirens stopped abruptly. The Fernstetter powered down immediately as well. There was no sound in the room, save for the quiet hiss of rolling tape, the occasional pleasant beeping that accompanied some of the more special lights, and the ragged breathing of the three survivors.

"Gentlemen, "Dr. Davenport announced. "We've saved the Nucleotron."

"Thank goodness you were here, Doctor!" MacPhee enthused. "I couldn't have done it by myself."

"Of course not," Davenport agreed. "But what exactly did happen?"

Professor MacPhee bristled at the very thought.

"You know what they would have said if we had failed: 'There are certain things that man was not meant to know.' ""Yes, but we did not fail," Davenport cajoled. "Although I do understand that the slime monster has broken loose?''

"And 'A scientist should not tempt forces beyond his control!'" MacPhee insisted.

"Yes, but, those forces remained within our control," Davenport said patiently. "Now, about the Slime Monster?"

"Perhaps," MacPhee continued, becoming even more infuriated, "even that 'we should have thought twice before tampering with the very fabric of the cosmos.''' His fingers curled into fists as he looked wildly about the computer room. "Simple-minded fools!

Whatever we do, we do for science!"

"Yes, certainly; you'll get no argument on that. But how did the Slime Monster get loose?"

"Oh, that," MacPhee replied, making a visible effort to calm himself. "I'm not too sure-"

Roger frowned. There was something about this fellow that he didn't quite trust.

Perhaps it was his agitated manner, always jumping from object to object or topic to topic. Perhaps it was the way he looked through Roger, as if the latter wasn't even there. Or perhaps it was that MacPhee sported a pencil-thin mustache.

Roger knew that he shouldn't judge people on appearance, even in the Cineverse.

Simply because both Doctor Dread and Menge the Merciless had pencil-thin mustaches was no reason to condemn MacPhee out of hand. The significance of the well-manicured mustache in a fifties' monster world was probably entirely different from its meaning in, say, a forties' crime setting. Still, the a.s.sociations brought to mind by the facial hair were, to say the least, unsettling.

"Well, what did your instruments tell you?" Davenport prompted.

"Well, I did mention the Boatner Board and the Ittelson Effect," MacPhee said defensively.

"Yes, certainly," Davenport replied, her tone suddenly changing. "Surely something like that must have been at fault. I'm sorry, Professor. You must be awfully tired from your recent ordeal. Why don't you take a break? Roger and I can watch the computer room for a while."

"Do you think so?" MacPhee asked in obvious relief. "Well, I could use a breather. If you'll excuse me?"

And with that, he was gone.

"I think we could all use a rest," Dr. Davenport admitted. "A lot has happened to us in the past few minutes."

Roger studied the scientist standing beside him. He wondered if he should ask the obvious question that had sat in his brain ever since they had escaped the sand and surf.

"You're probably wondering," Dr. Davenport said after a moment's silence, "how I could be two such different people on two different worlds. It's one of the secrets of the Cineverse, and one of the things we study at this Inst.i.tute of Very Advanced Science. Still, it's painful to think of what I had become. I shall never be able to hear a giggle again without s.h.i.+vering."

She paused to fish in the pockets of her lab coat, finally pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. "Still, Dr. Davenport and beach bunny Dee Dee are one and the same."

She shook a cigarette free and stuck it in the corner of her mouth, then offered the pack to Roger. He politely refused. She fished in the pockets again and found a slim rectangular lighter. "As I said, it is one of the secrets of the Cineverse-and one we were pursuing at the Inst.i.tute! There are certain worlds, we have found, where you will find yourself in immediate danger; there are other worlds that you or I might consider paradise. But for every single person in the Cineverse, it seems, there is a special world- a world where that man or woman belongs all too much." She paused to light the cigarette. She took a long, nervous drag, then blew the smoke toward the ceiling. "Oh, how I remember that sand and surf and sun, and that relentless surfing beat! Part of me wants to go back there even now. More than that. Part of me needs to go back there." She stared down at the glowing end of her cigarette for an instant before going on. "It was like an addiction. I was-" She cleared her throat. "I am a beachaholic!"

"A beachaholic?"

Dr. Davenport puffed on her cigarette for a moment, her eyes focused somewhere far away, perhaps on a place where summer never ended. "It was a pleasant enough life, I guess. If you hadn't rescued me, I would have wanted nothing more for the rest of my sunbathing, go-go dancing days." She s.h.i.+vered and looked around for an ashtray.

"I'll always have to live with that, you know-the fact that, on some level, that was the world where I belonged. It's difficult, sometimes, to confront your true self; to look in the mirror and see a blond beach bunny in a bikini. My mind wants to test the limits of science, but my body and soul want to frug throughout eternity!"

She found the ashtray on a small shelf immediately below the Carver Switch. She flicked off the ash, then stubbed out the cigarette. "Ironically, that was one of the subjects we were studying here at the Inst.i.tute-the hidden relations.h.i.+ps between personality type and movie world. As highly theoretical as all this was, we'd even come up with a name for it-Movie Magic."

"Movie Magic?" Roger repeated, despite himself. He remembered Louie's stories, and his own experiences, with this primal force of the Cineverse. But could there really be a scientific explanation for all of this?

Dr. Davenport struck her fist into her open palm. "There's so much about the Cineverse that we still don't know!" She looked down at her closed fist and laughed ruefully. "I had no idea, when I went to search for the origins of the Slime Monster, that I would stumble into my own personal experiment!"She looked around the room. The whirring, blinking, and clicking of the great computer seemed to calm her. "But all that's behind me now. I can return to my work, guiding research here at the Inst.i.tute. What do you think of our computer? It's the very latest design; it can compute complex mathematical equations in mere seconds.

And that's only the beginning! Someday, computers will manage many of the mundane aspects of our everyday existence, leaving mankind free to pursue loftier goals. Of course, those computers will have to be much larger than our prototype here, taking up whole city blocks-but I digress."

She leaned closer to Roger, frown lines etched deep into her tanned forehead. "What is your opinion of Professor MacPhee?"

Roger was a bit taken aback. Did Dr. Davenport also distrust the man with the pencil- thin mustache? He wondered how candid he could be concerning an Inst.i.tute em- ployee he didn't even know. He decided, after a few seconds' thought, to act in the best public relations tradition, with the exact proper mixture of honesty and politeness: "He did seem a bit evasive."

"I thought so, too," the doctor agreed. "Especially since I can't see how the monster's escape could have possibly affected the Boatner Board. Still, I have been away from the Inst.i.tute for quite some time. Perhaps there are changes here that I am not yet aware of." She paused, her voice taking on a wistful edge. "There were other reasons for my going on that ill-advised field trip, you know. I also hoped, somehow, to find my father, the brilliant scientist who founded this Inst.i.tute."

She paused, her eyes again focused somewhere far away. "One day, when all this strangeness first began, he came to me and said something very odd, just before he disappeared in a puff of blue smoke. I never saw him again after that moment."

"Something odd?" Roger asked, telling himself to stay calm. But what if both of them were looking for the same thing? "If it's not too personal, could you tell me what it was?"

"I wrote it down,'' she said as she fished inside her plastic pocket pen protector, "so I wouldn't forget it." She pulled out a well-creased piece of paper and unfolded it.

"Here it is. There were two separate thoughts. The first one makes some sense. The second one, though-"

"May I?" Roger asked, holding out his hand.

She pa.s.sed the paper to him. His heart raced as he read the neatly printed words: 1. SCIENCE IS THE CORNERSTONE OF TOMORROW'S SOCIETY.

2. ROUGHAGE IS YOUR STOMACH'S BEST FRIEND.

Roger recognized the tone of these messages. After all, he'd seen them spelled out in secret code on a thousand cereal boxes. This could mean only one thing."Roger?" Dr. Davenport asked as she studied the look on his face. "Is it that terrible?"

"Oh, no, not at all." He tried to smile rea.s.suringly as he handed the paper back to her.

"It's just that I've seen messages like these before. I think your father may have had a-how can I put it?-a secret ident.i.ty."

The doctor did not seem rea.s.sured. "What do you mean?"

"Have you ever heard of-Captain Crusader?" Roger asked gently.

She nodded distractedly. "Why, of course. Every school child in the Cineverse has.

But I had always considered him a legend. I had certainly never seen any hard scientific evidence of his existence."

Roger smiled at that; it only made sense. "I'm sure that's the way your father wanted it. He could use this world, and the Inst.i.tute that he founded here, as a safe retreat from his battles in more violent realms of the Cineverse. And he could use the resources of this establishment of Very Advanced Science to perform the crime- fighting research he needed for his cause. The more I think about it, the more I'm certain." He allowed his smile to widen to a grin as he announced: "Dr. Davenport, your father is Captain Crusader."

"My mother always thought highly of him," Dee Dee agreed, still a bit uncertain. "Yet it is a bit of a shock, finding out your father is a hero among heroes." She looked again at the piece of paper in her hand. "Of course, it would go a long way towards explaining the blue smoke."

Roger shook his head. "What a coincidence that I should rescue the daughter of Captain Crusader! Unless it isn't a coincidence at all. I can't help but feel that everything that has been happening around me, perhaps around all of us, is somehow interconnected. If only I could figure out how- or why."

"It's interesting you should make that point," Dr. Davenport agreed. "It's one of the main fields of research that we at the Inst.i.tute of Very Advanced Science have put our resources behind. Why, did you know that before my father disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke, we weren't even certain of the existence of the Cineverse? Oh, we knew about it from folk tales, and there was the occasional report of blue smoke, although our armed forces liked to dismiss those sightings, saying they were either swamp gas or weather balloons.

''I suppose I should have given this back to you already.'' She reached in the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out Roger's ring. "You know, we had to design one of those things ourselves, from scratch. Here-I'll show you the results." She walked over to one of the control consoles and flicked a switch. "Look up at that television screen."

A panel slid aside high on one of the metal walls, to reveal what Roger thought of as a video monitor. The screen showed a blurred, circular image. Dee Dee twisted a pair of k.n.o.bs on the controls. The image came into focus. It was a Captain Crusader Decoder Ring!

"You can see the problems we had," she explained as she looked down at Roger's ring, still in her hand. "I suppose it was rather like trying to reconstruct an extinct animal from its fossil remains." She pointed back to the television. "See, we thought it should be made in one continuous piece, not broken in four. And we completely missed the concept of chewing gum as an adhesive!"

Roger cleared his throat, and attempted to explain that his ring was not in perfect working order. As a part of his explanation, he managed to fill her in on much of what had happened to him during his adventures in the Cine verse. Occasionally, she would interject a comment to determine if she fully understood him, usually words or short phrases such as "Sidekicks?" "Nut Crunchies?" or "The Secret Samoan?" But for the most part, she only listened politely.

"So you see," Roger concluded, "that's how it happened, in a nutsh.e.l.l."

"Now I see what you mean when you say all you've been through is more than coincidence," was her reply. "Certainly the plans of this so-called Dr. Dread suggest there exists some sort of master plan, if only because that is the plan Dr. Dread is attempting to subvert. And your part in it seems a.s.sured by the fact that Dread sent one of his a.s.sistants to eliminate you." She paused, and her eyes wandered to the Fernstetter. "I wonder if Dread has sent a.s.sistants to sabotage any other part of the Cineverse."

Roger followed her gaze. He remembered who had most recently driven the Fernstetter; the same man who had been alone in this room when the Nucleotron had gone out of control! "Do you mean-"