Peter Clines: Ex-Communication

“We were in the car for an hour.”

“You very boring,” he told me. “Talk of trees and weather. Is women-talk.” He shook his head.

The GPS led us past the first cluster of trees, across a muddy line that might be a stream at a different part of the year, and over a small stretch of rock. Eleven minutes after we left the car, it beeped three times. A small target flashed on its screen. I walked in a circle, checking every direction. The GPS beeped again. The target kept flashing.

This was it.

I gestured for Nikita to set the bags down and kept circling, stomping the grass down. I needed room to work. Forty-six minutes till showtime. A little tighter than I’d hoped, but still more than I needed.

I pulled open the first bag. It had the three bracket sections, each one wrapped in a padded blanket to keep them safe. I double-checked the GPS one last time and started setting them up.

The first bracket popped open and I spread the legs. They were made out of iron. Weaker and heavier than steel, but they weren’t conductive. At least, not conductive for what I was dealing with. I set the GPS down on the ground, shuffled it a few inches to the left, and then centered the bracket’s arms over it. Once I felt comfortable with it I unwrapped the second blanket and started to unfold its legs.

Nikolai stood by the bags and cleared his throat again. “This is … how you say …” He dug around in his head for words. “This is science equipments?”

I locked the last leg into place. “Well,” I told him, “it’s a kind of science.”

“You could not do this in Novosibirsk?”

“Not really,” I said. “It’s not just about the path of the Moon. It’s also about what that path crosses. Have you ever heard of ley lines?”

“Lay lines?” Nikita echoed. “Is like … sex lines, yes? Pickup lines.” He nodded.

I laughed and shook my head. “Different type of ley,” I said. “The popular interpretations are all bullshit, of course. They’re just an excuse for ‘witches’ and ‘druids’ to dance around in a field with their junk hanging out. But the general idea has some truth behind it.”

I adjusted the legs and set the bracket in place across from the first one. “The Earth’s just a big magnet, and there are lines of electromagnetic force circling the whole planet like a spiderweb. It’s easier to work with the lines than against them. Spots where two lines intersect are very potent if you want to harness some of that energy.”

Nikita nodded and tapped a clove cigarette out of his pack. I could tell I’d lost him and he was just feigning interest. He fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. I kept talking. It’s not like he’d believe me, even if he understood everything I was saying.

“Now, if you can find one of those intersections,” I told him, “and if it happens to be the site of another big cosmological event, you can work some serious mojo. Especially if you’re knowledgeable about such things. Which I happen to be.”

He nodded again and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Right,” he said. “Cosmic event.” He glanced at his watch.

I reached for the third bracket. “To be honest, I half expected to find another dozen or so folks out here, all fighting for the spot. This really is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Although some of those guys are on their second or third lifetime at this point.”

Nikita took another drag on his cigarette. He wasn’t even feigning interest anymore.

Bag two was some tools and the Century stands. Big steel things they use on movie sets. Each one’s like a tripod on steroids, with adjustable feet and height and an arm with a pivoting holder—a knuckle—at the end. They call them Century stands—C-stands—because they’ve got a hundred positions. I set them three and a half feet apart next to the assembled brackets.

Bag three was the convex lens. Thirty-nine inches across. Damn thing weighed over a hundred pounds. It was wrapped in foam and a padded blanket and two canvas tarps. Two pins on either end of its brass frame locked into the knuckles on the C-stands. Nikita had to help me get it into place. We locked it into position and then shuffled the stands until the big lens was over the brackets. I had a laser level that did measurements. It took me another fifteen minutes to make sure the lens was level and centered over the locked arms of the brackets.

Eighteen minutes to go. I grabbed a prybar from bag two and tossed it to Nikita. “I need you to make a line in the dirt around this,” I told him. “One and a half meters out. Make it about two inches—six centimeters deep.”

He looked at the bar. “What for?”

“Insulation. It’ll help keep things stable.”

He let out a mouthful of smoke. “I am just supposed to be driver.”

“Fifty bucks,” I told him. “Just get it done in the next ten minutes.”

He grinned and bent down to start chopping at the ground with the hooked end of the prybar.

I pulled a pair of latex gloves from my pocket and my travel wallet out from under my coat. It rode on a sling around my neck and shoulder. It had two small bundles in it. I opened the smaller one—the one triple-wrapped in soft leather—first.

It was a two-inch lens I’d spent months carving. Obsidian is brittle, and there’s a trick to working it with bone tools. It took me three blatant practices and six attempts to make the damned thing. I blew some dust off it. Any imperfection—even some oil or sweat from my fingertips—would ruin all this work. I set it in the top ring of the brackets. Another few minutes of fudging with the level made sure it was straight.

Then I pulled out the second bundle. The medallion. It went in the lower ring, and I spent another five minutes checking and double-checking that it was level. I had to resist the urge to fidget with the equipment. In and of itself, it was pretty simple. Big lens on the C-stands focuses on small lens in the brackets. Small lens focuses on the center point of the medallion.

Nikita grunted. He’d finished his circle and was tapping out another cigarette. I pulled two packages of salt from bag one. “Fill the circle with this,” I told him. “The whole thing. There can’t be any breaks. When it’s done you can step over it but not on it.”

He sighed and pushed the cigarette back into the pack. He tore open the first package, folded it into a rough spout, and started to pour the salt. “So what is?” he asked as he shuffled along the miniature trench. His eyes darted to the medallion. “Is more equipment?”

“That’s what all this is about, yeah,” I told him. I saw a glint in his eyes and shook my head. “It’s not worth as much as it looks like, believe me. But if I’ve got all this right, in ten minutes it’s going to be priceless.”

He smirked. He was halfway around the circle now. I followed the line of salt with my eyes. He was doing a good job. Not a single break anywhere. He tore open the next bag of salt.

“Of course, I’m not going to let everything ride on one medallion,” I told him. “Even if it comes out perfect, I still need to set up a couple of fail-safes before I can use it.”

He finished the circle. Six minutes to go. Up above us, the glare of the sun started to vanish behind the moon.

“You might want to go back to the car,” I told him. “This is probably going to be a little disturbing if you’re not ready for it. To be honest, I’ve been working toward this for almost three years and I’m not sure I’m ready for it.”

He glanced up at the forming eclipse and shook his head. “No big deal,” he said. He knocked his sunglasses down over his eyes, slid out another cigarette, and fumbled with his lighter again. “I big boy. Not scared of the dark.”