down, two deftly warded off her slaps and kicks and lifted her by the shoulders so that she hung between them like a rag doll. Brushing past Skillman, they filed back out of the room, Adams’ screams echoing down the corridor. The two men in black thanked her, and walked out, leaving her standing in the silent room, listening to the sick woman being dragged down the hall.
Temporary Headquarters, Randi Institute of Pneumatology, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA
James Randi sighed and rolled his eyes. While the search teams were scouring the nation’s medical facilities for the apparently insane who might not be insane after all, the fakes and charlatans had continued to pour into the Institute in unimaginable numbers. The publicity combined with the persuasive talents of the US Secret Service and the FBI had achieved results that even his million dollar prize had failed to attain. Privately, Randi kicked himself, he should have involved the Secret Service earlier. They’d even brought John Edwards and Sylvia Browne in, over those two unworthies angered protests. It had taken only a few minutes testing to discredit that pair of mountebanks, after which they’d been unceremoniously ejected from the building. As Agent Stella Carter had remarked ‘Hey, guess what. Sylvia didn’t bounce.’
Up to now, that had been par for the course. There were still the palm-readers and card-players who waited in the antechamber for their turn, all dressed up in beads and eye liner and all sorts of clothes that looked mysterious in smoky, underlit rooms but just appeared absurd under fluorescent business lights. They were the routine dross that had to be inspected, just in case. Even so, there was hope for the plea for any real psychics or necromancers to come forward had brought in five or six possible hits – all quiet, shy people who worked ordinary jobs and lived ordinary lives.
He was just about to call the next person in when his cell phone rang. He checked it; it was a 555-1000 number. He answered. “Randi here.” After a moment, he nodded and said, “Will do. Please bring her in.”
At last. Randi sighed the words to himself. Ever since his discussion with that charming Thai General, he’d been waiting for the first of the medical subjects to arrive. Then, he squared his shoulders and opened the door to the antechamber and just stood there, looking out toward the outside door. It opened, and eight national guardsmen marched in, wearing full combat fatigues. Two of them were carrying what appeared to be a heavily sedated woman, her glassy eyes half-open and a bit of drool trailing down her cheeks. Behind them were three men in lab coats, looking like stereotypical doctors. As they reached where Randi stood, one of the men in lab coats strode forward past the soldiers and offered his hand. Randi shook it, and the man said, “James Randi? Dr Ed Bullmore, psychiatry and neurology at Cambridge. Pleased to meet you.”
“The pleasure’s mine, Dr Bullmore. What do we have here?”
Bullmore spoke with a pleasant British accent. “Untreatable schizophrenia patient from New York. Name: Julie Adams. Onset at age sixteen. Reported ability to read minds.” He looked meaningfully at one of the soldiers, who spoke up, sounding shaken. “On the way over here, she told me about my daughter who drowned. No way she could have known about that – she was locked up for years before Kelsie was born.”
Randi thought for a moment. “Bring her in.” Briskly, the white-bearded man walked back through the door. He glanced over at his secretary. “Jane, please request brain-imaging at the nearest hospital ASAP. Play the DoD card if you have to.”
Neuroimaging Center, Arlington Hospital, Arlington, VA
Julie Adams woke up in a little tube of metal, found herself immobilized, and felt a little whisper in the edge of her mind. “See? I told you soooo!” Then she slipped back into unconsciousness.
When she next woke up, she was sitting in a chair, leather straps holding her wrists to the chair arms. Sitting across the table from her was a grandfatherly-looking man, bald but with an enormous white beard. A voice danced across her vision, and she said, “James Randi?” The man raised one eyebrow, dropped it, and continued to regard her over clasped hands. She struggled with the bonds.
“They told me you’d do this to me! They told me!”
He spoke, his voice, calming and authoritative. “Who told you?”
She’d never been asked that before. Before, they’d always assumed the voices weren’t real, that she was crazy. She wasn’t crazy; she just heard voices. “They did.” A warning buzzed across the back of her mind – “Don’t trust him. He’s going to rape you.”
The man smiled. “Have they ever told you who they are?”
These questions were completely foreign to her. “Uh… I… no…”
His eyes twinkled through his spectacles. “Well, Julie, we want to help you. We know they’ve hurt you. We’re going to hurt them back, and we’d like your help.”
It was tempting. She’d always thought of them as enemies, even when they were telling her the truth. But they’d been enemies of her enemies, and so they had been her friends. But now, this man was offering his help to her, to her… “DON’T LISTEN TO THEM!” screamed a voice, and spots erupted behind her eyes as Randi morphed, grew – black scales erupted on his face, horns growing from his bald head, his glasses falling to the desk, shattering; furred bat wings unfurled, spread, brushed the walls and ceiling, looming over her. And now a smell like rotten eggs was strengthening; the room was darkening, and she could hear faint screams in the distance, like a chorus of damned souls.
She was dimly aware of her own screaming, of the stabs of pain spiking through her; the thing across the desk was prodding her with a pitchfork, leering at her. It stepped backward and lustily licked its lips, grabbing a giant organ from between its legs and -
The hellish scene shimmered and faded suddenly, and the previous scene returned with the bald, grandfatherly man looking concernedly down at her and two men with chiseled faces hovering right above her. One of the men said, “Hold still, sister. You’re almost safe.” There was a prick in her arm, and then she was happy, floating free down toward blessed oblivion.
Randi straightened up and looked over toward the door. The psychiatrists and a lab technician were filing through the door. “Did you guys get it?”
“Yes James, we did,” said Bullman. “Before we hashed the room with electronic white noise, the electronic surveillance system we had set up caught a faint signal. It was a miracle we picked it up at all, it was right on the edge of the spectrum covered by the ESM but it was there and we’ve recorded it. It has some strange properties, and we’re sending the records to the physicists next door. They’ll digitize it, feed it into our threat libraries and we’ll be able to monitor for it. Also, if we can feed the waveform into the computers controlling our own emitter systems, we should be able to transmit ourselves.
“Much more importantly, we’ve already figured out how to keep her, and others like her, safe and sound from any further interference.”
Randi cocked his head curiously. “And what’s that?”
“Well, James, the signal in question isn’t that much different from an electromagnetic pulse, you know that thing the scare stories have claimed would wipe out electronics worldwide. We’ve known how to defend against that for decades and the power levels are much lower here. So, building on that experience.” Bullman grinned and pulled a shiny contraption from his lab coat. “A hat made of aluminum foil.”
Recon Team Tango One-Five, Wadi Haran, Western Iraq.
“Control, we have baldricks, column advancing along the Pipeline Route. Estimated battalion force with company-level harpy cover.”
“Very good. Engage and harass.”
Lieutenant Jade “Broomstick” Kim acknowledged, the transferred her attention back to the mast-mounted sight on her AH-6J helicopter. A deft touch on the controls and the aircraft rose slightly so that the ball of the sight just peaked over the ridge. The picture hadn’t changed much, even though the column was mounted on the rhinolobsters, they were moving slowly. Well, slowly by United States Army standards, Broomstick guessed that by medieval standards they were fairly galloping along. That was excruciatingly slow when compared with the way the First Armored Division was moving up.
A long rectangle of rhinolobsters, each with its rider and a small group out in front. They’d have to be the command group. The primary subject of interest, the cream of the crop in this target-rich environment. Eliminate the command structure first, leave the combat elements floundering around without orders. It was a process the United States Army called ‘shaping the battlefield’. “Tango Leader to all Tango birds. Select Hellfire missiles, target the command group in front, ripple fire both missiles.”
Spaced out down the wadi, the three Little Birds gunner their engines slightly and lifted up still further. The column ahead was oblivious to their existence, even when the laser target designators locked into place. On her
