Edge of Dawn

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “So you were his rescuer. Convenient.”

  Richard again let the sneer pass. “I didn’t know it would have that effect. I did it because Rhiana was a threat.” He didn’t add that he feared he had done it because Rhiana’s actions had led directly to a dear friend’s murder. Had it been vengeance or justice? Perhaps it had been a bit of both.

  Eddie led them down several flights of stairs to a basement apartment. Gold reacted to the layers of security from cameras, motion detectors, infrared, and guards with guns.

  “What? Is he dangerous now?” Gold asked.

  “No, this is to protect him,” Richard said. “I don’t know if the Old Ones could actually kill Kenntnis, but I never want him to fall into their hands again. While he was trapped, the world went crazy. I don’t want to risk that happening again.” He paused, not sure whether to go on with his deeper analysis of Kenntnis, but decided candor was the best policy. “I think he’s like an ur-creature, an avatar of rationality, if you will. When he’s not present, bad things happen.” They reached the door to Kenntnis’s quarters. “I know you all knew him as a man, but he is an alien. Somehow he can manipulate matter and build himself a physical form.”

  Cross jerked a thumb at his chest. “Like me. Only he’s got control over how he looks. Me, not so much. My form gets warped by all the good little Christians. Hell, you don’t think I’d willingly look like this, do you? The wimpy Jesus thing is a real drag.”

  Richard turned to the door’s control panel and underwent fingerprint and retinal scans. The big door swung open, and they entered the apartment. Richard had sent some of the furniture and objets d’art from Kenntnis’s penthouse atop the Lumina building here. He had hoped that the familiar items might help restore Kenntnis’s mind.

  The room smelled of sandalwood incense, and Bach played in the background. Kenntnis sat in a large armchair. The more you studied the man, the greater was the sense that his form encompassed all races and all types. His age was indeterminate. He could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty. He looked up as they entered the room, but there was no other reaction. In the past year plus, he had regained most of his bulk and was again six foot six and more than three hundred pounds. His skin was a rich ebony, which made the swirling silver and gold lights in his eye sockets all the more startling. It was the one place where he no longer matched the human norm.

  “When we come in,” Eddie said, “he doesn’t react at all. It’s only when you’re here,” he said to Richard.

  “I don’t think it’s me. I think it’s the sword. I think that’s what he senses.” Then Kenntnis promptly blew that theory out of the water by switching his focus from Richard to Mosi. The little girl met his gaze without any sign of discomfort.

  “No,” Cross said. “It’s paladins. Maybe it’s because you’re more akin to him than you are to other humans.”

  Richard found that conclusion faintly disturbing. He also hated talking about Kenntnis as if he weren’t present, so he walked over to him and took his hand. “Hello, sir. How are you? The officers have come to see you.”

  Kenzo moved forward. “Mr. Kenntnis, it’s Kenzo Fujasaki.” There was no reaction. Kenzo might have been invisible.

  Gold pushed forward. “Mr. Kenntnis, your instructions were to turn Lumina over to Richard if you failed to check in once every twenty-four hours. You’re back now, but you haven’t checked in, so does that directive still apply?” Nothing.

  They really do want me out bad, Richard thought, but he kept silent. From the corner of his eye he saw Mosi investigating the bookcases. She took down an illustrated copy of Peter Pan and began looking at the pictures.

  “Does he ever speak?” Dagmar asked.

  “No,” Eddie said.

  Kenzo snapped at Eddie, “What is wrong with him?”

  “Best guess, the time he spent in the spin glass damaged his cognitive abilities. Light degrades when it’s in the glass. He probably suffered dispersion,” Eddie said. “It would help if we could get him to turn back into the light-dust thingy. Maybe then we could figure out what part of him was his brain and figure out how it was damaged. We’re stumped because we don’t know whether to treat this as a medical problem or a physics problem.”

  “I can think of a simpler explanation,” Gold said.

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “He’s been drugged.”

  Richard stiffened, and his inchoate anger now focused. “If you’re accusing me of stealing this company, George, then fucking do it. Let’s have it out.”

  Pamela cast an agonized glance at Mosi, who had looked up from her book. “But maybe not right now … and not right here.” She turned on Gold and in an undertone hissed, “And frankly, how dare you accuse my brother? I’ve never seen anybody who wanted a job less!” Pamela’s face twisted into that sudden uh-oh look.

  Kenzo, quick as a shark, leaped in. “Then perhaps he should step aside.”

  All of Richard’s fantasies of walking away from the burden burned off in the possessive white-hot rage that swept through him. “Not a chance!”

  He strode over to Mosi. “Would you mind staying here and reading? Or maybe read aloud to Mr. Kenntnis? He’d probably like that.” She studied the big, silent figure for a long moment. “Are you afraid of him? You don’t have to be.”

  “His eyes are all funny.”

  “That’s because he’s an alien.”

  Pamela and Dagmar both reacted. Pamela’s mouth became an O of surprise, and Dagmar took a step toward him, but Richard was undeterred. He raised a hand to hold them back.

  “A good alien?” Mosi asked.

  “Yes, a very good alien. He came here to help humans.”

  “Like Superman.”

  Richard found it interesting that she thought first of Superman as an alien rather than a superhero. Was that because she felt like an alien in the white culture? Which was ironic—her people had been on the North American continent first. Or maybe it was being with him in a new life. He just hoped he could be as wise as Pa Kent.

  Richard nodded. “Yes, like that, but he didn’t have superpowers. He was just really smart.”

  Mosi twisted her mouth around for a few moments, then nodded.

  Richard turned to go and was surprised when she caught the hem of his jacket as he turned away. She motioned to him to come close. He leaned down and she put her lips to his ear. “Everybody’s really mad,” she whispered.

  “Yes, but it’s going to be all right,” he whispered back and touched her hair lightly.

  Chapter

  THIRTEEN

  THEY returned to ground level. “We need a conference room,” Richard said to Eddie.

  “Um, we’re all set up for the sword experiment.”

  “It can wait,” Kenzo said.

  “Mr. Oort. Mr. Oort!” A voice calling, loudly. Richard turned to see a tall Chinese man rushing toward them. Richard drew back reflexively and his hand slipped to the Browning. The years he’d spent as a cop made him wary of people getting too close too fast.

  Eddie hurried into speech, “Richard, this is Dr. Chen. He’s the guy we brought in on the sword project after the crystallography test didn’t give us much. We realized we needed to step up to Big Hammer Tech, and Chen man is the best for that.”

  “Ah, yes, Dr. Chen, welcome.” Richard held out his hand.

  “You have it? You have brought the object? We have theories and would love to start the next round of testing.”

  “Yes, that’s one of the reasons we’re here.”

  “Excellent. Excellent. Well, shall we begin?”

  Richard glanced at his officers. It was clear from Kenzo and Gold’s expressions that they wanted to have the fight. Richard was torn. His anger had faded, and now he had that aching, oily feeling in his gut that had always happened whenever his father had been about to lecture him. He decided on cowardice.

  He nodded to Dr. Chen. “Lead on.”

  “We will have this conversation,” Kenzo said
in an undertone.

  “Yes, but not right now.”

  They went down hallways into another wing of the building and into an elevator and descended several floors. “We have a small accelerator here,” Eddie explained. “It’s nothing compared to Fermilab, Berkeley, Oak Ridge, or Cern, but what we learn from this initial test will … might tell us what kinds of tests will give us the most bang once we get on one of the big machines so we’re not wasting time.” Eddie’s excitement had created a babble of word salad.

  “So this test today won’t tell us anything?” Richard asked.

  Chen stepped in. “Probably not, but it will indicate the direction we should go. We’ll then petition to run an experiment on one of the larger machines.”

  “So what are you planning to do?” Richard asked.

  They had entered a white-tiled control room. Wires snaked in all directions, some bound together with duct tape, and computer screens were festooned with sticky notes. The initial design might have suggested high-tech competence, but the scientists had turned it into controlled chaos. Richard’s earlier feeling of cocky confidence had faded. All he could think about was the upcoming confrontation with his officers.

  “First, I would very much like to see the object,” Dr. Chen said. “Its behavior has been described to me, but I find it rather fantastical. Perhaps a demonstration? That might affect the parameters of the experiment.” He sounded less like a Nobel Prize–winning physicist and more like an eager teenager. “And Eddie … Dr. Tanaka says you should inoculate me. I’m eager to experience that.”

  “It’s often painful,” Richard warned. “I don’t want you incapacitated right now. We’ll do it after the experiment.”

  Eddie jumped in. “You’ve said yourself it’s usually not as hard on us science types since we’re a bunch of Commie pinko atheists.”

  Dr. Chen flinched. Richard gave Eddie an exasperated look at the gauche reminder that Dr. Chen was from China. “What? Oh, shit, I was rude again, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes,” Richard said.

  “I didn’t mean because he was Chinese. I mean, some people think all of us scientists are like that.” Eddie paused and considered. “And I guess that’s sort of true. At least about the atheist part.”

  The three technicians in the room were laughing. Dr. Chen unbent and also chuckled. Richard pulled the hilt from its holster and drew the sword. The overtones from the sword blended rather unpleasantly with the room’s hum. Chen moved from one side of the blade to the other, peered closely at the space-black metal, jumped a bit when the silver lights washed through like a retreating galaxy. He reached out a cautious finger.

  Richard pulled the blade away. “Best let me do it, with someone close by to catch you.”

  Alarmed by the implication of what he’d heard, Chen stepped back. “Well, perhaps we should postpone the inoculation.”

  “So I ask again,” Richard said, “what is it that you’re planning to do?”

  From the corner of his eye, Richard noted that Kenzo and Gold were in a huddle on the far side of the sterile room. Pamela and Dagmar were talking. Richard caught Weber’s eye and cocked his head toward the two men. Weber nodded and drifted that way. Richard brought himself back to the scientific discussion.

  “I think the blade goes into a pocket universe when it’s sheathed. I’m thinking a neutron-scattering experiment that would have an H+ proton beam slam into a target to generate neutrons that would directly probe the nuclear structure of the sword,” Chen said.

  “Will all of this make it possible for you to do what I want?” Richard asked.

  “Which is…?” Dr. Chen asked.

  Richard sheathed the sword and lightly bounced the hilt on his palm. “Make more of these. Well, not exactly this. I’d really love a more up-to-date shape. I’m sure this worked out great for Charlemagne, but I’d like something more appropriate to our era. A gun. A Taser. Something.”

  “Well, let us see what it is and how it works.” Chen reached for the hilt.

  Richard pulled it back. “I don’t let it out of my hands. I’ll take it wherever it needs to go.”

  Eddie was suddenly frowning. He rubbed a hand on his head, causing the thick black hair to stand up like a rooster’s comb. “Oh, shit. What we really need to bombard is the blade.”

  “But there’s no blade unless I’m holding it,” Richard said. “Can I stay inside the accelerator?”

  “No, the beams are running in a vacuum, and there’s a shit load of radiation generated. The hilt’s going to need to cool down for at least twenty-four hours, and we’ll still check with a Geiger counter just to be sure.” Eddie chewed at his lower lip. “If there was just some way—” He sighed. “But I guess there isn’t.”

  “No,” Pamela said firmly. “There’s not.”

  “I don’t like this. Not having the sword available for a day,” Richard said. “Is there any other way?”

  “Not if you want more of these.”

  Chen and Eddie watched as Richard wrestled with the decision. He finally sighed and nodded. “Okay. Just be careful, all right?”

  “We’re always careful.” Eddie turned to Chen. “So let’s start by bombarding the hilt. It might agitate something, cause something to happen.”

  “That doesn’t sound careful,” Richard said as Weber, who had just walked up, added, “Is this the throw-shit-against-the-wall-and-see-if-any-of-it-sticks method?”

  “Well, we usually have a calculation that tells us how sticky the shit might be,” Eddie shot back.

  The decision having been made, one of the technicians led Richard through a set of big metal doors, down stairs and catwalks, until they reached an access panel. There was an adjustable pedestal inside. Richard set the hilt in the center. The gray curves, beautiful and enigmatic, echoed the curving metal walls of the accelerator. The hilt looked like a piece of abstract art on display in a gallery of the distant future. The tech closed the panel, and Richard hesitated, staring at that blank metal. He had literally not been parted from the blade for years. It felt like he was not only naked but also skinless. Finally, he followed the waiting tech.

  Back in the control room, a completely unintelligible conversation was taking place among the scientists and techs. Richard and his officers retreated to the back wall so they would be out of the way.

  Weber sidled up to Richard. “They clammed up when they noticed me. What I did manage to hear was all about cash flow worries and that you aren’t a businessman.”

  “Well, they’re not wrong if by that they mean that I don’t put money over people,” Richard whispered back.

  The techs and scientists were exchanging cryptic commands, buttons were pushed, commands were typed onto keyboards with a sound like robot chickens pecking. Richard had expected to hear something—a rising hum, the crackle of electricity, something—but it was just human voices and keyboards in the control room. The computer screens were filled with scrolling numbers and oscillating lines like a heart monitor for the universe.

  One screen showed the hilt in its lonely isolation far below them. “Why do you have cameras on it?” Dagmar asked.

  “Because it’s in vacuum, things can get really hot, and we don’t have a cooling line to bleed off the heat. We want to be able to monitor the target and make sure it hasn’t shifted, or isn’t getting degraded,” Chen explained.

  “Could this damage the sword?” Richard asked. Anxiety coiled in his chest. “Maybe we should hold off—”

  But things were happening. The screens with their lines of scrolling numbers and oscillating lines went wild. Richard’s gaze flew to the camera screen. The hilt was surrounded by color, strange purples, orange, and a burning white center. There was a blinding flash that had everyone yelling. And then it was gone.

  The colors.

  The flash of light.

  And the sword.

  * * *

  For several heartbeats, Richard’s mind seemed empty of any and all thoughts. Horror gripped him. I
t felt like the world should have gone silent over this catastrophe, but instead the scientists were yammering about how the beam had vanished with the sword.

  “Well, that ain’t good,” Cross said.

  Richard blinked as if that could bring back the sword. The pedestal remained empty. Then Richard frantically clawed at the holster at the small of his back though he knew the familiar weight of the hilt was not there, yet somehow hoping it would be. Empty. Like the pedestal. Like his heart. Guilt slammed down. Kenntnis had entrusted him with the sword. With Lumina. With the world. He had betrayed that trust. Richard met Kenzo’s gaze and saw the bitter pleasure in the man’s dark eyes. Resolve stiffened his spine and settled the sick pain in his gut. There was no time for guilt or despair. He had feared that this moment would come. What he had not anticipated was that the sword—or the loss of it—would be the precipitating event. But whatever the reason, it was time to act.

  “Well, it seems your role as paladin is at an end. So perhaps it is time to discuss your other role.”

  Richard ignored Kenzo and went over to Eddie, who was in a huddle with Dr. Chen and several other scientists. Richard pulled him out.

  Eddie was babbling. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. We’ll figure it out. We’ll get it back. I promise—”

  Richard cut off the agonized words. “Is there a room in this building, other than Kenntnis’s quarters, that locks from the outside?”

  Eddie blinked at the intensity of Richard’s whisper, then said, “Huh?”

  “Yes or no.” Richard’s urgency seemed to penetrate.

  “Uh … yes. But—”

  “Take us there. Now.”

  Richard turned back to his officers. Gold and Kenzo were again in a huddle. Dagmar looked devastated. Pamela just seemed stunned. “Let’s let the scientists work, figure out what happened. We’ll adjourn to another room,” he said.

  Richard gave Eddie a shove to get him moving. They all trooped out. Dagmar fell into step with him. “Richard, this is a disaster. What are—”