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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 80: Kondor 282
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 277
Kondor and Zeke rode their bikes through and into Central London to South Kensington to one of the Imperial College campuses. Driving up and down the nearby streets in the misting rain, they passed the five story library and the small park named the Queen’s Lawn. Turning left from Imperial College Road, they went down another until they reached Prince Consort Road. The Royal College of Mines, a traditional stone building, massed itself to their left, and they turned around it onto the Prince Consort’s path. Kondor remembered that his instructions had included that name so he followed it until he got to Blackett Laboratory on their left.
Unlike the formidable Royal College of Mines or some other of the schools in London campus whose space was shared with other city dwellers, this building was an uninspiring soft green on one side and on the other a brick face seven to eight stories tall with various adjuncts slapped onto it without regard for looks or taste. Parking nearby, they shrouded their bikes in plastic after locking them, and hurried down the sidewalk to get inside. They attracted some pity as they passed native Londoners with their umbrellas up.
Inside was better, with a brightly lit sense of style, and more importantly warmth and dryness. Checking the list of offices, they passed their eyes over research departments for Photonics, Condensed Matter Theory, High Energy Physics, Superconductors–which led them to the room for Dr. Philip Albert, a Fellow in Physical Sciences. What exactly that meant Kondor was uncertain, but taking the elevator up to the fourth floor, he cleared his thoughts.
Up a hallway they came to a door, and knocking heard a grunt on the inside, and opened it. A skinny looking man with his glasses all askew lay under a tipped over desk with papers scattered about the tiny room. Passing a door to the left, Kondor and Zeke quickly righted the desk, and made it so the man could breathe.
“Thanks awfully, chaps. I could hardly speak.”
Kondor put a hand out to hold up the man from getting up, and began to check him over.
Impatiently, the unwilling patient knocked Kondor’s hand to the side.
“I’m fine, lad. Just a bump and thump, no big deal.”
He scrambled to his feet, and smiled up at his two skeptical looking visitors. He reached at most five feet, and shoving his glasses back on his face he began to bend over and pick up the hundreds of scattered papers that must have been on his desk before it was tipped over. Kondor and Zeke began to help after trying to get the tiny, thin man to stop, but even with an occasional wince, the professor refused to slow down.
Once he got his desk full, he began to recreate the preferred order. Kondor closed his door. The man looked up, and a hard light was in his eyes.
“Is this the second go around? Because I told you boyos the first time, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you anyway since you didn’t say ‘please’. I’m a great stickler for courtesy, I am.”
“Doctor Philip Albert, we’ve been sent from the government to keep an eye on you. Heard you had some threats.”
The man looked skeptical, and picked up his phone, and called a number. He quickly described Kondor and Zeke.
“Yeah, yeah, two men. One black, well-muscled, about six feet tall, looks to be about twenty or so, military officer bearing; the other, white with sandy hair and light eyes, shorter, just a couple inches taller than me, I think, muscles but more scrappy, also early twenties.”
Kondor waited as the doctor verified they were the good guys.
“Well, my apologies. I thought you were just new students whom I got lucky to have drop by, or those rotters come back for a more polite chat after the first go-round. It seems you two are legit.”
“I also have medical training. What did they do to you, and when, and how many?”
“Oh, they tossed me around a bit, held me and punched my gut some, finally tossing me over the desk and dumping it on me.” Kondor looked at the desk. It was not a modern thing at all, but a very heavy oak construction. “About forty minutes ago,” the professor said after glancing at a wall clock in the small book-lined office with the painted concrete block walls. “Three of them. Oh, I gave them what I could. Ran my shoe down one’s shin, and stomped his foot top quite well. I would bet I broke some metatarsals. He will remember me.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Zeke asked.
“Like I said, I’m fine. Look, I use to be a jockey. Rode horses, jumped fences, got stepped on by quarter-ton beasts. Broke my collar bones, four, no, five times. Give me a night asleep on the stairs in my apartment townhouse, and I’ll be good to go. They only bruised some ribs and broke a finger. Not a big deal.”
Kondor and Zeke turned their heads to stare at each other which let them communicate without words or telepathy, but all they had to say to each other this time was ‘huh?’ Shaking it off, Kondor turned back to the indefatigable doctor, and spoke.
“I’m to be a research assistant, and while I know some of the field, I think I could use a refresher on the particular things you’re doing.”
“Well, a law enforcement agent who understands physics. You’re an unusual man, ah--”
“Doctor Ezekiel Smith, from America.” And Kondor thought to himself, you have no idea, doctor. “This is Walter Walters, an American exchange student who took the opportunity to come with me to work as a lab tech.” The doctor took them into the next room which was his laboratory, and began to speak. He explained the new angle that the room temperature superconductor allowed in the study of cold fusion.
“A more stable platform, for a longer time, allows us to fine tune things to a previously unimagined degree. Also, it allows us to run four different tests in this one small lab, whereas before we would have needed a lab three times this size to run a single, shorter lived experiment. Keeping the superconductor deep cold was a really strenuous barrier to jump for any great length of time, and it was very costly in both space and money. Now?” He waved his hand about showing the small lab and its four major tables with similar devices atop each.
“And the data, the ah, ‘rotters’ want?” Zeke asked.
“Ah, well, sir, only I have access to the full data. After I got approached last week, I scrubbed this lab of all such data, only having the end results but not how I got to them. It would be very hard to go from the data in this lab to the basic research. Even my two lab assistants don’t have the data set I used.”
“Which is unfortunate,” a female voice said from the open doorway back to the office. Kondor and Zeke were not surprised although the doctor was.
“Ah, Deirdre, my number three assistant.” An English rose of a girl walked into the lab from the office. Her dress and open top shoes were suited for a dress shop, or a casual office, but not a laboratory.
“I don’t work for you, Dad. Mom sent me with lunch.” She held up a brown paper bag with one hand before letting her arm drop.
“Who are these?” She looked with disfavor on them both.
“Doctor Ezekiel Smith. He’s an American physics researcher. And ah--”
“Walter Walters, electrical technician and student assistant,” Zeke said with the appearance of calm. Kondor waited to see if their illusion held, but she seemed to think nothing of it.
“While I’m sure my father has you entranced, I want to remind you and him that he has to eat.” She very firmly said, eyeing them all. “And Dad, don’t think you can hide. I see the way you lean. What happened?”
“Oh,” he said a bit vaguely before brightly adding, “I’m afraid I told Carter that Dark Matter is bilgewater, and Laghari that Superstrings are mental tapeworms, and that the American theory that duct tape holds the Universe together makes more sense than his pet theory.”
“And they beat you up?”
“Well, they tried.”
“Laghari is seventy five years old.”
“Very stringy. I think it's that pure vegetarian diet of his.”
“Uh-huh. Well, food’s in the bag. Might be enough to share; you know how Mom packs. Bye.” She waved at them all and dropped the bag on the nearest table before swishing her way out.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
