Without explanation, he thrust the bit into the wall. A turn of the disk, and the primitive drill started tearing away chunks of mud brick.
Kyler watched him work in silence, straining his ears for the sound of any approaching Guti. "This is taking too long," he whispered.
"Like hell it is. Look, I'm already through."
He pulled the drill out to reveal a small hole. From the bag he took a curved bronze rod that looked like a crowbar, and inserted it into the opening. A heave, and he levered out a brick. Someone with lesser strength would've had a harder time, but Shumir took only minutes to make a Kyler-sized opening.
"In you go," he said. "The working girls' business won't last long, so get that tablet and get out. I'll be waiting in the corner over there, behind the bush."
Leaving the hard part to me, Kyler thought. He wriggled into the jagged hole. His mace threatened to snag on a brick, but by turning his hip he managed to worm through.
Murky darkness on the other side. His palms and knees touched a floor of cool stone, smooth as marble. After a few seconds his eyes adjusted. Lamplight guttered from somewhere ahead. He crawled for it, striving to remember the layout from Arshan's map. The library was on the ground floor. A confirmed bachelor, Naram Eil kept no women. With him up in his tower and the servants asleep, the lower rooms should be vacant. That was the theory, at least.
He found a clay lamp in the foyer. Steps of polished basalt led upwards, but he skirted those, taking the lamp with him as he headed towards a hallway. The house was tomb-silent. He became too aware of his own breathing, the echo of his footfalls. If caught, he'd be punished in the most literal manner possible: his dead body would be used to shore up the hole Shumir had made. "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth," came directly from Hammurabi's law code, enacted in Babylon one thousand years earlier.
But there was more at stake here than his own safety. He swallowed fear and crept down the hall. At the far end, a doorway opened onto a chamber with niches carved into the walls. Clay tablets lay stacked within.
Jackpot.
Conscious of time draining away, he played lamplight over the library's shelves. There were at least a hundred tablets, all crowded with wedge-shaped cuneiform. Not a large selection by modern standards, but enough to take too long if he wasn't careful. Luckily, he had an excellent reference hidden in his homespun tunic. A copy of the Kidinnu Tablet, exact as they could make it in the twenty-third century, after sections had crumbled away. Using the copy as a guide, he shuffled through tablets until he found a match. The real one went into his tunic along with the fake. Ironic, but the best way to protect it for now was to keep it close. Arshan and crew would receive the copy. Kyler would then return the tablet to Naram Eil, after he'd nabbed his time-traveling thief.
Satisfied, he turned to the doorway. And froze.
A sleek black leopard had come padding into the room. The beast sat on its haunches, observing him with lambent yellow eyes. A silver collar encircled its thick neck.
Kyler silently cursed. Arshan's plans hadn't allowed for pets.
The leopard let out a growl. It might be playful, or it might be a prelude to ripping his guts open. He considered the mace at his side, but he didn't really want to brain the beautiful animal. Also, killing this far back in time was frowned on; even the loss of a big cat could snowball into unforeseen consequences.
The leopard got up and slunk over. It nuzzled his hand before growling again, louder this time. Slow as he could, Kyler withdrew the stylus he'd used in the alley. Two strong clicks. Instead of a ballpoint, an eight gauge hypodermic slid from the tip.
The cat's growl edged into a roar. Black lips pulled back over bared incisors. He plunged the needle into its neck. The stylus hissed, injecting a full reservoir of toxin. Paralytics designed for a ninety-kilogram man made the leopard's muscles spasm. It went rigid before keeling over.
Kyler's heart started to pound. Could someone have heard all that growling? He left the lamp where he'd set it down and hurried from the library. Passing the foyer, he glimpsed a stooped figure coming around a corner at the top of the stairs. He dove for the smooth-floored chamber. A short distance away gaped the hole Shumir had made. He ploughed through without getting stuck.
Out into the gardens. Compared to the house's dark interior, it seemed almost bright. But where was Shumir? He searched the shadowed corner where he'd said he'd be waiting. No trace.
Rustling noises. A pair of broad-shouldered shapes came loping down the side of the house. Their interlude with Iltani's 'maidens' must be over. Kyler pressed himself against the ground.
An old man's voice cried out from the front of the house. The guards wheeled and started running in that direction. Naram must've already found the leopard. They'd search the house, find the hole, and find him, a short distance away.
He leapt for the wall's rim, but couldn't reach it. Goddamn Shumir. He must've known he would've left him trapped here—
Wait a second. How would Shumir have gotten out? He wasn't any taller.
Kyler felt along the wall. His fingers brushed a deep gouge in the brick, at the perfect height for a foothold. Shumir could've made it with one of his tools. He thrust his toes inside, pushed, and scrambled over the top of the wall. Hang-dropped to the other side.
The open plaza stretched around him. Instead of feeling relief, the back of his neck prickled. He sensed eyes watching from the darkness.
Kyler had been a Level Two Precognitive before becoming a field agent. His intuitions had a habit of turning into solid facts. And right now, his intuition screamed to leap for cover.
He did so. Two meters to his left a public fountain bubbled, and he hurled himself behind it.
His retinas flashed. A finger of ruby-red sparks angled down to touch the space he'd just vacated. It scorched a pattern on the paving stones and followed to where he crouched. There was a whoosh as the fountain's water converted to steam.
Someone had brought a laser to ancient Babylon. He rolled and popped his head up. Again, the ruby light flashed, and he ducked. This time the whooshing went on for a long moment, as the gunner raked the fountain. Either excited or frustrated. Steam rose in a large, roiling cloud.
Kyler stood up. When the beam flashed again it struck the cloud and diffracted into a harmless spray of color. Smoke would've been more effective, but what the hell. He traced the laser's path to a wall top some thirty meters away.
The beam winked out. Likely, the capacitor needed several seconds to charge again.
Likely.
But if he stayed here, pinned, his sniper would find another angle.
Expecting to be fried at any moment, he broke from the fountain and ran.
* * *
Twice Kyler got lost bolting down darkened side-streets and alleys. Twice he had to retrace his steps. Soldiers, cesspools, and staggering drunks seemed to materialize out of the warm night air. He eluded them all.
The twisting streets began to look familiar. Another few blocks and he found his safe house; a bottom floor room in a four-story tenement. He had to wake the landlord by pounding on the door, which got him a sharp look, but thankfully, no questions. His room was a tiny cubicle with a straw tick and the Babylonian equivalent of a chamber pot. A slit-window let in air. During the day, the place was an oven.
He rolled up the tick and placed the tablet—the real one—in a niche he'd dug the day before. Hopefully, Damon would have access to a better hiding place. Loot secured, he collapsed into a corner and allowed himself the luxury of several deep breaths.
Safe. For now, anyways. Nothing like a leopard or a laser-potting sniper to remind of one's mortality. He fought the urge to reach under his tunic and activate the recall beacon clipped there. A quantum-entangled signal could haul him back to the present in minutes.
But that would mean leaving Uncle Damon high and dry. And there was still the matter of the mystery-thief.
Though he had a damn good idea who it was.
* * *
/>
Babylon came to life in the ash-colored dawn. The sun had risen early for another day of merciless scorching, throwing shadows across the abandoned temple. As Kyler approached, he could hear the echoes of stalls being erected in the market near Buzzard Gate. Commerce never waited long.
He crept into the temple courtyard, eyes wary. Arshan's plan called for a regroup the morning after the heist, to exchange the tablet. It had struck Kyler as the perfect opportunity for a double-cross.
But some of his tension eased when he spied Shumir waiting in plain sight. The big man leaned against a cracked stone altar, his arms folded. He grinned at Kyler. "Glad to see you made it."
"No thanks to you."
"Hey now, don't get hostile." Shumir was keeping his right hand tucked behind his back. "Sorry I had to ditch you in the garden, but those tribesmen were loose."
"Where's Arshan?"
"Not here yet. You got the tablet, right?"
"You going to try and laser me for it again?"
To his credit, Shumir's face remained calm. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you don't. Two things you need to know, pal. One, I've hidden the tablet in a secure place. Two, I didn't come back in time alone. My uncle Damon's armed and watching us right now."
That last part was a bluff, but it sounded good.
"Alright," Shumir said in Anglic, stretching to show the auto-pistol in his right hand. "How'd you figure it?"
"Your muscles. They don't have deltoid grafting in the ancient Middle East. Another thing; minus the extra pigment and the hook someone added to your nose, you look just like a professional wrestler from a couple years back. Big Hoss McAdams, I think his name was."
"Big Boss McAdams. But close enough."
"One thing I don't get. If you brought a laser back, why bother with all the subtleties? You could've roasted Naram's guards from the wall, and burned through his front door."
McAdams shook his head. "That would blow my cover to any other time travelers. No, I had to take a low-tech approach."
"Until you tried to shoot me, anyway."
"Nothing personal."
Kyler felt his hands clench. "You've got no idea what you're doing. The Kidinnu Tablet's a big chunk of early science. Steal it, and we could be travelling back to a radically different future."
"Bullshit. I don't buy any of that 'paradox' theory. You're just another government agent trying to suppress the free market."
"More bullshit."
McAdams's voice grew reasonable. "Look, I bet you're getting paid dick for this mission. Some bureaucrat's salary. My employer can triple it. Quadruple it, even. Just tell me where—"
A bearded figure appeared at the edge of the courtyard, silhouetted in the morning sun. "By the breath of Utuk," Arshan said, "what language are you two speaking? It sounds like goats farting."
McAdams's gun slithered out of sight. "Just an old Greek dialect I picked up. Kyros here found the tablet."
"Of course he did."
"I guess it's time to divvy, then," McAdams said, winking at Kyler.
"Not quite. Iltani isn't here, yet. And I'll need the tablet first, to obtain the full sum …"
As he spoke, a dozen men converged on the courtyard from different directions. Ragged men, lean as hyenas, gripping sickle-bladed swords and knives. Babylonian gutter-trash. They shuffled past Arshan to form a ring around Kyler and McAdams.
"What gives?" the big man said. "I was the one who told you about the buyer. I approached you to set this whole thing up."
"I found a new buyer," Arshan said.
Kyler pulled the copy from his tunic. "What if I just gave you the tablet right now? Would you let us go?"
Arshan shook his head. "Sadly, my new buyer wants no traces on his end. So you'll both have to disappear." He nodded to his cutthroats.
Kyler held the fake high, threatening to break it. But McAdams had already leveled his gun. The automatic barked. Two thugs dropped as explosive bullets tore holes in their chests. The others hesitated, unfamiliar with the strange weapon. McAdams cut down two more while they gawked.
"Clip's dry," he said, in Anglic.
"The secret room." Kyler reached behind the altar and yanked up the concealed trapdoor. Below lay semi-darkness. He leapt down without bothering to use the ladder. McAdams joined him seconds later.
The cedar wood table was still there, and someone had re-lit the lamp. Breathing hard, McAdams glanced at the bright square in the ceiling. "We're trapped in here, you know."
"They can only come at us from one direction."
Above, Arshan's voice exhorted his men to finish the job. Shadows hunched over the trapdoor. McAdams grabbed up the table. He tilted it forward and charged as a trio of men dropped down. Wood slammed them against the wall with bone-jarring force.
"Just like in the ring!" McAdams's shouted. "I'll break your primitive little—"
A thug landed on top of him, knife slashing. McAdams hurled the man to the floor. Blood dripped from a deep cut across his pectorals.
Another thug leapt down.
Frowned on or not, Kyler would have to fight, and probably kill, to get out of this alive. He hefted the mace—and caught a faint jingling, behind him. Sharp bronze pressed against his throat.
"Not so fast, handsome," Iltani's voice husked. "Tell me you've got the tablet."
He had to speak carefully, to keep the blade from cutting his Adam's apple. "I've got it. But Arshan will kill you, too."
"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm very persuasive." She took her lips away from his ear. "Ahmose, search him."
A pair of hands felt through his tunic. Kyler could only watch as McAdams fought off three armed men at once. He dislocated a jaw with a single punch, but got a knife in the thigh for his trouble.
The Egyptian eunuch's hands found the tablet and tore it free.
"Alright then," said Iltani. "I've got my bargaining chip. Tell me one good reason why I shouldn't slit your throat right now."
"You have a deep-felt love for humanity?"
The knife bit tighter. "Try again."
"How about this: your eunuch is actually my uncle Damon Cole in disguise, sent back in time from the twenty-third century."
"What?"
There was the familiar hiss of a narcoject, and the pressure against Kyler's throat slackened. He turned to see Ahmose/Damon pull a stylus from Iltani's neck. Her rigid body crashed to the floor.
"Your timing, as ever, is impeccable."
Damon tore the veil off his face. Like McAdams, he'd had extra pigmentation implanted. "For your sake, maybe. Not your friend's."
Behind them, McAdams had just finished throttling the last of his attackers. Both men went down in each other's arms. A knife hilt protruded from McAdams's muscled back, near the base of his spine. He convulsed, and a throaty death-rattle filled the chamber.
"Requiescat in pace, Big Boss," Kyler said.
"Did you find out who he was working for?"
Kyler shook his head. "The least of our troubles. Arshan's waiting up there and I figure he's still got a couple swordsmen left. We can't activate the recall signal until we've returned the real tablet to Naram Eil."
"Gloom and doom, nephew." Damon fished an egg-shaped object out of his robes. "You really need to put more faith in technology."
"What's that?"
"Gas grenade." A grin split his darkened face. "Non-lethal, but when Arshan and his men wake up they'll have splitting headaches. Too bad aspirin won't be invented for a couple millennia."
†
STRONTIUM DREAMS
Mac met up with Lev in the quays of Jetsam Flats, just as the soot-streaked sky was lightening from purple. He'd been living outside for two weeks, still learning how to sleep with a respirator on. Which was why he felt dead-tired and never saw the Collection team until they pounced.
He'd come strolling up, Lev beside him. Their confederate, Cal, was waiting as agreed, leaning against a plastic-covered mound only inches from the
water. Cal with his arms folded, his hood pulled forward and trying to look nonchalant. Like the three of them didn't have Big Plans for the morning.
Then he felt it. Instant roiling in his guts. And just as his knees folded and dropped him to the filth, he thought, Oh shit, because he'd had the sensation before, and knew what a non-lethal ambush meant. Cal and Lev were writhing, too.
Half a dozen men came boiling out from behind a midden heap, each one encased in armor. Mac scoped them as Independents by the artwork stenciled on the ceramic plating; ochre vulture skulls and crossbones, against gold-flecked black. One of them clutched a wide beam maser with a square barrel. Mac figured that was the weapon that had laid him out.
They came to him first, kicked his hood away, and took one look at the ideogram stamped on his forehead. Moved on, muttering curses beneath their faceplates. Mac's breathing calmed a little. Next came Lev, but they could see his indigo-mottled skin without much prodding and gave him a pass, too.
Cal, poor bastard—not his lucky day. One Collector pinioned his arms and the other tore his respirator off. Cal's goiter glowed cherry red under his swollen neck, a sure tag of thyroid cancer, but it must've been lean times in the collection business, because they popped him with a hypo anyway, started laying his slack body out on a folding gurney. The guy with the hypo complained their haul wasn't worth the joules it took for a maser shot.
Mac had recovered a little in the meanwhile. Enough, if he wanted, to fling himself up and try something stupid. Like bouncing a shiv off all that hard armor. Or trying to wrestle well-fed, gene-modified goons who outnumbered him six to one. So he stayed right where he was.
A glance at Lev's flat eyes told him his friend was thinking the same thing.
And for maybe the thousandth time in his young life, he thanked his father for blowing the last of the family money on the Genetic Undesirables stamp gracing his forehead, a five-armed logo warning of tainted nucleotides and dangerous recessives. The GU rating made his organs worthless and kept his flesh out of the Long Pork tacos hawked on every corner of Jetsam Flats.
Apocalypse Soon (Kyler Knightly and Damon Cole Book 2) Page 4