“For such a back-to-basics fellow, it’s interesting that Ren has a Maker and a Dynamo hidden away, isn’t it?”
Ellis was worried the sound of his heart pounding was audible. What would Warren do when he found out? Lock him up, probably. Chain him in the chicken coop or something. He set the Maker down, and looked for the poker.
The coat-wearing intruder took a step toward him, and Ellis was just about to reach for the poker—which he’d left on the floor—when his visitor stopped, turned, and carefully closed the door, providing them with privacy.
Something in the person’s movements and expression was familiar. There was a gentleness around the eyes, concern in the line of the jaw, and the mouth was on the verge of a smile.
“Pax?” Ellis said the name as a wish with equal parts hope and disbelief.
The smile exploded into a giant grin. “You recognized me!”
Ellis physically wavered. He hadn’t expected the response. As much as he might have hoped, as much as he prayed for it to be true, it wasn’t really possible…was it? “Is it really—”
Pax rushed forward, wrapping him in a tight embrace. “I’ve been waiting for you. Thought you’d never get back.”
“Oh my God!” Ellis whispered, smelling the scent of cinnamon. “It’s you—Pax, you’re alive!”
“Of course, I’m—”
Ellis returned the hug, squeezing as hard as he could, and then, without thinking or caring to think, he kissed Pax—a long, hard kiss on the lips. A tear slid down Ellis’s cheek, and he said, “Oh Jesus, Pax, I thought—I thought that you’d killed yourself. I thought I had—God, you’re still alive!”
“Yes, Ellis Rogers, I’m fine—a lot better, now that…that…”
“What?”
Pax looked at him grinning, showing off those perfect teeth. “I can’t believe that you recognized me.”
“Listen, Pax, we need to leave. We need to go right now.”
“Together this time, right?” Pax smiled at him hopefully.
“Absolutely.”
Still holding on, Ellis felt Pax’s body stiffen. The arbitrator pulled away and stared intently into Ellis’s eyes. The bright smile was snuffed out and replaced by horror. “Oh no—oh…” Ellis felt Pax begin to shake. “They’re going to concrete Hollow World.”
Ellis nodded. “Three nuclear bombs. I think they’ve already placed the first two. They’ll go off in less than three hours—at precisely 14:54 Hollow World core time.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We still have a chance,” Ellis said. “If we can find the bombs, we can use your Port-a-Call and shove the warheads through to give your PICA company.”
“But how will we find them?” Pax pulled the POC from a vest pocket.
“They’ll be at the Geomancy Institute.”
“I think that might be a big place, and they’ll have hidden them, won’t they?”
“Probably, but that’s okay. I know a way to find them. We just need to make a stop on the way.”
Chapter Thirteen
End of Times
The forest was not as Ellis had remembered. He recalled his journey as frightening—a trip through the unknown. It had been night and the woods were intimidating. This time the soaring trees seemed majestic. Angled shafts of sunlight pierced the high canopy with angelic elegance, dappling the cascading river of moss-covered stones.
He and Pax scrambled up the rocks, following the river. The two had ported out of Firestone Farm back to the hill where they’d shared the stew. From there Ellis took out his compass and notepad, and made general guesses that Pax worked into the Port-a-Call. They performed a series of upriver jumps until Ellis felt certain they were close. Approaching from the opposite direction was more confusing than he expected, and he couldn’t find the marks he had carved in the trees.
That boulder looks familiar. Did I stumble on that?
They were running out of time.
“Yes, any Geo. Ask Vin. This is an emergency. Listen, just let me talk to Vin, okay?”
Behind him, Pax was speaking to Alva, although it looked as if Pax were talking to the sky.
“How are you doing that?” Ellis asked. “How are you communicating? Is it through the Port-a-Call?”
“No. Just a con…what? No, I wasn’t speaking to you, Alva. I was talking to Ellis Rogers…What? We’re sort of busy at the moment…Okay, all right!” Ellis heard Pax huff. “Alva says hello.”
“What’s a con?”
“Huh? Oh, it’s a microscopic receiver-transmitter implant. Just about everyone has them.”
“So, what? You just think about who you want to talk to and then talk?”
“Sort of, yeah…Vin? Yeah, I’m with Ellis Rogers, and we have a very serious problem…Of course, I’m alive. Listen, I need your help…Thanks, I knew I could count on you. I need permission and coords to the Geomancy Institute, and I need them right now…Yes, I’m serious…No! Don’t talk to Pol-789! Don’t talk to anyone on the Council. Go right to the institute…Yes…Yes…Tell them it’s for me, and that I’m bringing Ellis Rogers. Tell them—tell them the sky is falling…Yes, that’s what I said. The sky is falling. Tell them that…You don’t need to understand, and I don’t have time to explain. Just do it, Vin.”
“The sky is falling?” Ellis asked as he trudged up the riverbank.
“It’s a code phrase geomancers use. It indicates the most dire of circumstances. It means drop whatever you’re doing and get on this, because if you don’t, the world will end.”
“Code red,” Ellis said. “That’s what we used to say.” He saw it then, the bright pale scar cut into the bark of the giant tree—a crude arrow pointing to the right. “There!”
He pointed up the slope. “Up here, I think.”
They climbed, and Ellis was becoming desperate. Just as he thought they wouldn’t be able to find it, he caught a glimpse of bright red and blue.
“There it is!” he shouted as they ran to the pile of plastic milk crates surrounding his old van seat.
“This is your time machine?” Pax asked, stunned.
“I told you it wasn’t much to look at.”
Ellis ran to the cooler.
His sweater was still where he’d left it. Throwing it over his shoulder he popped the top off the cooler. More cans of food, bottles of drinking water, and the Internet-purchased Geiger counter were still with the rest of his gear. He had no rational reason to expect it wouldn’t be—just the general nightmarish fear that the worst would always happen when he could least afford it.
“This is it.” He picked up the little handheld and showed it to Pax. The Mazur PRM-9000 was the size of a thick iPhone and looked a bit like a garage door opener except that it had a green digital display and a red LED warning light in the design of a radiation symbol.
“And that can find the bombs?” Pax asked.
“It should. Warren wouldn’t even let me get near the one they had at the lab because it was leaking radiation. The website I bought this from said it had excellent sensitivity for detecting even low levels of radiation in food, which was why I paid six hundred dollars for it. So it ought to be able to pick up a plutonium-leaking nuclear warhead.”
Ellis slipped the Geiger counter into his back pocket. “Have we gotten coordinates yet?”
“Not yet. I have Vin and Alva working on it. They’re calling in favors on my behalf from a few people I’ve helped in the past.”
Ellis pulled his sweater on and plucked leaves off it. Now that the weather had cooled, he found he was happy to have it again. “So you just, what? Think Alva or Vin and they can hear you?”
“They hear a faint tone or the name of the person who is trying to talk to them. The person being called can either accept or reject.”