Madeline glassed the hills on both sides of the highway. “What am I looking for exactly?”
“Maybe something built into a hill. An out-of-place building. A research complex, I don’t know. What are the options, Captain?”
Captain leaned forward and extended John’s atlas out to him. “There are two roads on the left and two on the right in the next two miles.”
“Maybe we should talk to some of the ranchers,” Madeline said as she lowered the binoculars.
“Good idea. Let’s take this first road up here,” John said as he slowed down and swung over into a right-turn lane. He drove onto a winding dirt road and saw a few cattle but little else. A half mile later he reached a group of white-and-brick-red farm buildings. He pulled up next to the main house, which was a two-story structure with flower boxes full of purple geraniums on either side of the front steps. It reminded him of a plastic farm set he played with as a kid. He bounded down out of the truck and Madeline followed. They both went up to the house and Madeline rapped on the screen door.
A tired woman in her mid-twenties with disheveled, curly, brunette hair approached the screen door but did not open it. In her arms a fussy two-year old boy squirmed and in the background a baby cried in its crib. In a quiet distrustful voice she asked, “Can I help you?”
“Hi, I’m Madeline and this is John,” Madeline said. “We were wondering if you had seen anybody riding through the area on a motorcycle yesterday or the day before. He was an older gentleman with gray hair, a bandana, and a black leather jacket. Might have been wearing goggles or glasses, too.”
The woman kept her distance as the boy wriggled in her arms. “No, I haven’t.”
“Okay,” Madeline said. She blushed. “Thanks anyway.”
They both walked back to the truck. John knew they might have to do a lot of driving and knock on a lot of doors before finding any clues. “Next,” he said as he started the truck and drove further down the road. The road went for another mile before ending at a swamp. He turned around and drove back out to the highway.
Two roads and four doors later they came across a man in his late seventies driving a green-and-yellow tractor into a barn. After the man parked the tractor and emerged from the barn, John rolled down his driver side window and waved.
“Hi…do you have a minute?” John said.
The man approached John’s window and put his hands into his pockets. He wore a red and blue plaid shirt, blue jeans, and a green John Deere cap. His face was thin and weathered, but his eyes were bright, cheerful, and eager to help. “What can I do for ya?”
“We were wondering if you’d seen a man on a motorcycle around here. Maybe driving on the back roads. He’s an older guy with…”
The man smiled before John could even finish his sentence. “Wears a black jacket? Funny lookin’ goggles? I’ve seen ‘em.”
“Really? Where?”
The man pointed back out toward the highway and at a hill that stood a little taller than the others surrounding it. “Round up that way. Showed up a few weeks ago. Keeps to himself.”
“Do you know his name?” Madeline said as she leaned over toward John.
“Can’t say I do. My grandson calls him the Man in the Mountain.”
“Does he live over there? In the mountain?” Madeline said.
“My grandson said he saw him riding out of the mountain,” the man said with a laugh. “I said people don’t drive out of mountains. He kept insistin’ he saw a motorcycle come out of the mountain.”
John looked at Madeline and then back at Captain. He turned back to the man. “Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”
“Do you know ‘em or something?”
“We think he might be the one setting the fires around here,” John said.
The man’s face suddenly turned ashen and solemn. Seconds later his face became flush with anger. “If you find him, tell me. I wanna have a word with ‘em.”
John thanked the man and drove off back toward the highway. A mile further north he found a dirt road that appeared to wind its way toward the taller hill. The hill was hardly a mountain, but John reasoned they were on the right path this time.
Madeline picked up the binoculars again and scanned the area. “Slow down a little. I think I see something.”
John slowed the truck as he approached the base of the hill. The edge of the hill was set back a hundred feet from the road and he was not looking forward to wading through the high grass to get to it. The grass here was just as dry as it was elsewhere and he saw no sign of electrical lines running nearby. He did see a faint depressed path carved through the high grass as if it was recently driven on. The path was too narrow for a car but wide enough for a motorcycle.
He stopped the truck at the opening in the grass and jumped out to take pictures with his cell phone. He opened up Dr. Ferganut’s laptop computer and pulled out the two wireflies the professor provided. He set the wireflies on the hood of the truck and waited for the tracking and navigation software to appear onscreen.
Madeline continued to scan the hill with the binoculars and pointed to a place where the depressed path met the base of the hill. “There,” she said. “The grass over there. It’s looks greener than everything around it.”
John did not see any signs of a swamp or a spring nearby and the more he stared at the greener grass the more it resembled the outline of a door. Perhaps there really was a door in the side of the hill.
As soon as the navigation software was ready, John plugged in the tracking antenna, plotted a course for the wireflies, and launched them. The devices whirred to life, rose up off the hood, and began to circle the hill at eye level.
Once the wireflies returned he reviewed the black-and-white footage they took of the surrounding area with Captain and Madeline. He did not see anything unusual about the hill, except for the off-color grass in one particular spot. “Who’s up for a walk?” He said suddenly.
John reached back into the truck and pulled out the other cardboard box. He then tucked the laptop under his other arm.
“What’s in the box?” Captain asked.
“Centipedes.”
“What are we going to do with those? Storm the hill?”
“Madeline’s dad warned me about bombs.”
“Seriously? Bombs?” Madeline’s voice was suspicious and mocking at the same time.
“If they exist, the centipedes will defuse them,” John said.
The three of them trudged along the worn path in the grass until they came within twenty feet of the discolored grass. The grass crunched underfoot as if a single dropped match would incinerate the area in minutes. “Let’s stop here,” John said. He flipped off the lid of the cardboard box and dumped the centipedes onto the grass. He then opened up the laptop computer and programmed the centipedes to storm the hill like a platoon of tiny metal soldiers. The centipedes tore down the path and disappeared into the tall grass.
In seconds a small explosion went off fifty feet away and was followed by another one next to it. The shock wave of each blast pressed against John’s chest and the sounds echoed off the nearby hills. All three ducked and instinctively covered their heads to shield themselves from flying dirt and debris.
Madeline jumped back and clutched John’s arm. She extended an arm to block Captain who stepped forward for a better look.
John watched as the tracking software painted the tracks of the centipedes as thin green lines onscreen. Two of the lines ended abruptly while the others looped back toward their current position. After a few minutes most of the centipedes returned to the cardboard box and scampered inside. John motioned toward the hill. “Shall we?” He marched down the beaten path and the others followed.
Captain split off and walked up to the discolored grass on the hill. “Check this out. It’s a door.”
“Don’t…” Madeline said.
Captain reached down and scooped up a rusted padlock from the ground. The padlock was open and so he tossed it to the
side. “Looks like a latch.” He grasped a metal handle hidden in the grass and tugged on it until it opened on its own.
Dirt showered down as the door rose up under the power of hydraulic tubes on either side of the entrance. As sunlight illuminated the interior it revealed a ramp made of wooden planks that receded into hill. Captain withdrew his cell phone and turned it into a makeshift flashlight. He aimed it at the walls and slipped further inside.
John crept forward but Madeline blocked his path. He pleaded with his eyes but she refused to lower her arm.
Captain reemerged a moment later. “There’s nothing in here other than a bottle of motor oil and a rag. Looks like a storage shed. Hey look at this.” Captain pointed to a spot where the wooden-planked ramp met the grass. “Looks like a tire track from a motorcycle.” He took a few pictures with his cell phone and then stood next to the others.
“So much for finding his flag,” John said with a sarcastic edge to his voice.
“John, you’re taking this Stratego thing too far,” Captain said as he sipped a fountain drink.
“Or maybe not far enough.”
Captain rolled his eyes. “Want me to grab the rag and the oil?”
John shook his head and panned around. “This place must have been used for something at one point. Why waste the time on planting explosives?”
Captain paced back up to the door and ducked inside. He returned with the bottle of oil but no fountain drink. “Just letting him know we’re onto him.”
* * *
When they returned to Dr. Ferganut’s house, Madeline retreated into the guest bedroom with John’s laptop computer. Meanwhile, John, Captain, and Dr. Ferganut sat around the kitchen table and kicked around their findings. Despite several theoretical discussions nobody could arrive at a consensus. In the middle of the table was the laptop computer Dr. Ferganut borrowed to John with a map of all the tracks the centipedes took. Next to it John spread out his atlas and began to draw red lines with a pen and a ruler.
“Okay, now you’re worrying me, John,” Captain said in jest. “First it was the circles, but now you’re drawing gridlines.”
John spun the atlas around so Captain and Dr. Ferganut could see. He stepped into the living room and came back with the Stratego game board in hand. He set the board down onto the table next to the atlas and studied the two side-by-side. The lakes in the area almost lined up with the lakes on the Stratego board. He drew a red ‘x’ on the atlas where the approximate location was of the storage facility they discovered. None of the circles, lines, or marks on the map brought him any peace of mind, however.
The three remained silent until Madeline burst into the room a few minutes later. She sat down next to John at the table with a piece of paper full of scribbled notes. “It took me a while but I found something. Jared Wickham wrote a book called Sparks of Heaven. In it, he wrote about a dream he had one night where there were fires on a series of hills. The fires created sparks that started new fires. He claims the interpretation of the dream was that God was showing him how his teachings would spread. I wish I had a copy of his book with me.”
“Who’s Jared?” Dr. Ferganut said.
“You don’t want to know,” Captain said with a smirk.
“He was a teacher that came to my church years ago,” Madeline said with derision. “He did a lot of damage with his teachings but he’s gone now.”
“Did this…Jared…know Dr. Minton?”
“I don’t know,” Madeline said. “But Jared worked with Dr. Amalynth. It’s possible they met.”
John studied her notes and then glanced back at the Stratego board. Somewhere amongst the gridlines, lakes, and hills was an answer just out of his reach. A part of him hoped that they would have stumbled across a research complex built into the side of the hill. At the same time he knew they were ill-equipped to handle the threat of weapons being drawn against them.
Chapter Ten
In the evening, while Captain overcame his fear of robotic bees in the laboratory and Madeline did more research in the guest bedroom, John resumed his interview with Dr. Ferganut in the living room. John reviewed his interview notes, but the handful of questions that remained made him hesitate. The list was short but intimidating since it covered work habits and the professor’s past troubles with gambling. He did not know if he should get that personal let alone publish such information in a book. He figured he would start easy and then step it up as time allowed.
He cleared his throat and dove in. “Where do you find inspiration for new inventions?”
Dr. Ferganut’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I find it everywhere. In the past I think I borrowed some of my designs from nature. Nowadays I go through scientific magazines or get ideas from science fiction books and movies. My mom used to tell me I was fascinated with bugs as a kid and maybe I was. I drove her nuts because I kept bringing home jars of crickets or dragonflies or frogs. When one cricket died I buried him in the front yard next to our big elm tree. I even made a little cardboard tombstone for him, too.”
“So did you like biology in school?”
“I loved it. But I was weird about it. I didn’t care much for population studies or genetics or ecosystems. I got hung up on the machinery inside of cells and bacteria. And the way bigger things moved.”
“Do you have any advice for someone wanting to get into your field?”
“Do you mean materials science or teaching or…”
“Inventions.”
Dr. Ferganut rocked in his recliner and stared thoughtfully. After a minute of silence he spoke up. “I don’t know. I sort of stumbled into it myself. I remember watching a video of rescue workers digging through rubble from an earthquake in Taiwan and I got so frustrated seeing them use such clumsy tools and wasting time. I thought that I could do better than that so I started making my own. It was hard because when I told people about what I was doing they said, ‘Oh, that’s nice’ and walked away. I guess sometimes people don’t understand what you’re doing at first so they don’t know what to say. I can think of a warning, though. Don’t let your work become your life.”
“You mean you think worked too hard?”
“Worked too hard and worked too many hours. I paid a steep price over the years, John. I kept pushing myself to excel and kept trying to one-up what I did last time. I was my own worst competitor. It didn’t help that I kept constantly comparing myself to others in the industry even thought what I was doing was original. But all those hours I put in hurt my marriage and my relationships. Especially with Madeline.”
John wondered if the door of the guest bedroom was open and if Madeline could hear any of this conversation. He lowered his voice. “So would you say you needed balance?”
“I needed boundaries. Boundaries on my work. Boundaries on my creativity.”
“On your creativity?” John was puzzled and stopped taking notes. His hands hovered over the keyboard.
“Definitely. I used to say I couldn’t help myself because I knew a solution was just around the corner. And often times I was right. But creativity can be like a fire. Or at least that’s how some people have described it. I happen to agree with them. Like a real fire, it’s relatively easy to get started, but without controls in place it spreads. And that’s when everybody gets burned.”
“How so?”
“It’s kind of like what a high performing athlete goes through. Some of the top ones talk about ‘being in a zone’. It’s where everything just seems to click and you almost feel superhuman with your abilities. I experience the same thing when I get rolling on a problem. I feel like I can solve any engineering problem I set my mind to. I can’t of course, but I get these super-productive stretches where I almost feel invincible. It’s intoxicating but the rest of my life isn’t life that.”
“I think I know what you mean. Sometimes when I get rolling on a software problem at work or I start figuring out something new with my rocket system and I don’t want to stop working on it until I fix it. It drives M
adeline nuts.”
Dr. Ferganut laughed but then became serious again. He whispered, “Evelyn used to say I was married more to my work than her.”
John typed a few notes and then stared hard at the next question on his list. It was about Dr. Ferganut’s rumored gambling addiction in the past. He hesitated and Dr. Ferganut took notice.
“Getting to the tough stuff?” Dr. Ferganut said.
John remained quiet.
“Did you want to ask me about the gambling?”
“I don’t want to pry…it’s okay.”
“No, I’ll talk about it. When I was a kid I used to play card games all the time with my brothers. We’d play for pennies, peanuts, chores, that sort of thing. I got pretty good at cards. Too good, maybe. I forgot about it after a while but when I got older and started building more and more inventions it came back to haunt me. At first, I was able to secure a few good lucrative contracts. One of those contracts helped us buy our first house. As time went on the contracts dried up. I don’t know if that was because of Julius’ meddling or what.”
“What kind of contracts? Private? Military?”
“Both. But after a few run-ins with the military I really didn’t want to work with them anymore. I didn’t want to make offensive weapons.”
“So would you consider yourself a pacifist?”
“You might say that.”
“So you said the contracts dried up. How’d you make ends meet?”
“Evelyn went to work full time and I got more into teaching. I also got too stubborn on a couple of ideas. One of those ideas was the bees.”
“And the other?”
Dr. Ferganut looked to the side and then back at John. He gave John a sheepish grin. “I still work on it from time to time.”
Dr. Ferganut continued. “Anyway, we barely had enough to pay the bills let alone fund any new hardware purchases. So I started playing lottery tickets. Scratch-off tickets. A few here, a few there. It was stupid. The odds were bad, but I won just enough so I thought I should go to a casino. Biggest mistake of my life. I went after class one afternoon but it was on Madeline’s second birthday. I showed up late for dinner and was so broke I couldn’t even afford to pick up her birthday cake from the grocery store. Evelyn had to drive over to pay for it. It was embarrassing and I never forgave myself for that one.”
The Fire and the Anvil Page 7