The Empire of Time (The Chronoplane Wars Book 1) Page 13

  “Well. That was some Briefing. Wigner didn’t put everything in, but I can guess at what he left out.” He paused, ordering his thoughts.

  “He’s got plenty of spies at the WDS. They kept him posted on Sherlock, and one of them learned that Seamus Brown figured out that the Sherlock field doesn’t need precise alignment. Not if you just position it between the Sun and the Earth like a burning glass.”

  “Ah, ah—how could I be so stupid?”

  “So Brown went to Gersen. And Gersen understood . . . Isn’t that incredible? A Trainable teaming up with unTrainables like that.”

  “Not surprising, really. Brown saw the implications.”

  The implications. Pierce considered them. No solar flare would bring Doomsday to Earth. No alien invaders would pounce out of space. There was no need now for superweapons against Outsiders. On Ore and Ulro, an experiment had gone terribly wrong, and that was all. Doomsday was caused by a human act.

  So the International Federation, welding all humanity into a single unit, was not needed. The Colonies were not needed; the Agency and all its expedients were not needed. Separatism was now legitimate—and practical, since Ore possessed a weapon Earth would be unable to counter for some time.

  “Wigner had three motives in sending me here,” Pierce said. “He knew about Sherlock in general—and what it meant—but not how far it had progressed. So he wanted that information. He also wanted me to abort it, preferably by killing Gersen. And he wanted me to die. He wanted to keep Sherlock a secret, preserve the whole Doomsday myth, even if there was only one chance in a thousand of succeeding. And if that meant blowing me up—” He shrugged. “And he knew all about my freezing, of course . . . Oh my God, my God.”

  “What—”

  “They block us all, for one reason or another. All Agents. And it’s the blocking that makes us freeze. I remember Suad saying so, a few months ago. ‘Poor old Jerry. Twenty-six memory blocks. You’ll be freezing solid in less than a year, old friend.’”

  “If the blocks are gone—you may never freeze again.”

  “Never. I’ll be a working Trainable all my life. All my life.” He should have felt jubilant, but somehow he did not.

  Anita nestled against him, warming him. “And now?”

  He shuddered. “‘What are you doing about Dooms-day?’”

  —The burning girl. She fell, and fell, and fell. She would fall forever, suspended on the screen of the Afrikaner’s Nikon binoculars, on the screen of memory.

  After a time, he finally said: “I know what to do.”

  Chapter Ten

  They returned to the bus. The indents were enjoying their holiday, but cautiously: they gossiped, played cards, smoked, slept—all out of sight of Mrs. Curtice, who sat in the rear door of the bus with her hands tied behind her. Dallow sat nearby, his truncheon in his lap, smoking. He glanced up at Pierce and Anita, and his eyes widened in surprise.

  “Man, you been doin’ some extreme serious shit.”

  “Well put.” Pierce stood in front of Mrs. Curtice. “How’s your arthritis?”

  “Fuck yourself, you goddamn—”

  “Shut up!”

  There was so much danger in his voice, so much pent-up menace, that her voice cut off in a gurgle. Her pale eyes met his for a moment, then looked away. Absently, Pierce realized he must have a very crazy air about him, and exploited it.

  He leaned forward. “I’ve just gone for a stroll down Nostalgia Alley. You wouldn’t believe the number of corpses I saw there, Mrs. Curtice. Not even you. Be careful.”

  “Arright, arright—no harm intended—I’m just upset, that’s all, just upset.”

  “Mm. How’s your arthritis?”

  “Much better, thanks. Lots better. Couldn’t hardly stand bein’ tied up if I was feelin’ bad.”

  “Good. You’re going to help us do a job.”

  “Is that right? Uh, mind tellin’ me what it is?”

  “We’re all going through that knothole your old friend Klein operates.”

  Her mouth fell open. She laughed; it was a most unpleasant noise. “He charges ten thousand a body, one way. You got that kinda money?”

  “He’ll do it for free.”

  “Uh. Uh-huh. Where we all goin’?”

  “Everywhere. All twelve chronoplanes. A couple here, a couple there.”

  “This is crazy.” She regretted the word at once. “I mean, it’s hard to understand, y’know? What’s all this about?”

  “You’ll know when you need to.” Pierce looked at the Sun; it was mid-afternoon. He turned to Anita. “Give me the wand.”

  A little reluctantly, she obeyed. Pierce whistled, and the indents began to drift over.

  “Listen up. We’re going back into Little Frisco. You folks are going to do a job for us, and then each of you gets his freedom. This time tomorrow, you won’t have those bracelets on.”

  They did not exactly throw their caps in the air. A young Sicilian, arms folded across his massive chest, asked: “What kind of job?”

  “A very safe, quiet job. All you have to do is mail some computer cartridges. Then you’re on your own.”

  “I rather stay with Mrs. Curtice,” the Sicilian said, and most of the others nodded.

  Pierce had half expected this reaction. He raised the wand. “We all got a good taste of this today. Anyone want more?”

  They were silent. Pierce hoped he was bluffing.

  “If you people want to stay with this old bitch, that’s fine. But first you’re going to go through a knothole, hustle your ass to a mailbox, register what you’re sending, and come back with the registration.”

  “What if we don’ come back, man?” asked a tall American Black. “What you gon’ do then?”

  “Your kids will stay with me.”

  He scanned their unexpressive faces for a few seconds, watching his remark sink in, watching mothers look at fathers, fathers look at children.

  “All right? We understand one another? Okay, everyone in the bus. Let’s get going.”

  They stopped in Farallon City en route to Little Frisco, and Pierce went into a replication shop. A cheerful Chinese boy, snapping a mouthful of Coca-Chew, sold him a blank computer cartridge and gestured to an empty console booth. Pierce inserted the cartridge, thought carefully for a long minute, and began to program. The whole thing took him fifteen minutes. He got up, handed the cartridge to the boy, and ordered two hundred copies.

  “Oh, wow. Yeah, but it’ll take like an hour, mister.”

  “I can give you twenty minutes. Get going.” The boy looked distressed, but nodded.

  While the cartridge was being replicated, Pierce hurriedly typed address stickers. The copies would go to laboratories, government offices, newsfiche publishers—all places plugged into a major computer network.

  The boy stacked the copies in a cardboard box. “That must be some program.”

  “Not really—I just don’t want to lose it.” He paid and left, glad that Mrs. Curtice traveled with a sizable amount of cash. There was a mailbox outside. He dropped fifteen cartridges into it, addressed to destinations in Farallon, Glaciopolis, and Little St. Louis.

  “What the hell is all that?” Mrs. Curtice asked when he returned to the cab. She was stowed in the bunk, still tied up.

  “Don’t you worry your pretty head about it, love.” He winked at Anita, who replied with an uncertain smile.

  The trip back across the dunes was uneventful; there seemed to be fewer Copos around. Pierce pulled into a McDonald’s on the edge of Little Frisco, and sent Dallow in with a huge order. There was considerable excitement in the back of the bus over this unexpected treat. But Pierce allowed no one else out of the bus. As the afternoon turned into a golden dusk, the passengers of El Emperador sin Ropa munched their hamburgers and fries in the parking lot.

  Pierce sat behind the wheel, watching the almost-full Moon rising above the hills of Little Frisco. He was reviewing all the steps they still had to take when a spark suddenly be
gan to burn very brightly on the Moon.

  “Look,” he said to Anita, with a mouth full of french fries. Mrs. Curtice squinted through the windshield from her bunk.

  “Sherlock,” Anita said.

  “Works like a charm. That’s why Gersen went down to Mojave Verde, to watch the launch.”

  The spark’s intensity grew as they watched. It was centered on the Sinus Medii, virtually the dead center of the Moon’s face; Pierce suspected that that was no accident, but a deliberately aimed-at bull’s-eye.

  The Sun set; the Moon climbed into a sky made pale by that pinpoint of fire.

  “It’s dimming,” Anita said at last.

  “No, but it’s reddening around the edges. Beam’s ejecting white-hot material that cools once it’s out of the impact area. It’ll make a gorgeous crater.”

  “More likely a rill. The beam is moving.”

  She was right. The spark had begun to shift toward the Sea of Fertility. It was winking like a star now, its light distorted by the turbulent lunar atmosphere it had created out of dust and vaporized rock; it left a track of ugly red, a new cicatrix on the Moon’s scarred face.

  In ten minutes the beam traversed perhaps a thousand kilometers. It winked out, leaving purple after-images; then, almost at once, it reappeared at Sinus Medii and moved due north.

  “They control the field pretty well,” Anita observed. “Gersen could write his initials up there if he wanted to.”

  “I think I know what their strategy must be. First Gersen shuts down all the I-Screens, so no one can get off Ore to report funny lights on the Moon.”

  “But Earth can still send people in—”

  “Doesn’t matter, if Orc can control who goes out. Anyway, that’s only a temporary precaution; they’ll need just a day or two. Then they launch another spacecraft—and an I-Screen generator—into orbit around Orc. They turn the I-Screen on, move the spacecraft through to Earth’s chronoplane, and that’s it. In another day or two, the Sherlock field would be in position, aimed right at Earth. Gersen reopens Orc and gives the IF his terms—independence for Ore or Doomsday for Earth. He might even burn another crater on the Moon, just to show them he’s serious.”

  “No,” said Anita, “on Earth. He’ll want everyone scared. If he blows a hole in Australia, or the Himalayas, there’ll be more pressure on the IF to give in.”

  Pierce nodded. “Well. We don’t have much time, but I think we can screw Gersen—and Wigner. Finish your hamburger.”

  They drove several blocks in silence before Mrs. Curtice cleared her throat.

  “You people both Trainables?”

  “Yes,” said Pierce.

  “Is that right. And you act just like ordinary folks. What the hell do Trainables need with a bunch of broke-down indents?”

  “Not much. Just a few hours’ work.”

  “Illegal, ain’t it?”

  “Extremely.”

  “Well, I don’t mind that, but don’t you get my people into nothin’ dangerous.”

  “Not a chance, Mrs. Curtice. No danger at all.” In Greek, he asked Anita: “Are your powers weak?”

  “Yes, but not gone.”

  “When we speak with the—” he groped for the Greek equivalent—“the gatekeeper, can you make him feel comfortable and trusting?”

  “Yes, unless he is seriously disturbed or alarmed.”

  “Good.” In English again: “Mrs. Curtice, you’re coming in with us to see Klein.”

  “You gonna tell him we’re all goin’ through for free?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t miss that scene for the world.”

  Their destination was a shabby two-story factory, not far from the Transferpoint: klein & son storage cells. A good front for an operation that demanded heavy, regular use of electricity. Pierce parked in the factory’s lot, next to a loading dock; no one was in sight, but there were lights on inside. He slid back the partition: “Dallow. We’ll be back out in a few minutes. Anybody gives you trouble, hit ’em.”

  “Hm!” Dallow nodded and grinned.

  Moving unhurriedly, Pierce and the two women got out of the bus and walked inside. A dusty corridor, its sides lined with cardboard boxes, led to a small office where a young man sat with his sandaled feet on a desktop. A radio murmured a news story about influenza spreading on other chronoplanes, and the impending closing of all I-Screen traffic. The young man, listening intently, held a finger to his lips until the item was over.

  “Hi, Mrs. Curtice—good to see ya. Sir—ma’am. Sorry to make you folks wait. Some story, huh? They say it could be the worst flu since ’06. My ma died in that one.”

  “Remember it well, Tim. Thought your dad would never get over it. Rest her soul. Well, they close the Screens, you and your dad’ll make a pile.”

  “About time, too. It’s really been slow lately.”

  “Your dad in?”

  “Sure is. Right through the door.”

  Pierce was relieved at the ease of entry. Mrs. Curtice had supplied him with passwords to use with Tim Klein and his father, Horst, but her presence alone was enough to get them in. They went through the door into a small anteroom whose echoes indicated armor plate in the walls. A loudspeaker buzzed:

  “That you, Herman?” A password.

  “It’s not the milkman,” Mrs. Curtice responded.

  The door to Klein’s office slid open; they entered an office as neutral and impersonal as the first one. Klein, a short, stocky man of fifty, sat at a desk facing them. Pierce was fairly confident that there was a gun trained on them.

  Klein studied them for a moment, then asked: “Mrs. Curtice. What can I do for you folks?”

  “These two are phonies,” Mrs. Curtice said conversationally.

  Instantly, Pierce sprang forward and slapped Klein across his face, then shoved him away from the desk.

  “Don’t move,” he commanded softly. Without taking his eyes off Klein, he said to Mrs. Curtice: “You treacherous old savage. I ought to kill you.”

  “Well—worth a try, wasn’t it? Can’t blame me for tryin’.” She sniffed. “Fast son of a bitch, ain’tcha.”

  “Mr. Klein,” Anita said urgently, “you’re in no danger if you do as we ask, and we succeed. If we fail—if the Copos find us—they’ll massacre all of us, just to make sure no one talks.”

  “That’s your story,” Mrs. Curtice growled.

  Klein’s face was pale; his thick cheeks trembled with anger. “Wh-what is this all about?”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Klein.” Anita stepped forward, put a comforting hand on his arm. “We’re friends. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  The knotholer visibly began to relax. “This is a dangerous business, you know. We have to be so careful.”

  “That’s over now. All the worries, all the fear, over. You and your son will be safe.” Her words were just background music; the real message, Pierce knew, was going through Anita’s fingers into Klein’s arm.

  “What do you want?”

  “Eleven round trips, one to each chronoplane. Tonight.”

  “Oh, that’s very dangerous. Too much power drain. The authorities will notice, and then I am out of business.”

  “By the time they can notice and react, it won’t matter,” Anita murmured.

  Pierce watched Klein’s transformation with interest. After years of living under stress, Klein was almost collapsing with gratitude for the tranquility Anita gave him.

  “Whoever you are, you are not phonies. I will help.”

  “Thank you,” Anita said.

  Relaxed or not, Klein was now all business. “I must work out a schedule. How long are the trips to be?”

  While Mrs. Curtice, disappointed, sat scowling in a chair, the others concentrated on logistical details. After a time, she interrupted:

  “You people are gonna screw up everything, you know that? I don’t know what you’re doin’, but it’s gonna mean the end of everything. I can just feel it.” Her distress was real.
>
  Pierce looked at her. “Everything is ended anyway, Mrs. Curtice. The IF—the Agency—it’s all over. That spark on the Moon was the end. All we’re trying to do is to keep Gersen from using it on Earth.” He smiled without amusement. “When this situation is resolved, I’m sure you’ll be able to go back to blackbirding. If that’s any consolation.”

  The preparations were soon finished. Pierce returned to the bus and climbed in the back. The indents regarded him balefully; one of the children whimpered.

  “We’re ready,” he told them. “I’m going to send you inside in pairs. You listen to the man and do exactly what he tells you. Each pair will take fifteen cartridges through the I-Screen. On the other side you’ll mail them, registered. Then you come back and jump through the Screen when it goes on. You go AWOL, or you don’t bring back the registration tabs, and the kids will pay for it.”

  “What if we get picked up by the police over there?” asked the young Sicilian.

  “That’ll be too damn bad for the kids. So don’t get picked up. No matter what chronoplane you go to, you won’t be more than a kilometer from a mailbox. Okay, let’s go. You—and you.”

  He escorted them, two at a time, into the building, down the corridors to the I-Screen. It was an old machine, salvaged from some university after the IF declared I-Screens a government monopoly. But it would work as well as any official Screen.

  Still, it was a slow business. After each pair went through the two-meter Screen, Klein and his son had to recalibrate for the next chronoplane. Pierce prowled restlessly between the bus and the building, fingering the wand. He stood in the dark parking lot, listening to the anxious chatter of the remaining indents, the whining and wailing of their children. The night air was cold, and the sky was clear. The L-shaped scar on the Moon still glowed a sullen red-orange.

  The cartridges must already be in the mail on Luvah. Some would be reaching their destinations within an hour or two. Not all would be run at once, but some would, and all it would take was one per chronoplane. Earth was the only one that really mattered, but the mailings would ensure that no Colony remained ignorant of Sherlock, even for a few days.

  At 2:30 a.m., the last indent pair had left and Klein calibrated for Earth. The large, low-ceilinged room was quiet. Mrs. Curtice slept snoring on a battered old couch; Pierce had decided not to use her. Anita, her eyes red with exhaustion, sat next to Klein, keeping him calm and alert.