Arc Riders (35 page)

Weigand swallowed. It hadn’t occurred to him that the weapon would be a dud. The mean time between failure of Anti-Revision
Command equipment was comparable to that of granite.

“Pauli,” said Gerd Barthuli in the instant that Weigand’s mind, blank with catastrophe, was capable of hearing the voice in
his ears. “Colonel Watney says that the arming distance of a LAW is ten meters. You’re too close to the target.”

Weigand strode ten meters farther from the tank as he extended the tube of the second rocket. The shooters within the terminal
stopped firing at him when they saw him attempt to destroy the tank, but the clang of the missile hitting the turret had aroused
interest within the vehicle. A head emerged from the open cupola hatch.

The armor of an M60 tank was as impervious to rifle and machine gun fire as Weigand’s displacement suit. The men of the assault
force were primed and ready for a target they could not only hit but hurt. At least three marksmen blew simultaneous holes
through the tank commander’s head.

Weigand aimed the notch-and-post sight of the second launcher at the same point as before. He pulled the trigger. The missile
tracked straight and went off against the side of the turret with a white flash.

The
crack
! of the warhead was almost lost in the
clang
! of beaten metal. The shaped charge’s metallic lining hit the turret armor as a gaseous spearpoint, piercing the steel and
ripping on through the tank’s fighting compartment. Ammunition went off inside. A blast and fireball lifted the loader’s hatch,
belching a ring of black smoke skyward.

Weigand walked toward the tank he had just put out of action. He didn’t run, because he was extending the launcher of his
last rocket. His armored grip was so strong that he might well have smashed the fiberglass tube and rocket motor if he’d been
too hasty.

The second tank’s 105 fired as Weigand turned. The muzzle blast lifted dust from the asphalt and rocked the heavy vehicle
back on its suspension. The crew within were unaware that their consort was burning 15 meters away.

Weigand aimed, squeezed, and watched the third missile strike home to detonate. The smoke from the warhead dissipated on the
breeze fanning the flames of the terminal building. There was a red-rimmed smudge on the turret side. The coaxial machine
gun beside the main gun fell silent, but for a few seconds there was no other sign that the missile had been effective.

The tank blew up with a shattering roar. The turret leaped five meters skyward, spun, and crashed back down on the blazing
hull, upside down and with its long cannon cocked to the side.

Weigand got to his feet. The displacement suit had protected him from injury, but he would have needed ten times the mass
not to be knocked down by the shock wave. Figures ran from the terminal—Carnes, Barthuli, and Watney, but other members of
the assault force as well.

The building was fast becoming an inferno. Most of the men in the north wing had already abandoned it for the captured gunpit
on that end. Those in the south wing were surely dead.

The air between Weigand and Barthuli shimmered and took on the appearance of translucence rather than transparency. Carnes
and Watney, five meters to either side of the analyst, were still as clear as before in the spark-shot, smoky atmosphere.

TC 779 locked into phase with the temporal horizon, hovering above asphalt that was beginning to bubble from the heat of the
burning tank. The capsule’s outer hull was scarred by sealant sprayed on to replace plates melted during the attack in 50K.

The hatch opened. Chun Quo stood in the hatchway screaming, “Quickly, they’re going to use a nuclear weapon!”

Weigand was already running for the hatch. The unprotected members of his team ran also, in a blue ambience beyond which the
world moved in slow motion.

Quo had thrown the immediate vicinity slightly out of phase. The team would be all right if the damaged capsule’s systems
could maintain phase with absolute precision despite the high-energy shock of a thermonuclear explosion.

Weigand was two steps from the hatch, pausing to let Carnes enter ahead of him. All his electronics failed simultaneously.
The displacement suit became a lump of metal as dead as an anvil, with Pauli Weigand at the center of it.

He wasn’t in doubt as to what had delivered the electromagnetic pulse that had overwhelmed his suit. As his suit froze, he’d
seen an image that he knew would remain with him for the minute or two before he died: a second transportation capsule hovered
over the fire-wrapped parking lot beside TC 779.

Timeline B: August 24, 1991

R
ebecca Carnes thought she was seeing a mirage—the ARC Riders’ time vehicle mirrored by a side effect of the process which
slowed down motion beyond the immediate bubble of blue haze.

Differences struck her like a hammer of ice: the second vehicle’s hull was as smooth as a knife blade, and its hatch was closed.
This wasn’t a double of TC 779 but rather the enemy that had ripped the wounds in the capsule of Carnes’ friends.

Weigand fell forward, overbalanced by the arm he’d thrown out to gesture Carnes into the vehicle ahead of him. He hit the
asphalt and rolled onto his right side with no more control than a sack of groceries has. His suit was dead. Shortly Pauli
would be dead also, like the suited enemies Carnes had EMPed in California.

She knelt beside Weigand. Her short hair lifted and began to spark purple in a building static charge.

Gerd shouted something, one hand on Watney’s shoulder and the other pointing toward the hostile vehicle. Chun Quo had vanished
from the hatch of TC 779. Huge sparks popped soundlessly between the vehicles and the asphalt.

The displacement suit’s external latch was beneath the right armpit. Carnes tried to push it open from the back and failed.
To get a better angle, she jumped over Weigand’s body as though it were a vaulting horse. The surface of the armor was hot,
hot enough to blister.

The world beyond the blue ambience went white in a flash that Carnes knew now to recognize. An opalescent cloud, light tangible
and more hideous than the face of a corpse lain three months in a shallow grave, swept at a snail’s pace across the airport.
Everything it touched dissolved.

The displacement suit clicked. The chest plate opened only halfway, blocked by the ground itself. Carnes grabbed the gauntlet
of the outstretched arm and used it as a lever to lift the suit. She gained two inches, a third, using her thigh muscles against
the stiff weight.

“Gerd!” she shouted as she started to slip, but it wasn’t Barthuli’s hands that suddenly aided her and flung the dead mass
on its back. Pauli had gotten an arm free. He pushed against the asphalt with strength doubled by desperation. With the front
fully open, Weigand threw back the helmet and clambered from the suit. Carnes braced herself to anchor his brutal grip.

Watney pulled the friction igniter of his satchel charge and flung the bomb against the side of the hostile vehicle. The charge
bounced back. The vehicle drifted in the other direction as though the two were of equal mass.

Weigand started for the satchel charge. Carnes grabbed his arm and swung the big man enough that he tripped on the legs of
his rigid armor.

“I’ve got it!” Watney cried as he scooped up the ten-pound charge again by its carrying strap. He put his free hand against
the hull of the hostile capsule. It drifted like spider silk, but the revisionist walked after it in constant contact.

The nuclear shock wave had expanded beyond the limits of the airport reservation. Objects drifted in the vacuum glowing behind
the wave front. The only thing Carnes could recognize was a fragment of pierced steel girder, probably part of the terminal
building.

Barthuli clambered into TC 779. Weigand tossed Carnes aboard like a sack of rice and jumped in after her. The capsule’s insubstantial
outer blister and the inner door shut more quickly than visible motion.

Chun sat at the front of the vehicle. Bars of vertical red light danced in the air before her, obvious warning signals. The
inner bulkhead was an unbroken display of the scene beyond the hull.

Watney followed as the capsule fled, like one magnet pushing another across the surface of a fluid. A line of thin gray smoke
trailed from the satchel.

“A pyrotechnic fuse,” Weigand muttered. “If he’d used an electronic delay, it wouldn’t have worked in the stasis field.”

Chun turned her head toward the others. Her face was still. “Is he—” she said.

The satchel charge went off with the smoky red flash of TNT, a
huge
flash. Watney vanished.

The hostile vehicle skittered from the explosion. The membrane of blue light above the hull collapsed downward, sucking with
it the outward hellrush of secondary compression waves rebounding from ground zero.

Superheated gas touched the vehicle. The solid matter of the hull sublimed with the speed of glass shattering.

The remnants of what had been a transportation capsule spewed out into the firestorm, as dead and glowing as everything else
within a mile radius.

Rebecca Carnes hadn’t prayed since her first tour in Vietnam. She looked at the fiery expanse where Kyle Watney stood a moment
before and whispered, “Christ have mercy on his soul.”

Chun Quo’s face was a death mask. She touched a control without speaking. TC 779 displaced from the heart of hell.

March 2, 1967

G
rainger was so frustrated he would gladly have hosed down any number of federal buildings, or, better, the business high-rises
on K Street among which Bates’ office was situated.

The team had a roomy briefcase now, the legal sort with an accordion bottom, and Grainger had bought a pilot’s case which
had even more room. Enough room for a tanglefoot device.

Armed to the teeth, they were about to make a serious try for their prey in this urban jungle with its plants in pots on concrete
sidewalks.

It felt good to be doing something real. Last night in the elegant hotel room, it had taken all of his self-restraint to avoid
trying something way too real, like hitting on his boss.

He’d taken a very long H
₂
O shower instead, trying to estimate the number of gallons he was turning into wastewater. Even in his time, the overage charge
for that water would have meant a month’s salary. In Roebeck’s milieu, such luxury was not available even to the very rich:
there was no such thing as a constant stream of available water for cleaning your body. You cleaned your body with bracingly
abrasive dry chemical particles sprayed from heated air jets in a dry shower stall. Water was for drinking, cooking, and the
rest belonged to the environment’s flora and fauna by international agreement.

They had appropriate day clothes, now, at Roebeck’s insistence: blue blazers, rep tie, khaki pants for him; a gray suit with
flare-legged pants for her. Headgear was still a problem, so Grainger had yet another hat and so did Roebeck. She looked really
grotesque with the round hat pulled down over her hair, which was brushed forward as much as possible to cover her equipment,
and her pants legs flapping around her booted feet.

He supposed he looked no better, and yet they seemed to be attracting no undue attention. It was, after all, the sixties.

In Bates’ building, you walked up to a guard presiding over a free-standing desk. The front of the desk was a glass-topped
list of who occupied what floor. You then asked for the floor and the person. The guard called ahead to confirm that you had
an appointment.

Then you were waved on, to a bank of marble-clad elevators with no attendant. You were, virtually, on your own.

They were alone in their elevator, but there might have been surveillance cameras installed above the false ceiling. They
didn’t talk. They didn’t check their gear.

They were going to bag themselves a couple revisionists, or else.

When the elevator opened, Roebeck checked her hair, which just covered the membrane pushed up on her forehead. “Ready?”

She stepped out first.

“Yes sir.” He followed.

The suite numbers on the door didn’t immediately tell you which direction to take. They went down the hall a bit, turned,
and came back the other way.

At the very end of that hall was a pair of mahogany-colored doors with a brass plaque on one. As they neared it, one door
opened, and a man with an overcoat and a briefcase came out.

Grainger tensed. The man drew no weapon, but held the door open, smiling distractedly.

Roebeck paused, then walked straight toward him, shoulders squared.

Of course, Grainger realized, the gentleman was holding open the manually operated door for a lady.

Good thing he hadn’t shot the guy down.

Roebeck said “Thank you,” and the stranger said “My pleasure” and then headed for the elevators, leaving Grainger to fend
for himself where doors were concerned.

The carpet was a rusty orange inside the office. The chairs were upholstered in brown hides. More dead animals turned into
furniture.

A receptionist at a horseshoe made of the same mahogany received Roebeck’s announcement that they were “… here to see Mr.
Bates. We have an appointment at fourteen hundred hours.”

The receptionist looked at her curiously. “I’ll just tell Mr. Bates you’re here. Please take a seat.”

She should have said “two o’clock,” Grainger realized. By then, so did Roebeck.

You couldn’t anticipate every difference in custom. Maybe it would be overlooked. The receptionist had a huge curly black
hairdo which made her look like a mongoloid child. Her skin was the same color as the desk. The desk was made of more mahogany
than Grainger had ever seen outside of 50K or in a museum.

No wonder there had been no mahogany trees left in his own time. There were paper periodicals all over the glass table before
the reception area chairs, too. Tens of them. Made of heavy, glossy stock with multicolor printing that made it nearly impossible
to recycle efficiently. The prices for the periodicals were a pittance compared to the price for so much real first-use paper
in Grainger’s time.