“Thanks,” I said. “That means a lot. More than I can express.”
We shook hands. But I sagged back, feeling how weak and sick I still was.
“I heard you got beat up,” he said, nodding to my bruises.
“It worked out in my favor,” I told him. “But thinking about it hurts my head.”
He nodded. “Another case like what happened with your friend Dr. Sanchez?”
“Yes. If you have any suggestions or theories I am all ears.”
“Sadly, no. This is a strange case.”
“Strange doesn’t begin to cover it. This started off weird and got weirder.”
Bolton said, “You mean the Mountains of Madness and the connection to pulp horror writers? I know, it’s maddening. However, the reference to the God Machine in what your man, Bug, found…? I think I might have something useful on that.”
“What?” I cried, nearly leaping over the desk at him.
“It’s not much, but it’s something I caught wind of ten, twelve years ago. I was working an industrial espionage case that involved one of the tangential players from Gateway.”
“Our case,” I corrected, and he winced.
“Okay. Our case. The espionage thing involved Oscar Bell, who used to be married to Marcus Erskine’s sister. Bell’s files had been hacked and I recovered them because he was working on several important defense contracts. I, ah, may have peeked into Bell’s private files.”
“Naughty, naughty.”
“I know,” he said with a straight face, “I’m so ashamed.”
“And—?”
“And that’s where I first saw mention of the God Machine. Bug probably told you that it was a bit of weird science cooked up by Bell’s son, Prospero. Brilliant kid, incredible IQ, but quite mad, I’m afraid. Died in a fire, I understand. Anyway, from what little I read, the God Machine was designed to facilitate interdimensional travel. And I’m pretty damn sure that’s what Erskine was building down there. I think that’s what you and your team saw. And,” he said, “I’m equally sure that’s why Erskine called his project ‘Gateway.’”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
“Interdimensional travel?” I asked. “Okay, we’re now having a conversation in which interdimensional travel is a thing. Sure. Why not? My day hasn’t been nearly weird enough. But seriously… why? What’s the appeal, I mean in terms of Washington bean counters and Defense Department paranoids?”
Bolton shrugged. “It was sold to the government as a source of cheap, renewable energy and endless raw materials.”
“How so?”
He launched into an explanation of the omniverse theory and how, if such a theory could be proved, it might mean that there are an infinite number of worlds like ours which could be mined for fossil fuels, minerals, clean water, and so on.
“And you believe this?” I asked, smiling.
“I didn’t used to,” he said, “but then I read your after-action report. Something weird happened down there. Something very weird that you and your team — three intelligent, experienced agents and trained observers — could not explain. Something our current science can’t explain. And we know for a fact that Bell and Erskine were tied to a project to explore this. Someone in government believed in it enough to fund it. So… sure, I’m keeping an open mind.” He paused. “That said, if such a technology exists and infinite worlds do, in fact, exist, this whole process is in its absolute infancy. There is no chance in hell they are going to get it right without a lot of things going badly wrong. The fact that the Russian, Chinese, and American stations down in Antarctica all went dark at the same time is suggestive. Maybe they opened a doorway and something bad came out.”
“Something like what?”
His eyes drilled into me. “You said you saw something that looked like a giant monster. Maybe what you saw was some kind of animal. Something from one of those other worlds.”
I said nothing.
“And consider this,” Bolton added. “You were exposed to a strain of the Spanish flu that is unknown to science. Unknown to our science. I asked Dr. Hu about that and floated the theory that this could have been a virus from an adjacent dimension.”
“How’d he take it?”
Bolton laughed. “He threw me out of his lab.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a dick,” said Bolton.
“He is.” I loved it that Harcourt Bolton despised the same cretinous jackass that I did. Made me feel special.
“Tell me, Joe,” he said, amusement twinkling in his eyes, “are you buying anything I’m saying? Does this give us a working theory?”
“My considered opinion,” I admitted, “is that it beats the shit out of me.”
He blew out his cheeks and rubbed his eyes. “I’m right there with you, Joe. I’ve been chewing on the God Machine concept for years now, ever since I recovered Bell’s files… and now there’s the Gateway incident. Quite frankly I don’t know what to believe. Over the last twenty years I’ve seen science twisted into new shapes that I don’t recognize. Makes me almost long for the days when the worst thing we had to deal with were Soviet spies smuggling nuclear secrets and plans for the stealth bomber. Now this stuff? Joe, I’m more than half-glad I’m too old to go out into the field anymore. I sure as hell don’t envy what you went through down at Gateway.”
I said, “Has anyone ever actually proven that alternate universes exist?”
“Oh, hell no. In quantum physics, in superstring theory, they’ve gone pretty far in making a case for additional dimensions beyond the common ones we know. But they’re mathematical constructs at this point. And that’s an attempt to understand complex quantum dimensionality. No one’s crossed the line and done the math to build a credible case for other universes.” He paused. “Except maybe Prospero Bell.”
“And Marcus Erskine believed in it enough to get a gazillion dollars’ worth of covert funding.”
We sat there and stared at each other.
“Shit,” I said.
“Shit,” he agreed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Late in the evening on a hot September night.
Bunch of us sitting around on the back deck of the Pier. Top and Bunny were back and the rest of Echo Team had returned from the make-work assignments they’d been sent out on. We talked about the Closers, about the fight at San Pedro’s office, about Gateway, about Rudy, and about the surfers. We talked and talked and we got exactly nowhere. Junie wasn’t home yet and I really wanted to pick her brain about Prospero Bell, but she was out of cell phone range.
So we sat and let the day burn its way into night.
Bunny was sprawled on a lounge chair, shorts, no shirt, a Padres cap pulled low to throw shadows over the line of six stiches. Lydia sat next to him in a bikini top and cut-off military camo pants. Montana Parker, Brian Botley, and Sam Imura were all in civvies. Top was in sweats and I was wearing one of my most obnoxious Hawaiian shirts — fluorescent toucans and bright blue howler monkeys doing a line dance. Every flat surface was littered with empty beer bottles. An impressive number of them.
Or, seen from our viewpoint, not nearly enough of them.
There was no moon and the sky above us was filled with cold little diamond chips that bathed us in blue-white light. Beneath the Pier the endless waves slapped against the pilings and washed against the beach. The surf roar sounded like faint and distant crowds of people talking, talking, talking, and saying nothing.