“It gets worse, I’m afraid,” said Gustafson. He picked up one of the papers. It showed a diagram of several electrical circuits connected to gemstones. Diamond, ruby, emerald, topaz, garnet, and sapphire. Beneath the diagram were several scrawled notes. “Did you take note of this?”
“I did. What do you make of it?”
“It’s labeled ‘crystal power sequence regulator,’ and it corresponds to a key section of the firing controls for this device. From its placement in the system it clearly keeps the machine from overheating or exploding. Even if something that improbable were to work, the cost of obtaining gemstones of the type and size indicated here would be enormous. Prohibitive.”
“I didn’t ask you here to comment on the budget, Doctor.”
“No, um, very well,” fumbled the scientist, “but let me say two things. First, using gemstones to regulate this kind of power is pure fantasy. There’s no valid science to support it. And frankly it’s unreasonable to assume that a few carats of precious stones could in any way act as a regulator for any machine as complex and sophisticated as this. And please let me stress that as designed, those gems are key to the safety features.”
“Point made. What’s the other thing?”
“This,” said Gustafson, placing his finger on a list of notes written in the lower left corner of the page. “These are book titles, I think. A few have bylines, so we can assume that much. And they’re placed as a footnote to the power sequencer. The indication is twofold. That there is a very precise sequence needed for safe firing of this ‘God Machine’ and—”
“‘God Machine’?” interrupted Bell.
Gustafson nodded. “There is a small notation indicating that this is the name, or perhaps code name, of the machine. Shall I continue? Yes? Very well, sir, it appears that the crucial sequence can only be found in one or more of these books. Look here, the designer says as much. I quote, ‘the sequence is hidden in the prayers to the ancient ones,’ and ‘the Unlearnable Truths are the key,’ and yet he notates that ‘nothing is unlearnable.’”
Bell nodded. “I saw that. Do you have any idea what the ‘Unlearnable Truths’ are?”
“If I were to guess, they are the product of a delusional mind.”
Bell stood up. “Thank you, Dr. Gustafson,” he said without warmth, “you can show yourself out.”
The scientist rose and moved awkwardly toward the door. He paused, his fingers touching the doorknob. “Sir, you asked what ‘he was building in there.’ Who’s ‘he’? Who designed this? And is he actually building it, because again, I need to caution you…”
His words trailed away as Oscar Bell turned his back on him and went to stand by the window, looking out on the roses in the garden. After a long, uncomfortable moment Gustafson sighed, opened the door, and left.
When he was alone, Bell crossed back to his desk, lifted the receiver, and punched in a number. The call was answered on the second ring.
“You were right,” he said. “I want a team over here. I want this machine out of here before my son is home from school. All of it. The papers, Prospero’s prototype. All of it. Get moving.”
He made a second call to a gem merchant and a third to his banker to transfer funds. The banker cautioned against so large a transfer and warned that some holdings might have to be liquidated. Bell told him to stop whining and do it.
After those calls he replaced the phone in the cradle and then returned to the window. The early-afternoon sun turned the waters of the Atlantic into a rippling blanket of deep blue. His lips formed three words but the sound of them echoed only in his thoughts.
The Unlearnable Truths.
Oscar Bell turned and reached for the phone again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We sat in the empty hull of the airplane and did not look at each other. I couldn’t bear to see the truth of what had just happened in the eyes of Top or Bunny. They avoided my eyes, too.
We’re soldiers and we’re a very specific kind of special operator. We’ve seen things that no one else has seen. Monsters. Genetic freaks. Doomsday weapons. That’s our job, that’s the kind of thing we face.
But this…?
This was something else.
That gateway was ten kinds of wrong. The shapeless mass with all those tentacles? Wrong.
Swapping bodies with Bunny for a few seconds? Doing some kind of bullshit astral projection and spying on Lydia while she undressed? Really, really wrong.
The clones of Professor Erskine… or whatever they were?
So wrong.
When giant violent albino penguins are the least extraordinary issue of the day, then your day has slipped a gear.
We were all wasted, wired, and sick.
Really sick. And getting sicker.
Bunny suddenly staggered to his feet and ran in a stumbling lope toward the head. Almost made it. Then stomach cramps stopped him as solidly as if he’d been punched in the gut. He bent forward and vomited with terrible force all over the wall. Everything came up. Everything he’d eaten, everything he’d experienced, too. It was worse than when we’d first been hit by whatever had come blowing out of that machine. The force of it dropped Bunny to his knees and then forward onto his hands. Top and I rushed over, but we were losing it, too. Top wrenched open the door to the head and spewed inside. Into the toilet, onto the walls, the sink, the floor.
I threw up, too. Right where I stood.
The cramps really hit then. They dropped us and for a while all we could do was curl into balls and scream. The plane’s crew tried to help. Tried. But there was nothing they could do.
Not for a long time.
Not until the spasms passed.
Not until we were so spent that we wanted to die. It was like seasickness times ten. I’ve never experienced anything as sudden, as fierce, as painful. The cramps pulled muscles and tore cries from each of us.
What the hell had we breathed down there?
What the hell had happened down there?
The plane flew on, taking us home, but if it was flying anywhere in the direction of comfort or answers, that part wasn’t clear to Top, Bunny, or me.
Jesus H. Christ.
INTERLUDE SEVEN
“Dr. Greene?” said Oscar Bell. He stood at the window, holding his cell phone to his ear and cradling a glass of scotch against his chest.
“Mr. Bell,” said the psychiatrist. “Good to hear from you.”
“I need to cut right to it,” said Bell. “In your sessions with Prospero, has he ever said anything about where these damn books are? These Unlearnable Truths? Where are they?”
“Not directly. He said that some have been destroyed.”
“Christ.”
“But that the essential knowledge — the knowledge he claims that he needs — is repeated in sections in the other books. As long as one possesses certain key texts from that collection, then a critical truth can be learned.”
“His exact words?”
“No… I believe his exact words were that the books contained a message that would allow him to, and I quote, ‘solve the riddle of the stars’.”
“Which books would he need to do that?”
“Sir, this is—”
“Now, Doctor.”
Greene sighed and then there was the sound of rustling papers. “Very well, Mr. Bell. They are as follows: The Book of Azathoth, The Book of Eibon, The Book of Iod, The Celaeno Fragments, The Cultes des Goules, The Eltdown Shards, On the Sending Out of the Soul…” The list included fourteen entries and he read them all carefully.