Earth Cult (6 page)

‘They think the mine is haunted?' Frank said. His expression must have been one of amused scepticism, for Cal Renfield said with a flash of annoyance:

‘Science can't explain everything and the man who says it can is a fool.'

‘I wouldn't dispute that. Any good scientist knows that his knowledge is far outweighed by his ignorance. But there's a hell of a difference between belief and superstition on the one hand and hard scientific evidence on the other. You're not saying that we should credit every crackpot story with being the absolute, incontrovertible truth? There has to be some sort of proof, some objective evidence that we can look at dispassionately and examine as rational human beings—'

‘What about the irrational, the inexplicable?' Cal Renfield said. His face was bathed in a light sheen of perspiration which had gathered in droplets in the folds under his eyes. Frank was also aware that it had become much warmer in the room, the atmosphere heavy and humid. Cal Renfield was about to go on when he noticed that his glass
was empty. He raised his arm and snapped his fingers, which was evidently a signal that Spencer Tutt had been trained to respond to – fresh drinks were already on their way.

Frank Kersh ruffled his curly hair and stretched himself. He was beginning to feel the liquor creeping up from his gut and making dizzying spirals inside his head; another couple of shots and he'd be under the table himself.

He said, ‘Look, Mr Renfield, I don't—'

‘Call me Cal, for chrissakes. We're getting smashed together. What better basis for a friendly relationship?' He sucked eagerly at his glass.

‘I wouldn't dispute there's a lot we don't understand, Cal. Hell, that's what science is all about, exploring the unknown, investigating the cosmos, delving into the submicroscopic world of the atom. But at the same time we have to use our minds and not just accept things in terms of blind belief. If there was any concrete evidence that something strange was happening in connection with the Project I'd be the first to listen – all you've fed me so far are miners' tales from a hundred years ago.'

Cal Renfield nodded. He was about to say something and a bubble of wind got in the way. When it had cleared he said, ‘All right, you want proof, I'll give you some. The Project started up two years ago. Since that time the weather round here has gone haywire – don't take my word for it, check the records. We've had more electrical thunderstorms recorded over a fourteen-month period than in the previous five years. And that is
fact
.'

‘The freak weather conditions might be fact but who's to say that the Project is in any way responsible?' Frank demanded. ‘You're making an arbitrary assumption that the one caused the other; maybe it did but there's no evidence to prove it'. His eyes were bright and blue, enlivened by the alcohol and the argument; he decided that he liked Cal Renfield but it still irritated him when intelligent people allowed their irrational fears and prejudices to overrule their basic common sense. Why couldn't they see that the truth could only be arrived at through a process of calm, logical
deduction, casting aside subjective feelings and unreliable emotions?

He said in a quiet even voice, ‘Listen, Cal, let me tell you what the scientists at the Deep Hole Project are trying to do. There's a species of sub-atomic particle called the neutrino which originates in the Sun's core. As soon as it's formed it shoots out into space at the speed of light and some of these particles reach Earth. Most of them – the vast majority of them in fact – go straight through and out the other side in a fraction of a second, but now and then, very occasionally, a neutrino will interact with another particle and that's how we know it's there. At this instant there are thousands of neutrinos passing through our bodies but we're unaware of them; as far as they're concerned we hardly exist. Don't you see? The Deep Hole Project is a passive experiment, its only function is to detect neutrinos, calculate their velocity, and in this way we hope to get some idea of what's happening in the innermost depths of the Sun. And all this isn't vague supposition or blind belief, it's proven scientific fact.'

Cal Renfield had listened to this, staring at the red-and-white checkered tablecloth, and now he raised his head and regarded Frank with those grey shrewd eyes of his. He said presently, ‘The entire Earth is being bombarded with these particles?'

Frank nodded. ‘That's right. Every thing and every body.'

‘So how do we know they aren't affecting us?'

Frank smiled and placed his hands flat on the table. ‘Because there's no evidence to suggest that. Quite the reverse in fact. Neutrinos are like ghost particles, with no mass and no charge. To them we're as nebulous as a patch of hazy gas floating about in space. They pass through us like a high-velocity bullet going through thin air.'

‘Then how come they can detect them at the bottom of a mine shaft one mile underground?'

‘They've installed tanks of liquid which occasionally trap a neutrino. It's as simple as that. Neutrinos have been passing through these mountains since the day they were formed; it's unlikely they're going to set up some sort of
strange nuclear interaction after eighty million years, and there's no reason why they should.'

Cal Renfield sniffed and studied his glass. He seemed to be debating something with himself, his lower lip thrust out, and then he said, ‘You pride yourself on being a hardheaded realist, Frank, a rational man. How would you explain what's been happening to the kids born around here over the past fourteen months or so? One in three has shown signs of abnormal development: how does your scientific mind cope with that?'

He looked up and his eyes were flat and hard; perspiration gleamed in the creases on his neck and the collar of his shirt was a dark ring.

Frank said, ‘Are you serious? Abnormal in what way?'

‘They don't behave like new-born babies,' Cal Renfield said in a low voice. ‘They don't respond to external stimuli. They don't cry and it doesn't seem to bother them if they're fed or not. They grow but they don't develop – is that abnormal enough for you?' His voice had risen and the room had gone quiet, the farmhands motionless and attentive, listening.

Frank said, ‘There must be a medical explanation for what's happened. If it's confined to this area there could be a virus going round, or maybe the ante-natal care was at fault in some way—'

‘Then you talk to the medics yourself,' Cal Renfield told him. ‘I have and I've got nowhere fast. Some of those babies are over a year old now and the doctors still don't know what's the matter with them or what they ought to do about it… so much for the wonders of medical science!'

Frank was puzzled and intrigued and was about to press Cal Renfield for more details when his attention was caught by a girl standing at the entrance to the dining-room.

Before he had time to register anything more than a fleeting impression she had reached their table and was standing above them with one hand resting aggressively on her hip and the other poking into the wrinkled cotton sleeve of Cal Renfield's jacket, her sharp pointed nails digging into his arm.

‘So you had some proofs to check, did you? Work piled up at the office and you had to clear it before morning? I've had dinner waiting for two hours and all along you're sitting here getting sozzled with any bum who's willing to listen to you for the price of a drink.'

Cal Renfield's eyes were shut tight. His face had adopted an expression of pained and weary martyrdom; then he opened the eye nearest to Frank and squinted at him in hopeless defeat.

Frank thought it wise not to say anything.

‘Okay, okay,' said Cal Renfield, raising his square podgy hands. ‘I told a white lie. I'm a bad little boy. Spank me and send me to bed without any supper.'

He looked at Frank and nodded his head towards the girl. ‘My daughter, Helen,' he said in the tone of a man apologizing for a tiresome maiden aunt who's decided to break up a poker school. ‘She feels responsible for me.'

The girl, red-haired, slim, with nothing about her to suggest that she was Renfield's daughter except for the same cool grey eyes, seemed to take in Frank for the first time. Her lips tightened and she said:

‘Are you the guy from Chicago? The one that's been visiting the Project?'

Frank admitted that he was, and had been.

Helen Renfield glared at him. He was taken aback, alarmed even, by the animosity in her eyes. It appeared out of nowhere and the full blast of it was aimed directly and unflinchingly at him across the table.

She said bitingly, ‘Checking up on your experiments? Seeing how far the sickness has spread, is that it?'

‘What sickness do you mean?' Frank asked her quietly.

‘No doubt you've got some fancy scientific name for it. And something just as neat to explain it all away.'

‘Helen,' Cal Renfield said placatingly, getting up and holding her arm. ‘Frank is a journalist, a writer, he's got nothing to do with the Project. He's on an assignment for his magazine, all right?' He raised his sparse eyebrows in Frank's direction and shook his head as if in apology.

‘Does she mean the babies?'

‘That's right,' Helen Renfield said. ‘I see you know all about them.' Her nostrils were pinched and white, the flesh below her cheekbones pulled taut. Her face was quite pale now and made to appear even more so in contrast with her hair.

‘Frank didn't know a thing about them till I told him,' Cal Renfield said, becoming annoyed himself. ‘Don't jump to conclusions without proof.'

‘I think that's good advice,' Frank said, rising to his feet. He looked at Cal Renfield. ‘I don't think any of us should do that.'

Helen turned to her father. She was almost a head taller. ‘You let him wriggle out of it, is that right? Did you tell him that this only started after they took over the Telluride Mine?' She glanced at Frank with narrowed eyes. ‘I suppose you'd call that a coincidence, just like the storms we've been having.'

One of the farmhands had risen and was standing at Frank's shoulder. He was lean and stringy, veins protruding on his arms, and Frank could smell dried sweat on him.

The man said, ‘Christ, fella, you'd better get the hell out of this town!'

Another of the men said, ‘Take it easy, John. Maybe he's not—'

‘I've got a kid at the hospital in Radium bin affected by your damn Project and whatever your scientist friends are doing out there. An eight-month-old baby girl lying there like a zombie.' He clenched his lean red fists and raised them in a gesture of impotent fury. His eyes were hard and dry.

Frank felt sorry for the man but didn't see what he could do or how he ought to respond; it wasn't his fault, nor his responsibility.

Helen Renfield pulled at her father's arm, urging him to leave, and at that precise moment a low rumble of thunder echoed faintly in the distance, the onset of a storm rolling towards them from the Mount of the Holy Cross.

Had Frank Kersh doubted or disbelieved Cal Renfield's account of the freak weather conditions along the Roaring Fork Valley – which in fact he hadn't – the storm that night would have swept his doubts aside and made him a firm believer.

It was spectacular, fearsome to behold, and torrential.

The blackness outside was total: a combination of low dark cloud, sweeping gusts of rain, and the night itself closing in around them until even the streetlights were obscured in a dense pall of wind and water which buffeted the window of his room so that he thought it was going to shatter under the strain. Now and then a flicker of forked lightning licked across the mountain top, the dark streaming granite face standing out in stark relief, and then the blackness descended once more accompanied by a crash which jarred the light bulbs in their sockets and made the window-frames creak.

It was the most vicious storm he had ever experienced and it was little comfort to know that it was probably due to the high altitude of the terrain: instead of being above them the storm was actually around them, at ground level. If what Cal Renfield said was true about the frequency of the storms they had suffered over the past eighteen months it pointed to some severe disturbance in the lower stratosphere which the high rugged backbone of the Rockies had exacerbated and brought down upon itself. But of course there had to be a quite rational meteorological/geophysical explanation; the notion that it was somehow connected with – or even caused by – the Deep Hole Project was nonsense, the superstitious belief of ignorant people.

It was impossible to sleep, the noise and general psychological discomfort too great to allow prolonged relaxation,
so Frank lay on the bed reading
Moby Dick
, a book he always carried with him in the hope of one day actually finishing it. It seemed the more he read the longer it got. He could have done with a drink but he didn't feel like disturbing his friendly hotel manager, Mr Stringer.

He had just finished Ishmael's account of the habits of the Sperm Whale and was about to start Chapter 82, ‘The Honor and Glory of Whaling', when the bedside lamp dimmed and went out. A glance into the corridor told him that the power had failed and there wasn't a light showing anywhere. He looked at the luminous dial of his watch and saw that it was twelve-nineteen, which meant that the storm had been raging for more than an hour.

There was nothing else to do but lie in the pitch blackness listening to the sound of his own heartbeat and feeling the close tepid air pressing against his face and neck. His one fear was that the road to the east had been washed out and he would be delayed on his return trip: he had planned an early start, getting to Denver by mid-morning and taking Route 80 through Omaha, Des Moines, Davenport, and arriving in Chicago sometime during late-evening. It was a fair drive but there shouldn't be any problem – provided the road between here and Denver was intact.