Wormholes (8 page)

“Well, yeah, if he remembers to bill you. He sometimes forgets.”

“Is he a smart-ass like you?”

Cooper looked up at the huge helicopter hovering over the ocean a quarter-mile away. He could almost see Haggerty’s glower.

“Nope, but he sees things in a way nobody else does. He’s smarter than me. His name’s Gerald Meier.” Cooper signed off, clicked off the radio and slipped it onto his belt, still staring down at the body. Another rifle shot from the ship interrupted his private mourning for the seaman he’d never known, the one who, without even speaking, had told him of the horror that had happened here.

• • •

Dacey ran her hand absentmindedly over the glass-smooth surface of the rock from the cavern, as she sat at her desk and studied the seismograms once more. For two weeks she’d pondered the mystery, leaving it and coming back, as if she might sneak up on some unsuspecting insight and pounce. She leaned back in her comfortable desk chair in her well-appointed office in the geology building. Geology at Oklahoma Tech was very highly prized and well-supported, given the state’s dependence on oil. So, the building was a handsome concrete-and-glass structure with carpeted halls, offices outfitted with the best oak furniture, and walls decorated with handsome framed images of geological strata and formations. Dacey had taken care to decorate her own office to suit the quality, with some beautiful geodes, a chunk of iron pyrite, some large malachite crystals, and a small collection of framed antique geological maps.

Today, she was especially glad she’d made it a nice office; and that she’d spent two hours the day before cleaning up piles of papers, books, rock samples, and assorted tools.

Today, she would get a site visit from the representative of the Deus Foundation. He’d probably inspect the research labs, talk to the department chairman, and critique her research plan. And then she would know whether she’d gotten the grant.

She felt a bit out of place sitting in the neat office, dressed in nice beige linen pants and a blue cotton blouse with puffy sleeves, low heels and her silver Indian-feather earrings. Her hair was done up in an efficient, businesslike bun, although stray blondish wisps kept escaping to hang down at her neck.

The graduate students who had come by to consult on their research had noticed the changes. Especially that she wasn’t dressed in her usual jeans and t-shirt with a flannel work shirt. She’d always had problems dressing like an associate professor, however that was supposed to be.

She remembered the newspaper photo one of the students had taped on her door, and arched an eyebrow and made a worried face. Maybe she should take it down. Maybe the guy from the foundation wouldn’t think it professional. After all, it showed her covered in mud, rising out of the cavern in the basket with the rescue workers. The handwritten caption was, “Guess which one is the geologist?” Beneath it, somebody else had added, “Our den mudder.”

To hell with it, she shrugged. That’s who she was. She went back to her study of the seismograms, fiddling with her left earring as she examined the jagged up-and-down scrawls on the laptop screen. Side by side were the traces from the Gillard collapse and the San Francisco event. Her conclusions were still unshakeable. These weren’t earthquakes. No way. An earthquake typically produced two sharp spikes of ground motion, one right after another. When an earthquake fault ruptured, it sent out shear waves and pressure waves — those that shook the earth back and forth, and those that shoved it forward and backward. One kind of wave always traveled faster, arrived before the other, making two separate spikes the signature of the earthquake. And an underground explosion would show up as a two-spiked pulse, something like an earthquake.

But these traces! Just steady jiggling and shaking. Again she thought of some huge animal rooting around.

Still no closer to capturing an elusive insight, her mind wandered. What had become of Gerald Meier? After her adventure hanging over the side of the bridge tower, they’d all gone to the San Francisco police department laboratories to work up the data. Then they’d had a late dinner at a fish place on the wharf. Gerald had dropped her at her hotel, stuffed his worn spiral notebooks into his blue van and taken off, promising to call her the next day. But he hadn’t.

She found herself worrying about him, and wondering why she worried. Maybe because he was different from her usual friends — beer-drinking jock-intellectuals, who built bridges, or who tore them down, or who looked for oil or minerals in Godforsaken places.

Typical of that group was her last boyfriend, Kenneth, the civil engineer. He was the second since her divorce. He was the Iron Man contestant who ran six miles at lunch and wandered the apartment at night like a caged animal. He’d not gotten tenure, though, and had moved out West and gone to work for a mining company. They decided a couple of months ago that neither of them was committed enough that she could be expected to pull up stakes and go with him. She wasn’t sure she could ever follow a man anywhere after what she’d been through. Since then, she’d had occasional dates, fending off all of them. Well, not fending off one — the visiting geologist with the incredible smile whom she’d briefly made a fool of herself over. Her spirit was feeling the weight of the past when she was aware of somebody standing at the door.

A very tall, very large man in his late fifties stood there in a slightly too-small blue suit, whose coat couldn’t quite close around his round belly. The prominent paunch strained at the buttons of his shirt and rested heavily over his belt. His jowly face, which spilled over his collar, was flushed from exertion, with the faintest sheen of perspiration. He didn’t notice the photo of a mud-covered Dacey.

“Dacey Livingstone?” He breathed raspily, hefting a large case at his side.

“Yes?” She paused. Could this be the Deus representative? Somehow, she pictured a more dapper man; a fastidious, well-dressed gent who looked like the grants officer for an exclusive private foundation. “Lawrence Platt?”

“Yes. May I come in?”

She stood and shook hands, his large, meaty mitt enveloping hers. She asked if she could get him anything to drink, and he requested a glass of water. She left him sitting in her guest chair to get a glass and water from the department office. As she did the chore, she reviewed what she knew about the Deus Foundation.

Very little, it turned out. The university fundraisers told her it wasn’t listed in their reference books of foundations. They did a Google search for media mentions and found a few stories about research projects the foundation funded in physics, philosophy, medicine. But they assured her the lack of information wasn’t too unusual. There were dozens, probably hundreds of little foundations out there, set up with bequests from individuals, or with private money from some rich businessmen.

These foundations were often “unconventional,” the fundraisers had told her. Sometimes eccentric in what they funded. But they also were willing to write out checks based on a good idea, even if it was unproven. And they didn’t require the volumes of applications and the incredibly stringent reviews that government grants demanded. But even so, the two-page application and four-page research description she’d done for the Deus grant seemed incredibly perfunctory.

She found a nice glass and filled it with water from the cooler. She decided that, no doubt, Platt would more than compensate for the short form with a lengthy grilling and inspections.

She returned to find Platt sitting quietly, his bulk filling her guest chair, holding a slim folder on his lap. He accepted the water gratefully and downed half of it in one drink.

“Now,” he said fishing glasses from his coat pocket, opening the folder and peering at its contents. “We’ve looked over your application and it looks fine. Here’s our standard agreement. Fairly simple.” He handed her a single sheet of paper and waited for her to read it. Basically, it said that she would periodically report her findings to the foundation and would agree to work with other foundation grantees on projects of mutual interest. And it gave all patent rights to her and the university. There were no accounting requirements, no reporting, no requirement to even acknowledge the foundation.

“This is it?”

“Yes. Would you sign it?”

“Uh, sure.” She scribbled her signature on the paper and handed it back. The university lawyers normally wanted to go over such contracts with a fine tooth comb. But this one sure didn’t need a lawyer to protect the university’s rights. The university had all the rights, anyway.

“Fine, well …” Platt heaved himself out of his chair and handed her an envelope. “We’re pleased to have you as a grantee.” He reached out his large hand and she shook it, and turned and left.

She stood there a moment unbelieving, looking at the envelope. That was it! No grilling, no lab inspections? No seminar to describe her plans? No interviews with deans or department chairmen? No lawyers? She opened the envelope and pulled out a check. Her eyes widened in even greater disbelief.

It was made out to her personally, not to the university. And it was for $180,237.00! A hundred thousand dollars more than she’d asked for!

T
he scoreboard clock ticked off with inexorable authority the closing five minutes of the football game, and the crowd cheered in its collective teenaged soprano voice for the Tigers of Melville, Missouri. The cheers were especially deafening, because the team had made it to the five yard line, and were about to score a game-tying touchdown against the conference-leading Porter City Yellow Jackets.

But the lanky teenagers at the other end of the verdant green field leaned with calculated cool against the chain link fence. Out of the full glare of the tall lights, they practiced their indifference. They presented to the world a sharp contrast to the bright-eyed bouncy cheerleaders and the striving athletes dueling over an inflated pigbladder at the other end of the field.

Displaying multiple earrings, nose rings, tattered sneakers, funky-sculptured hair and a matching ultrahip attitude, they had labeled themselves the Zoners. They made it a resolute point to occupy at each game the deserted grassy area beyond the end zone opposite to wherever the action was. That is, if they could predict the flow of play, which required careful attention to the game without seeming to pay attention.

But they were satisfactorily out of the action now, so they practiced air-guitar, capered about, and performed adolescent boy-girl play that involved teasing, touching, and occasional voluptuous girl-boy embrace.

Suddenly, the area was enveloped by an eardrum-tearing shriek that seemed to rip open the black sky, south to north. The entire crowd simultaneously clasped its hands to its ears and gasped in distress, except those whose hearing had been sufficiently deadened by rock music.

Ironically, when the sound struck, one Zoner member in baggy shorts and black high-tops had just twanged off a silent chord from his imaginary guitar. He stared at his remarkable hand in foggy amazement for a moment, then realized that he was not the cause of the noise from the heavens.

The game stopped as everyone searched the offending sky, but it remained silent, coal-black and anonymous beyond the lights. The players milled about on the field, and the crowd chattered about the possibility that the sound blast came from an airplane, a missile, or even a
UFO
. But the mysterious sound had died and seemed to result in nothing more phenomenal, so the play resumed. The third down began and the crowd quickly restored its full concentration on the players.

But the real celebrity from the night’s events would belong to the motley Zoners. As they arranged themselves along the fence for the final minutes of indifferent loitering, an object plummeted silently from the dark sky. It flashed into the bright lights of the field, bounced once on the thick turf beyond the ten-yard line and came to rest. A long-haired boy in a tie-dyed t-shirt and knee-torn jeans first spied the object, narrowing his eyes in puzzled concentration, since it was too far away to be instantly recognizable. He nudged his five-earringed comrade, who also brought his attention to bear on the identity of the object.

“Man, is that a hand?” asked Tie-dye.

“Like, an arm, too, maybe!” exclaimed Five-earrings.

“Dummy arm, man. Somebody threw a dummy arm on the field.”

“Looks real.”

They dared each other to run out and fetch the arm, foreseeing great fun with the fake appendage. It was concluded that, since Tie-dye had seen the object first, he was under primary obligation. So he let himself through the gate at the end of the field and to the raucous cheers of the other Zoners, sprinted raggedly under the goal posts to the one yard line, the five, the ten and beyond. He reached down to pick up the arm. Then he stopped, looked closer, straightened up and stood staring, shocked out of his cool.

“C’mon, man, bring it back!” shouted Five-earrings.

The boy merely shook his head in frightened puzzlement and continued to stare. By this time, he had attracted the attention of the referees at the other end of the field, who yelled and waved at him to get off. He looked at them, pointed down, shrugged, and stood there, not knowing what else to do. Finally, two angry referees began the laborious slog down the field, their bellies shaking. They arrived puffing and aggravated, berating the boy, who jabbed his finger down at the arm.

“Damn,” observed the line judge, looking down.

“Yeah,” agreed the umpire.

Lying on the green turf was a grayish pink arm, with the hand partially closed, the fingers pointing up. But it was more than just an arm. It had been severed from the body of its owner beyond the shoulder joint, including a section of collarbone and chest muscle. The severed appendage wore the remains of a white short-sleeved shirt, which was stained with blood. Clots of dried blood covered the broad stump, but the appendage had been largely exsanguinated, hence its grayish color.

The referees angrily accused the boy of a ghoulish prank, but he shrugged his shoulders and insisted upon his innocence. Other Zoners quickly came to his rescue, running onto the field, pointing skyward and asserting the truth of the event. The two referees with capped heads and striped shirts stood stolidly amidst the Zoners, and after initial skepticism, abandoned their initial theory that a cadaver had been scavenged and the limb put there as a joke.

“Aw, man, gross!” said one of the Zoners, reaching down to touch the arm. One of the referees slapped his hand away. Reminded of their oversight duties, the referees pushed the Zoners back away from the grisly object, as if to give it air. By this time, the football players had abandoned any thought of their game and had sprinted down the field for a look, so an outer circle of green and yellow helmets surrounded the inner core of long hair, with the two white caps in the center.

Pushing their way through the crowd came two sheriff’s deputies, who next assumed responsibility. They covered the arm with a towel and waved for a stretcher, which was all the deputies could think to do. Two emergency technicians joined the growing crowd. One undraped the object and examined it, declaring that it had been recently severed. However, since it had fallen onto the field, this was not a crime scene, so he ruled that the object could be safely removed.

He donned rubber gloves, knelt and lifted the rigid, severed appendage onto the stretcher. He covered it with a red emergency blanket and he and his partner carried the stretcher to their waiting emergency van, which roared away, siren blazing, lights flashing.

The referees stood and looked with puzzlement at each other amidst the dispersing crowd, then walked away and huddled alone. There was some gesturing among them and a few raised voices. After a long while, the head umpire returned and with a decisive tweet of his whistle, announced that since there was only five minutes to play, the game would be finished. The players clapped their hands heartily and sprinted bulkily down the field to the line of scrimmage. The cheerleaders tentatively began a cheer, quickly gathered confidence and rose to full girlish throat. A continuing low chatter among the crowd indicated that gossip about the event still occupied their collective mind. But they began to cheer nevertheless and the Tiger Band struck up a fight song.

The Zoners retired back behind the chain link fence and wondered at the weirdness of it all and how the dumb game could possibly go on after what had happened.

And the Tigers scored on two carries, finally winning by a field goal when they subsequently recovered an on-side kick to the Yellow Jackets.