Kara merely glares at me in response. She notices the gun I’ve picked up and points to it. “You know how to use that?”
I study the side of the gun. “Squeeze the trigger and blow big holes in stuff?”
Kara steps over and yanks the gun from my hand. She flips a toggle back and forth on the side. “This turns it off. This is low power. This is high. The rest of the features will be beyond you.” She flips the switch to off and shoves it back into my hands. “Don’t obliterate yourself with it.” This last statement is uttered without condescension, making me acknowledge the fact that I really could obliterate myself somehow. I double-check the off switch.
I follow the others outside onto the wrecked roof of the larger floor below us. The building is tiered and we’ve arrived near the apex. The holes on our level are repeated elsewhere in the shell of the building below. The skyline is bleak under dark patches of gray shifting clouds. Moonlight illuminates a few neighboring structures from somewhere above but doesn’t penetrate near us. Mountains define the eastern horizon, but the air has the distinctive scent of the sea. I take a few steps toward the edge and am surprised to find the bases of the buildings are not anchored in dry land, but climb directly out of turbulent water below. Looking east in new fascination I try to orient myself to the nature of this strange city. In that direction the skeletal buildings gradually run to ground, and in the distance I make out a familiar lighted shape. “Is that the Space Needle?”
I’ve addressed my query to no one in particular and when I turn toward the others it’s clear that no one has heard me. Bozzle is helping Deanna to her feet from her hiding place behind a wreck of an air conditioner. Deanna in turn reaches into the darkness behind the machine and she and Bozzle both work to lift a battered-looking Tad Masterson. Tad staggers forward a step, then nearly collapses again, Bozzle catches him just in time and props him back up. Deanna gives me a semblance of a smile as she tries to assist her friend over to where Kara has stopped.
Kara and Milo have measured out a space for the anchors and are discussing the proper spacing of the pipes. Ultimately they lay the pipes across a few stacked cinder blocks and when they seem satisfied with them, instruct me to join them. Cliff and Genesis linger near the edge of the building. I catch just a snippet of Cliff’s speech. “He would like the ocean well enough. Seems our best option . . .”
I can’t make out what Genesis says in reply, but Cliff offers her the stone anchor. She shakes her head and her shoulders shudder as she tries to contain her emotions. Cliff nods, rubs his thumb across the top of the stone once, and then hurls the anchor toward the darkness of the sea in the west. The black stone vanishes immediately in the night and I wouldn’t be able to see it hit the water from where I’m standing anyway, but I imagine it plunging into the waves and sinking its way to the floor of the bay.
I can think of worse places to be buried, but the thought stirs anger in me, too. I’m tired of watching friends get buried. I’m tired of this race and the future, and I’m tired of feeling overwhelmed by it all. I turn back to Kara and Milo and take my place at one of the anchors with the others. Kara gives us the time to set and we each adjust our respective devices. Deanna helps Genesis with her Temprovibe when Cliff and Gen join us.
Jonah has the dog’s leash secured tightly around his arm and the dog is pressed flush against the boy’s legs for better contact. Jonah’s messy hair is blowing in the breeze and he meets my eyes as Kara counts off. I try to give the kid a reassuring smile, but I doubt it’s convincing. I feel anything but sure about our prospects. Kara finishes the countdown and I activate my chronometer, trading the dim rooftop for an even darker tunnel. I drop a couple of feet onto cement steps as the piece of pipe has now become a railing.
“Where are we?” Deanna asks. She and Bozzle help Tad stay upright as he descends the steps.
“We’re in the Seattle Underground,” Kara replies.
The floor below me is an old sidewalk, and despite scraps of plywood and bits of debris, the tunnel walls look as if they were once well kept. “Is this some type of subway access?”
Kara secures her riot helmet. “No.” She stomps forward with her gun at the ready. Milo lets Cliff and Genesis follow her next before falling into step beside me.
“This was part of the old city,” Milo explains. “It was actually here in your time. It’s been here since the beginning of the twentieth century. The original city of Seattle was built on a tidal plain, and after a fire around 1890 they decided to raise the level of the streets. The old ground floors of the buildings were still down here even though the main street is now up above us.” He points to some ancient looking glass blocks that penetrate the concrete over our heads. Dim light is filtering from a streetlight somewhere above, refracting on the walls like sunlight through a beer bottle. “The city grew out over the water in the next few centuries and this old part of town stopped being used much, but that works well for us.”
“Have you been here before?” I study Milo in the half-light. “You said you were from the 2140’s didn’t you?”
Milo flicks on his flashlight to light the sidewalk ahead of us. The beam illuminates the concrete beyond Bozzle and Deanna’s feet as they help Tad along. Kara is somewhere ahead on the fringe of darkness while the others trail closely behind us.
Milo’s voice is cautious. “Ben, there are some things I didn’t tell you before about why I’m in this race. In fact, I told you a couple of lies.”
“You aren’t the first.” I keep my voice light but my grip on my gun tightens a little. “So you’re not from the twenty-second century?”
“I am actually. I didn’t lie about that, though I haven’t lived there in quite some time.” He keeps his eyes fixed ahead as he continues. “I lied about Kara. I didn’t get assigned her from the guide pool. We arranged to be in this race together. In fact we’ve been working hard to be in this race for a long time.”
“Why? Did you think it was going to be something else?” I recall Deanna’s shattered expectations of celebrity and wealth.
“No. We knew that this wasn’t a normal chronothon. I think we were the only ones who knew the truth. But we needed to come anyway.”
“What truth?” My curiosity increases at the thought of getting real answers. “What’s really going on here?”
“I’m going to explain it, but everyone deserves to hear it together. We’re almost there.” Milo shines his light farther down the passage to where Kara has stopped in front of a brick archway. She pounds on the thick metal door beneath it and waits until something heavy is thrown clear on the other side. I hear the clunk as we near the door. In the corner of the archway, a small red light next to a camera lens flashes to green.
Kara turns the handle and the door swings open smoothly. Someone speaks to her from the other side, then shuts the door again. Kara strides back to us and heads for Milo.
“We need to check in first, then we can bring the others.”
Milo nods and addresses the rest of us. “Take a rest here. It will be safe in these tunnels. Kara and I need to get you clearance for the rest of the way but it won’t take long.”
“Where are you taking us?” Bozzle’s voice is firm, and indicates none of the shakiness I feel.
“We have contacts here,” Milo explains. “Friends who will be able to keep us safe from the Zealots.”
My stomach growls audibly and I get the sudden hope that whomever we’re meeting will have some food. Genesis slumps to the floor against the corner of a stone wall. Cliff sets his gear next to her and walks over to stand near me.
“You have a way out of this place?” Cliff growls. “That’s what we need right now.”
Milo reaches a hand out and places it on Cliff’s shoulder, suddenly the leader. “Just stay put. We’ll get you out of this. I promise.”
It seems there is nothing else to be said. Kara raps on the door again, and this time she and Milo are admitted. Deanna helps Tad to a sitting position near the arc
hway, then checks on Genesis. I get the sense that she has found a purpose in helping the others—her own grief no longer shows as prominently in her eyes. Cliff watches Deanna wet a bandana and run it across Gen’s forehead, then seeming satisfied enough with the current situation, eases himself to the floor. I let my own satchel slip from my shoulder and find a place next to him.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, watching Bozzle slowly patrolling the passage. Jonah and Barley follow the alien, the dog sniffing the ancient timbers and crumbling mortar of the buried walkway.
Slumped against the wall next to Cliff, I’m drained of energy. Cliff looks exhausted, too, but his hands are still fiddling with the stock of his shotgun. From down the passage I hear wet, muffled sobbing from Genesis. Cliff hears it, too, but says nothing.
“So what are you going to do now?” I ask, not sure if I should broach the subject.
Cliff grunts and flips the safety back and forth on the gun, but then noticing me still waiting for an answer, he lays the gun down. “I’ll help Gen get back on her feet. She has to get home.”
I fidget with the top of my canteen. “So, I know she’s really upset obviously, but I was thinking . . . she’s a time traveler, right? So once this is over and we’ve got these bands off, couldn’t she just go back to a time before Jet was killed, and save him?”
Cliff stares at some imaginary horizon. “She’ll probably go back and see him, at least from a distance. Most people do in the beginning, when the pain is still fresh. It won’t be so awful since she’s a sister. But they’re close, and that makes it harder.”
“How so?”
“You have to remember, any time she returns to in one of her own timestreams, Jet will still be alive, but she’ll be there, too.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Makes things complicated.”
“So there will be two of her and only one of him,” I say. “What would happen then?”
“How would you feel if one day you’re spending time with the person closest to you, and another you shows up, saying they’ve lost everyone and everything and they want to spend some time with your loved one?”
“I guess I would try to be understanding.”
“Yeah, you would. And if it’s just that this other you lost his mother, and now he wants to come take your dear old mum out for lunch and hear the sound of her sweet voice one more time, maybe that’s okay, and she’s none the wiser. Maybe you even feel good about yourself for helping him out, considering he’s you and all.
“But then, maybe sad, distraught other you decides that he wants to make himself feel better by sleeping with your girlfriend. You still gonna feel understanding?”
“No. I guess not.”
“No. Things start to get complicated real fast. You start layering your life with multiple versions of yourself, it can get a little crowded. Maybe you think you’ve got it all worked out, and everything with your other self is copacetic. Then you wake up one morning to a knife through your gut, and your mirror image looking down at you, saying, ‘Sorry bud, I just don’t want to share anymore.’ Happens more often than you’d think. It’s hard for authorities to solve a murder when the supposed victim is standing there smiling at them.” Cliff picks his shotgun back up and rests it across his knee. “No. Most time travelers learn to leave themselves alone. Best to clear off before things get stabby.”
“I guess that makes sense.” I sip the last drops from my canteen.
“Genesis will do what everyone else does. Grieve her brother, then find a way to move on. Knowing her, I wouldn’t be surprised if that means some revenge. I’ve got a bit of my own grief to work through, and it may take finding whoever’s responsible for this cock-up of a chronothon, getting my hands around their throat, and giving it a good squeeze.”
We lapse back to silence as we wait for Kara and Milo’s return. It’s perhaps ten minutes before we hear the clunk of the door being unlatched. When it swings open, Milo gestures for us to join him. He’s holding a device in his hand that he scans across each racer’s bracelet as they pass. For a moment he reminds me of a bouncer, although a bookish sort. He explains the device to Cliff ahead of me. “We’re putting a data freeze on your race bracelets. We don’t want the committee to be able to track where we’re going.”
I pull the Admiral’s bracelet from my pocket and he scans the electronic wand over that as well. I follow the others through the archway and into an open, brick-lined basement. At least it was a basement once. Now the lower floors have been ripped out, creating a new ceiling a couple of stories up. The old façade rises above the street level, but the windows are bricked over. The room is lit from industrial light fixtures that hang from vestigial copper plumbing pipes. A few support columns have been left alone, stretching to the building overhead and giving the place a feeling of stability despite the gutted interior.
Kara leads the way up a set of steel steps to a raised platform surrounded by a railing. Two burly guards watch our assent with weapons at the ready. The two men are dressed in durable clothing of canvas and leather and are laden with knickknacks like binoculars and knives. The gear looks surprisingly low tech for the twenty-fifth century, but the stern looks on the men’s faces leave no room for doubt about their ability to use it. I try not to stare at the guard on the right as we pass, despite the detailed tattoo of eagle talons that stretches across one side of his face. It’s an elaborate image and skillfully drawn, but my admiration of the artistry doesn’t override my instinct to stay well clear of him.
Kara crosses the concrete platform and stops at a pair of rusty elevator doors. The elevator bank is old even by my standards but must be positively ancient for the others. An analog brass needle is attached to a spindle over each door, designed to point to the appropriate floor. The needle on the right is dangling loosely toward the floor, but the indicator on the left currently reads seven. The tarnished brass backsplash could very well be original to the building. If so, it is about all that remains. The space above the elevator is vacant. Perhaps twelve feet above the basement floor, the shaft of the elevator has been dismantled. Bricks and mortar have been smashed and the shaft is missing completely, leaving a spacious void of perhaps forty feet and then a gaping square hole in the ceiling that may once have been the third or fourth floor.
Admiring the old brass indicator hands, it occurs to me that the elevator is as out of its own time as I am and I get a brief sentimental attachment to it just before Kara presses the up button. That irregular action jars me back to the present.
I glance at Milo, but he doesn’t seem to have a problem with his guide waiting for a non-existent elevator. I fidget with my gun, wondering for the first time whether the secret Milo needs to share with me could involve any type of mental illness. I take a step back and ease my way toward Bozzle. At the moment, with Cliff involved with consoling Genesis and Deanna back attending to Tad, the alien seems the likeliest of allies if Milo and Kara turn out to be crazy people. I’ve just found the safety of my gun with my fingertips when I notice the needle above the elevator doors moving. I stare incredulously as the indicator counts its way down the missing floors and stops at the capital B.
The doors still ding when they open.
My curiosity replaces my nervousness, and I take a step closer to peer inside the doors. The interior of the elevator is well lit. Bozzle has his head tilted slightly to the side, considering the device, and I’m happy to know I’m not the only one ill at ease with the situation. No one makes a comment about the elevator’s miraculous appearance. The others merely file inside. I follow cautiously, surmising that perhaps the elevator descends to subterranean levels and I’m mistaking the numbers on the indicator for stories above us. It’s a tight fit to get all of us into the wood and polished brass interior. Unlike the outside of the elevator, the interior has been carefully maintained and gives a feeling of nostalgic opulence. A neatly lettered nameplate to the left side of the door reads “Tempus Mobilus- Fine Elevators since 1882
.” Kara extracts a brass key on a chain from around her neck and inserts it into a keyhole under the inscription. She turns it clockwise three full revolutions and the doors close, and to my complete consternation, the elevator begins moving upward.
The interior of the elevator has a matching brass floor indicator, and this shinier needle begins to tick off floors with regular consistency. Our ascent seems in no way impeded by the complete lack of an elevator shaft above us. When we reach the seventh floor, the doors ding open again, and seemingly just to solidify my complete and utter shock, the windows of the room beyond are streaming with sunlight.
The dog’s tail begins to wag as it wriggles past me onto the polished floor of the seventh story. I follow Bozzle out of the elevator and into the spacious, elegantly furnished penthouse. Kara steams past me and we follow her down a marbled hallway and through a doorway into a sunlit library. Along the window side of the room, a broad-shouldered man rises from behind a mahogany desk and appraises us with a tight-lipped sternness reinforced by his thick, bristly beard. His intense gaze sweeps over the seven of us, pauses briefly on the dog, then returns to rest on Kara. Beyond the man, in the radiant blue sky, sunshine glints off the side of an airship moored to the top of the Space Needle. Two more silver-sided airships hover offshore, lingering with their noses pointed toward the city.
The man behind the desk straightens his military-style jacket. “All right, Lieutenant LaCuesta, you’ve got them here. We may as well get them some chairs.” He snaps his fingers at a man along the far wall who is standing at attention near a second doorway. He then points to Tad. “Corporal, see that this man gets medical attention immediately, and get our other guests something to sit on before they fall over.” He settles back into his own chair. “They’re going to need a seat once they hear what we’ve got to say.”
28
“Most people think of time as linear. It would be more accurate to describe it as a web or a snowflake. Its nature is fractal and complex. Getting around in a universe that complicated is bound to cause confusion. Don’t forget where you parked your car.”–Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2180
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 97
