Magic Time: Ghostlands (19 page)

He let the boy go, and Inigo took off running full-out, back the way he came, all too glad to be let off the hook.

Goldman, however, pressed on.

He passed through the shimmering portal to parts unknown, felt the queasy, familiar sensation of being transported to someplace far from the point of origin, hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away.

The best you know…

The Man with the Power. And Goldie would need that power, would need every trick he could glean, every skill and talent he might derive.

Emerging through onto the other side, he found himself in a dark corridor, the only sound the mausoleum-knock of
his footsteps. He willed another globe rolling brilliant onto his hand and crept forward.

Then froze in his tracks.

Ahead of him, as far as the eye could see, metal spikes projected diagonally up out of the wall.

With heads stuck on them.

Big
heads, far larger than any human would have—any normal human, at least.

His stomach lurching, throat in his mouth, Goldie forced his feet to move, forced himself to approach the nearest of the hideous trophies. He reached out and felt it, found to his relief and amazement that it was
not
flesh but rubber instead.

The heads, the heads were all
masks,
huge and grotesque, of mice and dogs and tigers and bears, of dwarfs and a rootless boy who led other Lost Boys.

Incredibly, he
knew
them, or at least recognized them from childhood years sitting planted in front of the TV screen. With a sense of disorientation and homecoming, he began to suspect just where he might be.

Continuing on, he discovered a stairway that led up to a closed metal door. He opened it, and it swung outward, surprisingly silent. A balmy night wind met him as he stepped onto level ground, with no hint of Midwestern chill.

Everything was dark, of course, and some of it was far different than he remembered it from long ago, when he had come here with his parents.

There was no Skyway, no Rocket to the Moon.

And, most significantly, no people.

At least, none of the human variety…

The puny, gnarled creatures scurried this way and that in their huddled groups, muttering nastily to themselves, one group chasing down a rat, pouncing on it with teeth and claws, consuming it alive.

Sounds like needle jabs drew Goldie’s attention, and he realized that it was demented, high laughter. He spied a bunch of the loathsome little curs swinging on the unmoving arms of the familiar framework he recalled from his youth. They clambered up into the fiberglass cars so artfully formed into the shape of grinning, flying elephants.

They were everywhere, had overrun the place, claimed it as their own.

A real E-ticket ride…

The grunters in the Magic Kingdom.

THE NEW PHYSICS

A
rcott called the place a
boulangerie,
but Cal discovered in reality it was nothing more than a funky new-old coffeehouse named Insomnia, crammed with thrift-store sofas and sagging bookshelves, stained oak tables with irregular legs, and scruffy college types poring over dog-eared texts.

And oh yeah, John Lennon and Bob Dylan blaring out of the speakers, laptops blazing atop every surface, and the microwave heating croissants to buttery perfection.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

For last year, that was. But for right now, a drop-jawed astonishment, as with everything else he and Doc had seen since crossing the city limits.

Not to mention why these students would be so casually bothering to study instead of scattering to the four winds in search of kin, or taking up a useful trade such as farming or necromancy or wandering samurai-for-hire.

A Cheshire Cat, Arcott settled himself into a scuffed leather wing chair flanked by Theo Siegel and Melissa Wade, opposite Cal and Doc. He signaled five fingers to the peroxided, pierced and tattooed waitress, who promptly brought over five steaming lattes.

“It’s on me,” Arcott said expansively.

“What do folks do for money around here?” Cal asked.

“Well,” Theo piped up, “paper money’s no good, obviously, though most folks are holding on to it in the hopes it someday
will
be.”

“They trade services,” Melissa added, “or whatever else might have concrete value.”

“Such as gemstones?” Doc asked.

Arcott smiled. “We put those to other use.”

Cal noted how Arcott used “we”: a royal pronoun for himself when making decisions for the town; a reference including everyone else when it was something Arcott himself needed. Casting a glance about the café, Cal saw that that everyone gave Arcott a subtle deference that might be respect or fear…or both.

The two deputies—clearly part of Arcott’s security force—stood blank-faced and watchful just inside the door.

“My, this is a treat,” Arcott said, sipping his latte. “We don’t get many visitors.”

“Not with that bubonic horror show you’ve got running on the perimeter,” Cal said. “And for those that can’t read the writing on the wall, you’ve got these.” He nodded at the gem-encrusted rifle perched on Doc’s leg.

“We haven’t had to use them inside the town…as yet.” Arcott’s eyes glittered with that sharp watchfulness that stripped you bare as a chemical peel, the corners of his lips curled in an insolent smile. “So tell me, just what do
you
do? Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief?”

“Correct on the first two,” Doc said. And as for the third, Cal reflected, if they’d brought along Enid Blindman, well, he was half Lakota Sioux, if not a chief, as far as Cal knew.

“Really?” Arcott sounded impressed. “Professional men. And what brings you to this far-flung outpost of the empire?”

“How is it you have the power up and running?” Cal asked flatly.

“Ah, you’ll show me yours if I show you mine.” Arcott chuckled. “Very well, we have no secrets here….”

Cal caught the uneasiness that bloomed in Theo’s eyes.
Bullshit,
it screamed in glowing neon letters. Cal saw that Melissa Wade had noticed this, too; uncertainty flickered
momentarily in her eyes, then was replaced, with an effort, by neutrality.

“A question, Mr. Griffin.” Arcott leaned on the small round table, which had barely enough room for the five cups and his elbows. “Why precisely do you think the world came crashing to a halt?”

“Because all the machines stopped running.”

“Obvious but, I would posit, dead wrong. It stopped because most everyone assumed the rules had changed, when in actuality all that happened was a new addendum was included.”

Cal thought of the miles of crushed, scorched aircraft he had seen on his journey alongside Larry Shango, when Shango had been on his odyssey to find Jeri Bilmer and her errant information; of the hundreds, thousands who had plummeted to their deaths when the jet engines had abruptly cut out…and beyond that the uncounted millions who had suffered appalling injury and worse when the hideous power of the Source Wave spread out from its unknown point of origin somewhere in the west and carpeted the whole wide world.

An addendum…

“So what are you saying?” Cal demanded. “That something was added rather than taken away?”

“Yes, exactly,” Arcott responded airily. “The rules that governed the Einsteinian universe are still the same, with just an addition to the cosmology that funnels energy to a fresh purpose. A new physics, some might say, but more accurately the old physics with a twist or two, a new wrinkle. Perfectly explicable, if you merely apply a clarity of observation, some logical thinking. And once you bring that scrutiny to bear”—he waved at the computers, the electric lamps, the espresso machine with its screeching din—“you can introduce a governing principle into the mix that restores balance to the situation.”

“And this is what you have done?” Doc inquired. “You are, what? A graduate student, like Ms. Wade and Mr. Siegel here?”

“Until last year, when I got my doctorate, then I was pro
moted to associate professor. I was hoping to land tenure eventually….” He smiled that Cheshire smile again, glanced around the room at the steady stream of light, the computers, the works. “But since landing the brass ring, they might just give me the town.”

“And you came up with this all on your lonesome?” Cal asked.

Arcott betrayed only the slightest hesitation. “Yes, the initial theoretical underpinnings. Fortunately, it was a parallel area of research to studies we’d been doing prior to the Change, examining different strategies utilizing precious and semiprecious stones to contain elusive energies, initially in an attempt to harness fusion.

“Or putting it more simply,” he added airily, warming to the topic, “we learned there were certain assemblages, specific combinations of gems, that set up a spectral interference, jangled the harmonics of the post-Change sieve effect, withholding the energy from being siphoned away to fuel the hoodoo and beasties and things that go bump in the night, and keeping it where it rightly belonged—in the matrices of the electrical and mechanical devices it had originally been designed to run.”

Arcott’s eyes were gleaming now, as though he himself were filled with electricity. “Once I got the basic principles down, I built the practical equipment along with Theo and Melissa here. They in turn oversaw a team of undergrads to do the scut work.”

He gestured at those in the café. “We’ve convinced most of the student body—and practically all the town—to hang tight until we get the kinks out. Then we can teach others, restore the U.S. grid. But for the time being, we’ve got to keep to ourselves, for security’s sake. Can’t risk some invading force of yahoos thinking they can take over the whole flea circus.”

It
sounded
reasonable…so why, Cal wondered, was it giving him the creepy crawlies?

“And what about the illusion of plague?” Doc asked. “That is, as you say, quite the new wrinkle.”

“A little serendipity along the way.” Arcott shrugged.
You set out to make a solvent and you discover Nutrasweet.”

“I would like to study this Nutrasweet of yours a bit more closely,” Doc noted.

“We’ll see,” Arcott said, and Cal knew his meaning was the same as when parents said it. “Now. I’ve shown you mine…”

“My sister was kidnapped,” Cal replied. We’re searching for her.”

Siegel and Wade registered surprise. Arcott’s eyes narrowed. “On your own?”

“With some friends, who are waiting back at camp for us.”

“Ah. I won’t ask exactly where that might be, not yet at least. But you could be so good as to tell me what
they
do.”

You’re fishing,
Cal realized.
You need something…or someone.
Unbidden, Doc’s words on the roof of the mall came floating up to him.

You cannot know what you will need at your ultimate moment of truth…nor whom. So given that, it is a good idea to bring as wide a variety of dramatis personae as possible.

“We have a former naval lieutenant,” Cal said. “An Internet geek, a few laborers…and a physicist.”

Arcott sat up at that. “What’s his name?”

“Dahlquist. Rafe Dahlquist.”

Theo Siegel and Melissa Wade recognized the name and were clearly impressed. But the most dramatic change was in Arcott. There was no insolence now, no mockery.

“Take me there, I’ll come alone,” he said. “I need to talk to him.”

CAT AND ROCK AND BONE

F
or hours, the windsong of the grasses was their sole companion as, an invasion force of two, Shango and Mama Diamond soldiered on into the heart of Iowa.

Then, as dusk drew its cloak across the land, Shango pointed out a black speck in the east, moving across the sky like torn fragments of leather lifted on a storm wind. Black, and distant, and purposeful. Mama Diamond could barely make out the telltale crenellation of the distant wings.

It was a dragon, though by no means necessarily Ely Stern.

It dipped below the level of the horizon and could not be seen anymore.

A sound came rippling though the air to them, like a distant crack of thunder.

The dragon rose, was visible for just a moment, then dipped down out of sight again. A second, identical sound pierced the night, and Mama Diamond realized it
wasn’t
thunder but rather something that would have been as out of place and astonishing to a Styracosaurus or Australopithecine in their day, had they the sense to know it.

It was gunfire.

When Mama Diamond and Shango reached its point of origin—and it didn’t take all that long at full gallop, having
chosen to stow the bike and its payload behind—they didn’t find the gun or the shooter.

But they did find one hell of a big dead dragon.

Not Stern, Mama Diamond observed with some disappointment, very clearly not Stern.

Shango crouched by the huge carcass, lamp held high as he investigated the killing mark smack dab between the creature’s eyes. He studied it until he was certain, and then stood again.

“A bullet wound,” he said, leaving unspoken the vast panorama of all that might imply.

Hoofprints led in one direction away, and tire prints another.

The path of treadmarks lay along a road that dipped into a valley. Peering down into it in the dying remnant of the light, Shango gasped and his face betrayed that rarest of emotions for him—fear.

Mama Diamond followed his gaze and was perplexed, seeing nothing that would draw such a response. But then she understood that what
she
perceived bore no relation to what Shango was seeing.

And Mama Diamond knew it wasn’t because of what in the old days (the pre-Stern days) had been her rusty old vision, the cataract on her left eye and what she jokingly referred to as her “good” eye on the right, the sight that had remarkably become acute. No, this came up out of the part of her that was her dragon soul, that could tell the difference between false and true.

Mama Diamond spoke low and calmingly to Shango, reassured him and in due time got him moving forward into the valley, against the evidence of his eyes, his nose and all his other knife-sharp loner instincts.

Beneath the killer moon, the Rock and Bone Woman and the Cat Who Walked Alone descended into the waiting arms of the town called Atherton.

Leather Man will have my hide,
Inigo thought anxiously as he stood at the crossroads, in what the Great Unwashed, the
normals, laughingly thought of as darkness, breathing hard from the running and the fright, standing bent over with his hands on his thighs, trying to catch his breath and decide just exactly what he should do.

Take the portal on the left and head back to New York City—or fake New York City, at any rate—where Papa Sky and Christina were waiting for him, where he could report
mission accomplished
and get a gold star and maybe a hot meal or two and not risk a major ass-whipping.

Or do something
really
stupid.

But he knew, he just
knew
that where he had led Herman Goldman to was one major suckhole of a quicksand pit that old Mr. Hippie Wizard there would absolutely positively
not
be able to extricate himself from, at least not without some
major
help from an
amigo
or two or three.

And if young Master Inigo Devine, he of the blue-gray skin and pale saucer eyes (which really didn’t look
that
bad once you got used to them), just slunk on back to the Bogus Apple without flagging anybody as to the whereabouts of Goldie Five Aces, well then, it really wouldn’t matter where Inigo as the representative of the man in black, who was not really a man, led Cal Griffin and his little group—at least, not to Herman Goldman, who wouldn’t be a member of that little group, or any little group for that matter, except maybe the constituency of the dearly departed.

And yes, Inigo knew that Goldie had squeezed him for info, and perhaps for a fleeting moment had intended to do a great deal more. But Goldman had thought better of it, because, Inigo sensed, that wasn’t Goldman, not really, not the better part of him, just the small, dark fraction that was like most of Leather Man and the totality of the Big Bad Thing, and even a little black corner of Inigo himself. I mean, who
didn’t
screw up now and then?

Inigo had to admit, he
liked
Goldie.

And he had just left him in a world of shit.

He swore under his breath, in that lightless corridor a quarter mile beneath the prairie grasses, under the waning moon.

What would his parents tell him to do, if they weren’t
both individually MIA or in the Big Hereafter, if that was indeed where they had gone?

They’d tell him to get his meandering grunter ass back to the Ghostlands and Bogus Manhattan before he was missed on his little walkabout. Because Leather Man was in the service of the Big Bad Thing, and Inigo was protected so long as he didn’t cross either; he wasn’t significant enough to bother with, at least while he served their
need….

But tonight, he knew, he’d been on a secret mission that very much did
not
serve the Big Bopper,
numero uno,
and right now what he was considering doing wouldn’t be serving either Boss Man number one or number two (not that either could reasonably be termed
men
anymore).

Which greatly increased his chances of being noticed and squashed by one or the other, or both.

So he knew Mommy and Daddy in absentia would tell him to be
sensible,
to get on home.

But where in the Taco Bell Chihuahua had
that
ever gotten him?

Inigo turned away from the portal.

No gold star tonight…

It took him a bad long time to reach the surface, get to the lip of the silo where he had last seen Colleen Brooks writhing on the ground, temporarily blinded by the flash balls Goldie had wielded, that had allowed Inigo to slip from her grasp and propel himself into
this
universe of doo-doo.

Naturally, she wasn’t there any longer. But even in the depths of night it was ludicrously easy for him to track her heat-radiating, stumbling footprints back to camp. And even if there’d been no prints, he could just as have readily followed her scent.

Mighty handy to be a little gray guy every now and then.

He found her in the bowels of the grain silo just as dawn was breaking, making him squint against the light and giving him yet another in a long line of Excedrin headaches (only, of course, there was no Excedrin to be had). Colleen was engaged in an intent powwow with Cal Griffin and that
Russian doctor guy. Near them, he noticed, that husky old scientist Dahlquist was hunkered down with a newcomer, and they were holding a Coleman lantern over big unrolled sheaves of paper that looked like blueprints of some kind.

The newcomer hadn’t changed his attire since Inigo had seen him before, at the train siding, but he’d have recognized him anyway.

It was Bomber Jacket.

A new day was just starting, and already it was a ball-breaker.