Revelations

by Nigel Foster

  “Wh-e-e-e-she-ecch!”

  He slowed, turned his head and saw the alien was now floating in the air and following him. They did that sometimes: fixed on a particular individual and stayed with them until suddenly they were gone. He did not want to arrive in Seattle City with an alien in tow. People would notice. There’d be media and government involved. Wouldn’t be easy to slip away and kill a man. “Okay, fuckwit. What you got?”

  The alien settled onto the ground. What could be an eye, enclosed in a transparent pyramid, emerged from a slit in the grey-green skin on the end of a long, fleshy stalk and – maybe – looked at him. The stalk bent so the pyramid’s apex pointed downwards.

  The man wore standard Wilder shirt, jacket, trousers and hiking boots, deceptively simple but nothing he could trade without looking half-dressed. He had just enough cash to support a few days in the city. A small, flat vintage automatic pistol that fired perfectly. A slim knife sharpened on both sides and tapering to a needle point. It was held in an embroidered sheath that Sara had made for him, his only remaining physical link with her. Everything else had been ceremonially burned. Not the Wilder way, but very much his way and no one had tried to dissuade him. Aliens had long ago stopped accepting money, so there was nothing to trade.

  He’d always been good with his hands. It took only twenty minutes to strip branches from a tree and twist them into a classic stick-man about a metre high, with a globe head and twiggy digits, while the pyramid-enclosed eye followed every movement as if recording him.

  “Here you go.” He put the mannequin on the earth next to the alien, which jiggled perhaps in excitement, perhaps disappointment. With aliens, who knew? There was an audible click as one of the boxes was released from the metallic belt to fall on the ground. He picked it up. Five centimetres a side, some sort of grey metal, the edges rounded and slippery to the touch, light in his hand. “Good doing business with you,” he said and walked away, looking back just before the path took him out of sight. The alien was spraying some sort of translucent film over the mannequin. He could almost swear it looked happy. A Free Spacer – a pirate, according to the newly formed Earth Central’s Galactic Division – had talked about a far distant planet that aliens used as a sort of trading post, or could be a museum. There were warehouses crammed with human artefacts of every possible kind. It made no sense, the Free Spacer had said, these were things that had been exchanged for tech like anti-gravity and AI technology, and were now laid out on shelves like the galaxy’s biggest second-hand market. Then again, the Free Spacer had said, nothing about aliens or even the galaxy made sense, and believing it might was the quickest way to madness and an early death.

  He’d once wanted to be a Free Spacer. Meeting Sara had changed everything. And now nothing mattered except the need for revenge.

  The alien artefact was safe in his pocket. A man might get seriously rich, but for the most part no one ever figured out what the artefacts did and the aliens weren’t saying. Or if they were, no one understood them. That was another reason why Wilders looked down on the new city states: so much effort to make sense of things that belonged to another race. He remembered reading in school something said a hundred years ago. Any country could learn how to manufacture a transistor radio. The trick is to develop the science that enables you to invent it. And have a society that needs it.

  Trees thinned, shortened. The grass got thicker, lusher, scattered with spring flowers. The air seemed lighter, softer. He could see the Protected Territory’s fifty-kilometre-wide agricultural strip that penned Seattle City State against the Pacific. Maglev train tracks, raised ten metres above the ground, spread out from the city hub like spokes in a wheel. The local terminus was a mere three kilometres away.

  An hour later he stood waiting in the warm sunshine on a hundred-metre-long platform of polished concrete with a waist-high wall and surrounded by fields. There was one other passenger, standing by the access stairs: a rugged-looking man in his fifties in work clothes and with a farmer’s quiet watchfulness, always ready for disaster. The man nodded a greeting then walked over, light on his feet as an athlete.

  “You’ll be a Wilder,” the farmer said. “See by your clothes.”

  He nodded.

  “Interesting cloth you people use. Seems like man-made but I seen some growing wild one time. Like no goddamn plant I ever knew. Had to spray twice before it went. Business in the City?”

  “Business,” he agreed. The plant that produced Wilder cloth had come from an alien trade, as the farmer had obviously guessed. Still, wise not to confirm it. City states were nervous about alien and Earth plants cross-breeding ever since a carnivorous black rose with poison thorns had been found with sucker roots penetrating the dead body of a municipal gardener. Galactic Division, or GalDiv, had just announced that in future it had to be informed of all alien trades. All but a few city states had agreed. The video of the black rose screaming as it was dragged from the earth probably helped.

  “Some city states don’t allow Wilder people, not casual like. Guards, fences.” The farmer spat onto the single metal rail. “Hear that Erie City’s gonna make everyone wear those 'lectronic chips, you know? Gonna make communication easier. Yeah, right, like we all forgot how to talk. Sounds more like a way to control. Damn stupid.” He held out a powerful hand. “Name’s Doug Barnes. Farm five thousand hectares, mostly potatoes and beans, some dairy and beef.”

  The farmer had pale blue eyes and a strong grip. The other man glanced down, sensing something out of place, not sure what, the thought vanishing as Barnes gave an extra squeeze that lingered a few seconds too long, accompanied by a searching look.

  “Anson,” he said, relieved to be no longer holding hands with a stranger, “Anson Greenaway.” He paused, then decided it would be suspicious to stop there. “I’m a cop in my part of the Wild.” For the most part this meant keeping tourists from the city in line. Any Wilder who committed a serious crime, from large-scale theft to murder or rape, did not hang around. The Wild extended worldwide and without any overall bureaucracy a person could reinvent themselves many times over in a lifetime. Aside from tourist wrangling, Anson’s main duties were taking care of drunks, domestic violence and scrappy teenagers.

  An old-fashioned train whistle, broadcast from hidden loudspeakers, warned of the maglev’s imminent arrival. A disembodied voice said ten minutes. Anson glanced down the track and saw a distant blur. The whistle sounded again.

  “Cute, right?” Barnes spat on the rail. “Like it’s all traditional. 'Cept everyone knows this maglev came from an alien trade. All we did was the concrete.”

  Anson found himself defending a city state. “Humans had been working on maglev for years. The aliens only improved it.” Something he couldn’t identify still nagged at him, something strange about Doug Barnes.

  “You think?” Barnes shook his head. “That’s like saying the rifle only improved the spear.” He stared at Anson for a moment then nodded and half-smiled. “Say what. Half-hour turnaround here. So we got an easy twenty minutes. You wanna fuck? There’s a place below the station.”

  Anson wasn’t shocked by the offer – the overlong handshake and soul-searching look hadn’t been subtle – but he would never get used to how easily City people propositioned each other, even country-folk from the Protected Territories. He’d been born ten years after First Contact, so had no memory of how quickly human traditions, social mores, morality had gone into free fall. “I got someone,” he said truthfully, albeit she was dead. “So thanks but no.”

  “Hey, I got a new wife on a three-year contract. City girl, twenty-two, real blonde with an ass like a peach. Don’t hold me back none, though. Thought you Wilder folk fuck easy?”

  Most city staters believed the same, hence the tourism. “Some. Depends.”

  “Be the best you ever had. Make you squeal for more.” A promise made by both sexes since humans first began to speak.

  “So I’ll regret saying no.”

  Barnes
shrugged. “Yeah, well, don’t blame a man for trying.” He reached inside a pocket and took out a slim visor. “Latest 3D,” he said proudly. “So fuckin’ real you’d swear it was. You don’t mind, I got a good vid to watch.”

  Greenaway was sourly amused to think he was only a little more desirable than a 3D movie. Barnes had lost interest so quickly it was almost insulting. He thought of the farmer’s contract wife – a Seattle City practice yet to catch on in the Wild – and wondered what crisis had made her sign up, even if it was only three years. He moved ten metres down the platform and watched as the onrushing train began to slow when it was eight hundred metres away, the blur firming into a long metal snake with a curiously beaked head. An engineer had once told him how maglev trains in motion used the hot air piling up in front to clean and clear the track, hence the curiously shaped nose – a genuine human invention. The frictionless coating on the train’s underside came from an alien trade, though. If the magnetic field – human discovery, alien improvement – failed the train would merely coast along the rail until gradually braking to a stop.

  Greenaway realised what had worried him about Barnes.

  Not the handshake but the hands.

  Recently manicured. Perfect quicks. Powerful, yet soft-skinned.

  Okay, farming nowadays was as automated as any factory, but even so. He’d recognised the anomaly but that sudden, extra pressure had distracted him... exactly as it was meant to do. And, later, as had the proposition. Somehow the man had been alerted. And then how quickly Barnes had lost interest. You’d think anyone so attracted as to proposition a total stranger within minutes would try a little harder. Anson glanced back and saw Barnes standing stock still, 3D visor covering his eyes, as he seemed to be talking. Perhaps joining in the vid’s dialogue.

  But not lost to the outside world.

  Barnes’ right hand came up, pointing directly at Anson, who saw a gleam of metal and without thinking dived to the ground, twisted into a rolling break-fall, moved left, checked, moved right, scrabbling for his own gun as tiny chips erupted from bullets cracking into the polished concrete.

  One thought in his mind: If I die she won’t be avenged.

  He checked again, now gripping his own gun, rolled left, checked, left again desperately hoping Barnes would expect a move to the right, and ended in the classic prone position, both hands around the pistol’s grip, aware of Barnes’ gun swinging around in his direction.

  Why had he waited to kill me?

  The impulse was to loose off as many shots as possible. Instead Anson took a deep breath as he’d been taught, sighted and fired two rapid shots as Barnes’ gun jerked in his hand.

  A sudden, sharp pain above his left eye. He panicked, thinking he’d been shot, realised it was only a concrete splinter and exulted as Barnes lurched to one side then collapsed onto the platform, now more large, shapeless toy than human sprawled at the head of the stairs.

  Greenaway glanced down the track. The train was around five hundred metres away. Driverless, with only a conductor to take fares and make nice. There was what – six, seven minutes before it slowed to a stop. He stood up, remembering to control his breathing, and ran towards Barnes. A new thought appeared in his mind: Will killing a man temper my drive for vengeance? Then he half-smiled. The drive to kill was still there, even enhanced.

  Barnes was definitely dead, two singed entry holes in his lower left chest signposting an exploded heart. His hand still gripped a modern-looking automatic pistol, his expression angry. He had not died a happy man.

  A righteous killing, an escape from death, can help a person forget their troubles, if only for a little while.

  Anson Greenaway had never killed before and now felt as alive as the first time he’d seen Sara. The air was clearer than a few minutes ago, the sunshine brighter. He could hear a single cricket singing from a long way away. The scent of gun smoke was strong in his nostrils. The dead man’s mouth was half open, showing a right canine faintly discoloured at the base. There was a tiny patch of stubble just below the left nostril. For a moment Anson knew a moment of total togetherness with the dead man, the distant cricket, the entire universe.

  Six minutes to go, tops.

  Anson dragged the body – gun still gripped by lifeless fingers – down the stairs, on its side to lessen, hopefully prevent, a smeared blood trail from the exit wounds. Halfway down the bowels voided, the sudden stench making Anson gag.

  He looked around, expecting panic to start nibbling at his gut, relieved and curiously amused when it didn’t. At the base of the raised track he found an unlocked door and shoved the limp, stinking and annoyingly uncooperative body into a storeroom. After spending fifteen seconds relieving the late Doug Barnes of his possessions and the 3D visor, he closed the door firmly and ran back up the stairs. There was an elevator ten metres further down, he’d used it earlier, but it made sense to check for bloodstains. Nothing too obvious and the platform itself was clear, except for a dozen or so shell casings that he threw over the wall and into the rough grass running alongside the track. It was then that he saw, half hidden behind a bush, a sleek all-terrain vehicle. And knew that Barnes never intended to take the train back to Seattle City.

  His forehead stung, he remembered the concrete chip, found his skin to be sticky and cleaned himself with saliva and a sleeve. Nothing to be done about the marks on the platform. Maybe no one would notice. Or they’d blame kids. Birds. Raccoons. Aliens. People mostly did that these days: blamed aliens for anything out of the ordinary or annoying.

  Nowadays fishermen have to have reference pictures of every known fish in the sea. Just in case they land a visitor from Alpha Centauri taking a bath.

  I’m getting light-headed.

  He thought about the renegade US Army Ranger, who’d been given temporary refuge in the Wild two years ago and who had said thank you by training a young, rookie cop.

  “People react different when they kill for the first time. Some go all quiet, act as if nothing’s happened, others start to shake or pray or look for someone to fuck, which is a pretty crap idea but the body wants what the body needs. The real bad one is feeling invincible, 'cause that’s when you end up dead. But some just feel alive and ready for anything. Natural soldiers, women and men always apart from the crowd.”

  Then the station filled with silver as the maglev eased in and hummed to a stop, far shinier and sleeker than Anson remembered. He walked to the far end, now the front, figuring any passengers would choose a carriage that stopped closer to the elevator and stairs. But there was only the conductor, who waved to his solitary passenger fifty metres away. Anson went directly to the carriage toilet, washed his face and hands with the complimentary pine-scented soap and examined himself in the mirror. A slight cut, more of a graze, above his left eye. Clothes not too rumpled although sweatier than he’d like. He should have brought a change. She used to say I had a hero’s face, but my green eyes were definitely faerie. She used to say that one day we’d sit in our rocking chairs on the porch and laugh about all the stuff we’d done when young. After Sara had died Anson had sensed her as being sad, confused and very alone. In his mind he’d tried to comfort her, saying it was okay, she was safe now, the nightmare was over and soon he’d be with her forever. Even though he’d known it was grief and guilt her presence had still felt real.

  She still did. Greenaway froze as the sense of her filled him then vanished. He understood that something had changed. He was no longer so relaxed about dying. He wanted to live.

  After he’d killed one more man. And as many as it took to get to him.

  Greenaway took a window seat – plusher and better-smelling than he remembered – facing the now-front of the train. The adrenalin was running down and he needed to think about the past ten minutes. Any time now he’d probably begin to shake. Anson held out his hands. Steady as a rock. He looked for guilt and found none, not even over Sara’s death. Killing had changed him.

  Why hadn’t Barnes killed him earlier?
Shot him in the back as he walked away? Why kill him in the first place? Random, serial, sport murder? Mistaken identity? Greenaway relived those few minutes they’d been together.

  First, Barnes getting close to make sure of his target.

  Positioning himself by the top of the stairs, so he could shoot and leave, fast. Except that would mean Greenaway’s body was discovered when the train came in. Rethink. Right. They had both been close to the stairs when instinct made Greenaway turn. Barnes had skilfully manoeuvred him into the kill zone. Replay. Identify, move target into position, kill, drag body off platform... which was why the storage locker was unlocked, ready for the dead Greenaway. So a professional hitman, which made the main question all the more important: why Greenaway? And how did Barnes know where he’d be?

  Within an hour of the body being discovered the cops would want to talk to the young man at the terminus. No name, but here’s a photo from maglev surveillance. His DNA, taken from the dead body, would match other DNA found on the train. And there seems to have been a gun battle on the platform. Anson could probably establish self-defence. Explain the taking of the man’s belongings, of lying to the conductor, as Wilder intransigence. But it would slow him down or worse, might alert his quarry. He’d allowed himself two days to kill Sara’s murderer. Now he shortened the time to twenty-four hours before officialdom got involved. Which was fine for a suicide run, but now he wanted to live.

  "Hello," said a woman’s warm voice from a hidden speaker, "welcome to the Seattle Flyer. I’m the train AI and I’m here to serve you."