Dr. Gordon resumed his slow pacing. “And the weather phenomenon continues to puzzle me. It's as though Earth Yellow's atmosphere has encroached on the other two without a reciprocating effect. Maybe our two universes are materializing within each other somehow, one overlapping the other so that the worlds will merge physically. If so, the danger level has become literally astronomical. The gravitational collapse alone would annihilate both planets. Our peril cannot be overestimated.”
“That's not exactly comforting.” Nathan slid his Earth Blue cell phone from his pocket and checked the battery indicator. Still plenty of power. “Okay,” he said, standing, “I'm off to see the mirrors again. Give me a call if you hear anything from Daryl Red. If you can't get me on the cell, try the landline. If it's out, try smoke signals. I'll get back in touch somehow.”
Clara Blue tapped his shoulder. “Shall I go with you?”
“Better not. Daryl might need your help, and if we have to jump dimensions, we want to punch as few holes as possible.”
“I won't make a very big hole,” Kelly said, rising slowly from her chair. “Besides, you need my ears.”
“And your tackling skills. You never know when I'll need someone to pull me out of a dream.”
Clara Blue crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, Mr. Practical, have you thought about where to get fuel, or did you forget that the Toyota is almost empty and operating gas stations are likely to be few and far between?”
Nathan licked his lips. He cringed at the hint of gasoline still coating the surface. Siphoning his way to Iowa wouldn't work, but Clara's smirk revealed that she already had an idea cooking. “Okay,” he said. “I give. Whatcha got?”
She pointed in the general direction of the observatory's rear exit. “I checked the outbuilding. If you look behind the lawn mower, you will find two small gas cans. It won't be enough to get all the way to central Iowa, but it's a start.”
Daryl Blue gave Kelly a peck on the cheek. Her voice cracked. “Take care of yourself. I don't want to lose another Kelly-kins.”
Blinking rapidly, Kelly took her hand. She opened her mouth to speak, but, after a second or two, she closed it again and returned the kiss.
Silence descended on the telescope room. The gravity of countless dangers seemed to weigh on everyone's mind. With interfinity at hand and Mictar lurking in every dark corner, the shadow of death seemed to hover overhead.
Offering only a wave, Nathan and Kelly left quietly, hand in hand.
After gassing up the Toyota and packing the violin, camera, and mirror, they began the long drive back to Newton. The skies, now gray and darkening, spattered cold rain across the windshield and slickened the pavement.
Nathan flipped on the radio and pressed the scan button, searching for a good signal. The digital readout sped through the FM frequencies, topping at 107.9 and starting over again.
Obviously, no stations were nearby. When he pressed the button again to end the search, mild static buzzed through the speakers, and a rhythmic bump sounded every second or so, as if a percussionist struck a drum in time with an inaudible melody.
Nathan reached to turn the radio off, but Kelly grabbed his wrist. “Leave it there. I hear something.”
He pulled his hand back. “What?”
“I'm not sure. Just let me listen.”
As they passed close to the Burger King they had visited in Earth Yellow, the static increased in volume and pitch. Nathan decelerated and pulled into the parking lot. “Let's change the frequency one notch at a time.” He pressed the tuning button. The static altered, pitching higher again.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Try going up a few more.”
He hit the button twice. The static separated into several scratchy voices, some bass singers, some sopranos, and a couple in between. As he continued climbing the frequency range, the jumbled sounds clarified until the chorus of voices sang without distortion. Although each singer performed with professional polish, they sang oddly blended notes, without melody, without purpose. The voices seemed to compete with each other, some in one key and some in another, until the combination sounded more like an operatic war than a choir performance.
Kelly winced. “That's awful! It sounds like Pavarotti is having a temper tantrum.”
“Can you interpret?” Nathan asked, turning the volume down slightly.
“They're all saying different things, but I'll try to pick up something.” She opened the glove box and withdrew a pen. “Got any paper?”
He pulled “Foundation's Key” from his pocket. “Use the back of this.”
She retrieved Daryl's puzzle book, scooted her feet up on her seat, and set the paper and book on her knees, drawing them close to her eyes. While she jotted down some words, Nathan pulled slowly out of the parking lot. “Let's see if we can keep moving and still pick it up.” As he accelerated, the signal faded but not enough to squelch the voices.
Kelly turned up the volume and continued to transcribe lyrics. “I count at least eight different voices, and they're all saying something different. I'm piecing them together the best I can.”
Nathan glanced at her as she worked. At times, she just listened intently, then, with tiny, precise letters, she slowly formed a word, pursing her lips to mouth the syllables as they painstakingly appeared on her paper.
He squeezed the steering wheel and looked up at the darkening sky. It was a good thing they had over four hours in front of them. With so many voices, her transcription could take every minute of it.
Although no other cars competed for road space, Nathan took his time. Every few miles, as the signal wavered, he adjusted the volume. Soon, he noticed a pattern. Whenever the thickness of the clouds overhead decreased, the strength of the signal increased. He gazed up at the thinning blanket overhead. Was the music, if it could be called that, coming through the wounds in space? Could the singers be the twelve white-haired freaks torturing Scarlet from their stance in the chromatic circle?
Nathan pressed down the gas pedal. Scarlet needed help. He had to rescue her from their clutches. Even if it meant wounding the dimensional fabric again, ending her suffering would be worth it.
He leaned through the gap between the seats and grabbed the mirror from the back. Propping it on the dashboard, he stared at it while still accelerating.
Kelly looked up. “What are you doing?”
“I want to see if Scarlet will help us get back to her.”
Her glassy eyes blinked twice. “Scarlet? What can she do?”
“She watches me through the Quattro mirror. She said she's the one who rescued us from the plane crash.”
“Do you need music?”
“To show a transport destination, I think so. But we have this stuff on the radio.”
Kelly laughed. “I wouldn't call that music. I'd call it the opposite of music.”
“Maybe we can find a normal station now.” He pressed the scan button again and watched the digits climb.
“Nathan!” Kelly pushed his hand away. “I was just getting some important stuff. I think it's about your parents.”
“Why didn't you tell me?” He pushed the tuner until the singing returned.
“I wanted to wait until I had it all.”
He lowered the mirror and breathed out an exasperated sigh. “Go ahead. Keep translating.”
She settled back again and tapped her pen on the page. “It's really strange. Most of the voices are singing about morbid things like death, fear, and war, but there's one female who inserts other words out of the blue. So I started concentrating on her voice. She sings in what sounds like F-sharp Major, and every time she sings an A-sharp, I hear a word that doesn't fit what she's saying overall. That's when I started writing down the A-sharp words that my mind translates.”
“Wow! That's amazing. With all that noise, you gotta have perfect pitch to pull out those notes.”
She doodled on the page, making a warped quarter note. “It has to be more than that. I've a
lways been good at identifying notes, but ever since you showed up at my house, I've been hearing things I've never heard before. All the sounds separate neatly from each other, almost like I can see them in my mind.”
“You're the interpreter. You picked up a sixth sense of some kind.”
“I guess so.” She tapped her pen on the paper. “Anyway, here's what I have so far. ‘Solomon location square music.’”
He glanced at her notes. Whoever was sending them a message had mentioned his father's name! His voice spiked in volume. “Is that it? Isn't there more?”
“Not yet.” A hurt expression wrinkled her face. “It's really hard. I'm doing the best I can.”
He clenched the steering wheel. Everything was moving too slowly, much too slowly. “I know you're trying, but there has to be more. The words sound important, but they don't make sense.”
“You switched the station,” she said, pointing at the radio with her pen. “I'll have to keep listening to pick it up again.”
Nathan stared at the radio. She was right. It was his fault. He slammed his hand against the dashboard. “I can't believe it! I'm so stupid sometimes!”
“I'm not touching that one.” She angled her ear toward the radio and squinted at the paper again, her pen poised. “But it'll help if you turn down your volume for a while.”
Nathan bit his tongue. That was the sharpest rebuke he had heard from Kelly in a long time. As he glared at the road, a dozen retorts flashed through his mind and begged to burst out, but he pressed his teeth down harder. He deserved the scolding. They had a plan, and he switched gears. And why? Because he wanted to rescue Scarlet. Somehow the maiden in red had captured his will, and he couldn't get his mind off her.
He set the mirror in the back and gazed at Kelly. Her lips once again pursed, she continued to painstakingly transcribe from the midst of the turmoil. In some ways, she mirrored Scarlet — fair of face and form, possessing a fire within that defied description, and, with her vision so brutally wounded, carrying an air of vulnerability that called out for his protection.
Finally, he let out a long sigh. It was time to make up for his blunder. He reached over and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “I was wrong, Kelly. Keep me in line. You're good at that.”
Kelly kept her gaze fixed on the paper. A little smile grew on her face, a gentle smile that spread a soothing balm over his aching heart.
Nathan allowed a smile of his own to emerge. It felt good to apologize, very, very good.
The translation process continued. Sometimes the voices would stop for a while, as if giving the singers a few minutes to rest, but they always started back up again, beginning with a ten-second-long burst in which everyone belted out a C-natural at various octaves before crashing into the usual cacophony of horrible dissonance.
After an hour or so, the music came to a halt, another rest. Kelly slid her feet back to the floorboard and held the paper in front of her. “There might be more, but here's what I have so far. ‘Solomon location square music key circle sleep interpreter dream bedroom Patar.’”
“Very interesting.” Nathan let the words sink in, analyzing them as they passed through his mind. It was just a jumble of words, but his father's name was in there, so it had to be important. And, strangely enough, every word was a noun. The sentence needed verbs, at least a couple to give it meaning.
He turned the volume up one notch. “Can you catch any verbs when she sings a different note, maybe stray verbs that don't fit in with the rest of the stuff she's singing?”
Kelly lifted her feet again. “I'll try, but the music is so obnoxious, it's giving me a headache.”
“Let's make a pit stop while they're resting. We need gas anyway.” He exited the interstate at Walcott, a few miles west of Davenport. An Iowa 80 truck stop and a Pilot Travel Center faced each other on the secondary highway, but darkness covered every opening except for a faint glow from the window in the Pilot's doorway.
Driving slowly, he pulled up to one of the Pilot's service islands. There was no sign of power — no prices on the pumps or words on the instruction screens. It felt like a disaster scene, a war zone or the aftermath of a plague.
He opened the door and slid outside. “Come on. Might as well see if we can use the restroom.” As he approached the entry, he glanced up at the late evening sky. The clouds had raced away, replaced by a purple canvas speckled with hundreds of shimmering lights, much bigger and brighter than stars.
The air had grown hot, very hot. Did that mean it was still summer on Earth Yellow? Or maybe Indian summer? Or could it have already cycled to the next year's summer?
He pushed his sleeves up past his elbows. Although he had long ago shed his sweatshirt and thrown it in the backseat, he had to live with the overly hot shirt. He had nothing but skin underneath.
Kelly, walking slowly next to him, her poorly focused eyes meandering from side to side, had also stripped down to her shirt, but her short-sleeved white tunic, loose and flowing, likely kept her cool.
A crashing sound made him pivot. Kelly clutched his hand and froze. “What was that?” she asked.
Nathan scanned the highway. At the truck stop across the road, a man in a business suit had just broken a door window with the butt of a rifle. He reached through the jagged hole and opened the door from the inside, then disappeared into the darkness.
“Armed robbery,” Nathan replied, pointing in that direction. “The upper class has sunk to looting.”
She squinted toward the truck stop. “What are we going to do?”
“I don't think it's a good idea to get shot stopping a beer and pretzel heist.”
Kelly let out a weak sigh. “No. I guess not.”
Still looking back, Nathan pushed the door open and walked inside. When he turned, the twin barrels of a shotgun pressed against his forehead.
10
ABODAH'S MESSAGE
“Store's closed,” a woman on the trigger side of the gun announced. “Got a problem with that?”
Nathan backed away a step and pushed Kelly behind him. Swallowing, he tried to keep his voice steady. “Uh … no problem. I just needed gas, and the door was open, so I —”
“Thought you'd see what you could take,” the woman finished. She lowered the gun to her hip. With only an oil lamp on the counter casting light on her stocky body, her features blended in with the dim interior of the store. Yet, her wide eyes communicated more fear than bravado.
“I wasn't going to take anything.” Nathan drew in a deep breath, keeping his eye on the shotgun. That lady could pull the trigger at any moment. The thought of Tony Clark getting his guts blown out sent chills across his body. But he had to move on, conquer this fear, and press forward. “I know how to stop what's causing all these weird events,” he finally said, “but if I don't get gas, I can't get where I'm going.”
The wrinkles in her brow slowly eased. “You got money?”
Nathan flicked his thumb toward the pumps. “Does the credit card thing work?”
She shook her head. “Cash only, but if I can't get the generator running, nothing will work.”
He dug out his wallet and rifled through his bills, trying to calculate how much he could buy. “What's the price per gallon?”
Now, instead of fear, her eyes gave away confusion. She set the gun butt on the floor and glanced back and forth as if lost. “Uh … Three seventy-nine … I think.”
A gust of wind pulled open the door and slammed it shut again, knocking over a stack of newspapers. The room grew suddenly cold, and the smell of burning firewood drifted by. An overhead fluorescent light flickered on, and a hum sounded from the cash register.
“What am I talking about?” the woman finally said. “That's way too high.” She leaned the shotgun against the counter and ran her fingers through her short graying hair. “What?” Using both hands now, she grabbed two shocks and pulled. “What happened? My hair is gone!”
Kelly blinked at her. “Was it long and as black as a raven
?”
“Yes!” Her whole body quaked as she continued to comb her fingers through her hair. “What's going on? Why aren't there any customers?” Finally, she backed into the counter and stared wide-eyed again. “Is the world coming to an end?”
Kelly stepped slowly forward, her hand out to guide her way. When she reached the woman, she set her hand on her shoulder. “Turn on the pumps, and I'll tell you all about it.”
The woman stared at her and nodded stiffly. “Okay. I can do that.”
Giving Kelly a smile, Nathan strode toward the door. He picked up one of the spilled newspapers, that day's Chicago Tribune. With no sports or entertainment sections, it seemed lightweight … void of anything frivolous. He quickly thumbed through the few pages. No advertisements appeared anywhere, just long articles and a few black and white photos.
As he made his way to the car, he pushed his sleeves back down and read the front headline. In big, bold letters it spelled out “PANIC!” and underneath, a smaller headline read, “Midwest and Southeast Hardest Hit by Cosmic Terror.”
When he shifted his eyes to read the article, a thump and a loud hum jerked his attention toward the gas pumps. The island lights flashed on, and zeroes appeared on the digital meters. Nathan set the paper on the trunk, pushed the nozzle into the tank, and squeezed the trigger. The gallons meter began counting, but the dollars and cents meter ticked up at a rate so slow, it would easily stay under a dollar by the time he finished.
While the gas flowed, he read the newspaper's lead article. The governments of Earth Blue had determined the cosmic abnormalities were the result of some kind of imminent alien invasion. The long-dead airline disaster victims had to be imposters, brought to earth to create havoc and gain influence. The United States would lead the effort to battle against the encroaching power, apparently another realm invading through some kind of wormhole in space. Details about how they would carry out this battle were sketchy at best. The entire country, of course, operated under a state of emergency. With widespread blackouts and very little fuel available, law enforcement had been relegated to foot patrols in many areas. The National Guard kept order in the cities, but little if any help was available in rural areas. Crime was rampant.