Of Salt and Sand

by Barnes, Michael

  Sam lay fast asleep on the bed, his body moving in a soft cadence, up and down. Jessie touched him softly, then laid carefully at his side. “I’ll wake him up gently,” she said.

  Teresa stood in the entry, her arms crossed and her slender frame tilted in a gentle lean. As she gazed down at Jessie and Sam, lying cuddled together in a guarded bond, she was again overwhelmed by a sense of maternal protection and responsibility. All that had taken place in the last forty-eight hours—things so unbelievably horrific that even now, having witnessed it with every sense of her being, she struggled to comprehend. Things she had actually agreed to be part of—terrifying and frightening things. Why? She now pondered. What had driven her to act in such an uncharacteristic manner? She was not a risk-taker. If anything, she was overly cautious. And she certainly never considered herself to be brave or heroic. She slept with a nightlight on, had locks on her windows and two on each door, and she wouldn’t even drink too much at night because it scared her to crawl out of bed in the dark to use the bathroom! So what had changed her? The moisture building up in her eyes as she stared down at the kids gave her the answer: it was love. She loved them beyond measure. And in that moment of realization, she knew . . . Teresa Henington knew that she would never be the same woman again. She would fight like a dragon for those kids, and for Brant. That’s who she had become. And as a single tear broke free and rolled down her cheek, the sense of commitment and courage gushed through her veins in a transformation of fire. She was fearless! She was invincible! Mike Wilde, lookout! Teresa Henington is coming for you . . .

  --

  Jacob felt like an animal behind glass. He even paced like one—starting at the perimeter near the walls, then moving inward, stepping in a figure-eight pattern which could have been painted in bright yellow stripes on the floor. At one point, as he rounded the table and bumped his leg on a chair for the tenth time, he made the connection: he had more in common with a caged lion at the city zoo than any other living thing—at least that’s how he felt. Emotionally, he was spent, and all that was left within him was the concern of those he loved.

  It was in this moment of despondency that the large screen suddenly came to life in a burp of light. Jacob froze, his eyes moved to the image just coalescing before him. “Ruthanne! Eli! Ellen!” he shouted, and felt himself run toward the monitor. The screen was partitioned into four segments; three of which held faces Jacob longed to see—his dear companions. But the fourth, the image in the upper left corner of the large viewer, held a face which Jacob not only feared, but one which he now despised more than any other on the planet: Tanner.

  Like Jacob, each of his companions cried out names, and rushed in excitement to the their own screens, longing to be drawn together. As they gazed with hopeful faces—smiles appearing for the first time since their incarceration—the scene was a mixture of bitter-sweet: knowing they were each alive, yet seeing that they were each confined in similar fashion . . . caged in their accommodating, studio prison.

  “My voice is the only one heard on your audio,” came the raspy voice of Tanner. “Because my voice is the only voice that matters to you now.”

  Their faces turned to his view, all but Ruthanne, who simply angled her head askew, and listened intently.

  “So cry out to your comrades if it makes you feel better,” Tanner continued. “Blow kisses and let yourselves blubber like emotional fools. But know that you cannot be heard,” he paused as though to nourish on the hatred burning across him from fearful eyes. “I have some information which I feel obligated, in a motivational sense, to share with you. It does, after all, involve each of you quite harshly. I thought you might like to know that your four friends—the intrusive Professor Brant Stephens; his lovely fiancé, Miss Teresa Henington, and the two unfortunate orphans—Tom’s troublesome grandchildren—Jessie and Sam Goodwin . . . are all dead! They were blown to bits while trying to infiltrate Jacob’s little shop of wonders in the salt underground.” He tapped at his chin casually. “All of them, including the android, Three-Of-Ten, were target practice for Mole Hole’s Apache helicopters. I admit the Sandray was a quaint little craft, but now she is shrapnel, littering the desert surface along with the pieces of your friends,”—he shrugged, carelessly—“somewhere out near Quadrant 11, I believe it was.”

  It was somehow merciful, in an ironic sense, that Tanner had disabled the audio between his captive’s surveillance system. For now, as his news reverberated from microphone to speaker, cries of anguish and remorse shrieked out. Cries which would have pierced even the most prowess of heart with emotional devastation. But as Tanner viewed the effect of his announcement, he viewed in silence. For their sorrow died on confining walls, their lamentations unheard. And as each of the Four bent and wreathed in terrible grief, Tanner could only bask in the clarity of his cameras—the images of despair were quite remarkable. “I’m certain,”—his voice broke in again—“that they owe this fate to each of you. You who could not keep your work to yourselves . . . you, whose foolish sentiment allowed for a breach of oath and obligation. Know that their blood is on your shoulders. And know for certainty, my dear friends, that you are alone. All who have loved you are dead.” Again, a pause, a punishing hesitation to allow his feast from the suffering. “So turn your thoughts from escape and freedom, to acceptance and accord. Agree to work with us, and live together contently. Fight us, and you will join the ranks of your friends in death. Thank you for your time.” The screens went dead, dead as the last vestiges of hope in each of the Four’s hearts.

  Chapter 56:

  The Sandray wasn’t the problem. She was easily capable. She could move at speeds near the barrier of sound, and could rise to an altitude limited only by the concentration of oxygen in the air needed for her occupants to breathe. But she did have one weakness; one which was neither foreseen by her designer, nor calculated by her prodigious android pilot. The issue proved to be the spoiler on the wings, the drag of the sails, the dirt in the bearings: the Sandray didn’t have a potty.

  Especially for the women onboard—Sam was no exception, refusing to pee in anything but the privacy of some outside bush—this was a problem. Perhaps it was nerves, or the fact that everyone had drunk copiously to stay awake during the night hours at the motel, but whatever the cause, about every thirty-minutes or so, someone had to . . . go.

  Three-Of-Ten happily complied to every request. He slowed, dropped altitude, and brilliantly located a conduce spot for the deed. Then, the amiable android simply recalculated the vectors and started off again, without so much as a groan. Brant, however, was not so accommodating. Mr. balloon bladder, as he was soon nicknamed, was annoyed with every stop. He felt the inherent danger in each of the delays. “Okay, but this is absolutely the last stop!” he announced adamantly, peering down at Sam with all the frustration of a grizzly awakened during hibernation. “We’re nearly there. Can’t you hold it for fifteen more minutes?”

  Sam thought a moment then nodded. “I suppose so,” he said, rather more agreeably than Brant was prepped for. Probably because the kid really didn’t have to go again at all. He was . . . well, sort of faking it. He just loved the way the Sandray’s door seemed to magically float in midair when he got off and back onboard. It was so cool!

  Brant had him pegged, of course, and truth be told, thought it was way cool too, but not enough to tempt risk, nor to take advantage of their limited time. “Good, kid,” he sighed, with a pat to the head. He glanced over at Teresa and feigned a smile.

  She lifted her head from her arm-perch and grinned back in an equally bogus gesture. He’s just about to topple, she thought to herself, chin back on perch. And she was pretty much right on target.

  Brant’s nerves were becoming more frayed as they approached. He knew that that if they found Gracie’s DNA signature—and he hoped that they would, he really did—it would mean him suiting up with Jacob’s repel-belt and portable EMR device and going against . . . who knew what? He hadn’t really thought about havi
ng to actually put the defensive gear on and use it—not for real, anyway!

  Soon, Three-Of-Ten began to slow the Sandray in a gentle descent. “Location reached,” he announced. “Beginning DNA proximity scan for Gracie Reitman.” He had brought the Sandray over a darkened flat area, which Brant soon identified on the GPS tracking screen as a body of water called Beards Creek: a branch of the South River, a wide inlet of water reaching into Maryland from the Atlantic Ocean. From this vantage point, the airport was clearly visible in the distance to the east.

  “So how is this all going to go down?” Teresa asked, her eyes scanning out the front window at the distant haze of lighted activity. “Isn’t that the airport?” she pointed.

  “Yes,” Brant replied. “We’re close enough for Three-Of-Ten to start his scanning . . . in fact, he’s already begun. He’ll basically expand his search in a series of concentric circles, radiating outward until his sensors either pick up on Gracie’s DNA, or they are taxed by distance limitations—about a twenty- mile radius. Right big guy?” Brant said, giving the android a quick glance of confirmation.

  Three-Of-Ten made no response.

  Jessie gave a slight snort of amusement. “You’ve got to quite giving him all these nicknames, Brant,” she advised. “How is he supposed to know that ‘big guy’ refers to him?”

  “Hel-lo. Because he’s a big guy?”

  She snickered to herself once more then leaned into the android. “Three-Of-Ten,” she spoke.

  The android quickly responded by turning his head attentively toward her. “Yes, Jessie Goodwin.”

  “No . . . it’s just Jessie,” she reminded. “We talked about his.”

  “Yes, Jessie,” the android corrected.

  “Better,” she commended. “Now, Brant would like to also identify you by the alias, ‘big guy’,” she emphasized each word pronouncedly. “Understood?”

  “But I didn’t—” Brant sputtered.

  “Yes, Jessie.” Three-Of-Ten toned. He turned toward Brant. “The pseudonym ‘big guy’ has been added to the enumeration-set assigned to Brant Stephens for triggering Three-Of-Ten’s response.”

  Brant rolled his eyes. “Good grief. Talk about pomp and circumstance!”

  Teresa and Sam joined in with a chuckle of their own.

  “Okay. Now that we have names straight, can we get back to the plan please?” directed Teresa.

  Brant sighed and relaxed his ruffled feathers. “I couldn’t agree more.” He eyed Jessie maddeningly, then continued. “As I was saying: pending the outcome of Three-Of-Ten’s sweeps, we’ll continue to move the Sandray farther and farther out from the airport in hopes of locating Gracie.”

  “And if we don’t find anything?” Jessie questioned.

  “Then we’ll pay Mr. Mike Wilde a surprise visit,” replied Teresa with a hint of anticipation. “We have both of his resident addresses, right?”

  “Well . . . yes,” said Brant. “But I’m hoping we don’t have to involve him. Doing so would blow the lid off our plan. They would know our intent, location . . . the whole gamut. At this point, all Jimmy Reitman—and his military thugs—know is that we’ve snuck into Jacob’s private lab. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “They know we have the android helping us,” reminded Teresa. “I’m sure that made our little foray into Jacob’s lab a bit more intriguing to them.”

  “Yes, but that still leaves plenty of supposition for them to chew on. If we interrogate Wilde—and who knows how hot that grilling might get,” he added, giving Teresa a decisive glare. “Then we’ve tipped our hand, and they’ll know everything we’re up to.”

  “Not if we keep Wilde from running back to the pack, howling,” interjected Teresa.

  Jessie gasped. “You don’t mean—!”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, no!” Teresa snorted. “I meant we just leave him confined. Sort of, tied-up’ish. Something like that.” She smiled, eyeing them all complacently. “ . . . after a good butt-kicking, of course,” she mumbled on the outtake.

  Three-Of-Ten’s synthetic voice suddenly broke in: “DNA signature identified. Downloading location to navigation computer.”

  “Where!” shouted Brant, leaning toward the displays.

  Everyone else followed suit by crowding in around the Sandray’s front control displays. Within seconds, the GPS monitor displayed an intersecting line joining their position with a pulsing dot indicator.

  “Didn’t I tell you! Didn’t I!” sang out Brant. “I knew Gracie had to be close to the airport!” He touched at the controls. “Right there. Only 4.2 miles east of us; across Glebe Bay on the end of that peninsula—Cedar Point.”

  “It looks pretty isolated alright,” piped in Teresa. “Figures.”

  “Let’s head in closer,” Brant said anxiously, nodding at Three-Of-Ten.

  But the android did not respond. Instead, he moved his head in an inquisitive sweep, this way and that, as if in some kind of reboot sequence. Then, just as Brant was about to make a second request, Three-Of-Ten turned and made a shocking announcement: “Residual pattern only. Gracie Reitman is no longer at the location.”

  “No!” blew out Jessie. She banged her fist against the armrest of her chair. “They’ve moved her!”

  “Three-Of-Ten, are you certain?” Brant questioned, his own voice garbled in disappointment. “Can you explain your conclusions?”

  “We’re too late,” spoke Teresa.

  Sam looked from face to face, trying to read some kind of hope in the expressions of disillusion rebounding back at him. There was none.

  Three-Of-Ten continued in his silent parody of odd head-twists and contorted motions.

  Brant didn’t wait for the android to reply. He turned to Jessie. “How can he be so sure?”

  Jessie shook her head naively. She wasn’t Jacob. She knew more about the humanoid than the rest of them, but a robot expert, she wasn’t.

  Had any of the group understood the technology behind the android’s unique skill, they would have easily grasped his ability to determine, so accurately, the results of his DNA probe. The secret was all about neutrinos. In fact, much of Sandcastle’s advanced scanning technology was based on the properties of this amazing, near massless particle. Created, profusely, in the nuclear reactions of stars, this infinitesimal particle teamed throughout the universe in a soup of neutrino radiation. Like visible light to the human eye, so was this celestial fog detectable by Three-Of-Ten’s sensor technology. The 65 billion neutrinos pouring through every square centimeter of the Earth’s surface meant that at any given instant, Three-Of-Ten could see, with unprecedented clarity, what the human senses could neither understand nor fathom. Yes. The humanoid comrade knew beyond any doubt that Gracie Reitman was gone from the facility. The neutrino spectrum echoed back this absolute conclusion as it poured between all mass—in and around every particle of every atom like water around rocks, revealing, as a brilliant beam of light in the darkness, all traces of Gracie’s DNA. And then suddenly, the android sensed something else of the pattern which was very, very interesting. “ . . . island off Maine,” he unexpectedly spoke as if in a ramble.

  “What?” Brant whirled at him. He looked from Three-Of-Ten to Jessie, then to Teresa and back again. “What did he say?”

  “I think he said something about Maine?” replied Teresa, her ears tuned keenly.

  Jessie also moved in close. “Three-Of-Ten. What have you found?”

  The humanoid blinked his large luminous eyes at her. “Gracie Reitman is . . .” he paused, “sneaky.” Then he turned and punched in a several new commands into the navigational computer. “New course entered. DNA scan shall commence pending our arrival at new coordinates,” he indicated at the screen. The navigational GPS now showed a clear destination—a cluster of highlighted islands located off the coast of Maine.

  Brant shrugged. “Hey. He’s the pilot.”

  Teresa returned her signature look—a conglomerate of confusion and worry—a new but frequent appearance.<
br />
  Jessie clicked her tongue, shook her head and plopped back down in her seat. “Buckle up everybody. I guess we’re heading to Maine.”

  --

  Some twenty miles west of the secret Mole Hole Base, was a dried out basin known as Dragon’s Back. It was a desolate swath, hidden between two rising mounts of dirt that looked like ant hills on the Sahara, when viewed from afar. But the Black Peaks weren’t just hills. They were high enough to catch a snow drift or two in the winter, and in the summer, sparkled from the black topaz rock which topped them. Looking down from either of the shadowy ridges, Dragon’s Back basin looked like the skin of some colossal ancient reptile––pockmarked in rock, sand, and clay the color of bone. But in recent days, things had changed.

  As the sweltering fingers of the morning sun broke over the summit’s ridge, a very different scene sparkled up in a shimmering reflection of aqua-blue. The strange reservoir of water had started its existence with a fence; an ominous wired barricade planted right near the center of the desiccated plot. It was a section now referred to by Colonel Briggs as the WBLP or the White Basin Lake Project. The secluded site was as out of place in its lakebed bowl as it would have been on the surface of the moon. Yet, from a distance, the body of water had all the markings of a natural oasis—reed grass, cat tails, water lilies, irises and even an assortment of young palm trees. Its banks were populated with a variety of animal life including several species of birds, muskrats, desert reptiles and insects. Its waters were equally inhabited in aqua-life—frogs, crayfish, salamanders and fish. But this seemingly thriving ecosphere amid the desert wasteland was not spawned by deep running springs, nor the runoff of a desert deluge . . . for nature would hold no ties to it.

  The White Basin Lake was the creation of man. It had taken just under a day to complete. Using the EMR technology, the military engineers had created levees, ducts and barriers in hours, with the water appearing at capacity in mere minutes. It was an unprecedented engineering feat; the first large-scale EMR transformation above ground. But the reservoir, filled with its crystal clear water, was far from complete. Its pristine liquid initially held not a single living organism, nor did its rocky shores. This was soon to change, however. Unlike the lake’s construction, these more complicated embellishments could not be created using the EMR technology. And time, precious time, would have to be spent to deliver, position and place the living entities appropriately. Oddly, Tanner had accepted these scheduling comprises with surprising tolerance—a rare characteristic where the HOPE project was concerned. His patience in the development of the lake’s aesthetic milieu, with all of its painstaking aspects, was soon to be made—like the waters of the lake—crystal clear, however.