The Weapon - Oblivion  - part 14

By Diana the Valkyrie

Well, that's another fine mess you've gotten me into

Update: 13/08/2003 to valkyrie05



"Hey babe," she said next morning, "stop looking like someone just killed your

puppy." "That's exactly how I feel, actually." "Tain't over till the fat lady

sings," she said, "what are we chasing up today?"



In the morning, we tried a hypnotherapist. And we discovered that Wendy

doesn't hypnotise, what a big surprise. In the afternoon, we visited a

psychiatrist, and discovered that Wendy doesn't psychoanalyse. That evening, I

downloaded all the messages that Wendy's web site had gathered, and we went

through them, to see if anyone had any useful suggestions. Or rather, Wendy

did, she can read faster than I can. Quite a lot faster. Most of the messages

were sympathy and commiseration, which has no practical value, although it was

nice to know that there were so many people rooting for her. "You see, David,

they love me as much as I love them," she said, "we've got to whip this thing,

for their sakes."



One message was interesting; it asked if she had the equivalent of fsck that

she could use. "What's that," I asked Wendy. "Dunno," she said, "I'll google

it. OK, it's file system check, something that fixes messed-up file systems.

Yes, it would be nice if I had something like that, but if I do, then I don't

know about it. And I doubt if I can download it from anywhere." "Fsck for

Guardians," I said, and Wendy giggled. "Maybe you could fsck me," she

suggested, suggestively, and dug an elbow into my side. "Ow!" So then she

rubbed my side, "Aw, did I hurt my baby then? Momma rub it better." Except

that she wasn't rubbing it, she was tickling me, and I was trying to push her

away, which is a bit like trying to push a double decker bus, and then her

other hand came round and attacked my other side, and then she pulled me

towards her and I was under siege from the front and both sides, and those

great white wings came round and finished the encirclement by wrapping

themselves round me and, well, if you've ever been ticked with a feather, you

can imagine what I was going through.



We didn't get any more done that evening. Well, nothing constructive. But I

was feeling a lot better by the time I fell asleep. Exhausted, but more

optimistic.



. . .



Next day, we visited a veterinary. My reasoning was, they have to deal with a

lot of different animals, maybe Wendy could be regarded as just an especially

exotic one? But when we explained the situation, she just shook her head

sadly. "I mostly do cats and dogs," she said, "if you came to me with a horse

I'd just refer you to a horse specialist. I don't know any Guardian

specialists."



I sighed, and thanked her for her time. She looked a bit sad. "You know, if

there was anything I could do, I would. She looks so young, it's hard to

believe that she's suffering from something so acute. But I can maybe make a

suggestion."



"What is it," I asked, "right now, I'd take any idea."



"Well," she said, "she must be a homeostat." "No, she's one one the People," I

explained. The vet laughed. "No, I mean, every living thing has things to

maintain itself as it is. Like if you get hot, you sweat to cool down, but if

you get cold, you shiver to warm up. So, every kind of animal can get damaged

or infected by disease. But there's always something that resists, fights

back. You see, if your skin is broken, it heals over, it's actually quite a

complex process, and at the end it can be as good as new. And with disease,

you have internal systems to fight the invaders. Surely a Guardian would have

the same sort of thing?"



We looked at Wendy.



"How would I know?" she said. "My skin isn't skin, it's just an illusion I put

in place so you feel more comfortable with me, and if it's broken, I just

recreate the illusion."



"Yes," I said, "but what about internal infection. Do you have, um, antibodies

or something, to fight off, um, germs and stuff?"



Wendy went quiet for a little while, and gazed down at the floor. "Yes. Yes,

there's some stuff here ..."



I grinned at the veterinary. "I could kiss you," I said. "No thanks," she

replied. "Or I could," said Wendy. The vet said nothing, which meant

everything. Wendy moved towards her, took her in her arms, and gave her one of

her three-dimensional stereo kisses. Then she carefully lowered the vet into a

chair, and as we left, she said "and I love you too."



We flew home, keen to try out this new idea. We sat down, facing each other

across the kitchen table. "So, what have you got there," I asked.



"Well," she said. "There a thing for adjusting the charges on each black hole,

and a thing for adjusting the spin." "Are the charges and spin correct right

now?" I asked. "I think so," she said, "there's quite a wide range that's OK.

There's a thing for sweeping up masses that get into the gravitational fields.

There's a thing that balances the colour charge, and the charm ..." "Charm?"

"Don't ask, it's just another sort of charge, like Strangeness."

"Strangeness?" "You want to see the equations?" "Not really. I think we need a

theoretical physicist again." "Oh, please. Not Meredith again, all she wanted

was to pump me on GUTs." "She's the only one I know." So I phoned her, and

yes, she was available, and happy to meet us again.



I persuaded Wendy to fly us back to Imps, and we knocked on Dr Meredith's

door. "Ah, it's you," she said, which I thought was a remarkably casual

greeting when you see the Guardian of Humanity in your doorway. I'd warned her

we were on the way, but even so.



She'd been busy; my warning had given her time to collect a symposium

together. There were several of them crowding the tiny office, competing for

the "most disreputable knitwear" honour. The place was so jammed, Wendy

decided that it would be easier if she flew up and lay on the ceiling. Under

the ceiling. Oh, you know what I mean. It meant we all had to crane our necks

up to see her, which might actually have been the desired effect, I can never

tell when she's doing something like that on purpose and when she's doing it

by accident.



"Thanks for attending our little seminar," started Dr Meredith, as if she'd

organised the whole thing and persuaded the Guardian of Humanity to come by. I

introduced the seminar by explaining about Wendy's memory loss problem, and

how we were wondering what internal mechanisms she might have for diagnosing

and perhaps even fixing this problem. "The problem is," I said, "she knows

about as much about her homeostatic systems as people do, and she doesn't know

what to do. Basically, she's, well, going to stop existing in any real sense

within a fairly short time-span, and we were hoping you might be able to

suggest subsystems she might have, that she could use for this, before she

..." I trailed off. Somehow, I couldn't bring myself to use the word "death".



"How do you do that?" said a beige pullover, addressing Wendy and gesturing

with his pipe. "Do what?" asked Wendy. "Hover there," he said. "Well, I just

flap my wings," she said. "You don't have any wings." "Oops," she said, "I

forgot." And out came the wings. The beige pullover snorted, "Yeah, right. You

mass over a billion tons, I read. No way can a handful of feathers keep that

in the air, that's just for show, how do you really fly?"



Wendy smiled. "I orbit my masses around a common center of gravity. As each

one is moving against the local gravity gradient, I spin it up, and as it is

moving down the gradient, I spin it down again. It drags the gravitic lines of

force around with it, creates a local flat area, space-time flat, I mean."



A violent purple sweater fought his way to the whiteboard. "I see, I see," he

said excitedly, "zero-gee" and started scribbling equations on the board. "No,

that can't work," said a bilious green cardigan, "conservation of energy,

you'd be able to make a perpetual motion machine, second law of thermodynamics

..." "No, look, it's because you aren't using a rotating frame of reference

..." "OK, so we use a rotating frame ..." "I bet she's doing it real fast,

you'll need to account for relativistic effects" "But you can't use Special

relativity in a rotating frame ... " " ... so we use General, here's the

four-tensor ..."



I crept out of the room. No-one noticed I'd gone. I sat down in the corridor

outside the office, my back against the wall, my head in my hands.



People only care about their own problems, never about others. Maybe if these

people had stopped to think about Wendy's problem, maybe they'd have some

ideas. Maybe. As it is, all they're interested in is the physics of how she

flies. The fact that she might not be flying for much longer, just didn't seem

to signify.



I felt someone's arms round me. I didn't look up. "Hi, Wendy." "David, I think

they just invented an antigravity machine." "Good for them." "Trouble is, they

won't be able to rotate anything fast enough without it breaking up." "I bet

they don't care about that, as long as it works in theory."



She sat down next to me, her back to the wall.



"Well, that's another fine mess you've gotten me into," she said.



"Oh, Ollie, what are we going to do now?" I asked.



She cuffed me around the head with one of her wings. Since it was just

feathers, it didn't hurt. I fought back, wrestled her to the ground, and held

her down. "OK, you win," she said, "I surrender." Damn. I was hoping she'd

struggle a bit.



The office door opened, and a couple of cardigans emerged. They saw us on the

floor, and jumped to the wrong conclusion. "She fainted," I lied, "do you have

any smelling salts?" Wendy closed her eyes to support my fib. They went back

into their seminar. I suppose it was silly of me to have thought they'd be the

least bit interested in our private life.



"Come on, Wendy, there's nothing for us here. Let's get back." "David, they

were just like the churches. All they wanted was to get something from me, to

further their own agenda." "Except in this case, they did actually get

something." "No they didn't." "Yes, they did, you told them how you fly."



"I made that up, it's a total porkie. They have to do their own research, I'm

not a Royal Road to four-Geometry."