“Does it open?”
“Put your hand back on it.”
He did, and after a second or two of nothing, his mind was flooded with images. It looked like a travelogue for a beam of light, only one that took detours outside of regular space.
“Wow,” Ed said. “I’m not really sure what any of this means, am I supposed to?”
“The visuals are a form of communication, yes. It’s going to figure out you’re not an advanced being. The next step would be to activate its defenses, but I’ve disabled that feature.”
“Oh good, thanks.” The images stopped, and he removed his hand. “What defenses are we talking about?”
“Just a sonic alarm. Dobbs, would you like to try?”
Dobbs did want to try. He put his hand on and acted suitably impressed by the show going on in his mind.
“But it didn’t open,” Ed said.
“Oh, right. Wait until he’s finished.”
“Was that eighth dimensional space?” Dobbs asked.
“Yes, very good. It’s a short cut. The universe is incredibly large if you’re stuck inside of it, but very reasonable otherwise. Dobbs, think about the capsule opening.”
“Okay.”
A horizontal line creased the center of the tablet, and then it popped open like an old-fashioned lunchbox. The interior was bathed in a baby blue light.
The device was full of stacks of circular discs or coils. It appeared almost solid-state.
“This looks like a large radiator,” Dobbs said. “Probably isn’t, though, huh?”
“No, it’s much more than that. You’re familiar with quantum computing technology?”
“Oh, wow, really?”
“You’re only seeing the portion of the machine that exists in this dimension. It’s actually much larger, if size even means anything in this instance.”
“What’s the power source?” Ed asked. “Is that here, or is it hanging out in the extra dimension?”
“It’s both. It uses a combination of zero-point energy resources and… there’s no word for the secondary technology. Imagine a way to collect and store chaotic energies. Discharges from the corona of the sun, kinetic energy from a gravitational slingshot, and so on.”
“That would violate the third law,” Dobbs said.
Violet smiled. “Yes, it would, in a closed system. The waste product of this energy storage would be entropic, and it is, but the entropy isn’t manifest in this dimension.”
“Okay,” Ed said. “But nothing nuclear?”
“Oh, yes, there’s a nuclear core too. It’s only a backup, though. Like a battery in an alarm clock if the house loses power. The core isn’t active right now.”
Ed stepped back instinctively, and nearly fell over. Dobbs decided he didn’t want to touch the probe any more.
“It’s shielded,” Violet said. “Don’t worry. Radiation would do the same to me as to you.”
“Sure, but you can go find another body,” Ed said, “we’re sort of stuck with these.”
“Comin’ up on zombie world, everyone,” Oona announced from the driver’s seat.
“Is this still extending the… I don’t know what to call it… invisibility cloak?” Ed asked.
“It is.”
Ed walked to the front to look out the windshield. “Stop at the turn, I want to see what we’re facing.”
“A lot of confused marionettes, Edgar,” Oona said.
The zombies in the street looked like their equilibrium had been severely compromised: a hundred instant inner-ear infections and extreme vertigo.
“Perfect,” Ed said. “Violet, can you shut it off?”
“Why would you do that?” Oona asked.
“I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
“It’s done,” Violet called.
The zombies righted themselves.
“So now they’re all in my way and you don’t want me to kill anybody, so how do you plan to get there from here?” Oona asked.
“They’re not moving.”
“Yeah, I know they’re not moving, that’s my problem.”
“No, I mean they’re not moving toward us or away from us. Honk.”
Oona honked. The zombies immediately in front of her got out of her way. Slowly, but successfully.
“What the hell.”
“Annie made it to the ship,” Ed said.
“How do you know?”
“They’re not looking for her any more. They’re on standby, in some sort of basic self-defense mode.”
“It’s gonna take us a while to get to the ship, just honking and rolling.”
“Do the best you can.” Ed turned the back of the camper. “Dobbs, maybe try the screamer again to get some of them moving. It might help.”
“Okay.”
“When we’re close, I’m going to need you focused on finding that signal again.”
Ed sat back down next to Violet, with her alien capsule at his feet. The zombie parents were standing across from them, holding their balance pretty well in the rocking trailer.
“Do you want to tell me what you’re doing, now?” Violet asked.
“Not sure yet. But I have a few questions. First, how big can you make that invisibility cloak extend?”
“I’ve never tested its range, how far did you want it to go?”
“How about the same size as Sorrow Falls?”
She studied him carefully.
“Perhaps. But why?”
“Maybe question two will answer question one for you. What did Susan and Todd die of?”
“Susan perished from tuberculosis. Todd was crushed by a carriage wheel.”
“Todd looks pretty good.”
“Yes…” And then she understood. She smiled.
“How long would it take?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But if it works, everyone is going to be extremely hungry afterwards.”
ANNIE HAD no particular strategy in mind when climbing into the ship, or at any subsequent point in the conversation—possibly except for the part where she mingled Dorothy Gale of Kansas with Violet Jones of Sorrow Falls. She didn’t expect that to actually work, but thought it would be funny if it did. It was funny, up until the part where she pissed off the super-powerful alien in the planet-ending spacecraft.
She’d been rolling with the just keep him talking rule that really only made sense in different contexts, like talking a jumper off a building, giving law enforcement time to trace a phone call, or keeping someone with a concussion awake. She was pretty sure it didn’t make as much sense here, because if she was stalling, she didn’t herself know what she was stalling for. There wasn’t anyone coming to the rescue.
Except of course there was. Ed would come running. So would Sam. Dobbs, Oona, Laura… they probably would too. Maybe even Violet.
Violet was the only one who could actually rescue anybody, and only by surrendering. Likewise, Annie could rescue herself just fine by telling the alien where to look. But as angry as Annie was at Violet, it was the kind of angry she expected to get over eventually. When she did, she wanted Violet to still be around.
Besides, Violet’s dad was turning out to be a scary combination of innocent and amoral.
“Drones, you mean all the zombies?”
“That word doesn’t correspond to their function. I have heard it said many times tonight and reviewed the meaning.”
Annie thought about mentioning the whole undead thing, which was definitely a zombie standard, but it seemed beside the point. He recognized that a lot of his drones were living people and was threatening to change that, so he understood alive versus dead.
“So you’re an evil idea,” she decided.
“No. Ideas are neither good nor evil. It’s only in their application that they can be one or the other, and even then they can only be judged one or the other from a subjective viewpoint. If I tear apart this planet looking for my daughter, you would no doubt see these as evil actions, but I have seen a million such worlds and consider her of far greater value. I would call it a good thing. Now tell me where to find her or I’ll begin with the drones and stop only after I’ve set the world on fire and picked her out of the remains.”