“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said.
“Do all of you feel that way?” said Murdoch. “Can we talk to the others?”
“I lead this group,” said Serat. “Alone I talk.”
That was clear, at any rate.
“Others should not know,” he added, as if trying to make it clear.
We’d seen conflict between An Serat and other Invidi back on the station. An Serat was regarded as something of a maverick in the future. Perhaps he had always been a problem for them. I wished I knew more of the background to the conflict between Serat and An Barik, who seemed to represent the rest of the Invidi.
“Know what?” said Murdoch. “You are going to tell the others about us, aren’t you?”
“You go now.”
“What?” My voice rose. “You can’t just send us away like that. We don’t belong here.”
“You’re kidding,” said Murdoch. His eyes on Serat were cold. “You send me back a century and then leave me here? No way.”
The door burst open. An officer in a blue U.N. hat stood in the entry, flanked by two soldiers holding guns. For a moment, I thought An Serat had sent them a signal and they were responding.
The armed men immediately checked all angles of the room. Satisfied we were the only occupants, they stood still, the weapons covering us.
Another soldier walked in behind them, carrying a box with sensor equipment on top.
“Excuse us,” said the officer with no hint of apology. He bowed fractionally to An Serat. “Someone is sending an unauthorized electronic signal from within this building.”
I chafed at the interruption. “There’s nobody here but us.”
“Won’t take a minute, ma’am.”
The soldier with the sensor advanced farther, until he stood in front of me. A quiet, tanned face. He nodded at the officer, who said, “I’m going to have to ask you to step outside, ma’am.”
“Why?” I looked at him, at the projectile weapons on either side of us, cold tubes of menace.
“Our equipment indicates you are the source of the signal. You understand we have to be cautious. If there is some mistake, we apologize, but for the moment you’ll have to come with us.”
I met Murdoch’s eye and he shook his head slightly.
We left An Serat standing there. One of the soldiers stepped in ahead of me and one followed behind Murdoch. What “signal” could it be? The transponder was gone, the Seouras implant was safe—had Levin’s ID set off another, unknown security system?
The sky had clouded over while we were talking to An Serat, and it was cooler. The other Invidi stood outside with a third soldier. I could see small figures grouped around vehicles at the checkpoint onto the far runway. The children’s tour was about to begin.
“What kind of signal is it?” I asked the sensor operator. He glanced at the officer and didn’t reply.
“Empty your pockets,” was the next order.
We did the same thing we’d done at the gate. Wrist timer, ID, comb, bus passes. The officer passed each item to be checked by a different set of sensors.
“This one, sir.” The soldier held up my ID. “Don’t know how it got past the main detectors. Might be a time-delay trigger.”
“What’s the signal for?” The officer asked me politely enough, but his eyes were hard, his young face tight.
“I don’t know anything about a signal. As far as I know, that’s an ordinary ID.”
“She’s telling the truth,” said Murdoch. “We only came here to meet the aliens.”
“What kind of signal is it?” I asked again.
The officer finally nodded approval for the soldier to answer. “Some kind of activation sequence.”
The officer spoke into his head mike. “Go to alert. We have a possible situation Tiger.” His fingers dug into my arm. “Activation sequence for what? A bomb? An attack?”
“I tell you, I don’t know. Bill?”
He shook his head. “No idea.”
Levin must have done something to the IDs so we’d be caught. The lousy bastard.
“Did you lend your ID to anyone recently? Did it leave your sight?” He rushed through the words, obviously not believing our innocence. He spoke into his collar again. “Did anyone else come with them?”
“We...” I began to tell him about Levin, when something clicked in my skull. Something about gifts and packing your own luggage.
I stared at Murdoch. “Activation. Presents. Bill, Levin gave Will a cap.”
“Yes, but...” The initial skepticism faded swiftly from Murdoch’s face.
“They have to get rid of it.”
Murdoch turned to the officer and he was no longer a casual visitor—like spoke to like. “Listen to me. We didn’t plan this, but we think there may be a bomb or similar device with the child who came with us. Tell them to isolate his cap and take cover.”
“His cap?”
“It’s got a metal badge. We think the device is in there.”
The officer glanced at the sensor operator, who nodded.
“It’s possible.”
“Block the signal. Jam it,” I said.
The officer spoke to his HQ and we waited for an endless moment before the signal operator frowned.
“Still going. It’s a...” I grabbed the ID from the officer’s grasp and flung it on the ground. “Shoot the damn thing.”
He stared at me, then drew out his pistol, aimed, and fired. The card shattered at the second shot. The operator shook his head. “It’s stopped, but there’s some reaction at the other end.”
I couldn’t see the figures beyond the checkpoint, a good hundred meters away along the runway.
“Full alert,” said the officer into his collar. Sirens wailed across the water. “Situation Tiger confirmed. All mobile liaison units return to base. Unit Random Two, report.”
Murdoch turned to the Invidi. “I advise your people to take precautions.” The alien spoke, with a different timbre to An Serat. “Your advice understood.” “You can see what’s going to happen.” I rounded on the Invidi. “Whatever it is, stop it.”
The silver suit twitched all over.
“They can’t contact Random Two—that’s the jeep your child is in,” said the operator. “We’re sending a ground unit...”
His words faded, because in the next moment I was running through the gate and up the runway, without conscious thought. Behind me, Murdoch’s shout whipped away in the wind.
“She’s not armed!”
Hard asphalt, burning lungs. Gray sky wheeling overhead. I was never a sprinter, but I swear it took less than ten seconds to the next gate.
“Can’t go through here.” A firm voice, arm barring my way. I kicked out without thinking, somebody cursed. Squeezed through a narrow opening, the tarmac spread before me. Four jeeps reached a low building. A fifth, still in the middle of the runway, turned and started to follow the others. Another, carrying crash-suited soldiers, drove toward the lone jeep from a different building.
I ran on, waving frantically. Can’t they hear the siren? Throw it away, Will. Throw it...
The bomb exploded.
One moment the jeep was there. The next, a small flash of unbearable light. The approaching jeep leaped into the air and something smacked me hard.
A single high note, far away. It distracted me from trying to get somewhere, do something.
Bumping sensation—someone’s hands on my shoulders, shaking. Pain burned across my cheek as it scraped on the ground. Eyes, open your eyes.
I was sitting on the tarmac. Murdoch’s face came into focus in front of me. His mouth moved but I couldn’t hear any words. My fingers tingled and the shadows at the corners of my vision were edged with strange colors. The same high note over it all.
I pointed at my ears and shook my head. “Can’t hear.”
Murdoch mouthed, “You okay?”
I nodded. He sat down wearily beside me and put his head in his hands.
/> A round, glassy scar smoked where the tarmac had been seconds before. A sunken area in the center, leaking seawater, was echoed by another sunken ring around the edge of the blast zone. It seemed impossibly small for such a powerful explosion, until I realized that the Invidi must have detected and contained the blast, or perhaps deflected it upward. I’d been close to the edge of the containment and must have felt the beginning of the shock wave. The airport and everyone on it had been saved.
Except for the two closest jeeps.
Murdoch’s shoulder jolted against mine. He wept with his face buried between his raised knees. I wanted to hold him but my arms wouldn’t move. We sat there in numb silence until the soldiers came.
Seventeen
They put us in a small, bare room one floor above the ground, in one of the buildings overlooking the tarmac. We tried to explain, but nobody had the time to listen.
Murdoch sat on the floor against the wall and closed his eyes.
I looked out the window and tried to gather my thoughts, which dashed around in meaningless circles. Like the people and vehicles below, busy around the edges of the blast site, but not yet venturing onto it because it was still too hot.
Grace must know by now.
At that thought, everything else caved in. We’d brought Will here and now he was dead. Nothing else mattered.
I felt myself begin to shake. Murdoch looked up as I stumbled around. He said something I couldn’t hear properly. I needed to be sick but there was no privy in the room, not even a basin.
I held both hands over my mouth and leaned against the cool glass of the window, which wouldn’t open.
The sky had darkened further and soldiers were setting up lights around the blast site. On the far side of the burn mark, the other terminal building sat undamaged. Beyond the building moved the gray sea, and beyond that, lights and thronging vehicles and people on the shore. Copters flew over them, a swarm of black gnats clustering on the edge of the no-fly zone. The undamaged tarmac stretched back to where the Invidi ships waited.
I tried to concentrate on the shape of the ships, the size, which ranged from baby runabouts through shuttle-sized yachts to one larger vehicle I’d never seen before. Perhaps they’d stopped using them in the intervening hundred years, or maybe we were too far out at Jocasta for that kind of ship to…
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
I turned around. Murdoch was staring at the ceiling.
“They think we did it.” I must have shouted, because he winced.
“What do you expect?” His voice sounded muffled, but audible.
“How could they think we’d involve the children?” My throat closed and I had to turn back to the window.
“It didn’t worry Levin.” Even half heard, Murdoch’s voice was harsh. He rose stiffly and came over to the window, leaned his arms against the sill. His eyes, bleak and stunned, roved over the scene below.
“I thought I’d seen a bit of the galaxy but...” He coughed and rested his forehead on the glass. “We’re not a nice species, are we? I never realized how...”
“Do you think he planned it all along?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. They might have had the stuff but couldn’t work out a way to get it in.” “How...” My voice gave out. “I dunno, okay? Some nanobug to eat through a covering. Doesn’t matter now.”
I looked out at the Invidi ships. “It’s time to go home, Bill.”
He followed my gaze. “Don’t be stupid.”
“It’s the only chance we’ll get. By now, Levin will be gone. We’re the only suspects they have. An Serat won’t help us. We can spend the rest of our lives rotting in a twenty-first-century jail or we can grab one of those yachts and run.”
Murdoch look at me in consternation. “Jeezus, you’re serious. For a start, you can’t use an Invidi ship.”
“How do you know? No human’s ever been allowed to try.”
“What about Grace? You’re going to leave her, just like that, without trying to explain, without trying to help them catch Levin?” He dropped his voice again, with a glance at the door. I had to strain to hear over the ringing.
“What can I do for Grace now? It’s my fault Will is dead. Do you think she’ll want to hear what I have to say?”
“It’s not... I hate the idea of running away. It’s like we’re abandoning her.” Misery lowered his voice.
“It’s either that or abandon our own time. Abandon everyone on the station. Because they’ll keep us locked up for life over this.”
“Not if we give them enough evidence to get Levin,” he said.
“Do you really think we can do that? Do you think Levin will hang around waiting?”
He leaned his forehead against the window and ran his hand over his head. The glass fogged with his breath. “If we don’t tell them about Levin, he’ll get off scot-free.”
“You don’t know that. There might be a way to trace him from the blast residue. Or something.” It sounded lame, even to me. I swallowed the sickness in my throat enough to get words past. “We have to go or stay. And I can’t spend the rest of my life in jail here.”
He stepped back from the window and looked at me. A gaze that seemed to go right through me. Then nodded once, decisively. “Let’s do it, then. Nowhere to go but forward. What’s your plan?”
“I, er.” My mind remained blank. “If I distract the guard by going to the toilet, you can get out and... sneak up behind him.”
The muscles of his face relaxed a little. “You need a refresher course in anti-terrorist contingencies.”
“Have you got a better idea?”
He thought for a moment. “Can’t you short the power to the lock from in here?”
I examined the walls and ceiling. The single light source was set into the ceiling behind a glass cover, and too high for me to reach by myself. The switch must be outside the room. No surveillance camera, unless it was hidden in the light. We had no tools to either unscrew the cover or rip up wall panels to find wiring. I could stand on Murdoch’s shoulders and try to smash it or pick at it with my fingertips...
“No time, even if I had the tools. They’re going to come back for us pretty soon.”
He nodded. “Only reason we’re still here is probably because they want to keep us away from the media. You go to the toilet, and when you come back, I’ll jump him.”
“How is that different from my plan?”
“Okay, okay. I’m not in a creative mood.” He retreated to the window and sat down on the floor. “I’m here, in an unthreatening position.”
“That doesn’t mean you’ll stay there.”
“It’s a combat psychology thing. Trust me.”
“Hey!” I raised my voice. “Hey, open up! Hello?” I banged on the door a couple of times then retreated a few steps.
The door opened and the young soldier stood at the ready. He didn’t look much older than Vince, with the same lonely, underfed look.
“I need to use the toilet.”
He looked at me doubtfully, eyes flickering to Murdoch and back again.
“To pee,” I added. “You know.”
“They’ll be coming to get you soon,” he said. “Wait until then.”
“I’m busting. I can do it on the floor, but you’ll have to explain.”
He sighed. “Okay. You can’t go at the same time,” he said to Murdoch.
“I’ll wait.”
The soldier motioned me out the door with the muzzle of his gun, taking care to leave an open line of fire to Murdoch as well. The boy knew his job—it might be harder to get out of here than I’d thought. But infinitely easier from here than from wherever they intended to take us next.
The toilet was down a flight of concrete stairs and halfway down a ground floor corridor that seemed to run the length of the building. Green exit signs glowed at each end of the corridor. The soldier let me half shut the cubicle door.
“What’s your name?” I asked from inside.
; “Can’t tell you that.”
“No personal communication with prisoners, eh?”
He said no more and we ascended the stairs in silence. The stair lights activated automatically as we passed. I couldn’t see any obvious surveillance cameras, but they might be built into the walls. Unreasonable to think there wouldn’t be any in an airport building.
The rush of adrenaline as we approached the door made my heart jump painfully. My breathing faltered suddenly like blocked pipes and I forgot everything else.
“Shit.” I dived for the door. My spare inhaler, the only thing they’d left us, was still in Murdoch’s pocket.
“Hey!” The guard was as surprised as I was.
“Asthma,” I wheezed, fingers scrabbling at the handle. “Medicine’s inside.”
It was a bad attack. As I slumped against the door frame and sucked for air that wouldn’t come I was conscious of the soldier unlocking it as fast as he could. Then it opened and I stumbled into the room. Something knocked violently against me and I fell.
Through a fuzzy roaring I could hear curses and sounds of a scuffle, but couldn’t do anything but fight for tiny gasps of air.
The inhaler attached itself to my nose and mouth, thrust down in Murdoch’s hand. One, two. Slowly, small breaths. One, two.
One, two figures on the floor. One still, one moving. I uncurled and sat up. The moving one was Murdoch. He groaned and rolled over, then began to search the soldier’s pockets. His nose dripped blood on the green and brown fatigues of the young man.
“Sorry. I wasn’t much help,” I said.
“You weren’t any help.” He sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. He began to unlace the soldier’s boots. “Hope I haven’t broken his jaw.”
I peered at the soldier’s face. His eyes were closed peacefully but his lips were bloody and a red, swelling weal across his lower face matched the shape of the gun butt. Sorry, sorry. I wish this didn’t have to happen.
Murdoch tied the boy’s hands with the laces, removed the boots, utility belt, and slid a two-way radio out of his chest pocket. He wiped most of the blood off his own face and pulled me to my feet.
“Come on. Better go before they realize he’s out of it.” He left the boots and belt inside the door. The U.N. cap went on his head and the gun loosely under his arm. It might fool the cameras for a second or two.
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