by M M Buckner
Yue had collapsed and knocked her head against a monitor. The gash on her temple still seeped a little blood, and Roman knew he had pushed her too far. Like him, she’d been surviving on black-and-red capsules. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d rested. Moments ago, when he had carried her down to the bunk, she felt like a sack of bird bones in his arms. He removed her shoes, then bathed her emaciated face with a cloth. She’d been beautiful once.
As he rocked to and fro beside her bed, he longed to rest his brow against the soft white edge of her mattress. But he feared the cotton batting was not solid enough to support the weight of his skull. If he pressed against it, he thought he might dissolve through the fiber and metal springs. His cohesion would fail, and he would enter a region of molecules, where his cellular atoms would swirl a billion courses through the void.
“¿Qué?”
He shook himself awake, got to his feet and climbed the dew-slick ladder to the deck. Someone had made coffee. Burnt sludge, he drank it anyway. Enlisting the help of the Coast Guard and the Corps of Engineers had taken all his energy. He loathed the taste of bureaucratic shit, but he’d eaten it. His tongue rolled around his sour unbrushed teeth, and he felt gritty inside. To gain cooperation from the Anglo authorities, he had divulged that the colloid might not be completely inert. His people didn’t know enough about its properties to guarantee public safety, that’s how he put it.
With a scowl, he threw his cardboard cup overboard, and the rippling water engulfed it. Green, brown, rust-red, piss-yellow, the fluid undulated in a billion fleeting crests and troughs. He allowed the movement to lull him. Haze thickened the air. It would be easy to let the Feds take over. Deny liability. Fight it out in court. Then finally, inevitably, liquidate Quimicron to pay off his bills, and let it all drift away. In his weariness, the idea tempted him.
Ironic, his obsession with solid things. Ships. Buildings. Pipelines. Paper notes in a bank vault. Real estate. Nothing was real. The tighter he gripped his assets, the faster their significance slipped through his fingers. Every firm surface was illusion, a trick of light and excited particles, disguising the vacuum.
He craned to see the sky. The seaplane would arrive from the South.
Swim
Thursday, March 17
11:28 AM
Boat sirens echoed across the water, and CJ sat up in her cockpit. Ships of all descriptions were converging toward her. Their engines pumped decibels and energy, and she had a hard time keeping track of the colloid’s field. A second Coast Guard tender plowed through the traffic, and an officer onboard shouted something through a megaphone, but the wind distorted his words. She ducked low in her cockpit. Were they coming to arrest her?
But the Coast Guard’s garbled instructions finally resolved to intelligible words. The guy was directing traffic, clearing a stretch of the main river. CJ wrinkled her nose. All this engine noise would screw up her music session. What the heck were they doing?
As if to answer her question, a seaplane circled low in the milky sky and lined up for an approach. She didn’t realize they allowed airplanes to land on the Mississippi River. The plane must belong to some high-roller, she thought. Then her mind clicked. Roman Sacony.
Speak of the devil, she heard his voice. Roman was standing directly above her on the Chasseur’s deck, talking on his phone. She flinched and looked up, but he wasn’t leaning over the rail, so he couldn’t see her.
In fact, Roman had no idea CJ Reilly was loitering under his bowsprit. As he watched the float-mounted cargo plane approach the volatile water, his thoughts snapped more rolls than an aerobatic biplane. Nothing felt solid. Not even the deck beneath his feet.
He’d chartered the bulky Fairchild cargo plane from a Florida outfit, and they claimed their pilot had years of experience landing on moving water. But the Mississippi wasn’t just any moving water. Its tremendous volume pounded downstream at locomotive speed. If the plane’s pontoons touched down at the wrong angle, the river’s mighty current would flip it like a piece of trash.
Humidity dampened Roman’s shirt, and there was no breeze to mediate the river’s vinegar reek. He focused his binoculars on the pedestrians collecting along the waterfront to watch the seaplane land. Office workers, shopkeepers, schoolchildren. Mist in the air made their faces indistinct. “Get back from the water,” he growled. A vein on his forehead quivered.
He knew the exact population figures for East and West Baton Rouge, but as long as everyone stayed out of the river, the supercool emulsion couldn’t hurt them. What worried him, what gave him head-splitting angst, was the increasing toll of damaged ship and barge hulls. The colloid showed a whopping appetite for iron, steel, and river cargo of every description. Very soon, the authorities would hold him accountable.
He hung fire as the seaplane skidded sideways through the steamy air to bleed off velocity. The pontoons kissed the water, bounced, dipped, and touched down. The plane slewed to one side, settled into the rushing water and began immediately to drift downstream. Its motor revved up, and its propellers beat the air. When it finally taxied out of the current into the relative calm of the canal bay, Roman allowed himself to breathe.
He leaned on the rail and contemplated the water. Somewhere below that cloudy surface, his enemy lurked. He knew he had not created this beast. He hadn’t filled this northern river with excrementos. But he understood that life was not founded on justice. He was the one who stood here now, defending this Anglo city. He, a Latino. This enemy had chosen him. If he refused its challenge, he knew that something inside him would sink and drown and never surface again.
So he would catch the beast and roast it with electricity. His attack might knock out power all along the waterfront, and he would have to reach deep in his pockets to pay the lawyers who would defend him. No matter. He would not back down. As long as he walked and breathed, he would not let this violador win.
Seven feet below, hiding in her Viper, CJ heard him groan.
Gush
Thursday, March 17
12:11 PM
Hal Butler woke from a stupor and rolled off his leatherette chair. The soft chime from his laptop indicated a new instant message had arrived, and he hoped it would be the one. He crawled across a six-pack of empties and a half-painted miniature playing field for a game called Forge World. His naked knees scattered tiny ogres and knights.
The message glowed on his screen. Finally. Soeur Rayette.
“Friend, the Lord has saved us!!! Satan’s evil creation is gone!!!”
Hal frowned at the multiple exclamation marks. He didn’t want Satan’s evil creature to be gone. His blogs about the Watermind were drawing record traffic, and his hasty special edition of the Eye was selling out. He was already planning the next issue.
“Calm down, dear sister, and tell me all.”
Rayette responded with a longer than usual message. In King James diction, she gushed relief and gratitude because “the Lord broke the blue gates and drove the creature away.” She described the spontaneous party that sprang up on the Quimicron dock when Merton Voinché found an old waterproof CD player the scientists had left behind. She told of workers too weary to lift their arms who were suddenly jigging and clogging to the rhythms of zydeco. “A MIRACLE,” she messaged in all caps, lining up a row of exclamatory punctuation.
On the back of an envelope, Hal scribbled, “Merton Voinché.”
“How narrow was our escape,” Rayette messaged. “The Lord’s miracle has saved us!”
“Bless you, sweet Soeur.” Hal closed her message box and Googled the white pages for Merton Voinché.
Stir
Thursday, March 17
2:34 PM
On a hot iron barge under a steamy brutal sun, a dozen black, copper, and bronze men worked to lower an enormous yellow bag into the water. Its coarse carbon texture chewed at the men’s work gloves. The crane operator watched them connect the bag’s huge grommet hooks to his hoist. Inside his hot metal cab, the operator cu
rsed his broken AC. His cab stank of a urine bottle he kept under his seat and a tobacco juice bottle he kept between his knees. When he saw a helicopter circle near his crane tower, he said, “Man, don’t touch my tool. I knock you outta the sky.”
Roman saw the helicopter, too, and ground his teeth at the red-white-and-blue call letters blazoned across its airframe, a local Baton Rouge TV station. Roman leaned his elbows on the Chausseur’s gunwales and counted the minutes. The crew was dropping the fifth of eight bags into position, but the process was taking longer than planned. The heavy bags didn’t want to slide off the barge, and the men were having to wrestle them over the edge. A second barge was standing by to pump the bags full of river water, but the way things were going, they might have a long wait.
A rogue Caribbean storm was stirring weather up the river, and marble clouds gathered in the South. Roman watched the current, as thick as Turkish coffee, and he visualized the bath of chemicals washing downstream every second, feeding the colloid. As barometric pressure dropped, he felt the beginning of a sinus headache.
A hundred yards away, beneath a dank Port Allen wharf, CJ also felt sinus pressure building. She’d been forced to abandon her spot under the Chausseur’s bowsprit. Too much traffic coming and going.
Beneath the wharf, she hid in a forest of creosote piers. Esters of chlorophyll permeated the rising vapor, and the sun painted bright white lines through the wharf planks. Around her, a fetid lather of plastic and rotting Styrofoam washed back and forth in sync with Earth’s eternal rhythm. Plash, gurgle, rill, the water swelled in and out with the regularity of breath. And her Viper swung like a cradle.
The temptation to sleep deviled her. Blinking, she watched the delicate tracery of the colloid’s EM field waver on her handheld instrument. At this distance, the field diffused to a ghost image, like breath on a mirror. Only its changing shape distinguished it from the energetic confusion in the bay. While the other fields propagated in standard spheres, the colloid revolved from flower to crescent to plume. She kept losing it, then straining her eyes to find it again. Sometimes she could sense its presence only through her own stubborn faith.
Brim
Thursday, March 17
3:09 PM
Two hours of sleep and another stimulant capsule revived Li Qin Yue. She climbed to the foredeck to meet Rick Jarmond, the junior regulatory manager from the Corps of Engineers. He wanted more “input” before he would agree to close the Port Allen lock. Roman was skulking on the bridge, watching the NovaDam operation. Peter Vaarveen was lounging on the stern, idly downloading new satellite scans. Meir was sleeping. That left Yue alone to fend off the Federal snoop.
“Permission to come aboard?” Rick Jarmond swayed on his Boston Whaler Gallant and danced to regain his footing. He waved happily to Yue. Rick loved boater talk. He loved boarding vessels in an official capacity. He didn’t even mind the smothering humidity. In fact, Rick brimmed with enthusiasm for this assignment.
In the damp heat, Yue helped him step across to the Chausseur’s deck while he glanced around like a tourist. He had short sandy hair, round cheeks, and a peach-fuzz goatee. He carried a clipboard and a heavy black radio, and his breast pocket bulged with mechanical pencils. In blue jeans, sneakers, and a New Orleans Saints windbreaker, he looked all of twenty-five years old.
In fact, Jarmond had never conducted a site inspection before. Paperwork usually anchored him to his Baton Rouge desk, but this week, four field agents had intestinal flu, so Jarmond got the assignment. He couldn’t wait to tell his girlfriend. Getting paid to take a boat trip on the Mississippi River. Very cool.
Yue felt a sick headache coming on. Her spine felt crooked and out of joint. The Refuerzo still couldn’t set its collar, and the NovaDam crew was taking too much time. Worse, the Port Allen lock still flowed wide open, stepping heavy freighters up and down from the waterway to the river. That left the colloid free to escape in any direction. Roman expected her to tell this Corps guy whatever was necessary to get the lock closed.
She swallowed bile and guided Jarmond below deck for a fresh cup of coffee-flavored sludge. The young man kept blinking his eyes to settle his contact lenses. He couldn’t stop smiling.
In the galley, they found Rory Godchaux and Max Pottevents eating leftover pancakes and laughing at a tabloid newspaper someone had brought onboard. The centerfold of the Baton Rouge Eye showed an “artist’s conception” of a man-shaped liquid demon with a massive computerized brain and webbed feet. According to “reliable sources,” this so-called “Watermind” was the offspring of a female abductee who had been secretly impregnated with artificial electronic sperm.
“Back to work,” Yue growled.
Rory and Max exchanged a glance, then hustled out. Quickly, Yue stuffed the Eye in the waste bin. She’d read Hal Butler’s article. The last thing she wanted was to bring it to the attention of the Corps. But Rick was too excited to notice the newspaper. He wanted to see her computer data.
The galley smelled as damp as breath. Yue sat at the table, opened her laptop and retrieved a three-month-old safety report on Quimicron’s Miami operations. She angled the screen to let Jarmond read the dense technical verbiage.
He stroked the patch of fuzz on his chin. “This isn’t right. You’re stalling.”
Yue sneered. “I’m not familiar with this system. Let me try again.”
She called up a random Word document—which turned out to be her letter of resignation. How interesting that her cursor landed on that file. She’d been revising and polishing her resignation letter for the past three years.
Rick’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed. “Ma’am, don’t try my patience. I have an injunction in my pocket.”
What the hell, she thought. Roman hadn’t spoken to her for days, except to bark orders. He treated her like a lackey. She pictured him pacing the bridge, spinning his cold-blooded lies. He expected her to lie, too. He expected everything, and all he gave in return was money.
Across the sultry bay, a motor percussed the air, and the NovaDam crew splashed another enormous bag into the canal. Rick looked out the porthole. “You don’t have the okay for that.”
“Don’t we?”
“Better show me that data, or I’m shutting you down.”
The crane’s loud motor drilled through Yue’s bones. Her skull sank heavily against her jaw, and her weary spine settled farther into her pelvis. In a febrile vision—brought on perhaps by amphetamines—she saw her entire body turn to powder and blow away on the wind.
“I’ll show you everything,” she said.
She led him to the stern, and Rick Jarmond bounded after her like a pup. When Peter saw them coming, he darkened his workstation screen. The sun had bleached his hair whiter than ever, and his glasses winked with blank reflections.
“Show Lieutenant Jarmond we have nothing to hide,” Yue said.
Peter grinned. He could see Yue wanted to stir up difficulties for Roman. Though he didn’t understand all the history between the QB and the CEO, he recognized the fury of a woman scorned. But no way would he share his data with this government geek. He shrugged and kicked some cables aside. “Sure thing, lieutenant. Step into my lab.” He tapped keys to retrieve a satellite scan. The Corps of Engineers could get that anyway.
The infrared scan showed the goblet-shaped canal bay in blues, yellows, and reds indicating cool, warm, and hot temperature patterns. Just inside the goblet’s narrow throat, a frigid blot glowed dark blue-violet.
“Awesome.” Rick blinked at the screen, then at the buoys in the water. “What makes it so cold?”
Peter smirked. “It’s an aliphatic hydrocarbon containing halogens of chlorine and fluorine.”
Rick tugged his eyelid to adjust his contact lens. “Freon, huh? Y’all spilled CFCs?”
Peter stiffened. He hadn’t expected the dorky Fed to understand his chemical lingo. Chlorofluorocarbons were chewing through the planetary ozone shield, exposing Earth to lethal radiation. The government
charged hefty penalties for CFC emissions. Peter noticed Yue smiling.
“Quimicron doesn’t deal with CFCs,” he explained to Jarmond. “This Freon came from upriver. It’s not ours.”
Rick studied the satellite scan, winking his left eye at his unruly contact lens. “This picture’s ten minutes old.” He pointed to the time-and-date stamp in the upper right corner. “Let’s see the latest one.”
“Why not.” Peter accessed the military FTP site and downloaded a new image.
Rick moved closer to the screen and squinted. “Where’d it go?”
Peter leaned over his shoulder. Then he pushed Rick aside. Rapidly, he accessed the FTP site and downloaded another scan. Yue had never seen Peter in such a hurry. She rushed over and elbowed Rick farther away. Peter doublechecked the time-and-date stamp on the new scan. He verified the download procedure. He scratched his white hair. The cold spot had vanished.
Yue pounded keys at another station. She was already picturing Roman’s face. He would blame her, but how could she control the colloid’s vacillating temperature? Like a thrown switch, the slick must have warmed up to match the surrounding river heat, so the satellite’s infrared cameras couldn’t see it.
Yue tried triangulating its radio emissions, but that didn’t work. A hundred different radio frequencies crisscrossed the bay. While Rick Jarmond hovered with his mouth hanging open, she clawed the keyboard to locate the EM field. But her sensors painted a confused overlay of energy patterns. Boat engines. Wharf cranes. Channel buoys. Power cables crossing under the river. The entire downtown waterfront glowed hot with electromagnetic radiation. She slung her fingers as if they burned. She’d lost the colloid.
CJ didn’t hear Yue’s brittle curses. Hiding under the wharf a hundred yards away, CJ gripped her small instrument and focused on the faint EM field she’d been tracking all along. If she didn’t know its variations so well, she would never have spotted it moving sideways through the jumbled energetic noise in the water. Even so, she had to strain to keep the changeling contour in sight. While she watched, the convoluted flower smoothed into a disk, and its wispy image grew fainter still, as if it were sinking to the bottom. CJ kept watching.