Empire State

by Adam Christopher

  "Mr Bradley," said a voice – one which didn't come from either of the two goons, but from somewhere near Rad's feet. He raised himself up on his elbow, wincing as the bottom of the mask cut into the flab of his neck. Another man walked closer, moving to the left and stopping next to Bullethead. He leaned in, too close, peering at Rad through the mask goggles like he was some kind of specimen. It crossed Rad's mind that perhaps he was as he gasped for breath, pulling air through the mask's soup can for everything he was worth.

  The third man was old (but he couldn't be old because it was the year Nineteen), and his accent was foreign (but it couldn't be foreign because there was nowhere else apart from the Empire State). A thick shock of white hair, properly combed. Moustache, also white, also thick, trimmed in perfect symmetry over a small mouth. The clothes were the same too, belted jacket, somehow out of place, with epaulets and silver buttons. The third man laughed at some triumph. The sound was high, short, and sharp; a staccato exclamation. After it came the smile, showing teeth straight but yellow and grey with age.

  Rad felt his heart settle. "Captain Carson! What's going on?"

  But the third man shook his head, the smile plastered on his features. "No, my dear chap, my name is Nimrod.

  "Welcome to New York City."

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  NIMROD STROKED HIS MOUSTACHE. Rad had a great deal of trouble thinking of him as anyone other than Captain Carson. He was identical. The voice with strange clipped accent. The smile. The way his eyes shrank to slits when he smiled. The same grey and yellow patina across his front teeth. Identical, like Rad was identical to Sam Saturn's killer. That didn't make him feel any better.

  Rad sucked in another breath. The mask was comfortable enough, sure, although the way the heavy filter pulled out and down was annoying. He could feel the rubberised edge of the mask stuck all around his face, forming a tight seal. The goggles misted just slightly, but it was no problem. He could still see fine.

  It was the breathing that was the problem. If he sat still, and didn't speak, he could pull air into his lungs, and push air out. He could breathe, but it was a conscious effort. He had to take over the manual controls from his brain stem, and move the muscles of his ribcage himself. It was tiring, and somewhere in the back of his mind the seed of panic was sown. It was the same spark that entered the mind of someone being strangled, or drowned. People with asthma had it bad, Rad suspected. They'd get that spark every time they had an attack.

  It was worse when he spoke. He had to time his breaths with his words, which resulted in strange pauses and broken sentences. He remembered his first encounter with the masks in the alley. The two goons – who now stood in the office, picking their nails and choosing their cigarettes with the greatest of ease – had not only moved with agility, they'd sucker-punched him good and proper, and had still been able to hold a conversation. Well, one of them had. Rad glanced at Chinless on his left and Bullethead on his right, trying to remember the voice and match it to the face. The man who had applied his fists to Rad's face and asked the questions had been the heavy man with no neck – Bullethead – while his friend had stood back and not done much at all – Chinless here, who Rad remembered the Bullethead had called Grieves when the Skyguard had dropped on him. Rad looked at their faces and thought he preferred them with their masks on.

  Another breath. In, out. The intake felt like sucking on elastic, as if the rubbery air was resisting and would snap back into the soup can if Rad let up the pressure. Breathing out made the goggles mist, momentarily, and his eyes hurt as the pressure inside the mask increased, the foreign air, absolutely, positively refusing to be pushed back out into the atmosphere through the respirator.

  Rad figured he'd get used to it. Perhaps it was a case of learning the rhythms of the mask. He imagined they would become second nature after a while. He didn't know how long that would take. He didn't want to find out either. He needed to get back to the Empire State.

  Chinless lit a cigarette, wreathing his face in smoke. He put the cigarette to his lips, then pulled it away, holding it in midair while transferring thick grey smoke from his mouth to his nose. It wasn't particularly classy, but Rad was fascinated. The Prohibition in the Empire State covered tobacco as well as alcohol. While the latter was easy enough to distil and sell in places like Jerry's speakeasy, tobacco was another matter. Rad was then very glad of the mask. Before Wartime he'd been a chain smoker. Safe in his little rubber and glass universe, not a single whiff of the rich smoke was available to him. Then the thought occurred to him that maybe there was no "before Wartime" and that maybe he'd never smoked in his life, that the tingle in his nose the sight of the smoke produced – and the sharp craving that followed it – was another element of his life "reflected" from his New York City original.

  "I apologise for the way my agents Mr Grieves and Mr Jones here were forced to manhandle you, Mr Bradley, but I felt it was really time for us to meet." Nimrod vaguely indicated the two goons as he spoke. Rad glanced at them again but neither seemed particularly interested in the conversation.

  Rad shifted in his wooden chair, then regretted the motion as he struggled to pull a proper, full breath. He wasn't restrained at all, which was a pleasant feeling, even though he knew he wouldn't make it to the door without getting dizzy. They knew it too. That was why he wasn't restrained to the chair. He was restrained by the mask.

  Rad managed, "They're making a... (breath)... habit of it. A bad habit (breath)."

  Nimrod laughed, and clapped his hands. At this sign of humour from their boss, Chinless Grieves and Bullethead Jones smirked.

  "My point being, Mr Bradley, that I was most displeased you failed to make our previous appointment. Getting in touch with you in the Empire State requires considerable organisation and expense. Travelling to the Empire State, even more so." Nimrod leaned over his desk on his elbows. The desk was covered with papers, in stacks, in file folders, in loose sheaves covering the blotter. The paper crinkled under his elbows.

  "You have cost me a lot of time, and a lot of money." Nimrod paused, then sat back and folded his arms. "There is a lot riding on this. We can't let one unreliable factor ruin our plans. There is too much at stake."

  "That so?"

  Nimrod nodded in exactly the same way that Carson would nod. Rad's eyes flicked to some pictures on the wall behind Nimrod's head. A certificate or diploma, with a bright red seal. Something else that was also text, too small to read from his chair. But three pictures, sepia photographs, showing the impossible landscapes in white. Carson – no, Nimrod – as a young man; the airship; the companion with blond hair. Rad frowned.

  If Nimrod could see Rad's eyes roving behind the mask goggles, he gave no indication.

  "That is so, Mr Bradley. I'm not sure you are taking this seriously."

  A hard-won intake of oxygen. "Oh, the end of the world seems pretty serious to me." And another. "That's what you said on the phone anyway."

  Nimrod nodded.

  "How did you call me, anyway?"

  "We have the Fissure tapped for a variety of purposes. Communication is one. Monitoring and observation is another."

  Rad nodded. "Carson explained the Fissure. A tear in the world, he called it. So, it allows travel too?"

  "Yes," said Nimrod. "Although the two realms are not entirely... compatible, shall we say. The environment in each rejects material from its opposite." With one arm still folded, he pointed at Rad's face with the other hand. "The mask helps. The environment is not lethally toxic, but it is exceedingly uncomfortable."

  As if to prove his point, Nimrod stopped speaking and the office was filled with the sounds of Rad's heavy, slow breaths coming through the respirator. Nimrod smiled. "You'll get used to it. You acclimatise."

  "So you pulled me through the... Fissure?"

  Nimrod's mouth turned upside down. "Not through the Fissure itself, but using its power. The Fissure is a single, physical location, but its influence spreads out across the whole city. A 'fiel
d' of sorts. If you can detect the field, measure it, you can tap it as a power source and use it for all sorts of things. You can even use that power to cross from here to there, using mirrors and reflections. Fascinating really, quite a trick. But physical transfer between the Origin and the Pocket is even more expensive than a telephone conversation. I'm going to have the department accountants on my back for this one, eh?"

  Grieves and Jones sniggered. Grieves puffed his cigarette and said something back to Nimrod, although Rad couldn't catch it. Nimrod exploded with laughter, slapping the top of his desk.

  "So if you're Nimrod, who's Captain Carson?"

  Nimrod's laughter died. "I was hoping you could tell me. I am Captain Nimrod."

  "His ship," wheezed Rad. "Carson has a ship, under his building. Like an airship, of some sort. Said it was called Nimrod."

  Nimrod steepled his fingers. "Ah."

  "Still no clue?"

  Nimrod shrugged, then rotated on his swivel chair to face the back wall of his office. He looked up at the photographs.

  "I was commander of the Carson, a hydrogen dirigible of experimental design, on an expedition to the Antarctic. Funded by the United States government, mostly scientific, partly military. I was recruited, you see, due to my not inconsiderable experience with Arctic exploration. It's in my blood. My father cut through the jungles of Africa in the nineteenth century, claiming lands and treasures for Queen Victoria. I followed in his footsteps, although I was no good in hot climes. The snows called me!"

  Rad looked at Nimrod's back, ready to start with the questions, but took a breath and found the effort required to ask what he wanted was just too much. "No kidding," he managed at last.

  "Of course," Nimrod continued, lost in his own personal nostalgia trip, "money was the issue, and funding seemed to come more easily from the United States. So we upped sticks and moved from London to New York in 1921. My family tree had some branches here already, including property in Manhattan, so it was not quite such a wrench as it may have been."

  "Uh-huh."

  Nimrod spun back around to face Rad, his face somewhere between delight and surprise. A beaming, open-mouthed smile, forehead creased and narrow eyes as wide as they could go, which was not very.

  "Extraordinary," said Nimrod. "You really have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? London? England? Africa? No? The Arctic and Antarctic? Polar ice caps?" Nimrod shook his head, paused, then frowned. "Even New York City? Manhattan?"

  Rad shrugged, because it was easier than speaking. He saw Grieves finish his cigarette and laugh silently, shaking his head. Jones said nothing. Rad figured that he probably hadn't heard of any of these places either.

  Rad wasn't sure what to make of it. The Empire State was the Empire State. Polar ice caps? Sounded weird.

  And yet... something, something stirred in his mind. He thought again of Claudia. He had no memory of their wedding day, like he had no knowledge of what London was.

  "I'm in New York City, apparently," he managed. "You said so yourself."

  "Yes, yes, I did." Nimrod went back to stroking his moustache. "The name may be different, but I feel you will recognise New York. Manhattan, at any rate. The Empire State was born out of New York City, and takes its image, more or less."

  "You said 'we'. You and these two beauties?" Rad managed to nudge an arm in the direction of Grieves and Jones. Grieves straightened against the door, like he wasn't quite sure whether he was being insulted or not. He looked at Nimrod for support.

  Nimrod met his agent's eye, then turned back to Rad.

  "Alas, I am at the mercy of the State Department when it comes to staff. When I say we, I mean myself and my companion, Keats." Nimrod leaned back in his chair and tapped one of the photographs on the wall behind his head with a fingernail. Nimrod the younger and the blond man. Nimrod held his head up, pulling the loose skin of his neck tight, and sucked air through clenched teeth.

  "Keats was my batman and engineer on every voyage. On our last expedition, there was an… accident."

  Nimrod's eyes narrowed and he gulped. He kept his head up and was staring at the wall behind Rad. Rad didn't like where the story was going. The old man cleared his throat.

  "Keats was injured. Very badly. We brought him back home, and I even managed to fashion… devices, to help with his breathing and alleviate at least some of his discomfort. A 'life-support', you could say. When the position was offered here, they also offered to take care of Keats, to help him rehabilitate and even regain something of his former life."

  Nimrod coughed again and lowered his head. He glanced at the top of his desk and shuffled some papers. Rad kept quiet.

  Nimrod lifted a single sheet of paper and pretended to read it. He didn't look at Rad as he spoke.

  "We came by ship, but Keats died during the crossing. I had been reading his favourite book to him as we travelled, as it seemed to ease his pain. After he died… well…" Nimrod tapped his breast pocket, which Rad could now see was filled out by something flat and rectangular. A small book.

  Rad tried to nod, but the soup can just slapped his chest. "I understand."

  Nimrod put the paper down and smiled at the detective. Rad wasn't sure whether his eyes were wetter than they were usually.

  "He always had an affinity for the great Romantics. Always claimed he had been named after John Keats." Nimrod's eyes went far away again. His fingers found the book in his breast pocket and tapped against it again. "Don Juan, by Lord Byron. Have you read it?"

  Rad sat up and coughed. Nimrod leaned forward in concern, his glazed eyes clearing and his hand automatically adjusting his tie, as if he was suddenly aware that he had said too much. Rad recovered after a moment and ran a finger along the rim of the mask under his chin.

  "Can't say that I have." He cleared his throat. "Any chance of a drink? Can I take this mask off?"

  Grieves looked at Nimrod, and Nimrod nodded and waved at the door. The agent pointed at Jones, who shook his head without taking his eyes off Rad. Grieves left the office and closed the door behind him with a click. In the brief moment it had been open, Rad could hear footsteps, voices, and typewriters. Wherever Nimrod had his office, it was a busy workplace.

  "A capital idea, Mr Bradley," said Nimrod, clapping his hands again as he was fond of doing at regular intervals. Just like Carson. Rad actually found it easier to think of Nimrod as Carson, or maybe Carson's brother. The personality and manner were identical. Nimrod, captain of the Carson. Carson, captain of the Nimrod. After his personal journey back through difficult memories, he had appeared to regain his composure. Rad wondered how many times the agents had heard the story of Keats. They sure hadn't shown any interest on this occasion.

  Rad cleared his throat, looking forward to his drink. The air pulled through the mask was smelly but completely dry.

  "Its image, you say?" he asked.

  Nimrod nodded and said nothing.

  "An image of the city. New York City – this place – what? Reflected? Reflected through this Fissure thing. And the people in it. You, for example? Nimrod and Carson, two sides of the same coin."

  Another clap of the hands and the expansive smile. "We will make a private detective of you yet, Mr Bradley. An excellent deduction." He paused, and leaned in, voice low. "Or are you merely, how can I put it, 'playing' with me? You are accepting the facts somewhat easily. Have a care, Mr Bradley. This is no elaborate practical joke."

  Rad shook his head, exaggerating the otherwise natural movement so it would be clear with the rubber hanging off his face.

  "Hey, I've given up fighting." He waved a hand dismissively as he took a long breath. "Carson had a theory about doubles and the Empire State being some kind of Pocket. That runs with your tale. If my city is an image of your city, then this makes New York the Origin. That's the word Carson used."

  "Interesting nomenclature. Pocket is quite accurate. The only place you know of is the Empire State, because the Empire State exists in a pocket. There is nowhere els
e."

  Rad laughed. "Just the city and the fog. Explains why I could never figure out what was on the other side of the water."

  Nimrod hrmmed to himself, and there was a tap on the glass

  of the office door. Grieves was a grey shadow behind the bubbles, hunched over a tray. Nimrod glanced at Jones, who sighed, nodded at his boss, and opened the door with complete disinterest. The tray wobbling in Grieves's thin arms held four cups and a tall, narrow pot. Steam rose from the spout, and Rad wished he could smell what it was. He was still smarting from using up his coffee ration prematurely.

  "Thank-you, Mr Grieves," said Nimrod, as his minion set the tray down on the most stable stack of papers on his desk. Nimrod busied himself with the cups, and inclined his head towards the detective. "Help him with the mask, would you? I think we can afford you maybe ten minutes of the freshest air New York City has to offer!"