A Vision of Fire

“Perhaps we haven’t seen it all,” Flora replied, setting the rod on the table. She touched Arni’s head with the toe of her boot, half-expecting it to cave under the pressure. It did not. “Damn it,” she said. “I hate a mystery without enough time to solve it.”

As if on cue, Casey Skett arrived, still as skinny and slack-eyed as he had been a decade earlier when Flora first found him. Mikel went upstairs to admit him and they rode down in the elevator. Casey worked for the Department of Sanitation, “DAR” division—dead animal removal. He was good at his job, but Flora also appreciated his discretion and his connection to the shelters—specifically, the ones with incinerators. He lifted Arni’s body into a refrigerator on wheels with its contents and shelves removed. If anyone happened to notice Casey wandering around the shelter before dawn, he would say he was cleaning up more of the dead, decaying rats that had been in the news—did they want to take a look inside?

Flora and Mikel then spent forty-five minutes triple-washing the floor and two agonizing hours scrutinizing every inch of the laboratory and the locker room for anything that might catch the eye of a police officer. Then Flora went ahead and scuffed and dirtied things up, so the lab didn’t look too scrubbed.

When they were done, Mikel went about seeking a potential cause. He’d noticed hours ago that his carved meteorite was sitting on the table and the Geiger counter was out. He approached the object cautiously and waved the wand over it for several minutes but nothing happened. Finally, he picked it up, wrapped it in cloth, and strode to the safe to stow it.

“Not there,” Flora said. “We’re putting all the relics in the deep freezer.”

“For what?”

“As a precaution,” she replied.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Mikel asked.

“As my great-uncle Commander Hunt said during the Blitz, ‘One cannot overreact to this.’ Anyway, it’s my prerogative.”

“But we don’t know that this or any of them had anything to do with Arni’s death.”

“We don’t know they didn’t.”

“That argument is ridiculous,” he said. “We have to try and reconstruct what he was doing—”

“And we will, after we’ve had a pause and a good think. I’ve read your report about the trip. There isn’t a damned thing in this building that we know as little about.”

His impatience evident, he held up his find. “Which is why we need this here, now. This has more writing than any of them. We can learn from it.”

“We will,” she said. “Please, Mikel—consider all that’s happened already, the rats in Washington Square, the birds around your plane. Those phenomena all have artifact proximity and they began after this thing started its journey.” She shook her head ruefully. “Arni was a synesthete. These objects may be connecting with animal and possibly human consciousness on some level. Perhaps there was something emitted by this rock at an inaudible frequency, triggered by a certain kind of light or sound, perhaps, for example, the electrical output of an airplane or a Geiger counter.”

“The rats weren’t anywhere near my artifact.”

“They were not,” she agreed. “But they came running here, to the collection. Which is why I want all the objects stowed and stabilized until we’ve examined this more thoroughly.”

Mikel shook his head. “That’s the reason we have to keep studying them now, Flora, while they are being influenced. And I mean, why freeze it? Why not superheat it?”

Flora snatched it from his hand.

“You’re being a little extreme here,” he said.

“Arni is dead!” she said, showing the first real sign of emotion.

“I’m sorry too but we have a bigger picture here,” Mikel insisted, “a force we don’t understand and that we haven’t understood for a long damn time. Being able to read some of the symbols is one thing. We’re getting pretty good at that. Understanding the mechanics of these objects is bigger.”

“You don’t think I know that?”

“Of course you do. Look, this thing has obviously been through tremendous heat before and survived. Arni didn’t heat it—no burner. No cigarette lighter. I don’t think we’re going to know the full extent of its functionality until we start ruling things out.”

Flora turned away. “It goes in the deep freezer with the rest, since we know that all of these artifacts have survived low temperatures for thousands of years without killing anyone, and that’s final.”

“How do you know that?”

She half-turned. “What?”

“That they haven’t killed anyone before?”

She hesitated for the briefest moment. “You’re right. I don’t know. All the more reason for caution.” Then, without another word, she went to the locker, loaded all the objects onto a tray, and navigated to a room down the hall. She packed each item in a plastic bag and put them away. When she returned, Mikel was leaning on the wall outside the lab, pouting. She flicked off the light, slammed the door shut, and followed him up the stairs.

“Go home,” she said. “Get some rest.”

“I’m rested. I want to work.”