Problem Between Device and Chair

They were waiting for him when he walked out of the terminal. Not holding signs or anything, but the suits and the black sedan behind them told Cyrus all he needed to know, even before they started beelining for him.

He rolled his eye and tightened his grip on his luggage, waited for the nearest one to get within a few feet and whispered, “Could you be any more obvious about this?”

“Mister Colfax? Come with us, please.”

Yeah, there were definitely some double takes and sidelong glances from the passers-by. Cyrus shook his head, shoved his suitcase into the surprised man’s arms, and followed them to the car.

The suits held the door for him, put his suitcase in the trunk, but didn’t enter with him. Cyrus gave them a wondering stare, but they merely shut the door on him. Only when he turned to the driver, did he understand.

“Buckle up,” said Solomon Gable. “We’ve got a long drive and the roads out here are shit.”

Cyrus’ boss started up the car, and pulled away from the terminal. It didn’t take long to thread into midday Dallas traffic, but it was a couple more minutes before he spoke again.

“Tell me what went wrong with the pilot,” Gable asked.

“There was more to his story than was in the dossier,” Cyrus said. “Long story short, a couple of years back he bombed a bunch of communist rebels on CIA orders. Then he found out they weren’t commies and the CIA had lied so a fruit company could keep their costs down. He tried to write a book about it, and I’m guessing the spooks or the company had someone watching him. I thought he was just being paranoid. I was wrong. When I tried to help him move, some hit man put a slug in his chest from close range.”

Gable breathed hard through his nose. “That Guatemalan bullshit. Stupid. It’ll be in the papers soon enough anyway. What a damn waste. You sure it was a hit man? Not some amateur hired off the street?”

“He did it smart and I didn’t see him until he’d done it,” Cyrus said, repeating what he’d told the Santa Fe cops over and over again. “Had his face all wrapped up too. Between the hat and scarf, nothing showing but green eyes. Blazing green eyes. He was gone before I could realize what happened, but I’ll never forget those eyes.”

“You didn’t tell the police about the Guatemalan bullshit.” It wasn’t a question.

“No. I knew better than to mention CIA. Just that the guy thought he had enemies, and I hadn’t taken his fears seriously.” Cyrus squeezed his eye shut. “It helped that it was the truth. The police still tried to grill me pretty hard, even after I dropped your name and number. But I just kept repeating the basics. I’d been sent by you to hire him for a private flight. He’d wanted to go immediately because he thought some people were after him. Some stranger had shot him on the way back to the airport, so I guess he was right.”

“Was there anything you could have done differently?” Gable asked.

“Not really,” Cyrus admitted. He’d had a long time to think about it, in the cell they’d tucked him in overnight. “He didn’t even have a phone, so we couldn’t call a new taxi. Couldn’t go to the neighbors houses, because he didn’t want them dragged into this mess. He was the one who insisted on going immediately. And green eyes? He was good. I’ve gotten soft since Korea, but not that soft. I clocked him coming and wrote him off as another passerby. Normally someone who’s getting ready to pull the trigger and cancel a human check and has time to think about it tenses up. They make it into a big thing. This guy was a killer. He either didn’t think it was a big deal, or he was good enough to pretend it wasn’t a big deal. A man like that… no, he was a professional.”

“Like that one psychopath you cleared. Mossjaeger.”

“I’ll say this. Mossjaeger’s trouble on paper, but I never saw him in action. So I can’t compare the two.”

“Can we use him?” Cyrus asked.

“That’s what I sent you to determine. But I agree with your initial assessment. And I’m no longer in a position to second-guess you.”

“Why’s that?” Cyrus asked. Something in Gable’s voice rang alarm bells.

“I’ve been demoted. As soon as you get back to Site 719, you’ll meet your new director. I’m merely the assistant director now. Emphasis on assistant.”

“Well, shit. What happened?”

“On paper, the President has decided that the CIA has jurisdiction over this, due to the incidents taking place on foreign soil. Off paper, the guy they sent, Smith, is looking to make a name for himself. And he thinks this is the way to do it.”

Cyrus chewed his lip. He’d spent a good part of his tour dealing with spooks in one form or another, from the various alphabet agencies. He was still an outsider when it came to a lot of this bullshit, but he felt informed enough to risk questions.

“Hoover’s letting the CIA steal a march on the FBI?”

“On paper we’re not FBI. Off paper, I’ve been told he’s furious. There’s some capital being traded up in the upper echelons right now. But the problem is, I’m not sure he believes that we’re on the level. Wizards? Magic? It’s a hard sell. If we didn’t have a young girl in custody who can turn invisible at will, then I wouldn’t believe it myself.” Gable dug out a cigarette, passed a lighter back to Cyrus. Cyrus lit him one, while Gable kept his other hand on the wheel and eyes forward. A few puffs later, he continued. “The truth is, this situation happens a lot. A weird situation comes up, the parent agency puts together a task force to handle it, then the other agencies start waving their dicks around trying to assert authority over the task force. Because that means more funding, more clout, and that translates to bigger dicks.”

Cyrus rubbed his face. “Well, shit.”

“Shit, yes. I was trying to get things moving too far along for an easy power grab, but reopening the breach took longer than expected. No fault of yours.” Gable gave him a sympathetic glance in the rearview mirror. “Next to this, rocket science is easy. That’s what Mr. Fuller tells me, anyway.”

“Have we…” Cyrus hesitated. “Did we get it open again?”

Gable’s gaze slid out of the mirror, back to the road. “That’s what our new director wants to speak with you about.”

*****

The desk was bigger than Gable’s had been.

No government surplus this, the guy had probably had it shipped in and assembled in the room, because there was no way to get it through the door that Cyrus could see. It was a huge mahogany monstrosity that almost went from wall to wall, and Cyrus took some comfort in studying the ample gut of Director Smith, and comparing and contrasting it to the relatively smaller gap between the sides of the desk. It was a pretty near thing. He half-wondered if the man had to crawl over it to get out.

He had plenty of time to study Director Smith. The man had been letting him sit in silence for a few minutes, merely reading through a pile of papers, one by one.

Cyrus could live with that. He’d been put through worse by better.

Smith’s hands were soft, his belly large under his tailored suit. He was one of those guys who had aged early, had a relatively unlined face under a head that was fast losing blonde hair to male pattern baldness. Clean shaven, as almost every spook Cyrus had met had been. And pursed lips that thinned every time he glanced from the papers to Cyrus and back again.

Cyrus waited, hands in his lap, face as neutral as he could make it.

“You’ve had one hell of a vacation,” Smith said finally, his voice mellow and deep. He slid over the paper he was studying; Cyrus’s photo from the police station, a clean view of him holding up the plaque they’d made him raise and grimacing at the camera.

“Wasn’t exactly a vacation,” Cyrus said. “Sir.”

“Don’t call me sir, Mr. Colfax. I work for a living.”

Cyrus doubted that statement entirely. And it irked him when civilians made this particular joke. This one was reserved for sergeants, and others who had to put up with the mixed bags of nuts that were PFCs.

“All right,” he said, as levelly as he could. “So why did you want to speak to me, Mister Smith?”

“I wanted to ask you what you were playing at.” Smith’s genial smile faded. “Because that’s the answer I’m coming to, when I ask the right questions.”

“I’m not playing at anything,” Cyrus said. “I want my family back. I’ve been helping the project the best I can. What kind of questions are you asking that indicate I’m not on the level?”

“You ever read John Carter of Mars?”

“Burroughs. Yeah, I liked Tarzan better. Still, we lost a hell of a writer back in ‘50, when he went.”

“Focus. Spare me the biography.” Smith snapped his fingers repeatedly, like he was scolding a kid. Cyrus fought to keep his face neutral, hoped he succeeded. Smith continued, probably without noticing. “Given the overwhelming testimony, given the alien artifacts that mexican kid hauled back, given her… unique talent… I’m inclined to believe that you DID in fact visit another world. Venus, maybe, I couldn’t begin to tell you which one. What I’m questioning, is why we can’t get BACK there.”

“That’s what I’ve been working on!” Cyrus snapped. “Well, up until I got tapped to recruit the Breach Team.”

“Yes. I’ve already discussed that topic at length with my assistant director. I don’t entirely agree with his reasoning, but what’s done is done, and you managed to get three out of four right with that one at least.”

Cyrus bit his tongue.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“I am wondering why we have a machine that’s SUPPOSED to open up a door to another world that does not in fact DO THAT. And the answer I keep coming to is that you are STALLING.”

Cyrus blinked. “I’m not.”

Smith slammed his hands on the desk, half rose. “No? Because that’s the only reason I can see! Two months almost, two months you’ve had to remake your device, and what do we have to show for it? Two months you’ve been drawing a government salary and paying to keep your damned failed farm afloat? Is that it? Are you afraid we’re going to ditch you the second it’s built? You milking Uncle Sam for all he’s got? Because I call that stalling. I call that playing us. And I don’t like the cards you’re trying to bluff on, Mister Colfax.”

Cyrus nearly threw a punch.

Nearly.

Instead, he inhaled, held it as long as he could. Exhaled, and waited for the red to seep out of the edges of his vision.

“Take me to the machine,” he said instead.

“So you don’t even deny it?”

He wanted to say that there was no point. That he’d dealt with plenty of idiots like Smith, and there was no leading them away from a conclusion once they’d reached it, even a damnfool one like this. That Smith was coming across as one of those guys who would never admit he was at fault so long as there was someone down rank to blame it on.

Instead, he said, “When a car doesn’t run right, you pop the hood and look. Let’s go pop the hood.”

He watched Smith’s eyes flick back and forth, then narrow. “I expect results, Mister Colfax.”

“That makes two of us.” Cyrus rose, feeling his legs flare with pain. He steadied the cane, leaned on it as he walked toward the door. “You still got the prototype at the anomaly?”

“I didn’t give you permission to leave,” Smith snarled.

Cyrus tried to hold his tongue, but there were limits. “That’s funny. You were giving me the impression you didn’t like stalling.”

Silence from behind him.Silence broken by a sound he’d never heard before, but knew instantly. That had to be teeth grinding.

Yeah, I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, Cyrus knew.

“It’s in the machine shed next to the anomaly, Mister Colfax,” Smith said, his voice icy cold. “And for your sake, I hope you can get it working.”

*****

“You’re back!” Bristol Fuller said as Cyrus stumped into the newly-erected shed. “I’m glad. That new Director’s got a stick up his ass… about…”

Judging by the way Bristol’s skin went pale and his eyes were fixed on a point over Cyrus’s shoulder, he guessed that Smith had just walked in right after him.

“Show me what you built,” he said, eyes fixing on a familiar, tube-like shape mounted on a tripod. “Get the casing off, let’s have a look.”

“Right away!” Bristol said, scurrying toward the new prototype. “It… still doesn’t work. Yet. I told you the vacuum tubes were a mistake. Didn’t I? Either way, there’s no difference.”

“Vacuum tubes?” Smith asked.

Cyrus glanced back, saw that Smith had acquired two burly looking guards on his way here. He figured they’d be escorting him off site if this didn’t work. Probably not too gently, either. “Vacuum tubes,” Cyrus confirmed. “Now a days you have transistors, but when I started work on the original machine, the one that worked, I had to use vacuum tubes. Couldn’t afford transistors. Surplus tubes were cheaper.”

“What’s a vacuum tube— never mind. Get on with it,” Smith snapped.

Cyrus shared a look with Bristol. It was the same kind of look everyone who’s served knows intimately, even if the kid was coming at it from a different angle. It was a “Can you believe this guy is in charge?” look, and Cyrus found himself liking Bristol a little more.

“You got those plans I gave you?” Cyrus asked.

“Over there, the copies are tacked to the board,” Bristol said.

“Copies,” Cyrus said, but he took them down as Bristol got to work with the socket wrench, working the screws out and the casing off. He studied them…

…and knew what had gone wrong.

He also knew that with the mood Smith was in, he couldn’t say what had gone wrong. Or else Fuller would take the brunt of the blast. Smith was just dumb enough to make an example of the kid, to try and scare Cyrus. It was a classic dick-waving move, and Smith had overcompensation written all over his sweating face.

The plans had been changed. Notes were written on them, and corrections. The kid HAD modified things. And he wasn’t smart enough to lie if Cyrus asked him that question.

So instead of asking about the modifications, Cyrus asked “Check the power source, while you go. That’s the first thing. Director Smith, have you seen how we’ve done the cabling? It should work just fine, but maybe you see something we don’t. Bristol, tell him how much draw we need, here.”

And while he said that, Cyrus took a pen from a pile of nearby clutter, and scrawled over some of the notes.

He gave Bristol a little time to talk before slipping the pen into his pocket and turning around. Sure enough, Smith had a glazed look on his face, and the two guards were shifting as Bristol’s flood of tech babble overwhelmed them. Nobody was giving him any sort of stinkeye for the quick editing.

Cyrus stumped over to the prototype, looking it over. For the most part, the kid had followed directions. But he hadn’t been able to resist the urge to tinker. “Power’s off, yeah?” he asked. It was more of a rhetorical question than anything else, he’d feel it if it was on.

“Well, yes, but the problem’s not the power— hey!”

Bristol tried to grab Cyrus’s hands, as Cyrus pulled two wires loose, and swapped them.

“The plans must have got muddled when they got copied,” Cyrus said. “Look at them. Got some of the wiring wrong.” He handed the papers over.

Bristol frowned. “No, I distinctly remember this join. It was nonsensical. It actually HURT power draw. I had to… correct…” he trailed off as he glanced down at the plans, and saw where Cyrus had written “Shut up and agree with me if you want to stay hired.”

“Oh. You mean this part, where things are a bit blurry?” Bristol finished, weakly.

“Yeah. Honest mistake, looks like,” Cyrus said, grabbing a screwdriver and getting to work. “Director, you might want to get clear. We’ll need to fire her up to test her. You want to get your guys to carry her back into the Anomaly’s room?”

“They’d die if we tried,” Smith said, his voice still cold.

“What?”

“The previous director’s security was, to put it mildly, sloppy. Leaving vital machinery next to an unsecured entry point? Having crucial personnel work on it where they could be ambushed at any time? Idiotic. The place is a death trap. We’ll have to disable them temporarily, for a proper test, and I want my head of security there for it. So you go on and take your time with Mister Fuller, and make sure that you’re GOOD and READY. This is your one chance, for both of you. Don’t fuck it up.”

Smith turned and left without another word. The guards looked from him to them, then hurried to catch up with him.

“You know,” Cyrus said, when he was reasonably sure that Smith was out of earshot, “When he yawns I reckon I can see the top of that stick up his ass.”

“Never mind that, what the hell are you doing?” Bristol whispered, pointing from him to the device. “That… that wire swap does nothing. Worse than nothing! It decreases the efficiency by twenty percent, at least! And if it overheats, then you’ll destroy at least three tubes!”

“I believe you,” Cyrus said. “But this is how it works.”

“But it shouldn’t work! It doesn’t!”

“It will. You did a bang up job with the rest of it.”

“But a ground like this goes against everything I was ever taught!”

Cyrus put his hand on the kid’s shoulder, and leaned in. “And there’s the problem. You were taught. I wasn’t. I had to learn by doing, and yeah, some of it’s probably wrong.”

“You admit it? Then why…” Bristol’s hands were twitching. Cyrus could see it was taking every bit of the young man’s willpower to NOT swap the wires back. “Why are we doing this the wrong way?” Bristol whispered.

“You’re doing it the right way if this was an engineering sort of problem,” Cyrus said. “But it’s not. It’s a magic sort of problem. And it doesn’t follow the same rules. If it has any rules to begin with.”

“But… everything has rules,” Bristol’s eyes were wet. Shit, was the kid going to cry? “Everything HAS to have rules,” he said, sounding like someone had just run over his dog.

“This does too. We just don’t know them yet,” Cyrus said. He didn’t know if it was the truth, but it was what Bristol needed to hear right now.

“For both our sakes I hope you’re right.” Bristol said at last, turning away and pulling out a handkerchief.

“Me too,” Cyrus whispered, as Bristol pretended to wipe away sweat that was most certainly tears.

*****

The developing fluid stunk, but it worked. And as the shadowy shapes faded in on the film, Cyrus’ eye widened.

“Color?” he asked Bristol.

“We’re using a state of the art camera,” Bristol said.

Cyrus whistled. “I’m just glad it works the same,” he said, putting the still damp print in front of Director Smith. “This is it. This is the anomaly.”

Smith picked it up, pursed his lips. “This isn’t a trick of the light?”

“No sir,” Cyrus said, pointing at the rainbow-like blob of colors, that stretched out tendrils like a jellyfish or octopus, like some deep sea creature caught in the darkest part of the ocean. “This is what I saw through the original sight. Bristol’s done a good job. Just got some wires crossed is all.”

“So how do we get through?” Smith asked. “Is there another button on it you can push?”

Cyrus shook his head, opened his mouth, but Bristol spoke first. “Actually, that’s where my testing might be of use. The limited amount the Dir— the previous Director let me do confirmed that a sufficient ground in the right place will alter the anomaly slightly. But I couldn’t see what I was working with, before, and now I see why I couldn’t get the same result twice.” He pointed back at the rack, where the five consecutive photos were developing, color slowly fading in. “It’s the arms. The thing MOVES. I was able to catch a few of them with blind luck, but, well… it was like shooting in the dark. Now that I can see what I’m doing, I am certain that proper testing will trigger the anomaly.”

“Is he telling the truth?” Smith asked Cyrus.

Cyrus studied Smith. The tension had eased out of the man, and he knew why. Cyrus had just given him results that he could report up the chain as progress. It was a pretty good victory. The government didn’t mind delays as much as it did work stopping. Progress was almost as good as completion, to petty bureaucrats.

And that meant Cyrus didn’t have to blow smoke up his ass. Which was good, he didn’t like playing these sorts of games even when he didn’t have family on the line.

“He’s telling the truth as he knows it,” Cyrus said. “Fact is we’re dealing with, well, magic. Or science different enough from our own that it might as well be magic. We’re workin’ in the dark here. But I got through once by accident, reckon if we keep poking at it, we can do it again on purpose.”

Smith had started nodding midway through, not really listening to the words, more of the tone. “Good,” he said. “Go report in with my Head of Security. Get the keys to the containment room, and get a full briefing on the traps. I want both of you working on opening the gate full time, and I don’t want you breathing cyanide because you forgot to shut the pressure plates off before you went in.”

“Cyanide?” Cyrus blinked.

“Wizards are human. I’m assuming they breathe. Well, anything that steps wrong in that room won’t, after a couple of breaths.” Smith’s smile was smug. “Go talk with Palmer. Second quonset hut to the right, when you’re heading toward the gate.”

Cyrus nodded, gathered his cane, and headed wordlessly to the door. Bristol hurried after him.

Once they were out into the main courtyard, Cyrus cleared his throat. “Palmer. Anything I need to know about him? Smith was an unpleasant surprise. I’d hate to have another today.”

“Well, er… not really. He came in just after you left, and got the team working on the anomaly’s shed. You saw the results, it’s completely different inside. It DID set testing back a bit, but that’s fine, because it took a while for the parts to come in. He’s always shut down the traps himself first, though, I haven’t… they didn’t trust me to do it, I suppose.” Bristol shrugged. “Though it could just be that he had to leave a few days ago. Some family emergency or another. Said he had a plane to catch. And THAT was even more of delay. He just arrived back yesterday, that’s when the last test failed.”

“All right,” Cyrus said. “But he’s on the level? No stick up his ass?”

“No, he’s actually quite pleasant. Very relaxed. Nothing seems to rattle him. Quite even-tempered, always.”

“Well that’s good,” Cyrus said, lowering his voice as they came to the last hut on the right. “Hopefully we get along.” He knocked on the door.

“Come on in!” was the reply.

Cyrus got a step within the door, looked up, and froze.

“You all right, friend?” the slender, black-haired man in the swivel chair said, turning to look at him.

And oh, didn’t he have a pair of blazing green eyes.

Very familiar blazing green eyes.