Shadows of Falling Night (48 page)

“Harvey will take no chances. This is his one opportunity,” Adrian said.

Eric nodded: “So if you want to be sure…with a twenty-five-k bomb, put it no more than a mile away, and even then not with any terrain features in between.”

“Shadowspawn are more vulnerable to the radiation, aren’t they?” Ellen said. “I’ve heard you say that.”

Adrian tapped his fingers together, leaning back in the chair. “Yes. Especially the aetheric body, nightwalking or post-corporeal. About…roughly, about as vulnerable as unshielded electronics are to EMP. That is not the mechanism, you understand, but the effect, in range and so
forth, is about the same.”

Peter nodded. “I think the
actual
mechanism that randomizes things is—”

He started to lapse into mathematics, then stopped as everyone groaned. Adrian smiled slightly as he went on:

“It tracks very closely. The Council did some experiments…using Shadowspawn under sentence of death…in the 1950s, around the Soviet nuclear tests. It was simpler to hide in the middle of a continent, and the Soviet government made secrecy easy, with the Council in control.”

“I’ll bet,” Peter said. “The Soviets used to set off nuclear tests upwind of cities like Semipalatinsk to see what fallout did to civilians, and that was without evil sorcerers sticking the Power in. So the effect on aetheric bodies is
like
EMP?”

“Closely similar.”

“Ah,” Eric and Peter said together. “After you, professor,” Eric went on.

“Okay, that limits it too,” Peter said. “EMP is short-range when the explosion is low-altitude.”

He went into details that flowed over Ellen’s head; Adrian apparently had the same problem:

“Just the results, Peter.”

“Ah…three miles maximum. Less if there’s a building in the way. Really, the EMP for a ground burst is about the same radius as the blast effects.”

“That simplifies matters a little,” Adrian said. “And Shadowspawn who are corporeal are only slightly more vulnerable to radiation than normal humans, but they could not escape in aetheric form if they feared a nuclear weapon had gone off nearby. So it will be close, to kill the corporeals with blast and heat and the post-corporeals with the gamma
radiation. Not more than half a mile from the Rustaveli Theatre, I would say.”

“And we know the target is this Rustaveli place?” Eric said, tapping a pencil on the little
cultural landmark
symbol.

“Rustaveli National Theater, yes. That is the only location where all the adepts will ever be in one place. You understand, Shadowspawn do not
like
being concentrated so, it makes our prescience much less effective. Think of it as being in a dark room with plugs in your ears, a lot of background noise and a large group of your worst enemies. They will keep it to a minimum. There need be little debate; the
fix is in
.”

“So a mile around
here
,” Eric said, tapping the spot on Rustaveli Avenue…which was right in Tbilisi’s historic downtown. “Above ground location…top floor, if possible. But the thing weighs what, a hair under two tons? Bulky, hard to handle on your own.”

“If that bomb goes off there, a hundred thousand humans will die, minimum,” Adrian said grimly.

“Yeah, it’s bad,” Eric said. “The way the hills surround that area, that’ll focus it. Whooosh!”

He made a welling-up gesture. Ellen winced. She didn’t like the clinical way he was talking about it…but it wasn’t that he didn’t care. It was a technical area he knew something about, the way she did the evolution of perspective, and that was how he discussed it.

“I thought you said there were simple ways to protect yourself?” she said.

He shrugged his thick shoulders. “Simple if you know ’em and you’ve got the stuff you need and you’ve got warning. If you don’t, you die. Or if you’re just too damned close. That’s right in a city center. Lots of people just too damned close.”

“And we’ve got too many places to look,” Peter said, peering at the
map and then dancing his fingers across his tablet. “I mean, jeez, look at the number of buildings!”

Adrian shook his head. “If the bomb were not shielded…but then, it wouldn’t be here.”

He frowned. “Let us first eliminate the obviously unlikely ones. Then…I think you should search, and I will try a search for the right
people
. Harvey is very skilled, but lacks the raw power to compel large numbers to forget. He cannot take the bomb with him when he deals with them, and must be outside its influence. He can hide himself, but not the ripple effects of his interactions. Someone may notice something.”

“Yeah, there are a couple of angles. Like, construction companies—did anyone rent a crane last day or two? Pain in the ass investigating without knowing the local language, but I can try.”

“Me?” Cheba said.

“I need you to guard the children,” Adrian said.

She nodded grimly and made no foolish objections; that would be dangerous enough, and she had nothing to prove—not when she’d attacked a giant squid with a machete not forty-eight hours before.

When the others dispersed to get some rest, Ellen looked a question at him.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I do not think it would
work
, taking them with us as shields. Too much is at stake, and my sister…she loves them in her fashion, but she is ultimately a solipsist.”

“Yes, and—”

She stood very still for a long moment. Adrian waited, his eyes locked on her.

“We’re starting at the wrong end. Look, Adrienne is planning on being
there
, at the meeting, right?”

“Yes, she must.”

“And she’s going to blow it up while everyone’s doing the UN From Hell bit…she must know when Harvey’s going to blow it up, that is.”

“Yes.”

“Look, lover, we’ve got to find out
how she plans to survive that
. If we find out that, we’ll find out where the bomb is, or get a lever on it. We can work
back
from that.”

He seized her, and the kiss left her breathless. “And that will be for you and me.”

“That was a stroke of genius you had,” Adrian said, looking around the interior of the Rustaveli Theatre.

A few Shadowspawn lounged there already, and a slightly larger number of renfields seeing to the arrangements. Ellen winced as they walked past the manager, who was middle-aged and portly and probably normally a dignified-looking man. He was looking down at the body of one of the theater attendants, with tears trickling down his cheeks.

A renfield cuffed at him and snarled in Russian; probably
get rid of that and be quick about it
, because after a moment he bent clumsily, grasped the dead woman’s wrists and began to drag her out.

“I really do not like saving this bunch from getting fried,” she said. “If only they didn’t have a city as a human shield.”

As a theater, it all looked quite nice, in an old-fashioned way; about eight hundred seats, with three levels of boxes extending around to the horseshoe-shaped section at the rear, and a broad stage. On that workers and technicians were erecting…

Yup, that’s an altar,
she thought queasily.
Carved altar. And they’re putting down a waterproof surface around it. And those scared, cute-looking
people at the back in the handcuffs are going to have a starring role in the production, so they’re making them watch, and the carvings show what’s going to happen to them…though I doubt they really believe that, because some of the things are impossible without the Power and nightwalking.

“I know what you mean, but needs must,” Adrian said.

He walked over to one of the renfields. “The seating arrangements,” he snapped.

The man looked like he wanted to object; he glanced into Adrian’s face and tapped his tablet instead. A printer nearby spat out hard copy, and Adrian took it without thanks.

He’s usually unfailingly polite to waiters and ticket agents and bellhops,
Ellen thought.
But here, I can see why he’s a bit…abrupt…this time.

“This is the Brézé area; this is the speaker’s podium below the altar,” he said. After a long moment:

“I can think of only one way for her and her supporters to leave the theater fast enough to catch the others by surprise.”

“How?” she asked, baffled; that had been puzzling her.

He looked down. She did too…and then remembered Adrienne walking out of walls in Rancho Sangre to take her by surprise.

The bitch loved it when I screamed in shock. I got so I twitched every time I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye.

“But isn’t that dangerous?” she said.

“Hideously,” Adrian said. “One mistake and you suffer the Final Death.”

Then, a deep breath. “Come, we do not have much time.”

Night was falling. Tbilisi wasn’t
very
cold, but it smelled like it might snow, mealy and damp and densely overcast. Eric looked up at the building.

“That would be perfect,” he said.

It was new; still under construction, in fact. In the States it would be a middling office building, but it was larger than average here. This was mostly a low-built town, even more so than say Albuquerque.

“And the contractor couldn’t figure how his computer lost the file,” Peter went on. “That was a good idea.”

He looked up at the building again. “We’ve got to decide quickly. And I don’t want to go up against someone who can Wreak without an adept.”

“Not to mention the way Adrian always talks about him. That is one serious badass and I want the odds in our favor,” Eric agreed.
Thank God Peter isn’t trying to be Action Man.
“Time to get backup.”

He took out his phone. Under his stoic exterior he could feel the sweat trickling down his flanks. Unless he missed his guess, up there was a nuke with a man sitting by the controls ready to hit the switch.

He tapped the number. Then again, then again…

“Shit! Boss isn’t answering! I’m getting full bars here, too!”

“Back to the theater,” Peter said. “He may be somewhere reception is bad.”

They turned and trotted, pushing through the crowds on the sidewalk and ignoring the throaty Georgian imprecations in their wake. It was only a third of a mile, anyway. They were running against the clock and they’d better win, or they’d be trying to outrun a fireball, and failing.

“What do you want?” the manager said, in heavily accented English.

He was slumped behind his desk in the cheerful, cluttered office whose walls were posters where they weren’t bookshelves. There was a
stale smell in the air, as if he hadn’t bathed in days, or as if he was exuding a heavy musky scent of despair.

Adrian replied in gargling Georgian. He didn’t just speak it; his body language adapted, gestures growing wider, hands moving more fluently. Ellen could see whatever he was saying break through the apathetic misery of the man’s demeanor, until he virtually flung himself at a file and brought out a roll of old blueprints. He and Adrian spoke quickly and traced their fingers over sections of it, then the man took a pen and sketched rapidly. Adrian nodded, and spoke again.

The man walked quickly out the door without looking back. Adrian snarled a laugh.