Ghostlands

SEVENTEEN

Back in the good old twentieth century when Einstein was the latest word in all things physical, the Astronomy Department had set up this telescope-a Meade Starfinder situated in the cupola atop what had once been the Atherton Agricultural College, next to the newer Physical Sciences Building-for long-term use by its faculty and student body.

But Melissa Wade was the only person who came here anymore.

The retractable domed roof of the cupola had been donated by a wealthy alumnus, a tool-and-dye tycoon with a stargazing fetish. Melissa hadn’t expected a clear night, considering the long snowy day. But the sky had opened like a treasure box just after dark. And so, alone between dinner call and lights-out, she had come here and cranked back the roof.

The room was stocked with scope accessories-digital imagers and trackers-but Melissa left these alone. They were an unnecessary draw on the community current, for one thing; moreover, Melissa wasn’t here to do research or even serious observing. She just liked the place. It was conducive to thought. It was her aerie. Crossing the night-lit room, she caught her reflection in the curved glass of the dead monitors, and quickly looked away. Not that she was unattractive; quite the reverse. She got her curves from her mom; her wide, radiant smile from her dad; and that glowing, perpetual-tan skin from the mixture of both, the sweet gift of having one parent white, one black. Whenever she traversed the quad, she was aware of heads turning to watch her; the men, and women, too, as if she was something quite extraordinary.

But she wasn’t, she knew; at least, not that aspect of her. It was merely something she’d been given, not something she’d earned. And so she chose not to dwell on it, not even in reflection.

And anyway, her looks had no effect on Jeff.

Melissa plopped herself down in the plush leather chair and stared up at the expanse of stars through the open dome, gemstones scattered across black velvet. She put her eye to the viewfinder, and the scene leapt to dazzling intensity.

Some astronomy plebe might look at that array and see only constellations and nomenclature; man imposing his arbitrary meaning on nature, and rendering himself blind.

But Melissa’s focus of study had never been astronomy, and what she’d learned by rote in those required classes she’d mostly forgotten. Of all the celestial bodies in the night sky, she could still identify only the moon, Venus and Mars, the Big Dipper, Polaris the North Star and a smattering of others.

But none of that mattered. She didn’t have to name them. She loved them much more simply than that.

With all its optical gear and tracking equipment disengaged, the Meade was little more than an expensive amateur scope. What was different since the Change was the sky. Less pollution to block the view. No competing light from automobiles or cities or towns (except here in Atherton, and then only before curfew). Melissa had grown up in Los Angeles, where the night sky was generally blank as slate. Out here in the boonies-and since the Change-the sky was a river of stars.

She bathed in it.

Stars were suns, very far away. The fuzzy ones were galaxies-whole clusters of stars. And even after the Change they had not varied in their courses. Maybe that was what she found so reassuring in this immensity, the fact that all this scary terrestrial stuff was less than a fleabite against the somber rotations of the sky.

Still, it didn’t change the fact that the natural laws-at least locally, in galactic terms-had become a whole ’nother ball game.

Melissa had been a physics major, specializing in quantum mechanics, but had soon found that her real skill was as a grease monkey. She’d always messed around with motors and engines. Her dad had been a first-rate mechanic-a weekend hobbyist mainly, but a good one-and he’d let her fool around with tools and equipment from before she was riding a bike minus the training wheels.

So when she joined the Atherton lab as a grad student import from UCLA’s Large Plasma Device facility, she’d just naturally fallen into being the pair of hands supervising the building of Jeff Arcott’s own radically original version of the plasma zapper, hand-tooling the steel housings and mounting the big water-cooled bus bars, pumping all the air out of the hundred-yard cylindrical chamber until you had a near-perfect vacuum at barely a billionth of an atmosphere, then introducing argon into the mix. Theo Siegel had taken the lion’s share of fine-tuning the lasers and doing the other minute calibrations. And Jeff Arcott was the designer on high, the lord of creation, the big brain in a globe the mutants carried around.

Nowadays, of course, the plasma zapper was just so much rusting junk; there were bigger fish to fry. Oh, she supposed they could summon up the raw energy to get it all sparking again. But the elusive Holy Grail quest for fusion power was Old Physics thinking now, when there was so much more of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if you started pursuing new lines of inquiry.

At least, that was Jeff’s point of view.

Sometimes-quite often, actually-Melissa felt like someone standing halfway up a mountain, unable to see anything over the top, while Jeff stood on the summit, gazing out onto immensity and rhapsodizing over what he saw.

She just had to trust that what Jeff reported was what was actually there.

And why should she doubt it? Why should she listen to the queasy, whispering little voices within her?

Not long ago, she and Theo had discussed this topic, for he shared her-all right, call it disquiet; she was alone and, in this moment at least, could be candid with herself.

What if Jeff was mistaken, what if he was drawing all of them into the darkness rather than the light? There was no evidence of that so far, given his triumphs here in town.

And yet, there were still those whispers….

In conversation with Theo, she’d betrayed none of these doubts, had instead hotly defended Jeff. “He’s doing something incredible,” she’d said, “and we can help make that happen. What’s this stupid life for anyway? You only have the people you care about, and if you’re not loyal to him”-she quickly amended it-“to them, then what do you have?”

Theo had said nothing in response, had only grown abashed, and retreated.

Which had been no mystery, for although by mutual unspoken consent they had never discussed it openly, had in fact barely alluded to it, Melissa was aware of how Theo felt about her, and equally aware of how nothing could come of it.

Melissa knew herself well, knew the recurring patterns of her life. Every man that had held center stage in her life, from her professorial father on down, had been a distant star retreating, as cold and unreachable as the ones in the firmament, the ones she could spy through the opening in the cupola above.

And Jeff, with his immense charm and charisma, that incredibly sexy air of assured genius (in her lighter moments, Melissa liked to fantasize about an infomercial for a videotape called Scientists Gone Wild), was merely the latest and greatest, the most brilliant and rejecting of all.

And she cherished him more than the gems he had studded Atherton with, the treasures that had restored sanity to the town.

Even now after so much had happened, when Jeff entered a room, Melissa still felt weightless.

Which-as her father liked to say in his favorite colloquialism-was to laugh, because the only thing that made Jeff Arcott’s head turn, the only thing he had ever truly loved, was the quest for pure knowledge.

So she mooned over Jeff, while Theo mooned over her. At present, she suspected Jeff held much the same affection for her that she held for Theo; if that wasn’t her projecting emotions onto Jeff, filling in the blanks. She could hope at least, knowing that sometimes affection bloomed into more, a great deal more. She’d seen that happen on numerous occasions…and not all of them just in movies and TV.

Normally about this time of night, Theo would be seeking her out, asking if she might like some peach tea, or offering up a day-old Danish from the bakery the campus cooks still maintained despite all that had happened. He was as solicitous as a little brother, as kin, and she supposed in some odd way he was…given the nifty hand-tooled item just the two of them shared under the skin.

Through the open cupola, Melissa heard footsteps and voices echoing from the sidewalk outside. Two of the voices she didn’t recognize, but the third she knew as Theo’s, though laced with a tension she thought sounded like pain.

Theo cried out as he took a misstep, verifying her suspicion. Melissa looked away from the eyepiece and closed up the cupola.

She found Theo standing one-footed stork-like on the pavement outside, flanked by two strangers who introduced themselves as Cal Griffin and Dr. Viktor Lysenko.

Strangers, here in town. Incredible.

Jeff would certainly have a word or two about that. And more than a word. As she was sure Theo knew every bit as well as she did.

Melissa clucked her tongue in mock disapproval. “My goodness, Theo, what have you been up to?”

Theo shrugged and smiled haplessly. Shaking her head, Melissa couldn’t help but smile back, feeling a warmth surge up in her that was far from being in love.

Telling them nothing, she helped them get Theo to the Med Center.

Watching the MRI tech and the night nurse load Theo Siegel into the big magnetic resonance chamber, Doc Lysenko seemed moved almost to tears.

“I didn’t believe I would see equipment like this up and running for many years,” he told Cal, who stood alongside him in the waiting room just outside. “Truly, this town has accomplished the miraculous.”

Yes, Cal acknowledged silently to himself, but at what price? His hand rested on the hilt of his sword and he noticed that, despite his words, Doc kept a close grip on the rifle.

Miles to go before we sleep…

Cal glanced over to where the young woman who had introduced herself as Melissa Wade sat waiting nearby, idly flipping through an old magazine-what other kind were there now? The photo he’d seen in Theo’s wallet hadn’t done her justice. She was breathtaking, and not flashy about it. In fact, dressed casually in jeans and an oversized man’s work shirt, it was obvious she was trying to downplay it.

Still sitting, Melissa stretched, one hand sweeping the hair up off her graceful neck, craning her neck against the kinks.

Cal felt a chill-on the back of her neck was a bump seemingly identical to the one he’d felt on Theo when helping him out of the El Dorado.

When they were alone again, he would mention this to Doc. He felt certain Doc would be equally intrigued; perhaps the two of them might prevail on the medical staff to later run an additional MRI on Theo Siegel’s neck.

Just keep an eye out for what you really need, the grunter boy Inigo had told Cal. But were these mysterious bumps part of what Cal needed or merely yet another of an endless series of distractions, delays from getting what he needed, to get where he had to go?

Spying an intern passing by in the hallway, Doc exited quickly and collared the man. Through the door, Cal could hear Doc requesting access to a microscope.

He watched as the intern led Doc away, and made no move to intercede.

Half an hour later, Doc returned and took him aside, out of earshot of Melissa Wade. The young woman continued to read her magazine, seemingly unconcerned with them.

“I needed to verify a suspicion, Calvin,” Doc said. He held up Colleen’s amulet, the one Papa Sky had given her in Chicago, the one that had saved them from Primal. Then he showed Cal the ragged piece of hide he had sawed off the dead dragon outside of town. “This and this, the same. At least, the same species, but not the same individual. They’re dragon scales.”

Incredible. To date, Cal had seen only two dragons up close, Ely Stern and the one he had killed today. It was hard to imagine that Papa Sky, aging and blind, had had a run-in with a dragon and lived to tell about it. He’d said the scale had been given to him by some unseen “friend.” Supposing Papa Sky’s mystery man really existed, how had he come into possession of something like this? And how had he known what powers it possessed-how vital it would be to their survival?

Perhaps an even bigger question was why.

Every answer only raised more questions….

Cal took the scale Doc had cut off the dragon carcass. “Do you think this might have the same properties as the other one?”

“I don’t know,” Doc answered. “But I think it would certainly be advisable to find out.”

The door to the MRI room opened and Theo Siegel emerged on crutches, his leg securely taped at the ankle with a surgical bandage, followed by the night nurse and the emergency room MD who had first examined him. Cal handed the scale back to Doc, who quickly stowed both in his pocket.

Cal stepped forward concernedly, Doc beside him, while Melissa Wade rose and followed them. Cal saw that Doc still held the gem-worked rifle loosely at his side. Cal himself kept a close hand on the hilt of his sword.

Cal positioned himself with his back to the wall, the entrance to the room in his line of vision. He saw Doc casually do the same.

“Nothing broken,” the doctor, whose name was Asher Waxman, assured them. “Just a bad sprain.”

“It’s a good thing you’re sturdier than you look,” Melissa admonished Theo, leavening it with a smile. Cal could readily see the fondness there-and read a good deal more in Theo’s shy glance back at her.

There was a knock at the waiting-room door, which seemed a curious formality to Cal. Through its small window, he could see a young man with blazing blue eyes and a broad forehead crowned by wavy black hair. He wore the faintest hint of a smile-not mockery; Cal had the impression it reflected a permanent air of ironic bemusement.

“That’s, um, Jeff. Jeff Arcott,” said Theo, ducking his head with reflexive subservience.

Cal saw Melissa’s eyes light up at the sight of Arcott, saw her draw in a quick breath, could almost hear her heart pick up its pace.

The doctor opened the door and Arcott sauntered in, hands hooked lightly in the pockets of his faded bomber jacket. Two uniformed sheriff’s deputies entered behind him and took flanking positions opposite Cal and Doc. Cal noted that each had a hand on a holstered nine-millimeter pistol-guns that, like the rifle, had gemstones worked into them.

Arcott gave Melissa the barest nod then appraised Theo dourly, neither acknowledging nor overtly ignoring Cal and Doc. “My my, Theodore…”

The way he said “Theodore” made Cal think of the condescending, smart-ass way that guy on Leave it to Beaver referred to the little kid who starred in the show. I’m smarter than you, it said. Way smarter.

“I got a call you’d had a bit of a party tonight,” Arcott continued, “complete with pinata…only it seems you were the pinata.” Now at last his eyes came to rest on Cal and Doc. “Brought home a few new friends, too.”

Melissa stepped between Arcott and Siegel. “They helped him back to town, Jeff. Drove the car back, too.” Her tone was ameliorating, her voice, as ever, musical. Cal sensed she was trying to protect Theo, to intercede for him.

Siegel worked the crutches laboriously, drew up to Arcott. “They’re okay, Jeff, really. They saved my ass.”

“Said ass shouldn’t have ventured outside the town limits, Theodore.” That strange formality again, that presentational style with its feigned lightness, its considered air of playfulness a thin coating over dead seriousness.

And through it all, the easy air of authority-and implication of threat.

“The coffee here is appalling.” Arcott addressed Cal now, and Doc. “There’s a boulangerie around the corner that should be open awhile and serves up something considerably more serviceable. Let’s talk…and see what we will be to each other.”

Doc glanced at Cal, who nodded agreement. Letting Arcott lead the way-and never allowing his security goons to position themselves behind them-they emerged out into the night, Theo Siegel struggling alongside on his crutches and Melissa Wade bringing up the rear.

The vapor lamps of the town hissed and blazed from on high, as they prepared to learn just precisely what Jeff Arcott had in mind for them.