The Empire of Time (The Chronoplane Wars Book 1) Page 9

  “Well, sir, I’m afraid I don’t make the regulations. Now, if you’ll come this way—” He gestured down the long concourse to an unmarked door. Pierce reached out, gripped the man’s outstretched wrist, and flung him off balance. The Copo hit the floor head first, his mouth and nose spraying blood across the gray vinyl floor.

  Anita gasped and began to sag, until Pierce grasped her shoulders and guided her smoothly through the doors. Rapid footsteps sounded behind them—bystanders going to the Copo’s aid.

  They were outside, half running across the sidewalk to the cab. The driver lifted his sallow face from his comic and gaped at the muzzle of Pierce’s pistol.

  “Hey, whatcha doin’?”

  “Out.”

  “Hey, watcha doin’?”

  “Out of the cab—now.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, hell.” Pierce shot him on low impact and opened the door. The driver, eyes rolled up in his head, fell heavily onto the oily asphalt. Anita got in and slid over to make room for Pierce behind the wheel. He started the engine and pulled sedately away from the curb. The driver lay face up on the road, his comic fluttering beside him.

  “Sorry I had to be so rough,” Pierce said.

  “Yes, yes. Never mind.” She stared at the dashboard. “I’ve never been this weak before. I tried to stop the Copo—really tried. And nothing. And I couldn’t stop them killing Gordon. It’s like being paralyzed.”

  “Nothing could have saved Gordon.”

  “If I could have stopped the Copos from breaking in, he’d at least have lived to get the message out.”

  Glancing across at her, Pierce saw she was on the edge of a real breakdown. He tried, and failed, to imagine what it must be like to be a !Kosi. They all were gentle people, scholars and thinkers as isolated in their new world as they had been in their old one. Now he was escorting her through a very dangerous passage. If she were hurt or killed, the repercussions would be immense.

  “Do a mantra. Rest,” he told her. She nodded and closed her eyes; in a few seconds she grew calmer.

  They turned west onto Highway 605, headed for Nuevo Sacramento. There was little traffic at this time of day, except for some trucks and the occasional bracero bus carrying migrant workers. Pierce monitored the cab’s CB radio, but heard nothing unusual In a few minutes there would surely be an all-points bulletin out on them. They would have little chance of getting through Nuevo Sacramento undetected, let alone of reaching Farallon City.

  Already they were on the ragged edge of town, a patchwork of marshes, truck farms, housing tracts, and light industry. There seemed to be an abandoned car in every front yard; grubby kids with slingshots sniped at them from the side of the road. Colonials.

  “There’s a shopping center over by the next offramp,” Pierce said. “We’ll ditch the cab there.”

  They left it in the crowded parking lot and ambled into the covered shopping mall. Built in a classic 1960s style, it resembled a thousand others on a dozen chronoplanes, right down to the aimless teenagers dawdling outside the shoe boutiques and pornotheques. Pierce and Anita walked into the giant department store at one end of the mall; he was glad to see it was a sale day, and the store was crowded with haggard housepersons and their squalling children. The store affected an old-fashioned decor, complete with a pseudo-wooden floor; most of the merchandise was shabby and overpriced junk from Earth.

  “Let’s buy some new clothes,” he suggested, and gave her a couple of hundred-dollar bills. Using a credit card would surely give them away to the databank computers, which by now must be programmed with all their documents. UnTrainables being old-fashioned about sex roles as well as about merchandising, there were separate men’s and women’s clothing departments, complete with changing rooms. Pierce felt rather silly observing such niceties. No wonder they needed pornotheques!

  He bought khaki trousers, a red-and-black-checked flannel shirt, serviceable Swiss hiking boots, an olive-drab jacket, and a black baseball cap. The clothes all looked too new, but at least he now blended in with most of the other males.

  Anita met him back on the mall. Her jeans and sweater had been replaced by ugly red-and-green overalls, a red turtleneck sweater, and a black windbreaker. She wore a short Afro wig, and a chromofilm spray had turned her golden skin a rich brown. The chromofilm would break down in a few hours, but right now it made her considerably less conspicuous. When Pierce slouched up beside her, they looked like a typical Colonial farm couple, in town for an afternoon’s shopping.

  “There’s a Copo car in the parking lot,” Anita murmured. “They must have spotted the cab.”

  “Okay. Back into the store.”

  They sidled through the crowds, found a stairway to the basement, and took it. No one was visible in the basement, but mariachi music bleated from a radio somewhere nearby. They slipped silently through a labyrinth of shelves and cartons. It was lunchtime; no one was around.

  An open door led to a loading dock facing a parking area. Pierce considered stealing one of the three trucks standing there unattended, but decided against doing so—the alarm would go out within minutes, and the trucks were too easily identifiable. Beyond the parking area, trees screened this side of the building from the highway. They would have to take their chances on the road.

  No one saw them cross the lot and then the highway. There was a hitchhikers’ shelter on the shoulder of the westbound side, and Pierce and Anita stood beside it, thumbs out. Four or five cars hissed by, including an unmarked Copo Toyota, whose driver regarded them indifferently. More police would be in the area soon.

  A bracero bus groaned down upon them. Its yellow paint was camouflaged under a thick crust of dirt, and its dented front bumper carried a Spanish title: El Emperador Sin Ropa. It stopped. The driver was a heavy, apathetic man, clearly no more than the chauffeur for the woman beside him. She rolled down the window and stared at them through mirrored sunglasses. Strands of gray-blond hair had escaped from under her old straw hat. She wore a brown wool jacket; her hand, resting on the window frame, was gloved.

  “Hi,” she said. “You folks lookin’ for a ride, or for work?”

  “Both.” Pierce smiled.

  “You wearin’ nice clothes for people need work.”

  Pierce shrugged and grinned. “Well, yes, ma’am. Just bought ’em. Now we just about broke.”

  “Is that right. You ain’t runaway indents?”

  “No, ma’am! Free agents.” He considered drawing his pistol and commandeering the bus, but two more police cars were coming down the highway. Pierce saw no occasion for dramatics; all they needed, after all, was a ride out of town.

  “Well, you better be. I find an indent, he goes back to his boss by special delivery.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Go climb in the back with the others.” She turned, slid open a panel between the cab and the back of the bus. “Dallow! Got a couple more comin’ in. You let ’em in. Get ’em settled.”

  “You bet, Miz Curtice,” a young man’s voice replied. There was some fuss and muttering from the unseen passengers; Mrs. Curtice silenced it by slamming the panel shut.

  “Hurry up,” she told them.

  “Mighty obliged, ma’am.” Pierce smiled again.

  They walked to the rear of the windowless bus, where the door was already open for them. Anita paused.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “Don’t worry. In you go.” He followed her into the dim interior of the bus.

  —And was knocked sprawling to the cold metal floor. Stunned, he heard the door slam, felt the bus lurch into motion. He was already beginning to recover, to tense for a lashing kick out at his assailant, when hands fumbled at his left wrist.

  Very far away, he heard Anita screaming. He was not sure how long she had been screaming; he only knew that he himself had been in agony forever. Somewhere back at the beginning of his life, someone had hit him, and then, a moment later, his hand had been—shot off? burned? crushed? Pierce w
asn’t sure, and it never occurred to him to open his eyes and look.

  The pain stopped. At least, the agony in his wrist stopped; it took some time for the convulsed muscles in his arm and shoulder to recover. He lay quietly on the floor, doing his breathing exercises automatically. His new clothes were drenched with sweat. Someone frisked him, took his pistol.

  “Least you ain’t no crybaby.” It was the young man, Dallow. “And you pack some solemn armament. Here, pass this piece up to Miz Curtice . . . Okay, c’mon, sit up.” He was pulled onto one of two broad benches running the length of the bus.

  Pierce saw a white plastic band around his wrist. An inductance bracelet, of course. And handled by a real pro. There was no point in trying to break it—the plastic was too tough. He looked around.

  The bus was crowded with adults and children, a typical assortment of indentured workers: Sicilians, Mexicans, Egyptians, Portuguese, some American Blacks. They all wore the bracelets. A few grinned at him, grateful for the entertainment he and Anita had provided. The bus stank of old sweat and fresh urine.

  Pierce found himself sitting next to a lean, undersized young Black with a gap-toothed smile and intelligent, crazy eyes. He held a half-meter truncheon with the authority of a field marshal.

  “How you head, man?”

  “Hurts.”

  “You got some thick head, man. You the first I ever see start to get up after I hit ’em.”

  Pierce stood, a little unsteadily, and lifted Anita from the floor. When he held her in his lap, she slumped against him like a sleeping baby.

  “Watchoo name, man?”

  “Jerry.”

  “Watchoo woman name?”

  “Anita. What’s yours?”

  The young man shifted the truncheon to his left hand and extended his right. Around the wrist was a fluorescent orange ID strap, wider than the inductance bracelet on the other wrist. Pierce read the strap:

  DALLOW, WM. C.

  Indent. # 0-671-5512

  Expiry Date: 1 Jan 20

  Property of: Curtice Labor Brokers

  702 E. Eisenhower Avenue

  Nuevo Sacramento, Orc

  Phone: (603) 771-1654

  “Call me Dallow. And don’t give me no shit. I’m Miz Curtice’s chief honcho an’ass kicker. You get along with me, you gonna get along with her and that little wand she got.”

  Pierce nodded. Anita stirred; Dallow touched her head to see how hard she had been hit, and dislodged her wig. Even in the dim light, her orange skin and peppercorn hair looked strange. Dallow was alarmed; so were the other workers close enough to see.

  “What’s all this, man? She sick or somethin’? She got funny hair.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s using chromofilm. Her skin’s the same color as her scalp.”

  “No shit. She got some disease?” Colonials lived in dread of local germs.

  “None.”

  “Watchee want to look Black, then?”

  “We didn’t want to make it easy for the cops.”

  “Hunh. What they want with you?”

  “I shot a couple of ’em.”

  “Hunh. Man, you shot ’em good. Har’ly any ammo left in that piece I took off of you.” He thought for a moment. “We ain’t no special friends of the police. You do what I tell you, you smooth with us.”

  “Good.” Pierce was annoyed at this development. But the bus was moving west toward Farallon City, and that was the important thing. “We’ll cooperate.”

  Dallow whooped. “Man, we all cooperate with Miz Curtice! Nobody like a taste of bracelet, they can avoid it. ’Sides, she a smooth lady. She got some style.”

  “How’d you meet her?” Pierce asked.

  “Hunh. Like most of these dopies—got my ass kicked downtime to this shithole. They lay on all that good shit, everybody get a job down here, hunh? Sure. Lotta guys like me, they go endo, live in some cave somewheres. Hunh! Some never-never. So I get indented, okay? Least you gets paid steady, work or no work. An’ Miz Curtice, she make sure you work. Food in the camps ain’t so smooth, but—” He shrugged good-naturedly.

  “Indents don’t wear bracelets.”

  “Yeah, well, hunh. You broker sell you contrac’, you go where you told. Miz Curtice, she a blackbirder arright, but she smooth, she better’n most. Can’t blame her. Lots indents goes AWOL ’less they got a bracelet. You go AWOL and get picked up, you in bad shape, you wish you have a bracelet. Getchoo ass pounded good, and then they don’ pick up you option, man. You starvin’. Miz Curtice, she make sure her people don’t get themself in that fix.”

  “What about the Copos? Blackbirding’s illegal.”

  “Aw, they smooth, they unnerstan’. What they s’posed to do, bust all the blackbirders? Then we all on the road AWOL again, makin’ trouble for everybody. Shit, the Copos got enough trouble without messin’ with us.”

  Anita gasped and woke in tears. Pierce cradled her gently and whispered to her in first-century Greek: “All is well, all is well, these people will not harm us.” His words sounded more comforting, somehow, in that formal and archaic tongue.

  “My arm hurts,” she whimpered in English. Then, in Greek: “My arm hurts. Where are we?”

  “Whatsat you sayin’?” Dallow growled.

  “She’s an African,” Pierce said. “She likes to talk in Swahili; she taught me how.”

  “Hunh. Extreme. She teach me? You teach me Swahili, sister?”

  “Oh—yes, brother.”

  “Arright” But Dallow was in no hurry to learn; calmed by knowing that they conversed in an acceptable language, he relaxed and ignored them. The others watched for a while, then withdrew into their own gossip or private fantasies.

  “We have been taken captive,” Pierce said. “The woman in the cab is a—melanorthis? A slave owner. She’s bound for the coast.”

  Anita looked revolted. “What can we do?”

  “For now, nothing. At least we’re headed in the right direction.”

  “You tolerate enslavement for the sake of your mission?”

  “This is not really enslavement. Where struggle is futile, acceptance is wisdom.”

  “So self-deception often calls itself.”

  He said nothing. First-century Greek, he reflected, could sting as well as comfort.

  The bus crawled slowly west through the afternoon, stopping only infrequently. During those breaks Dallow watched everyone closely, including the women squatting behind trees.

  “Ev’body wanna get in some AWOL time,” he commented to Pierce. “Shit, I gone AWOL plenny. But Miz Curtice don’t go for that, unh-unh. She like to show up on time, in place, with ev’body ’counted for. Thataway you gets a good rep with the bosses . . . Okay, people, le’s go, shake it more’n twice you playin’ with it!”

  “D’you know where we’re headed?” Pierce asked as everyone drifted back to the bus.

  “We know when we get there. Miz Curtice don’ tell us nothin’ till we need to know it.”

  Pierce and Anita were about to climb back in the bus when Mrs. Curtice called them over.

  “What’s the matter with your skin, girl? You got a disease?”

  “No—it’s just chromofilm.”

  “You call me ma’am.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I know it’s chromofilm, I got eyes. I mean underneath.” The film had already begun to fleck off Anita’s cheeks and throat. “You got jaundice or something?”

  “That’s my natural skin color—ma’am.”

  “Is that right. What are you, some kinda Jap-nigger cross?”

  She hesitated. “That’s right, ma’am.”

  “Thought so. I can usually tell.” She turned to Pierce. “You come with me, I wanna talk to you. But keep your distance.”

  The bus was parked in a muddy clearing just off the highway; judging by the litter and stink of excrement, it was a regular stop for bracero buses. Mrs. Curtice and Pierce walked slowly around the edge of the clearing, watching where they p
ut their feet. She moved stiffly, and Pierce realized with surprise that she had arthritis and was in considerable pain.

  “You didn’t buy those clothes, did you?”

  “No, ma’am. Anita found this credit card in the ladies’ changing room—in the department store? So we figured we might as well use it to get some new clothes. But the card musta been reported, ’cause they nearly nailed us.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You can cut the horseshit, bud. You aren’t no glorified shoplifter, not packing a goddam Smith and Wesson. And that Jap-nigger girlfriend of yours is so straight I’d like to kick her fat ass.” She winced as she stepped over a log.

  “Would you like to stop and rest, Mrs. Curtice?”

  “No, I would not. Don’t change the subject. You’re some kind of professional, right?”

  “Uh—I won’t deny it, ma’am.”

  “Thought so. You prob’ly work for one of them spic gangsters down in Mexicopolis. You sure as hell ain’t a Copo. So what the hell you doin’, hitchin’ rides on 605 with that funny-lookin’ kid?”

  “Ma’am, believe me when I tell you with all due respect that it’s a lot safer for you if you don’t know anything about us.”

  “Is that right. And maybe it’s a lot safer for you.” She paused breathing hard. “Copos like to get their paws on you, I bet. Might even be a reward in it.”

  Pierce said nothing.

  “But I pay off the Copos every month; no need to give ’em something extra ’less I need to. Want to get that strap off your wrist?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’ve killed people.”

  “I have.”

  “Knew it the second I clapped eyes on you. You got than clean-cut crazy look. You kill somebody for me, I let you and your girlfriend go.”

  “Who’s the candidate?”

  “A blackbirder on Luvah. Lives in New Monterey, runs a chain of pornotheques with indent girls.”

  “Well, ma’am, I’d be glad to oblige, but I can’t get through an I-Screen without papers.”

  “I know a knotholer in Little Frisco. Fat little kraut named Klein. He’ll send you through.”