Milton snorted. “You can be dark, can’t you? Take it from someone who’s been to a very very dark place. You have no choice but to be a lamp onto the darkness. Don’t worry about how brightly you burn. That light is the God inside you. The more in touch you get with it, the brighter you will burn of your own accord.”
“I’ve said as much on many an occasion. Pray that my mindfulness will win out over my forgetfulness, so that the light no longer flickers.”
“I will,” Milton said with a rueful smile.
***
“I believe we’re next at bat,” Santini said, seeing Robin exit Milton’s flat.
“Robin!” Mort thundered, grabbing her hand and pumping it. “Robin Wakefield! I’ve just been telling my friends here all about you. Been a huge fan for ages.”
Robin smiled at the gentle giant, and glanced at the dogs. “Highly sentient, psychic dogs from the Hartman experiments, stunning.”
“Yeah, about that,” Mort whispered, “we’re trying to keep that on the down low, leastways until we can determine who exactly is having the psychotic break around here.”
Mort hadn’t yet released her hand, explaining perhaps where the psychic hits were coming from. “You’re part of the resistance in the U.S.,” she said. Robin turned to Toby. “Maybe it’s time East meets West.”
Toby swallowed hard and turned the ignition. Once the engine was idling, he said, “Engaging satellite jamming and men in black neutralizing.”
“Men in black neutralizing?” Santini said. Then he saw three skulking figures some distance off drop to the ground, press against their ears and scream.
“Hurry, get in,” Toby said. “The countermeasures won’t last long.”
The party jumped in the car. And Toby was off. The dogs pounced on the downed men in black, ripped their skullcaps off with their massive jaws, and feasted on their brains right there before the crowd, which thinned miraculously at that moment to allow Toby’s vintage vehicle to pick up speed. “Can you do anything to neutralize the screaming?” Mort said.
“Fraid not, sir.” Toby slipped the car into second gear.
“How did you drop them like that?” Santini asked.
“Some scientist associated their psych profile with the neurochemistry behind it. Then figured out how to target a beam to explode the endorphins their brains are the most saturated with. The effect wears off pretty quick, I’m afraid. But by then, we should be out of eyeshot.”
“We should get that device disseminated to the renaissance scientists,” Gretchen said.
“We thought of that, mam.” Toby turned a corner, still looking to pick up speed, and still checking his rearview mirror and side mirrors for tails. “But if they get their hands on a unit, it’s a cinch they’ll figure out how to counter it, and it’ll be useless from that moment on.”
“So you just keep it for when you’re in a position to permanently incapacitate your stalkers,” Robin said, trying to get comfortable in Mort’s lap.
“Got to admit, didn’t expect the dogs to be that efficient at their jobs,” Toby said, his eyes still scanning the road in all directions, leaving precious little time for actually looking at what was straight in front of them. “Figured the crowd would be the real deterrent.”
“So,” Mort said, aiming his mouth at Robin, “How does this psychic stuff work? I get the idea of taking a tour of the DSM-IV, using each neurosis to pop up in your Pandora’s box of a mind to give you the unique perspective you need to further your case, but the DSM-IV doesn’t cover that.” It didn’t strike Robin as particularly surprising that Berkeley PD cops were up on the DSM-IV, what, with the town being the largest open-psych ward in the world. Though they might have been from Oakland; she couldn’t place the accents much past East Bay Area.
“My mind shuts down a lot,” Robin explained, “post-Hartman. At first I thought it was just another short-circuit. Then I thought it was just my mind seeking the eye of the tornado, giving me a reprieve from all the twisting, twirling, terrifying images and flashbacks. Maybe both answers hold some truth. But the longer I stayed in the vacuum, the more Renaissance figures started popping into my mind. And if I held on them long enough, I’d get not only a strong sense of them, but could establish a link. The link itself grew stronger with time, until I could reach out to them, even in the afterlife, as I did with one of Hartman’s students, a kid named Spence.
“Today, with Milton, was the first time I’ve slipped into someone’s mind without even trying. I may have just relaxed enough in his presence to go into phase with his brainwaves. The next project is to see if I can go beyond this timeline into others, parallel universes. So those I didn’t get a chance to save from themselves in this reality, I can still reach in others before it’s too late. Before they lock in a pattern of behavior that takes them through progressively worse purgatories relative to this timeline on a path straight to hell.”
There was a silence after the bombshell of a revelation went off. Then, Mort said, finally, “As martyr complexes go, I have to admit, that one’s second to none. You may even have Sister Gretchen outclassed for being quite touched.”
Gretchen smiled. “Give me time.”
***
Forty minutes later, give or take, they arrived in Cheshire. “You fit the entire European underground moment inside a couple small nondescript buildings?” Mort said. “You couldn’t fit a couple of these cars in there.”
“Not exactly,” Toby said, shutting off the engine. “There’s a lift that takes us underground to several hundred miles of tunnels.”
“Now we’re talking.” Mort smiled approvingly.
“It’s England’s largest salt mine.”
“What about all the workers coming and going?” Mort asked, easing Robin off him and climbing out of the back seat.
“They don’t mess with us. Just tell them you’re with the toxic dump people.”
Santini cleared his throat. “The who?”
“Yeah, once you go down about five hundred feet and get off the lift, someone will direct you. Tell them you’re here to inspect the walking dead. They love that. Big joke.”
“Yeah, big joke,” Mort said, pulling at his collar. “Just for the record, it isn’t really dangerous down there, is it?”
Toby shrugged and gestured, palms up.
“Comforting,” Mort said.
“Just go a little past the toxic waste area,” Toby explained, “and look for someone walking without blinking, as if they’re in a complete trance. That’s one of our scientists. And trust me, that’s normal for them. No heavy metals on the brain required. I’ll be waiting right here.”
“Complete lunacy,” Mort mumbled, “hiding in plain sight, hundreds of workers coming and going.”
“What if we’re spotted?” Santini said. “We’ve become celebrities in our own rights.”
“I imagine that’s what the hundreds of miles of getaway tunnels leading every which direction are for,” Gretchen said, squeezing her purse. “Should make for an effective getaway in that maze.”
“Yeah, but there’s only one way out.” Mort surveyed the small shack holding the lift.
“I doubt they’ll mess with us, or the scientists,” Robin said. “Hell, we’re doing their work for them. Rounding everyone up so they’re easy to keep an eye on. Once our people have done the heavy lifting of engineering the future, they just cherry pick which items suits their take on things, and make sure nothing else gets to market by their usual methods. It’s come time to take anything out of there that things are likely to get interesting.”
“And what if they don’t share your capacity for transcendental thinking?” Mort scoffed.
“Trust me, no one does.” Robin smiled and led the way.
Gertrude and Santini choked off grins as well, and headed after her. Mort begrudgingly brought up the rear.
***
“Hell, the air is fresher down here than up there,” Mort said. “Of course, I predicted as much all along. Co
nsidering the size of our 401Ks, Santini, maybe you and I should consider retiring down here. If our eyes keep failing us, and the rest of our senses, we’ll make damn fine mole people.”
“I think your transcendental thinking is even better than Robin’s.” Santini cupped the small of Gretchen’s back with the palm of his hand. “What do you say, Gretchen? We can hang some murals around each corner for a quick trip to Bermuda or the cliffs of Dover.”
Gretchen smiled, but didn’t bother answering. She was used to the boys doing their shtick. Just their way of staying sane during insane times. The scale of the place was indeed daunting. Maybe it was giving them the heebie-jeebies, same as her, and they were just shaking it off in their own inimical style.
“Excuse me,” Gretchen said to one of the workers, shouting up at him in his big rig. He idled the engine for her, stared down at the party. “Where are the dead men walking?”
He pointed, “That a way. Here, use my Geiger counter.” He threw it down to her. Mort caught it. “When it starts spiking, that’s them. Ask ‘em if any of ‘em have a pretty wife they don’t mind giving to me once they’ve passed on, or their dicks stop working.”
“I’ll be sure to canvass each of them until I find just the right one for you. Blond? Brunette? Tall? Short?”
“Rich, pending her dead husband’s life insurance policy paying huge dividends. Not that you need to rub that part in their faces.”
Gretchen smiled. “It’s good to know such plotting and scheming isn’t confined to royalty, and we commoners still have plenty of the right stuff.”
He smiled back at her, and returned to his work.
Mort engaged the device and gulped, hearing it tick and seeing the needle move in response to the direction in which they’d been pointed. “So much for the fresh air.”
***
“We must be getting closer,” Gertrude said, suspiciously studying the dead men walking back and forth past one another in formation, each refusing to stray from the designated paths they were wearing into the ground. Not a one of them blinking or looking where they were going.
“No kidding,” Mort said, noticing the alarming clatter the Geiger counter was making, and the needle spiking into the red.
“The last time I saw choreography like that was at the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics,” Santini said.
“Let’s keep walking until that needle is all the way at the top,” Gretchen said.
“I stopped listening to advice like that when my girlfriend said, marry me,” Mort quipped. Gretchen grabbed the meter out of his trembling hand and blazed the trail for them.
“You’re the psychic!” Mort blared at Robin. “Now would be a good time to rescue us from this mad woman.”
“Makes sense if you wanted to avoid people dropping in on you that you’d find the place that Geiger counter topped off and called it home.” Robin didn’t hesitate to follow Gretchen.
“I’m quickly losing my taste for transcendental logic,” Mort mumbled, and pulled out his gun.
“What’s that for?” Santini asked.
“I think it takes a needle bouncing half that high to make a zombie. And my reflexes aren’t what they used to be.”
“Sensible,” Santini said.
A few minutes later the Geiger counter topped out, and tired from making such a racket, succumbed to its own noisemaking. “That’s just great,” Mort said. “Damn thing went and offed itself rather than face what’s ahead. What does that tell ya?”
Gretchen spied the hole in the floor, and the ladder attached to it, and promptly headed down.
“Down the rabbit hole, literally,” Mort grumbled. “I don’t remember that working out so well for Alice!” he shouted after her, then holstered his gun.
“Better let me go first,” Santini said. “Don’t want to take any chances you mistaking one of those Renaissance types for your worst nightmare.”
“Have at it. I’ll cover our rear. Give you guys time to die first, just in case. It’s only fitting the wittiest one of us survives to attend to the quotes on the gravestones.”
The party splashed down on the floor below a few minutes later. Mort whistled, taking in the sights. “Of course, I predicted it’d be Shangri-La down here. Just goes to show you, you psychics and sensitives and martyrs have nothing on me.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Santini said, surveying the situation for himself. “Maybe it’s done with mirrors, just one more way of keeping the men in black off them.”
They didn’t get a chance to contemplate matters much further before they were surrounded. “You’re from the American underground!” “How’s it going over there?” Hands were being pumped, shoulders patted. “Is it true you’re building a time machine?” “Oh, yeah, we surmised as much with what we know of the scientists who went missing.” “We haven’t gotten anywhere with ours.” “The talk is Hartman and the three stooges kicked off the Renaissance officially by driving the internet into full blown sentience.” “Mother, you twit. We call her Mother.” “Well, we’ve got an anti-gravity device.” “Not very stable, though.” “And some nano-assemblers that can build the Taj Mahal for you.” “Definitely not stable.” “Could also devour the planet and leave us floating in space.” “Should be one hell of a group hug, if that’s the case, to end things on a good note.”
Robin had to peel herself away from the throng. The last time the voices got disembodied around her, Go-Along Charlie had just blown his brains out right in front of her. She was feeling a bit light-headed as a result. “Is Robin going into one of her fugues?” “We hear it’s quite the performance?” “Saw some mimes in London’s theater district once who could do that catatonia thing for maybe ten minutes tops before one of them blinked. You really had to stop and stare though.”
“Let’s give her some air, boys,” Santini said.
“I could use the grand tour,” Mort mumbled.
“Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ll take you around. I’m Arnold, sort of the leader around here.”
“Hey, it’s an egalitarian age. We don’t believe in leaders!”
“Yes, well, I’m sort of the leader on account of I don’t have quite the prolific mind the others do, which leaves me a lot of time to walk folks like yourselves around,” Arnold said. The self-deprecating remark seemed well-suited to Arnold’s surviving the next couple minutes, considering the audience.
“We were wondering if it’s all done with mirrors,” Mort said, taking the lead alongside Arnold.
“Oh, dear no. This place is big enough already. Hard enough to keep from getting lost. It’s a complete city down here. Everything you could need. Cafés. Book stores. Night clubs. All sorts of pre-fab factories which can be programmed to spit out most anything on a dime.”
“Do you people sleep? Or would that be considered sacrilege?” Mort asked.
“Most of us just take power naps right at our stations, usually nodding off in the middle of what we’re doing. Some of the old timers sleep though. Not sure where they do that. Then again, I’m not the adventurous sort. A lot of this place I still haven’t seen myself, and I’ve been down here a couple of years.”
“Come time to ship stuff out, how do you get anything out of here?” Santini asked.
“Yes, we were wondering if you could supply some of our people in America,” Gretchen said.
“Well, that is the tricky part.” Arnold developed some facial tics just thinking about it, rubbing both sides of his oily nose with a bent index finger and then licking the finger. “We keep coming up with new ways, of course. But it doesn’t take long before the men in black get wise, and we have to find another method.” He grabbed a handful of his long hair and flagellated the back of his neck with it. “We’ve got a hole dug up to some farmer’s spread. We were climbing out at night and sticking it in the female cows’ uteruses. That was working pretty well for a while. I swear the cows were getting so they looked forward to it.”
“You’re joking,” Mort said, laughing.
>
“Wish I was. I got signed on to that project on account of my lack of prolificness with cranking out new inventions, already mentioned. Plus my long bony arms were seen as a definite plus. We tried sheep and goats for smaller packages.”
“If that muling strategy isn’t paying dividends any more, what are you going to turn to next?” Santini asked.
“Oh, we’re still using the animals. Just had to get a little more creative. We’ve branched out from that one farmer, using trucks hidden away near the contact point with the surface. Other than that, all sorts of things. Weather balloons. We have superconductive wire going out coiled up in hay bales. The drug lords lend us their submarines when they don’t have drugs to ship. Just good business for everybody. And well, if I told you all the methods, I’d have to kill you,” he said, laughing nervously.
Mort patted him on the back. “You’re all right, Arnold. I can tell we’re cut from the same cloth.”
“Oh, no, none of these ideas are mine. We have some non-scientists in support roles, like yourselves. Do all sorts of things for us. I’m afraid as steep as the IQ slope is around here, most of us can’t tie our own shoes without assistance.”
Gretchen handed him a slip of paper from her handbag. “Here are some folks we’d like you to supply over in America. They’ll need all sorts of things, many of which, I imagine, don’t exist yet.”
“Not a problem,” Arnold said, taking the slip from her and looking at it. “We get those kinds of requests all the time. In fact they’re our specialty. Mercifully the people who dig salt out of this place are constantly expanding the tunnels. No end to growth opportunity, if we can just stay ahead of the folks who want to fill it up just as rapidly with toxic waste.”
“About that,” Mort said. “Our Geiger counter croaked back there it was so spent gauging how irradiated we were getting.”
“False readings, of course,” Arnold said. “To keep anyone getting too close and asking too many questions.”
“Just like I was explaining to my nervous nelly compatriots here,” Mort said, shaking his hand so hard he was threatening to dislocate it. “Like I said, Arnold, my kind of people. Now, about my retirement accommodations.”
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 103
