“Correction. Chen Te-Sheng and I have beenclose friends for nearly two years. I believed him unconditionallyand decided to help him no matter what. But about the double you'reright. When I saw how the dead man looked like, I believed myneighbor even more.”
“You and Chen moved thebody into this shack. You began to write a Chinese scroll to warnVictor not to talk to the Police. Then the first policeman came.Deputy Tan, on his bike. He looked around, found no dead body, andleft. You hung the completed scroll in the Chen's shack. Why didyou wash the drops of blood at the floor?”
“It was Chen's blood, but the screwdriverwas covered with the blood of the other man.”
“Brilliant! You even thought about the bloodtypes!”
“You have amazingabilities, Missis Bowen. I take it back. You are not playingSherlock Holmes. You arethe Sherlock Holmes, just a differentincarnation. How did you know where I hid the body?”
“Because you volunteeredfor the search party. To be honest with you, I thought that thebody was still in your shack, and you were looking for the place tohide the body tonight. But when I saw that the body was gone, Iimmediately knew you hid it yesterday. This automatically changesyour motive for joining the search. You wanted to be in the groupto place yourself at the right spot, above the dead body: it was inthe irrigation ditch, under the snag. Next, you waited until DeputyInvestigator Woxman was near-by, and screamed that the body wasfound. You calculated his reaction quite well. I didn't know youwere a psychiatrist, but since you told me… everything matchesperfectly! A psychiatrist is a psychologist too! Woxman was sinkingin the mud, you were showing him the snag, and the kids werelaughing. No wonder, the investigator didn't want to check theditch a little deeper.”
“Most of all I was afraid of you, DeputyKim,” Lee smiled, “After I saw the local deputy in shorts andbarefoot, I realized that the ditch was not a very good place tohide a body. Fortunately, you and Deputy Woxman had some quarreleven before we started on the ditches. I was so lucky: the deputiesdid not want to break the fragile peace! Woxman did not ask Kim todouble-check my ditch, and Kim was reluctant to show initiative.You got it spot-on, Missis Bowen. Just one thing I can'tunderstand. How did you know I hid the body exactly atmidnight?”
Indeed, how did our SherlockHolmes-on-wheels guess about the midnight? It seems I will have todo the dishes all week long.
“It was a bluff,” Kate chuckles, “Anunjustified spark of intuition.”
“This once again convinces me that I amfacing the great detective,” Mr Lee made a short bow, “And becauseyou know everything about this affair…”
“Not everything,” Kate interrupts Lee,“Could you tell us what kind of super-duper nuclear-space-strategicbomb your neighbor was inventing? If he told you about it, ofcourse.”
“He told me all-right,” Lee sighs, “But itwas not a bomb.”
“And what was it?” I ask.
“Does name Martin Fleischmann tell youanything at all?”
“N-no,” Kate says, “Who is it?”
“And Vincenzo Rossi?”
“Also no idea,” I say.
“In 1989, British chemist Martin Fleischmanndiscovered that by passing an electric current through a solutionone can create a thermonuclear reaction. He claimed a newphenomenon: a Low-Temperature Nuclear Fusion. Or Cold Fusion, assome people preferred to call it.”
“And can you really make these reactions?The Cold Fusion?” Kate asks.
“It turned out thatFleischmann's design did not work. As we psychiatrists call it,Martin Fleischmann was clearly ourpatient, but unfortunately only in ahind-sight. Before he went after his Cold Fusionidée fixe, Fleischmannwas an expert in the field of classical electrochemistry and held aprofessorship. A classic case of an overvalued idea disorder wassuperimposed on an individual with top-notch education and strongscientific authority. By that time, Fleischmann was over sixty, hishealth deteriorating with Parkinson's and Diabetes. The old man wasso desperate to give his discovery to the humankind! He made nosecrets and published it all in his scientific papers. Other labstried to repeat the experiments, with no success.”
“And the Cold Fusion idea was killed?”
“If so! Fleischmann workedon his Cold Fusion until his death in 2012. He had generousresearch grants. The US Navy gave money, and the ItalianINFN. Fleischmann evengot himself an apprentice genius: Vincenzo Rossi, an Italianengineer. Based on the Fleischmann research, Rossi made a machinecalled D-CAT. Ibelieve the press release was dated 2011.”
“That's why I did not hear these names,”Kate says, “In the 2011, I was just one-year-old! I did not careabout the machines. Even a Barbie doll was way over my level.”
“What did this machine do?” I ask.
“The machine was top secret. Rossi said itconverted nickel into copper. At the same time, on one kilogram ofnickel the machine could produce ten kilowatts of electricity forten thousand hours.”
“Ten kilowatts of electricity? But this is…”I see how Kate moves her lips calculating something in the head,“Shit! Your solar-charged light bulb here – about two watts. Tenkilowatts – it's five thousand such light bulbs! Each house in ourSlum can have a light!”
“Ten kilowatts is not asmuch as you may think, dear Missis Bowen. In the modern slums wedon't have enough electricity. But before the Meltdown the electricity was waymore accessible. For instance to boil a kettle, you need one and ahalf or two kilowatts. Do you remember electrickettles?”
“The electric kettles? Yes, I remember themquite well! I was… six years old. Or maybe seven, not sure. Westill used an electric kettle. But then they cut our electricityfor no-payments, and since then we boiled water whatever way wecould.”
“But if Rossi inventedthis wonderful machine, why there was the Meltdown first place?” Iask.
“In 2015, Vincenzo Rossi disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yeah. The rumors were that he wasassassinated. The oil companies did not want people to have cheapenergy.”
“And the Rossi's invention? The machine?”Kate asks.
“Everything disappeared. Someone stole allthe papers and all the computers, smashed the laboratoryinstruments, and sat the place on fire.”
“What a shame,” I say, “If Rossi was alive,the Slum kids wouldn't collect cow dung now. But what did thisRossi have in common with our Chen Te-Sheng?”
“Pretty much everything. Twenty years ago,Chen was the Chief Scientist at the Rossi's research lab.”
“So you're saying someone is trying to killMister Chen?” I exclaim, “No, wait, that's stupid. Who would wantto kill him? The oil companies are all bankrupt, and the oil iscontrolled by the Senate commission. Besides, Kate guessed rightabout the double. They didn't want to kill Chen! They are after theRossi's invention! Right?”
“Right. They are after the D-CAT.”
“But of course! Ifsomebody has such a machine…” I ruffle my hair, “Damn! Damn! Withsuch a machine… Wow! The Meltdownwill be over! Ten kilowatts! Surely, one can makemore than one machine! One machine for each Patch. No, I'm talkingnonsense again! No freaking Patches! We don't need slums anymore!Everybody can have a big house. And in every house there will bethis energy machine…”
“In the house you can have water taps,”,Kate smiles, “Just open the tap – and get as much water as youwant: a bucket, or a barrel. No, not barrel! You can fill abathtub! Can you imagine, Wile E. Coyote: a bathtub full of hotwater?”
“You know, Road Runner, wecan quit the Police! We will buy a car! No, not just a car. We buya camper! A Winnebago with a king-size bed! There are still some in the slums. Ofcourse, they don't run now, but we can fix it. Put a couple ofelectric motors in, and make it run on electricity. We can goanyplace we want. California! We are the Navy sailors! We both haveserved in the Atlantic, now must look at the Pacifictoo.”