Cowboy Angels

by Paul McAuley

  ‘Tom gave you a way out,’ Stone said, understanding now how Tom had turned Eileen Barrie, how he’d worked on her dangerous mix of arrogance and naivety.

  ‘Perhaps this isn’t the way it’ll be,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Perhaps this path has a very low probability. Perhaps it’ll collapse, and all that’ll be left are trace memories of what might have been.’

  ‘Don’t put yourself down, Dr Barrie. What you’re doing right now is world-changing.’

  She glanced over at him. ‘Don’t you feel a certain transparency, Mr Stone? Do you get increasing attacks of déjà vu? Do you feel as if you’re walking on thin ice?’

  ‘We’re on the right road, Dr Barrie. Straight ahead, all the way.’

  ‘Maybe we’re a transient loop. A footnote rather than a new page. A change that won’t take.’

  ‘What I have in mind,’ Stone said, ‘is a lot more permanent than that.’

  They turned onto the Strip and drove through the centre of Alamogordo. In the stark early-morning sunlight it looked shabby and two-dimensional, like a movie set waiting to be struck. Eileen Barrie slowed down as they drove past a string of motels. A black sedan and a squad car were drawn up at the kerb outside the entrance to one of them, the El Dorado. In front of a fake stone monolith carved in pseudo-Aztec style, two uniformed cops were talking with a man in a black suit.

  Stone got a bad feeling and said, ‘Keep going, Dr Barrie. There’s no help for you here.’

  Eileen Barrie reached inside her leather jacket, tossed a cell phone into Stone’s lap. ‘That’s the phone my handlers didn’t know about. I palmed it when you were searching my attaché case. Back at the McDonald’s, I used it to call Victor Moore.’

  Stone looked at her, at her sly smile. ‘If you warned him, it won’t help your case.’

  ‘I didn’t tell him about you. But I did let him know that Tom Waverly was hiding out somewhere in Alamogordo.’

  Stone’s hard-won confidence vanished. Dropped straight into a black pit and vanished, just like that. ‘You think they found him.’

  ‘We used various motels for our trysts,’ Eileen Barrie said. ‘The El Dorado was the first. Tom’s fatal weakness is sentimentality - my guess is that it has let him down again. You wanted to end the cycle, Mr Stone. Well, I’ve done it for you.’

  They were coming up to the end of the block. Stone jammed his pistol into Eileen Barrie’s side and said, ‘Make a right, park in the first space you find.’

  She made the turn. ‘I didn’t betray him when he contacted me because I thought he loved me. But your story convinced me otherwise. You told me that he’ll murder as many of my doppels as he can—’

  ‘That was in another history.’

  ‘I had to do it, Mr Stone. I had to make sure that he wouldn’t be able to come after me.’

  Stone saw a service alley that ran along the back of the string of motels, told Eileen Barrie to drive into it and park. ‘If Tom was staying in that motel, his daughter was probably staying there too.’

  ‘Linda’s here?’ Eileen Barrie was genuinely startled.

  Stone grabbed her wrists and handcuffed her to the steering wheel. ‘I’m going to check things out. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Take me into custody before you do this. I’m a noncombatant, Mr Stone. And I can tell you everything you need to know about Operation GYPSY.’

  ‘You can wait in the car while I check out the motel. Then we’ll do the other stuff.’

  She tugged at the handcuffs. ‘What if you don’t come back? What do I do then? Sit here until they come for me?’

  There was more than a hint of panic in her voice now.

  ‘Maybe this isn’t anything to do with us. Maybe Tom and Linda were staying at some other motel. Sit tight, Dr Barrie. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’

  Stone locked her attaché case and the Macy’s bag in the trunk of the car, set his Stetson on his head, and moved down the alley, past parking lots, past cinder-block walls topped with razor wire, past steel gates stencilled with the names of different motels. The El Dorado’s gate was painted green. He climbed over it, dropped down between a pair of Dumpsters, and edged along the back wall of the motel. At the corner he took a fast peek, saw service carts parked under a steel stairway, a swimming pool inside a chain-link fence, cars and pickups angle-parked along a two-storey L-shaped block, and a man in a black suit standing about twenty yards away.

  Stone pulled the brim of the Stetson low on his face and walked out into the early-morning sunlight, holding his pistol behind his back and waving his army ID, saying loudly, ‘Maybe you can help me. A couple of people used false papers at one of our checkpoints last night. I understand you might be looking for them too.’

  ‘There’s nothing for you here, pal,’ the man said, and reached inside his jacket a moment too late as Stone swung the .38 in a short arc and clubbed him behind his ear.

  Stone stashed the man’s pistol in a planter, heaved him over his shoulder and carried him to the service area under the stairs and sat him down. He found a spray-bottle of bleach hooked to the handle of one of the service carts, unscrewed the top and held it under the man’s nose until he stirred, slapped him to get his attention, asked him where the two fugitives had been taken.

  The man was about half Stone’s age, with a blond crew cut and bright blue eyes. He gave Stone an arrogant stare and said he didn’t know anything about any fugitives.

  Stone put the .38 in his face and asked him again.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘You work for GYPSY.’

  The man denied it, but Stone saw a telling flicker in his gaze.

  ‘Where did you take Linda and Tom Waverly?’

  The man studied him for a moment, then said, ‘I guess you must be Adam Stone.’

  ‘Where did you take them?’

  ‘You’re too old for this, Mr Stone. Give it up now and we’ll go easy on you and the girl—’

  Stone cocked the .38 with his thumb. ‘Last chance. Where are they?’

  The man saw something he didn’t like in Stone’s expression and said quickly, ‘Take it easy. We only found Waverly’s daughter.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Somewhere you can’t reach her.’

  ‘She was taken to GYPSY’s facility, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I have friends right out in front. If you shoot me, they’ll be all over you.’

  The blond man put up his hand when Stone clubbed him with the .38 again, got his fingers mashed against his skull, and howled. Stone gave him another tap. This time his eyes rolled back and he slumped sideways.

  Stone tied him up with strips torn from a hand towel, clambered onto one of the Dumpsters and checked the alley before vaulting over the wall. He jarred his knee when he landed; as he limped down the long service alley, he thought ruefully that the crew-cut guy had been right - he was definitely too old for this.

  Someone was standing by the Ford, a panhandler it looked like. Ratty denim, long grey hair tangled around his face, something flashing in his hand. A knife.

  Stone realised that it was Tom Waverly and started to run. He saw Tom jerk open the car’s door and lean inside, heard Eileen Barrie scream.

  Tom turned when Stone shouted his name. Stone stepped forward, watching Tom over the front sight of the .38. Eileen Barrie was slumped halfway out of the open door of the car, hanging from her handcuffed wrist, her throat cut to the bone. Blood soaked the front of her leather jacket and there was blood spray on the windshield.

  ‘Lose the knife, Tom,’ Stone said, maintaining eye contact as he stepped closer, hoping that he wouldn’t have to shoot.

  After a moment, Tom opened his fingers and let the knife drop point first into the dirt between his feet. ‘You should have trusted me,’ he said. ‘This would never have happened if you’d trusted me.’

  5

  When Stone kicked the knife under the car and told Tom to assume the position, Tom said, ‘Listen to me, Adam. Listen carefully. They
snatched Linda. It looked like a clean job, I don’t think she was hurt—’

  ‘They’re from GYPSY.’

  ‘Of course they’re from GYPSY,’ Tom said, and inclined his head toward the car and Eileen Barrie’s body. ‘She sold me out, didn’t she?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have taken a room in the motel where you two used to rendezvous. Turn around, Tom, and put your hands flat on the roof.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No, I’m not. You just killed an unarmed woman and it’s made me kind of twitchy. I have to be certain you aren’t carrying, or else I might accidentally shoot you if you make a sudden move.’

  ‘This is all I have,’ Tom said, and hitched up his denim jacket to show the Remington .45 semi-automatic stuck in the waistband of his jeans.

  ‘Pull it out slowly. Keep your fingers away from the trigger.’

  Tom did as he was told. When Stone took the pistol from him, he said, ‘I know exactly where they’re going to take Linda. We’ll go in together. We’ll blast our way in if we have to, but we’ll get her back.’

  ‘We won’t be going anywhere but jail if we don’t get out of here right now. Where did you get this pistol?’

  ‘This is a military town,’ Tom said. ‘There’s a guy in just about every bar can get you anything you need. Don’t throw it away. I’m going to need it.’

  Stone unlocked the trunk, lifted out the Macy’s bag, dropped the Remington inside, and told Tom to take Eileen Barrie’s attaché case. ‘Do you have transport?’

  ‘Linda hot-wired a pickup last night. But it’s parked at the motel, and there are cops out front.’

  ‘I saw them. Start walking. We need to steal a car.’

  ‘We need to catch up with the people who took my daughter.’

  ‘One thing at a time. How did it happen? How did you manage to escape?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Tom said as they headed down the alley. ‘When it got light I went out to find us some breakfast. I was in the Denny’s across the street, waiting for my take-out order, when I saw three black sedans pull up outside the motel. I phoned Linda, but it was too late. There was nothing I could do, Adam. There were too many of them, I couldn’t risk a gunfight in the street, and then the cops turned up. I guess the manager called them. I had to watch them take her out. I had to watch them drive her away . . .’

  ‘Keep walking, Tom.’

  ‘I hung back, waiting for the cops to leave. A couple of knuckledraggers had been left behind to watch the place. I figured I could take them down and use their car to get to where I need to go. But then you arrived, and as soon as I saw Eileen I knew. I didn’t even have to talk to her. As soon as I saw the way she smiled at me I knew she’d given us up. I guess I snapped, went crazy for a second—’

  ‘Bullshit, Tom. You planned to kill her all along. That’s why you made that call last night. That’s why you set up a meeting with her. That was always the plan, wasn’t it? That’s why we came here.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘Back in the Nixon sheaf, TW Two warned me that Eileen was compromised, that I would be ambushed if I tried to close the deal with GYPSY. That’s what happened to him, you understand? I thought I could fix things by going back three weeks, to the day before I stole the time key. It would have given me the chance to start over. I would have taken Eileen away, and left you and Linda with enough evidence to bring down GYPSY. But the time key fucked things up by taking us back just two weeks instead of three, and then you fucked things up even more. I knew you’d go after Eileen, so I tried to warn her, and she sold me out. She told GYPSY where to find me. The cold-hearted bitch. I knew it as soon as I saw her. She would have given up everything to save herself. That’s what happened before. That’s why I had to do her, Adam. Don’t you see? It was the only way to break the cycle.’

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened last time, Tom. No more smoke and mirrors. No more bullshit. Just the straight truth.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we’ve found some wheels. If we hustle, we might get there before they take Linda through—’

  Stone dropped the bag and grabbed Tom’s arm and yanked it up behind his back, spun him around and slammed him against a utility pole and jammed the muzzle of the .38 under his jaw. ‘We’re not doing it your way,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Adam, this isn’t the time or place—’

  ‘Tell me everything,’ Stone said, screwing the pistol’s muzzle into the soft flesh under Tom’s ear. ‘Tell me everything. Right here, right now. Or I swear I’ll leave you here for the cops and do what I have to do on my own.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Tom’s head was tipped back and he was standing on tiptoe. ‘Whatever you want to know. But how about easing up with the fucking gun?’

  Stone let go of Tom’s wrist and stepped back, trembling with anger and disgust and fatigue. He had to stay frosty. He had to keep on top of this. ‘How did she sell you out, the first time around?’

  Tom massaged his jaw with thumb and forefinger. ‘Eileen and TW Two stole the time key. TW Two hid out in the Nixon sheaf while he arranged a deal with GYPSY through an intermediary - hard cash for the time key’s return. But the people running GYPSY figured out that Eileen Barrie was involved, they confronted her, and she sold him out. When he came back to make the deal, she steered him into an ambush. The bitch dumped him in the shit to save her own skin.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Adam, we really can’t get into this here. The area is crawling spooks and cops-’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Jesus Christ. All right, but you have to understand that I only know what TW Two told Linda and me. He got away from the ambush, but he didn’t realise that Eileen had sold him out. He went after her because he wanted to rescue her. The poor sap. GYPSY has a black facility hidden in a wild sheaf. That’s where he went. He found Eileen and discovered that she’d sold him out to save herself, and he killed her and did some serious damage to GYPSY’s facility.’

  ‘That’s where he got his fatal dose of radiation.’

  ‘The facility has a nuclear reactor. He fucked it up and got a lethal dose. Adam, we can talk about this later. I’ll confess everything. But right now we have to get moving.’

  Stone picked up the Macy’s bag. ‘I need to know everything you know, Tom. I need to know how I can stop the loop closing. I need to know how to make things different.’

  ‘Things are different. For one thing, I killed the bitch right here. For another, as near as I can figure it, she isn’t supposed to sell me out for a little over two weeks. The ambush and TW Two’s dumb rescue attempt, all that, it happened a couple of days before you and Linda turned up in the Nixon sheaf.’

  ‘Bullshit. Freddy Layne saw him a few days before we were brought into this, and he was already suffering from radiation sickness.’

  ‘He used the time key, Adam. He blew the fuckers to Kingdom Come, or at least I hope he did, and he used the time key to escape into the past. You know the rest.’

  Stone thought about it as they walked. ‘He went back two weeks and killed six of Eileen Barrie’s doppels. He was trying to change things.’

  ‘Of course he was. Maybe he tried to kill the Real version of Eileen Barrie, too, but she was put under guard after the time key was stolen.’

  ‘He killed the doppels, he passed through the Nixon sheaf and gave you a call and told you when Linda and I were going to turn up—’

  ‘And he ended up in Pottersville. But that isn’t going to happen this time around.’

  ‘What about the time key?’

  ‘He dumped it.’

  ‘Tell the truth, Tom. I’m at the end of my patience.’

  ‘I’m telling you what he told me. That post office box, the one where you found the empty envelope? Our old drop? I was using it for one of my little businesses. I got the idea from your old buddy Walter Lipscombe. I find rare books in the American Bund sheaf, where prices are low, and bring them through the mirror and sell them in the
Nixon sheaf, where prices are high. It makes a nice contribution to my retirement fund.’

  ‘This doesn’t explain where the time key went. Unless you took it.’

  ‘I looked, of course, but it had already gone. My guess is that TW Two stashed it there, all right, but he left it switched on so the people who owned it could find it and take it back. The real owners, not anyone from GYPSY,’ Tom said. ‘Did Eileen happen to mention them?’

  ‘She spun a story about GYPSY taking the key from a bunch of time travellers.’

  ‘It isn’t a story. Why do you think there’s only one time key? Why do you think GYPSY wants it back so badly? Eileen hasn’t been able to duplicate it, but she figured out some fundamental principles and used them to modify Turing gates. There are three of those gates in the black facility, back doors into the past of three different sheaves. If we don’t move fast, the major players will disappear through one of them as soon as GYPSY begins to unravel. They’ll take Linda with them, and they’ll take their fucking nuclear bombs too. No lie, Adam,’ Tom said. ‘I swear on my daughter’s life I’m telling you the truth.’

  Stone thought for a moment. ‘If we go after GYPSY, we’re not doing it on our own,’ he said. ‘We’re going to do it my way.’

  6

  The soldiers guarding Adam Stone and Tom Waverly snapped to attention when General Bruce Ellis and his aide entered the office. Bruce Ellis was wearing a yellow sweater and checked slacks. He strode across the room and took Stone’s hand in a two-handed grip, saying, ‘Good to see you back in active service, Adam.’

  ‘Good to see you, too, Bruce. Congratulations on the promotion. And I guess I should apologise for interrupting your game.’

  ‘I’m strictly a Saturday hack-and-slicer, and you gave me a great excuse to bow out of a game I was bound to lose. I was seven points down at the fifth hole when I was told that you had actually turned up.’