Alternities (54 page)

The President distractedly agreed. “Get the Senator a visitor’s pass,” he told the gnome at the checkpoint.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Unrestricted,” Endicott said helpfully.

“Sir, there’s no such thing as an unrestricted guest pass,” the gnome said. “We just don’t let people roam free here. Except for you, of course,” he amended hastily.

“If you can make one exception, you can make two.”

The gnome squirmed, discomfited. “Sir, all visitors must be escorted. That’s SOP here.”

“Then get the Senator a pass and an escort, and custom will be served.” Robinson turned to Endicott. “I know you understand, Walter, that I’ve got my hands full—”

“Oh, I understand, Peter.” The blue and white visitor’s badge now dangling from his lapel just below the green Alpha List badge was all he had needed from Robinson. “I won’t be underfoot.”

“Thank you.”

With an acknowledging salute, the President boarded an elevator and left. Endicott waited for his escort, gloating at the gnome who had earlier refused him. Warm bodies were apparently in short supply, for it took nearly ten minutes to produce one. But when he finally arrived, the escort gnome proved more astute than the guard gnome had been.

“I know you,” he said, recognition dawning in his eyes. “You’re the one that shot that Russian spy. I saw you on the news, didn’t I?”

“That’s right,” Endicott said, pleased at being recognized. A little innocent awe and deference would be useful in the hours to come. “What’s your name?”

“Edwards, sir. White Section. Where can I take you, Senator?”

“You have a cafeteria here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the chance of the coffee being any better than the poison they’re serving in there?” he asked, jerking a thumb in the direction of the warren.

“Not good, sir. But I know a department on the sixth floor that has a supply of Colombian and a black-water wizard named Angelica. We can probably boost you something potable there.”

Endicott worked the younger man for nearly an hour, sharing stories of Washington and of the President, drawing him out about the Tower, binding him in a conspiracy of confidences. Not until he knew he would not be refused did he voice his real interest.

“I’d like to see the Cambridge,” he said, pushing his empty cup across the cafeteria table. “I’d like to see the gate house.”

“Well, sure,” Edwards began. “There’s a lot of offices above the fifteenth floor with windows on the atrium—”

“I’ve seen it from there,” Endicott said. “I mean the way the runners see it. Ground level, from the atrium floor.”

Edwards looked at his watch. “It’s almost four,” he said. “The pre-evac withdrawals from Blue should be finishing up. It’s been hectic down there, but I guess we can get you a peek.” He shrugged. “Sure. This might be as good a time as any.”

The three monitors working gate control looked like they had been under siege. Voices were hoarse, patience short, and the countertop looked like a battlefield. Several inbound runners were waiting in a ragged line for clearance, check-in, or directions. Other runners waited restlessly in the chute, using their transit bags as seats or pillows.

“Donnie, this is Senator Endicott,” Edwards said, approaching the counter from the side. “I’m going to take him inside for a few minutes.”

“Don’t gaff me. I haven’t got the time,” the monitor gnome grumped without raising his head.

“No gaff. The President gave specific orders for me to take him where he wants to go, and he wants to see the gate house.”

Wearing an expression that said, why-are-you-doing-this-to-me, the gnome looked up and locked a querying gaze on Endicott. The gaze took in the dual badges, then shifted focus to Edwards. “The middle of the craziest day we’ve ever had and you’re giving tours?”

“This is Senator Endicott,” Edwards repeated in a tone that Endicott found pleasing. “Just tell the snipers we’re coming and buzz us through, all right?”

The monitor gnome sighed and surrendered. “Keep it short, will you?”

“The snipers?” Endicott asked.

“You’ll see.”

Endicott did. Bathed in light from a hundred floodlamps and the afternoon sun reflecting down from overhead, the Cambridge stood like the dark kernel of a great towering crystal in the center of a magnificent rectangular atrium. Sixty feet up the inner walls, in the glare zone beneath four of the clusters of lamps, were pairs of armored security nests. Their overlapping fields of fire blanketed the entire open zone surrounding the gate house.

“How do they know not to shoot?” Endicott asked, squinting in a vain attempt to see how many marksmen occupied each nest.

“See there, at the front door?” Endicott looked and saw a black waist-high pedestal. “Everyone coming back has to stop there and dial their transit code. If it’s not a valid code—”

“I get the picture,” Endicott said. “Do you have this kind of security at every gate house?”

“Oh, no. This is special. We’ve got to treat this one like a border checkpoint. We have to be careful who we let in. The outbound traffic can’t hurt us.”

“Can we go inside? I’d like to see the gate itself. You can see it, can’t you?”

“In the dark. But there’s a special forces team monitoring the gate. I don’t think they’re going to let us in.”

“Let’s try, can we?”

There were two sentry gnomes in the brightly lit focus room, crouching behind portable trifold shields positioned fifteen feet from and facing a blank wall, sentries at an invisible door. Endicott allowed Edwards to precede him into the room, then edged to one side until his escort’s body was between him and the more distant of the two sentries.

“Corporal, this is Senator Endicott with me,” Edwards was saying.

“The President wanted him to have a tour. How long until we get outbounds, so he can get a peek at the gate?”

Both sentries glanced Endicott’s way, then turned their attention back to the gate. Discipline, Endicott thought. Albert did a good job with discipline.

“Soon,” the sentry gnome replied. “But not soon enough. I’ve got the wanders from staring at nothing for three hours. I don’t know what the old man is so nervous about today. You couldn’t squeeze an extra body through unless it was on somebody’s shoulders.”

Edwards laughed.

Three, Endicott thought. More than I’d expected. More than I hoped for. But it has to be now.

The gun felt larger in his hand than it had in the pocket of his suit jacket. He pointed it at the middle of the nearer sentry’s back and fired twice. The wet slapping sounds of the bullets’ passage though the sentry’s body were almost lost in the echoes which bounced around the bare-walled room. His body twitching, the sentry toppled forward to the floor.

Edwards’ head whipped around in surprise. Behind him, the second sentry was rising from his crouch, trying to see what was happening, starting to push Edwards out of the way. But before the corporal could turn his weapon on Endicott, the Senator’s little revolver spoke again. Seconds later, the corporal was on his back in a pool of blood, sucking air raspily through his chest.

“Jesus Christ,” Edwards breathed, backing toward the wall.

The revolver held two more bullets. The first missed, vanishing through the gate without ever marking the wall. The second caught Edwards in the hip and took him to the floor, where he lay writhing while Endicott calmly reloaded. Endicott said nothing to him before he silenced the screaming with a bullet to the head.

He did not allow himself to think or feel, only to do. Methodically, he discarded watch and ring, shed belt and slacks to reveal a pair of cotton drawstring warm-up pants. He threw his jacket and tie aside, then cupped his hands in the blood pooling on the floor and smeared his remaining clothes with the crimson stain.
There’s been fighting in the Tower—I was the last one out—

Last of all, Endicott tossed aside the revolver, dropping it on Edwards’ corpse. For the briefest moment, he stopped and surveyed the carnage—three shattered bodies, endless blood. How many of these phantoms, these aliens, have I killed? He was jarred to find he had almost lost track. Eight. No, nine. Mustn’t forget the first. Can’t forget killing myself.

Cleaner hands next time, he vowed silently. I’ll let others do the killing the next time. That’s what separates Presidents from mobsters, after all.

Then he walked toward the wall, through the gate, and out of the world to which he had never meant to come.

It had been so long that the sensations were almost new, the shuddery tingling in his limbs, the coursing energies flowing like water over skin dead to sensation, the sightless images pouring directly into his brain. Endicott laughed in the soundless corridors in celebration of his victory.

See what I am, Peter! he cried, lingering at the junction. See all the choices I have! I give you one world, a token for your hospitality. Scratch, you silly bastard, scratch and fight for your empty words, your shallow ideals. You’d have been better to stay in bed with Janice than to rise up to hatch your plots and plan your quests.

Ah, Peter, you simple fool, you never learned the secret. Wait until your new world becomes real and your real world moves out of reach. Then you’ll see that none of it matters to God. Then you’ll see that we are God. So easy. Too easy!

He chose a corridor at random and fought his way upward to it, seeing it as a well to be climbed, a journey from the darkness into daylight. His hands grasped, feet slipped and found purchase in nothingness. Upward he rose, the substance of the maze a channel for his will, the challenge a harmonic with his intent. His body grew light, floating, drawn upward as much as driven.

Then the light above him vanished as though the corridor had closed, and Endicott was suddenly touched by awe. A gatekeeper for the gate. A cruel and lovely joke. He continued on, borne toward the new presence by currents in the very substance of the corridor. It was no mere runner that awaited him, no accident of transit. This one was one with the maze. This one embodied all the powers of the maze, and something more besides.

Liar, he cried. Cheat. Oh, yes, now, you demon trickster, now you come to ask an accounting. Silken whore. Who are you to judge me? Thief and liar. Mother-raping murderer, you kill millions. I defy you. I defy you. You judge me for being like you, for learning your rules and playing the game too well. I know you, coward! I know you. Come for me, then, you bastard god—

Then they touched, and Endicott screamed. He felt the cold dispassion, the inexorable power, the inevitability of his own destruction. For one brief moment, he merged with the other, before his will was drained and his essence dissipated like a handful of salt in the sea.

And in that one frozen instant he saw with the demon’s eyes, saw the twinkling worlds like beads on a string, the whirling stars marching in soundless synchrony, the many-folded fabric of Time shot through with threads of gold, saw the pattern and the purpose, the patient handiwork, the intricate design.

It was too late to recant, too late even to understand. There was time only to know that it was beautiful and that his death would erase a blemish on its sculpted face.

Margaret Mills was accustomed to looking out her bedroom window, beyond her backyard, beyond the gleaming outer fences of Hanscomb Air Force Base, and seeing the slump-winged tanker aircraft arrayed on the parking apron. She was accustomed to the deep-throated roar of a takeoff, rattling the house windows a dozen times a day.

But never in the eleven years she had lived there, never in the five years since the big planes had replaced the mosquitolike fighters, had she seen and heard anything like what was before her now. Ever since Albert Tackett’s curious call that afternoon, she had been drawn again and again to the window, wondering what he had thought might be happening at the base. At last she knew.

The base was lit up like a Christmas display, every spotlight and floodlight ablaze. Trucks scurried everywhere, and men ran instead of walked. It seemed as though every aircraft was in motion, creeping along the taxiways, queueing up for the runways. She stood at the window with the telephone receiver at her ear, barely able to hear the ringing over the thunderous rumbling of a hundred idling jet engines. Their smoky exhaust formed a haze over the base, blowing eastward like an oily fog rolling off a concrete sea.

Margaret did not know where the planes were headed. Neither did she understand just what they would do there. But she was a pilot’s widow, and she felt the urgency of their departure as a shadow on the night—and feared both for them and for herself.

“Answer, Albert,” she said anxiously. “Answer, Marian,” she pleaded. “Please be home to tell me how foolish I am—”

At the end of the runway, a pale-bellied tanker lurched forward, its screaming engines a sharper note against the unrelenting background tumult as it rolled ever faster along the concrete ribbon. Trailing four twisted tendrils of smoke, it strained upward into the darkening sky, hurrying to a distant rendezvous.

Stubbornly, desperately, she let the phone ring until after the last plane was gone, though she knew the phone was ringing in an empty house. When the futility overtook her and she hung up at last, there was not even enough feeling left inside her to allow her to cry.

The skies outside Tackett’s office were as dark as the tone of the meeting taking place inside.

“I have to tell you, I feel betrayed,” Robinson pronounced in a stentorian voice. “Betrayed by Senator Endicott, and betrayed by you, too, Albert.”

Tackett grunted in indignant surprise. “Me?”

“There’s no excuse for this kind of screw-up. Three dead in a shootout, an evacuee lost, a violation of the gate house, of the gate itself—carelessness, that’s the only explanation. Carelessness and incompetence. Your internal security stinks, Director. Why were there only two sentries at the gate? Why was there no metal detector to catch the gun?”

If he had been huddled privately with Robinson, Tackett would have pointedly reminded him of his contribution to the fiasco. With Monaghan and Rodman for an audience, Tackett made an effort to cloak his rebuke.