Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(8)

The god itself had rolled into the far corner.

It didn’t move.

I watched it for a while. It definitely didn’t move.

It was the size of a walnut, a small, gray, pitted object, its outer surface shiny like a polished stone. After a few moments, other colors grew apparent in it, too, as if the act of concentration pulled them out: bruised blues, purples, a dark, smudgy maroon. The thing had a quality of being there and not-there, both at once. Stable, yet not really solid. When I moved my head, changing the angle of view, so the piece itself appeared to shift in shape, suggesting other forms, still hidden deep within, memories and reflections of its former states, past iterations captured in its central core.

I got a chill, just watching it.

I have seen gods in their incarnate states, diverse and strange, sometimes almost wholly mineral in type, others mimicking the shapes of animals and men. I have seen gods as light and heard them as vibrations in the air. But I had never seen a thing like this. Not a god, but a piece of a god. A fragment of it. Looked at from certain angles I could almost think that there was something moving deep inside, an embryo ready to break out of the shell; but I was half inclined to write this off as an illusion, a trick of the light—or the mind. Even so, I seemed to be perceiving it on several different levels, like something only partly in the world, and partly—well. I don’t know. Elsewhere . . .

Melody, too, was focused on it.

Her face thrust forward, and, without leaving her seat, she seemed to pitch herself towards it, like a diver ready for the high-dive. Her hands made claws on the arms of her chair, clinging on—but ready to let go.

I pulled the reader out again, switched on.

“You don’t mind if I . . . ?”

I set the balance, adjusting for background, checked it a couple of times.

“It won’t do any harm,” I assured her.

She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “It better not,” and sounded like she meant it, too.

“It’s like a thermometer,” I said. Which wasn’t even slightly true.

I took the reading.

“That’s pretty good, for just a fragment.”

The thing was genuine. More than that: it was sound. It was strong. There was a theory that the old gods propagated this way, shedding chunks like buds. So maybe that was what it was. A new god being born . . . or just a fragment of an old one, far from home.

“You talked about equipment.”

I didn’t look at her, my eyes still on the god.

“Retrieval gear,” I said. “We isolate it in an insulated flask. That keeps it safe. It’s a pretty routine process, usually. Sometimes not. And after that . . .”

“You drain the power.”

“Yeah. It’s a little different from the way it used to be—years back, they’d simply burn them up, like coal or something, and then that was that. Now the thinking is, keep them around, let them re-grow, take a little at a time. We’re a lot more forward-looking nowadays.”

“Would I . . . you know. Still be allowed to see it, sometimes? Touch it?”

“I won’t lie to you. I’ve never known that happen.”

“Ah.” She nodded, considering. “And you need this equipment. This . . . gear,” she said. “But you don’t have it with you.”

“Not now. It’s portable—a small unit, you’d put in a backpack—but, it’s heavy. You wouldn’t carry it for fun.” I smiled. It looked like I was making progress here. “Say the word, I’ll come tomorrow. We’ll get the whole thing sorted, then and there. Money’s authorized. Say yes, and it’s straight into your bank account.”

“That’s good to know.”

She reached out. Her skin was like a loose glove, slipped over her hand, creased and wrinkled in a thousand little lines.

“I, ah, I wouldn’t touch it. Not if I were you.”

“I always touch it. He wants me to touch it.”

I caught the change of pronoun there. It worried me a little.

“I’d advise you, really, not to do that—”

“You pay for him, he’s yours. For now, he’s mine.”

There’s a feeling I’m all too familiar with, when everything’s just running along swimmingly, just wonderfully well, then suddenly, in seconds, it all turns to shit.

Well, that was this. And it struck me, too, that the person I was all alone with here was very possibly insane, and just as possibly dangerous, to boot.

And sitting between me and the door.

I put the reader in my pocket. I thanked her for letting me see the thing, suggested we might put it away now, perhaps? Lock the box and I’d set it back under the bureau for her?

“That piece,” she said, “that little piece. He’s gotten me through so much.”

“I’m sure. And I think you’ll find, um, that’s reflected in the payment that we’re offering.”

“You’re saying not to touch him. But I like to touch him. When I touch him, when I hold him, the feelings just flow through me. It’s like my whole body’s a map. I’m a country, with roads, and hills, and everything’s spread out before me, and it’s me, you know? It’s mine. You understand?”

I’m no negotiator. If I was, I wouldn’t be in Field Ops. But I said, very softly, “Melody. There’s no rush here. I just wanted to take a look, and get a reading, that’s all. No one’s going to take it from you. Not without your say-so. OK?”