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

  As soon as the bus was parked, Pierce used one of his last flechettes on Mrs. Curtice. She slumped back into her seat, eyes rolled up. Pierce opened the panel to the rear of the bus: “Dallow!”

  “Yo.” Dallow’s lean face appeared in the opening.

  “I’m locking the bus. Mrs. Curtice is out; so’s Anita. You people just relax for a while. I should be back in half an hour, maybe less.”

  “Yeah. Hunh. What if you ain’t?”

  “Raise hell. Scream, shout, whatever. But not for half an hour.”

  “Right.”

  Pierce left the bus, locked it, and began walking purposefully toward Government House. A hard, clean wind, smelling of salt, gusted down the street, and he could hear surf pounding the seawall. It was nearly lunch hour, and the streets were already filling with hungry civil servants.

  A driveway led down into an underground garage: authorized personnel only. Pierce strode down into the garage, past the rows of Copo cars, past the duty sergeant immersed in a newspaper, into the locker room. It was empty; the day shift had been on for almost four hours.

  The lockers posed no problem; Pierce’s tripled sensory-input synthesis made it easy to feel out the padlock combinations. The first locker held only civilian clothes; the second, a uniform a shade too large. Just as well; he put it on over his shirt and trousers. The hiking boots looked bad, but they would have to do. The Smith and Wesson fit snugly in the long holster.

  He took the elevator to the fifteenth floor, got out, climbed a flight of stairs, took the elevator another five floors. Lunch hour was well under way, and the people in the elevator gave no more than a glance at him and the others in uniform.

  At the twenty-sixth floor, Pierce went to the stairs again. He was just a little shaky with eagerness.

  “Hold it.”

  Two plainclothesmen stood by the door to the twenty-seventh floor, their pistols aimed down the stairs at him.

  “Who’re you?” asked the older of the two.

  “Turner. Just got in from Little St. Louis. I’m supposed to report to Mr. McGowan.”

  “Why you on the stairs?”

  “I don’t like waiting for elevators, so I ran up.”

  “All thirty floors?” The younger man laughed.

  “Sure. Like to stay in shape.” Both plainclothesmen had beer bellies. “Now can I for God’s sake come up and show you guys my orders?”

  “Come up slow. Keep your hands where we can see ’em.”

  “Right.”

  They were office cops, very slow. Pierce dropped them without difficulty. He took their pistols, serviceable Mallorys that scarcely showed when he tucked them inside his shirt. He would have to hurry now.

  Going through the door to the twenty-seventh floor, he found himself in a typing pool, rows of desks facing a supervisor’s glass-walled office. A few of the typists looked up as he walked calmly to the supervisor’s door. He knocked and entered.

  “Sit down, ma’am. Would you mind, uh, opaquing the wall for a minute? This is a confidential matter, I’m afraid. Thank you.”

  He leaned across the desk. His fingers reached out, curled around her neck, and his thumb pressed against her windpipe. She was a Latin-American of thirty or so, and she looked at him with stupefied horror.

  “Where’s Commissioner Gersen?”

  “H-he’s not here. He’s not in Farallon City.” Her eyes were round and focused tightly on him. “I swear, I swear.”

  “Where is he, then?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  He pressed hard for a moment, then relaxed.

  “Uh! Oh, please! Mojave Verde. He—went down yesterday, w-w-with Mr. McGowan. Please, I—”

  She got a drugged flechette. Pierce went from the office into a corridor leading to the elevators. With no target, with no objective now but escape, he shivered uncontrollably. The plainclothesmen would be coming to any minute; he had little chance of slipping unnoticed out of the building, so he might as well do it in style. Besides, it would help him take out his frustrations.

  A descending elevator opened its doors. Pierce drew his pistol and shot the woman and three men inside. Down the corridor, someone gasped. Pierce lunged into the elevator, pressed the button for the mezzanine floor, and turned to study his unconscious traveling companions. All were plainclothes Copos; had they noticed his boots, he might well have been killed. He discarded the Smith and Wesson—its clip was almost empty—and replaced it in his holster with one of the Mallorys. It was fully loaded.

  As he had hoped, the mezzanine was quiet. He pressed the main-floor button and stepped out. He descended a flight of stairs and found the main floor boiling with people who hurried to the elevators; the arrival of the Copos had created a useful diversion. He walked briskly outside into the sea breeze.

  Damn it! How the hell was he going to get to Mojave Verde? The bus was far too slow, never mind the problems of looking after Mrs. Curtice and the indents. Then there was Anita to consider: she was quickly becoming more of a liability than an asset. Perhaps he could persuade her to go through that knotholer’s I-Screen, warn Wigner personally—some such bullshit stratagem, though it seemed unlikely to work on a mind-reading genius. But he must get to Gersen; his Briefing would allow no one to stand in his way. If necessary, he decided, he would risk killing her; even a !Kosi was expendable when the stakes were this high.

  As he entered the parking lot, he glanced at his watch: twenty-three minutes had passed. His white bracelet glinted in the sunshine. Somewhere he would have to get the damned thing removed; he detested even the potential restriction on his freedom of action. Getting into the cab, he saw Mrs. Curtice and Anita still sleeping peacefully. The panel was open; Pierce thought he’d left it closed. Dallow looked at him with a smile.

  “Ev’thing smooth?”

  Pierce opened his mouth to reply, but no words came. Every muscle in his body seemed paralyzed. His hands fell limply across his thighs.

  Anita slid down out of the bunk onto the seat next to him. Her eyes were dark and unreadable. His jaw slack, Pierce watched her unbutton the Copo shirt, the shirt underneath, felt her push up the T-shirt and scratch her nails across his chest. Something peeled back; he felt a brief, sharp sting between his ribs.

  Anita held a very small cylinder between thumb and forefinger.

  “A self-destruct, Jerry. I felt the pseudoderm patch last night.”

  He wheezed, croaked, found he had a voice again. “That bastard.”

  “Who?”

  “Wigner. Wigner. He’s the only one who could order an involuntary implant on a Senior Field Agent. Even so, he was taking a hell of a chance. Bastard.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not to keep me from being questioned—if it were, I’d have died yesterday morning when Shih captured me. It’s an Agent abort. Once I’d killed Gersen, I was supposed to blow myself up.”

  “That’s senseless.”

  “Wigner never did a senseless thing in his life.” Pierce turned away, and his eyes met Dallow’s.

  “More trouble?” Dallow asked.

  “More trouble.”

  “Watchoo gon’ do now?”

  “I don’t know—we’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get to Mojave Verde.”

  “Jerry.” Anita put her hand on his.

  “Wigner or no Wigner, whatever Sherlock is, it’s got to be stopped. I’ve got to kill Gersen. Even if I annoy my boss by living to tell about it.”

  “The Briefing is still running you, Jerry.”

  “Not much we can do about that, ma’am.”

  “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me—you make me feel like Mrs. Curtice. No, there’s quite a lot I can do, Jerry. I can knock you out, and keep you out for a day or two if necessary. That would at least keep you out of trouble while I tried to warn Wigner. But I don’t know enough yet. You’re the one with all the information.”

  “I’m blocked.”

  She took his hands in hers. “Jerry, I can Cle
ar you. Without the drugs and machines. Without wrecking your mind.”

  He wanted to believe she was lying, but knew she was not. Unaccountably, he began to tremble.

  “I can feel your mind, Jerry. I can feel the blocks. They’re like cysts, running deep. I think I may open up some things you don’t want to remember, things you’re not supposed to remember, but we’ve got to know everything they put in your Briefing. And when it’s over, you’ll be your own man again. Free.”

  “There’s no such th—” A flutter of remembrance: where, when, had he told someone that there was no such thing as freedom? What had happened next? It seemed oddly urgent, like a powerful dream not quite recalled.

  “How long will it take?” he muttered.

  “A few hours. Not long.”

  “All right. All right.” He switched on the ignition. “We’d better find a quiet place to do it.”

  “There’s a camp outta town,” Dallow said. “Nobody mess witchoo there. We look after you.”

  Anita smiled. “Thank you, Dallow.”

  He smiled back. “You welcome.”

  The bus moved out into the traffic. Pierce drove very carefully, very slowly. He had never been so frightened in his life.

  Chapter Nine

  Dallow directed them to a migrant camp a few kilometers north of Farallon, between the dunes and the sea. Pierce parked El Emperador sin Ropa on a site facing east, across the gray-green crests of the dunes to the snow-gleaming Coast Range. In mid-afternoon, the camp was almost deserted.

  Pierce climbed out of the cab and carried Mrs. Curtice around to the back. She still slept heavily, as if her body were grateful for a respite her mind would never willingly allow. She was very light, older and frailer than she had seemed when her fingers had held the inductance wand.

  After he left her, Pierce went for a restless walk around the campsite. The indents, glad to be outside at last, flopped contentedly on the sand, letting the sun soak into their bodies. Ignored by everyone, the children ran squealing around the bus and made forays down to the surf to chase sandpipers. Dallow detailed a crew to pick up a late lunch from the camp mess hall. There was an air of holiday, which Pierce did not share.

  Anita came out of the bus with a couple of blankets under her arm. She spoke briefly to Dallow, who nodded respectfully. Anita turned toward Pierce.

  They walked silently out of the camp, into the dunes; the wind slapped at them and drove sand like mist around their ankles. In a few minutes they were out of sight of the truck; in the lee of a dune, the air was calm. The surf thumped patiently a hundred meters away.

  “This will do. Sit down, Jerry.” She spread a blanket on the smooth sand.

  He obeyed. She undressed and sat cross-legged, facing him. The black chromofilm was gone; her body gleamed like gold.

  “I said I would Clear you, but that’s not quite the word. Whatever is in your mind will stay there; it won’t go into a reel of psychotape. But it’ll all be accessible to you; you’ll Clear yourself . . . You’re very scared.”

  “Yes.”

  “With reason. Your mind is full of blocks, and I don’t know which one will release your Briefing. I’m going to have to open up everything. I won’t wreck your mind, but the experience will probably be very unpleasant. They don’t put in those blocks without good reasons.”

  “And the whole thing’ll take just a few hours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t Dr. Suad love to get his hands on you.”

  “Wouldn’t he just.” She smiled. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “I will feel what you feel about whatever is released, but that is all. Your memories will be your own. And when we’re through, no matter what, it’ll be your life, your mind, and no one else’s.”

  “I know. I know.” That was one reason he was so frightened.

  “Then . . .” She closed her eyes and began to rock back and forth. A little !Kosi song whispered on the wind.

  Whatever it brings, I won’t look away, Pierce said to himself. Then, as he stared rigidly at the naked woman an arm’s length away, he froze. The wind no longer blew; the surf had become a dull, meaningless noise. The sun blazed on Anita’s shoulders, on her arms, her breasts, her thighs, but she no longer moved. He felt like a prisoner condemned for life to a single eternal quarter-second.

  Then, incredibly, in that endless immobility something moved. Anita’s eyes opened, her face tilted like a flower to the sun, and she seemed not just alive but afire, burning, burning bright as she walked naked into the night forest that was his mind.

  *

  He was on Ulro again. His tank had crossed the dusty bed of the East River, heading back to the Transferpoint in Queens. The early morning sun blazed through the window, throwing the cabin into dazzling contrast despite the filters.

  Pierce, sweating and itchy in his spacesuit, was eager to get back through the I-Screen. It had been a good scavenge: the case in the nose of the tank was full of artifacts carefully excavated from a buried basement on Morningside Heights. Columbia University, in some form, had still existed on its old campus when Doomsday came, and Pierce hoped his cargo of broken plastic and glass would be somehow connected with whatever the university’s scientists had been doing.

  A TV monitor showed that his partner’s tank had fallen more than a hundred meters behind. They must be back at the Transferpoint in just seventeen minutes, when the I-Screen would open for exactly three seconds.

  “Trouble, Wayne?”

  “Overheating a bit. No fear.”

  It was rough going over the beige-and-gray wasteland, since no two tanks were ever allowed to take the same route; if there were Outsiders, and they should happen to glance down at New York, they must see no sign of recent activity on the surface. They might, of course, manage to notice a tank itself, not merely its tracks, but that was a gamble the Agency had to take.

  The Transferpoint was in sight now, a small flat patch in the rubble. Pierce checked the time: four minutes to go. He pressed the timed self-destruct button. After he and Wayne had lugged their cases through the Screen, their tanks would back off a few hundred meters and blow themselves to bits. Such was the caution of the scavenging teams.

  “Hustle,” Pierce called.

  “She’s goddamn well packed up on me.” Wayne was two hundred meters behind now, his tank camouflaged by clinging yellow-gray dust. “Got time to pull me?”

  Pierce didn’t hesitate. “Sure.”

  He spun his tank around and roared back. By the time he reached the disabled tank, he had already computed the outcome of trying to haul Wayne’s tank within jumping distance of the Screen. There would be just six seconds for them to blow their doors away, step out, grab their cases, and lurch to the spot where the Screen would appear.

  “Hey, whoa,” Wayne said, his voice tinny in Pierce’s earphones. “Too fast.”

  Pierce said nothing. He slipped a hand into a remote glove, and one of the tank’s tentacles snaked out and looped itself around the handle of Wayne’s case. The case came out easily.

  Another spin, and Pierce was racing back toward the Transferpoint.

  “Jerry, you son of a bitch!”

  The monitor showed Wayne leaping clumsily from his tank. The sun glared on his white suit. He ran, painfully slowly, over the treacherous surface. Pierce could compute the outcome of this decision also: he would reach the Transferpoint with both cases and a margin of thirteen seconds. Wayne would be at least forty meters away when the Screen shut down. Wayne could compute just as well, of course. And he knew perfectly well that the Screen could not be reopened until the reception cell had been thoroughly decontaminated, which would be several hours after Wayne’s air was gone.

  Pierce’s door blew away into the blinding vacuum. He retrieved his cases and plodded slowly, carefully, over the rubble to the open patch. Wayne’s breath was harsh in his earphones. He heard it as the Screen appeared, as he stepped through into the airless, lead-lin
ed cell; when the Screen vanished, Wayne’s panting cut off instantly. Another voice murmured in his phones: Wigner’s.

  “Good thinking, Jerry.”

  Air began to howl into the room, and then jets of decontamination fluid sluiced the radioactive dust of Ulro from his suit. Standing in the little room between his two cases, Pierce threw up inside his suit; the Decon squad got him out just before he would have suffocated.

  *

  The sun rose into a cloudless blue sky over the Saharan grasslands of Vala. Pierce and two rookies, a man named Cherois and a girl named Carmody, hiked across the brown prairie, a few paces behind three undersized Black adolescents. The Team had doped a hunting band last night, Tested the youths, and found these three Trainables. For some reason, Base Camp had failed to send the rendezvous helicopter, so the Team and its captives had been walking since midnight. Pierce expected to reach camp by sundown, unless the copter met them en route.

  The endos, two girls and a boy, were terrified. They had wailed for a time, after the dope wore off, but Pierce’s growls and gestures had kept them quiet since then. They made no attempt to escape, for which Pierce was grateful; if they did, he would have to shoot them full of dope again, and the Team would have to carry them.

  He called a halt near a noisy brook. The endos all squatted to urinate, even the boy, and avoided looking at their captors. They were diuretic marvels, Pierce thought; they had stopped to piss every couple of kilometers. He leaned against a rock and scanned the sky, wishing the copter would arrive and spare them the rest of this tedious march.

  The rookies offered candy to the endos, who refused it with averted faces. Carmody turned to Pierce.