~~~~~~
The River Walk ran the length of the Great River’s prime tunnel. Jack guided the Andromeda off the eastbound level-way. He crossed Spenard Boulevard, and took the down ramp into Moab. Moab’s green themes replaced the Nodlon blue.
The uptown park was west of the port of Moab, and deep within the Halls of Industry. Jack followed his navigation system into the Halls. The Andromeda glided past several abandoned blocks. Small convenience stores and little shops hunkered in the shadows of the vacant factories. Hooligans and ruffians eyed the flyer with suspicious looks.
A few resolute molemen strode down the sidewalks, intent on their own destinations.
Low-town Park was abandoned, but for two police cruisers.
“Gumshoe,” said Jack. “What’s up?”
“Morning, gentlemen,” said Gumshoe. “A sanitation engineer thinks he heard Noddie. We got a call about an hour ago. They got a malfunction warning on a sluice gate, and sent an engineer to check it out. The engineer heard something splashing in the sluice drain, something big.”
“He’s clean I take it? Hasn’t been drinking has he?”
“Clean as a whistle. He was pretty shook up when we arrived, but he passed a sobriety test like a champ. He’s a black dwarf, and he’s been an engineer down here for years. Straight shooter type, not likely to pull a hoax,” said Gumshoe. He winked at Shotgun. “Says he’s never seen anything like this, and I believe him.”
“What about the cameras?” asked Jack.
“Yeah, what about ‘em?” Gumshoe raised an eyebrow. “I think you need to see this yourself.”
Gumshoe led them down a staircase and to a park bench overlooking the river. The Great River flowed by blissfully unconcerned. A dwarf in an engineer’s overalls sat on the bench with a bottle of water. Bloodshot eyes and curled hands betrayed fresh fear. He shared the bench with a backpack and his tablet.
Gumshoe said, “Gentlemen, this is Niles. He’s an engineer with the sanitation department.”
“Wow, nice to meet you, Mr. Clay. My wife and I have seen your show several times. And we’ve seen you on the vid with the Inspector. I hope you can solve the Zodiac murders.”
“Thanks Niles, but Inspector Lestrayed is the homicide detective. I’m just a magician. He solves cases, and I just consult.”
“Niles, would you show us what you’ve found?” interrupted Gumshoe.
The dwarf took up his tablet, and said, “Let me show you what I found. I checked our security cameras, and this is spooky.”
Sergeant York joined them.
“Just a second Niles,” said Gumshoe. “Sergeant York called Wiggles after taking Nile’s incident report. And they both agreed we should take a look.”
York assumed a serious demeanor. “Gentlemen, I’m glad you came. This may be a wild-goose chase, but I just had a feeling you should know.”
“And I agree,” said Gumshoe. “Niles, would you run the security vid?”
Niles turned his laptop around, and they saw a vid of the Great River flowing smoothly through the tunnel. “I’ve started it about a minute ahead of whatever you want to call it.”
They watched the video on Nile’s laptop. Opposite the camera was an aperture, and for a moment the river flowed past undisturbed.
“This camera monitors that sluice gate,” said Niles. “Those gates open when there’s a flood and we need to divert the flow to the storm sewer.”
The river flowed past the gate making its way to Roosevelt Lake. The gate opened. Nothing appeared from the open tunnel, but ripples appeared on the water, and then a shadow fell over the camera blotting out the view. As quickly as it appeared, the shadow disappeared.
“What in the world?” Jack muttered.
“Let me slow that down for you,” said Niles. He backed up the vid, and set the replay to slow motion. Ripples in the water appeared, and then a shadow covered the camera. The shadow blotted out the view entirely, and then shrank to the opposite wall.
“Niles, can you step through the vid from where the shadow appears?” asked Jack.
The dwarf rewound the vid and stopped on the ripples. Slowly the shadow appeared, and the image went black. After several blank frames, the river reappeared with the shadow on the far wall.
“Stop,” said Jack. “What do you make of that?”
On the tunnel opposite the camera was a blob. The shadow stretched over the gate and down the far side.
“Maybe it’s a Rorschach ink-blot,” Shotgun offered.
Kneeling to get a better look, Clay studied the shadow. “Whatever it is, I wouldn’t want to meet it in an unlit mine.”
The engineer grinned nervously. “Not sure I’d want to meet it anywhere. I think I very nearly met it when I arrived. I had to go down to the gate, which is a hundred yards upstream from the west end of the park to investigate the alarm. I heard splashing coming downstream fast. I thought it might be a flash flood, so I ducked into one of the flood cellars. You can hole up in one of them for weeks if you have to. There’s a port hole in the cellars’ hatch, but it’s hard to see anything. Whatever it was came out of the coolant water drain, crossed the river downstream, and went into the sluice gate.”
“So you didn’t get a good look at it?” asked Gumshoe.
“Well, I thought I did.” The engineer sighed, and his shoulders sank meekly, “until I saw the vid.”
“Niles whatever you saw, trust me, I won’t put it into any report. No one will know at the department, or the media, unless you tell them.”
“Thanks, Inspector, I don’t mind if people think I’m crazy, but I can’t afford to lose my job. I’m a free dwarf, and I’ve got a wife and a baby. I would have sworn I saw a dragon’s tail. But I couldn’t have. A dragon would show up on the cameras.”
“Unless it’s Noddie,” said Jack, “She’s invisible to cameras.”
“Kind of rough aren’t you, boss?” asked Shotgun. “Just because Noddie is a legend doesn’t mean she’s not real, just misunderstood.”
“Shotgun, you cut me to the quick. I simply meant that maybe Noddie is intelligent and has a method of avoiding detection. Stranger things have happened where synthetic creatures are involved.” He held out his palms, “look at me.”
“Speaking of stranger things,” said Niles. “I’ve found another spot on the vid record you need to look at.” The engineer tapped on his keyboard, and the vid image again displayed the river flowing past the open gate. “Now watch.”
For a few seconds, the river flowed by peacefully, and then the camera swung violently downstream.
“Whoa, stop,” Jack’s voice raised. “Back up the image Niles.” The dwarf complied, and ran the footage in slow motion.
“Look,” said Jack. “Ripples in the water after the camera is twisted.”
“You fixed the camera didn’t you Niles?” Gumshoe asked.
“Yeah, I checked the camera before I checked the vid record. If I had seen this, I don’t think I would have gone down there. When I saw the camera turned, I’m not ashamed to say I was scared. I can’t say it was Noddie, but it was very large and very fast.” The engineer twisted around on the bench, and glanced up and down the river searching the placid water.
“And it didn’t want to be seen,” finished York. The moleman glanced at the river, and fingered his lightning pistol. “What do you think gentlemen?”
Gumshoe studied the river himself with a frown. “Could be a coincidence, but at this point, I’m willing to entertain any clue.”
If he’s nervous, Jack thought, he certainly keeps it well hidden.
York’s caster rang. “Excuse me, gentlemen.” The moleman stepped back from the group, and put a hand up to his ear.
“If Noddie’s using a tunnel nearby, perhaps we can plan our next move at a location where we can get some breakfast,” said Shotgun. “I’d rather be reading a menu, than be on a menu.”
York put away his caster. “Gentlemen, I think we have the next pie
ce. Two gents who live in one of the shelters spotted a black airship going into the old Thornmocker coal plant.”
“An airship going into a coal plant doesn’t seem unusual,” said Shotgun.
“Yeah,” said York. “But that plant’s been abandoned for longer than anyone living has been alive. No one goes in there unless they’re pulling off a Soma deal or dumping a body.”
“Who spotted the airship?” asked Gumshoe. “Anyone we know?”
“Reliable informants of the usual kind,” York smiled. “An old trach named Charlie, and an anonymous informer we call the Blue Blazer. Broken by life, but decent enough fellows for this neighborhood.”
“Niles do you need a ride?” asked Gumshoe.
“No, Inspector, but thanks. I’ve got my cart down on the river.”
“Suit yourself, but try not to get eaten,” said Gumshoe. He strode off towards his new cruiser. “We’ll follow you, York.”
The Marie Celeste
Driving through the Halls of Industry behind the police cruisers, Jack thought of Thornmocker. Recalling his old history teacher, Busky, Clay chuckled. Busky was a gentle curmudgeon who threw birthday parties for the biot children in his class.
He could hear him ranting, “To think the fools fought over whether to store the stuff into perpetuity or burn it. Today, we mine the Oort cloud, but we needed to start with a deposit. What’s coal? It’s carbon, the stuff of life! When you’re building a space station, where are you going to get your complex organic building blocks? Are you going to strip the soil from the bread basket of New Atlantis? Or cut down a rainforest and export it? Coal provided the answer. Who would’ve thunk it?”
Before the Regressive Wars, Thornmocker had mined the coal out of the heart of the mountains. The resulting honeycomb had made Nodlon possible. The Chicom Empire had fallen after the first Regressive war. After the Federation fell, the Atlantis hegemony arose from the anarchy after the war. They had big dreams and bigger plans.
Thornmocker knew how to turn those dreams into reality. He reprocessed coal for export to the out-worlds. Much of Nodlon’s coal was shipped to the Great Station of Ur.