Time Salvager, page 16
A few minutes after walking into the tunnel, her breathing became labored, reminding her of the first time she had gone scuba diving. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t take in a full breath. Thinking it was just the adrenaline of being chased, she continued on, moving through the blue tunnels until she turned right at one intersection and accidentally found herself on the surface, standing under a gray drab sky.
The sun’s rays just peeked through the thick, fast-moving clouds that sped across the horizon, Elise was struck by their hazy glow, as if a film of grease covered the atmosphere.
She glanced at her surroundings. It was more crowded up here than below, with lines of people moving in every direction as if on some mad scientist’s assembly line. Here and there, pockets of people—those not standing in lines—sat in huddled groups, looking on with resignation as those with places to go passed them by. Elise saw a child, barefoot and in rags, pull on his mother’s sleeves and giggle at her.
Elise brushed her fingers against the oddly tinted breeze that seemed to hold subtle but visible dimensions—she could actually see which direction the wind was blowing. Her breathing became worse and her senses began to wither under a barrage of attacks. Her head ached, her nose began to burn, and her eyes watered. When she tried to inhale, she felt as if she were sucking in a mouthful of smoke. She dropped to one knee and tried to steady herself. She felt as if she were drowning.
An old woman—a vendor of some sort carrying a tray of what looked like wilted grass—tapped her on the arm and began to speak, her voice muffled and distant. Elise cocked her head to one side and gestured one hand at her ear. The woman, looking irritated, spoke louder and even faster. Nothing she said made any sense. Elise pointed at both ears this time. She couldn’t make out anything the woman was saying. She shook her head and shrugged. Finally, as if fed up, the woman took a pinch of the grass and jammed it into Elise’s mouth.
“Eat this,” she said, or something along those lines.
Too surprised to protest, Elise obediently chewed. She didn’t usually chew whatever someone stuffed in her mouth, but there was too much going on right now for her to protest. Immediately, a wave of nausea passed over her and then everything went numb. First her tongue, then her sense of smell evaporated, and then any feeling she had from her hands down to her toes was gone. All her senses just seemed to dampen.
“You can breathe in again, off-worlder,” the old woman said, this time purposely speaking in a slow, drawn-out voice. “The cany weed blocks all the good stuff that you aliens aren’t used to.”
“Thanks,” Elise said, breathing in deeply. The air still burned the hairs on her nostril a bit but it wasn’t debilitating like it had been previously. She touched her face with her hand and couldn’t feel her fingers.
“Numbness takes getting used to,” the woman said. “It’s good grass, eh? Good cany weed.”
Elise nodded.
“Stuff will wear off before dark, girl. You’ll need more. You want?” The old woman held up the basket. “Works good.”
Elise shook her head. “I don’t have any…” What did they even use for money here? “I have no way to pay. I’m sorry.”
The old woman looked down at Elise in disgust and snorted. “Alien scum with fancy clothes and no scratch. And you take my sample. Fuck you, off-worlder shit!” For a second, the not-so-kindly-looking old woman looked like she was about to reach into Elise’s mouth and take back her cany weed sample. Instead, she turned and stormed off.
Elise watched as the woman disappeared into the mass of people, becoming just another stooped figure in an assembly line of hunched-over shadows. She took another breath and looked around. Whatever this weed was doing, it was working, though Elise wished she knew more about what was going on with her body.
Well, what was done was done. Elise picked herself up and explored the area, making sure to keep the blue tunnel exit within sight at all times. The last thing she needed was to get lost and not be able to find her way back to the Heights. Eventually, James would come back, right? He’d better. If she lost James in this strange world, she was as good as dead. For now, she just had to stay away long enough in the vicinity until those guys were gone.
Elise turned around in a slow circle and scanned her surroundings. She was standing in a vast plaza sandwiched in between gigantic buildings on three sides. Each of the buildings was easily a hundred stories tall, their tops lost in the low-hanging clouds. It was also scalding hot down here. At first Elise had thought that running from those strange men had made her feel flushed. It wasn’t until a few seconds later that she realized her face was already sunburned from the brief exposure to the elements, even though the sun was nowhere in sight, hidden by the buildings, smog, and weirdly colored winds.
The fourth side of the plaza was a ten-lane street that had vehicles buzzing by at different speeds. Each lane had a set speed attached to it, from the slowest human-drawn wagons to high-tech speedsters that passed by in a blur.
Using her forearm to protect her face from the sun, Elise explored the plaza, moving with the crowds and checking out the vendors one by one. She was surprised to find that nothing much had changed. In fact, most of the stuff being sold she could find back in the poorest countries of her time, except she was in a major metropolis. It was as if she had gone backward in time instead of forward. There were people selling vegetables, grain trinkets, small electronics, primitive-looking tools, and even some firearms. To her shock, she even found a stall where people were being sold.
Elise shook her head in disgust and continued on her way, turning down another street and seeing more of the same. This time, she entered what could only be called a beggars’ row. Here, hundreds of vagrants sat meekly together, desolate and dirty, begging for food or money. The smell overwhelmed the cany weed and made her queasy. Her work back in her time often took her to desolate places filled with poverty and filth, but this place, in the middle of a major city, was as bad as any she’d ever seen. She turned away and fled in the opposite direction, trying to get as far from the misery as possible. However, there was no escaping this world.
As she stumbled through the crowds, she happened upon the first clean, brightly lit place she’d seen so far. It looked like someone had parked a freshly washed spaceship in the middle of the city. Beams of white lights lined the perimeter of the building and somehow, the colored air wasn’t able to touch it. The shiny building called to her. Not able to look away, Elise wandered toward it like a fly lured toward a bright light. She didn’t seem to be the only one falling under this building’s trance. There was a circle of people standing around it as well, just staring at its glow. Once she got to the edge of the crowd, she was stopped by an armed guard ten meters from the building’s entrance.
“That’s far enough, Earthgrime,” a white-armored guard growled. He shoved her backward with one hand and, pointing his other hand at her, said, “Only corporate-class citizens allowed in this shopping district. The rest of you rabble stay where you belong.” At least that’s what she thought he said; she was only starting to get the hang of this dialect.
Elise looked over his shoulder and saw a steady stream of well-dressed people leaving and entering the building directly through flying transports so they wouldn’t have to mingle with the rabble. The guards around the building made sure that the people surrounding the glowing building did not get too close to the so-called corporate-class citizens.
Elise stayed and watched a while longer, staring almost wistfully as small groups of glamorous futuristic-looking shoppers entered and left. They looked like the people she had in mind when she thought of people from the future. Then finally, as if synchronously on cue, all the guards retreated into the building and then the entire thing took off.
“What in Gaia was that?” Elise asked.
“Damn corps still have to do business here on Earth, but there’s no city rich enough to take care of their needs. Mobile corp shopping facilities takes care of them until they can finish their business and get the hell off-planet.” The man standing next to her shook his head. “Way they keep us separated from them like animals…” He put his hands to his mouth and bellowed, “Hey, you all came from here too!”
Exhausted from the depressing outing, not to mention the tender feeling of the skin on her face from just the few minutes of exposure to the sun still hidden behind clouds, Elise decided to head back toward the hotel and see if James had returned. Maybe she could hide near the entrance and catch him before he went inside, or if he was there, he’d surely wait for her, right? What else could she do? She backtracked the way she had come, through the narrow bazaar back to the plaza, then found the blue tunnel that took her underground.
No sooner did she see the entrance of the Heights at the far end of the tunnel than two black-armored men wearing the cone-shaped helmets appeared on either side of her. One of them said something she couldn’t quite understand. Elise shook her head. The other one looked at his friend and grinned.
“Off-worlder, huh?” he said. “That chronman knows how to pick them.”
“ChronoCom monitors,” the first said. “Come with us.”
As if to show her how much choice she had to comply with their demand, he grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her with them. Elise was about to protest when she noticed the emblem on both their shoulders. It was the same emblem as the half-flaked-off one on the ship James flew. Maybe they were going to take her to him.
“Are you guys with Salman, I mean, James?” she asked.
“Quiet, whore,” the first one said.
Elise looked stunned. She heard those two words very clearly.
The grinning one leered at her and spoke to his friend as if she weren’t there. “Funniest-looking prostitute I’ve ever seen. Never heard of an off-worlder one. Look at her skin. Not spaceborn white but none of the surface blems. I wonder how much she costs.”
The first grunted. “Probably more than you can afford. Let’s hurry back. We’ve kept the auditor waiting long enough.”
“Hey, assholes,” Elise snapped, swinging her elbows. She was protesting more at being completely ignored and treated like an object than actually being called a whore. Who did these guys think they were! This was no way to—
The first conehead backhanded her across the face. Elise felt her legs buckle and she fell to her knees. “Stop struggling, whore,” was all she heard as they grabbed her elbows and carried her limp body along the ground.
It took a minute for the cobwebs in her head to clear. The conehead had busted open her lip, and the smack stung even more on her sunburned cheeks. James’s friends or no, she knew she had to escape these two. She had to think of something.
The two carried her all the way back to the plaza on the surface level. Whoever these guys were, the people in these crowded tunnels gave them a wide berth. The two didn’t even acknowledge the masses as they continued chatting with each other, once knocking down someone too slow to get out of their way.
Elise devised a plan to escape; it wasn’t much of one, but it was better than pretending to be unconscious and carried like a sack of potatoes. She stayed limp until they reached the far end of the plaza. Just as they were nearing the end of the crowds, Elise leaned in toward the guard on the left—the grinning conehead—and pushed into him as hard as she could. She wasn’t a very big person, and the guy probably only stumbled a couple of steps, but it was just enough to knock him off balance and into the crowds.
Grinning conehead had to let go of her to steady himself. As he did so, Elise swung her right arm up and smacked the right conehead in the face. He took her punch with a slight swivel of his chin, and then he looked down at her. She tried to knee him in the groin. Same effect. Were these guys robots?! Just then, the grinning conehead she pushed grabbed her hair, spun her around, and smacked her on the side of the head. The blow knocked her to the ground.
“Easy there,” the right conehead said, “we still need to interrogate her.”
Grinning conehead spat. “Bitch did that on purpose!”
Elise, facedown on the ground, realized that they weren’t holding on to her anymore. She got onto her hands and knees and scampered into the forest of legs. She heard a squawk from one of the two but she continued to crawl forward in desperation, around feet, under carts, pushing between bodies. She turned left and then right and continued to change directions until she wasn’t sure which direction she was going anymore. All she could hear was the yells from the two coneheads behind her as they barreled through the crowds looking for her.
Suddenly, she was out in the open and on her own. She got to her feet and took off, running as fast as she could to the edge of the plaza and up a flight of metal stairs, pushing and shoving as best she could, but she was still mostly at the mercy of the flow of the crowds. She had turned back once to see if they were in pursuit and was horrified to see that they were only a few steps behind her.
Elise turned right into a crowded intersection and continued to run, weaving left and right as her eyes scanned for any place to hide. She looked up and saw one of those bright clean spaceship stores landing in a clearing and made a beeline for it. She reached the opening where the ship, still fifty meters off the ground, was slowly descending.
Elise tore through the beams of white lights lining the perimeter, ignoring the cries of alarm from the white-clad guards who were keeping the crowds at bay. She gritted her teeth and hurtled under the landing ship. If she could reach the other side, maybe she could throw off her pursuers, since they’d have to go around the building. The sprint under the building looked like a hundred or so meters. As she ran under the ship, she was almost immediately struck by the heat from its thrusters. She staggered a few steps but continued on, willing herself to get across. The building continued to lower, increasing the temperature around her by the second. If she didn’t get out from under here soon, she was going to burn to a crisp.
She barely made it out from under the spaceship store when it landed on the ground with a thunderous boom. Exhausted, Elise fell to her knees, but she knew she had to push herself back to her feet. She had to find a place to hide. Unfortunately, her legs had had enough. They gave out. Elise fell again and this time, she couldn’t get up. She rolled onto her back, gasping for air. One of the coneheads, the grinning one, appeared next to her.
“Get up!” he snarled. He held up his foot as if he was going to stomp down on her face.
“Not the head, idiot,” the other conehead said.
A crowd had formed around them. The grinning conehead grunted, picked her up by the front of her shirt. Elise lashed out, clocking him on the side of the face. The grinning conehead snarled and punched her in the stomach. Elise gasped and almost fainted from the pain.
“That’s for pushing me,” he smirked. “And this is for trying to run away.”
She continued punching and clawing at him, trying desperately to squirm out of his grip. He held her shirt with one hand and struck her again with the other. She squeezed her eyes shut as the blows rained down on her face and body, her own struggle weakening. Then the blows suddenly stopped. She pried her eyes open and noticed that her attacker wasn’t even looking at her anymore; he was staring up into the sky. Elise followed his gaze and saw a familiar ship hovering above them.
“Chronman,” the other conehead said hastily. “We appreciate your assistance, but we have this under—”
The conehead was yanked into the air and tossed like a rag doll into the ogling crowd. Grinning conehead dropped her and screamed as he was pulled into the air as well. Then she watched in horror as his body slammed down into the ground with force. Then James dropped from the air next to her and offered her his hand. “I have you,” he said, pulling her close, “let’s get out of here.”
NINETEEN
THE HUNT
Levin Javier-Oberon was having an awful week. Today was memorable, at least. He stared at the Watcher’s Board in the hallway outside the office of Director Young Hobson-Luna, head of Planetary Control on Earth. The Watcher’s Board was nothing more than a giant framed screen filled with hundreds of small electronically inked names, updated once a day at zero hour. Completely low tech: cheap, easy, and symbolic. The board served only one purpose: to display the current roster count of ChronoCom operatives.
Levin glanced down at the numbers near the bottom: 112,311 support, 2,266 administrators, 42,398 engineers, 3,021 handlers. His eyes moved up the list: 42,953 monitors, 3,341 chronmen. Both numbers had dropped since yesterday. The monitors by twenty-six and the chronmen by two. Levin then looked up to the last list near the top: 224 auditors.
Only 224.
From the tens of thousands of initiates at the Academy every year to the foot soldier monitors to the chronmen tiers and finally to the auditor chains, there were only 224 human beings like him out of a population of twenty billion humans in this solar system.
Levin was an apex, part of a select elite cadre that zealously guarded the chronostream. Only some of the largest corporations could field better military units. Obtaining this status was so rare and prestigious that the name of every person who had ever held the auditor emblem was forever etched in ChronoCom lore. No other rank could boast that. Every significant auditor event was carefully documented in agency records. Because auditors mattered. Auditors were important.
Well, today was a significant day for sure. A chronman had broken a Time Law, and not just any Time Law, but the first law, a cardinal sin that had never been broken in their history. Chronman James Abyss-plagued Griffin-Mars had brought someone back from the past, and he had done it on Levin’s watch. On Levin’s planet of stewardship. To make matters worse, after he committed that heinous crime, he broke out of Central right under Levin’s nose and disappeared into abyss-knew-fucking-where.
