by J D Cortese
“So, where are we?”
He wanted to tell her more about himself but an oppressive sensation, the awareness of being watched from above, stopped him. It didn't help to know that this had been true for everybody even centuries back. Now it wasn't just the humans—he would be watched, like all the others.
“This is my apartment,” she said, signaling an elegant building with a wrought-iron and glass double door. “We can stay here, until we can put together a search party for Tysa.”
Agdinar just let her guide him inside.
Chapter 7
The strangeness of his situation hit Agdinar hard as soon as he entered the building with Sarinda. He really was there, in a past that was his present but was not his time. His people had traveled back in time, but he wasn't knowledgeable—nor did he have any memories—of the Watchers’ world in the future.
And that cave, with those wooden desks, tables, and the colorful Persian rug extending to the elevators; he'd never seen a real building other than as images in a weightless screen, ethereal as one of their AIs.
This was all real, but his mind was refusing to believe it. He felt as if in a dream, and a little nauseated; his stomach rumbled, whether from dizziness or a hint of hunger. The thought of eating human food, made from dead animals or plants, both sickened and frightened him.
“Are you coming?” Sarinda was standing next to the closest elevator's door.
Adding to the disgust and fear that overtook him, a new wave of unease made him shiver. It was ridiculous to fear a mechanical lift box, but the scary experience of his last transition down from the Towers was still fresh. Dhern's comment about some of his hair having been bleached heightened his worry.
When the old elevator shook before starting the climb, his entire body shuddered as if he were coming out from icy water.
He kept his eyes on Sarinda all the way to the penthouse.
* * *
The building was more than a century old, and even the top floor looked as barren and unremarkable as a hotel's. There were two doors in the hallway, and Sarinda already stood next to one of them, her hands searching intently in her jacket's pockets.
He approached her, oddly excited about watching how a metallic key would open a door. But, as he got closer, something struck him as peculiar: the door was not totally straight, and it curved inward.
“Sarinda, stop!”
“What?”
Agdinar was surprised at his own logic. “Someone could be inside.”
“Have you been watching old police shows? Look, this isn't...”
As soon as she touched the door, it started to open and revealed a shredded wood frame. Agdinar put himself in front of Sarinda, conscious of the protection offered by his suit.
Nobody was inside, the apartment completely dark and silent. As he took his first step into the shadows, Agdinar received a stream of information—the place had been ransacked by three men, and the pattern of objects strewn around suggested they'd been searching for something. And likely for the someone who was near him.
Distracted, Agdinar waved to the slab curtains and they started to raise. All of them.
Sarinda grabbed his arm, tightly enough for him to flinch. “Was it you?”
Night vision allowed Agdinar to see a lot more than Sarinda could, and what he saw was disheartening.
An armchair was upturned, and its fillings spread all over the window side of the living room, as if the thieves had engaged in a pillow fight. The dinner table had been pushed all the way toward the kitchen's island, and deep scratches on the dark wood floor suggested the dragging had been forceful and swift. Those drag patterns, and a few broken slabs here and there, pointed to people looking for something hidden. And whatever it was, they had thought it could have been stored in a wall safe, as not a single painting or framed photograph remained on the walls.
Sarinda seemed oblivious to the mess and, after turning on a lamp, she started to collect objects from the floor—shelf decorations, some of the photographs—while ignoring the broken ceramic vases and smashed glass on most of the picture frames. The thieves had walked carelessly all over the room.
Agdinar's personal viewers elaborated graphically on the possibility that there had been three invaders, two of them wearing boots rather than shoes. This suggested they had been Hawks. And, if the Hawks had been after Sarinda and Tysa both at the park and the apartment, she might still be in considerable danger.
“Tysa, does she live with you?”
“She stays with me, sometimes.”
“Regularly?”
“Why do you care?” Sarinda was staring at him, and hers was a stern stare, even in the shadowy lighting.
“Just thinking. I worry that whoever was here was trying to get one of you.”
Sarinda suddenly stopped, while holding a long frame with a beautiful picture of a dune crossed by human footsteps. “Do you think they are after me?”
“It's possible. You are the daughter of a politician.”
“Don't think so. My father is well-liked.”
“By the Hawks?”
“All right, you have a point. Well, they didn't take me. And we still need to find Tysa, don’t we?”
He was going to make another excuse when a mind-alarm hit him—causing another sudden headache.
Someone was outside, on the apartment’s back terrace.
Agdinar's right-side viewer showed a large man near the windowpanes, carrying a hand weapon and trying to move slowly and to their right, attempting to enter back into the apartment by the kitchen's outside door. Unfortunately for them, the curtain's movement had revealed their presence in the living room.
He forgot all restraint and advanced to the glass sliding door. He didn't make it.
“Stop, both of you.” The intruder, stout and bearded, was now standing inside. He had his gun pointed past Agdinar and to Sarinda's head.
Agdinar could not read the man’s mind—the worry about Sarinda had paralyzed him, and he couldn't will his AIs to act.
The intruder took a couple of steps toward them, aiming his gun between Sarinda's eyes. “Don't worry,” he said, “we will treat you well.”
“Leave my apartment,” said Sarinda, and Agdinar had to grab her jacket to stop her from moving any closer to the gunman.
“I suggest you do what she says,” said Agdinar, while moving left to slowly cover Sarinda's flank. But the man corrected his aim again to her head.
Later, Agdinar would think that what he did next was unconscionable. But he felt that protecting a human life was more important than his secret. The Managers—and especially the Overseer—were ruthless about following the Watchers’ rules, but he was not. He cared about present-day humans and had not seen the future the Watchers seemed to love so much. His peers talked a lot about the progress to a civilization he didn't know or care for, and not enough about the costs in past-human lives.
Also, he cared a lot about the girl in his present. A surprising lot.
Agdinar didn't yet know the meaning attached to those words, but humans would say he was developing feelings for the stubborn and dazzlingly beautiful girl.
And so he pushed forward, using both hands. He couldn't use the energy bursts in a confined room, but he convinced his suit’s strength servo-control that he was going to push a heavy car, which was stuck in the middle of the room.
The servo acted. The man and his gun crossed the window, exploding it in a million shards; he skittered on the patio, losing the gun and disappearing over the balcony’s metal railing. The blast pulverized the entire panel of windows with a crashing sound.
They had both fallen—Agdinar forward, taken by the momentum of his motion, and Sarinda backwards, blown by the percussive wave.
She spoke first. “What happened? I don't understand.”
She didn't get her answer. Agdinar was already heading outside, to check where the gunman had landed.
Standing by the balcony’s edge, he looked down and saw an em
pty set of stairs, connecting all the apartments on the building’s back wall and leading to a large inner square with plenty of trees. All the buildings in that block confronted the greenery with the side opposite to the streets. Agdinar couldn't see anyone down there—no splattered body or large guy limping away.
Dhern was making all kinds of suggestions over his mind-comm: that the thieves were hired professionals, and that their motive for searching Sarinda's apartment might have been political.
Sarinda startled him when she spoke next to his ear. “It was you, wasn't it? Who are you?”
“I'm a kid who watches the city.”
“But what you did, it’s impossible. There are no weapons that can do that, push away a man like that, so fast.”
“There are where I came from.”
She expected him to say something more and didn't understand how many of her questions were being answered when he pointed up.
Chapter 8
It took a while for Sarinda to muster the energy to speak again. “How did you do that?”
“Sarinda...”
“Who are you?”
Before answering, Agdinar considered his unplanned rescue and how it had changed Sarinda’s future. They were both now linked, and he felt responsible for her. “As I said, I am Agdinar and I'm visiting New York.”
“I asked if you were military. You lied to me.”
“No, I didn't. I'm not with the military. I am on a mission of observation.”
“Sure, a mission of observation. Can't you stop with the lies? You were not observing that guy; you almost killed him.”
“I was worried about you. And it is true, I am here on an observation trek.”
“Now it's a trek. From where? You are not with the Asian Group, I hope.”
“Not from where,” he said, and sighed. “It is from when.”
“When?”
“From the future. In fifty—”
“Are you expecting me to believe you came from fifty years in the future?”
“No, not fifty years. Fifty centuries.” Agdinar had spoken knowing full well this would stop Sarinda, at least for a while. “We have been here for a long time,” he added.
“This is insanity. A joke. And where are your people? Did you bring a ship that cruises over us, watching?”
“Close, but not exactly. We brought our cities. There.”
Sarinda's past world and all she'd called reality came to an end in that instant. The walls of the apartment and everything inside disappeared, and they seemingly stood in an extension of the penthouse's balcony. They were alone, outside, in the yellow clarity of the sunrise.
If that would have been all, Sarinda could have thought it was an illusion. But, as she followed Agdinar's finger to where its tip was pointing, any hopes of trickery vanished.
It couldn't have been a hallucination, because no human brain would construct a view like that.
There was a network of channels of light, floating high up in the sky. Many were connected to immense orange funnels—buildings or ships of some kind, with so many floors and appendages they were each the size of city blocks—and these irregular edifices sent out countless tendrils that attached them to blindingly bright pods. It was impossible to see how big those shiny structures were, but there were dozens, or maybe hundreds of them, floating in formation over New York. Each looked like a donut that had been fashioned out of crystal, each one shimmered, forming a lattice of brilliant stars over the sky.
Sarinda raised her hands, eyes opened by fear, as if trying to touch the vision.
“Sarinda, are you all right?”
Sarinda looked around, dazed. The holographic projection of Tower City was gone, and they were again in the apartment, with everything in the same disorder it had been a minute earlier, including the freezing draft coming from the broken windows.
“That's where I live,” Agdinar said, taking a step toward her.
Sarinda moved back, stiffening. “Those buildings up there,” she said. “It's impossible. A nightmare.”
“I'm sorry, Sarinda. I didn't want to intervene, or to take you into my world.”
“You didn't want to intervene—haven't you done plenty already? And now...”
...He did intervene to save you. Or you would be dead.
“Don't talk to me like this. Speak with your mouth.”
“That wasn't me.”
...He's right.
“And who's this?”
...I am the Indian guy.
“He's my friend, Dhern.”
“Your invisible friend.”
...Well, yes. I am invisible, like most of the things he has shown you.
“You can think of him as a computer,” Agdinar said, trying to smile. “Or a network assistant, like the one in your wristband.”
“An assistant? This thing is inside my mind.”
...I was starting to like you, young lady, but I'm not a thing. I carry ten times the knowledge of all of you and your boxy computers.
“This is...it can't be possible,” she said.
“I know it seems so. But remember, five thousand years.”
“Five thousand years.”
...Finally, you two agree on something. May we go back to search for her friend?
“You know about Tysa?”
...I know about lots of things, including the small fact I'd mentioned, that you owe this impulsive fellow your life.
Sarinda looked at Agdinar, with both understanding and incomprehension. She was shaken but spoke with anger to the uninvited spirit that had been moving within her. “And how would you know that?”
“He has what you'd call a crystal ball.”
...A big, purple crystal ball.
“Please,” Agdinar said, again trying to stop the two fiery wits from arguing. “It's time we talk about what to do. As your contemporaries would say, we have now all the cards on the table.”
“You're right,” she said, and unexpectedly held Agdinar's arm. “We need to talk.”
...Finally.
“You, shut up,” she said.
“You heard her, be quiet.”
...All right. I'll be quiet as the night.
Chapter 9
Back in the streets, it would seem they had been away for days, not just a few hours. There was some snow on the sidewalks, and the way it bunched over the asphalt suggested there had been quite a frozen mix falling all over the city.
They were now taking a path downtown that skirted West Manhattan. Sarinda didn't want to walk straight to Central Park, even in the daytime, as there were still too many patrols and spies from the Hawks. Agdinar couldn’t argue with that.
Agdinar tried to restart a conversation. “How do you know Tysa?”
“She has been my friend for many years. I attended high school in New Jersey, before my Dad got involved in politics. Tysa was my only friend—I was such a loner.” Sarinda stopped, pointing to her dark clothing as if to prove the point. She waited for Agdinar to say something, and then continued. “When we decided to move to New York, she came with me, at a huge personal cost. She had no family left. They had escaped Ethiopia before the African wars, and her mother, Tigist, was killed in one of the early riots, you know, just after the dirty bomb. The police suppressed dissent with violence, and many foreigners like Tigist were killed...but the Hawks survived the purge, and grew, finally taking over Manhattan South.”
“What happened with her father?”
“Her Dad? He committed suicide—couldn't really live without Tigist—and that left Tysa not just an orphan, but in criminal immigration debt. My be-kind-to-others-it's-my-slogan father refused to help her financially, and Tysa ended up homeless for a while.”
Sarinda got quiet, seemingly trying to compose herself by watching the park’s edge across the street. It was a true forest, and its shadows were still black under the low sun.
“I'm sorry,” Agdinar said to her back. “It's a horrible situation. Don't worry, we will be able to help h
er.” He was talking to himself as much as to her, but doubt had been slowly creeping up on him.
“Not sure about that,” Sarinda said, without looking in his direction. “As you know, she's not the luckiest person in the world.”
“We will help her,” he said, with less conviction the second time.
“You know what? It's kind of ridiculous that she's been taken by the Hawks. They opposed the authorities and won, so at least they did something to even the score for those who were killed.”
“The world is full of incoherent stuff,” Agdinar said, “and improbable things happen all the time.”
“This coming from the superhero with magical powers.” Sarinda was trying to be funny, and she made a small curtsy.
“What?”
“Sorry, but don’t you see that you have magical powers—getting invisible, showing me that city of alien shipyards?”
“No, what I meant is that I don't know what a superhero is.”
“Oh, God. At least we have ways to go before we reach the park.”
* * *
The AV was where he had left it. Agdinar had been worried it might have been recalled by Tower City, using some secret automatic setting. He was sure that Dhern had something to do with this—his personal AI was as much his butler as a partner in crime.
AIs could be deceitful, something surely coming from their prolonged exposure to humans—future and present—and their attempts at mimicking them, apparently relishing to experience with them their unsettling, short lives. As he reversed the invisibility of the AV with a thought command, he concluded that Dhern must have learned at least a bit of deception from him.
Yes, Sarinda was right. He was a magician of sorts and should learn to make better opening gestures—or get himself a wand.
“Wow. This thing’s beautiful.” Sarinda approached the AV, her right hand extended.
“Stop, please.”