Ascendance

by John Birmingham

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, trying not to think about the tattooed hottie, ‘there’s no way you can stop her from getting home.’

  Unless a sniper puts a bullet in her head, I suppose.

  ‘If you could live with 50,000 nuclear warheads pointed at you for so long, I reckon you’ll cope with a treacherous blonde and her samurai sword. She’s going to tell her bosses the same thing about me, which you may not care about, but I do.’

  Both Trinder and Comeau turned their attention fully back to Dave.

  ‘You didn’t think I’d thought it through, did you? Because if you have a hard-on for taking Varatchevsky out of the game, it has to be a lay-down certainty that your opposite number back in the USSR feels the same way about me. Right?’

  ‘It’s not the USSR anymore,’ said Trinder.

  ‘Beatles reference,’ said Dave as the exotic young woman hurried up to them. ‘Anyway, my super friend and I have agreed we won’t be doing any more UFC cage matches. In fact, we’re going to catch up in an hour or so, after she’s talked her guys off the ledge, and we’re going to swap information. The thing she killed, this big-ass Thresh daemon, it’s not like Urgon. It knows different things, which seems to mean that she knows different things. It’d be cool if she and I could compare notes and –’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Trinder barked. He spoke so abruptly, so loudly, that the young woman who was jogging toward them flinched. It was a more obvious reaction than the slight flush Dave had seen on her caramel-coloured features, the widening of her eyes, when she’d got a whiff of ol’ Super Dave’s secret sauce. ‘You can’t share intelligence with an enemy agent.’

  And then Trinder froze. His teeth, yellowed by nicotine, bit off the end of the last thing he had said. His nostrils flared and his eyes slitted, giving him a dangerous canine appearance.

  ‘What the hell?’ said Dave, and then realised someone other than him had hit the pause button. Comeau was frowning, hands on hips. The Asian chick had been caught mid-stride and was actually floating, suspended a few inches off the concrete floor. Dave could see now that she wasn’t Vietnamese as he had thought, but some mix of races which had passed through Southeast Asia at some point, with a good pinch of African-American stirred into the melting pot. The doors on the elevator from which she had emerged were starting to close, and he could see Madigan and the shoulder of the young Russian woman through the gap. He looked back toward the ramp, surprised, yet not at all surprised, to find Colonel Varatchevsky, still rocking her spanky black motorcycle leathers, striding down from the street. A sword hilt poked up over one shoulder.

  Dave’s first thought was that she had come, or been sent, to retrieve the traitor, the secretary he had rescued.

  ‘I thought we were gonna be cool,’ he said. It sounded like a protest, a weak one. He didn’t see how he could stop her taking the girl back without an explosion of cartoon violence that would bring this building down around their ears just like the Russian one.

  ‘I heard what Agent Trinder said. You can’t share with the enemy.’ Karen smiled.

  She took her foot off the accelerator – it had to be her; Dave had done nothing – and they dropped out of warp.

  ‘Yes he can,’ she said, raising her voice, addressing Trinder directly.

  The tattooed female agent gave a little squeal of surprise as she landed and found the enemy in their midst. Trinder cursed and Comeau drew his weapon again but Dave put a hand on his arm. Comeau’s draw seemed inhumanly fast, until you understood what ‘inhuman’ really meant.

  ‘Don’t, man,’ said Dave, easing the agent’s gun arm back down. ‘She’ll kill you before you can even squeeze off a shot.’

  ‘I will,’ said Karen, a statement of fact, not a threat.

  ‘Stop her, Hooper. Put her down,’ Trinder demanded.

  ‘Stop her doing what?’ Dave asked. ‘If she was going to do anything, it’d be all over by now.’

  ‘Mr Trinder, sir?’ It was the Asian girl. Trinder seemed even more unhappy at being interrupted than he was at finding Karen Warat in his basement. Probably, Dave thought, because he knew he could safely shift his ire on to his underling.

  ‘What?’ he snapped.

  ‘It’s Washington, sir,’ said the young woman. And then she faltered in her already nervous delivery, her eyes flicking toward the Russian spy, before being drawn to Dave. Always to Dave.

  Colonel Varatchevsky spoke before Trinder’s agent could continue. ‘She came down to tell you what I came to tell you, Hooper,’ she said. ‘The monsters are back. They’re here. In the city.’

  02

  ‘Boston has been trying to reach you, sir,’ the agent confirmed. ‘And the Pentagon. And Homeland.’

  ‘I turned my phone off, Agent Nguyen,’ snapped Trinder. ‘With good reason.’

  ‘Yeah, because it’s a BlackBerry.’ Dave smirked.

  He thought he saw Agent Comeau suppress a grin. Karen Warat was eating protein bars, peeling the wrappers and inhaling the contents as though she were loading bullets into a gun. Dave wasn’t feeling all that hungry, yet, but he knew he’d burned through a lot of his reserves fighting her, and then repairing the damage from that fight. He patted down the pockets of his coveralls looking for something to eat.

  ‘What does Boston want?’ asked Trinder, with the air of a man who didn’t care for the answer.

  Nguyen tried to keep her face blank, but failed. Even the boss-looking tattoo couldn’t hide her grimace. She really didn’t want to be the messenger.

  ‘You’ve been ordered to detach Mr Hooper back to OSTP for temporary –’

  She didn’t finish. All of the colour which had previously leached away from Trinder’s features came flooding back in a hot, red flush.

  ‘The hell I will,’ he said, loud enough that it echoed around the garage.

  ‘Sir, if you would just turn on your phone . . .’ Agent Nguyen said, or tried to. Her cute little mouth froze in a perfect ‘O’.

  Dave was ready for it this time.

  ‘Will you stop doing that!’ he said, turning to Warat, the only other human being who was still in motion. She had frozen the others, or warped with Hooper, or whatever the fuck it was they were doing when they did this. He was beginning to understand how annoying it must be when he did it to other people.

  ‘We don’t have time for their bullshit,’ said Warat, tossing him an energy gel. ‘I just orbed out of the consul-general’s office while I was explaining why I had to cut the third secretary into sushi chunks. We have monsters to fight. So eat up, Super Dave.’

  He caught the packet and frowned.

  ‘You know, you really shouldn’t call me that unless you mean it,’ he said, emptying the gel with one squeeze. He didn’t mind blowing off Trinder. The guy was turning out to be even more of a pain than Heath; although, admittedly, not nearly as much as Compton had been. And since Karen hadn’t said or done anything about that little Russian woman he’d rescued, the smart money was on getting her out of Trinder’s building before she noticed Agent Madigan spiriting the girl away. He’d explain it to Trinder later. Couldn’t let big bad Colonel Varatchevsky catch them in the act.

  ‘Okay. Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Where are these critters at?’

  Dave hefted Lucille across one shoulder. She was humming their special tune again.

  ‘Forty-second Street,’ Warat said as they jogged up the ramp.

  East 91st Street looked even worse than it had before. Traffic had been piling up outside the ruins of the consulate, smoke and people pouring from the wreckage, when Karen hit warp. Dave could hear a long, unnatural wail which had to be sirens, and one police car, its flashers caught turning, threw a crazy blue glow up the side of the buildings. The cops had driven their patrol car right up onto the sidewalk and been busy trying to direct consulate workers away from the burning building, while ordering rubber neckers to get the hell back across the street. To get the hell out of the street altogether. The frozen tableau looked like some sort of cin
ematic special effect to Hooper, and he realised he had never really seen so many people caught in his . . . what? His warp field?

  ‘You did this, right?’ he asked, waving a hand at the unmoving chaos.

  ‘You helped,’ said Karen.

  ‘No, I don’t mean the demolition job. I mean the pause button, the warp field, whatever you call it. I didn’t do it, you did, right?’

  She strode on down the sidewalk, weaving her way around the living human statuary.

  ‘Yeah, come on,’ she said. ‘I want to try something.’

  Dave found himself wondering if Karen had caught a whiff of his super-powered pheromones. She hadn’t given the slightest hint that she was affected by them. He’d seen the flush colouring Madigan’s cheeks, and the sexy Asian chick with the tattoos on her face as well. They got within about twenty yards of him and he could tell they just had to . . .

  ‘Knock it off, you fucking idiot. I wouldn’t suck your dick if it blew espresso martinis.’

  Dave almost tripped over his own feet he stopped so suddenly. Karen rolled her eyes.

  ‘The Threshrend are empath daemons. All the sects use them. When I get close enough, I can tell what they’re thinking, and, God help me, you’re even easier to read than they are.’

  ‘You can read my mind?’ asked Dave, alarmed at the idea.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You’re more Dr Seuss than Tolstoy. Now get on. I want to try this.’

  She swung a leg over a motorcycle, a big-ass rice-burning Jap number.

  ‘You ever try this?’

  Dave looked dubious.

  ‘You mean riding? While, you know . . .’ He twirled a finger to take in the stalled world around them. ‘No,’ he admitted. Probably because he’d presumed it wouldn’t work. Or if it did, that any machinery would just run stupidly slow.

  Warat seemed to have none of his reservations. She had a key for the motorcycle, perhaps explaining the leathers she wore. One long leg scissored over the bike, she seated herself, turned the key, flicked a succession of switches and thumbed the ignition. The bike roared into life.

  ‘Get on,’ she said, indicating the pillion passenger space behind her.

  ‘I don’t normally need to be asked twice to climb on for a lady,’ said Dave. ‘But what about helmets and Lucille and your nasty little friend there?’ He indicated her sword. ‘Last guy who touched that thing, I heard his arms fell off.’

  Warat regarded him with a look verging on contempt. She slid the scabbard off her shoulder, examined the sword and tossed it at him without warning.

  ‘Catch!’

  ‘Fuck!’ squawked Dave, but he couldn’t help himself, plucking the sheathed weapon out of midair. No body parts fell off him.

  ‘I don’t think it will be a problem.’ Warat smiled. ‘That guy you heard about didn’t even touch the blade, just the scabbard. Get on. It’ll be quicker and we’ll save energy.’

  He passed her sword back, frowning. ‘You know, for a traitorous bitch, you’re quite an asshole.’

  She passed one arm through the old leather strap of the katana’s sheath and seated it comfortably on her back again.

  ‘I’m not a traitor,’ she said. ‘I’m a patriot. Just not for your country.’

  Dave was still trying to get his head around the idea. Her voice, her looks, her energy, everything about her was so American. He carefully climbed on the bike, a Honda, gripping Lucille up near the business end, and slipping his other arm around Varatchevsky’s waist.

  ‘Nice abs. You work out, right?’

  ‘Just because the sword didn’t cut you doesn’t mean the sword wouldn’t cut you. Now shut the fuck up and hold on.’

  Warat leaned forward slightly and Dave felt one arm flex as she fed power into the bike. They leaped away from the sidewalk and threaded through the chess pieces of all those motionless bystanders and consular workers. He felt awkward, riding behind her, as though he might spill off at any moment, but Warat seemed entirely comfortable. Her body flowed with the bike as it leaned one way then the other. Immobile figures blurred past on both sides as she accelerated away from the weird, 3D still of the burning building. He adjusted quickly, finding his balance in a way he knew would not have been possible a week earlier.

  By the time she leaned into the turn onto 5th Avenue, Dave was seated as comfortably on the speeding Honda as she was. He’d only ridden a motorcycle once in his life. A disastrous misadventure at a county fair as a teenager. He’d put the little dirt bike straight through a fence and come out of hospital with twelve stitches and a promise never to ride again. Now he felt as though he could take the wheel of this thing and give the Russian a run for her money. Just as soon as she showed him which buttons to push to turn it on and off.

  Sadness caught him by surprise. Marty Grbac would have loved to race this bike.

  They roared down the avenue, heading toward 42nd Street. Dave found it easier to keep his gaze forward, over her shoulder, watching her anticipate the moves needed to plot a course through thousands of motionless, or nearly motionless, vehicles. He knew the stasis wasn’t total, that the world was still moving, but that they were moving through it on some hyper-accelerated fast track. He also knew that even using the motorcycle, they were still burning energy, running down their reserves, to hold the warp field in place.

  Or maybe he was wrong.

  Maybe they hadn’t hit pause on the whole world. Maybe they were in something like a bubble, bending space and time around them, and only them. Urgon knew nothing of this ability and Dave was no better informed. He didn’t know how he’d even begin figuring it out. Whenever he was in warp anybody who might help him, a friendly Nobel-winning physicist for instance, was frozen out of the effect.

  The Honda screamed past a line of yellow cabs which were crawling slowly – very fucking slowly now – past Saks. He wondered how the drivers and passengers would experience the motorcycle’s passage. As an inexplicable blur of light and sound? A small sonic boom?

  Dave held tightly to Lucille, who was humming louder as they moved downtown. Could Warat hear it too, the murder song? He supposed not, since he couldn’t hear any backing vocals from her magical sword.

  And then his stomach clenched.

  Hunger.

  A second pang, stronger and lasting twice as long quickly followed.

  ‘Stop,’ he yelled in her ear. ‘Pull over.’

  He was pushed into her back as she applied the brakes and brought them to a fast stop near the intersection of 5th and E49th Street.

  The bubble didn’t burst. Everything and everyone but them remained suspended.

  ‘What?’ Karen asked, exasperated.

  ‘Sorry. You gotta gimme a second. Honest, it’s important.’

  ‘It had better be,’ she warned.

  He dismounted the Honda. Light blazed from storefronts and above them from office windows climbing away into the sky. Turning a quick circle he estimated he could see thousands of people, hundreds of vehicles. And beyond them? The whole city, a stopped watch. All of existence, frozen.

  His stomach cramped again and hot flushes followed cold chills through his body. There was no way they could be doing this to the whole world. He’d been turned into some sort of mystical freak, but he was still an engineer and he knew that the energies needed to affect all of existence like this – even mystical energies – were so vast as to be impossible. Whatever effect he and Warat had generated, and were maintaining, it had to be limited to them. They couldn’t, for instance, be dragging the planet out of its orbital track. But even limited to some temporal bubble around the two of them alone, there was a cost. Just as there had been a cost for all of the energy he’d spent fighting her.

  Karen was starting to look annoyed.

  ‘We don’t have time for you to scratch your balls and ponder the mysteries of magical physics,’ she said, obviously reading him.

  ‘Just give me a minute,’ he said testily. ‘They’re not going anywhere.’ He waved
his hand at the tableau around them.

  ‘No, Hooper. We’re the ones not going anywhere.’

  Dave let her protests fall behind him as he found what he wanted a short way down 49th. A steakhouse.

  ‘One minute. Promise,’ he called back to Warat as he started toward the restaurant. Another racking gut cramp doubled him over, almost tripped him as he mounted the sidewalk at the corner. He was careful not to bump into anyone as he passed. He could probably impart enough energy with a tap to send them flying when his time stream synced with theirs again. Best not to take the chance.

  He recognised the steakhouse as part of a chain operation, but a boutique chain. Smith and Wollensky. There was one in Houston that was popular with the carpet walkers at Baron’s. Dave left Lucille by the door and carefully picked his way through the suits at the entrance and into the main dining room. His mouth flooded with saliva as he smelled chargrilled meat and melted cheese and the salty goodness of deep-fried carbs.

  ‘Sorry, darlin’,’ he said to a waitress as he ghosted past her. ‘I only got time for a dine and dash.’

  Two bizoids in dark suits and hundred dollar haircuts were already tucking into their mains at a nearby table. Without ceremony or apology he scooped up the long-boned rib eye of the older, portlier gent and, grimacing, the steak tartare of his companion. The loose pile of nearly raw meat started to come apart in his hands, forcing Hooper to stuff the lot into his mouth. He had memories of hating this dish, but when the uncooked flesh hit his taste buds it arrived as a revelation.

  ‘Fark,’ he gargled, surprised at how much he blissed out to the taste and mouth-feel. If they got through this latest orc attack he was definitely coming back for more. He’d even pay for it. Or get Trinder to. He hurried back out, licking his fingers and stuffing a couple of baked potatoes into his pockets. He grabbed up the enchanted splitting maul and tore huge bites from the rib eye as he trotted back to Warat through the unmoving crowds and traffic.