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

by Miles A. Maxwell

  “Phase imbalance!”

  “The reactance system will handle it,” Denny drawled, butt still in a chair.

  “That automation is still offline!” Everon yelled back, quickly scanning systems across the big board for the right shutoff. Hand reaching for what he thought was the knob to shut down Junior’s power. They had to cut the load off Phase C.

  Extreme phase imbalance could burn out all kinds of stuff — including Junior’s generator — and this meant shutting the whole thing down — right now! They’d have to find the cause of the problem and start all over. With fuel they didn’t have.

  This probably meant the end of their chances.

  Possibly the end of Enya.

  “Phase C!” Turban shouted, hand shooting for the same switch Everon had decided on.

  But before either of them could touch it, the siren stopped. The big red Phase C numbers came back up until they matched Phases A and B.

  And Mercer’s system was as stable as before.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Everon asked. He studied the small gauges, the big screens. “An imbalance somehow corrects itself? As if it never happened?”

  Turban looked as puzzled as he was. A strange thought whipped through his mind: That weird switch behind the plant.

  Teeth clamped hard, Everon ran for the outside. Gritted out: “Somebody’s gotta be stealing our power out the back door. And I’m going to find out who it is!”

  Franklin vs. Ralph — Mrs. Tavitt

  At quarter to nine, Franklin greeted Mrs. Tavitt in the front office, his sixth unscheduled appointment.

  Kitty Tavitt was a devoutly religious woman in her forties, another he’d have thought would rather see Ralph. Her short dark hair fell limply along the sides of her head, almost obscuring her face. “My God,” she said, “what if the next one’s aerial?” She waved her hands frantically, flapping the white and lime-green print dress that hung flat down the front of her hunched chest and hips to the middle of her calves.

  Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Franklin could feel time slipping away as he walked her back. Sunday morning he would have to give the sermon. The New York sermon. The sermon of destruction. Even had it been Ralph’s week, Ralph would have insisted. Franklin had been there. He’d seen the city on fire. He’d lost a sister. He was on the cover of People, for Christ’s sake!

  “The news says the next one could cause ten, twenty, thirty times the damage of the first two.” Kitty alternated between taking gasps of air and babbling. “My brother Jeff is living in Manassas, out west of Washington! Fortunately he wasn’t affected by the Virginia Beach bomb.”

  Why doesn’t he just get out of there? Franklin thought. Her personality was not merely energetic. It was frantic. Is this the type of person the bomber would be?

  He closed the door. They sat down and Franklin mirrored Kitty, jerkily letting parts of the same two verses he’d used with Mrs. Astor burst forth in short machine-gun-like blasts. The prayer from John. The blood-relative metaphor from Mark:

  “ . . . And . . . of her blood —

  “ . . . and she felt in her body —

  “that she was healed of that plague.”

  Kitty’s deep trance required only half as much time as Mrs. Astor’s. And from there Franklin went right into process, helping her search out ways to handle her uncontrollable worry.

  Twenty minutes later, Kitty Tavitt was a different person. She wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were clear. Her posture erect and calm, she looked almost pretty.

  “I normally see Reverend Maples. But he was busy until tomorrow. I’m so glad I spoke with you. Thank you for praying with me, Reverend.”

  Ralph appeared in the hall between their offices, just in time to catch Kitty’s last few words.

  He licked donut sugar from his first two fingers. Held aloft his white gilt-edged Bible, shouted out his favorite translation. “Most brilliant thing ever written!” A gilt-edged smile on his face, mostly it seemed for Franklin. “We must all live our lives by it!” Ralph said, “No matter how famous we become!”

  Ralph greeted a gentle, sad-looking couple in their sixties, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas in reception. Ushered them back toward his office. Franklin stared at Ralph’s back trying to understand. What is Ralph’s problem? Offering his supreme compliment to his chosen Bible, he’s what — complimenting himself?

  Harry chose that moment to let out a long soft “Whooooo —”

  Ralph excused himself from the Thomases as they went through his door. He walked over to the antique birdcage near Marjorie’s desk and frowned grimly at the owl, then turned the frown on Franklin. He returned to his office without another word.

  Franklin stood in the hall feeling uncomfortable. He felt a war forming in his mind: Christians like Ralph versus the principles of Christ — versus something else, though he wasn’t sure what. Since the moment of Cyn’s death, it was slowly becoming more difficult — the things Franklin was supposed to be teaching, against the things he was made of. But it’s been growing there long before that, hasn’t it?

  He thought of that Amish man with the black horse and black cart, clip-clopping up Route 71. He thought of Matthew 5:39:

  DO NOT RESIST EVIL

  Franklin didn’t want to turn the other cheek. He wanted to resist evil. He wanted Cyn’s killers dead, Dead, DEAD!

  Dale Wants Teddy’s Help

  He scanned the chart and looked down on the big dark-skinned woman where she lay unconscious, a thick tube down her throat, her fleshy arms full of needles connected to small tubes that ran to hanging bottles.

  While her breathing was steady on the respirator, her heart beat weakly, its tempo irregular. But Dale had found her a heart that fit, a tissue type that matched. There were so many available.

  Out the second-floor window another helicopter descended toward the roof. More coming in from the New York and Virginia surgical tents.

  For so long there’d been a shortage of kidneys, livers, hearts. Since the bomb, there were more than enough spare parts to go around — though he had to be careful. A lot of the donors had absorbed radiation from black rain.

  He had to move while he could. Save whoever it was possible to save. Decisions had to be made. His next decision involved the woman lying before him, and a brain-dead thirty-five-year-old man. Typically it would have been easy. Operate.

  Dale Rass turned out of the ICU and ran smack into Teddy Baker.

  “You can’t do it, Dale!” Ted’s face looked down on Dale with disapproval and determination. A congenial walrus, shaking his round, balding head. At six-four, Teddy had him by a couple of inches.

  “Ted, I have no choice.”

  “Dale, a nurse in there just told me! Dale, we just lost water pressure to the taps! One flush left to a toilet. No water for hand washing or cleaning. Sanitary conditions around here are about to go right down the drain!”

  Dale shook his head. “It means nothing, Teddy. You know water won’t be used. And I have twice as much sterile saline set aside as I could possibly require. We’ll use it to wash with if we have to.”

  “But Dale, we’re on the red wall outlets! The hospital’s running on its basement backup generators. Lighting only for critical areas. Power only for ventilators, dialysis machines, things like that. And I just heard the backup generators are nearly out of diesel!”

  “Old news. I talked to the engineer,” Dale said. “They got a little emergency fuel in. We should make it.”

  Teddy looked at the trail of cots filled with patients running down the corridor. “There aren’t any ORs available.”

  Dale nodded. “OR 1 has an excellent laminar air-flow system. It’s still powered up.”

  “What — Where? Not in the same room!”

  “I know it’s unusual. I know it’s not the way things are done. But has anything been typical in the last three days?”

  “You don’t have a team. Who’s going to perform the harvest?”

 
“I have someone in mind.” Dale stared at him.

  Teddy’s eyes widened. “Oh no, not me! I’m not going to be involved in such a hairbrained scheme! What does the administrator have to say?”

  Dale stared back at him.

  “You haven’t told him? Dale, you can’t operate off schedule like that. If —”

  “Look, Ted, this woman’s going to die. She’s flat-lined twice now. Her heart’s failing. The HLA tissue-match is perfect. If we don’t get a couple of cannula into her chest pretty damn soon, she’s gone.”

  Teddy was staring at him. At least he’s still listening.

  “These bombings are a disgusting tragedy, Ted, but there’s one good thing that’s come of them, and I don’t want to let it go to waste. Organs, Teddy. Lots of donors. Lots and lots of organs.”

  Dale hit harder. “You know how long the waiting list is. You know how difficult it is to find a match. Especially one that’s AB negative. That’s one percent of the population. “The man’s tissue is perfect — skull crushed by a building girder, brain activity ceased more than a day ago.”

  Dale watched something in Ted’s eyes change. He’s starting to come around. He could always count on Teddy. “The organs aren’t going to be viable forever.”

  “The man’s family sign?”

  “They will.”

  Dale studied Ted’s face. Is that agreement? “Actually, part of me agrees with you, Ted. In fact I put her chances around fifty-fifty. I don’t want to go in under these conditions either. But we just — don’t — have — a choice . . .” Dale took a deep breath. “I’ve got a top-flight perfusionist. You know Sue Childs?”

  Teddy nodded.

  “And I’ve got a very good anesthesiologist lined up too. Both tired as hell but they’ve agreed to do it. I’ll find a circ nurse somewhere. But I’ll need some solid help cutting if I’m going to pull this off. I need you as Assisting.”

  Teddy looked at the floor, took a breath. Then nodded softly, “Alright, Dale.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Okay, Dale,” stronger now. Ted’s lips pulled in as his mouth bulged. “It’s the right thing.”

  “Thank you, Teddy.” Dale paused. “Umm —”

  Teddy looked up. “What?”

  “Know any good operating techs we can get?”

  The Forest

  Everon ran down the metal gantryway, eyes locking on the mystery switch at the rear of the Williams property. The phase imbalance made no sense at all. Rani and Holmes would have to wait.

  He passed the diesel tank on the ground floor. 6,500. Really getting low. They had to have more fuel soon. Scrounge!

  He stopped before the rear fence and looked at the tubes, the blades, the wires. The switch is connected! Who — are those fresh prints in the snow? They aren’t mine! One of the techs?

  Behind the switch, thick cables disappeared into the ground. Where do they go? Can’t be the U.S. grid. Not underground like that.

  His bare fingers gripped the fence’s cold diamond-shaped links, eyes staring into the woods. He glanced at the sky. To the west it was getting dark. Looks like a heavy storm coming in. Dimming down the light. It made the forest seem even darker.

  The toe of his right boot found its way into the fence. He climbed. Pulled himself up.

  He sat on the upper fence-tube eight feet in the air. There was no sign of the cables in the forest, just snow. They had to be pretty old. Buried pretty deep. Sighting by eye back to where the heavy black lines disappeared, they definitely ran right underneath him. He looked the other way, marking out a narrow path between several trees.

  He swung a leg over, jumped down onto a thick bed of snow and leaves. Just a quick look, he thought. Doesn’t have to take long. Exactly perpendicular from the fence, he started into the woods.

  The terrain rolled gently. He slogged over a thick snowy rise. Bumped a shoulder against a tree trunk as he rose out of the next depression. He lined up more trunks by eye, three at a time, trying to hold his course. Despite small patches of gray sky, the farther in he went, the darker it became.

  He slid between two tall thin grandfather oaks as he cleared a fourth rise in the snow-covered floor, thinking he must have lost his direction. He heard an echo, a ticking sound up ahead.

  As he drew closer, the dull forest was cut by wide light beams. The sound of heavy engines. He moved cautiously.

  From the edge of a clearing, lit by mercury vapor lamps mounted on the side of a vast gray metal warehouse, his eyes picked out a school-bus-size generator and a big transformer on a covered concrete pad. Three thick black conductors rose from ground tubes, as if they must line up directly with his present position.

  Those have to be connected back to Mercer’s switchyard!

  A wide truck door on the building’s side rolled up. Several men carrying what looked like automatic weapons ran out. Sweeping for intruders? Everon made himself as thin as possible behind a tree as they scanned the woods.

  Probably can’t see much outside their circle of light.

  His guess was confirmed when one of them yelled. “All clear!”

  Now he recognized the sound he’d heard, the ground vibrations. Diesel engines. One after another, a dozen 18-wheelers followed each other out the big door, taking the single lane blacktop into the trees away from him.

  As the last truck’s taillights disappeared, the door began to come back down. The men ducked inside. The lights went out.

  Everon stepped from the trees to get a better angle. He wanted a look at the transformer the ground wires were hooked into.

  He was less than a dozen steps down the hill when the lights flared back on. He froze. How? Ground sensors?

  A yell! A side door opened. A dozen men poured out.

  “Up there!”

  “Cut the lights!” another yelled. “Cut them off!”

  Shit! A man was pointing right at him.

  Everon ran back and ducked behind a large maple. Tree bark exploded above his head.

  What the fuck! A bullet?

  The lights went out. The forest was gray-black again. They couldn’t see him now. He should be able to get —

  “There!” a voice yelled. “I got him!”

  He ducked low and ran. The sound of angry bees swarmed past his head on either side. Something stung his left cheek.

  He dropped to his knees. More bees swarmed above him. Silencers? How can they even see me? Night vision!

  He scrambled over a rise, legs moving faster than he’d ever run, pumping, throwing snow behind him. Explosions of bark pelted his jacket. A root caught his boot. He went flying as angry wasps spun overhead.

  “I think I got him!”

  But they hadn’t. He stumbled on. Knees pumping, feet sliding in the soft snowy leaves, pushing his body onward, moving low over the next rise. To hesitate was to die. To run, to live. Maybe.

  He changed directions in the next dip. He didn’t care if he ended up in the next county, as long as he got away from them. Why are they shooting? What is that place? Who are those guys?

  The sounds of pursuit faded left. He ran more upright now, able to go faster. Faster!

  His face slammed hard into a chain-link fence.

  On the other side he saw grinding mills. Tanks, the cooling tower.

  Mercer! The back of the plant!

  In seconds he was up on the fence.

  And over.

  The mystery switch was disconnected.

  Processing

  Rudolph Gartenbuerger screamed high-pitched like a woman. A tall dark red man with horns and a tail dragged him into the denser hotter flame, fastened his wrists then his ankles to the glowing rocks. His flesh sizzled. It was melting off his bones!

  The Devil himself had taken him straight to Hell.

  He screamed again . . . and as the terrifying vision of smoke and fire ended, his bladder and colon both let loose. He shit himself. Bishop Rudolph Gartenbuerger, hundreds of churches under his purview, the
Lutheran cleric in charge of the entire New England Synod, felt the goosh of feces, the wet of urine between his legs.

  Had pride come into the equation, certainly the embarrassment itself would have killed him. A tall, reedy, ginger-haired man with a severe, patrician bearing, Gartenbuerger was of good German stock, after all. But there was no opportunity for pride here — wherever here was. The dark silence made his skin crawl.

  He thought the vision was over. But there was something across his eyes. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. And he had no idea where he was. The last thing he could remember was driving down from Boston, going to sleep in his Manhattan hotel room after the ELCA Convention.

  “What?” He was sure he’d heard someone speaking a moment ago. “Hello?” he cried out. “Is someone there?”

  All Rudolph heard back was a small whine. Like an insect. A mosquito maybe, behind his right ear. His right arm flexed automatically, but couldn’t move his hand more than half-an-inch. He couldn’t wave it away. In the time he’d taken to realize this, the whine had become a screeching violin — in both ears — perforated by the percussive bounce of an electronic beeping.

  His heart was racing. His head felt stuffy, like it was underwater. He became aware of a growing pain in his forehead, an awareness that focused to a single brilliant point of white heavenly light.

  “He’s going! We’re losing him!”

  Their patient’s EKG tone was high and very fast. A warning in green numbers flashed on the screen’s upper left.

  “Cut back on the ’lucinogens!”

  The second tech quickly rotated a thumb dial on a tube. There was no change. And then, the EKG began responding — blip, blip, blip . . . blip, blip . . . slowing.

  “Whew! That’s better. Loosen up those straps, and —” the lead tech held his nose “ — get him cleaned up! For the next hour, just a light drip of the tranquilizing agent only.”

  “He’s not adapting well, is he?”