The Sixth Idea (A Monkeewrench Novel, Band 7) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

P. J. Tracy is the pseudonym of the mother-daughter writing team of Patricia Lambrecht and Traci Lambrecht. They both live in Minnesota, outside Minneapolis.

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***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2016 P. J. Tracy

PROLOGUE -- 1957

Confine a dozen scientists and engineers to a seemingly endless desert of hard-packed sand with no recreational diversions and inevitably, they will design and build a golf course. 

“This is not just any golf course, Donald,” Arthur kept insisting.  “This is Augusta, a near perfect replica of the first nine holes, minus the grass and the water hazards, of course.”

“Both of which are somewhat critical components to any dandy golf course, wouldn’t you say?”

“Stylistic details, Donald; a matter of preference.  Tennis is played with equal enthusiasm on lawn and on clay.  Think of this as golf’s version of a clay court.  I think it’s ingenious, really.”

“We could really use some caddies and a club house.”

“I’ll give you that.”

Arthur always dressed in the plaid knickers and cap of his hero, Bobby Jones, which looked especially ridiculous in the deserted New Mexico hinterlands.  But that was the charming thing about Arthur – in his knickers and cap he was at Augusta, on the master’s course Bobby Jones had built, and he made you believe you were right there with him.

Donald Buchanan and Arthur Friedman played the makeshift course almost every morning while the rest of the men slept.  Most of the scientists preferred to work through the chill of the desert night and sleep through the most brutal heat of the day, but Donald and Arthur were paced to a different clock.

“I have an idea,” Donald said as he lined up his drive.

“Jesus Christ, the last time you said that, you and Teller damn near blew up half the world.”

“That is a ridiculous exaggeration.”

“It could still happen.  Nice drive,” Arthur said as he watched a golf ball sail up into the dry air against a backdrop of blue sky and mountains.  “So what’s this idea of yours?”

“A bomb that doesn’t kill anybody.”

“That defeats the purpose of a bomb, doesn’t it?”

“Not necessarily.  If you could invent something that would destroy infrastructure – power grids, delivery systems for weapons, communication, transportation – the enemy would be crippled with no cost of human life.  The world would never again see the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“Without infrastructure, there are no resources, no order, no money, and nothing to buy with money even if you had cash in hand.  Anarchy would fill the vacuum and people would die anyhow.  Friends and neighbors would end up killing each other over a crust of bread or a vial of penicillin.”

“Perhaps.  But the death toll would be minimal in comparison to a multi-megaton atomic bomb.”

“So you’re seeking a more moral weapon.”

“I’m seeking a less morally repugnant one.  Infrastructure can be rebuilt but humans cannot.”

“And how do you propose to invent such a device?”

“I don’t know yet.  But the electromagnetic pulses the bombs generate intrigue me.”

“You need a nuclear detonation to create an EMP substantial enough to be an effective weapon, which is exactly what you’re trying to avoid.”

“Yes.  But there has to be a way to generate EMP without a nuclear detonation.  And if we could harness something like that, perhaps miniaturize it and selectively direct it…it’s something to think about, anyhow.”

“Indeed.  But for the time being, I’d think about what you’re going to do with that nice drive you just made, because it landed in a sand trap.”

They both laughed, because the whole damned golf course was a sand trap.

***

By the time she was nine, Alice had moved five times.  She had been too little to remember the first two moves, but the last three were sharp in her memory.

It was always the same.  Father would come home one night and tell them all that in two weeks, they were going to live in a wonderful new place with a bigger house, a nicer town and better schools.  Alice and her brother and sister, older by five and six years, all would start crying because they knew they would never see their best friends again, and then Father would send them from the table before they finished their dinners because crying was not allowed.

Father was very strict about a lot of things, like not crying, but he was never mean, like Melinda’s dad, who had slapped Melinda’s face once when Alice had been right there, watching.  If Father sent you from the table he always brought snacks up to your room later, and by the time you woke up in the morning, he was smiling and gentle again.

“Come into the living room, Alice.  We’ll have a little talk, just me and you.”  He sat in the big brown recliner Mother hated because it didn’t go with the white floral sofa, and patted the foot rest for Alice to sit on.

She hitched up the legs of her pedal pushers just above the knees, because that’s what Father did when he sat down in pants, and for some reason, it always made him smile to see her doing it.  She sat obediently, almost reverently, before her father, big eyes eating him up, little mouth open in breathlessness.  Father-daughter talks were rare in this house and almost exclusively disciplinarian, like when her older sister was caught smoking or using mascara.  But Alice never did anything wrong, so she wasn’t afraid; just excited.

He handed her a well-thumbed paperback novel, the kind her mother removed from the bookcase and hid in a closed cabinet of the buffet whenever guests were expected.  “These are trash,” she’d told Alice’s father, “and totally inappropriate for a child.”  Alice remembered that day because her mother had raised her voice, and she’d never done that before.

Ever since, only big fat books with no pictures on the cover were permitted in the bookcase.  Alice read every one her father gave her, even though she had to look up an awful lot of words in the battered Webster’s dictionary, but the best days were when Father went to the cupboard of the trash books, and selected one for her to read.  They all had pictures of bad women on the cover.  You could tell they were bad because they wore bright red lipstick and blouses that bared their shoulders and showed the tops of really big bazoomies.  There was just such a picture on the cover of this book, but instead of a man pulling on the woman’s arms, she was running from a really big fire.

“Don’t show your mother this book.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t show anyone this book ever.  Not your mother, not your sister or brother, not your friends.  Hide it in a very safe place.  Even after you grow up, you must keep it hidden.  It’s our little secret.  And remember the part about the generator, I marked it for you.  Read it again and again until you have it memorized.  Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.  But what’s a generator?”

“It’s a machine that makes electricity.  You can use it to run things in case the power goes out.”

“Oh.  Okay.  I’ll memorize that part.”

 “All right.  Run along now.”

Two days later, she and...