All the Birds in the Sky(59)
Laurence and Sougata both looked around the loft, with the exposed ceiling beams and posters for The Gossip and James Bond movies, plus beanbags and a corduroy sofa. The disco ball doubled as a security system. The “clubhouse” disguise was very cunning indeed.
Soon enough, Priya was flexing one long, sparkly finger at Six-Fingered Steve and watching him dance. “His reaction time is impressive,” she said with only a slight Punjabi accent. “I would have given him some kind of central gyro, for balance.”
After a couple hours hanging out and tinkering, Priya was like part of the group and she swore on all that was unholy not to tell anybody else about their hideaway. Laurence explained to her about the antigravity thing: “The goal is to negate gravity, to change the spin of all the electrons in your body so that your mass is effectively shunted somewhere else.”
“Like another dimension,” Priya said. “Because of the theory that gravity is a stronger force in other universes.”
“Yes,” said Tanaa. “So you would still be here, but your mass would be elsewhere.”
“All of this is just a means to an end, though,” added Sougata. “We think if we can solve the gravity problem, we can create stable worm—” Anya kicked him and he coughed and said, “pie. Worm pie.”
“Mmm,” said Priya, “worm pie. My favorite.”
“It’s a delicacy,” said Laurence. “Someplace. We don’t know where, but we’re going to go there and enter a contest, once we’ve perfected our recipe.”
A couple weeks passed. Everybody got used to having Priya around. Meanwhile, the team finally had some real success with the machine. First a golf ball, then a baseball, then a boiled egg, then a hamster named Ben—they all let slip their surly bonds at the flick of a button, then returned to normal weight at a second button press.
In theory, a person could crouch on the glowy white disk, with the giant red nozzle aimed at it, and be bathed in the full effect of the antigravitation rays.
“But I’d want to do a lot more testing before doing any human subjects experimentation,” said Anya.
“Can I try it?” Priya said. “I want to be the first weightless person on Earth, so my name can be misspelled in every record book, forever and ever.” Anya started to protest, but then Priya said, “Conventional Newtonian gravitation is so last year.”
Everybody giggled. Priya always knew just the right things to say.
The others looked at Laurence, who slowly nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I think we can make that happen.”
An hour later, Laurence was frantically dialing Patricia, praying that she hadn’t left her cell phone at home or turned it off for some witchy festival. She picked up, and he started talking immediately. “Hey, I desperately need your help. We have tampered with forces that people were not meant to f*ck around with, and we seem to have pushed Sougata’s girlfriend into another plane of existence, where we have no way of locating her or even proving that she still exists, and we’ve basically exhausted all scientific options and don’t worry I won’t tell the others about your secret, just please help.”
“Wait a minute,” Patricia said. “Sougata has a girlfriend now?”
“We didn’t account for the extra mass, and the correspondingly greater level of attraction in the other universe,” said Laurence, as if that answered her question.
“I’ll be there in a few,” Patricia said. “I’m just up the street.”
When Patricia got to the cement blockhouse and Laurence came down to let her in, she barely had time to impress upon him the fact that his friends must not find out about her skills. No matter what.
“Sure, sure,” said Laurence. “Of course. Soul of discretion. No worries at all. Just please, please, if you can, please help. I will be in your debt forever.” He was climbing the stairs behind her and as they reached the top step, Patricia turned and practically glared at him.
“Never, ever say that to me.” Incandescent.
“Say what?”
“The thing about being in my debt. It has a different meaning for me than it does for most people.”
“Oh. Oh, right. Okay. Well, I will be super-grateful. Anyway, it’s over here.”
Sougata, Anya, and Tanaa stared at the shining white circle under the big ray-gun barrel, and didn’t acknowledge Patricia’s arrival until she was standing next to them.
“What’s she doing here?” Sougata said.
“She can help,” Laurence said. “I can’t explain. But she can help.”
“What’s her area of expertise again?” Anya folded her arms over her unicorn shirt.
“Dimensional transcendentalism,” said Patricia.
“You just stole that from Doctor Who. This is not a joke, this is serious,” Anya said.
“Okay, look,” Patricia said. “Do you guys want your friend back or not?” Everybody nodded slowly. “Then just stand the f*ck back and let me work.”
Everybody kept clustering around Patricia and trying to see what she was doing, and Laurence worried that she was going to put so much energy into obfuscation that she wouldn’t be able to reach into the hole in the universe and pull Priya out. Patricia was wearing a strapless red dress that teased you with the sweep of her pale shoulders and a hint of cleavage. As she turned her back to Laurence and stared into the space over the white circle, he couldn’t help noticing the dimples behind her knees and the perfect curves of her calves and ankles.