So far, everything we've seen has been from the same geographical area, just different time frames." Blacklock closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Edelman had explained his theory of time travel to him. And if Edelman was right, then Hulbert was going to be righter than the man could possibly guess. They were going to have problems. If they had been dragged back in time to the Cretaceous period, and Edelman was right about others being dragged along, that meant any and all creatures that lived from then till the day the prison disappeared could be outside the walls waiting on them.
Including people. "Edelman." Andy and Jeff turned to look at Joe Schuler. "Yes, Lieutenant?" "If you're right, we're in even more trouble than that, aren't we? That stegosaurus outside the wall three days ago was from the Jurassic period. That was even earlier than the Utahraptor and the Cretaceous Period. "Actually," Jeff Edelman said quietly, "I was holding back. I didn't want a panic." "Holding back?"
Captain Andy Blacklock asked. "Yeah. There was another critter, and since no one asked, I didn't volunteer its origin. It was almost hidden in the trees. It was no more than ten feet long and wouldn't weigh more than fifty pounds. But it had a mouthful of teeth that could do some real damage. The thing might have been a Coelophysis.
And if it was, we are looking at a meat-eater from the Triassic period. That means, if my theory on what is happening is correct, we have the possibility of running into any creature that roamed the Earth in the last two hundred and forty-five million years." Hulbert glanced out the window, then at his watch. He had less than an hour to shower and eat breakfast. Then it would be time for his meeting with the department heads. He gave a low groan. This meeting was not going to be pleasant.
Chapter 16 Adrian Luff sat on the floor of his cell next to the bars, a mirror angled so he could see what was happening in the corridor. It wasn't much. The corridor was empty. The only things he could see were the mesh-covered light hanging from the ceiling and the gray metal door at the end of the hall. The door would be locked. He was the only prisoner inside the cell house. The others had been moved. He listened to the silence and checked his watch once more.
He's late. The sonofabitch is always late. Adrian looked like a mild mannered accountant. Which is what he had been, in fact, before the cops dug up his basement and found the bodies encased in cement. His short, sandy hair, pale skin and pale blue eyes were combined with little open features that inspired trust. He was clean-shaven and soft spoken. Things had worked out fine, would have continued to work out fine, except he forgot his manners. One time. One slip. And the old bag he offended had focused her binoculars on his house day and night till she caught him. And turned him in. For a long time, he hadn't understood what happened. It kept him awake at night. Tossing and turning. Trying to decide what had aroused her suspicions. Then one morning, listening to the prison wake up, he remembered his mother.
She was one of those soft-spoken little women who wouldn't say shit if she had a mouth full of the crap. He was in fourth grade and she was at schoolagain. He had spouted off to the teacher who had turned him in to the principal-and that's when they found the girlie magazine tucked into his binder. The magazine had been stolen, but no one noticed that. They didn't ask how a kid his age could come up with the thing. They glossed over the smut rag, shrugged it off as pubescent curiosity, and concentrated on his foul language. On his lack of manners. Yes, he was young. But not too young to learn. And that was the last time his mother ever came to school in disgrace. After that, her son was a pleasure to have in class. Such a nice boy. A hard worker. So polite and well mannered. Two years later, when the school was vandalized, no one looked at him. They tried to pin it on other boys. The loudmouth boys without manners. And thinking of that day, remembering what he learned, he finally understood what went wrong.
The neighbor hadn't gotten suspicious. She was just pissed off at him.
That's why she'd spied on him, hoping she would find something she could tell the neighbors about, or better yet, the cops. She was simplyoffended. She didn't care about the old man and old woman buried under his basement. She didn't care about the social security checks direct deposited into an account he accessed each and every month. She was just out to get him. The only thing that had kept him from getting the death penalty was his insistence they were dead by natural causes. He'd been their landlord and had just taken advantage of their deaths. He'd been careful, so the autopsies couldn't prove any different, and the lawyer had gotten him a plea bargain. He would pull a double dime train-two ten-year sentences served back to back.
That first year behind the bars had been the worst. The innocent looking face that helped him on the outside had almost gotten him killed behind bars. Almost. But not quite. A month after theunfortunate incident, just before he was discharged from the infirmary, he had been offered a place in the nursery. He had turned it down. Protective custody was worse than death. It was solitary confinement for the duration of a man's sentence. No. Twenty years of hiding in fear wasn't in him. So, he turned things around. A knifing here, a rumor there, a bribe slipped into an open hand, and when there was nothing else that could be used, blackmail. He learned the system and then worked it. Working other prisoners had been tough at first.
But he caught on. The guards hadn't been so tough. They wanted to believe in people. Oh, some of them were hard-asses, pricks. But that was okay. They were predictable. And that's all you really needed. You just had to know how they would react in any given situation. You had to know who could be bought and for what price. Sex, drugs, money, power-or maybe it was something on the other side of the coin-the feeling of being useful, of being needed. A savior to some poor man's damned and tormented soul. He could feel himself calming and concentrated on his breathing. Panic is what landed him in prison. He couldn't afford to do it again. When old Mrs. Haywood asked him what he was going to build with all the cement he bought, he should have been polite. He should have told her it was for a patio. Or a sidewalk. Not, "It's none of your fucking business!" But he had learned. A man with something to hide can't drink. And that was the second piece to the puzzle. The reason he forgot his manners. A half-pint of Jim Beam. Now he smiled and waited for the door to open.
He waited for the man dressed in a light blue shirt, dark blue pants and shiny black shoes to step into the corridor. He thought about the guards and what he would do and how he would handle things if he had their job. If he were a guard he would have no pity. No grudges. No bad habits. Then he thought about the kitty-kitties, the women guards.
He liked the sound of that. Women guards. He didn't use the term female, not even when talking to himself. And he never called them bitches unless he was talking about them to another prisoner. He wondered what it would be like, being a woman and walking these halls.
He knew what it would be like if he was a guard at the women's prison.
Those little connets would love him. He gave a soft chuckle, then adjusted his mirror. "Glad you could make it," Adrian said. "I was getting nervous, afraid something went wrong." He kept his voice light. None of the irritation showed. None of the anger or impatience.
"Yeah, we had another meeting and it ran over." The man stuck his arm through the bars and dropped a small package no bigger than a cigarette lighter into Luff's hand. "I don't know who's the bigger fool, Andy Blacklock or Joe Schuler. But I guess it doesn't matter as long as they stay that way." Luff pulled himself to his feet using the bars. "What was the meeting about?" "You haven't heard?" Luff shook his head. Hehad heard, but he wanted it confirmed. It sounded just too good to be true. Blacklock was letting the prisoners out of their cells once a day. He was going to give them time to dump their chamber pots-fancy ass name for an over-sized tomato soup can-grab a shower, and get a little fresh air and exercise. The nonviolent inmates in good standing were even being allowed to volunteer for work details.
And all the bosses had agreed, no one was going to mess it up. The first man to slime one of the guards, died. Before the Quiver, it was fun to see a guard gunned down with piss or shit saved by a bored con.
But not now. Getting out of the cell for a little while was too damn important. Everyone knew it. Those with brains knew they had better watch those without them. He shook his head again. "You know how it is around here. I've heard a few bits and pieces, but didn't believe none of it. It was way too stupid a move, even for them." Terry Collins leaned in close even though there was no one to hear what he had to say. "Well, you better believe it. Believe every word. And smile.
Smile nice and big. Show your teeth, baby, because we're about to bite em' in the ass!" Luff smiled. "When?" "Soon. If your boys do job right, we're about to change the way this place is run." "When?" Luff was having a hard time controlling the anger Collins always stirred up in him. "When do we move? I have to know so I can make sure my people are in place." "Your people?" Luff hesitated, trying to decide how to respond. Collins was one of the crazies. Not off enough to be spotted, unless you knew the type really well. Collins was a sadist. A Bible thumping whacko who used scripture to justify whatever it was he was doing or not doing. The man was nuts. But he was also cunning. An operator. Collins loved twisting the knife on someone weak, but he loved sparring with the strong even more. So Adrian shrugged. "My people. If you want them, you have to take them." Collins laughed. "So serious today, baby. So serious. You should be happy. It's not everyday a man gets to be a part of history in the making." "When do we move?" "Soon, I told you. I have to see how many guards are going to be on and where. There's a lot of planning with something like this. When I get it figured out, I'll let you know. Then you and your boys can get ready." "What happened at the meeting?" Adrian allowed a little of the agitation to show. Not enough to send the man off in a huff, but enough to get a response. "Blacklock and Schuler just saved us a hell of a lot of trouble. It's as though they know what is coming down, and are going out of their way to help us out." "How?" Adrian Luff hated begging for answers. He hated trying to sort through Collins' bullshit to come up with what was happening. Terry Collins lost his grin for the first time since entering the corridor. "Soon, this empty wing will be full of prisoners. The list I gave Hulbert has been approved. So the men you told me you wanted are in the process of packing up their old cells and getting ready to be marched across the yard to their new home." He looked at his watch. "They should start arriving in about fifteen minutes. Andy Blacklock's own orders, the stupid bastard. And once the move is completed, the sign up sheets for work crews will be passed out. And we're not just talking about the infirmary. The lists are for the whole ball of wax, even the machine shop." Luff nodded. His sources were dead on the money. That meant they were probably right about the other bits and pieces of gossip flying through the pipeline. "I hear we got company last night."
Collins frowned. "Yeah. They found some shot up piece of shit out in the woods. The fucker can't even talk English." "Too bad. If he could talk, we might find out where he came from." Luff didn't give a rat's ass about where the fish came from. He came from somewhere. And he had been shot. That meant there were others out there. And for right now, that's all he needed to know. Other people meant other opportunities. *** That night, Adrian Luff lay in the dark, listening to the sounds of three hundred men breathing, snoring, coughing, farting and spitting. Collins still hadn't given him a day or a time. And no details on how the coup was going to take place. Nothing except, "Be ready. I'll unlock the gates. We'll use the guards' own guns to take over the place." Nothing but bull and shit. But he had filled the tier with the men Luff asked for. Twenty cells, three men to a cell, sixty men in total: his personal crew. Collins was a waterhead. He thought he was going to rule the roost once the lid came off. He thought they would forget he was a badge just because he was the one who opened the gates. But even fools had a use. And sometimes they could give you information that would come in handy. And sometimes they gave you something to worry about. "It's as though they know what is coming down, and are going out of their way to help us out." Why would Collins say that? What would make him think it? Could it be true? Did they know? Were they setting them up? If they were, why? He considered one possibility. Blacklock and his people wanted them all dead.
Theywanted them to revolt so they could just gun them down. That way they wouldn't have to feed the convicts. He rolled over on his bunk and looked out between the bars. No. That wasn't the right answer. If they wanted them dead all they would have to do is quit feeding them.
There was a war going on. That was obvious. Either the Muslims, Arabs or Chinese had come up with some new weapon, and the prison had taken a hit. They had been blasted right out of middle-America and into wherever they were. Captain Andy Blacklock had no one to answer to. He could do anything he wanted to do, and no one would care. So why were they still alive? Why hadn't he ordered them shot? Adrian rubbed his head and tried to think. He needed information. And he couldn't count on Collins to give it to him. Besides, he didn't want the bastard to know what he was thinking. Ducks like him loved to quack; it made them feel important. But they tended to spook easy. He needed someone else to supply him with gossip. Reliable gossip. Mentally, he went over the list of inmates already on work detail. He figured the infirmary was the best bet for getting reliable information. That posed a problem, since he didn't have anyone working inside it. There were four prisoners who worked the infirmary. Two were high-ranking rugheads. No way he would get anything from one of them. The third hung out in Boomer's corner. He wasn't the man's galboy; Boomer didn't lay the track with anyone. But he took care of his boys. He was retired-a lifer-so he didn't have anything to lose. Each time he went off, he'd do the hole and the thorazine shuffle for six months, then he'd be back in the general population looking for revenge. No. Adrian didn't want to mess with that. They didn't call Tim Bolgeo "the Boom" for nothing. The little bit of information he was after wasn't worth getting 10-10'd over. The last guy Boomer labeled a poacher got greenlighted. The contract hadn't taken forty-eight hours to be filled. The man was a crazy. But he was a crazy who paid well. It would have to be the fourth one, the Indian. He had run the guy's tags as soon as he showed. He had been transferred in just three days before the Quiver. His name was James Cook and he was an unknown. But the word was he was an amateur. This was his first trip and he was an independent, and that meant he hadn't been schooled. He could be used.
He was also in the cell house, just one tier up from him and was scheduled to work the infirmary's afternoon shift. But he'd have to be softened up first, and softened up good. Luff needed full cooperation and he didn't have time to screw around with the usual slow and easy methods. Luff scribbled a quick note, stuck it in a tin hooked to a thin rope, and whipped it into the next cell. "Work this over to Butch. As soon as the screws open the gates for supper, I've got something I want him to do."
Chapter 17 "You're sure about this?" Margo asked, peering at the graphics display on Leo Dingley's laptop screen. "I mean… it seems…" "Really weird?" Dingley chuckled. "As opposed to everything else about these…" He turned his head to half-glare at Richard Morgan-Ash, who was sitting next to Malcolm O'Connell on the couch in the living room of the large suite he'd rented at the hotel in Collinsville. "Whatever we're going to call these things, which we've never been able to decide because Mr. Fussbudget over there shoots down every proposal I make." Morgan-Ash smiled thinly. "I have probably ruined my reputation as it is, associating with you heretics.
I will be damned, however, if I will hammer the nails into my own professional coffin by presenting a paper entitled 'Some Observations on the Mystery Bombs from Outer Space.' Much less 'Some Observations on the Bizarre Bolides from Beyond.' " "They're good names," insisted Leo. " 'Myboos' and 'Bibobs' are right up there with quarks." " 'Myboos' will be turned into 'Myboobs' within eight seconds of reaching the blogosphere," said Morgan-Ash. "I shudder to think what would happen to 'Bibobs.' " "Will you two quite clowning around?"
Margo said crossly, still peering at the graphics. "Dammit, this new data you brought down here with you just doesn't makesense. Why would there be a time dilation? We've never seen it before." Malcolm O'Connell shook his head. "That doesn't mean anything, Margo. The data that exists on the Grantville event is sketchy, to say the least. None of the equipment that detected anything at the time was designed for the purpose, the way our stuff is now. And all the other events since Grantville have been tiny in comparison. The energy levels either weren't high enough to produce this phenomenon, or-more likely, in my opinion-the phenomenon existed but we simply weren't able to detect it. The fact that you can track a jumbo jet's trajectory from miles away doesn't mean you can track a sparrow's from the same distance."
He heaved himself up from the couch and came over. "And it's weirder than you think." He pointed to a sidebar in one corner of the screen.
"See this? If I'm interpreting it correctly, it means the time bolide or whatever the hell we wind up calling it isn't simply speeding up-so to speak-relative to our own timeline. It's… I'm not sure what it's doing, exactly. Call it stuttering." "What do you mean?" asked Nick Brisebois. He was sitting on the other couch in the room next to Timothy Harshbarger, his friend from the state police. Every time Margo looked at the two of them next to each other she had to struggle not to smile. Where the air transport specialist was stocky and on the short side, Harshbarger was at least six feet, four inches tall, and as lean as a rail. The effect was even more striking when they were standing next to each other. Mutt and Jeff, absent the facial hair and the antique costumes. Neither man had said anything, since Richard explained the gist of what The Project had been doing in Minnesota for the past few years. Brisebois seemed interested, at least.
Harshbarger's expression had been completely neutral. Margo wondered if the policeman thought they were all half-nuts. O'Connell looked over at him. "What I mean is that-if I'm interpreting this correctly, mind you-the bolide's timeline isn't speeding up steadily in relation to our own. It's stuttering. Stopping and starting. At various points, it seems to suddenly slow down and match our own. Or slow down even further. It's hard to know, of course. And there seems to be a wobble in the spacial dimension. If I'm right about that, what it means is that the area of impact as the bolide moves back in time isn't holding steady. It's moving around. Not much, but some. And it keeps getting bigger too. Well. I think." Brisebois looked a little cross-eyed, as if he were trying to visualize the process. Margo had tried that herself and suspected she looked cross-eyed too, when she did. "In other words," Nick said, "it's like a spike being driven back in time.
But the penetration isn't steady. It stops or slows down at points.
And the-tip of the spike, I'll call it-is shifting around. And spreading out." "Hey, that's not bad!" said Malcolm. "What if we call them 'time spikes,' Dick? You can't possibly object to that." "Oh, I can manage to object to almost anything. To start with, there doesn't seem to have been anything 'spiky-ish' about the Grantville event.
That was more like a time scoop." He shook his head. "But forget that, for a moment. Nick's translation-yes, yes, it's a layman's attempt to put mathematical concepts into words, with all the usual imprecisions but it's still damn good-brought something into focus for me. Is there acorrelation between these stutters, as you call them, and the shifting of the spacial locus?" "Huh!" O'Connell frowned. "I dunno.
Actually, I'm not sure exactly how you'd match the two." He peered at the screen. "I mean, the way these figures are generated…" "Sure we can," said Leo, sounding excited. "Hold on a minute." For just about that period of time, he typed furiously at the keyboard. Not the laptop's own, which Dingley found a nuisance, but a full-sized keyboard he'd brought with him and had connected to one of the computer's USB ports. He finished whatever he was doing and, quite dramatically, pressed the "Enter" key. A completely new graphic appeared on the screen. "God damn. Will you look atthis?" He lifted the laptop a few inches off the table and swiveled it so that everyone could see. Brisebois laughed. "Oh, swell. Leo, that spiderweb or whatever it is may mean something to you, but it's Greek to me." The reaction of the scientists in the room, however, was quite different.
All of them immediately understood what was being displayed. And all of them-including Margo herself, she was pretty sure-practically had their eyes bulging out of their sockets. "Jesus," she whispered. "It's aperfect correlation." Morgan-Ash, naturally, interjected a cautionary note. "Nothing in nature is 'perfect,' Margo. Not to mention that this is simply a graphic depiction of some mathematical concepts which may or may not have any correlation to the real world." O'Connell rolled his eyes. "Oh, great. Just the time and place to have another philosophical debate about whether mathematics inheres in nature or is simply hard-wired in the human brain and our way of interpreting data that has no inherent mathematical nature of its own. God, I swear. If the day ever comes that we master this stuff enough to create our own time machines, I vote that the first expedition goes back and shoots David Hume." "You'd probably have to shoot Locke and Berkeley too,"
Brisebois said, smiling. "And just to be on the safe side, jog forward a bit and plug Immanuel Kant. I'm afraid that debate's pretty deeply rooted in the western intellectual tradition. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if, in the end, you wound up putting out a contract on Plato and Aristotle." Margo stared at him. It would never have occurred to her that a man whose institution of higher learning had been the Air Force Academy would be familiar with the history of philosophy. He must have spotted her stare, because he shifted the smile to her and shrugged modestly. "I read Will Durant'sHistory of Philosophy when I was a teenager and got interested. I don't have the training to work my way through Whitehead and Russell'sPrincipia Mathematica, but I've read most everything else. Even worked my way through Hegel'sScience of Logic once. The Big Logic, too, not the condensation in his encyclopedia." His friend Tim spoke, for the first time in over an hour. "Good thing for him he was just a lowly trash-hauler. They make allowances for such. If he'd been a fighter jock, he'd never have lived it down." Again, Brisebois did that little modest shrug. "What can I say? I simply didn't have the wherewithal to be a fighter pilot. My reflexes might have been good enough, but I lacked the key temperamental ingredient." "Which is?" Leo asked.
"You've got to be a complete asshole to make a good fighter jock. I'm just not that arrogant. Even my kids admit it." A little chuckle went through the room. Margo joined in, although she wasn't moved so much by the humor as by a new peak of personal interest. An impulse made her ask: "What did you think of Schopenhauer?" "You mean, besides his being a misogynistic jerk?" She decided that maintaining one's focus exclusively on professional matters was probably not what it was cracked up to be. She gave Nick a gleaming smile and said: "No, that'll do quite nicely." Morgan-Ash cleared his throat. "To get back to where we were, I wasn't actually raising an abstract philosophical issue. I was simply pointing out that even Malcolm will admit that half the principles-if I may be allowed the term-of his invented mathematics-" "Discovered mathematics," O'Connell interjected. "-are just first approximations." Richard pointed to the display on the screen. "Whatthat is, with all its crispness, is simply a display of logic that's at least partly guesswork. It's more like a drawing-or a cartoon-than a photograph." O'Connell looked on the verge of exploding. Richard held up his hand in a somewhat placating gesture.
"I'm not sneering, Malcolm. I'm simply cautioning against trying to draw too many exact conclusions." Fortunately, Leo came into it-on Richard's side, where he normally tended to align with O'Connell.
"Hey, look, Malcolm, he's right. Still and all"-here he shot Morgan-Ash a reproving look-"the fact remains that while Margo was over-shooting to call the correlation 'perfect,' it's awfully damn good. You're the statistician, Richard. You tellme what the probability is that a display like that would emerge from random correlations." Morgan-Ash grinned. "Oh, there's none at all. Not worth talking about. I agree that we're looking at something real. I'd just be a lot happier if we could match the numbers against-dare I say it-some bloodyevidence. You know, that filthiest of all filthy four-letter Anglo-Saxon words. 'Fact.' " The state policeman shifted in his seat. "What sort of fact are you talking about?" Morgan-Ash tugged his neatly trimmed beard. "Lord, I don't know. If we could just get our hands on whatever showed up in Grantville! One thing that seems clear about these time impact events is that, in their own way, they adhere to the principles of thermodynamics. Action, reaction.
Nothing is free. If they shift something into the past, something gets shifted forward to the present. If we had enough data to find out, I'd be willing to bet we'd discover the mass involved was identical."
Harshbarger stared at him, for a moment. Then, suddenly, came to his feet. "All right. I've decided you guys are real. Give me a minute.
Nick, I'll need a hand." With no further ado, he left the suite, with Brisebois on his heels. They were back in less than three minutes, carrying something large and heavy into the suite. It was encased in a peculiar sort of wrapping that Margo realized must be one of the storied body-bags she'd heard of, and seen occasionally on television news footage. "Clear the table, would you?" Hastily, the scientists moved aside the remains of their lunch. Tim and Nick placed the body bag on the table and, with no further ado, Harshbarger slid open the long zipper. "Okay. You tell me. Is this the kind of evidence you're looking for?" After a long silence, Leo said:"Holy shit." Richard's contribution was more sedate. "Unless there's a hitherto unreported species of large reptile in the central United States, I'd say the answer is yes. This is indeed the evidence we're looking for. And the odds of that being true-I speak here as a expert statistician, you understand-I estimate as being indistinguishable from zero. Seeing as how-" He peered at the carcass on the table. "Did you weigh it?" "Yup.
Eighty-three pounds, four ounces. Measures six feet, three inches, from the snout to the tip of the tail." "As I said. The chances that a reptile not much smaller than a Komodo Dragon has been wandering around loose along the Mississippi river without ever being noticed is indistinguishable from zero." Malcolm-unusually, for him-played the devil's advocate. "We shouldn't jump to conclusions. Maybe it got mistaken for an alligator." "Wouldn't matter," said Tim. The policeman pointed to the patch on his shoulder. "State Police, remember? There have never been any sightings of alligators in Illinois. This isn't Florida or Alabama. I can guarantee you that if anyone spotted what they thought was an alligator in these parts, we'd have heard about it." He leaned over. "Besides, it doesn't look the least bit like an alligator, other than having a generally reptilian appearance. But I don't think it's even a reptile in the first place. My partner and I got a clear look at it before we shot it. This critter wasn't running on all fours, the way a lizard or alligator will. Hell, look at those forelimbs. Those aren't designed for weight-bearing. It was running on its two hind legs. Like a bird, except the body was level, with the heavy tail counterbalancing the head and chest. Which is to say-"
Margo finished the sentence for him. "Exactly the way paleontologists these days figure dinosaurs moved." "Yup." Harshbarger poked the reddish skin with a long forefinger. "That's what I think this thing is. A real, no-fooling dinosaur. Got no idea what kind, though. It's not something I ever studied." So far as Margo knew, none of the scientists in the room had any real knowledge of paleontology either.
She certainly didn't. "Where's your partner?" Nick asked. Tim grinned.
"Knowing Bruce Boyle, he's probably knocking down his fourth boilermaker at Jimmy's, telling himself he was hallucinating. It was all I could do to get him to agree not to turn this over to the siblings, like we're supposed to." "Excuse me?" asked Morgan-Ash. The grin stayed on policeman's face, but the humor in it vanished completely. "The siblings. Those clowns from FEMA. They've given orders-just as arrogantly as they do everything, speaking of assholes-that 'anything unusual' is to be turned over to them immediately and not to be discussed. Apparently, deep matters of national security are involved." "Huh?" asked Leo. He frowned at the carcass. "I mean, sure, it's nasty-looking. But I really can't see where even a thousand of these things running loose would be more than a local problem, for a while. Hell, it's not even the size of a mountain lion, much less a bear." Tim barked a little laugh. "Oh, you'll get the news tomorrow. It'll be all over the country's news channels. It seems-no, I'm not joking-that the disaster at Alexander wasn't any sort of natural catastrophe. It turns out it was a terrorist attack." "Huh?" Leo repeated. Obviously, Nick had already gotten the story from his friend. His own grin was sardonic. "Oh, sure. We knew Al Qaeda was crazy. Now we know it for sure. They strike at the Great Satan by blowing up thousands of our hardened criminals."
"Good God," said Morgan-Ash, his normal imperturbability shaken.
"That's… that's… preposterous." "Yeah, it is." Tim's grin was finally replaced by the scowl it had so thinly covered. "I really, really hate being played for a damn fool. Even by people who are polite about it, which these shitheads certainly aren't." He poked the carcass again. "That's why I brought this thing here, after Nick told me about you guys. I just held my peace until I was sure you weren't fruitcakes." Margo smiled. "Don't jump to conclusions. We're Ph. D.'s, don't forget. Probably a bigger concentration of fruitcakes in academia than anywhere else. Not to mention that we've spent most of the past few years living half a mile underground in an old iron mine.
That's got to be borderline fruitcakery, at least." The state police officer smiled back. "Yeah, I guess. But you're pikers in the fruitcake department compared to the of-fi-cial clowns who are telling me that Moslem terrorists blew up a maximum security prison." Again, he poked the carcass. "I wonder how they'd explain Nasty here?
Probably claim it was a stem cell experiment gone bad." He leaned back and shook his head. "No, I think I'll toss in with you folks. Nick and I spent quite a bit of time talking it over. So. Now what?" The scientists stared at him. The tall, skinny policeman planted his hands on his hips. "Looks, folks, you might as well understand something right from the start. I guess for you this whole thing is just a matter of scientific curiosity. Well, that's fine. But for me-and there'll be more than just me-it's goddamitpersonal. These are small communities down here in southern Illinois. It ain't Chicago. I knew a lot of the people who worked at Alexander. One of the guards was my high school girlfriend. And the lieutenant in charge of afternoon shift, Joe Schuler, was my best friend. I've known him since we were both six years old." He looked down at the carcass, glaring fiercely.