Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

of the notes and tapes. If Vandie accused me of taking all of them, it wasn’t that much different. But if she thought a third party had taken them, then it was a stroke of luck—my borrowed notes and tapes would likely go unnoticed. Either way, I was almost undoubtedly best served by a hasty exit.

My entire reason for coming so far had been to find and confront Vandie. But my already thin rationale for being here was crumbling underneath my feet. The guard on the road knew I was there, and surely he’d called in and announced my presence to Vandie’s man Murphy CaDell by now. The security team of ex-rig workers was loyal to Vandie, and would view a lone cop as a headache at best, and at worst an opportunity to vent some frustration in a location where they’d likely never face consequences. Dinah McIntire and her assistant knew I was there, but if I disappeared they’d assume I left safely. Maybe this wasn’t going to go bad on me, but if it was, I’d much rather not be surrounded by Vandie’s friends and employees.

I went back to the desk, and rummaged until I found one of the tent schematics I’d seen earlier. I studied it, then folded it down to be inconspicuous. I turned, but a round shape caught my attention. Whoever the interloper was, they’d missed two of the tapes. I didn’t hesitate, just grabbed them and headed for the door.

With the schematic as my guide, I made my way out of the tents in the most direct path possible, stopping or sidestepping anytime I heard footsteps approaching. Once outside, I made a beeline for the snow-runner. On the way out, I threw a mock salute to the guard.

It took a few hours of driving across the ice plains, but I finally stopped peering into the snow-runner’s side mirrors to watch the road unspool behind me. Already the traffic out to Shelter in the Bend was starting to appear. The final concertgoers for the final concert, hurtling like flies to the web.

33

I RETURNED THE SNOW-RUNNER TO THE Camden Terrace substation and headed home. I fed Rumple and started my own dinner heating up while I rummaged in the bedroom closet. I’d managed to collect enough crap over the years to fill up my apartment, and my closet was a refuge of things that had broken and I intended to mend, things I’d mended and then immediately rebroken, and things that I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw out. There, beneath dust-covered photo albums and a box of Talena’s old school projects, I found what I was looking for: a beaten-up reel-to-reel player.

I popped on the first of the three tapes I’d taken from the rig and took a breath. I had a fleeting premonition that hitting play would give voice to some sorcerer’s pre-recorded spell that ended the world. Instead, there was simply the click of the lever and the whir of the tape moving across the head. A moment later, a voice broke the silence, slightly distorted by the recording, but unmistakable. It was Dr. Heidelbrecht, the insane and viciously egotistical scientist who’d aided Harlan Cedrow in his mad search for oil.

The madman’s clipped syllables pronounced the date, then rattled an introduction. “My dearest employer,” he said, “it is with great enthusiasm that I tackle the tasks with which you have presented me.” Heidelbrecht’s sentences were as convoluted as his thinking. “You have made an excellent investment by bringing me on board at this most critical of junctures. As you know, I have a tremendous amount of experience, both theoretical and practical, in matters of manna manipulation, elevation, and exploration. If you’ll pardon the digression, I would like to review some of the accomplishments and accolades with which I have been laureled.”

I dragged over a chair. I’d had a conversation with Heidelbrecht once before, and I knew this would take a while. His voice summoned unpleasant memories, of experiments on animals and sentient Families, of callous disregard for the innocents consumed in his quest for renown and a quick profit. In his brief time here, there was no disputing his importance to the city and to the lives of countless people. Without Heidelbrecht and his twisted experiments, there would be no manna strike, and neither Gellica, Vandie, nor I would have been in the predicament we were in. The last time I’d seen Heidelbrecht I’d missed the opportunity to drag him in front of a judge and jury, and I desperately wanted to correct that mistake.

On the recording, Heidelbrecht had finally gotten past his bona fides and moved on to the proposal for Cedrow. “By combining manna and a given substance, there can be created a bond of sympathetic magic. Even without the strategies of the so-called sorcerers, this sense of connection can persist over great distances—a homing beacon, in a sense.” I shivered, knowing full well what that meant. Harlan Cedrow had sponsored illegal research under the guise of a charitable organization. Research that had impacted people I cared about. Heidelbrecht built on Cedrow’s work and pushed it into even darker, more twisted waters.

“Interestingly,” the recording hissed, “there may also be connections between manna and the source of the geo-vent heating system. I looked into it once before, and while the project itself ended prematurely due to regrettable moral timidity, it held great promise.”

I jabbed the pause button, needing a moment to process that. I rewound and listened again, confirming that he really was talking about the geo-vents. This changed everything. Heidelbrecht was actually laying out a connection between manna and the source of the city’s warmth. Was he talking about the Titan? Something else?

I took a breath and hit play, eager to hear more. Instead I sat and listened to him slather more praise on his own accomplishments. I glanced at the amount of tape remaining, and the notebook’s many pages. It was filled with cramped writing, a