“It is more than just this installation.” Ooljee looked over at her. “I think whatever he is doing is also affecting the weather. The storm outside came up too fast. What really scares me is that he may not know what he is doing.” Moody lumbered forward, his eyes roving the banks of readouts and monitors. “There’s got to be a way to shut this thing down. Some critical components we can disable. ”
“You don’t know what you are suggesting,” said the engineer. “You don’t have any idea what a facility like this costs.”
“You tell us where to start,” Moody replied emotionlessly, “or we’ll pick a spot and begin disassembling at random. The result will be the same. Only not as neat.” She met his gaze briefly, then dropped her eyes and let out a resigned sigh. “Come with me.”
On the way they were attacked twice by intruding mah-ih. One plainclothesman suffered a bite on the arm before the corporal blew his assailant to oblivion with a blast from his taser.
They descended two levels via open stairways, not trusting the elevators. Not with Gaggii in control of the building’s power supply. While the others stood guard, the project’s chief engineer set to work with an assistant in the bowels of the machine. As they removed a protective panel, exposing circuitry and delicate processor cubes, the unearthly howling rose in pitch around them.
The flickering lights made it difficult to see. Moody squinted at shadows, searching for low, loping shapes, his taser clutched tightly in one hand. He muttered urgently at his companions.
“Hurry it up!”
Already furious at what she was being forced to do, the chief engineer yelled back at him. “This isn’t a bathtub, young man. You don’t drain it by pulling a plug.”
The detective tried to put a rein on his impatience. Gaggii might already have gotten what he was after anyway. Whatever the hell that was. Ooljee’s remarks about the universe being a delicately balanced, easily upset place kept haunting him. Was Gaggii playing around with that somehow? And if so, why? If they had learned one thing about Yistin Gag-gii’s character, it was that he liked, even needed, to be in control. It followed that he would do everything to keep from losing it.
Somehow that was small consolation.
In a moment of candor he’d confessed to them that he had a specific goal in mind. Did he know how to achieve it? Or was he simply seeing how far he could push what he’d learned?
The whine that reverberated through the lower level of the facility reminded him of a shuttle just lifting off, of a wave rolling in from Africa, which, finding no beach to break upon, kept crashing and tumbling in upon itself, the very picture of kinetic frustration.
Ozone tickled his nostrils, burned his eyes. Strobing lights distorted his vision. He thought he could see shapes advancing. Not coyotes. Coils and loops of light, violent neon, gaping auroras with sparks for teeth. The plainclothesman on his left cursed and fired, struck nothing. You couldn’t shock a reflection, a trick of the eye. No dragons roamed the service corridor, no demons occupied the depths of the machine. Blurred images of vast tentacular shapes and ambulatory geometries were no more than the hallucinatory
offspring of tired minds. The toroid accelerated heavy particles, not dreams.
Here there be nonsense, he whispered silently. Get ahold of yourself. All lawbreakers thrive on confusion. Gaggii’s no different. Don’t give him that.
The two engineers worked silently, applying their tiny and insignificant tools to the vaster instrument that was the accelerator. From their position they were unable to see the howling phalanx of buff-colored shapes that came snarling up the corridor. One of the cops turned to flee. Moody grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back. “Hold your ground!” he roared. “Use your taser!”
Then everyone was firing madly at the onrushing mah-ih. Coyote bodies exploded in fountaining sparks and blinding light. Moody found himself ducking and whirling as he tried to avoid teeth and claws, cursing the several seconds the taser’s battery needed to recharge. Nor did it matter how many he and his companions obliterated. The survivors pressed on relentlessly, as if delighting in their own destruction.
“Got it!” The triumphant shout came from behind him, not from the battle line.
Almost immediately the whine of the toroidal accelerator began to fade. The chief engineer emerged from the service bay, cradling a rutilant cylinder of metallic glass. The lights in the corridor ceased to flicker as emergency power came on line. Their comforting steady glow banished the mah-ih and companion nightmares from sight.
Moody rose from his crouching position, the taser hot in his palm. Officers and techs eyed one another uncertainly. The chief engineer handed the cylinder to her assistant as carefully as an obstetrician passing a newborn to its nurse.
The howling was a memory, the only noise in the corridor the hiss of the lights and the automatic space heaters.
Moody pocketed his weapon. “That’s it, then. We stopped him.”
“I wonder.” Ooljee tilted his head back to gaze groundward, two flights above them. “We have seen some things down here. I wonder what Grayhills has seen up there.”
They used the elevators this time. As Moody emerged he happened to glance through a corridor window. It was now sleeting outside. Lightning twisted and cracked through boiling black clouds, millions of volts with no place to go. He was reminded of sandpainting patterns.
Grayhills was not waiting for them. She was seated at an engineering station, weaving in tandem with the young tech next to her. Moody observed the performance, admiring their technique much as one would that of duo pianists.
She sensed his presence and paused long enough to look up.
“We stopped it,” he told her.
“I know.” She indicated her companion, who grinned shyly at the detective. “Little Bear and I have been trying to determine what happened. There was heavy particle acceleration to near light-speed within the toroid, but no result we can measure because no target was emplaced.”
“So what happened to the particles?” Moody asked.
“We do not know.” The young tech blinked. “They went someplace. We do not know where. Since they did not collide with a preset target, they must have collided with particles somewhere else. Unless they were aimed at something located outside the toroid.” He blinked again.
“Is that possible?” Grayhills’ gaze narrowed.
“Theoretically. It is never done, because it would be impossible to monitor the results properly. And there is no guarantee the particles would not strike others before reaching an external target, thus invalidating the experiment. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to do such a thing. ”
“Unless they want the result of the experiment to remain a secret,” Ooljee pointed out.
The chief engineer had been silent long enough. “This is madness! You don’t throw heavy particles around like cookie crumbs. If they escape the confines of the accelerator, there’s no way to track their paths.”
“There’s something else,” said Grayhills. “It’s this storm. We’ve been in touch with the National Weather Service office in Flagstaff. A low-pressure system just materialized, right here. No front, no occluded lows. The bottom just fell out of the barometer over Cameron.”
“Gaggii,” said the sergeant. “Whatever he is doing is affecting the climate. We have stopped the accelerator, but the storm continues. He is doing something, wherever he is.”
“All I know is that the NWS says this is an abnormal weather system, that its effects are highly localized, and that it’s not moving. It’s just sitting here on top of us.” Tired, she leaned back in the swivel seat and closed her eyes.