“What’s wrong with him?”
“Wrong? With Marius? Well, nothing—that I know of…”
Sandy looked at him, and waited. “As I said, he has helped several of our students who were in difficulties. For instance, Elizabeth Wong.”
Sandy knew that story all right. Elizabeth Wong had been the star student in biology, about five years back. Orphaned, no money, existing on scholarships and holiday jobs—like Sandy herself. She had been working for her doctorate—on DNA, what else? and had been promised a post at some other university as soon as her doctorate came through. Then she had made the mistake of describing her work too thoroughly to a visiting professor from the department concerned.
The need for outside work held up the writing of her thesis. She was still working on it when a paper was published, more or less duplicating her results. The author was a former student of the professor in whom she had unwisely confided…
She might still have got her doctorate—there was no doubt that she had done the work. However, without waiting to find out, Elizabeth Wong had left the University, and nobody knew where she had gone.
Except, apparently, Sandy’s chairman—and Marius, of course.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” said the chairman hurriedly. “I—well, a couple of years later, finding myself in that area, I went to visit her…” He sighed. “I don’t think I was altogether welcome, though she was perfectly polite—no doubt the visit reminded her of things she preferred to forget. But she appeared to be… um… settled, happily enough.”
“So what’s wrong?” enquired Sandy bluntly.
“Nothing, of course. Except that… well, Elizabeth has never published anything. Of course, pharmaceutical work… trade secrets… His voice trailed off.
“How about the others?”
“They were not in this department. I believe, though, that they were all people with no family or close friends. I’m told letters have been received from them, occasionally… but again, no published work. It seems… well, a waste… But it would do no harm to hear what he has to say.”
It would harm my nerves, anyway. Sandy thought as she walked away. Hearing Marius was exactly what she did not want to do, ever again. It probably was not his fault that he sounded exactly like the man who had visited her in nightmares, regularly, for years—still did, once in a while…
She had worked out, many years later, that it must have happened when she was four years old. She and Mom and Da had all been together downstairs, though it was long after her bedtime… and Mom kept asking Da whether he had locked the door. Da said he had. but all the same the big man got in and took him away…
That was all she remembered. Some time after that she and Mom were in what in retrospect must have been a Greyhound bus, and she got tired and went to sleep… It must have been after the end of the journey that she got left at the orphanage, though who took her there she could not remember; anyway she never saw Mom again, or Da either.
No way to find out, when she got old enough to try, whether the big man was a member of the Mafia or a plainclothes cop… The horror of the dream had been pretty well worn out by the time she got to high school. She had forgotten how the big man sounded until she heard that accent again…
Well, whoever she might have been born, she was now Sandy Jennings, B.Sc and halfway to Ph.D. What mattered now was getting the other half. The big problem was to keep her cultures alive and uncontaminated until she could afford another year’s research. Keeping herself alive was less of a problem; she had been working part-time for a small firm which supplied cultures of various organisms for teaching and research, and they would be glad to take her on full-time. She could have had bench-space there, but there were no facilities for sterile working.
Sandy found that she had somehow gravitated to her cubicle in the lab. There was nothing she needed to do there—none of the cultures would need fresh medium for another three days. No point in starting any of her planned experiments; she would have to clear out before any of them were complete—
“Miss Jennings? I wonder—”
The voice—
Sandy gave a yell of fright, whirled, and in the same movement backed away. She came up against the wall of the cubicle—and it gave way like so much tissue paper, so that she fell backwards through it and went sprawling on the floor.
On a floor. The lab floor was of bare hardwood. This felt… padded. And the ceiling was far too close. And it shone. And what she could see of the walls—
“Are you hurt?”
That voice again. Sandy shuddered. Then, because lying on her back felt vulnerable and undignified, she sat up… and stared.
Marius was standing a few feet away. Directly behind him was a solid, unbroken wall. Not only that, it was plastered with high-tech stuff—switches, dials, digital readouts and other items so way-out she had no idea what they could be.
“Are you hurt, Miss Jennings?” Marius kept his hands rather ostentatiously at his sides. “I would offer a hand, but since I appear to alarm you—”
“I’m all right,” Sandy said, and scrambled to her feet.
She was standing inside a twelve-foot cube. No furniture; but the walls to the left and right were loaded, like the one behind, with switches, indicators, matte black oblongs that could be some kind of VDU. The style of even the simplest items was somehow unfamiliar. The opposite wall had a door in the middle—slightly recessed, as though it slid rather than swung. On one side was another door, narrower; on the other a tier of smaller panels—locker doors?
The floor looked like marble, despite its softness. The ceiling, devoid of light fittings, diffused a soft glow.
One thing was certain; this didn’t belong on the other side of her cubicle wall. Or in any other part of the laboratory.
She said, “What the hell is this place?”
Marius sighed.
“That is not easy to explain. I had intended to talk to you before bringing you here, but—”
“Bringing me? What for? How?”
“For convenience I had virtual interfaces set up at a number of points. One was in the wall of your cubicle. Again for convenience, the activator is built into this ring.” He lifted his hand. Turned towards his palm was a flat black stone. “When you… er… fell back against the partition I put out my hand automatically, and apparently touched the sensor-point.” Regretfully, Marius shook his head. “An unlikely accident; finding the point takes several seconds, as a rule. The interface opened and you fell through.”
“Interface with what, forgodssake?”
“This universe…
Presently Sandy realised that her mouth was hanging open. With an effort she pulled it shut. Universe? The place was weird, all right—but it was a human sort of weirdness, not—not—
Marius was speaking again.
“Miss Jennings, we can go on forever like this. You ask a question, I answer, you do not know what to believe. Since you are here, I suggest two possibilities. Either you come with me and I show you something of this place, which will answer many questions in a way that leaves no room for doubt; or I will re-activate the interface for you to return.”
“You mean—you’d let me go? Just like that?”
“Of course. Go, if you wish; and I will never trouble you again.”
Sandy opened her mouth to ask another question; then realised that she knew the answer. Telling people would be like claiming to have been carried off in a flying saucer. Marius knew he was safe on that score…
She said, “Right. Open it.”