The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (35 page)

Seven sucked in some more smoke before responding. “Not weight so much as displacement. You wanna talk nightmares? Fine. On the one hand you’ve got a great portion of our ice cube almost instantly melted by the heat generated by the ultra-megaton force of the blast, while on the other hand you’ve got the incredible concussion generated by the blast, which will fracture ice at incredible distances. And remember, long after the mushroom clouds are history, the oil fires stretching through the ice shield are going to be burning. The fire will raise the heat levels and even more ice will bite the dust.

“Now the ice closest to the blast radiuses would get vaporized and be gonezo. But plenty more would melt, thanks mostly to the burning oil and soot blackening the landscape and helping to absorb plenty of that twenty-four-hours-a-day sunlight. So you’ve got all these tons of water plunging into the ocean in a matter of seconds, minutes, hours, days—take your pick. Conservatively you’re looking at a rise in sea levels worldwide of two hundred feet. In fact, four might be a more realistic figure.”

“Four hundred feet?” Kimberlain repeated disbelievingly.

“Give you an idea of the effect of that—over ninety percent of the entire state of Florida isn’t more than seventy feet above sea level.” Captain Seven blew a smoky kiss. “Good-bye, Miami. Along with every coastal city in the world. Give you an idea what we’re talking about over seventy-five percent of every U.S. of A. lives within one hundred miles of a coast.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It’s not his fault. And I’m just getting started. It don’t matter much what is the coast and what ain’t, because there’s not gonna be many left to notice. Let’s get back to weight.” He reached down to the table for the thin pick he’d used to free Kimberlain of the handcuffs and laid it across his index finger. He looked at Lisa. “Could keep this here forever, right? Why?”

“Because it’s balanced,” she replied.

Seven eased the pick a bit forward and it slid off his finger to the floor. “And now it falls. Why?”

“Because the weight wasn’t balanced anymore.”

He smiled at her the way a teacher acknowledges good work by a student. “ ‘A’ for the day, young lady, ’cause you just described what the fracturing of Antarctica will do to the balance of the Earth. The stability of the Earth’s spin axis will get fucked royally and cause it to tumble over like an overloaded canoe. So, Ferryman, you don’t have to worry ’bout the world being turned into a giant swimming pool ’cause there won’t be many left to take a dip.”

“Go on,” Kimberlain said.

“You want it all?”

“I want it all.”

“Hope you got a strong stomach,” Captain Seven muttered and settled low and deep in his chair. “Like I said before, the problem’s one of of weight displacement. Not much different than my pick, ’cause losin’ all that ice mass will topple the planet in similar fashion. We’re talkin’ here about what is generally and accurately referred to as a ‘poleshift,’ in which
everything
ends up tossed out of balance. Forces of nature don’t like that much, and they want their balance back. So they try to find it. Violently. Hurricanes with thousand-mile-an-hour winds will sweep the globe. Tidal waves will be as common as Jacuzzis. Any volcano with any life left in it will burp lava and hot ash like you never did see. Earthquakes will splinter plenty of land areas, and, as a bonus, they’ll swallow up lots and lots of nuclear reactors thereby causing the effects of a thousand meltdowns. Lots of radioactivity, my friend, set blowin’ in the wind.”

Captain Seven started to raise his bong up again, then saw he was out of pot. “Thing is we’re talkin’ here about a planet that hangs in a surprisingly delicate balance between the poles. Our axis is maintained by the huge weight masses concentrated at top and bottom. Once those nukes displace all that weight in the south, what you’re effectively doing is removing one balance point. Dig?”

“All too well.”

“The planet would wobble around in search of a new balance with probably tropical South America taking over as the South Pole and somewhere around Japan taking over as the North.”

That made Kimberlain think of something. “If you could predict the location of the new poles, could you also predict zones least affected by the pole shift?”

“You mean so anybody who knew what was coming could find refuge? Theoretically, yes. But all this is untested, so nothing’s for certain.”

Not nothing
, the Ferryman thought.
The Hashi are in this to inherit whatever’s left, and somehow they’ve found a way to survive the initial effects of the cataclysm
.

“The only thing that’s certain is that whoever does survive might end up wishing they didn’t. All of the crops and plants indigenous to the old world will have a heap of trouble making it in the new. So whatever few survivors are left won’t have much to eat, and with all the aquifers ruptured by those quakes, a lot of the drinking water will be gone too. Freshwater bodies aboveground will be polluted with debris and poisons beyond repair. Yup, I guess you could say the world’d be fucked up good.”

Captain Seven lapsed into silence and went about refilling one of the chambers of his bong with pot. Kimberlain found himself speechless as well. What the captain had just elaborated on was the vision of a madman, the vision of Jason Benbasset. He was going to punish the world for what it had done to him, to his family, and he had chosen a means that would destroy civilization as it was known and force it to remake itself from scratch.

The Ferryman’s mind turned back to the Hashi. Their leaders would have embraced the plan as a means to create the kind of world they wanted and were suddenly in a position to inherit. If those safe zones could be pinned down, if they could emerge relatively unscathed from the Eighth Trumpet, then all other survivors would be at their mercy, the world
theirs
to remake.

The key remained with Outpost 10. Danielle was en route there now, but even if she reached the outpost, she would need help to accomplish what she had to, and that help could only come through him.

“There’s a senator,” Kimberlain told the three of them in the train after summarizing his thoughts, “I arranged a payback for. I’ve never called one in before, but there’s always a first time.” He thought further. “But that doesn’t help us with Macy’s. The parade’s got to be called off, and I haven’t got the slightest idea of where to go, considering the authorities will have no reason to believe me.”

“I do,” said Lisa.

“TLP is on the best of terms with the Macy’s toy department,” she explained. “And we’ve got strong connections to the parade coordinators.”

“How so?”

“We’ve sponsored a float every year in the last four. Every year except this one, that is.”

“Something changed?”

“Yes,” Lisa replied with a smile that came quite easily. “Someone destroyed the life-size models of our Powerized Officers of War that were going to make up this year’s display.”

While Lisa went to the seventeenth floor of Macy’s main store across from Penn Station in Manhattan, Kimberlain drove to the Hudson Valley and the white, Queen Anne-style mansion on the river’s east bank belonging to Senator Thomas Brooks. He called ahead, and the senator, home for the holiday, agreed to see him immediately. Brooks was there to greet him as soon as he rang the bell.

“It’s been a long time, Mr. Kimberlain.”

“Not really, Senator. A year and a half, maybe two.”

“A long time in politics, son. Forgive me.”

“It’s you who must forgive me. This isn’t a social call. I need a favor. I know I said there would be no compensation for what I did for you, but—”

Senator Brooks cut him off. “Please, Mr. Kimberlain, you have no need to apologize. If it’s in my power, I’ll do it.” His voice grew reflective. “God knows I owe you. You saved my sanity. They took my grandson because of me, and I felt useless until you brought me back to life with that … payback. Just name it. Anything I can do to help you.”

“Not just me, Senator.”

They moved into the study. Senator Brooks had a fire going, and the Ferryman wished he could have enjoyed the splendid autumn panorama through the freshly restored bay windows.

“How familiar are you, Senator, with oil exploration in Antarctica?”

Brooks thought briefly. “Proposals for drilling have come up before my energy committee several times. It always turns into a battle of lobbies between the environmentalists and the oil industry.”

“Just screens.”

“Pardon me?”

“Senator, have you ever heard of an installation called Outpost 10?”

“No, I’m quite certain I haven’t. Why?”

“Because it’s the central part of an operation called Spiderweb. Oil drilling in Antarctica has been going on for some years already. That’s what I meant by screens. The oil industry’s just going through the motions because they’ve already got what they want, and when the time’s right they’ll make the announcement to the country. There aren’t many who know about it, though, since the whole project comes under the auspices of the Defense Department.”

“That’s incredible.”

“But quite real. Hundreds of live wells linked together by pipelines stretching thousands of miles, and all joining up at the master control station called Outpost 10.”

Senator Brooks no longer looked relaxed. The warmth of the fire could not stop his face from paling. “If what you say is true, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“It is true, Senator, and hell’s an accurate way to describe the upshot, but not for the reasons you might think. Are you up to interrupting the President’s holiday retreat?”

“With sufficient reason, absolutely.”

“Then make yourself comfortable, sir. This story may take a while to tell.”

Senator Brooks was still trembling when Kimberlain left him, secure in the notion that he would contact the President after checking the story himself as best he could. It was already Tuesday afternoon, and because of the Antarctic Treaty the Ferryman knew the U.S. maintained no active military presence on the continent. That meant troops and equipment would have to be airlifted, which would take time under the best of circumstances.

That much, then, was out of his hands.

Lisa Eiseman had left a message for him with Peet at the midtown hotel they had checked into. She wanted him to meet her at Macy’s as soon as possible. He arrived there at four o’clock and rode the mezzanine elevator up to the Special Events offices located on the seventeenth floor. The corridor was narrow, and he made out Lisa sitting patiently in a chair outside an office at the very end.

She saw him and strode over. “He canceled a host of meetings to see you, Jared,” she told him. “They’re taking this seriously.”

“How much did you tell them?”

“Just the basics. That we had discovered there was a possible threat to the safety of the parade, and that you would provide the specifics.”

“Well done.”

A balding, portly man noticed Kimberlain’s appearance and emerged from inside the office. He extended his hand to Kimberlain rather cautiously. “Bill Burns, director of special projects.”

“Jared Kimberlain, longtime customer.”

The Ferryman had tried for humor with the remark, but gained barely a polite smile from Burns. “We can talk in my office.”

Lisa followed them inside, and Burns closed the door when she was seated next to Kimberlain.

“I’m curious, Mr. Kimberlain,” Burns started, “to learn exactly who you are. Miss Eiseman was rather vague in that regard.”

“I’m a lot of things, Mr. Burns, but mostly I provide a service: I help people. You won’t see my services listed in the Yellow Pages, but enough seem to find me when they’re in trouble.”

“And that’s what we are, in trouble?”

“More than you realize.”

“But I don’t remember seeking you out.”

“It was different this time. There was another matter I was called in on. That led me to you, to Macy’s.”

“And the parade.”

“And the parade.”

Burns hesitated. “Have you gone to the police about this?”

“I was hoping that wouldn’t be necessary.”

“How wouldn’t it be necessary, Mr. Kimberlain? Under the circumstances, I mean.”

“I was hoping you would be willing to cancel the parade.”

Burns started to laugh and then stopped. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all.”

“Are we talking about terrorism here?”

“A form of it, I suppose, yes.”

“But we haven’t received any threats, any demands.”

“As I said, only a form. Three years ago an explosion ended your parade prematurely, Mr. Burns, just as it prematurely ended the life of one powerful man. But it didn’t kill him. Instead it gave birth to a whole new human being. And now there’s a new disaster about to happen—the one Miss Eiseman has explained to you—and this man has chosen your parade to begin it. The ultimate symmetry, Mr. Burns. A mad brand of logic.”

“And just who is this man?”

“Jason Benbasset.”

“My God. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I wish I could say I wasn’t.”

The phone on Burns’s desk buzzed. He excused himself and picked it up, listened, and then spoke briefly. He turned back to Lisa and Kimberlain.

“When Miss Eiseman advised me of the potential severity of the situation and of your … interest, I took the liberty of having our security department run a check on you.”

“I know.”

“You
know
?”

“It’s what I would have done in your position. But, you see, my file’s sealed. Your security department wouldn’t have found anything unless I unsealed it.”

As if on cue, a knock came on Burns’s door and a younger man in shirtsleeves entered the office and put a manila folder into the portly man’s hand. Burns started reading, eyes widening and occasionally coming up to meet Kimberlain’s as he thumbed through the single-spaced pages. When finished, he did nothing for a time other than gaze across the desk at the Ferryman.

“It would seem you underestimate yourself, Mr. Kimberlain,” he said finally.

“Modesty’s always been one of my virtues.”

“You have my apologies and my attention. Please, what exactly are we facing here?”