Porter (3 page)

Several days passed before Albert Dans noticed that his daughter was missing. He asked Sarah about it and when
Sarah
said that she was on the road, doing her music, he nodded distractedly and went back to the paper he was reading
on wormhole theory
.
Sarah wasn’t sure he’d actually
comprehended the calamity that had befallen their
little
family
.

In actual fac
t
, Allie’s dad had given up on understanding the port phenomenon for a couple of years but then recently had awakened in the middle of the night with an idea regarding quantum tunneling and how very low power electromagnetic fields such as a brain
could
generate
might allow particles to appear at a new location. So his port research was back on
,
full speed ahead and he
was spending
every waking moment thinking about it.

The band was on break and Allie walked out behind the bar to hang out with her bandmates. She sat at the corner of a little deck looking up at the stars while the three guys
shared
a cigarette over by the door. She knew they smoked dope too because she could smell it on their clothes, but they knew better than to smoke it around her and they bought what they used in each town and
never
kept a stash in
the
ir van. She’d laid down the law. T
hey didn’t drink more than one beer during a set either. Joe arranged their gigs
,
ran their finances
and was their nominal “leader,”
but Allie was far and away their best musician. Her guitar licks and eerie vocals were what commanded the
substantial
fan following that they had developed
so far. T
hey
all
knew that the band would be
just another bunch of
“
wannabes
” without her. So, when she
made a rule
, they followed it.

             
The back door of the bar slammed open and a large, obviously drunk man stumbled out. “Where’s Eva?”
he slurred.

             
Eva was Allie’s stage name but she didn’
t like talking to drunks so
she
turned back to continue
looking up into the sky.

             
“Where’s Eva?!”

             
Out of the corner of her eye,
Allie saw the big guy tap forcefully on Joe’s shoulder. It looked like the guys had been trying to ignore the drunk too. Joe looked up at him.

             
“Where’s Eva?!”

             
Joe shrugged and turned back to reach for the cig. The big guy shoved him and said ominously, “You know where she is!”

             
Allie said, “I’m over here. Are you a fan?”

             
“Of you babe! Not
of
the rest of these losers…
only you.” He waved a deprecating hand at the rest of the band as he lurched her way.

             
Allie wrinkled her nose, “We’re a band, not a one person show.”

             
The man came too close, invading her personal space. His breath stank of beer and garlic. “Hey,
I
can set you up with some
real
musicians! You could really be on your way.” He grasped her elbow.

             
She looked down at his hand. “Please let go of me.”

             
“Aw, I’m j
es bein’ friend
ly.” His hand stayed put.

             
She looked up into his unfocused eyes. “Please, let
,
go.” The other band members were shuffling her way. Obviously, they wanted to help her get rid of this guy, but he was
huge
. Forcing him to let her go
would
be
a
pretty dangerous
endeavor
and they hadn’t joined a band because they liked to fight. Joe turned and trotted back to the bar, presumably to get a bouncer.

The big guy pulled on her arm, “Le
sh
go
shumwhere an’
talk.” He peered at her. “He
ee
y, You’re
really beautiful, ya’
know?” His eyebrows went up as if she should be astonished at this
revelation
.
“Why do you wear such baggy clothes?”
             
Allie resisted the pull
on her elbow
but it
inexorably pulled her up off the bench she’d been on
.  She took a few reluctant steps with him.
His grip on her arm hurt. Startled she realized that this
guy
could be a
real
problem. She jerked and twisted on her arm trying to get it loose. He was pulling her out toward the parking lot!

He said, “Heeyy,
don’ be sush a downer, we’re jus’ gonna go si’
in my
car and talk about your career.
”

He seemed oblivious to the fact that Allie was pulling as hard as she could to go the other way.
Her feet were sliding on the pavement as her struggles slowed him not at all.
Allie’s heightened senses were focused on the big man including the one that allowed her to feel the pressure of the blood flowing through his arteries.
Although her ability to make ports had actually returned
the week after that Thanksgiving
years ago
,
All
ie had
carefully
kept the
secret completely to
herself. She certainly didn’t want her dad
to know about it
!
Allie hadn’t made a port in a couple years because they seemed useless except as “party tricks
” and she was worried that a “party trick” would come to the attention of her dad and he’d be all over her to allow more testing. But m
aybe she could let blood out of an artery
in the big man
and that would stop him? She had thought
of this
“weapon” aspect of a port in the past
but
“back of napkin”
calculations had determined
that she couldn’t hold a port open long enough to even weaken a big man like this with
the amount of
blood
that would flow
through a 3mm port. But maybe she could make him think he had a bloody nose and he’d let her go? She sensed the vessels in his head. There
was
a big one in his neck right next to his windpipe!
Suddenly he started to cough. A
t first it was just a
little
;
then big wracking coughs doubled him over. Her bandmates were startled to see blood on the hand he used to cover his
mouth. He let go of Allie’s arm
and she patted him on the back. “That’s a bad sounding cough. Probably ought to go to the ER and have it checked out. Especially coughin
g up blood like that.” Her tone fairly
dripped
with
false
concern.

A
bouncer trotted up, Joe
behind him. “What’s going on?”
he said with authority.
Then he stepped back, looking
a little apprehensively at the coughing man mountain
who’d just stood to his full height and taken a long gasping breath
.

Allie smiled up at him. “I’m not sure but this fellow has
suddenly
developed a terrible cough and he’s bringing up blood. Can you help him get some me
dical attention? We’
ve
got
to get back for another set.” She grabbed Joe by the elbow and tugged, “Let’s go guys.” Shaking their heads the guys started back into the bar, turning occasionally to look back at the big fellow who was bent over
again, hands on his knees. T
he coughing had cut back to an occasional wet hack.
Just as they went in the door h
e threw up a large
quantity of foul smelling
bloody
beer.

Then next day Joe bought each of them a
can of
Mace.
A
llie’s was a little pink cartridge to go on a keychain. She never carried a purse but she
started carrying
the Mace
in
the front pocket of her
trademark
baggy jeans.

             
D
espairing of
understanding
the port phenomenon
alone,
Dans
had recently
decided to try collaboration.
He’d spent
months
going over the data he had
from the
past in light of his q
uantum tunneling
idea. Such tunneling over a distance,
aided by fields still seemed promising but he hadn’t been able to develop any hardware that would make it happen.
Maybe a fresh viewpoint on his d
ata would shake something loose?
The question
had been
who to collaborate with? The other academics in his department were too fusty and really were specialized in small areas that seemed unlikely to be related to
the porting
phenomenon. People from other universities would be too far away for the kind of
intense
collaboration that he envisioned. Academics also would want to see
the phenomenon
reproduced, a first principle in science, be
fore they would be interested. However, Randall Forst, o
ne of
Dans’
old graduate students
,
had es
tablished quite the private enterprise right there in the city. As a grad student, he’d always
been better at the engineering
than t
he theory side of physics. H
e
had demonstrated a real talent for turning
out excellent equipment and was making a very good living doing just that.
He had a phenomenal eye for producing devices no one else had been able to
concoct and a string of lucrative patents
.
Albert
made an appointment
with Forst
and then
spent
several
entire evening
s
going over the literature that he had accumulated that might be relevant. He
wanted
everything
fresh in his mind for his meeting
.

             
“Eve of Destruction”
had become
an
east coast phenomenon. The crowds at their gigs had gotten so big that they were now being booked into
small to medium
concert halls instead of
the bars they’d started in
. Joe even interviewed a number of “managers” and they had moved from their van into a bus.
On this
particular
morning they
had all gathered in a coffee shop to talk to one of the
manager
candidates. Allie came back from the restroom to find him at the table with the other band members. Immediately she thought that he didn’t fit their image, too slick. He wasn’t wearing a suit, but looked like he was. When she sat down across from him he looked mildly startled. “Holy shit!
Eva, you’re gorgeous! Why don’t you dress like this for your shows?”

             
Allie looked down at herself. She was wearing a snug midriff t-shirt, cutoffs and sandals. “Doesn’t fit our music.”

             
Joe said, “Give it up Steve. Yes, she’s beautiful
,
but she wants us to succeed on the music, not her sex appeal.”

             
“
Come on
! It’s hard enough to make it in this business, For God’s sake, you’ve
gotta
play all your cards!”

             
Allie got up from the table. “Joe, let me know when you’ve got someone else for us to talk to?”

             
They all watched
wistfully as she walked
out the door. “Joe, you’ve got to talk some sense into her!
Are you the leader of this band or what?”

             
“Yeah,” he chuckled
ruefully
, “I’m the
‘
leader
’
, but I do
exactly
as
she says, just like the rest of the guys.”