Kinsella (Kinsella Universe Book 1) Read online

  “What do you mean ‘deal with her?’” Elaine asked, wary.

  “She’s on our case. It’s do or die for us tomorrow morning.”

  “You crossed a full professor?” Elaine said, obviously startled. “I won’t get involved!”

  “Sometimes I just want to punch that smart-ass in the mouth! Do the math! Is that all she can say?” Stan growled in anger.

  Elaine looked at Stan as if he were insane. “In my country, were you to punch a full professor in the mouth, they would take you out the same day and put a bullet in your head. Then they send a bill to your family for the cartridge. Tell your wife I’ll be waiting for her in the laundry room.”

  Elaine whirled and left, as if fleeing the Black Plague.

  Stan stared at Johnny morosely. Johnny just shrugged. Singapore was more civilized: they wouldn’t send his parents the bill for the bullet.

  Trina came out and looked around. “What happened to Elaine?”

  “She went ahead,” Stan said.

  Trina nodded towards the playpen where their year-old son was playing with some toys. “Watch the kid, Stan. I’ll be back in a while.”

  She left too and Stan stared vacantly into space. Finally, he huffed a sigh, his eyes resting on his son. “Some day, John, you will be my age and your mother will go out and tell me to ‘watch the kid.’” Stan lapsed back into silence.

  The baby smiled at his father’s words and picked up a kaleidoscope someone had bought for him at one of the baby showers Trina had gone to. He promptly tried to look through the wrong end.

  Stan got up and went and took it away from John, handing it back reversed. “Gotta look at it the right way, John!”

  He was halfway back to the sofa when he saw the light bulb go off over Johnny’s head. He was a second behind.

  “How it works can come later,” Stan said eagerly. “We need to work from what is happening. We’ve been looking at the wrong end of the problem.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s strong or weak force,” Johnny said. “No way!”

  “And electromagnetism is out,” Stan said firmly. Giving up a favorite hypothesis isn’t easy.

  “Gravity. Remember the plumb bob?” Johnny mused.

  “Up and down, right and left. All around,” Stan replied. “Oh yeah! The source has to be a point. A point that was level with the turbine’s rotational axis and at right angles to it and a couple of feet away.”

  “A point gravity source at a remove from the apparatus! That has to mean the Holy Grail of modern classical physics! There is indeed a direct relationship between gravity and electromagnetism!” Johnny said, slapping his fist into his palm. “All we have to do is figure it out!”

  He looked at Stan. “You know where we’d be if she hadn’t made us take those measurements? Sunk!”

  “What was that one at the end? The one that broke when it hit the floor?” Stan asked.

  “The video!” Johnny said, springing towards Stan’s TV. They had watched the DVD earlier twice, with only the dimmest understanding of what they were seeing, having no idea what to look for.

  Now they watched it intently, calling out comments about what was almost certainly happening. And at the end, the camera was badly focused on the instrument; they could just barely read the numbers, nine point eight zero one five two. The microphone on the camera picked up the turbine winding up.

  The instrument flickered, going to point eight one, then point eight two, then changed, going to nine point nine two five. “That’s an accelerometer,” Johnny said, his voice hushed. “We created a ten centimeter a second gravity well!”

  “Oh, we are so fucking going to kick that woman’s ass tomorrow!” Stan said loudly and gleefully.

  Trina had just come in, now she walked up to him and glowered at her husband. “I forgot the detergent. If I ever hear language like that from you in front of the kid again, I’ll wash your mouth out!”

  She vanished into the bedroom and returned with a box of detergent and stalked past, rigid with anger.

  Stan watched her go, a smile on his face. “She’s a tiger around John, you have to give her that!”

  “Give her what you want later,” Johnny told him. “First, we have to figure out how rotating magnetic fields create a point gravity source!”

  The next morning Stan and Johnny stood in their thesis advisor’s office, Stan scribbling equations on a white board with Johnny pointing out the important parts.

  Doctor Sorenson, a dour Swede, old enough to be their grandfather, sat haughtily silent throughout the presentation.

  When Stan finished with a flourish, he faced Professor Sorenson, but his eyes were on Professor Kinsella who’d stood equally silent throughout.

  The elderly professor looked at the board for a few moments and then spoke to Stan. “It is my understanding that you were doing empirical experiments, working without a hypothesis and that you saw no reason to take notes. Further, you departed significantly from the agreed upon protocols and terms of experiment. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I like to fish, but that is a form of recreation. You are studying theoretical physics, not fishing. Your experiment was a fishing expedition, pure and simple. You are physicists, not engineers. We do our work with predictive mathematics, not hammers and duct tape. Professor Kinsella has offered to take the two of you in hand for a remedial month in basic experimental techniques.

  “At the end of that month, I will question her about your progress; I will question you. At that time, I will decide whether or not to allow you to continue in your degree programs. You are dismissed.”

  Outside, the two stood chastened, but breathing a little easier. Obviously, they’d missed the worst of the bullet. That comfort lasted until Professor Kinsella joined them.

  “For now, a simple thing. Tomorrow afternoon at one o’clock I want you to present an experimental plan to me. We will go over it, and if it’s satisfactory, you may begin the day after tomorrow on it.”

  “That would be a Saturday, Professor,” Stan said, trying to sound reasonable.

  “Thirty days, counting today. You can take the whole thirty days off as holiday, for all I care. Or not.”

  Johnny spoke up, “Professor, our budget is pretty well used up. We never had much. Stan and I did a lot of the work ourselves, scrounging things.”

  “How large was your budget?” Stephanie asked him.

  “A thousand dollars,” Stan said.

  Stephanie fished in her purse, pulled out her checkbook and wrote a check. She handed it to Stan.

  He looked down and blinked — another thousand dollars!

  “Before you start salivating,” Stephanie said coldly, “I am a proactive grant giver. That is, you will keep receipts. At the end of the experiment I want an accounting of the money, every penny. It will not have been used on pizza or soda pop — just on the experiment. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Professor,” the two students chorused.

  “Tomorrow at one in the afternoon,” Stephanie commanded.

  The next afternoon, the two presented a hastily prepared experimental plan to Professor Kinsella.

  Stephanie read it through and then looked at them. “This is barely adequate. You may, however, begin. You do not need my permission to deviate from this plan, but I want a written addendum to the plan within a day of any change, the reasons why the change was made and the results. In any case, I want a report every three days, except I expect the first progress report on Monday at this time,” she told them.

  Later, the two of them ran over the equipment list, and then divided it up. Johnny went after the items needing scrounging, Stan after those that needed to be bought.

  Days passed, hectic, busy days. The only notable thing in their first meeting was after Stephanie finished listening to their report when she asked if they’d made any changes in their experimental plan. They assured her they hadn’t.

  The second meeting was a Thursday and again she asked at t
he conclusion of their meeting about any changes. “We learned our lesson, Professor Kinsella,” Stan Benko told her. “We won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  She nodded, her eyes bright. “Anything else to report?” she inquired.

  “No, Professor,” Stan replied. “Although, I was wondering — our next report is due on Sunday. Is that correct?”

  “If I’m not going to be in my office for one of your progress reports, I will inform you in advance. I will be here Sunday, so there won’t be any problem.”

  Stan and Johnny exchanged glances, but they didn’t say anything until they were out of her office. “I wanted to take my wife out Sunday after church,” Stan said with disgust.

  “I could come by myself,” Johnny told him. “There’s nothing hard about making the report.”

  “I’ll think about it. The Lord knows what she’d do if I skipped a progress report. I’m not sure I’m ready to find out yet.”

  Sunday was the same thing all over again. The testing occurred per the plan, there were no changes to report and the results were such and such. Stephanie did add another question. “Have you considered the theory behind this?”

  “We’re still working on gathering raw data,” Stan told her.

  “There’s a lot of it,” Johnny agreed. “We were going to spend some time analyzing it this week. It’s there in the plan.”

  “Good,” she told them, “you do that. Follow your plan, let me know about any changes.”

  Outside, walking away, Stan was upset again. “What did we say that couldn’t have waited until tomorrow?”

  Johnny Chang sighed. “Nothing. But I get this feeling we’re out on a limb and there’s someone sawing it off behind us.”

  “She’s a bitch, pure and simple!” Stan said with heat.

  “She may be many things, but right now if we ever expect to get our doctorates, she’s a hurdle we have to pass. And really, she’s not asking anything of us that she’s not willing to do herself.”

  Stan could see an odd expression on Johnny’s face just then. “What?”

  “Maybe we should work on theory sooner, rather than later. What if she’s already worked it out? If we don’t come up to speed on it, she could still take this away from us. I mean, this is Nobel work, right?”

  “Oh, yeah! The link between electromagnetism and gravity is someplace in our data! You’re right! If we don’t get it before she publishes it, we’re screwed. She wouldn’t be the first professor to shaft grad students.”

  More time passed. There was a meeting midweek in Professor Kinsella’s office. She reviewed the data and looked at the two young men. “You’ve been working on the theory?”

  “Yes, Professor,” they chorused.

  “We found that working backwards, knowing what was happening, provided unexpected benefits in sorting out the math. We think we have a viable theory. It’s there in our report,” Stan told her.

  They’d sent notarized copies of the report to half a dozen places, hoping that they would be able to preserve precedence that way, if no other.

  “And no changes have suggested themselves to your plan?”

  “No, Professor,” Johnny told her.

  “Well, I’ve thought of one. I want to borrow your apparatus for a few days.”

  Both Stan and Johnny blinked in astonishment. “Borrow it, Professor?” Johnny asked.

  “Yes, currently the turbine is on a cart in your lab, is that not correct? The cart has wheels, does it not?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stan said, wondering what she could mean.

  “Come with me.”

  She got up and led them from her office. They followed her in silence. They shared a mystified shrug when she went out of the building and towards the faculty parking lot. She stopped at a crew-cab pickup and unlocked the passenger doors. “Get in,” she told them.

  She climbed up and drove competently towards the freeway and then west.

  “Professor,” Stan asked, “where are we going?”

  “Patience,” she told them.

  Stan subsided. Thirty minutes later they were off the freeway and drove up to a locked gate. A guard came out and unlocked it, without a word.

  “This is the Campbell Air Park,” Stephanie told them as they drove down a road towards old, rusting hangers. “My father is a gambler, as was my grandfather before him. Some gamblers go to Las Vegas or now the Indian casinos to get their fix. My father and grandfather got their jollies buying up acres of farmland around the northern periphery of the San Fernando Valley and holding onto it until land prices escalated.”

  She stopped in front of a old, rusting hangar and got out. The two young men followed her inside. The building was warm in the March sun, but there was plenty of light. She walked just a few feet and stopped in front of what looked like a go-cart.

  “A friend of my father’s owned the go-cart; it belonged to his son, who has gone on to bigger and better things: the Air Force Academy.”

  “I’m not sure I understand, Professor Kinsella,” Stan told her.

  “I want you to move the turbine here; I want you to transfer it and its fuel supply to the go-cart. It would be nice if the cart could be controlled remotely, but we can run it from a tether, if need be. At least a thirty meter tether, at least a hundred meters from the building. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Professor,” Johnny said. “I used to fly radio-controlled model airplanes in Singapore. I know how to do something like that.”

  “It’s not going to go very fast,” Stan told Professor Kinsella. “We’ve tweaked the output and the best we’ve done so far is about 58 centimeters a second.”

  Stephanie grinned at Stan sardonically. “Mr. Benko! Did I just hear you offer a prediction?”

  Stan tried not to blush, but nothing stopped his ears from flushing.

  “First steps, Mr. Benko, first steps! The Wright brothers flew less than a hundred meters on their first flight. The go-cart won’t move very fast. The important thing, Mr. Benko and Mr. Chang, is the fact that the steps are taken.”

  “How are we going to get the turbine and other things here?” Johnny Chang asked.

  “Do either of you have a driver’s license?”

  Stan Benko nodded. “I do, Professor.”

  Stephanie had been holding a set of keys in her hand; now she held them out to him. “You may have use of my truck. When do you think you’ll have results?”

  “Monday,” Johnny Chang told her. “We’ll have to work over the weekend.”

  Stephanie Kinsella nodded. “If you have any questions or problems, I’ll be in my office.”

  “How will you get home, Professor?” Johnny asked.

  “My father doesn’t live that far from here; he’ll take care of it.”

  She dipped into her purse as she started to walk away, pulling out a cell phone.

  “Oh gosh!” Stan exclaimed. “A car! Oh gosh!”

  “To be used for the experiment,” Johnny cautioned.

  “And to get to the store, the kid to the doctor’s...”

  “Stan, if something happens on one of those trips, you’re toast, do you understand? No matter whose fault it is, you personally are toast!”

  Stan just grinned, humming to himself.

  When they went to leave, this time the guard plunked himself down in the middle of the road, forcing Stan to stop.

  “Professor Kinsella says you may be admitted at any time, any day,” the guard told them.

  “Yes,” Stan said, not understanding the point of this.

  “You’ll have to sign in and out. Please be ready to stop at the gate.” He handed Stan a clipboard.

  Stan looked at it. It was blank.

  “Doesn’t Professor Kinsella have to sign in and out?” Stan asked in what he thought was a reasonable tone.

  The guard laughed. “Look around you, sonny. This here is a thousand acres of prime real estate surrounded on all sides by subdivisions. It’s worth, give or take, about a million bucks a
n acre. This is just one parcel the Prof’s father owns.

  “You guys going to make any noise?”

  Stan blinked. “Nothing much, I guess.”

  “This used to be a private airfield, back in the day. Except as the Valley grew, people started bitching. The bitching finally killed the airport. Then the boss leased it to some guys who ran drag races and street races. My goodness! If you think planes are loud, wait until you hear a rail going the quarter mile! The boss won’t have a problem with mild noise, but he’ll hear about anything more. You’ll want to be ahead of the curve, if you get my drift.”

  “Not much noise,” Johnny said, across Stan’s body. “A gas turbine. About as much noise as a car.”

  “Cool! No problem! Just don’t forget to stop! Some of the guys on this job are young and take themselves too seriously. They’d just love hauling out their pieces and shooting at someone who didn’t stop.”

  He waved them forward and Stan drove away. “That family is entirely paranoid,” he said as he drove, shaking his head.

  Johnny laughed; he was quite at home with real estate. “Stan, after all those warnings, you need to learn to do the math! A thousand acres at a million an acre. That’s a billion dollars in round numbers.”

  Stan managed to not drive the truck off the road. Oh!

  On Monday, the two of them showed up early in Professor Kinsella’s office. She smiled at them as they stood nervously in front of her desk.

  “Professor, it’s gone really well,” Johnny said. “We can have a demonstration tomorrow. We’re working on the last of the bugs.”

  “No problem. And your regular test protocol?”

  Stan turned three shades of purple with anger, and Johnny simply said, “We haven’t worked on it, Professor. You have control of the apparatus for a few days.”

  “Ah, I forgot!” she told them.

  With sudden clarity, Johnny knew she was pulling their legs, mostly Stan’s. And with that came the realization of something else. It was something he was going to have to think about...

  The next day the go-cart went down the field at something a bit faster than a slow walk, but not by much. “I’ve been thinking about ways to improve the velocity, Professor,” Johnny said helpfully as she stood mute, watching it.