Footprints of Thunder (39 page)

Everyone at the table turned to look at Nick with new respect—except Gogh, who kept his eyes on the photograph.

The report on the civilian situation had new dimensions of horror. Part of Mobile, Alabama, was a lava field now, and the rest a firestorm. An avalanche of steaming mud had buried Aspen, Colorado. Omaha was inundated by a wall of water roaring across the wheatfields. Lake Tahoe had overflowed its banks, drowning the cities of South Tahoe and Stateline.

U.S. military bases also were reporting on overseas effects. Part of Paris was forest, and most of Rome, including the Vatican, was missing. London was untouched, but there were severe tidal wave losses along most of the English coast. Scotland was gone. Russia and the Ukraine were the only East European countries still communicating, and their reports had a familiar ring. Countries all over South America and Africa were pleading for help. From Central America came reports of missing cities and villages and strange animals roaming the countryside. The Panama Canal would have to be redug.

The reports were bleak, endless, and repetitive, and soon, under Elizabeth’s urging, the President cut it off with a curt “thank you” and then moved down the agenda.

When Nick’s turn came he asked that Colonel Conrad, Dr. Roberts, and Sergeant Yamamoto be admitted. The first two took seats against the wall while Yamamoto went immediately to the computer. Colonel Conrad looked comfortable, every inch the confident professional. Dr. Roberts looked ill at ease but Yamamoto appeared almost gleeful. The chance to sit with the Security Council and hear the secrets of the secret was his fantasy become reality.

Yamamoto’s computer was linked to a special overhead projector, which enlarged the computer images and projected them on a wall screen. Now he called up the list of events and dates.

Nick began, “Mr. President, we have a theory that may help us explain what has happened. If you remember my earlier report I said that what appears to have happened could best be described as time displacement. 1 still believe that to be true, and the photo of the ankylosaur and other evidence support the theory. I also said that it might be a natural phenomenon. I was wrong about that.”

Heads turned and mumbling filled the room. Elizabeth leaned forward and whispered in the President’s ear. He nodded and then spoke.

“If it was not natural then was it an attack?”

“No, sir. Nor were aliens involved. Take a look at the screen. The list you see represents unexplained events that have occurred over the last century. Most of these are objects falling from the sky, like boulders, ice, huge amounts of water, grain, even unidentified plants. Sometimes animals have fallen from the sky, like frogs, tadpoles, and rabbits. There are also mysterious intense fires, floods, and rock falls. We believe that all of these events were real and that they were caused by the same force that caused our current problem.”

Gogh cleared his throat for attention and then spoke, looking back and forth from Nick to the President as he did.

“Ice falling from the sky is hardly the same as a city disappearing. Frogs from the sky we can handle, but ankylosaurs roaming the countryside suggests a completely different kind of problem.”

“Different problem but the same source,” Nick dismissed Gogh curtly. “Run the next program, Sergeant.” The program with the two circles appeared on the screen. “These two Circles represent nuclear explosions- You know when nuclear weapons are detonated several waves of destruction spread out from ground zero. There is a pressure wave, which does the blast damage. There is a wave of thermal radiation-—essentially a ball of hot gas that expands rapidly; that’s about a third of the released energy. There is also an electromagnetic pulse, which induces current in power lines and electrical equipment. There was an EMP accompanying the time displacement we’ve experienced. Then of course there’s the ionizing radiation, neutrinos and gamma rays.” Nick looked around, making sure everyone was with him. “We’re proposing that another kind of wave is also created, a time wave, which radiates out not only through three-dimensional space but also across the fourth dimension.” Murmuring filled the room.

“We have no evidence of such a wave, Dr. Paulson.” Gogh said it with an air of dismissal. “We would have detected it long before now,”

“Detected it with what? What instrument? The only evidence is that list I put on the screen.”

Dr. Gogh pursed his lips as if he was going to say something but kept silent, his eyes focused intently.

“We believe that when a nuclear device of sufficient size is detonated, it sends out a time wave in the same fashion that it sends out heat and pressure.”

“And how does that drop frogs from the sky?” Nick turned at the President’s question in time to see Elizabeth lean back.

“It doesn’t, sir. Not by itself. Sergeant, run the program.” The circles appeared, then expanded until they intersected and froze with the A showing. “It appears to take two waves in conjunction. Where the two waves contact, the time displacement takes place. Say two bombs were detonated, the first bomb one hundred kilometers east of Washington and the other simultaneous detonation one hundred kilometers west. If both waves traveled at fifty kilometers per hour they would contact each other over Washington two hours later.”

“And drop frogs or something?” Gogh suggested derisively.

“Possibly drop something, but more likely pick up something. People walking down the street at the contact point might find themselves … displaced.” Nick nodded to Yamamoto and the program continued until B and C appeared on the screen. “The displaced person would find themselves along the line marked by A, B and C.”

“Say, in San Francisco,” the President offered.

“Possibly,” Nick conceded, “but you can’t just speak of where, you also have to ask ‘when?’ This wave is four-dimensional. If the waves travel at fifty kilometers per hour and one year per kilometer, then the person would disappear one hundred years from now and reappear someplace along this line in the future.”

“So how do we get frogs falling out of the sky?”

“If the contact point is a wetland on a summer evening you could pick up a pond full of frogs and drop them fifty years later on tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf.”

“I assume that you checked the dates of the events on that list against the dates predicted by the model,” Gogh said.

“That was the most difficult part. We tried using Soviet and American test sites, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the model didn’t fit well and it did not account for many of the events. We tried various starting dates for the model, and different rates of geographic and temporal spread. Various combinations of blasts do seem to predict the events on the list, but the best fit comes if you assume a starting date of October 31, 1952.”

“Halloween?” the President said. “You’re not suggesting a supernatural source, are you?”

Defense Secretary Natalie Matsuda lifted her hand to catch the President’s eye, and then turned to Nick. “It’s Mike, isn’t it?”

“Mike marks the beginning of it.” Matsuda turned to the President to explain. “Mike was the code name given to the first hydrogen fusion bomb tested. It was an above-ground test … everything was then … we set it off on Eniwetok Atoll.” Then turning to Nick she asked, “Is it the fusion or the tonnage that causes the effect?”

“We suspect tonnage. Mike was a ten-megaton device. The fission tests before that approached a thousand kilotons and maybe exceeded it. Anyway, the effect seems to be rooted in a series of tests carried out by us and the Soviets, which ranged from fifteen to sixty megatons. It was the combination of Soviet and U.S. tests that gives us the best model fits.” Gogh tried another tactic.

“I still say that frogs and wholesale topological change are not the same thing.”

“I agree with Arnie,” the President said, nodding his head toward Dr. Gogh. “It’s a good theory but it seems inadequate.”

“Yes, sir, but there’s another piece of the puzzle,” Nick explained.

Yamamoto pulled up the next program without being asked. The pulses of circles began and raced toward the edges of the screen, the screen changed and the circles merged into two larger circles and then contacted each other.

“One more time, Sergeant,” Nick explained. As the circles expanded he explained. “As you can see, the time waves that follow the earlier waves travel at a faster rate. We think this may be for two reasons. It might be that the earlier waves somehow alter the time/space relationship. Each wave would clear the path for the wave following it. Just like the first snowshoer does most of the work and the tenth snowshoer in line has a well-packed path to follow. This also might explain why the effect does not begin until the fifties. The earlier fission explosions might have cleared the way for the effect to occur.

“The second explanation may actually depend on the first. The earliest explosions may have been insufficient to cause the effect. We don’t know what the minimum explosive power would be for such an event, but we moved from the fifteen kiloton, warhead used on Hiroshima to sixty megaton devices during that time. The speed of the wave may be a function of the megatonage of the device. Larger explosions could send out a faster wave … and by faster I mean in terms of time and space. The faster later waves from the sixty megaton warheads would eventually catch the waves in front of it.”

“And pass it,” the President offered.

“Let’s assume for now they merge to form a larger wave. When the smaller waves contact each other you pick up some frogs here, apples there, chunks of ice in the antarctic, water off of lakes and oceans, possibly the heat of a blast furnace in Pittsburgh. In the future frogs and ice fall from the sky and people and buildings burst into flame, all events that have been recorded. Now picture several of these waves merging into two larger waves … two superwaves. What would happen when two superwaves contact?”

Nick paused, and let the idea sink in. There was silence around the table, although Gogh was scribbling furiously on a yellow tablet. After Elizabeth whispered again, the President had a question.

“It takes two waves, you said. The other wave comes from Soviet testing?”

“Yes, sir. The model assumes a Soviet wave and a U.S. wave meeting. I have some people working on contact points using French, Chinese, and British waves, but their programs may have been insufficient in terms of frequency and megatonage to create the effect.”

Admiral Chelsea asked the question Nick had expected Gogh to ask.

“Some of those dates you had up there were before the first bomb was ever tested. How do you account for that?”

“Two ways. First we assume that the time wave travels in both directions, forward and back. We’ve tried to fit the earlier events to the model, and some events are when and where they should be, but there is little accurate data to work with. The best data we have from before the turn of the century is more than two thousand years old, but it too isn’t specific enough. A second possibility would be natural events. Mount Saint Helens exploded with the equivalent of ten kilotons, and there are other more powerful explosions in history—Krakatoa, the Siberian explosion, Pompeii. They aren’t regular enough to produce a superwave but perhaps could have combined to produce some events.”

The room filled with silence, the only sound the hum of the fluorescent lights. Then Gogh started scribbling on his notepad again. Others around the table started asking questions, and Nick handled each of them within the parameters of the theory. Then the President asked the question he was dreading.

“Dr. Paulson, how did you come up with this theory and these programs in so little time?”

“I didn’t, sir. Colonel Conrad and Dr. Roberts obtained the computer models, and Sergeant Yamamoto helped decipher them.” Grinning, Yamamoto waved his hand at the mention of his name.

“Who created the original program?”

As Nick started into the story of the hostages, the I-5 mountain, and how a college kid and some mysterious group of friends in Oregon had predicted the end of the world, he watched for reactions, knowing that some would judge his theory on its source and not its merits. He decided partway through not to mention Zorastrus yet, or his predictions. This group was more likely to put its faith in technology, not in the analytical abilities of an ancient scientist. At some point Gogh stopped scribbling and began listening. The President’s eyebrows raised when Nick mentioned Kenny’s current mental state. Nick quickly added the fact that a psychologist had been with him in the cave and on the trip to Washington.

“Dr. Roberts,” the President asked, turning toward the psychologist, “is Kenny Randall insane?”

Nick watched as Dr. Roberts rose shakily to his feet. He was pale and perspiring and his voice wavered.

“Kenny is in a catatonic state. However, the psychosis is reactive, not chronic, and there is a good chance he will recover. But what I think you are really asking is whether this theory is real or the product of a delusional mind. My best professional judgment is that Kenny’s condition resulted from two factors: the knowledge that something terrible was going to happen, and the inability to get anyone to believe him. He was sane when he began this work. We don’t know anything about his friends yet, but we assume they all couldn’t have been insane.”

Nick paused, studying the President’s face. He looked unconvinced. Nick had only one other card to play, and it looked like this was the time.

“Sir, what has happened was predicted—but not by those psychics Ms. Hawthorne rounded up. It was predicted by a man called Zorastrus …”

“The Prophet of Babylon,” the President said, surprising Nick and the others at the table.

“Yes, sir. Even in his day things did fall from the sky, or strange animals appeared. He documented them and measured the time between events. He knew something would happen, and he predicted it, unfortunately he was executed before he could finish his calculations, otherwise we might have had some warning.”

Nick paused again, waiting for some response from the President. When it came, it surprised him.