The Age Atomic

by Adam Christopher

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Rad cried out. He rolled on his side and remembered the woman with blue eyes falling from a tall building. Then he looked up. The ground was cold, freezing, and the sign that shone in the icy air said Soma Street.

  He jerked up, his head pounding. Someone said “Easy, tiger,” and a hand pressed down on his chest. He blinked, clearing his vision, and saw Mr Grieves looking down at him, standing in a sea of silver men.

  Rad cried out again, and spun around on the floor. Soma Street was to his left, close enough to touch. The army of robots was on his right, impossibly tall from his position on the floor. Lying next to him was Jennifer, face down and very still. Of Kane and the woman with blue eyes there was no sign, but when he blinked he saw their outlines moving, right on the border between the two universes. It looked like they were dancing, dancing until the end of the world, but Rad blinked again and they were gone and maybe it had been his imagination anyway.

  Rad winced. He hurt all over. His head felt like it was going to explode. He turned his attention to Jennifer, his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t respond, but Rad felt her body gently move. She was breathing, at least.

  “What in the hell?” he asked of no one in particular, but Grieves moved away as a familiar laugh barked out.

  “Welcome back, Mr Bradley,” said Nimrod. He was standing by the torus reactor, now dark, silent. He looked tired, his face slick with sweat and his safari jacket a little crooked, but he was alive and standing with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Rad, pulling himself to his feet with a little help from Mr Grieves. “What happened? Where’s Kane and the blue lady? And why aren’t we dead?”

  He turned to look into the Empire State. The portal that formed the wall of the factory was as large as ever but different somehow; the edge of it, where one universe cut into another, was not torn and flickering as it had been before, but a solid blue outline, curved and bold. It was still cold, standing so close to the winter city, but the wind was gone. Soma Street was still, quiet, like the robots surrounding Rad.

  “The portal is quite stable. We have Mr Fortuna to thank for that, and Evelyn, of course. But I think you and Jennifer saved us all.”

  Rad looked at Mr Grieves, but the agent just shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck like he’d just gone two rounds with someone a little bigger than he was.

  “I remember,” said Rad, turning on his heel to survey the factory. “The robots were counting down to the end of the world. Kane stopped them but it was too much for him. Said he was locked to McHale and couldn’t do a thing.”

  “You spoke to him?” asked Nimrod. “Fascinating.”

  Rad nodded. “Said he needed my help. He gave me a little touch of the power he carried, but… I guess it was too much. He asked me to take out Elektro, but I couldn’t. The robot was too strong.”

  Nimrod walked forward, and Rad jumped back as the two robots immediately behind him stepped with him in time. Nimrod clapped his hands, rubbing them together like he was starting a fire between his palms.

  “Fret not, detective. While you two were out for the count I had a look at the master control circuit.” Nimrod gestured to the control panel underneath the torus reactor. “This army is now mine.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Rad. He eyed the robots. There was something about the way Nimrod seemed so pleased to be in command that he didn’t like, not this time. There was a hardness in the old man’s eyes when he said it.

  Jennifer moaned. Rad dropped to his knee and helped her sit up.

  “Kane was the key,” Nimrod said, watching the pair. “Evelyn couldn’t see his timeline because, like her, he existed outside of the world. They were two sides of the same space-time event.”

  Grieves loosened his tie. “The Fissure?”

  “Precisely,” said Nimrod. “Polar opposites, perfectly balanced. They fed off each other.”

  “But the Fissure was inside Kane,” said Rad. He pointed to the portal to Soma Street. “How could both sides be here, in New York?”

  “They couldn’t,” said Nimrod. “He pushed Evelyn off her axis, and she began to fall, dragging him down. He realized this, from what you say, which is why he needed your help to tap into another power source. The injection of energy from the fusor reactor was enough to pull them both back up so the convergence could be complete. Two became one, the opposite sides of the Fissure balancing once more. Et, voilà.”

  Nimrod spread his arms open like a showman as he stood in front of the giant portal to the Empire State. Rad moved forward, expecting to feel the buzz-saw vibration, but there was nothing. Nimrod glanced sideways at him and chuckled.

  “It’s quite stable. The Pocket and the Origin are not merely tethered, they are tightly bound together.”

  Jennifer sighed and rubbed the back of her head.

  “That was quite a punch you threw,” said Rad.

  “I followed your lead on that one,” she said with a small laugh.

  “Are you OK? You tore up Elektro but then collapsed.”

  Jennifer nodded and rolled her neck. “I think so. I heard you from outside. Sounded like you needed help, so… I just ran.” She flexed the fingers of her right hand. “I guess I’m stronger than I look. But that was all I had in me and it was lights out.” She looked around. “I take it it worked.”

  Rad nodded. “We wouldn’t be here without you, so thanks. With your brother out there…”

  “Stop,” Jennifer waved Rad off. “Didn’t seem much point wishing I could get James fixed if the world ended, right?”

  “True enough,” said Rad. Then he saw his hat on the floor. He scooped it up and put it on. The band was cold against his skin. “And Kane?” He turned to Nimrod. “He’s dead, I take it?”

  Nimrod’s mustache rolled under his nose as he surveyed the blue boundary of the portal. “I don’t think he was ever alive, not really.”

  “Never alive?”

  “Well,” said Nimrod, waving his hands. “Alive, in a sense, the same as the Fissure is alive. But like Evelyn, it wasn’t him. He was an echo, an afterimage.”

  Rad nodded. “A ghost. Like her?”

  “Indeed. Evelyn McHale died in 1947 at the bottom of the Empire State Building. The Director of Atoms for Peace was not the same woman, not really.”

  Rad pondered this, but it all seemed too big, too dreamlike. He wasn’t really sure Nimrod knew as much as he claimed, and while there was an empty sadness at the thought that Kane had never come back to the Empire State, not really, there was a calmness too, melancholic and cool but one that filled Rad with a kind of nervous hope.

  He turned to Soma Street, to the Empire State. To his home.

  “Sir!”

  Rad turned as two of Nimrod’s agents rushed in, the same men Grieves had left to help up top. Nimrod frowned.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Carson, sir,” said the agent in front.

  Rad froze. “What about him?”

  “He’s in a bad way. He said to get Captain Nimrod.”

  Rad turned to Nimrod. Nimrod brushed his mustache with the back of a thick finger.

  FIFTY-SIX

  They stood in front of the portal: Rad and Jennifer and two of Evelyn’s robots and two of Nimrod’s agents. The two robots carried the metal body of James Jones between them, while Nimrod’s agents held a stretcher, on which lay Captain Carson. The old man breathed deeply but too slowly for Rad’s liking, and when he exhaled there was an asthmatic rattle.

  “He’ll be better when you get across, trust me,” said Nimrod, his eyes on his other self. “The incompatibility sickness is making his condition worsen. Are you ready?”

  Rad pulled his collar up and his hat down, and he looked at Jennifer. She nodded.

  “And the sooner we get back, the sooner we can work on getting James help,” she said, looking down at her brother’s lifeless machine body.

  Rad frowned. Inside he hoped she was right, but he also knew that gett
ing James fixed, if that was even possible, depended largely on whether Carson would pull through. Carson and his New York counterpart were their best hope, but Rad wasn’t too sure about relying so much on Nimrod’s co-operation.

  “OK,” he said, turning to Nimrod. “We’re ready.”

  “Very good,” said Nimrod. “These robots will obey your every command. With luck, they will be able to overcome the programming of the robots on the other side, and those will in turn begin reprogramming their brethren – and so on, and so forth. The process will be exponential. When you are ready, simply give them the command, and they will go about their work.”

  Rad shook his head. “There’s an awful lot of assuming going on there. You should come with us. We’ll need your expertise, not just with the robots but with James here too.”

  “I have much to do here,” said Nimrod, “but I shall try to be quick. With the portal open, we can come and go as we please.”

  Jennifer tapped Rad’s arm. “We need to go.”

  Rad nodded. He shook Mr Grieves’s hand and reached out for Nimrod’s, but the Captain merely took a step backwards and bowed.

  “Quickly, detective.”

  Rad frowned. He turned to the robots and the two agents.

  “Follow me,” he said, then he hunched his shoulders and walked into the Empire State, the others right behind.

  They watched Rad and Jennifer for a moment, and then Mr Grieves coughed. Nimrod turned to him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Mr Grieves. “We’re still federal fugitives, aren’t we? Even with Evelyn gone…”

  “Yes,” said Nimrod, fire in his eyes. “There is something we need to do.” He turned to the two robots behind him. “Come with me.”

  In Soma Street the hour was early, but there was something different. Rad paused, letting the others go ahead, as he looked at the sky. Morning would come soon, and it was still cold, colder than the coldest winter in the Empire State, but the deadly bite was missing, the chill that made Rad fear for his life. The Pocket and the Origin were reconnected, and now perhaps the Pocket was healing.

  Rad turned around. The middle of Soma Street no longer existed. Instead, there stood a huge arch of shimmering blue, three or four stories tall and just as wide. Evelyn’s New York factory was right there, the silver army frozen in place just beyond the threshold. Rad guessed the portal would be permanent, which meant access to Soma Street would have to be restricted. Something to worry about another time.

  Nimrod and Mr Grieves were nowhere to be seen. Rad sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He liked Captain Carson, but there was something about his New York counterpart that made Rad nervous.

  “Rad!”

  The detective turned. Jennifer waved at him from farther down the street, the agents and robots trudging forward, carrying their charges.

  “Coming,” said Rad. And then he pulled down his hat and jogged to catch up. Beneath his hat he smiled.

  Home sweet home.

  EPILOGUE

  REGIME CHANGE

  The men, near to thirty of them, sat around the circular table so large it occupied the entire room, a great ring of polished wood that circled two desks in a central arena. At these desks – themselves large, expensive, and tax-payer funded – sat two clerks, both female; one was checking through a vast stack of paper while the other prepped her stenotype for the second half of the meeting, due to commence in just a few minutes. Around the room, portraits of the great and good looked down upon the senate subcommittee: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and a dozen other presidents – some famous, effective; some less so.

  The recess was nearly at its end, the committee members slowly returning to their seats, sipping from their fresh coffee and laughing about their poor games of golf that weekend, the episode of I Love Lucy from TV the previous night, and the chances of the New York Giants against the Cleveland Indians in the forthcoming World Series. The Giants were going to get their asses handed to them was the general consensus.

  The double doors of the committee room opened and a man walked in, leading three others; behind them, two walking machines, hulking silver men nearly seven feet tall, their features a rough parody of human faces, their chests lit with spinning discs the same glowing red as their eyes.

  The man in front wore a brown suit that was most definitely bottom rack, while the three behind wore matching black suits of a quality cut with black hats to match. All four were holding guns, and they strode into the room quietly and at speed, stepping through the gap in the circular table that allowed entry into the central space. In just a few seconds the three black-suited men spaced themselves out around the table, each covering enough of the committee members to ensure nobody did anything they might regret later. The two robots stood by the doors, still except for their eyes, which scanned the room back and forth, back and forth.

  The clerks seated at the desk made to stand, but the man in the brown suit shook his head and motioned with his pistol for them to sit tight.

  The committee members began to mutter, quietly at first but with gathering volume. Most seemed canny enough to keep still. All except the committee chair, a tall man wrapped in immaculate blue pinstripe, his hair snow white and perfectly parted. The Secretary of Defense.

  “Who are you?” asked the Secretary. “What do you want?”

  The man in the brown suit raised an eyebrow.

  “You can call me Mr Grieves,” he said, before turning back to the clerks. He clicked his fingers at one of them. After a moment the young woman realized what he wanted and picked up the phone, offering it to him. Mr Grieves nodded at her. “Dial for me.”

  The clerk put the receiver to her ear. “Um… what number?” she said, almost adding “sir” to the end of the question.

  Mr Grieves smiled.

  “The Oval Office. Get me the President.”

  The phone rang twice. The man sitting in the chair behind the big desk ignored it, his attention instead on the gun pointed at him, unmoving.

  The phone rang four more times. Nimrod glanced at the black-suited agent and the robot standing by the door, and then picked it up.

  “Oval Office,” said Nimrod, a happy lilt in his voice. Behind the desk, Dwight D Eisenhower scowled at his former special aide, but he didn’t speak, his lips tight, his left eyelid twitching. Nimrod kept his eyes on him and kept the gun perfectly level.

  “Ah, Mr Grieves,” he said into the phone. “I take it everything is in order? Yes? Good. What? Ah, the Secretary of Defense wishes to speak to the President? I’m afraid he will have to speak to me.”

  Nimrod smiled at Eisenhower as he waited on the phone. There was a movement in his ear, muffled, as the phone was passed over.

  Nimrod raised the gun, stretching his arm out straight, pointing the barrel directly at the center of Eisenhower’s expansive forehead.

  “Ah, Mr Secretary? How charming to speak to you again.”

  Nimrod pulled his thumb back, cocking the revolver.

  “Now, listen very carefully. These are my terms.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE CLOUD CLUB

  She took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and sipped it, enjoying the tickle of bubbles against her nose. Glass half-drained, she kept it high, and peered over the rim at the man on the other side of the room. The man raised an eyebrow, his mouth twitching into a smirk. Then he turned away.

  The band struck up again, and soon people were back on the dance floor.

  “You’ve been looking at him all night.”

  She lowered the glass and turned her back on the room and her attention to the vast window that formed nearly the whole of the wall. She took a step forward and pressed one gloved hand to the glass. Manhattan stretched out before her, the lights of the city kissing the invisible horizon in every direction. If she squinted, just a little, the lights fuzzed and spun, turning into the whirly stars of the Milky Way, bathing her in their magical blue light, the light of…

  “Seriously
,” said her friend, sipping from her own champagne. “You can’t keep this up all night.”

  She smiled. “I can keep this up forever.”

  “If you don’t do something soon, I’ll do it for you.”

  She blinked, and the city returned. She turned away from the window and watched the patrons of the Cloud Club drink and talk and dance.

  “He looks nice.”

  “Yes, he does,” she said. Then she frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve seen him somewhere before, that’s all.” She searched the room. “Where is he?”

  Her friend smiled and slid sideways, back towards the window.

  “Excuse me.”

  She turned. He was there, smiling at her, his eyes big and brown. His hair was dark, slicked back, one escaped lick flicking across his forehead. She decided she liked that.

  The man bowed and glanced at her friend, who smiled before burying her face in her glass. “May I have this dance?”

  She laughed, glancing at her friend, who nodded furiously. She turned back to the man and held out her arm.

  “I’m charmed, Mr…”

  “Fortuna. Kane Fortuna.”

  “Evelyn McHale.” She took his arm.

  “Ms McHale,” he said, “the night is ours.”

  The pair weaved their way to the middle of the room, joining the mass of dancing couples.

  Outside, New York sparkled, the lights of the city like jewels on velvet, like the stars in the sky, their light the light of the gap between the universes, the light of the end of the world.

  And in the Cloud Club, the music played on and the couples danced, and danced, and danced.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First and foremost, I have to thank my literary agent, Stacia J. N. Decker, for work above and beyond the call of duty on this manuscript. The Age Atomic wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for her, and for that I am forever grateful and forever in her debt.