David Brin: The Practice Effect

“As I was saying,” Flaster resumed, “a psychosomatic reality anomaly has its start when we surround a center of mass by a field of improbability which...”

When attention had shifted fully away from them, Gabriella whispered once more in Dennis’s ear. “ Now you’ve done it!” she said.

“Hmm? Done what?” He looked back at her innocently. “As if you don’t know!” she bit. “He’s going to send you to the Qattara Depression to count sand grains! You watch!”

On those rare occasions when he remembered to correct his posture, Dennis Nuel stood a little above average in height. He dressed casually... some might say sloppily. His hair was slightly too long for the current style—more out of a vague obstinacy than out of any real conviction.

Dennis’s face sometimes took on that dreamy expression often associated either with genius or an inspired aptitude for practical jokes. In reality he was just a little too lazy to qualify for the former, and just a bit too goodhearted for the latter. He had curly brown hair and brown eyes that were right now just a little reddened from a poker game that had gone on too late the night before.

After the lecture, as the crowd of sleepy junior scientists dispersed to find secret corners in which to nap, Dennis paused by the department bulletin board, hoping to see an advertisement for another research center working in zievatronics.

Of course, there weren’t any. Sahara Tech was the only place doing really advanced work with the ziev effect. Dennis should know. He had been responsible for many of those advances. Until six months ago.

As the conference room emptied, Dennis saw Gabriella leave, chattering with her hand on Bernald Brady’s arm! Brady looked pumped up, as if he had just conquered Mt. Everest. Clearly he was crazy in love.

Dennis wished the fellow luck. It would be nice to have Gabriella’s attentions focused elsewhere for a while. Gabbie was a competent scientist in her own right, of course. But she was just a bit too tenacious for Dennis to relax with.

He looked at his watch. It was time to go see what Flaster wanted. Dennis brought his shoulders back. He had decided he wouldn’t put up with any further put-offs. Flaster was going to answer some questions, or Dennis was going to quit!

“Ah, Nuel! Come in!”

Silver-haired and slightly paunched, Marcel Flaster rose from behind the gleamingly empty expanse of his desk. “Take a seat, my boy. Have a cigar? They’re fresh from New Havana, on Venus.” He motioned Dennis to a plush chair next to a floor-to-ceiling lavalamp.

“So tell me, young man, how is it going with that artificial-intelligence project you’ve been working on?”

Dennis had spent the past six months directing a small AI program mandated by an unbreakable old endowment—even though it had been proved back in 2024 that true artificial intelligence was a dead end field.

He still had no idea why Flaster had asked him here. He didn’t want to be gratuitously impolite, so he reported on the recent, modest advances his small group had made.

“Well, there’s been some progress. Recently we’ve developed a new, high-quality mimicry program. In telephone tests it conversed with randomly selected individuals for an average of six point three minutes before they suspect that they’re actually talking to a machine. Rich Schwall and I think…”

“Six and a half minutes!” Flaster interrupted. “Well, you’ve certainly broken the old record, by over a minute, I believe! I’m impressed!”

Then Flaster smiled condescendingly. “But honestly, Nuel, you don’t think I assigned a young scientist of your obvious talents to a project with so little long-range potential for no reason, do you?”

Dennis shook his head. He had long ago concluded that the Chief Scientist had shoved him into a corner of Sahara Tech in order to put his own cronies into the zievatronics lab.

Until the death of Dennis’s old mentor, Dr. Guinasso, Dennis had been at the very center of the exciting field of reality analysis.

Then, within weeks of the tragedy, Flaster had moved his own people in and Guinasso’s inexorably out. Thinking about it still made Dennis bitter He had felt sure they were just about to make tremendous discoveries when he was exiled from the work he loved.

“I couldn’t really guess why you transferred me,” Dennis said. “Umm, could it be you were grooming me for better things?”

Oblivious to the sarcasm, Flaster grinned. “Exactly, my boy! You do show remarkable insight. Tell me, Nuel. Now that you’ve had experience running a small department, how would you like to take charge of the zievatronics project here at Sahara Tech?”

Dennis blinked, taken completely by surprise.

“Uh,” he said concisely.

Flaster got up and went to an intricate espresso urn on a sideboard. He poured two demitasses of thick Atlas Mountains coffee and offered one to Dennis. Dennis took the small cup numbly. He barely tasted the heavy, sweet brew.

Flaster returned to his desk and sipped delicately from his demitasse.

“Now, you didn’t think we’d let our best expert on the ziev effect molder in a backwater forever, did you? Of course not! I was planning to move you back into Lab One in a matter of weeks, anyway. And now that the subministry position has opened up...”

“The what?”

“The subministry! Mediterranea’s government has shifted again, and my old friend Boona Calumny is slotted for the Minister of Science portfolio. So when he called me just the other day to ask for help…” Flaster spread his hands as if to say the rest was obvious.

Dennis couldn’t believe he was hearing this. He had been certain the older man disliked him. What in the world would motivate him to turn to Dennis when it came to choosing a replacement?

Dennis wondered if his dislike for Flaster had blinded him to some nobler side of the man.

“I take it you’re interested?”

Dennis nodded. He didn’t care what Flaster’s motives were, so long as he could get his hands on the zievatron again.

“Excellent!” Flaster raised his cup again. “Of course, there is one small detail to overcome first—only a minor matter, really. Just the sort of thing that would show the lab your leadership ability and guarantee your universal acceptance by all.”

“Ah,” Dennis said. I knew it! Here it comes! The catch!

Flaster reached under the desk and pulled out a glass box. Within it was a furry-winged, razor-toothed monstrosity, rigid and lifeless.

“After you helped us recapture it last Saturday night, I decided it was more trouble than it was worth. I handed it over to our taxidermist.…”

Dennis tried to breathe normally. The small black eyes stared back at him glassily. Right now they seemed filled less with malevolence than with deep mystery.

“You wanted to know more about this thing,” Flaster said. “As my heir apparent, you have a right to find out.”

“The others think it’s from the Gene-craft Center,” Dennis said.

Flaster chuckled. “But you knew better all along, right? The lifemakers aren’t good enough at their new art to make anything quite so unique,” he said with savor “So very savage.

“No. As you guessed, our little friend here is not from the genetics labs, nor from anywhere in the solar system, for that matter. It came from Lab One—from one of the anomaly worlds we’ve latched onto with the zievatron.”

Dennis stood. “You got it to work! You latched onto something better than vacuum, or purple mist!”

His mind whirled. “It breathed Earth air! It gobbled down a dozen canapes, along with a corner of Brian Yen’s ear, and kept going! The thing’s biochemistry must be...”