"CONTACT HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED," said the machine.
It had worked! The Chairman smiled and almost turned around to face the robot, then caught himself and thought better of it. He pushed his back against the robot again, reassured by its unyielding solidity.
"What did they say?"
A pause, then: "What do you require of them?"
"Peace," said the Chairman, excitement creeping into his voice. "An end to Wartime. If the war can end, I will be able to leave the city."
The robot paused, as if it was considering.
"The contact wishes peace and an end to Wartime."
The Chairman's eyes lit up. He clasped his hands together, rolling his fingers around his knuckles. It was perfect. With Wartime over, he'd be able to leave the Empire State, and return home. It made sense. He had been sent here for a purpose, a mission, and with that mission complete, he would be sent home.
Praise the Lord, amen. The Chairman unlocked his fingers and one hand found its way into a pocket. His fingers curled around a large, folded white cloth, something like a napkin, stuffed inside.
The Chairman thought again about the police. Outside the night was black and orange, the city spread out underneath his feet. There was movement, blimps gathering. Keeping their distance, but always moving, moving, moving, slowly like drowsy bumblebees on a cold morning. Spotlights played hesitantly across the Empire State Building; no sooner did a beam of bright light stab into the boardroom than it was snatched away again, like a cat pawing at cotton thread. The Chairman considered again how long it might be before they had the courage, or numbers, to storm the building and "rescue" him. They were probably working out what to do, knowing now that one machine had single-handedly killed an entire building full of people, and would have no trouble taking out a handful of police, no matter how heavily armed they were. They would have to wait for more robots and hope that no more would go rogue.
It didn't matter to the Chairman. Nothing mattered. Wartime was going to end, the Empire State could return to normal, and he could go home. He slid down the robot's back, and landed with a thud on the floor. The machine's legs were not as comfortable a support as its smooth back, but they were just as solid and unmoving.
"Tell me about the Enemy," he whispered. "Tell me about the war."
The robot whirred, as if accessing the memory required a mechanical action deep inside its armour. The whirring stopped, and then the static-laced man's voice spoke. Unlike the previous responses, this voice was emotive, more human, rising and falling in excitement as it told its story.
"We set sail in the summer of Eighteen. Oh, the crowds, so many people. I saw my family there, down at the docks. They were in the second row, in a crowd of, oh, thousands of people. Clarke and Zachary were laughing and shouting, and waving flags. Pa was smiling, but he was quiet-like, you know? And Ma. Ma was cryin'. Pa ignored her, didn't even have his arm around her shoulders. She just stood there and cried, and I don't think she was even looking at the fleet as we sailed away. Then she turned and pushed her way into the crowd, and I lost her. Pa didn't even move. But his smile, it wasn't real. He was putting it on. Perhaps he knew.
"My name is Rating six-three-eight-nine-oh-five, and I don't remember my family any more than that. I am a part of the ironclad crew, for the glory of the Empire State. We sailed to the Enemy to take the war to their door, yessir.
"We steamed away, all of the ships. It was a splendid sight, sir, a splendid sight. So many ships, as far back as you could see, as far in front as you could see. Why, you could have walked from the docks right across the water to the other side without getting wet. If there was another side."
The machine paused. The Chairman opened his eyes. He was surprised at the voice. This was the story of the man inside the shell, who was no longer a man, who had walked into the naval factories on his own two legs with a smile on his face, and left carried out on a rack, his batteries charging and a metal guard where his jaw used to be and a rubber pump where his heart used to be. The Chairman closed his eyes and wept.
"And then we hit the fog," the machine continued, the ghost of the sailor whispering in awe at the memory. "I imagine the fog was cold, sir, except I don't know, I don't feel the cold any more. We stood on deck, all hands. We were told that the battle would begin as soon as we passed through. None of us had any idea the Enemy was so close – right on the doorstep of the Empire State! They were there, had been there all the time, just a few miles on the other side of the fog. Just waiting for us to send in the fleet and fight.
"The fog took forever to get through. Hours, or days, or maybe it was months. I don't know. None of us did. Our internal chronometers went haywire, but the ship's clock hadn't moved hardly at all. When the fog began to clear the commander came around and manually adjusted our chronometers back to ship time.
"The first thing I saw was the light. It was orange, a glow, like flames hidden in smoke. And then as we got closer, the fog bank thinned, and lights shrank, focussing into points, like stars on the water. They were close too, so close.
"And then we were there, all at once. The fleet was steaming up a river, into a harbour. On our starboard side was a city, a huge floating city, with tall buildings and low buildings, and lights. A city on an island, docks and wharves pointing right at us. Our radios went wild, we all started chattering. We'd got lost in the fog, we'd somehow got turned around and steamed back home. We were looking at the Empire State.
"Then the commander gave an order for radio silence, and we all manned our battle stations. I was a marine, and had to get ready for a landing, but before I went below decks – to charge up in the battery room with the other soldiers – I stood by the deck rail and looked out at the Enemy. My logic gates flipped a few times, I can tell you. The commander gave orders to make ready the guns, but it didn't make no sense. We weren't looking at the Enemy, we were looking at home."
Rating 638905 stopped, and whirred again. The Chairman opened his eyes.
"Continue."
"I stood by the deck rail and looked out at the Enemy, but it wasn't the Enemy, it was home. It was the Empire State. It was night, and the lights were bright and the city had the mist, like always, but I could see the Empire State Building, and others, all familiar. And things were moving too, tiny shapes like ants, all moving and stopping at once, like someone was winding a clock with a broken spring that refused to catch. They were people, I suppose, or cars or something. Didn't make no sense. But it was my home, after all. It was the Empire State. Except... except the night was darker than I remembered, and the mist thicker. Our clocks had been reset, but I couldn't tell if it was late or early.
"The commander ordered us below, and then the deck guns started up. They were firing, round after round after round, the big guns designed to hit enemies broadside on the water.
"But they weren't aimed right. They were firing into the air. I looked up, and above us was another fleet. Lord above, ironclads like us, matched in number one for one. But these could fly, really fly, and they steamed through the air, their chimneys threading the orange fog with dirty grey and brown. They were upside down, the hulls above, the guns and decks hanging underneath. And as we fired up, so they fired down, with the same huge deck guns. Ma, what dream was this?
"Well, I didn't need to hear an order twice. I went below deck, and plugged in, and waited for the landing."
The Chairman bit into his fist. Afraid, overwhelmed with sorrow, the magnitude of the situation threatened to overwhelm him. His teeth drew blood from his knuckles; the copper taste snapped him out of his reverie and he withdrew his hand to look at the injury, then returned it to his mouth to soothe the bite with his tongue.
"The landing?" he asked as he sucked.
"The landing. The landing." The machine paused, as if the voice were a recording stuck in a loop. There was another whirr, and the Chairman felt the robot shift a little behind him. Then with a burst of static, the voice began again.
"The landin
g... there was no landing. Plugged into the battery room, we watched the fight through the eyes of the commander. For every shell of ours that found its mark up above, one of theirs hit an ironclad. We thought we were winning for a while, but really it was an even match. It was perfect, like we were fighting our own reflection, floating up there in the clouds."
The Chairman hissed.
"Your orders... What about your orders? If you didn't land, how did you make contact?"
The robot tilted its head in the glare of the latest spotlight, as if the human brain inside the shell, augmented with valve-powered electronics, was trying to make sense of what had happened.
"What about your orders?" the Chairman repeated.
"I didn't make contact... the Enemy made contact with me. Maybe that explained it, explained how they could match us shot-for-shot, boat-for-boat, so perfectly. The Enemy could patch into our radio, talk on our channels and listen to the ironclads whispering. There was a voice, speaking to me, telling me it had been ordered to contact me and offer a deal to end Wartime. It was like it was reading the orders out of my head. Contact was established and terms negotiated. Only..."
"Terms? Go on."
"Only there were no terms. Its orders were the same as my orders. Everything I said, it agreed with. The Enemy wants whatever we want. If we want an end to Wartime and the beginning of peace, then that's what they want."
The Chairman pulled his hand from his mouth, trailing a thick worm of saliva from his knuckles. It snapped and collapsed onto his chin, and hung there in the shadow behind the machine, until the Chairman licked his lips and wiped it away with his other hand. He nodded to himself, finally understanding, the robot's story confirming his own theories about the Empire State, the nature of the Pocket, and more importantly, the nature of the Enemy.
The machine's voice took on a more formal tone as it completed the report.
"Once contact was established and terms agreed, I fulfilled the second part of the Chairman's orders and commandeered ironclad twenty-seven fifty-nine and returned to the Empire State. Anchoring in the harbour, I disembarked to report to the Chairman of the City Commissioners of the Empire State. Forced entry was required." A whirr, and a click. "Report ends."
Rating 638905 fell silent and the Chairman drew his knees up to his chest, and rocked gently against the immovable metal legs behind him.
He was right. Carson's experiments at probing the fog had given the most outlandish, obviously incorrect, results. Something to do with the fog, some factor or property that made it impervious to analysis, twisting all data carried through and throwing it back as a garbled reflection.
Except it was not so. Carson's data was correct, and the Chairman's theory of the Pocket, and the Empire State, was correct.
There was nowhere else but the Empire State, and there was no Enemy.
Or rather... there was somewhere else. The Pocket hadn't been created by the fight between the Skyguard and the Science Pirate. They'd torn open the Fissure, and had created the Empire State, but the Pocket was a pre-existing space, an interstitial nothingness between the real universe and... and whatever else. Only it hadn't been empty. Like lights reflected on calm water, something was there. An after-image of the Origin, a semi-formed, reflected impression of New York. It must have been there from the beginning, from the birth of the Origin's universe, forged in the maelstrom of creation, a shadow, a blank silhouette of the "real" world.
But when the Fissure was opened by the Skyguard and the Science Pirate, it provided a direct connection, a conduit for data, for information. New York City was reflected and projected into the Pocket. An imperfect copy, not a parody or caricature, but a broken, incomplete model. The Empire State.
Only there had already been a reflection of New York in the Pocket. The amorphous, pale sketch, mirroring the Origin but not existing, as such. Nothing more than a shadow crossing the dimensions. The Empire State usurped it, pushed it out as it made space for itself.
Pushing it beyond the fog, beyond the impenetrable, impossible walls of the Pocket. As New York was reflected in the Empire State, so the Empire State was reflected in the Enemy. The Enemy was the Empire State, but another copy, another image, another generation down, the imperfections and incompleteness increased by an order of magnitude. Not so much a place, but a state of being. With no independent existence outside of the shadow of the Empire State, it merely mirrored its own origin, the raw data that had been the original shade of New York solidifying and taking form beyond the fog.
The Empire State had been fighting itself. Every ironclad manufactured in the naval dockyard was matched by its counterpart across the fog, only the imperfect reflection created great floating airships instead of water ships. No matter how many ironclads were built, no matter how many citizens of the Empire State were converted into armoured sailors, no matter how large the fleet, they were matched, one for one, by the Enemy. Equal and opposite. Total, perfect, mutual annihilation.
The Chairman wept. He was responsible. Pulled into the Pocket without warning, without choice, finding himself leading a version of New York that wasn't New York, locked in a forever war with the nation beyond the fog. But he didn't know. How could he? But God knew. God had shown him the way. He reached into his pocket and fingered the folded white cloth, not quite remembering what it was for.
And Carson, not a refugee from New York like him, but another reflection, a copy of Nimrod from the State Department. Someone with expertise, know-how.
Martial law had been Carson's idea. Prohibition had been Carson's idea. The ironclads and robots and blimps and airships were his design.
But the war was the Chairman's responsibility. Sending the fleet and thousands of men to extinction had been entirely his decision. And when Carson left and locked himself in his house on the hill, realising that the data from his fog probes were correct, the Chairman kept building the ironclads, sending the fleets.
How many deaths?
And so the Chairman wept. He pushed himself away from the robot and hugged his knees, rocking back and forth as he cried. Eyes screwed tight in misery, he failed to notice the party of four that stepped into the boardroom.
"Sonovabitch!"
The Chairman's head snapped around, Rex's exclamation echoing loudly around the marble-floored boardroom. Rad turned to him, furious, but Rex pushed him off and stepped forward.
"So that's where you've been hiding."
Rad laid a hand on Rex's shoulder. He grimaced at the touch. It might have been his imagination, but his fingertips seemed to numb, just a little, at the contact.
"That's the Chairman," said Rad. He nodded to the man sitting on the floor. "What's the matter? You recognise him?"
"You bet I do." Rex took another step forward and looked at the man, who glanced up and pulled his knees even tighter to his chest.
"He's the 'Missingest Man in New York'."
Rad looked at Grieves and Jones. Grieves shrugged but Jones raised his gun.
Rex stood over the Chairman, who flinched away from his look.
"Joseph Crater, Associate Judge of the New York Supreme Court," said Rex. "I got a bone to pick with you."
THIRTY-FIVE
KANE SLIPPED THE HELMET OFF and placed it carefully on an area of the control deck clear of levers. He sighed and waved a gloved hand over the panel.
"Any of this make sense to you?"
His companion paced the small bridge slowly, almost casually, dragging fingertips across the control panels that lined the walls. The metal-tipped gauntlets made a hollow, metallic sound like glass marbles rolling on pavement.
"Yes and no. Patience," said the Science Pirate.
Kane frowned, and turned back to the panel in front of him. Switches, levers, dials. That was fine, what he expected. But the language was odd. To be perfectly honest, he'd expected English. It had never occurred to him that it could be anything else, that there could be anything else. The letters were slanted, twisted, faded even. The whole
ship felt old, worn out. Yet it floated above the Empire State's perpetual cloud deck without so much as a sound.
"You'd better work this out, because if I start pressing buttons, who knows what'll happen."
The laugh that emanated from the front grille of the Science Pirate's helmet was a deep, hard basso, the pitch artificially lowered to frighten people, Kane suspected. It was the same with the Skyguard's helmet, as he had discovered, but he couldn't stop himself flinching as his companion spun around to face him.
The Pirate said, "You want to crash this thing, don't you?"
Kane's eyes widened. "Generally, yes," he answered, taking a step towards his mysterious ally. "But not just anywhere. And not with us on it, preferably."
That laugh again. Kane watched the Science Pirate's helmet bob up and down. The helmet was similar to that of the Skyguard, although more austere and compact, with fewer flourishes. He decided he liked the look of his helmet better.
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