by Edward Aubry
"Cody, you're needed back at the office," Claudia said. All three of them jumped, and then they looked around.
"There she is," said Harrison, pointing to a building about 200 yards away. He waved, a huge sweeping motion over his head.
"Yes," she said, "obviously, I see you."
"Can she hear us?" Warren asked quietly.
"No," Harrison and Sarah said simultaneously. Harrison knew that Sarah didn't like to talk shop at home, and he expected that Warren knew very little about the limits of their abilities.
"Well then," said Warren. "God damn it! I hate it when she does that."
"It's not that much different from what I do," said Sarah dryly. "Or Harrison."
"Yes, it is," said Warren. He sounded bitter, petulant. "She does it on purpose."
Harrison raised both arms over his head in what he hoped would be readable at Claudia's distance as a shrug.
"What are you doing?" Sarah asked him.
"I'm spending the very first warm day of March at the park with my children, and if she wants me to drop that and go do something all boring and work related, she can come over here and get me," he replied. "I'm letting her know that I didn't quite hear her. At this range, she'll probably believe me."
"That's so mean!"
"No," said Harrison, still shrugging as big as he could. "Just Machiavellian."
Claudia began walking toward them. "You are such an asshole," she said.
"Don't react," said Harrison to Sarah and Warren. They didn't.
It took Claudia a couple of minutes to reach them. She did not seem to be in any particular hurry, which Harrison felt vindicated his behavior. She also did not try to speak to him again at any point along the way, which tipped him that she probably knew he was faking it. Claudia's gift was the ability to cast her voice over great distances by telekinetically pushing the sound waves, or, as she discovered shortly after she reached Chicago, by pushing radio waves. She knew, of course, that 200 yards was well within her functional range, but there were some variables that interfered with her talent. Light was one of them. It decimated her radio range, which is why her broadcasts were, to most of her audience, audible only at night. Once she and Dr. Tucker had figured that out, she had started working the night shift to take advantage of her extended range. Light was less of an obstacle to what she did with pure sound, but the fact that it was high noon on a sunny day gave Harrison a slight edge in plausible deniability.
"What's up?" he asked once she was in range of his voice. Sarah and Warren were conspicuously silent.
"Alec needs you." Claudia's tone was professional and cold. "He has some questions about your last salvage run."
"Did you remind him that this is my day off?" Harrison asked her.
"No, but he did preemptively ask me to remind you that you are on call 24-7." Having delivered this message, she warmed up a degree. "Hi, Sarah. Long time, no see."
"Hi, Claudia." Sarah smiled. "How have you been?"
"Busy. But good. What's new with you?"
Warren shifted uncomfortably, but Sarah expertly dodged the question. "We were just talking about where we were on May the twenty-fifth. Warren slept through the whole thing." She nudged him in the ribs, and he rolled his eyes.
"I woke up on a putting green," he said. "No golf course, just one hole, with the flag still in it. I'm still disoriented."
"We still haven't heard Harrison's story," said Sarah. "Can he stay long enough to tell us?"
Harrison resented the idea of asking Claudia's permission to stay. Still, it would give him one more stalling tactic.
"No," she said flatly. So much for that idea.
"Claudia," he said, stretching the delay just a mite further, "what about you? What did you see that day?" He was goading her, but as he said it, he realized he had never heard her story. Yet another reminder that they were not close. It took a tiny fraction out of the joy of teasing her.
For a few moments, it looked like she would refuse to say anything, but then, to Harrison's surprise, she sat down.
"The May 25 event originated in New York City at approximately ten a.m. and spread in a circular fashion, expanding at over half the speed of sound. Do you know how fast sound travels, Harrison?" It was still difficult, sometimes, for Harrison to reconcile Claudia's age with her intellectual maturity. She spoke of the event in clinical, scientific terms, to a degree that no one else he had met here was comfortable doing. Additionally, her question about the speed of sound triggered a mild panic response, as he pictured himself back in the tube, racing toward oblivion. Before he could answer her (probably rhetorical) question, he had to remind himself that Glimmer had, eventually, turned up alive.
"About 740 miles an hour," he said. "Give or take."
Claudia nodded. "The wave was moving at almost 400 miles per hour. While I'm sure that seemed pretty fucking fast to you at the time, it took over eight hours to reach California. I was in San Francisco. Way before it got there, everyone on the west coast knew it was coming. We had already seen TV coverage of a wall of destruction. The clips were all very short. They all ended abruptly. We saw aerial footage from helicopters, just as the pilots were learning that they wouldn't be able to fly fast enough or high enough to escape. West coast news stations were keeping a running tally of cities that had gone silent." She paused long enough for Harrison to regret asking the question. "What did I see? I saw millions of people panicking. I saw riots, pointless looting, streets filled with people climbing over cars, swarming to get out when there was nowhere to go. I saw the end of the world, Harrison. And then it all vanished." She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at the ground. "Two days later, Louise found me. We rode to Chicago on a Harley." She stood up. "Are we done playing now?"
No one spoke. Finally, Harrison stood up. "Sarah." It came out as a whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Sarah, would you mind taking the kids back to the hotel?"
She made eye contact with him, nodded, and looked away.
Chapter Nineteen
The Trick
Monday morning staff meetings were a strange comfort to Harrison. He often felt he had risen in his new position more by virtue of an accidental gift than through any hard work on his part. It was therefore reassuring to spend some time in an environment where he was treated as more than just a master key. He gathered that it had been a pleasant surprise to everyone concerned when they learned that he had talents and intelligence beyond his simple, dumb luck.
While his actual responsibilities had been vague from the start, his position had evolved into one that was almost administrative. They had plainly been training him to be some sort of field operative in Baker's umbrella security agency, as his particular special ability lent itself so well to espionage. They did not, however, appear to expect him to be involved in assignments that could turn violent, as he had only been given some very rudimentary hand-to-hand training, for which he did not show an exceptional aptitude. What they did value about him were his insights and his problem-solving strategies. He found this amusing. It had been less than a year since he had set out, on foot, in a pair of sneakers, imagining that he could cross a thousand miles in under a month. He never brought that up.
He had risen in rank several times since being brought into New Chicago's government. He gathered that this was not unusual. The country was too young to dally with waiting for its people to become seasoned before they were given responsibilities. What was unusual, or so he imagined, was that his promotions always had a side effect. Each time he advanced, his superiors decreased in number, but he also had no subordinates whatsoever. Essentially, he was being given increased latitude, and the accompanying accountability, but no leadership. On one level, he found this disappointing and frustrating. He was sure he was being groomed for something, but it was impossible to tell what.
Harrison expected this particular Monday morning meeting to be somber. It was May 24, the day before the first anniversary of the end of the world. He kn
ew there were plans for a large-scale remembrance, including a groundbreaking ceremony for a May 25 memorial, at which the president was to give a speech. He imagined that his own day would be pretty light. All the exploration and salvage teams had been recalled, and he was unlikely to be given a new assignment.
The meetings were held in a conference room in the building where he had first been held prisoner, six months before. While no one had ever mentioned that event in his presence, he considered the fact that he was expected to show up for work there every day to be a test of his character. He determined that it was a test he had passed.
As he entered the room, the first thing that struck him was how few people were there ahead of him. While he was never actually late, he always seemed to be one of the last two or three people to straggle in. He double-checked his watch. He was not especially early. As he sat down, he started to notice that not only were there fewer people in the room than usual, but that several of the people who were there were people he did not recognize. Well, he realized, one of them was someone he knew: Jeannette Lee, the former Surgeon General of New Chicago. She had been fond of the uniform that came with the job, and he was not used to seeing her out of it. Today, she had a troubled look on her face. Given the irregular cast at the meeting, plus her recent resignation, he couldn't help but wonder if he was about to be brought in on some sort of political scandal. The thought intrigued him.
Claudia was already there. She also seemed out of sorts. When he made eye contact and raised his brows, she gave him a wide-eyed shrug, then, apparently remembering she didn't like him, looked away. So, he thought, like him, she had noticed something amiss and didn't know what it was about. It was not often that he saw her look even remotely helpless. He did not consider that a good sign.
The naiad, Susan, was there, too. Though he had seen her a few times at these staff meetings, he had no idea what role she served in this administration. But at least she was a familiar face, not to mention an entrancing one. Kneeling on the floor beside her was a centaur he didn't recognize. Several of the people Harrison didn't know were wearing uniforms. This bothered him, in a vague sort of way. Although the agency was part of the government, it was not part of the military, and he was suspicious of their presence here.
Alec Baker was the last to arrive. Claudia snapped to her feet when he entered, which Harrison thought was a gratuitous display, until he noticed that everyone else was standing, too. So, as not to look like a fool, he stood up, and then he saw why he was standing. President Hatfield had entered the room. He looked around to get a sense of whether anyone had seen this coming. No one was gasping or looking shocked, but just about everyone looked tense or nervous. Even Claudia, whose personal relationship with the president was very close, seemed surprised. He was glad that he was not the only disoriented person there.
"Sit please," said the president. This was the extent of her greeting as she found her own seat at the conference table. Everyone sat down.
"Right, then," said Alec, taking his position at the middle of the table, right next to President Hatfield. "Down to brass tacks. Most of you do not know why you are here. Or you think you're here for a routine meeting." He held his hand out. He was holding something between thumb and forefinger, something almost too small to see. Harrison knew it was the remote control to the presentation system in the room. They were about to see some sort of slide show. "When we're through here," Alec was saying, "you should all appreciate the need to keep the nature of this meeting discreet. I will need you to set aside any reaction you may have to being left out of the loop until this moment." He swept the room with penetrating eyes. "Nothing you are about to see," he repeated, "leaves this room."
Harrison shifted in his seat. For the first time since being brought into this organization, he truly saw Alec as a spook. It chilled him.
As the room lights dimmed by just a hair, the entire wall behind where Alec was now standing became a topographical map of North America. Alec let it sit there for a few seconds, long enough for everyone to fully absorb what it was, then he waved his hand at it. Hundreds of blue dots appeared at apparently random locations. "These," he said, "are sites where items or structures have been found which are beyond the state of world technology as of the year 2003. Every site shown here was either discovered by one of our exploration teams or was reported by an incoming citizen. These," he waved his hand again and a substantially smaller array of red dots appeared, scattered across the map, "are locations where items possessing some form of magical quality have been discovered." He paused. Everyone in the room scrutinized the board, some of them trying to appear knowledgeable.
"I see it," said Harrison, then bit his lip as he realized he had said it loud enough for most of them to hear. They were all looking at him now. Some were curious, some irritated. Trapped, he forged ahead. "Circles," he said, and pointed.
Alec's brows went up. "Keenly observed, Mr. Cody," he said. He waved again. Large, blue circles appeared on the map. They were narrow, and there were several dozen of them, all arranged like ripples from a stone thrown in a pond. He allowed this image to linger for a few seconds before speaking again.
Harrison had already seen the pattern. He looked around the table to watch the light bulbs come on above the other heads. What they were noticing was that only a tiny fraction of the blue dots were still visible. The rest were covered by the blue ripples.
"As you can see," Alec said, "the technological finds are approximately dispersed in concentric circles. Apart from infrastructure, such as roads and Worm tunnels and the like, ninety-six percent of the finds occurred on one of these circles. Initially, we were uncomfortable with that level of certainty. However …" He waved again. Red circles appeared this time, interspersed, and covering all but a handful of the red dots. The map, in two colors, now looked like a huge target, its bulls eye at New York City. "Ninety-nine percent of the magical finds appear in these circles. We now consider the four percent discrepancy for the tech finds to be based mostly on reporting errors."
He waved again. The point of view pulled back until the entire globe was visible, and the image began to rotate about the earth's axis. The circles wrapped all the way around the planet, getting wider until each one reached an approximate great circle, the circles converging on the other side of the world. From a distance, they made the Earth look like a spherical loaf of very thinly sliced bread. "The mathematical model shown here," Alec continued, "has technology bands of uniform width and distribution. The magic bands are slightly narrower, and slightly further spread, but also in a uniform fashion. We have no observational data about any other continent, but if the pattern holds, we have extrapolated that there are 512 such technology bands, and 343 magical ones. These numbers are significant. They are relatively prime, meaning they have no common factors. In a nutshell," he looked away from the map and at his audience, "there is nowhere on the planet where two of these bands overlap. With two important exceptions. Tracking the bands inward, we predict that there should be one of each at the exact point of origin." The image of the spinning globe froze and zoomed in on New York. The map showed a large violet dot that covered most of Manhattan. "The other theoretical location, if the pattern holds, is exactly half a world away from New York. Here." The map zoomed out again, spun and zoomed back in, highlighting a spot in the Indian Ocean, a bit south and east of Madagascar. It, too, was covered by a violet dot.
"It should be noted," Alec said, "that 512 is a power of two, and 343 is a power of seven." He paused, perhaps unsure whether to explore that concept right then. Harrison understood, at least theoretically, why the power of two was significant. Regardless of how advanced they became, computers were still binary in nature, and virtually every number that cropped up in computer technology was a power of two. It was a remarkable quirk for the technology bands to turn up in such a number. He did not find the power of seven striking until he happened to look over at Susan (really just hoping to gaze at her a bit), and he saw her ho
lding up seven fingers to the centaur. She looked troubled. The centaur was nodding.
"We do not," Alec decided to add, "consider that a coincidence."
There was some general murmur. Alec did not attempt to contain it.
"What's out there?" asked a man Harrison did not know. "At the point on the other side of the world?"
"To the best of our knowledge," Alec replied, "nothing. No land mass whatsoever. All things considered, that is very fortunate."
Several people gave each other plaintive glances. No one asked another question.
Alec waved again. The image of the Indian Ocean, covered in rings, was replaced by one that elicited gasps from many seated at the table. Harrison himself was horror-stricken but compelled to look. It was a creature, and he found himself deeply disturbed that its resemblance to Glimmer was startling. Like her, it was approximately human, with prominent insect wings. Unlike her, it was hideous. It had a shriveled, starved look to it. Harrison was suddenly reminded of a story he had seen on TV about anorexia nervosa. It had given him nightmares. The face of this creature was bony, with sharp chin, sharp nose, sharp cheeks, and small, sharp fangs that protruded slightly from a lipless mouth. To show its scale, it had been placed next to an ordinary ruler. This revealed, absurdly on the colossal wall display, that the creature was a bit less than eight millimeters tall.
Overwhelming all of these observations for Harrison, though, were the creature's two most manifest qualities. It was dead, and it was luminescent. Was this the one that had been following him? Alec gave no indication one way or the other.
The meeting continued in that vein for almost an hour. After Alec explained the significance of the avatar he had shown, and how difficult it had been to procure a specimen, even a dead one, he went on to enumerate a variety of other discoveries. Some, such as the universal change in the properties of compasses, Harrison already knew. Even so, he was baffled by the revelation that, like his own ability to open any kind of lock, the compass phenomenon was not magical. The scientific explanation made absolutely no sense to him, having to do with what was apparently the very important distinction between a magnetic field and an electric one.