Gale Force

Maybe one of the pagan faiths would be willing to do it. And then there were the caterers. Photographers. Musicians for the reception. Florists.

The whole thing was obscenely complicated. I suspected the wedding ritual was designed to make absolutely sure you really wanted to get married. God knew that if you were on the fence about it, the organizing would put you over the edge into permanent bachelorette-hood.

I was settled in an uncomfortable hard plastic seat in the baggage claim area, watching the arriving passengers.I had a sign propped next to me with the stylized sun symbol of the Wardens on it in gold and glitter— unmistakable, to anyone who knew what it meant, although I’d put SILVERTON below it in block letters, just in case.

I spotted a likely candidate—a tall African American man with erect military bearing who snagged an olive- drab duffel bag from the baggage belt. Sure enough, as his eyes scanned the waiting crowd, he fixed right on me and headed in my direction.

I stood up, claimed the sign, and waited for him to stride over. He got taller and taller the closer he came, very imposing. His handshake was firm and businesslike, and I realized he was older than I’d thought— probably in his early fifties, with a light dusting of gray in his close-cropped black hair, lines around his eyes. “Mr. Silverton,” I said. “Joanne Baldwin.”

“Heard of you, ma’am,” he said. No hint of whether the advance notice had been good or bad. “Call me Jerome, please. No point in formality if we’re going to be working together.”

“Right. Jerome, my car’s outside. How was your flight?”

“Food-free,” he said. “Could I impose on you to discuss this assignment over dinner?”

“Sure,” I said. “Anything in particular?”

“Fish,” he said. “Hate to miss the fish when I come to the coast.”

He liked my car. In fact, Jerome liked my car more than most people, walking all the way around it, asking questions about the engine, the performance, the mileage. I was betting that he’d ask to drive it, but he didn’t; he stowed his gear in the trunk and took the passenger side. I made sure to drive extra fast, just to give him a demonstration, which he seemed to appreciate.

“So,” I said, as we whipped down North Ocean Boulevard, enjoying the sea breeze and late afternoon sun, “I noticed you were NFA in the system. Travel a lot?”

“Prefer it that way,” he said. “Not really interested in being tied down.”

“And that sound you hear is the hearts of women breaking from coast to coast.”

I got a low chuckle out of him. “Not likely, ma’am.”

“Joanne.”

“Joanne.” He flashed me a million-dollar smile. “Pretty women make me nervous.”

I doubted that. “No Mrs. Silverton, then?”

The smile disappeared. “No. There was, but she’s gone now.” The way he said it didn’t invite mining that particular subject. “Tell me about the earthquake. ”

I did, sparing no details; no telling what was relevant. When I got to a description of the black glass thorn stuck into the aetheric, he frowned and turned toward me, intense and focused.

“That’s why you called me,” he said. “Because of the radiation problem.”

“That’s one reason, but you’re supposed to be a very good Earth Warden as well. One of the most sensitive to things not being right before things go to hell. That might really be an asset around here right now.”

I took a right turn into the parking lot of a seafood restaurant I particularly liked, parked, and turned off the engine. Silverton made no move to get out, so neither did I.

“I’m going to need some things,” he said. “A handheld GPS device. A Geiger counter. Couple of other things.”

“Anything you need, I’ll get,” I said. “Make me a list.”

He was still studying me, in a way that made me feel like I should have something more to say. I followed a burst of inspiration and asked, “Have you seen something like this before?”

With that, Silverton opened his door and put one long leg outside. Before he levered himself up, he met my eyes and said, “I sure as hell hope not.”

It took the rest of the day to get Silverton’s shopping list together, which included a detailed map and geological survey of the area, and a whole bunch of equipment whose names and purposes I didn’t even recognize. “What are you expecting to find, Jimmy Hoffa?” I muttered, loading the last of it into the backseat of the Mustang. I didn’t like using the car as a packhorse. It was a thoroughbred. Besides, I didn’t want dings in the upholstery.

Silverton didn’t answer me. It was getting dark, and I’d proposed waiting until the next morning, but Silverton seemed anxious to get started, so we started driving, cruising slowly—just two people in a fast car, slumming it on a leisurely sightseeing trip.

Silverton kept his eyes glued alternately on the Geiger counter and the maps, and I could tell that he was also maintaining part of his awareness, searching the aetheric. It took a lot of control to do that. He steered me with terse commands to go right or left—once, he had me back up and turn around. I heard the Geiger counter begin to click, and Silverton nodded once.

The sun was going down in the west, layers of stacked colors trailing behind like vast silk scarves. A few cirrus clouds skidded toward the horizon, but it was a calm sea with fair winds.

And inside the car, the Geiger counter stopped clicking and started chattering. I instinctively slowed down. “Here?”

“Not yet. Keep going.”

Not good. The clicking was already frantic. What did that mean for all those people driving by? Were they sick? Dying?

“Pull in up ahead,” Silverton said, and pointed off to the right. I bumped up a ramp into a deserted parking area—some kind of office building, marked as condemned. I barely paid attention. My gaze was fixed on Silverton as he compared maps, looked at the GPS, and used colored pens to mark our position. He shut off the Geiger counter, which was a storm of constant, nervous clicking, and got out of the car. I unbuckled my safety belt and hurried after him, grabbing the heavy duffel bag from the back. He paced the parking lot, prowling like a cat, and finally headed off across the asphalt toward the building.

It didn’t look like much: three stories, mostly built of concrete slabs, with a few cheerless windows. The style looked vaguely 1970s, one of those designs of the future that had never really caught on. I’d always wondered why, in the future, people never seemed to appreciate things like plants, carpet, and comfortably padded furniture. I just knew that the offices inside this building would have hard plastic chairs and concrete floors and earth-toned macramé wall hangings.

Well, it would have, except that this building was long abandoned. Some of the higher windows were broken out; the lower ones were boarded up with warping plywood. A sign on the door announced NO TRESPASSING, in uneven Day-Glo letters.

Silverton, however, wasn’t about to be warned off. He walked up to the double glass doors and, without hesitation, yanked. Nothing happened. They were locked.

I cleared my throat. “Maybe we should—”

Apparently, the end of that sentence was break in, because Silverton exerted a pulse of Earth power, and the lock made a little metallic snapping sound, and the glass doors shivered and sagged open. He shot me a look. “You were saying?”

“Just wondering if we ought to alert the bail bonds-man now, or wait until they let us have our one phone call,” I said. “Don’t mind me. I’m fine.” Well, I wasn’t, really. “Are we radioactive?”

Silverton raised his eyebrows. “Well, yes. Did the clicking not tip you off?” He didn’t wait for my answer, which would not have been helpful anyway; he swung the door open, and a wave of eau-de- abandoned-building swarmed over me. Old paper, turning to dust. Mold. Stale, still air. A faintly unpleasant undertone of sewer problems, too.

Oh man. This was looking less like a good plan all the time. I had not worn the right shoes for tramping through sewer water. In fact, I didn’t own the right shoes for that, and hoped I never would. Still, not cool to abandon the contractor you’ve hired to solve the problem.

So when Silverton strode on, into a dim entry hall, I followed.