“If you are waiting for me to apologize, then I hope you have a comfortable seat,” said Grey. “Besides, it made me feel good. Tell me how this is about ghost rock.”
Looks Away grunted. “It’s complicated.”
“Uncomplicate it for me.”
“Have you ever heard of the word ‘metallurgy’?”
“Sure. Something to do with metals and such. Making alloys, all that.”
“All that, correct. The term was originally used by alchemists because some of the properties of various metals and ores were believed to be magical.”
“I don’t believe in magic,” said Grey, but his comment sounded false even to his own ears. He saw the expression his tone put on Looks Away’s face, so he amended. “I believe in God and suchlike. And… ghosts. I believe in ghosts. Not sure about a lot of the rest of it. Witches and like that. Met a couple of fortunetellers who were fakes. Maybe one who had something.” He shrugged. “I met a whole lot of people who think ghost rock is spooky. The sounds it makes when it burns. Like the screams of the damned.”
The Sioux nodded. “Do you think that’s what it is?”
“Don’t know. Only heard it burned twice. Sounds weird, sure, but if I’d never heard a kettle boil or a steam engine scream I’d have thought that was the sound of the Devil, too.”
“There is perhaps a stronger connection between ghost rock and the spirit world than you might think,” said Looks Away slowly. “You see, inventors, industrialists, and natural philosophers the world over have been experimenting with the ore to harness its power. There’s really nothing like it anywhere.”
“So I’ve heard. So what?”
“So, just as scientists are exploring its potential, so are alchemists.”
“How’s that work? I thought all that alchemy stuff was hokum that it died out a hundred or so years ago.”
Looks Away laughed. “Died out? Not even close. It was largely discredited, to be sure, and fairly so because most alchemists were charlatans. Like most fortune-tellers and other snake oil salesmen.”
“Con men,” suggested Grey.
“Con men,” agreed Looks Away. “However, just as you’ve met one fortune-teller who you thought might have something, there are a precious few among the world’s remaining alchemists who also ‘have’ something. I refer, of course, to those who have made a serious study of what some call ‘the larger world.’”
“The spirit world, you mean?”
“Yes and no. For most people the spirit world is a label they slap on everything from ghosts to demons to, say, vampires and werewolves. Most of it is fairy stories for gullible children. Gullible adults, too, I suppose.”
“But—?”
“The larger world, as viewed by those select wiser alchemists, refers to a universe where science and magic may well be two sides of the same coin. After all, our science of this modern age would look like magic to someone a century ago.” He touched his chest. “Imagine what the first peoples here in America thought of the Europeans with their great wooden ships and muskets. Think about it. Imagine that a red man who is a skilled hunter and tracker, one of the best of his tribe, who is deadly with a bow and arrow, encounters a man in a metal chestplate and helmet who can point a stick and with thunder and lightning, strike down a great elk a hundred yards away. Tell me that red man did not believe he was witnessing true magic.”
Grey thought about it, nodded.
“To the settlers who crossed this continent in covered wagons barely half a century ago,” continued Looks Away, “what would the steam locomotive have been like? Twenty years ago the thought of a horseless carriage was an impossible pipe dream, and now, with the power of ghost rock, you can see them on the streets of New York and Philadelphia and Boston.”
“I see where you’re going with that.”
“Now, step back and look at ghost rock through the same telescope. It screams when it’s burned. Sure, we all see that and it’s rather shocking. The weak-minded always want to ascribe something supernatural to the things they don’t understand. History tells us that. But what if all we’re witnessing is merely an aspect of science that has not yet been measured and quantified.”
Grey thought about it, but he slowly shook his head. “I’ll buy that as an explanation for why ghost rock sounds like the screaming damned. Chemicals hiss and pop and make all sorts of sounds. Everyone knows that. But that?” He stabbed a finger toward the corpses that were now laid in a row and weighted down with rocks. “Tell me how your science — or alchemy, for that matter — explains dead men getting up and getting rowdy? I shot one of those fellows in the heart and he didn’t blink. You hear me? He did not even blink. He just kept grabbing at me, trying to bite me. If that’s science and not magic, then everyone’s been calling it by the wrong damn name all these years. Maybe it’s all magic. That or this is a madhouse and we’re all inmates.”
Looks Away nodded. “And now you get to my problem.”
“Pardon?”
“Until tonight I was fully invested in the camp of people who believed that the qualities of ghost rock were nothing more than science that was not yet understood.” He paused and regarded the corpses, then shuddered. “Now I don’t know what I believe.”
“Welcome to the rodeo,” said Grey. “We’re both riding the same bucking bronco here. Want to tell me what was the blue flash, and could it have caused this?”
“That’s the point where all of my beliefs trip and fall on their face, old chap,” said Looks Away. “You see there was a man I met while at university in England. An American scientist and inventor. Rather a brilliant fellow by the name of Percival Saint.”
Grey frowned. “Why’s that name so familiar?”
“He was an advisor to President Grant,” said Looks Away.
“Oh, hell yes. He was a slave as a kid, but he escaped. Took a bunch of other slaves with him and went north.”
“That’s the man.”
“The papers said he went to college and got himself a degree. Went back down South after the Confederate States of America abolished slavery and helped build some factories and design some new farm equipment. I heard that he’s been making weapons, that he’s a gun maker.”
Looks Away sniffed. “Calling Percival Saint a ‘gun maker,’” he said with asperity, “is like calling Michelangelo a ‘house painter.’ Doctor Saint has more doctorates and degrees than you’ve had hot dinners. He is a great, great man.”
“Well pardon the living hell out of me.”
“I met Doctor Saint when our Wild West show visited Sweden. We gave a special performance in October for the birthday of his friend and colleague Alfred Nobel.”
“Dynamite Nobel?”
“The same. Our show was held at the Bofers Ironworks factory in Kariskoga where they make the steel for certain types of cannons. The factory used several of Nobel’s metallurgic techniques there, and there is a rumor that he plans to buy the company. We gave a show for the staff and several hundred guests. I had arranged with Doctor Saint and Mr. Nobel to use some of their experimental chemical combinations to create a fireworks display that served as our finale. It was all quite exciting.”
“And you’re drifting away from getting to the damn point,” growled Grey.
“Not really. It was during my discussions with Doctor Saint and Nobel that the subject of ghost rock came up. This was a few years ago, mind you, during that big surge to find the stuff. Naturally both men had a great interest in the rock and its potential. They both saw it as a great weapon of war. They had each done some, shall we say, casual experiments with it.”
“Casual?”
“Did you hear about the big fire in Chicago some years back?”