by Gregg Loomis
"Did you get the name of the corporation?"
"Manna, Limited."
Same as the boat itself. Lang stored that bit of information away. "And platinum metals?" "I have no answer yet."
Lang sank back into the softness of the first-class seat. Manna. As in, from heaven-god-given food for wandering Israelites. What could the people of Exodus have to do with a fossil-fuel substitute?
***
The Book of Jereb
Chapter Three
1. And the Israelites were at the base of the mountain forty days while Moses returned to speak with the one God. But they again murmured among themselves, saying, "We have naught to eat, for the cattle we brought out of Egypt have long been consumed, as has the wheat, and we shall surely starve without meat or bread."
2. And Joshua quieted their fears, saying, "Has the one God brought you out of Egypt to perish here?" And the Israelites mocked him, saying, "Does the voice of the one God speak in your ear?"
3. Upon the morning the ground and bushes where the golden calf had been burned were covered with manna*, whereupon Joshua said unto them, "This is the bread your God has given you to eat." And the Israelites likened the manna unto honey, it was so sweet, and they feasted upon it until Moses returned from the mountain.
4. And Moses bade them to gather up the manna of which they had a thousand bushels and carry the same with them. *The Egyptian word mfkzt is used. The first-century Roman historian Falvius Josephus, a converted Jew, says the Israelites awoke to find the mysterious substance and thought it had snowed, although how people, generations of whom had lived in Egypt without the benefit of film or television, would even know of the existence of snow is anyone's guess. The Hebrew word man-hu means, "What is this?" It is more likely the term was introduced when the first drafts of what we know as the Old Testament were written, perhaps in the sixth century B.C., during the so- called Babylonian captivity. The same query comes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which depicts the pharaoh being served "schea food" for enlightenment and asking, "What is this?" or, "Mfkzt." Manna, then, likely had its origins in Egypt.
TWENTY-TWO
Peachtree Center
227 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, Georgia
Two Days Later, 9:21 a.m.
Lang had written the day off as a total loss before he got out of bed. He would not be disappointed.
He planned to spend the morning returning phone calls and e-mails before wasting an afternoon giving what he hoped was an entertaining if not informative CLE lecture at the former Federal Reserve Building, now owned by the Georgia Bar Association.
All thoughts of the bar disappeared the minute Lang entered his office to see the former mayor sitting in the reception room.
An accusatory glance in Sara's direction only elicited an almost imperceptible shrug.
The mayor was mocha-skinned, heavy on the cream. A fringe of cropped white hair framed premature balding. He displayed a pencil-thin mustache, also gone white. As always, his suit looked as though it had never seen a wrinkle, and the crisp white shirtfront was evenly divided by a designer tie. The mayor's shoes memorialized at least one alligator.
Lang made a mental note to ask him to let Wal-Mart supplement his wardrobe before appearing before jurors, most of whom didn't make as much in a week as his tie cost.
The mayor stood, straightening out to the six-foot height he had used to advantage in towering over a jury box in the days when he had been a trial lawyer rather than a politician. He extended a hand before Lang could think of an excuse to get him out of the office. "Thanks for seeing me without an appointment."
Before Lang could reply, his client was in his office.
"I wanted to discuss trial strategy for a minute or two."
Lang suppressed a sigh of resignation. Lawyers in trouble with the law always wanted to handle things their way, frequently the way that had gotten them in trouble in the first place.
Lang shut the door, more to discourage Sara from offering coffee or anything else that might prolong the visit than for privacy.
"I think we need to make the jury understand that this whole witch-hunt is racially motivated," the mayor said.
Lang plopped down behind his desk. "Racism" had been the mayor's excuse for everything that had gone wrong during his administration, and that was a long list. Anyone, no matter his color, who had opposed him had been Ku Klux Klan or an Uncle Tom, including the majority-black city council, the governor, most of the legislature, and the chamber of commerce.
The spots had just about worn off that deck of race cards.
"An idea," Lang said in a neutral tone. "Problem is, three of the objects of the feds' corruption investigation are white. All three have already pled guilty to charges of bribing you."
The mayor leaned forward, demonstrating the megawatt smile that had looked so good on television. "But that's it, don't you see? White economic power structure, black mayor. Hell, this is no more'n an ol'-fashioned lynching."
Lang had heard it that before, too. Despite Lang's strong advice, the mayor insisted on giving impromptu news conferences whenever he was in the city.
"Yeah, well," Lang observed, "Atlanta has had one black mayor or another since 1975. None of them has even been charged with a traffic violation."
"One of 'em's dead," the mayor said defensively.
There was a rap on the door. Without waiting for a reply Sara stuck her head in. "Important call, Mr. Reilly."
Custer could have found her useful at Little Bighorn.
Lang picked up the one line that was blinking. "Excuse me."
The mayor was annoyed but had no choice.
"Reilly."
"Morse, Detective Morse."
This time Lang made no effort to stifle his sigh. The day was spiraling downhill faster than he had anticipated. At this rate he'd have notice of an IRS audit before lunch.
He started to ask if he could call the policeman back, but realized he would only be encouraging the mayor to stay on and said, "What's up, Detective?"
"We tested that white powder," Morse answered. "An' you ain't gonna believe what we found. Or, rather, what we didn't find."
Lang was beginning to wonder if there was a conspiracy afoot to waste his whole day. "And your tests are important to me because…?"
There was a pause.
"Guess I did'nt 'xactly start off right, Mr. Reilly. State crime lab tested that stuff an' came back with nothin' but craziness. Wonderin', your foundation's so generous to Georgia Tech an' all, maybe you could get 'em to look at this stuff."
Being asked a favor by the man who had arrested him for one killing he didn't commit and suspected him of another had a certain sweet irony. "You telling me the state lab people are incompetent?"
The mayor was impatiently crossing and uncrossing his legs.
"Not a'tall, Mr. Reilly. It's just that this ain't like anythin' they ever tested for before. They ain't got the equipment."
Lang's curiosity was piqued. "Exactly what did the tests they did do show?"
"Like I say, crazy. The stuff's weight keeps changin'. Hold on." There was the sound of rustling paper. "Iron, silica, and aluminum."
"So?"
The mayor was making a display of checking the diamond-encrusted face of his gold watch, apparently forgetting that he had time to spare that, quite possibly, would expand into years.
"So?" Morse repeated. "That's the part that don't make sense. Stuff wouldn't dissolve in acid."
The significance was lost on Lang, who realized that he didn't know enough chemistry to know what made sense and what didn't. "Tell you what: I'll call Tech, get the name of somebody who'll use their equipment."
"Sure 'preciate that, Mr. Reilly."
Lang put the phone down and looked up. The mayor had left.
The day showed signs of improvement.
As Lang entered the lecture hall at the Bar Association, the first person he saw was Alicia Warner.
"Hi," he s
aid, too surprised to come up with something more original.
"Hi, yourself," she replied.
"Thought the feds had their own CLE."
She treated him to a smile that could have served as an ad for toothpaste. "We do. If you'd checked the program, you'd have seen I'm on it, too."
He did, and she was.
" 'Mechanics of a Federal Prosecution?" Lang asked. "You're giving secrets away?"
She tossed shoulder-length red hair that Lang suspected was as real as the faint freckles makeup didn't cover. "No more than you are."
"I'd say the attendees are in for a pretty dull session."
Green eyes sparkled merrily. "And this is news?"
Lang was becoming increasingly aware that the seminar audience of thirty or so people was watching. He moved toward the podium. "I've been out of town the last few days or I would have called you."
She said nothing, watching in amusement.
"I, er, I figure I owe you a nice, quiet dinner after… after our lunch date."
Several attending lawyers made no effort to hide the fact that they were listening to the conversation.
Screw 'em.
Lang plunged ahead. "I'd love the pleasure this evening."
She cocked her head as though to view him from a different angle. "My Kevlar vest's at the laundry. How 'bout you just come by my house rather than we go out in public? I'll throw something together. Not only less expensive but safer."
Alicia nodded to where the program's moderator was watching, shifting his weight. She dug into a purse that could have served as a suitcase and handed him a business card. "Call me and I'll give you directions."
She turned and headed for the door.
Along with every male in the room, Lang watched her departure.
There was the clearing of a throat behind him. "Now that Lang Reilly has his social plans in place, perhaps we could entice him to speak."
Lang was not sure what a blush felt like, but suspected he was experiencing one.
TWENTY-THREE
School of Chemical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia
Two Days Later
Like students receiving remedial instruction, Lang and Detective Morse sat in folding chairs across the desk from Hilman Werbel, Ph. D., professor of advanced chemical engineering. The man's credentials were displayed in a series of gold-framed degrees that shared the white plaster walls with photographs of the professor embracing, shaking hands with, or simply smiling beside people Lang guessed were luminaries of the scientific world. A window air-conditioning unit provided more noise than cooling, and Lang was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm as well as annoyed with himself for letting the policeman convince him to come along.
"I can't explain it," Werbel said, eyes downcast as though the admission were one of guilt. "Frankly, until yesterday I'd never heard of anything with these properties."
Morse leaned forward. Lang had noticed that the policeman's street jargon and accent had not followed him onto campus. "Doctor, had anything beyond the most basic science courses been required for graduation, I'd still be in high school. Reckon you could reduce all this technical stuff to something I can understand'?"
He had echoed Lang's thoughts.
Werbel regarded both men over half-moon glasses while his hand went to a perfectly adjusted bow tie, a gesture that he had repeated so often as to seem unconscious of it. "I'll try. First, of course, we weighed a portion of the material, the powder, to the nearest thousandth of a gram, recording that weight on the outline of the experiment you have before you." He pointed to the papers in the other men's hands. "We began with emission spectroscopy, placing the material in a carbon electrode cup and using another to create an arc. The elements in the sample ionize, revealing the specific light frequencies of the elements involved…"
Lang held up a hand. "Doctor, neither Detective Morse nor I has the background to appreciate the various protocols of your experiments. Could you dumb it down a little, make it understandable to two nonscientists?"
The professor's pudgy face contracted into a quick frown, the sort of expression he might have used had been asked to actually teach undergraduate students. "But without explaining the process, the results, and my conclusions…"
Morse put his elbows on his knees. "The results and your conclusions, Doctor, are what Mr. Reilly and I came for." He smiled innocently. "We are far too chemically unsophisticated to understand your thorough scientific process."
The professor considered this a second and nodded. "I'll try to put all this in layman's terms. In the first few seconds, silica, iron, and aluminum were indicated, with traces of calcium, sodium, and titanium. Then, as the temperature increased, we saw what appeared to be… Well, without going into exotica such as iridium and rhodium, let's say the material seemed to be composed entirely of platinum group metals."
Lang's interest picked up at the words. Whatever they were, platinum group metals seemed to be a recurring theme.
"I thought you said it contained iron and aluminum," Morse interrupted.
Werbel sat back in his chair. "That's just it, Mr.-Detective Morse. The very composition seemed to change, and that isn't even the strange part."
As one, both the policeman and Lang crossed their arms expectantly.
"As the subject material heated in a separate test, it increased its weight by one hundred two percent. As it cooled, the mass reduced itself to fifty-six percent of its original weight. In other words, it levitated."
"Levitated?" Lang asked. "As in it rose into the air?"
"We couldn't see it actually rise," the professor said, "and there was no indication that it dissolved into the atmosphere of the chamber we used."
"But it had to go somewhere, didn't it?" Morse.
"One of physics' and chemistry's basic theorems is that matter is not created nor destroyed, so, yes, it had to go somewhere."
One of the few things Lang remembered from his brief and unpleasant exposure to the sciences. "Okay, so where did it go?"
The professor came forward in his swivel chair so suddenly, Lang thought he might be catapulted into a wall. "I'm no theoretical physicist, you understand," he said, as though apologizing for the oversight, "but my colleagues in that area speculate that the material must have gone into a different dimension."
Lang and Morse looked at each other, their expressions saying what manners prohibited: The professor was nuts!
Werbel saw the glances. "No, no, I'm not crazy-at least, no more so than anyone else who works here. Einstein as well as lesser-known physicists have long speculated that there are one or more parallel dimensions."
"Like in Star Trek?" Morse asked.
"We don't know-not yet, anyway. Stranger still, not only did the sample levitate, but so did its container. Further heating to over a thousand degrees Celsius transformed the subject powder into a clear, glasslike substance, which, when cool, returned to one hundred percent of its original weight."
The professor paused long enough to open a desk drawer and produce an envelope. He opened it carefully, emptying it on the desk's blotter.
Both Lang and Morse leaned forward to see what, at first glance, resembled a contact lens.
Werbel prodded it with the tip of a ballpoint, in his element of academic lecturing. Lang felt he should be taking notes. "You'll note it's flat. Unlike the glass it resembles, it is impervious to any number of acids, sulfuric, hydrochloric, et cetera. Also, you'll note the substance itself seems to magnify light." He took a pen-size flashlight from a pocket. "You'll see the size of the beam increases as it passes through and turns a richer color, yet we could ascertain no prism effect."
"What's the significance of that?" Lang asked, mesmerized by the light passing through the tiny glass disk. It had an inner iridescence he had never seen before.
The professor shook his head. "Like everything else about whatever this substance is, I don't have a clue. The only th
ing further I can tell you is that we reversed the testing process with another one of these bits of glass or whatever it is."
"And?"
The chemist produced another envelope and nudged its contents out with the same pen. A tiny mound of shiny yellow metal slid onto the blotter beside the glass. "Looks like gold," Morse commented. "It is," Werbel said, still perplexed. "Of the highest purity."
TWENTY-FOUR
The Varsity
North Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia
Twenty Minutes Later
The Varsity, just across I-85/75 from the Tech campus, had been an Atlanta institution for over seventy years. It boasted-truthfully, Lang guessed-the world's largest drive-in eatery, the world's best hot dogs, and the world's highest volume of Coca-Cola sales. It chose not to brag about its equally artery-clogging onion rings, milk shakes, and unique fried apple and peach pies. Its aroma reached for blocks and was a siren song luring the unwary onto the rocks of congestive heart failure.
Lang did not entirely dismiss the urban legend of a tunnel under the place leading directly to the nearest cardiovascular surgery center. Still, he hadn't been there for years. He rationalized that the cholesterol bomb he was consuming would do little harm as long as it was infrequent.
Besides, the earth had no better chili dog or Varsity Orange, a combination of Orange Crush and ice cream.
He and Morse had elected to leave their cars and were seated in one of several rooms featuring student lecture hall desks and a ceiling-mounted TV tuned to a local station. Lang had pulled his desk against a wall, where he could see anyone entering.
Morse's street dialect had returned like a sweater worn so often its owner never noticed it draped around his shoulders. He was heavily salting a grease-stained paper carton of french fries when he looked around to make sure no one was in hearing range. "Gold! No wonder somebody offed th' professor. Probably stole all but th' little bit we found. Least we got a motive."
Lang noted the plural first person and dismissed it as merely figurative. Unlikely that the cop was going to include him in an investigation if he could help it. He spread chopped onions more evenly along the brown carpet of chili surmounting his hot dog. "Wouldn't do a lot of good to steal the powder unless you had equipment that could raise it to… What did the man say, over a thousand degrees Celsius?"
