Nye, Jody Lynn - Muchness

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Muchness by Jody Lynn Nye

Muchness

Jody Lynn Nye

Valerie Hodges looked at the shimmering wall of force between the transformer pillars in the center of

the Electromagnetics Lab, and glanced up at her fellow scientists with dismay.

"Why me?" she asked. "Why don't one of you big, muscular mooses go first?"

"Conservation of mass," one of them replied almost too quickly. "You're the smallest and lightest person

in the lab. Therefore if something goes wrong, we can pull you back more easily."

"I don't like it." She ran a hand through her short blonde hair, and sensed that her fingers were trembling.

"I'm a power technician, not a test pilot."

"You did volunteer," Clyde Sawyer reminded her.

"Well, that was before I saw it." She stared at the insubstantial metallic field, painted on the air and

quivering as if seen through heat haze. "You've been very secretive about how the transference system

functions. This is the first time I've been allowed in this chamber for six months."

"By necessity," Professor Connor Fitzhugh said, smiling down from his height of six foot three. "We

couldn't risk data leaks. No offense, Hodges. I know we could trust you, but we had to omit all or none.

We didn't want some other university stealing a march on us. Think of it! If this works, you'll step out of

the field into the receiver station four thousand miles away!"

"You're about to make history," Clyde said.

"I don't want to be history," Valerie said crossly.

Connor dropped the theatrical air that was his everyday manner of lecturing and became serious. He

loomed paternally toward her.

"Val, we can't order you to do this. It's not as if we're asking you simply to stay overtime. We're

cognizant of the danger involved. The retrieval system isn't perfect yet, but we can't wait any longer to

pass a human through so we can have a sentient report on the transference process. The rats survive, the

ones that come back. You've seen them. They're not even too disoriented. Yet we still do not know how

the process appears to the human mind. That's vital before we attempt longer transferences, say to the

Moon, or to Mars. We need your help."

His appeal made, he withdrew to a carefully measured psychological distance to let her think. He needn't

have been so considerate. Val realized she had already made up her mind to go. The adventuresome

streak in her personality was what had pushed her into the sciences in the first place, and the native

stubbornness had kept her going through her necessary A-levels and university education even when

she'd been actively discouraged, first by her parents, then by the males in her classes and her first jobs

who felt threatened by women advancing into their field. Here they were now, asking for her help—as a

guinea pig, mind you—but still asking her as if she and they were equals. This could work to her

advantage. She could demand concessions later on, if she survived. At the moment, she didn't care. The

silvery haze drew her. It felt unreal, torn from some other Creation. Its other side was not merely beyond

the pillars, but entirely elsewhere in the world.

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Nye, Jody Lynn - Muchness

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