Alternities

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “ID and pass,” Chambers demanded. “Where are they?”

  “In—in my wallet.” Wallace’s voice was trembling; the line between feigned terror and the genuine article had blurred. “In my pants pocket. On the left.”

  “This one’s dead,” announced the first officer.

  Chambers grunted in answer. Letting Wallace look down the barrel of his pistol close enough to catch the stink. Chambers fumbled for the leatherette wallet and extracted the Guard-manufactured identity card and travel pass.

  Those ought to buy me about four minutes, Wallace thought, watching the policeman’s face. Food jobber from Mercer, hah.

  But the questions Wallace was expecting didn’t come. “Arms behind your back, Mr. Wallace,” Chambers said. A moment later, a plastic strap was tight around Wallace’s wrists, the meek little ratcheting sound of the catch a misleading measure of the quickcuff’s strength.

  Some protest seemed in order, even if it was guaranteed to have no good effect. “I don’t understand what I did wrong—”

  “Up, Mr. Wallace,” Chambers said. “You’re going for a ride.”

  What had saved him so far, Wallace thought as he tried to keep his balance on the narrow seat in the back of the speeding jeep, was that his captors weren’t detectives. They were foot soldiers in an urban war, trained more for obedience and rote thoroughness than curiosity.

  But the questions they hadn’t asked would be asked eventually. The courier pouch was still strapped to his midriff. They would find it, and they would defeat its lock and open it. There was no chance of it going undiscovered until the six-hour chemical timer ran down and reduced the contents of the bag to dust.

  And then they would draw the obvious, completely wrong, conclusion that he was one of the Brats.

  Which was fine as far as the Guard was concerned, but less promising for Wallace. True, Rizzo didn’t have quite enough of a free hand to carry out his oft-stated solution to the terrorism problem—which would involve disemboweling Wallace with a power drill and then mounting his head on a spike outside police headquarters.

  But if Wallace’s future wasn’t completely black, it was certainly bleak. The Guard had rescued more than one runner from an ordinary criminal offense, paying the bail in manufactured money so that he could escape to Home. But there would be no bail for a Brat terrorist.

  The jeep took another hard, high-speed turn, and Wallace slid clumsily sideways on the seat until he was directly behind the driver. As he squirmed back into an upright posture, he concluded that getting out of the jeep would be no problem. Chambers was dutifully keeping an eye on him from the front passenger seat, but Wallace was confident he could throw himself over the side of the vehicle at any time.

  But that was no answer. They’d either end up scraping him up off the pavement or shooting him down in the street. Only marginally better outcomes than ending up in Rizzo’s little Home for the Criminally Suspicious—Short-Term Boarders Only. He had to get the jeep stopped and the two badges distracted.

  Wallace had archived one idea when they put him in the jeep, under “There’s Gotta Be a Better Way, But…” With each passing block, every foot farther from the gate house and closer to police headquarters, it seemed more and more certain that better ways were in short supply.

  Roll the dice, Wallace thought.

  The jeep was slowing to round a corner, and Chambers was looking away as he reached for the radio. Now—

  In one quick motion, Wallace pulled his knees up to his chest, then drove his feet against the back of the driver’s seat. The hinged seat back pitched forward, jamming the badge hard against the steering wheel.

  The jeep, already turning, lurched sharply left as the driver fought to free himself. The struggle pitted the strength of the driver’s arms against the power in Wallace’s legs. Chambers was not a factor. The black was fighting his own battle—against inertia, against being catapulted from the vehicle.

  Wallace had the edge, but even more, he knew both the rules and objectives of the contest. For two long seconds, he held the badge helpless against the wheel as the jeep continued to turn, curling left toward a solid barrier of storefronts. Then, with a massive jolt, the jeep struck the curb and leapfrogged it, front wheels wobbling in midair.

  The shock separated both Chambers and Wallace from their perches. Wallace tried to transform his graceless jouncing exit into a controlled backflip, but he had lost his leverage too soon. He came down awkwardly, twisting his right ankle and falling hard to his knees and then his side. A moment later, its driver still frozen behind the wheel, the jeep drove itself self-destructively into the wall, metal screeching, masonry cracking, glass tinkling.

  Rolling over, Wallace struggled to his feet and ran. He felt painfully slow, naked to the bullet he was sure was coming, awkward and helpless with his hands bound behind him. But he ran without looking back, his mouth set in a tight line, his thoughts an evolving refrain: one more step, one more step—one more block—one more chance—

  Though Wallace’s heart was racing, his steps felt leaden, as though his feet were churning through mud. The distance between his hunched shoulders was a hundred yards, a target any junior marksman could hit. The city blocks grew longer even as he ran them.

  Following the dictates of his paranoia, he zig-zagged across the city, up this street, down that alley. Every corner he turned gave him a few moments of safety, a brick and steel shield for his back. Yet every corner he turned held the threat of encountering another police patrol.

  Five blocks from the wreck, hurrying down a narrow canyonlike alley, Wallace slipped on the trail of slime leaking from an overloaded trash dumpster. With no hands to break his fall, he sprawled headlong, his right shoulder taking the brunt of collision with the oil-stained gravel-strewn pavement. He skidded to a stop on a cushion of tom clothing and bloody, abraded skin.

  Twisting around, he looked back the way he had come. There was no one else in the alley. He had lost his pursuers.

  Or his pursuers hadn’t found him yet. Chambers was back at the wreck, tending to his partner. Why chase a fugitive alone on foot when the radio could bring a dozen jeeps screaming into the area?

  With a painful effort, Wallace sat up. Or maybe Chambers was hurt, too. No pursuit. No radio alert. And no reason except his own recklessness and panic that could keep him from reaching the gate house safely.

  A razor-sharp rusted edge on the dumpster obligingly sliced through both the plastic handcuffs and the heel of one hand. Still no pursuit.

  New strategy, he thought, trying to staunch the free-flowing blood as he started down the alley at a trot. In this one, I use my head, and get there alive.

  Wallace edged up to the southeast corner of Broad and Sansom with triumph already in his heart. Hugging the wall, he peeked around the corner at the old Bellevue Stratford a block away. The wide boulevard was still deserted. There was no sign that the gate house had drawn any special attention in his absence or that a reception was waiting for him there.

  Then a bullet licked off the concrete facing just above Wallace’s ear. He jumped as though he had grabbed an electric wire. Ducking his head, he plunged around the corner and headed on a line for the hotel. Ten flying steps and he was off the curb and into the street. Fifty carried him halfway down the block and halfway across the street, to the trolley tracks which bisected it. He ran mouthing heartfelt half-formed prayers for deliverance.

  There had been no more shots, but he did not make the mistake of thinking his prayers had been granted. He knew that when the badge rounded the corner where Wallace had been standing moments before, he would again be a target. The question was whether he would reach the hotel before that happened.

  Each step was a discrete victory, an increment of hope. Wallace searched frantically for the quickest way back in, knowing that he could never retrace his marquee escape in time. He thought about breaking a window, and wondered what he would break it with.

  Then a thought hit him which nea
rly stopped him in midstride, midstreet. Idiot—why don’t you lead them back to the one place they can’t be made curious about. You can’t go back inside at all, he scolded himself. You lost. Almost doesn’t count.

  Then bullets were flying again, whining hornets in the air, and Wallace’s feet carried him forward without instructions from his conscience-bound consciousness. Crossing Walnut Street, Wallace narrowed his focus to a pair of stairwells tucked against the front face of the gate house and leading down below street level.

  The first, closest to the corner, was the entrance to the Broad Street subway. On any other day, the subway would have been an ideal place to lose or waylay his pursuers. But today it promised him nothing, for below he would find no trains, no crowds—only locked gates.

  The second stairwell was the wrought-iron-ringed street entrance to the former Irish pub in the basement of the gate house. He angled toward it and hurled himself over the edge recklessly, saving himself from broken bones by snatching a handhold on the brass railings on the way down. Then he crept back up the crumbling concrete stairs for a glimpse of his adversary.

  It was Chambers. The officer was a hundred feet away, dragging his right leg as he walked steadily toward where Wallace hid. Chambers, stalking him with grim confidence of vindication. Chambers, determined to erase an error. He did not even waste a bullet firing at Wallace’s head, knowing that, momentarily, he would have a much easier shot.

  There were only two choices, Wallace realized, both with little appeal: compromising the gate house, or dying where he was.

  He stole another look over the edge. Chambers was just sixty feet away, close enough for Wallace to read both pain and cold-eyed purposefulness on his face. But this time, Wallace saw something else: Chambers was alone, with no radio visible on his hip. Which meant that no one knew where he was, even if he had been able to call in an alarm before leaving the jeep.

  And Wallace knew then what he had to do. Seizing two loose fist-sized fragments of concrete, he hurled the smaller blindly up and out in an arc toward Chambers. He leaped to the bottom of the stairwell and used the larger to shatter the small window in the pub’s wooden door. Reaching through the opening, he frantically clawed at the locks, knowing that the sound of breaking glass would pull Chambers in like a magnet.

  The door fell open at last, and Wallace dove inside. But instead of fleeing, he lingered in the pub, crouching behind a half-wall near the inside entrance until he saw Chambers’ shadow in the stairwell. The badge was moving more slowly now, and Wallace realized there was a danger he would grow too cautious and decide to wait for support. That could not be allowed to happen.

  “Hey, nigger-boy!” Wallace called out. “How’s your buddy, huh?”

  Chambers’ only answer was to keep coming down the stairs, the barrel of his revolver leading the way.

  “Fuckin’ black monkey, you’re too dumb to live,” Wallace taunted. “You’re never going to catch me.”

  This time the answer was a bullet fired through the doorway. It thudded into the half-wall where Wallace had been hiding and exploded through the other side in a shower of wood splinters and plaster bits. But by then Wallace was already on the move.

  Playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek, Wallace led the badge higher and higher in the building, careful not to let Chambers too close, careful not to draw too far ahead. There was a noisy race in the stairwell, third floor, fourth, fifth. Wallace kept up the taunts to keep Chambers coming, exploiting the badge’s single-mindedness and his wounded pride, his pain and his hate.

  All the time, Wallace was feeling for the gate, for the faint touch of its energies. Like all experienced runners, Wallace had learned to read the shivery sensation in his body and to follow it to its source. With a call as clear as a siren song, the gate guided Wallace through the midnight maze of the hotel.

  Finally, at the end of a long hallway, he saw the telltale glow, spilling out through one of the open doorways and splashing across the facing wall. He ran toward it, knowing that Chambers was close behind him, showing Chambers his fleeing silhouette. He plunged through the doorway just as the barking report of the revolver sounded in the corridor.

  The gate was there, shimmering, open. But Wallace balled himself in a back corner of the closet, out of sight of the door, and waited.

  He did not have to wait long. Chambers had to be sensing the end of the chase, confident beyond certainty that his quarry was unarmed, believing that his perseverance was about to be rewarded. Suddenly he was there in the doorway, revolver secured in its holster as a precaution. He was ready to finish the job with his powerful hands.

  But he could not have known what he would see, could not have guessed that the source of the cold yellow light would be an oval of bare wall wider than his outstretched arms. Forgetting Wallace for a moment, he stepped toward the gate uncertainly, raised a hand to try to touch it.

  And as he did, Wallace rose up from where he crouched and flung himself at Chambers from behind. As he wrapped his arms around the bewildered officer, the force of the collision and Wallace’s driving legs carried them both forward—toward the wall and through the gate.

  Once through, Wallace barely had time to release his grip before the white fire lashed out. A wave of pressure drove him inexorably away as, in silence but with terrifying intensity, the energies inside the gate discharged through the dozens of metal objects which Chambers wore and carried.

  One second crawled into the next. Chambers became the heart of a man-sized ball of dancing lightning. The dazzle was so intense that Wallace had to look away, and for one long moment he felt regret, empathy. He had lost friends between the gates, and dreamed at times of dying there, and in neither case had he conceived of a death this cold and final.

  Then the light was extinguished, and Chambers was gone, consumed. The seething energies of the gate quieted, and Wallace suppressed his qualms. He had done what was necessary. He was a member of the Tower Guard, and he had protected his Home. His victim had only been a shadow, an unreality from an unreal world.

  Except that it was the first time he had killed for the Guard, and the shadow had worn the face of a man.

  Downham House

  Knight’s Bridge Road

  Essex

  November 14, 1978

  Dear Gregory,

  … There is a bit of a chill here already, and once again this year we are facing a terrible problem with rodents looking to come inside. After much persuasion, the landlord has agreed to release some weasels—or to look the other way while I do—in the hope that the rodent invasion can be blunted. The problem is that weasels are proscribed and it may be difficult, tho not impossible, to bring them into the country. Please ask your father if he knows any dealers, or whether any trappers there might be willing to take on the job. The expense and responsibility on this end will be mine…

  With affection,

  Robbie

  GLAVNOYE RAZVEDYVATELNOYE

  UPRAVLENIYE INTERCEPT

  Sender identity: Robert Halcomb Taskins. United States Ambassador to Great Britain

  Recipient identity: Gregory O’Neill. United States Secretary of Defense

  Evaluation: Imputed relationship verified, files. Complaint verified, local interviews. GRU New England verifies that John O’Neill, father of Gregory, owns small farm outside Derry, Massachusetts.

  Conclusion: Personal communication.

  Delete from alert list: WEASEL, LANDLORD.

  Vladimir Orens, GRU London

  CHAPTER 2

  * * *

  Wolf May Come, Sky May Fall

  Essex, England, The Home Alternity

  That was the damnable thing about dealing with parliamentary governments, Robert Taskins thought as he hurriedly dressed. You never could be sure whom you would be dealing with one year to the next.

  The summons had come early, delivered in person by a fresh-faced aide from the new Prime Minister’s office. And summons was the only word for it: “I wish to spe
ak with you at once. Come to the Admiralty.” It was signed D. Somerset, PM, as if it were still necessary for him to politely remind people who he was.

  To be sure, there were still many questions about David Somerset. No one had expected the fall of McLeod’s Conservative government, and certainly not over such a question as the reorganization of British Rail.

  In retrospect, it was easy to see that the vote had reflected Conservative factionalism, not Labour strength. The CP was full of frustrated ambition, middle-aged pols with their own power bases who were watching their prime years slip away while McLeod’s team kept them on the fringe. Their expectations had been raised by nineteen years of Conservative dominance, and they had broken ranks to warn McLeod, not to unseat him.

  So thought the rebels, and so thought Taskins. Almost no one in the U.S, legation had predicted that Labour would muster enough seats to end McLeod’s personal nine-year reign. The few who had were the embassy’s new gurus, and were now leading the scramble to come up with useful answers to the question, “What will Somerset do?”

  Taskins had his own questions and problems. There had already been two exchanges of dispatches—handcarried because of the gravity of the matter—between Washington and London, and yet Taskins was still without instructions. Three years of careful work was at risk, both from the new players brought in by the upset and from the loose ends represented by the vanquished.

  But absent guidance from President Robinson or the CIA, he could do nothing about either danger.

  Taskins had waltzed gracefully through the official ceremonies accompanying the change of government, carefully avoiding any substantive conversations with Somerset or his advisors. Better to be elusive than to christen the new relationship with lies. Easy enough to maintain the routine Home Office contacts, let Somerset see to a new Cabinet and the vagaries of settling in.