The Secret Sea (32 page)

“Hands where I can see them,” she said. “Don't touch the control board.”

“If I don't—”

“Don't touch it,” Zak threatened, deepening his voice. “We've modified this stick to be lethal.”

Was that even possible? It didn't matter—the operator believed it. He held his hands in the air. “We'll hit the air cushion at the Battery Landing station if I don't signal for anticollision.”

He might as well have offered his mother's recipe for stewed wombat, for all the sense that made. “Let us worry about that. Keep your hands up,” Moira said. “We'll tell you what to do.”

Zak took the stick from her and kept an eye on the operator as Moira approached the control panel. It was a flat touch screen with a series of blinking lights and touch controls. She thought it made sense—readouts for acceleration, a GPS window, pretty much what you'd expect. This whole universe seemed to be designed by someone with exceptionally good taste.

She whipped off her hat to fan herself. The operator gasped. “You're a
frau
!”

“Damn right,” she muttered, slapping the cap back on. The board had lit up with a flashing icon that showed a cloud morphing into a crushed puff of air.
Air cushion? Is that what he was talking about?

She scanned the rest of the board. Off in one corner was a red touch target with a lightning bolt in the shape of an exclamation point within.
That's the alarm.

“Signal for anticollision,” she told him, as if she knew what she meant. “But keep away from that alarm. Unless you want my chap here to fry you with a million snapping volts of electricity.”

The operator's fingers fluttered over the board, and soon the cloud icon melted away into the background.

“We're on approach to Battery Landing now,” he told her. He seemed frightened enough to be telling the truth. Plus, if he did anything stupid to the train, he would be one of the first to die. He was well incentivized to play this honestly.

Zak jabbed at the back of the operator's neck with the prongs of the unpowered stick, eliciting an anxious hiss of indrawn breath.

“Now we're going to ask you some questions,” Zak said, “and you're going to answer them. Aren't you?”

The operator hesitated, and Moira leaned in close to him. “There's a saying I'll bet you've never heard before,” she said in a tone as menacing as she could muster. “It's this: ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.' Want to find out for sure?”

The operator hiccuped in fear. “What do you want to know?”

*   *   *

Moments later, as the superway decelerated inbound to Battery Landing, Moira finished tying up the operator while Zak watched over him to make sure he didn't try to escape. They had no rope or cord, so they used Zak's belt and shoelaces to bind the man's wrists and ankles.

Through the windshield, Battery Landing was coming up fast. “Is he secure?” Zak asked.

Moira checked the bonds once more. She wouldn't bet her life on it, but … Well, she actually didn't have a choice. “He's good.” She stuffed a wad of fabric into his mouth.

Zak settled into the operator's chair. “Microphone?”

“Third tab.”

Zak's fingers splayed out on the control board, and he grunted in annoyance. Moira sidled up to him and skimmed the board. “Let me,” she said, and found the right icon. A burst of static like a throat-clearing sounded through the superway's PA system.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said sweetly into a small microphone bud positioned at head height, “this is your new operator. Hi! Bee-tee-dub, this superway has been hijacked in the name of the Feminist Liberation Army.”

“Girl power!” Zak shouted into the microphone. Moira arched an eyebrow at him. “I dunno,” he mumbled off-mic. “It felt right.”

“Now, don't go panicking,” Moira said into the mic, “because we have no desire to hurt you. In fact, as soon as we pull into Battery Landing, we expect you all to get off the train and run for your lives. And…”

She nodded to Zak, who leaned over and hit the alarm icon. A blaring siren sounded throughout the cabin, as well as the cars.

“That sound you hear means the authorities have been alerted, so they should be on hand to evacuate you as soon as you get off the train.” She and Zak exchanged a look.
Is that all?
she asked with her expression.

He shrugged back.
Yeah, that's good.

“That's all,” she said. “Have a nice evacuation, and thank you for riding Aero Rail Transit. Oh, and stop treating women like pets.” She clicked off the microphone and slumped back against the bulkhead. If they hadn't been committed before, they were now.

“I'm glad that's over,” she said.

“Not yet,” said Zak, and when she looked, she saw that he'd stood up and aimed the stun stick at her.

 

FIFTY-FOUR

Khalid helped Dr. Bookman down the stairs to street level. The man was still shaky—literally, his body trembled with every step. Whatever his voodoo spell had done to him, the effects lingered. Maybe they would be permanent. But Khalid had recovered an older Wonder Glass from one of Dr. Bookman's bookshelves and used it to page a car service. They had to get to Battery Landing.

“He's been going back and forth. For centuries. Constantly exposed to the Secret Sea. To the same quantum foam we use in electroleum. He's attuned to it.”

“What are you talking about?” Khalid demanded. “Slow down; make sense.”

“He exists outside of physics,” Bookman rambled. “The Secret Sea is what remains of the creation of the universe. He's soaked in it. His power is subtle but large. The Secret Sea connects universes and also subsumes them. Each world is a wave. You find our physics strange here, Khalid? The physics of the Secret Sea is the physics of the big bang, of the moment of creation. No one can know what effect that would have on a spirit.”

They reached street level. Khalid helped Dr. Bookman prop himself up against the wall and then checked for the car. It hadn't arrived yet. Khalid took a deep breath and made a decision.

“Look,” he said, grabbing Bookman by his lapels, “you have to start making sense
now.
Or we're not going anywhere.”

Dr. Bookman took a deep breath and steadied himself, both hands against the wall. He still shook and shivered, but he finally managed to meet Khalid's eyes with his own.

“It's the spirit,” he said. “The Godfrey spirit.”

“What about it?
Him
, I mean.”

“That much electroleum … that kind of energy…”

“Stay focused, man. Talk to me.” Out of the corner of his eye, Khalid noticed a car slowing as it came around the corner.

“I was connected to Godfrey, Khalid. He saw inside me and I saw inside him, though I dearly regret it. What he plans to do … is monstrous. And your friends are making it possible!”

Khalid clenched his jaw. “Exactly what is he planning? Give me a hint here.”

“Electroleum in its raw state is … unpredictable. M-electrons and—” He broke off, no doubt distracted by the glazing-over of Khalid's eyes. “Sorry. In any event, it's unpredictable. A product of wild science. Depending on how it has been conditioned, its energies interact in different ways with the world. It can be made safe, as we use it for our lighting. But it can also be dangerous.”

“And you guys just leave this stuff lying around.”

“Of course not! That's why it's carefully controlled. Regulated. We can control it to a degree, and to that degree, it's useful and safe.”

“Until it isn't.”

“With enough of it, you could bring down the walls between universes. It could theoretically even break the barrier that separates the living from the dead, as we saw with my cockroaches.”

“‘Break the barrier.' You make it sound like death is just another alternate universe.” Khalid blinked as Dr. Bookman said nothing, but the man's expression spoke volumes. “Wait. Are you saying death
is
just another alternate universe?”

The wild scientist shrugged. “Who's to say? We have after-death phenomena in my world, things that you would most likely call ghosts. And now we have the evidence of Godfrey, evidence that some sort of consciousness can linger after death. We would need vastly more research, but this I know, Khalid: Electroleum in its raw, pure form is dangerous and unpredictable. During processing, specific impurities are introduced to make it function in safe, understandable ways. For purposes of my experiment, I was permitted one milliliter of the raw substance.”

“And that was enough to do what it did to the cockroaches?”

“The electroleum in the room magnified the emotion and power Godfrey exuded. I had been testing other properties of electroleum entirely, but apparently the combination of electroleum and all of the energy in the room rejuvenated some of them.”

“Wow. That's good, right?”

“How do we know?” Dr. Bookman asked with unfocused aggravation. “How? Without actual testing, how do we know what is good, what is bad? Yes, some roaches seem to have come back to life. Others died. And others simply vanished. To the living and the revived, it is very good. But what about the others?”

“I guess I didn't think of that. To them, it's not so hot.”

“No, indeed. Not if you're on the killing end. Or the dying end. And I surmise that in the proper quantities and context, the misuse of electroleum could even kill a ghost.”

“Aren't they already dead?”

“Erase every trace of it from the world, the universe.” Dr. Bookman flapped his hands. “Semantics.”

“So, then, the problem is…”

Dr. Bookman flinched in frustration. “The problem is, no one knows, Khalid! No one knows! This is why wild science is so regulated, so controlled. So that people won't try these sorts of things! There are some things we try
not
to learn.”

“I don't get it. If it works, then everyone's alive and everything's great.”

“No. No. Our worlds are close together, remember?”

“Right.” Khalid thought back to the apartment building, to the walls between units. His universe was a next-door neighbor to this one.

“Godfrey slipped through the thin spot in the wall between them three hundred years ago. And died there. He was stuck underground until the event you call 9/11 released him from his tomb. His power helped him survive, but ‘survival' is not life. He did not age. He did not progress or change or learn. He only abided.”

“And?”

Bookman shook his head. “I saw it all, Khalid. You saw what he put me through. During the ritual. I was trying to contact your friend Zak. The intersection of Godfrey's rage and the electroleum in my office…”

Khalid thought back and shivered at the memory of Bookman levitating, the blood from his mouth, the burning dreadlocks. “The guy was trapped underground for hundreds of years. That'll mess with a guy's manners. He's sort of desperate.”

“He's beyond desperate. I have performed that ritual many, many times and never before encountered such…” He paused. “I'm uncomfortable with a word that has such nonscientific implications, but: I have never before encountered such evil.”

“Evil? Doc, he's going to help us rescue Tommy!”

“No. When he possessed me, I saw it all. It all made sense. I'm trying to explain.… Once he was free, Godfrey was able to
move
again. Ever since, he's been going back and forth. He's incorporeal, so he found a way to cross from your universe to mine and back again.”

“That makes sense.”

“But with each pass-through, he weakened the walls even further. Made them thinner.”

Khalid thought about it for a moment. “That's how
we
were able to come through. Before, only a ghost could go through, but now…”

“Now actual physical matter can cross over. Godfrey cannot directly manipulate the electroleum. Indirectly, however … with a physical intermediary … With Zak's help, he plans to
detonate
the electroleum.”

Khalid's mouth opened and closed like a dumb fish's. It took long moments before he could speak, and even then he could only whisper, “Detonate? Like blow it up?”

“Yes. The result … Well, Godfrey
believes
the result will be an explosion that resonates not merely on the physical plane but on the spiritual one as well. That may very well resurrect Godfrey, given his special connection to the electroleum.”

“Well, that's—”

“But at the same time, it will blow open a hole in the wall between our worlds.”

Khalid's throat clogged and refused to work. He gagged and stepped away from Dr. Bookman's quaking form. “What does that mean?”

But he knew. What if one apartment was on fire when you knocked down the wall? Or what if the fire was inside the wall to begin with?

He remembered Zak's vision in the subway, the water flooding the tunnels.

And he thought of the teeny, tiny amount of electroleum in Dr. Bookman's office. And what had happened when Godfrey unleashed his power there.

“There's no way to tell what will happen,” Bookman said. “The Secret Sea flows betwixt our worlds, and it is not merely water, Khalid. It is the ur-water, the Platonic ideal of waterness. It is physical but also metaphysical. Should that be released into a physical universe…” He shook his head. “I cannot begin to comprehend the ramifications.”

Khalid swallowed. “Is that what'll happen? Are you sure?”

“No, I'm not. But
something
will happen. Even in the absolute best-case scenario, opening the path between our worlds so explosively will be catastrophic.”

Khalid imagined water
everywhere
. Imagined Manhattan inundated with an endless, raging torrent of water sucked out of another universe. All of lower Manhattan, at the very least, covered in the waters of the Houston Conflux.