There was too much she didn't understand, and she wasn't going to find answers just standing there. She had no idea which areas here were safe, in terms of radiation, but reasoned that if the cooling towers were in one direction, she should go the other. She stepped around the shattered, bloody remains of a middle-aged man who lay face down in the gravel beside the coffin, and started down the overgrown road, heading southward along the edge of the lake. It looked like there was a town in the distance.
It was then that she noticed the tiny island out in the pond, and the tiny gray building on the island, and the blinking red light on the building's door.
19.4
Stan shook his head as he walked down the hospital hallway. If this Dr. Pintick was a hybrid it was news to him, judging from his interaction just moments ago. Seemed like a regular guy to Stan. Sure did look human. He'd chatted away about Georgia weather and the hurricane and his gold investments while adjusting a piece of equipment. A regular guy. Which meant, of course, that the hybrids could be anywhere now. Hidden. Embedded. Spies. Whatever.
But Pintick was clearly what he said he was, judging from his dealings with the other hybrids, the ones who you could easily tell were hybrids from their strange features and odd manner. You could feel it, sometimes, when they were speaking mind to mind. And the looks they exchanged with each other: there was something definitely nonhuman about them. Pintick had arrived in the middle of the night and gone right to work getting his lab set up. It was only eight in the morning and he'd already begun his analysis of the contents of the vial. He seemed optimistic that he'd solve the puzzle quickly. Which meant that Stan had better follow up on yesterday's calls with the production and distribution facilities he'd decided to work with.
But first, a quick visit with Keeley, since he was here. He made his way to her room and popped his head in. She was awake, so he donned a mask and gloves and stepped into her room.
"'Bout time you got your ass back to work, isn't it?" he asked, grinning widely so she'd see he was joking behind his mask.
Keeley scoffed. "'Bout time you got your ass in here to visit me," she said, putting on a fake frown.
Stan stood beside her bed. "Sorry, old girl," he said. "Been a bit busy lately."
Keeley reach out and took Stan's hand. "Mary told me," she said. "You're stuck running the country while our Linda flits off on yet another crazy adventure."
"That's about the size of it," said Stan. "Though, technically, Speaker Simpson is the President now."
"You gonna tell him the truth?" asked Keeley.
"Linda thinks he'll do a better job if he doesn't know," said Stan.
Keeley nodded. "She's probably right."
"So how you feeling?"
Keeley rubbed her eyes. "Pretty good. Weak. Fuzzy headed sometimes. My joints ache. But mostly pretty good. My memory of being sick was that it was a glorious, euphoric experience. Not that I'd want to repeat it."
"I'm glad to hear you're doing better," said Stan. "I know Mary's been really worried. We all were." Stan sat lightly on the edge of Keeley's bed. "So, this serum from that vial Linda brought back from Squirrel Island: it seems to have done the trick."
Keeley nodded. "Seems to have, Stan. One little shot and I turned right around."
Stan motioned toward the door with his head. "They're analyzing it right now. Figure out how it's made. So we can make more. Get it out to the people Stop this thing. Or get ready to."
"Seems you're of the opinion that we should use it," said Keeley.
"I've made no secret of that," Stan said. "Seems to me we have no choice in the matter. Not if we wish to remain who we are." He squeezed Keeley's hand. "How about you?"
Keeley sighed, shook her head. "I'm not sure we can keep it under wraps at this point," she said. "Too many people know about it. News'll get out. It always does. And that'll force the issue." She reached up to run her fingers lightly over her cheeks, as if to reassure herself that the rash was still gone. "I sure wouldn't want Linda's job."
Stan sighed. "Yeah. And I'm not sure she's even capable of thinking clearly about it right now, you know? What with her son missing. And her wild notion that she can go confront that Fisherman bozo."
"You think she's losing it?" asked Keeley, raising an eyebrow.
Stan shrugged his uncertainty. "Not that, really," he said. "I just know how much feelings of revenge can skew your thinking, you know?" He watched Keeley closely, searching for clues as to how she was hearing his words. "So I'm not sure she's clear enough to make this choice on her own."
Keeley nodded, looking away to think for a moment. "Yeah," she said at last. She turned to Stan. "I wish she'd just come back so we could get this sorted out."
"Me too," said Stan.
"Maybe we don't want to remain who we are," said Keeley.
19.5
The drive would have been strange in any event. Radiation signs everywhere. Old murals, peeling and flaking. Buildings in ruin. Trees and plants where they should not be. Fields and yards and side streets flooded. Cave-ins and burn-outs and rusted vehicles. All of it bursting with life, despite the radiation, despite the heat. Flowers and forests and marshes were pushing their way through the Zone, covering up the mistakes of the past. And everywhere there were animals: deer and bison and elk, eagles and hawks and waterfowl and songbirds galore. Wolves and foxes and wild boar.
The addition of hundreds of dead human bodies added little to the strangeness, at least for those who hadn't been here before. In a way, the bodies fit right in, adding the final zombie-apocalypse touch to this surreal, movie-like world. Those same bodies, transported to an earlier time, to a bustling city street or suburb, would have stood out like the horror they really were. Here, they looked more like set dressing.
Such were Linda's thoughts as they made their way out of Chernobyl and north to the nuclear plant. It was a four-mile drive, give or take, but it took them at least thirty minutes. Brenda had quickly proven her skills as a driver, winding her way along the body-strewn highway. Only twice did they have to get out and move some bodies, which meant scaring away the wolves and foxes and birds of prey which were already scavenging the corpses. Cole, Brenda, Marionette, and Doobie did most of the heavy lifting, though Linda pitched in when necessary. Muriel was too horrified to touch anything. Annabelle was too old to lift much. Raf wouldn't get out of the van.
At one point, back in the town of Chernobyl, right in the center of an intersection, they saw a pile of bodies in the form of a cone or pyramid. The effect was so spooky - it looked as though they'd been intentionally stacked there - that Brenda turned the corner and sped away as quickly as she could. There was nobody there to stack the bodies like that, as far as they knew. And there hadn't been time. So it had to have happened by chance. But still...
Soon enough, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant rose up before them through the trees. They drove out of the woods and into the more open flats that surrounded the plant. Ahead, to the northwest, were two cooling towers, one tall, the other short and seemingly only partially finished. To their right was the cooling reservoir, home of the famed "giant catfish." They made their way slowly up the road, scanning the area for something out of the ordinary. Linda, knowing of The Families' love for grand gestures, joked that they probably used the cooling tower as an entrance for wok flights. Cole guessed that there had to be ground-based entrances as well, for the delivery of equipment, foodstuffs, and the like. The question was, could they find one? The other question was, was there anybody still around? They'd assumed that all they'd have to do was show up and that The Families' security people would pick them up and bring them in. But maybe now they were on their own.
Brenda pulled her lead van to a stop. Just ahead, off to the right of the road, was what looked like a shiny, metallic capsule, almost like a coffin. It's top had been opened. Beside it was the mangled body of a middle-aged man in a nice suit. The travelers and drivers got out, to check out the coffin and stretch their legs and sur
vey the area.
"Is the radiation bad here, Raf?" asked Linda, ducking her head down to talk to their still-seated guide.
Raf looked around, then shook his head. "Not so bad," he said, trying to smile. "Okay but not for long time."
"Got it," said Linda. "Thanks." Not an immediate problem. She walked over to the body. The legs were smashed and crumpled. He hit feet first and flopped face forward to the ground. There was something strangely familiar about him. Linda pushed at his chest with her foot, turning him enough to see a part of her face. She gasped. Cole joined her and she pointed down at the body. "Guy Legrand," she said in a low voice only Cole could hear. It was Gabrielle's father. Cole inhaled sharply. Three years before, Legrand, whom they'd hoped would help them, had turned them over to Agent Rice, then sat there and watched and laughed as Rice had shot Cole in the chest.
"Good," he said. He stepped away to examine the coffin with Brenda.
Linda pushed the body back down to hide the face, then followed. "Any idea what we're looking at here, Brenda?"
Brenda shook her head. "No idea, Ma'am," she said.
They heard a voice, calling from a distance, and turned in the direction of the sound. Across the cooling reservoir was a small strip of land. An island. On the island was a tiny gray building with a blinking red light. Standing next to the building, jumping up and down and calling their names, was a very happy Gabrielle.
19.6
Alice sat with the girls on the sofas in the common room. Emily and Grace were eating their breakfast, which Isaac had prepared for them. Ness was in the kitchen now, talking to Isaac about the diet requirements and preferences of the Middle Children. "Really?" she kept saying, over and over. "Really?"
The girls had been unhappy to learn that their parents had been put in danger. Mary had spoken with Stan, who'd updated her regarding the travelers and their progress, how the planes had been blown up, how Gabrielle had been abducted. The girls were relieved to know that nobody'd been hurt in the blasts, and that they'd found another plane, but were unhappy for Gabrielle, even though neither of the girls had got to know her at all. Mostly they were afraid for their folks. The fact that spaceships could appear in the sky and blow things up did not set their minds at ease.
Alice felt pulled in two different directions. Ambivalent, the word was. Torn. On the one hand, she wished to help her friends. She could easily send a couple of woks piloted by Middle Children to watch over Mrs. Linda and her people. But on the other hand, her refusal to involve herself and the Middle Children in the affairs of their parents felt like true wisdom. She'd been worried that, during their latest battle, as humans had struggled to break through the Life's Interdict, one or both of those parents would lash out at the Middle Children. Nothing like that had happened, at least so far, so perhaps the fear had been groundless. But Alice found it difficult to tell. The Middle Children's request to share the Earth with the humans might have seemed a provocative move to the Life. But her alignment was not with the twisted humans whom the Life wished to contain. It was with the rest of them, those left behind.
"So will our Mom and Dad be safe now, do you think?" asked Grace of Alice.
Alice went inside herself and thought for a moment, then looked at Grace and Emily. She crafted a smile, knowing that that gesture would help put the girls at ease. "Preliminary reports from reconnaissance woks indicate that those who have wished harm to your parents have either left the planet or are now deceased," she said. "While those who have left might return, and while the full intentions of the Life are closed to me, and while all who live on this planet now face a higher than normal degree of risk, the odds that your parents will return unharmed are now judged to be high."
Grace exhaled deeply. Emily closed her eyes and nodded her head. "That's good," said Grace. She finished her piece of toast and took a bite of her eggs.
"Do you know where they are right now?" asked Emily.
Alice softened her focus and cast out across the network of hybrid minds. Though the humans had refused direct aid, the Middle Children had kept an eye on the situation from a distance. She took in the latest update, then blinked her eyes and looked at Emily. "They continue on to the place known as Urbem Orsus," she said.
Emily nodded. They'd been briefed on their parents’ plans by Mary just after they went into the nullspace apartment. "But the people that wanted to hurt them are no longer there?" she asked.
Alice cocked her head. "That is what our preliminary analysis tells us," she said.
19.7
A bit of shouting and gesturing convinced Linda's crew that they should go out to meet Gabrielle, rather than the other way around. It appeared that Gabrielle's island was connected to the mainland by a thin strip, and they understood the girl's big, circular arm waves to mean that they needed to go around the cooling pond to reach her. So they piled back into the vans and drove toward the towers.
They soon encountered a canal between themselves and the towers. It had both rail and vehicle bridges over it, but the bridge that the minivans might use looked like it might fall into the canal at any moment. They backed up a bit, parked the vans, and set out on foot across the rail bridge, moving slowly so as not to twist an ankle on the rails and ties.
"You're thinking that gray building with the emergency light on it is an entrance, right?" asked Annabelle, who seemed to be having little difficulty keeping up with the group.
"I am," said Linda as she led them over the bridge and along the railroad bed. The towers rose up on their left as they walked. Nuclear cooling towers had always given Linda a creepy feeling. But now, here in this site of a major nuclear disaster, where she might have expected to feel even more disquiet, the towers reminded her of her old farm, of rusted silos and dilapidated corn cribs. With the land reclaimed by trees and shrubs, with the warmth of the afternoon sun on their heads, with the silencing of civilization and the rising of birdsong, the place felt serene. The crazy energy that had pulsed and hummed here was long gone, or deeply entombed. Were it not for the knowledge of low levels of radiation surrounding them, Linda might have felt more at peace here than she'd felt in a long while.
The railway continued on across a second canal. Beyond that were roads and parking lots at the base of the unfinished tower on the left, and an overgrown gravel road to the right. They headed down the gravel road, grateful for the partial shade. Brenda, fluent in Ukrainian, found a sign that indicated that this was the way to the cooling pond, confirming what they already suspected. Brenda had to act as guide now, as Raf and Muriel had elected to stay with the vans.
"It's just the sort of thing they would do," said Linda, continuing to answer Annabelle's question. She turned and looked at the old woman behind her, and the rest of their crew behind Annabelle, then pushed on ahead. "Like how they and the aliens built their underground Lodges right under our noses in major cities across the planet. Or how they replaced me with a virtual twin and imprisoned me under my old vacation cabin. Or just building their City of Beginnings under one of the worst nuclear disasters of all time. These guys love grand, theatrical gestures, and situations fraught with irony and meaning. So of course they can't put their ground entrance along the side of the road or in a parking lot. They have to put it out at the end of a tiny spit of land surrounded by radioactive water. Or course they do!" Linda got animated as she spoke, her voice rising and her arms and hands waving about.
She stopped, turned to face Annabelle, and took a deep breath and smiled gently. "In a way, Annabelle," she said more evenly, "that's why I'm dragging you guys around the world instead of staying home and taking care of the things I should be taking care of. I know William, you see. The Fisherman. I know he's got one more grand gesture up his sleeve." She looked at Cole and Doobie and Marionette and Brenda, then back to Annabelle. "And I'm trying to match it with a grand gesture of my own." She turned and peered along the gravel roadway, noting the light area at the end. She turned back to her fellow travelers. "So, yeah," she said. "
We didn't stop them going. Maybe that was never a possibility. But there's still something here for me. For us. I can feel it. So, if you'll all just indulge me for a little while longer, I think we'll soon find out what it is."
"Just so long as it's not some trap set to snap down and chop our fool heads off," said Annabelle. She smiled at Linda. It may have been the first time.
Linda led them down the road. It curved to the left and brought them out into a clearing in which sat a cluster of two-story brick buildings, overgrown and in disrepair. On the side of one building was a sign that read "Polevaya Radioecology Center." The path continued on through the woods surrounding the buildings, then turned to the right. They passed a pair of rusted out fire trucks and an overturned rowboat and then found themselves on the shore of the cooling reservoir. The causeway was right before them.
They started out. The tiny island was just ahead now, roughly south and east. Their backs were to the cooling towers. The afternoon sun was low in the sky to their right, and the air was beginning to cool. The causeway was no more than fifteen feet wide, and less in some spots, and it looked to stretch for half a mile or more out to the island. It was covered with grasses and wildflowers and the occasional small shrub or sapling, all growing out of what was mostly rock and gravel, put there to create this strange peninsula. Linda stayed in the lead, with Cole now at her side. The rest followed in single file, with Brenda in the rear. On either side of them the reservoir stretched into the distance. The views were beautiful. The light breeze blowing across the water was refreshing and welcome.
As they walked they could see Gabrielle, waiting at the point where the causeway met the island. Soon they were close enough to see her wide grin.
19.8
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 71
