Distortion Offensive (4 page)

“And that's a lot of head,” Kane mumbled.

As they spoke, Grant returned, accompanied by the church warden and a local medical practitioner called Mallory Price. Price was a tall, gangly woman with a gaunt face and thin blond hair, and she looked very much as if she had just been woken up.

“What do we have?” Mallory asked as she approached
the two teenagers, glancing over at Kane and Brigid. Her voice was husky, as if she had spent a lifetime shouting or smoking. Kane couldn't tell which.

“I found them in a trancelike state under the pier,” Kane explained as he joined the medical woman. “They just didn't seem to want to wake up.”

“The girl said some stuff,” Brigid added as she walked over to join them, her boots back on her feet once more. “Unusual things, not what you'd expect from a teen.”

Price checked the two teenagers briefly, but other than their general disorientation, she could find nothing ostensibly wrong with them. “They're both suffering a little bit from exposure,” she told Kane and the others, “but they're young. They'll be fine.”

“What about their altered state of mind when he found them?” Kane asked.

The woman shrugged. “Teenagers being teenagers,” she said. “Who knows what they're getting hooped up on. You probably did the same when you were their age.”

Overhearing this, Grant laughed. “Oh, you don't know Kane,” he muttered.

Kane opened his fist and showed the mollusk shell to Mallory. “Have you seen one of these before, Doc?” he asked, letting her handle the little shell.

The medical woman turned it over in her hands. “What is that?” she queried. “Some kind of snail?”

The church warden, an older man called Vernor, with thinning hair that was turning gray at the temples, had made his way over by then, and he sucked at his teeth as he peered at the shell in Mallory's hands. “Could be a crab, maybe?” he suggested.

“Could be a lot of things, Vern,” Kane agreed.

The old church warden looked up at Kane with an expression of concern. “Seen a few of these things wash up just lately. You think this has something to do with how these kids are acting, Kane?”

“Let's get these kids inside and see whether we can make any sense out of all of this,” Kane suggested noncommittally.

 

“I
KNOW.”

The words came as a whisper from the thin gray lips of a creature called Balam. He was fifteen hundred years old and he had been born as the last of the Archons, a race that confirmed a pact between the Annunaki and the Tuatha de Danaan millennia before.

He was a small figure, humanoid in appearance but with long, thin arms and a wide, bulbous head that narrowed to a pointed chin. Entirely hairless, Balam's skin was a pink so washed out as to appear gray. Within his strangely expressive face, Balam had two wide, upslanting eyes, as black as bottomless pools, their edges tapering to points. His tiny mouth resided below two small, flat nostrils that served as his nose.

He reached out before him, spreading the six fingers of each hand as if to stave off something that was attacking, and a gasp of breath came from his open mouth.

There was a child playing in the underground garden that spread before him. She was human in appearance and perhaps three years old, wearing a one-piece suit in a dark indigo blue that seemed to match the simple garment that Balam himself wore. The child turned at Balam's words, her pretty, snow-blond hair swishing behind her in simple ponytail, her large, blue eyes wide with curiosity.

“Wha' is it?” the child asked, peering up from the
daisy chain she had been making on the little expanse of lawn before Balam's dwelling.

Balam looked at the child with those strange, fathomless eyes and wondered if she might recognize the fear on his face, the fear that had threatened for just a moment to overwhelm him.

The child smiled at him, chuckling a little in that strange, deep way that human children will. “Uncle Bal-bal?” she asked. “Wha' is it?”

“The Ontic Library has been breached,” Balam said, his words heavy with meaning, fully aware that the child could never comprehend the gravity of them. “Pack some toys, Quav. We're going to visit some old friends.”

With that, Balam ushered the child—known as Little Quav after her late mother—back into their dwelling in the underground city of Agartha and prepared her for the interphase trip that would take them halfway around the world. It had been almost three years since Balam had last spoken with the Cerberus rebels, but the time had come to do so once again.

The Cerberus warriors made their way back to the church hall, along with Vernor and the two teenagers, while Mallory returned to her surgery. The kid with the dyed hair—Tony—was getting edgy, and he started to ask some awkward questions. He'd been in trouble before, Kane realized, recognizing the signs, and he wondered if the youth might bolt before they could question him more fully about his altered state of mind.

Noticing the teen's discomfort, Grant took the lead. “Hey, Tony,” he said, “you want to see something cool?”

Tony looked at the towering ex-Mag, visibly swallowing. “I didn't do anything wrong,” he said.

“I know you didn't,” Grant said reassuringly as they approached the stone steps that led into the church building. “Come on, we'll catch up with these guys in a minute.” With that, Grant led the way off to the side of the two-story building with Tony tentatively following.

By contrast, the girl—Pam—seemed to have automatically slid into an air of unquestioning trust of the adults who were trying to help her. Kane reasoned that she had most likely grown up in a walled barony and was thereby indoctrinated to trust Magistrates and similar authority figures. Once again, Kane was struck by the difference between ville folk and outlanders.

Walking ahead, Grant didn't bother to look back to check on his charge, thereby demonstrating his trust in the teen boy. They walked around the side of the church building, along a wide service road that led to a side gate that opened on an open-air storage area. Grant pointed to the gate. “Take a look inside,” he encouraged. “It won't bite.”

Warily the plum-haired teenager worked the catch of the wooden gate, keeping one eye on Grant as the towering ex-Mag watched. “What's in there?” he asked.

“Take a look, son,” Grant said, a smile on his lips.

Grant recognized the anticipation on Tony's face, both excited and fearful, wondering if a trick was being played on him. When the boy didn't open the gate, Grant reached over and pushed it gently until it swung open on a creaking hinge.

“Whoa!” Tony uttered, unable to contain his excitement. “Is that real? What are they?”

Two bronze-hued aircraft waited in the rough scrubland of the church hall garden. They were huge vehicles, with a wingspan of twenty yards, and a body length of almost fifteen feet. The beauty of their design was breathtaking, an effortless combination of every principle of aerodynamics wrapped up in a gleaming burned-gold finish. They had the shape and general configuration of seagoing manta rays, flattened wedges with graceful wings curving out from their bodies, and an elongated hump in the center of the craft providing the only evidence of a cockpit. Finished in a copper, metallic hue, the surfaces of each craft were decorated with curious geometric designs, elaborate cuneiform markings, swirling glyphs and cup-and-spiral symbols that covered the entire body of the aircraft. These were the Mantas, transatmospheric craft used by the Cerberus
team for long-range missions. They were alien craft, discovered by Grant and Kane during one of their exploratory missions to the Manitius Moon base. While the adaptable vehicles were mostly used for long-haul and stealth missions, Kane, Grant and Brigid had employed them on this occasion as robust workhorses, able to convey the heavy crates of rations in collapsible storage units that had been attached to their undercarriages for transportation to Hope.

Grant chuckled as he answered Tony's question. “They're real, all right,” he assured him. “Me and my buddies flew here in them.”

Tony turned to Grant, his eyes wider than ever. “You flew them? Are you some kind of spaceman or something?”

Grant placed a friendly hand on the teenager's shoulder and guided him closer to the Mantas as the early-morning sun played off their metallic shells. “No, we're just like you, kid,” he said.

Tony ran a hand along the wing of the nearest vehicle, touching the swirling patterns that had been engraved within its surface. “They're beautiful,” he said.

He had come down from his high, Grant realized, just an excitable kid once more.

“Do you think you could ever fly one?” Grant asked.

Tony beamed. “I'd love to. How fast do they go?”

“Real fast,” Grant assured him. “You could cover the whole of this ville in five seconds.”

Tony was amazed. His was a world of poverty and survival; he had almost no inkling that such wondrous technology existed. While he looked at the engines at the back of the Manta craft, Grant brought up the subject of the mollusks and learned that the youth had
found them on the beach while he was down there with his girlfriend. They were both hungry, it seemed, so they had decided to try eating them. They tasted lousy raw, so Tony had cooked them, starting a fire like his father had showed him. That kind of stood to reason, Grant thought, and he quietly admired the kid's adventurousness.

A few minutes later, Grant and the fourteen-year-old entered the church hall to join the others as they, too, discussed the mysterious mollusks.

Inside, Kane and Brigid had separately established that Pam had cooked and eaten the strange mollusks with Tony.

“We found them along the beach, near the old pier,” she explained.

“Were they alive?” Brigid asked.

Pam shrugged. “I don't think so. They didn't try to get away or nothing.”

“So they probably washed up on the tide,” Kane concluded.

Vernor concurred. “I saw a few things like that lying on the beach when I walked Betsy the other day.” Betsy was his dog, an old mutt who spent most of her day sleeping in her basket passing gas.

“Recently?” Kane asked.

“Must have been—” Vernor thought back “—the day before yesterday. Didn't really pay them much attention, and Betsy—well, she doesn't let stuff like that worry her no more.” That was an understatement, Kane knew. Betsy didn't let anything bother her anymore; she seemed to be content just counting the days until she finally croaked.

Kane turned his attention back to the teenager, running through a logical series of questions as his
analytical Magistrate training had taught. “Were there a lot of them?” he asked. “How many?”

Pam thought for a few seconds, her eyes looking up as she tried to remember. “We ate…maybe fifteen. Some were dead small, though.”

“That's all right,” Brigid assured her. “You haven't done anything wrong. Just tell us.”

Pam nodded. “My mom will be getting worried. I should be at home.”

Kane's eyes met with Grant where he had entered the hall with the other teen, and the huge ex-Mag nodded infinitesimally.

“You two head home, then,” Kane instructed the kids, “but I want you to report to Doc Price here if you get any stomach problems, okay? We're not sure what's in those things you ate, and I wouldn't recommend that you eat them again.”

“Are we going to die?” Pam asked, her voice taking on a whining quality.

“No,” Brigid assured her, shaking her head firmly. “You just might have an upset tummy for a little while. You've both been rather silly eating these things. They could have been poisonous.”

Apologetically, the two teenagers gathered themselves up and, hand-in-hand, made their way through the shadowy porch and off down the street.

Brigid laughed as she watched them go. “Young love.”

Kane sighed, shaking his head in despair. “Let's get back to the problem at hand, Baptiste,” he growled. “The flesh of these mollusks has some kind of psychotropic property when eaten.”

“That's not that unusual,” Brigid told him. “It may not even be particularly dangerous.”

Kane offered a self-deprecating smile. “Trust me, Baptiste—it's always dangerous. Whatever it is.”

Grant chuckled. “You're getting to be a real cynic in your old age, Kane.”

“This area is overpopulated and hungry,” Kane stated. “If these things start washing up on shore in greater numbers, we may very well see a spate of drug-related problems arise as more and more people start hallucinating after eating them. We have a rare opportunity to nip this problem in the bud. So, I want to know what they are where they're coming from.”

Grant and Brigid nodded. “Agreed.”

Church warden Vernor proposed to spread Kane's warning to the local fishermen, and he went off to make a start with Betsy in tow.

“Sea creatures often swap shells,” Brigid pointed out, “but if we can catch a complete one we could take it back to Cerberus and show it to Clem.”

Kane looked mystified for a moment. “Clem?” he asked. “The cook?”

Brigid smiled. “Chef. And Clem Bryant is a brilliant oceanographer, dear,” she teased.

“He cooks a mean toasted sandwich,” Grant added. “I know that much.”

“Not helping,” Brigid chastised him.

Kane shrugged. “Okay, I'll take your word for it. Let's go take a look along the beach and see if we can find us a little something to show to Clem.”

“Heh. Maybe he'll cook it for us.” Grant chuckled.

Brigid glared at him. “Still not helping.”

The trio made its way out of the church and down the steps, heading toward the beach with jocularity despite their concerns.

“So,” Kane asked, “how did Clem end up chefing for the tired, hungry masses of Cerberus?”

Brigid looked exasperated. “Why don't you ask him?”

Kane gave her his most innocent look. “Well, I just assumed you knew everything, Baptiste.”

“You know what happens when you assume?” Brigid challenged.

“No, what?” Kane challenged back.

“I kick you in the nuts, smart guy.”

“Yeah, that sounds familiar,” Kane agreed.

 

A
T THE
C
ERBERUS REDOUBT
located high in the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana, adventuring geologist Mariah Falk sat alone at her private desk in the laboratory, watching as the results of a spectrographic test appeared on her computer screen. Beside the desk, a single crutch rested, propped up against its side. Mariah had been testing the same batch of rocks ever since she had got back from the escapade in Canada that had seen her, along with Brigid Baptiste and another Cerberus man called Edwards, caught up in a deadly ordeal that sucked the very will from the Cerberus teammates. During that ordeal, Mariah had almost killed herself in supplication to the stone being known as Ullikummis.

Mariah was a slender woman in her forties, her dark hair cut short and showing traces of white throughout. Though not conventionally pretty, Mariah had an ingratiating smile and a fiercely inquisitive nature that made her a fascinating and engaging companion. She had recently been spending more of her time in the company of Cerberus oceanographer-turned-chef Clem Bryant, and their attraction to each other was clearly mutual. Both Mariah and Clem hailed from the last days
of the twentieth century, where they had been part of a military program that saw them cryogenically frozen until the nuclear hostilities were concluded.

Mariah grimaced as she checked the spectrographic results for a second time. Despite every incredible thing she had seen in Canada just three days before, there was nothing on these charts to indicate that there was anything out of the ordinary about the rocks she had brought back. Frustrated, Mariah sighed and wondered at what else she could do.

As she sat there thinking, Lakesh stepped through the doorway and greeted her. The nominal head of the Cerberus organization, he was a tall man who appeared to be in his midfifties, with refined features and an aquiline nose. Known to his friends as Lakesh, Dr. Mohandas Lakesh Singh was in fact a 250-year-old man who had been involved with the Cerberus redoubt back before the nuclear conflict had all but destroyed civilization. Though ancient, Lakesh had had a degree of his youth restored by Enlil in his guise of Sam the Imperator. Over recent months, Lakesh had begun to suspect that that blessing had in fact been a curse, for he was worried that he would begin to age once more, and at a far more rapid pace than was normal.

The slim doctor made his way over to where Mariah sat and lowered himself so that he was at the same eye level as her. “How are things going here, Mariah?”

Mariah sighed once more and showed him the results of her analysis. “Not good,” she admitted. “There's nothing untoward about the rocks I brought back with me.”

Lakesh offered a friendly smile. “This must be a new definition of the term ‘not good.' Would you care to explain?”

“The asteroid that we believe held Ullikummis
is nothing more than metamorphic rock. Its original source was probably igneous and originated right here on Earth,” Mariah explained. “Both spectral and carbon analysis place the rock at over six thousand years old, but it's difficult to be more specific without an idea of where it came from. This rock type is so common it would be impossible to be that specific,” Mariah added.

“An educated guess…” Lakesh encouraged.

Mariah shrugged. “A tropical climate, possibly Africa or the Middle East. I honestly don't know. There are also traces of radiation, but it's at a very low level and that's as likely from its travel through space.”

“I see,” Lakesh mused. “And the other material?”

Mariah picked up a slate-gray chunk of rock. “It's just schist,” she explained. “You'll find it all over Canada. It's a good building material, but it has no special properties whatsoever.”

“You sound disappointed,” Lakesh observed as he lifted himself up and gave Mariah's results the once-over.

“I saw this stuff
move,
” Mariah reminded him, “like it was alive. That monster—Ullikummis—built a wall with it, and not with his hands. A rock wall
grew
out of the soil, and it then proceeded to follow his commands, moving as he willed it. It was alive, I'd swear it.”

“It was granted life,” Lakesh corrected pensively. “Instructed to act as it did.”