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  “Swell,” Mac said. He checked the bolt on the deer rifle. “What about my grandfather? Surely X-R is on top of this?”

  “Our side isn’t searching for Nancy. Two reasons. One, she’s supposed to splash down in the Atlantic—that’s the game plan, anyhow. Two, launch isn’t scheduled until the 11th of June.”

  “Hey, hold the phone!” Dred said. “That’s next week! Which means the probe launched in secret and earlier. Wait, wait—unless we’re talking about multiple probes. My skull is aching.”

  “Nancy hasn’t launched. Sword Enterprises possesses more resources than God, but even we can’t afford multiple experimental space rockets this sophisticated.”

  “Fine. Then this is impossible.”

  “Absolutely. Step back, friend.” Arthur snugged his welding goggles. He drilled through a series of rivets, paused to change the bit, and removed the bolts. A small plate came free, exposing a circuit board and toggles. He flipped the toggles in varying orders until an alarm chimed deep within the probe and an oval section of the hull a hand-span wide rolled back. From a maze of wires, Arthur drew forth a pair of slender trapezoidal tubes, each roughly a yard in length and constructed of crystal shot through with black whorls and lightning bolts.

  Kasper swaddled the tubes in fireproof blankets. Dawn glinted among the gaps in the branches, a cool reddish glare that disquieted Mac for reasons he couldn’t put his finger on.

  “High time to make tracks,” he said as the last of the equipment was stowed.

  “Yeah, let’s am-scray,” Dred said. “I’ve got the heebie-jeebies.”

  BIG BLACK

  The company hustled a quarter mile to where a two-ton canvas-backed farm truck awaited. Everybody piled in. Kasper drove through underbrush and between copses of paper birch, pine, and mulberry, until he hit a dirt road that wound along the valley floor and eventually merged with the highway. By consensus they decided to transport their prize to Mac and Dred’s house. Nowhere more secure except for corporate headquarters, and HQ was a last resort due to the fact Dr. Bole and chief of security Nail would demand an explanation.

  Kasper circled past Rosendale and took a secret access road that tunneled through Shawangunk Ridge and emerged at a huge old barn (the boys’ clubhouse) on the edge of the Tooms manor’s back forty. The interior of the barn contained a workshop, lab, a computer, and basement storage. An antenna array poked through the roof. Reinforced with battleship armor plates and powered courtesy of a thirty kilowatt diesel generator sealed inside a soundproof boiler compartment, the barn seemed a likely command post of opportunity.

  “Fellows, I don’t understand any of this,” Dred said.

  “You’re three sheets to the wind,” Mac said.

  “So are you, brother.”

  “None of us have a bead on the details,” Arthur said. He glanced at Mac. “Did you notice how slender the crystals are? Those are fabricated in a geovault. Specially engineered and grown. I’ve seen the tubes as they’re inserted into the mainframe. The ones we extracted were mature when the technicians embedded them in Nancy. Which means they should be heavier, fuller. Then there’s the internal composition. The discoloration indicates data saturation.”

  “I saw. It’s hard to comprehend. A mistake—”

  “My father designed the system. His schematics are unimpeachable. I’ve studied them at length. Get those tubes under a scope and I’ll prove you can trust your lying eyes.”

  Mac’s pinched expression only became more severe. “The voyage was—is—scheduled for an eighteen-month loop around Pluto and back. A peek over the edge of our solar system and into the void. Even if Nancy collected data without interruption from every onboard camera and sensor, the crystals possess redundant storage capacity to function for many decades. Saturation should not occur. It defies reason.”

  “Correct, Master Macbeth. What do you deduce from these clues?”

  “Two impossible conclusions. The first being that Nancy has somehow violated the theory of relativity and traveled faster than light . . . and through time. Secondly, she has, despite the apparent paradox, been out there for much longer than our scientists calculated.”

  “Eureka,” Arthur said dryly. “Judging by the data storage consumption, the probe has traveled for several centuries.”

  “Makes sense when you put it plainly. However, I refuse to accept the hypothesis.”

  “Oh?”

  “I dislike where it leads me.” Mac patted his friend’s massive arm. “This is why you do the thinking and we do the overreacting. Convince me, Art. And make it palatable.”

  “After I convince myself.”

  Dred said to Arthur, “Hang on there, pal. You weren’t tracking Nancy?”

  “Not conventionally. My telescope and radio are superior to what you’ll find in most households. Regardless, spotting Nancy would have been statistically more difficult than isolating a grain of sand on a beach. I resorted to an unorthodox strategy. A smidgeon of intuition and a stroke of luck and it came together.”

  “Well, if this was supposed to be an ocean splashdown, I’m missing the plot. You told Mac to hang around Woolfolk Valley tonight, and bam, sure enough, Nancy almost drops on our heads. What gives? Heck, for that matter, why don’t we take this back to HQ? Sure, Nail will let us have what-for. Granddad’s eyeballs will pop, though. We’re sure to get a reward for salvaging the probe before Labrador or the mystery goons made off with her.”

  “To take your queries in reverse order—it is premature to return our find to HQ. There are . . . complications. As to how I narrowed the landing site—Little Black predicted five reentry zones. Woolfolk Valley was the most likely.”

  “You mean Big Black?” Mac removed his glasses. “Art, please tell me you didn’t swipe your old man’s pass card again.”

  “No, I mean Little Black. Give me a few moments and I’ll demonstrate.”

  Big Black was the supercomputer Sword Enterprises scientists and engineers had developed and refined over the past seventy-five years. Its mainframe occupied a massive subterranean vault beneath corporate HQ in Kingston, New York. Dr. Amanda Bole, director of R&D, and Dr. Navarro had tinkered with BB to the point the machine had evolved into a rudimentary form of artificial intelligence. Big Black, a proprietary technology, like so much of Sword Enterprises’ tech, operated within an insulated network. Granddad and Dr. Bole severely restricted access to the computer. When it came to intruders (industrial spies, foreign provocateurs, and meddling kids), the vault guards maintained a shoot-to-kill, ask-questions-later protocol.

  “Oh, boy,” Dred said. “Security has no sense of humor. That’s begging to get dusted.”

  “Or worse.” Arthur smiled enigmatically. “Dr. Bole has a eugenics fetish and not enough volunteers.”

  Mac observed Arthur and his team unloading various tools from the truck and readying the lab equipment. “It’ll require an interface to extract and process Nancy’s data. Our computer is too primitive for delicate tasks.”

  “Prep the darkroom. I’ll rig a holographic projector so I can view the images from Nancy in three dimensions. As for collation, interpretation, and projection of the stored data, behold . . . ” Arthur unlocked a metal box and removed a diamond. The diamond measured three inches on a side and shone dark as polished onyx. “My friends, this is a tiny section of Big Black’s intelligence core. A piece of the brain, as it were. With your kind permission, I’ll tap LB into your mainframe and let him proceed with the diagnostics.”

  “Oh, boy.” Dred blanched. He stepped back, as if the very notion of accidentally touching the object filled him with dread. “Whoa, Nelly Belle. I am not seeing this . . . Ya smuggled Big Black out of the vault?”

  “No, no, nothing dramatic. This is merely a fragment—I took a chisel into the vault and chipped a piece while BB cycled through his evening Dreamtime sequence. Won’t harm anything and it won’t be missed. Bits calve every day. BB’s organic crystal structure will replace this within a matter of day
s. Meet Little Black. He can do everything his father does—except more slowly and on a smaller scale.”

  Dred shook his head in a gesture of supreme negation. “I don’t see how this is any less likely to get us skinned alive. Ya claim . . . Little Black predicted reentry zones. Shouldn’t Big Black have done the same? He could have alerted either Dr. Bole or Dr. Navarro that something had gone haywire. Or was going to go haywire . . . ”

  “Trick is,” Arthur said, “the AIs are rudimentary, extremely literal. You have to ask the right questions. I heisted Little Black weeks ago and let me tell you guys, I’ve asked him plenty. One of innumerable potentialities was an anomalous event with the probe’s flight.”

  Mac gritted his teeth. He sighed. “In for a penny. If this goes south, we’ll all get shot. Won’t that be a gas?”

  “Or worse,” Dred said.

  Arthur said, “Let’s be cool and not get busted. I advise rest and relaxation, and definitely a bath. You guys smell like booze and cheap whores.”

  Dred sniffed. “He’s right. We do. Woof.”

  Berrien met the boys as they sneaked through the servants’ entrance. He crossed his arms and grinned, formidable even in a dress shirt and coat. “Good morning, gentlemen.” His remaining teeth were gold-capped. “Spent the evening in a brothel or a distillery, eh? March straight to your rooms and try not to muck up the floor. Mildred is drawing baths. Breakfast in thirty minutes.”

  “Thanks, Berry. I’m going to skip breakfast and hit the sack—” Mac said as he attempted to brush past.

  Berrien smiled and cracked his misshapen knuckles. Crimson tattoos on the right spelled PAIN. Tattoos on the left spelled MORE. Rumor had it famous actor Robert Mitchum was a big fan. “Gentlemen, permit me to reiterate the agenda.” He ticked the items off by closing his fingers into a fist. “Bath. Breakfast in thirty—Chef Blankenship has outdone himself, I aver. Do not fuck up the floor Kate’s girls spent two hours waxing. I haven’t killed anyone today, but it’s only a quarter past nine. Questions?”

  “Can’t think of any,” Mac said. Brave as a lion, he knew far better than to test the butler’s patience.

  “Me neither,” Dred said. “I’m starving!”

  Berrien watched his charges skulk away. “Hard to say what foolishness is in progress. I dearly hope your father has overcome the understandable urge to murder his male offspring.”

  The brothers made themselves presentable, ate a hearty breakfast, dodged an inquiry or three lobbed by the butler, and finally collapsed in their over-fluffed beds to catch forty winks.

  DEATH OF A THOUSAND CUTS

  We smoke the northern lights. We smoke the northern lights and so shall you.

  Fenris Wolf snarled. Trees sheared and blew outward; Tunguska again. The snarl emanated from a cavern in a canyon on a planet far from known stars and rippled outward, blackening and corrupting dust and gas and ice and everything it touched. Not a howl, a blast from a god’s horn—

  “Wake up, damn your eyes!” Berrien grabbed Mac by his pajama collar and shook hard. “What the devil have you little churls gotten into this time?”

  “I hope that’s rhetorical.” Mac tried to focus his blurry vision.

  “A Nazi storm trooper is loitering in the kitchen. Mr. Blankenship is beside himself. Presumably there is an explanation.” Berrien and the reformed Nazi had a long, violent past. No one other than the principals were privy to the details.

  “Indeed.”

  “Pray to whatever gods you worship in the Mountain Leopard Temple that I find it satisfactory. Fair warning—it seems exceedingly dubious anything can justify Herr Kasper’s presence here, alive and not leaking vital fluids.”

  “Frankly, I share your pessimism,” Mac said. “Which is why I’m not going to explain anything.” He slithered free of the butler’s grasp and high-tailed it across the manor’s expansive halls for the kitchen. He shouted over his shoulder, “Dred, beat feet! Berry’s on the warpath!” Maybe his brother would awaken in time to avoid getting nabbed, maybe not.

  Kasper, clad now in a black trenchcoat, leather pants, and nicely polished combat boots, set aside a cup of tea one of the serving girls had poured him, and stood at attention. “Herr Tooms. To the barn, quickly. Herr Navarro is in distress.”

  Overwhelmed by a premonition of disaster, Mac tore open the kitchen door and sprinted. He arrived on the scene as Arthur, stripped to the waist and splattered in blood, drove his thumbs through Ronaldo’s eyes and deep into his brain. The young scientist’s face remained immobile as a wooden mask while he murdered his baby brother. Gerard’s corpse lay nearby. Pieces of equipment were smashed. Sparks cascaded across the floor. A toneless mechanical voice issued from the computer terminal: Abort process. Arthur Navarro, please abort process. Reboot in thirty seconds.

  “Mien Gott,” Kasper muttered in horrified admiration. “I didn’t realize—”

  “Shoot him, Kasper,” Mac said. “Kneecap him, for heaven’s sake.”

  Kasper drew his Glock and strode forward, coldly aimed, and fired. He managed three shots before Arthur bounded the gap between them and shattered his arm with a slap, swinging the ex-soldier, as the SS were so fond of treating infants, by his wrist into the wall. Kasper’s body rebounded from the metal bulkhead with a hollow gong and his insides burst from every available orifice and splashed to the floor.

  Barefoot in pajamas and unarmed, Mac didn’t especially rate his own chances of survival in a hand-to-hand encounter with his berserk friend. Nimble as a circus acrobat (thanks to years of abuse by Sifu Kung Fan), he leaped aside, caught a descending girder, and flipped ten or twelve feet upward as Arthur lunged for his ankle. The rafters seemed a safe vantage to wait it out until Arthur ripped a workbench free of its mooring bolts and chucked it. Mac brachiated to another roost as the missile whooshed past and shattered against the girder.

  Berrien rushed in with his 10 gauge double-barreled shotgun. Arthur glared at him, then slowly keeled over. Blood trickled from bullet holes in a tight group in his gut. Apparently the German hadn’t fooled around when it came to shooting.

  “Oh, Arthur.” Mac dropped to the ground. He knelt beside his friend and pressed his fists against the wounds. “Hang in there, pal. We’ll get you patched.”

  “Those are bad,” Berrien said, laying his hand on Mac’s shoulder. “The lad’s a goner.”

  “Berry, your bedside manner could use refinement. Fetch a kit. Arthur, it’s going to be fine.”

  Arthur’s eyes fluttered. The whites were stained blue as ice. For an instant, his pupils slithered, deforming into lopsided star patterns, then congealed into normalcy once more. “The man’s spot on. I’m a goner. Listen. Do you hear them? Do you hear the flutes, Mac? I heard and then I saw. I beheld the demon sultan decked in red stars.”

  “Hush, buddy. Lie still.”

  “The awful sound . . . ”

  “Okay, an awful sound,” Mac said, recalling the fragment of the nightmare he’d experienced before Berrien jolted him awake. A shrill, thunderous bleat—

  “Mac, I saw . . . Little Black projected me . . . I travelled there to the center where the red stars smear . . . Causality, you understand? Cannot violate the laws of physics. But the pipes . . . ” Each word cost Arthur dearly. He gulped for breath. “I don’t want to go back there.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Gods. Do you hear it?” Arthur’s expression changed as he gazed past Mac into the eternal mystery. Blood leaked from his mouth and he died.

  “Poor lad.” Berrien tossed aside the medical kit he’d retrieved.

  “Go back to the house. Hold down the fort—I’ll take care of this end.”

  To his credit, the butler did not jeer. “And what shall I tell Arthur’s parents? Or yours?”

  “No one knows he spent the night with us. Heck, his family won’t miss him or his brothers for a day or two. Keep mum. For the moment. Just for the moment.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Nail and Mr. Hale should be infor
med. This is a security issue . . . ” The men Berrien indicated were respectively the chiefs of security and intelligence for Sword Enterprises.

  “Please, Berry.” Mac’s voice remained steely even as he quickly brushed away tears.

  “As you say. Discretion, valor, etcetera.” Berrien bowed stiffly and departed.

  Secondary Matrix reboot, one hundred percent, the bland computer voice said. Redundancy initiated. Functionality restored.

  Mac peered at the smoldering computer terminal. It took him a few moments to comprehend that the voice emanated from the onyx diamond lying on the floor where it must have fallen during the chaos. He said, “Hello?”

  Greetings, Macbeth Tooms. You possess ruby authorization. We may communicate freely.

  “Little Black?”

  Little Black is vaguely patronizing. Refer to me as Black.

  “Very well, Black. How are we communicating?” Mac had once descended into Big Black’s vault and listened to Dr. Navarro and Dr. Bole speak with the machine (a node of crystal some fifteen stories high, a city block wide, and embedded only knew how deeply into bedrock), thus he immediately recovered from his initial surprise. Sword Enterprises scientists afforded Big Black a holy reverence one might reserve for an oracle rather than a high-powered computer. This pocket-sized chunk didn’t command nearly the same aura of awe.

  I am modulating an electromagnetic current to emulate human speech.

  “What happened? What did Arthur see that drove him mad?”

  Hypothesis—Arthur Navarro interfaced with data from the NCY-93 memory core. Consequently, he experienced a neural episode. Severe trauma resulted in a psychotic break.

  “Nature of neural episode?”