The Fall of the Republic (The Chronoplane Wars Book 2)
Page 25
She leaned forward in the dimness and patted his shoulder, felt him shivering.
“Good night; sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
“But if they do,” he whispered, “take your shoe, and beat them till they’re black and blue.”
Back in the living room, Jaz saw her own expression mirrored in Annette’s: a kind of helpless anguish. What must the inside of his mind be like now? Jaz wondered. What has he been doing since the night of the tunnel?
In New York City, wet snow was falling out of a white sky. Wigner’s temporary office in the old UN buildings overlooked the East River; Brooklyn was lost in the snow. He turned away from his computer to watch the clustered snowflakes waver past his window. Each flake was a unique variation on a single hexagonal theme, a marvellous expression of natural beauty, a universe obedient to natural law, yet free to obey in its own way. When conditions allowed, each tiny flake might cling to another and another, until some new form emerged, less regular but more capable of resisting the pull of gravity, of rising again on the wind for a few more moments of independence before sinking at last into the dark waters of the harbour.
“Where are the snows of yesteryear? Right through the nearest I-Screen,” he murmured to himself. Then he turned to the flickerscreen, which had frozen to display a single page.
— deaths of Agency personnel appear to be linked to a forcible entry made via the Riverside Park Information Repository sometime not long before. The purpose of the killings is unclear. It may have been linked to the unexplained presence of Jonathan Clement and two trained interrogators in the Riverside Centre. A number of local assets appear to have been engaged in an operation that night, yet none are at present available for questioning.
Given the repository break-in and the failure of Riverside Centre to report any breach of security, it seems likely that the person or persons responsible for the killings were known Agency members, aware of the centre’s layout and purposes, and with an unknown motive for killing senior Agency personnel. Any other hypothesis strains credulity.
While this tragic event occurred before the foundation of AID, recruitment of many Agency personnel could mean that a person or persons connected with the killings is employed by AID or will be in future. If so, the consequences could be incalculable. It would be wise for AID to arrange deep interrogation of all former Agency personnel known to have been in the New York area at the time of the killings.
Wise indeed. Wigner had quickly traced the eight goons Clement had hired to pick up him and Pierce. Jerry had foolishly allowed two of them to live when he’d taken their car. Two had been killed in the lobby of the Riverside building when Pierce had tossed that grenade from the stairwell. The rest had been arrested and transported to Woodstock; Dr. Franklin had confused their memories of the night and of much else as well. They had then been sent to mental hospitals around the country, and there they would remain for the rest of their lives.
The industrious and thoughtful young fellow who’d written this memorandum was too prominent for such treatment. He could use some seasoning on one of the downtime worlds. Eden, in the twelfth century, was a fascinating place: crowded cities, violent natives, virulent diseases to which modem people were highly vulnerable. Inoculations did not always take. He would soon have more immediate concerns than some trivial episode from the unhappy last hours of the republic.
Wigner ordered the Polymath to produce Dr. Franklin’s latest report on Pierce. It was highly optimistic; Pierce was responding well to treatment. A new approach to memory blocks was working better than that used in Pierce’s first stay at Woodstock. In theory, Pierce could undergo any number of psychological traumas and be restored to cheerful functioning each time. Long-term consequences would, of course, be carefully monitored
“Of course,” murmured Wigner. The snow was falling faster now. Pierce would have to be put in the shadows for a time, somewhere away from attention. He’d said he wanted a downtime assignment; he would have it, but in a safer place than some medieval cesspool. Back farther than that, on some world thinly peopled yet as large as any other, a world where a man could safely lose himself for a while. He owed Jerry that much, and more.
Luvah: 22,249 B.c. High summer in the Caucasus, and the streams ran milky with rock flour from the rotting glaciers that mantled the mountains to the south. Insects buzzed over the dwarfed wildflowers and mossy stones, and towering cumulus reared into the sky. Off to the north a thunderstorm shadowed the hills, stabbing its own darkness with blades of lightning. But here in this clearing, palisaded by scrubby pines, the sun shone warmly.
Not far from a noisy creek stood a shelter of skins stretched over mammoth bones. Smoke rose from a fire just outside it; tending the fire was a lean boy with the first fuzz of adolescence on his cheeks. He wore a leather smock, elaborately decorated with discs of bone and antler, and his forehead had been ritually scarred in three parallel rows. No one else was in sight; the two older men in the family group had gone hunting and the women and younger children were off foraging for roots and herbs. On the boy’s right leg was a poorly healed scar running from thigh to calf; he needed a staff to pull himself to his feet.
“Very good,” murmured Pierce. He sat behind a clump of trees, watching the boy through binoculars. Beside him lay a backpack and a long-barrelled Mallory rifle.
“You ready for Testing?" a voice whispered in his ear. Pierce lifted his ringmike.
“All set. You can begin moving up.”
Pierce picked up the Mallory, checking to ensure that its impact setting was low. In the scope, the boy’s face was even closer than it had been in the binoculars: calm, dreamy, at peace. Pierce put the scope’s crosshairs on the boy’s belly and squeezed the trigger.
The boy jerked, almost losing his balance, and an instant later his yelp of surprise drifted across the clearing.
“Mamaa! Mamaa!” he called. Pierce found it still wonderful that the name of mother had endured for so many millennia, had survived the glaciers themselves. The boy sat down awkwardly, plucking away the flechette and then slumping onto his side.
“He’s down and ready for Testing,” Pierce reported.
“Copy. Be right there."
Pierce stood up, slipped his backpack strap over one shoulder, and walked slowly across the clearing. The boy lay sprawled awkwardly alongside the shelter; Pierce pulled him into a more comfortable position. A good-looking kid. If he was Trainable, he would Be uptime within a couple of days; they would probably have to operate on the leg to repair the damage. Then he’d undergo Training, and lend his talents to the saving of the human race from Doomsday and its own foolish habits. It would be rough on him for a while, adjusting to an utterly different world, and he would probably miss his family. That would pass. And if he was not Trainable, this would become only a strange memory, a visit from mysterious gods.
Drugged, the boy groaned. Pierce squatted beside him and brushed the boy’s dark hair away from his forehead, waved away the flies.
“It’s okay,” Pierce murmured, hearing the approaching footsteps of the Testing team. “It’s okay. We’ll take care of you, old son.”
As the team went to work with its electrodes and dials, Pierce walked off down the bank of the creek. The water rolled and roared, cold and clean and loud enough to compete with the thunder in the north, and gleaming in the high summer sun.
Pierce drew a deep breath. The air was sweet. He had never been happier in his life.
If you enjoyed The Fall of the Republic, we would be really grateful if you could leave a review on the Amazon page and Goodreads.
For weekly updates on our free and discounted eBooks sign up to our newsletter.
Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
.
ve.