“What the hell blows up green?”
“For fireworks,” she said, “they use barium chloride. People throw copper wire into campfires to make the flames burn green, but there’s a longer answer about color spectrums, heat, and gas that you don’t want to hear.”
I gave myself another jab of painkillers. “No,” I hissed. “I don’t.”
“So, short answer is we don’t know why the explosions are green. Or, why they’re so hot. Teams that have managed to examine blast sites report a great degree of melting, indicating intensely high temperatures. We don’t know what it means, but it’s weird and I don’t like weird unless I’m in bed with someone.”
“Is Sam going to be okay?”
“Honey, he’s a mess and the only people who’ve seen him are EMTs. I hope so, but right now I can’t put good money on any bets.”
“What about Auntie…?” I asked, afraid of almost any answer.
“Alive and holding on,” said Doc, “but she’s critical and, trite as it is to say this, they’re doing everything they can. Seriously.”
“Will she make it?”
“Cowboy, you’re asking me to read the future, and I left my tarot cards at home. If I was still a church lady I’d pray to one of them saints, but far as I know nobody up there’s taking calls from this Texas gal.”
Right about then, Church joined the call from his jet, which was nearing D.C., and asked for a full report. I didn’t omit a single detail.
When I was done there was a solid two-count, and Church said, “A God Machine?”
“A small one, but, yeah, that’s what it looked like, boss,” I said. “So, any of you geniuses want to tell me what the hell’s going on? Earthquakes, insanity, mass suicides and murder, and now this. And, if this thing was the same as all the others, the ones that exploded, then why? What’s the point of any of this?”
“We can draw a few conclusions,” said Doc. “These devices, whether they’re actually the same technology that Prospero Bell created or not, were positioned around the epicenter of this quake. They have to be involved, but we don’t know how. I read all of the reports obtained during the Kill Switch matter and there is absolutely nothing in there about effects on plate tectonics. Nothing.”
“I—” I began, but she cut me off.
“There is quite a lot,” she continued, “about psychic disturbances. We know from that case that when a large God Machine was idling at the lowest power settings, it caused a number of effects. The Gateway Project, which was the ugly stepsister of the larger and better-funded Majestic program, was experimenting with those machines, and there were a number of suicides reported at their base in the Antarctic. Which, I believe, you blew into orbit, Cowboy.”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time,” I said.
“Ain’t arguing, sugar,” she conceded, “given what they were working on. Remote-viewing, mind control, psychic spying, and — the big enchilada — trying to open an interdimensional gateway without actually knowing what was on the other side of it. As stupid goes, that’s the prize hog. They could as easily have opened a doorway to a toxic environment, the airless vacuum of space, or a dadburn black hole. I’m frequently forced to push back the limits of my understanding of human stupidity, and that goes triple when the Department of Defense is involved.”
“Not always,” I said lamely.
“You’ve just had your tight white ass handed to you, Cowboy,” said Doc, “so we’ll all pretend you didn’t just hashtag-NotAllMen the DoD.”
“Shutting up now,” I said.
“The takeaway here,” said Church, “is that we have a bead on the technology used to cause the mass suicides and other violence. How many explosions have you tracked?”
“A total of forty-six devices were detonated,” she said. “The one taken away by the bad boy with the Taser makes forty-seven, unless that is somehow different. Considering the situation — a bunch of cars wrecked by the earthquake — we can postulate that that device was damaged and not able to detonate according to plan. The telemetry from Sam’s RFID and his car tell us that the first biker was also there to retrieve a faulty device that was in a car partly buried by debris. So, of the known machines we had eyes on, two faulted out, and in both cases someone was sent to retrieve them when they failed to detonate.”
“Why would the first biker blow himself up?”
Calpurnia played the video on the screen inside the car but Doc narrated the key points. “It’s likely he was trying to use his cell to deactivate the detonator and was unable to do so. When Sam confronted him, the biker dropped the cell, and the resulting jolt to the burner somehow made the firing sequence work. I believe that’s what you military boys call a clusterfuck. Unfortunate for him and for Sam. Before you ask, Cowboy, the biker was blown to rags. We can run DNA and dental, if they find enough of his face, but that’s going to take time. His body will be collected and hopefully there will be papers or some other kind of ID.”
“Calpurnia’s drones are hunting for the second biker,” I said. “And her dashboard cam should have—”
“Yes,” she said, cutting me off again, “we got the license plate of the Kawasaki. It’s stolen, as was the other bike. Both thefts were done after the earthquake started, which is a narrow time frame, so it’s likely they had eyes on possible vehicles to steal, and they certainly weren’t worried about being chased by the cops. Not today.”
I rubbed Ghost’s soggy neck. He was looking a little better.
“Okay,” I said, “someone has the God Machine technology and they’re using it to drive people batshit crazy. Are they using it to cause earthquakes, too?”
There was silence on the line.
“Kind of like an actual answer to that one,” I said.
Doc sighed. It was so long and hard that it sounded like a hot-air balloon deflating. “Your little sweetheart seems to think so.”
“Junie?”
“She’s here. In the computer room with Bug, and they’re jabbering on about this and that. Aliens and reptilians and all sorts of New Age weirdness. I think they’ve both lost their damn minds.”
“I’ve found,” said Church very dryly, “that Junie Flynn speaks from great experience and insight. She has been correct far more often than she’s been wrong. Wouldn’t you agree, Captain?”
“Yeah, damn it.”
Doc sighed again. “That,” she said, “is what I’m afraid of. So, the short and less facetious answer to your question is that we’re working on it.”
“Which leaves me where?” I demanded.
“Sam Imura is on his way to Johns Hopkins,” said Church. “Aunt Sallie is already there. I’ll be there shortly. Why don’t we make that the center of our operations for now? We can get you and Ghost some treatment as well. We’ll close ranks and be family with our injured until we have our next move planned. Meanwhile Doc Holliday, Bug, and Miss Flynn will continue to work the problem from their end.”
So, I drove the hell back to Maryland. Thinking bad, confused, alarming thoughts as the miles fell away behind me.
INTERLUDE TWENTY-ONE
Gadyuka called while the coastline of Chile was dwindling over the horizon. “You promised a six point five at least.”
“I did,” he said, and there was a small flicker of doubt in his chest. Gadyuka purred when she was angry as often as when she was happy.
“Early reports are calling it a six point nine,” said Gadyuka. “That is very, very impressive.”