Chapter 6: Sound Effect

I was in the office when Clara, my attorney, called. She gave a clean bill of health to the latest contract from USS. I signed my copy, scanned it, and emailed the image back to USS and Clara. Physical copies of the contracts would follow through mail, or more likely Fedex, but the contract was now in effect. I emailed the package consisting of source code, build instructions, and documentation for my pattern recognition software in encrypted streams. It wouldn't decode it, but it would indicate the relative strength of encryption and identify some probabilities about cleartext, something that USS thought would be useful for both their corporate and personal software divisions.

In return, they were supposed to make the initial payment within 30 days. I was looking forward to the $125,000 check, especially as I needed to pay Clara as well as my accountant.

I went back to grading the last homework. The students all read their textbooks and could regurgitate the material in response to my questions. A few added original questions; and two voluntarily researched some questions further, using the footnotes in the textbook and the Internet. I was happy to assign the grades, mostly Bs, with a scattering of Cs and As.

It was almost completely dark by the time I locked up and walked home. The day cleared up and I could see the skies. The grass smelled fresh from the earlier drizzle, and the smell of flowers was in the air. I wondered how much I could have smelled if I enhanced my olfactory mechanisms — there were enhancements in the Grimoire to enhance a Nalu's to be comparable to that of a bear. I knew bears had some of the most sensitive mammalian noses, so that could be quite interesting.

While musing on the senses, I heard something to the left that sounded like a girl in distress. I stopped and listened. My memory of the sound localized it to almost three hundred feet away. Now that I was concentrating, I heard several muffled male voices, and a soft, slightly querulous female word. I could not distinguish the words, but I heard enough to start running towards the sound.

It was quite dark, but I could see a structure of some sort — I think it was a gardening shed next to some trees. The voices came from there, and I could see blurred tints of four people inside. The woman, or girl, sounded drunk, slurring words and moaning in distress. The men were quietly nasty. I had a horrible feeling. Had it been just one male voice, I could have supposed a date plying his girl with alcohol. Three men implied a deliberate drugging. As I approached the shed I slowed, trying to catch my breath, and fumbled out my cell phone.

"This is a 911 operator, what is your emergency?"

I gasped, "This is Mitch Acker, Professor at Coleridge. There is a suspected rape in progress in the garden shed on the north side of the school green. I am going in to check."

The operator was asking something, but rather than listening I shoved the telephone, without hanging up, into my pocket. I hoped the line would stay open and provide the operator more information, but it could get disconnected accidentally in the pocket.

I heard tearing cloth and could no longer wait. I kicked the wood door and heard something splinter. I kicked it again and it swung open. I ran into the shed, and stopped in the middle of large open space full of dark shapes. Ahead I saw light from a room — and office? That's where the voices came from, and I resumed running.

I saw a blond girl, probably a student, lying on an old coach in panties and torn t-shirt. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open, making whistling sounds as though she had problems breathing. A young man in a denim jacket and jeans had one hand on her panties, even though he turned towards the entry. He must have heard me, but still didn't want to stop touching the girl.

He snarled, an almost animal sound, and moved towards me. Almost too late, I saw that his other hand contained something sharp and metal. A knife!

His arm was moving very quickly, almost in a blur. I put up hands to stop him, but his hand dipped below and the blade came toward my unprotected belly. I stupidly thought about all the wonderful spells I had for a full-body shield, none of which I had time to construct. I had pushed on his hand directly with plasm, knowing it was too late and too weak to slow down the incredibly quick knife.

Everything happened almost at once. I felt an incredible coldness in my belly, which turned at once to a burning pain. My hands encountered the knife-wielder's jacket and I pushed him away as hard as I could. He looked surprised, and his mouth opened as he flew back and hit the couch, and then his head smacked the wall behind it, and he then slid off the couch and incidentally the girl's legs. I was pushed in the other direction, and sat down hard which knocked my breath out and made the burn in my belly even sharper.

I tried to breathe, and thought it was a pity that stronger bones and muscles didn't make my skin any more resistant to knife blades. My thoughts were skittering in all directions. I now realized that the second young man — another student probably, was approaching me with a large metal bolt in his right fist. He was approaching a bit slower, maybe because he saw my first opponent fly into the wall. I had time to notice the third one, who was dipping in his pocket, but was not approaching me yet. To my rapidly growing list of regrets, I added wasting my exercise on swimming, instead of something useful like karate or judo.

Having a second before Mr. Bolt was within bashing distance, I pushed the plasm against him. Not against his arm or the bolt, but against the blood vessels going up to his brain. I was gratified to see his eyes roll up as his knees collapsed on him. I turned my attention on the last opponent, and he collapsed even quicker as I clamped more vessels.

My hearing assured me that there was nobody else in the shed. Adrenaline made me forget the wound on my belly, but now that I turned my attention to it I saw an ugly gash above my belt. My white shirt was red, and the wound started to burn badly. For a moment I was dizzy. I took a deep breath, but it made it hurt even worse. I ignored the burn and continued with my breathing exercises. It took much longer than usual, but I calmed down and was able to isolate the pain and fear from my thoughts. Clenching my teeth, I pulled apart my cut shirt and the t-shirt underneath, and concentrated on using plasm to clamp together the flesh and skin, as neatly as I could manage. Since I could focus on the disrupted plasm flows beneath my skin, I was able to hold together vessels and muscle fibers below. Now that I was not in a hurry I was able to create a higher-level spell that held together a few thousand plasm strands acting as tiny staples.

Luckily the cut was very shallow; my last-moment attempt at a shield probably slowed the knife and reduced its penetration. I stood up slowly and carefully. The cut burned, but it was much easier to ignore now that I knew I wasn't bleeding to death. I tried to clamp the blood vessels in the area. I didn't want to cut them off completely, but I figured reducing bleeding while I was standing up was a good thing.

I was worried about the girl, as well as the three attackers waking up. I listened to their heartbeats and the blood in their arteries. They were still unconscious, and I didn't think the reduced blood flow to their brains for a few seconds was going to cause any permanent damage. The first may have a concussion, but I wasn't too concerned about him — the bastard cut me!

I was happy to confirm that the girl's wheezing didn't indicate an obstruction of her airways. I could hear the air in her trachea all the way down to the lungs. I moved her neck slightly. She mumbled a weak protest, but her breathing seemed more comfortable.

I tried my phone again. As I feared, it got disconnected squeezed in my pocket. I dialed 911 again. The same operator answered before I could explain anything. "Is this professor Acker?"

"Yes, it's me. Please send a policeman and an ambulance."

"On the way already, Professor; the police should be there in five minutes. Can you explain the situation?"

"Thanks. There is a girl of about twenty, possibly drugged, with some bruises on her upper arms. There is a young man, with a probable concussion, unconscious. There are two more young men, unconscious but with no visible injuries. And I have a scratch from a knife."

"What?! Five injuries? Let me get more ambulances."

I sat with the girl, who was not quite asleep but not awake either, and talked quietly to her. "The help is on the way. Just wait a few more minutes, everything will be alright."

The time passed slowly. My wound burned, and I kept talking quietly. The knife-wielder didn't wake up, but I squeezed the carotids of the other two when I heard their heartbeats and breathing indicate possible return to consciousness. I was careful not to press too strongly or for more than a few seconds.

The operator was right. In about five minutes, I heard the first of many vehicles approach. The police car drove right over the grass.

The officers' eyes widened as he saw the girl and three unconscious men around the room. I was sitting on the arm of the couch, next to the blonde's head. The officer had his hand on the holstered pistol. I was happy to see he wasn't drawing it.

"Hello, officer, I am the one who called 911. I am Professor Acker. The young woman here was possibly drugged and possibly assaulted — she needs medical help."

"Yes, sir. Do you have any id?"

"I do. Let me get my wallet — it's in my pants pocket."

I slowly stood up, and saw the first officer's eyes widen again as he looked below. I looked as well — the front of my shirt and the pants below were soaked with blood. It looked pretty gruesome.

"Sorry, Professor, I think you should lie down until the ambulance gets here. Let me help you get down..."

The officer looked a little grey. He was young, and perhaps not used to seeing blood yet. Actually, I didn't feel all that good myself, but had no intention of lying on the floor.

"It looks worse than it is. The knife wound is very shallow, and has almost stopped bleeding."

I took off most of my vessel clamps. The bleeding started again, but it was very slow — the blood mostly clotted, and my internal "staples" were still holding things together.

After a bit of an argument I ended up sitting down again on the arm of the couch. The paramedics took away the girl and the knife-wielder. The knife was photographed and taken in a plastic bag. The other two came to within a minute of the police arriving. On the strength of my statement, they were taken in handcuffs after the paramedic determined that they had nothing worse than a few small bruises, probably from falling down when I clamped their arteries and they lost consciousness from lack of oxygen in the brain.

It was a long evening. Eventually the paramedics got to me, and tried to cart me away to the hospital. I refused categorically. The last thing I wanted was tests and scans. My soft tissues would probably not be all that distinct, but my bones were not like other people's bones, and that would show on X-rays.