True Path

by Graham Storrs

  The second thing he noticed was that Jones wore a dog collar. His briefing materials had given the Director’s full title as “Reverend Doctor Matthew Jones, Director, FBI.” Now Jay wondered quite how he should address the man.

  “I’m very pleased to be here, Reverend Doctor,” he said, hazarding something that at least showed he wasn’t ignorant of the Director’s status in the Church.

  For his part, Jones feigned surprise and touched his collar with a polite laugh. “Ah yes, this. It must seem strange to your European eyes, but we are warrior priests in the Bureau. The Church and the State are one, you see, and we are its guardians.” He waved Jay towards a group of uncomfortable looking leather armchairs and sat in one himself. “I won’t take up too much of your time, Chief Inspector. I merely wanted to tell you that the case of this missing female is of great importance to us.”

  “Sandra Malone, sir.”

  “Yes, yes. The man who has taken her is a most dangerous terrorist. An insane, deranged man. He is responsible for many atrocities and he does not scruple at killing and maiming innocents. The fact that he has kidnapped a specialist in the diabolical arts of time travel is of great concern to us.”

  The diabolical arts of time travel? Jay tried not to look amazed. “If done correctly, a timesplash can be a terrible weapon,” Jay said. “Do you believe your enemies are attempting to acquire the capability to create a major splash?”

  “My enemies, Chief Inspector?”

  “This man, Polanski, and his followers.”

  Jones’s eyes narrowed. “Polanski is a rogue terrorist, Chief Inspector. He has no agenda other than anarchy and destruction. Within our borders, the United States of America has only one enemy—the Old Enemy, Satan himself. We have established the Kingdom of God here on Earth, Chief Inspector. You can imagine how wild with rage that makes the Devil and what he would do to drive this nation back into sin and error.”

  Jay nodded, not trusting himself to say anything. The Director’s eyes seemed to pierce through Jay’s silent acquiescence and lay bare the moral turpitude within.

  With a look almost of disgust, Jones said, “Trade relations with Europe have become important to us. We are pleased to find that we have something Europe wants after having been treated as the poor relation for so many years. Help us bring Polanski to justice and you will have served the cause of international accord as well as having brought God’s judgment on an evil man.”

  He stood up and walked to his desk. Jay stood up too. “That will be all,” the Director said, picking up a file and flicking it open. “God be with you.”

  “Er, thank you, sir.” Dismissed, Jay hurried to the door.

  Outside, Agent Simmons was waiting. “Everything go well?” he asked in his usual cheery tone.

  Jay studied him. “Have you ever met the Director?”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s quite a privilege.”

  “It was certainly something. What’s next?”

  “Deputy Director English is waiting for you.”

  “When do we start work?”

  Simmons looked confused.

  “I’m eager to bring God’s judgment on an evil man,” Jay said.

  “Ah, of course. Deputy Director English is in charge of the investigation. I’m sure he will assign someone to bring you up to speed.”

  -oOo-

  Cara Malone regarded her reflection in the mirror. So did Eve, the lady from the clothes shop.

  “Now doesn’t that look pretty!” Eve exclaimed, as she had exclaimed over every hideous outfit Cara had tried on. “That is definitely your color, and we have a full range of matching accessories.”

  Cara thought the floor length gray skirt, high-collared white blouse and gray cardigan looked awful. The only good thing about the whole ensemble was that the skirt was so ridiculously long and full that it completely hid the vomit-making round-toed shoes and white ankle socks they’d found for her.

  “I know it’s a little bit risqué,” Eve said, standing back. “It’s from our young ladies range, not our children’s range, but you’re just so tall, my dear.”

  Cara glanced over at her chaperone, Mrs. Mueller, a beefy woman in her mid-thirties with arms as thick as drainpipes and brown eyes that scowled at her resentfully. Simmons had dug her up from somewhere—Cara suspected her usual job was laying out bodies at the morgue—and dumped her at the hotel that morning. With her long black dress and black headscarf tightly tied under her chin she looked like an Italian peasant woman from the 1950s. If she had any expression other than that resentful scowl, Cara had yet to see it. Right now, Mueller was slumped in one of the shop’s uncomfortable chairs and reading a little black book—a paper book no less, like ones Cara had seen in museums—that she kept tucked away in her dress most of the time. It was a Bible, of course. Everybody in America seemed obsessed with religion.

  Beyond Mueller, standing by the door, was a young man in a dark suit. He was Cara’s own, personal, FBI bodyguard. Simmons had seemed very pleased with himself when he told her that Special Agent Lowry would accompany her everywhere to make sure she didn’t get into any trouble.

  “Don’t you like it, honey?” Eve asked. “It really is what all the best young ladies are wearing. I really don’t know what else I can show you.”

  With a sigh, Cara yielded. “Oh, what the hell. It’s only for a few days.”

  Eve gasped and Mueller was on her feet. “Young lady! You will behave with decorum or I will take you straight back to your hotel room where you will stay for the remainder of your visit.”

  Mueller hadn’t strung together so many words since they met. It took Cara a moment to realize what all the fuss was about. When she realized what it was, Cara then had to bite down hard on her first reaction, which was to say, “Oh, bugger!” Instead she apologized through gritted teeth.

  The truth was, she was a bit scared of Mrs. Mueller and her FBI enforcer. Between them, they had complete power over her and neither seemed to like her one little bit.

  She turned to Eve and smiled. “The outfit’s fine,” she said. “I’ll take it—and all the accessories you think it needs.” Her father was paying, after all, and, as long as he didn’t mind her throwing everything in the nearest bin when they got back to the UK, it was no skin off her nose. At least none of her friends would see her looking like a complete twonk and no-one here seemed to care what they looked like.

  She checked her commplant for messages without thinking and almost screamed when it gave her the same “no service” message it had given her the last five hundred times she had tried to use it. As Eve went to select belts and headscarves, and to find a bag to put her old clothes in, Cara said to Mueller, “I’d like to talk to my father, please. How do I do that?”

  “Have you got a compad?”

  “You mean a commplant?”

  “No, I mean a compad.” She pulled a small black tablet out of a hidden pocket.

  “Is that how you talk to each other? Where can I get one?”

  “Does your father have one?”

  “Why would he have one of those? He’s got a commplant, like everybody.”

  Mueller sighed and shook her head, heaving herself to her feet as though she were exhausted from having to sit there. “Are we finished here? Can we go now?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “There’s no point trying to call your father if he doesn’t have a compad.”

  “Well how am I going to talk to him then?”

  “I’m sure you’ll see him at the hotel tonight.”

  “Tonight? That’s no good. I need to talk to him now. You don’t understand. My mother has been kidnapped by some evil creep named Polanski and my father’s here to find her. I’m here to help him. And I’m stuck here wasting my time buying Halloween costumes with matching accessories.”

  “Polanski?” the woman said, as if none of the rest mattered. She glanced across at the FBI man by the door, which made Cara look too. The agent was watching them. Hastily, Muel
ler looked away. “Come on,” she said, flustered. “We are going to see the sights.”

  “What?”

  “That is our schedule. Those are my instructions. Once you are properly dressed, I can show you the monuments and the museums. Unless you would rather return to your hotel.”

  Cara couldn’t understand what was happening. Mueller seemed to have dismissed her request to speak to Jay and now she wanted to drag Cara off on a sightseeing tour. But she wasn’t acting like her old, phlegmatic self. Now she was agitated and bustling. She called to the shop assistant to hurry up and then took Cara by the arm and almost shoved her out of the shop.

  “You know this Polanski, don’t you?” Cara asked as they crossed the street to the black government car.

  “I certainly do not,” Mueller said, loudly. “But I’ve heard of him, of course. Who hasn’t? Such an evil, terrible man.” She looked around nervously. “Now hush. All this talk is making me sick. I’ve never known such a talkative, rude child.”

  Cara, who, in her own opinion, had been extremely forbearing, scowled at the woman in silent resentment. Something funny was going on here and none of it made sense. She looked across at the FBI man to find him still watching her. Some instinct for self-preservation kept her from asking what the hell he thought he was staring at. Deep in thought, she subsided into the car’s plush upholstery.

  Chapter 13: Alley Shanty

  In 2039, Government forces bulldozed the Washington suburb of Alexandria. The Lord’s True Path Party had a firm grip on the nation by then and the existence of rebel-infested enclaves like Alexandria was an embarrassment. They’d shelled it and raided it for two years prior, but after each assault, the rebels would just crawl out of their hiding places like rats from the sewers and begin their campaign of rocket attacks and sabotage all over again. After a rebel rocket took out the West Wing of the White House, killing twenty-seven people, then-President Carpenter ordered the whole area leveled. Troops and tanks cleared out the residents, and the wrecking crews and the bulldozers followed behind. By the end of that week, Alexandria was a nine thousand acre car park, devoid of all life.

  Two years later, every square inch of that wasteland was covered with makeshift housing and the population was three times what the old suburb of Alexandria had been. The Alley Shanty seemed to spring up overnight. Tens of thousands of displaced and homeless people from devastated cities like New York and Chicago found their way there. If they didn’t have food, or jobs, or running water, at least they had a corrugated tin roof over their heads and a packing case wall to keep out the winter snow.

  Things were better now that the City had installed stand-pipes in the streets so people could get clean water, but, to Sandra—as Polanski led her down the noisy, cramped, rubbish-filled streets—the Alley Shanty looked like something Bosch might have painted. If a party of winged devils had appeared to devour some of the squabbling, screeching children, or their listless, sullen parents, the picture would be complete. As it was, the stench of untreated sewage, mixed with the aroma of greasy, fried foods, added a dimension of disgust no mere painter could ever adequately represent.

  “Where the hell are we going?” she asked.

  “Not far,” Polanski said.

  They passed a block of two- and three-story buildings that had collapsed, spilling mattresses and clothing, chairs and crockery into the muddy streets. It seemed to be a recent catastrophe, but already men and women and half-naked children were swarming among the ruins, salvaging boards and wooden beams, and dragging them off to begin life anew as parts of other homes.

  Two blocks up, they stopped outside a door in a plain plywood wall. Two men sat outside the door on rickety wooden chairs nursing machine guns in their laps. Polanski greeted the men by name and they grinned and hugged him and welcomed him back. They eyed Sandra with curiosity but asked no questions and were given no explanations.

  It was the same inside. More armed men, more happy reunions. They passed from one room to another as they burrowed into the shanty, sometimes crossing an alley that let in a little light from above, sometimes encountering women and children, or a family eating a meal, or a couple having a screaming match—more happy to see Polanski than they were concerned to have been caught in the act. Finally, Sandra and Polanski reached another door with another brace of guards. A handful of people came running up, calling greetings as they arrived. No-one seemed to dispute Polanski’s absolute right to walk through their homes as he pleased.

  “This is terrorist HQ, isn’t it?” Sandra said. “And this bunch of half-starved desperadoes is your rebel army. Am I right?” She saw one of the guards clench his fist and step forwards but Polanski stopped him with a gesture.

  “Feisty little thing, ain’t she?” Polanski said, grinning at her would-be assailant. “Peter and I only managed to get her back here by watching each other’s backs all the way. I thought for sure one of us was gonna wake up with a knife in his ribs.”

  Everyone relaxed.

  “You’ll get used to her ways and her foul mouth after a while. But don’t let that pretty face fool you. This little lady is one vicious little hellcat. Let your guard down for a minute and she’ll be out of here. Meanwhile, you’ll be left trying to explain to me how your arm got broken.”

  People laughed but Sandra saw them studying her with a new uncertainty. They also seemed to hear Polanski’s unspoken message: anyone who failed in their duty to keep her a prisoner would have to answer to him personally.

  It irritated Sandra to think that Polanski was closing down her options for escape. She said, “And behind that door is the hardware you want me to assemble, right? The displacement rig.”

  Polanski’s expression hardened. His followers stopped smiling.

  She looked from face to face. “Do you know what will happen if we ever run that thing in there? This whole rat-infested cesspit you live in will come down like a house of cards. Everything for miles around will be destroyed. People will die. Lots of people. The backwash from a timesplash doesn’t discriminate between men and women, good and bad, old and young. Nobody will be safe. Not your children, not your lovers, no-one. It’ll be like a nuke going off right here. This room will be ground zero.”

  She was pleased to see anxiety creeping into a few of the faces around her.

  Polanski shook his head. To the crowd, he said, “She doesn’t understand. Even though she’s seen a little, she hasn’t seen enough yet. She hasn’t had to live here. She hasn’t had to bring up her kids here, to watch them die of dysentery, or cholera, or measles. In her whole life she hasn’t had to go without food. She hasn’t had to live in fear of the SOBs and the Feds. She hasn’t had her parents dragged away in the night, never to be heard of again.”

  He looked Sandra in the eye. “If you knew what these people lived with, you’d appreciate their willingness to do anything, to take any risk, to lay down their lives if need be, so that the people of this country can be free again.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but the people around her were shouting their approval and slapping Polanski on the back, looking at her with contempt and defiance. She shut her mouth again.

  “OK,” said Polanski, bringing everybody to order. “Open her up.”

  The anticipation in the small group told Sandra she was expected to be impressed. Polanski stood back and let her walk in alone.

  The room was large. For a roofed space in the middle of a labyrinth of lean-to shacks, it was palatial. And, mostly, it was empty. Near the middle of the room was a group of electronics racks—all different makes, models and generations, and all stuffed with boards. Beyond them were big, boxy devices that she recognized immediately as focus fusion generators. Again they ranged from fairly modern, Indian-built units, about the size of a compact car, to older units of uncertain provenance, some as big as a garden shed. One or two looked as if they might be hand-built. If even half of them worked, there was enough power generation capability in that room to light up a small city. S
he spotted displacement field coils, high-voltage power switches, heavy-duty cables and a table piled high with screens and keyboards. The whole collection looked as if it had been salvaged from junkyards and landfills—and perhaps it had—but all the pieces were there to build a lob site. It wouldn’t be the kind of site she knew from her work at the university. It would be the kind of site that brilliant, enthusiastic kids used to lash together in the bad old days of the spalshparties.

  “It all works,” said Polanski, standing beside her. “We’ve had it down in Houston running trials.”

  Her eyes kept moving over the equipment, assessing and inventorying it. “Don’t tell me, lots of people died.”

  “Good people,” he said. “Friends.” There was a long silence before he added, “We planned to go back twenty or thirty years, travel to the target, and make a splash. It seemed simple enough but …”

  “But you couldn’t control the splash, could you?”

  A new voice said, “In the end, that’s what finished us.”

  She looked around. The voice belonged to a man about the same age as Polanski. He was short, mousy, unprepossessing. The kind of person you’d see standing around the edges of a nightclub, holding a drink, hugging the shadows. The trace of an English accent made her search her memory, but she couldn’t place him.

  “At first,” the man went on, “we couldn’t get the calibration right. The lob itself killed them. Then there were problems with equipment, the suits, even targeting accuracy. The thing was, if we couldn’t land them somewhere quiet at the far end, they never had a chance of making it to the splashtarget. And we just never had the accuracy.”

  He held out a hand to her, which she ignored. “We have met before,” he said. “When you used to work for Flash. When you were hunting Sniper. My tag was Jean Luc. I was on Flash’s team. One of the tekniks.”

  She eyed him coldly. “I never worked for Flash. We had a mutual enemy, that’s all.” As for having met him, tekniks were just part of the furniture in those days. It was the bricks that mattered.