Michael handed the copper and brass device in his hand to his daughter, who took it curiously and inspected it. "What is it?" she asked.
"That is the old immersion heater element, the one that went pop about two years ago and made all the lights go out," he replied. Pointing at the heating element, which was cracked and obviously faulty, he went on, "Hard water makes them fail in a few years unless you use a specially plated one, which this one wasn't. It got a lot of limescale buildup, overheated, and then cracked, which created a short circuit."
"All right." She picked at the crusty remnants of the element with a fingernail, peeling up some of the very thin and corroded copper. "Why did you keep it if it's broken?"
He shrugged with a smile. "I replaced the old one, and put that in a box in the garage, then forgot about it," he admitted. "I meant to throw it away but never got around to it. But I was thinking about how to use a HOP to heat water and I had a brainwave…"
She looked at him, then at the dead heater with an evaluating expression, having obviously discerned his idea on the spot. "Ohh… very clever, Daddy. We use this to attach a HOP tuned to emit heat to and it will screw right into the hot water tank!"
"Exactly," he smiled. "Cut the old element off, solder some copper wire to where it was, and make a holder at the end so it's putting the sphere right into the middle of the tank."
"It will need some way to control the heat or it will boil the water," she remarked, putting the thing on the table and pulling out her notebook. "I can't think that would be good."
"No, it would in fact be rather bad," he told her. "We could probably use the original thermostat to control an electric circuit like you did with the torches, and just turn it on and off. A small battery would work for years, wouldn't it?" She nodded, already sketching another diagram.
"Yes, but there's a better way. I think I can set up the control circuit to just make sit at a specific temperature all the time. We won't need a thermostat, it will only ever get that hot. How much water does the tank hold?"
He thought for a moment. "I think it's roughly a hundred and twenty liters or so? And the thermostat on the immersion heater is set to seventy five degrees centigrade." Jotting the numbers on the margin of the page, she nodded again.
"All right. So… it will need to detect heat, like this…" The girl drew with expertise from much practice, as he watched over her shoulder. "This compares the temperature to the correct one and keeps it in the right place, this is an emergency off control if something goes wrong, this powers it all…" Looking up at him she said, "It can't really be a sphere because that will have the smallest surface area and be very inefficient. It should probably be shaped like a lot of plates, if it's going to work properly, I think."
"Can you do that?" he queried.
"Easily, yes, it's simple," she smiled, going back to drawing. Finishing, she turned the sketch one way and the other, checking it over and finally deciding it was correct. "I think that will do it."
"One of the more complex ones so far," he noted.
"It's doing several things at once, but it's fairly straightforward." Picking up the failed heater with one hand, she turned it around a few times, looking between it and the drawing. "I think we can just cut it here and here, then attach the HOP to this bit." Hermione pointed at the closed-end pocket that the thermostat would have fitted in.
"That looks fine," he replied.
She gently pulled on the element while using her telekinetic knife trick to separate the lower end of it from the base of the screw in heater, the coiled copper tubing cleanly coming loose leaving a bright shiny surface, surrounding a white ceramic material with the heater wire up the middle. The cut off stubs were about half an inch long. Putting the removed piece to one side she closely examined the remaining part, turning it over to look at the connector side as well. "Good, it has these caps on where the wires attached," she noted, "So it won't leak water. All right, that means all I need to do is make the HOP and fit it here, and it should be ready to go into the tank."
"Remember it needs to fit through the hole that screws into," Michael warned. "It's only about two and a half inches in diameter."
"That's not a problem. I'll make it small enough to fit, and we can always enlarge it later if it doesn't work properly," she replied with a smile. Concentrating, she did the psionic operation and quickly made a strange looking thing that sat in the air over the table. It was a crystalline construct, a pale yellow color like the walls of her bedroom, and took the shape of a series of disks a little over two inches in diameter arranged along a tubular part up the center, the whole assembly being just over a foot long. Both of them examined it.
"That hollow part goes over this copper tube here to hold it in place like I suggested, and then we just screw it in place of the original one." Hermione looked pleased with her efforts. Michael reached out carefully and put his hand near the force construct.
"It's not hot," he said.
"No, I'll turn it on after you install it. It'll be too hot to touch otherwise."
"We should probably double check you got your sums right before I do that," he smiled. "Just in case. Always best to double check things."
"Of course, Daddy," she giggled. "We can fill the sink with cold water and put it in there, then measure the temperature."
"Good suggestion." He walked over to the sink and put the plug in, then turned the cold tap on. When it was full Hermione plucked her HOP construct from the air, carried it over, and unceremoniously dropped it into the water. Rummaging through the right drawer Michael came up with a cooking thermometer meant for measuring the temperature of meat, and put the end into sink just under the surface. The reading quickly dropped to around thirteen degrees, the temperature of the water straight out of the cold main. "Good, that's working well. Turn it on and we'll see what happens?"
His nascent H-field sense, which he and Helen were still astounded by although in both their cases it was a weak thing compared to their daughter's abilities so far, felt her poke the control section of her HOP. "It's on," she reported. "And it looks like it's working." Both of them could see small currents of water flowing around the thing as convection took place, causing tiny visible distortions in the light. Curiously he put a finger into the water near it and nodded.
"Yes, definitely heating up." Removing his finger he watched the reading on the thermometer, which had started to rise fairly quickly. "Twenty degrees… thirty degrees… thirty five. That's very good, it's putting a lot of heat out to make it change that quickly."
In under two minutes the entire contents of the sink were steaming and the temperature had stabilized at exactly seventy five degrees. He propped the thermometer against the side and left it there, then filled the kettle and turned it on. Hermione looked briefly puzzled but then smiled. "I see. We add hotter water and make sure it turns off."
"Exactly." He grinned at her as they waited for the kettle to boil. "Very nice work, by the way, dear."
"Thank you," she replied with a giggle. "This is fun. And I like helping out."
Ruffling her hair, he chuckled. "You help out a lot, just by being there," he told her. Moments later, as she was huffing although smiling and patting her hair back into place, the kettle clicked and turned off. He picked it up and poured the contents into the sink, the thermometer quickly rising to well over eight five degrees.
"It turned off immediately," Hermione remarked, looking at the energy construct. "That works too. Brilliant."
"Excellent. In that case, turn it off properly and we'll go and screw it into the tank. Your mother will be pleased when she comes home. Free hot water is a nice little bonus to having a psionic researcher as a daughter." He grinned again as she started laughing. Plucking the device out of the now empty sink, she quickly attached it to the modified original heater base and held it up.
"Done."
"In that case, to work," he replied, both of them heading upstairs to the cupboard the gas boiler and hot water tank lived in. Opening the door he turned the power off, then stopped, realizing a minor problem. "Ah. I'll have to drain the tank first, or we'll flood the house," he said with a sigh having missed that in the excitement of what they'd done. "The heater goes in at the bottom there, and if I take it out all the water will go everywhere."
"I can hold the water in place with telekinesis, I think," Hermione replied after thinking about the problem for a few seconds. She was staring at the tank and clearly probing it with the energy sense. "If I just make a force field around the existing element, and expand it out a little, it should push the water away… I think that's got it."
"If you did it incorrectly we're about to get very wet," he cautioned, but he trusted her enough that he thought she probably had got it right. Popping back to the garage he retrieved a bucket and some tools, then took them upstairs again. A couple of minutes work had the cover over the contacts on the back of the heater assembly removed, and he disconnected the wiring and removed that too. Then he put the large special heating element spanner over the mechanism and heaved carefully on it. A moment's resistance followed before it scraped slightly and shifted. Hermione floated the bucket under the bottom of the tank and the heater as a small dribble of water came out.
"I dearly hope that's all," he said just a touch nervously.
"I can feel most of it's held out of the way," she replied. "I think that was what was inside the force field when I made it."
"Well, we're about to find out," he chuckled, turning the element further. A little more water appeared but the flow stopped almost immediately so he continued turning. After an entire rotation it was loose enough he could do the rest by hand, which only took a little longer. As he pulled the unit out a cupful or so of water followed it into the bucket but that was all.
He pulled one of Hermione's modified torches from the shelf over the boiler and turned it on, directing the beam into the hole, just to see what it looked like. There was a three inch diameter cylinder of air going into the tank, and water on the other side of it, with absolutely no visible indication of why it wasn't coming out. "Incredible," he muttered, shaking his head. "Every time I see that I still think it's ridiculous."
Putting the torch away he quickly screwed the new H-field powered heater into place, tightened it, and nodded. "That should do it. You can relax now, dear."
Hermione smiled. "I'll let the water back, then turn it on." They heard a gurgling thump from the tank before all went silent. "It's working," she added happily.
"And nothing's leaking." He held out his hand and she shook it gravely. "A first rate job."
It didn't take long to disconnect the other end of the immersion heater wiring and remove it, then turn the boiler back on. This was necessary to run the pumps to circulate the water and to heat the radiators, but he had ideas on how to get around that too soon. For now, the boiler should only come on for heating and not hot water, which was a good test. Closing the cupboard, he turned to his daughter. "I think that counts as a successful afternoon, dear."
"I think so to, Daddy. Shall we do some more exercises now? You and Mommy are coming along very well indeed."
"I have a little paperwork for the practice I need to finish and get out of the way, but after that, certainly," he replied with a glance at his watch. "And tomorrow we have to get up early for the trip to London, don't forget."
"I'm looking forward to it," his daughter replied, smiling. "I really want to see some of those shops."
"Remember we'll be taking the tube so we can't buy everything," he pointed out as they headed back down the stairs. "We'll have to carry it with us."
"I know," she said. "I haven't been on the tube for ages. Or to London."
"The second part implies the first one, really," he chuckled, making her give him a look of fond tolerance. He headed for his study to do the paperwork while Hermione disappeared into the garage. A little later her heard her go back up to her room, but by then he was deeply involved with writing a letter to a colleague, after which there was some patient rearranging to do because of staff illness.
Hermione yawned a little as she flipped through the latest issue of Elektor, making notes with her free hand and occasionally looking up at the scenery outside her father's car. They were on the A3, currently passing Guildford, having left the house twenty minutes ago. Her father had said that with any luck they'd be at the dental supply company in south-west London in roughly an hour and fifteen minutes, but it depended on traffic once they passed the M25 which he'd said was often quite busy at this time of morning. She didn't mind, as she was looking forward to seeing what she could find in the shops she hoped they could visit, and also wanted to see the Science Museum again. They'd visited just after her eighth birthday but that felt like ever so long ago.
Considering all the things that had happened since, it was, she reflected with an inner smile.
The girl closed the magazine a few minutes later, making a mental note to read the article on page thirty nine about analogue switches at some point, and put both it and her notebook in the door side pocket. The street lights were just starting to go out as the sun rose, it being just after half past seven in the morning. She looked at her father, who was concentrating on the road ahead although he glanced at her and gave her a quick smile, then went back to watching the world go past at seventy miles an hour. The car was quite an expensive model and very comfortable, although she didn't often get the chance to ride in the front.
"The traffic's lighter than I thought it might be so with a bit of luck we'll manage to push right through into Putney before it really picks up," her father commented. "It shouldn't take more than an hour at most to finish at the company, and the nearest tube station is Southfields on the District line."
Nodding, Hermione recalled the tube map she'd memorized some time ago just in case it came in handy. "So we take the District line to Embankment station, change to the Northern line there, and that takes us right to Tottenham Court Road. Or we could go in the other direction to Edgware Road first, then come back on the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus and transfer to the central line for one stop."
Her father snorted, shaking his head. "Only you, Hermione, would be able to remember all that. Do you have the entire map of the underground in your head?"
"Yes." She grinned as he laughed. "It's useful information."
"I will have to take you on trips more often, it'll save ages looking at maps," he chuckled. "Speaking of Tottenham Court Road, fancy visiting the new Forbidden Planet shop? It's just down New Oxford Street about three hundred yards from the station now since they moved last year to a much larger place than they used to have. I haven't managed to visit it yet."
"I'd like that, Daddy," she told him, smiling. "We haven't been to a big book shop for months. Especially one that specializes in science fiction."
"We could consider it research material, I suspect." They shared a look of understanding.
She watched the cars passing for a little longer, then closed her eyes and settled back in the seat to wait. Extending her energy sense outward the girl amused herself by trying to catalog all the things that flashed past. Her range was quite a bit larger now if she pushed, closing in on a mile at the extremes, but she wasn't trying to reach out that far at the moment and was only interested in things a few hundred yards away at most.
The people in the cars stood out with the characteristic field distortions that living things produced, which were quite distinct from those everything else made. She was getting good enough at interpreting these tiny changes to the background energy of the field that she was fairly certain she was actually nearly able to deduce things like emotional state. It seemed plausible, going on the whole idea of psionics, as an empathetic sense was certainly one concept that came up quite often. She was very keen on seeing if she could do other things than telekinetic effects even though those seemed to have almost limitless applications.
At times she could feel one or other driver seeming to get quite annoyed, probably due to the whole driving aspect of travel which seemed in some ways rather boring. There were also feelings that she suspected corresponded to tiredness, anticipation, happiness, and a whole host of others. It was going to take a lot of practice to really get good at this sort of thing she decided after a while. Some people seemed to be easier to read than others, too, which was fascinating. Hermione wondered why, and what the difference between people was in these terms. Possibly it was linked to their own connection to the H-field?
She had so many unanswered questions about the whole thing and every time she worked out one aspect half a dozen more popped up. It was clearly something that was going to take an awfully long time to properly understand, although she was fairly pleased with her progress to date. And she still wondered if she'd actually found something new or if she was merely the latest to stumble across something others knew about. The complete lack of any real proof one way or the other did rather suggest that she might have managed to make a whole new discovery, because once you understood the possibilities, proving it was a real thing wasn't difficult at all. Nor, it seemed, was teaching other people how to do it too, based on the results with her parents.
After a little thought, she decided that wasn't necessarily completely true… If this was some sort of family trait, possibly her family could do it an other people couldn't? That seemed a bit unlikely, to be honest, but without more evidence one way or the other she couldn't rule it out or confirm it. At some point she was going to need to see if she could teach someone unrelated how to access the H-field, but that meant telling other people, which she was a little reluctant to do right now. She wanted to have some really good data on her experiments before someone with a lot more resources got involved and made things too complicated…
Even if it was something that was being researched somewhere else, she was quite content to do her own work, thank you very much, and didn't want someone getting in the way until she'd finished if she could avoid it.
Oh well. Things were going quite nicely so far and she planned on continuing in this vein for the foreseeable future. Maybe when she finished school she could study it at university or something, but that seemed like a very long way away from where she was right now. Still, she was having fun, her parents seemed pleased too, and all in all it was a rewarding hobby on top of the electronics. Which she also loved.
A flicker of something strange at the edge of her current scanning range made her frown. What was that? It was something similar to what she thought she'd sensed before a few weeks ago, vaguely reminiscent of a HOP but… not. Focusing on it, she tried to get as much information as possible before they drove too far past it to detect. At this distance, something like a quarter of a mile and increasing, she couldn't quite get a good look at the H-field parameters, but…
"That's odd," she mumbled.
"Sorry? Did you say something?" her father asked.
"I thought I felt something strange some way off, almost like a HOP, but it's… bizarre," she replied after another look. Moments later whatever it was disappeared behind them, too far away to sense, and she opened her eyes with a mild sigh.
"Bizarre how?" he asked, glancing at her, then going back to changing lane to pass a slower truck in front of them.
"It felt… off, somehow. It was…" She tugged on her earlobe gently as she thought. "A bit like it was much more complex than anything I've made so far, but at the same time it was also too simple. Does that make any sense?" The girl looked at him as he frowned slightly. "I'd need to see it up close, but I got the impression it was really inefficiently connected to the field. As if there were lots of extra parts that didn't really do anything, and it had been made by someone who didn't quite understand what they were trying to do."
"How far away was it?" he asked.
"About… a quarter of a mile off the road that way when I sensed it?" she replied, pointing to the left.
"So roughly two miles back and a quarter of a mile west, which would be somewhere close to Ripley town center," her father said a moment later, having thought it over. "I wonder what that was?"
"I have no idea. I thought I detected something a bit like it a few weeks ago right at the limit I could sense, but I was almost asleep and it vanished after a moment so it might have been a dream," she responded, still wondering what it was. This one definitely wasn't a dream, she was sure of that.
"Sounds like someone else knows how to do what you're doing," he commented.
"It does rather, yes," she admitted with puzzlement. "Although it really didn't feel right somehow. It was related to a HOP, but I don't think it was a HOP. Not quite, at least not the way I make them. But I could only sense it for a few seconds so perhaps I made a mistake."
"Possibly. It will be interesting to see if you spot anything else like that."
Nodding, she settled back again and closed her eyes, intending to check for exactly that. Expanding her range to the limit and looking specifically for something similar to that odd little knot, she passed the rest of the journey carefully noting anything out of the ordinary. Four more times she detected almost the same phenomenon, with very minor differences as far as she could make out. Each time she got a slightly better understanding of what the thing was, at least as far as what it looked like in an H-field sense. She had no idea what it was for because the thing seemed almost to have parts missing. It wasn't quite an amplifier, it wasn't quite a force field, it didn't interact with electromagnetism in any sensible way, and it had a huge number of extra bits that didn't seem useful at all other than to waste energy. The things stood out against the background H-field like lighthouses compared to her HOPs, which were barely detectable except at close range.
She'd spent quite a lot of effort thinking about how to make them as efficient and simple as possible, of course, since needless complexity was not only wasteful but made analyzing the operation much more involved than it required. Why make things more difficult than they needed to be? HOPs were fairly straightforward if you understood the fundamentals of both H-field knots and electronic theory, and the math wasn't terribly hard to follow.
Hermione raised an eyebrow as she examined her memory of the last one of those mystery knots. That was an interesting point, in fact. The design was almost like whoever had done it didn't understand the fundamentals, but had achieved the result they got by trial and error, empirically changing parameters until it did what they wanted and having as a result to add a lot more aspects to compensate for all the places it was trying to be unstable. "How strange," she murmured, casting about to see if she could find another one. "I wonder who made them? They certainly seem close enough in design that it's either the same person, or someone using the same information."
"Mass production of HOPs?" her father asked, slowing at the junction they were approaching and looking both ways. "Or is it like a blacksmith making customized work for his clients?"
"I really have no idea," she admitted. "I wish I did. I've never seen someone else's H-field work. I didn't know anyone else was doing it until an hour ago."
"It looks like this trip is producing surprises," he noted, and she nodded. Writing down her observations in her notebook, as she'd been doing each time, she added a few impressions and thoughts before closing it again. "We're only about ten minutes away now," he added.
Shortly they turned off Kimber Road into a small industrial estate and drove right to the back. Parking the car, Hermione's father turned it off. "Here we are. Put your coat on, it's chilly, and we'll go in." Taking his seat belt off, he reached into the back seat and retrieved both their coats, handing her own to her and putting his on. Both of them got out and he locked the car, then led the way to the door and pressed the button next to it. A slightly crackly voice spoke from the intercom over the button. He said, "Doctor Michael Granger to see Dennis Halcombe, please."
The door emitted a harsh buzz and he pushed it open, waving Hermione through then following. Inside they were quickly met by a tall solidly built blond man who held out his hand with a smile. "Michael, it's nice to see you again. And who is this young lady?"
"My daughter, Hermione," her father replied. "We're going into town afterwards to visit some of the shops. Do you mind if I leave the car here until this evening?"
"Of course not, no trouble at all," the man replied with a smile. "We have lots of parking space." He looked down at Hermione. "It's nice to meet you, young lady. Would you like a soft drink, or some tea?"
"Tea, please," she replied with a smile.
"Follow me, then." All three of them went up a flight of stairs into an office, where he directed Hermione to a chair at a table to one side. She sat down and looked around with interest. The room had quite a lot of dentistry equipment around it, which all looked very expensive and new. Shortly she was sipping some quite good tea and reading a manual for a dental x-ray machine with a certain amount of curiosity while her father and Mr Halcombe talked about a number of very technical subjects that seemed to require quite a lot of paperwork.
The tube car was as noisy as she remembered them to be as it rumbled through the tunnel under the city. It was also crowded with people to the point that most of them were standing up, although luckily when Hermione and her father had got on in Southfields it had been fairly empty. Each stop added more people, who all seemed to want to get right into London and were oddly patient about standing cheek by jowl on a packed tube train. She supposed that if you did this every day you either got used to it or went mad.
"Doing quite well for time," her father commented directly into her ear, having to slightly raise his voice to be heard. He looked up at the wall chart on the opposite side of the carriage which showed the stops along the District line. "That last one was Earl's Court, so we have another five stops to go."
Hermione nodded as she also looked, checking her recollection was correct. "That won't take long," she replied, thankful that they'd be able to get off this useful but claustrophobia-inducing train soon. She didn't mind small spaces, but she didn't particularly enjoy sharing them with about two hundred people she didn't know.
Soon enough they were exiting the Underground station onto a busy street. The sound and smell of traffic was much more obvious than at home, and there were a lot more people wandering around although it was nothing like as busy as on the tube. Hermione looked around, orientating herself from a remembered map, then pointed. "I think it's that way," she said. "Henry's Radio is one place I want to look at, they have all sorts of second hand equipment according to the advertisements, and there are a couple of other shops down that way too I think."
"I remember that place, I went in there once years ago to buy some cables for the stereo when I happened to be in the area," her father replied as they started walking. Hermione made sure her backpack was securely in place, as she didn't want anyone to knock it off. As they walked along she looked around curiously, seeing a vast number of shops selling almost anything you could think of, and people of every color and ethnicity under the sun. Luckily, although it was quite cold, the weather was good for the time of year and the walk wasn't a long one.
"Ooh," she breathed as they entered the shop they were after, looking around wide-eyed at the huge amount of equipment and parts all over the place. It was a narrow but long place, leading back quite a distance, with tables down the middle and around the edges, all full of boxes containing more electronic bits and pieces than she'd ever seen before. "This should be fun…"
Her father looked at her and smiled, then followed as she eagerly headed for the first table and started peering at all the things on it. A couple of the other customers looked oddly at her, apparently a bit surprised by a girl her age carefully inspecting component after component, but after a while just shrugged and went back to what they were doing.
An hour and a half and three shops later, they emerged into fresh air with Hermione smiling happily, her backpack half full and noticeably heavier. "That was brilliant," she exclaimed. "I got enough transistors and logic chips to make several of the projects I was wanting to experiment with, and a whole bag of LEDs for a really good price."
"Which, of course, I paid for," her father chuckled.
"Of course you did, Daddy, that's what fathers do," she giggled. He patted her shoulder as they headed back the way they'd come.
"One day, my girl, I expect that I will be living off your earnings. I can hardly wait." He grinned as she smiled up at him. "So where next? It's only just gone eleven so we still have lots of time."
"I think Cricklewood Electronics," she replied after a moment's thought. "We need to go to Willesden Green station, so that's two stops on the Bakerloo line and six on the Jubilee line. It should take about twenty minutes."
He stared at her, then shook his head in wonder. "My little walking and talking underground map, so she is," he remarked with a look of mild incredulity. They headed back towards Edgware Road station, her father making jokes about her memory most of the way.
Hermione was very much enjoying herself, and she was fairly certain he was too.
Emerging onto the surface at St Giles Circus, Michael held Hermione's hand as the flow of people out of the tube station behind him nearly knocked the girl off her feet. A large number of them really seemed in a hurry to get somewhere, he thought as they moved to the side out of the main crush. "There are a lot of electronics shops that way," he said, pointing up Tottenham Court Road, "And Forbidden Planet is that way down New Oxford Street."
"Can we finish with the electronics shops first?" his daughter replied after looking both ways. "It's probably easier like that. We'll both get so lost in a book shop we'll forget what time it is."
He laughed, checking his watch. It was about half past one, so they were doing well on time. Half an hour or so poking around for electronic bits to go with the entire backpack stuffed with surplus things she'd already had him buy for her, then an hour in the bookshop, and they'd still have time for a couple of hours or so in the Science Museum before it closed and they got thrown out. Strictly speaking that really needed an entire day, and he thought that was something they should do at some point. He was pleased how well his daughter was handling the tedium of getting around the city. At her age he'd rather have expected complains by now, but then Hermione was an unusual girl even leaving aside her remarkable talents.
He'd noticed several times that she'd got that same faraway expression which he was fairly certain meant she'd detected another example of whatever it was she'd noticed on the trip from home, but with the number of people around neither of them had thought it was the right time to discuss it. She'd occasionally pulled her notebook out on the tube and written in it following one of these events and he was quite curious to hear her thoughts and conclusions on the whole thing when they got home.
Now, though, it was of secondary importance, and he took the lead across the street, Hermione following and looking around with considerable curiosity. The pair spent a happy forty minutes poking around in a few more smaller shops than the ones they'd visited, including one place that was down a small side street and dealt in surplus and second hand computers of all sorts. There were a number of IBM PC clones, lots of monitors, a few BBC micros, some Apple computers, and a large number of machines he'd never even heard of before. Some of it looked very industrial and well worn, clearly the detritus of a company clear-out.
Hermione looked around the place with an intrigued expression, wandering off into the aisles while he investigated a rack of used monitors, wondering if there was a better one for the computer at home, which was getting along in years although it had been a decent machine at one point. "Looking for anything in particular or are you just browsing?" the young man behind the counter said after a few minutes of watching him.
"Mostly browsing," Michael replied over his shoulder. "I'm vaguely interested in a monitor, something about this size, but carrying it on the tube would be a little awkward." He pointed at an NEC monitor he'd recognized from one of the PC magazines he'd leafed through at W H Smiths a month or so ago.
The clerk laughed a little. "Yeah, those are pretty heavy, mate. Good monitor though, only six months old. SVGA, fourteen inches, bang up to date. I can do you a Trident SVGA card to go with it for a hundred quid if you like. We can arrange a courier, we do that all the time for the bigger stuff."
Thinking it over, Michael inspected the monitor, turning it around on the shelf to check the back. It was a little dusty and had clearly been used quite a bit but looked fairly clean overall. "Where do you get all this?" he queried as he turned it around again.
"All over," the man replied. "Friend of mine does bankrupt stock clearances, fire sales, office refurbs, you name it. Lot of gear comes out of that, all those companies upgrading their stuff, that sort of thing. We keep the best kit and clean it up for resale here, the rest either goes as scrap or gets sold in bulk." He waved a hand around the shop. "We can probably supply anything you want if you don't mind used. And sometimes we get new gear too, you never know what will turn up in an auction."
"Hmm." Michael nodded as he considered the information. He spotted Hermione appear down the far end of the aisle then vanish again. Turning to the man, he said, "All right, that sounds like a deal to me. It definitely works?"
"Word of honor, guv. We test everything, anything sold in the shop is fully working. Three month warranty, if it fails, we'll replace it."
"In that case, I'll take it." The other man nodded, pulling out a credit card machine and putting a slip in it. Once paid for, Michael gave him one of his cards, which the chap stapled to his copy of the invoice while handing the other one over.
"Should be with you by Wednesday. Any trouble, call us on that number."
"A pleasure doing business with you," Michael said.
"Likewise. If you want a computer for your kid there, let me know," the clerk commented with a nod at Hermione who was heading their way, holding a book.
"Found something, dear?" he asked.
"A book on computer aided design for electronics," she replied, holding it up. "It looks interesting."
"We'll take this too," Michael said, turning to the clerk after looking at the price and handing him a five pound note.
"Fine by me," the man replied with a grin, ringing up the sale. Hermione retrieved her book from the counter and put it in her backpack, then they left. Only a few feet from the shop, she stopped dead, looking at an old woman walking down the other side of the narrow road just in front of them. Michael followed her eyes and raised his own eyebrows, thinking that the woman seemed to be slightly vague about which century they were in as her clothes seemed to be at least ninety years out of fashion if he was any judge. She looked a well-preserved sixty plus, with her hair in a bun and a look on her face of someone about some important task as she strode around the corner.
He looked back at Hermione, who had pulled out her notebook and was writing quickly in it. "Did you get one of those feelings again?" he asked in a circumspect manner, aware that there were a few pedestrians around. She nodded, still writing, until she finished and put the notebook back in her pocket.
"Yes." She looked around cautiously, then added in a low voice, "That woman had one of those things in her pocket."
"You're sure?"
"Definitely. I could practically see it. I can still practically see it, for that matter. It's radiating waste energy like mad." She seemed almost offended. "So inefficient."
"How odd." He looked after the woman, but there was no sign of her. "I wonder…"
They exchanged a glance and he could see Hermione was torn between wanting to follow the woman and demand an answer and being cautious until she worked it out for herself. "Probably best not to poke too much right now," he finally said, causing her to nod a little uncertainly.
"I suppose. I'm really curious though." She blinked a couple of times, then hissed, "It just vanished!"
"Vanished?" he echoed.
"Yes. Just disappeared without warning. Maybe she turned it off…?" Hermione thought as she peered down the street, until she sighed. "I have no idea what on earth is going on with that. There's something very odd happening."
"Well, I'm sure you'll work it out sooner or later," he assured her. "Come on, let's go and look for some good books then it's museum time."
"All right," she replied, following as he headed back to the main road, turning left at the end of the side street and aiming for the Centre Point building a few hundred yards back the way they'd come. He noticed she was looking over her shoulder every now and then for a few minutes, but finally shrugged and appeared to forget about whatever had happened for the time being.
Ten minutes later both of them were staring in amazement at the largest collection of science fiction and fantasy books either had ever seen. Their eyes met, both got a look of excitement, and they headed deeper into the basement rooms of the largest science fiction bookshop in the country.
Hermione stared up at the Black Arrow R4 rocket hanging from the ceiling, feeling sad that people had managed to make something like that and just give up before succeeding. The description of the UK space program and how it was basically shut down for no really good reason annoyed her. Who put that much effort in and just… stopped?
She sighed faintly and moved down the hall, looking at the other exhibits of technology from the distant to recent past. It was absolutely fascinating and she wondered idly if one day possibly some of her own work might end up here. That would be rather nice, she felt. Catching up to where her father was studying an immense red horizontal steam engine a minute or so later, she stood next to him and also inspected the machinery. "It's absolutely huge," she remarked, feeling dwarfed by the thing.
"It's impressive to see it running, but it's a bit too late in the day for that now," he replied. "Perhaps next time." Checking the time, he nodded. "We've only got about twenty minutes before they'll close, so we probably should start our way back."
"All right." She looked around with a smile. "I really love all this sort of thing."
Putting his hand on her shoulder, he squeezed it gently. "I know you do, and so do I. I'm glad you've had a good time."
"And we've got lots of books to read as well, so it's been a really brilliant day." She smiled at him, which he returned.
"We'll come back and properly look around the whole place one day," he assured her as they started back through the transportation gallery, pausing to look at the Apollo 10 capsule for a few minutes.
"The Natural History museum is also well worth visiting, but it's enormous. We'd need a couple of days to really see it all," he added as they moved on.
"I'd love to see that," she told him.
Having retrieved their bags from the locker they'd rented, they left the museum to a darkening and now rather cold evening. Father and daughter headed for the South Kensington tube station, which only took a few minutes to reach. Descending the steps they found there was a much larger crowd of people milling around near the ticket machines than expected, and to Hermione most of them felt frustrated and angry. "What on earth is the problem?" her father commented, looking around for any indication of the issue.
She did likewise, then spotted a London Regional Transport poster on a placard near the escalators. Pointing, she said, "I think that's the reason." Both of them pushed through the crowd, Hermione staying behind her father as he wedged his way closer, then read it.
Quite a lot of other people were doing likewise, all of them looking annoyed.
'District line closed west of Gloucester Road until 11 PM due to an incident at Earl's Court' the sign said, above a list of alternative routes, most of which involved a lot of changes and would take a long time. "I wonder what happened?" she asked as she read the sign.
Her father sighed. "Probably some sort of electrical or signaling failure. That's normally the problem, Must be fairly severe if they've shut the entire line down," he replied. "Damn. That's awkward, the District line is the one we want and there's no easy alternative."
Hermione thought about the problem. "We could go to Gloucester Road, transfer to the Picadilly line, change at Green Park, and go to Waterloo station. That has a train service that calls at Wimbledon. Which is quite close to Southfields so we could get the bus. It's a lot faster than waiting around for nearly five hours."
He looked at her, back at the sign, then asked, "You're sure about those stops?"
"I am, yes," she replied confidently.
"In that case, let's go," he replied with a smile. "You are really earning your allowance today, dear."
Smiling to herself she followed her father as he headed for the platform, quite a large number of people having come to the same conclusion doing likewise. They managed to squeeze onto a carriage ten minutes later for the single stop required, then hastily transferred platform just in time to jump aboard a train going the other way on the Picadilly line. Luckily there were some seats free so they sat down, feeling relieved. "Three stops, then onto the Jubilee line," she said, settling the carrier back full of books between her feet.
Unfortunately when they arrived at Green Park, the platform was absolutely heaving with irritated commuters. The door opened and someone near it shouted, "Oi! What's going on with the Jubilee?"
"Packed to the gills mate," someone shouted back from the platform, which was so full of people hardly anyone could move. "Stay on and change at Picadilly Circus if you're heading to Waterloo, I would."
"Thanks!" the man shouted. Hermione and her father exchanged glances and stayed put. Only a couple of people got off, and about a dozen managed to shove their way aboard, before the doors closed and the train rumbled back into the tunnel.
"All right, that means we change at Picadilly Circus onto the Bakerloo line," Hermione remarked. "It shouldn't make much difference."
"Fair enough, not much we can do, I suppose." Her father shrugged a bit. They waited the short trip to the next station, which only took a couple of minutes, then looked out when they arrived. While the platform was crowded it was vastly less so than the previous one so they disembarked and headed for the Bakerloo southbound platform, following the press of people all going the same way. Hermione walked in the lee of her father to avoid getting trampled, while yet again noticing something she'd felt when they'd been at Tottenham Court Road earlier that day. Aside from the bizarre vanishing woman, which was definitely something she was going to have to think about, there had been a distinct odd distortion in the field coming from the south, fairly close although unlike the mysterious knots she'd been sensing on and off all day, this was much more diffuse. It was very strange, feeling almost like the field itself was warped over a fairly large area in subtle but obvious when you looked at it way.
Now, though, she could feel it to the east. Remembering the map of London, she tried mentally triangulating on whatever it was and finally decided it had to be close to Charing Cross tube station, or in that general area. As they got onto the carriage, only being able to get standing room, she kept monitoring that strange area, and felt its position relative to the train's travel. Sure enough, as they slowed for Charing Cross, she could easily tell the distortion was above and to the north-east of their current position. She closed her eyes and leaned on her father's hip as the train moved off again, trying to work out exactly what it was she was detecting. Like the strange woman's nearly-HOP, it was similar to what she did, but at the same time quite alien. It was certainly doing something to the H-field but as far as she could tell it wasn't directly acting on it like she did. It was somehow indirectly manipulating it in a way that was using far more energy than it required, unless she was severely misunderstanding what it was trying to do.
That, from what she could sense, was basically doing something vaguely akin to one of her force fields, but in an odd manner which was producing an effect that didn't seem to do anything very useful. It wasn't blocking energy or physical objects by the look of it, and the field distortions surrounding the whole setup were very peculiar indeed. The train curved around and she turned her head to follow the retreating field distortion, still attempting to figure it out. Even when they stopped at Waterloo and got off, she could easily pick up whatever it was now she was looking for it.
Hermione puzzled over the entire situation the whole way to Wimbledon on the surface train, feeling that weird zone of field bizarreness eventually vanish into the background distortions of London itself. When they finally got back to the car she wrote out a lot of notes while her father drove home, filling a dozen pages with ideas and sketches of the patterns she'd deduced and inferred from her energy sense.
That night, tired, generally in a very good mood, and having spent a while talking to her parents about the whole day, she lay in bed trying to work out just why all those strange knots and distortions made her uneasy. There was something a bit wrong about them, she finally concluded, unable to really put it into clearer terms even to herself.
More information was needed on what was behind it, and she was going to have to think about the entire thing. She fell asleep still puzzling over the day's revelations, and had some very strange dreams as a result.