Time Salvager, page 13
The collie made a sharp turn toward Central. He leaped toward the cockpit and punched in several new commands.
“Why did you put Collie on manual?” Smitt asked. “Your AI band is offline. I can’t get a read on your life signs. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he thought back. “Will report in soon. Just, um … need to check on something.”
“All right, my friend. Whatever you say.” Smitt sounded anything but all right. “Listen, about that strange signature—”
“The comm band is out of levels as well,” James cut him off. “Going dark for a bit. Will report in soon.” It was a flimsy excuse. The comm band used so little levels he could have kept the link open. It was against protocol for any chronman to disengage from his handler while on assignment without extraordinary cause. Well, James had extraordinary cause, all right.
The collie had reached the eastern seaboard of the Northern American continent. Brown sloping oceans gave way to a gray barren landscape dotted by the devastation of centuries of war, waste, and environmental degradation. They were currently flying over a large radiation field of a wrecked city that had been razed by one of the dozen conflicts.
Elise’s eyes had widened like full moons as she stared at the devastation below with a hand over her mouth. She looked at him and pointed out the window. “Is that the Washington Monument we just passed? What happened?”
That name sounded familiar. James had taken extensive history courses while training to be an operative, but he had always been a mediocre student. It took him a few moments to recall his history and geography.
“Razed in the middle of the Third World War,” he said. “Both the Democratic Union and the Confederate United States surrendered the next year to the Tri-Axis Alliance of China, Pakistan, and Russia.”
“When did this war happen?” she asked.
James kept his face neutral as he spoke. “Two thousand ninety-eight, the year following the destruction of the Nutris Platform. It lasted nineteen years and cost over forty-three million lives. Global GDP—”
“Stop. Please,” Elise looked like she was in shock. She sat down on the bench and buried her head in her hands. “My family. My friends…”
James hesitated. Unsure exactly what to do, he reached a hand out and patted her on the back, stiffly. “By the time it happened, you were already dead.”
He thought the words would provide her some comfort. After all, it meant she didn’t have to live through all that suffering of the years that followed. Instead, she just sat there silently, numb, her arms cradling her knees as she huddled in the far corner of the bench.
Embarrassed and unsure how to handle her, James walked back to the console and checked the scanner. They’d be landing in Chicago in a matter of minutes. He’d have to hide her before heading back to ChronoCom. Maybe after he answered whatever questions Smitt and the monitors had, he could retrieve her. If Valta held up their side of the bargain, he could be in Europa in two days. He’d take Elise with him, of course. Maybe they could start a new life, assuming she even wanted to stay with him.
This was all assuming Elise’s health wasn’t an issue. If the Vallis Bouvard Disaster was true, people moving forward in time were doomed to become mentally and molecularly unstable. James never put much stock in that story, thinking it nothing more than scare tactics from the Academy, but it poked at the back of his mind. Well, he’d have to wait and see. For her own good, he might have to kill her after all.
The slum city of Chicago appeared on the horizon. First things first, he needed to find a safe place to hide Elise. He lowered the collie through clouds thick with smoke and soot and entered the habitat zone just under the skyways of moving vehicles. Collies were larger than regular low-altitude transports, and his entry beneath the sky lanes was bound to draw attention. They’d have to park the collie and proceed on foot. He maneuvered to the western town of Humboldt, an industrial center that processed the majority of the city’s waste, to park between several mammoth buildings with dozens of smokestacks rising high into the sky, each stack puffing out noxious plumes that spread out until they faded into the clouds.
Hopefully, the heavy smoke would hide his entry, and there would be fewer people around this more heavily polluted area. When the collie powered down, James went to the emergency storage locker and pulled out two respirators and chem suits, handing one to Elise.
“Put this on,” he instructed. The chem suit was overkill and could draw some attention, but it wasn’t unheard of. It would attract a lot less attention than the antique clothes she currently wore, which ironically looked much more futuristic than the clothing of his time. Not to mention the attention his being nearly naked would draw.
Elise, still in shock, took the gray rubber suit in her hand and stared dumbly at it. Then she frowned. “Why did you give this to me? Are we heading to town or are we growing Ebola cultures in a test lab?”
“Your body hasn’t been immunized or protected. The air will make you sick until you acclimate or we get you a band,” James said. “Also, you don’t exactly look like a local. We’ll need to hide you for a while until this problem gets sorted.”
Elise slipped into the oversize chem suit one leg at a time. She looked like a little girl wearing her father’s clothes. “What do you mean, get sorted? What problem are you talking about?”
“Come on. Let’s go,” he said, opening the hatch and ushering her out. “There are laws that prohibit bringing someone to the present day. I’ll explain later.”
He hurried away from the parked collie, pulling Elise along by the hand and walking down a narrow road with a dozen of the towering processing plants on either side. Elise stared at gray sky, visible through the crisscrossing gaps between the buildings. James kept a hand on her wrist and led her along. A few minutes later, they entered an underground tunnel to the mass transit, and were soon moving deeper into the Earth. Elise, her face covered by the respirator, looked around the train, packed with dirty and tired workers returning from the night shift.
She tugged on his arm. “Are you sure we’re in the future?”
“Do they have flying cars in your time?” he said.
“Well, they sure had this same sort of transit system,” she said. “I mean, how do you still use the same trains from four hundred years ago?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not from around here.”
“Then why are we here? Where are you from?”
James leaned in and lowered his voice. “Born on Mars colony.”
“Why are you whispering?” she asked.
“Because I don’t want anyone to try to mug us,” he said, all of a sudden remembering how naked he was without any of his bands.
The train stopped deep underground and James dragged her through the tunnels. They walked for the better part of twenty minutes, past the gray and brown sublevels until they reached the purples. Higher toward the surface, they reached a set of blue tunnels, where the decor was much cleaner than in the previous sections.
“Why would people want to rob you if they think you’re from Mars?” she asked.
“Because anyone with any amount of money would have left Earth by now.”
They continued down the blue tunnels before eventually arriving at a clean, dead-end street. James led Elise through a set of sliding double doors into a building that was a far cry from the decay they had had to wade through to get there.
The Heights was one of the better hotels in Chicago. It was usually reserved for visiting dignitaries and off-planet corporate executives. The cost of staying here per night was usually more than the employees who worked there made in a week. In the present day, few hotels in the solar system outside of Europa, Callisto, and Titan were considered finer.
Elise wrinkled her nose, clearly unimpressed. “What a dump.”
James checked them in to the penthouse and led her by the hand to the unit’s private elevator. A few seconds later, they saw daylight as the elevator rose past ground level to display fully the splendor and rot of the city. Elise’s eyes stayed glued to the window as she saw the advanced technology and the decay of the present side by side. Dozens of tall skyscrapers rose into the air, their tips lost in the low-lying gray smog clouds that blocked out the sun. More smokestacks rose from the ground, spewing massive columns of smoke that seemed to hold up the clouds.
Hundreds of small vehicles and transports zoomed around the tops of buildings, a swarm of metallic locusts coming in and out of the city over the skyway, which reached out as far as the eye could see. On the ground, those who couldn’t afford cars walked, bussed, or trained in huddled masses, like tiny ants.
Everywhere they looked, rust dominated the landscape, from the walls of the buildings to the frames of the cars to the railings of their elevator. Occasionally, a dim pale ray of light would sneak past the thick gray clouds, laying down an orange glaze across a surface, only to be swallowed up seconds later. In the far distance over Lake Michigan, an electric storm sparked and shot long streaks of lightning at the water, puncturing the haze, if only for a moment.
Elise look disgusted as she peered out the window. “Everything looks so washed out. What happened to this place?”
“Not just this place. Everywhere on Earth,” he said.
“You sure as Gaia lied about the present when we were underwater, James the time-traveling liar.”
The elevator dropped them off at the fifty-sixth level, just below the skyway. James led Elise to the suite. It was a spacious four-by-four-meter room with its own bathroom. A single clean bed occupied the center of the room, and a vid screen was mounted on the opposite wall. Being the most expensive unit available, one of its walls consisted entirely of windows, though the grime caked on several of the panels made it difficult to see outside. At this height, James could see only the brown and black wind as it swirled around the building.
He turned to her. “Listen, stay here. Do not leave the room. Do not answer the door. If the lobby calls up, tell them you’re indisposed and do not wish to be disturbed. This is important, understand?”
Elise gasped, momentary panic blanketing her face. “You’re leaving? Where are you going?”
“I have to report in. I’ll be back; I promise.”
“What am I supposed to do in the meanwhile?”
James kept the growing irritation rising up his gut in check. After all, she didn’t realize how serious a situation they were in right now. It was all he could do to hold it together and not outright panic. For a brief second, he considered surrendering her. He could tell them it was a mistake, a moment of weakness. Perhaps he could even sell the auditors the story that she clung on to him. There were dozens of scenarios that he could concoct to escape this dilemma. Then he thought about Sasha.
“Fucking abyss,” he muttered. He led Elise to the bed and sat her down. “There’s nothing to worry about. Get some rest. I’ll be back shortly.”
She nodded. “What if someone knocks? Room service or something?”
“Don’t answer it. If someone does try to come in, run. Hide. It’s important no one knows you’re here yet. Understand?” She nodded again.
James turned on the vid screen to a channel showing a game of Lok Gull from the Callisto League. That should keep her preoccupied. He got up and walked to the door, looking back at her once more while she sat on the bed, confused and still in a bit of shock. He didn’t blame her. She had just traveled from her utopian past to his dystopian present. There wasn’t a greater contrast between the two worlds than that. It was a lot for her to take in.
“I’ll be back shortly,” he repeated, hoping desperately that he was telling the truth and that he was not actually saying good-bye.
SIXTEEN
POWERS THAT BE
The powers that be were not happy when James, about three hours late, finally landed at Earth Central. James watched from the sky as he made his descent toward the landing pad. Smitt was there, flanked by four monitors. From fifty meters away, James could see the worried grimace on his friend’s face; he also noticed the fidgeting. The auditors must have really put the screws to him when James went so far off protocol.
James recited his prepared excuses. One of the requirements for being a chronman was thinking quickly on his feet and believing his own lies. During the Publicae Age in the mid-twenty-third century, neural bugs were commonplace and a chronman couldn’t even step foot in that period unless he was trained successfully to lie and think through the constant mental surveillance. Still, James had the feeling he had his work cut out for him.
His being gone nearly half a day, especially on Earth, of all places, had to have raised alarms. He wasn’t sure how closely he had been monitored, but the fact that they were waiting for him at the landing pad probably meant they had tracked him nearly every step of the way once he hit Chicago’s airspace.
James took out the bottle of whiskey he had purchased at the Heights and took a swig, spilling half of it over his collar. Well, he still smelled like sewer, so it might actually have been an improvement. No sooner had he landed and taken two steps out of the collie than all four monitors closed in around him. At least they had the decency not to aim their wrists at him. The fact that he wasn’t arrested on the spot was a good sign.
Levin, waiting at the bottom of the ramp with Smitt, somehow looked grim and pleased at the same time. No doubt he was reveling in whatever punishment he was about to dole out to James. The man was finally getting his revenge for that busted jaw. The fool must not know about the agreement with Valta. ChronoCom wouldn’t dare rescind a payout from an outside party for a promised contract. If word ever got out that ChronoCom had done such a thing, the chronmen tier would be in chaos. No, as long as they didn’t know about Elise, he was safe.
James walked up to Smitt and Levin, and jammed a thumb at one of the monitors. “Is this really necessary?”
“You went off mission, Chronman,” Levin said, “and went dark on your handler.”
James shrugged with forced casualness. “Comm band ran out of levels. It was a rough mission. Had to process a few things in my head. I got the job done; went to go celebrate. So what?” He wiggled the bottle in front of them. “Want some?”
Levin’s face reddened. “You were drinking on a job during a Tier-1 salvage?”
James held his hands up. “Relax. Calm down before you piss yourself. I didn’t start drinking until after the job was done.” He took another swig.
Levin didn’t see the humor in the situation. “Monitors, take his bands.”
James lifted his arms toward the guards as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Go ahead. They’re dry anyway.” He began to hum.
Levin scowled. “Take him to interrogation. I’ll debrief him personally.” He turned and stormed off.
James continued to hum and winked at the monitors playfully.
Smitt’s face bunched up in a scowl. “You seem to be in a cheery mood for once. I don’t like happy you. It feels unnatural. Does your netherstore have all the goods?”
James nodded. He watched as Smitt retrieved the netherstore container from within the collie and handed it off to a tech. The tech checked the content fields against the schematics, probably provided by Valta, and then nodded.
Good riddance, James thought. The instant ChronoCom took control of those items, James’s contract with Valta was fulfilled. All he had to do now was survive a little longer and he would soon be free of this nightmare. He could hide Elise for a few months until he finished his ChronoCom contract. Then, with the funds he had saved, he could buy Elise a new identity and they could live out the rest of their days in peace and luxury. James shook his head. How could he think that? He hardly knew her!
He and Smitt walked toward the interrogation room with the four monitors in tow. James could tell Smitt was struggling to suppress his anxiety. His friend wasn’t exactly fast on his feet; that was why he had never made tier at the Academy. Still, for him to be this on edge made James uneasy. They were almost at the interrogation room when James decided to probe his handler and see just how bad the situation was.
“What’s wrong, man?” he asked Smitt. “I just celebrated a little. Why is everyone so uptight?”
Smitt hesitated. “Monitors detected two signatures during your jump. They think…” He was so concerned he couldn’t finish the sentence, but the implication was clear.
James’s heart sank. If they were able to determine the jump signatures, then he was in trouble. He formulated a new plan. James gazed at his bare wrists. He might even have to fight his way out, though there were some things he needed to retrieve first—a fresh set of bands being foremost. Then, if he somehow escaped, he would need gear to stay alive out in Earth’s harsh wastelands. There was no better place to find all these items than here at Central.
James needed time to think. He stopped. “We need to make a quick change of plans.”
Smitt looked confused. “Our orders are to go directly to I-Three.”
James stepped close to his friend. “I don’t know about you, but I think it will do us all a lot of good if I took a shower first. Especially if we’re cozying up in an interrogation room for a few hours.” He leaned further forward.
Smitt must have finally smelled the bilge on James. He pulled back and scowled. “Shit, man, did you swim in the ocean? Fine, go take a bath first, but hurry.”
“Our orders were to escort him directly to I-Three, Handler,” one of the monitors said.
James gave the monitor a knowing look. “Come now, I just need ten minutes.”
Smitt waved them toward James’s quarters. “You guys aren’t going to be trapped in a room with him for abyss knows how long. You guys can stand guard outside. I’ll stay with him in his room.”
