CHAPTER SIX
May 30, 1992
Dr. Duncan Reed arrived at SILO Labs and parked in the space with his name on the curb. He locked his GEO Storm and walked the twenty feet across the lot to the steps of the steel and glass surface building. He hummed contentedly to himself as he ascended the steps. Reaching the door, his hum became a line of song, "Daylight come and we wan' go home." The automatic doors opened for him, as did the security doors just beyond the foyer, and he walked directly into the main building. The elevator across the lobby opened for him without so much as a button pressed. He stepped in and was taken to the second floor of the building at which point the doors opened and he exited onto the highly polished tile floor of an equally shiny corridor. A few steps later, a tinted glass door slid open to allow him access to the reception area of his office. It was a tremendously well-lit office, though it would have been difficult for the untrained eye to pick out an actual light source in the room. That had been his idea. The original renovation plans had called for track-lighting, but Dr. Reed had seen to it that this was abandoned in favor of something more creative. Everyone had track-lighting these days. He strode across the thick gray carpet of the climate controlled room and arrived before a desk made of blue glass, behind which sat a middle-aged woman with a strawberry-blonde permanent. She was typing on a keyboard and squinting at the terminal's screen. She looked up and after removing her bi-focals, smiled at him. "Any messages yet, Susan?" "`Fraid so, Doc," she said. "Your priority e-mail flag popped up." "Priority flag?" She nodded. "Haven't seen one of those in a while. Who's it from? Mr. Brown?" "Well, I certainly wouldn't know anything about it? After all, it was priority, direct to you and not for my eyes." Dr. Reed frowned at her. "Susan..." he said testily. Susan suppressed a slight smile and blushed red. "Oh, all right. It's from upstairs. Check your box." "Thank you so much."
"Oh, and by the way, Susan, good morning." "Good morning to you too, Doc." He pulled his head back into his office for a moment and then poked it back out again. "Oh, and Susan..." "Coffee's already on the way, Doc." "Thanks. Remind me to write myself a note about giving you a raise." "Sent it e-mail yesterday."
After wading through over a dozen screens of back-mail he found the new message. The identity of its author surprised him, though only briefly. He switched his monitor back off and wheeled his chair over to the vid-phone, pressing the auto-dial for a number in the 206 area code. The screen lit up and after two rings a smiling, plump face appeared on it. "Good morning, Dr. Reed," said the face. "Hello, Mavis. Your back feeling better?" "Yes, Dr. Reed. Much better." She consulted something off screen. "Oh, I see that Dr. Stewart wants to see you today." "What sort of mood is she in?" "I'm not sure. It's so hard to tell these days. She is smoking again, I can tell you." "Ah, that's a good sign." "Sorry?" "Uh... Nothing. Never mind. Listen it's good talking to you Mavis. I'll have to get around to coming out there one of these days." "You do that, Dr. Reed. I'll transfer you right away. Hold please." She gave another cheery smile and the screen blinked, changing to a SILO Labs Promotional Advertisement. This was the kind of video that only the suits and people with vid-phones ever got to see. It showed images of scientists, wearing light blue lab coats, laboring over incomprehensibly complicated equipment and occasionally looking over their shoulders to smile at the camera. This cut to a shot of a man wearing a suit of green armor that had a scorpion-like tail attached to its posterior. The tail was firing lasers at a five foot concrete block. The lasers first carved perfect ellipses into the sides of the block, sending stray bits of concrete in all directions. Then, when the dust had sufficiently settled, the tail blasted it apart with three well-places laser shots down its front. An unseen audience could be heard to clap at this. Suits, thought Reed. Momentarily, the screen with the bowing armored man blinked off and when it came back on a woman in her mid-sixties was smoking a cigarette on it. "Hello, Duncan," she grunted. "Good to see you, even if it's only been a week." "Six days, Glennis. Surprised me to find you at the home office, though." "You know me, slave to the lecture circuit. I have my hands in very little actual work, these days." "So I keep hearing. You ought to be careful. Someone is liable to take your company from you and you won't notice until you find their feet on your desk six months later." "Oh, believe me, they try every once in a while. Damned stock-holders!" she laughed. Her laughter turned into a coughing spasm which lasted for some time. "Sounds more like those damned cigarettes to me," Reed said. She waved a scoffing hand at him from the screen. "Pure nostalgia. Been smoking them ever since I heard about our friend the Swashbuckler showing up on your doorstep the other day." "You heard about that, did you?" "I may not be in the office much, but I still keep six ears to the ground." "Why am I not surprised?" "So, is he planning on coming out of retirement again or was he just out for a few thrills?" "Purely for thrills. Actually, this was all for his new team's benefit. They were nervous about coming to us for help. What better way to reassure them?" She looked up with a seriousness in her eyes. "They, uh, don't know about us, do they?" "Good question," he said, pausing to consider. "I really can't be certain. You and I both know that Thad would never risk our identities, but his team has a lot on the ball. I wouldn't be surprised if they've figured me out by now." Dr. Stewart's laughing face beamed at him from the screen. "Oh, I just wish I could have been there to see the look on your face when he showed up with his swords and hat. He must have looked a sight in the old costume." "Yeah, though certainly not how I'd expected. He wasn't just some old man in a uniform. It was really... I don't know. Like you said, nostalgia. Almost made me dig up my old threads." "I can't wait to tell Emily and Peter. They still get out once in a while with the Angels" She laughed. "How's Nelson working out for you?" "Quite well, actually. She's dedicated. Been pulling some hours on this." "She was like that here, before I sent her to Ames. Workaholic." "I've tried to send her home twice now, but she refuses." "Tell her I said to get some sleep or I'll see to it her pay is docked." "I doubt it would do any good." There was a lull in the conversation during which Dr. Reed dropped his smile. "Listen. I didn't mention this to you last week, but I do want to keep this project quiet. I don't want the other branches getting wind. Especially Falstaff." "Oh, I've got Falstaff booked so full he won't have time to snoop! You're safe on that end. I assume you've talked to your people about it?" "The only ones who know anything are Nelson, McKendrick and Lennard, of course. Maybe some of their own people as well. Nelson shares my concern and you know how much McKendrick and Falstaff like each other." "I'll keep things tight from my end," said Dr. Stewart. "Listen, I have to go. Everyone's so damned fired up that I'm around the office they've scheduled meetings all afternoon just to show off." They shared one last smile. "It's good to see you again, Glennis." "Don't be a stranger." The screen went blank. Dr. Reed finished with some minor business at his desk and decided it was long past time he had his morning coffee. As he walked toward the door, his computer terminal pinged loudly at him. He sighed heavily and switched the monitor back on. The message was from Lennard, in security. As he read it, his eyes snapped open in shock for a moment and then resumed their normal stare. He typed a reply to the message, deleted the original and moved to the door, chuckling lightly to himself. "You sound as if you just got good news, Doc?" said Susan as he walked past her desk. "What? Oh, I suppose you could say so. I certainly found it interesting... Oh, drat, I've forgotten my badge again." He walked back through his open office door and retrieved his security badge from his coat. "Much better." He poured himself a
cup of coffee and headed out the door. "If anyone needs me, I'll
be on sub-seven."
Tubes ran from the four large, tanks hanging above the long metal counter, and occasionally dripped thick fluid into the 5thMatter below them. The drips, varying in color depending on the tank, would fall on the black substance and within a second or so, whiff out of existence as they were converted and absorbed with a hum. A young technician watched this, writing the results on a clip-board and confirming them with some nearby equipment. Dr. Sylvia Nelson sat at her desk a few feet away. She was watching a television monitor on a video cart beside her desk. On it screen was the image of Thud's head. "Fake fire-place logs," Thud's image was saying. "Definitely those fake logs. He buys them in bulk. He drinks a lot of instant tea too, but the fake logs are his favorite." Her own voice followed from the monitor's speaker. "What about a real wooden log? Could he have absorbed that?" The technician walked over to her. "Number four is still most positive, Dr. Nelson." Dr. Nelson paused the tape and took the clip-board from him. After reviewing it briefly, she shook her head and sighed. "Let's remove tanks one, two and three and load tank four up with a new batch of the same. Also, I want two other tanks brought in: one with a 100 percent charcoal solution and the other 75 percent charcoal and 25 percent..." she paused, as though still deciding, "...instant tea solution." "I'm sorry, doctor? Did you say `instant tea?'" "Yes. Have Perkins pick up twenty jars. We also need to look into local grocery distributors in case we need more in bulk." "Yes Doctor." Dr. Nelson tapped her pen against her front teeth in thought. After a moment she reached for the VCR. On the monitor, Thud's face remained frozen for a brief second before coming to life as she wound the tape back. "...ogs are his favorite," Thud's image repeated upon resuming play. Her own voice followed. "What about a real wooden log? Could he have absorbed that?" "It depends on if it's alive or not. He can eat paper and I guess he could eat a dead log, but if it was still part of a living tree he can't." "Did you ever see him try?" "He wouldn't." "Wouldn't or couldn't do it?" "He... He couldn't absorb living matter." Dr. Nelson stopped the tape and fast forwarded. When the VCR's counter reached the number written on her list she stopped and pressed play. Hopscotch's masked image appeared on the screen. "...and misses it completely. I would..." his image said before being cut off. Dr. Nelson rewound the tape until she was satisfied it was to the beginning of the section she wished to review. "...didn't know what their blasts would do to him and didn't want to find out. So he decided to glob the door to keep the robots from coming through. Now back then he couldn't hit anything with a glob, no matter how hard he tried. I don't know if he just kept mis-judging them or if they were just that hard to create and throw. But the door was right there in front of him, point blank range, so he figured there was no chance he could miss it. So he raises back with a glob and throws it at the door and misses it completely. I would have laughed except the robots burst through the door and started shooting at us. I think he even took a couple of hits. He was always taking hits—even with his force-field on." Dr. Nelson wrote force-shield on her clipboard and fast forwarded. "He used to get shot a lot. An awful lot," said Mobius from the monitor. "We had a pool running to see which of us took the most hits. It was a close race for a while." He paused momentarily. "I won last year." "Describe a typical fight," Reed's voice said from the speaker. "That's easy enough. We'd find a bunch of Chess agents—usually in a big open warehouse—and start fighting them. Juice would fly up fifteen or twenty feet above the ground so he could see the whole fight and have plenty of targets. But that just made him a target too and pretty soon everyone would start shooting at him. This didn't bother him so much, until we started fighting agents with bigger guns. Then it was just a matter of time before one of them got lucky and hit him. Juice would then fall fifteen feet and hit the floor. He always ate a lot after he woke up from one of those." "What about his force-shield? Didn't that protect him at all." "Well after we finally convinced him to use it all the time, his falls were kept to a minimum. It saved his ass more than once too. But for the longest time, he hated to use it. He could never fly very fast with it on and he didn't like that. So he'd just go flying into combat without it and, as usual, someone would shoot him and he'd fall again. We finally told him if he didn't keep it up, we'd start shooting him too." A bell sounded as the elevator arrived the adjoining lab. Dr. Nelson paused that video and looked up as Dr. Reed entered the room. "Good morning, Dr. Nelson. How are things going?" "Things are progressing." "That good?" "Actually, they're looking up now. We may be on our way to a breakthrough in feeding the substance. Or we could be on our way to decided failure. I'll know in a few hours." "Very well. What's its current status?" "We've been taking regular scans of it and from what I can tell it may be growing." "May? That's not very definite." "No, but neither is the substance. Every time I think we're getting somewhere, it starts to shrink again and we have to feed it twice as much just to keep it stable. And it definitely has dietary preferences." "You tried the fireplace logs yet?" "Not exactly. It has responded best so far to a charcoal and wood-pulp solution, which is as close to the logs as we've come." "And the nutrient mixtures?" "Did nothing at all. It took five times the amount of nutrients to achieve the same level of stability from one tank of our charcoal/pulp solution. We're abandoning nutrients entirely and are beginning experimentation with variations on our other solutions." "Sounds good. By the way, I'm sending up Lennard in a while to install a S-19 monitor." Dr. Nelson raised an eyebrow at him. "S-19?" she said with a slight nod. "I wondered if we might be needing one. Very well, I'll be expecting him." "Anyway. I'll leave you to your work, Dr. Nelson. Keep me apprised." Dr. Nelson waved him on and sat back at her desk. She fast-forwarded the tape for several seconds. When she pressed play Prodigy's face appeared on the screen. "What do you mean, what do I know about 5thMatter?" he said, a look of confusion on his face. "Don't get him started,
Doc," came Bluestreak's voice from the speaker.
From his invisible position
on the ceiling, Hopscotch viewed all of this with great interest.
The Pacific rolled in over the old man's toes and went back out again. He took no notice of it nor of the wet clothing that clung to his thin body. It would soon be dry—not that he would take any more notice of it then. He was unaware of the cold and dark that surrounded him, just as he had been of the daylight before it. His eyes gazed out toward the ocean, their expression solid, never faltering, never blinking. The man was quite skilled at the art of solitary staring. He'd done so from atop mountains, from deep within the Grand Canyon, from deserts and from beneath the ocean itself. He suspected that if he wished to, he could sit on the beach and stare out at the ocean for the rest of his life. Never moving. Never caring. He could become a fixture of Las Tunas beach; a lone monument for tourists to gawk at and children to climb on. He could sit and watch forever, his thoughts growing slower and slower. But this was not his wish. Even had it been, his friends would not allow it for long. They would soon come and insist that he return with them to the city. The old man imagined that he would eventually return, but until he did, he would simply sit and stare out at the ocean. The sun had been in the sky above for nearly four and a half hours when there came the sandy crunch of approaching footsteps. A tall man with thin muscles and tanned wrinkled skin arrived and sat down in the sand. He was wearing shorts and a shirt which read My Son Went to Brandeis And All He Wrote Was This Lousy T-shirt. And though he appeared to be at least sixty himself, he was quite obviously the old man in the sand's junior by a number of years. The old man did not look up or otherwise give indication that he was at all aware of his surroundings. Presently, though, his mouth did open and he spoke in a tired, gruff voice. "Hello, Carter. You're a bit far north for this to be just a friendly stroll." "No pretenses, Stone. I came to see you." Stone's gaze remained fixed at the ocean. "Fine. How do I look?" "Like a man who's been sitting on the beach for eleven days." "Hmm. It felt more like nine." "Johnathan called and told me where you were." "Bing's full of surprises these days, isn't he?" Carter sighed. "We all have our secrets, Stone. Sometimes they get out." "In other words, cut the kid some slack? Well consider it cut. I have nothing against him." "Stone, why are you here again?" The old man continued to stare out at the ocean. "Just a feeling I have." "A feeling?" said Carter. He didn't sound at all convinced. "What kind of feeling?" "Oh, a bad one, I assure you," said the old man. "Something's up. Something's wrong." "You turning psychic on me now?" The old man didn't answer right away. "Maybe so. Runs in the family." Above them the gulls cried and dived at the newly revealed sea-life left by the receding waves. "Right now I just see old faces," continued Stone. "Yours. Emily's. Duncan's. Thad's." He broke his stare for the first time in eleven days and he looked up at his friend. "I can see Connor's face too," he said solemnly. "Like he looked at the end. I can see all of the faces from back then. A couple of `em I wish I'd never seen in the first place. They're all in there rolling around. I... I don't know why." His stare gradually shifted back toward the ocean. "Stone, we all get a little nostalgic now and then, but you've got to put it behind you. The old days are gone. Long gone. We left them behind us thirty years ago." "I know that!" he said, irritated. "This isn't nostalgia." He stopped suddenly. Stone's eyes narrowed and his stare fixed on Pete Carter's own. "You can feel it too, can't you?" "I don't feel anything, Stone." "No, I think you do. You might not think so yet, but you will. Maybe I'm the first. Maybe not. But you'll see the faces too. You'll see them in your dreams, and you'll feel that something's wrong." "What's wrong is you sitting here for days worrying your teammates." "They came and saw I was here." "And you didn't even speak to them." "I just wanted to be left alone for a while." "And you got your wish." "Finally." Peter Carter sighed and shook his head. "So you've got a feeling. What are you planning on doing—sitting on the beach until it goes away? Just sit here forever?!" "Not forever. Not yet, anyway." "I'm supposed to be relieved by that?" Stone stared ahead in silence. "Okay, Stone. Fine. Have it your way. Sit here for however long you want. I'll warn you now, though, if you stay up here much longer they're going to call Truk." "Hmm," said Stone. "Well, now that would be a real shame. He'd have to interrupt his busy schedule to drive up here." Carter stood up stiffly and looked down at his friend for a moment. "You can't waste your life worrying, Stone. You wait and see. Things will turn out all right. They always do." Pete Carter turned away and retraced his steps up the beach and toward his car. As he did the image of a long dead boy wearing a singed blue and red mask floated through is mind. He shook it off and continued to walk. The old man's face
remained fixed on the horizon. "No," he said. "No they don't."
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