“But the stream water’s pure,” Warren reminded him.
“Not anymore,” Wattenbarger responded. “I was down there today adjusting the hydroelectric generator. The water’s turned sulfur.”
“How?” Warren asked.
“I don’t know; it just has, and it’s getting worse. Even Marbles won’t drink it anymore, and he eats stuff that’s been dead for a week.”
38
Luci lay in her tiny space far below the streets of Seattle, shivering, curled up in a tiny ball, even though the temperature had climbed to near unbearable levels, even in the deep part of the sewer where she had made her home. A deep fever wracked her little frame. She lay on her wretched blanket and clutched her precious, damp Flower to her naked chest. Because of the oppressive, nearly unbearable heat, she had removed all her clothing but her torn and stained panties; but still, her body was covered with sweat. And yet, Luci shivered on and on.
She had managed to conserve much of her food, still surrounding her in its boxes and cans. But she was unable to eat it, convulsed by continuous nausea and endless diarrhea; consumed by a constant, never ending thirst. All the days and weeks before had passed by in endless near darkness and aloneness, but she had stayed out of sight, surviving on her stash of food from Mr. Lee’s and drinking water from a perpetually leaking water pipe near her hiding place. Only one day the pipe no longer leaked and she had to find her water elsewhere. Luci made her way up to the higher levels above and found a relatively constant trickle of water from somewhere high above. The water was cloudy and often had a foul taste, but for weeks it sustained her.
Then she became desperately ill.
As Luci lay on her pallet, she was not only sick but she was tired. It was the weariness that precedes death and all animals clearly come to understand its developing sensation. It is a kind of precognition that seeps up to the conscious mind from the deepest recesses of the physical form. It does not hurry, it is not frightening and it is gentle. It is the benevolent reminder to all creatures that they have their limit as it lurks, unhurriedly, close at hand.
But, as in all life forms, there is also that certain tension between life and death. One that argues with the other. One that outwits. One that flees. One that chases. One that calculates. One that ultimately wins.
Luci had no knowledge of the quantum storms. She had no concept of nuclear wars. She had no ability to taste nuclear wastes from bomb contamination in her drinking water. The idea of physiological responses and mediation was well beyond her aptitude. Yet, she was able to make a simple decision that triggered an unusual, even supernatural response.
As she lay there, Luci simply decided not to give in and not to give up. She decided not to sleep the long sleep. She decided in her mind that she would give life one more day - just one more - and see what happened. Luci clung to the little girl hope that one day the face of her father or her mother would appear around the hole in her sewer hideaway and beckon her home at last. And it was that single thread of little girl hope that made her decide – just one more day.
As Luci determined that she wanted to live, she forced herself to sit upright. The dim beam of her flashlight barely illuminated her thin, grimy and emaciated form as she arose and forced her small eyes open. Luci knew that she had to find water, no matter what. The thirst that enticed her to sleep as she lay prostrate now drove her mad as she sat in the upright position. As she remembered the cool, fresh water from her leaky pipe, she began to cry gently, quietly, for her energy to cry was just as limited as her energy to sit upright. But she soon ran out of that emotional force and sat motionless, staring with hollow eyes through tear stains on her dirty face into the darkness just beyond the hole in her wall. She was out of options, out of energy and out of ideas. One powerful, persuasive voice argued forcefully for her to lie down again, just one more time. That is the moment when the most extraordinary event of her life came to pass in the dark recesses of her sewer.
It was not an event that was visible or measured in circumstance or in time. But it was a supernatural event of extraordinary reasoning well beyond her years. It was a single, powerful, solitary thought that fixed itself in her mind from some unknown region in the hidden dimensions of space and time. It was not in words; it was not a vision, not a picture, not a symbol - but simply an isolated, distinct idea.
Go. Turn right; do not turn left. Go now.
It was an idea that would draw Luci forward at that very moment on resources she did not know she had, further into the darkness under the Seattle streets into dark, frightening regions of the sewer she had hitherto been afraid to explore. But as she followed this unseen reasoning - this wordless, pictureless logic originating from the measureless fabric of un-dimensional space - she found a source of pure water and, deeper down, a larger, cleaner, even more secure space to which she would eventually move all of her belongings and food.
In just two days, Luci was eating again and drinking her fill from the rusty elbow of a water pipe that never seemed to run dry of clean, fresh water. And in her new home she found a draft of cool air that seemed to flow up from a nameless vent. She also found hope to go on yet another day and another. For Luci knew that one day soon, her father’s face was going to appear; she just knew it, and then her problems would all be over.
39
Oh, God ; oh… oh… God,” Stevie Wonder half moaned, half prayed. “I’m on the eternal, freakin’ express elevator from hell,” he groaned.
“Shhh! I can’t hear the movie,” Travis T responded, moving his head so he could see the small movie screen around Wonder’s form as he lay prostrate across the Command Center ’s main console.
“Oh God, killlll me, pleasssseeee,” Wonder whimpered. His face lay flat down against the console to which he was clinging.
“What’s the matter with you?” Travis asked, and then said, “Look over here and tell me pal, what’s up with you?”
Wonder slowly turned his pasty face in his partner’s direction, as Travis leisurely and deliberately dipped a large, nine inch piece of beef jerky into an open jar of peanut butter and began to slowly lick it off with a carefully calculated devastation of Wonder’s delicately balanced, hair-trigger digestive system in mind.
“Oh my God!” Wonder said through a full blown, pre-vomitus gurgle and bolted for the nearest hatch.
As soon as the hatchway opened and Wonder sped away into the darkness, Legend entered, dressed all the way down, as was his style, in his ever-present Hawaiian shirt and denim cut-offs.
“What’s up with him?” he asked. “Is he still seasick after all these days?”
“I dunno,” Travis responded with a wicked grin, still licking the peanut butter off the beef stick. Travis had never been seasick a day in his life, so he delighted in endlessly torturing his constantly sick companion.
The Phoenix submergible platform was designed to ride the most violent seas on earth, and they had been in the middle of them for six days. At night, the Phoenix surfaced for air exchange and to monitor surface and satellite communications. On the surface, the platform rode the seas like a cork, ever bobbing in and out of monstrous swells as it passed from one crest to another. The feeling inside was exactly as Wonder had described – a permanent, never ending hellish express elevator that accelerated up and down in a demonically inspired cyclic motion, some 40 to 50 feet up and down each and every sequence. At sunrise, the platform submerged to ride the comparatively quiescent ocean with its upper platform positioned some 90 feet below the waves. With her thick steel deck, it offered them more than adequate protection against the solar radiation. The violent storm that raged around them was itself exclusively a product of the quantum storms.
The science of quantum storms was based entirely upon a curious scheme of careful modeling and sheer conjecture. Aaron Seven had just reached the limits of man’s capacity to understand the stellar quantum origins of the thermonuclear tempest. But to understand and model the complexities and vagaries of the effect
of the storms on the earth’s atmosphere was beyond the scope of mere man and his hopelessly inadequate computers. Understanding the atmosphere was an exercise in predicting expanding chaos, and the capacity to model was made more difficult as the minutes and hours separated the observer from the actual event. Models were also largely based and built upon empirical data, of which, in this event, there was none at all.
In the absence of any other evidence, the early, rough estimates of the effects of the storms on the atmosphere were predicted to result in a wash. It was agreed that the added ionizing, non-thermal radiation would result in a low grade heating of the upper atmosphere. But by the defining physical model, the storms would also result in a lack of sunspots and their associated faculae, which would produce a dramatic cooling effect. Thus, the reasoning, before the storms commenced, was that it would be a wash in which one would cancel out the other.
This did not happen.
The immediate, dramatic effect was an abrupt warming of the lower atmosphere, based on effects not clearly understood among the molecular interactions of the high energy particles on the atmospheric gasses and the normally occurring suspended particles near the surface. It was not a linear process; the heating began sharply then quickly leveled off. Had this leveling not occurred, the temperature of the earth would have exceeded levels even those in the shelters could have endured. But, the net effect was that most regions of the earth in the mid-latitudes experienced uncomfortable warming while the tropics became altogether unlivable.
The other dramatic effect of so much thermal energy being dumped into the atmosphere all at once was the planetary storms. They swept across the earth with a vengeance. Monstrous, long-lived hurricanes became routine in all latitudes and there was no longer any hurricane season to limit their term. Tornadoes dropped out of black skies with widths of several miles and destructive capacities that had never been observed before on earth. The Saffir-Simpson and Fujita scales were suddenly incapable of describing even the most modest of these horrifically destructive natural monsters.
And so it was that the North Pacific Ocean was being raked with a huge storm that had churned its waters for nearly a week. It was a significant factor in allowing the Phoenix and her crew to make good their escape from the Chinese navy. But life onboard the Phoenix was anything but agreeable.
PHOENIX MAIN DECK AND ORBITING LROV
Sam and Baker followed Legend into the Command Center . They each immediately took their seats and strapped themselves in. Every half hour or so, the platform took a violent roll one way or another, and those who were not securely fastened took a violent roll right along with it. All of them except Travis had undergone periods of discomfort, and after six days, they were all thoroughly worn out but now accustomed to the incessant pitching and rolling.
“Okay, Bro, so why the meeting?” Baker asked his brother.
“I didn’t call a meeting,” Legend replied with a curious look on his face. “I thought you called the meeting.”
“I didn’t call a meeting,” Baker responded.
They each sat for a full second looking at one another when the hatch began to slowly open.
“I called the meeting,” said a familiar voice. To their horror and total astonishment, into the space stepped Dr. Kim Lou Adams brandishing a semi-automatic .45 caliber hand gun.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Sam said, unlatching her seat belt and leaping across the console table in his direction. She landed on a console and crouched on its surface before him like a deadly poised tiger, her fingers touching it lightly in an almost ballet like pose, but ready for an imminent attack.
“One more move - one more centimeter - and you are a dead woman,” Adams responded coolly, pointing the gun in her direction. “Your leap from that distance cannot possibly match the reflexive speed of my finger. And if you are dead, if I am not mistaken, then Mr. Striker Legend has no hired gun remaining.”
Sam’s black, unwavering eyes bored into his as she remained silent, motionless and perfectly balanced where she was, faultlessly poised and carefully positioned just five feet from Adams, even in the violently pitching waves.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Legend repeated Sam’s observation, also eyeing Adams. Legend was obviously fully relaxed as he leaned back against his seat, lacing his fingers behind his shaggy blond hair.
“Yes, you killed me. Or should I say, she killed me. Or should I say she killed my double. You wasted an expensive asset of the Chinese Secret Service, my body double, sent to assist me onboard this vessel. We knew you were stupid enough to try something like this. But he was slow, clumsy and not properly trained, as I am. Now I demand that you immediately turn this vessel back over to the proper authorities for reintegration into the Chinese Armed Forces. During the past days while you carelessly let your guard down, I had sufficient time to install ultrasonic homing beacons on this vessel and they are at this very moment signaling the navy for a rendezvous. If I do not respond to their signals in a matter of a few hours, they will destroy you. Now comply immediately, or I am prepared to kill your crew one at a time, starting with her, until you act in accordance with the Chinese government’s demands.”
Legend laughed loudly, his head back, and continued to chuckle deeply. “You know, Dr. Adams, you Chicoms have watched way, way, too many James Bond movies. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in your overly simplistic plotting and planning. Furthermore, I’m really weary of riding this cork in high seas, getting little or no rest and I’m not particularly in a good mood right now. So now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe that I’m just gonna have you killed again so that I don’t have to listen to any more of this excessively dramatic Chink crap.”
To Sam, the command came though loud and clear. She caught Adams’ glance in the direction of Legend and that fraction of a second was all she needed. She used it to her deadly advantage. A mere handgun matched against a lifelong artist of the cult of ancient Chinese assassins to which Sam belonged was absolute laughable folly. Sam knew that. Legend knew that. But Dr. Adams had so squandered his heritage that he, unfortunately, did not.
Adams was correct about the timing of his finger’s reflex. A bullet was indeed fired in the space from his weapon, but in her carefully controlled, pre-planned, single motion, Sam deflected the gun so that the bullet harmlessly struck an empty cabinet. The first time, she killed the man she thought was Adams with a relatively humane cervical dislocation. But this time, she knew her boss would want the last word. As her body sailed in its deadly but flawlessly graceful trajectory across to Adams, her right hand reached into her black hair and withdrew a five inch hair pin. The moment her left hand deflected the handgun, her right hand slipped the pin all the way into Adam’s cerebellum then expertly twisted it with a delicate snap of her wrist, instantly paralyzing his autonomic functions.
Adams fell like a rag doll against the deck. His eyes were fully open and his conscious brain was completely awake, but his body was no longer responding to any commands. His speech, his arms, his legs and his breathing were no longer functioning. Sam reached down and pulled his head up by his hair so that his eyes could lock onto Legend’s, his mouth gaped open and drool streamed from his lips.
“Now, Dr. Adams, stay dead this time, will ya?” Legend said to him, leaning over his console top and looking down at Adams’ functionless body. He watched carefully as the Chinese agent’s lights faded to black.
At that moment, the hatch opened again. All eyes were trained immediately on the door. Sam dropped Adam’s head with a thud onto the deck and crouched into position for yet another leap.
Stevie Wonder stumbled groggily through the entry and stopped, looking at the body lying on the deck before him. Focusing his eyes on the corpse, he looked up and said with a sickening expression on his face, “I knew it. It was only a matter of time before this out of control elevator ride was gonna kill somebody.”
Sam lifted Adam’s head off the floor facing Wonder so he could see w
ho it was.
“Hey, he’s supposed to be dead and fish food, like last week!” Wonder responded.
“Well put, Stevie,” Legend responded. “So we must now ask ourselves, are there more Chinese secret agents hiding out somewhere on board?”
“Ya know, I think if I were gonna have all that plastic surgery and all, I’d wanna have something other than the Dr. Lurch look,” Travis observed, still chewing on his beef jerky. “Think about it. For all that effort and expense, you could look like anybody you wanted. And this goof, or at least one of these goofs, chose, on purpose, to look like that skinny little dwarf. Go figure the Chicoms...”
“Okay team, we need to begin a search,” Legend ordered. “We’re lookin’ for any more Dr. Adams and any strange lookin’ devices that may be signaling the Chinese Navy even as we speak. I want every inch of this platform searched and I don’t care how long it takes. Let’s get it done - now!”
“Wait a minute, Striker,” Baker said holding his hand up to stop his brother. “I thought you said last time that Dr. Adams was bluffing, that it was all typical Chicom crap.”
“I did,” Legend replied sincerely, looking down on the dead Adams under his feet. “But this Dr. Adams wasn’t bluffin’ and we’re runnin’ out of time. Now let’s get to work. I wanna find it - all of it - if its here, and certify this ship as squeaky clean before we submerge at sunrise.”
“How do you know these things?” Baker persisted.
“Instinct,” Legend and Sam responded simultaneously.
gh
At that same moment, 200 kilometers west of their location, the Jiang Zemin sailed in the open ocean in a perpetual circle of some 22 miles in diameter at 150 feet of depth, out of reach of the most uncomfortable of the storms’ swells above them. It was a standard submariner’s technique called station keeping. The boat had sailed in this endless circle for two days, attempting unsuccessfully to contact its base at Central Command Headquarters in Jhanjiang. The ship had lost contact with the three surface vessels at the outset of the storm. Because they were so heavily loaded with shielding, it was assumed by Captain Luan that they had floundered and sunk in the monstrous waves.
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 31
