by Randy Moffat
Petrovski was studying the board closely.
“The angle is interesting too.” The young man said the scientist to the fore. “It looks like it cut through it at about 60 degrees. The board was leaning against the stone at about a 30 degree angle. 30 plus 60 is 90 degrees In other words, the particles were traveling straight as an arrow from the accelerator towards the wall.”
Bear nodded.
Simultaneously they both realized what was implied and turned to look at the wall behind there the board had been. Sure enough, there was a blister in the paint that Bear reached out and touched. The stone looked like it had been indented ever so slightly, but he was not certain it was a result of the experiment since it could have been a natural feature of the uneven rock walls that resulted from the original mining back in the 20s and 30s rather than an effect of their magical graviton beam.
Bear stood up and so did Petrovski.
“Tomorrow we test it against a stone wall. But whatever we do, NO ONE touches those activation controls while anyone is standing beyond the mouth of the accelerator! That would be all I need is to have a member of Q-kink develop a hole in place of their pancreas because they were standing at the mouth of this . . . this . . . Petrovski cannon when it went off.”
Antonin nodded his head in mute agreement.
The ancient Po moved like a snail from the terminal building to the open door of a rental car that Li had gotten to pick him up in Detroit. For Po’s aged bones the movements were practically a sprint so Li knew that he was still agitated by his visit to headquarters in Beijing. He had been breathless on the phone from China. Li had had him followed most of his time there, spying on his play acting chief spy. To his knowledge at least three vice chiefs of intelligence had seen him and the reports were that at least two of them hated him on sight so Li knew he had stayed right in character across the Pacific. There was even a rumor circulating in the men’s room of the People’s Intelligence headquarters that Po was an idiot. For them to catch on so quickly made it clear that there were some very competent people in charge in the old country these days.
The visits to vice chiefs was interesting, but even more so was the word that Po had been shunted to two other bureaucrats when Po pointed out some errors in the reports based on ‘late data’ acquired after submission. The errors had been inserted on purpose by Li and the two people Po was sent to were ten times more interesting than the any chiefs or vice chiefs. To an expert like Li it was clear that they were the actual people in charge though their public titles meant nothing. These were most certainly the Éminence Grise, the powerful decision-makers who operated secretly or unofficially. Being one, Li recognized the signs of grey eminence when he saw them. This power behind the power was what Li had set out to find. He had found it with a mine detector named Po.
The final Vice Chief had who had seen by Po as his last appointment in country. The Vice had handled the old man less than gently which is why he had rushed home angry and insulted. When you are 93 you are a bit out of practice with people drilling you a new asshole. Li smiled at the idea as Po climbed in clutching several plastic garbage bags that passed for his luggage.
Po spent the trip back bitching about all the folks at ‘home.’ In between Po’s stabs at the Vice Chief’s paternity through unlikely experiments in animal husbandry, Li subtly picked the old man’s brains. He learned what he needed for the next seventy five miles. At the trip’s end, Po was an empty bottle that Li has drunk dry. Li was so pleased with what he learned that he treated Po to a McDonald’s number one combo which made the old man sigh. He loved McDonalds. Another benefit of being 92—Your hearing is so bad you can’t hear your arteries slamming shut.
After alienating 75% of the intelligence headquarters staff, Li figured the odds were 50-50 that it would be Po’s arteries that killed him.
CHAPTER 6—UNDERGROUND ZERO
The next day the rumor had spread through the entire Q Kink group in minutes and they all milled around ‘ohing’ and ‘ahing’ at the hole in the canvas and the board until Bear pressed them all into service shifting the apparatus around 90 degree to face the pure stone wall that backed the work area. Whatever happened, in that direction it would not hurt anything until it passed through about a mile of native limestone.
While the Eggheads programmed the next test according to the plan that he and Petrovski had organized the previous night, Bear had Pinta gleefully painted a “red line of death” on the floor well behind the accelerator. Pinta gleefully painted “Dead line” of next to it in ragged letters a foot high. Meantime Gaston and Baxter with several eager hands were busily painting the wall in front of the accelerator a bright white. Bear discovered that they had never purchased any video equipment during earlier buying binges so he dispatched Anderson, Diaz, Rivera, O’Hara and a credit card to the nearest electronic chain store to make up for the lack. They had orders to study the camera’s manuals in the vehicle on the way back and with that expertise they were now officially promoted to cameramen. Killien and still surprisingly the quiet Woo were busily securing the accelerator to the table. Bear saw them exchange a knowing glance and brush a hand lightly across a palm as if it was part of their work. That startled him. Woo was no beauty, though neither was Killien Bear reflected—chemical bonding occurred according to human nature not according to human appearance. He wondered idly if last night had been the first time between them.
The last step had the team filling sandbags that liberally weighted the table to the floor and prevented vibrations. They piled such a heap of them that it looked as if they suspected the rig was going to roar away like a jet engine.
Eventually they were certain that no random jostle or heavy boot on the floor would move the beam coming out while the rig was operating. Bear had Pinta and Maxmillian use a laser level and plumbs to put an “X” on the wall where the particles should strike. It was instantly labeled Target Zero with a black magic marker. The re-assembled team stood around in nervous conversation starring at it.
The Eggheads took their sweet time, but eventually finished pontificating and Petrovski gave Bear the royal nod over Woo’s head at the keyboard.
“Everyone behind the damn death line! This is not a drill!” Bear roared and then repeated it—the ex-soldier kicking in and trying not to grin when he saw Woo hunching over the keyboard, protecting it with her body from another grab by Gaston. There was a nervous titter and shuffling as everyone checked to make sure their toes were firmly behind the new red line on the floor—the safety zone. Baxter pointed at the front sole of a Diaz’s shoe whose shadow lay on one edge of the red line and she guiltily shuffled back a centimeter. Baxter grinned at her and then at Bear with a thumb up.
“Power! We good?” Bear called looking at his carefully prepared checklist that he had scribbled on the back of an envelope ten minutes before.
“Roger, sir.” Maxmillian hollered back from the massive old mechanical switch box he had salvaged from somewhere in the cave complex and used to route power to the accelerator. The thing was probably built in 1948.
“Camera one running?” Bear said over the sudden expectant silence as everyone quieted to listen to the steps in the evolving process.
“Camera one good!” yelled Diaz, excited to have a speaking role at last.
Bear called out the other three cameras including one with a special and expensive zoom lens that would allow then to zoom in on close-up to the action of the accelerator firing from a distance of 25 meters. If there was any action—They were ready.
Petrovski looked at him expectantly—still among the boss’ prerogatives to say ‘go.’
“Go!” Bear said . . . thinking about it less this time than the last.
Woo hit a key and the lights flickered a tiny amount as power went to the paperclip.
They had set the rig to run the particle beam at less than yesterday’s strength and the
effect was not at all immediately apparent.
“Disengaged?” Bear peering at the new protocol they had agreed to—a social contract to prevent anyone getting cut in half by invisible beams of energy. Petrovski carefully hit several keys and then sung out, “All Clear! Computer interlocks set.” The ray gun had a safety now.
“Power off?” Bear called to his secondary safety.
“Power is off!” Maxmillian sang out having flipped the circuit breaker off that left the computers operating, but left no power to the accelerator paperclip. Twin safeties were set. It was safe to cross the red line of horrors.
There was a moment’s hesitation until all were certain that this was the last of Bear’s new and slightly anal safety protocols. Strangely no one wanted to be the first in front of the gadget any more.
“OK.” Bear said and walked forward of the red line as the designated representative for Q-Kink Kommand. Aziz followed for the Eggheads, Johnson from the Wongers and not surprisingly Baxter for the Boys. They all reached the target together and peered at it. This time there was no mistaking it. The lighting was horrendously bright as Bear had had made the Boys string every work light he could lay hands on around the rock area’s top, bottom and sides, so even their combined shadows were vague and did not conceal the target. Pictures have been taken of the ‘X’ and surrounding region prior to the experiment and were taped all around it for comparison. The X was raised up as if on half of a bubble in the paint, except the stone itself appeared to have been pushed in at bottom and pulled out at the top a bit on an area the size of a quarter. It was a small odd-looking anomaly, but quite evident and result of the device.
“Diaz!” Bear yelled and she jogged forward.
Bear pointed at the ‘X.’
“Film this from several angles; zoom in and out to get all details. Ms. O’Hara! He called.
She ran up expectantly. He thought she looked pleased to be of practical use as well. An accountant’s life usually involved the sterility of mathematics in neat columns and over time had to wear as thin as the material on an exotic dancer’s knickers.
“Take your super lens camera and do the same after Diaz finishes. I want multiple images at various zooms on different cameras. Check?”
“Check.” She said tersely, but smiled.
He waited with his arms crossed for the filming to be done while he talked to Petrovski and Aziz quietly.
“We are going to do it again. This time I want a much more powerful setting say 100 times more powerful or some such. Don’t focus the beam as tightly either.”
“Shouldn’t we go up in smaller increments to establish a baseline?” Aziz asked logically.
Bear shook his head.
“No! It’s my call. Give it the juice. I want to see what this baby will do.”
Aziz and Petrovski broke almost immediately into arguments over the effect of accelerator at various distances that were the square of the distance. Everyone eyes drooped, but only Feathersgait really got what they were talking about at the granular level and Bear ignored them after a minute or two. The essential question was whether increases in a digit in a computer would result in arithmetic or geometric increases.
Bear considered saying something more but subsided and stood aside. They had their orders—more details at this juncture would just confuse the situation.
Feathersgait stood too with folded arms for a time, the image of insulted arrogance, but then got tired of it and waded in. He was soon outclassed by the other two Eggheads who themselves did not agree perfectly but both of them clearly disagreed with Feathersgait. They turned on his reasoning like intellectual wolverines, reached detente as a fractured group and entered a value in the computer that took only a few seconds and once again Petrovski nodded at Bear who went through his verbal checklist with safety, power, computer control, and cameras.
They were ready and running.
“Engage!” He said.
The lights flared, dimmed almost instantly and then went out all together. Sparks flew in his peripheral vision.
In the bright flare of the lights failing it was clear that the wall where the target lay was simply gone.
“Power! Disengage power!” Bear yelled a bit desperately as fireworks lit the dark again somewhere by Maxmillian. It was an unnecessary command. The sparks had been the power panel fusing and after giving Maxmillian a nice set of first degree burns on one of his hands which he shared the pain with the group through a series of inventive curses that would have made a gunnery sergeant blush. This added texture to the background noise made by a Q-Kink team suddenly plunged into a complete darkness usually reserved for spelunkers. For a moment there was pandemonium.
“Quiet in the cave!” Bear roared twice in his best command voice and was pleasantly surprised when it worked and everyone stopped talking at once.
He waited a moment. “Is it just me . . . or was that NOT supposed to happen.”
Someone laughed. Their tension was broken. Bear continued before they broke into general conversation again. “Does anyone have a light?” Bear asked moderately into the void.
No one had prepared explicitly for a sudden swim in lightlessness began patting theoretical pockets somewhere out of sight. A beam showed suddenly, a little LED flashlight on Woo’s key set while a moment later Pinta, the smoker, flicked his classic Zippo into life and held like it like Diogenes over his head. The tiny light sources looked brilliant in the now stygian darkness of the cave.
“Baxter! Killian! Do you know where there are other flashlights?”
“Yes, Sir! There are several in the workshop!” they answered sharply.
Bear nodded automatically realizing it was a meaningless gesture in the dark.
“Please accompany Ms. Woo’s flashlight to the workshop and return straight away with as many lanterns and lights as you can lay hands on.”
There was a general rustle and Woo’s light disappeared up the corridor leaving the eerie flickering flame of the lighter held over Pinta’s head as their only illumination. “Are all the camera’s still running?” Bear asked to occupy their minds.
O’Hara’s voice came from the black void’s depths.
“Yes . . . except Baxter’s.”
“Keep them running in the direction of the target and everyone please stand where you are until lights show up. I do not want anyone to trip over a cable or something else vital in the dark.”
“I think someone already tripped over their dick!” One of the boys said caustically from the crowd. Someone tittered and they all laughed. General banter resumed. Then multiple flashlights came hurrying back like a scene from the X Files and Baxter was pushing a cart full of them so almost everyone snatched one up and turned it on making the cave into a weaving tapestry of light beams and darkness.
“Maxmillian. Take your flash and see to getting the primary lights back up!” Bear yelled. “Try to figure out why the backup generators failed too.”
“Sir!” The big black man’s voice replied and his departing footsteps sounded like a Latin dance step fading under the Doppler of departure.
“Wong!” Bear yelled again. “Make a note . . . install battery powered emergency lighting ASAP.” That got a laugh. Bear went on. “Everyone else point your light at the target wall please, but stay behind the safety line just in case . . . .” The crowd suddenly remembered what had happened and got quiet as they focused their beams collectively on where the target had been. The ‘X’ was gone along with about twenty meters of the wall. The rear of this new tunnel shone back distantly in the light of the torches with a glassy smooth look like high gloss paint. Chatter started instantly again and was overly loud in the depths of the cave.
“Quiet in the cave!” Bear called again in a basso profundo and it dropped to whispers like naughty 4th graders shushed by a librarian. “Aziz, Petrovski, Fea
thersgait and Johnson let’s move forward and take a look! O’Hara on the right and Diaz on the left bring your cameras! I want imagery of everything. Stay behind us as we advance. Everyone else stay behind the line until I say so and keep pointing your lights ahead of us.”
He aimed his own lantern at the dark mouth of the new hole in the cave wall and strode forward. As he approached he realized that the hole was not perfectly round, but that there was a distinct lip rising upward at the mouth to the new hole that sat at about knee height. It glittered as if glazed and fired or exposed to extreme heat and that image held in his mind though some corner of his mind knew that this was something very different since there was absolutely no warmth emanating from the rock at all.
Aziz had somehow gotten ahead of him in a frenzy of scientific ardor and put one knee on the lip. He swung his light down and his astonished ‘Holy Shit!’ echoed oddly in the new formation. The holiness of the shit was questionable, but Bear could sympathize with the emphasis.
Bear reached his side by the shit and shone his beam downward and realized that the lip upward was a slight bulge of perfectly curved stone about three feet across and on the far side it curved down and away in the shape of a playground slide to a depth that was triple its height. It looked for the entire world as if a mad sculptor had taken tools of extraordinary fineness, plenty of polishing compounds and a lot of time to carefully craft a model of a wave pouring smoothly down and into the depths of the earth.
‘Holy shit squared!’ Bear said. It was all a man could say in the face of a machine that changed the matter of solid limestone as if a giant had instantaneously thrust his tongue into the earth—pushing it out of the way as easily as a child waved off a gnat. Aziz had proved himself a weathervane of sentiment. Everyone who saw it said precisely the same thing. Whatever else they had discovered they had immortalized a universal expletive that clearly would become the team’s motto.