P Deutermann - The Moonpool

Not having had any coffee, the subject was still trying to restore color vision and coherent thought. I asked them if they had a warrant for my arrest. This produced some awkward hemming and hawing, and then verbal foot-shuffling. I told them to leave my ass alone or I’d smear them with pine pitch and get ticks in their Bucar. I also mentioned that I was probably still somewhat radioactive. That made them both back up a few steps.

“Tell Creeps I’ll meet with him down at the deli on Main Street,” I said.

“Why not right here?” one of them asked, not bothering to pretend not to know who Creeps was.

“Because there’s no coffee and there’s no food. I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Sir, we’ve been ordered to bring you in to the RA’s office.”

I started to make inhalation noises. I held my nose, took a deep breath through my mouth, and let it out slowly. “I inhaled twenty million curies of moonpool radiation last night,” I said, still holding my nose. “I’m going to sneeze. Then I’m probably going to die, and so are you.”

They vanished.

Once they left, I prayed that the water was back on. It was, and I finally was able to delouse in style. If the water was still radioactive, it might actually get the pine pitch off, but I kept my mouth shut just in case. Once out of the shower I had a thought and called Mary Ellen again, this time at her office phone number.

“I miss you,” I said. “Even if you are getting married.”

“Tell me the truth,” she said. “Are you up to your mendacious ass in deep camel dung? Are there bad guys looking for you? Are there good guys mad at you? Have you killed anyone in the past twenty-four hours?”

“Um.”

“Unh-hunh.”

“And that’s why I’m calling. I need a spot of information. You ever heard of a woman named Moira Maxwell? She’s an-”

“Mad Moira? Of course I’ve heard of her. Everyone here has.”

“What’s she famous for?”

She told me to hang on a second. I heard her dismissing a student. Then she was back.

“Moira Maxwell is the resident campus Bolshevik,” she said. “The UNC system is a liberal, left-leaning establishment, to say the least, but Moira Maxwell is a one-off. She makes even the professional liberals squirm. Wa-ay out there.”

“All talk, or is she capable of being a doer?”

Mary Ellen had to think about that. “She’s a modern revolutionary, which means she lurks on the Web instead of in dingy Parisian garrets.”

“A virtual Bolshie.”

“Well, by that I mean she doesn’t burn underwear down in the campus Union, or picket the dean’s office and chant the “Internationale.” Please God you’re not mixed up with that nutcase?”

“Better that you don’t know,” I said. “Not romantic, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She laughed. “Got that right, Mr. Investigator. Reportedly, Mad Moira doesn’t keep boy friends.”

She did in that detention center, I wanted to say, but held my peace. “It’s possible she’s involved in the same matter I’m looking into,” I said. “I guess what I really wanted to know is whether she has the courage of her convictions, or if the Red Square stuff is all about getting attention.”

“She’s called Mad Moira by the faculty people who know her,” Mary Ellen said.

“Mad as in nuts, or mad as in angry?”

“Both,” she said. She hesitated. “These are the calls that scare me, Cam.”

“I understand,” I said. “Stick with your plan, lovely lady. I’m probably not going to change.”

“Nor should you,” she said. “Doing this stuff, well, that’s just you.”

But not you, I thought sadly. “I’m still going to miss you, even when you’re Mrs. Professor.”

“Yes,” she said. “Me, too. Good-bye, Cam. Please, keep safe.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I mean, what could possibly go wrong?”

I thought I heard a small laugh, but then she was gone.

Creeps and Missed-it Mary came through the deli’s doors like Batman and Robin, stopping most of the subdued conversations among the locals, who had been discussing last night’s atomic panic. They were both dressed up in metallic-looking Bureau suits, and they appeared very official indeed. They saw me and walked over to my table, while the locals adjusted their places as if they anticipated gunplay or some other drama. I’d stuffed two, count ’em, two apricot Danish down my gullet, along with enough coffee to restore both stereo vision and sequential sentences. I told them the Danish were terrific, and suggested they get themselves some coffee and then we could talk.

“Your Bureau is incredibly busy this morning, Mr. Richter,” Creeps said, slipping off his sunglasses. He looked a little ragged around the edges. Missed-it nodded emphatically. Very busy, yes, sir, you’re certainly right about that.

“You have breakfast yet, Special Agents?”

Mary looked over at Creeps. He said no, and then Mary said no.

“The earth will no doubt continue to rotate if you do, so: I say again-why don’t you guys go get some coffee and Danish, come back to the table, and we’ll talk like civilized people often do.”

They stared at me for a moment and then, amazingly, did what I suggested.

Once they were seated, I asked them if everything was reasonably secure out at Helios. Creeps said yes; they’d isolated the moonpool, and the engineers had taken the reactors into local control and shut them both down before there were any further excursions.

“Excursions?” I asked.

“Nuke-speak,” Creeps said. “When the power levels in the reactor rise or fall out of ordered limits.”

“Or, in other words, when the engineers no longer have control of the reactors.”

“Just so.” He looked around nervously to see if the civilians were listening. They were, raptly.

“And that actually happened?”

“I believe so, yes. Fortunately, the, um, individual who penetrated the control network did not know what she was doing. The danger was that she had the network, and the engineers in the control room did not.”

“Did radioactive water get into the county water system?”

Creeps was lifting his coffee cup to his mouth when I asked that question. He stopped. I admired his self-control in not looking down into the cup. Then he went ahead and took a sip. Missed-it was looking at her cup as if she had seen a roach operating at periscope depth, but when Creeps took a sip, she dutifully did, too. They’re big on loyalty in our Bureau.

“It got out of the plant and all the way to the first water tower, about two miles away. The system is engineered to recognize back-pressure in the lines, and the primary supply valves shut themselves. When the back-pressure continued to build up, relief valves lifted and the water was diverted out onto the grounds of the water tower.”

“Lovely,” I said. “They’ll never have to cut that grass again.”

“Well, that’s preferable to decontaminating the entire county and possibly the municipal water system,” he said. “Dr. Quartermain was able to tell the response team how to shut down the moonpool’s internal pumps. Now then: Would you care to recite your evening’s activities?”

I did. They just listened, not taking notes, which told me I’d be asked to go through this all again downtown with some office scribes. When I was finished, I became suddenly aware that the entire cafe had gone silent. Apparently, everyone, including the cooks and the waitstaff, had been listening to my tale of horrors from the night before. Creeps looked around the room as if realizing for the first time that the great unwashed public was now privy to Bureau secrets. He cleared his throat and suggested that we reconvene in the Wilmington office.