The Empire of Time (The Chronoplane Wars Book 1) Read online

  “Suppose I just went through and disappeared?”

  “Suppose you did. We’d sure give your girlfriend one fine working over ’fore we gave her to the Copos. And we’d tip ’em off about you as well, so you wouldn’t last very long . . . Deal?”

  “It’s a deal.” He had no intention of doing Mrs. Curtice’s chores for her; he intended to go nowhere but Farallon City and to kill no one but Gersen and McGowan. But he had to oblige Mrs. Curtice until he could get that wand out of her grip. “When do you want this done?”

  “Tomorrow. You go through, drive down to New Monterey, and come right back again. This time tomorrow, you and your friend are on your way.”

  “This knotholer—can you trust him?”

  “Sure.” Her legs were hurting her. “He knows his stuff. I’ve used him four, five times. Bastard charges plenty, but he’s good. Why, you scared of going through a knothole?”

  “Well—”

  “Nothin’ to be ashamed of. We’re all scared of somethin’. But Klein’s got good equipment and he knows how to run it. Know what scares me?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Drugs. Head drugs. Worst thing you can ever do to yourself is let yourself take anything that works on your mind. I don’t care what, grass, speed, enkephalin, DDG. Rather drop dead than let some goddamn blinkie doctor shoot me full of that crap. They make you think they’re doin’ you a favor—next thing you know, you’re doin’ them the favors, and you don’t even know it. Unh-unh.”

  They returned to the bus, Mrs. Curtice walking slowly through her pain.

  It was early evening when they pulled into a migrant workers’ camp in the Alcatraz Valley. Dallow and a few others were detailed to pick up supper at the camp’s mess hall; Mrs. Curtice silently oversaw the conversion of the bus into a dormitory. Boards were laid across the aisle between the benches; hammocks were slung, bedrolls brought out, the toilet hooked up to the camp sewer. The meal, when it arrived was something resembling chop suey, spooned out of plastic buckets and eaten at battered picnic tables. Other groups, screened by scrub alder but very audible, were camped nearby.

  “How are you feeling?” Pierce asked Anita as they shared their supper.

  “I’m freezing, but I’m not as upset as I was.”

  “Good.” He watched the children as they ran through the blue twilight, screaming exuberantly. “Just treat this as some kind of horrible holiday. We’ll be out of here in a day—two at the outside.”

  Mrs. Curtice walked slowly up to them.

  “Stand up when I approach you.”

  They obeyed.

  “How you gettin’ on? Food okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Pierce.

  “Good. I look after my people, they look after me. You Americans?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Figured you was. Still got some spunk and brains. These goddamn greaseballs can’t zip their flies without me tellin’ ’em how. No responsibility. No initiative. ‘Patron-dependent groups,’ they call ’em. Kids are the worst. The old folks used to work, anyway—they remember how to look busy. Guess how old I am.”

  “Ma’am, I really couldn’t.”

  “Sixty. No shit. And I can whip every ass in this outfit, arthritis or not. Sixty.”

  “Hard to believe,” Pierce said politely.

  “Believe it or not, I saw Nixon get shot in ’63. I was eight, goin’ on nine, the toughest little bitch in Texas. Never forget that day. My daddy always said that was the end of the good times. Now you look at these young clowns, shit! They never heard of Nixon.”

  “Uh, you mean Kennedy, don’t you, ma’am?”

  “Kennedy, Nixon, whoever.” She shrugged. “Yeah—Nixon resigned or something, didn’t he? See, that’s what I mean—it was all downhill after ’63. Look at America now, takin’ orders from greaseballs in the IF, shippin’ good citizens downtime to make room for endo blinkies. It’s a goddamn plot, you ask me. The same people that got ridda Nixon and Kennedy. It’s all a goddamn plot.” She shifted her weight. “Well, let’s get these people bedded down. Big day tomorrow.” She grinned unpleasantly at Pierce.

  Everyone was locked inside the bus. Pierce found himself cramped between Dallow and Anita. “Where does Mrs. Curtice sleep?” he asked.

  “She got a little bunk above the cab. Now shuddup and go to sleep—we make too much noise, she give us all a tingle.”

  “Dallow—” His voice was a murmur. “How’d you like to be a rich, rich man? Have anything you want?”

  “Like it fine.”

  “We can make you a rich man, Dallow. You could have a big car, a house, your own servants if you want ’em.”

  “Unh-hunh. Sure. What I gotta do for all this?”

  “Help us get that damn wand away from Mrs. Curtice. That’s all.”

  Dallow snorted softly in the smelly darkness. “Man, you mus’ think I dumb. What I want to hassle her for, just ’cause you make big promises?” He turned over, and went to sleep almost at once.

  “Always trying,” Anita whispered in Greek. “Never mind. By the morning I should have my powers back.” She paused. “I wish she would go to sleep—her pain makes me uncomfortable. And her anxiety.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She is always a little afraid. And there is an—anticipation in her. Not pleasant. It must be about the job she wants you to do. I suppose your regular employers must feel something similar when they send you out on a job.”

  “Mmm.” He rolled over, so that they lay back to back. “Sleep well. This time tomorrow, the whole plan will be stymied.”

  Despite Mrs. Curtice’s liking for quiet, the bus was noisy—children whined, people joked, quarreled, made love. Anita turned and snuggled against him.

  “All the fornication makes me amorous.” Her small, smooth hand slipped inside his shirt and did a gentle effleurage across his chest.

  “No.”

  “As you wish.” Her lips brushed his ear as she whispered: “When I regain my powers, I’ll give you a permanent erection, like a !Kosi man, and then I’ll do things to your senses that the psychologists never dreamed of.” She giggled like a little girl.

  “Good night. Go to sleep.” He masked his anxiety with enough brusqueness to deceive himself that he was not interested. He began the breathing exercises that would put him to sleep in thirty seconds; just before they worked, he felt her hand move down his ribs, pause a moment, and then withdraw. He fell into a troubled sleep.

  Chapter Eight

  Next morning, Pierce had been awake for a long time when the rear door was unlocked and gray light seeped in.

  “Pierce,” Mrs. Curtice said quietly. He felt a light tingle on his wrist, rose, and stepped over Dallow, who blinked up at him.

  Mrs. Curtice hobbled to one of the picnic benches and slowly seated herself, ignoring the heavy dew. Pierce stood seven or eight meters away from her.

  “Christ, it really hurts this morning. Anyway. We’re goin’ to town today, you an’ me, and you’re gonna go through Klein’s knothole.”

  “Ma’am.”

  “Here’s the drill.” She gave her instructions in a soft, unresonant voice: how to deal with Klein, how to find the man she wanted killed, how to return. Pierce listened attentively, though he knew he would not be carrying out her orders. At some point he would have to overpower her, with or without Anita’s help, make his way to Government House in Farallon City, and then do whatever his Briefing impelled.

  “Ma’am, it’d sure be easier if you’d come with me into Klein’s place.”

  “Oh, no. I’m an old operator—I don’t get caught in a place where there’s folks with no bracelets. Anyhow, you’re a big boy. You don’t need no help.”

  “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  “Goddamn right. Now, be a good boy and get that lazy nigger Dallow off his black ass. Sun’s damn near up—gotta get these people’s breakfast.”

  Pierce rapped on the door, and Dallow was up at once, bel
lowing at the others. Yawning and scratching, they stumbled out into the morning mist and shaped up in two lines. Dallow called roll, turned to Mrs. Curtice, and said: “All present, ma’am.”

  “Okay. Get the bus cleaned up and send a detail out for breakfast. After chow everybody gets the morning off. Bring that Jap-nigger girl over here.”

  Dallow gestured to Anita, who followed him. Pierce turned to go with them.

  “She din’t say nothin’ about you. Git in that bus and help stow the bedding.”

  Reluctantly, Pierce obeyed, but he stayed close to the open door. It wasn’t hard, with his sharpened hearing, to eavesdrop.

  “You know what your friend is gonna do today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show respect!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, you better hope he does it, ’cause if he screws up—or goes AWOL—I’m gonna mess you up. Know what it feels like to have one of these bracelets round your neck? You don’t ever want to find that out, honey. So you make sure he knows what you’re in for. Understand me?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Curtice . . . You’re in pain.”

  “So what?”

  Pierce stepped into the doorway; he could see Mrs. Curtice sitting on the bench, with Anita and Dallow facing her at the usual distance.

  “I can take away the pain.”

  “Is that right.”

  Then Pierce saw blank astonishment in Mrs. Curtice’s face. She gasped and stood erect.

  “Oh my God! Oh—my—God! What you—what—what you done to me?”

  “I’ve blocked the pain.”

  “Oh my God.” She took a few tentative steps. “I can walk. And it don’t hurt at all.” Her face showed shock, delight, and then alarm. “This is some kind of trap!”

  Pierce realized, too late, what was happening, and saw Mrs. Curtice’s fingers tighten on the wand. He leaped from the bus, but he was too far away to do anything. None the less, Anita might be able to take advantage of any distraction he could create. He got five or six steps toward them before the pain smashed up his arm. Everyone was screaming and falling—she had triggered all the bracelets at once.

  Somehow Pierce kept his feet. His peripheral vision vanished. He was staring down a long tunnel at Mrs. Curtice, at Anita vomiting as she collapsed under the collective agony of thirty people, at Dallow springing at Mrs. Curtice, his face contorted. Dallow hit the old woman hard, knocking her flat. The wand splashed into a mud puddle.

  The pain went on, and on. Pierce staggered and fell, and crawled awkwardly on one hand and his knees. Mrs. Curtice, pinned under Dallow’s convulsing body, screamed in renewed pain and groped frantically for the wand.

  Pierce grasped it and turned it off. Everyone in the group had been shrieking, but suddenly it was very quiet. The children sobbed.

  Dallow picked himself up. Mrs. Curtice lay still, her clothes soaked in mud, her face unreadable. She looked at Pierce.

  “I was right.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything. You’re a real pro, you are. Nobody but a pro could keep moving with a hot bracelet on.”

  “Dallow, help her up.”

  Dallow lifted her gently while she spat and hissed with pain, and carried her into the bus. Pierce bent over Anita, touched the pulse in her throat. Her skin was clammy with sweat. He picked her up and followed Dallow to the bus. As he did so, he heard the morning shape-ups in the other campsites, and realized no one had bothered to investigate the horrible uproar they had made.

  The two women lay almost side by side in the doorway of the bus. Mrs. Curtice never took her eyes off Pierce.

  “Boy, you’re in real trouble now.”

  “Is that right,” said Pierce.

  “Incitement to riot. Inducing an indent to abrogate his contract.” She glared at Dallow. “Theft of personnel-management equipment. I’ll have the law on you, you bastard. And your weirdo girlfriend. Hope the bitch dies. And, Dallow, you’re goddamn well finished. I’ll have you so fucking blacklisted you’ll have to go endo or starve.”

  “Put a bracelet on her, Dallow.”

  “Hey, man, you sure? She no indent.”

  Pierce looked balefully at him. Dallow fished a bracelet out of his jacket and sealed it around Mrs. Curtice’s bony wrist. She made no resistance.

  “Bring ’em up out’a the gutter, make somethin’ of ’em, see they’re fed and clothed and got work—look at the th-thanks you get. Oh, Billy Dallow, how c-c-could you?”

  “Miz Curtice—that girl, that Anita, she healed you. She took away you pain. And what you do? You freak out, Miz Curtice, you hurt ev’body. You think we all out to get you.”

  She laughed bitterly. “And I was right, right. It was a trap, and I’da got out of it until you jumped me.”

  Dallow looked at Pierce. “You better not be playin’ me for a fool, man. You said some smooth words las’ night, you better not be lyin’.”

  “Don’t worry, Dallow. You did the right thing.” He looked down at Anita, wondering what it felt like to suffer that much pain. “I need sedatives. Something to keep Anita asleep for a few hours.”

  “Hunh? Miz Curtice, she don’t stand for no drugs.”

  “You playing me for a fool? You’ve got drugs.”

  Looking embarrassed, Dallow climbed past the two women and fumbled about in the bus’s dark interior. He returned with a hypospray pistol and a single pink cartridge. Pierce recognized the drug—a nonprescription sedative that would keep her out for about four hours.

  “Any more of these?”

  “One.”

  “Okay.” Pierce shot the drug into Anita’s thigh; she trembled and relaxed. “Put her in the bunk above the cab. Mrs. Curtice, get up.”

  “I can’t. It hurts too much.”

  “Get up.”

  Whimpering, she obeyed. He gestured to her to climb down. Somewhat absently, Pierce observed that the others were standing in a ragged semicircle behind him, watching silently.

  “You’re riding up front with me,” he said to her. Turning to the workers, he said: “I’m the boss for a while. I’ve got the wand, and I’ll use it if I have to. After we get to where I’m going, you can do whatever you damn well want.”

  “Watchoo gonna do with Miz Curtice?” Dallow asked.

  “Nothing, if she behaves. If she doesn’t, I’ll kill her. Okay, let’s get going. Everybody in the bus.”

  Before getting behind the wheel, Pierce retrieved his Smith and Wesson from the glove compartment and slipped it into his jacket. Then he helped Mrs. Curtice into the cab. They drove out of the camp without incident. Mrs. Curtice sat sullenly glaring out the window, averting her face from Pierce. After a few minutes, she said: “What’s all this about, anyway? What the hell you doing?”

  “A job.”

  “A job, a job. Why pick on me? What I ever do to you? I’m just a hardworking old woman, tryin’ to get along—”

  “Quit blubbering. You just came down the road at the right time.”

  “—Gonna get me in the shit with the Copos, I always had a clean record, made my payoffs like clockwork—”

  “Once we get to Farallon and I finish my job, you’re on your own. You can have your wand back and everything. I don’t think there’s much future in blackbirding, though. Once we get one or two matters cleaned up, we’re going to shake out every Colonial government from top to bottom. People like you are going to be out of business.”

  “Why, you sneaky son of a bitch, you’re a Trainable, ain’tcha? You work for AID.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  She laughed. “The Agency ain’t gonna mess with me. I done ’em too many favors.”

  Pierce said nothing. He reflected that he had been too high up, too specialized to be aware of everything the Agency had been doing. He was vaguely embarrassed that the Agency should deal with blackbirders, though it was not really surprising. He remembered Wigner’s remark about slavery on Beulah.

  Highway 605 ran up out of the Alcatraz Valley
to the lower slopes of the hills of Little Frisco. Then it turned north to the Golden Gate Pass and followed the river west across the Farallon Dunes. The road was busy: logging trucks, bracero buses, and many, many Copo cars.

  “Never saw so many,” Mrs. Curtice said. “For Christ’s sake, drive careful. They like to shake us down every time the brakes squeak.”

  Pierce laughed. He had the pleasant, light-in-the-stomach feeling of being in danger of his own free will, like a hang-glider stepping off a thousand-meter cliff. In a few hours at most, Gersen would be dead, Sherlock would be stalled if not stopped, and Pierce would be on his way back to Earth with a message for Wigner, and with Anita to back it up. This time tomorrow, the Gurkhas would be in control of Mojave Verde; a month from now, the Agency and all Colonial government would be thoroughly purged. After that, he could retire—but that was a long time away.

  All around them the dunes stretched green and gray and blue in the mid-morning sun. Sloughs gleamed, their surfaces rippling in the wind; the dune grass waved shimmeringly. Overhead, millions of birds stormed into the sky and sank again to their ponds and thickets: snow geese, wood ducks, grebes, passenger pigeons, mallards, pintails—so many that their cries and the thunder of their wings drowned out the wind in a strange, dispassionate jubilation.

  “Why’d you dope your girlfriend?”

  “None of your business.”

  “She’s got some kinda power, don’t she? Something you can’t control.” Mrs. Curtice studied him for a moment. “And she wouldn’t like whatever it is you plan on doin’. You need her, or you’da ditched her somewheres, but first you gotta do somethin’ nasty. Probably kill somebody.”

  “Don’t you worry, ma’am. The less you know, the less they’ll hurt you.”

  “Who?”

  “The Copos, if I don’t succeed.”

  “Lord, lord. Well, it’s my own damn fault for pickin’ up hitchhikers.” She laughed at her own wit. Pierce laughed, too.

  They entered Farallon City. The bus would attract attention in the city center, but Pierce had to risk it. From the bus to Gersen’s office and back must be only a brief sortie. The downtown area stood between the western slopes of Mount Farallon and the harbor. Government House, thirty stories high, dominated the waterfront skyline. At the top was Gersen’s office, no doubt heavily guarded. Pierce reviewed what he knew about the building as he drove into a parking lot two blocks away. The Copos’ North American headquarters took up the first five floors; above that were various agencies and departments, with the Commissioner’s staff situated on the top three floors. The building would be swarming with police; it had better be, if his plan was to work.