The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man

by Dave Hutchinson

  “Are there any?” Alex asked. “Pretty sights?”

  Larry grinned that grin again. “Sure. The SCS is the largest privately funded science project in the world. Don’t you think that qualifies it for a look-see? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  Well, no. “Stan wants me to create sensawunda.”

  Larry gave him a level look. “Stan wants gravity.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Gravity. He wants to know how it works.” He sat back. “Actually, he’s self-aware enough to realise he probably won’t be able to understand it, but he’s got people who can boil off a cartoon version for him. He can hold up a piece of paper and say ‘Behold: The Graviton’. Cue music, crowd goes wild.”

  “Is that a bad thing? Particularly?”

  Larry shrugged. “Good, bad, it doesn’t matter. If they come up with some solid proof about the nature of gravity, he gets the bragging rights. They find themselves a massless spin-2 boson and they get to rewrite quantum field theory.”

  “So it’s quite a big deal, then.”

  Larry squinted at him. “What kind of science journalist did you say you were?”

  “The wrong kind, obviously.”

  Larry picked up his glass, half emptied it in one swallow, put it back on the table. “Most people believe it’s experimentally impossible to detect individual gravitons. Gravitational waves? Sure, we got those. But the individual particle, nope. They interact very weakly with normal matter. You’d need to put a detector the size of a gas giant in orbit around a neutron star, and even then you’d only pick up a graviton once in a blue moon, and even then you couldn’t be certain it was a graviton.”

  “So the SCS is a waste of time? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Well, I’ve seen some papers which suggest it would be possible to detect gravitons in a collider. I’m not convinced, myself.” He sniffed. “But it’s Clayton’s money.”

  Alex thought about it. “I’ve been here almost eight months,” he said, “and this is the first time I’ve heard anyone mention gravitons.” Now he thought about it, nobody had ever mentioned a specific task for the SCS; they were just going to smash up particles at energies no one had reached before and see what came out. It was research for research’s sake, and that was one of the things that made it a hard sell.

  “Well, that’s PR for you, isn’t it.” Larry refilled his glass again, then held the empty pitcher above his head to indicate he wanted more. “They’re going to get all kinds of interesting results, once they get the thing working properly, but if word got out that they were tilting at windmills…” The waitress took the empty pitcher from his hand, replaced it with a full one, and went away again.

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “They got in touch, six, seven years ago and asked me to lead the research. I wasn’t interested in being a figurehead.”

  Alex suddenly had a horrific thought. “Is that why the military are involved?” Because the merest hint of being able to manipulate gravity would have been enough to interest the defence industries.

  “Ah, well,” Larry said. “What motivates our friends in uniform, I can’t say.”

  Alex rubbed his eyes. This was a scandal of enormous proportions. Or was it? Could it be a scandal if everyone went into it with their eyes wide open, knowing what they were trying to do was impossible? “Stan’s not a stupid man,” he said.

  “No sir, he is not. What he is, is obsessed. I told you. He wants gravity, and he’s found a bunch of people who’ve told him, whether they believe it or not, that he could have it if he builds his toy just… so and presses the big red button.” He drained his glass in one go, refilled it. “Actually, what I think really happened is that he found a bunch of people who told him it was impossible, but that it shouldn’t stop him from trying. A lot of people have been feathering their own nests from Clayton’s piggy bank.”

  “Jesus. So what are you doing here?”

  “Like I said, they’re going to get some cool results whatever happens.” Larry drained his glass again. “And all kinds of interesting stuff happens when a failure mode kicks in.” He got up. “Back in a second.”

  While he was gone, Alex stared into space, trying to think. There was probably a book in Stan’s quixotic pursuit of the force of gravity, but it wasn’t the book that Stan wanted him to write.

  There was a sudden commotion at the other end of the bar, the sound of breaking glass and raised voices. Alex turned his head and saw Larry and one of the pool-playing bikers standing toe-to-toe, yelling at each other, and he felt his heart sink. As he watched, Larry, still shouting, took a step back, grabbed one of the cues from the pool table, and broke it over the biker’s head.

  THEY SPENT THE afternoon and early evening in cells at the local police headquarters. Alex sat on the grubby mattress with his back against the concrete wall, knees drawn up to his chest. Periodically, he could hear one or other of the bikers, along the row of cells, shouting threats and obscenities at Larry, but the only response from Larry was snoring.

  At some point, there was the sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor outside, a key in the lock, and the door swung open and Bud Rosewater was standing there. They looked at each other for a while.

  “Alex,” said Bud.

  “Bud,” said Alex.

  Bud gave a little jerk of the head. “Let’s go.”

  The local police chief, a man named Lundgren, was waiting by the front desk, looking stern. Alex thought Chief Lundgren spent quite a lot of time looking stern. He looked on while the desk sergeant produced Alex’s personal effects in an A4-sized envelope. Alex opened the flap and looked inside without taking anything out, because he didn’t want Bud to see the 007 Phone. He signed for his belongings.

  “What about Professor Day?” he asked.

  “We’ll let him sleep it off, then we’ll probably let him loose with some harsh words,” said Lundgren. “We found crystal meth on the other guys, so we’ll want to discuss that with them in more detail.” He watched Alex signing a couple of other forms. “You might want to consider not coming back to this county again, Mr Dolan.”

  “I’ve been considering it ever since I got here,” Alex said. “No offence.”

  “None taken.”

  Alex rolled up the mouth of the envelope and turned to Bud. “Are we done?”

  “I’m parked out front.” He nodded to Lundgren. “Chuck.”

  Lundgren nodded back. “Bud.”

  In the truck and heading south towards Rosewater County, Alex sat with the envelope in his lap, staring out at the passing countryside. He felt tired, somehow jetlagged.

  “You okay?” Bud asked after a while.

  “Me? Oh, I’m grand, thanks. Never better.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. We were having a quiet drink, Larry got up to go to the loo, the next thing I knew we were being arrested.” One of the unpleasant-looking men in the Black Cougar had turned out to be an off-duty police officer, who had restored order, of a sort, by breaking a couple of heads before calling for backup.

  “That place has a bad reputation,” Bud told him.

  “It wasn’t my idea.”

  Bud grunted. “I guess not.” Without taking his eyes off the road, he unbuttoned one of his breast pockets and took out a folded slip of paper and held it out.

  “Another customer satisfaction survey?” Alex asked, taking it and unfolding it. A Minnesota address was printed on it.

  “Mickey said you were asking about Vern and Pam,” said Bud. “The Shanahans.”

  “Oh. Oh. Thank you.” He unrolled the mouth of the envelope, dropped the note inside, rolled it up again. It occurred to him to ask why Bud had the address, but he kept his mouth shut.

  They drove on for a while in silence. A sign went by welcoming them to Iowa. After a few more miles, Bud said, “Technically, Chuck didn’t let you go. He released you into my custody.”

  Alex thought about it. “So wh
at happens now?”

  Bud shrugged. “I could take you back to town and put you in a cell until I decide what to do with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Or you could make a spectacular escape and I’d never see you again.”

  Alex said nothing.

  “Hey!” Bud shouted all of a sudden, making Alex jump. “Where’d he go? How’d he get out of the truck?”

  “Very funny.”

  Bud chuckled. “Word to the wise, Alex? Stay out of that guy’s way.”

  There was no need to ask who ‘that guy’ was. Alex looked out of the passenger window. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  Bud nodded. “Don’t mention it.”

  A COUPLE OF weeks passed. Larry was not seen at the SCS; there was anecdotal evidence that he was making a nuisance of himself at MIT, but no one knew for sure. Alex tried to get his head back into the book, which comprised about fifty thousand words’ worth of disconnected bits. He’d been promised an in-depth interview with Stan about his motivations for launching the project in the first place, but somehow that kept never quite materialising, so in the end he’d had to make do with press releases and media profiles. He was sort of tempted to write Stan out of the book altogether, leave him as a mysterious, unnamed presence in the background. He quite liked that idea, in fact.

  Most evenings, he went over to Ralph’s for a game of chess. He thought his game was improving, although he had not once come close to winning, or even forcing a draw.

  “You’re getting better,” Ralph said one night, after thoroughly destroying him in a dozen or so moves.

  “No I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are,” Ralph insisted. “You’re… no, you’re right. You’re a lousy chess player. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Cheers.” Alex gave the board one last look, then he started to reset the pieces. “Do you ever miss writing?”

  Ralph raised an eyebrow. “Miss it?” He settled back in his chair and lit a cigar. “I guess not, no.”

  “What happened?”

  Ralph shrugged. “I just woke up one day and I couldn’t do it any more. Ran out of words.” He regarded Alex through a cloud of cigar smoke. “You don’t believe in writers’ block?”

  “It’s not an excuse most of my editors would have accepted.”

  Ralph grunted. “You’re in a different part of the business, of course. I kind of admire journalists, having to churn out copy day after day, come rain or shine or hangover. It’s quite a discipline.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way.” He held out his fists. Ralph leaned forward and tapped one; Alex opened it to reveal a black pawn. He turned the board around.

  “You want me to read what you’ve got so far?”

  Alex shook his head. “There’s nothing to read. Just a lot of bits.” He looked at the board for a couple of moments, then played pawn to king four.

  “What’s your deadline?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  Ralph narrowed his eyes at him.

  “I haven’t asked anyone, but I’ve been through my contract and there’s no delivery date.”

  Ralph thought about it. “This is why amateurs shouldn’t be allowed to mess around in the business,” he said finally. “You think they’re actually serious about this?”

  Alex shrugged. “I’m here. And the money seems to be real. I do wonder sometimes, though.”

  “Seems a peculiar thing to do, ask a man to write a book and then just forget about it.”

  “That never happened to you?”

  Ralph laughed. “Hell no. I had editors on my back the whole time, especially when I was hot. Do us this thing, Ralph, do us that thing, Ralph. We think you’re really great. And then all of a sudden they stopped.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Ralph pushed one of his pawns forward. “I’m not.”

  Alex looked at him. Despite almost constant grumbling about dieticians, the old man was sticking to his diet and he hadn’t put on the weight he’d lost while he was in hospital. Instead, he seemed to be slowly mummifying. He said, “I’m a spy.”

  Ralph glanced up from the board. “Say what?”

  He couldn’t believe he’d actually said it, out loud. For a moment, he doubted that he had said it. He habitually left his phones at home when he visited Ralph, and he was as sure as he could be that Stan’s people hadn’t wired this house. But still.

  He said, “I’m a spy.” And he told Ralph about Kitson’s approach, the fait accompli he’d been presented with.

  When he’d finished, Ralph spent a while regarding the end of his cigar. Finally, he said, “Well, this is exciting.”

  “It’s really not.”

  “Here I was, thinking you were just another halfwitted journalist, and now it turns out you’ve been James Bond all along.”

  “Ralph. I’m serious.”

  Ralph looked at him and pursed his lips and said, “Well. I’d say you were in a situation, son.”

  “No shit.” Alex looked at the chessboard but suddenly none of the pieces made any sense. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Have you told anyone else?”

  Alex shook his head. He’d almost told Bud, on the drive back from the Black Cougar the other week, but had thought better of it. It had never even crossed his mind to tell Wendy.

  Ralph stared into space. “The government tried to get me to spy for them once,” he mused.

  “What?”

  “Back in the late 90s. I was touring Aztec Snow and my publishers got me a gig in Moscow. The usual stuff, interviews, bookshop signings, a lecture at the university. Five days of vodka and pickles and black bread. Anyway, this pencilneck turned up a couple of weeks before I was due to leave. Said he was from State and they’d be ever so grateful if I’d keep my eyes and ears open while I was in Russia and if I saw or heard anything interesting I could let them know when I got back.”

  “Wow. What did you do?”

  “Said yes, sure. I was hoping they’d send me to spy school, teach me how to do invisible writing and use a one-time pad and set up dead-drops, but they didn’t. So I just forgot about it. Went to Moscow, had a great time. When I got back the pencilneck turned up again and I told him I didn’t have anything to report, and I never saw him again.”

  “Good lord.” Here they were, a pair of amateur spies.

  “Anyway,” Ralph went on, “the point of telling you all that is that you haven’t been sent in here to steal blueprints or some new weapon of mass destruction. It sounds to me as if all they want you to do is keep your eyes and ears open. If there’s nothing here for you to see or hear, that’s not your fault.”

  “Kitson’s very keen,” said Alex. “He’s sure something’s going on.” He thought about it. “Also, nobody threatened to have you deported.”

  “They can’t deport you for not telling them about stuff that isn’t there. Why would they do that? Spite? It’s a lot of effort and all it does is increase the chance of you going running to Wikileaks.”

  “Nobody goes running to Wikileaks any more, Ralph. Those days are over.”

  Ralph waved a hand. “Whatever.”

  “I remain unconvinced.”

  “That’s your business, Alex, and nothing I say’s going to make you feel any better. But if you want my advice? Fuck ’em.” He leaned forward and moved one of his knights. “You don’t even know he’s really an intelligence officer.”

  “He’s on the end of the right phone number.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Alex brought his bishop back across the board. “Pretty sure.”

  “Pretty sure isn’t sure. For all you know, this is some sort of industrial espionage thing. Some jealous scientist wanting to find out the inside scoop from Black Hole Central.”

  “Scientists don’t do that, Ralph.”

  Ralph stared at him. “Oh, please.” He looked at the board again. “Thing is, you don’t know. All you know is what this guy told you. Ever hear the phr
ase ‘false flag’?” He moved his knight again. “Mate.”

  Alex looked at the board. “You asshole.”

  THE ADDRESS BUD had given him for the Shanahans was not in Minneapolis or in St Paul, but further to the west of the Twin Cities, in a town called St Christopher. It was an almost four-hour drive from Sioux Crossing, and the Accord was more than equal to an eight-hour round trip, but instead he drove over to Mason City and parked at the long-stay car park at the airport, then went inside to the Hertz desk and hired a Lexus, with cash. He did all this almost without thinking, an indication of the generalised air of paranoia which had begun to settle on his life. He had no evidence that there was a tracker on his car, but equally he had no evidence that there was not, and if anyone did, in future, ponder why the car had spent all day in the car park at Mason City airport, well, he’d have to cross that bridge. He’d left his phones at home, so before leaving the airport he bought a preloaded burner in case of emergencies, and set off north.

  He was in St Christopher just after lunchtime, following the Lexus’s GPS to find the Shanahans’ address. As a town, it didn’t seem all that much larger than Sioux Crossing, and if it didn’t have that brand-new patina, it seemed prosperous enough.

  The address turned out to be a small apartment complex on the edge of town, set in its own grounds and looking out across farmland that seemed to go on forever into the west. A sign with the words WINDY RIVERS APARTMENTS went by as he drove through the gates.

  He parked in a little parking lot to one side of the complex and walked back round to the front. The Shanahans were in one of the ground-floor apartments. He walked up to the door, took a moment to gather his thoughts, then rang the bell.

  There was no answer, and it belatedly occurred to him that he might have driven all this way only to find nobody here. He rang the bell again, and this time he heard the door being unlocked. It opened, and a young boy was standing there, blond and big-boned and about eleven years old.

  “Hi,” said the boy.

  “Hi,” said Alex. “Are your parents home?”

  “Who is it, Timothy?” called a man’s voice from inside the apartment.