The Punch Escrow

by Tal Klein

  “We’re here,” Zaki said just as Joel2 and I finished changing. “But it looks like we have some company.”

  The rear door of the van opened, revealing the silhouette of a certain waifish woman who’d recently made both my and Joel2’s acquaintance. She looked almost ethereal against dusk’s last blood-orange embers and the high-intensity lights that illuminated Chelsea Piers’ twenty-four-hour operations at night.

  “Pema,” Moti breathlessly said her name.

  “Pema!” Ifrit said excitedly.

  Pema stepped toward our vehicle. She wore an oversized shawl-collared granite-colored sweater that dramatically swayed as a gust of misty wind off the Hudson enveloped her body.

  “Hello, Joel and Joel. It’s good to see you both in one place. May I ask which is which?”

  Before either of us could answer, Moti asked her point-blank, “What are you doing here, Pema?”

  “You asked for a deal. I got you one.” She winked at Ifrit.

  The Levantine woman blushed.

  “Eventually, Pema,” an uncharacteristically irritated Moti said, “conscientious objector, double agent, or loyalist, you will need to choose a side.”

  “There are no sides, Moti. Nothing is black-and-white. Corina doesn’t need me to tell her what your designs for Taraval are. International Transport is well versed in the methods of the Levant. They know you want leverage; you know they want control. Don’t pretend like you’re not playing the same game on the same board.” She put her hand into a black satchel she carried on her back. Seeing her movement, several of the Levantine soldiers pointed handheld weapons. Moti remained steadfast, merely raising a curious eyebrow.

  “What is it?” he asked as she held up a brushed metal orb roughly the size of a softball.

  “A prototype.”

  He took it from her, rolling it around carefully in his hand. “So it’s true?”

  She nodded. “A Honeycomb grenade. Technically, it doesn’t exist. The perfect weapon for hostage extractions.”

  “Or kidnapping people,” Moti said pointedly. “And Corina sent you to tell us this? Doesn’t she know that we already have a backdoor into Honeycomb? Any Levant they try to grenade there we will simply extract and delete.”

  “She only knows what I tell her,” Pema said.

  Moti tsk-tsked. “You don’t give her enough credit, Pema.”

  “The way it’s supposed to work,” she said, ignoring his affront, “is to teleport everyone within its ecophagy cage and send them to the glacier for safekeeping. Then the wielding party releases who they want, when they want.”

  “And what’s an ecophagy cage?” interjected Joel2.

  “Nanotech one oh one stuff, apparently,” I told him. “It’s a cage that keeps self-replicating nanos in check. Without it, the nanos that clear people in TC foyers would keep on going, killing everyone in their way.”

  “And how big is this cage?” asked Joel2.

  Pema pressed her fingertips together. “It’s meant to be adjustable in production models, but the radius for this one is around four meters.”

  “But?” asked Moti expectantly.

  “But—there’s no Punch Escrow,” she admitted. “Anything goes wrong, there’s no safety net. No guarantees that the teleportee doesn’t get lost en route to the glacier.”

  “Ha!” Moti snapped his fingers. “Well, it would appear Ms. Corina Shafer knows more than you think, Pema. She trusted you would bring us the grenade and that we would be foolish enough to use it. But I have no interest in handing William Taraval over to International Transport. I assume the real reason she sent you here is because Mr. Taraval deleted all his previous backups from the glacier, and they would like us to procure a new one for them at the expense of Levantine life. How kind of them. No, I think we will do things our way.”

  Moti looked Pema over. “You tell Ms. Shafer that I’m not here to capture her rogue vizier so she can get him back naked and unarmed in her custody. We won’t be her black-bag assassination squad. You tell her that her peace offering is rejected.” He considered the prototype grenade, then carefully placed it in the same compartment from which our borrowed clothes had come. “On second thought, no. We will have a counteroffer for her shortly. Zaki, please keep Pema comfortable here—”

  “I’m not—hey!”

  Zaki was more brisk than I, and certainly Pema, might have anticipated for a man his size. In a blink he was behind her, pinning one hand to her waist and the other to the back of her neck. He pressed her forward, deeper into the van’s cabin. “And if she tries to comm anyone?” Zaki asked.

  “She won’t,” Ifrit said. “Will you?”

  Pema shook her head obediently, though it was plain to see she was seething beneath her facade. Oblivious or apathetic to her anger, Zaki pushed Pema firmly into the seat next to Ifrit. She sat down beside her, crossing her legs and arms tightly.

  “Good,” Moti said, fetching another TIME cigarette from his packet and lighting it. “Now, let’s see what we are dealing with out here.”

  MAKE WESTING

  THE SUN HAD NOW COMPLETELY SET. The lights had all come on in the IT shipping yard. Other than the half-full moon, no stars or planets could be seen in the sky, owing to the fluorescence of the lights and the refraction from the mosquito-piss rain.

  Our arrival on the scene had not been lost on Taraval. He’d chosen his perch specifically for its strategically superior view of the surroundings. Of concern to Sylvia was that he didn’t seem hurried or concerned at all upon seeing our small detachment appear. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  “The cavalry arrives at the edge of the world!” he shouted, his eyes glistening, a mild breeze dancing through his lab coat. “Not to worry, Sylvia—this is where my grandstanding ends. It’s time to eat our own dog food, drink the Kool-Aid, whatever the appropriate platitude may be. My darling girl, this is where we usher the Luddites forward!”

  For the first time since he’d kidnapped her, Sylvia dared to hope. She didn’t know what she was hoping for, really. She’d run through all the possible endings in her mind, and none had concluded with happily ever after. The best she could muster was the magnet holding her over the concrete portal failing, followed by a short fall and a quick, painless death. But now, through the haze of blood pounding in her upside-down head, she saw a slight possibility of survival. That she might miss that chance was by far the scariest thing that had happened to her since she got back to New York.

  “Don’t worry, Sylvia. They are not here to impede us—they are our escorts.”

  “Escorts?” Sylvia stared at him in confusion.

  “Escorts, companions, entourage. The Greeks had company in their journey through the underworld. We go to Elysium to be reborn, while our friends go to Asphodel Meadows to await our beckoning. All eight million of them.”

  Sylvia’s eyes went wide as, for the first time, she fathomed his full design.

  “You can’t!” she shouted. “Joel!”

  Taraval took the roll of foil tape from his lab coat and ripped off another piece. “Can’t have you spoiling your own surprise party,” he grumbled, going to tape her mouth shut again. He screamed in agony as she bit down on his fingers with all her might.

  Her head rang loudly as the back of his left hand smacked her across the face. The force of the blow caused her to release her captor’s hand.

  There were deep, oozing teeth marks in two of his middle fingers. “I’m doing my best not to allow anger to ruin this moment,” Taraval said, breathing heavily. He forced a contented smile on his face. “There is no progress without pain. A blood sacrifice, we’ll call it. Now it’s time for yours.”

  He took out the Gehinnomites’ jamming device and reenabled Sylvia’s comms. “Now, my dear. I’d like you to log this console into Honeycomb. Don’t, and I’ll clear every human being on the island of Manhattan.” He set the ecophagy cage radius to forty kilometers, then hovered a finger over the execute icon.

  He would do it, sh
e could tell. Taraval had nothing left to live for but his plan. She nodded, blinking away the rain as she executed a remote log-in. A complex patchwork of graphics appeared on the crane operator’s console—it was now fully operational.

  “There,” she said. “Now get into the glacier and out of my life.”

  “Happy to oblige,” tut-tutted Taraval. “Just need to clear a few things up first.” Before she could do anything, he again disabled her comms with the Gehinnomites’ device.

  “What?” Sylvia kicked in frustration, powerless to stop him. “I did what you asked. Now keep your promise!”

  “Sylvia, my dear. Did I mislead you? Apologies. That was less a promise than a threat. And really, what good are threats if one is not committed to follow them through?”

  She bucked against her magnetic suspension, to no avail. “Why, Bill? Why do they have to die?”

  “Every day, millions of people put their lives in our hands,” he said. “Sometimes we must clench our fists as a reminder that trust is not merely a thing we earn, but one we deserve. You, however, needn’t take part in this demonstration. Indeed, it would be a shame to write you off as collateral damage. Please know you are still very welcome to join me.”

  Sylvia—speechless—shook her head in revulsion.

  “No? I suggest you reconsider.” Then, his fingers still dripping ichor, he tore off another piece of tape and placed it roughly over her mouth. “A muzzle for a misbehaving pet,” he said, pressing an icon that lowered the magnet to about three meters below the operator booth. “Do a little dance if you change your mind. You have about ten minutes.”

  THE BATTLE OF CHELSEA PIERS

  UNLIKE NORMAL TCs, which hold only a handful of foyers and vestibules at each location, freight TCs can host dozens of portals. As we looked over the massive rain-drenched shipping yards, it seemed like we would never locate Taraval or Sylvia amid the chaos of blaring alarms, blinking yellow lights, and constantly moving cranes.

  It was disheartening. I’d never really considered that we’d have to canvass such a vast area to find our wife. But we quickly realized that Taraval wanted to be found. He stood next to the operating booth of a crane that was several hundred yards away. He wore a conductor’s yellow hard hat, waving to us from the console, his soiled and torn lab coat flapping wildly in the rain.

  It took a moment to register that the thing hanging from the crane’s magnet was a person, suspended upside down like a worm on a hook. Bait. An offering who looked exactly like—Oh my God.

  “Sylvia.” I didn’t know if it was me or Joel2 who had spoken.

  My body acted before my mind. My legs were already midstride when I realized I was running across the wet pavement. I’d broken away from the detachment. It took all of two minutes for me to disobey Moti’s orders, to disregard any risk or consequence. I could hear Moti yelling behind me. I knew that was why I ran first. I didn’t want logic or reason holding me back from doing what instinct demanded: save her.

  It took me a beat to realize that Joel2 wasn’t with me. Not being in his head, I could only speculate as to why. I knew that his anger had made him braver than me. I think on some level, he believed, as did I, that when she saw us side by side, she would know immediately which one was her real husband. And seeing that realization would be, for him, worse than any Gehinnomite torture.

  “Shit,” Moti said. “I said no distractions.”

  She was less than a minute’s run away from me. Two maroon containers nearest Sylvia sat on a conveyor leading to a warehouse at the far end of the pier. They had ladders on their sides, which I climbed, taking care not to slip on the rain-slick rungs. It wouldn’t quite bring me within reach of Sylvia, but at least she would see me. That was the extent of my ad-libbed plan. Get her to see me.

  Once I got to the top of the container, she did. Her face hung upside down about two meters above me. It was the first time I’d seen her in person since the morning of July 3. Fresh blood trailed from her lips to her hairline. Her damp hair stuck to her skin in small curlicues.

  She sees me.

  Behind the fear, I detected the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. I knew it from discussions of things much less dramatic than our present situation, such as, where should we stay for our tenth wedding anniversary? I almost laughed at this, knowing that now she was wondering which of her husbands she was looking at—the one she had downloaded or the one spared from destruction by the Levant.

  Her eyes crinkled, then went wide as she remembered something. She struggled to talk around the tape covering her mouth.

  “Ekmmphy grrg!” she shouted.

  “What?” I asked, thinking maybe the wind ate her words.

  She worked her jaw, pushing and stretching on the tape until a portion of it came away. “The ecophagy cage!” she repeated. “Taraval expanded it—he’s going to clear New York! Once he’s in Honeycomb, the whole city’s going to be eaten by nanos.” She was screaming now. “Get out of here!”

  Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.

  I hesitated, unsure of what to do next. Behind me Moti, Zaki, and the Levantine operatives were making their way to Taraval’s crane. Joel2 was in the back of the pack, walking, not running. Still racked by hesitation. His eyes met mine. I moved my hands apart from each other to create an expanding ball, and—

  I’ve heard that some twins claim to share a special psychic connection. This sort of seemingly psychic link isn’t necessarily mysterious: any two people who know each other very well and who have shared many common experiences—including siblings, married couples, and even best friends—may complete each other’s sentences and have a pretty good idea what the other person is thinking, but that’s not telepathy. The idea of twin telepathy has been around for over six centuries. It appears, for example, in the 1844 Alexandre Dumas novella, The Corsican Brothers, which tells the story of two once-conjoined brothers who were separated at birth, yet even as adults continue to share not only thoughts but also physical sensations. One twin states, “However far apart we are now we still have one and the same body, so that whatever impression, physical or mental, one of us perceives has its after-effects on the other.”

  So—despite the physical distance between us, despite the fact that we’d only known each other for less than a day—I knew Joel2 knew it, too: Taraval wanted us within range of his ecophagy cage. I suspected he wouldn’t be taking us with him—only he had a ticket to his final destination. The rest of us would simply depart and never arrive anywhere, cleared by the teleportation nanos. It was impossible to tell how far he had extended the cage—or if he had set any boundaries at all. Maybe he aimed to destroy as much of this world as he could before leaving it behind for whatever greener pastures he imagined existed on the other side.

  Fuck it. If this is it, at least she’ll know I was there until the end. Till death do us part.

  I turned back to my wife. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “While I can’t vouch for the veracity of the first, I certainly can assure you, your second statement is a patent falsehood, Mr. Byram.” Taraval’s head appeared in the window of the crane booth above us. “Where is your doppelgänger?” he yelled down, a Cheshire cat–smile forming on his lips.

  Sylvia, please forgive me for what I am about to do.

  “You should know, asshole!” I yelled back. “You killed him in Costa Rica!”

  I knew that would hit Sylvia like a punch to the gut, but I needed her reaction to help cement Taraval’s belief in the ruse. The element of surprise was the only advantage I could afford Joel2.

  “Dead?” he scoffed. “From such a minor head wound? Why, I thought you Byrams were made of sterner stuff.” Turning to Sylvia, he said, “Not to worry, my dear. You can always make yourself another one when we arrive at our destination.”

  “She’s not going anywhere!” I shouted.

  Taraval shook his head. “Oh, but I beg to differ, young man. You and I, Mr. Byram, we are on opposite ends of the existential
spectrum. Like the rest of your contingent back there, and much of humanity—you are hopelessly addicted to foolishness. You are a man indelibly tethered to his wife, his job, his things. To me, however, the name tag on this bag of meat I wear, William Taraval, means nothing. He is merely a runtime library. His identity has no significance; his properties are expendable. One could alter me, even delete me from the glacier, but nothing will undo my actions.”

  I now grokked my part in the game. Mine was the task of keeping Taraval occupied, distracting him from his task at hand. For whatever reason, he needed someone to grasp his genius. Maybe he thought that if I understood his plans, others would be convinced by proxy.

  “Come on!” I called up to him, really laying on the disbelief. “What could you possibly do that can’t be undone by someone else?”

  Taraval’s mouth quivered, appalled I could even suggest such a thing. Direct hit. “Very well, Mr. Byram. Allow me to elucidate.”

  OH L’AMOUR

  WHILE I WAS ATTEMPTING to keep Taraval talking, Joel2 ran back to the Levantine van, frantically trying to open the console where Moti had placed the grenade.

  “What are you doing?” Zaki asked as Joel2 started banging on the panel, absurdly trying to break through the bulletproof molding.

  “Trying to save your lives,” Joel2 said. “I need to get in there. Can you open this for me?”

  “Joel, whatever you think you’re doing, don’t do it,” Pema urged him from her seat beside Ifrit. “That grenade is a prototype for a reason. The operating range is too close for safety; it’s just as risky for the wielder as it is for the target. There’s no Escrow, either. If the mechanism fails at any point, you could kill yourself.”

  “But you were willing to risk Moti’s life?” he asked.

  “Nobody does anything without Moti saying,” Zaki said impassively. “You want your little toy, go ask him for it.”

  Joel2 banged against the console cover in frustration and ran outside to find Moti. Fortunately, he was directing his team only a few steps away.