Double Dose, page 34
A couple of the Tadhaks spotted her and started hurrying toward her, but Jason, standing by an open panel to her right, waved them away. They backed off, but not far.
“I suppose you’re in a snit because I didn’t tell you it was the equinox instead of the solstice.”
Like yesterday, his insufferably superior attitude put her on edge, but she wasn’t going to let him know.
“I don’t get into snits. And besides, you were under no obligation to jeopardize your agenda for mine. I would have done the same were positions reversed.”
“My, aren’t we rational today. Such a rarity for your species. I’m impressed.”
(“So am I.”)
Trying to get on his good side.
“Are you ready to melt down Elis’s tower?”
“Ready and waiting for the exact moment.”
“Do it now.”
Jason shook his head. “Too early. We wait until the exact moment of the equinox—four twenty-one Pacific Time—and then we wait just a little longer until the passage is stabilized and the Rymwyr are in the Void. Then we send the surge.”
“No. Send it now. People are dying out there.”
“It’s called collateral damage.”
“It’s called people’s lives. If he succeeds in flooding the valley, hundreds of thousands could die.”
He gave her a cool look. “There are nearly eight billion of you out there. What do a couple hundred thousand matter?”
“It sure as hell matters to them! And it matters to me!”
“But it doesn’t matter to me. The only lives that matter to me are those of the Rymwyr. And those are lives I want to end.”
“Please. I’m begging you.”
A pitying smile. “And now the façade slips and the sentiment pours through, scouring away the patina of rationality. I’ve told you our history with the Rymwyr, I’ve told you how long we’ve waited to balance the scales, and yet you stand there thinking an emotional appeal at the last minute will convince us to put all that aside, to weigh a few hundred thousand of your species against billions of ours and decide on your behalf. How pathetic.”
She took a step forward. “Please!”
He gestured to the nearby Tadhaks. “Remove her.”
Daley lunged for him but two of the Tadhaks grabbed her under the arms, lifted her off her feet, and marched her out the door. She struggled and kicked but they remained implacable as they carried her into the little anteroom, and then ejected her from the outer door into the base of the wind turbine. She leaped back to the door but it found it locked.
“Damn you!” she shouted as she pounded on it.
(“What’s this going to accomplish?”) Pard said.
She stopped and leaned against the door.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
(“And when you leaped at him back there…what were you going to do if you managed to reach him?”)
“Hell, I don’t know. I lost it. I just wanted to do some damage.”
(“Well, now what?”)
“We head for the tower, I guess, and hope we can get past anyone he’s got guarding the place.”
(“And then what?”)
“We interfere, damn it! I’ve never wanted to own a gun, but I wish I had one now.”
(“I don’t see you shooting someone.”)
“Well, neither do I, but I could sure as hell make them believe I would. Let’s get back to Juana.”
She stepped out into the sunlight and the noise and hadn’t gone ten steps before the ground heaved beneath her and tossed her off her feet. She hit hard, knocking the wind out of her. She groaned in pain as the ground bounced her around like a pinball.
This is no aftershock!
(“A new one! Pendry’s still at it!”)
She tried to rise but was knocked flat again. A shadow fell over her and she looked up to see one of the towers falling toward her. She screamed and rolled out of the way as it landed against another fallen shaft with a deafening crash. The turbine blades broke off and went flying in three different directions.
Still the ground shook.
And then it eased a little, although it still jittered. Another tower crashed to earth behind her.
(“You’ve got to get out of here!”)
Ya think?
She forced herself to her feet and started moving. She wanted to run but couldn’t find an open stretch long enough to allow it—duck under one tower, hurry ten feet to the next fallen shaft and slide over that. Her knees would buckle slightly as the ground rose and sank under her. And still the turbines tumbled, seeming to fall in slow motion only to buckle and shatter on impact and send their massive blades pin-wheeling through the air. More than once she had to duck to keep from losing her head.
Finally she reached the front gate and bolted into the clear to where both Juana and her Harley lay on their sides in the dirt.
“Are you okay?” she panted as she skidded to a stop beside her.
Juana nodded and held up a hand. “Help me up.” Daley pulled her to her feet and helped dust her off. “I tried to get up a few times but kept getting knocked down, so I stayed down. I’m gathering from this new quake that your end run failed.”
“Miserably.”
“What now?”
“Get me to the tower.”
“But I thought you said—”
“The tower, Juana. Before he triggers another.”
Daley had a feeling Elis would keep pushing right up till the equinox, and maybe even after—until he got his flood.
She helped right the Harley but when Juana got on and hit the pedal, it wouldn’t start. After numerous tries, she got off, leaned it on the kickstand, and started messing with the cowling.
“Something must have shook loose while it was bouncing around on the ground.”
Daley couldn’t wait.
“Catch up to me if you get it going.”
“But it’s miles away!”
She started running.
Becky
“We need to get someone from maintenance up here,” Becky said. “And someone from IT as well. We need that monitor working—now more than ever.”
The mainshock had clocked in at 8.2 Richter and knocked one of the big wall monitors from its moorings. The data collection center was chaotic at the moment.
Pryor, hunched before her monitor, said, “The epicenter was the Cerro Prieto like before but it propagated southward into the Gulf. We’ve got a significant upheaval in the Wagner Basin.”
That made sense. The Wagner Basin sat underwater at the southern end of the Cerro Prieto fault and connected to the East Pacific Rise. The whole Gulf was a hotbed of seismic activity due to its being home to the Gulf of California Rift Zone, the spreading center that was slowly taking the Baja Peninsula farther and farther from the mainland. She didn’t like what she was hearing, though.
“How ‘significant’ an upheaval?”
“We’re working on it.”
“Do we have any DART stations in the Gulf?”
Pryor swiveled to face Becky. “No. All the DARTs are deep ocean. You worried about a tsunami?”
“Worst case, we could have a big wave funneling north.”
Pryor made a face. “Oh, crap. You’re not thinking a Tafjord scenario?”
“Exactly what I’m thinking.”
“Well, shit, it’s possible.” She turned back to her monitor and began banging on the keyboard.
Hendry turned to her. “Tafjord scenario?”
“Long time ago,” she said. “Norway in the 1930s. Part of a mountain collapsed at the end of a fjord and created a tsunami that roared down the channel to devastate the town of Tafjord with fifty-foot waves. If the rockslide had happened on the ocean, or even on a big lake, the waves would have spread out in all directions and dissipated. But because it occurred in a fjord, the force of the wave was concentrated and focused straight ahead as it funneled down the channel. A lot of people died.”
“So you’re thinking the Gulf of California—”
“Yeah. Also a narrow body of water, and most narrow at its northern end. The force of any wave traveling north will be funneled straight ahead—just like in Norway.”
Cheatham shouted from his monitor, “Fishing boat just called in an eighty-foot rogue wave rolling north in the Gulf.”
“Eighty feet!” Becky said. “That’s no rogue wave. That’s the tsunami.”
Hendry said, “But tsunamis don’t rise that high.”
“They do when they get channeled. What’s the coastline like at the north end?”
“Marshy desert. The Colorado Delta Bioreserve takes up most of the area and it’s, like, maybe ten feet above sea level.”
“Plus the surface rupture ends right there,” Becky said.
This was looking bad, very bad. A 7.8 foreshock with a huge surface rupture into the Gulf, followed by an 8.2 mainshock combined with a sea-floor upheaval sending a tsunami up the Gulf toward the rupture. That eighty-foot wave was going to hit with tremendous force and have nothing in its way, leaving it free to plow right into that rupture.
What would happen then?
It was probably hitting the coast right now.
“Get the NRO back on the line,” she shouted. “We need an eye in the sky!”
Rhys
“You’re looking a little better,” Cadoc said. He wore what looked like some cloth napkins tied into a makeshift sling for his arm.
Rhys was feeling a bit better himself but kept the ice pack against his scalp. His head hurt like a bitch. At least it had stopped bleeding.
They’d spent a long time on the second floor trying to free Mom. Cadoc could use only one arm, but his back was fine and he helped drag debris from the pile clogging the hallway. When they finally reached the bedroom, Mom was trapped under a fallen ceiling panel. They’d pried her free and hauled her downstairs just in time. The rear of the house was pretty much uninhabitable now.
They’d been just carrying Mom from the house when the mainshock hit, knocking Cadoc and Mom, who were going out the door ahead of him, forward onto the walk. Rhys, though, had been rocked back into the house where his head met with a falling four-by-four. Damn near knocked him out. It might have been a lot worse if Cadoc hadn’t used his good arm to grab his wrist and drag him out before more debris came down.
Cadoc leaned closer and lowered his voice. “This is Papa’s doing.”
“No shit,” Rhys said. “He lied to me about the solstice being the target date. Lied to everyone.”
Cadoc said, “We’ve got to stop him.”
Rhys forced himself to his feet. The world swayed a little but he held himself rigid.
“Not we. You need to take care of that arm and one of us has to stay with Mom.”
“Maria can—”
“Seriously, Cad. Mom needs one of us here and maybe I can get Dad to listen to me.”
“A fool’s errand. No offense, but that man listens to no one, only his vaunted scrolls.”
“Maybe so, but he’ll listen to me more than you. He’s still pissed at you for showing Daley the film.” Which reminded him: “Hey, speaking of Daley, do you have any idea where she might be?”
“Down in El Centro. It was on the news that ‘La Curandera’ had returned to the medical center.” He smiled as he shook his head. “Our Daley…La Curandera…who’d’a thunk, huh?”
“‘Our Daley’? Damned if I know whose Daley she is now, if anybody’s, but she sure as hell isn’t mine anymore.”
Cad gave his shoulder a gentle punch. “You can worry about that later. Right now we have a madman to deal with. Be careful down there. And be prepared: Talk may not be enough.”
Talk may not be enough…
The words followed Rhys to his car. The Elders had all wandered off a short while after Dad’s departure. Supposedly for a little conference. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’d find them all gathered at the tower, pumping their standing waves into the ground to cause these quakes.
What then? Would they try to keep him from his father? They were all older men, but hardly frail codgers. He wouldn’t be able to bull his way through all four of them if they wanted to stop him.
Dad had a gun…a .32 he kept in his bedroom. That would be a handy option to carry right now, but thanks to the mainshock, the second floor of the Lodge was totally inaccessible.
He raced down the hill but slowed as he entered town, aghast at the destruction. The Tadhaks had built the town and it was obvious now they’d done little to earthquake-proof the buildings. Most of them were in shambles—Jason Tadhak’s own real estate office was no exception. In fact, that whole block of wood-frame buildings had been reduced to kindling, Daley’s Healerina included. A few people wandered here and there in a daze.
Rhys stopped and stared at the wreckage. The second-floor apartment had collapsed into the store beneath, leaving the store destroyed and the apartment uninhabitable. If Cadoc hadn’t told him Daley was in El Centro, Rhys would be charging into the rubble looking for her. The wreckage across the street was only maybe half as bad, but Arturo wouldn’t be serving meals again for a while. Maybe never.
Shaking his head in dismay, Rhys gunned his Highlander ahead. He passed the trailer park where a lot of the units had been knocked off their foundations. Some lay on their sides. Lots of dazed looking people here. Wanton destruction…but this didn’t even scratch the surface of what his father had to answer for.
He found the gate to the solar array locked but unguarded. Well, Dad had given the workers the day off, supposedly as part of the clan’s equinox celebration. Rhys had thought it a generous gesture at the time, but now he knew the real reason: no witnesses.
The tower loomed in the sky at the far end of the array. The copper fittings on the cupola glittered in the sun but no high-voltage arcs split the air. Soon they would, but for now all the current was flowing into the earth’s crust. Something vaguely different about the tower. Did it lean ever so slightly to the south? And some of its struts and trusses appeared to be missing. Shaken loose by the tremblors?
He had a key to the gate, and since the only way to the tower was through the array, he wound his way around the panels until the base of the tower came in sight. Close up now he could see definite signs of damage but nothing too severe. The steel braces and isolators had done their jobs better here than back at the Lodge.
Only one vehicle parked by the open gate—his father’s Land Rover. No sign of any Elders or their cars. They couldn’t all have arrived in the Land Rover. Did that mean his father was alone? Maybe this wasn’t such a fool’s errand after all. Then again, simply talking to Dad was a long way from persuading him.
He parked, jumped out, and hurried toward the gate. The ground beyond it was sprinkled with fallen bits and pieces of the tower, but no Elders in sight. No father in sight, but he could be around on the far side of the central shaft.
Rhys was maybe two steps from the gate when something closed around his leg. He yelped and jumped but it held him fast in a viselike grip. He looked down and saw a gray-brown hand clinging to his ankle. And then, all around him, porthors began climbing form the sand. A dozen or so. The grip on his ankle was released and he was pushed back from the gate. Then the porthors surrounded him, enclosing him in a tight circle.
And then they stopped moving.
They stood straight and silent, shoulder to shoulder with their arms at their sides, eyes staring, their rudimentary, humanoid features expressionless. Rhys tried to push one out of his way but it wouldn’t budge. Tried to squeeze between two but again, they wouldn’t budge. Utterly immoveable.
Rhys faced the tower and shouted, “Dad! Dad, what’s going on here?”
His father came around from the far side of the shaft, wiping his hands on a cloth. He smiled.
“What do you think is going on? You’re being contained.”
“We need to talk. Please! You’ve got to stop this!”
“Talk? You want to talk? It’s a little late for that now, isn’t it? You’ve been doing all your talking—and a lot more than talking, from what I gather—with the Duad. But none of that matters now. I neutralized her, and I neutralized you, and everything is proceeding as planned.”
That implacable tone in his voice. Not a shred of doubt.
“But people have died in these quakes, Dad. Died because of you. It’s murder plain and simple. Don’t make it any worse. Please!”
“At the risk of sounding clichéd and heartless, Rhys, I’m making an omelet—a cosmic omelet—and that requires the breaking of some eggs.”
Cadoc was right: They were dealing with a madman.
“What happened to you, Dad? How did you get to this point?”
He didn’t seem to hear. He pointed to a portable shortwave radio on a nearby bench. “See this? It’s tuned to the FEMA channel. When I hear what I need to hear, I’ll cut the power to the shaft and kill the standing waves. I’ll wait until four sixteen—exactly five minutes before the moment of the equinox. And then I’ll power up the dome and open a passage through the Void to the Visitors’ realm.”
More madness. Rhys doubted anything of the sort was possible, but that wasn’t the point. The earthquakes had already done their damage. No reversing that. He pounded against the porthors but they wouldn’t budge…gave no sign that his blows even registered.
Kendrick
Jeff crawled out from under a pile of broken and splintered boards that used to be the back stairs up to the goddess’s home. In fact, the rest of the place was in pretty much the same condition. Her Healerina store was flattened, completely collapsed under the upstairs apartment which had landed on it. Definitely not livable but you could still tell it had once been an apartment.
Fuck! Broken wood everywhere. That last shaker had come out of nowhere and bigger than anything before. All the other buildings in sight from here had taken a beat down, some worse than the goddess’s.
After the she’d gone off this morning, Jeff hadn’t had nothing to do, what with all her devoted followers trailing after her. He’d hung out at Arturo’s for a while, then came first shock and that had done some damage, loosening the staircase from the rear wall. He’d been trying to fix it when the bigger one hit, collapsing everything around him.
