The gun was translucent, and I could see the internal workings, but it wasn’t a water reservoir and pump, nor was there the standard machinery of either a pistol or a dart gun. I bent close to examine it and saw what looked like circuitry. The whole thing was immaculate and looked to have been highly polished, and yet I had a weird feeling that I was holding something very old. There was nothing at all to hang that feeling on, though. It was rock. All rocks are old. Even so, the feeling persisted.
“Okay,” I said, addressing Bug and anyone else in the TOC — the tactical operations center back at the Hangar in Brooklyn. “I’m open to suggestions as to what I’m holding.”
“No idea. Looks like a ray gun from a video game. Hold on, here’s Doc.”
“Cowboy,” said Doc Holliday, “what can you tell me about that weapon?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me something.” I described the weight of it and turned it at different angles so she could see every part of it. I knew cameras were recording it all. “It’s broken in a couple of places. This make any sense to you?”
“Maybe,” she said slowly. “I need to check some things. In the meantime, don’t pull the trigger.”
“There is not one chance in holy hell that I would do that,” I said.
“Good.” And she was gone. I slipped it carefully into my pocket.
“It’s okay, fuzzball,” I told Ghost, and now that the gun was out of sight he relaxed by maybe one tenth of a percent. Even so, he kept cutting looks at the pocket. Very reassuring.
The clock in my head was ticking, so I decided to get the hell out of Dodge. I stood up and stretched, feeling the bruised muscles in my back protest. I’d popped as many painkillers as I could on the way to Russia, and they were wearing off. Fun.
I wanted to leave the right impression in the office for whomever found my snoring buddy. I went through his office and smashed a bunch of stuff, slashed chairs, flipped over the area rug, and dumped desk drawers onto the floor to set the stage. Then I tore a bunch of paintings from the walls to sell the idea that I’d had to search for the safe. I used a felt-tip marker to write crude graffiti on the walls in Russian slang. I even encouraged Ghost to pee on the rug because thieves sometimes do that, and Ghost was happy to oblige. Then, as promised, I bound Rolgavitch’s wrists and ankles, and wrapped his tie around his eyes. I left behind no traces of anything that didn’t look like the fiction I knew my pal Yuri would earnestly want to sell, if he even remembered the conversation, which was unlikely. Horsey tramples all over short-term memory.
Then Ghost and I got the fuck out of there. A black sedan was waiting for us two blocks away.
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
Doc Holliday and Junie Flynn sat on chairs in the Playroom — the massive, sprawling complex of labs that formed the inner sanctum of the DMS Integrated Sciences Division. Scientists and technicians moved like silent robots around them, each of them pretending not to listen to the conversation the two women were having.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat this, sweetie,” said Doc, a smile lighting up her face, “but there’s a pretty darn good chance that you’re completely out of your mind. You know that, right?”
Junie’s smile was all freckles and light. “Sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Doc looked down at the thick file on her lap. It was a sub-report of the Extinction Machine case, and it was currently open to Junie’s account of her own complex heredity.
“Alien DNA? Bug told me that, but I thought I was being pranked.”
“Really?”
Doc looked away and studied the middle of the air for a long moment. Her shoulders rose and fell. “No,” she said.
“No,” agreed Junie.
“But I guess I don’t want to believe it, and that’s a hell of a thing for me to admit out loud to anyone. I’m a scientist. I’m a damn good top-five-in-the-blessed-world scientist, and I don’t want to believe it.”
“Yeah? Try looking at it from inside my head. I grew up with this.”
“So, we’re talking what, here?” asked Doc, still smiling. “Little green men?”
“I have no idea if they’re little,” said Junie, “but I doubt it. The pilot seats on the original T-craft were built for very tall beings.”
“Bipeds?”
“Yes. And, I think, reptilian.”
“As in the Reptilians? ’Cause I’ve read a lot of wacko conspiracy theory stuff about aliens called that. Big, nasty green guys.”
Junie shrugged. “Reptilians, Draconians, reptoids… there are a lot of names. Some of them going back to antiquity. The idea of reptile people interacting with humans is not exactly new. Most people think the idea started with a short story, ‘The Shadow Kingdom,’ written by Robert E. Howard, the author of Conan the Barbarian and King Kull.”
“Right,” agreed Doc. “In pulp fiction.”
“There’s a theory — one I agree with — that the pulp fiction movement, with all of its fantastic imagery, otherworldly and metaphysical story elements, were the result of the firing of an early prototype God Machine.”
“Right,” said Doc cautiously. She set down the report, picked up a cup of tea, and tried to take a sip, but it was empty. “You also said that the surrealist movement was caused by the same thing. And the same for parts of the hippie acid rock stuff of the sixties.”
“I can give you a lot of evidence to support that supposition,” said Junie with a thin smile. “And I can give you the pharmacology, the psychology, the social culturalism, and a lot more to support it.” She paused. “Besides, we know that the T-craft exist. We know that whoever designed the original machines threatened us to acquire and turn over the Black Book. This isn’t science fiction, Doc. It’s science fact.”
Doc Holliday stared into the empty cup. She was no longer smiling. “I know,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t want to believe it.”
Junie put her hand on Doc’s knee. “I know. Believe me… I know.”
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
I climbed into the passenger seat of the sedan. Bunny was behind the wheel, huddled in a fur-trimmed anorak and shivering his Southern California cojones off.
“How’d it go, boss?” he asked as I fished in the glove box for my bottle of painkillers.
“It went well,” I said, removing a packet of pain pills from an inner pocket and dry-swallowing two of them. “We have a new target.”
“Something good?”
“To be determined. But it’s a better lead than any we’ve had.” I gave him the address of Pushkin Dynamics and forwarded the same info to Top, who was waiting with Echo Team somewhere discreet. Bunny put the car in gear. While we drove, I filled him in on what happened in Rolgavitch’s office. He seemed amused by it until I got to the part about the green gun. When we stopped at a traffic light I showed it to him. Bunny started to touch it but withdrew his hand.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He shook his head and either didn’t want to answer, or couldn’t. The green glow made him look ill. I put the crystal gun back into my pocket and we drove in silence. I caught him glancing at me in the rearview mirror, looking troubled and uncertain.