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

  “The kids are all asleep in the bus,” Pierce told her. “Dallow’s baby-sitting until their folks start coming back.”

  “Good.”

  “Here’s the wand.”

  She accepted it distastefully. “I won’t use it,” she whispered.

  “Neither will I—least of all on kids. But to these people you’re nothing without it.”

  “Speak for yourself.” She found the energy for a wry, conspiratorial wink. “You’re as bad as Wigner.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Ready,” Klein called. Pierce automatically patted his pockets, making sure he had the cartridges.

  The I-Screen formed in a free-standing ring in the middle of the room. On most chronoplanes, the knothole opened onto wilderness or farmland, with the nearest settlement huddled around the Transferpoint a couple of kilometers north. When it opened onto Earth, however, it revealed a large, oak-paneled room and another jumble of I-Screen equipment. Pierce strode through into an overheated atmosphere dense with cigarette smoke. The Screen winked out behind him with a gust of wind.

  “Hold it right there.”

  Pierce obeyed.

  “That you, Herman?”

  Pierce sighed. “It sure isn’t the milkman.”

  “Okay, turn around.” Sitting behind a control console was a hard-faced man in a green turtleneck jumpsuit. He regarded Pierce with calm wariness.

  “What’s your story?”

  “I’m doing a round trip; I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  The knotholer laughed. “Hell of an expensive trip.”

  “You have no idea. How do I get out of here?”

  “Up those stairs behind you, and out the door. When you come back, knock three-one-two. Got that? Thr—”

  “Got it, got it.” He was already on his way.

  The door was a fire exit leading to an alley. It was early evening, with a damp February chill. The low hum of traffic resonated like a hive, and the sidewalks were thick with people. Pierce walked quickly, looking for a mailbox. He found one, fed the cartridges one by one into the registration slot, tore off the receipts, and walked away again. Signs everywhere asked:

  What are you doing about doomsday?

  He felt an unaccountable mix of emotions about the men and women who surrounded him: liking and regret, fondness and guilt. Each of them, happy or not, successful or not, pursued some private destiny that Pierce had just changed. Some, who might have lived long, would die young because of what he had done; others would be reprieved. (A stroboscopic memory: the Roman camp in the snow, the general and his catamite dying surprised. This was what Pierce knew best, the toppling of empires. His own would make a very loud crash.) Please don’t be too angry, he asked the crowds. I think I’m doing what you’d want me to do—what you’d do yourselves.

  He entered a corner drugstore, went to the phone booths, and plugged in his ringmike. He punched Wigner’s home number in New York, and the unhuman voice of the computer whined in his ear: “Four dollars for the first three minutes, please.” He slid his credit card into the slot, knowing it would enable the Agency to trace him pretty quickly. “Thank you.”

  Wigner’s phone rang twice before his answerer, in a voice almost identical to the computer’s, said: “Please code.”

  “Pierce. Piggly Wiggly.” Absurd password games. Everyone watched too many spy shows—especially the spies.

  “Thank you.” A click, then another ring.

  “Hi, Jerry.”

  “Hi, Eric. The balloon’s going up. They tested Sherlock a few hours ago on Orc. Burned a couple of big grooves on the Moon. They’ll probably put a magnetic lens into Earth space within forty eight hours.”

  “Good work.”

  “Mine or theirs?”

  Wigner laughed.

  Pierce went on: “I hear Gersen’s shut down the Transferpoints, but I assume you’re sending people to Orc through our own Screens.”

  “Not yet. We’ve had some foul-ups.”

  “Mojave Verde. That’s the important spot. And Farallon City. Get the Gurkhas in as fast as possible.”

  “Will do. Where are you, Jerry?”

  “In San Francisco, as you must know perfectly well. Not for long, though.”

  “Come on home then, Jerry me lad.” That was a code phrase, designed to trigger a Briefing Pierce no longer obeyed. He laughed.

  “Not a chance, Eric. I’m off to spread the good news about Doomsday.”

  “Spread—” Wigner paused, for once at a loss. When he spoke again, his voice was cold with rage. “You must be mad. Think of the consequences.”

  “I have.”

  “Command, Jerry: I bid you good day.”

  Feeling a little giddy, Pierce put his lips closer to the ringmike and said: “Bang! Arrgghh. Oh, they got me, Sheriff. I’m a goner. Ride on without me, fellas.”

  “Command, Jerry! I bid you good day!”

  “I heard you the first time. That’s supposed to make me self-destruct, isn’t it, Eric? Too bad. I’ve been disarmed, so to speak. See you in a day or two. And get those goddamn Gurkhas into Mojave Verde.” He hung up, feeling not giddy but desolated: Wigner tried to kill me. Directly, in person. Wigner.

  He left the drugstore and walked back to the alley. The people on the sidewalks seemed foreign to him now; their faces were opaque, unreadable. Whatever he might do to save them, he did not understand them, did not belong to them or with them. How could they have allowed their lives to be directed by men like Wigner—or like himself? What criminal laziness or cowardice or apathy possessed them?

  Well, he had the consolations of his craft, and his old boyish pleasure in making things go smash.

  “That didn’t take long,” said the man in the green jumpsuit. “You still got twelve minutes.”

  “I’m efficient.”

  “Ha. Or she was. Like a cup of tea?”

  “Sure.”

  “Earl Grey. Very nice stuff.” He waved Pierce into a hanging-basket chair near the I-Screen ring. “You’re the first round-tripper in—gee, almost a year. Mostly we get rich Backsliders. They make a pile downtime, but they’re too dumb to stay there and enjoy it. So they pay us a fortune, and pay the forgers even more for phony papers, just to live in some uptime dump full of rats. Burns my ass to see ’em. Christ, I’d love to get downtime, start a vineyard on Los.”

  “Well, why don’t you?”

  “Oh, I will one of these days, soon as I make enough to get started properly. No point in going downtime to a joe-job. Trouble is, I got a wife who doesn’t want to leave. She says this is where the action is.” He shrugged. “Sure, action. So what? You got the right idea, bud. Come uptime for business, then back down again.”

  “Mmm.” Pierce enjoyed his tea in slow, careful sips, then looked at his watch. “Want some really good advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “Get the hell out of here. Right now.”

  The man’s face tightened with suspicion. “What for?”

  “In about fifteen minutes the whole city will be crawling with Agency gorillas. They’re sure to find this place. You better be a long way away.”

  “Shit. What did you goddamn well do, anyways?”

  “Got a computer terminal at home?”

  “Sure. Built right into the cinevision. So what?”

  “Watch the terminal. You should see what I did before noon tomorrow.”

  The man looked perplexed. “How is it going to show up on the terminal?”

  “I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.” He stood in front of the I-Screen. “No kidding—get out of here. By this time tomorrow, the heat should be off, but if they nail you before then, they’ll take you to pieces and stuff you down the garburator.”

  The man looked a little sick. The I-Screen blinked on; Pierce waved and stepped through.

  Klein smiled. “Last out, first back. Now we start pulling back the rest.”

  “Right.”

  “Mr. Pierce—we are making very heavy deman
ds on power. If they investigate too soon, what do we do?”

  “It won’t happen. They’ll have other things on their minds.”

  “Confidence becomes you,” Anita said. “Now, will you please tell me how those cartridges are going to tie up the Copos?”

  Pierce laughed, an oddly mischievous guffaw. “Where’s your computer terminal?” he asked Klein.

  “My office.”

  “Good. That’s where Anita and I will be for the next while. I’ll order in some food.”

  Over the next two hours Pierce and Anita ate a late supper, talked with the returning indents, and watched the glowing blue screen of Klein’s terminal. Not long before dawn, Pierce dozed off; a minute later, Anita shook him awake.

  “Look.”

  The screen was pulsing red; white letters crawled across it.

  code jj 16 violet prime /priority xii

  emergency override emergency override emergency override

  all stations suspend normal operations 2 hrs from receipt

  repeat following message for 2 hrs

  no further overrides permitted for 2 hrs

  The letters faded, replaced by a succinct description of Sherlock and its implications. The whole message took some four minutes to creep across the screen, then repeated.

  “You’ve preempted the whole computer network,” Anita said.

  Pierce nodded. “It was harder than it looks—the cartridge had to go through several test commands before it would override. And even that couldn’t happen until some trusting soul put the cartridge into his terminal. But it means that every terminal hooked into this network is carrying the message. It can’t be overlooked or suppressed.”

  Anita began laughing. “What a wicked man! Think of all those innocent housepersons who won’t be able to make breakfast because the computer won’t talk about anything but Sherlock.”

  “Tragic. But this won’t do much good unless Wigner gets his troops to Mojave Verde. If the Sherlock missile manages to get into Earth space, this little message will just help to soften people up. The awful Colonials with the death ray.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I spoke with Wigner. He mentioned foul-ups. Once I’d have taken that as stalling. Now I suspect he’s really less organized than he looks.”

  Dallow came in. “Ev’body’s back. And hungry.”

  “Phone up the nearest café and order some breakfast. After they eat, they can take off if they want to.”

  “Aw, thass too bad. This the best job we had in a long time.”

  Pierce and Anita were alone again in the little office, watching the letters crawl yet again across the screen.

  “He tried to kill me. Wigner. Right over the phone.”

  Anita’s eyes widened.

  “Oh, don’t look so outraged. Eric’s all right; from his point of view, he feels he’s doing the right thing. And what I’m doing is a threat to everything he stands for.”

  “You’re very forgiving of a man who’s treated you like a—a utensil.”

  “He’s the closest thing I’ve got to a friend, Anita. You don’t let go of a friend just because he does something stupid or cruel.”

  “What a strange man you are.”

  “Mm.”

  Pierce found a portable cinevision plate in Klein’s desk and turned it on. UnTrainable broadcasting always bored him, but it was worth putting up with this morning. A slightly haggard young woman was reading the news:

  “—still tying up all computer networks. Trading has been suspended on the Glaciopolis Stock Exchange, and government offices have been paralyzed. Hospitals report several fatalities caused by the computer override as patients failed to receive automated therapy and medication.

  “It’s still not clear whether Commissioner Gersen will respond personally to the charges made against him in the mysterious message still displaying on all terminals. A Government House spokesperson in Farallon City says Gersen is in Moiave Verde and isn’t expected to return until tomorrow night. The spokesperson denied that the Commissioner’s tour of the Missile Facility is in any way related to the so-called Sherlock Project, which was reportedly suspended several weeks ago.

  “The same government source says Sherlock was certainly not the cause of the unusual lunar light observed yesterday. No explanation has yet been offered for that, but some scientists speculate that an anti-matter meteor may have collided with the Moon.

  “In other news, the I-Screens are still closed as the new flu strain continues to spread from one chronoplane to the next. Government health officials say the quarantine will remain in effect until a vaccine is developed; that may not be for another week. But there’s no cause for alarm. No cases of the so-called Tharmas B flu have been reported anywhere on Orc.”

  She chanted her way through the rest of the news, ignored.

  “If he’s not due back till tomorrow night,” Anita said, “It’s because the Sherlock missile is due to be launched before then.”

  Pierce reviewed what he knew of Mojave Verde’s launch capabilities. “Maybe as early as tonight; more likely tomorrow morning. They won’t want to foul up the countdown. If Wigner doesn’t get there in time—”

  “You want to go south?”

  “I don’t want to, but we can’t take a chance, not if Wigner is having trouble getting mobilized.”

  “How will you get there in time?”

  “Oh—something dramatic, like renting a car from Hertz-Avis. Want to come with me?”

  “I’d get in your way.”

  “We make a good team.”

  “Not in this case. I’m exhausted—couldn’t do a thing. And you’ll probably have to hurt people. Go alone.”

  He shrugged and stood up. “I’m going to see if Dallow found breakfast. And I want to get those damn bracelets off everyone.”

  “Good—that’s something I’ll be glad to help you with.”

  The indents sat in little clusters around the empty ring of the I-Screen; they smoked, slept, compared trips. Tim Klein, the knotholer’s son, blearily drank coffee in an armchair while his father slept on the floor by the couch, where Mrs. Curtice also slept. Dallow was nowhere in sight.

  “Got some good wirecutters?” Pierce asked; after some rummaging, Tim retrieved a thermocutter from a tool chest. Pierce nodded his thanks and began with the young Sicilian, who tried to protest:

  “I lose my job, I go to jail.”

  “A man must take his chances in this world,” Pierce replied in Italian.

  “And my family, sir, what of them?”

  The thermocutter burned through the tough plastic. “They have endured pain and slavery on your account; could freedom be worse?” He handed the Sicilian the thermocutter. “Release your family and pass these around.” He yawned, stretched, rubbed his face. His whiskers were growing back; it would be good to have his beard again.

  By the time Dallow and a couple of other indents had returned with boxes of doughnuts and a styrofoam coffee urn, most of the people were free. Dallow cut himself free with an enigmatic smile.

  “It spooky out there,” he said. “Ev’body walk aroun’ lookin’ stoned. Nobody talk to nobody. Extreme.”

  “They’ll get over it,” Pierce said. He could imagine the streets of towns on a dozen chronoplanes, filled with people whose lives had been brusquely overturned by the crawling letters on the terminals. Some had been jolted right out of life altogether: they had gone to join the burning girl and Dr. Chatterjee and all others benevolently murdered. At least, Pierce thought, they would not suffer the final indignity of oblivion: he would remember his victims now, he would allow himself to be haunted. It seemed a small enough penance.

  Now everyone had been cut free. Klein and Mrs. Curtice were awake, sleepily drinking coffee. The indents laughed nervously, comparing the paleness of wrists, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Pierce stood up. Gradually the others fell silent.

  “You did well. Because of what you did, there won’t be a Do
omsday. And there won’t be colonies any more, unless people want to have them. Soon you’ll be able to go back home to Earth, or anywhere else you like. You can be independent, or you can find a patron again.” He glanced at Mrs. Curtice, who gave him an evil wink.

  “I’m sorry I threatened your children. I would never have harmed them. I hope they will never be threatened again.”

  Their blank expressions unsettled him a bit. Just as well; at least they weren’t sucking up to him as their new patrón.

  “Anita and I are leaving now. What’s left of Mrs. Curtice’s money is in the bus. Take it—you all earned it. Then disappear for a few days. And if Mrs. Curtice complains, she’ll go to jail, not you.”

  “That’ll be the day,” the old woman muttered.

  There was an awkward, pleasant moment when everyone insisted on shaking their hands and wishing them luck. At last they left the room through the corridor to the parking lot.

  “What now?” Anita asked.

  “You go to ground in some motel. I rent a car—or a plane. With a plane I could be in Mojave Verde in four or five hours.”

  They emerged into a cold, misty morning. Although the lot was screened from the street by other buildings, the traffic noise was loud. They were walking past the bus when there was a sudden change in the light, and Pierce saw the reflection of an oily rainbow shimmering on the bus’s windshield. A gust of warm air swirled against their backs—

  “Drop!” Pierce shouted.

  He was already rolling under the bus, groping for the Mallory, as flechettes cracked and spattered on the asphalt. He caught a glimpse of their attacker striding through an I-Screen that vanished in an instant: a man with a Mallory .15 like Pierce’s, a man in denim with a bolo tie glinting prettily at his throat.

  Philon Richardson. The Dorian Climber, full of smiling hostility in the elevator to Wigner’s floor. Sent through a portable I-Screen to zap a bad guy in the finest Agency style.

  Pierce crawled swiftly under El Emperador sin Ropa; his heightened hearing tracked Philon’s foot-steps. The Dorian was moving around the edge of the lot, on Pierce’s left, seeking a vantage point from which to drive Pierce into the open—or to kill him where he lay.