THE CELTIC MIRROR
Copyright 2008 by Louis Phillippi, All Rights Reserved
This book is entirely a work of fiction. Similarities to any persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental and must be read as such.
Other than incidental quotation in reviews or promotional materials, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.
Cover design by Louis Phillippi
1st Edition, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61584-708-290000
THE CELTIC MIRROR
DEDICATION
For my wife, Nancy, who supported me throughout the length of this project and who, most importantly, put up with me all that time.
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
Those readers who are familiar with the ancient Celtic pantheon will quickly discover that I have taken quite a few creative liberties with those deities and their attributes. This work was uploaded directly to Kindle as a Microsoft Word document. In order to avoid formatting problems, the manuscript was left with a ragged right margin which I hope will not interfere with the reader’s enjoyment. Any errors in formatting, grammar or spelling are entirely mine.
Forgive me and enjoy the tale.
THE CELTIC MIRROR
By
Louis Phillippi
PROLOG
0830 Pacific Daylight Time, PacSail Headquarters
The click of O’Hara’s heels on the parquet floor made Wiscombe’s heart lurch violently as if trying to escape both his body and the dismal room. With shaking fingers, he thrust the pistol into a right-hand drawer and covered it with a handful of reports he was never going to read. He commanded so little control of his fingers that he knocked a holo’ onto the floor where the glass shattered then he fought a desperate battle with a desk drawer that had never before jammed. With a groan that echoed the one threatening to escape his own lips, the offending drawer shuddered home at last, and he slumped, drenched in oily perspiration, back into his chair. On the floor, glass shards reflected the dim light, staring up at him like dead men’s eyes.
Suddenly the room brightened with a false hope.
Jessi O’Hara entered the office on tiptoe and eased the heavy doors shut behind her, defeating the light. Wiscombe took a perverse satisfaction that she made no attempt to open the thick drapes that shrouded the windows. She looked about the room quickly then started, visibly shaken by the sight of the broken remains of the holograph that had once depicted heaven but which had drawn, instead, hell to that room.
The gloom that lapped at each corner of the office was a perfect partner to Wiscombe’s present state of mind. The darkness there was nearly complete and would be complete soon. Still, Wiscombe silently pleaded with O’Hara to bring him light again, to allow him to keep that right-hand desk drawer closed a little longer. He said nothing.
“A message from Lieutenant Hazlett, sir,” she whispered, averting her face, aware that the flimsy message form spelled out further disaster for PacSail’s beleaguered president. The Coast Guard communiqués of the past few days had brought no joy to the drained man who had recently made the cover of Time and had been the envy of his competitors only weeks earlier.
Wiscombe’s hands shook again as he unfolded the note and spread it flat on the polished surface of his desk. He was forced to turn on the brass banker’s lamp on his desk in order to read. The resulting glare stabbed at his eyes, yet they remained as lifeless as broken dreams, in the lamplight.
If he noticed O’Hara’s hissed intake of breath at the sight of the now illuminated John Wiscombe, he made no sign.
“Search operations canceled as of 0600 hours, this date,” he read. His voice cracked as he continued. “No sign of Morgan or Le Fay. Wreckage recovered along Morgan’s reported course follows the pattern established by the other 4D losses. Sorry John.”
It was signed, “Hazlett.”
Wiscombe crumpled the note into a loose ball and let it fall unheeded to the floor. He fell back into the chair, his defeat total, staring at nothing, yet slowly becoming aware that O’Hara remained in the room.
“You read this?” His voice was a hollow monotone, devoid of expression and intonation.
“Yes, Mr. Wiscombe,” she confessed, cheeks reddening. “I only wanted to see if they found Kerry, or....” Her words trailed off, eaten by the darkness that threatened to swallow her as well.
“Damn it!” The boat builder rasped; his fingers curled into white claws as they gripped the arms of his chair.
“I hope to God nobody at PacSail thinks I take any pleasure in knowing that I’m responsible for the deaths of the best small boat sailors in this country!” Droplets of spittle flecked his lips and sprayed her face. His right eyelid twitched uncontrollably as if winking at a monstrous lie.
She was frightened by the display of rage, but she stood firm, facing the crushed and angry man hunched behind the desk.
“I’m sorry, Jessi,” He said gently, his voice regaining a thin residue of the fabled Wiscombe charm. “Morgan was a friend—almost a son—not just another employee. His disappearance is a hundred times harder for me to accept than any of the others’.” He looked up after carefully composing his face, sincerity unfeigned, his now placid expression only a carefully constructed mask.
“You can leave now,” he said in a reassuring tone. “I’ll be fine. But hold my calls and tell Irene that I’m not to be disturbed until I give her the OK. I need to be alone with this a little longer.”
“If you’re sure, Boss,” the young woman said maternally, despite the thirty years that separated them.
“I’m sure. Leave now.” Please stay! he cried inside.
O’Hara left Wiscombe’s depressing office with a shudder and closed the oak doors firmly behind her. The sound of her heels softened and diminished like the wake of a departing rescue ship.
Wiscombe paused until he was quite certain that she had obeyed instructions and then struggled to his feet, knocking the desk lamp askew as he stood up.
Even a suit fashioned by the best of London’s Seville Row tailors looks like a derelict’s delight when it has been slept in.
At fifty-four, PacSail Limited’s president appeared and felt like a Skid Row resident: unshaven, red-eyed, and sour-mouthed. Although it was only nine o’clock on a rare, crystal morning, the once-acclaimed genius of America’s sailing renaissance opened a paneled cabinet and extracted a captain’s decanter, pouring three fingers of Wild Turkey into a diamond-cut highball glass.
He tossed half of the contents down his throat in a single swallow as if the glass contained the secret to his salvation. He almost retched a moment later when the liquor exploded in his otherwise empty stomach. Standing in the middle of his heavily carpeted sanctum, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking at each dim object as if for the first time—or the last.
The century-old telescope, which rested on a hand carved stand in front of the west window, had been a gift from his father, now fifteen years in his grave. Until a few weeks earlier, Wiscombe had taken delight at this window station, watching for incoming PacSail boats during the cutthroat races held periodically in Channel waters. Only a few weeks ago, a Wiscombe-built hull had meant something.
In more recent days, he had trained the antique on the Mare Tranquillitatis and watched the ugly little cancer that marked the growing Asian Nations Cooperative lunar industrial research station. He wondered when the results of that lunar “research” would be launched at the already moribund American industrial base. Thank God he would not have to witness that day!
A folded Harbor Messenger from the
night before lay on the floor near the telescope stand. He prodded the paper with a toe, turning it so he could read the banner headline for the third time.
Another Wiscombe Boat And Designer Lost Off California Coast!
Wiscombe did not have to read Erik Galloway’s hysterical rhetoric; he knew the story better than any Messenger scribbler. Each word was etched upon his soul in acid.
His eyes watered as he swallowed the last of the whiskey and dropped the empty glass on the floor next to the shattered holo’—the one of Morgan’s fate-ridden boat. The publicity boys had taken it on her shakedown sail. Le Fay, complete in every detail, had been captured like an exotic bird, to be picked up, studied and admired, sailing on a sparkling sea. Now the real Le Fay was lost forever, the latest in a line of PacSail mistakes to disappear from the surface of the ocean.
When Morgan had come to PacSail, he was a battle-shattered wreck, a man who had seen things no man should have ever seen and had done things no man should have ever been required to do. The projects he had been given to do at PacSail seemed to be healing him at last and he had begun to smile a little more easily even at Wiscombe’s bad jokes.
He laughed bitterly. He had taken Morgan into his company and into his life and thought he could be credited for bringing him back into the normal world. Instead, Wiscombe the “savior” had become Morgan’s unwitting executioner. By assigning him to work with that bastard, Ian Connach and his 24D Project, he had set the awful wheel of fate into motion. By believing in the 24D Project, he had linked his own fate with Morgan’s.
Wiscombe looked slowly around the room once again, and then stopped, his eyes captured by the ball that had been Hazlett’s report, spotlighted by the off-center desk lamp. He swallowed hard against rising bile, then opened the top right-hand desk drawer for the last time and picked up the automatic that rested inside. The perspiration on his palms made the satin-smooth wood of the grip sticky, and he meticulously dried off the offending moisture with a handkerchief before raising the weapon to his head.
The steel was cold against his teeth and the taste of gun oil triggered a gag reflex that he fought down only with effort. As tears ran unbidden down the canyons of his ravaged face, he wondered if he would meet Morgan in hell.
The 1911 Colt had been meticulously maintained, and did not misfire.
CHAPTER ONE
Morgan awoke in hell. The bloody dream that had propelled him into wakefulness was gone but the remembered terror hugged him like the perspiration that slicked his skin and matted his hair. The close atmosphere was oppressive, the darkness, absolute. An unseen drop of water formed on the overhead, swelled, and splashed onto his forehead, making him lunge into a sitting position, gasping for breath, the sodden cushions oozed moisture as he swung his legs over the edge of the bunk. Blood-warm water swirled around his feet, clutching at his ankles, making soft, sucking sounds.
He groped along the bulkhead fittings, fingers jerking like the legs of blind spiders. They pounced on the first toggle they captured. A click answered his desperate movement then a comforting glow filled the compartment, pushing back the last tendrils of the dream, giving him a temporary feeling of security.
“Well, this must be my lucky day! Wiscombe and Connach decided not to pull all the plugs out of this tub, after all. Leave the man some hope, folks!” He laughed, a humorless croak that was meant for him alone. While the cabin lights gave him some measure of comfort, the world that waited outside the dogged-down hatch cover held him in a state that neared paralysis.
He watched the water that covered the sole as it sloshed with the gentle rise and fall of the hulk, eddying around the base of his quarter berth and the open bilge cover. He realized that the automatic function of the bilge pump had broken down, but the implications of that failure sent no warning signals to him.
The bilge cover still lay where it had fallen when Kendra screamed and he had jumped for the companionway and missed, falling hard against the gimbaled stove instead. Kendra was no longer aboard when he had regained consciousness; neither was Kettelmann. That awakening was the real beginning of Morgan’s nightmare.
A high swell rolled under the Le Fay, and his right deck shoe floated slowly by. One inch more and the battery would be submerged and would begin producing deadly chlorine gas instead of power.
“Shit!” The bilge pump failure immediately became a huge problem. Not now, Morgan! He touched the power panel again like a penitent touching a holy relic, praying for salvation, and manually activated the motor. The water level began to drop and his hopes began to rise.
“One more thing works around here, and I’ll throw a party. The guest list might be tough to fill, though.” He spoke to fill the emptiness that still unnerved him.
Reassured at his second small success, he grabbed an overhead rail and eased his six-foot frame to the ladder. He glanced at the telemetry monitors that Wiscombe had installed for the test. Most of them were still faithfully sending impulses no one would ever receive. The screen on the bulkhead-mounted GPS glowed but showed a blank display as it had last night. It was as if every positioning satellite it used had somehow disappeared. He knew now that the satellites had not disappeared. He and Le Fay had done the vanishing.
Only the Mirror monitor showed zero activity. There was nothing to register or transmit. The Mirror was doing nothing—the comforting azure curtain that separated, yet linked, two realities was very much absent.
He fingered the gold-anodized microlenses that studded the inside edges of the companionway. They were spinning no web. He stared unhappily at the grain of the teak splashboards on the deck side of the lenses, something he could never have seen from the cabin aspect of a working field.
“Ian! I told you the damned thing couldn’t work. No way in hell!”
Frustrated, he pounded both clenched fists along the line of the gleaming nodes, hoping to somehow beat the Mirror back into service, but the Celtic Mirror could just as well been carved from oak. It had never been intended that Morgan or any other 4D sailor should turn it off and on at will. The Mirror simply existed.
Trying hard to delude himself that everything was all right on deck, he put one foot on the ladder, slid the hatch cover back quickly and raised his face to the morning sun.
“Jesus!” It was as much prayer as oath.
There was nothing but forever moving seas around him. No smudge of land marred the horizon. Anacapa Island, yesterday’s destination which had been in sight when he had ducked below to close the head’s seacock, something Kendra always forgot to do, something that had almost sunk more than one boat in the marina, was not visible. West Harbor Marina was not astern. He had not expected to see them anyway. They were as lost to him as Kendra and Kettelmann. What happens to people unlucky enough to be caught on the outside when one of Connach’s wonder machines decides to crap out? Or did it really crap out? I’m still trying to find out what happens to someone on the inside. He spat into the water to punctuate his thoughts. No good! It’s just no damned good!
Forward of the bow, the line attached to the cleat he had jury-rigged during the night sagged, grew taught, then sagged once more. The sea anchor held. Satisfied, he slowly turned through all points of the compass. There was only the eternal rolling of the sea—and the alien sun. Huge, it swam in a white sky so saturated with moisture that he could almost discern individual droplets suspended before him. He blinked his irritated eyes against the acid bite of the perspiration that poured from his scalp in a stream, evoking unpleasant memories of the southern Philippine islands and other places he had been sent where no civilized man should have gone. It felt exactly like the rain forest as it had been for him when he was young and still believed in his own invulnerability. Yet now there was no clawing, choking forest around him, no booby-trapped trails, no bivouacs under sudden attack, no screaming wounded. There was only the skin-rotting humidity and the enormous star hanging above him.
He fingered the hidden shrapnel scar that lay beneath the hai
r at his right temple. It throbbed incessantly whenever he was under great stress. It had awakened that day as soon as he did and had not left him. He fought to ignore the familiar pain and the ancient fear that even now threatened to overwhelm the present and decided it was time for him to quit being a victim on a helpless wreck and start being the skipper of a living boat again. He would work on the bilge pump switch first, since the first rule of sailing was to keep the water out and the people in.
It took him less than five minutes to locate the break in the pump wiring and to repair it. He replaced the bilge cover and stood to reach for a pad of paper in the navigation station to begin inventorying Le Fay’s needs and remaining resources, when he was knocked off his feet.
Crash! The boat shuddered from a massive blow to the hull just below the waterline.
“Good God! She’s gone aground!” Morgan rolled to his hands and knees, searching for the entry wound that could spell Le Fay’s doom.
Crash! A second smash at the same location, just aft of amidships! He lunged for the ladder and froze in mid-stride when he saw the water that surrounded Le Fay.
Morgan blanched beneath his tanned hide. There was no hull-ripping reef or coral head. He was under attack!
CHAPTER TWO
A pod of orcas circled the boat like Hollywood Indians attacking a settler’s covered wagon in an early Western movie. Periodically, one of the creatures moved outside of the circle, turned and gathered speed then bludgeoned the sloop’s hull. Each blow was directed at a single location. It was as if the attackers understood that even the near plate-steel strength of the advanced PacSail fiberglass and alloy ribbing would weaken and break eventually under a relentless beating. In the center of the wheeling cetaceans orbited a gigantic beast that Morgan instinctively knew was orchestrating the operation. It was the largest killer whale Morgan had ever seen, and it raised half of its upper body gracefully, effortlessly out of the water, clicking and whistling to its army in a bird-like twitter that was most unsuited to an act of deliberate murder. When it sensed Morgan’s presence on deck, it rotated majestically toward the man.
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