The lack of streetlights and the cloudy skies left the night darker than the armpit of hell—a saying of Daddy’s that seemed appropriate. I got out, carrying my gobag, in which I had placed the psy-meter 2.0, a bottle of water, and a protein bar. I slung my pink blanket over a shoulder, seated my weapon, and took the flashlight in one hand, but off. I should have brought the low-light/IR headgear. I’d surely remember next time. This was one reason I was still a probie. I didn’t always plan ahead.
In the dark, I crossed the road into the woods. Occam would be along in cat form when he could, and with his cat vision, I’d be easy to find. Pressing the light against my belly, I turned it on.
Shielding the beam, I found a rabbit trail into the woods, thankful that most barbed and poisonous plants would be dormant. A thin fog was growing up around me, created by the cold earth and the slow-moving, warmer weather front.
Deep in the woods, the scent of pine needles and dead fir trees and loamy soil strong in my nose, I spread my blanket and sat, cross-legged. Without the flashlight, my eyes adjusted and I could see the distant lights of the DNAKeys compound. On my cell phone map, I had thought the area was all uphill, but the lights seemed to come from belowground, so the compound was in a hollow—what I had grown up calling a “holler,” a fold in the mountain, visible only from this angle.
I tested the psy-meter to the four compass points, getting a baseline normal, then pointed it at the lights. I got baseline normal again and pushed a button to put the unit to sleep. Holding it on my lap, I relaxed and put one fingertip on the earth, easing into the land in the way T. Laine had suggested not so long ago. Like on Soulwood, the land here was dormant, sleeping, but it seemed weak and . . . maybe stupid wasn’t a nice word but by comparison to Soulwood it was both. My woods were growing more powerful, more aware, and therefore more intelligent year by year. This place was not even half-aware. The land was no threat to me, and so I placed my palm flat, reading deeper, wider. I searched through the trees, finding so many dead that it gave me pause. There was a disproportionally high number of dead pine and Douglas fir trees, and a lively army of bark beetles hibernating just below the surface of the trees’ outer skins. I moved among the trees, letting my consciousness touch here and there, giving a bump of energy to a tree that was still on the brink of death but hadn’t crested the hill. And another tree. And another. But there were so many trees on that cliff face of dying that I would never be able to save them all. Half of this forest was dying and there was nothing I could do short of claiming the land and . . . well, I wasn’t going to kill a human to save the conifers.
Unsettled, I turned my attention elsewhere and searched the shape of the land, reaching out for the creatures moving upon it, sleeping on it, or hibernating below it in dens. I reached out and out. There were bear and lynx and dozens of deer. Skunk in a den. Squirrels high in trees. Birds sleeping in trees and thickets. I moved through the ground, looking for buried electronic devices and electrical lines, and then up, into the air, searching for the same, plotting out the electrical and water that supplied the corporation. I found four places with minute changes in the electromagnetic ambience that seemed likely locations for cameras or alarms. And there was the larger incongruity that would be DNAKeys.
I was sensing things I hadn’t before. Or maybe identifying things that I hadn’t recognized before. The burning by Devin and healing by Soulwood had done something to me on a deeper level than just leaves and twigs and sprouts.
I marked in my mind where the compound was and explored its outlines, its parking lots, walking trails, and outdoor pens. The pens were massive, with tall mesh fences and taller mesh roofs. The building had basements, two deep. There was a familiar but fuzzy sensation in the basement levels, as if something was interfering with my perception. Rebar? The thickness of the basement walls? I pulled away for now. I’d need to get closer to be sure my impressions were correct.
Changing direction, I pressed my awareness out and down, into the heart of the small mountain. I found rock and water, the shattered stone of an ancient mountain, slab upon fractured slab, broken and splintered and rotting back to sand. The water table was higher than I might have expected and the earth’s crust thinner. The water in many places was hot and rising through cracks in the earth, as if struggling to become hot springs. I eased back to the surface, clasped my hands together, and thought about that.
Hot underground water was produced when water came into contact with magma (molten rock) and was heated. It became hot springs when that hot water rose to the surface. The town of Hot Springs, named after the heated water that boiled up to the surface there, was only a stone’s throw from Asheville, North Carolina, which was a short distance as the bird flies from Knoxville, so the wider region had geothermal activity.
Most geothermal systems were near volcanoes that had been active in the past, or were still active, but there was no known volcanic activity in this immediate area. Soooo. What had caused this thermic change?
Soulwood had recently forced heat through the ground when I was hypothermic. Had magma risen closer to the surface under the command of Soulwood, just to warm me? If so, had allowing magma closer to the surface caused some kind of unexpected instability? Should I—could I—do anything about it? If I had caused the change in the earth’s temperature, had I also caused the death of the trees by making the environment a better place for the beetles to live? Robert K. Merton’s thoughts about unintended consequences danced through my mind.
Disconcerted and uncertain, I got up, turned on my flash, and carried my blanket deeper into the woods. I read the land by the psy-meter 2.0 again and got the same levels. My personal, less scientific reading confirmed the readings as well. I wondered if I should walk deeper in the woods for a closer reading, if I could do so safely, and decided that I’d know if a stranger came toward me. But the thought of being caught was distressing. I had been given a basic class on what to do if I was ever held captive by a dangerous subject, but the lesson at PsyLED Spook School had done little to salve my fear of attack. Not that I was afraid of being hurt while in the woods—any woods, anywhere—but I didn’t want to kill anyone just because they were stupid.