Psychlone (29 page)

For a moment, he felt a surge of crazy hope. Then he knew.

Dorothy climbed from the wreck, her mouth working. She dragged one leg as she crawled.

Fowler almost welcomed her. There was no horror left in him. The glass glittered orange in the smoky pall, then fell.

On the highway, the noises faded. The smell of burnt metal and smoke merged, danced, and became dusty, like a forgotten attic.

Mount Metcalf looked over the small town of Siloam Springs. A fire trail had been expanded and compressed by heavy equipment the day before. On a natural plateau three hundred feet above the town, six olive-green trucks were parked, the bulky loads on their trailers covered by tarpaulins and guarded by thirty heavily armed Marines. At a distance of twenty-five feet surveyors’ stakes connected by yellow ribbon indicated a perimeter beyond which no one but specially dressed project members could pass.

On the opposite end of the plateau, a command truck had been parked. A cable snaked down the trail to units at the base of Mount Metcalfe. Beamed transmissions were unreliable for several reasons—interference from the psychlone, and whatever effect such transmissions might have upon it. George Burnford stood by the truck, eating from a tin plate of reconstituted eggs. His eyes were bloodshot and his arm was in a sling. The helicopter had made a rough landing in Dayton and he had sprained his shoulder. When he was through, he put the plate down on a wooden folding table and leaned into the doorway of the mobile command room. Machen and an aide were poring over maps and charts.

“How long?” he asked.

“Four hours,” Machen said.

“Too long. I'll be asleep by then."

“I doubt it."

“Could you hand me my notebooks and the calculator?” Burnford asked. Machen's aide picked up the plastic folders and the slim case and passed them down to him. Burnford put the material on the wooden table, pocketed the calculator, and walked to the edge of the plateau. Siloam Springs was empty. The evacuation had gone more smoothly here. The town only had a population of seven hundred and eighty.

“So many small towns,” he said. How many American casualties in World War II had come from small towns? It didn't much matter now. The psychlone didn't discriminate. It affected whatever it could and then went on its way. If they didn't stop it here, its next target would be either Akron or Cleveland, and then Pittsburgh. If the tapes of Thesiger's last statements gave any real clue to the psychlone's nature, it would finish its tour of the POW home towns, then branch out to take in the homes of its new victims.

It had to stop here. His work had to be accurate. Burnford wasn't the only physicist working on Silent Night—for which he was grateful—but he was the only one who would be on the mountain, observing.

He returned to the wooden table and sat on a folding chair. Carefully, following a ritual, he laid down a mechanical pencil, opened his scratchpad, and removed the calculator from its case. It was a new model with no moving parts—no buttons or mechanical on-off switch. It was about the size of his hand and barely a centimeter thick. The liquid-crystal display consisted of black numerals and characters against an eye-saving yellow background. He considered it one of his more useful toys—it had the calculating power of a small computer.

He lined up all his tools, then opened the large black notebook where his final figures were kept. A few hours earlier, he had written down key statements from Jacobs and Thesiger and was now preparing to see what they implied.

First: the elemental in California had responded to the solution. If the psychlone was related—and all evidence indicated it was generically similar—the solution would work on it, too.

Second: if, as Thesiger had apparently confirmed, the psychlone had been created in the fireball of a nuclear explosion, then the environment of the solution would come very close to replicating those conditions. Perhaps the process that had created it would eventually lead to its total destruction. He made a nervous checkmark next to his notes at that point.

For a few minutes, he lost himself in a side branch of speculation. He reconstructed a few of the equations describing conditions in the early moments of the universe, before the appearance of matter. Making comparisons, he saw that no complex of fields like the elemental or the psychlone could have survived in those conditions. Or—and he reworked part of the key framework—no such complex could survive independently. If the early universe had been pervaded by such a field, a single entity could have survived. After the formation of matter, it would have broken up. Taking the human soul as a similar field—

The calculator beeped. He jerked and looked down at the display. When it was turned on—activated by a pressure-sensitive switch—it beeped. Each subsequent entry also caused it to beep. It automatically shut itself off after three minutes if no entries were made. Apparently he had bumped against it with his insensitive elbow and sling. The display read: 2.7182818. He frowned. To get that, he would have to have pressed the ex button—the natural number e to a certain exponent, namely, e1—to bring the number itself on the display. That was two distinct entries, very hard to get by accident. He cleared the calculator and pressed the on-off switch.

A helicopter bass-drummed the air as it flew over the mountain. Burnford looked up, shaded his eyes, and saw it hovering before coming down on the plateau. Machen came out of the command truck and walked to the makeshift landing area. Burnford returned to his notebooks.

From there on, the details became very technical. Despite the fact that everything seemed to work, his assumptions were shaky. He was on the fringes of accepted physics, leaning precariously over an abyss of unconfirmed theory. Whatever the field of the elemental had been, it had violated several near-sacred tenets. He rubbed his eyes and yawned to bring moisture to them. The air was cold but still. In his jacket, the cold didn't bother him, but it was dry and he had always had eye trouble in dry weather.

The calculator beeped. This time he knew he hadn't pressed it. As he watched, a number marched across the display, digit by digit: 2.7182818.

“Something's wrong with the damn thing,” he said, picking it up and shaking it. He set it down and turned it off again. Just as quickly, it beeped on, and beeped for each entry in a new set.

Digit by digit: 3.1415927. Pi, another number easily available on the calculator—there was a button for it—but not digit-by-digit. The calculator was generating non-random numbers by itself.

Then the display cleared. He moved his seat back quickly and stood up, wincing at the pain in his shoulder.

Digit-by-digit: 12 (clear display) 6.

Twelve and six. He reached down gingerly and pressed it off. It beeped on again. Twelve (clear) six, (clear), twelve (clear) six, (clear). “Goddamn!” he said. He reached out to shut it off again, then hesitated. Twelve and six, twelve and six ... e and pi.

If communicating across interstellar space, two species would begin by recognizing each other as intelligent. They would send signals which would not be replicated by the whims of nature—constants of mathematics, perhaps. His heel caught one leg of the chair and pulled it over.

Following the first signal, some code would have to be arranged. He almost stumbled and fell backward. He was now about two yards from the table and couldn't see the display clearly. Twelve and six.

The helicopter blew clods of dirt and water from snow puddles as it landed. Burnford watched it, hand thrust hard in his jacket pocket. Jacobs and the two remaining psychics—he couldn't remember their names now—climbed down. It was obvious they weren't allowing Prohaska on the mountain during the enactment of the solution. This was the last flight. Two men he had never seen before left the aircraft and the group walked to the command truck. Jacobs greeted Burnford with a nod and his usual intense gaze. Machen accompanied the two strangers and climbed into the back of the truck with them. Almost surreptitiously, he pulled the door shut behind, telling Burnford, “Keep our colleagues entertained for a few minutes, will you?"

“Your arm,” Jacobs said.

“I injured it in Dayton. A rough helicopter landing. The pilot was affected—not badly, thank God for us. I'm sorry if I'm a bit distracted. I've been working on—"

“Who's here?” Miss Unamuno said, looking around, her nose wrinkled.

“Looks like they're preparing to set up a circus,” Trumbauer said, “as it were. So many trucks and tarps."

“All top secret,” Burnford said. “Don't try to get near them. The Marines are fluttery enough as is."

“Is somebody here?” Miss Unamuno asked Trumbauer.

“I don't know."

“Very weak."

“What's the matter?” Jacobs asked.

“I'm not sure,” Miss Unamuno said. “Mr. Burnford, is your side hurt?"

“No, just the arm."

“Somebody has a cut in the side. Very serious—of course it's nobody here. But—” She stiffened. The calculator was beeping again.

“Something's wrong with it,” Burnford said.

“For God's sake.” Jacobs picked it up and examined it. The beeping stopped, leaving a number on the display. “I thought these things were foolproof."

“It worked fine until just a few minutes ago."

Trumbauer tapped Jacobs on the shoulder. “Franklin, our guides won't be back for some time. But I think someone needs to talk."

“What's all this mysterious shit?” Burnford said, a bit too loudly. “You're right about the circus."

Miss Unamuno shivered. “Are we going to stay out here all night?"

“They'll have a tent up in an hour,” Burnford said. “They're not very organized yet."

Jacobs put the calculator down. It beeped four times. “It's flashing numbers now,” he said. “Twelve and six."

“It's been doing that. Must be the keys."

“Twelve and six,” Miss Unamuno said.

“L and F,” Trumbauer added.

“What?” Burnford asked.

“L is the twelfth letter in the alphabet, F is the sixth. L and F."

“It's that man from the cabin,” Miss Unamuno said. “Fowler."

“He's not here,” Burnford said. “We don't know where he is."

“He's dead,” Trumbauer said.

Burnford gaped at them. Jacobs nodded. “Your calculator's trying to tell us something, Mr. Burnford. Before the others get out here and spoil the atmosphere, let's see what it has to say. Perhaps Miss Unamuno should act as sponsor ... antenna. Whatever."

The woman nodded and put both hands on the table. “We understand,” she said. “Lawrence? Larry. Larry Fowler. Go ahead."

“Better write these down,” Jacobs said. “May I borrow a piece of paper?” Compared to what had happened the past few days, this seemed almost normal to him. It was more ingenious than the usual seances, but then Fowler—if it was Fowler—was choosing a medium familiar to him.

“Five, nineteen, three, one, sixteen, five,” Miss Unamuno read off. The beeping and flash of numbers sent chills from Burnford's scalp to the tip of his spine. He felt like all his hair was standing on end. Not even the encounters with the elemental and the wash of the psychlone had affected him so deeply.

“'Escape,'” Jacobs decoded. “Who, us?” he asked the empty air.

“Jesus,” Burnford breathed.

“Fourteen, fifteen."

“'No,'” Jacobs said, recording the answer with Burnford's mechanical pencil.

“Twelve, six, five nineteen, three, one, sixteen, five, four."

“'L F escape ... D. L F escaped.’ From what?"

The beeping halted for several seconds. “From the psychlone?” Jacobs prompted.

“Twenty-five, five, nineteen."

“'Yes,'” Jacobs said.

“Four, five, one, four."

“You are,” Jacobs said without decoding.

“What? Are what?” Burnford asked, his voice shrill.

“He's asked if he's dead. It appears he is, and that he's escaped from the psychlone. How did you escape?"

“Six, twenty-one, twelve, twelve."

“'Full.’ What's that mean?"

“That it's full?” Burnford ventured. He cocked his head and looked at the calculator.

“Twenty-five, five, nineteen."

“'Yes,'” the physicist translated. He wiped a tear from one eye. “Pardon me. This has ... this has never happened before. I'm not up to it right now. I didn't even know he ... you ... I didn't know he was dead."

“What do you mean, full?” Trumbauer asked. Miss Unamuno spoke the numbers and Jacobs decoded quickly, catching the knack.

“'No more.’”

Another sequence.

“'Cant hold all.’”

“Is it giving up?” Trumbauer asked.

“'No.’”

“It's still coming for this town, then?” Jacobs asked.

“'Yes.’”

“On schedule?"

“'Yes.’”

“Where are you?” Burnford asked. The next sequence was longer than usual and Jacobs had to spend more time decoding. He read the reply with a smile.

“'Good old scient.’ Scientist, I think that is. ‘dont know.’ And a pause, I assume a break in the sentence. ‘Here I am.’”

“What do you see?” Burnford continued, his face flushing with excitement. He was walking back and forth on the dirt, almost dancing.

“'Every.’ Pause. ‘Clarified, empty, shell.’ Now I'd like to ask—how do you feel?"

“'Like salt in water,'” came the reply. “'Not much time. Storms and sickness.’”

“Larry, my God, Larry,” Burnford said. “What'll I tell that woman, Dorothy?"

“'Here. Salt in water. Downstream.’”

“Heaven and hell?” Burnford asked impulsively.

“'Wine,'” Jacobs translated. “'Spirit wine. L F leaves. Storms.’”

“So many questions,” Miss Unamuno said, touching Burnford's arm. “We all have them. Let it go now."

“It?"

Jacobs addressed the empty air as the sun touched the horizon. “Go very far, very fast,” he said. “I think tonight we will learn new guilt. It will be very dangerous. Godspeed."

The calculator shut itself off. They stood in silence for a moment, then Jacobs said, “Let's prompt them about that tent. We'll all freeze in an hour if we don't have something, and it stands to reason they won't let us in their exclusive club.” He pointed at the communications truck.