Artifact

by F. Paul Wilson

Chapter 41

  "Josh. " Ray Arno shook Keene's hand as he stepped off the private elevator into his penthouse. McKendry followed on Keene's heels. "Terr. I tell you, I could hardly believe it when I heard the message on my machine, saying that you'd both be here. Good to see you both alive. "

  "Good to be seen," McKendry said.

  Ray had to work to maintain his smile. Both men seemed to have aged a decade in the past year. McKendry, especially, must have shed another ten pounds since Ray had last seen him. Both men carried grim, haunted looks, as if they'd been through hell and had not quite made it all the way back.

  Ray offered drinks and showed them around the penthouse. When he'd given them the inside tour, he hit a switch that automatically drew all of the curtains, revealing picture windows which overlooked the panorama below.

  "Behold. My own private playground," he said, pointing out the various hotels along the strip. Naming the mountains. Taking what was almost an owner's pride in Red Rock Canyon and snowcapped Mount Charleston.

  The visitors took in all the grandeur without much reaction. Keene's usual ebullience was conspicuously absent. He had moved to a window and stood gazing out at the glittering panorama.

  "Is Van Alman coming?" he said finally.

  The tight voice and the use of the last name instead of "Frik" were not lost on Ray.

  "He's due any minute. "

  "Lots of good people are dead because of his little treasure hunt. "

  "And because of us," McKendry said. "We've been over all this, Josh - "

  "I know, I know, but I detest him and his goddamn device. If he'd letitbe. . . " He took a deep breath and turned from the window. "We got our piece, didn't we? Like good little errand boys we went and found it, and we're here to deliver it. But at what cost? If it had been up to me I'd have tossed it into the Cayman Trench and told Frik to go dive for it himself. "

  The Cayman Trench. . . hundreds of miles long, five miles deep. Ray shook his head. No one would ever have found it there.

  "Why didn't you?" he asked.

  "Because I needed to know that the past year wasn't for nothing. And because I promised someone that if this device could be put to good use, I'd see to it that it was. I also promised that if it was going to be used for wrong, I'd prevent it. By any means necessary. Otherwise this is the last place I want to be. "

  "I'm glad you came," Ray said softly, sensing Keene's pain. He'd never imagined the man could be this bitter. "We're dwindling in number. "

  McKendry shook his head. "Yeah, I keep trying to figure out what's happening. Arthur last year. Now Simon's gone. This goes on, there won't be anyone left. "

  "Fine with me," Keene said.

  Ray stared at him. "You're kidding, right?"

  "Not a bit. I picked up a new perspective on a lot of things in the past year. . . what's important, what's not. And you know what's last on the list? This idiotic club. How'd I ever get involved with such a bunch of arrested adolescents?" Keene made a disgusted sound. "What could I have been thinking?"

  "Let me remind you. You were thinking, Life's too short to play it safe," said a new voice.

  They all turned. Frikkie stood in the doorway, a shiny titanium briefcase dangling from his good hand.

  "Well, well," Keene muttered. "If it isn't Mr. Teen America himself. "

  Frik either didn't hear the remark or chose to ignore it. "And you were thinking you didn't want to miss what could be an historic moment. Truly adefining moment in history. For all we know,A. D. may come to mean 'anno device' instead of anno Domini. "

  Ray saw Keene set his jaw and knew what he was thinking: no one could mix grandiosity and arrogance like Fredrick Van Alman and, yes, sometimes you wanted to punch out his lights. But Keene only dropped into a chair and swiveled it toward the window; he went back to staring silently at the bedizened desert, effectively removing himself from the room.

  "What's with him?" Frik said.

  "Better you don't ask," McKendry replied. He fished in his pocket and pulled out a small object. "Here's our part of the deal," he told Ray.

  He held up the piece as if he were about to toss it across the room, apparently changed his mind, and lowered it. He stepped closer and pressed it into Ray's hand.

  Ray understood. People had shed their blood for this little piece of strangeness. No one should play catch with it. He stared a moment at the object in his palm before he closed his fingers around it. It was larger than Arthur's. Bluer. With the little figure-eight piece at one end.

  Like Arthur's, the strangely textured surface seemed to suck the warmth and moisture from his skin.

  "Where's Peta?" Frik asked, looking around.

  "On her way. " Ray jerked the thumb of his free hand over his shoulder. "Should be landing on the helipad any minute. "And won't you be surprised to see who's with her.

  "Good. Because we can't do anything without Arthur's piece. In the meantime. . . "

  He set his briefcase on the coffee table. Ray noticed for the first time that it was cuffed to his wrist.

  Frik unlocked the cuff and the catches. He lifted the lid to reveal a gray, foam-lined interior. Nestled among the egg-crate contours were three oddly shaped objects, similar to the piece in Ray's hand, yet distinct - distant relatives, but unquestionably members of the same family. A wire-frame stand lay in a rectangular cutout.

  "Voila!" Frik looked around. "Now, where's this lab you told me you set up to assemble our treasures?"

  "Right through that door back there," Ray said without thinking. He'd been toying with Arthur's piece on the workbench when the call announcing Keene and McKendry's arrival had come from downstairs. He'd been trying to run a current through it, but not only was it nonconductive, it absorbed whatever he shot into it without altering its own temperature even a fraction of a degree.

  Had he put it away?

  "We should wait for Peta," he said quickly.

  "We will," Frik said. He rose and carried the briefcase like a tray toward the rear of the penthouse's great room. "We have no choice. But why waste time once she arrives? We can assemble what we have now and be all set to go. When Peta gets here we'll simply have to plug in the final piece. "

  "I don't know, Frik," Ray said, trailing after him.

  "I do. I've waited all year for this moment, and I'm not going to put it off a nanosecond longer than absolutely necessary. "

  Ray glanced over his shoulder. McKendry was close behind, but Keene remained slouched in his seat by the window. How was he going to steer this little procession away from the lab - at least until he'd checked it out to make sure that Arthur's piece wasn't visible?

  He tried to scoot around Frik. "At least wait until I straighten up a little. "

  "Nonsense," Frik said, not even slowing. "We've known each other too long to worry about messy desks and overflowing wastebaskets. "

  He pulled the door open and stepped through, leaving just enough space for Ray to slip past him.

  Ray made it to the workbench first and suppressed a groan - You idiot! - when he spotted Arthur's piece lying out there dead center for all the world to see. Wouldn't be the end of the world if Frik spotted it, but he'd promised Arthur and Peta not to assemble the device until they arrived, and he wanted to keep his word.

  Pretending to clear a space for the briefcase, he swept a forearm across the scarred surface, effectively moving the piece to the side. Picking it up might be too obvious, so he brushed a sheaf of notes over it.

  He turned to see if Frik had spotted it and barely suppressed a sigh of relief. The Afrikaner had stopped inside the door and was gazing at the equipment racked on the walls.

  "What do you with all of this stuff?" he said. "Looks like an electronics store. "

  McKendry sniffed the air. "A temperature-controlled, electrostaticfiltered electronics store. " He glanced at Ray. "Laminar flow?"

  Ray nodded. "Just a hobby. Trying to build a bet
ter mousetrap. "

  "Forget mousetraps. Before the night is out you'llreally have something to tinker with," Frik said.

  He removed the wire-frame stand from the briefcase, followed by the three pieces, one by one. He handled them gently, as if they were fragile.

  Ray knew that if these were related to the piece Arthur had given him, they were anything but fragile. He didn't know why, but his mouth began to dry as he watched Frik settle the largest of the three pieces into the base of the platform. After he'd snapped another, slightly smaller piece into the first, he held out his hand for Keene and McKendry's.

  "Yours comes next. "

  Ray handed it over, reluctantly, but he had to marvel at how perfectly it fit into the other two.

  "Which one is Simon's?" McKendry said. He stood behind Frik, watching over his shoulder. His voice was soft, almost hoarse. "The one he died diving for?"

  "This one. " Frik lifted the final, unassembled piece. He rolled it between his thumb and fingers. "Poor Simon. I miss him. He gave his life for this. I propose we name the device after him. The Brousseau Device, so that we never forget him. "

  "As if we need that to remember him," Keene said from the other room.

  A grand gesture, Ray thought, but ultimately meaningless. What did Frik care who it was named after, as long as he controlled it?

  "What about Paul Trujold? And Arthur?" Ray asked.

  Frik glanced up, a sardonic smile twisting his lips. "Paul was my employee. I assume Arthur acquiredhis piece through the mail or via your friend Manny, and he died in a men's room. I think the device deserves a better pedigree than that. "

  He fit Simon's piece into the assembly, then jerked back his hand.

  "What happened?" Ray asked.

  "It. . . " Frik rubbed his fingers. "It felt like a shock, like a - "

  "Holy shit!" McKendry rasped.

  Ray didn't have to ask - he knew what the big man was talking about: the incomplete assembly was moving. It spun around so the gap where the last piece would fit faced the pile of papers Ray had just moved. Platform and all, it began sliding, inching its way across the workbench.

  "What do we do?" Ray said. He felt his gut coiling into a knot. Objects didn't move on their own, a force pushed or pulled them, energy was expended. . . unless it was magnetic and being drawn toward a metallic - Oh, hell! It was butting up against the papers covering Arthur's piece. Ray reached out to grab it, but Frik stopped him.

  "Wait!" He gripped Ray's wrist with his good hand. "Let's see where it's going. "

  Ray had a pretty good idea: it was moving toward the rest of itself.

  Sure enough, it kept moving, bulldozing the papers aside, until it straddled Arthur's piece.

  "Where didthat come from?" Frik frowned as he pointed. "That's. . . that's. . . "

  "Arthur's," Ray said. No use trying to deny it. By process of elimination, Frik certainly knew what it looked like.

  "It was supposed to be in New York!"

  "Supposedto be. But it's been here all along. "

  "So Peta lied about - "

  "No, she really thought it was there. By now she knows otherwise. "

  "I don't understand," McKendry said.

  "It's a long story," Ray muttered, thinking that it was one he didn't want to tell. Not yet. Not until Peta and Arthur arrived.

  He didn't have to worry about stalling. Frik was off and running. He picked up Arthur's piece and dragged the assembly and its frame back to the center of the workbench. "Right now it's show time. "

  "We should wait for Peta. "

  "What for? Peta is coming in empty-handed. As I said before, I've waited too long already. "

  He grabbed the pair of insulated gloves lying to his right and slipped a glove over his good hand. Before Ray could stop him, he had snapped the fifth and final piece into place.

  A flash of brilliant blue-white light lit the room, knocking Frik backward. He would have fallen if McKendry hadn't been standing there. Ray too was staggered by the brilliance. He blinked furiously, trying to focus through the floating afterimages, but he could make out only shadows. He heard footsteps pounding in from the great room.

  "What the hell was that?" Keene's voice.

  "Look who decided to join the party," McKendry quipped.

  "What are you jerks trying to do?" Keene said. "Wreck the thing?"

  Finally Ray could see again. He focused on the workbench and saw the device jittering around as if in an earthquake, only the floor was still. And one of the pieces - Simon's, no Peta's, he thought - was smoking. The fumes stung Ray's nostrils.

  "Something's wrong!" Frik yelled.

  "How about telling us something we don't know," Keene said.

  The smoking piece twisted and took off, hurtling across the room to shatter against the far wall.

  Frik and McKendry hurried over to check out the fragments. McKendry, who had been closest to them, got there first.

  "Nice work, Van Alman," Keene said, his tone verging on a snarl. "You must've put it together wrong. "

  "I couldn't have," Frik said. "The way they're shaped, there's only one way those pieces can interlock. I - "

  "Face it, man," Keene said, keeping up the pressure. "You blew it. Whatever you did triggered an eject button. "

  "More like are ject button," McKendry said, picking up a handful of fragments. "This piece was bogus, guys. The device spat it out. "

  "Peta!" Frik said, doing his best to ball his good fist within the heavy glove and pounding it on the table. "Damn her! She gave me a fake! When she gets here - "

  "Watch out!" Ray's gaze had been fixed on the device. "It's up to something!"

  They all watched as the device began to glow and a blue light enveloped it and its stand. The glow brightened and seemed to thicken - not a term Ray would normally apply to light, but the best he could come up with at the moment - and obscure the device within it.

  Suddenly a beam of bright blue shot out, thick as a man's wrist and laser focused. It barely missed Keene's head as it lanced toward a spot on the wall just to the left of the door. Keene stared at it a moment before stepping through into the great room. "Get in here, guys. You'vegot to see this. "

  Ray led the way but stopped dead in the doorway when he saw what Keene was talking about. McKendry plowed into his back, propelling him into the room.

  The beam of light had pierced the wall without damaging it - no hole, no burn marks. As far the beam was concerned, the wall didn't seem to exist. It traveled with undiminished brightness across the great room, through the outer wall, and into the night.

  "Look," McKendry said, pointing. "It's moving, almost as if it's tracking something. "

  At that moment Ray became aware of a pulsating thrum.

  "Do you hear that?" Frik said.

  Ray nodded. He knew the sound. "That," he said, "would be Peta's helicopter heading this way. "