Paradigms Lost - eARC

by Ryk E. Spoor

  “He could be a wolf.”

  “If Rex Hammersmith has failed to thoroughly douse such an unknown in silver dust,” Morgan said, “then I would be very disappointed in him. I am quite certain that such tests would be applied in an extreme fashion before Mr. Hammersmith would allow anyone to remain in close proximity to Miss Lumiere, and as we know, even Virigar is not immune to silver.”

  That did make sense. “Okay, then. I hope you’re right about who he is. I’m sure it won’t be hard to get a chance to drop by Valinor, given how happy she is with Sky’s work.” I studied Riakafan for a moment. There’s another mystery, though…

  “I will certainly arrange it,” Morgan said. “But now, Master Jason, what is it that brought you here?”

  “Something maybe associated with that deep past again. Not nearly so exciting, probably.”

  Nothing would be likely to dent Verne’s good spirits, but he turned to me more gravely. “Then by all means, tell me.”

  “Xavier Ross. I just received some more info on his case from Jeri, and some of it’s…pretty interesting.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, before she died, Renee had pushed for further investigation on his disappearance; the whole thing had bothered the hell out of her, coupled with the fact that the reason the kid went out in the first place was that no one out on the Coast was willing to reopen the case of his brother’s murder. So she’d called in a few favors and from what I read here, she even put some of her own money into a couple of PIs to poke around and ask questions. Wish she’d mentioned it to me; I’d have kicked in a few dollars.”

  I shrugged. “Anyway, knowing where they thought he got hit, they were able to interview people who might have been in the area, and they did find a couple of people who thought they noticed someone fitting Xavier’s description. One in particular is very interesting—a guy who works in an office facing the right area of the street.” I put down a couple of printouts, pointed to a paragraph midway down the first page.

  Verne read aloud, “Interviewee David Ringo said that he recognized Xavier Ross from the photograph. ‘I especially remember because he was talking to this really tall guy, kinda a weirdo in a funny outfit and a strange hat.’” Verne’s head came up slowly. “Khoros.”

  “Seems likely; but that’s only part of the fun in this one. Take a look at this later report. Apparently, Mr. Ringo called back to the station some months later and gave this tidbit. ‘Hey, I think I saw that kid you were looking for, Ross! He was right near where he was last time—I think he’d just come out of the alley. And that same guy with the five-sided hat was there.’”

  Verne’s mouth tightened. “So Khoros is not merely peripherally involved. Did Mr. Ringo say where they went?”

  “According to him, he ran out the door and tried to follow them, but they’d vanished around a corner, even though,” I continued, with a meaningful glance at Verne, “there seemed to be nowhere they could have gone.” I checked the dates once more. “And if the dates are right, it looks like this sighting happened one year to the day from the time Xavier Ross vanished.”

  Verne muttered something in Atlantean which I was pretty sure did not constitute a compliment to Khoros. “Then it is all related, my friend. Anything else?”

  “Well, they did manage to find members of a gang that had apparently assaulted Xavier, but according to their testimony they never got to finish it because someone interrupted.”

  “Khoros, of course,” Verne said, nodding.

  “No, actually.” I did enjoy surprising Verne on occasion, and his eyebrows rose at my response. “The two punks interviewed both agreed on a bunch of things, once they stopped trying to pretend that nothing had happened. First, they had attacked this kid cutting through the alley. Second, someone had knifed the kid pretty bad—in the gut, probably. Third, just before they had a chance to finish him off, this old guy showed up out of nowhere, and beat the living hell out of the entire gang by himself.”

  Verne blinked. “An ‘old guy,’ you say?”

  “Yep. White hair, long mustache, they guessed he must be seventy at least. But according to the one guy they picked up…” I looked until I found the part I wanted. “Yeah, here. ‘That old man told Colt to stop it, standing there just like…like nothing could touch him. And when Colt went to shoot him, he just…was there, twenty, thirty feet from where he’d been and taking Colt’s gun away without even a pause, you know? We all went after him…and it was, you know, like we didn’t even matter to him.”

  I looked up. “He goes on to say that he thought the old man killed three or four of them and knocked out the rest, except a couple like the witness who ran like hell when they realized just how badly they were outclassed. No one ever found any bodies…but Jeri checked, and the ones that the witness thought were killed were never seen after that day.” I shook my head. “Twenty-two people—gang members—against one old man? What the hell was this guy, and how’s he mixed up in this?”

  Verne picked up the paper and studied it; a faint smile appeared on his face. “Perhaps…” he said slowly, with that smile brightening, showing the same hope I had seen in his eyes before, “just perhaps…the father came for his son.”

  Part VII: Shadow of Fear

  May 2001

  Chapter 73: Rude Awakening

  The scream was so piercing that I was up, cradling Syl in my arms even before I was fully awake. “What? What is it, Syl?”

  She was shaking, and for a moment she couldn’t speak, just clung to me tightly, staring into the darkness of our bedroom as though something monstrous lurked there. As there was enough moonlight coming through the windows, I could tell that in fact there wasn’t anything lurking anywhere in the room.

  Finally she relaxed her grip. “Something…something happened, Jason.”

  “Not to be sarcastic, Syl, but…that’s not very clear on the ‘something.’”

  “I…” She swallowed, reached out to the side table and grabbed the glass she usually kept there, and drained all the water left. “Better. Jason…I don’t know what it was. It was…a shock, a ripple, like the whole Earth was struck by something huge.”

  “What? You’re saying…what, a meteor or—” I had the terrible image of a dinosaur-killer having hit somewhere on Earth and us being just minutes away from annihilation by fire or water.

  “No, not…not struck Earth physically. It was almost like being hit myself, inside, where my Talent is.”

  I blinked sleep out of my eyes, gave her another hug, and sighed. “Okay. Wish I knew what that meant, though.”

  I waited until her shakes died down, then got out of bed and turned on the light, glancing at the clock. 3:25 a.m. “Hope we can get back to sleep in a bit, but I know neither of us is ready just yet.” I turned on my computer and switched on the TV; Syl often watches TV until she falls asleep, and I figured I could do some quick searches to see if there was anything I could connect to her “shock.”

  As the TV came on, however, I realized I probably didn’t have to search, because the normal late-night programming wasn’t on; instead there was the serious face of a main cable news anchor, staring out at us, saying: “…no response as of yet, but current reports indicate a nuclear explosion.”

  He cut to images—clearly taken with cheap, easily available cameras—showing a huge mushroom cloud rising over some forest or jungle. “These are the first images coming in from Gabon. They appear to confirm that a very large explosion has occurred somewhere within the country.”

  I frowned. Hard to think of this as coincidence, but I doubt that nuclear bombs would have some kind of psychic shockwave or whatever. And what the hell would someone be doing, bombing Gabon? I checked some online maps. Making some guesses based on what the newscaster said as to the location of the images, it looked like the blast would have happened…basically in the middle of nowhere, rainforest without a single valid military or industrial target within at least a couple hundred miles.

  The phone
suddenly rang. I glanced at Syl, who was still riveted to the newscast, shrugged and picked it up. “Jason Wood.”

  “Mr. Wood.” The rough-toned voice was instantly recognizable. “It seems you are already awake. Would I be correct in assuming your wife woke you up?”

  “You would.”

  “My sympathies to you both. I’d like to invite you to join the investigation.”

  I nodded to myself. Of course. “You don’t think it was a nuke.”

  “I’d bet everything on that, yes. And since you’re the world’s current authority on the strange, getting you in on it early will look properly proactive.”

  “Not to mention,” I said, heading over towards my dresser as I talked, “if I’m working for you, you can tell me whenever you want me to look the other way. Harder to do that if I work for anyone else.”

  The short chuckle indicated I’d hit the mark. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

  “As long as Syl comes along. Face it, she’s more likely to be useful than I am.”

  “If she wishes to accompany you, I won’t object.”

  “Of course I’ll come,” Sylvie called from the other side of the room, where she was sorting out clothes and starting to pack. “Mr. Achernar has some of the Talent but I have much more experience in this kind of Sensing.”

  “Excellent,” said Achernar. “By the time you reach the Albany Airport, I will have a fast transport waiting.”

  I followed Syl’s instincts in packing—which suggested that we’d be there for a while. I’ve never been anywhere in Africa. Shame this isn’t a vacation trip. I made sure to pack stuff ideal for hot-weather bush-hiking; Gabon had actual rainforest and sat right in the middle of the tropics. It was a good thing that I always kept a travel pack of essential toiletries and such ready; saved me a lot of time.

  It was well over an hour before we were in the car and on our way to the airport. “Wonder what Mr. Achernar will have arranged?” Syl mused.

  “My guess? Something we won’t expect,” I answered, pulling into the parking lot. “He plays on a different level than the rest of—”

  My new cell phone beeped. “Jason Wood here.”

  “See you’ve arrived, Jason,” came the Jammer’s voice. “I’ll let Mr. Achernar know.”

  “How the heck did you—”

  “Traced the phone, cell tower triangulation, called once you stopped moving.”

  Showoff. “All right. You coming on this trip too?”

  “No, I’m staying at HQ, actually. Not that I mind field trips, but the amenities out there in the bush aren’t going to fit my usual preferences.”

  “Where am I—”

  “Just go in the main entrance, you’ll figure it out.”

  I rolled my eyes. Super-spies employing wiseguy hackers really should stay in bad suspense novels. “Okay.”

  Syl was already pulling her luggage out of the trunk; I followed and the two of us eventually made it to the entrance—where I saw James Achernar waiting.

  “You’re playing taxi yourself?”

  “For something like this? Yes. I’ll brief you on what we know along the way.”

  Waiting on the tarmac, far away from the usual commercial jets, was a plane of a type I’d never seen before—though with its shadow-black color and sleek, almost bladelike design, I could tell that the SR-71 Blackbird had to figure heavily in its ancestry, though there was something oddly out of place about parts of its engine mountings. “What is that?”

  “HSC-2 Hermes, high-speed courier aircraft. Only three like it on Earth,” Achernar answered. “Fastest operating aircraft in the world. She’ll get us there in under three hours.”

  “That’s almost six thousand miles in less than three hours?” I said, trying to grasp what I was hearing.

  “Correct.”

  We entered Hermes and found that it was set up more as a small private jet than a military vehicle…though all the seats could be locked down and equipped for full military acceleration, and—I was able to see as I studied them carefully—also had full ejection setups; they looked like Martin-Baker manufacture with mods.

  “Strap in,” Achernar said, and to my surprise he went to the pilot’s seat. “I want us in the air as soon as possible.”

  “You know how to fly too, Mr. Bond?” I asked as I followed his instructions. Syl didn’t seem as gobsmacked as I was, probably because she didn’t spend a lot of her time thinking about technology and its limits.

  He laughed briefly. “I have an…eclectic skillset, yes. Not, unfortunately, the equal of that particular gentleman, but I have advanced degrees in aerospace engineering as well as psychology, and training as a pilot and driver of multiple vehicles. And a few other less commonly useful skills involving things like handguns.”

  The jet engines began their rumbling whistle—surprisingly faint. Must have very good soundproofing here. “And a master of the martial arts, I’d bet.”

  Hermes began to move slowly down the tarmac. “Tower, this is Courier Seven, requesting clearance for takeoff,” Achernar said into his headset, then in answer to my question, “Actually, no. I’m not completely incompetent in hand-to-hand, but in all honesty, our mutual friend, the Jammer, could probably beat me in that area.”

  That was a bit of a surprise; I’d started imagining Achernar as the classic superspy, and his wide range of talents had seemed to fit with that. “Really?”

  “Really. There are unfortunately a lot of things I don’t do well—which is why I need a team, after all.”

  “Courier Seven, you are cleared for takeoff on Runway Two,” the tower said.

  “Roger. Courier Seven cleared for takeoff on Runway Two,” Achernar acknowledged.

  A few minutes later, Hermes roared thunder from both main jets and pushed us back in the seats with more force than I’d felt in any normal takeoff. Syl was wide-eyed at the power the plane demonstrated. Swiftly, the nose lifted and the plane streaked into the sky, the lights of the city dwindling away below us as we arrowed away towards the gray light of approaching dawn.

  A screen deployed from the ceiling, and the lights dimmed. An image appeared of a green jungle with a huge, bare, perfectly circular crater in the center, surrounded by countless thousands of trees blown flat like matchsticks in a gale, radiating outward from the crater; a significant number were on fire, or had been, and smoke fogged the image. “Holy crap.”

  Achernar unstrapped, having set the plane on autopilot, and came back. “Okay, we’ll start the briefing. First, the summary of what we know so far.

  “At 7:02 GMT, sensing stations at various locations registered a shallow seismic pulse located in Mwagne National Park, near the border between Gabon and the Congo. Fortunately, one of our low-level satellites was in position to get a picture within ten minutes of detonation; this is the image you see here.

  “The diameter of the primary crater is one thousand, seven hundred forty meters. From this, surrounding blowdown effects, and initial seismic pulse, we estimated a detonation on the order of eighty to one hundred megatons.” He looked at me and Syl. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

  I thought a moment, then pointed to the trees. “Only some of them are on fire. The thermal pulse from a nuke—or from a meteorite, for that matter—should have cooked everything closer than a certain distance, and I’m thinking that distance should be quite a ways out.”

  He nodded. “Very good, Mr. Wood.”

  “And mundane explosions don’t send out mystical pulses, either,” Syl said firmly.

  “Agreed,” Achernar said with a wry smile, “but I can’t put that into a For General Release report. In fact, I probably don’t want to put it in more restricted reports, either. The fact that you and I—and probably a number of other people—sensed something cataclysmic at the same time is very important to us, but not something we want known outside of a very limited circle.”

  I was studying the picture carefully. It had the usual distortions and limited resolution of satellite i
mages; contrary to popular myth, you can’t just whistle up a satellite and read the newspaper over someone’s shoulder. But there was still a fair amount of detail…

  I got up and walked to the screen. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

  In the very center of the crater, almost obscured by drifting haze, was a darker object, maybe greenish.

  “Good eyes, Mr. Wood. That is very much what we want to know, and why we are trying to get there as fast as humanly possible—before anyone else can, hopefully.”

  “You mentioned a team; you have people other than us, I hope. I’m no forensics expert, and this would be out of even a normal forensics guy’s league.”

  “Oh, I’ve got several more people coming.” He looked back at the crater and grimaced. “I wish I had even more, but there’s a limit to how many I can trust…and how many I can get there. One more thing…what do you think it was that we didn’t find so far?”

  Given that they didn’t have boots on the ground yet, that left remote monitoring of various sorts. So…“Radiation. You haven’t picked up any increase of radiation.”

  “Not one extra click on the geiger counters, no,” he acknowledged. “Mystery enough for you?”

  “Mystery enough, yes. Hopefully we’ll learn something useful.”

  “Oh, we will, Jason,” Sylvie said, and her voice had that tone in it. “We will.”

  Chapter 74: Smoking Gun

  “Well,” I said finally, as staring failed to make sense of what I saw, “it’s…definitely not what I expected.”

  Achernar’s expression probably matched mine—the dumbfounded expression of a man who’d opened the hood of his car to find that the engine consisted of three hamsters running a giant wheel at three thousand RPM.

  Syl didn’t look quite as surprised, but she was obviously overwhelmed by the sheer scale of destruction…and, I guessed, the lingering traces of the power that had echoed to her halfway around the world.