Ghostlands

NINETEEN

Arcott called the place a boulangerie, but Cal discovered in reality it was nothing more than a funky new-old coffeehouse named Insomnia, crammed with thrift-store sofas and sagging bookshelves, stained oak tables with irregular legs, and scruffy college types poring over dog-eared texts.

And oh yeah, John Lennon and Bob Dylan blaring out of the speakers, laptops blazing atop every surface, and the microwave heating croissants to buttery perfection.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

For last year, that was. But for right now, a drop-jawed astonishment, as with everything else he and Doc had seen since crossing the city limits.

Not to mention why these students would be so casually bothering to study instead of scattering to the four winds in search of kin, or taking up a useful trade such as farming or necromancy or wandering samurai-for-hire.

A Cheshire Cat, Arcott settled himself into a scuffed leather wing chair flanked by Theo Siegel and Melissa Wade, opposite Cal and Doc. He signaled five fingers to the peroxided, pierced and tattooed waitress, who promptly brought over five steaming lattes.

“It’s on me,” Arcott said expansively.

“What do folks do for money around here?” Cal asked.

“Well,” Theo piped up, “paper money’s no good, obviously, though most folks are holding on to it in the hopes it someday will be.”

“They trade services,” Melissa added, “or whatever else might have concrete value.”

“Such as gemstones?” Doc asked.

Arcott smiled. “We put those to other use.”

Cal noted how Arcott used “we”: a royal pronoun for himself when making decisions for the town; a reference including everyone else when it was something Arcott himself needed. Casting a glance about the cafe, Cal saw that that everyone gave Arcott a subtle deference that might be respect or fear…or both.

The two deputies-clearly part of Arcott’s security force-stood blank-faced and watchful just inside the door.

“My, this is a treat,” Arcott said, sipping his latte. “We don’t get many visitors.”

“Not with that bubonic horror show you’ve got running on the perimeter,” Cal said. “And for those that can’t read the writing on the wall, you’ve got these.” He nodded at the gem-encrusted rifle perched on Doc’s leg.

“We haven’t had to use them inside the town…as yet.” Arcott’s eyes glittered with that sharp watchfulness that stripped you bare as a chemical peel, the corners of his lips curled in an insolent smile. “So tell me, just what do you do? Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief?”

“Correct on the first two,” Doc said. And as for the third, Cal reflected, if they’d brought along Enid Blindman, well, he was half Lakota Sioux, if not a chief, as far as Cal knew.

“Really?” Arcott sounded impressed. “Professional men. And what brings you to this far-flung outpost of the empire?”

“How is it you have the power up and running?” Cal asked flatly.

“Ah, you’ll show me yours if I show you mine.” Arcott chuckled. “Very well, we have no secrets here….”

Cal caught the uneasiness that bloomed in Theo’s eyes. Bullshit, it screamed in glowing neon letters. Cal saw that Melissa Wade had noticed this, too; uncertainty flickered momentarily in her eyes, then was replaced, with an effort, by neutrality.

“A question, Mr. Griffin.” Arcott leaned on the small round table, which had barely enough room for the five cups and his elbows. “Why precisely do you think the world came crashing to a halt?”

“Because all the machines stopped running.”

“Obvious but, I would posit, dead wrong. It stopped because most everyone assumed the rules had changed, when in actuality all that happened was a new addendum was included.”

Cal thought of the miles of crushed, scorched aircraft he had seen on his journey alongside Larry Shango, when Shango had been on his odyssey to find Jeri Bilmer and her errant information; of the hundreds, thousands who had plummeted to their deaths when the jet engines had abruptly cut out…and beyond that the uncounted millions who had suffered appalling injury and worse when the hideous power of the Source Wave spread out from its unknown point of origin somewhere in the west and carpeted the whole wide world.

An addendum…

“So what are you saying?” Cal demanded. “That something was added rather than taken away?”

“Yes, exactly,” Arcott responded airily. “The rules that governed the Einsteinian universe are still the same, with just an addition to the cosmology that funnels energy to a fresh purpose. A new physics, some might say, but more accurately the old physics with a twist or two, a new wrinkle. Perfectly explicable, if you merely apply a clarity of observation, some logical thinking. And once you bring that scrutiny to bear”-he waved at the computers, the electric lamps, the espresso machine with its screeching din-“you can introduce a governing principle into the mix that restores balance to the situation.”

“And this is what you have done?” Doc inquired. “You are, what? A graduate student, like Ms. Wade and Mr. Siegel here?”

“Until last year, when I got my doctorate, then I was promoted to associate professor. I was hoping to land tenure eventually….” He smiled that Cheshire smile again, glanced around the room at the steady stream of light, the computers, the works. “But since landing the brass ring, they might just give me the town.”

“And you came up with this all on your lonesome?” Cal asked.

Arcott betrayed only the slightest hesitation. “Yes, the initial theoretical underpinnings. Fortunately, it was a parallel area of research to studies we’d been doing prior to the Change, examining different strategies utilizing precious and semiprecious stones to contain elusive energies, initially in an attempt to harness fusion.

“Or putting it more simply,” he added airily, warming to the topic, “we learned there were certain assemblages, specific combinations of gems, that set up a spectral interference, jangled the harmonics of the post-Change sieve effect, withholding the energy from being siphoned away to fuel the hoodoo and beasties and things that go bump in the night, and keeping it where it rightly belonged-in the matrices of the electrical and mechanical devices it had originally been designed to run.”

Arcott’s eyes were gleaming now, as though he himself were filled with electricity. “Once I got the basic principles down, I built the practical equipment along with Theo and Melissa here. They in turn oversaw a team of undergrads to do the scut work.”

He gestured at those in the cafe. “We’ve convinced most of the student body-and practically all the town-to hang tight until we get the kinks out. Then we can teach others, restore the U.S. grid. But for the time being, we’ve got to keep to ourselves, for security’s sake. Can’t risk some invading force of yahoos thinking they can take over the whole flea circus.”

It sounded reasonable…so why, Cal wondered, was it giving him the creepy crawlies?

“And what about the illusion of plague?” Doc asked. “That is, as you say, quite the new wrinkle.”

“A little serendipity along the way.” Arcott shrugged. You set out to make a solvent and you discover Nutrasweet.”

“I would like to study this Nutrasweet of yours a bit more closely,” Doc noted.

“We’ll see,” Arcott said, and Cal knew his meaning was the same as when parents said it. “Now. I’ve shown you mine…”

“My sister was kidnapped,” Cal replied. We’re searching for her.”

Siegel and Wade registered surprise. Arcott’s eyes narrowed. “On your own?”

“With some friends, who are waiting back at camp for us.”

“Ah. I won’t ask exactly where that might be, not yet at least. But you could be so good as to tell me what they do.”

You’re fishing, Cal realized. You need something…or someone. Unbidden, Doc’s words on the roof of the mall came floating up to him.

You cannot know what you will need at your ultimate moment of truth…nor whom. So given that, it is a good idea to bring as wide a variety of dramatis personae as possible.

“We have a former naval lieutenant,” Cal said. “An Internet geek, a few laborers…and a physicist.”

Arcott sat up at that. “What’s his name?”

“Dahlquist. Rafe Dahlquist.”

Theo Siegel and Melissa Wade recognized the name and were clearly impressed. But the most dramatic change was in Arcott. There was no insolence now, no mockery.

“Take me there, I’ll come alone,” he said. “I need to talk to him.”