Ghostlands

THIRTY-FOUR

“You’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.