Berta looked up. “I’m a mechanical engineer. Spiro and I spent the past ten years designing the technology to harvest and contain the strange matter.”
“Spiro is dead,” Riley said.
Berta went back to her work. Riley guessed she had nothing more to say on that subject.
“If you’ve really discovered strange matter, you deserve a Nobel Prize in Physics,” Riley said.
“I didn’t discover anything. It was discovered more than a century ago when the U.S. government was exploring the area known today as Yellowstone. Of course, all they knew at the time was that once in a very rare while a little blob of matter, which was like nothing ever seen before, would bubble to the surface of a mud pit or a hot spring and, well, you’ve seen what it can do under the right conditions.”
“It was horrible,” Riley said. “What did they think it was?”
“They didn’t know. It was impossible to collect and study because it bubbled to the surface so rarely and randomly and always in such small quantities. The reaction would be over in seconds and, as you saw, there was nothing left to study. Later, they discovered more in Hawaii and then in Samoa and so on. The government decided to create the National Park system to protect and study the mysterious substance that had such an enormous destructive potential. They didn’t know what it was at the time. They only knew that it was connected to volcanic activity. The real breakthrough was in 1970.”
“What happened in 1970?” Riley asked.
“We realized that certain volcanoes were formed over mantle plumes and were drawing magma directly from the earth’s core.”
“Cosmic leftovers from the big bang,” Riley said.
Berta looked surprised. “That’s right. The world we know is composed of normal matter, but at the earth’s core there are small bits of exotic matter leftover from the early universe.”
“Like strange matter.”
Berta nodded. “Correct.”
“So why hasn’t the earth been destroyed long ago?”
“Most of the strange matter we find is no bigger than the size of a light nucleus. They’re called strangelets, and they don’t seem to have the mass to do any significant damage. Every once in a couple hundred thousand years, a larger mass is extruded, and the results can be devastating.”
“Destroy-an-entire-continent devastating?”
Berta shrugged. “You’ve heard of the lost continent of Atlantis? We also suspect strange matter is the catalyst responsible for the past couple magnitude-eight eruptions at Yellowstone.”
“And you’ve discovered a way to collect strange matter?” Riley asked.
“Strangelet by strangelet. It’s been a painstakingly slow process. Even after ten years all we’ve managed to put together is the size of a tennis ball.”
“Is that enough to destroy a continent?”
“It’s enough to destroy the earth and turn it into a little dense ball floating through space. The little field experiment you witnessed was mostly plasma. The actual strange matter was less than a single drop, and it would have destroyed all of Mauna Kea if it wasn’t contained within a magnetic field.”
Riley looked around the room. She needed to find a way to escape before Berta decided to conduct another field experiment on her.
“Why doesn’t it destroy the earth’s core?” Riley asked.
“We don’t know yet. There’s a powerful magnetic field at the core. Maybe it’s the intense heat or pressure. Maybe something happens to change its charge from positive to negative when it reaches the surface. For whatever reason, it’s not until it reaches the surface that it seems to react with normal matter.”
“It seems to me that you’re a scientist, not a killer.”
“Your life means no more to me than a lab rat’s. If the director wants me to experiment with human subjects, I have no problem with that. If he wants me to build him a super-weapon, that’s just fine with me too.”
“Why?” Riley asked. “What’s in it for you?”
“Just a little thing called France. It’s the bonus I’ve been promised once Director Young conquers the world.”
“A friend of mine recently told me that greed leads to suffering,” Riley said.
“I guess I’d rather suffer as a rich empress than be a happy, dead scientist like Spiro,” Berta said. “You and your friends picked the wrong fight.”
Riley jiggled her chains and glared at Berta. “Funny, I was just about to say the same to you.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE UNMISTAKABLE WUP, WUP, WUP OF A hovering helicopter filtered through the windows of Mysterioso Ranch.
“Ride’s here,” Emerson said, springing out of his chair, gathering up his backpack, and going to the door.
Vernon, Alani, and Wayan Bagus joined him on the front lanai. A six-seat Airbus Eco-Star helicopter was landing in the pasture behind the house, stirring up the grasses in the process.
Vernon looked at the chopper and groaned. “Tell me you didn’t,” he said to Emerson. “There must be a thousand helicopter pilots in Hawaii and you chose Mr. Yakomura, Alani’s dad, didn’t you?”
“It was the only helicopter I could find at short notice, and who would fly us around at night, no questions asked.”
Yakomura hopped out of the Eco-Star and walked over to them. He gave Alani a hug, then saw Vernon and shook his head.
“Good evening, Mr. Yakomura,” Vernon said. “I reckon it’s been a while.”
“Dad, you remember Vernon,” Alani said.
Yakomura frowned. “How could I forget? Are you still a degenerate?”
Vernon looked around for help. “No, Mr. Yakomura.” He reached out to Wayan Bagus. “In fact, this here’s my personal spiritual adviser. He’s teaching me the ways of the Sage and such.”
Mr. Yakomura looked skeptically at Vernon. “Really. What ways would those be?”
“Oh, you know. Showing my elders respect and not objectifying women’s racks and things like that. Isn’t that so, Little Buddy?”
“No,” Wayan Bagus said politely.
“This is my father, Steven Yakomura,” Alani said to Wayan Bagus.
Wayan Bagus steepled his fingers and bowed ever so slightly in greeting.
Half an hour later, they were airborne and flying over the interior of the island. The sun had just set and they had a full-on view of Kilauea. Glowing red rivers of lava flowed down the dark mountain and into the sea. Huge plumes of smoke and steam obscured the entry points. Even from a distance it was impressive.
The helicopter banked to the left, and the dark lava fields were replaced with lush rain forests.
“That’s Ola’a,” Alani said.
Everyone looked down. A thick blanket of trees covered the area completely. Emerson reached into his backpack, pulled out a large telescopic camera, and aimed it at Ola’a Forest.
“What’s that?” Alani asked.
“It’s a long-range infrared camera I appropriated from the security system of the main house at Mysterioso Ranch. It basically picks up any heat signature and takes a picture using temperature differences the same way a regular camera uses light.”
Vernon, Alani, and Wayan Bagus looked at the camera’s viewing screen as Emerson scanned the forest through the thick canopy. Except for the occasional pig or goat displayed in a rainbow of yellows, reds, and greens, initially there was nothing but complete darkness.
“The detail is amazing,” Alani said. “We have an infrared telescope at Mauna Kea, but I had no idea the image quality for terrestrial cameras was so good.”
“It used to be strictly a military technology,” Emerson said. “It provides an accurate image up to a distance of two miles.”
Emerson aimed the camera at the center of Ola’a. A good-sized red and yellow blob of an unknown heat source filled the screen.
Emerson pointed at the area. “It looks like we may have found Riley.”
“I don’t know,” Alani said. “It’s just a blob of heat. It could be anybody down there.”
Emerson shook his head. “It’s not a campfire. We’d see the light from the air. I think it’s an exhaust, just like the one we saw on Mauna Kea. And it’s coming from the center of an unspoiled wilderness that just happens to be owned by the National Park Service.”