Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  Air!

  His chest tightened as something sweet, a cloth, came over his nose and mouth, his head thrust back. He couldn’t breathe. The stars disappeared. The world was black.

  Hours of darkness, emptiness, nothingness . . . existence without form or meaning . . . Where am I? How long have I been here?

  Images appeared. Beautiful flowing gardens, running water, a river. Voices. Young women laughing.

  He saw a table spread with dates and figs and fish and lamb — stretching unto the horizon before him. More food than a hundred families could eat. The women he’d heard laughing came into view. His dinner companions, dozens of them, seductively dressed. Bare midriffs, jeweled navels. Breasts and hips accentuated by their thin, colorful, gossamer clothing. All eager to fulfill his slightest command. He had only to choose the ones he wanted first.

  Muhammad! . . . Muhammad! The name of the Prophet flooded across the fields of his brain.

  A voice spoke, boomed into his right ear — “Read!”

  “What? What shall I read?” he asked.

  “The name!”

  “What name?”

  Letters glinting in bright sunlight, words carved deep into a tablet made of gold! “The New Prophet!”

  A name echoed through his mind.

  “No!” he screamed. “Blasphemy!”

  Over and over and over, in his ears, his mind, the name, shining words that did blind his eyes!

  Until all became blackness once again.

  The Message

  The door to Juniata's control room was opened by Hunt’s pilot Andréa.

  “Hi,” she smiled at Everon, her right eyebrow rising, a reminder of the sex they’d had flying Hunt’s Lear on autopilot only minutes before the New York bomb went off. And the bomb’s post-coital clear-air turbulence that put the Lear into a dive that nearly killed them.

  Nan looked Andréa up and down, right off, an instant dislike for the other female pilot. It wasn’t merely that Andréa was tall and slim with the same shade of dark red hair as Nan’s. Nan appeared to be picking up on something else.

  Not now! Everon shook his head. Priorities. Fuel shortages. Misused crew. Essential equipment.

  It was all he could handle.

  Faint, tinny music emanated from the tiny earbuds worn by Metalhead, the head-bopping silver-hard-hatted lineswoman Nan had brought from Phoenix.

  Guitar and drums. Someone screaming.

  Highway to hell indeed.

  The control room itself was a hundred feet wide and cold. In a place that should never sleep, where white-coated power techs should have been routing a million megawatts, Everon’s team bunched together dumbfounded.

  Temporary light stands cast shadows from the corners. A small space heater on one side. Up above the wide U-shaped console, where should have been a colorful spiderweb of electric blue and purple, white and green connecting the neighborhoods to receive power from the plants that generated it, the huge mimic screen was black. And below on the console itself — banks of meters, switches, gauges, dials, all of it — dead.

  On the floor beneath the console, Hunt’s young programmer Ewing and a bald-headed man in a white shirt and red tie were sorting through a mess of green circuit boards. As Rani lifted one off the floor, Ewing looked up and froze at the sight of Rani's scared face. He nudged the older guy. Whispered, “Get a load of Frankenstein, Sam.”

  Rani turned to Ewing and smiled hideously, purposely showing the damaged side of his face in the shadowy light. “That's Rani-stein to you, my friend.”

  Everon had to laugh. No matter how bad things got, Rani always lightened them up. “Disfigured doesn’t equal evil, kid,” he said. “Evil's on the inside.”

  Lama went straight to the left side of the console and set up a laptop. Fished through a metal case of CD’s. The last one was dated three days ago. More than a day before the first bomb.

  “Where’s the backup from the night New York went off?” he asked Ewing.

  “Uh — it was right there. It should be. That short thick-necked guy with the buzzcut — he had his laptop right where yours is. He was looking at some of the disks. That’s why I thought he was a new guy Mr. Williams brought in.”

  “Highly suspicious,” Lama replied. “And Mercer was taken offline ten minutes before New York City . . .”

  Ewing got right into it with him. “The optical drive updated its backup seven minutes later. That’s only three minutes before New York went boom! Whoever’s behind these bombings, I’ll bet they had something to do with that disconnect signal. That signal was a message. Trying to tell us these attacks aren’t over.”

  “Somebody might stop after one bomb. Nobody stops after two.”

  “There’s never been a programmer who wasn’t a conspiracy theorist,” Nick muttered.

  “Lama,” Everon said, “there's no time for that crap. You and Nick need to get these guys started,” he pointed to Ewing and Hunt’s only remaining control technician, Sam, “installing new monitors and replacing control circuitry in here. Then they carry on while you get on over to Thomas Substation.

  A pleasant female contralto drifted from an office door, a song Everon didn’t recognize. Enya, singing over a smoky soldering gun, replacing parts in a radio by the light of a single desk lamp. Everon went past silently. The big woman didn’t look up.

  “Twenty, thirty minutes, E,” she called out as he went out the front doors. Everon smiled. She was humming now — the melody was enchanting. She always knows where I am.

  He walked rapidly out the front gate, around the Williams fence. On the small red brick building next door was a rectangular red and white sign:

  He found the front door unlocked.

  Inside the place was dark. its offices empty. As his eyes adjusted he located a small pool of light glowing back in the glass-paneled sound booth. A guy was back there, sitting by himself in the dark, with a candle.

  “Hello?” Everon called out.

  The man didn’t move. Everon made his way back.

  The slim man was maybe forty-five years old. He had a bald dome, fringed by yellow hair that hung down to his shoulders. He was staring into space. On his desk sat a half-full glass, next to a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

  “Worked half my adult life to buy this place,” the man said vacantly, not bothering to look up as Everon stepped into the sound booth. “The other half just to survive.

  “First FM nearly kills us. Then satellite radio takes a bite. Internet radio peels off some more of our customers. But we hang in. Things were just starting to get better.”

  He took a swallow of his drink.

  Apparently this was Big Hot Dick.

  “Twenty years, I never thought I’d need a backup generator next to a power company. Guess it doesn’t matter. With the banks like this, we won’t be able to collect from our advertisers anyway.”

  “I’m with Williams Power, next door,” Everon said. “Would it be possible to let us mount a local radio antenna on your tower?” Everon’s finger pointing upward. “Your antenna’s a lot taller than ours.”

  Big Dick looked up. “What for? You guys don’t have any juice, do you?”

  “We’re trying to repair some of our systems. We need a way to transmit to our repair crews until we’re able to get cellphone service.”

  Big Dick let out a long sigh. “Yeah, okay. Can I ask a favor though?”

  “Name it.”

  “When you guys get power to your control room, would you make sure we get a little over here right away?”

  “Absolutely. First thing.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Nick and Lama left Juniata’s control room repairs in the hands of Hunt’s people, and drove out the gate for Thomas.

  Holmes watched them go. He stood three hundred feet in the air — braced against the whistling cold night, work boots planted on a metal crossmember of the three-sided lattice tower owned by 1055 Radio.

 
He leaned back against the four-inch-wide leather belt around his waist. I just bet this baby would rock pretty good if the breeze picked up a little. When they threw hands, Holmes’ paper beat Rani’s rock. Holmes got to go up. Can’t fly like Everon or Nan, but this shit ain’t so bad — see halfway to Philadelphia. But for a few car lights on the distant highway, it was all dark. If there was somethin’ to see.

  “Too bad!” he laughed.

  The cold wind whipped his laugh away, the gust strengthening. The tower swayed. “Whoa . . .” And Holmes held on.

  When the rocking eased off, he activated the flashlight clipped to his shoulder. Made a quick loop in the black coax cable, and with a plastic strap-tie from his pocket, tightened the loop to a crossmember. He lifted the cable’s end and screwed it onto the antenna’s input.

  “Connected!” he yelled down. The black cable flowed down too, into the darkness.

  On the ground Rani paid out more coax, rolling a 24-inch wooden reel around the Williams fence . . . across the parking lot . . . stopping outside a wall at Juniata. He cut the cable and shoved its end through a slit in the barely open window of the office Enya was using.

  “How far away?” she called out.

  “About five hundred feet — including up to the top of the tower.”

  “Should work. I’ve got a small booster.”

  Enya crimped a connector onto Rani’s cable. Plugged her booster box into an extension cord. “One . . .” she said into the microphone that sat on her desk, punching up 143 megahertz on the digital display.

  “Three . . .” She doubted anyone could hear her yet. She watched an oscilloscope, adjusted screws on various tiny pots across the radio’s circuit board. “Five . . .” It was mostly a good luck thing. “Seven . . . Nine . . .” As much to herself as to the transmitter she spoke a string of odd numbers like this whenever she wanted something to work right out of the gate. “Eleven . . . Thirteen . . .” A little superstition she’d picked up somewhere. “Fifteen . . . Seventeen . . . Nineteen . . . Nick? Lama? Do you read?” Just something people could tune in to on the other end. “Twenty-one . . .”

  “Hello?”

  “Turban? Hello!” Enya recognized the unexpected voice in her headset — about half as high-pitched as Lama’s. He sounded upset. She leaned forward, adjusted the gain.

  “Ah, yes — Miss Enya. I am at Schuylkill. He is very bad.”

  “He?”

  “The turbine. His generator. There is no hope soon for him at all here. Parts twisted, blades mangled. Please pass to Mr. E, I shall try now for Mercer.”

  “Understood, I’ll let Everon know.”

  E’s not going to like that. Enya plopped down hard in her chair, massaging her left arm. There was an uncomfortable pain inside her elbow.

  Slowly it passed.

  She dialed up the gain. “Nick? Lama?” She spoke louder: “Twenty-three . . . Twenty-five . . .”

  Everon was heading down the hall to Hunt’s office when Andréa came around the corner.

  “Hi!” was all she said — before she had him in a lip-lock — up against a doorway. Pushing him into an empty office. She was a great kisser, arms around his neck. One leg came up around his right hip.

  He gently pushed her back and disengaged himself.

  She was incredibly sexy. But she wasn’t the kind of woman he really wanted. Freaking out over a couple of barrel rolls in Hunt’s Learjet. Not going with him into the city when he and Franklin went to look for Cynthia. Not wanting to take the risk. And once again she was in the middle of his critical path.

  There’s no time for this!

  She looked at him. Puzzled. “I guess this isn’t the best time and place. But I’ve been wanting to do that for two days!”

  “Everon!” Hunt’s voice echoed down the corridor.

  Andréa slipped out the office door and was gone.

  The Rabbi Of Happiness

  He was coming out of it.

  He could feel the squeaky vinyl pad against his shoulders, his wrists strapped down, arms fixed in place, held outstretched like he was being crucified or something. He vaguely remembered the black van. Being taken off the street.

  Moshe Specowitz hunched sideways, using his shoulder to slide whatever it was that was wrapped around his head, halfway up off his eyes.

  Now he could see a little.

  He looked to his right forearm first because of the very uncomfortable dull ache there. Just this side of a velcro strap, a needle was taped to the inside of his elbow. It had to be pretty thick because the tubing attached to it sure was.

  He smiled at it. It was funny, really. Well, kind of funny. The sensation was somewhat familiar.

  But for the headset — electrodes attached around the sky-blue yarmulke perched atop his hairless head — with a nearly constant smile on his face the Rabbi of Happiness looked a lot like his nickname. Close friends called him Papa Smurf. Almost none of the nearly one million Jews he represented and influenced as president of Reform Judaism United knew Rabbi Moshe Specowitz had been, for the last fourteen years, a heavy opium user.

  The tubes ran over to a red box, a console the size of a DVD player, which sat on a small cart next to the gurney or whatever it was he was strapped down to.

  BEEP!

  Just below the device’s logo — (it was hard to read from his angle) Syringe Pump he thought it said — several colored lights lit up.

  There was the sound of a little motor whirring. The flat black bar on top of the device began to move, slowly depressing the horizontal plunger on the fattest syringe Specowitz had ever seen. He laughed at the memory: Was it only an hour — or was it a day — since my last injection?

  The Rabbi watched the brown liquid feed into the thick tube, flow around a curl. And into his arm.

  Immediately his arm felt warm. Very warm. The sensation flowed across his chest. Whatever he was being given wasn’t just opium.

  He smiled.

  And then it really hit . . . again . . .

  Glorious!

  Darkness

  It was a cold and lonely thing. Moonlight poking through scattered clouds. No light from street poles or industrial parks. On a short street that ended in a cul-de-sac, two pair of headlights came to rest on a twelve-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire. One of the Williams crew undid a padlock and pushed open the gate to Thomas Substation.

  The trucks rolled through drifted snow to the high-voltage warning chain. Like the thick rubber boots and gloves they usually wore, the chain was unnecessary. Every circuit at Thomas was dead — thousands of homes that surrounded the substation were dead too.

  The Williams guy was just closing the gate when a van topped with a transmission dish roared up the street and pulled in behind them.

  “Reporters?” Nick said.

  A young man in a long coat and dark, styled hair hopped out, followed by a cameraman. “Hey, guys,” the reporter yelled. “When will the power be back on?”

  “When it’s on!” Ortega yelled back.

  “As soon as possible — we’re working on it,” Nick said in a more conciliatory voice. “Check with the company office on Wycombe if you need more information.”

  The Williams man locked the gate in front of the news van.

  “Thanks for the extra light!” Ortega said. “Now, if you don’t mind, mang,” dropping into a strong Mexican accent, “we got work to do!”

  From the truck’s bed Nick and one of the Williams people, a thick-bodied woman Everon had pulled off Woodie’s crew, lifted opposite sides of a portable generator. Ortega brought out light trees and set one on either side of the truck. With the pull of a cord, the generator roared.

  “Let there be light!” Nick shouted.

  And the Thomas yard glowed, illuminating the two major components of any substation: transformers and circuit-breakers.

  The mammoth gray transformers that cut high voltage down low enough to be used by homes and busines
ses didn’t look too bad, Nick thought. Better than Nicola. But there were black scorch marks seared along the sides of two school-bus-size circuit-breakers that would determine where power would be sent.

  Nick got the Williams woman to start draining samples of transformer oil into glass bottles. He poured the samples into a device the size of a shopping cart that would determine if the oil could still insulate against high voltage. Minutes later, a display gave the oil’s water and acid content.

  Nick pointed Ortega to the middle transformer. “That one. Its case is scorched, but according to its oil readings, the guts aren’t too bad inside.”

  Ortega and a tall, old gray-haired man from Woodie’s crew named Bryce screwed the purifier’s hoses onto the transformer’s oil fittings and plugged the purifier in.

  The lights dimmed and flickered. Rrrr . . . rrr . . . like a car battery wearing down. Everyone in the yard held their breath as the little generator went slower, and slower . . . it was painful . . .

  Dirty cooling oil could cause the transformer to explode. It would take a full day to get the burned oil clean enough to use safely again. Delaying would mean even longer before they could send any power through Thomas.

  Slowly the lights grew marginally brighter. Ortega let out a breath, picked up a socket wrench and began unscrewing the middle transformer’s long, thin, dipstick-like sensors.

  Nick used a flashlight to see inside the old block control shed.

  “Whew!” Lama said. “This place stinks.”

  The acrid smell of burnt plastic permeated the air of the tiny shed.

  Nick pulled open the medicine-cabinet control box. Its once-green computer cards no longer stood in their slots but were melted into black blobs.

  “What a mess,” Lama said, pulling out one of Scrounge’s new laptops. “Probably all done by New York’s EMP too. Railroad tracks, power lines. Any path the pulse could take to get down here. Once these connections were blown, though, I doubt Virginia Beach had much of an effect.”