Torrent

by Lindsay Buroker

  I took a guess and texted back, Professor Wilkons?

  Yes. I’m running it through the computer, but there’s nothing familiar about that language. Where are you?

  I’m not surprised. Prescott. I thought about calling him, but remembered him as a quirky introvert who preferred research to teaching and dead languages to spoken ones.

  Isn’t a bear mauling the city up there?

  Something like that. Will you let me know what the computer says? We’ve got a mystery up here.

  No shit.

  “You know, linguists aren’t nearly as articulate as you’d think,” I said.

  “I like your lakes.” Simon was in his own world.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Undeveloped land over the aquifer. It’s nearby too. Your Verde Watershed includes a lot of national parks too—couldn’t you see some awesome caves hiding under those red rocks in Sedona?—but I’m going to put my program to work on the local stuff first. Eleriss and Jakatra moved up the street to the Best Western, not to Sedona or Flagstaff or anywhere else in Northern Arizona.”

  I nodded. “They specifically said it was in this area.”

  My phone beeped again. It’s not Klingon. I checked.

  I showed Simon the screen, figuring it would amuse him.

  All he said was, “I could have told you that.”

  I returned the text: As odd as the two speakers are, I don’t think they’re Trekkies. They thought they were alone and didn’t know we were recording them, so I’m sure they were using their native language. As soon as I sent the message, I wondered if I should admit to our spying tendencies to a university professor. I was on the verge of explaining that they’d been trespassing in our van when Wilkons responded.

  Understood. The computer program will run it against all of the known languages on Earth, dead and living. I just thought I’d check popular fictional ones.

  A familiar Jag rolled up and stopped next to the curb. The utter availability of parking in downtown Prescott was notable. I wondered how much these “bear” maulings would hurt the tourist industry.

  I stood, glad to have an excuse to remove my rump from the cold cement. If Simon had noticed his would-be girlfriend drive up, or me putting my laptop aside to stand, he didn’t show it. He was chewing on his lip and staring intently at something.

  “Hey, Temi.” I waved and my stomach gurgled an even more enthusiastic greeting when it noted the canvas grocery bag in her hand.

  She strode up the walkway, her limp barely noticeable, her face grim, but she nodded at my greeting. “There are army vehicles all over town.”

  “National Guard, I think. We saw them come down this street.”

  “The police have barricades up by that hotel and coffee shop we visited,” Temi said.

  “Not surprising. Did you hear about the carnage there last night?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t hear about any men in black leather being among the dead. When you were researching, did you...?”

  “They’ve moved their motorcycles to the Best Western, so I’m sure they’re fine.”

  “Oh, that’s only a couple of blocks away from our motel, isn’t it?” She gazed up the street.

  “Don’t remind me,” I said. “Anything promising in that bag?”

  “Not much.” Temi handed it to me. “There were only two people working at New Frontiers. These are yesterday’s leftovers.”

  I pulled out several wedges of salmon, an entirely-too-healthy-sounding kale salad, and some promising cranberry coconut bars. “Looks a lot better than our usual breakfast. Yo, Simon, you want some salmon?”

  He blinked and looked up. “Oh, Artemis. Hi. Uhm.” He waved shyly.

  I dropped containers of salmon and coconut bars in his lap, knowing he wouldn’t touch the greens unless his mother was here—or he thought it would impress Temi. He’d already returned his focus to the screen, though, and didn’t notice.

  Temi considered the brick front of the library building. “When you spoke of coming here to do research, I imagined you inside, at tables with books around you.”

  “Yes, me too,” I said. “We’re still hoping someone might show up to unlock the door.”

  Temi sat at the bottom of the steps and opened the containers holding her food. I contemplating returning to my research—Simon seemed to have the cave hunt in hand, but I wanted to look for information on the coin Eleriss had given us. I wished I knew of an archaeological equivalent of that DNA sequencer Autumn had mentioned. It’d be great if we could scan a picture of the coin and run it through some software that would spit out an identification of the civilization and era it had come from. As it was, I’d have to post pictures to some archaeology forums and see if anyone had any ideas. That could wait though; I didn’t have a scanner, so it’d take a trip to one of the shipping stores that had computers.

  Breakfast in hand, I sat at the bottom of the steps with Temi, leaving Simon, his fingers flying again, in his spot against the doors. Another convoy of National Guard vehicles passed us by, and I wondered if we’d soon see troops marching through the streets with rifles.

  “Your friend said she’d call when she’s ready to be picked up,” Temi said after we’d finished eating. “It sounded like she’ll be able to access a lab right away.”

  “That’s good. I’ve got someone working on the language program, so—” My phone beeped. “That might be him now.”

  The text message was indeed from Professor Wilkons. No matches. It’s weirder than Basque.

  “Hm.” I typed in, What about single-word matches? If there aren’t any full language matches, might there at least be some shared words?

  We’ll see. I have the computer running a deeper analysis.

  Thank you.

  I put the phone down and chomped on my salmon. I’d never been a fish lover, but I felt a vague sense of duty to my body to eat it and the salad before diving into the dessert bar.

  “Basque?” Temi asked. She’d been peering over my shoulder as I texted. “That’s a Spanish language, right?”

  “Not exactly. The Basque region is located mostly in Spain—it’s up around the border shared with France, but it’s a language isolate that doesn’t have anything in common with the Indo-European romance languages surrounding it. It’s not like any other languages, really. There are a lot of interesting hypotheses by linguists, trying to link it to more distant languages—all contested though. One of my school friends did a paper on the idea that the Basques are descended from the Neanderthals, because it’s widely known that they lived in Western Europe. She had some modern information on blood types and DNA analysis, speaking of all that stuff, to back it up. It was an interesting paper.”

  Temi turned toward the street, her face thoughtful. “You guys have a wide breadth of knowledge. Is there anything that would be useful for me to study? To assist with research?”

  “Actually, we have extremely specialized knowledge that’s not at all useful outside of our business.” I smirked. “That’s what a degree in a specific field gets you. If you want to study something, that’s fine, but do it because you’re interested in it, not because of us. All this monster stuff is outside of the realm of our usual work. Most people who do antiquing as a source of income don’t have a formal education in a related field. They pick it up as they go and learn what people will pay for and what they won’t. I’m still learning myself when it comes to that.”

  “I wonder...”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I’m sure it’s a dumb idea.”

  I thought of the idea she’d proposed that Autumn had shot down. I didn’t want her to think we wouldn’t value any contributions she might have. “You know, a lot of breakthroughs and innovations come from individuals who don’t have a background in the field. Sometimes the experts in an industry have this sort of myopic thinking where they’re so influenced by their peers and mentors, who were trained by their peers and mentors, that they can’t see the problems
from a fresh angle. Whereas an outsider can bring that fresh perspective, especially in this day and age when there’s so much information available to anyone who wants to research it.”

  Temi shrugged. “I don’t have any brilliant innovations. I was just wondering, well, this Basque isn’t the only language isolate, I assume? What if those two were speaking another? From somewhere on the planet that hasn’t been studied thoroughly and isn’t in your professor’s computer.”

  It seemed Temi wasn’t ready to buy into the notion of alien visitors either. She hadn’t seen the glow-in-the-dark eyes...

  “There aren’t that many places left on the planet that haven’t been studied thoroughly,” I said. “The languages of New Guinea haven’t been scrutinized in much depth yet, but those two look like a couple of white guys, even if they’re a little odd in appearance. They sure don’t look like some native of New Guinea.”

  “Do I look like a native of New Mexico?” Temi asked dryly.

  “Well, no, but it’s hard to imagine some obscure back-wilderness race adopting a couple of white kids and raising them to speak their language. Or some dead language. Unless...” I trailed off. Now I was the one hesitant to share stupid ideas.

  “Unless?” Temi prompted.

  “I don’t know. I keep thinking in terms of them being part of some military experiment or mad scientist’s lab creation.”

  “Hey,” Simon said, “the Harleys are on the move.”

  “Which way are they heading?” I didn’t feel like chasing Eleriss and Jakatra off into the woods again, not when that monster was chasing them everywhere too. Besides, they might simply be coming to visit us, to see if we’ve found their information yet.

  “They passed our hotel and went up Iron Springs Road,” Simon said.

  “That goes out toward the national forest and some more hiking and camping areas, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, but they’re still in town. Stopped at a light, it looks like. They’ll be out of my range before long.”

  “I went up Iron Springs Road this morning,” Temi said. “To drop your friend off at the vet.”

  An uneasy feeling jumped into my stomach alongside the salmon.

  “If they figured out we had more of their blood,” Simon said, “they might be going to collect it.”

  “Damn.” I’d been joking about the fridge insulating the blood. Was it possible the riders had sensed it as soon as I took it out of the van’s fridge this morning and gave it to Autumn? I grabbed my phone to call her.

  “I also went that way to visit the grocery store,” Temi said. “Maybe they’re going for breakfast themselves.”

  “Those coconut bars are pretty good.” Simon waved the empty box.

  Autumn answered the phone with, “What is it?”

  I stood up. “Get the blood back and get out of there.” I waved Temi toward the Jag. “We’re coming to get you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I think our interesting men are coming to collect the other sample.”

  “All right. Call you back in a sec.”

  “Simon,” I said, “pack your stuff and let’s go.”

  “They won’t do anything to her, will they?” Temi asked as we jogged for the car. “They politely took the slide last night.”

  I didn’t know if polite quite defined Jakatra’s frosty demeanor as he’d stalked across the hotel room. “We let them take it without a fight. Who knows what would have happened if we’d tried to stop them?”

  “Maybe it’d be wiser not to try and stop them,” she said.

  “Wiser? Probably, but I want to know who these guys are that they don’t share any human blood types.”

  We climbed into the car. Temi started it up. “Aren’t we still thinking this blood might belong to the monster?”

  “I’m not sure what to think at this point.” That slip-up from Eleriss had me thinking the blood belonged to them, to Jakatra specifically; he’d been the one with the bandage. “I just know I want to see that DNA analysis.”

  CHAPTER 20

  We didn’t drive sixty miles per hour this time, but Temi did run a few red lights. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea given how many police and soldiers were patrolling the town, hunting for monsters, but traffic was non-existent, and nobody pulled us over.

  “Are they still driving or have they parked somewhere?” I asked, glancing back at Simon.

  His MacBook was open in his lap. “Uh, sec.” He picked up his phone.

  “I appreciate how assiduously you’re paying attention back there.”

  “I got some results back from the app. I’m... No, they stopped. A half mile ahead.”

  “That’s where the vet is,” Temi said, increasing speed.

  We zipped past the Starbucks—judging by the line of cars in the drive-thru, the monster threat wasn’t quite big enough to keep people from their espresso addictions—and some other businesses, then hung a hard right into a tree-shaded parking lot. A single car was parked out back, and two familiar motorcycles waited next to the dog potty area.

  “I’ll stop over there so they won’t see us if they walk out the front.” Temi veered toward the far side of the building. Towering boulders rose on that end of the parking lot, ensuring the vet would never have any neighbors on that side. Trees and brush blanketed the top of the rocky ledge.

  I grabbed my phone and tried Autumn again. I’d called on the way and she hadn’t answered.

  This time it stopped ringing immediately. “Sssh,” came the whispered response.

  “Autumn?” I asked.

  “They’re out front in the waiting area,” she whispered. “I think they know we’re back here, but we locked the inside door, and they haven’t tried to force it. Do you think they will?”

  “I don’t know; they’re polite but determined.”

  “Wait,” Autumn whispered with new urgency. “Someone’s fiddling with the lock.”

  “Is there a back door you can come out? We’re in the parking lot outside. We can get you out of here.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Don’t park,” I told Temi. “Drive around back. Look for a door.”

  Before the car rolled into motion again, Simon hopped out with his MacBook cradled in his arm, the lid still open.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, but didn’t tell Temi to stop. Maybe Simon wanted to sabotage the motorcycles again. I wasn’t sure we should be pissing off our clients, but I didn’t want them chasing us down the highway either.

  As we rounded the back of the building, two people darted out of a door by a dumpster, Autumn and a pasty-faced young man with eyes wider than horseshoes. I didn’t know what Autumn had told him, but he looked like he was being chased by the mob.

  Without any need for encouragement, they hopped into the back seat Simon had vacated. The parking lot went all the way around the building so Temi continued forward, curling around the corner that led back to the potty area—and the parked motorcycles. We were almost even with the front door when it was thrown open, and two dark figures strode out.

  Jakatra’s face was as stern and cold as always, but this time, easy-going Eleriss’s was too. They spotted us immediately and raced for their motorcycles. That sword hung across Jakatra’s back in its ancient scabbard. I envisioned him racing up beside the car like a Mongol cavalry warrior of old, ready to chop off his opponents’ heads.

  “Go, go,” Autumn urged, gripping the back of Temi’s seat.

  I was ready to urge the same thing, but then Simon jogged into view.

  He ran toward the riders, waving his hand and pointing to his MacBook. “Wait, I have your cave!”

  The car had reached the end of the parking lot. “Do I wait or go?” Temi asked.

  I hopped out. “Go, take them wherever they want to—no, to Phoenix!”

  I chopped a wave and ran back toward the other three. Despite Simon’s words, Eleriss and Jakatra had jumped onto their bikes. The motors growled to life. Simon ran in
front of the Harleys with his hand up. It might not have been smart, but I raced up and joined him.

  “Hey, we’ve got your information,” I yelled, though I didn’t know if Simon had been speaking the truth. “You owe us the other half of our payment. You made a deal with us.” My words came out in a rushed jumble; I didn’t know if they heard them over the engines. Or, if they had heard them, I didn’t know if they cared.

  His face like a glacier, Jakatra revved the engine. I bent my legs, ready to spring away, though we were so close that I didn’t know if I would have a chance to get out of the way in time.

  A split second before Jakatra took off, Eleriss dropped a hand onto his forearm. Jakatra stabbed his fingers in the direction the Jag had disappeared and spouted a stream of words. Eleriss responded with a single syllable, then repeated it in a lower tone.

  I could only guess but thought it might mean, “Later. We’ll deal with them later.”

  The riders turned off their engines. I met Simon’s eyes, hoping he had the information they wanted and hoping it would delay them—distract them—for a while. If they could track their own blood, it wouldn’t matter if the Jag drove out of sight. The motorcycles could simply catch up. Even breaking the speed limit, it’d take an hour and a half to reach Phoenix, and who knew if Autumn would be able to get in to use that DNA sequencer right away, or how much time it would take for the computer to spit out the decoded genome? Did Eleriss and Jakatra have an inkling of what we meant to do? They must. They’d been evasive all along—they must want to keep their identities secret. Whatever they were, the answer might be in that blood sample.

  “Speak,” Jakatra told Simon. His boots were flat on the ground, but neither rider had dismounted. They could leave at any second.

  “Where is the cave?” Eleriss added.

  “We can’t be certain it’s the cave you’re looking for,” Simon said, “as you gave us so few parameters.”

  Jakatra’s already suspicious eyes narrowed further.

  “But I’ve found something that may be worth investigating,” Simon went on. “My survey shows a pocket under the northeast side of Lake Watson. It’s hard to judge the size, because of the tons and tons of solid granite there, but there’s definitely something.” He turned his laptop toward them.