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32: Disaster Earth 5000
We were about to clamber up into the module in which Tuttle had come uptime, when Sindi spotted something on the screen in the locomotive. "It looks like a man lying near the tracks," she said.
Tuttle frowned, climbed back down, and took a close look. "I think he is stirring."
I took a look, too. "Is that blood on his side?" As I looked, I watched the man try to roll from his back to his front several times. Each time, he fell back and lay helplessly resting for the next try. His garments had a dark stain over the ribs on the right.
"We should see if he needs help," Sindi said.
Tuttle and I both jumped at her. I said: "It could be a trick. This boulder attack couldn't have just happened by itself."
"He is right," Tuttle said. "The Time Trains normally work with the Membrane and other built-in factors to avoid situations like these. That boulder should have disintegrated as the train approached."
"You think someone on the inside helped these looters?" I asked.
Tuttle said: "I'm afraid it is the only logical explanation. Someone had to deactivate some systems for the train to malfunction like this."
Sindi pointed to the screen. "He is lying still now. Maybe he is bleeding to death."
"Let his people come get him," Tuttle said.
"You don't understand," I said. "She is a priestess. She has an obligation to intervene."
Sindi said to me: "And you, Brother? Do you not share the same Direction?"
I said: "The first Direction is to preserve one's life." I added: "I understand your noble motivation, but I adhere to the higher motivation which is to use our opportunity to save our Mars civilization."
Tuttle said: "You two have to be clear about something. I can have the system pull me like it did Taylor, and, as an emergency approved by me, your other woman friend. You can't have yourselves pulled because you are Level Twos. The Membrane is designed to block a pull order from you. What I am saying is that the Membrane will parse the situation if it goes wrong, and whisk me away, leaving you here. That is a pre-programmed logical event sequence. If you decide to go out and help this man, and it turns out to be a trap, you may never make it out of here alive. The Membrane will heal itself and fix everything, including getting this train repaired and running again, but in the meantime, you may perish from any number of causes."
Sindi looked incredulous. "You see the man bleeding to death. He is, what, 100 feet from us? We can patch him up and leave him for his people to collect him."
I could not deny her sense of morality, finally. "I will go in your place, Priestess. I would be ashamed to do otherwise. You will carry on our mission if I am lost."
Tuttle looked exasperated. "If you two have to go on babbling like this, I am stepping back and letting the Temporale take care of its business." He cracked the airlock between his module and the locomotive. The smell of burning instantly seeped in. Sindi climbed up the ladder and slipped out between the module and the locomotive. I was hard on her heels. I figured two were stronger and smarter than one, and I made save her if she got into trouble.
Things went wrong quickly. Sindi jumped down to the ballast gravel and ran lightly toward the injured man. I landed on the gravel a second later, with a gun in my hand that I had found in a wall niche with a picture of a gun on it. I looked left and right at a crouch, ready to duck and roll for cover while shooting.
I missed the treachery behind me as I watched the supposedly injured man pull a gun out from under his left side, away from us, and shoot first Sindi, and then me. His shot took Sindi in the head, and I shot him even as his second shot clipped my left outer thigh high up below the hip. In that same moment I watched a red and gray eruption from Sindi's head, and I would have cried out but there wasn't time. I shot him several times and he went limp in a mass of scorched entrails. Sindi lay tangled with him in a mass of twisted, severed body parts and scorched entrails.
"No," I sobbed as I fell to the ground, holding the burning pain on my thigh.
"Farr, drop the weapon or I'll kill you in the next second." So said a man's voice, and he had to repeat his words twice more, because I was stunned as I looked at the priestess' body. She had been a vibrant, living friend until a minute ago—now she was forever gone to the place of waiting for return to the Erdith paradise.
"Drop the weapon, you stupid bastard," the man's voice boomed. "I mean it."
I was still pondering the loss of my friend, this good woman with whom I had shared adventures and prayers. Slowly I laid the gun down and I kept staring at her. My thoughts were with her and I didn't think to wonder who might be uttering these harsh words.
"Farr. Turn around. Turn!"
Slowly, I turned and saw a group of men in black fatigues and helmets, the livery some regiments of the Olympus king's troops wore, with leather harness for carrying holsters, canteens, extra rounds, and the like. They aimed weapons at me. Standing on the locomotive were two persons—Tuttle, the traitor who had turned off the Time Train's defenses. There, also, was the man with the mask who had appeared at my trial following Timony's introduction to me on the turret staircase, which had started all this.
The man removed his mask, and I stood face to face with Duke Balesso.
"Eastgarden," he said to me, "you poor fool."
"You murdered a priestess," I said flatly.
"And I'll butcher a priest yet to taste," he added with a laugh.
I studied him as I would study some new species of creature. Here he was, full of himself, in command of some of the King's troops, and clearly on a trajectory of his own design, with which he appeared quite pleased. As his dozen soldiers kept careful aim on me, Balesso clambered down off the locomotive. Tuttle stood sullenly by—a changed man, I thought. I regarded him with moral pity, and he could not meet my gaze. I wondered what his price had been. I wondered, too, if the City of En knew it was being betrayed. It occurred to me that an unscrupulous person could gain hold of the right piece of information and threaten their very existence. It was the old saw about killing a butterfly in the age of dinosaurs and changing a future world.
Balesso strode closer. "Farr, I should shoot you now and be done with it, but I need to have the secret you found under the Holy City."
"If I had such a secret, I would die with it, so why don't you do your dirty work and get it over with."
"Oh no," he said comfortably, "I have nothing to get over with. I want to keep you as long as possible until your secret runs from you. What is your price, prayer-mumbler?"
"If I have a price, you are far too small to contain it."
"Bahh," he said, gesturing to a medic. "Fix him so he doesn't die of infection on us."
"You!" he said, pointing to Tuttle. "Take us back in time to the creation of that monstrosity in our city."
"I'll have to call for a new train on a rerouter."
"How long?"
"A day or two, subjective this point in time and space."
"Do it then."
I winced as a medic cut open my torn, scorched trouser leg and applied cleansing and cauterizing foam that smelled like sulfur from hell, and stung like coals. Two soldiers used hand-held vacuum and lavage devices to clean the debris, and then they applied a concoction of Mars' primitive but potent valley plants to seal the wound with a yellow, skin-like film. The stuff was rich in oxygen and would help my body regenerate itself.
The fog roiled ever thickly around the fields surrounding the raised track. The starless night was unchanging. It wasn't clear where, out in the fields, the Temporale cut off and the inhospitable nothing of the underverse abruptly started.
"I see movement," a soldier said. He pointed, and I saw it too. We all did. The Tribers, if that they were, had regained some of their courage or greed, and could be seen encircling us.
Balesso barked an order. "To the city! Let's shoot our way out if we must."
I had no idea where we really were, or which city he meant. I was able to hobble fairly well.
Tuttle climbed onto the locomotive. He waved to Balesso, who nodded curtly. Tuttle climbed into the brassy cylinder in which he'd arrived. In a minute or two, its engines began to whine and the dust around us was disturbed in faint circular ripples. The craft rose a short distance into the air. The encircling natives unloaded a few ineffective pot shots and Balesso's troops responded with a withering wall of covering fire that must have cut quite a few of the Tribers down.
The craft descended to just above the the ground beside the raised trackage, and slowly moved this way and that as if looking for something. When it picked a spot to stand still, an array of metal shafts like arms popped out all around. The ends of the shafts widened and flattened out to seek contact with each other, so that a kind of wheel resulted. The wheel began turning slowly, and inside of it, I saw a dim light grow out of the blackness. The light became brighter, until it assumed a cloudy light-gray color. Red lights began blinking on the craft's nose.
Balesso grabbed me by the shoulder and waved his arm. "Let's go through!"
He pulled me along. I went willingly—what choice did I have—but stumbled because my left leg was stiffening and every step became increasingly painful as I followed the others along a narrow path into the gray hole made by the pod. I entered a damp, chilly cloud and tripped over some loose rocks. I lay on wet concrete, whose slimy surface was alive with running water. There was an overwhelming thunder in the air, and the concrete shook with its power.
Behind us, the soldiers backed through the opening made by the craft. As soon as we were all through, the craft shut down and the tunnel disappeared. The craft appeared to be stuck in the middle of a stone wall. Its wan yellow glow provided the only lighting in this dim place. Tuttle clambered down from his hatch, and we followed Balesso toward a gradual lightening of this gloom. The sound of thundering and the shaking of the concrete grew more intense.
We were behind a waterfall caused by a large, broken drain pipe overhead. Millions of gallons of greenish water poured over the edge of the concrete deck and into the Thames below. I stood on the broken deck and looked up in amazement. Behind me were the ruins of the New City. Black, gaping, empty layers of concrete held up by huge pillars reached half a mile into the sky. Millions of people must have lived and worked, been born and died, in that hive. Now the concrete was black from thousands of years of exposure. I remembered that the alien Faraos had left after a destructive war around 3000, and then humans destroyed each other in a civil war whose apocalyptic blows included a vast electronic pulse that wiped out all electromagnetic data and shut down or wiped out most machines. A Professor Taylor, for example, would have been reduced instantly to a mass of sparking and smoldering scrap lying on the ground. But all the windows, all the books, all the skeletons and robots and cars, had long since disintegrated, rusted, blown away in the wind that incessantly battered London Hive from the southwest. The weather now seemed about what it had been in H.G. Wells' time, judging by the black storm clouds looming from the direction of what once had been Ireland and Wales.
"Stop gaping and move along," Balesso said.
Tuttle pointed to the ruins of Taylor's offices and laboratories across a strip of wild brush and trees that had once been a carefully tended park. "We'll wait in there. We have shelter and I can upcargo some supplies behind Taylor's back."
We moved in a loose military formation across this no-man's land. Tuttle, Balesso, and I walked together. Ahead of us moved six soldiers in a skirmish line and behind us straggled another six with just enough space apart to avoid getting mowed down all at once if attacked. Seeing my look, Balesso laughed. "Don't worry, priest, we have nothing to fear from guns or knives." He stopped and stubbed a rock-like object with his toe. The object came loose from the dark, gooey mud and rolled over. It was a skull that looked like it might be from an ape. "When the destruction came, animals got out of zoos. Their descendants got caught in some of the radiation and other effects and are now more like primitive men."
I felt a chill run through my spine. Worse was yet to come. That evening was a full moon. We were holed up in the ruins of Taylor's building. The second stories were all gone, but Taylor's apartment had been secured all around by City of En stealth technology and reinforced with steel and extra concrete to withstand bomb blasts. There was one heavy-duty glasslike window pane, several inches thick, and marred from years of grit blowing against it, where Taylor used to sit with his back to the wonderful view outside. Tuttle got a steel door open, which had long ago replaced the heavy wooden door, and we locked ourselves in. Tuttle did some Temporale magic, and a nylon satchel of food and water appeared on the bare concrete floor. Another satchel came with heating supplies and spare ammo. The place was very dry, though also dusty, and there was a faint musty fungus smell. Tuttle took the ammo from the second satchel, pulled a wire inside the satchel, and sealed the satchel back up. Sitting on the floor, it produced an aura of faintly glowing heat that took the chill and must out of the place. That night, as we all slept, I woke up when I heard grunting sounds. I opened my eyes and stared out at dark, furry face with huge teeth and fangs, a chimp-like creature. It must have smelled us or something for it made nervous motions ready for combat. It looked scared, and tired, as if it had been running from enemies or predators for hours, for days. Then it loped away into the brush. I knew the score when I saw a rucksack on its back. Not long afterward, as I sat awake looking out the window, I saw several upright apes filing across my view horizon. They passed by in a minute as they hunted and foraged in the moonlight, but I heard the chorus of sharp exhalations they made, a repetitive, low, sharp, ominous hunting-grunt in rhythm with each down-step of their right leg. Each carried a spear, and had a head the size of a large human's, but with a simian face and a tawny mane like a lion's. This was a creature the Earth had not seen before. Speaking as a member of a successful predatory race, my instinct told me these guys were very smart and deadly. I hoped the chimp thing escaped before they caught up with it.
The next morning, Balesso posted guards on the rooftops all around, and his soldiers were on high alert. Tuttle was opening a temporary Time Train stop nearby. This had been a major station added onto the London Transfer long after my visit. It had been one of those party stops for wild teenagers from Rio de Janeiro and Berlin and Mumbai, but now it was a wind-scoured hulk filled with bird droppings and no ceiling, overlooking the Thames from a great height. You could hear hundreds of birds making churring and clucking noises in their roosts directly below the deck.
Tuttle and Balesso and I sat or squatted in the grass waiting for the arrival. I noticed that Balesso always had at least two soldiers with their weapons trained on me, well out of my reach. I calculated and recalculated the steps for me to reach Balesso's throat with the small knife in the belt at my back, which they had missed in checking me over. Balesso must have calculated the same, because he stayed far enough from me that I would be mowed down before I could sprint to him with my knife held ahead of me. And Balesso, a tough bird himself who liked to micro-manage and do hands-on, hence his leadership in the current operation, carried a large, mean-looking black gun on his belt.
The transport carrying six more troops plus several of Balesso's civilian advisors materialized in a thick whirring sound that bent the vegetation back all around and startled dozens of pack birds from their roosts. Coldly amused at his power and the precision of his operations, Balesso proudly introduced us all around. I recall only his chief advisor, a balding, baby-faced monster of a person named Evkar Voreill. This person, who had long advocated such policies as cutting off the water and oxygen supplies of the low-canyon Tribers, was a clever and sociopathic schemer who added brains to Balesso's narcissistic greed for power. I speak, of course, from what I saw then and what I learned later. It didn't take long for my negative view of Balesso to be further darkened by the ruthless Voreill.
While Tuttle took command as pilot of the 50-seat passenger transport, and the now two dozen blue-uniformed troopers boarded with their gear, I hobbled to a tree to relieve myself. The usual two silent, grass-chewing men in blue hovered about forty feet behind me with their rifles aimed in my general direction. Voreill and Belasso stood near the edge of the deck, with the wind blowing in Belasso's hair. I overheard their conversation, which blew to my ears above the wind and above the low murmur of birds resting between their hunts in hidden places around me. I heard them mention my name, which is what got my attention. Voreill said: "Don't kill him. He's an asset. Keep him and we'll have a show trial." Balesso said something, nodding—because he tended to knuckle under his scheming advisor. Then Voreill said: "We'll take all those fools with their religion and their loyalty, and all the various crazies running around the landscape, and make them support your run for total power. You need every vote of support we can get. After you have it, the fools won't matter a bit, and they'll understand they were duped. It will be too late for them."
Before walking to the transport, I noticed a rucksack thrown in the brush. Scattered bones that were all that was left of the chimp-like creature that had come to the window last night. The lion-heads had made short shrift, killing and eating him on the spot where he'd fallen face down. His walking stick still lay inches from a skeletal hand, and the grasping hand still seemed to be reaching for its support.
"Hurry!" Belasso yelled from the door of the transport.
I said a fervent prayer over the creature, whom I saw somehow as a comrade. Bending down, I picked up his stick and apologized to him for taking it. I sensed somehow it was a good thing, because his life had ended here, yet something of him would survive to walk among the stars. Otherwise, all that he had been, and all that he had strived for, would be lost here, thrown aside. I did not stop to look if there were books, or artifacts, or just some talismans of his own faith in the rucksack.
"Dammit!" Belasso yelled.
I took my time walking to the transport as tall grass and weeds blew around my wounded leg. From the frustration in his voice, I knew he was not entirely the master of this situation. That gave me hope, because I knew he needed to keep me alive. And I wanted retribution for Sindi, and salvation for Mars. For myself, I just wanted to retreat someplace and be alone with my thoughts.
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