Marc Zicree - Ghostlands

“Not precisely how I might word it, but that is the gist of it, yes.”

“Okay, I just wanted to be sure,” she said, and tried to make it sound light. Because she knew there was no room in the future that laid itself out before them for anyone to be squeamish, or allow false scruples to deny them a tool that might give them the edge, tilt the balance enough for them to do some good (she wouldn’t allow herself the luxury to add, even in her thoughts, And maybe just save our lives ).

But in the turmoil of her thoughts, in the craggy inner landscape of her mind, she wondered which of them-Ely Stern in his fierce, unfathomable actions, or the dead thing on the slab, or she and her friends standing around discussing its cannibalization-were truly the monsters.

Doc replaced both the scale and the parchment strip in the drawer, slid it shut. “An effective material,” he said, “and they’ve put it to remarkable use here. Which gives me pause.”

“How so?” Cal asked.

Doc sighed. “Perhaps when Ely Stern delivered his inventory of gems, he informed Jeff Arcott of his ability to repel energy, to cast illusion. But to design an instrument to project an illusion such as we witnessed…?”

Cal understood. “Stern’s no scientist.”

“No,” Doc concurred, “and it’s not plausible to believe the physicists here in Atherton were embarked on such a line of research prior to the Change. It’s a true melding of the old science and the new.”

“Arcott spoke of a new physics,” Cal said.

“A convenient turn of phrase, Calvin, but truly there has not been sufficient time for such a thorough melding of theory and application to have arisen-not within the scope of human research and development, at least.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Jeff Arcott is…how do you say it? Talking through his buttocks.”

Colleen snorted (which was something she really hated to do). “Do you possibly mean talking out of his ass?”

“Out of his ass, yes.”

“You mean lying,” Cal added.

“Indeed.”

“So who’s the man behind the curtain?” Colleen asked. “The guys at the Source Project? I mean, assuming they are guys, and not…” She mimed something with tentacles.

Doc shrugged. “What would they have to gain?”

“Depends on what Arcott’s working on now,” Cal said. “That supersecret project of his.” He gestured at the overhead bank of lights, the refrigeration equipment and, by extension, all the restored machinery in the town. “The reason for all this preamble.”

“I suppose we might ask him,” Doc offered.

“Yeah,” Colleen said. “And his security goons might dance the Nutcracker. ”

“Mm.” Doc agreed. “Of course, we can presume he has allowed Dr. Dahlquist into his confidence, if only for expediency’s sake, to get the project completed.”

“Maybe so,” Cal said. “But we’re not going to know anything till we find some way past Arcott’s guards.”

Which seemed like a perfectly good occasion for Goldie-who had not said a word for a good deal of this-to reveal just what nifty little knack his lip-lock with the Bitch Queen in the magic kingdom had given him.

Rafe Dahlquist was having the dream about Neville Chamberlain and Anna Paquin again, when a sound startled him awake.

He opened his eyes just in time to see the door in the air appear and Herman Goldman step through.

“Don’t try this at home,” Goldie said quietly, so as not to alert the two guards just outside. Then he led Dahlquist back through the portal to where his friends waited.

“Arcott calls it a Spirit Radio, but it’s a damn sight more than that,” Rafe Dahlquist told Cal Griffin and the others, as they sat in the kitchen of the cramped lodgings in Married Student Housing, where Melissa Wade had assigned Colleen Brooks and Doc Lysenko.

“What exactly does it do?” Cal asked.

“Not much, at least not yet. We’ve only got it up to about one-ten-thousandth strength. Believe me, that baby takes a mother lode of power, not to mention calibration so exact it could give you hives.”

“What does Arcott say it will do?” Cal pressed.

Dahlquist sighed, took a gulp of the Instant Sanka Doc had cooked up in the microwave. “Okay, here’s the official line…. With broadcasting and telephones down, there’s no way to readily have discussions with anyone beyond your immediate enclave. The world will stay fractured and every city, town and suburb isolated and plunged back to the Middle Ages until we can change that. Hence the Spirit Radio, which will allow two-way communications again. But because it requires such a tremendous outlay of power, they had to get the grid operational first.”

“But the design is…complicated?” Doc inquired.

“Yup,” Dahlquist agreed. “Sorta like the Manhattan Project was complicated.

“I’m not saying this is a nuclear bomb or anything like that,” he added quickly. “It’s just hellishly ornate. It definitely does have features of a very powerful receiver.”

“If it’s a radio,” Colleen asked, “doesn’t it need a similar device on the other end?”

Dahlquist nodded. “Arcott says he’s been writing to a sister community, sharing plans and materials. With our help, they should be ready to launch when we are…. Then it should just fan out from there.”

“Where is this community?” Cal asked.

“Supposedly a few hundred miles to the west.”

There was a sudden chill in the air. Cal glanced about, caught the same thought mirrored on the faces of Colleen and Doc and Goldie, felt the familiar heaviness in his gut.

There was far more to the west, he knew, than the Source Project. And yet…

Dahlquist caught the vibe, too, addressed Cal. “You want me to pull the plug on this, boss, say the word. I gotta tell ya, the deeper I sink my elbows in, the worse feeling I get.”

“Why’s that, Rafe?”

“Hell, this thing ain’t no friggin’ radio. I mean, Jesus, it’s just made to seem like one.”

“What do you think it is?”

“An access point, an entryway, a transferal device…for Christ’s sake, a door. ” He shot Goldie a sharp glance. “Not like that fancy little trick you did in my quarters, nothing sweet and benign like that. ”

He swallowed down the rest of his coffee and shuddered.

“There’s something on the other side, and you turn this hungry beast on, I mean, really rev up the juice, I think it’s gonna bust on through. This precious gizmo is designed to withstand terrific stresses and energies, for long-term duration-so whatever comes, why, it’ll keep right on coming. Just an educated guess, but I gotta tell ya, I’m pretty damn educated.”

Cal considered a moment, then said, “You have any idea what’s on the other end?”

“No,” Dahlquist replied. “But the other day we ran a test, y’know, just minimum strength to get things going. I heard these… voices …coming through, sounded like thousands of ’em, all overlapping. Couldn’t make out anything, ’cept one word….”

The word was “Wishart.”

It was a rare thing for Jeff Arcott to propose a toast. But then, it had been a damn satisfying day, no two ways about it. With Rafe Dahlquist stirred into the mix, they were advancing miles at a stretch now, not fucking inches.

Which, of course, Theo Siegel reflected, didn’t say a thing about what they might be advancing toward….

The hour was late now, and bone-weary from the day’s labors, he was dining with Jeff Arcott and Melissa Wade in what had once been a faculty conference room on the third floor of the Nils Bohr Applied Physics Building, in the college town of Atherton, at a table that seemed too big for just the three of them.