It was tricky determining how to control the robot, though. Although there were robots with artificial intelligence, they were very expensive. This one didn’t have the smarts to do what needed to be done on its own; it would have to be operated by remote control. They couldn’t use radio signals; those would interfere with the quantum registers, ruining the attempt to reproduce the experiment. Dern finally decided to simply run a fiber-optic cable from the robot’s torso back into a small control box, which he perched on a console in the quantum-computing control room. He used twin joysticks to move the robot’s hands, having the machine press down on the top of register 69 just as Ponter had originally done.
Adikor looked at Dern. “All set?”
Dern nodded.
He looked at Jasmel, who was also present. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Ten,” said Adikor, standing next to his control unit; he shouted the countdown just as he had the first time, even though there was no one out on the computing floor to hear him.
“Nine.” He desperately hoped this would work—for Ponter’s sake, and for his own.
“Eight. Seven. Six.”
He looked at Dern.
“Five. Four. Three.”
He smiled encouragingly at Jasmel.
“Two. One. Zero.”
“Hey!” shouted Dern. His control box jerked off the desk and clattered to the floor, skittering across it as the fiber-optic cable coming out of its back end was pulled tight.
Adikor felt a great wind swirling about, but his ears didn’t pop; there was no significant change in pressure. It was as if air was simply being exchanged …
Jasmel’s mouth formed the words, “I don’t believe it,” but whatever sound she was making was drowned out by the wind.
Dern, dashing across the room, had stopped the console from being pulled farther by clamping down on its cable with his right foot. Adikor hurried over to the window to look down on the computing floor.
The robot was gone, but—
–but the cable was pulled taut, half an armspan above the floor, stretching from the open control-room door to three-quarters of the way across the computing facility, until—
Until it disappeared, into thin air, as if through an invisible hole in an invisible wall, right next to register column 69.
Adikor looked at Dern. Dern looked at Jasmel. Jasmel looked at Adikor. They hurried over to the monitor, which should be displaying whatever the robot’s camera eye was seeing. But it was just an empty, black square.
“The robot’s been destroyed,” said Jasmel. “Just like my father.”
“Maybe,” said Dern. “Or maybe video signals can’t travel through that—whatever that is.”
“Or else,” said Adikor, “maybe it’s just emerged into a completely dark room.”
“What—what do you suppose we should do?” asked Jasmel.
Dern shrugged his rounded shoulders slightly.
Adikor said, “Let’s haul it back in—see if anything can survive going … going through.” He walked out onto the computing floor and gently took hold of the cable, disappearing a few paces away into nothingness at waist height. He added his other hand and began to pull gently.
Jasmel came over to be behind him, and she began to pull gently as well.
The cable was hauling back easily enough, but it was obvious to Adikor, at least, that there was a weight hanging off the end, as if, somewhere on the other side of the hole, the robot was dangling over a precipice.
“How strong are the connectors on the robot’s end of the cable?” asked Adikor, shooting a glance at Dern, who, now that he no longer had to hold down his control box, had come out onto the computing floor as well.
“They’re just standard bedonk plugs.”
“Will they come free?”
“If you jerk them hard enough. There are little clips that snap onto the cable’s connector to help hold it in place.”
Adikor and Jasmel continued to pull gently. “And did you engage the clips?”
“I—I’m not sure,” said Dern. “I mean, maybe. I was plugging and unplugging the cable a fair bit as I set the robot up …”
Adikor and Jasmel had already hauled in perhaps three armspans’ worth of cable, and—
“Look!” said Jasmel.
The robot’s squat form was emerging through—well, through what they couldn’t say. But the machine’s base was now visible, as if somehow it were passing through a hole in midair that precisely matched the robot’s cross-section.
Dern hurried across the computing chamber, the closed ends of his pant making loud slapping sounds against the polished rock of the floor. He reached out and grabbed one of the robot’s spindly arms, now partially protruding from the air. He was just in time, too, for the cable connector did give way, and Adikor and Jasmel went tumbling backwards, him falling on her. They quickly got to their feet and saw Dern finish pulling the robot through from—the phrase came again into Adikor’s mind—from the other side.
Adikor and Jasmel ran over to join Dern, who was now sitting on the floor, the robot, toppled over, next to him. It seemed no more damaged than it had been before it had gone through. But Dern was staring at his own left hand, a dumbfounded look on his face.
“Are you all right?” asked Adikor.
“My hand …” said Dern.
“What about it? Is it broken?”
Dern looked up. “No, it’s fine; it’s fine. But—but when I first grabbed hold of the robot … when the cable came loose, and the robot fell backward, my hand passed through. I saw half of it disappear through … through whatever that was.”
Jasmel took Dern’s hand in hers and peered at it. “It looks all right. What did it feel like?”
“I didn’t feel anything. But it looked like it was cut off, right behind the fingers, and the edge was absolutely straight and smooth, but there was no bleeding, and the edge kept moving down my fingers as I pulled my hand back.”
Jasmel shuddered.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” asked Adikor.
Dern nodded.
Adikor took a half step forward, toward where the opening had been. He slowly stretched his right arm out and tentatively swept it back and forth. Whatever door had been open appeared to be closed now.
“Now what?” asked Jasmel.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Adikor. “Could we get a lamp to put on the robot?”
“Sure,” said Dern. “I could take one off a head protector. Bo you have extras?”
“On a shelf in the little eating room.”
Dern nodded, then held up his hand and rotated it from the wrist, now palm up, now palm down, as if he’d never seen it before. “It was incredible,” he said softly. Then, shaking his head slightly to break his own reverie, he headed off to get the lamp.
“You know what happened, of course,” said Jasmel, as they waited for Dern to return. “My father went through whatever that was. That’s why there’s no trace of his body.”
“But the other side isn’t at ground level,” said Adikor. “He must have fallen and—”
Jasmel raised her eyebrow. “And maybe broken his neck. Which … which means what we might see on the other side is …”
Adikor nodded. “Is his dead body. That thought had occurred to me, I’m sorry to say … but, actually, I’d expected to see him drowned in a tank of heavy water.” He reflected on this for a moment, then moved over to the robot, which was bone dry. “There was a reservoir of heavy water on the other side when Ponter went through, and—gristle!”