True Path

by Graham Storrs

  “Why, man, you’re bleeding,” the newcomer said.

  The man looked concerned, not aggressive. Polanski didn’t know what to do. “The worst thing that could happen,” Matthew had told him, “is that you bump into one of the locals.” And here it was. The worst case scenario. “If you see one,” the teknik had said, “try to keep out of sight, or just pick up your stuff and go somewhere else.” But he couldn’t do that. It was too late. The shell needed forty seconds of flight time and Polanski needed to guide it on the final part of its trajectory. That gave him—he glanced at his watch—ninety seconds to do something.

  The stranger, who had been studying the mortar, switched his attention to Polanski’s wrist. “Is that a pocket watch, strapped to your arm?” An aura appeared around him as he spoke, just like the shimmering of the grass and the air, but more intense. It seemed as if the man were vibrating too, slightly, yet so fast that it blurred his features just a little.

  “I’m afraid I’m busy just now, er, friend,” Polanski said. “If you can wait one minute, I’ll be pleased to talk all you want.” Moving slowly, so as not to alarm the stranger, he picked up the mortar shell and raised it above the open end of the tube. All he had to do was drop it. When it hit the base of the tube, its charge would ignite and it would be away.

  The stranger took a step forward. So much for not alarming him. “Good Lord, that is some kind of can-can-can-on-on, if I am not not not not mistaken-n-n-n-n-n.” The stranger twitched back and forth as he spoke. It was horrible and fascinating at the same time. Transfixed, Polanski stared at the man as he held the shell above the tube. “Who are you and w-w-w-w-what are you do-do-do-do-do-” The man now seemed stuck on that one syllable, repeating the sound, repeating the same movements of his mouth, the little movement of his head. Stuck in a behavioral loop, Polanski thought, as if he might never move on from that moment.

  And yet everything else around them continued normally. The trees nodded in the breeze. The cattle went about their business—except for that one he had noticed earlier. Insects buzzed and flitted. Only this stranger in his buckled shoes and tricorn hat was stuck in his own private loop. “Do-do-do-do-do-do—” Like a machine. And still Polanski’s hand held the shell.

  At the stranger’s feet, in their buckled shoes and white stockings, a new motion began. The grass waved. It rose and fell in little ripples. As he watched, the ripples moved out from the stranger’s feet, little concentric circles, spreading further all the time, now a yard in diameter, now two. A timesplash was beginning, simply because this man from three hundred years ago had seen Polanski and his peculiar equipment.

  When the rippling ground touched Polanski’s foot, he snapped out of his trance with a gasp. Time was slipping away. Worse still, the moving undulations were just a couple of feet from the mortar. If they reached it and unsettled it, there was no time to get it back on target. He dropped the shell and ducked down, covering his ears. The percussion was almost instantaneous and he felt the warmth of the blast on his hands and neck. Quickly, he looked up to see the projectile streaking away into the sky. The air in its wake crackled and shone, not from the little rocket engine, but in some kind of temporal protest at being forced into the wrong place at the wrong time. It was pretty. A contrail of rainbows. “You’ll be so far back,” Matthew said in his mind, “that the Universe is going to resent every moment you’re there.”

  Suddenly, he toppled and fell onto all fours. The ground pulsed beneath him. The timesplash around the stranger was worsening. Polanski staggered to his feet and got clear of the widening disturbance. He ran about twenty yards down the slope before he felt safe. Cracks were appearing in the ground and he could no longer be sure of sizes and distances.

  He turned to look at the stranger again and, as he did, the remote in his hand bleeped to warn him of the shell’s proximity to the target. He peered into its little screen and saw the image from the missile’s nose camera. The display showed the estimated point of impact with an oval around it indicating the possible error margin. It was hard to understand what he saw, even though he had practiced this very operation half-a-dozen times. At first the aerial view just seemed to show empty countryside, fields and forests. Then he could see buildings—a house, barns, stables. A timer gave the countdown to impact. The digits were flying. He had almost no time. With a trembling finger, he touched the estimated point of impact and dragged it onto the house. It would not go all the way to the center of the building, and instead stopped in one corner. He had left it too late, the projectile’s limited maneuvering capability could not change its trajectory as much as he wanted.

  He watched without breathing as the last few seconds tumbled off the readout. The image of the house grew larger, the point of impact shifted about on the roof by small amounts, the oval of uncertainty began to contract around it. Everything accelerated until the oval snapped closed around the impact point and the image went blank.

  Immediately, Polanski was thrown to the ground. The earth heaved. The sky darkened and the world seemed to fold. In the direction of Mount Vernon, the forest melted into itself then shrank away from him like an ebbing tide. He tried to stand but the ground had moved away from his feet. “Do-do-do-do-do-do—” the stranger said nearby with deafening loudness. Polanski turned in fright and saw the world tear itself in two, scattering cattle and trees.

  “It worked!” he yelled, elated and terrified.

  Something seemed to bore under the ground towards him, growing bigger and more fearsome as it came. It passed under him, the size of a train, tossing him into the air with a bone-jarring force. He twisted and spun helplessly above a world monstrous with violence. The ground rushed up at him, faster than it should.

  The light disappeared.

  Chapter 30: Flight

  “O-o-o-o-owwww!” the FBI man complained. He staggered back, holding his chest where the bullets had struck, and fell onto his backside. “What did you do that for? It really hurt.”

  Sandra gaped. She knew that voice. “Jay?”

  “Dad!” Cara shouted, and ran past Sandra to help him up.

  Jay pulled off his helmet and received his daughter with a big hug and a lot of wincing.

  “I thought you were the Feds,” Sandra said.

  “What, and you always shoot policemen on sight? I thought you’d got over that.”

  Sandra looked at him in amazement. He had the same long, lean body, the same dear face, only now he was a man, not a boy. He’d aged well. Cara was hanging onto him, beaming. When Jay looked at her and smiled back, Sandra’s heart gave a little kick. But this was no time for working out what her feelings were at seeing them together.

  “How fast can that thing go?” she asked, shoving the gun into her waistband and running to the APC.

  “It’s lovely to see you too,” Jay replied, but hurried Cara into motion. “How long have we got?”

  “About forty-five minutes.”

  She went to the passenger door and climbed in. From there she could see the burnt, mangled remains of Matthew. She turned her face away. Jay was handing Cara in through the driver’s side. He climbed in after her, asking, “How far away do we need to get?”

  “Go north,” she told him, and he slammed his door shut and then stopped moving. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking the direction on my commplant.”

  “North’s that way,” she said, pointing towards the F2 generators across the room. “Do you want me to drive?”

  “No thank you, I’ll be fine.”

  He gunned the engine, took off the brake and swung the wheel. The heavy machine lurched into action, swerving through a hardboard wall and into the dim bowels of the building. Cara squealed and hurried to find herself a seat in the back where she could strap herself in.

  “How far do we need to get?” Jay repeated.

  “I don’t know. A long way. The crazy bastard went back to kill George Washington.” Jay said nothing, perhaps saving his attention for the job of bulld
ozing his way through people’s kitchens and living rooms. “It’s three hundred and thirty years back. He might not make it. Every little thing he does back there could start a splash that would stop him.”

  “He seems the determined sort,” Jay said.

  They burst through a wall into a confusion of trucks and armed FBI officers in the street. Bullets hit them like a sudden hailstorm. Sandra winced and looked back at Cara.

  “It’s all right,” Jay said. “Bullets won’t get through. But they’ve got RPGs, and artillery, and drones. Nothing too sophisticated, though.”

  Sandra looked around at the steel walls enclosing her and her precious daughter. It wouldn’t take anything sophisticated to blow this rolling death trap to pieces. When she looked forward again, it was just in time to see them plunge into the wall of a building. She let out an involuntary cry of alarm before she realized they’d already demolished the wall and were through it with barely a bump.

  “You’ll get used to that,” Jay said as he drove the APC through someone’s empty bedroom. A great explosion slammed into the side of them like a truck, blasting the walls and ceiling all around them.

  “RPG,” Jay said, flinching as the roof landed on top of them.

  “What the hell did you do to piss them off so much?” Sandra asked.

  “They’re just a bit over-sensitive.” Jay crashed through an outer wall and they were in a street once more, even though it was so narrow that the APC could barely squeeze through without knocking down porches and flattening parked bicycles.

  “They probably think we’ve got Polanski with us,” Cara said, and Sandra and Jay both looked back at her.

  “Shit. She’s right,” Jay said, eyes back on the road.

  “What the hell would we want with him?” Sandra wanted to know.

  Jay cut a corner, taking out a little hut with a barber’s pole outside. “They’ll just jump to that conclusion because they can’t find him anywhere. Paranoia seems to be part of what they feed them at Quantico these days.”

  “Have you tried telling them? This thing’s got a radio, right?”

  “Probably. I couldn’t find the microphone.”

  Sandra wondered if he was joking and decided he wasn’t. She reached forward and unhooked the fist-sized mike from the dash.

  “I was a bit preoccupied,” he said, taking it from her. He held down the send button. “This is Jay Kennedy. Patch me through to Deputy Director English.”

  In seconds English’s voice was growling out of the speakers. “Chief Inspector Kennedy, I want you to pull over right now and wait for my officers to arrive.”

  “I’m sorry but I can’t do that. I have my daughter and Ms. Malone in here with me and I have to get them as far from the lob site as possible before the backwash hits. I suggest you and your men evacuate the area immediately and head north. Do you copy?”

  “If you don’t surrender right now, I will blow you and your passengers to pieces. Do you copy?”

  Sandra saw Jay’s jaw muscles tighten. “English, you are a fool. The backwash arrives in—”

  “Thirty-nine minutes,” Sandra said.

  “—thirty-nine minutes, so you’ve got that long to get your sorry bunch of crusaders fifteen kilometers away from here.”

  “Thirty,” Sandra corrected him.

  “Thirty?”

  She could see him doing the calculation that they would need to average sixty kilometers an hour. His face turned white. “At least thirty, Jay. It could be much worse than that. I just don’t know. It’s George Washington, and it’s deeper than any target of that significance has ever been.”

  English was threatening them with all kinds of things over the radio so Sandra leaned across and turned it off, acutely aware of invading Jay’s private space.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, love?”

  “There’s a little aeroplane following us.”

  Sandra turned to find Cara crouching by the rear hatch, peering up into the sky.

  “Spy drone?” Sandra asked.

  “The last one wasn’t,” Jay said. “Cara, if you see little puffs of smoke from its wings, give me a shout.” He turned to Sandra. “I should drive inside the shanties for cover, but it slows us down.”

  “I’ll go and keep watch,” Sandra said and climbed into the back. “Cara, you get strapped in. I’ll take over.” The inside of the van whirled and she fell sideways into a seat and then onto the floor.

  She heard Cara shout, “Dad!” as she felt her daughter’s hands trying to turn her over.

  “I’m all right,” she said, struggling to sit up.

  “What’s the matter?” Jay asked. The APC swerved off the road and into the side of a building. Then they were bouncing and grinding their way through someone’s home.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Sandra realized Jay had taken cover because no-one was watching the drone. She felt guilty, but it was hard to think straight.

  “One of Polanski’s thugs hit her on the head,” Cara called to her father. “She hasn’t been right since.”

  “Concussion?” Jay asked.

  “Probably,” Sandra replied, hoping that’s all it was. “Go and buckle up,” she told Cara. “I’m all right now.” She managed to stand and then went back to the door, hanging on tight as the APC jounced across the rough internal terrain of armchairs and refrigerators. All the movement set her head swimming. Jay must have been watching because he swung the vehicle back onto the road. “Got it,” she called, spotting the drone a hundred meters in the air and maybe two hundred meters behind them. Even as she said it, the aircraft dived.

  The APC swerved back into the shanties.

  “Jay,” Sandra called to him. “You can’t keep driving through peoples homes. You’ll kill someone. Also—”

  The front of the APC lifted as they came to a screeching halt. Sandra was thrown up the aisle almost to the front. Cara let out a shout.

  “Also, you can’t count on every pillar and pole in these places being as flimsy as the one’s we’ve hit so far,” she finished.

  “Mum, are you all right?” Cara asked. Sandra patted her daughter’s leg and pulled herself off the floor. “What did we hit?”

  “Looks like some kind of pillar or pole,” said Jay, drily. “The back wheels are still on the ground. This thing’s got eight-wheel drive.” He put the vehicle in reverse and it began juddering its way down the heavy beam it had struck. “The roof’s on top of us,” he said, peering up through the window slit. “Maybe a whole second story. I might need to go back and forth a bit to shake it all loose.”

  The APC jumped as a powerful explosion hit it. Sandra found herself back on the floor again.

  “Everybody OK?” Jay called and, without waiting for a reply, raced the engine and set the vehicle scrabbling for traction through burning rubble. “Good news is, the missile blew the building off the top of us.” The APC’s big wheels finally got a grip and it shot off through the wreckage.

  “Give me that damned thing,” Sandra said, climbing forward and grabbing the mike from the dash. “English!” she shouted into it.

  Moments later, Deputy Director English was back on the line.

  “English you fucking moron, we have not got Polanski with us. It’s just me, Jay, and Cara and we’re evacuating the disaster area. So stop fucking trying to kill us, arsehole.”

  “Do you know who you’re talking to, young lady?”

  “If you’re still within the backwash radius, I’m talking to a dead man. Polanski’s going to turn up at the lob site in about twenty minutes, probably dead. He’ll have a canister of a nerve gas called VX with him, which might well have already opened, in which case, it will spread explosively through the area, killing everyone it touches. After that, the backwash will hit and, if Polanski was successful, you’ll be standing near ground zero in the single most destructive event humankind has ever devised. And all you can think of doing is to chase me and my child with drones? Are you out of your fuckin
g mind? Get out of there and run. Run for your miserable life.”

  There was a long pause before English said, “What about the plutonium?”

  Sandra threw the mike into Jay’s lap, too angry to speak to the ridiculous man. Jay picked it up and said, “Deputy Director, I’ve no idea who’s got the plutonium you lost, but it’s not Polanski. He’s using nerve gas to kill George Washington. The plutonium is a red herring. Now, please, evacuate as many people as you can. Call ahead to DC, get them moving north. You might still save some people, even if you can’t save yourself.”

  Sandra looked crossly at Jay and took the mike off him. “If you start a mass evacuation from DC, we’ll get stuck in it, you idiot.”

  He snatched the mike back, scowling at her.

  “She’s your daughter too,” Sandra said.

  English didn’t reply for a long time. Sandra assumed he was taking advice from some other morons. When he spoke again, he sounded shaken, as if the truth had finally dawned on him. “I’ve called off the drones,” he said. “And I’ll make a few calls.” He hung up.

  “Great,” Sandra said, for Jay’s benefit. She was angry with him, even though she knew it was the right thing to do. “At least you’ll die knowing you were totally noble to the end.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and he did sound sorry, curse him. But sorry wasn’t going to keep Cara alive when they hit the traffic chaos in DC.

  She kicked at the dash in a frenzy of agitation. “All right! All right! It was the right thing.” She subsided into her seat, fuming. She felt Jay and Cara watching her but wouldn’t look at them. Wanting to keep Cara safe was the right thing, too.

  “At least we can use the roads now,” Jay said.

  They had turned onto what was, for the Shanty, a broad thoroughfare, and the APC’s speed was creeping up at last. Sandra studied the instruments. One of them seemed to show their current speed, sixty miles an hour.