Avenging Fury

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Avenging Fury Page 14

by John Farris


  As for the hazard level of the surreptitiously transported materials:

  The first recorded year in history was about six millennia ago. Nuclear “waste” is still highly toxic, and will continue to be hot, hot, hot for another ten thousand years. But it’s anyone’s best guess. Handling the hot stuff (i.e., from train to truck) by remote control and behind heavy shielding is mandatory. With no protective shielding, “spent” fuel will kill an exposed person standing within three feet of it in about ten seconds. Even when it is stored in shipping casks, irradiated fuel emits 10 millirems per hour of low-level gamma radiation. This radiation is harmful to human genes, depending on how long one is exposed to a truck or a train standing in a rail yard waiting to be unloaded.

  The shipment aboard the latest thirty-car train, mandated on a can’t-wait basis but now about to be stopped at the Craig Road crossing of the U Pac by a small but disciplined band of no-nukes activists and ordinary Vegas citizens opposed to “Mobile Chernobyls” passing through their middle-class neighborhoods, is contained in large-capacity casks designed to hold together for a thousand years. But, for practical reasons, none of the fully loaded spent fuel casks has ever been tested, except for computer simulations, for their ability to withstand violent earthquake shocks, explosive stress, long-burning fires at temperatures above 1425 degrees F, or well-mounted assaults by terrorists with armor-piercing missiles.

  An attempt by a homegrown terrorist group to derail one of the first trains (consisting of ordinary, not new, and unprotected rolling stock) with its cargo for Acheron prompted the DOE to rethink its long-term strategy for transporting the stuff, and to clamp down on news stories about the attempted derailment. A few Internet Web sites did report the story; in most cases rumors substituted for facts.

  It was a fearsome fact, however, that any accident causing spillage of toxic waste could send an invisible cloud of radionuclides downwind from the accident site, with fallout continuing over a wide area for centuries. Over largely uninhabited Nevada desert, or Wisconsin dairy-land. Or downtown Oklahoma City.

  The demonstration at Craig Avenue is efficiently dismantled almost as fast as it materializes. Armored vehicles cordon off the area. The flatbed truck driven onto the track in the path of the anticipated Mobile Chernobyl is pushed out of the way by a heavy-duty tow truck. A minor TV actor who loses his balance and falls out of the bed of the demonstrators’ truck suffers a broken wrist. Diehards throwing their bodies across the gleaming rails are nipped and savaged to their feet by attack dogs and are herded—backing up, cowering—to a line of military transports. In only two or three minutes the melee is resolved: there are no more bullhorn voices, shouts, epithets, crudely lettered placards denouncing the DOE or the entire Big Oil-Military/Industrial-WTO-IMF conspiracy that has kept the world from settling into a harmonic of lasting peace, nature unspoiled, and love-thy-neighbor. Effigies of politicos currently on the most-hated list are removed along with now-bedraggled and rump-bitten demonstrators locked into plastic wrist restraints. They will spend a few days incommunicado in a barracks at nearby Nellis Air Force Base. No one is trying valiantly to sing “We Shall Overcome.” The mist falls in a smear of spotlights, floodlights, red lights, blue lights. Mobile Chernobyl. There are riot police faceless behind reflectant shields, closely spaced on both sides of the crossing. They carry SP-5s and other hard-nosed weaponry. Then a heavy thrum of approaching diesel engines. The local media, tipped off by the leadership of the demonstrators, then warned off by federal honchos, spokesmen for deep-background agencies hardly anyone has ever heard of, have dutifully looked the other way. A matter of homeland security. The train is unscheduled. It was never here. Stick to the familiar, the mundane, those human-interest stories heavy on the aw-gee and warm-fuzzy that everyone is following already, on their morning newscasts. Lincoln Grayle, the first alternate Mr. Las Vegas, is still missing. But we’re all praying, Kevin. Yes, we are, Susie. A long-unemployed software designer from Silicon Valley has fed a dollar slot at the Barbary Coast and hit a progressive jackpot worth a little over four million. That’s what Las Vegas is all about. No major traffic tieups to report this morning. Afternoon temperatures are expected to be in the midsixties. This is what Las Vegans want to hear at seven a.m. while they bathe, shave, brew coffee, get the kids off to school. Eight thousand new residents moved in last month, beating the previous month’s record influx. The tourists can’t get enough of whatever it is they came here for. But they’re coming in droves. What recession? Sure, the suicide hotlines are humming 24/7, but let’s keep it rosy. On Eye-Opener Las Vegas our own Portia Harpring is going to give you homemakers valuable tips on how to carve those Halloween jack o’ lanterns. —Gosh, just can’t believe it’s Halloween already, Kevin! I can connect with that, Susie. Now let’s find out what Dr. Steve has to say about our air quality today.

  CHARLESTON MOUNTAIN • 2:28 A.M.

  Dr. Marcus Woolwine was awakened by a hand tugging at his shoulder. Two beauties were sitting on either side of him on his spine-friendly Swedish bed. His sleep mask had been pulled up to the crown of his bald head. After a couple of woozy waking-up moments he recognized Harlee Nations. He couldn’t place the other luscious teenager, who was holding the point of a stiletto against his carotid artery. Presumably not in jest.

  “Good morning,” Harlee said. “Where is Eden Waring’s doppelganger, Dr. Woolwine?”

  “Wha’?”

  “Come on, wake up. The doppelganger, or dpg, or whatever. Is she here?”

  “. . . No.” His eyes were on the knife wielder. She had a delicious scent he couldn’t place. A touch of heather. As for the stiletto—“What are you doing in my bedroom? Who are you? I have a pacemaker. Please put that—instrument—away.”

  Harlee said, “Dr. Woolwine, all I have to do is wink my left eye twice”—she demo’d by blinking it once, which caused him to flinch and turn glacial—“and Devon will push that stiletto through your neck like a pin through a voodoo doll.”

  “But—why are you threatening—”

  “The doppelganger—what does she call herself, Gwen?—was here two or three days ago. Linc wanted something from her. A favor, didn’t he say? What was that favor, Dr. Woolwine?”

  “I have a pacemaker,” he said again in a pleading tone. “You’ve interrupted my sleep! Who do you think you are?”

  “A special friend of Lincoln Grayle’s. From long before he took that persona for his own.”

  Woolwine turned his head carefully so as not to joggle the stiletto. He was still getting the Borgia stare from Devon while he evaluated Harlee. Scientific obsession percolated into his eyes. Not just another bewitching young face. A specimen, a literal throwback, rare fauna rich with implications. His fear stopped flowing out of him like damp from an old grave.

  “You must be . . . a Fetchling.”

  “We both are.”

  “Amazing. Such lovely skin. Neither of you looks a day over sixteen.”

  “Physically we’re not. Now what about Gwen?”

  “You’re wrong. She’s no longer here. She is, as far as I know, time-traveling.”

  “Oh. How does she do that?” Devon said.

  “If you know anything about doppelgangers—”

  “I don’t know much,” Harlee said. “Fill us in.”

  “Of course. It isn’t necessary to bully me in order to secure my cooperation.”

  “We couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t give us a tussle.”

  “I am eighty-four years old. I deplore violence.”

  “Supa-dupa.” Harlee glanced down at Devon, who smiled slightly and withdrew the stiletto from the throbbing pulse in Woolwine’s crinkly neck, which he then massaged tenderly. Without the glowering authority of his specs, his eyes looked lonely. Befuddled.

  “Thank you for not cutting my throat,” he said with desperate politeness, his voice breaking like a breadstick.

  “Would you care for a glass of water, Dr. Woolwine?”

  “Yes, please, if it
isn’t too much trouble.”

  Devon replaced her stiletto in its forearm scabbard up her left sleeve and got off the bed to pour spring water from a carafe. Woolwine sat up to gulp some of it. He wore Picasso–print pajama bottoms, blue and white birds and a seascape, but his chest was bare. He had age spots but retained good skin tone and his muscles were not at all stringy. Looked to be a hale old fucker, Harlee thought.

  “About this time-travel business,” she said. “I’ve always regarded it as pure bumshuck.”

  Woolwine shrugged. “Seeing is not believing in this case. However: perhaps you’d like to have a peek into the suite Gwen occupied before she was blitzed out of here by whatever fluctuation in the space/time structure or super-luminal hyperspace phenomena was required to return her to the past.”

  “That explains a lot,” Harlee said as Devon crossed her eyes comically.

  “My dear,” Woolwine said with a sigh, “hyperdimensional space and plasma physics are not in my area of expertise.”

  “Bumshuck?” Devon said, now doubling over in a mime of hysterical mirth.

  “If one of you wouldn’t mind bringing me my robe and slippers,” Woolwine said.

  There was subdued cornice lighting in every room of the suite that Woolwine opened to the Fetchlings, moon-glow from the terrace. He stood aside, making no move to go in. Air flowing from inside the suite had the heady freshness of negatively charged ions. Harlee felt the down on her forearms stirring, a tickle around the lips, giddiness in her breast as if she were about to board a diabolical thrill ride as yet certified only for crash-test dummies.

  “After you, Doctor,” Harlee said courteously.

  “I’ll just remain here in the hall. I have—”

  “A pacemaker,” Devon said, as if she’d caught a hint of sly treachery waiting within. One lives for hundreds of years under mostly Machiavellian circumstances, one learns a few things. “What of it?”

  “The torsion field inside is of a magnitude that could shut my pacemaker down. Or the reverse, accelerate it until my heart explodes like a gerbil in a microwave.”

  “Gross,” Harlee said. “Could you, like, explain ‘torsion field’ in terms accessible to Star Trek junkies?”

  “My dear. Let’s just say that the dynamics are necessary for reaching the fifth dimension: hyperspace.”

  “O-kay. And that’s where Eden Waring’s doppelganger went?”

  “Hopefully,” he said with a tremulous smile. “If not to pieces. By the way—touch nothing inside, and stay well away from the holographic image.”

  “There’s a holographic image?”

  “It serves Gwen as a touchstone; without it she may be unable to find her way back.”

  “Roger that,” Harlee said. “Now exactly why did you bring us up here?”

  “To verify my assertion that Gwen is not presently available to you. Why don’t the three of us do lunch sometime? I’d love to get to know you better. Perhaps you might be willing to part with a few of your secrets for maintaining eternal youth.” He smiled again, covetously, then trembled, as if his pacemaker had gone a little haywire on him.

  Devon said, “It involves propitiating Astarte with burnt offerings of goat, kine, and over-the-hill rock-band drummers.”

  “You can go back to bed,” Harlee told Woolwine. “We’ll lock up here.”

  “Remember: touch nothing.”

  They watched him pad silently back down the hall to the elevator.

  “Now why do you suppose he’s told us that?” Devon said. “Perhaps it’s reverse psychology.”

  “He could be genuinely anxious about our welfare. After all, we possess the secrets of eternal youth.”

  “This is rather scary, don’t you think?” Devon said, looking into the suite but not seeing much other than oriental furnishings and a nice Hokusai wood-block print of abalone fisherwomen on one wall.

  “Well, as long as we’re here,” Harlee said.

  No sooner had she laid eyes on the ruby crystal skull on the writing table than Harlee knew she had to have it, even though she’d been warned. But she talked it over with Devon while they stood a respectful eight feet away, at the perimeter of the time-and-space-bending energy field that emanated from the skull’s radiant depths.

  “It’s humming,” Devon said. “D’you hear it? Isn’t it humming?”

  “ ‘You Go To My Head’?” Harlee suggested.

  “Get on. I’m not amused. And quite apart from its undeniable ghastly charisma, I don’t trust that beastie.”

  The dynamic field wasn’t visible, but they were aware of it from the fizz across their skins, a sensation of heat lamps in the frontal lobes, and the look of each other’s neatly arranged bones beneath glowing violet flesh.

  “We should get started,” Harlee said.

  “Don’t be foolish. It’s putting out enough energy to zap Chicago into orbit.”

  “But it knows me,” Harlee said, a charmed look in her eyes as she rubbed the tickle on her lower lip. “I’ve been with it before, although not during working hours.”

  “Whatever do you mean by ‘been with it’? In a romantic sense? You and the skull have a history?”

  “Oh, silly. Mordaunt introduced us. We hit it off right away, vibrationally.”

  “Nonetheless, I’m opposed to disturbing it. Obviously the Great One had an urgent purpose, allowing the doppelganger to use his skull for that boost into hyperspace.”

  “I’m just going to borrow it for a little while,” Harlee said, heavy-lidded, a mesmeric glaze to her eyes. “The old purpose isn’t as urgent as the new purpose. I must get in touch with him. I’ll put the skull back exactly where it is now. No harm done.”

  “At least turn it off before you touch it.”

  “Turn it off?” Harlee said, her tone peevish. “I don’t know what turns it on.”

  “I can’t stand it when my hair frizzes like this. Also I’m feeling strangely violated. To put it another way, I am jolly well freaking O-U-T out.”

  “None of that, now.”

  “There is a definable atmosphere of malevolence in this room, Harlee.”

  “We have to center ourselves. Focus on the larger purpose.”

  “If you distract that snarky flaming skull from another purpose—lesser though it may be—is there a possibility it could become angry with you?”

  “The Great One is depending on us, Devon. Us, and us alone.”

  “Our last glimpses of him in those surveillance tapes make me a wee pessimistic about his chances for getting out of this latest snafu.”

  “It’s the Irish in you, my love. Irish souls, forever dripping melancholy rain. Remember, I did suggest you add a Latin strain to your bloodline during your most recent tune-up. Flamenco-style zest.”

  “I have zest. It’s just a cooler kind of zest.”

  “We’re going to do this, and we’re going to pull it off. Now don’t sulk, I need you. Just hold on. Don’t let me be snatched into another dimension.”

  “Gerbils in microwave ovens,” Devon said. Then she moaned in dismay, long arms locked around Harlee’s waist, her head tucked into the small of the other girl’s back as Harlee moved determinedly to the writing table and into the full tumult of the torsion field that enveloped it. The hairs on Devon’s head stood out, fiery at the tips from St. Elmo’s dancing fire, straining at their roots. Her bones resonated to the low hum from the hypercomplex structure of the crystal skull.

  Harlee cried out.

  “What’s happening?” Devon said, unable or afraid to look herself. “What do you see?”

  “Buff guys in singlets with lyres and lutes.”

  “I hate it when you’re being a smart-ass.”

  She felt Harlee tugging against her embrace, reaching out and down to the skull. Devon braced for both of them. A thrill running through her body, like an orgasm she was enjoying in twilight sleep. She couldn’t think anymore, struck dumb by momentum, a gale in the mind. The delights of orgasm faded. She felt as cold an
d depleted as a corpse, but continued to hold on with eerie strength to Harlee Nations.

  Abruptly both of them were hurled backward with tremendous force, Harlee landing on Devon with a scream. Devon’s head hit the terra-cotta floor and rebounded in a blaze of sky-high sparklers, melting into blackness.

  She came to with Harlee kneeling beside her, shaking her gently. The light in the room had a surreal quality, a shower of moonbeams to Devon’s hazy-dazy eyes. Then she felt snow pelting her blooded face and throat. It was snowing quite heavily in the room. The humming had stopped. The crystal skull sat tamely in the crook of Harlee’s other arm, benignly grotesque, with a look of empty caverns.

  “Got it!” Harlee said gleefully, snowflakes massing on her brows.

  Devon tried moving.

  “Oh. Ouch. Damn.”

  “Anything broken?”

  “I don’t know. Help me to sit up.” Devon was shivering, her teeth clicking rhythmically. The terrace doors stood open, but the snow was a local phenomenon, falling from directly above their heads. Nature rioting in some manic and inexplicable mode. “What’s c-causing this blizzard?”

  “No idea. Could it be a stage effect Linc stored in here, then forgot about?”

  Devon concentrated on her breathing. Some twinges, but not as if broken rib ends were macerating soft tissue. Harlee helped her to her feet.

  “Am I b-bleeding?” Devon chattered. “I got such a whack.”

  “I think that’s just melting snow running down your neck.” Harlee wiped, licked her finger. “Yep.”

  “Let’s g-get out of here.” She looked through the softly hissing snowfall past Harlee at the overturned writing table. The chair was gone. “Harlee?”

  Harlee turned to look. Then they looked at each other. Harlee put the tip of the little finger of her free hand between her lips and bit delicately at the nail. Devon noticed that she had acquired a skunk stripe in her coffee-bean-brown hair, a reminder that they had heedlessly ruptured an entire cosmology. And got away with it, so far. Minimum consequences. But Devon dreaded the first inspection of her own person that she would be compelled to make when she came to a mirror.

 

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