15
Frosty Morning
The house was very quiet at 8 a.m., no sounds except for the faint noise of cars driving past, half a block away. Eric sat in the kitchen staring down into a mug of coffee that had been warm once, maybe an hour ago.
“You’re up early,” Dr. Sheffield said from behind him. He turned quickly. The lady scientist, wearing one of Beth’s bathrobes, walked into the kitchen and sat down on one of the other chairs next to him.
“There’s more coffee in the pot,” Eric offered.
“Thanks.” She reached across the table for a clean mug and the coffee pot. “Did you get much sleep?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Too much to think about. All of this happened so fast—things used to be so easy for us. Uncomplicated. No problems, not in the last couple years . . . ”
“You mean, you don’t usually go around summoning monsters and consorting with elves?”
He smiled. “Consorting with elves, sure. All the time. Summoning monsters, not if I can avoid it.” The smile faded. “I didn’t want to . . . to do what I did, at the Labs. But you know that, right?”
She didn’t answer at first, swirling the coffee in her mug. “Friends of mine are dead or brain-dead because of you, mister. I can’t say I could ever forgive you for that. But what Blair was doing, it was illegal and evil. Even if he hadn’t gotten hold of my project, he probably would’ve graduated to some more extensive levels of cruelty eventually. I’ve read enough on psychopathic sadists to know that they never stop until they’re arrested or dead. Fourteen people died that night at the Lab . . . yeah, and we don’t know how many people ‘disappeared’ under Dr. Blair’s tender care.” She shook her head. “The man was already sick and dangerous, and the truth is that even without the Poseidon Project, if Blair continues unchecked, he’ll beat that record of fourteen eventually if he hasn’t already. Just a matter of time.”
Eric’s mouth opened; he closed it again.
“Besides, it’s not like the Lab people don’t know that they’re at risk, always. Working at the Labs, you know you’re a target. It’s one of the first places a nuclear would hit, if we ever got into that kind of war, and it’s a constant target for terrorists. Those scum probably think of all the plutonium in that complex and can’t stop drooling.” She took another long swallow from the mug. “And then there’s the possibility that something could go wrong from the inside, that some technician could press the wrong switch and the entire place could go up in smoke. Colonel Steve—my boss—he thought that what happened with the monsters could’ve been an internal accident, that all of us were hallucinating from a chemical accident or something like that. So you know you’re a target when you work there, in more ways than one.” She stared down into the mug. “It’s just when it happened, when something did go wrong, somehow I wasn’t expecting it. I mean, I was expecting some lunatic guys with automatic rifles, not an army of monsters.”
“Sorry about that,” Eric said sourly. “Next time, I’ll leave the demon army at home and bring a squad of terrorists instead.”
She gave him a sharp but steady look. “There won’t be a next time, kid, because you and your army of Tolkien fans are going to get it right the first time. That’s why I’m still here, instead of taking off in the middle of the night and heading for Sheboygan until all of this is over. I’m going to make sure you do it right.”
“We’ll try.” She’s a good lady, Susan Sheffield. She didn’t deserve this. It’s the least I can do to make sure that she doesn’t get hurt.
He looked up and around, wondering where Kayla was. She ought to get up soon; they’d need to head out as soon as the morning traffic was over. He set his coffee mug down, and refilled it from the pot.
The mug rattled once on the table, then again, more insistently. The windows began to vibrate, one window swinging open. He could feel the ground moving beneath him, gentle swells that felt like floating on the tides of the ocean, close enough to shore to feel the motion of the waves.
“Oh shit, is that . . . ?” Eric turned to Susan Sheffield.
The rattling noise ceased, as suddenly as it had begun.
Susan drank some coffee. Eric could see the unsteadiness of her hand as she lifted the mug. “Well, it could be natural. But—”
“But you don’t think so.”
She shook her head. “I’d say he’s testing the engines, so to speak. Calibrating the probes. He’s moving faster than I had expected . . . still, it’ll take him a fair amount of time to calibrate the system, if he wants to do it right the first time. He has my notes and all my project files to work from, but Frank and I were the only ones who really lived with the system. He’ll have to absorb a lot of information very quickly. And the physical calibration, even with the system computers to plot the resonance intersection points, that’ll take time.”
“How long?” Eric asked.
She was quiet for a few seconds, thinking about it, before she answered. “Definitely all day. Maybe by sometime tomorrow, if he works through the night. He might be able to do something tonight, but if he rushes too much, an improperly triggered earthquake could destroy the probes and he’d have to start over with the recalibration.”
“Maybe we should’ve destroyed the probes ourselves, last night.”
Susan shrugged. “Wouldn’t have mattered that much. There’s a roomful of them back at the Labs, though most of them still need some assembly work. We could’ve slowed him down a little, but not much. Maybe an hour or two. That’s why I didn’t suggest it at the time. What we need to do is stop Blair, not the project. In fact, I’m hoping we can do that without damaging the project equipment or laboratories—it’d sure be nice not to have to sacrifice most of my last two years’ work tonight.”
Kayla vaulted into the kitchen, still wearing a long flannel nightgown. It looked strange on her, now that Eric was so used to her leather clothing and studded jewelry. “Was that a real earthquake?” she asked.
“Just Warden Blair warming up the engines,” Eric said. “Shouldn’t you, like, get dressed or something?”
“Oh, yeah.” She dived back through the doorway, and they could hear her feet pounding up the stairs.
“She’s a good kid,” Susan observed. “Why are you letting her get involved in this mess?”
Eric thought of Kayla after the battle in Griffith Park, soaked in blood up to her elbows, and tried to remember that this lady didn’t know them, didn’t know anything about them and what they’d already been through together. “She’s very important. Kayla is a healer, a genuine ‘lay on hands and fix what’s broken’ healer. If anyone gets hurt during this fight, it’ll probably be Kayla who saves their lives.”
“But she’s just a lad!” Susan protested.
“She’ll do fine. I’m more worried about the flaky Wiccans that Beth dug out of the woodwork, to be honest. From what she was saying, some of those people need to consult a crystal ball before they can tie their shoelaces in the morning. I’m not so worried about the elves; they believe in the danger and know what they’re fighting for.” But with luck, none of them will need to go anywhere near the Labs. I started this mess, and I’ll deal with it. “But I don’t need to tell you about elves, you know enough about them already.”
“I’d rather not talk about that,” she said.
That was something of a surprise. “Why not? I thought you had a good experience with the Misthold elves that summer.”
“I did.” She looked up to meet his gaze. “But then it ended, and they left me.” She stood up abruptly. “Well, I’m going to shower and get dressed. I’m not certain what kind of clothes one is supposed to wear to Armageddon, but I’ll see if I can borrow something from your friend Beth.”
She set her mug down in the sink before leaving the room. Eric contemplated pouring another cup of coffee, and wondered if adding a shot of whiskey to it would help clear the blurriness from his mind. Probably not, he decided.
He’d never been a morning person, ever. Morning was that awful thing that happened every day before noon, something to avoid if possible, endure if not. But today he had a schedule to keep, if he wanted to keep his friends out of danger as well as the rest of San Francisco.
Maybe a little more caffeine would help . . .
“Hey, pour me one of those,” Kayla said, sliding onto the chair recently vacated by Susan Sheffield.
“It’ll stunt your growth, kid,” Eric said, pouring her the last cup of coffee in the pot.
“Hell, I’m tall enough already. So, are you ready? Did you eat breakfast?”
“I never eat breakfast,” he said grimly. “Breakfast is for people who wake up before lunch.”
“Look, Bard, you have to take care of yourself. You’re about to go burn a lot of magical energy, you need something to replace it.” Kayla hopped off the chair and began rummaging through the refrigerator. “How does scrambled eggs and toast sound?”
“Awful.”
“I can add some cheese and salsa, if you want.”
“That’s worse. Kayla, make whatever you want for breakfast. I’ll stick with coffee, thanks.”
“Better to watch your nutrition. That’s what Elizabet always tells me. Well, it’s your funeral, Bard.” There was an awkward silence between them. “I didn’t mean it quite that way, Eric,” Kayla said after a moment. “I’ll cook up some eggs, and then we can get out of here.”
“Right. I’ll get my things together.”
He headed upstairs, quietly opening the bedroom door. Beth and Kory were still asleep. He took his flute case from the top of the dresser, and slipped it into his gig-bag. His leather wallet was lying on the window seat; he checked to make sure that he had his BART card in the pocket for the subway fare, and change for the bus, enough for Kayla and himself. There was a ten-dollar bill with the BART card—maybe Kayla and I can stop for lunch at Gordo’s Burritos in Berkeley after we save the world, he thought with a wry smile.
On the other hand, Kayla knew how to drive. Maybe they should take Beth’s elvensteed.
A last look at the waterbed: Kory, sleeping with his arm flung out wide, as relaxed in sleep as he always was when awake. Beth, frowning slightly in her sleep. He knelt and kissed her gently, careful not to wake her. I might never see them again. The thought was like a physical pain. He hurried downstairs to where Kayla was waiting, already wearing her black leather jacket and boots.
“Listen, Eric,” she said, a little hesitantly. “There’s something I need to tell you . . . I don’t know how to say this, exactly, but . . . you’re kinda visible. I can see it, and I know the elves can, too. I’d bet the bad guys could see you that way as well, so I thought you might want to do something about it.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“It’s a little difficult to explain . . . you kinda . . . glow, a little. Well . . . more than a little. You glow a lot, to be honest. When I close my eyes, I can still see you.”
This was a bad time for a joke. Or maybe it wasn’t a joke. “Are you serious?”
She nodded vigorously. “Scout’s honor, Bard. You look like a neon light at five hundred feet.”
He thought about that for a minute. “Okay. Let me try something.” He closed his eyes and reached inside, to that still pool of power within him. With an odd mental twist, he switched it off, like a light switch, or like opening the floodgates and letting it all pour out instantly.
The wooden floor was pressed against his cheek. That was the first conscious thought that registered, that and the fact that Kayla’s hands were bright with a pale blue light. He sat up slowly, waves of dizziness washing over him.
“Don’t do that, Eric!” The threads of light faded from Kayla’s hands. “Jesus, you scared me! You stopped your heart. Are you okay now?”
He nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak. I can just see the headlines in the newspapers—“Bard Commits Suicide Out of Sheer Stupidity.” He took a deep breath. “Let me try that again.”
This time, he moved more carefully into that pool of light, and the light slowly dimmed away, leaving a pool of shadows instead. He opened his eyes again, relieved to see that he was still alive. “Did that work?” he asked.
Kayla closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Looks good, Bard.” She helped him to his feet, then hesitated. “Oh, almost forgot.” She darted into the kitchen, reappearing a few seconds later. “I left them a note,” she explained. “I’ve told them that we’ve gone out shopping for supplies, and told them to wait for us. Maybe we can be finished with this before they realize where we’ve gone.”
“Yeah, sure.” You’re being very optimistic about this, Kayla, he thought. I’d guess that you’re as scared as I am, but you’re even better at not showing the fear. If you can be this calm once we’re inside the Labs, maybe we’ll survive this after all. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Kory rolled over in bed, then sat up abruptly. Something was wrong, very wrong . . .
It took him several seconds to figure it out. Nothing was wrong with him, and there were no enemies in sight, nothing more unusual than the sounds of traffic outside the window. Beth was still asleep, curled up in a ball next to him. Eric was . . .
Eric was missing.
Not just missing, but completely gone. Usually he could just think about Eric and know where he was. The touch of Bardic magic was unmistakable. Even when he had been captive in the tunnels of the Dublin Labs, it had only taken a small effort to reach out and find Eric, to touch him across all the distance of the city and the Bay.
Now he couldn’t sense anything. No Bardic magic, no Eric—He cast out his thoughts in a widening ring, searching . . .
Nothing.
Kory fought against the cold terror that wrapped itself around his heart. “Don’t panic, don’t panic,” he whispered to himself, and shook Beth awake.
“Wha—Kory?” She blinked, propping herself up on one elbow. “Is something wrong?”
“Do you know where Eric is?”
“He’s not asleep . . . ?” She glanced at the alarm clock. “It’s ten a.m. and Eric’s already out of bed? Amazing!”
“He’s gone, Beth. I can’t find him anywhere.”
She sat up. “You mean, you can’t find him magically? Are you sure?”
He nodded. “He is not in the city, as far as I can tell. I should know where he is, but I cannot find him.”
“Is he . . . ?” There was a question in her eyes that Kory did not want to answer.
“I—I do not think so. At least, I should feel that, as well. The death of a Bard . . . we would know it, I am certain of that. It would leave a mark upon the bones of the land.” Unless he was taken far away before they killed him, perhaps to the realm of those shadow-monsters . . .
“So either someone is hiding him from us, or Eric went AWOL.” Beth was suddenly all business, pulling on her bathrobe and slippers. “If this is Eric Banyon’s idea of a joke, I’m going to kill him. Can you tell where he was last, before he disappeared?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
He concentrated, imagining the Bard’s handsome features, remembering his laughter, the intense look on his face as he played an ancient Irish air . . . “Downstairs,” he said firmly. “In the hallway, very close to the front door. That’s where Eric vanished.”
“The front room? But that doesn’t make any sense—If someone had come through the front door and attacked him, Eric should’ve made enough noise to awaken everyone in the house.” She was out of bed and running downstairs before Kory could say anything else. He followed her a moment later, to find her standing near the front door, staring at the floor, then she looked up at the row of hooks where they always hung their jackets and coats. “No sign of a scuffle down here. And Eric took his leather jacket. If he’d been kidnapped, he wouldn’t have done that.”
Elizabet, sleepy-eyed, walked out from the kitchen. “Are they back yet?” she asked.
“What?” Kory asked.
“Kayla and Eric. They left a note saying that they were going to get some supplies . . . Can’t imagine what they’re doing, unless Kayla wanted to get some extra first-aid supplies. I thought they might be back by now.”
Beth shook her head, a thoughtful frown on her face. “I think I’ve figured this out—they took off early, leaving a note so we wouldn’t worry about them, and Eric makes sure that we can’t track him magically . . . where do you think they are right now, Elizabet?”
The older woman smiled wryly, her white teeth very bright against her dark skin. “Kayla isn’t someone who’d run away from a fight, so I know they didn’t just run for the hills—I’d guess they’re on their way across the Bay to the Dublin Labs right now, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s what I think, too.” Rage smoldered in her eyes. “Damn it, Eric Banyon, you are such a twit! How could he do this?”
“Perhaps because he did not wish any of us to risk our lives,” Kory said. Beth and Elizabet both turned to look at him. “I had thought about doing something similar,” he confessed, “but decided that I would probably not be able to succeed on my own.”
“And Eric, on the other hand, thinks he can do anything!” Beth clenched her hands into fists. “Okay, okay. Here’s what we do. I’ll call the psychic team, get them to head over to Mount Tam and start ASAP. The rest of us, and the elven assault team, will head over to the Labs and save Eric from his own stupidity. I can’t believe he dragged Kayla into this, too!”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Elizabet said. “You don’t know Kayla quite as well as I do. By the way, has anyone seen Susan this morning?”
Maybe this isn’t the best idea I’ve had in a long time, Susan thought. But I’m not going to be a bystander anymore. This is my project that some insane nut is trying to pervert into a killing machine, and maybe I can stop this without anyone getting killed—crazy human witches, elves or whatever other refugees from fantasy they can drag in.
It was that thought that had sparked her flight from the house on Broderick Street: the image of Melisande, lying dead with several .45 auto bullets in her, her blood soaking the white linoleum floors of the Dublin Labs. Not if I have anything to say about it.
As she expected, the traffic driving east along the Bay Bridge wasn’t too bad at this hour of morning. In the other direction, she could still see the “parking lot” of cars, inching their way into the city. It was a beautiful morning, with the last of the fog already burned away by the bright sunshine. She navigated the freeway interchange through Oakland, glancing involuntarily at the cleared area off to the right that had once been the double-decker Nimitz Freeway. This is what I’m going to prevent, she vowed silently. That’s why I fought to do the Poseidon Project, so that this would never happen again. Now I’m going to stop the inhuman bastard who wants to use my project for destruction.
It was a simple plan, what she was going to do. If she could get to Colonel Steve without being intercepted by Blair or any of his people, she knew she could convince him. Steve was ethical, no matter what Blair was. No amount of double-talking would get Blair out of this. Just the physical evidence, the fact that Blair was moving the probes and recalibrating the equipment to trigger a major quake—five minutes in the Lab, explaining what was going on to the colonel, and all of this would be over. Lab security would arrest Blair, she’d deactivate the machinery, and that would be the end of it.
The only tricky part was getting to Steve without alerting Blair. But she had a plan for that, too . . .
With luck this would work, because she had no intention of trusting that flaky dark-haired boy and his neurotic girlfriend. The elves she trusted, of course, but she couldn’t understand the overwhelming belief they had in their “Bard.” He screwed things up royally before, didn’t he? No, what she was doing was risky, but safer than the other options. And she wouldn’t have to watch Sandy die.
She turned on the radio, and punched the button to bring up the local talk radio channel. The station announcer was talking about the morning’s earthquake, and another very minor one that had hit ten minutes ago—right while I was driving across the Bridge, she thought. Terrific. But the announcer assured everyone that there was nothing to worry about, the seismologists at Cal Tech had said that the faults were just releasing a little pressure, there was no chance of a major quake.
She smiled humorlessly at that, and drove a little faster.
A half-hour later, she braked to a stop at the guard gate at the Labs, flashing her I.D. to the security officer. She parked in the underground lot, leaving the car doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. She knew she didn’t have to worry about car thieves, not in this complex. And there was a high possibility she might want to leave in a hurry.
Her first stop was the cafeteria on the second floor. There was a small dining room off the main area, which had a telephone in it. She strolled past the security officers, staying away from the elevators that descended into the underground laboratories. At this hour, the hallways were mostly deserted. Still, she breathed a sigh of relief when she walked through the cafeteria doors.
The cafeteria was empty. She guessed that all the personnel were in the kitchen, preparing for the lunch crowd. A few seconds later, she was standing next to the telephone. She dialed Steve’s extension and listened to the ringing tone. Come on, Steve, pick up your phone!
A click, then she heard his voice. “Colonel O’Neill, Poseidon Project.”
“Steve, this is me. Are you alone?”
“Susan, where are you? Are you all right?” His voice sounded concerned.
“I’m okay. Listen, we have to talk, right now. Where’s Warden Blair? Is he in the lab?”
“No, he’s organizing the cleanup on Level Thirteen. Where have you been, Susan? Security said you never went home, you’ve been missing for twenty-four hours . . . ”
“I’ll explain later. Meet me in my lab in five minutes. And please, don’t tell Blair or any of his people, all right?”
She waited, wondering how that security-overconscious mind was taking what she’d just said.
“Okay. I’ll be there ASAP, Susan.”
She hung up the phone, and hurried to the closest stairs. Ten minutes later, she was in her lab.
For a moment, as she stepped through the doorway, it felt as though all of the events of the last two days had been only a nightmare. Maybe, if she wished for it hard enough, Frank and Dave would walk back in the door, ready to help her set up the next test run. But no, there was the oscilloscope she’d thrown at the monster, broken and dented; someone had placed it back upon the worktable.
No time for funk, not now. She moved quickly, making sure that the computer workstation was up and running, then loaded the Poseidon simulation program. She set it to run a simulation based on current test run parameters, and waited impatiently as the numbers scrolled past on the screen. The screen cleared, then began to build the three-dimensional fractal landscape of the Bay Area, pinpointing the exact trigger point of the quake and the widening circles of area of effect and potential energy release levels.
“Son of a bitch!”
Until now, I wasn’t certain. It could’ve just been an evil fantasy, a delusion that Warden Blair wanted to destroy the city.
Now it’s laid out in front of me in full-color graphics . . .
As she’d guessed from the elven scouts’ reports, the Poseidon device was aimed at the San Andreas fault, directly beneath Hollister. And the potential energy readings were off the scales, somewhere beyond 10.0 on the Richter.
He’ll wipe the entire Bay Area off the map. Hell, the effects would destroy the Labs as well! How did he plan on surviving it?
The answer came to her a moment later, in a memory of the shadow-monsters drifting through the hallways of the Labs. Shadow-monsters that wouldn’t care if the complex crumpled in on itself, burying level upon level in rumbling death. She remembered the alien intelligence behind Blair’s eyes. He looks human, but he isn’t.
“Susan?”
She turned quickly, to see Colonel Steve walking toward her. “Steve, thank God! Listen, we probably don’t have much time . . . Blair is planning to use the project as a weapon, with San Francisco as his first test case. I have proof of this—he’s moved the probes off our test run coordinates and set them to trigger a major quake. Let me show you the computer simulation . . . it displays exactly where he was going to trigger the quake.”
He smiled. “It’s okay, Susan. I know.”
Shock froze her mind and her body—but her mouth kept going.
“But you haven’t arrested Blair yet?” Surely this was just a sting. Surely Steve had something planned.
He didn’t answer, only standing there, looking at her. There was something strange about Steve’s face. She hadn’t seen it at first, but now it was visible to her . . . lines of tension that hadn’t been there before. No, not just the lines in his face . . . it was in his eyes, a cold blankness, an alien intelligence that was staring back at her . . .
If she’d seen this before she’d met the elves, the musician, she’d have assumed she was the crazy one. Not now,
God, no. Not Steve. Please, this can’t be happening, this can’t be real . . .
She had to get out of here, before this insanity consumed her as well. That was her one thought, that if Blair could do—whatever it was that he’d done—to Steve, it was only a matter of time until she was changed into something like him: a walking and talking human being with an alien’s thoughts peering out from within her eyes . . .
But Steve was between her and the door. And Steve had a gun.
“This goes too fast,” she whispered, sitting down on one of the wooden Lab stools with a thump.
I am stuck. If he has Steve, and Steve has me—he has me. It’s over. “So, Steve, what happens now?” she asked conversationally, looking up at him.
He seemed momentarily taken aback. “I—I don’t know,” he said uncertainly. “I’m supposed to keep you here, until Blair tells me what to do. I wish—I wish you hadn’t come back, Susan. For a little while, I thought you were safe, safely far away from this.”
“I could’ve been, if I’d had any brains.” What’s going on inside his head? she wondered. “Steve, can’t you just let me walk out of here?”
“Can’t—can’t do that.” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “He won’t let me.” His hand twitched next to the pistol holster on his hip.
“I see.” Her glance fell upon the broken oscilloscope on the table next to her. The thought occurred to her that while the oscilloscope had been useless against a nightmare creature, it might be significantly more applicable against a human being. Especially if she swung it hard enough. “Steve, is that Blair out in the hall?”
Steve’s glance swung toward the open door. “No, I can feel where he is, he’s still on the thirteenth—”
The oscilloscope crashed into his chest. Steve made an odd choking sound, and stumbled backwards into another Lab table. A split-second later, Susan was out the door and running down the corridor.
She heard Steve’s voice from behind her, furious. “Susan! Stop or I’ll shoot!”
He won’t shoot me, she thought, any more than I could’ve hit him in the head with the ’scope. I couldn’t kill him, and I know he won’t—
The noise of the gun firing was very loud in the narrow corridor.
Something slammed into her back, a sudden pain like her body had been set on fire. The shock threw her forward against the wall; a second shock, a moment later, as she landed hard on the floor. Everything was very bright, very white . . . she tried to move, to get up and run, but somehow nothing seemed to be working right in her body anymore, everything was numb with pain and her legs just wouldn’t move at all.
She heard footsteps approaching, and Steve’s voice whispering, “I’m sorry, Susan . . . ”
I can’t forgive you, Steve, she wanted to whisper back to him, but the whiteness engulfed her before she could say a word.