Firebird

Two

TwoEarly next morning Nathaniel Machuzak, looking no better than the fits and starts of sleep he’d had, abandoned attempts to dream and headed south. The radio did nothing to untie the knot that twisted his stomach. Over night, every media host had flocked unswervingly to the call for an investigation. The single thought running through his mind was a mordant “What next?” Dread quickly crystallized when a sunrise eco-pundit warned that CFRC’s tritium supply was a sure target for terrorists. The words hit Machuzak with such force that he nearly swerved into a ditch. At once yesterday’s student came back to him and he vowed that someday he’d collar the kid and explain tritium. Machuzak switched stations: yet another suicide bomber had attacked Verizon in a last-ditch effort to communicate with a human being. He flipped to the surviving Austin classical music station. Tchaikovsky, as usual.

The sight of media vans lying in wait beyond the guard booth triggered evasive action. Veering off the main drive, Machuzak skirted the pentagon and drove directly to Site Alpha on the lab’s periphery. To the aging structures of Alpha Site, the original complex of the Austin National Fusion Research Laboratory, were relegated some of CFRC’s secondary experiments, including the Materials Test Facility, of which he, Nathaniel Machuzak, was head.

At the parking lot Nathaniel granted himself a breath in the deep morning shadows to gaze eastward. The thought was unavoidable: No wonder the public finds us so inscrutable. What could one make of this Lego-set city? Apart from the showcase main building, the rest of the sprawl was entirely utilitarian, great shells meant only to keep the rain off the tumult below. Strangers invariably found the lab ugly and unnavigable. Machuzak had always found a certain beauty in the haphazardness of CFRC. The unrestrained growth of offices, machine shops, temporary structures that took root to become labyrinths of the mindscape. The high-tension towers, hum of the transformers, silicon panels tracking the sun, satellite dishes linking them to supercomputers worldwide. CFRC was an improvisation, an improvisation crackling with energy.

Not, he understood, today. Machuzak badged himself into the water-stained test facility and threw the light switch. The archaeological fluorescents that functioned sputtered on and produced an irritating sixty-cycle hum. He’d call maintenance, but they’d probably RIFfed the electrician.

His laboratory greeted him and for the first time in twenty-four hours he felt a space of peace. People like him could hardly escape it, really. They were born tinkerers. Nothing gave them so much pleasure as making something work, unless it was the pleasure of making something work that nobody thought possible. When he described his workplace, Slava chided him for sounding like the futurists of old, with their songs of electricity and locomotion. No, it is not progress, it is sensation. I relish the cement floors, smooth with age, the smell of oils, ozone when the capacitors spark, the glint of steel and brass atop the workbenches. The polished vacuum chambers, the test cells sprouting wires and hoses. The clacking of the forepumps, the microwave plumbing running from floor to ceiling. This is my world. Here I am in charge.

Dream on. Though he hadn’t set foot here in nearly a month, to work proved impossible and he managed only to fidget and wander aimlessly through the rooms. He paused briefly at his desk and lifted his cold-fusion apparatus. The great cold-fusion scare of 1989 and the extraordinary hoopla surrounding it was beyond his memory, but he later tested the claims himself. There was nothing to the apparatus: a beaker of heavy water and two electrodes. It was madness to think that such a thing could work, but it was understandable madness. Inexhaustible energy on a benchtop. No great tokamaks, no billions of dollars, no decades lost, no high voltage, no…accidents. The Fountain of Youth. Understandable, misguided madness.

Unable to concentrate, Machuzak was about to head over to his office in the main building when the lab phone rang. Andy Lipman. Machuzak didn’t like the sound of the tech’s voice and Lipman wouldn’t talk online. Nathaniel told him to meet at his office in ten minutes.

Archangelsky was waiting. “Have you heard about the tritium?” Nathaniel asked before Slava could speak.

“Ahh, tritium…” the Russian scoffed. “It is as harmless as radioactive materials come. They should be more concerned with radium in coal smoke.”

“Tell that to CNN—”

Lipman appeared then with an uncertain rap on the doorframe and glanced uneasily at Archangelsky.

“It’s all right,” Machuzak assured him. “No secrets among friends.”

The tech hesitated, waved the pair after him down the back stairwell, past junked computers, improbable numbers of crickets and the stagnant smell of concrete; they left the main building and made their way across to the pentagon. Years ago, in homage to Peter Max, someone ordered the pentagon units painted tan, yellow and blue. The result was considerably less than psychedelic. During the walk, a grackle cawed from Toshi Matsushima’s geometry tree, where ceremonial plaques rattled like bamboo chimes, but Lipman said not a word. By the time the tech badged them in, they’d already guessed their destination: the surge room where Krieg-Zuber had glimpsed immortality.

The accident site was as they’d left it the previous day, except for the yellow DANGER DO NOT ENTER tape the police, probably, had put around the area. The truth is always too late.

“So what is it, Lip?” Machuzak said at last.

The tech yet hesitated. “Well, I figured I’d be appointed to the investigation, so I thought I’d get a head start.” Motioning the physicists forward, Lipman ducked under the tape and stopped at the door to the surge room. “Look here.”

Nathaniel followed Lipman’s finger to the interlock at the top of the orange door. It was a simple magnetic switch like the ones you find on alarmed doors. Open the door, a relay trips, alarm sounds. Here, open the door, a relay trips the capacitors are mechanically grounded, discharging them. To Machuzak it seemed okay.

“Yep, Cy didn’t touch it and I don’t believe anybody else did either.”

But if the interlock was intact—how? And the safety was just the first line of defense. After the fault light, the techs had also racked out the breakers—literally rolled out the circuit breakers from their cradles, disconnecting them from the circuit. There the monsters sat. In the open. What could have failed?

Now Lipman opened the door to the brightly colored room. The great power supplies at CFRC were divided into dozens of these smaller units to isolate the subsystems and make it more difficult to electrocute yourself everywhere at once. Machuzak listened for the discharging mechanism to connect. It did.

“Come on…nothin’s charged now. I checked.” Lipman pointed to the lightning rod in the corner—the time-honored, mandatory way of grounding a capacitor. That rule Zuber had evidently ignored.

Machuzak cast his eye over the tower of metal rings looming above them. Straight out of Frankenstein, these unearthly “ignitrons,” two or three times as tall as he was, protected equipment down the line. A fault is detected, the ignitrons fire, the circuit is “crowbarred.” A dead short in two microseconds. Toss a crowbar across the terminals of the nearest high-tension tower and watch.

Near one end of the alcove, amidst all the plumbing, Lipman pointed to a short section of busbar. “I noticed this when I came in,” he said, indicating the heavy piece of copper used to conduct large currents.

“What’s wrong?” Nathaniel asked, unable to see clearly in his own shadow.

Lipman waved them closer and Nathaniel saw immediately what he was getting at. The busbar, perhaps once thirty centimeters long, was now two. It seemed to have melted in the middle, leaving a gap of a few centimeters. A gap.

“This takes out the circuit protection,” Nathaniel guessed, “and the capacitor discharge switch?”

Lipman nodded.

Slava also instantly understood. “Open circuit—capacitors didn’t discharge when they should have.”

It was not too difficult to infer what had taken place: Circuit protection goes, some component in machine fries, fault light appears in control room, Krieg-Zuber fries.

The three stood for a moment in silence. “When was the last inspection?”

“Five days ago,” Lip answered. “I walked through myself. Here.” He handed Machuzak a touch pad. “I suppose I could’ve missed something.”

Nathaniel stared at the screen. The implications of Lipman’s words weren’t hard to divine, but his every instinct resisted them. Finally, he forced himself to look at the tech. “Are you saying,” he asked, holding his breath, “that someone deliberately cut the busbar?”

“Ain’t hard. Two minutes with a hacksaw—done. On the other hand, this looks it was cut by a torch. Maybe it melted under the load. I dunno. We were pressing the machine pretty hard. Some of this stuff’s museum quality and I’ve known one or two of these to go in my time. You guys got the PhDs. Tell me.”

Nathaniel paused long, glanced at Yaroslav Borisovich, stared at the electrical equipment surrounding them, listened to the distant hum of a generator. At last, exhausting every possible diversion, he whispered the word in the world he wanted least to hear: “Sabotage?”

Lipman only shrugged again. “You guys got the PhDs.”

“Hmm.” Nathaniel stood there, head completely empty. “Who would sabotage the machine?”

The tech didn’t reply, realizing that the physicist was merely drafting thoughts, but Slava whistled softly as if to say, “How many possibilities would you like?” Then he too fell silent.

“Lip,” Nathaniel asked, staring at Slava, “why did you come to me about this?”

The tech shrugged with a glance of Archangelsky. “Gotta go to somebody. Who’s in charge of this place anyway?”

“Well, maybe The Terminator when he’s recovered.”

“That’s the point, Mac,” Lipman said with another glance at Slava. “Last year we found a penny in a motor-generator and Zuber’s roaring sabotage. Cooling pumps break down—sabotage. Yesterday it’s s**t in hard hats—all my addresses have been wiped. That guy thinks he’s J. Edgar but his screws are a little loose, you know. Time’s ripe.”

Before Machuzak could respond, Archangelsky cut in. “If the press has gone loco with the accident, can you imagine what they will do with sabotage? They’ll go ballistic. Orbital.”

No denying it.

“Not to mention lab itself,” Slava added, almost as an afterthought. “We should keep this quiet.”

“Are you loco?” Machuzak exclaimed in amazement. “How are we going to keep this quiet?”

“We merely don’t tell anyone. Nat Edward’ich, I am of course not suggesting we ignore what has happened: we must in fact quickly determine what is down here.”

“Up,” Nathaniel muttered. Machuzak felt his hesitation surging forth. Again. God, where are my principles? The sound of passing footsteps argued for a quick decision. “How many people knew about this?” Machuzak asked Lipman.

He had yet to tell anyone.

“Don’t.”

“The bar?” pressed Slava.

Machuzak felt himself shaking internally. “No,” he put his foot down, “we can’t do it.” Machuzak left the surge room and the other two staring at each other. After a moment, Slava ran out after him, and the two walked back to the office together. The open space between the giant forms of the pentagon and the administration building seemed larger than ever and every two paces, or three, Nathaniel found himself glancing over his shoulder. Archangelsky was fuming.

“Brat, are you a holy fool or just plain i***t? They’ll discover that bar within hours. The instant they do…” Slava muttered something in Russian that Machuzak couldn’t understand.

“Maybe we’re making too much of this,” Machuzak responded, more to himself than to Archangelsky. “If you were going to sabotage the machine, why not blow it up and be done with it?”

Slava did not calm down for some time. When he did, he turned to Machuzak and said, “My naive friend, remember Andreyev’s play, The Black Maskers.” The Archangelsky-ism, referring with familiarity to a play no one had ever heard of before, might under other circumstance have been amusing, but Slava’s voice was fully laced with warning. “A rich duke, Lorenzo, holds ball. More and more guests arrive, wearing fantastic, grotesque masks. He asks each, ‘Who are you?’ but his question goes unanswered. Finally, they set fire to palace and Lorenzo goes up in smoke.”

Although with the rest of humanity Machuzak hadn’t read it, he vividly recollected the music Roger Sessions had written for the play. Disturbing, to say the least.

“Remember Lorenzo’s question, my friend.”

Archangelsky’s words chilled Machuzak to the bone. “Slava, enough,” he finally said, paranoia quickly rising. They entered the back courtyard of the main building and once more passed the geometry tree. At sunup and sundown when the temperature shifted and the wind picked up, the grackles there lost their minds, as if the end of the world was upon them. Now it was silent but for an occasional caw and the rattle of the plaques.

“What will you do now?” Archangelsky asked.

“We’re going to have to call the police.”

“What will you tell them?”

“I have no idea.”

Slava walked off shaking his head and Machuzak barricaded himself in his office. It was just eight in the morning.