by M M Buckner
Roman acknowledged him with a distracted nod. “Reilly, this is an order. Get some sleep.” Then he followed Max toward the boat ramp.
CJ huddled in her folding chair and watched them leave. “Why don’t you ask if Max needs sleep?” she muttered, but by then, Roman was too far away to hear.
She finished drinking her water, then brutalized the plastic bottle. Little hen, ha! She sneered at the flattened bottle, then kicked it under the rail. It landed on the lagoon cover and slowly filled with rain.
How many men had she slept with since fleeing Boston? Her hand slid down her achy belly into her crotch. Seven in twelve months. The number sickened her. She certainly hadn’t done it for pleasure. Each sordid memory filled her with revulsion. Except for Max, every encounter spoke a wish for oblivion. Maybe Roman had seen the truth about her. She felt adulterated, that was the word. She’d finally become an adult.
A movement on the screen caught her eye. Thermocline layers of hot and cold water were sliding over each other like wrinkling membranes. She checked the pH and found all the numbers rising. She opened her oscilloscope file, and there was the strong rhythmic pattern, running in waves across the screen. Only, something had changed. It took her a minute to notice the different meter. The colloid’s new pattern undulated in 3/4 time—not 4/4. It was playing a waltz.
Max had not played a waltz.
Could it be? She felt almost too giddy to move. Nevertheless, she slotted a disk to back up the data. For a wavering interval, the pattern held its shape. The graphic sine curves dipped and rose in the distinctive rolling three-beat cadence. Then like a rainbow, it dissolved, and the oscilloscope reverted to its previous static, but not before CJ had captured a few brief measures in 3/4 time.
“Check this, Roman Sacony. Your river trash just spoke his first word.”
Pulse
Wednesday, March 16
6:45 AM
Canal waters soaked the porous shoals of Devil’s Swamp, fringing the flooded witchhazel in rings of soapy lather. Ebb and flow, the turbid juice seeped upward through the osmotic mud and percolated among coiling tree roots. It welled among the sedges, then seeped back down again like a slow sexual exchange. In coitus with solid ground, the water slurped loam and decomposing leaves, crude oil and perchlorate. It drank ravenously of mercury and lead. It tasted promiscuously—eroding, leaching, dissolving, accreting.
CJ woke from a strange dream and found herself on a couch in Dan Meir’s office, covered in Roman’s windbreaker. She didn’t remember falling asleep beside the lagoon, and she had no idea Roman carried her to this couch in his arms. As far as she was concerned, Roman could rot. She remembered only how the colloid’s waveform had danced.
Strains of “The Blue Danube” lilted through her head in the ebullient flowing rhythm of water. Of course her watery colloid would invent a waltz. She sat up and laughed. Yue had labeled him an accident. Ha! He was nothing less than a miracle. An active, learning neural net self-made from river trash. CJ drew a breath. If he could learn this fast, he might truly become sentient.
No trained scientist should leap to such a presumption. She had no supporting evidence, nothing solid—yet she wanted to believe it. A new life. A living mind. She pictured him as a newborn, innocent, and hopeful, just beginning to explore his world. A child prodigy—she knew what that felt like. Yes, he needed protection and care. She felt his small chubby hand reaching out to her, arousing a primal empathy she didn’t bother to examine. Already, he had uttered his first baby talk. Imagine, a waltz! She sprang up from the couch and looked for her shoes.
Her body felt gummy, in need of a wash. Her head itched, grime encrusted the soles of her feet, and her mouth tasted like guano. Vaguely, as she tied her shoelaces, she remembered parking her Rover near the lagoon. A wad of keys bulged in her pocket. She could drive to the Roach, take a shower, grab a snack—or rush back to the lagoon and jam with the colloid.
In the ladies’ room, she splashed water in her face, wetted her hair, and rinsed her mouth. Her overdue period had still not started. She grabbed a Coke from the vending machine and left the building. The morning felt surprisingly fresh and dry. Beyond the Quimicron parking lot, she wandered through a maze of warehouses, then jogged across a stubble field toward the lagoon. A few damp puddles still lurked from last night’s rain, but they were evaporating. As she hurdled over stumps and broken glass, she thought of her father. “Harry, don’t you wish you were here?”
A stitch in her side made her halt and hug her ribcage, and a sudden longing for her father overwhelmed her. How Harry would have relished this discovery of a new life-form. He always believed in Earth’s infinite fertility. “Harry, I wish . . .” but her voice failed.
On the distant catwalk, figures moved under the floodlights. The morning was dawning fine and clear, yet around the lagoon, the sun’s early rays glowed through a nimbus of fog. Ghostly wisps boiled from the lagoon, and the whiteness crept down the surrounding embankment like dry-ice vapor. CJ hurried toward the steps. She could hear someone laughing.
At the base of the steps, a huddled heap of denim, flannel, and leather resolved into the sleeping figure of Max. He lay curled on the bare concrete, resting his cheek on his arm. CJ stooped and kissed his forehead but didn’t wake him. Through a cloud of steam, she mounted the stairs to the catwalk, and near the stacked computer gear, she saw Li Qin Yue and Peter Vaarveen toasting each other with cardboard coffee cups. They turned at her approach. The lagoon cover had been removed, and not far away, Roman gazed at the steamy water as if spellbound.
“Did you see my data?” she called out breathlessly. “He composed music! He can speak!”
In her hurry, she nearly slipped in a pool of liquid that had sloshed out of the lagoon. The run left her dizzy. The water looked different this morning. She peered into the depths, looking for her wayward infant. Where was the precious floral clump?
Peter gave her a snide grin. “You look awful.”
“Yeah, I’m feeling light-headed.” She sat in a folding chair. They’d removed her tent, and a fresh dawn breeze was gradually dissipating the steam over the lagoon. “Did you see the waltz? He composes in ions and pH.”
Roman eyed the lagoon with such fixed concentration that not a muscle moved in his face. It seemed to cost him an effort to notice her.
CJ felt queasy. She tugged the can of Coke from her pocket and popped the lid. Fizz sprayed everywhere. She lapped sugary foam from her hand. “It was only a few bars, but I recorded it. Three-quarter time. Did you see? Isn’t it amazing?”
Yue’s braid was pinned so tight on top of her head that it drew her eyebrows up at the corners. “We had to modify your sound wave theory.”
“Oh?” CJ gave Roman a questioning glance, but he’d gone back to ogling the lagoon.
“You chose the wrong kind of wave,” Yue continued. “We tested my hypothesis, and I was right. We used an electromagnetic shockwave.”
CJ blinked. She thought she’d heard wrong or missed something important. Yue wouldn’t fire an EM shockwave at her innocent little prodigy? Even the QB wouldn’t deliberately destroy their only viable sample.
“The chips are completely neutralized.” Yue smoothed her braided crown.
Noises died in the air. Echoes failed. The world went hollow. CJ sat stunned. At last, she understood Roman’s fixed stare. He was gloating over a dead opponent. She spoke from an empty place. “You wanted a weapon.”
“And we found it,” Yue answered.
CJ stood and steadied herself against the rail. She felt nauseous, as if she might faint. Suddenly, a violent yowl geysered out of her, and she flung her fists at Roman’s back. When he turned and caught her, she tried to knee him in the groin.
“Murderer! Liar!” Words gurgled in her throat.
Yue grabbed her waist and wrestled her away.
Roman seemed perplexed. “What’s the problem? We’ll take other samples. There’s plenty more in the canal.”
CJ broke fr
ee from Yue’s hold. “I hate this job. I hate you. I quit.”
She ran down the steps, dodged Max’s sleeping body, and fled.
Sizzle
Wednesday, March 16
8:08 AM
CJ steered her rented Viper up the Mississippi. A bright dry wind blew in from Colorado, bringing positive ions to mate with dopamine receptors in her brain so that, in the languid depths of Louisiana, she felt a clear Rocky Mountain high.
“Sacony, you will rue this day,” she chanted. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. I’m the Eveready battery.”
After hiding her Viper under the drooping willows, she followed her usual path across the swamp. The high pressure front made a noticeable change in the scenery. Sunlight rustled through shining Palmetto fronds, and green leaves sparkled. CJ ran her fingers through the silky grasses and drew lambent breaths of honeysuckle nectar. In the dry clear air, every crimson berry, nodding blue bellflower, and yellowjacket bee glinted in jewel sharpness. The poisoned swamp gleamed like a garden.
At her lookout post, she opened her backpack, drew out her binoculars, and rummaged for her cell phone. She hadn’t called Max in hours. Frankly, she’d been putting it off, not sure what to tell him. But Max worried so much, it was a crime not to call and let him know she was okay.
“Shit.” She’d left her phone in the boat. Now she would have to slog the long way back through the muck to get it. What a hassle. Before starting back, she took a minute to focus her binoculars and make a quick scan of the canal. The Refuerzo lay moored near the Quimicron barge dock. They must be trying to collar another sample, she thought, another captive for Roman to torture.
All at once, a burst of underwater illumination caused the entire north end of the canal to blink like a green traffic light. “Good God. They’re using the EMP in the canal.” CJ gripped her binoculars. Weapons-grade electromagnetic pulses bolted through the canal like strobes, convulsing the hearts and brains of pelicans, otters, and toads. Dead catfish boiled to the surface.
She focused on the dock. Of course, the fiends were there, Li Qin Yue and Peter Vaarveen. In the morning sun, their faces blazed with wicked glee. And behind them paced the arch-fiend, cool and smug, Roman Sacony.
“Butcher,” CJ hissed through her teeth.
They were operating a machine she didn’t recognize at first, a massive squat cylinder housed in aluminum, with a round cone on top like a TV satellite dish. But instead of pointing at the sky, the dish was aimed at the water. She realized it must be the shockwave generator. From its nozzle poured the invisible deadly electrons that could tear through computer circuits and human flesh with equal results.
“Aaaaargh,” the wail gurgled from her throat. She ran. Without thought, with only a ferocious resolve to save her infant colloid, she stumbled through the thick vegetation toward the water’s edge. And all she could see was her father stretched on the white table. The IV, the rubber block in his mouth, the electrodes clamped against his jelly-coated temples. Electroshock therapy—Harry’s last hope to escape the black deeps.
“Nooooo!” She rushed toward the water as if she could stop the EMP with her bare hands. She could almost feel Harry jerking and writhing through the grand-mal seizure on the white table. Sawbriars tore at her boots. Twice she fell into muddy sumps, and once her knee twisted with a smarting pain. She stumbled down the sloping shoal to the water’s edge.
As she splashed into its soupy margin, another sizzling blink lit up the canal, and she leaped backward. Her wrist tingled with mild electric shock, and she realized her digital watch had shorted. Would the EMP electrocute her? She fell back in the wet grass, panting and shivering, suddenly afraid.
With greater caution, she edged toward the northern end of the canal, keeping well back from the water and grateful for her rubber hip boots. Tangled vines and brush hampered her progress. She no longer noticed their sparkling beauty. Four more times, she heard the weird sizzle that always preceded the underwater bursts of lightning.
“Uh-uh-uh,” she moaned inchoate grief as she tore blindly through the undergrowth. The more she fought the vines, the more they entangled her. Sizzle, flash. She smelled the hideous reek of dead frogs. Birds shrieked overhead. She wanted her cell phone. She needed help. She needed Max.
Blow
Wednesday, March 16
9:12 AM
Hal Butler knocked the ringing phone off its cradle. Somewhere near his ear, a tiny voice whined like a mosquito. Not for the first time, he’d fallen asleep across his desk. Slowly, he pushed up from the pile of magazines, burger cartons, and spiral notebooks that had creased and pimpled one whole side of his face. His hair stuck out like coils of copper wire. His eyelids felt glued, so he didn’t bother to open them. He coughed and sat up and nearly fell out of his swiveling chair. Faint screams emanated from the phone.
“Yeah?” He picked up the receiver wrong end around and had to fumble and twist it.
“. . . on out here. They’re blowing the grid!”
“Huh? Wha?” Butler looked for his watch, but because his eyes were still shut, he couldn’t read the time. In his windowless office, the interminable fluorescent light bled weakly through his sealed eyelids.
“They’re blowing the fucking power grid, man! They’ve got this machine like a Van de Graaff ray gun, and they’re carpet-bombing the canal. It’s fucking wild!”
Butler’s eyes snapped open. He glanced at his desk, rubbed grit out of his eyelashes, and swigged an open bottle of warm Dixie beer. “Who the fuck am I talking to?”
“You gotta get out here. Devil’s Swamp. I’m taking photographs as we speak.”
“How much for the pictures? And what are they of?”
“Your Loch Ness Monster, man. I’m catching them in the act. Are you coming?”
Finally Hal recognized the voice. It was one of his flakey freelance photographers. “E-mail your shots, and I’ll take a look.”
“Butler, you are a fucking cave lizard.” The freelancer clicked off.
Hal dropped the phone, rubbed his face and tried to remember the last time he’d actually gone on location to cover a news story. He studied the scuff marks on his metal door. Ray guns, wow. His journalistic genius was already laying out the first-ever special midweek edition of the Baton Rouge Eye.
Glare
Wednesday, March 16
11:34 AM
For three hours, the canal water continued to blink. The acrid smell of ozone and burnt fish saturated the air as CJ finally rounded the far end of the canal and made her way doggedly toward Quimicron’s dock. Distorted voices mingled across the water, and crows squawked like hostile wardens. Under a stunted red maple, she paused to free her boot from thorns. The vegetation seemed to grow ever more junglelike, and she was too distracted and too far away to hear the Queen Bitch’s angry shout.
“Why do you question my work? The EM field is gone.” Li Qin Yue stood planted in front of her instruments, as gaunt and fleshless as a stick figure. She pointed at one particular screen. “Do you see any trace of it? No!”
“But the pH and thermoclines.” Roman swiveled the monitor away from the sun’s glare. “Look at this data. Part of the formation is still in place.”
Yue tossed her head, dislodging pins in her braid. “A vestige. Wait a few minutes. You’ll see it disintegrate.”
Peter Vaarveen sat in the shade of the pulse generator, flicking his penknife opened and closed, watching the two of them bicker. This fight was mild. On previous job sites, he’d seen them go at each other like sharks. Vaarveen often wondered what sick dynamic kept them working together.
Their last EM pulse had blown the power and knocked the whole Quimicron plant offline. Meir was off somewhere talking to the Dixie Electric Membership Corporation, trying to get their service restored. Meanwhile, Roman wanted them to tap the auxiliary generators and fire another shockwave. But Yue couldn’t abide the fact that Roman doubted her word. They didn’t need another shockwave. She staked her reput
ation that the energy field was already dead.
Dead. Peter Vaarveen pondered that word. It implied the blur of dissolved trash had once been alive. Reilly thought so, but Reilly was a mess. A total emotion-head. The worst kind of female. And yet, she’d discovered things about the colloid that he might have overlooked. His respect for her had inched upward of late. It didn’t hurt that she was a babe.
Alive? He wondered.
What force made something alive? He pictured a dog stretched on his dissection table. One instant it was kicking and fighting, or maybe just wagging its tail. The next instant, Peter’s needle plunged in. How could life and death change places so fast? “You’re either quick or you’re dead,” he snickered.
Still, he seriously regretted Yue’s rush to scorch the colloid without first checking the new sample they’d captured. With no collar to hold their target still, they might not have caught an active skein. Yue insisted she had no time to doublecheck, but Peter knew she didn’t really want a live sample. She didn’t want anything that might help CJ Reilly.
Women. Peter leaned against the generator housing and crossed his arms behind his head. Everybody could have gotten decent publishable articles out of this computerized soup if the females would just get along. But hell, it wasn’t his fight. He closed his eyes for a quick nap.
“Stay on it,” Roman snarled at Yue. “If anything changes, you fire that EMP again, understand?”
She turned her narrow back on him. Then Roman noticed Vaarveen snoozing in the shade. “Wake up.” He kicked Vaarveen in the ribs. “You slept last night. Work now.”
“Christ.” Peter rubbed his side and sat up to protest, but Roman was already running up the steps toward the levee.
Melt
Wednesday, March 16