Magic Time: Ghostlands (27 page)

ANOTHER NICE MESS

W
aiting had always been the worst part for her, even when she was little and it was the endless anticipation of scanning the horizon for Santa Claus or summer to appear on the glide path coming in on approach.

Which wasn’t a patch on waiting for some Union of Concerned Scientists, Hearty Man TV-dinner sweet old pencil-pusher—namely, Dr. Rafe Dahlquist—to give you the green light to step over the threshold into hell.

As the days slid one into the other and winter came on in earnest, Colleen Brooks had to admit that it was her own damnable impatience and not everyone and everything getting on her last nerve that made her want to haul off and kick a puppy.

So contrary action was in order….

“What’s the deal here?” Cal inquired as Colleen led him slogging blindfolded along the slushy sidewalk of the main drag toward the Art Deco structure that was still in reasonably good shape, despite being subjected to more than sixty corrosive Iowa winters in its long and distinguished tenure here in town. Doc obligingly brought up the rear, as did Goldman, who had been mostly absent in recent days—and infuriatingly mum on the subject, to boot.

Colleen had made it a point to seek out the surprisingly
young Bohemian who still kept the place running and charm the socks off the guy (not that hard a trick, really, when she set her mind to it; hell, she could walk and talk with the best of the bipeds). So he’d led her downstairs to his Fortress of Solitude, the big basement that doubled as a storage vault, and let her peruse what turned out to be his fairly impressive holdings.

Now, some days later, Colleen drew Cal out of the winter chill into the steam-heat warmth of the lobby, then to the larger hall beyond. Contrary to the exterior façade, its interior style was not Deco but rather a neo-baroque eruption of gilt chandeliers, cherub sconces and rococo stairways—a Depression-era proletariat vision of grandeur.

She sat Cal down front and center, and whipped off the blindfold.

The acoustics of the theater were pretty damn good, so the ovation that erupted was close to deafening.

They stood arrayed along the rows of seats and up the twin aisles, grinning broadly at him, Krystee Cott and Mike Kimmel and the rest, the orphaned wayfarers Cal had led through the valley of the shadow and other perilous realms to the respite and relative safe harbor of Atherton (all in attendance save Rafe Dahlquist, naturally, who was under lock and key with the full chorus line of guards, not to mention the unholy troika of Arcott, Siegel and Wade, building the Son of the Megillah).

“Surprise,” Colleen said.

“It’s not my birthday,” Cal said.

“Shut up,” she said. She waved her arm up at the little high window in back, and the house lights dimmed.

For the first time in a long time, they watched a movie.

Kenny Escobar, the manager-cum-projectionist, had a number of fairly recent releases (recent prior to the Change, of course) available for screening. But Colleen had gotten to know Cal pretty well by now.

So she chose Laurel and Hardy in
Sons of the Desert.

Cal laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks.

(Goldman, meanwhile, sat watching totally stone-faced. “Don’t think I’m not enjoying this,” he explained to her in a
whisper. “It’s just that when I was a kid my Uncle Vaclav had a complete collection of Stan and Ollie flicks that he’d screen in his weird old mansion and make me sit watching without cracking a smile, ’cause he was of the conviction they weren’t comedians but rather great
tragedians
—a theory which I suppose has its merits.” “Christ, Goldman,” Colleen responded, “does
everyone
in your family have a screw loose?”)

Then she showed Cal
North by Northwest.

It was only as she sat watching there in the dark, alongside those with whom she had inextricably bound herself, the three so-very-different men who had entrusted her with their lives, that she realized how much like these films their journey had become. They were all of them as helpless as dandelion fluff in a hurricane, totally at the mercy of whatever weird shit the Fates threw at them.

Give in to the moment, it invited, surrender to the currents of storm and flow with them, be uplifted.

Which, paradoxically, didn’t mean that she shouldn’t fight like hell at the same time—just not be so preoccupied with the struggle that she failed to recognize what resources might avail her.

In the darkness around them, Colleen could discern the other baby birds Cal had taken under his wing, and the townies and college kids who had filtered in to watch the show, who were now sharing the experience along with them.

We aren’t alone in this,
Colleen thought.
We never were.

Ely Stern may have brought them here, all the legions of the damned might be awaiting them at the end of the road, and she might not be able to do a damn thing about it, none of them might.

But that wasn’t for her to say.

Remarkably, with that awareness she felt suddenly unburdened, so light it was akin to weightlessness, and it occurred to her that this flush of exhilaration might well be labeled hope.

She sat anonymous and totally present, her eyes filled with the timeless, fleeting images on the screen—Eva Marie Saint dangling from Mount Rushmore, Cary Grant extend
ing his hand out to her, grasping her wrist and pulling her effortlessly up into what was now transformed into the interior of a sleeping compartment, as they kissed and the train that bore them vanished howling into the blackness of a railway tunnel and the unknown future beyond.

Amid the torrent of applause, the music of communal experience, the houselights rose again. Colleen perceived the bulky, rumpled figure awaiting them in the aisle, Goldman standing behind him, having spirited him here.

“We’re T minus thirty-three minutes,” Rafe Dahlquist said.

The light was like nothing in this world, and Jeff Arcott couldn’t take his eyes off it.

The resonance chamber was banked down like logs gone to ash in a fireplace, barely glowing now. But it was hypnotic in its lazy, ceaseless motion, the flashing bits of evanescence winking in and out of existence in the vacuum of the huge cylinder, leaving vaporous rainbow trails like fingers dangled casually in a stream. As he watched it entranced, it seemed almost to be talking to him.

And scant minutes from now, Jeff Arcott knew, it literally would be.

No longer murmuring in myriad whispers like the legions of the departed, it would soon be invested with power on a scale that would heighten and focus those voices to crystal clarity…and quite a good deal more.

It elated him, and scared him, too.

The letter of introduction Ely Stern had brought with him all those months back—along with the first delivery of prime gemstones—had been written in a delicate, almost feminine hand. But the power it promised, the secrets of the universe it offered to reveal in the fullness of time, had been anything but demure.

The driving force, the intellect behind all of this, was brilliant, sublime, commanding—a mind undeniably beyond anything human history had previously produced.

It has come to my attention,
the letter began,
that you
have been embarked on a line of research that might yield considerable benefit, were it combined with several areas of inquiry and experimentation in which we ourselves have recently excelled.

The letter was signed
Marcus Sanrio.

And it invited Jeff Arcott to collaborate.

In the letters and breathtakingly original designs that followed, Sanrio had taken Arcott’s initial work and built on it in a way that was mesmerizing, counterintuitive and unexpected—but, in hindsight, undeniably
correct
in its assumptions and execution.

Arcott had given himself over to its siren song, and followed where it led.

This much he knew, or at least had been able to read between the lines: for reasons unknown and unstated, Marcus Sanrio, the greatest thinker of the twenty-first century (and who always in correspondence oddly referred to himself in the royal
we
), had been previously unable to join Arcott here in person. But via the Spirit Radio and the instantaneous matter transmission it permitted, Sanrio would soon be with him.

Then the pace of the work would accelerate to a phenomenal degree. And this post-Change world would no longer signal the arrival of a new Dark Age of suffering and ignorance; no, with Sanrio and himself at the forefront, the wild energies let loose on the earth would be tamed and brought into orderly service to mankind. It would be the dawn of a new Industrial Revolution, one that made the pace of the first look leisurely by comparison.

Thus far, Arcott had merely been able to apply a few of Sanrio’s principles in order to recapture some of the technology that had been lost, a pallid replication of the old ways of the world. Soon, however, very soon, they would be able to eclipse those accomplishments, create a new understanding and application of that understanding that would allow remarkable new strides.

A rebirth, a renaissance, an enlightenment; a total redefinition of virtually everything, starting most importantly with men’s minds.

It was the way of things, Jeff Arcott recognized.

With his laws of motion in the
Principia Mathematica,
Isaac Newton had defined a coherent, observable cosmos around him, the natural world for all to see. But he little dreamed of the transcendent gospel that Einstein would unveil several centuries hence, the crazy-but-true universe where matter and energy were equivalent, gravity bent light, and velocity defined the pace of time; moreover, that the universe was a hyperbolic paraboloid and, wherever you went, if you traveled long enough you invariably arrived back where you started.

The epiphanies Marcus Sanrio’s line of inquiry promised were every bit as profound and disconcerting as Einstein’s; more so.

Sanrio, with his self-reverential double pronoun and unwillingness to travel via any method but the Spirit Radio, might be a major eccentric and fucking pain in the ass, but hell, Einstein never wore socks or got a haircut, and it only added to his charm.

What mattered was what you
thought,
and what you
did.

Together, he and Sanrio had brought this town back to life again, and now they would open the door to a radiant new future.

Sanrio and Arcott. Nothing wrong with being the number two man, nothing at all…

Arcott thought of Nils Bohr, whom the building he was standing within was named for. He had not been the prime innovator but rather a follower of Einstein, a willing hand that put the breakthrough concepts to practical use; still, Bohr had walked away with his own Nobel Prize.

Arcott tore his gaze away from the lights that writhed like cobras under the spell of a fakir’s music, and glanced over at Theo Siegel, who was just tightening the connection on the final bus bar. Theo thought
he
was the number two man. All well and good; no reason to disabuse him of that notion until everything came off as planned. Melissa Wade hovered nearby, monitoring the minute fluctuations of current, the pressure variances of the vacuum with its frisson of argon, at a billionth of an atmosphere a mere ghost thrown in for seasoning.

As Marcus Sanrio had written on many an occasion, there was room for everyone.

Arcott glanced at his gem-encrusted digital watch. Twenty minutes earlier, at Rafe Dahlquist’s request for a break and a bite of lunch, he’d dispatched him under guard to the lab’s kitchen several doors down. But neither had returned, and time was marching on.

“Flag a guard out in the hall to fetch Dahlquist,” he told Theo. “It’s high noon.”

Theo nodded and sprinted to the heavy steel door, muscled it open and stepped through.

It was only moments before he returned, walking backward, hands raised timorously over his head.

The guards, unarmed now, followed him, and behind them came Cal Griffin and a good many others, hefting sparkling, gem-augmented ought-thirties and nine-millimeters they could have liberated from nowhere but the armory.

Arcott was incredulous; the armory was guarded by his most loyal men, its computer lock triple-encoded. To get in there, a man would have to be able to walk through walls.

(Which, he found out soon enough, was precisely what Herman Goldman—who himself was nowhere to be seen—had done.)

Cal Griffin strode up, and Arcott saw now that Rafe Dahlquist had entered behind him.

“Little change of plan, Jeff,” Griffin said.

Then Dahlquist unlocked a storage cabinet and got out the damping equipment.

BIG BLUE

“Y
ou’re gonna fucking ruin everything.”

Theo Siegel had to admit it was the first time he’d ever seen Jeff Arcott lose his cool, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

But then, being held at gunpoint and watching someone take over your big nasty toy was likely to spoil anyone’s day.

Jeff had ranted awhile and then, seeing Cal Griffin wasn’t inclined to listen to Jeff’s version of reason, had settled down to a hateful silence. Griffin’s guards covering him, Jeff stood leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette and glaring at the assembled throng—all except Theo, whose glance he contemptuously avoided.

Theo felt jettisoned; his stomach hurt and his insides were ashes. But then, he figured he probably rated such treatment.

At first, Theo had tried to act surprised by the invasion, but he’d always had a lousy poker face and, after a few moments, had set about actively aiding Griffin’s troops.

Not that they’d needed much help. Under Rafe Dahlquist’s direction, Colleen Brooks and two other of Cal Griffin’s followers—who introduced themselves as Al Watt and Mike Kimmel—had efficiently set about getting the dampers wired up and spaced around the hundred-meter-long resonance chamber. Theo noted that Griffin’s other
lieutenants, Doc Lysenko and Herman Goldman, were nowhere to be seen; on duties elsewhere, no doubt. But Griffin clearly had made his plans well, and brought the personnel he needed.

Theo found he couldn’t keep still; he kept pacing, making note of this piece of equipment, that calibration and setting…all by way of avoiding the one person he knew he would have to face.

Finally, he turned her way, found himself snared by her beautiful, betrayed eyes.

Melissa Wade sat perched atop a packing crate. “I thought you were our friend,” she said, and her voice was cobwebs and razor wire.

Theo nodded—what was there to say?

But the way he saw it (and he could have been wrong, goddammit, could still be wrong), it had boiled down to a choice between helping Jeff turn the key on what well and truly could have had monstrous repercussions, or do his bit to throw a monkey wrench into the works, and just maybe save the whole damn world.

A world that included Melissa. Or more to the point—at least, as far as he was concerned—a world that pretty much
was
Melissa.

So when it came down to the short straw, Theo knew he’d have to choose saving Melissa’s life over keeping her regard for him.

Which didn’t mean it was one whit less of a gut-shattering soul ache, that he wouldn’t regret having done it to the end of his days.

Theo slowly moved close, so it would be just the two of them. Voice shaking, eyes blurring wetly, he whispered, “I am your friend.”

Through the rippling distortion, Theo saw Melissa still staring at him, but her expression had clouded over with uncertainty. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then thought better of it and turned away.

He moved off to where Cal Griffin stood marveling at the Infernal Device. It was the first time Griffin had seen it in
the flesh, and Theo could well understand his awe at the sight of it.

“She’s a beauty,” Theo observed. “How about I give you the ten-cent tour?” It would feel good to lapse into data speak, to put aside feeling if only for a moment, if only in pretense.

He led Cal closer to the big cylindrical vacuum chamber, its enameled-iron skin gleaming bright blue, thick orange bands of metal spaced along it at regular intervals.

“Big Blue here started life as a plasma generator, a fusion energy research project. You know, studying alvan waves, lower hybrid waves, drift waves, etc….” Theo caught himself, flushed with embarrassment. “Oops, just veered into major geek territory, sorry, pardner.

“Anyway,” he continued more simply, “prior to the Change, there were four brands of matter—solid, liquid, gas and plasma. Only plasma didn’t exist naturally on earth, it was far too hot, millions of degrees, core-of-the-sun hot—I’m talking the rigorous scientific definition of plasma here, not that fluffy stuff you get in those globes at Radio Shack alongside the lava lamps. So Jeff and four other PhDs—gone to their various native stomping grounds now—set about building this baby to generate it, working with grad students such as myself and”—here his voice faltered, and he had to work to steady it—“and Ms. Wade, plus various other grunts and techies.

“Made everything right here ourselves,” Theo added with obvious pride. “Lathing, milling, welding; epoxy, acetone and elbow grease. Took three and a half years, with funding from the Navy, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy….”

(Which explained at least partially, Cal supposed, by which circuitous route those at the Source Project had learned of the research in the first place, and had known to contact Arcott.)

“Those electromagnets generate a field up to eighty thousand times greater than Earth’s magnetic field.” Theo gestured at the orange bands, then at the row of big copper
clamps bolted onto the electromagnets and secured to the walls. “Bus bars feed in the current—thirty megawatts, enough for a small town—supplied by big turbines in the power room. Water pumps cool the bus bars, heat exchanges recirculated from the building’s water supply.”

He ran loving fingers along the big cylinder as he strolled the length of it, Cal following. “Initially, pulse lasers were employed to excite the argon atoms, create instabilities to measure. We used different materials for the lasing medium, cultured crystals, ruby, neodynium, YAG—you know, ytrium-aluminum-garnet and the like….” Theo paused, and his expression grew thoughtful. “Plasma is alive, in a way. It has waves in it, it has memory. It’s not passive, it’s active. External magnets alone can’t contain it; it uses its charge to neutralize the field and escape. It’s squirmy, always finds a way out.”

Indefinable and ungovernable, Theo knew, like the human heart itself, every bit as elusive and determined. He was quiet a moment, then came back from whatever distant land he’d been visiting, and gave Cal a shy smile. “Not so different from what we’re trying to lasso now…”

He continued walking, but his tone remained hushed, reflective. “Then Storm-day happened, and it all changed. Jeff got his inspiration…from whatever source,” he added pointedly, “and we got
this.
”

They had reached the far end of the device. Attached at complex but regular intervals around the periphery of the blunt end of the cylinder were gold-plated studs and a staggering array of gemstones, a coral encrustation of garnets, opals, tourmalines, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, a glittering mosaic. Anaconda-thick wires insulated with yellow Teflon crossed from stud to stud in a spiderweb pattern, looping in nouveau curlicues around a massive oval of blue crystal.

Theo saw that Griffin was holding his breath, then caught himself and let it out slowly. The massive blue crystal was not a doorway, not yet. Not until the juice was turned on.

Then the trick would be keeping whatever waited on the other side where it belonged.

“My stars and whiskers,” a voice close behind them said, and Theo knew it for Mama Diamond’s, realized she had been following them, had heard every word.

He turned and saw that she was peering past them, up at the wall of gems. “I know every one of them,” she said incredulously. “Those stones are mine.”

As a child in San Bernardino and then at the camp in Manzanar, Mama Diamond had sat often in church, sneaking in despite her parents’ Buddhism, listening raptly to the liturgy, letting the Latin wash over her in its power and mystery, the unknown words like an incantation, an unfurling of God’s secret plans, back when she’d believed there might be a God.

That young Theo Siegel’s description of his machine had been much like that; Mama Diamond hadn’t understood a word, but recognized the force behind them, the moving shadows of great and terrible things….

Which had led her, unknowing, to the very place she had sought.

Her treasure, her gems.

She approached the glittering wall of stones until it filled all her sight, reverent as a pilgrim arriving from a long sojourn lost and wandering. She knew each of them like the rough air in her ragged lungs, like the blood in her veins; their flow, their color, their flame.

Seeing them here, unprepared as she was, was like seeing them for the first time, like she had never really seen them before.

She had to confess, it was a rare gift.

Ely Stern hadn’t stolen her treasure, not really. He had merely relocated it, and her as well, changed and put to a different, perhaps better use.

People leave you, and possessions, too….

Mama Diamond was back with her possessions, and had come to know a good many people along the way. People whom she realized, with a warmth like a Pendleton blanket enfolding her, she had come to value even more than the
cold, inert objects she had gathered and held close to herself down the dust of years.

But not so inert after all, she corrected herself. She ran her fingertips above the gleaming gems in their new matrix, careful not to touch them. With her heightened senses, she could feel the power throbbing in them, waiting to be unleashed, teeming with every bit of mystery and certainty the good Lord held in His keeping.

Soon enough, she would step through that ring, and the stones that had been hers would gather her up as she had gathered them, would hold her to them and do with her what they would.

Cal Griffin walked over to where Rafe Dahlquist labored on the final adjustments with his crew. “How we coming?”

“Just about ready to crank the body up to the roof, see if lightning hits it.” Dahlquist was speaking facetiously, but it might as well have been literal, considering what they were about to try.

“Let me just make sure I’ve got this straight,” Colleen Brooks said, striding up to them (she found it was becoming her theme song, of late). “We push the big red button, that thing hopefully opens up onto South Dakota, the Source Project, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Dahlquist said, not looking at her, his eyes on the elaborate series of connections he was running from the damping devices to the large blue crystal. “And if this does what it’s supposed to, we keep the field contained, so there’s no surprises.”

“There are always surprises,” Colleen said.

At which moment, Herman Goldman appeared literally out of nowhere and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Judas Priest, Goldman,” Colleen yelped, spinning on him, “don’t
do
that.”

“Why not? It’s one of the best perks.” He tipped his straw cowboy hat with the five aces, which struck Colleen not as a courtesy but rather as the impertinence it was clearly intended to be.

“Where the hell’d you spring from anyway?” she asked.

“
Where
is not the pertinent question,” Goldie replied, stifling a grin. “But rather, with
whom.
”

He stepped aside, to reveal the hyper little grunter known as Howard Russo…and the serene ebony presence of Enid Blindman.