“Sidi?”
He blinked. “Ah—?”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Well, to start, we are going to file a patent application on your rug.”
“Patent…?”
“Yes. Let me explain. Say you have an invention, in this case your rug design. You write down a careful description of the invention. You present this description to the Patent Office. If the Patent Office thinks you have something new, useful, and unobvious, they will give you a document called a patent. And for a certain term of years other people cannot use your invention legally without your consent.”
“Ah, I like that.”
“We’ll fix up a place for you to work, here in the apartment,” he said. “I’ll get you a drafting table, instruments, paper, raw materials, everything you need. You can draw a diagram of the filaments, how they attach to the rubies, and so on. For the patent we’ll need everything in detail.”
She grinned. “Si, Sidi. As you wish!”
8. The Workshop
For az-Zahra’s workshop Beckwith cleaned out the storage room near her bedroom and installed various facilities, including an electric induction furnace for melting alloys, wire drawing equipment, computers programmable for auto-weaving, lapidary tools, a Verneuil furnace for making synthetic gems, plumbing, an exhaust hood for fumes.
When all was ready he watched with great interest as she connected the twenty-one shuttles with the different metal filaments into the coarse woolen weft of the little protoloom, plugged the circuitry program into the robocomputer, and flipped the switch.
The assembly came alive. Threads ghnted and vibrated and sang, and a handkerchief-size mat began to grow, centimeter by centimeter.
They watched in silence.
Soon, the loom shut off. Save for jewels, the thing was finished.
Beckwith studied the newly created artifact. “There seem to be several loose filament ends.”
“I know. They are to be interconnected in specific ways, depending on the location intended for the transported objects, and whether you are going backward or forward in time, or simply moving in the present. As you can see, it all depends on the wiring.”
He took a deep breath. “Of course.”
9. Az-Zahra Analyzes the Race
“I have studied once more the matter of the race to Jupiter,” az-Zahra announced to Beckwith a few days later.
He looked up from the library table. “Indeed?”
“Yes. I have been reading much, and I have found that the racing ships are driven by different djinns.”
“Well—”
“I will explain to you. The djinn of the German ship is the fleetest. He is called a hydrogen ram jet. Hydrogen, Sidi, is a very tiny speck of matter, and there’s not much out there in space.”
“I know. Very scarce.”
“At first the German djinn moves only slowly, so he is no able to eat much hydrogen. But as he gathers speed, he begins to gulp hydrogen like a wolf, and that makes him go faster and faster, until he is finally devouring hydrogen like a ravenous lion. Soon he is traveling at half the speed of light.”
“That’s pretty fast.”
“There is nothing faster than light, Sidi. But the German djinn, for all his speed, will not win the race.”
“No? Why not?”
“Two reasons. Long before he gets up to his greatest speed, he must start slowing down, or else he will go far far beyond Ganymede. Before he is really ready, he must start to de… de… Como?”
“Decelerate.”
“Decelerate. His great speed is good for journeys between the stars, but it does not help much between planets.”
“Good point. What’s the other reason he won’t win?”
“I cast his horoscope last night. It says he loses.”
“Interesting. Well, I guess that settles him. How about the French? Their ship uses a solar sail.”
“I know. A sail is of course the most reliable of all. On the other hand, a sail-djinn is also the slowest. No, he cannot win.”
“And then we have the Russians,” said Beckwith. “Their ship is very fast and is specially designed for travel between the planets.”
“Yes, and they’re ahead now. Their djinn eats a thing called antimatter. It gives him fantastic strength, so that he can move the Gagarin at one-fifth the speed of light.”
“Will they win?”
“I do not know. The horoscope is not clear.”
“Well, that leaves America’s ship, the John F. Kennedy. How do we look?”
“Again, Sidi, not clear. Our djinn makes a magic thing called lithium-five, and then he eats it, and it gives him great strength, so that he can move our ship at three-tenths the speed of light. But our ship left the base late, and I fear we cannot make up the lost time.” She studied his face. “This race is very important to you?”
He shrugged. There was no need to explain how important.
“Why were we so late, Sidi?”
He had got it in strict confidence from friends at the Agency. President Mugram was determined that his nephew Robin would plant the American flag. Unfortunately Robin had come down with mumps the day before the scheduled take-off. The flight was put on hold for two weeks.
Beckwith hated poor Robin with all his heart.
“There was… illness.”
She did not press him further.
10. Smerll’s Headquarters
Persons visiting the Ethics Section of the Metropolitan Bar Committee would find nothing unusual in the outer offices. One encountered first an amiable gray-haired receptionist, who might direct the visitor to one of the side offices, where the resident investigators worked. The central areas were occupied by secretaries, files, and miscellaneous office equipment.
Off to one side, facing the Federal Courthouse, was Room 1313, the Hearing Room. Despite air-conditioning, the room smelled of death.
This thirteenth floor of the Bar Building was the micro-empire of Irwin Smerll, which he ruled from a corner office in the rear.
Most of the wall space in Smerll’s office was covered with framed epigrams printed in heavy black letters. If the light was just right, a visitor with 20/20 vision could read some of them from Smerll’s doorway.
The first said:
Let a man write but seven words, I can hang him.
Next:
My desire is, that mine adversary had written a book.
Moving on around:
A fool’s mouth is his destruction.
Then a solid exhibit, mounted and framed: a thirty-two automatic, now empty, of course, and the barrel sealed. Under it the legend, “The suicide weapon used by W. Matthew Rood (formerly Esquire), the day following his disbarment.”
Then more epigrammata:
Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee.
Vengeance, like virtue, is its own reward.
And finally, not an epigram, but a list. Inspection revealed eighteen names of persons once members of the Metropolitan Bar, and the dates of their disbarment or other destruction. There was room at the bottom for several more names, and a very close inspection would reveal (written very lightly in pencil) the initials “D.B.” The date was blank.