Alan Foster - Cyber Way

His host had said something about—Moody yanked open a drawer and fumbled in the semi-darkness until his hand closed around the handle of the cleaver. He’d pay for the cable: cables were cheap. He could not allow whatever was happening in the condo to work its way into the tower molly sphere. For one thing, he was far too afraid of heights.

A single stroke would suffice to sever the thin connection. He raised the cleaver over his head, brought it down swiftly. When it was within six inches of the cable something that felt like hard air took hold of the utensil, wrenched it out of his hand, and flung it into the wooden cutting board on the other side of the sink, missing Moody’s ribs by about a foot.

Gaping, he backed away from the smoking, sizzling, slowly imploding interrupt box. His eyes were very wide and not a smidgen of sarcasm hung from his lips.

In the interim Ooljee had ceased chanting. He put the papers aside and lowered his left hand, which was no longer shaking. The image on the monitor remained. The kitchen was unchanged save for the melting, stinking interrupt box.

No, Moody thought, that wasn’t quite true. There was the matter of the meat cleaver which had somehow leapt free of his clenched fist, flown through the air, and buried its blade half an inch deep in the cutting block. He nodded at the police spinner.

“Turn that damn thing off,” he said tightly. Ooljee regarded him calmly.

“Let’s give it another minute. Maybe something will happen.”

“Whatta you think, something hasn’t happened already?” He tried to divide his attention between his host and the now motionless but previously ambulatory blade.

Something had yanked it out of his hand. He had not gone nuts for a few seconds and slammed it into the block himself. Or had he? Right then reality was a state of mind dearly to be desired. It was something he’d never previously had reason to doubt. Vernon Moody didn’t believe in poltergeists and ghosts. But then, he didn’t believe in flying knives either.

“Just a minute or two more,” Ooljee insisted.

“For what? So it can set the whole building on fire?”

“It is not burning anymore.” This was true: smoke no longer rose from the lump of slag that had been the interrupt box. For some reason Moody was not comforted.

“We are doing something wrong.” Ooljee’s gaze shifted from his papers to the monitor. “Or we are not doing something right.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Moody agreed tensely.

Maybe a spark had struck him, startled him, and he had lost control for a moment, just long enough to slam the cleaver into the cutting board. It made some sense, which was more than he could say for what he imagined had happened.

“C’mon, let’s go eat,” he suggested anxiously. “I’ll even drum on the restaurant floor if you want.”

Ooljee was ignoring him. “Missing something. Not making a connection somewhere.” He remembered his colleague.

“In the old days when a hatathli did a sandpainting, it was to help cure someone of a disease or a problem. In order for the chant to work, the supplicant was required to actually sit on the painting and in that way to become part of it. It was a way of achieving temporary union with outside forces. There was a definite path of action: from the original source of power to the Holy People to the sacred vehicle of the sandpainting and then to the patient.”

“We don’t have a patient,” Moody pointed out in what he hoped was the voice of reason. “Just you and I.”

“And we do not have a hatathli either. Just me.”

“What do you want to do? Sit on the monitor?”

“No.” Ooljee walked toward the zenat. “I believe the idea is to make contact with the design. Think of it as accessing the database. In this instance I am the supplicant, if not properly a patient.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.” Moody hesitated, uncertain whether to restrain his partner or not. It all seemed so silly, all of it. Except for the meat cleaver. “What are you gonna do?”

“Just touch the monitor. There cannot be any harm in that. It is only a projection.”

“Maybe it’s nonconducting Lexan, but it’s still drawing current from the wall jack. Keep that in mind.”

“I am not going to stick my fingers in any sockets,” Ooljee assured him. He was very close to the monitor now. The colors of the sandpainting illuminated his smooth skin, bleeding across his face: red and blue, yellow and black, white and green.

“You can rip it off the wall for all I care.” Moody told him, “but let’s get this over with, okay?” He fought hard to avoid looking at the cleaver.

Ooljee was muttering to himself again. “If the Kettrick painting was true, if no changes had been made…” Gingerly he extended a hand and touched the flat, cool surface of the screen. Whether by coincidence or design (Moody could not tell) he put his open palm over the dark circle in the center. The instant that contact was made, the painting changed.

It was a very small change, one that neither man would have noticed had they not been concentrating all their attention on the monitor. What happened was that the pair of lizardlike shapes guarding the opening pivoted slightly, until their heads were facing the center of the design. At that instant Moody wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d jumped right off the screen to clamp their tiny teeth into the sergeant’s flesh, at which point he’d surely scream.

They didn’t do anything of the sort and he was spared any such embarrassment. It was nothing more, he decided, than a brief moment of unexpected animation, crudely rendered at that.

He expected Ooljee to reach the same conclusion and return to the table. Instead the sergeant spoke softly.

“Interesting. All of a sudden it feels flexible, almost as if…”

Gently exerting pressure, he watched in disbelief as his hand entered the screen, pushing beyond the dark center of the sandpainting, past the edge of reality. The angular yei figures of the painting looked on. Their straight-line mouths did not comment. Their unfathomable dark eyes did not mock.

Beyond the symbols and figures was a holomage of infinite dimensions, aswarm with glowing shapes and lines and rainbows, unidentifiable solid objects and geometric forms. Nor was it static. Everything was in constant if lugubrious motion; objects bouncing off one another, rainbows twisting and writhing, tiny explosions of light making the two men blink reflexively.

The striking, undistorted light illumined every pore on Ooljee’s face as he stood there fascinated, his arm extended fully beyond the plane of the screen. The colors were an in vivo physicality, washing away the dullness of his life, cleansing, invigorating, life-affirming. The brilliance beckoned, drawing him onward, rife with a richness of experience he’d never known. With his right hand he reached out to draw it all to him, into him, leaning forward into the screen.

A much less mesmerized Moody let out a yell. “Paul!” Ooljee didn’t appear to hear him. Cursing, the detective charged around the table, not caring if spinner and home molly were knocked to the floor in the process.

Ooljee was two-thirds into the monitor when Moody threw a bear hug around his thighs and dragged him back.

There was no resistance and it took only a moment. He was much bigger than the sergeant.

The younger man stood dazed, surrounded by the familiar accouterments of his kitchen, arms hanging limply at his sides. Slowly he came around, finding solidity in the blocky, unyielding outlines of the refrigerator, sink, cabinets, cooker, in the decorations made by his wife and children, in the wall phone and the spinner lying on the table.