by M M Buckner
“You signed the disclose pledge,” Max reminded her. “That’s like word of honor. You gotta stick by that.”
“Well, he promised not to use my name.” Max’s warning troubled her. She should never have told him about Hal Butler’s request for an interview. She was feeling ambivalent enough without an ethics lecture. “Here, plug in this cable.”
She handed him the power cord to Yue’s multichannel analyzer. When he found the outlet, she connected all the units and booted up Yue’s computers. An image of the EM field blinked on the screen.
“Oh,” she whispered. “It’s outside the collar.”
“Sa?”
Max leaned over her shoulder while she tapped the keyboard, searching for a history of previous maps. She wanted to compare the images over time, to discover how and when the colloid breached its trap. A lurking memory made her shiver and hurry, but she didn’t know how to launch the software.
“Damn this thing.” She savaged the keys.
“You’re probably looking for the image archive,” said a familiar voice.
They turned and saw Roman Sacony stalking up the dock. Even in running pants and a T-shirt, he looked stylish. CJ wondered how long he’d been prowling in the shadows.
“I ran the query earlier.” He reached across her and keyed a command, which brought up a line graph with a hyperbolic curve.
CJ gawked at the image. “He’s growing,” she breathed.
“Yue estimates 10.4 liquid tons. That’s a thirty percent expansion since yesterday.” He checked his watch. “I’d like to know how the damn thing escaped the collar. Yue found it drifting a quarter mile down the canal. Now we’ll have to trap it again.”
“Show me the data,” she said, forgetting who was boss and who was junior employee.
Roman’s jaw sliced sideways. “You have five seconds to persuade me not to fire you.”
“I have a theory about language,” she blurted. Half-formed ideas tumbled in her head. She wasn’t prepared to verbalize a hypothesis, but neither was she ready to be fired. “I know how to communicate with the colloid.”
“You know?”
“I have to test it,” she hedged.
“The hell you do.” He shoved his long hair back off his forehead and glared at her. “Were you testing it this morning? We found your MP3 player. Didn’t I warn you not to go in that water again? With the Feds breathing down our necks, all we need is another accident.”
“How kindhearted,” she snapped back. “You need what I know. So listen.”
She reached for the duffel Max carried over his shoulder. It held underwater audio equipment Max had found in someone’s basement. She jerked the duffel open to reveal two disk-shaped Lubell speakers. The piezoelectric devices looked like hubcaps welded together, and each one was rated to project underwater sound through a fluid volume up to twenty acres in size. The speakers were battered and mud-streaked, but in perfect working order. She and Max had tested them in his friend’s catfish pond.
“We’ll play mathematical sequences through the water, then track the response,” she said.
Roman lifted one eyebrow. “What will that prove?”
“The Watermind responded to rhythm at the pond, so I intend to—”
“Watermind?” Roman’s expression turned feral. His eyes widened ferociously, and his voice blasted her like a wind. “Did you invent that name?”
“No, I—I saw it online,” she stammered.
He took a step toward her. “When I saw your report on the Web, I wanted to wring your neck.”
CJ blanched and faltered backward, knocking over a stack of surge protectors. “I didn’t—”
Max hustled to cover her confusion. He began setting up the audio equipment. Roman watched the young Creole’s hands adjust the jacks and speaker cables with quiet familiarity. The warm night closed around them, and for a moment, the faint clicks of Max’s gear were the only sounds on the dock.
When Roman spoke next, his voice was low and contained. “You wouldn’t be that stupid. Someone must have hacked our e-mail server.” He dropped to one knee to help CJ collect the spilled gear. “At least they deleted our company name.”
She swept up a double handful of surge strips, unable to meet his eye.
“You guessed a lot of things right, Reilly. That’s the reason I’m not firing you.” Roman stacked the gear on the workbench. “You make intuitive leaps. It’s a gift I admire. Just be careful while you’re gazing off in the distance not to miss something obvious right in front of you.”
Foam
Monday, March 14
10:11 PM
In the darkness and gathering heat of the Gulf-Pac dock, Max tested the audio speakers and watched the chief executive show Ceegie how to work the computer. Mr. Sacony had a commanding style that made Max both respectful and wary. He listened to them discuss the “colloid,” the name they used for the devil water. Though their words sounded like a foreign language, Max paid keen attention because he wanted to understand. The chief said djab dile was growing.
The lady scientist Yue had confirmed electric current in the water, and a crew was scouring the canal for the power source. Ceegie seemed pleased about that. The lady Yue had also found a living creature called phosphorescent dinoflagellates that luminesced underwater, and Max suspected that meant the aqua-green sparkle that glowed in the waves just at twilight. Everyone in Baton Rouge had seen that. Ceegie said that didn’t explain the colloid’s rhythmic flashes.
Ceegie was getting that shine in her hazel eyes, that crazy distraction that took her to places Max couldn’t follow, although he noted Mr. Sacony seemed to follow well enough. Mr. Sacony knew how to speak science.
Mutely, Max absorbed their talk about the mircoparticles the scientists had discovered in the water. Cognitive radio chips. Industrial lubricants. Human stem cells. Hanta viruses. Mr. Sacony showed her a picture of a living bacterium that was pierced through with a manmade metal rod finer than baby hair. A living nanomachine, the chief called it. The picture on the screen looked like a whirling dervish.
Mr. Sacony said living microorganisms were being drawn into the colloid by the weak polarized attraction of the EM field. Max didn’t know Latin, but he knew the canal was full of sewage and germs. It didn’t surprise him to hear that every kind of filth was cycling into the devil water.
“Yue also found your microbubbles,” the chief said. “She’s analyzing the gas. It’s not methane.”
Max envied the chief’s educated words. Mr. Sacony was like Ceegie, full of knowledge from books. Max couldn’t decide why he disliked the man so much.
When the chief showed Ceegie the gooey chains of microchips that spiraled around each other, she grew very excited. “He’s evolving his first specialized organelles,” she said.
The chief got mad and raised his voice. “Do NOT assign biological terms to this chemical reaction. The colloid is NOT alive.”
Ceegie raised her voice, too. “Maybe we need a new definition of what’s alive.”
Their shouting set Max on edge. As their decibels escalated, he stole another look at the screen. The microchip chains looked like twisted ropes of sparkling milk. Humidity fogged the glass, so he untied his paryaka to blot up the drips.
Mr. Sacony lowered his voice when he talked science. He said the colloid had no center, no organizing hierarchy. It couldn’t be alive. He said the internal structures were always churning apart, then washing back together. And when he mentioned heat, his voice turned ugly. Max decided it was Sacony’s voice he didn’t like. Too flat, the man’s voice lacked timbre.
“What’s happening to its heat? That’s the question. How did it form ice? Why does it stay cold? That much energy can’t vanish.” Sacony drummed his fingers like a machine gun. The noise made Max wince.
“I don’t know.” Ceegie sounded cross and tired. “The liquid inside the collar last night was freezing.”
Sacony made a noise with his nose. “You shouldn’t have been there.”<
br />
Max nodded hearty agreement, but Ceegie didn’t notice. He realized that she no longer even saw him. He’d blended into the concrete like one of those color-changing lizards.
“The real question is, what does he need the energy for,” she said.
The chief snapped, “It’s polluted water. It doesn’t need.”
“You just want to be rid of it.” Ceegie bit off a fingernail, and Max heard the stress in her breathing. He wanted to rub her shoulders. She needed to eat. She was getting perilously overexcited, and the chief wasn’t even trying to calm her. Max realized then that Roman Sacony couldn’t actually hear Ceegie. He could only take in the facts she spoke.
Suddenly, a wave splashed the dock, and all three of them turned to scrutinize the water. Gulf-Pac’s mercury floodlights showed an inky surface disturbed by unseen movement. Max caught Ceegie’s hand and drew her away from the edge.
The chief scowled at him. “How’s that sound equipment coming?”
“It’s ready, sir. Should I drop the speakers in the canal?”
“Not here.” The chief handed Max a twenty dollar bill and a set of car keys. Max eyed them in confusion.
“Silver Jeep parked by the front door. Get us some coffee.”
The man’s flat voice grated Max’s eardrums. Max looked to Ceegie for a sign, but she was caught up in a whirl of science inside her head. She’d gone far beyond him.
“I’ll come back quick,” he said. Then he took the keys and left.
Spume
Monday, March 14
10:29 PM
“Sound waves?” Roman examined the Lubell speakers. “Li Qin wants to try an electromagnetic pulse.”
“An EMP? I thought of that. Electromagnetic pulses work great in cell phones, but strong ones can fry circuits. They’re even used in weapons.”
“Ah.” Roman’s eyes shifted.
“Balancing the power level is just too delicate,” she went on. “We might disrupt his neural net. It’s too risky.” She visualized a weapons-grade EMP. Invisible, almost soundless, its intense burst of electrons would mushroom outward in waves, and the subatomic radiation would surge through every conductive material within range—metal wires, electronic circuits, water, human flesh. “EMP is a bad idea,” she said.
“The colloid killed a man.” Roman glowered at the water and slapped his pants with the back of his hand, over and over, unconsciously. “It’s loose in my canal, and I intend to neutralize it.”
She lifted the Lubell speakers and pushed Roman aside with her hip. “We can’t predict how the colloid will react. EM pulses might antagonize him.”
“Pardon me. We wouldn’t want to make the dirty water mad. Let’s sing it a lullaby.” Roman wrested the speakers away from her, and she pushed him violently with both hands, causing him to stumble backward. He laughed in surprise. Another wave splashed over the dock, soaking their shoes.
“I’m going to use those speakers!” she said.
When she tried to take them from him, he lifted them beyond her reach and tossed them into a cart. She swung her fist, and he dodged, laughing. “Shall we duel?”
She pushed him again, but this time he caught one of her wrists and twisted her arm behind her back. He grappled her and held her close. His breath warmed the back of her neck. “You like to play rough.”
“Let me go.” She knew she was blushing. She tried to kick him.
He released her with a gravelly laugh. Another wave rindled over the dock like ocean surf, and they both watched it sluice around their shoes. As it drained back over the edge, CJ lifted one dripping sole. “Is the canal rising?”
“It shouldn’t be.” Roman sounded uncertain. They moved together to the dock’s edge. The oily surface churned three feet below the concrete slab, just as before.
“What’s making the waves?” CJ asked.
“Wind, maybe.” Roman glanced at the motionless treetops, then at CJ. With the same thought, they turned in unison toward the water.
“Those gates will hold it,” Roman said. “They could hold a hurricane.”
CJ heard a grinding noise under the dock. She knelt on the wet concrete and tried to get a look at the piers. Then she lay on her stomach and craned over the edge. Beneath the dock, heat and humidity collected in a sweltering spume.
“Do you have a flashlight? I think he’s feeding on the sand again.”
“You have a vivid imagination.” His tone was light, not like Harry’s. She heard him rummaging in a toolbox.
When he returned, she took the flashlight and played its beam over the dank, slimy piers. She saw an empty beer can rubbing against the concrete. Roman knelt beside her.
“We captured a decent sample in the lagoon,” he said. “We’ll carry your speakers there and try out your sound wave theory. I admit, you have a knack for lucky guesses.”
She sat up, all attention. “Is the sample generating a field?”
Roman nodded and looked down at his arm. In her excitement, she had gripped his wrist. When she tried to draw back, he pressed her fingers against his shirtfront.
“At first, we found nothing but pure H2O. You were right about that,” he said. “Then Yue spotted the chain of microchips shielded in a clump of proplastid. A good sample for your experiment.”
“Oh I could kiss you!” she blurted. Then she blushed and lowered her head. Her womb suffused with crampy heat.
He fondled her hand against his shirt, and she felt the firm muscles of his upper abdomen. His signals were clear. He wanted her. This was the moment to decide, but her boldness drained away. She pulled free, picked up her flashlight and lay on her stomach again to see under the dock. Water sloshed around the piers in slow swells. When Roman rested his hand on her lower back, her nerves lit up.
She waved the flashlight and babbled. “What if the colloid seeps down into the water table and percolates to the Gulf? Where the river dumps out, there’s a dead zone of garbage the size of New Jersey. Imagine if he finds all that junk to feed on.”
Roman gripped her waistband. “Watch it. You’ll fall in.”
“Think how fast he might grow. He could spread into the Caribbean.” She rolled on her back and shined the flashlight under her chin to make a funny face. Roman loomed above her, not smiling.
“After that, the Atlantic. Then the other oceans. There’s plenty of pollution to keep him growing.” She was talking too fast.
Roman brushed her forehead. “You’ve got mud on your face.”
His hand on her face unnerved her. “Next, he’ll infiltrate the clouds and rain in the rivers. And we’ll drink him. Then we’ll be part of him, too. Our bodies are two-thirds water.”
“Reilly, settle down.” He touched her hair.
“He’ll live in us. And every living thing will be linked in a worldwide web of water.”
Roman grimaced in that familiar way that was almost a smile. She pushed at his chest. He was leaning too close. She no longer heard the agitated gurgles that whisked through the piers below. “It could happen. Think about it.”
“I have,” he said in a voice as agitated as the water. Then he pressed her hands down and kissed her open mouth.
When Max returned half an hour later with four large black coffees and a dozen sugar-sprinkled beignets, the guard named Timothy Bojorian was duct-taping plastic sheets around the computer equipment to protect the electronics from moisture. Tim gladly accepted the coffee and pastry, but he said Mr. Sacony and Miss Reilly had gone home.
Sleet
Tuesday, March 15
5:03 AM
The Ides of March burst across Louisiana with frigid gusts of wind, and no one in the environs of Devil’s Swamp could remember such peculiar weather so late in the spring. While it was still dark, Elaine Guidry woke to a spooky scratching at her bedroom window. She got up, barefoot, hugging a terry robe around her ample breasts. It was too early to call Dan Meir. She batted yellow hair out of her eyes and found her Beretta handgun. Then she turned on the porch li
ght. Fine grains of sleet pelted her window glass, melted at once and rolled down in big clear streaks. If she hadn’t risen so early, she would have missed it.
Merton Voinché saw the sleet, too, and turned on his radio, hoping the weatherman would explain. Sure enough, it turned out the sky was all mixed up. Miles high, a stagnant layer of warm air had shed its moisture. But the rain fell into a freak frigid band of cold air below, where it froze solid. Merton watched the icy grains bounce and melt in his potted hemp plants.
What Rayette Batiste found most frightening was the pattern. When she got out of bed to watch the early TV news, only one isolated patch of sleet was falling. The bright-colored radar map showed a thin yellow plume blowing East out of Devil’s Swamp into the community of Scotlandville—precisely where Rayette lived. The Channel 6 weatherman said it was not uncommon for sleet to fall in localized patterns, but Rayette took it as an omen. Sure enough, when she reached out the door to catch the devil’s sleet in a skillet, the ice stopped falling. And before her eyes, all the pearly grains vanished into the ground.
“Mother of Mercy.” She lit a votive candle before a cardboard print of Raphael’s Madonna. “To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.”
Ten minutes after the sleet perished forever, Roman woke in his Hilton bedroom with the Reilly girl in his arms. It took him a while to understand. He’d slept with an employee. A girl half his age, what an ill-advised move. With the colloid loose, he should have stayed at the dock and kept watch. He should be down there now with Creque and Spicer, supervising his enemy’s recapture.
He raised his head to see the digital clock on his nightstand, and the scent of her hair caught in his nostrils. A clean sweaty little girl smell, mixed with something darker and muskier—the perfume of cunt. Last night, they’d made love in the shower, clawing and biting like hot-blooded teenagers. They’d done it standing up, while the water streamed over their bodies. Then again in bed, their loins had pounded against each other, slick with sweat and saliva and cum. Now his penis was growing hard. What was it about this blanca that brought out his animal need?