Title: The oddly elusive brunette
Author: Peterson, John Victor
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The oddly elusive brunette" ***


                      The ODDLY ELUSIVE BRUNETTE

                        By JOHN VICTOR PETERSON

           _It was love at first sight--all over the world!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                        Infinity November 1958.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Certainly a faithful representation of a male simian cast in brass
would, granted reasoning powers, have felt unusual trepidation if
exposed to the Wisconsin weather that fateful winter morning.

I myself was inordinately glad that I lived in the project's
Bachelor Officers Quarters only a short block from the UNACMEA/WAGS
installation and that my first experience with Wisconsin winter three
years before had prompted the purchase of the thermo-parka I was then
wearing.

UNACMEA/WAGS is, I realize, a formidable array of letters. Though
quickly recognizable, of course, from constant stereonews repetition,
it is usually not immediately decipherable except by the UN which
spawned it and the eggheads who maintain it.

I help maintain it. I also maintain that I'm not an egghead. Literally,
that is. I do have a bushy albeit greying head of hair and a reasonably
handsome (Mom always said) face beneath; otherwise the brunette might
have--but first I must translate UNACMEA/WAGS. It's important.

When the United Nations finally established worldwide atomic control
three years ago--in '65--it created the Atomic Control Monitor
Establishment at its New York Headquarters with an Alternate
installation here near Racine. Piecing together most of the capitals,
the alternate set-up comes out UNACMEA. The WAGS, of course, is easy. W
for Wisconsin. AGS for Alternating Gradient Synchrotron.

Everyone knows what an AGS is from the publicity given to the 25-Bev
unit which went in at Brookhaven National Laboratories back in
the International Geophysical Year. Pix of that 700-foot diameter
horizontal doughnut were in all papers, mags and fax when it started
producing anti-protons, anti-neutrons and, among the Long Island
neighbors, a few tremulous anti-science folk.

Despite the parka I was shivering like a displaced Hottentot on Pluto
at aphelion as I approached the UNACMEA building next to the 1400-foot
diameter rings of WAGS. Activating the Harlan sphincter, I stepped into
the console room. I'd activated the parka's auto-open when I realized
that the last man out the night before, taking some dimpled weather
gal's prognostications as utter veracity, had apparently kicked off the
thermostat; the room was only slightly less frigid than external Racine.

Re-zippering, I kicked over the master switch to activate WAGS (which
had to be operating when the other physicists arrived); then I beelined
for the thermostat.

"You'd think," I said to the room's emptiness, "that certain sad
sapiens of the genus homo would think more of personal physical comfort
than the saving of infinitesimal quantities of fuel--"

Which is when there came from behind me a chattering but pleasant
feminine voice saying, "C-c-cut the rec-c-criminations and g-g-get some
heat in here b-b-but fast, prof-f-fessor!"

I was startled but turned slowly none the less, rationalizing that the
place had been deserted when I'd entered and that no one else could be
physically present since I'd entered alone and the only door hadn't
been opened since.

I fully expected to find one of the headquarters stenos grinning at me
over the closed circuit stereo from the Ad Building and I wasn't about
to begin to feed her ego by showing startlement.

I faced instead a very much present, very much alive and very lovely
raven-haired young lady who was in that remarkably provocative state
of nearly absolute deshabille that only the new Parisian sunsuits can
provide. The young lady's excitingly rounded curves were, however, a
rather curious blue and it had fleetingly occurred to me that she was
an extra-terrestrial when my better sense came to the fore and I said
rather inanely,

"You should be wearing more in Wisconsin this time of year!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Her dark eyes flashed and she wriggled her shapely shoulders angrily
with interesting shock waves.

"Since when is this Wisconsin?" she cried. "It's HOAGS' exploding that
caused this cold!" She paused. "Isn't it?"

"HOAGS!" I echoed. Things started to add then that by logic couldn't.
HOAGS is a new installation, an accelerator where two streams of
particles orbiting in opposite directions were caused to meet head-on.
Hence the HO.

HOAGS is at Cape Canaveral, Florida, whence American satellites have
lanced spaceward since IGY. Cape Canaveral in February boasts the
weather that permits if not cries for the abbreviated type of costume
this gorgeous young damsel was wearing.

While I was thinking I was also listening and she was spluttering that
her father was General Schoener of the Atomic Energy Commission and
that he would have me suitably punished if I had kidnapped her--

"Now wait a sec," I said, throwing her my parka after a natural period
of bug-eyed hesitation. "I wouldn't be about to kidnap anyone, least of
all a flighty teenager."

"I'm twenty-one," she said, her eyes flashing with indignation, and
proceeded to enfold the parka around everything save the tip of her
cold-pink nose and her long curved legs. The elusive tip of her nose
wasn't worth trying to follow as she buried her raven-haired head in
the fur collar; there was more of the curvaceous lower extremities in
view which merited and claimed my attention. Devoted attention.

"Well?" she said.

"Yes, thank you," I answered, glad the heat--the furnace's thermal
radiation, that is--was coming up.

"I mean, what'll we do?"

"I hadn't given that much mature thought," I answered, "but now that
you mention--"

"Stop the parrying!" she cut in sharply.

"Parrying was farthest from my mind," I said.

She spluttered; then asked, "Are you telling the truth?"

"About what?"

"That this is Wisconsin."

"Yes; it certainly is."

"Well, what day is it and time?"

"Wednesday, February 14th, 1968 and--and precisely 8:25 a.m."

She was silent for a moment, letting the parka fall away from her
lovely face; then she said, "But it was only a few moments ago,
considering the difference in time zones, that I was at Cape Canaveral.
They were activating HOAGS today and I was there with Dad. How--how
could I possibly be in Wisconsin now?"

"That," I said, "_is_ the question. With a capital Q. How could you
possibly--"

I stopped in shock. Those dark eyes had been looking directly at
me--and the image of them was planted on my retinal patterns like
a commercial symbol lingering on a stereo tube--but she, eyes and
all--and I do mean _all_--was _gone_.

Just like that. Blinko. Not over and out. Just out.

       *       *       *       *       *

I know I acted irrationally then. I scurried around the quickly warming
room, searching behind the proton beam accelerator, the control and
monitor consoles, the relay racks and equipment cabinets, feeling that
she just had to be somewhere!

The door opened. I whirled around expectantly. It wasn't she; it was
George Herrmann, my assistant.

George regarded me searchingly, his lean face lugubrious.

"What gives, Bob?" he asked. "You look as if you'd lost the world!"

"Maybe I have," I said, leaping to the visifone.

George watched me button Miami Exchange and said, "You realize what
Jack Hagen thinks about long distance calls!"

I ignored him. I realized all right. Hagen's project boss and has laid
the law down plenty on the question of what he considers unnecessary
calls--but how can a scientist operate if he can't call up others in
his specialty when he gets the glimmerings of a new idea?

Miami answered and I asked for General Schoener at Patrick Air Force
Base. Priority. I've top secret clearance and I put my marked I.D.
card on the pick-up, too.

Abruptly a brush-mustached frozen military face regarded me. "So you're
Robert Mitchell of UNACMEA/WAGS," the face growled. "Well, make it
short."

"It's about your daughter, General," I said.

The face became human.

"But what can _you_ know about Elaine? You're in Wisconsin, aren't
you?" And, at my nod, "Well, she vanished from here when we activated
HOAGS. Don't--don't tell me--"

"Yes, she was _here_," I said. "Just a few minutes ago. Said that HOAGS
exploded."

His twitching brows drew down. "It didn't explode. There was a defect
in the ring and particles of anti-matter we haven't yet named escaped.
That was just before we missed Elaine! Now, Mitchell, are you sure she
was there? Can you describe her?"

I felt that my descriptive detail was rather good, coming as it did
from a confirmed bachelor whose attention had theretofore been devoted
to scientific tomes and atom-smashers.

He nodded perplexedly as I finished. "Well, how do you account for it?"

"General," I said slowly, "I'm a research physicist and I certainly
won't admit for a moment that it might have been an induced psionic
manifestation. There's an answer in relativity, I'm sure. A logical
answer. Right now I'm far aspace. I thought I knew anti-nucleonics but
HOAGS has apparently spawned something research physicists haven't
anticipated."

"Well, where is Elaine now? Where did she go?"

"I don't know," I answered dumbly. "But she didn't _go_, General; she
was here and then wasn't. But let me try to find her, General. God
knows I'll do my best!"

He surveyed my face carefully.

"I'm sure you will," he said. "Call me when you find her."

I nodded wordlessly and rang off.

       *       *       *       *       *

Despite George Herrmann's admonitions re long distance calls, I
immediately visifoned every AGS installation in the States.

The last call did it. I raised Al Benson in Phoenix, Arizona. He'd seen
Elaine briefly. He'd been first in the control room at the Phoenix
synchrotron and had just activated same when, bingo! she was there.

He had in fact been just about to call me. She'd been wearing the
parka which had stayed when she "left". He'd found my name stencilled
on the parka's left breast. Said she'd said the "nicest" man had lent
it to her.

Which was nice to hear.

"We've just _got_ to find her," I said earnestly.

He looked at me quizzically. "Bob, my boy, is the old perennial
bachelor's veneer cracking?"

I thought that one over. "I guess it is," I admitted. "Now, Al, any
suggestions?"

"I'm essentially a computerman," he said. "Give me some data and I
might come up with something."

I knew what HOAGS had been intended to do: guide streams of particles
in a chainlike pattern through the influence of magnetic fields of
alternating direction so that head-on collisions of particles would
result. Theoretically this should yield energies as enormous as the
satellites reported present in cosmic radiation in space. But what side
effects might result from HOAGS' activation was difficult for even
computers to conclude.

There were other data: times of vanishment; durations of presence here
and at Phoenix; the fact that the parka had gone with Elaine from here
to Phoenix but had remained at Phoenix upon her vanishment there--

"She's drawn to an AGS unit upon its activation," Benson said. That was
already obvious to me but I didn't say so; Al Benson keeps his computer
pretty high up on a throne. He went on, "Your parka came here with
Elaine because it had picked up some manner of static charge from her.
For some reason it was discharged--degaussed, maybe--while she was here
and so it stayed when she--er--didn't."

I had looked at the wall clock as he was talking. "Look, Al," I cried,
"cut for now. Hanford AGS should have been activated a few minutes ago.
I'm going to call Ted Sosnowski there. Out, boy!"

I rang Hanford, Washington.

Yes, Elaine had been there. Briefly. Sosnowski started to go into
a rather ecstatic description of her undeniable charms but since
he obviously had no datum to add I cut him off and rang Berkeley,
California. The Bevatron had not been activated since the time of the
accident at HOAGS; Berkeley had nothing to report.

I had George Herrmann bring me the secret files then, and was scanning
the list of all synchrotrons in the world, known either through
publicity or downright espionage (a few were operating without UN
sanction), when the visifone buzzed.

It was General Schoener.

I briefed him and told him I was about to try visifoning all known AGS
installations.

"Hold it up," he said. "I want to call the Pentagon. I think I can pull
strings and get UNACMEA/WAGS fully activated."

"That would do it, General!" I cried. "I didn't think I'd stand a
chance if I asked--"

"Look, Bob," he cut in. "Elaine's my daughter and I'm not having her
flitting around fraternizing with every Tom, Dick and Harry even if
they are Ph. D's. She made one mistake and I'm not having her make
another."

"Mistake?" I asked.

"A pilot," he said. "Nice enough guy but it turned out he was already
married and intended to remain so. Incidentally, Bob, you resemble him
to a considerable degree."

"I _do_?"

I recalled the data. Elaine had been here for about _three_ minutes
but at Phoenix and Hanford only about one minute apiece. Was _I_ a
stabilizing influence? No, I reasoned, it couldn't be me. It must be
WAGS. It's an odd 40-Bev job. Maybe its magnetic field had a partially
polarizing effect upon the anti-nucleonic factor.

"Please call the Pentagon, General--and, General, if--I mean _when_--we
get Elaine back, would you consider me as a prospective son-in-law?"

"You get her back, Bob, and ask her the big question. If she says yes,
well, fine! You look okay to me!"

"Thanks, General."

"Call me Mike," he said. "Out!"

       *       *       *       *       *

It's a good thing Mike Schoener's a four-star general; if he'd been
a second lieutenant, his daughter would have bounced around the then
infinitely sadder earth to the end of her years, pursued by the vagrant
day-dreams of a hundred bug-eyed physicists until gobbled benzedrine
and tranquilizers took their toll of said dreaming BEP's.

As it was, it was afternoon here at Racine when Mike Schoener called
back and told me to stand by for the activation of UNACMEA/WAGS.

I stood in the console room for half an hour while the monitor
screens went on one by one until the five banks of them on the one
wall were all aglow. The controller at UNACME in New York gave me the
go-sign then and I said shakily, "This is Doctor Robert Mitchell at
UNACMEA/WAGS, Wisconsin, U.S.A. A strange phenomenon occurred here at
0822 hours today."

I paused, disconcerted by background voices translating my words into
dozens of foreign tongues; then, steeling myself, I went on, concluding
with the question, "Is Miss Schoener present at this moment in any one
of your installations?"

There were noes, _nons_, _niets_, _neins_--and then a hesitant _oui_
followed almost immediately by a resounding _da_.

My eyes went to the Siberian monitor and Elaine was suddenly facing me
on the screen, saying, "Doc, I'm in a lab in Russia and there's not a
soul here who can speak English, just a bunch of leering old bearded
men. I'm scared, doc, and--"

She wasn't there.

Sosnowski's voice came from Hanford, "She's here now, Bob. I cut the
AGS out and then back in and bingo!"

Elaine was behind him, sporting a Cossack hat.

"Elaine, I would--" I started. And stopped. She wasn't there.

"_Du bist wunderschon_," a guttural voice proclaimed.

I swung to the Munich monitor. I didn't need a translation. Elaine
was there and making an impression. She swapped the Cossack hat for a
Tyrolean one which a grinning Bavarian had been wearing--and vanished.

"_Elle est ici!_" a nasal tenor said. "_C'est la Sorbonne ou elle est.
C'est DuBois qui parle. Ma foi! Elle est vraiment magnifique!--Mon
dieu! Elle n'est plus!_"

Though sadly neglected since college days, my "knowledge" of French
told me that Elaine had arrived, conquered and departed, leaving
Monsieur DuBois of the Paris AGS in a state of bemusement, indeed!

"Fellows!" I cried. "Someone's not playing fair! In the last few
minutes, Miss Schoener has been in Siberia, in Hanford, Washington,
U.S.A., in Munich, Germany, and in Paris. This--"

"She's back again!" Sosnowski cried from Hanford.

I swung to the Hanford screen. "Ted," I said, "stop switching the AGS
off and on. It could be dangerous. The gauss level might even bring her
to critical mass. You're playing with something we know little about."

Sosnowski rolled his eyes from the screen to Elaine. "Brother," he
said, "this girl's always near critical mass! And I'm not playing. I'd
be happy if she'd stay right here!"

But she wasn't there.

"_Ona krasavitsa_," a jubilant voice said.

The Siberia screen displayed a Russian doing the sabre dance before
Elaine's eyes, and an interpreter somewhere in the vast UNACME network
was helpfully murmuring, "She is beautiful."

At which point Monsieur DuBois said throatily to an abruptly
materialized vision, "_Tu es belle. Reste ici, ma chere!_" And then
swore with Gallic fluency as thin air alone vibrated to his impassioned
words.

While Al Benson at Phoenix began a John Alden speech in my behalf.

I was silent, studying Elaine's lovely face as Al spoke to her. She
was apparently enjoying every second of her fantastic flitting yet I
could see perplexity deep in her dark eyes. I thought I could see a
bewilderment, a lostness.

"Al," I said, "I've got to talk to her."

Was it wishful thinking or did I see a warmth leap into her face as she
turned to see my image?

"Trust in me, Elaine," I said. "I'll bring you home."

"Home?" she asked.

"Yes, _home_--home to me," I said, naked longing in my voice--and, for
all the world to hear, "I love you, darling."

"_Moi, aussi!_" Monsieur DuBois me-too'd in French.

"_Ich auch!_" came from Munich, plus, "_Bitte komme doch bald
zuruck!_" which, I gathered, was asking her to come back but quickly!

"I mean it!" I cried through Babel.

       *       *       *       *       *

My voice was lost in a storm of pleas, protestations, proposals,
propositions, presentations and plain Ph. D. philanderings, during
which Elaine's loveliness appeared briefly on the monitor screens for
Paris, Leeds, Brussels, Hanford, Stockholm, Paris, Hanford, Phoenix,
Munich, Hanford, Atomsk, Tokyo, Hanford, Madrid, Paris, Hanford, Paris,
Hanford, Paris, Hanford--

"Sosnowski!" I cried, "and you, too, Monsieur DuBois! Stop! _Arretez!_
Don't do it any more! _Ne faites-le plus!_"

The situation continued to pingpong. Hanford to Paris to Hanford to
Paris.

Sosnowski said (while Monsieur DuBois was ardently proposing to Elaine
at the Sorbonne), "I sincerely wish to marry the girl, Bob."

"So do I, Ted," I answered him. "May the better man--"

"The _best_ man," he snapped back. "Don't forget DuBois!"

I cut my microphone and said quickly to Herrmann, "George, get the
chaplain and get the mayor to bring over whatever personnel and forms
it takes to get a marriage license. And, _move_!"

And a Russian roared from the Siberia monitor something that
sounded like "_Mogoo ya zhenitsa s vashey dochery?_", which, promptly
interpreted by a linguist on the network, resulted in "May I marry your
daughter?"

I didn't burn; I blazed. _My_ daughter, indeed! So my hair is greying.
Prematurely, that is. I'm only twenty-nine.

I was in control of UNACMEA at that moment. _Full_ control. I was
vested with UN power and that's _Power_ these days, despite the snide
remarks you hear from certain quarters.

"Look," I said to the whole wide world. "You will all--repeat
all--immediately deactivate every AGS unit. This is a direct order of
the UN."

I was hopeful but--

Monsieur DuBois said it was an accident.

Sosnowski said he couldn't figure out how it happened that the Hanford
AGS reactivated itself--

And a new and properly British voice said, "This is Gibraltar. I say,
Miss Schoener is here. It was, I assure you, quite accidental. One of
your flyboys is here to pick up a cargo of potables for your North
African bases and mistook the AGS button for an intercom and--"

"This is Sosnowski. I'm sorry but--"

And an interpreter cut in, "Commissar Vladislaw indicates that he
will allow Miss Schoener to return if monitoring of the Soviet AGS
installations will be permanently discontinued--"

"Gibraltar here. I'm rather afraid your pilot is somewhat out of hand--"

"_Mein liebling, kannst Du nicht langer hier bleiben?_"

"_Ma chere, reste avec moi et je te donnerai le monde!_"

"Elaine," I cried, "wherever you are, answer me!"

At last, at long last, her voice said, "Yes, Bob?"

"Will you marry me?" I asked prayerfully and Munich got into the act
with "_Willst Du nicht mich heiraten?_"

"Yes," she said so softly I barely heard.

I swung a frantic glance over my shoulder. His Honor the Mayor of
Racine and sub-alterns were behind me.

"Elaine?" I yelled.

"Whoops!" she said; then, "I'm back at Hanford."

"Sosnowski," I said sharply. "You heard my order. You will not activate
the AGS again!"

"I haven't been touching it for the last ten minutes," Sosnowski said.
"There's something wrong with the activator; it's turning itself off
and on at random."

"Then get a technician and damp the pile!"

"I'll do what I can," he said. "Anyway, Elaine's gone!"

Siberia was back in the act. Then Gibraltar. Then Munich.

"Elaine," I cried. "You're coming home--_now_!"

I cut the AGS; then reactivated it and she was here, oh! so wondrously
close to me, and the mayor handed her a pen and she signed the marriage
license and--

Sosnowski said he was sorry.

The chaplain arrived. I refuse to mention his name or faith; he asks
for anonymity. Suffice it to say that he is a man of God and a man of
science.

He looked at me questioningly and I nodded. The service began.

Elaine heard parts of the ceremony at sixteen different locations
in the world. And my errant colleagues (bless them!), despite their
playful reactivations of their AGS units, maintained a decent silence
when the chaplain made the fateful invitation to that someone to speak
now or forever hold his peace.

At last the chaplain said, "Do you, Robert, take this woman--there at
Hanford on the monitor--to be thy lawful wedded wife?"

And I said, "I do," and hoped I didn't sound facetious as I added,
"except that she's at Gibraltar now!"

"Do you, Elaine, take this man Robert--"

And Al Benson cut in from Phoenix saying, "The computer says to degauss
her, Bob!"

And I snapped on WAGS, full power--and Elaine was here, here beside me
saying, "I do, I do, I do!"

And George Herrmann (bless him!) had degaussing equipment ready--

       *       *       *       *       *

That was eleven months ago.

Now I am at the UNACMEA/WAGS console again and I am asking all the
physicists in charge of AGS units throughout the world to listen, to
understand and to help.

Flitting between them this morning is our two-months-old daughter. She
inherited a little instability and a high gauss tolerance. Her mother's
had her here at WAGS too often, too, I guess.

The little one's particularly disturbed now because she needs a change.
Will someone please do the necessaries fast?

Elaine's here and she's determined to go, too, figuring they'll wind up
together and then, with your cooperation, I can bring them both back.

But, fellows, it would be easier if--

_Elaine!_




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