Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb (9 page)

“Yes, about right. Minus the sarcasm.”

Mr. Cargill almost started to say something, but Mel spoke first. “Legally what could you do to stop us?”

Santangelo’s piggy eyes had opened a bit. “We have reason to believe that Zephyr Lines is flying in a special long-range seaplane sometime in the next few days.”

Mel put her hand up. “Please, Mr. Santangelo, what could you do to stop us?”

“I have a national judge downstairs who is ready at a moment’s notice to allow us to seize the aeroboat in question, and to prohibit you from leaving Zenith. If needs be, we can hold you and your brother and uncle indefinitely in custody.”

“In jail?” Johnny yelped, shocked even at the idea of it.

“On what grounds?” Mr. Cargill growled.

“On grounds of national security,” said Santangelo.

Johnny turned to his boss. “Can he do that?”

“It depends if
his
lawyers are better than
my
lawyers,” Mr. Cargill answered. “And whether or not the judge has an ounce of common sense.”

“Well, that’s rotten,” Johnny groaned. This whole meeting had turned really sour really fast.

“You’re all playing at a very dangerous game,” said Santangelo. “This matter is way over your heads. And it is of no further concern to you.”

Mel’s eyes shot daggers at the bald bureaucrat. “Mr. Santangelo, you weren’t nearly beheaded by a Steppe Warrior with no eyes and a nasty disposition.
I was
. You didn’t spend hours flying home through the dark in a badly damaged flying boat that might have crashed.
I did
. You didn’t nearly get sliced to bits in your own upstairs hallway.
I did
. You don’t have to go to sleep afraid because specters are hunting you.
I do
. So, I would suggest to you that what is happening is
very much
my concern.”

Johnny looked at his sister with admiration. Boy, did she tell that bum what’s what!

“Now, now, Miss Graphic,” said Santangelo, with a dainty little smile, “I’m just doing my job.”

“Melanie,” Mr. Cargill said, his abrasive voice unexpectedly smooth, “I think Mr. Santangelo’s suggestion that we reconsider our plans makes a certain sense. Let’s go back to my office, talk things over. We don’t want to get in hot water with the Ministry of Etheristics, now do we?”

Mel took a deep breath and followed Mr. Cargill’s lead. “No, of course we don’t.”

Santangelo looked victorious. Grinning in a magnanimous way, saying how sensible they were being, the bald man walked out of the office.

Johnny was almost shaking with anger. Who did this overbearing goon think he was, telling them what they could and couldn’t do? Even worse, why did Mr. Cargill, of all people, give in so easily? What was
that
all about?

“Why in heckfire did you say that, Chief?” Johnny asked, turning red in the face.

Chapter 17

Uncle Louie put an arm around Johnny’s shoulder, leaned over, and whispered in his ear. “Hey there, short stuff. You don’t go spouting off to your boss like that. Not if you want to keep your job. Right?”

Johnny sniffed and muttered, “Right, Uncle Louie.” Then he turned to Mr. Cargill. “Sorry I shot my mouth off, Chief.”

“John, my lad, you remind me a lot of myself when I was your age,” Mr. Cargill answered. “I can understand that you feel a little hot under the collar. But sometimes we just gotta take our punishment and do the best we can do. The guy who can handle a punch is the guy who will make it through. Now I suppose we’d better get going. Thanks for hosting this little clambake, Crider.”

Crider put up his hand. “Just a moment, please. I’d like to speak with you four privately, now that Mr. Santangelo’s gone. Johnny, will you please shut the door?”

Johnny did just that and returned to his seat.

“What I’m about to tell you is for background only, a rumor of a rumor that I heard,” Crider said, his voice low, his eyes furtive.

“Go on,” said Mr. Cargill.

“Off the record? I can trust you all?”

“Yes, sir, off the record and confidential,” the editor replied gravely. “Not a word you say will be published, let alone attributed to you. We’ll only use your information for deep background. Right Louie, right kids?”

Johnny, Mel, and Uncle Louie all agreed.

Johnny understood that Crider’s information—whatever it was—couldn’t be linked back to the lawman. But Mr. Cargill and his newspaper could use it for their investigation. It was a sacred trust for a newspaperman like Johnny to keep Crider’s secret.

“If you ever quote me or attribute this information to me, I’ll deny I ever said it,” Crider warned.

Mr. Cargill nodded. “What have you heard?”

* * *

“But why would the Ministry of War be interested in the Night Goose investigation?” Johnny asked.

Johnny, Mel, Uncle Louie, and Mr. Cargill were huddled together in a battered, green-upholstered booth at the back of the Angry Trout Fishhouse—Johnny and Uncle Louie on one side, Mel and Mr. Cargill on the other. Servers in long white aprons rushed back and forth carrying trays covered with heaping plates of different kinds of fish.

“Haven’t a clue,” said Mr. Cargill, shifting his unlit cigar to the opposite side of his mouth. “But if Crider heard true, some general somewhere thinks our ghost assassins are a real threat to the nation.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense, Chief,” Johnny said. “As rotten as the Gesellschaft murders are, it’s gotta just be some kind of crime wave. I mean, what does it have to do with armies and navies and threats to the nation?”

“That’s as may be,” Mr. Cargill replied. “But the Army and Air Corps don’t stick their noses into anything without very good reasons. And I’ve gotta admit, I’m even more intrigued by this affair than I was to start with. There’s a lot for our reporters to start checking out. Somehow, you two kids have touched a very raw nerve in the ministries down in Capital City.”

Johnny nibbled on his big clubhouse sandwich and regarded Mel, sitting quietly across from him. He knew that look, when she knitted her eyebrows together and half closed her eyes. She was formulating an idea or…hiding something.

“Mel, what is it?” he asked.

Mel stared down into her bowl of catfish chowder. Then she sucked in a breath and sat up straight, pulling back her shoulders. “I have an idea,” she said. “I think I know why the Ministry of War might be interested in this business.”

Mr. Cargill put down his cup of coffee and regarded the young woman with a questioning expression. “Go on, Melanie.”

“I mean, heavens to Betsy…” Mel began. “It’s a preposterous idea. Something Mongke Eng wrote in the
Annals of the Hausenhofer Gesellschaft
back in ’32. Mongke was sort of a genius, you know.”

Johnny nodded in agreement. His parents had worked with Mongke on several occasions and often said how much they had admired him. Mongke even helped Johnny’s pop with the research that transformed the art of medical diagnosis.

“I believe that his article is why we’re all being targeted for death,” Mel continued. “Eliminate us, eliminate the copies of that issue of the
Annals
, and you could control the theoretical knowledge that the conspirators wish to own.”

“Okay, then,” said Johnny, looking grim. “What does that mean, in ordinary English? What did Mongke come up with?”

“Right,” said Mel, clearing her throat. “Here goes—”

When she finished explaining, simplifying the science for the three nonscientists, the table seemed very quiet, amid the bustle and noise of the packed restaurant. The other three looked staggered and dazed. Even Mr. Cargill seemed at a loss for words—not his usual style. Obviously upset, Uncle Louie slowly shook his head. And Johnny wondered with amazement and horror if such a thing were even remotely possible.

“
An etheric bomb?”
Johnny pronounced after a long, stunned silence. “Powerful enough to wipe out a whole city?”

“I know, I know,” Mel said. “But I’ve gone over Mongke’s equations a dozen times, and I’d say there’s a chance that a bomb might actually work. They’d need at least three thousand wraiths, maybe more, and a containment vessel. No idea what that would look like, what it would be composed of, its size. But compress all those ghosts down to microscopic size—and ghosts can do that, you know. And they reach a critical mass. Then they form a conduit, a connection that draws energy directly from the ether and transfers it out to our universe. All in a millisecond. As a gigantic release of energy.”

“A bomb to end all bombs,” groaned Uncle Louie. “Makes sense that the Ministry of War would want to have a few of those.”

“Afraid so,” Mel agreed.

“Ghosts would like it, too,” Johnny said. “What ghost wouldn’t want another chance to properly die, even if it means being blown up in a bomb? I mean, what if the Second Impossible thing isn’t impossible after all? What if the people behind this have figured out that the bomb is a way to send ghosts to the great beyond?”

“Ghosts who’ve been trapped in the ether for centuries or longer might grasp at straws,” Mel said. “They’d be desperate for any chance to be released.”

“It might make them suckers for someone who promises them an escape from their predicament,” put in Uncle Louie.

Just then a waitress stopped by the booth, a plump woman with tight blonde curls all over her head. She regarded them and frowned. “Hey, whatsa matta?” she chirped. “Somebody die?”

“Nope, nope,” lied Uncle Louie. “Everything’s fine.”

“I betcha some pie or cake’d put some smiles on them gloomy faces, huh?” She handed out dessert menus and trotted away.

“So do we still go on our grand adventure around the world?” asked Mel.

“Absolutely,” Mr. Cargill pronounced. “You’re going to visit as many places where etherists have been murdered as is possible. You’re going to find out everything you can about the killings. And you’re going to send back your stories and photos through World Press Association offices. We’re still just operating on speculation and theory. But my reporter’s nose is tingling like crazy, and it usually isn’t wrong.”

Mel scowled. “But how can we do anything, go anywhere, now that Mr. Santangelo’s forbidden us to?”

Mr. Cargill shook his head. “No, not quite right, Melanie. Mr. Santangelo’s
warned
us, but he hasn’t gotten a judge’s restraining order. He hasn’t even talked to a judge yet.”

“He lied to us?” Johnny asked with surprise.

Mr. Cargill brayed with laughter. “He’s in the government. Of course he lied.”

“How did you know, Chief?” asked Johnny.

“Let’s just say I have a few friends of my own down at the National Building. But just in case Santangelo really intends to stop us, we’d better get a move on.”

Johnny looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

The newspaperman grinned and rolled his big cigar back and forth in his mouth. “How quickly can you folks pack your bags?”

Chapter 18

Monday, October 21, 1935

Zenith

At about one in the morning Johnny and Mel each gave the weepy Mrs. Lundgren a peck on the cheek—a strange, tingly sensation on the lips, kissing a ghost. Then they, Nina, and Uncle Louie slipped out the back door and into the woods behind the big brick house.

Johnny carried his pigskin suitcase and had his camera pack strapped to his back. Mel laughed when she saw him, saying he looked almost comical in his dark suit, dark blue shirt, black tie, and fedora—hardly an outfit for tramping through the woods.

Mel, on the other hand, was dressed practically—in a warm gray knit jacket, her lined wool trousers, and hiking boots. Yet she appeared almost as odd-looking as Johnny, with her army saber in a scabbard around her waist. Nina wore a dark sweater and heavy blue dungarees. An experienced woodswoman from her days up north with Uncle Louie, she carried everything she needed in a worn leather backpack.

Uncle Louie led them up the deer path toward the country road two miles northeast. He carried two pieces of luggage—Mel’s suitcase and his own black carpetbag.

About an hour later they emerged on the narrow dirt road. A twinkle of moonlight illuminated a well-polished automobile pulled partway off into the brush. Trudging up toward it, the quartet saw a stout, powerful man leaning against the car’s grill, arms crossed.

A bullhorn voice greeted them. “You’re five minutes late.”

“Sorry, Mr. Cargill,” Johnny said. “We had to detour around a muddy patch.”

Within half an hour they were rolling up Superior Avenue—less hectic than usual, but with late-night denizens still ambling from nightclub to nightclub. A few sad, lonely ghosts loitered here and there, staring dolefully as the station wagon rolled by—trailed by the colonel and the sixteen troopers of the First Zenith Brigade. Before long the automobile cruised by the lakeboat docks and the huge Acme Iron Works in West Zenith.

Heading out into the countryside, they passed Mount Pleasant Cemetery, with its telltale green glow. This sprawling “city of the dead” was also home to a sizeable Wraithville—a ghost ghetto. Thousands of specters “lived” here, and every night the vast graveyard glowed green from the light of their etheric bodies. This was where Lydia Graphic had found Mrs. Lundgren, where Mel and the colonel had recruited several members of the Zenith Brigade.

The car traveled northwest for another hour, through brushlands and bogs, a light drizzle making a metallic patter on the vehicle’s roof. No one felt like talking. In the front seat, Uncle Louie and Cargill stared through the back-and-forth of the windshield wipers. In the back seat, Mel and Nina nodded off. But Johnny was far too excited to snooze, gripping his camera backpack in his lap. He fantasized about all the great pictures he was going to take. This would be the most incredible adventure of his life.

About half an hour later, after bouncing off a blacktop road downhill onto a dirt track that wound through gloomy woods, the station wagon lurched to a halt.

“We’re here,” Mr. Cargill announced.