“A nuclear wasteland…?” suggested Auntie. “Sorry, bad joke.”
Brierley leaned back and scowled. Not at her, but at everything. “I wish I could help you, Auntie. Hell, I wish I could actually advise you about how to profit from coming down here. But, if you’re here to make sense of this, or to get someone to claim actual responsibility, then, frankly, I think you’re wasting your time.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Do you really think this was just POTUS playing with his toys? That he didn’t mean anything, and that all he wanted to do was try and prove that he has power? Or, worse, that he simply doesn’t understand due process and people are afraid to explain it to him?”
“That’s what most people think here in the Beltway. Why? Don’t you?”
“No,” she said. “I think there’s more to it. And why do I think that? Because there’s always more to it. Every damn time.”
Brierley shook his head. “That’s old-world thinking, Auntie. The old rules don’t apply.”
Aunt Sallie sipped her Coke and said nothing.
INTERLUDE ELEVEN
Rig perched on a stool like the statue of The Thinker, chin resting on his fist, staring at the partially assembled machine.
“What’s the problem, kid?” asked Valen as he came into the tent set aside for the assembly of the crystal machine.
“Problem? Problem? ” whined Rig, kicking a foot toward the worktable. “It doesn’t make sense, that’s the problem.”
“Then explain it to me. Walk me up to the edge of the problem.”
Rig took a breath and slid off the stool. He began pointing to the various pieces, which he had assigned new numbers to according to a hypothetical blueprint he’d made of how the device should look when assembled.
“See that rod there?” he said, pointing to a piece about two inches long. “That pretty much has to go into the holes at the end of the main housing. It holds this other piece, which I think is a lever, in place.”
“Okay. So…?”
Rig put on a pair of polyethylene gloves and handed the box of them to Valen. Then he picked up the rod and offered it. “Try to put it into the hole. See what happens.”
Valen shrugged and tried. The end of the rod fit through the opening with room to spare, but then it simply stopped moving.
“That’s funny,” said Valen, and tried again. Once more the rod stopped about a millimeter inside the hole. “Something’s blocking it.”
“Is there?” Rig handed him a large magnifying glass. Valen bent low to examine the hole, then the rod. Then he took a ruler and measured the rod’s diameter and the hole’s width. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s almost like the machine doesn’t want to go back together.”
“Which is impossible,” said Valen.
“Tell that to the frigging machine, man. And, it’s crazy, because some of the parts went together pretty easily, and some are like this. And some didn’t want to go together until I put other pieces together first.” He paused for a breath. “There are three hundred forty-six, and that’s if we actually have all of them, which I can’t tell until I finish building it. But, man, it’s going to take forever to work out the order. And there’s something kind of weird about the pieces that do fit together. Here, let me show you. It’s kind of cool but also kind of freaky.”
He went around to the far side of the table and very carefully removed a flat plate that fit on the main housing. Rig looked at him, and when Valen didn’t react, he frowned.
“Didn’t you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Um… look, I don’t want to get fresh or anything, but maybe turn your hearing aid thingy up?”
Valen did.
“Okay,” said Rig, “I’m going to remove another piece. Listen close, because it’s not loud.”
As Rig removed a circular pad that was near where the plate had been, Valen thought he heard a faint hrooom sound when the piece came free. “Did you hear it?”
“I did.”
“It makes that sound anytime two previously connected pieces are detached. But what I really want you to see is what happens when I put them back.”
Rig seemed to brace himself, and then placed the disk where it had been. There was no hrooom sound, but instead the whole unit flashed with intense light. It was there and gone, fast as a wink.
“How cool is that?” declared Rig.
“Give me the plate, kid.” When Rig handed it to him, Valen attached it to the machine. Although his hearing was bad, his sense of touch was superb, and as he moved the plate into place he felt something. A pull, like a magnetic attraction. Very faint, but definitely there. There was also another flash of bright green light.
Without saying anything he picked up the rod again and tried once more to insert it into the hole, this time paying attention to the feel of the resistance. While the plate felt like it was being pulled into place, the rod felt like it was being pushed back. It was a subtle feeling, but he was sure it was there.
“What…?” asked Rig.
“Magnetism,” said Valen.
“Huh? There’s no metal.”
He handed the rod to the grad student and told him what to feel for. It took a moment, but then Rig’s eyes popped wide.
“Holy crap,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Valen. “And now I think we have a way of figuring out how to assemble this thing.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Alisyn Camerota, the sharp-eyed blond co-anchor of New Day, was grilling an expert about the two Washington, D.C., quakes.
Geologist John Geissman, professor and department head of geosciences at the University of Texas at Dallas and editor in chief of Tectonics, was doing a workmanlike job of keeping his response down on the practical level. Mundanity for him to balance the needs of the seasoned journalist for something approaching apocalyptic hysteria.
“What is presently the Eastern Seaboard of North America,” he said casually, “has experienced a geologically long and very complicated history. You see, earthquakes form when rocks are displaced against one another along what we call faults. These are planes of zero cohesion in the Earth’s crust. So, there are ‘cracks’ along which displacement takes place. Once a fault forms, then there is a possibility, often a very good one, that subsequent displacement will take place over and over and over.”
“Resulting in larger and larger earthquakes?” said Camerota, trying to lead him.
He stroked his thick, graying mustache. “Resulting in the possibility of additional shocks,” he corrected.
“What can we do to predict these kinds of devastating events?”
Geissman suppressed a smile. “As advanced as geosciences have become, Alisyn, we still can’t predict earthquakes. However, we have gotten much better at assessing the probability and likely level of ground shaking at any point from future earthquakes.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”