Obsidian Tears (Apparition Lake Book 2) Read online

  “Did you hear that?” Rebecca whispered in delight, grabbing the front of the t-shirt Slate had been wearing for two days. “They're irate. About the geyser thingy. Let's start right now! Right here!”

  “Start what?”

  “What do you think? The protest!”

  That, incidentally, was their business. Slate, Rebecca, and company were hired protesters. Eight-fifty an hour, plus a sign; with bonuses if you were quoted or got your picture in the paper.

  Slate goggled at her. “We can't start the protest. It's already started at the Mineral Hot Springs in Mammoth. They started today. We join them tomorrow. To give the impression the protest is growing; you see?”

  “But you're not critically thinking,” she told him. “No offense. But, look, the geyser didn't whoosh!”

  “We're not here to protest Old Faithful,” Slate said with a sigh. “We're hired to protest the super-volcano up at the Hot Springs.”

  “What difference does it make? This…,” she pointed over her shoulder at Old Faithful. “Whatever just happened here… This is as good as an eruption, isn't it? And not normal? Isn't it not going off on its own, isn't that not normal?”

  Unable to follow that, Slate mumbled, “I don't know, Becky.”

  “Rebecca, please.”

  “Sorry, my bad. I don't know, Rebecca. What do I know about geysers and earthquakes? I'm a middle management protest organizer. All I know is we're supposed to be at Mammoth tomorrow morning, bright and early, to join the others. We don't go on the clock…” Slate couldn't help but pause to glare at the huge 'Old Faithful's Next Eruption' clock as it hung on the wall, lying now to the world about an eruption that never came.

  “Slate,” Rebecca demanded, jarring him back to attention. “What are you saying?”

  “I was going to say, we don't go on the clock until tomorrow morning. But, now that you've run it up the flagpole, I have to admit, I'm kind of feeling like saluting your idea.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags, the New York folks with more dollars than sense, were still haranguing the ranger with insults and threats and insisting upon a geyser eruption as promised in the brochures. “The earth tremor we just experienced,” the put-upon ranger was trying to tell them, “has most likely caused a subterranean alteration. It's happened before and will again. I'm sorry you're disappointed; it's understandable. But it happens. We'll keep watch now and, you'll see, Old Faithful will be Old Faithful again. We just have to figure out her new schedule.”

  The ranger finally got away. The Moneybags grumbled and headed in the opposite direction. But Slate and Rebecca had heard it all and, suddenly, shared a matching glint in their eyes.

  “How often does an opportunity like this happen?” Rebecca asked.

  “You're right,” Slate said with a nod. “Never let a crisis go to waste. We start the protest here and now. The signs are ready in the van. We'll march on our own time and hope that Priscilla is so delighted that she, I'm sure, gives us all back pay. Why wouldn't she? Yellowstone Forever wants publicity and we'll already have a headline for her.”

  Rebecca's heart was racing as Slate issued the command, “Round everyone up!”

  Chapter 7

  Glenn pulled into the Mammoth lot, parked, and sighed heavily. The protesters were at it again, blocking the sidewalk to the Administrative building and the paths leading to the otherwise gorgeous Mammoth Hot Springs tiers. They'd arrived yesterday afternoon, unwanted and unannounced, and had set up shop, saving the Earth by their own admission and howling their displeasure. Exactly what it was they were displeased with, Glenn wasn't sure. People damaging the environment certainly, that was a given. The general threat people posed to wildlife was also part of every protest. And, with this group, something about the so-called super-volcano, the huge magma chamber beneath a large area of the park; but just what about it the disgruntled greens had yet to make clear. No doubt, they would soon voice their specific complaints and their demands would follow. Greens always had demands, that was also a given. In the meantime, Glenn had a night of no sleep, a morning of no coffee and, now, had no way to avoid the inevitable confrontation. He grabbed his paperwork and his trooper's hat and stepped out.

  “Hear me,” the nearest sign wielder shouted. Oddly, his sign read, Hear me, too. “For I have been visited by a dream and given this prophecy.”

  Now it made sense, Glenn thought. Hear me was a reasonable sign for a prophet.

  “I've seen the eruption,” the fellow went on, “of the super-volcano that lies beneath Yellowstone, an eruption that will dwarf that of Mt. Saint Helens. Do not be taken unawares. There will be a devastating loss of life. More, riots and civil unrest will follow. Those survivors trying to find food, shelter, and medical supplies will be in danger. So much so that, eventually, we will be grateful for the darkness of falling ash, for it will stop the looters and bandits where law enforcement cannot. But crops will fail and people will starve. The world, too, will ache. For America, unable to feed itself, will be unable to feed the world. Wake up! Wake up! Abandon this giant zoo. Abandon your need to lord over creation with this private playground. Get out! Beg the forgiveness of the universe for what you've done. Prepare for the catastrophe mankind is ushering in.”

  He no sooner finished than another took over and, for a second day in a row, Glenn was forced to walk a gauntlet of protestors and prophets, blaming and terrorizing employees and visitors alike with their visions of the awful coming eruption. Of course, it was never explained how an underground volcano was anyone's particular fault. And, though it escaped the prophets, it did not escape Glenn their visions of doom varied wildly from one to another.

  As he reached the door, one particularly aggrieved protestor climbed into Glenn's face, barking, “You have no idea the evil people are doing to this park!”

  “I don't?” Glenn asked quietly.

  “That's right,” the green sneered. “You don't. And you're even more ignorant of the fact that the world is going to get its revenge!”

  “Son,” the chief ranger said, “Could I tell you a story.”

  But he didn't. It was time to start his work day and, really, why bother?

  Glenn found his office and, by drawing the blinds and turning on the heater, found a modicum of peace as well. He wasn't the only one dealing with it. Another group of protesters had shown up the day before, literally out of nowhere, within minutes of something having gone wrong with the park's most famous geyser, Old Faithful. There had apparently been a tremor, followed by a misfiring of the geyser, followed – almost instantly according to the rangers on duty – by the appearance of protesters shouting about the disruption and insisting that Old Faithful's failure to remain faithful was linked to the super-volcano. How, they didn't say. Where they came from or how they got there, no one seemed to know, but the timing could not have been better. By that, of course, Glenn meant it couldn't have been worse.

  Bad timing was, apparently, going to mark the day. Glenn's door burst open and Betty Chmielewski, the park's newest attached seismologist, barged in. “Have you seen this?” she asked, waving a sheet of seismograph paper in one hand as it trailed to the floor and several feet behind her.

  Glenn stared. “How could I have seen that?”

  “I don't mean have you seen it. I mean, do you know about it?”

  Glenn continued to stare, his patience wearing very thin, very quickly. “I can't know, as I haven't seen it. What is it?”

  “Are you difficult morning, noon, and night? Because if you are–”

  “Hold it. Hold on,” Glenn shouted to shut her up. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Lew. But I don't really have the time or the temperament for an Abbott and Costello routine every time we meet. Do you have something of interest for me or is this merely more vaudeville?”

  Lew took a breath. “What I have is a seismograph reading. Are you aware a new aftershock struck not far from the Old Faithful complex yesterday?”

  “I am.”

  “Great,”
Lew said. “It's nice to be on the same page.” She paused and studied the air as if she was hearing voices. “What is that ridiculous noise?”

  “Our protesters. We've got them down at Old Faithful, too. Tell me,” Glenn said, pointing at her train of paper. “Is there any way they could have known, ahead of time, that the geyser was going to go off time? Is there any way for these greens to have that information?”

  “There's no way for anybody to have that information. You can't guess seismic events to the hour, the day, or the week. Questions about seismic disturbances are asked and answered in terms of tens of thousands of years. If those folks were there, ready to protest when the event happened, it was pure co-inky-dink. Nothing else.”

  Glenn's phone rang, interrupting. With the rising shouts of protestors, no doubt freshly caffeinated, and pronouncements of the prophets of doom outside his window as background noise, Glenn picked it up to find Althea, Park Superintendent Michael Stanton's secretary, on the other end. “Mr. Stanton wants to see you right away,” she said. “He's got the president of Yellowstone Forever in his office.”

  Ah, Glenn thought, the demands have finally arrived. “I'm not at all surprised,” he told Althea. “I've got his cheerleaders yelling outside my window.”

  “Not his,” Althea said, correcting him. “Hers. Their president is a woman now. And she brought an earthquake expert, one of their own earthquake experts, with her.”

  “Oh, she did, did she? Well, two can play at that game. We've got earthquake experts of our own. I'll be right there.” He hung up.

  “Who were you talking to?” Lew asked. “And what were you talking about?”

  Glenn pointed at Lew's seismograph paper again. “Is there anything there, in your readings, that tells you we need to close the park and chase all of the people out of here for good?”

  “No. Of course not. Why?”

  “Anything that says we caused the shift at Old Faithful?”

  Lew frowned then shook her head.

  “Anything there says that we're ruining everything we touch? That mankind is evil and the only way to save the planet is for us to stay out of the ecosystem into which we were born?”

  “That's the most ridiculous thing I ever… What's this all about?”

  “Come on,” Glenn said, dragging the seismologist toward the door. “You're about to discover that I'm not the enemy.”

  Inside Stanton's office, Glenn and Lew found the park superintendent, sitting straight as an arrow behind his desk, and a slender blonde female and an African-American male sitting even straighter in two of the three chairs before it. Glenn recognized the blonde at the same time Stanton introduced her. “Priscilla Wentworth of Yellowstone Forever.”

  Glenn nodded. “Where's Nelson Princep?” The reference to the zealous organization's former president was the chief ranger's first, and last, try at pleasant conversation. The tone of Wentworth's short and not-so-sweet reply made it plain there wasn't going to be any.

  “He's no longer with us.”

  Priscilla Wentworth and Glenn already had a brief history. She'd slapped one of his rangers, Bart Houser, smartly across the face during a tense moment in their past. Not, Glenn had to admit, without provocation. But Bart was dead and time marched on. So did Wentworth.

  “Princep,” she added, “didn't have what it took to stick to his guns on behalf of the park or the planet. As I've made it plain in the past, Chief, I do.”

  Wentworth introduced the gentleman with her, Avondre Hollo, a seismologist hired by Yellowstone Forever. Following his first sentence, Glenn realized he'd been wrong. The gentleman was not African-American. He was South African, very South African by the accent. Glenn had met a number of his countrymen in the park over the years and discovered there was no way to understand a South African when he spoke until you learned the subtle differences between “Now,” “Just now,” “Now now,” “Later,” and “Right now.” Even then it was best to just smile and nod as you'd only be guessing. It was not a guess to say Dr. Hollo had come a long way to get involved with these folks. Curious.

  Yellowstone Forever had requested this meeting and, Glenn was right, they had demands. There was going to be a devastating eruption of the Yellowstone super-volcano. The science on that, Wentworth insisted, was settled and the people needed to be moved out of the park and kept out. Nothing less would do. Anything less would be inhumane and evil.

  Three or four sentences from their visitors made it clear that the bickering between Glenn and Lew had been child's play. They both knew it would need to come to an immediate halt. If they wanted Yellowstone National Park to survive as the public recreation site it had always been, they would have to join forces to defend it.

  A knock on the door interrupted the drama. Althea entered with a calm, “Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt but I have an urgent message for Chief Merrill.”

  Bless her, Glenn thought. A mean green had come, claws out, with her own protesters and a scientist in tow to ruin his day. But the universe had sent Althea to rescue him. Because of fate, or dumb luck, it had also forced one of the park's own scientists on him in the form of the ever argumentative Lew. He could escape with a clear conscience. For now, Dr. Lew and Superintendent Stanton could answer the concerns of the ever-bubbling Yellowstone Forever.

  Besides, while they'd received the usual mice in the cat's eye glare from the Yellowstone Forever reps, it hadn't escaped Glenn's notice that Lew had been the recipient of an entirely different look from Stanton. Unless Glenn was losing it, Michael had taken an instant shine to the seismologist and Lew had returned the smile warmly enough. It wouldn't bother him a bit and, down the road, it might come in handy if Stanton found something in her to cheer him up. With apologies to all, and an assurance to the greens they were being left in capable hands, Glenn escaped to the outer office with Althea.

  “I owe you,” Glenn told her as she pulled Stanton's door shut. “Huge.”

  “Maybe not.” Althea handed Glenn his message. He read the neatly printed name, raised an eyebrow, and asked, “Balasan? Who's Natasha Balasan?”

  “The new curator for the Museum of the National Park Ranger.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I forgot. What did she want?”

  “Wants,” Althea said, correcting him. “Urgent was her word, not mine. She was too excited to talk, again her phrase. She said she needed to see you at your earliest possible convenience. Then she said forget convenience, she needed to see you immediately.”

  Glenn nodded. “I'll give her a call.”

  Althea folded her arms, twisted her lips, and returned an icy stare.

  “Okay,” Glenn said, getting the message. “I'll go see her. Immediately.”

  Chapter 8

  It would be unfair to call the new curator for the Museum of the National Park Ranger flighty. Natasha Balasan, a second generation American of Romanian decent was, after all, well-qualified for her job. She knew all a book could tell about the park, the rangers, and their history. She had all the necessary education; more than the necessary education, including a degree in archaeology. She even looked the part with the lips of her stern librarian's mouth pinched in consternation, her black plastic glasses edged forward on her hawk-like nose, and her shoulder length mouse-brown hair lassoed in a too-tight pony tail. And, to hear her tell it, she had reason for her frustrated exuberance. But knowing it wasn't fair didn't help Glenn. The woman seemed flighty to him.

  On the other hand, apparently, she saw him as a grade 'A' moron. “You're not following me, Chief,” she said with disgust joining frustration. “My goodness, you're not following me at all!”

  “I confess,” Glenn said. “I'm not. What you're meaning to–”

  “Forget my meaning. You're not understanding how meaningful this is!”

  The this to which Balasan vociferously referred (and wildly gesticulated) was the padlocked box, found by rangers Pence and Maltby, and secured in her museum office by Glenn's own hand. The same office where the two now stood.
The box, out of its evidence bag, unlocked and open again, had been carefully placed on end on her desk. The ugly little Indian doll inside was sitting up, petrified in the crossed-legged position in which Glenn had last seen it, staring blindly out at them. Balasan, gushing over the thing, seemed incensed that the chief ranger wasn't doing the same.

  But Glenn had yet to see a reason to gush. He saw only a strange potential clue in an odd death discovered on his turf. And because of his, again apparent, short-sightedness he was being tongue lashed for not getting it. He stared at the object torn, as before, between feelings of fascination and revulsion. “I'm willing to understand, Miss Balasan.”

  She grimaced. “Natasha. Please.”

  “Okay,” Glenn said, displaying a smile usually reserved for troublesome tourists. “Natasha. Tell me, please, what is this doll? And why is it meaningful?”

  She looked at him like he was crazy. “My goodness,” she exclaimed. “It isn't a doll!”

  “It isn't?” Glenn sighed a ton. “Okay. What is it?”

  Renewed excitement replaced the annoyance on Natasha's face. From her look it was suddenly Christmas morning and she was a parent about to pull her hands from a child's eyes, about to reveal a wondrous secret. “This, Chief Merrill,” she said, her face inches from the box. “This is the Pedro Mountain mummy!”

  Glenn looked from the curator to the figure and back again. He didn't roll his eyes. He didn't clear his throat. He was, Glenn thought, Glenn hoped, the model of decorum. “Pretend,” he told her in his most professional voice, “I have no idea what you're talking about. Explain what that means in detail.”

  “In detail?” The look again, like he was crazy, followed by a confused glance into an invisible uncertain future. “I don't know that I can. In fact, I know I can't. Not now. Not this minute.” She looked at Glenn with controlled menace. “I called you the instant I realized what you'd brought. I haven't had any time for research. Besides, I've never practiced archaeology, merely studied the science. I'll have to look up the specific details.” She returned her attention to the figure in the box. “But… my God,” she whispered. “My God.”