Devil in the Wires

by Tim Lees

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “A body dump. Nothing to do with us at all.”

  “Well, good. I’ve got the overnights for you, by the way.”

  I poured a coffee. I found a place to sit down. I checked the overnights, the way I did each morning. A dull, routine job.

  And suddenly, I wasn’t quite so happy anymore.

  Chapter 40

  Spikes

  “There’s a spike. Here, here, and here.” I dropped the printout onto Kuehl’s desk.

  I had looked through all the readings for the last ten hours. It was an awful slog. I don’t like paperwork, or screenwork as it mostly is, and I didn’t know what I was looking for. There was a spike around 4:40 to 5:00, a sudden surge of energy with no clear cause. They’d automatically milked it off, kept him docile, but it was there, nevertheless. And everybody must have seen it. Everybody must have known. And they’d left me to find it for myself.

  Kuehl frowned. He picked the paper up, held it to the light. His forehead puckered briefly. “Yeah,” he conceded. “That’s a little above average, I agree.”

  He gave me a puzzled smile.

  “It’s a lot above average, if you ask me.”

  He shrugged. “It’s up and down. It fluctuates.”

  “You’re not bothered?”

  “Chris. It’s all within prescribed parameters. Nothing here is unexpected. Or unprepared for. I really don’t see why you have a problem with it.” He watched me in a way that clearly suggested my concern was foolish, not to say naïve. “You’re not trying to mix it up with that sad business out there, are you?” He nodded to the beach, “Because you know we had the police through here, and there is—­clearly—­no connection. Am I right?”

  “That,” I said, “is what I’m trying to find out.”

  He looked at the printout again, and narrowed his eyes as if scrutinizing something. Then he said, “I’ll send it for analysis. I’ll get New York to take a look, OK?”

  He turned back to his computer screen. His body language, his tone of voice, told me that our interview was over. But I said, “I’m a field op. I’m on a job, I notice an anomaly, I can’t send anything out for analysis. Hesitate like that, and I’d be dead.” I let this sink in. I wasn’t pulling rank; I was pulling experience.

  “Chris, Chris.” He shook his head. He did his best to look amused and just a little sad, as well. It was a valiant act, and it almost worked. “I’m sure that your credentials in your own field of business are impeccable. I’d expect no less. So let’s each stick to what we know, shall we? That,” he said, “is how a good team works. With assigned roles and duties. You agree?”

  It was quiet in the gallery. The cops had made us close today. It had been a while since I’d seen the place so empty. It was as if all sound had been locked out. I was angry now. I crossed the floor and a shadow shifted in the compound, and a smell came to my nostrils, sharp and harsh, like the smell of the big cats in the zoo. It was there for a moment, almost strong enough to make my eyes water, then gone; not a smell at all, of course, but an analogy, a thing that had been triggered in my brain by . . . what? Some stray association? I went up to the second level, looked out towards the lake.

  Tiny figures moved along the shore. They had an exaggerated, stop-­and-­go motion, bending every few steps, checking the ground. At one point someone waved and a ­couple of others went across to join him, but I couldn’t see what it was all about. An ambulance had come up. They seemed about to move the body. I looked around for Woollard. I didn’t see him.

  I went back downstairs, back to Assur.

  The light was wrong, somehow. A shadow fell, slantwise, and I couldn’t work out what was causing it. It cut the compound in two. The edges of it rippled slightly, but the lake was too far off to be reflected here.

  In the compound, where the shadow crossed, something crouched, watching intently. I say “watching,” but it was more than that; an awareness of me, so intense that I could feel it.

  There had been a feeling of elation when the god was first installed, released into its prison. I had felt it; I think everybody in the district felt it. But this was different. This was edgy and discomforting, like fingernails across a chalkboard. My anger drew it. My feelings against Kuehl were like a magnet to it. Moreover—­they seemed to open up communication, something that might almost be two-­way.

  I stared back. I swallowed. I said, “Hello . . . ?”

  For a second, it was there. I saw it, in a form as solid as my own, then suddenly it scattered, the particles racing away in all directions, vanishing in an instant. I caught that smell again, pungent, acrid, and when I thought back to what I’d seen, all I could remember was the image of a big cat, more than twice the size of any lion or tiger, its long tail flicking back and forth, its eyes as sharp as gemstones. Then the tail grew longer, thicker, seeming to absorb the rest of it, till there was only tail, a great serpentine coil . . . The image stuck, gaining strength and clarity inside my brain, although I knew it wasn’t what I’d really seen, only the memory it left behind, the edge around the hole; the thing the mind created to make sense of it.

  That was the trouble with a god: it was there, all right, but you could never say exactly where. Or what it really was.

  Chapter 41

  The Deal

  Woollard said, “You know something.”

  “No.”

  “Nothing definite, maybe. But you’ve got some . . . suspicion. Huh?”

  “I thought it might be something that I’ve seen before. Only it’s not.”

  “Well, that’s a pity. Might have closed the case for me. And what’s this something, anyhow?”

  “Not this. This isn’t it.”

  “But you’re expecting it. Whatever it is.”

  “I . . .”

  There is nothing worse than palling around with cops, unless it’s palling around with smart cops. And Woollard was a very smart cop indeed. His invitation for a stroll was anything but casual.

  “OK then. Different question. Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “See, here’s a thing. You guys come by. You get the mayor on your side. Free energy, free power, you say! The city’s got debts, and the mayor and everybody’s saying, tell me more. You set up this little educational exhibit and somehow, miraculously, it’s going to light the city. And it’s safe. I can’t say how many times I’ve heard someone say that: it’s safe. And we been hearing this for months, all through the build-­up. Then . . .

  “Here you come. At first you’re giving us the same old song, the company line. But then, you make all these demands. You want shit being monitored and such. Oh, don’t kid me. I’m a cop. I know ’bout your arrangements with the good folks at the Beach House. Some of ’em’ll stonewall, but some of ’em are chatty. So: the temperature anomaly. What’s that exactly?”

  He’d done his homework.

  I said, “It’s . . .”

  “Uh-­huh?”

  “It’s just a way of double-­checking. The containment system’s already monitored. They’ll know straight off if there’s a fault. Then the backup systems kick in. This is . . . it’s like, diagnosing an illness by monitoring secondary symptoms, that’s all.”

  “An illness.”

  “The house is air-­conditioned. The temperature should be homogenous. So, if one part’s warmer or cooler than another, that might mean—­”

  “Air pressure,” he said, moving on.

  “Same principle.”

  “You don’t trust their safety features? Don’t think they’re good enough?”

  “I think they’re excellent. They’re better than I’d ever have thought possible. Or necessary.”

  “Motion of air,” he said. “Unexpected change in light. Unusual sensory perceptions. Auditory, visual, tactile hallucinations. Strange i-­dee-­ations. How d’you plan to
check for those, by the way? Just being curious.”

  “I wasn’t expecting any of this. It’s just a safeguard, a way of double-­checking, making sure it’s all still functioning. That’s all.”

  “But the system’s excellent, you say.”

  “The best.”

  “Still not good enough. I want your view. Not mine, not the city’s, not the Registry’s. Yours. So walk with me, now, Mr. English. Walk with me.”

  We headed up, along the beach. It was a route that I was getting to know well.

  “System’s excellent, you say. But you don’t trust it.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust it . . .”

  “Then you don’t trust the folks that’re running it.”

  Shailer, I thought. Adam bloody Shailer.

  I said, “I’ve met the techs. I was impressed. They know what they’re doing. Insofar as . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s untried, all this. And the—­the Assur entity. It’s still to some extent, you know—­an unknown.”

  “So. Not the system, not the ­people.” He glanced back, at the square, fortress walls of the Beach House, at the cars racing by. “It’s that, in there, you don’t trust. Though I’m told that you’re the guy who brought it here. So where does that leave us?”

  “I contained it. At the original site.”

  “In Iraq.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So this here—­this is one of those Weapons of Mass Destruction after all, is it? That you brought here, to my town, to my neighborhood?”

  “Fuck sake! It’s not a weapon. It’s . . .”

  “I hear it’s alive.”

  “Sort of. And it’s old. Thousands of years, most likely. It’s a source of power. You can light a city with it. Like you said.”

  “Self-­renewing energy. I read the papers.” He put his hands on his hips, looked up at me. “So what’s the catch? Pollution? Another Three Mile Island? What’s gonna be the problem here, man?”

  “I don’t think we know enough.”

  He sighed. He checked his watch.

  “All right. Let’s get back to the job at hand. What was your exact worry when we saw the body? What was in your head at that time, then?”

  “I’ve worked with these creatures for fifteen years.”

  “Creatures.”

  “They’re beings of energy, and they rely on a trade of energies with us. I’ve seen one of them—­not here—­one of them could drain the life out of you, just by touching.”

  “You think this is that ‘creature’?”

  “No. No, it’s not, and I was glad to see that. I was . . . relieved. Maybe that was why I acted weird.”

  “And for my information, Mr. English, what do you believe our victim died of? At a glance?”

  “I dunno. I wasn’t really . . .”

  “Not seen many corpses, huh?”

  “Not many, no.”

  “Yeah. Sad thing is, I can’t say that. I’ve seen a lot. You get so you observe. OK, maybe the first time, you’re all, Oh my god, he’s dead! But after that, it’s business. So what did you observe? And relax, will you? It’s not a pass or fail.”

  “Discoloration,” I said. But I couldn’t see it clearly in my memory. “Kind of vague, to be honest. Just this . . . shapeless sort of mass.”

  “Yeah. Well, that’s something. Hands, maybe? See anything about the hands? Arms?”

  “Yeah—­sort of . . .” I had a picture in my head, something pale and blunt, like a flipper. “They were . . . odd,” I said.

  “Good, good.” He raised his brows.

  I shrugged.

  Then he said, “They got no fingers, that’s why.”

  I’d seen it, but it hadn’t registered. Still, I knew that he was right.

  “Bolt-­cutters, maybe. Garden shears. Whatev. And that discoloring you mentioned. There’s skin peeled off in patches. Peeled, maybe abraded. That’s nasty. One eye gone. Dick and balls . . . yeah. Not much left of ’em.”

  I tried to take this in.

  “Now what we’ve got in this town,” he said, “is mostly drive-­bys, drug deals, or some guy gets a rage on at a party, whips out a pistol, opens fire. Lotta long-­haul grievances, territory claims, that kinda shit. Lotta innocents, caught in the crossfire.

  “But this ain’t that. This is torture. That’s unusual, y’know? And what you’ve got, there in that Beach House, that’s unusual, too. See where I’m coming from now, Mr. English?”

  “Yeah.” I did not feel well. Spring here, trees in bud, everything fresh and bright, and I did not feel well.

  “You got anything to hide?”

  “No. Why d’you ask me that?”

  “Because, Mr. English, you’re a corporate type, and you corporate types—­well, let’s just say you like to keep your jobs, huh? So I’m going to propose a deal.”

  “A deal.”

  “That’s right. You and me, Mr. English, we’ll talk. We’ll talk straight with one another, OK? And if there’s something I should know, you tell me. Off the record.”

  I said, “What makes you think it’s us? If it was—­I dunno, Microsoft or someone, would you be going after them? I mean, seriously—­”

  “A ­couple of things. First, Microsoft, I know what they do. You ­people—­ha. Even you don’t know what you do, from what you’re telling me. Second—­I got friends. Most of ’em in law enforcement, same as me. Got a good friend from Wabash, Indiana. He told me some stories. So here is my proposal, Mr. English: I think if there’s a problem with your setup, you would like to know it, yes?”

  “That’s, you know, that’s my job.”

  “Good. Because it may be that it’s mine as well. So we trade. Off the record, unofficial. All right?”

  “Trade . . . ? You think I know what’s going on here?”

  “I keep you posted. You,” he said, “be very, very sure you keep me posted. That understood?” Again, he checked his watch, tapped the face. “Look at that. Piece of shit. That’s a Luminox. It’s a good watch. Can’t believe the damn thing can’t keep time.”

  Chapter 42

  Open for Business

  “Chris, Chris. How’s it going?”

  Each day the same: Kuehl’s big, Santa Claus greeting, his hand wrapped round mine, squeezing, swallowing me up, making a real point of it. How was I doing? “Fine,” I said. I was always “Fine,” it didn’t matter what.

  “Everything good?”

  I could hear the smugness in it. I could hear the subtext: look how well we’re doing. Look how great we are. Look how we don’t need you.

  I could hear it, but I couldn’t argue with it. Damn me, he was right.

  Each night, or lunchtime, or just any time at all, a call from Shailer: “Hi, Chris. Going well, I trust?”

  Going well. Yes. So why was I so worried by it all?

  We opened to the public.

  The queue went out the door, filled the underpass, then meandered halfway round the park.

  We had a marquee, and a banner. Angel’s slogan had been modified; the word “prayer” deemed much too sensitive, too full of resonance. So now it read: Power from the Past—­Fuel for the Future. Despite the change, it had a bold and optimistic look. It was thrilling, it was new.

  It wasn’t going to go away.

  I spent the day there. It was like being the lifeguard at the pool, trying to look useful, not actually doing much, there just in case. Unlike the lifeguard, though, I had no chance to chill out, flirt, or work on my tan.

  I’d started off at 6 a.m. I’d checked through everything—­all the systems that the techs assured me they had checked and rechecked and produced reports about—­and they showed me printouts and screens, but I wanted to know everything myself. I wanted to see it, so that if anything happened later,
I would know just what was going on. I read the rows of figures. I watched the lights blink. What I was looking for was anything that struck me as anomalous, anything that stood out. So I looked, and looked, and looked.

  The system worked. It all worked. It got harder and harder to justify what I was doing there, except that I’d seen what had happened at GH9, the Indiana facility. Had the lessons been learned? This place was smaller. The system was better. The fail-­safes were good. But it was also public, in the center of a city. That worried me. Maybe it was only habit, but it did.

  The techs worried me, too, though not today. Today they were excited, on their toes. But I wondered what would happen in a few months, when they got complacent, bored. When it was just another job. When half of them got shipped out to the next project, as they surely would, replaced with others who were maybe not so sharp, not so keen, not so aware. Or when some bright spark in accountancy decided, hey, the place was overstaffed; we could run on half that number, couldn’t we? So much could go wrong. So much that wasn’t even in my remit.

  When I couldn’t face checking it all again, I went out into the hall itself. I watched a girl in glasses and a Registry logo T-­shirt lecture to the crowd, leading us through a presentation with a huge TV screen. She was good. She could have fronted the History Channel. I just didn’t much believe the things she said, that’s all.

  “Since the beginning of the world, mankind has prayed to many gods.”

  A rapid montage flashed behind her: primitives bowing in the jungle, dancing around a totem pole, statue of Krishna, small boy receiving a communion wafer in a scene lit like a Rembrandt.

  “When we pray—­when we worship, we not only pay respect to God, we store up power within the Earth itself. That’s why some sites become sacred, why some are even said to possess special properties—­healing, blessing, and so forth. The gods our ancestors were praying to now pay us back with fuel, with power, and with electricity. One of nature’s wonders . . .”

  Yeah, right, I thought. Like getting struck by lightning. That’s one of nature’s wonders, too.