“What’s with the robes and hoods?”
The Senator smiled and said,
“Classified. I am sure you understand. Ah, here’s our Security Clearance.”
As Joseph stuck his hand out to receive it, he looked down. Instead of the expected papers in the Senator’s hand, there was a handgun. Puzzled, he looked up and was about to ask what was happening when he found out. The Senator fired three quick rounds into Joseph’s chest sending him reeling backwards. Joseph Mann was now lying on his back, hands and feet twitching in all directions. The Senator then stepped forward and fired a final shot into his chest, Joseph’s eyes slowly closed. In a very nonpolitical voice the Senator sneered,
“And that’s for your insolence.”
Seeing their security officer shot, many in the crowd suddenly understood that this was not a part of the evacuation. At a safe distance, they stopped and stared in confusion at the hooded men. The only reason the Senator did not fire into the crowd was that there were more of them than he had bullets. With gun in hand, he waved them away while yelling,
“He was contaminated. Disperse before I am forced to do the same to you.”
Some believed the horror of the contamination and others feared the retaliation. Regardless of the reason, they all turned and walked away. The Senator then turned to the choppers and gave the all-clear signal. In unison, the rotors whirled and tossed wind and sand about. Once clear of the compound all three turned in the same direction and sped off into the horizon.
At the silo door, the card was swiped and Congressman Tait made a move on the door but it did not open. A quizzical look toward the Senator prompted an explanation.
“It worked, the light is green. I suppose the elevator is down. It’ll just take a moment.”
Governor Sheltie added,
“Why would it be down? You’d think the General would have sent it up for us.”
The Senator nodded and added,
“I should have thought so as well.”
Chapter 28
The first one out of the elevator and stepping into the underground lobby was Whelan. With gun drawn and military eyes, he scanned the reception area for any sign of a mad General with a firearm. Satisfied that all was clear he signaled for Lynda and the Professor to follow. All eyes searched the cavernous reception wondering where General Irsthill might be. Lynda saw the receptionist’s desk in the middle of the floor and the clutter of caved in fans and conduits. Satisfied that they are alone, Whelan whispered,
“Let’s get to the lab.”
Upon hearing a familiar sound, Lynda stopped and turned around. The elevator doors closed and the whining motors indicated that it was going back up. She knew the elevator was a ‘sleeper’ that it stayed at the last command waiting for further instructions. This time it did not wait but rather went back up to the surface. Because Whelan and the Professor were already around the corner and out of sight, she let it go and hurried to catch up.
As Lynda turned the corner, she saw Whelan move slowly through the hall vigilantly checking all the offices. She was surprised to see that the Professor was not with him. Walking up to Whelan, without thinking of the consequences, she poked him in the back. Startled, he jumped and snapped around with pistol pointing at her. Quizzically he looked to her for an explanation. It only took her a second to figure it out and apologize for her error. She whispered,
“Sorry. What have you done with the Professor?”
Surprised, he spun around and checked the depth of the hall. He said,
“I don’t know. Where could he have gone?”
A sudden thought snapped into her.
“Our medical office.”
Seeing his confused look, she explained,
“The bell, he is after that stupid bell.”
Because the office was in the opposite direction of the lab and they were short on time as it was, the delay greatly annoyed him. He reluctantly pointed in the direction of the medical lab and both hurried off in that direction.
As they ran back through the reception area, toward the infirmary, again Lynda noticed that there was a humming to the elevators. Although she slowed down and looked toward it, fearing to loose Whelan again she did not stop. She understood that the motors should not be humming, that it should have reached the surface already. As she picked up her pace, it escaped her that it might be on its way down.
At the far end of the reception area, they saw the Professor standing at the medical office and preparing to open the door. Lynda whispered to him,
“Professor! The lab is this way.”
As he looked at them, he turned the handle and discovered that it too fell under the umbrella of total shut down. It was locked. Just then, Whelan heard the elevator stop. Lynda turned to see who was going to come out but Whelan, sensing danger said to Lynda,
“They will see us. Open the door with your card.”
She quickly swiped it and all three hastily disappeared into the infirmary.
Whelan wanted to know who had come out of the elevator but did not want to risk opening the door for a look. Recognizing danger, Lynda looked to the Professor and hissed,
“This is not a game Professor. We have to stay together. Tell us what you’re going to do next time.”
Ignoring the reprimand, the Professor started searching Doctor Raymond Nelson’s desk and Lynda knew what he was after.
There seemed to be urgency in the Professor’s search, drawers and papers flying in all directions. Finally having had enough she walked over to her desk and pulled open a drawer. She reached in and produced the target of his search, the bell. She gave it a gentle ring and the Professor suddenly turned into Pavlov’s dog. He immediately stopped his frantic search, froze and listened. He suddenly became childlike, turned to her and with both hands out, said,
“I want it. Give it to me.”
Quick hands snatched it from her and coveted it to his chest. Turning to the puzzled Whelan, she explained,
“I just got sick and tired of hearing it and hid it in my desk.”
Not having the patience or understanding of those eccentricities, Whelan shook his head in bewilderment.
Because stealth and silence was important, Whelan would not allow the Professor to bring the bell with him. When Whelan reached for it, it was clear that the Professor was not willing to let his so-called key to another dimension out of his sight. Recognizing the problem, Lynda reached back and in quick succession pulled out six tissues from the container. They were then quickly crammed into the bell forcing the hammer to silence. She looked to Whelan who, with a shrug of his shoulders conceded defeat. The Professor shoved his prize into his pocket.
Hoping that was the last of the distractions, Whelan then turned to the door and opened it just a crack. Seeing that the coast was clear, he turned back and asked,
“Are we finished with this nonsense? Can we get to the lab now?”
When both the Professor and Lynda nodded their approval, he turned back to the door, opened it wide and prepared to enter the foyer. It was then that a sudden hurtful thought came to Lynda. From behind, Whelan heard her angrily yell all too loudly,
“You lied to me.”
Not knowing what had just happened, Whelan quickly closed the door and snapped his attention back to the room. He saw Lynda grab the Professor by the arm and roughly spin him around to face her. It did not take much to see that she was irate. With piercing eyes aimed right into his, the Professor stood as if a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Confused at the sudden turn of events, Whelan saw wisdom in staying at the door and listen.
With a stabbing finger at the Professor, she continued her tirade.
“All this time you didn’t care about the anti-matter leak did you? All you cared about was this stupid bell. You don’t have the vaguest idea how to stop the contamination do you?”
A very guilty Professor lowered eyes to the floor and softly admitted,
“No. And yes, all I wanted was the bell.”
; Lynda was not finished. Staying with her anger, she snapped,
“I trusted you. All this time I thought we were trying to prevent a catastrophe. I thought we came down here to save the world and now I learn it was only to get this bell. You were willing to let this world come to an end just so you can return to Roads End with whatever magic you think this bell has.”
A confused Whelan was still at the door listening. He heard the Professor softly say,
“There might still be hope. The harmonics of the bell might somehow interact with the anti-matter and somehow turn it off.”
Lynda was far from settled down and snapped,
“No it isn’t. The harmonics of the bell aggravated the anti-matter.”
She marched up to Whelan and snapped,
“Let’s get to the lab and see what you and I can do to save this planet.”
Aware that the General was still lurking about, great care to furtiveness and silence was Whelan’s main priority. They made their way back through the reception area and down the hall toward the lab in single file, the Professor in the middle. At the door, Lynda knew what was expected of her and quickly swiped her card into the slot. Thankfully, red turned to green. After a quick dash into the scrubbing room and change area the door closed behind them.
Whelan led the way past the lockers with the Professor in tow. Again, Lynda knew the procedure. She stopped at one of the lockers and quickly undid the buttons on her blouse. With her bra on the floor and struggling with the darn zipper at the back of her skirt, Whelan came back and demanded,
“What the hell are you doing? There is no more need to be decontaminated.”
Standing there in full view of Whelan was not the embarrassment so much as was the naiveté of thinking that they had to decontaminate before entering the lab. Hands quickly became a blur as she covered up.
It suddenly came to Whelan that he was staring and so the gentlemanly side of him surfaced. With a touch of reluctance, he turned his back while she scrambled to get dressed. Because he too was slightly embarrassed, he was compelled to say something, anything. He was surprised at his choice of words.
“Next time I try to stop you from taking your clothes off hit me on the head with a hammer okay.”
Because her hands were busy fumbling with what should never have been taken off in the first place, she indignantly replied,
“Yea, well I’ll be doing more than that to you if this ever happens again.”
She was not aware of her poor choice of words but he was. He grinned and said,
“I hope so.”
At the elevator door that led down into the lab, she was about to swipe their entry when Whelan stopped her.
“We have to be careful here. If we have to wait for the elevator cage to come up it implies that the General is already down there. If the doors open right away then everything should be okay. Let me be the first through the door.”
The Professor added a spicy tidbit to the pot of trepidation.
“And it could be that the whole lab is filled with anti-matter by now and opening the door might release it into your face. Do I need to remind you of the effects of being touched by just one anti-matter particle?”
No, he did not, at least not to Lynda. Lost, not knowing how to handle the situation, Whelan turned to the Professor and said,
“Okay. It’s your move. What do we do now?”
Strangely, the Professor instantly locked eyes onto Lynda. Starting from her feet, he dragged his eyes up her legs. As she was not accustomed to such an intense scrutiny, she felt uncomfortable. She swore she could actually feel his eyes on her as they dragged their way over her hips and stopped at her blouse. Instinctively or perhaps defensively, she put her hands to her top button.
Disappointed that he could not find what he was looking for, he turned and did the same to Whelan whose take on the intense scrutiny was different. Perhaps because he too was male, his question was regarding strategies. What was the Professor looking for? What was going on with a genius having a mind flipped over more times than a pancake? With a tinge of disappointment the Professor started taking his jacket off and said,
“Never mind, I’ll use my own.”
A committed search in the pockets, paying extra attention to the inside breast pocket was conducted. Finally deciding that there was nothing of great value in them, no pens or scraps of paper with earth shattering mathematical formulas on it, he turned his attention to the bewildered Lynda and said,
“If the room is contaminated, the anti-matter beam will come straight out like a shot from a cannon. Go ahead and swipe your card but get away from the door right away.”
The Professor was not looking at him but Whelan knew the instructions included him as well. He stood next to Lynda ready to haul her aside if she froze.
After a series of terminals had clicked and an airlock hissed air, the doors slowly if not reluctantly started to open. Just to make sure that Lynda understood the danger and the Professor’s instructions Whalen took her by the arm and rather abruptly hauled her to the side. With the doors wide-open and him holding his jacket high, the Professor waited.
Lynda watched as he waved his jacket into the doorway. Nothing happened but then she was left to wonder what could anyway. Understanding what he was doing, Whelan nodded in agreement. Then the Professor rather casually tossed the jacket into the air and observed as it fluttered harmlessly to the floor. After a moment of observing a crumpled heap on the floor and deciding that nothing was happening to it, he stepped forward and picked it up.
Still not understanding the purpose of the exercise, Lynda was agape at the seemingly callous retrieval of his jacket. Forgetting that there was brilliance attached to the Professor rather than folly, she assumed that he was risking death for the sake of a piece of clothing. She hurriedly whispered,
“No Professor, it’s contaminated!”
As he fumbled with the sleeves, putting the wrong arm in the wrong sleeve, he corrected it and gave her a casual quizzical look.
Without so much as a ‘follow me,’ he turned and nonchalantly walked into the opened door and onto the elevator ramp. Because Whelan understood the purpose of the exercise and reasoned that the Professor was not prone to suicide, he too walked into what Lynda still thought was harm’s way. She was also not prone to suicide and therefore waited to see if the headless bodies of two rash men might come running back out.
A careful peek into the doorway revealed both men standing on the elevator platform waiting for her. It was a rather sheepish few steps but eventually she joined them. Looking down into the lab, she was struck by the contrasting isolation of it all. The first time she saw it, hordes of people milled about attending to this and that. It was now an empty shell of a lab with a lone saucer still attached to the gripping steel fingers. There was a hum in the air like crackling static electricity.
She noted that the Professor was intently staring down into the lab and appeared spellbound by something. She wondered if he even heard the crackling static. Whelan stood in front of Lynda and asked the Professor,
“Is it safe to go down?”
The Professor’s reply was rational although heavily laced with foreboding.
“The fact that we are still alive indicates the intrusion has not spread, at least up to here.”
He pointed to the saucer and added,
“Although the hole has greatly expanded, the anti-matter is still confined to a narrow beam. I presume that the hole is by now considerably larger than when you first discovered it.”
Lynda looked down at the hole just under the lip of the saucer and agreed. Instead of the size of a fist, it was now three meters across. Although the contamination had spread, it had not yet intruded into the main lab. The Professor continued,
“Because the antimatter is still concentrated, I think it is safe to enter.”
After a careful scrutiny of the lab looking for the mad General, Whelan asked the obvious question.
“Very wel
l, I guess we can take a few minutes to inspect the hole. How long do you think we have before it spreads to the whole floor?”
Either he did not care for the question, thinking it irrelevant or he did not understand the importance of limited time. He casually replied,
“I don’t know. It depends on how much of the anti-matter containment shield your inept scientists have destroyed.”
Quagmire's Gate Page 26