Chapter 14: The Sound of Music

I met my administrative aide the morning of my first day, and it was love at first sight. Well — of a sort. Mrs. Nolan was a gray-haired woman in her sixties with a no nonsense attitude and the heart of a drill sergeant. Her desk sat just outside my door and I truly believed that not even the Columbus Cannonball would get through my door if she hadn't approved it first.

She was waiting outside Bill Evan's office when our meeting broke up. "Mrs. Nolan, this is your new boss, Ceferino Escobar." Bill Evans said by way of introduction. "Cef, this is Mrs. Nolan."

After that brief introduction I found myself being escorted to my office. It felt like I was being escorted; Mrs. Nolan moved through the halls like an implacable force of nature and I drafted along in her wake.

The research department was on the third floor, sharing the space with the paper's archives, which made sense. Back issues would be one of the researcher's most important resources. The research section didn't look too disorganized, which I took as a good sign. I wouldn't have any trouble negotiating my chair from desk to desk. The desks were not separated by partitions, and there were eight of them, not counting Mrs. Nolan's desk, which was easy to spot, as it sat in front of the door label 'Research Manager' and had one of those little desktop signs that said 'Mrs. Nolan'.

My office itself was an interior one, with no view, but it was a decent size, with room for a table and four chairs as well as my desk. There was a counter the length of the wall to the left of my desk and a huge potted plant that looked like a banana tree or something not all that decorative, at least at the moment. There was a traditional swivel chair against the wall behind the desk but it had been pushed out of the way so I was able to roll my wheelchair right into place with no problem.

"Can I get you some coffee or tea, Mr. Escobar?" she asked.

"Do you see that as something you would normally do?" I asked.

"No, normally I'd let you fend for yourself, but at the moment, I know where the coffee pot is, and you don't," she said with a laugh.

"Alright, coffee would be good, as long as you get something for yourself. Do we have our own, or do you have to run off to get it?" I asked. I hadn't spotted a pot out in the main room, but that didn't mean there was one.

"We have a coffee pot and tea kettle, and if you want to use it, you'll have to chip in for the supplies. Your predecessor preferred to have his own coffee pot in his office, but he took it with him when he left. Cream and sugar?"

"Just black, thanks."

The minute or so that Mrs. Nolan was gone allowed me a moment to look around. The desk had three drawers, all unlocked, but with locks on them. It appeared that one of the keys I'd been given would fit them. There was a stack of three file cabinets, also with locks that I appeared to have a key for, against one wall and a wall-to-wall bit of cabinetry along with a counter top along the other wall. The desk was bare, except for a phone and a rolling phone directory. The phone was on the wrong side of the desk for me so I moved it to where I was used to having mine and moved the phone directory to match and looked around the room a little more.

About the time Mrs. Nolan came back with the coffee and a plate of cookies. I took a sip of mine and found it to be an acceptable but not exemplary example of its kind. Probably the kind of coffee that people with their noses buried in the archives drank without conscious awareness of it. Mrs. Nolan sat and took a sip of the tea it appeared she had fixed for herself and then sat back in the chair donning an air of inscrutability.

"Mrs. Nolan, does anyone refer to you as anything but Mrs. Nolan?"

"My friends call me by my first name, but I have few friends, and none here. I find it hard to make friends with co-workers."

"I see, well Mrs. Nolan is fine for me, I just wanted to make sure it was fine with you as well."

"Of course," she agreed.

"There were a lot of empty desks out there today," I commented. "Was that a sign of a lot of busy researchers, or a convenient means of avoiding the boss on the first day?"

"A little bit of both, actually. Doris Leland is on maternity leave and not due back for three more weeks. Scott O'Hara is working out of the Lexington State Library right now, fact-checking for Doyle Harding, one of the D.I.'s investigative reporters. Chuck Preston is on vacation in Florida, but due back tomorrow, Felix Gutierrez is probably back in the archives somewhere and should be around later. Miranda Smith is over at the Ashland Public Library working on follow up facts for a story we printed last month under Ronnie Rider's byline."

"Explain the phone system to me." I asked, nodding at the phone on my desk.

"Sure. You're line one, I'm line two. You can use the phone as an intercom between us by picking up the receiver and pressing the line two button. I can do the same in your direction. Dial '0' to get an outside line. Once you have a dial tone you can make local calls direct from your phone. Long distance calls have to go through the switchboard. I'll probably place those calls for you, its the easiest way."

"Alright, when can we have a staff meeting, and do you think Doris would come in for it, even if she's not due back to work?"

"Wednesday at the earliest, I'd think. I'll check with Doris and see if she can make it, but everyone else will be here."

I had a filing cabinet full of documents that I believed would tell me the tale of the D.I.'s research department. I spent the rest of the day at my desk going over them. For the most part, they were mind-numbingly boring. I suspected that for the most part, the job itself would prove to be the same.

-oOo-

I dropped down out of the night sky over Macon like a rock falling off a cliff. The lights of the city shone to the north of me as I used small movements to guide me to the meeting point on the banks of the Ocmulgee River. The call had come in from Midnight earlier that day to take Wing to Macon, Georgia and meet up with Blizzard, one of the Guardians' Eastern Seaboard group.

With Becka sitting in the pilot's seat, we made the trip from the Fortress in just under an hour, doing a continent crossing sub-orbital skip. Sealed into the flight cabin she had opened the hatch at 30,000 feet and I had slipped out under the meager light of a new moon. At a thousand feet I kicked in the jets and did a bright, burning decent into the lightly wooded area, finding the beacon my comm gear was looking for.

Blizzard was dressed in frost and ice.

That's probably not literally true, though I couldn't be sure, but his somewhat stocky, short frame was wrapped in swirls of white that seemed to vary from miniature snow flurries to flecks of ice that glittered with the reflected lights of the city to the north and west. His face, which was the only part of him that seemed to even pretend to resemble human flesh, was streaky white, with a beard and eyes that looked as if they were made of hoarfrost.

"Greetings, Iron Man," he said in a hollow, windy voice.

"Greetings, Blizzard," I replied. "What brings a cold fellow like you out on a hot, muggy Georgia night like this?"

That line got me a hollow, windy chuckle. "We think we have a problem in Macon, but we're just not sure what it is yet."

"You Guardians don't have enough warm bodies, ah ... so to speak, to respond yourself?"

"Oh, we've got the bodies," Blizzard answered, again chuckling at my accidental humor. "Problem is we've already got two missing over this, and no idea what happened to them."

"Let me sit down so we can be a little more eye-to-eye and you can fill me in."

"Iron Man, Wing is reporting an area of what she calls 'anomalous auditory and visual data to the east of you about fifty yards." Becka's voice came through the comm. "Thanks," I replied on the internal circuit. "Keep me posted if it moves or makes any changes."

"We're throwing an overlay on your HUD," she answered, and the overlay flickered into existence in front of me as she did. You should be able to see it at your 120."

The entire exchange took place in the time it took me to drop into a sitting position. Blizzard continued as soon as I came to rest.

"A week ago Snapdragon, one of our prime investigators reported that she was headed here, following the trail of someone who had managed to pull of a string of completely unsolved crimes all across the southeastern states. When she hadn't reported in within thirty six hours, we tried to contact her, but got no response. The Crusher volunteered to try to pick up the trail and he too failed to check in at the agreed upon time. We've got two Guardians out of action, or worse at the moment, and only now some hint of a clue as to what is going on."

"Some hint?"

"Some by inference, some not. For example, the Macon Municipal Police Department has not received or responded to a single report of robbery or violent crime in the past seventy two hours. There have been no ambulance calls for domestic violence, rape, gang violence, not even a bar fight."

"That doesn't sound so bad," I said, but even I knew it was too good to be true.

"Along with that, an associate has now given us information that tells us there is an air of mindless tranquility within the city itself and it seems to extend out in a five mile radius and then stops. Everything goes back to normal just outside those limits."

"I'm assuming that your associate is the source of the disruption my sensors are currently picking up in the vicinity?" I asked.

"indeed," Blizzard said after a momentary pause. "It would seem you are not so much the agent of brute force we had assumed you to be."

"Good to get that on the table then," I offered. "Now why am I here?"

"Probably so," he agreed. "We are hoping you will fly over the city and help us pinpoint the source of the ... whatever it is."

"And if the whatever it is happens to get me too?" I asked with some concern.

"We will be making some strong efforts to pinpoint the source if that should occur, obviously."

"Give me a minute, okay?"

"Sure," Blizzard conceded, turning away and pretending to gaze at the city lights to the north.

"What do you think?" I asked through the suit's comm.

"Insufficient data," Wing replied first.

"I agree," Becka chimed in a moment later. "We don't know if anyone has even been attacked, let alone how. Kinda makes it hard to make any preparations or plans."

I agreed, and Wing was silent.

"I would propose doing a high speed flyover with all detection systems active," Wing finally offered.

"Plot two points at opposite edges of the city and go as fast as possible between them without breaking the sound barrier?"

"Rinse and repeat?" Becka asked.

"Huh?" I responded, prompting her to laugh lightly in response.

"pick two more points and do it again if we don't get anything, is what I mean," she explained.

"Yeah, I like that," I agreed. "Okay, let's get this show on the road."

I stood, which got Blizzard's attention immediately.