Bloodless

by Douglas Preston

  Coldmoon stared at the ticker. Stock symbols and numbers were indeed scrolling past on an endless ribbon, the symbols and numbers just so much gibberish to him. “Um, one minute? That doesn’t seem like much of an advantage.”

  “It’s enough to make a modest profit, especially during a volatile market,” said Pendergast. “Which is what Miss Frost had been doing these many years: eking out small but steady gains. But when Ellerby took over the operation, he wasn’t satisfied with small profits. Once he figured out how the machine worked, he was able to build an improved version using updated technology.” He waved a hand at the device. “As you can see, this is not Frost’s modest briefcase machine, but a far more powerful one, capable of seeing deeper into the future.”

  Coldmoon could only shake his head again.

  Pendergast held up the journal. “If I understand Ellerby’s notes, the Roman numeral II on that dial is the second power setting. That increases the power beyond what Frost, and her friend at Boeing, intended, allowing the device to penetrate into a parallel universe running about an hour in the future. But recall, what we’re seeing isn’t our future. It’s a window into parallel universes exactly like ours, whether one minute or one hour ahead. Knowing what stock prices would be in an hour, and trading on that information, would allow one to make millions. Hundreds of millions.”

  “So why are we looking at this view and not something else?” he asked.

  “Frost explained that to me,” said Constance. “Shortly after she got the original machine fully functional, she went to Times Square, entered a building on the north end of the intersection, ascended to a height that allowed a good vantage point, and aimed the machine out a window and down Broadway. She focused it, or rather tuned it, to this very scene. After that, wherever she took the machine, she could always use it to observe the parallel Times Square from that same vantage point. As long as the stock ticker ran the current stock prices, and as long as she didn’t focus the machine elsewhere, she could trade on that information.”

  “This is too crazy,” Coldmoon muttered. “I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around it.”

  “Please do wrap your mind around it,” said Pendergast, “because I intend to increase the power to the higher level.”

  “Why?” Coldmoon asked.

  “Because that’s what Ellerby did.”

  Coldmoon glanced at Constance; she had turned toward Pendergast, an odd expression on her face.

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Coldmoon continued. “We should call in the FBI Evidence Response Team, have them pack this baby up and take it back to Quantico, where it can be examined in a state-of-the-art lab.”

  Pendergast raised an eyebrow. “You’d prefer to let our beloved government get their hands on it? Do you really have that much confidence in our political leaders to use this in a wise and beneficent way?”

  “Oh.” Coldmoon paused. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “We must do this ourselves,” Pendergast said as he placed his hand on the dial. “I’m convinced this device is key to whoever—or whatever—is plaguing Savannah. If we’re going to understand it—and confront it—we need more information first.”

  And he began slowly turning the dial farther.

  63

  AS PENDERGAST INCREASED THE power, it looked to Coldmoon as if someone had abruptly heaved a stone into still water. The mirror-clear view of Times Square wavered and grew suddenly distorted. The vibration in the room increased, causing an odd, slightly nauseous feeling in Coldmoon’s gut—something below the range of hearing but not below the body’s ability to sense it.

  Now the portal flickered and shimmered, images passing by almost more quickly than he could make out: tremendously accelerated in time-lapse, twisting and tangled up in ever-shifting shapes like knots, folding and refolding over each other. Coldmoon saw many Times Squares flash past in the blink of an eye—but he also saw, or thought he saw, bizarre astronomical images of stars and galaxies and nebulae, whirling alien landscapes and twisted black holes, all in furious succession.

  Pendergast’s fingers stopped at the dial’s second and last setting. The churning visions settled and the image of Times Square stabilized once again, like a pond returning to a quiescent state. It was still night and everything looked as before. Only now, Coldmoon noted, the time on the Times building read 10:15—an hour into the future.

  The portal itself also seemed different. The shimmering edges of the image were heavier now, creating the effect of looking at this Times Square through a glimmering tunnel. And in those tunnel walls, Coldmoon could barely discern the flitting about of grotesque, otherworldly shapes. The smell of burnt rubber, which had never gone away, now intensified as a stream of warm, humid air issued from the portal.

  With a sudden movement, one of the dragonfly-things, and then a second, zoomed in from the edges of the tunnel. They approached the portal, stopped, then wriggled through with effort, as if emerging from a cocoon.

  “Stay back, please,” Pendergast said, stretching out an arm in warning. They watched as the two insects buzzed the room: the same creatures Coldmoon had seen dead on the ground, with gossamer wings and fat abdomens carrying vicious stingers. The two spiraled upward toward the naked lightbulb in the ceiling, diving at it, hitting it again and again until their wings were broken and they fluttered to the floor. At the same time, several more insects squeezed out of the portal’s membrane and flew at the lightbulb, circling and ticking on it incessantly before tangling with each other.

  “It would appear,” said Pendergast drily, “the higher setting allows creatures to pass through. And not from a familiar Times Square universe, either.” He paused. “It seems there are other universes in there, quite different from ours.”

  Coldmoon watched the insects grappling, stinging each other frantically as they fell to the ground, tumbling around in a death embrace.

  “Only small creatures,” said Constance quickly. “Frost explained this. Those parallel universes are stacked like membranes on each other. Their edges are visible as you look down the tunnel. She called it a manifold space. It’s from this space that the tiny insects emerge.”

  Pendergast frowned. “Frost knew of this?”

  “She was speculating,” said Constance.

  Coldmoon saw the portal deteriorate. Its interface began to grow unstable, flickering in and out. The foul odor increased, along with the sounds from the other side: a strange scrabbling noise that raised the hairs on his neck.

  “I think we’ve seen enough,” Pendergast said, stepping up to turn down the power.

  “Wait,” Coldmoon cried out. “Do you see that?” He pointed at the biggest screen on the Times building, still visible in the unstable light. It was flashing BREAKING NEWS. Then the screen dissolved into what was apparently a live video feed, taken from a news helicopter: a city in flames, people running terrified through the streets, dead bodies strewn everywhere.

  “That’s Savannah!” cried Coldmoon. “My God, what’s happening?”

  Swinging into view of the camera came a beast out of nightmare: a giant bat with a distended body, a wicked mosquito-like head swiveling this way and that, its dripping proboscis spasming in and out. And on cue, the news ticker began streaming: HUNDREDS DEAD IN BRUTAL ATTACK ON SAVANNAH GA, MILITARY MOBILIZED…

  64

  SECONDS AFTER THE NEWSFEED flashed across the portal, with Pendergast’s and Coldmoon’s attention riveted on the scene of disaster unfolding on the Times Square screen, Constance ducked out of the room, exiting through the concealing closet and out into the basement. She’d had a revelation and was already thinking beyond the devastation that was being wreaked—would be wreaked—on Savannah.

  She took the stairs up into the lobby, and then still farther up, three more flights. Making her way quickly down the hallway, she reached the closed door that led up to Frost’s penthouse. This time it was locked. Pulling a hairpin from a pocket of her dress, she picked the
lock, then ran up the stairs. The door at the top of the landing was locked, too; Constance shook the knob and then, in a sudden display of rage, violently kicked it—once, twice—and it flew open, banging loudly against the doorstop.

  The interior of the apartment was even darker than usual, lit only by a few Tiffany lamps. Along the room’s far side, the shutters over the French doors had been pulled up, exposing the balcony and the twinkling rooftops beyond. The byōbu screens had been pulled back, giving the rooms a spectacular view of Savannah. The moonlight, punctuated by scudding clouds, threw dappled shadows over the bookcases, sculptures, and furniture.

  She glanced around quickly. Frost was just visible, sitting on the same sofa as during their previous conversation, the pearl-handled cane resting by her side. She was wearing an elegant kimono-style dressing gown in crimson silk, and beneath it a white silk blouse. There was an open bottle of wine on the tea table, and a single glass, half-full.

  The book she never seemed to be without was on her lap, and she was making a notation in it. Now Frost put volume and pen aside. “That was rude,” she said. “However, at least you spared me the trouble of having to open the door. I’m afraid this old corpus of mine is acting up more than usual this evening.”

  This was said in the same droll tone the woman had used before. Constance nevertheless detected a quaver in the old lady’s voice: an undercurrent of fear. Breathing hard, she stepped forward.

  “Join me in a glass of Giacomo Conterno. Since your last visit, I’ve been doing some rooting around in my collections.”

  “There’s no time for wine or chitchat,” Constance said.

  “My, my, you do seem a trifle overexcited.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I never lied to you.”

  Constance cut her off with a gesture. “At the very least, you left out something important. Something Ellerby did.”

  Instead of answering, Miss Frost raised her glass. But her hand was trembling so much that she put the glass down without sipping.

  “I’ve seen the machine,” Constance continued. “In use. Both at the first setting…and the second. No doubt you saw that yourself when you surprised Ellerby in the basement. But there’s more to it, isn’t there?”

  Hearing this, Frost remained silent.

  In an instant, Constance stood over the proprietress. “No excuses,” she said. “No remonstrances. You’re too old for those to matter, anyway…Miss Rime.”

  Hearing herself addressed by her true name, Frost’s pallid eyes widened.

  “You robbed an old man of his life’s work. And now you’ve let Ellerby turn his invention into a nightmare. Intentional or not, you still have to answer for it. So you will tell me what you’ve been withholding…beginning with whether Ellerby experimented with any settings past those marked on the dial.”

  The world-weary façade dropped from Frost’s face.

  “The time for lying is past. Savannah’s on the verge of destruction—we saw it in the machine. Tell me everything you know, everything you suspect, now.”

  “It’s the many-worlds hypothesis I mentioned,” Frost said immediately. “Patrick was greedy. He souped up the machine to see an hour ahead. But to do that, the portal has to traverse many more universes—some quite unlike ours. And the chance grows that the portal would not simply cross those worlds, but…intersect with them. Open a door to them.”

  When she fell silent, Constance heard, filtering up from below, what sounded like shouts and screams: faint through the closed windows but distinctly audible. “Do you hear that?”

  “Sounds like typical Savannah drunkenness,” said Frost.

  “It isn’t. We’re out of time. Answer my question: if Ellerby pushed the machine farther than level two, what would happen?”

  But even as Frost began to protest, a tremendous crash sounded outside. The eyes of the two women met. They both moved to the French doors overlooking Savannah. Constance flung them open and stepped out onto the balcony, stiletto in hand. A yellow light played over her face as she stared eastward, toward the sound of tumult and chaos. Frost stepped out on the balcony beside Constance. As the two gazed down across the city, Frost instinctively raised a hand to her mouth—but it did little to muffle the cry of horror that came involuntarily to her lips.

  65

  COMMANDER ALANNA DELAPLANE STOOD at the southern end of Forsyth Park, flanked by two lieutenants, observing the rally. So far it had gone off without a hitch. She could see the senator on his platform, high above the crowd, his voice booming out from the speaker towers. Behind him were two gigantic screens displaying and amplifying his speech as he stabbed the air with his finger and pumped his fist, the crowd roaring its approval and waving placards and flags.

  Delaplane privately believed Drayton was a first-class jackass, one of those politicians who gave a lot of lip service to supporting law enforcement but, in fact, was always first to cut funding. But she’d never breathe a word of her personal views to her colleagues. Nobody knew her politics and that was just fine with her.

  The protesters the senator had been worried about turned out to be half a dozen dispirited young people waving signs and shouting, unable to make their voices heard over the boom of the speakers and the roars of the crowd. She wondered how a guy like Drayton could generate a turnout this big and enthusiastic. There was something about him a certain type of person loved, it seemed. She just couldn’t see it.

  Her radio hissed, then emitted a screech, followed by a torrent of unintelligible shouting.

  “Officer,” she said, “take a deep breath and identify yourself.”

  “Officer Warner, ten thirty-three! Got a…flying…a crazy thing flying…attacking…What the—?”

  There was so much background noise the words disappeared into the roar. “What is the nature of your situation?” Delaplane yelled. The officer had sounded incoherent, panic-stricken.

  There was a burst of static, and then the transmission was cut off.

  Now the radios of all the cops around her were suddenly abuzz with hysterical chatter. As she tried to get through the jammed emergency frequency, she heard sirens to the east. And something else: a chorus of car alarms and faint screams.

  She pressed transmit. “Dispatch, dispatch, Delaplane here. What’s going on?”

  “Avondale, east Savannah, multiple reports of assaults. Something, uh, flying, assaulting people.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  As the dispatcher spoke—and none of it made any sense—Delaplane could hear a sound in the air, a clamor rolling in from the disturbance to the east and rapidly getting louder. She turned and looked over the tops of the oaks lining Drayton Street. Now she could see an orange light in the sky, and a rising column of smoke—a fire.

  She focused on her radio, but the dispatcher was making no sense, just broadcasting a 10-33 over and over. The officers around her seemed uncertain what to do, looking to her for direction.

  Delaplane rounded on them. “Okay, you heard it. We got a situation in east Savannah. Something big, a ten thirty-three, all officers respond. Now. Let’s—”

  Drayton’s voice faltered midholler. The crowd stirred, suddenly silent, uneasy. The eastern sky was reddening fast and the night was now filling with the sounds of car alarms and sirens. The booming voice from the speakers stopped and she glanced over at the stage. Drayton was staring eastward, mouth agape. And then she saw what he was staring at: a dark shape, backlit by the reddish sky, flapping its wings slowly, almost lazily, as it approached. She stood transfixed as her mind tried to make sense of it. A bird of prey? No: it was too large, too far away. Some sort of flying contraption? It was dark and yet shimmery at the same time. It glided over the tops of the buildings, which seemed to reflect off its underside. Christ, it was the size of a small plane.

  The deep silence that had fallen over the crowd was cut by a single thin scream—and then all hell broke loose. The massive shape came straight for the gathering, glidin
g in as if attracted by the noise, light, and multitude. It passed over the stage, abruptly illuminated from below by the floodlights. Now she could see it in detail, but that was of little help: it was like nothing she’d ever seen in her life. A mosquito head with huge bug eyes and an oily feeding tube was affixed to a monstrous, batlike body the color of liver. The wings were webbed with engorged blood vessels, and from its belly hung two rows of hairy, withered dugs. After passing over the stage, it banked and came back around, pumping its wings with a sound like tearing silk, gliding in low, each thrust sending a wash of foul, humid air over the terrified, stampeding crowd. Delaplane saw the greasy proboscis thrusting out, like a dog’s nose scenting the air, the compound eyes swiveling this way and that.

  In a flash, the gathering had been transformed into a pandemonium beyond all belief. The thousands of rallygoers ran from the platform like a massive wave, with an inchoate roar of terror, scrambling every which way, falling and being trampled, chairs clattering and overturning, shoes coming loose, people clawing up the backs of others as they tried to escape—and on the stage, high above, was Drayton, his face on the giant screens slack-jawed, jowls quivering, as the creature swooped in. Delaplane saw a flash of savage talons close like a steel trap around Drayton’s torso, and then he was yanked upward, the creature rising into the air with a beating of its leathery wings, with Drayton twisting and writhing like a fish torn from the water by an eagle, a single shrill scream echoing down from above.

  The senator’s security detail—the few who hadn’t fled—pulled their weapons and, crouching on the stage, opened fire on the thing as it rose. Delaplane pulled her own Glock, the cops around her following suit, but the thing was beating upward and out of range—and she held her fire; the chances of hitting the senator were too great. Besides, it seemed the barrage of gunfire from the others wasn’t hurting it, just making it mad. As she watched, it reared its mosquito head back and plunged the sharp end of its dripping, tube-shaped labrum into the senator’s body. Drayton’s keening voice was abruptly silenced—followed immediately by the wet, gurgling sound of a thick milkshake being sucked up with a straw.