by Gary Gibson
The guard glanced at the rucksack, which made a distinctive clinking sound as she took it off. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Go right in.’
I wheeled both bicycles inside to the main stage while Rozalia carried the rucksack. I could hardly believe it had been this easy to get inside. I saw a small rotund man sitting smoking next to the control rig and guessed this must be Dom. He jumped slightly when he saw me enter beside Rozalia, and darted an accusing stare at her.
‘What the hell?’ he protested loudly. ‘You didn’t tell me you were bringing anyone else with you!’
‘Here,’ said Rozalia, dropping the rucksack at his feet. ‘Take a look and stop complaining.’
She stepped back and watched as Dom kneeled by the bag with a wary look on his face, unzipping it to reveal half a dozen bottles of whisky.
‘All yours,’ said Rozalia.
Dom glared up at her. ‘This had better not be any of that rotgut your friend Yuichi’s been brewing,’ he muttered.
‘It’s the real deal,’ Rozalia insisted. ‘Try some if you don’t believe me.’
‘Fine. I believe you,’ the technician muttered, and nodded towards the stage. ‘You got transport where you’re going?’
‘I checked the mission itinerary,’ said Rozalia. ‘There are vehicles over there we can use.’
Dom stepped towards the control rig and touched its keyboard. In response, a screen lit up. ‘I want to be clear about this,’ he said, still glowering. ‘You weren’t here. I don’t know anything about this.’
‘All clear,’ said Rozalia. ‘And thanks.’
‘Don’t thank me,’ he muttered. ‘Just get the hell up on the stage so we can get this over with.’
A few minutes later I found myself staring at the ruined towers of Sao Paolo, off in the distance beyond parkland half-gone to jungle. I had hoped never to see them again.
Closer to hand sat the jeep and EV truck I remembered from last time, along with the SUV Casey had driven. A drone sat on its charging mount next to the equipment tent, humming quietly.
My gaze drifted towards the distant Hives, and I almost had to remind myself I wasn’t trapped in one of my nightmares.
‘Hey,’ I said, nodding at the drone. ‘Won’t they pick us up driving into the city?’
Rozalia shook her head. ‘Only if there’s someone to watch the monitors,’ she said. ‘And, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re alone.’
‘Let’s get this over with, then,’ I said, heading for the SUV. Rozalia nodded, following in my wake. I found the map Casey had used to find his way along the city’s safe routes, still neatly folded on the dashboard. I checked the rear seat and saw a pair of rifles there, along with enough boxes of ammunition to stage a coup in a small African nation.
I hoped Rozalia wasn’t going to ask me if I’d spoken to Chloe yet. That was something I was a long way from being ready to talk about.
‘Here,’ I said, handing the map to Rozalia as she climbed into the front passenger seat next to me. ‘Since you helped map this place out, you can navigate for me while I drive.’
Every inch of the road into Sao Paolo was burned into my brain. I drove across the shallow waters beneath the shattered bridge, then back up the incline, before guiding the car onto the road that led deeper into the city. Low one-storey suburban homes gave way to broad avenues lined with shops and businesses, and I saw the remains of the financial district off in the distance, once-glittering towers reduced to shattered, partially dismantled stubs.
Rozalia told me where to turn, and which avenues to follow, and where to go in order to best reduce our chances of running into any bee-brains. But in truth, I hardly needed her help, and I soon found my way back to the elevated motorway spanning the Pinheiros, and the blockade through which Nadia had carefully navigated the other SUV a lifetime before.
The whole way I kept having flashbacks, like a particularly bad case of déjà vu, to my last visit. My blood near as damn curdled when I once again saw swarms of bee-brains, still dismantling the multistorey car park near the bridge. Most of the structure’s upper floors had already been demolished; I couldn’t imagine how the creatures managed to do so much, with nothing more than their bare hands and the crudest of tools – and neither did I want to know.
The building soon receded into the distance, and I banished it from my thoughts.
It wasn’t long before we were making our way down the same avenue near where Oskar and Nadia and I had been forced to abandon the other SUV. I kept leaning forward to glance up at the rooftops, in case I saw more improvised missiles ready to be dropped on our heads. Instead the streets around us seemed quiet and deserted, and yet I knew from bitter experience how deceptive appearances could be.
‘We’re nearly there,’ I said, nodding at the road ahead. ‘See that pile of rubble scattered across the avenue? That’s why we had to take a side route, to get past it.’
‘Take it easy,’ said Rozalia, looking at me with worry. ‘You’re shaking.’
‘Am I?’ I looked down at my hands where they gripped the wheel. They were, indeed, shaking, and quite badly too. ‘Well, hell,’ I said.
I turned into the same side street Nadia had taken us into, and saw the chunk of masonry that had landed right on top of us. I’d have recognized it anywhere, even without the presence of the other SUV, still lying tipped over nearby.
‘We’re here,’ I said, the words like dull thunder in my mind.
‘Good driving, Jerry.’ Rozalia pushed open the door on her side, reaching at the same time into her jacket pocket and extracting a slim leather case. ‘Come on. You can keep an eye out for trouble while I take a look at that car.’
I grabbed the two rifles out of the rear of the car and handed one to Rozalia. I scanned the streets and rooftops as I stepped out, but the only sound was that of the wind sighing between the buildings. Of course, after my last visit, I knew that didn’t mean a damn thing.
I glanced towards Rozalia, seeing her unzip the leather case before lifting out a glass vial and a long thin metal instrument that glittered in the midday sun.
‘What is that?’ I asked.
‘Sampling kit,’ she said, dropping down on one knee next to the toppled-over SUV. I watched as she peered closely first at the vehicle’s undercarriage, then at the tyres, wondering just what the hell she was looking for.
She reached out and touched something on the undercarriage with an extended finger, then brought it to her nose and sniffed. Next she took the metal instrument and started to scrape at something on the undercarriage. I moved a little closer, until I could see some sticky, mucus-like substance clinging to the metal instrument.
She got up again and handed me the vial. ‘Hold this,’ she said.
I took one last glance around, then shouldered my rifle and did as she asked. I watched as she pushed the metal tool inside the vial, depositing some of the sticky stuff inside before taking the vial back and carefully sealing it.
‘So what is that stuff you found?’
‘You remember we talked about how the bee-brains largely operate on the basis of scent? Well,’ she said, holding the vial up, ‘if this is what I think it is, it just might be the proof we need that Nadia’s death was no accident.’
I was still trying to process what she had just told me as we got back in the SUV. ‘How sure of this are you?’ I asked her. ‘I mean, if this is true . . .’
‘I’m far from sure,’ she said.
‘You think someone deliberately put that stuff on our SUV?’
She glanced sideways at me. ‘In your official statement, you said you ran into a night patrol. Correct?’
‘Sure.’ I nodded. ‘But that was after the SUV got totalled.’
‘The night patrols are responsible for laying the scent-routes through the city.’ She showed me the vial again. ‘They do it by upchucking this stuff at different points, and the bee-brains follow after the scent of it like good little soldier ants.’
She chuckled when she
saw me grimace. ‘See,’ she continued, ‘in some ways the night patrols are the brains of the operation. If I’m right,’ she said, before tucking the vial back inside its leather case, ‘this stuff originated with a rival Hive, most likely the one that’s on the other side of the city.’
‘How the hell did you manage to figure all this out?’ I asked.
‘Deduction, my dear Watson,’ she replied. ‘I spent a lot of time on this alternate studying the bee-brains, and there had to be some reason they went so far out of their way to attack you the way they did. And this was the only logical answer.’
I reached for the ignition and got the engine started. ‘If someone really did sabotage our vehicle,’ I said, ‘they couldn’t have known we’d run into a night patrol. Is it possible they weren’t necessarily trying to get us killed?’
She laughed scornfully. ‘Are you kidding? They put you in a situation where you were guaranteed to come under attack by thousands of bee-brains the moment they caught the scent from your car – and, rest assured, they’d have had a very good idea just what your chances of survival were. I call that premeditated murder.’
‘So what do we do now?’ I asked, sitting and listening to the engine rumble. ‘It sounds to me like you’ve got rock-solid evidence. Are you going to take it to Bramnik?’
She hesitated as I rolled the SUV back from the wreck of the other vehicle. ‘Bramnik is absent from the island. Again.’
‘Maybe Kip Mayer . . . ?’
‘I need to run some tests first,’ she said, her jaws clenched.
I couldn’t understand her reticence. ‘Surely you just found definitive evidence someone sabotaged our mission?’
‘Not necessarily.’
I looked sideways at her, hardly believing what she had said. ‘Oh, come on . . .’
‘It’s a question of knowing who to trust,’ she said.
‘So that’s it?’ I snapped. ‘You dragged me all the way back to this shitty, dreadful place, and now you’re just going to sit on what you found?’
‘What we need to do,’ she said, ‘is bide our time. We need to build a strong case. That’s what Nadia would have said. She understood these things. For all I know, if we go running to Bramnik or anyone else, they’ll suggest we planted the scent-marker. Or maybe they’ll make us quietly disappear, or set some other act of sabotage to disguise our sudden and unexpected deaths. Until we’ve got a better idea just what Nadia and your predecessor were on to, we watch, and we wait.’
‘And if we don’t ever find out?’ I asked.
‘You’ve got to have faith, Jerry,’ she said, her voice tight, ‘and faith is all I have left.’
We made it there and back with surprising speed, no more than a couple of hours either way. It came to me that, if not for the apparently engineered incident that cost Nadia her life, the mission with her and Oskar would probably have been entirely uneventful.
‘Thank Christ you’re done,’ said Dom the rig technician, when we finally materialized back on the main hangar stage. ‘Now get the hell out of here before anyone sees you.’
I stepped back outside, Rozalia by my side, and saw it was getting close to dawn. The same guard as before nodded to us with clear relief.
Rozalia turned and called back in to Dom. ‘Thanks again.’
‘This is a one-time deal,’ he shouted back, jabbing a finger at the both of us. ‘We clear on that? Never again.’
She nodded. ‘As daylight.’
Twenty minutes later we had cycled back to my front door. Rozalia dismounted, then pulled me into a hug.
‘Damn,’ she said, regarding me with apparent affection. ‘You know how easy it is to get the two of you confused? You and the other Jerry, that is.’
I didn’t know what to say. ‘I should get at least a couple of hours’ sleep before we head back out,’ I mumbled. ‘Got that mission later, remember?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll see you and the others then.’
She got on her bicycle and set off, and I realized she’d forgotten about Nadia’s bike. I wheeled it inside and glanced at my predecessor’s diary, still sitting where I had left it on my living-room table, as yet untouched.
Something still held me back from opening it. Every time I thought about reading the rest of its contents, I found myself torn between unquenchable curiosity and overwhelming terror. I knew I would read it – eventually – but not yet.
Not yet. But eventually. That was one promise to myself I wasn’t going to break.
Later that morning, I was back at the hangar, and considerably the worse for wear for lack of sleep. Dom was gone, replaced by another technician, and some other soldier had been posted to stand guard next to the hangar entrance.
‘Hey,’ Yuichi called to me from on top of a stage, tapping at his wrist when he saw me enter. ‘You’re making a habit of being late. The others already transferred across – we’ve been waiting for you.’
I yawned and made a dismissive gesture. ‘Frankly, fuck them. All I care about is that wherever we’re going, there’s coffee.’
‘Hah.’ Yuichi shook his head. ‘Unlikely.’
This time, we were tourist herding.
Not that Schultner had used that term during my most recent briefing, after apologizing for the screw-up that sent me unprepared into a new alternate. Instead, he said, we would be escorting a ‘special investigations and assessment team’ to an alternate in the hours immediately before it suffered an extinction event. I was also warned not to interact with the members of this team unless addressed directly by them.
When I next spoke to Yuichi and relayed what Schultner had said, he laughed and told me ‘tourist herding’ was a lot closer to the mark. In his experience, these ‘special investigations and assessment teams’ always turned out to be gaggles of VIPs from the Authority’s home alternate, on what was essentially a sightseeing trip. Or touring the apocalypse, he said with a sneer.
I walked up the ramp to join Yuichi on the stage. Below, the rig tech punched at his keyboard until the air began to shimmer and twist around us.
‘I can’t imagine anyone wanting to visit some of these places for kicks,’ I said, as the shimmer grew.
‘Hey,’ Yuichi shouted down at the rig tech just before the hangar faded from view. ‘Which part of this alternate are we going, exactly?’
‘Philadelphia,’ the man shouted back, and then he was gone, in a blizzard of energy.
The bare walls of a deserted office shimmered into existence around us. Two Authority troopers were waiting just beyond the circle of field-pillars, along with someone manning a portable control rig. Exposed wiring stuck out of the walls or hung down from the ceiling, and the floor beneath our feet consisted of nothing more than bare dusty concrete. I had a feeling that the building either wasn’t finished or construction had been abandoned.
Judging by what I could see of the neighbouring buildings visible through the windows all around us, we were on the upper floors of a skyscraper. I stepped towards a window and peered through the glass at the streets far below. I could see people – real, living people – in their hundreds. The sight filled me with a kind of emptiness that was almost too much to bear.
The two soldiers quickly guided me and Yuichi up a stairwell to the building’s rooftop. I looked around, seeing Philadelphia’s rooftops spread out in every direction. Another half dozen troopers stood at various points around the roof, studying the surrounding environment through long-range sights fixed to their rifles.
A loose crowd of people stood in the centre of the rooftop, none of whom I had ever seen before. Their attention was fixed on Kip Mayer, who was talking animatedly to them. I looked around until I spotted Casey, Winifred and Haden, standing away from everyone else.
I took another look at the people gathered around Kip Mayer. They looked entirely ordinary. The majority were men in their middle age, and all wore expensive-looking suits that nonetheless had that curiously old-fashioned look that marked them as citizens of the Auth
ority. Some had the steel-grey hair and confident, upright posture I associated with seasoned politicians, or the CEOs of multinational corporations.
A number of them, I noticed, were accompanied by women – either their wives or their mistresses, judging by how they were dressed, and the way they clung to the arms of the men. But what really took me aback was that there was also a small number of children among the group – some of them quite young. They were all well turned out in what looked to me like their Sunday best.
Yuichi had been right. They looked like nothing so much as tourists, albeit expensively and conservatively dressed ones.
I looked around, wondering at the nature of the apocalypse they had come to witness. I glanced up at the sky, and got my answer.
‘What is that, an asteroid?’ I asked Yuichi, pointing upwards, and he nodded.
I looked back at Mayer’s audience. What kind of damn fools, I wondered, would actually bring their children to a place such as this? Or did the Authority have a surfeit of rich and jaded billionaires who thought nothing of witnessing the deaths of billions just for kicks?
‘How long?’ I asked. The asteroid was clearly visible, even with the naked eye, as a dark smudge near the noonday sun.
He shook his head. ‘Not long. This is going to be short, sharp and sweet. It’s due for impact any minute now.’
I felt my skin prickle, and wondered how Mayer’s audience would feel if something went wrong with the transfer stage, leaving us stranded here.
‘Just how big is it?’
‘Twenty-five kilometres along its widest axis,’ Yuichi replied. ‘A real planet-buster.’
I shook my head, feeling fatigued from death and disasters, then followed Yuichi across the rooftop to join our fellow Pathfinders. I felt tense, wound-up; I’d hardly seen most of the others since storming off in a jeep just days before, but I needn’t have worried. They all acted like nothing at all had happened – and for that I was grateful.
I nodded to them, exchanging greetings, then discreetly gestured towards the tourists. ‘Anybody have any idea exactly who they are?’
