Time Was

by Steve Perry

  “So, Mr. Tyler—or should I say Tye? That’s what everyone calls you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Ms. Donohoe,” replied the young man. He had a surprisingly high voice for one whose form was so classically manly.

  “Oh, do let’s dispense with the ‘Ms. Donohoe’ nonsense, shall we? Call me Annabelle.”

  “I . . . uh, I don’t know that I’m comfortable with—”

  “But I insist,” interrupted Annabelle. “I absolutely insist upon it. I wish for all gutsy folks to call me by my first name.” She picked up a folder and tossed it over the desk, down into Tyler’s hands. “Especially those who go behind my back and attempt to submit unflattering reports to the Board of Directors. I think that brand of gutsiness—and it’s quite rare around here—requires that we dispense with formalities. Of course you agree with that, Tye.”

  His eyes widened with panic. “Ms. Dono—uh, um—Anna—Ms. Donohoe, I can explain this.”

  “You can? Did you hear that, Simmons? Our friend Tye here says he can explain the unflattering contents of those eleven and a half, impeccably-typed, single-spaced pages that he holds in his hands.”

  “What a relief, madam.”

  “Yes, I thought you’d think so.” She sat down, blew a puff of smoke down into Tyler’s face, and grinned as he coughed and waved away the cloud, trying to read the pages.

  “I trust my smoking doesn’t bother you.”

  “N-n-no, Ms. Donohoe. Not at all.”

  She blew another stream into his face. “I’m listening,” said Annabelle.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Ms. Donohoe—”

  “Honesty is good, I like honesty. Simmons, what are your feelings about honesty?”

  “That it is the best possible policy, madam.”

  “So we’re all agreed that honesty is what’s needed here. I beg your pardon, Tye, I seem to have interrupted you once again. Please, do go on.”

  Tyler loosened his collar, stretched his neck, and rubbed his arm, already sweating more than Annabelle had hoped.

  “Do you think it’s hot in here, Tye?”

  “Maybe just a little. I apologize, I . . . I seem to be running a slight fever.”

  “Did you agree to the drug test this morning? I certainly hope so, Tye. Everyone here has to submit to it every three months or I send them on their merry, unemployed way.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did.”

  “Oh, no—don’t you ma’am me, Tye. ‘Ma’am’ is for English nannies and other assorted old maids.” She moved around enough to expose a little more thigh and was pleased that the young man’s eyes focused precisely where she wanted them to. “You don’t think I’m an old maid, do you, Tye?”

  “Not at all.”

  The barely contained lust in his gaze and words amused Annabelle no end.

  “Don’t even think about it, Tye. I’d chew you up and spit you out before you even had your shirt off.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry if I was staring at—”

  “You’re perspiring, Tye. Temperature up a bit, is it?”

  He blinked. “Yes, Ms. Donohoe.”

  Annabelle poured herself a healthy dose of cold water and sipped at it, reveling in the look on Tyler’s face as the ice tinked against the sides of the glass.

  “I’ll tell you what, Tye; I’m going to give you one chance—one—to explain to me why you did what you did, and if at any time during your explanation you sound even the least bit supercilious, Simmons over there is going to tie knots in your spine. Is any of that unclear so far? I could start again and talk slower.”

  “No, you’ve made yourself quite clear, Ms. Donohoe.”

  His explanation wasn’t precisely what Annabelle was expecting.

  She listened with great interest as the little cockroach explained that he’d been sent over from the main Accounting Division to secretly examine the books from the last five years, paying particular attention to the budgetary excesses of the last sixteen months—specifically, the money that Annabelle had allotted for the continued search for Zac Robillard and the five I-Bots.

  “The board has become seriously concerned about the money, time, and company resources that you’ve . . . squandered on this search,” said Tyler. “Some of the board members feel that you’ve . . . well, that you’ve . . .”

  “Gone a little overboard?” prompted Annabelle.

  “Yes. The word they’ve been using is ‘obsessed.’”

  Annabelle drummed her fingernails on the desk once again, louder this time, more forcefully. “And what is your personal opinion, Tye? Do you think I’m obsessed with Robillard and the I-Bots?”

  “It’s not my place to say, Ms. Donohoe. When my predecessor, Mr. James, resigned and left the company with all of his notes—”

  Annabelle lifted her index finger and shook it from side to side, twice. “Ah-ah—be careful you don’t jump to conclusions, Tye. That can be hazardous to your health.”

  Tyler blinked, looked back at Simmons, then swallowed loudly as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Ms. Dono—”

  “You will.” Annabelle walked away from her desk and pointed to the large photograph on the wall. “Do you know who this woman is, Tye?”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  Annabelle shook her head. “Infidels, Simmons. Tyler here is among those pitiful infidels who haven’t the slightest idea who St.Joan was.”

  “Most distressing, madam.”

  “Isn’t it?” She returned her attention to Tyler. “This was a great lady and great actress, Tye. Her name was Joan Crawford, and in her day she was the grande dame bitch of Hollywood. At one point in her life she was married to the CE0 of Pepsi. When he died, he left all his stocks to her. Pepsi’s board of directors was a little uncomfortable with having a woman in charge of their company, and they asked her to step down. Do you know what she said to them, Tye? No, of Course you don’t. St. Joan laughed in their faces, refused to step down, and said to them—and this is a direct quote from the minutes of that meeting—‘Don’t screw with me, fellahs.’ I admire her. That declaration to Pepsi’s board of directors has been something of a mantra for me all these years.”

  She crossed back to her desk and pressed a button.

  The giant photo of Joan Crawford hissed then began to slide slowly to the side, revealing something behind it.

  “Don’t screw with me, fellah,” said Annabelle, delighted at the way Tyler looked—as if he’d just soiled his pants.

  Behind the photo of St. Joan was a two-way mirror that looked into a shabby room where a shabby little man, bald and severely overweight, wearing a torn white shirt and split trousers, sat in a chair before a wooden table.

  On that table were several empty bottles of liquor.

  “Recognize him?” asked Annabelle.

  Tyler blanched. “My God, it’s . . . I mean, I can’t be sure . . . but it looks like Mr. James. We had been told that he resigned and—”

  “You were told what I wanted you to be told. I’ve known for a good long while that someone on the board has been planting spies in here, and I’m sick of it. I thought perhaps James’s disappearance might get my message across to them, but your presence here proves that assumption wrong—and I hate being wrong, Tye. You might want to keep that in mind.” She snapped her fingers and Simmons joined them at the window, holding a small radio-control keyboard in the palm of his hand.

  “There’s a tribe in Africa, Tye—well, what’s left of it, anyway—called the Masai, and every so often they choose one of their elders, or a cripple, or some other useless member of the village, and they give them a huge party, then take them out into the jungle and leave them there for the hyenas to eat alive. It’s their way of not only controlling the population but of thinning out those elements that might taint the purity of their tribal genetics.” She nodded at Simmons, and her assistant extended the silver antennae attached to the device in his hands then pressed a switch that activated a red indicator l
ight.

  “You keep an eye on your predecessor in there,” said Annabelle to Tyler. “Because right now I’m going to tell you the same thing I told him—and maybe you’ll listen. This world, Tye, from pole to pole, is a jungle. Whether that jungle is composed of vines and swamps or boardrooms and contractual pen strokes, it’s all the same, no different from the one where the Masai feed the hyenas. Its inhabited by various species of beasts, some that rut in caves and devour their young, others that wear tailored suits and dine on their business rivals’ broken stock speculations. All of these beasts have only one honest-to-God function, and that is to survive. There is no morality, no law, no imposed man-made dogma that will stand in the path of that survival. That humankind survives is the only morality there is. And for us to survive as a race, we must be superior, we must dominate all lesser creatures, and, in order to ensure that, it is not only vital but necessary to destroy, to eliminate, to thin out and expunge any undesirable element that threatens to stop the march of progress. Now, you’re a smart young man, Tyler—I’ve seen your records—so I’m sure you know where this is going.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Pity, because this has got one hell of a punch line.” She snapped her fingers, and Simmons pointed the antennae toward the figure of James, then pressed a button.

  James dropped to the floor and began to thrash around, screaming.

  “Besides the I-Bots program, Tyler, did you examine other budget records?”

  “A few, but—”

  “Did you happen to glance at Nano-Tech Division’s records?”

  “Briefly.”

  “Then you know about the experiments we’ve been conducting with nanites.”

  “I know a little about it but it’s not an area that I’m . . . well, very knowledgeable in.”

  Annabelle looked at her assistant. “Simmons—fill Mr. Tyler in on our most recent developments, will you? And Tye? Don’t take your eyes off James in there. I like to provide a good floor show for selected employees.”

  And that’s when Mr. James’s flesh began to smoke.

  19

  * * *

  —and now there were bodies scattered on the ground in front of him as a result of the panic firing but Janus kept up his pace across the compound’s main yard, increased it even, because nothing slowed him, nothing tired him, nothing stopped him, not even the bullets strafing down at him from the security towers. There was less gunfire now than a minute ago but that was only because they were getting ready to release the dogs. He’d expected that, and the gas, too, only someone had gotten impatient and given the order to use the bombs too soon and the yard was now impenetrable with gas clouds. Security guards were running this way and that, firing indiscriminately because they couldn’t see a damned thing, and that was good, that was very good, because Janus always came prepared, he’d put on his CX–47 mask and could breathe easily, and that was really, really good—

  —the sirens were getting louder, screaming like monsters, and that wasn’t so good, not so good at all because it was giving him a headache, but then a guard came out of the smoke plowing off shot after shot, a second guard fired off a round and accidentally caught the other right smack in the knee, pulping it, and the guard did a flip, landed hard, tried to crawl, and Janus smiled behind his gas mask because no one crawled too damned far with a kneecap gone, so he pulled the Colt Python from out of his shoulder holster and just to be a good sport about things blew the guard’s head clean off his shoulders on the way past because, after all, what was the guy going to do with the rest of his life, having a knee all shot to hell like that?—

  —he rounded the last corner of the main yard and headed toward the gate that was now visible through the haze of gas and smoke and gunfire, but now there was the outline of another guard, one stupid hero guard armed with one mother of a semiautomatic rifle and Janus charged toward him with all he had and Mr. Hero got off a couple of shots, one pretty close, one grazing Janus’s shoulder, but that didn’t stop him. He kept charging forward until he was close enough to make a fist of his right hand, a club of his arm, and one swing later the guard was out cold on the ground and Janus grabbed up the rifle and spun around, switching it from semi- to full-automatic, and with one squeeze of the trigger began to hose the yard behind him.

  The scream of the sirens was nearly drowned out by those of the guards he was laying to their final rest on the hollow points of bullets, and now things were good again, things were very good indeed, so Janus let fly with one last burst of gunfire and ran through the gate into the snow-covered street, running, running, running along the route he planned out months ago, running toward the frozen lake and the special box of supplies he’d planted there before breaking into the compound forty-seven minutes ago—

  —he could hear them spilling out of the gates behind him, firing their warning shots, the idiots, but underneath the crackle of gunfire was the snarl of the dogs, so Janus picked up his speed and flew around a corner of the lake road and lo and behold thank’ya Jee-zus here came a car straight toward him, and the driver saw what he was in for and hit the brakes and the car came to a shrieking, fishtailing halt in a cloud of snow and ice but Janus didn’t have time to be polite or even wait to see if the driver’s side door was unlocked, so he just skidded up beside the car, blew out the window and most of the driver’s skull with the last bullet from the Python, tossed the body out into the snow, slammed closed the door, ripped the car into drive, and took off in a straight line right through the middle of the guards, cutting through them like a machete through foliage, clipping a couple, fender slamming two of them, then he whipped the car around, skidding for all it was worth, but the driver had been a conscientious one, yessir, because the snow tires were good ones, giving Janus traction to spare, so it was easy for him to plow through the rest of this first wave of guards and dogs, flattening several of both like pancakes before flooring the accelerator and heading on down the lake road.

  Six minutes later he was deep in the woods surrounding the frozen lake, discarding his clothing and slipping into his specially modified wetsuit, inflating it, strapping on his air tank, checking the oxygen regulator, donning the underwater mask.

  The boots Janus wore were specifically designed for ice divers who, rather than chance the force of changing currents, chose to walk upside down below the ice. Five-inch spikes covered the soles of each boot. Nothing short of a bomb blast could loosen their hold once they were entrenched.

  Janus activated the oxygen tank, put the regulator firmly into his mouth, swung the speargun strap around his chest, secured his quiver of spears to his person, and double checked to make sure he had the disks he’d just stolen securely sealed in their protective case in his belt. His last pistol, a deadly Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum, was firmly held in a watertight holster strapped to his thigh. There were those who would probably think Janus paranoid for taking a gun underwater with him, but years of experience and wounds had taught him to take nothing for granted.

  He had a gallery of scars from the rare occasions he’d forgotten that rule.

  Admittedly, he’d made a few slips the last couple of years, but nothing serious, nothing he’d told anyone about. Though he knew he might be getting too old for his particular line of work, he tried with all his still-considerable might to deny it.

  Even to himself.

  Especially to himself.

  It was, perhaps, one of the few genuinely human foibles he possessed.

  He checked his air timer: thirty minutes. More than enough time to get from here to the drying shed three-quarters of a mile down the lake.

  He’d chosen this method for his getaway for several reasons, not the least of which was that he loved the peace that lay beneath the water. It would give him time to regroup after the violence at the compound—a form of decompression that was necessary to keep himself in one solid mental piece.

  Aside from the ethereal quiet he found beneath the ice, Janus had chosen this method
of escape because many of the roads leading in and out of the area were too bombarded with snow and ice to be traveled by any vehicle besides a snowmobile, and a snowmobile would attract too much attention.

  He lowered himself down into the hole in the ice he’d cut earlier, steadied himself, then pushed back his legs as if readying for a somersault until he felt the spikes take hold.

  A moment later, he was under the ice, walking across the lake upside down.

  For the first fifteen minutes, his otherworldly walk was bliss. He had cut out two exit holes, in case of any trouble with the oxygen tank, but he didn’t think he’d need the spare exit.

  Then he heard something like a drum. As he neared his exit, the sound became louder, and irregular—not like a drum at all.

  The water, so much denser than air, conducted sound as air molecules never could. As a child, Janus had liked to lie in the bathtub, his ears in the water, and hear the enormous clanks and knocks his toy boats could make as they bumped against the porcelain. It made his boats real. Now Janus heard sounds that seemed like footsteps: far away, yet all around him, the water carrying vibrations too long for air to carry. As he approached his entrance, they did not seem to grow louder from there—the water unlocalized sounds—rather, they grew louder from everywhere.

  Janus stopped and stood still. Tried to listen. The sound was too confused.

  Then, since he stood inverted, Janus looked “down,” as it seemed, and saw very clearly, in front of him, the footprint of a man on the ice.

  One black, ripple-sole footprint. In front of him.

  Another joined it—perhaps the man had raised a knee to fix a boot.

  Two black bootprints. Guard’s boots.

  A guard from the compound was standing on the opposite side of the ice from him: right side up on the other side of the ice on which Janus stood upside down, like figures on a playing card.

  Janus tried to figure out how the guard had gotten here so quickly—probably used a hover-car—then decided it didn’t matter.