Time spike

by Eric Flint

  Just in case. He had taken their advice. Just in case. But he hadn't bulked up much. He had the wrong body type for that. Still, he was stronger and his endurance was up. He just hoped he didn't need either. He was no fool. He was no match for two or three men looking for a fight and a little fun. For that matter, unless he had an edge, there was no way he could handle even one of these huge mothers. The big ones hanging over the rail, whistling and calling out "fresh meat" as the new fish were walked from the processing area to their cells had left his mouth dry and feeling as though it was full of cotton. He knew he wouldn't commit suicide. But just the same, he wasn't sure he would make it home to his mother. He might-probably would-get killed.

  He had already made up his mind. He would be no man's cocksucking bitch. He would die fighting if it came to that. If he couldn't die then, he would die later, when he went looking for revenge. Cook forced himself to take a few deep breaths. So far things had gone better than he had hoped. While being processed, his roommate had been a blond-haired, blue-eyed kid from the streets of Chicago. The boy had spent half his life institutionalized in one form or another. Foster homes, county jails, juvenile detention centers. He'd done them all.

  This was his first trip to an adult prison, but he was already hooked up and doing a booming business for hispapa. Since the sharks were being well fed, Cook and the other fish had had a relatively easy job staying out of trouble. As for his new roommate, his permanent roomie, he was a white man in his mid-fifties who made it plain he was doing his own time. He wouldn't be trying to dish anything out, but he also wasn't willing to give a fish any help. Cook was grateful for that. If the man had offered to help, it wouldn't have been for free. There was no such thing as out of the goodness of your heart in a maximum security prison. He had been warned about the way things worked. Some guy, usually older, definitely stronger and with a track record for busting heads would be friendly enough. Offer a little protection from the others. And then would come the price tag. Loyalty. Sex. And maybe a little hooking to one or two of his friends. But he would keep the others off you. He would make sure you weren't jumped in the shower or shoved into your room when the screws were busy elsewhere. He would remind you it was better to be one man's bitch than prey for an entire cellblock. Cook shuddered and reminded himself he wasn't effeminate.

  Young, yes. On the slender side, yes. Girlie, no. Except he didn't have much facial hair, and almost no body hair. He wished he was built more like the man on the bottom bunk; then maybe he too could sleep.

  Paul Howard, his roommate, wasn't unusually large. But he was big enough and thick enough and exuded a don't-fuck-with-me attitude without saying one word. He had been asleep for almost an hour, but his light snore wasn't why Cook was still awake. It was the other noises. The ones coming from other cells. Some of those sounds he recognized, and some he didn't. He glanced at the iron bars and was actually glad for them. A two-bunk cell with the right roommate was easier to survive than a bed in an open wing. He knew he had been lucky so far, but he also knew his luck would run out. It always did.

  Chapter 2 "We've got a big one, guys! Really big!" Margo Glenn-Lewis leaned over, squinting at the numbers appearing on the monitor screen, a frown gathering on her forehead. "Damn weird one, too." By then, Richard Morgan-Ash was already leaning over her shoulder. Within three seconds, so were Karen Berg and Malcolm O'Connell. Within ten seconds, Leo Dingley had arrived from the room next door. All five scientists working that night in the laboratory buried half a mile below ground in Minnesota had their attention fixed on the monitor. " 'Weird' is putting it mildly," Leo said, after a while. "If I'm interpreting these numbers correctly, we're talking about incredible energy here." Berg was already working the figures on her laptop. She carried it everywhere, even to the point of eliciting jokes about whether she took it into the bathroom-jokes which she laughed at but never answered. "It's as big as the Grantville event," she said, her tone hushed. "According to this." Morgan-Ash made a face. "Karen, to this day it has never been established what the figures were for the Grantville event." He gestured with his hands at their surroundings. "That was seven years ago. None of this was operating then, you may recall." The same meticulousness made him add:

  "Well. Not for that purpose, anyway. I admit some stray detections were made, but hardly enough-" "Oh, cut it out, Dick," said O'Connell.

  "We've crunched the numbers a thousand times over the years, and we know what it had to have been. A time transposition involving a sphere of space six miles in diameter and including umpteen jillions tons of matter-we've got that number figured somewhere, too, but 'umpteen jillion' does well enough for the moment-requires…" His own tone had grown hushed. His finger pointed at the screen. "Thissort of numbers." Morgan-Ash didn't pursue the argument. In truth, he didn't really disagree himself. He just found it necessary, as he had many times since he'd joined the project-The Project, was the only name it had-to restrain his colleagues' enthusiasms. In that, if nothing else, they tended to have the bad habit of conspiratorial rebels since time immemorial to be True Believers. The reason The Project had no formal name was because it had no formal existence. It was, in point of fact, something of a scientific conspiracy, launched less than a year after the Grantville Disaster by a small group of physicists and mathematicians who'd been completely dissatisfied with the official explanation of the event and just as completely disgusted by the scientific establishment's apparent willingness to go along with that official explanation. All the more so because, damnation, there wasevidence. Several of the deep underground experimental facilities located in various places around the world to study such things as neutrinos and nucleon decay and cosmic rays had detected…

  Something. But all pleas and requests to pursue the matter had been turned down, by governments and universities alike. And, unfortunately, the kind of equipment and facilities needed to detect the phenomena that they suspected were involved was extremely expensive. Not as expensive as something like CERN or Fermi Lab or the Very Large Array, no. But a lot more expensive than anything that would be financed by any single educational establishment or any single private donor. Fortunately, the newly elected President of the United States had come to the rescue, in a manner of speaking. Soon enough, his administration had so thoroughly infuriated enough scientists because of its heavy-handed political interference in scientific affairs, that influential figures in academia and even in some upper echelons of various government scientific agencies became more sympathetic to the requests. Not, probably, because they thought they were likely to be successful, but simply because they were antiestablishment. So, eventually, through a complex set of interlocking grant proposals, the conspirators got the funding they needed. Personally, Richard thought it showed very bad taste for Leo and Margo to refer to their funding as "embezzlement," even if he'd admit that much of the language in the grant proposals had been…

  Well. He preferred the terms "ingenious" or "creative," himself.

  "Vague," certainly. In a pinch, in a sanguine mood, he'd even allow "misdirection." On the bright side, the sort of nosy political overseers who'd have the inclination to ferret out the truth behind what those grants were actually funding were not the sort of people whose idea of a junket would include traveling half a mile down into an old iron mine in the backwoods of northern Minnesota. And even if they did, so what? How many of them would be able to make head or tails out of the use to which the equipment was being put, these days?

  It was, after all-for the most part, at least-the very same equipment that had been purchased and installed for its original purposes over twenty years earlier. The investigator would have to be a specialist in the fields involved to be able to sort out the truth from the flummery. Itcould be done. Indeed, that was how Richard himself had stumbled across the truth. He'd gotten puzzled by the reports that were occasionally issued from the Minnesota site and had come to see for himself. But, of course, he was hardly a political overseer in the eyes of anyone except his
teenage daughter. Who, fortunately, had taken the transition from southern England to northern Minnesota quite well, even if Richard himself was a bit dubious at times of the results. "The chronographic configuration looks really weird, too," said Malcolm. "Nothing at all like the events we've observed before."

  "I can tell that much from the numbers," said Dingley, "but you're our chronolotrist, not me." The term "chronolotry" was what they'd taken to calling O'Connell's esoteric branch of mathematics, much of which he'd developed himself. Richard understood it only vaguely. For that matter, after his third beer, Malcolm himself would admit he understood it only vaguely. O'Connell was frowning, now. "It's hard to explain. Leaving aside that half of it is guesswork. But the difference-forget the energy involved, for a moment, which is also different-is the trajectory. For lack of a better term." Margo sighed.

  "Malcolm, you're speaking English again. Try it in Greek." He flashed her a grin. "Attic or modern?" He looked around for a moment, as if searching for something. "If I could find a clay tablet and a scribe, I could show you the math. Not that it would make much sense to you."

  "And again with the insults." "Look, I don't ask you how your Gandalf computer programs work. Don't ask me how my Elrond math works, how's that? The gist of it-we've all agreed on this, at least tentatively-is that the Earth has been subjected for years now to a hitherto unknown form of bombardment from a cosmic source of some kind. Obviously, an accidental phenomenon, since the location and angle of the impacts have been what you'd expect from happenstance. Butthis -" He jabbed a finger at the screen. "This is what you'd expect from a marksman taking deliberate aim. It's dead on. Not a single joule is going to be wasted just moving tons of earth or water at random. I estimate the impact area won't be more than half a mile in diameter. If that."

  Karen Berg shook her head. "But, Leo, they've all had a diameter smaller than that. Much smaller, we figure. So I don't see why…

  Oh." "Yeah. 'Oh.' But none of them had anything like this kind of energy, did they? Not since Grantville." He gave Richard a sidewise glance. "Fine. Not since oursupposition of the energy levels involved in the Grantville event." Berg looked back at the screen. "Jeepers.

  Margo, do you have any idea yet where it's going to hit?" Hearing no answer, she looked down at Glenn-Lewis. Whose face, pale to begin with, now looked as white as the proverbial ghost. "Yeah," Glenn-Lewis said. "With this much energy and given the chronoletic readings, the trajectory firmed up much sooner than usual. It's going to hit not far from here. Somewhere around the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers." "Holy Moses," hissed Malcolm. "St. Louis? That's got a population of… jeez, what it is? Two million people?" Margo shook her head. "It'll miss St. Louis by a comfortable margin. But…"

  She sprang to her feet. "Who's coming with me?" The rest of the people in the room stared at her. "What are you talking about?" asked Karen.

  "Afield expedition? You couldn't possibly get there in time!" Dingley cleared his throat. "And a good thing, too. Margo, this thing isdangerous, for God's sake. The last time we got a chronoletic impact this powerful, a whole town got destroyed." "It might still be dangerous after the fact," added Karen, uncertainly. "The energy involved… Thatis the area that has the worst earthquake potential in North America, let's not forget." Leo looked startled.

  His eyes got a bit unfocused, as he started calculating. But this was Richard's area of expertise. "You can at least put that fear to rest.

  All things are relative. Compared to the energy involved in a major earthquake, this"-he jabbed his own finger at the screen-"is like tossing popcorn." Dingley's face cleared. "Yeah, Dick's right. And the energy levels aren't directly comparable anyway, since most of the impact happens on the fourth dimension, not the first three." He flashed that same quick grin. "To put it as crudely as I possibly can to you amateurs." Margo was looking exasperated. "For Pete's sake, don't you understand? Theycan't cover this one up!" Everybody went back to staring at her. "Look," she continued, "the only reason they got away with Grantville was because it was a once-only." She waved her hand. "Yeah, sure-weknow there have been dozens since then.

  Dozens, at least. But why won't almost anyone listen to us? For the good and simple reason that they've been small events and almost all of them happen where you'd expect random impacts to happen. Somewhere in the ocean. Or, if it was on land, somewhere uninhabited or nearly so." She shrugged. "So, fine. So some fishermen in the north Atlantic Ocean swear they saw a sea monster, and a small village in Borneo found some sort of weird carcasses washed ashore. But nobody checked the fishermen's story because fishermen have been telling sea monster stories for centuries and while a biologist did go to that village in Borneo, by the time he got there the remains had rotted and all he could say was that they had definitely been some sort of very large and peculiar marine invertebrate." Richard started tugging his beard.

  "Yes, true. And if a small village in the Sudan disappears, there are unfortunately far too many simpler explanations." "Well, there was…" But Karen didn't pursue the matter. She saw the point also.

  Karen was heading for the door. "So it won't hit St. Louis. Big deal.

  That part of the United Statesis populated. And not by illiterate villagers or semiliterate fishermen." Richard had already made up his mind. "I'll come. I think two of us will be sufficient." The others looked relieved, although they were trying their best not to let it show. They were quite bold people, actually, in their own way. But theirs was not the sort of temperament you find in tornado-chasers.

  Neither was Richard's, for that matter. But he didhave military experience-the only one of the group who did-and so he felt a certain odd sort of obligation. There was the advantage, with Margo driving her beat-up SUV through Minnesota back roads, that Richard figured the most dangerous part of the expedition would be over with by the time they got to the airport. If they got to the airport. But all he said was: "I believe the fishermen were from Boston." "Yeah, they were.

  Like I said. Semiliterates." Richard was tempted to point out that Boston had probably the highest concentration per capita of universities of any city in North America. But, having once fought his way through a heavy Bostonian accent, shortly after his arrival in the United States, he was not inclined to pursue this argument either.

  Chapter 3 The prison's generator coughed, sputtered, and fell silent. The walls shook. The ground heaved upward, toppling chairs and tables and people. Captain Andy Blacklock slid beneath the combination melamine and steel conference table as one of the twelve-foot long light fixtures broke free at one end and then crashed to the floor.

  From where he lay he could see Kathleen Hanrahan. She was wedged against the glass doors, her eyes wide with fear. He tried to move, go to her, get her away from the glass, but couldn't. He was plastered to the tan colored tiles, unable to lift his head or even his hand. The dull white walls took on a silver sheen, then dimmed to gray. The metallic blue bars looked almost black. The cream colored, airport style X-ray machine seemed to flatten out, and then regain its shape.

  His ears popped and the whistling eased, eased a little more, and then was gone. He could breathe again. Could move. The colors returned to normal and the room erupted in shouts as people scrambled to their feet. Few of them were able to take their first few steps without hanging onto walls or tables. They seemed to have lost their equilibrium. Kathleen struggled to her feet and then made her way to one of the white, plastic chairs close to the payroll office. She was flushed red and her breaths came in shallow gasps. Her dark eyes were wide with terror. Andy's radio came alive with status reports.

  Maintenance, zones A through D, the infirmary, communications, psych units: within minutes every sector checked in. The guards sounded calm, but Andy knew they weren't. They couldn't be. The prison had a disaster plan for every problem that could be thought up, but it mostly involved just locking down and waiting it out. Staff families were expected to fend for themselves during these emergencies. The gates were now on m
anual. The electrical locking system would be nonfunctioning. That was going to slow the guards down. Chits, sign-out sheets and keys. But it didn't matter. All inmates were locked away. When the electrical locking system went out, it went out in the locked mode. That was one of the few things inside the prison that was actually fail proof. Captain Greg Lowry hurried toward him, his face pale. For a second Andy was afraid the man might have a stroke. Greg was in his mid-sixties, just months from retirement. He was fifty pounds overweight, and rumor said he had some major health issues. Andy liked Greg. He was one of those men who kept his head and his temper. He also kept his own council. He didn't join in with the gossip and backbiting common to this type of work. "If there's ever a disaster, we're going to be in a bind, Andy," Lowry had told him at last week's staff meeting. "The disaster plans are written as though we're fully staffed. When was the last time you worked with a full crew? We need a plan that's for us, not the politicians in Springfield." Greg came up alongside him and whispered, "We might have gotten lucky. There's a wall integrity breach; it's small and it's outside the confinement area. But we have to find out if we have others-there could be breaches inside the cells." Andy nodded. He turned the volume down on his radio-loud enough for him to hear the reports coming in fast and furious, but low enough that if something private came through, it would remain so. "You're right, Greg." With both the afternoon and night crews present, they were still a dozen guards short for what needed to be done. He rubbed his head, trying to think clearly. The dull ache he'd acquired earlier was now a full-blown headache, pounding behind his eyes, across the top of his head, and through every sinus cavity he owned. "What was that?" Rod Hulbert was on his feet, looking around, trying to get his bearings.