Landslayer's Law (5 page)

Liz flourished the sheaf of flyers. “Putting up posters for the concert Saturday night.”

“Concert?” Scott echoed. “Oh, right. Forgot about that.”

Liz eyed him askance, with a bit more amused mockery than he really felt like enduring. “You
forgot
that half the people you know are getting together to play at the Earth Rights Festival?”

“Time flies when you’re not havin’ fun,” Scott drawled. “But actually, I did forget. Forgot what day it was, if you wanta get technical. Hard to keep up with, if you work weird hours and don’t have TV.”

Liz spared him a sympathetic smile. “Yeah, well, oughta be fun. ’Least I’m looking forward to it. Haven’t heard some of these folks in a couple of years, or seen some of ’em perform in longer than that. And of course there’s the Tracking party…
tomorrow
night.”

“Right,” Scott muttered, turning away.

“Catch you!” Liz called brightly.

“Right.” And with that Scott fled down the hall, at once angry at himself for being grumpy with someone who’d done him no harm, and irked at yet another person who seemed bent on reminding him that the reality of scientific rationalism, which had been the foundation of his work view until a few years back, was effectively built on sand. Yeah, the last thing he needed was to have to confront enchanted mythical beasts, then be reminded of Straight Tracks all in thirty minutes. And the worst part was that he’d have to soak in the whole mess major league tomorrow, because his sometime girlfriend, Myra (who was also a Tracker), would make him.

Sigh.

At which point he finally reached the sanctity of the local tributary of the cartography lab. As he slipped from the deserted hallway into the unlit space, he breathed another sigh—this one of relief. The place was deserted, which meant he might actually accomplish something for a change. Make that
had
to accomplish something. Green wanted hardcopy tomorrow. Scott had until then to contrive some.

Depositing his make-do dinner on one of the long Formica-topped tables that divided the room, he moved to the right, where a series of floor-to-ceiling cabinets contained sheaf upon sheaf of Landsat photographs of most of the state of Georgia. A quick shuffling secured the ones he needed: the extreme northeast corner; notably, from west to east, Welch, Fannin, Union, Towns, Enotah, and Rabun counties. These particular photos were long and narrow, reflecting the satellites’ orbit, and there were several versions of each, shot in various wavelengths, including infrared. He paused to double-check them, then laid them on the table beside his food. Another pause for a bite and a sip, and he rifled another cabinet, from whence he retrieved the appropriate standard geological survey maps for the terrain encompassed by the pics. A third cabinet provided one final set of Landsats—these so squeaky clean he hadn’t seen them before—nor had Green, though he knew what data they ought to contain. In any event, this might actually prove mildly interesting, given that they represented exactly the same locale he was already working on, shot from exactly the same height and angle, but precisely a year apart. The only difference, so far as he could tell, was that the older set had been taken at midday, the new one at dawn. Hopefully that would produce some patterns distinctive enough to ease his work.

So it was, that he actually found himself marginally excited (then again, this
was
his field) as he settled himself for a long evening identifying the telltale markers of certain types of ground cover on one of the older photos, corroborating it on two others, using a set of proportional dividers to transfer those limits to the survey map in red pencil—and then repeating the process with the new batch of pics. It was fun, in an odd way, though also depressing. New maps almost always showed more open country and less woods than their predecessors. It was a good thing a big hunk of north Georgia was national forest, else it’d be just like Atlanta in ten years’ time. Well, Atlanta, only hillier; no way anyone could put serious hurt on those kind of mountains, Myra’s rants about overdevelopment notwithstanding.

Time passed. No one disturbed him. The sandwich was eaten, the Mello Yello (chosen for its high caffeine content) consumed and replaced with another. His eyes were getting tired. Another hour and he’d retreat to his little apartment on Toombs Avenue and turn in. He’d done all of Welch, Fannin, Union, and Towns. Enotah remained, and Rabun. No, forget Rabun; he’d have to seek forgiveness for that one. Shoot, if it weren’t for the fact that Myra was (functionally, if not by birth) from Enotah, he’d give up on it too. At least this way they’d have one more thing to talk about when she returned from her latest round of gallery hopping. He grinned at that—in anticipation. Then scowled, having once again recalled the unresolved ambiguity of their relationship.

Cool it, man,
he chided himself.
Focus on the matter at hand.
Idly his gaze swept over the photos. It was mostly familiar turf, though he’d never studied that specific area from the satellites’ view before. Without really intending to, he found himself locating places Myra had talked about or taken him to. Like the rest of the northern tier of counties, Enotah was mainly forest, with a splatter of manmade lakes filling many of the valleys, and those that remained largely cleared for farmland. It looked a lot like Ireland, Myra had told him. He wouldn’t know, he’d never been out of the States.

But there it was: Enotah County—MacTyrie in the southwest, from which Myra and her troublesome brother, Darrell, hailed (and Alec and Aikin as well). MacTyrie had a junior college and—that was about it. From MacTyrie, he traced a route northeast, to where it joined US 76 in Enotah, the county seat. Continuing east, the road plunged into some serious elevations over on the border with Rabun. South… He found the one major artery that snaked in from that direction: White County via Franks Gap, and straight through the land where yet another of Myra’s young cronies lived. Sullivan Cove, it was called. He wondered if he could find it from the air. Yeah, right: there it was: a sliver of gravel road leading west from the main north-south trunk. He tracked it curiously, magnifier in hand. Houses showed as dark spots. More river bottoms, some pasturage, but with the mountains looming close, and an arm of one of those lakes at the end of the road.

He started, staring. Blinking. Knuckled his eyes and stared again. It was as if a flash of brilliant insight had just exploded in his brain, only to vanish into nothingness before he could fix on it. Like Coleridge’s “Kublai Khan,” perhaps, which the great poet had composed while zoned-out in an opium fugue, only to lose almost entirely when an interruption soon after waking jerked him from that heightened sensibility and back into his everyday world. This was like that: a precious memory surfaced, then drowned again, as though someone had thrown a heavy velvet shroud across a whole generation of synapses.

A pause for a deep breath, and he stared at the map once more. Yep, definitely something odd there, a little ways out in the lake at the end of the Sullivan Cove road: a strange sort of blot distorting a portion of the water, like…like a flat mirror floating on choppy waves. Both reflected the same sky, but differently. A check showed this was the daytime photo, so probably that was just some sort of sun-on-the-water effect. Or something.
(Something he
ought
to know, if only he could recall.)
Maybe if he checked the survey map.
(For what? Oh, right: the weird water effect.)
He did. Nothing there.
(What could’ve been there, anyway?)
Nothing but the lake and contour lines around it as flat as a desert—which, now he thought about it, was pretty weird too, given how steep that country was, and how many folks lived up in the mountains now, who’d have to have their places surveyed to get their deeds. Yeah, all in all, it was a damned odd phenomenon, and one he didn’t recall having seen before, though he hadn’t spent that much time assessing bodies of water. So maybe he’d check the new pics, just in case. He had to regardless, and this was as good a place as any to begin.

It took a moment to find the newer shots of the area in question: the ones done at dawn. And it took a moment longer to locate the precise section that had roused his interest. But when he did find it, a chill raced across his body, even as memories flicked and faded through his brain, like a strobe light: alive one instant, dead the next—and finally gone for good.

For there, clearly visible maybe half a mile offshore, surrounded completely by the lake, in precisely the location where he’d seen the blot, was, unmistakably, a small, but perfectly cone-shaped mountain!

A mountain that did not appear on the geological survey map.

Which was impossible.

Another chill, as memory stirred again but wouldn’t quite coalesce.

But it was sure as hell disturbing.
Damned
disturbing. No way a mountain could possibly be present in one photo and not the next. No way two centuries of surveyors could ever have missed an entire peak, certainly not when they’d built the lake. Absolutely not when it rose so blatantly from an otherwise flat sheet of water.
(And he knew why, too; only he also didn’t.)

A third chill, and he thrust himself back from the table. A fourth found him on the threshold of the storeroom where the older Landsats were stored. It took almost an hour (a very quick, nerve-racking hour), but in the end, Scott had proof—or at least he’d unearthed enough sweeps of the target zone to establish a viable hypothesis.

Which was essentially that there was some sort of visual aberration in the south end of Enotah County. More precisely, that there seemed to be a mountain there, surrounded by the waters of what he’d discovered in passing was called Langford Lake. A mountain, however, that seemed to register on film only at dusk, dawn, and (erratically), noon and midnight.

All of which were what the Trackers called “between times,” and two of which were also when Alec McLean’s damned magical enfield changed from cat to its far less likely alter ego. Which was not the kind of coincidence he needed.

(Part of him knew why, too, but that part wasn’t saying.)

Chapter III: Out of the Night

(Athens, Georgia—Friday, June 20—morning)

…Plink…

…plink…plink…

…plink…plink…plink…

…Plinkplinkplinkplinkplink…

It began as a tremor in the silence that wrapped David Sullivan’s sleep. It waxed amid the half-sounds of breathing and the soft hum of electronic toys. It manifested fully in a smothered, mumbled “Shit!” as he gained precisely enough groggy awareness to curse yet another day’s rain.

Rain on the plain tin roof an attic’s height above the antique pressed-tin ceiling of the second-floor studio apartment in which, nestled within the heirloom-quilted snugness of a Murphy bed, he lay.

He held his breath, listening; relaxing finally, as anger at another day potentially ruined by the latest of far-too-many summer showers gave way to a languorous appreciation of how neat it actually was to lie here on a warm June night, in one of the scores of turn-of-the century walk-ups that walled the streets of downtown Athens, and know how few folk even suspected the magic that went on there.

It wasn’t the magic of chants, spells, or divination he had in mind, however, but the more basic, earthy, and primal wizardry of the best woman in the world curled warm and pretty and naked by his side. A woman who had loved him when the rain had fallen not on the roofs of a trendy, sophisticated mini-city, but on that of the isolated mountain
farmhouse in which, until college, he had spent his youth. The rain had soothed him then. It soothed him now, urging him back to slumber. Something about moving water releasing oxygen ions—he
thought
that was how Alec had explained it.

A yawn ambushed him; he stifled it with a strong, tanned hand. The movement awoke an itch, which provoked a scratch, which prompted him to roll over. His hair slid into his eyes: thick, blond, and shoulder-long when (as now) it wasn’t bound back in a stubby tail. He raked it aside—and could see her. Liz.
His
Liz. A smooth shoulder frosted into eerie blue by the streetlamps outside; a feathery cap of red hair fallen into a coxcomb upon the embroidered pillow. The gentle S-curve of her spine as it slid from the nape of her neck into shadows lower down, beneath the coverlet.

Shadows.

Curves and shadows.

A smile bent David’s full, merry lips as he considered that, where he reclined on his elbow, watching. And then remembering: a fair chunk of the previous evening spent exploring those curves, shadows, and hollows, with eyes and hands, mouth and tongue alike; and of his own harder, more angular (though almost as smooth—she said) body being as thoroughly investigated.

…
plink…

…plinkplinkplink…

…plinkplinkplinkplink…PLUNK.

David grimaced at that discord, for he knew without doubt that it signaled a leak in that otherwise excellent antique pressed-tin ceiling; and a leak, so Myra Buchanan (who owned this particular studio apartment in which he and his lady were house-sitting) had said, was not to be endured—not with a small fortune of expensive
objects d’art
filling every conceivable corner, cove, and cubby, save only the oasis beneath the skylight where her easel took pride of place like a skeletal walnut altar.

Grunting softly, he rolled back over, slid the cover aside and rose, buck naked, to pad away on his quest. It wasn’t dark—it never was, what with the skylight and the street-lamps outside, that were only partly barred by the slatted
wooden blinds of the studio’s single streetside window. Even so, it took a moment to locate the drip—near the fireplace and directly atop the legless department store dummy whose rusty, steel-helmed skull and chain mail—shrouded shoulders testified to a boyfriend of Myra’s who once (and occasionally still) dallied with a medieval recreation group called the Society for Creative Anachronism.

David winced as a drop caught the helmet’s visor and splattered across his face. A frown followed, as he confronted a conundrum. By rights he ought to move the armor, but that would be impossible to accomplish quietly, and too much noise (he had little confidence in his dexterity, all sleep befuddled as he was) would surely rouse prettily dozing Liz, and that would be a crime. Unfortunately, it was something over twice his height (five-seven-and-a-half) to the ceiling, so plugging the drip was not an option. The only alternative was therefore to shift the sound of impact to some more pleasing tone. Sighing, he glanced around in search of a suitable muffler. Fabric would be ideal—whatever this was underfoot, say, which was blatantly
not
thrift store oriental carpet. He glanced down, saw a swath of white, picked it up with his toes and squinted at it in the gloom. His underwear size 30 Hanes tightie-whities. Not a good choice. A towel would be better. A moment later he’d procured one from the bath and wound it around the helmet’s peaked crown, then waited with arms folded across his chest to assess his handiwork.