Free Psychlone by Greg Bear

three hours.” The pencil raced, scratched the paper, and he threw it down, finishing the calculation in his head. “That's about sixty million calories lost.” The air was almost black. “Stop it!"
    It was an incredible amount of potential energy going somewhere: at least two hundred and fifty million joules, just in a fifty-meter square around the cabin. Of course, that wasn't taking into account the second law of thermodynamics, but—
    He realized what he was aiming at.
    If whatever was outside, draining the heat, was only capable of using a thousandth of that energy, it could lift a good-sized car forty or fifty feet in the air. Even a truck. His figures were rough, but he was in the right area.
    “Stop it, please,” he groaned. Then again, whatever it was, perhaps it was acting like a battery, storing power and releasing it. So far, it had done nothing overt.
    He clenched his fists and backed away from the desk, feeling as if he had been tricked. It was all nonsense. He was babbling, shooting in the dark, fantasizing.
    The air cleared and the room lights came back on.
    The fire was out. Across the ashes, white frost was forming.
    Fowler looked at his watch. The liquid crystal display was blinking erratically, but as it warmed, the numbers returned. Fifteen minutes had passed since the lights began to dim. It was now six o'clock.
    He was past being rational. There was nothing to do but admit his ignorance. Something abnormal was in and around the cabin. Whatever it was, he could now guess where it got its energy—from the air, perhaps the ground as well. Direct conversion of heat to other forms.
    He walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Frost dripped and melted from the strands of lank hair hanging across his forehead. He brushed melting crystals from his eyebrows. His lips were blue. “But I'm alive,” he said. “And it didn't freeze me like the cat."
    He heard a tinkling sound and returned to the living room, his knees shaking. Outside, wind was blowing the fog away in gluey wisps. The forest seemed to be filled with hundreds of tiny wind chimes. He opened the door slowly and listened. It was a sad, dead sound, the embodiment of winter. It made him want to cry. Then he did cry. Jordan and Henry were dead. It had killed them by getting into their minds, driving them mad. Now it was after him.

Psychlone

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    Arnold Trumbauer picked Jacobs up at the airport and drove him through late-morning traffic. Trumbauer was a thin, stoop-shouldered man with silvery-gray hair arranged in a fancy pomp. Jacobs had often suspected him of being homosexual, not that it mattered much. Inside, where it counted, everyone was the same. (But in his youth, as a sailor and general roughneck, Jacobs would have sooner punched Trumbauer in the mouth than take a ride through town with him.) “We're not going to the hospital,” Trumbauer said.
    “Oh?"
    “Miss Unamuno was released late last night. She works in a turquoise shop in the tourist area of town. I'm going there now."
    “I read in the paper that two of the Lorobu survivors died yesterday. One killed the other, then killed herself."
    Trumbauer nodded.
    “Any notion what's going on?” Jacobs asked.
    “Very confusing. I talked with Miss Unamuno last night. Her first name is Janet but she prefers Miss Unamuno. She's been making up a list for us."
    The architecture of the shopping area was patent Mexican, with touches of rustic old-West. The air was warm, as it had been in Arizona, where his garden was at this very minute surviving without him (vanity of vanities). Trumbauer parked the car and Jacobs stood under the sun patiently while he pointed out a few shoddy attractions.
    “And where is Miss Unamuno?” he finally asked, dark eyes boring into Trumbauer."
    This way. Was your flight pleasant?"
    “No.” He shook his head. “I hate flying."
    “That's right. You once crashed in a PBY."
    Jacobs had never told the man, or anyone else in