Space Magic (10 page)

This was crazy. He was a soldier in the most elite unit in the Army; she was a member of the terrorist “Committee for the Liberation of the USA.” They should be trying to kill each other, not huddling together in a squalid little bedroom in Belltown.
Damn you, Duke
, he thought.
You’ve turned everything upside down.

After a while the sobs subsided and she sat up, wiping her eyes.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Thatcher said, “but how on Earth did a nice little old lady get involved with a bunch of terrorists in the first place?”

“I’m 48, and we aren’t terrorists!” she shot back. “It’s the government that’s waging an undeclared war on the people. We’re just fighting back.”

“Tell that to Dave’s wife. He was the door guard at the hospital.”

Her look was icy. “If that’s the way you feel about it, I’ll give you bus fare back there.”

“Oh jeez, I’m sorry. It’s just—I didn’t think I was getting involved with the CLU! I just wanted out of the Army.”

“Who else did you think could break into a military hospital and rescue your sorry ass?”

“I wasn’t supposed to need a rescue! All I wanted was fake papers. The next thing I know I’m strapped to a bed and waiting to die. I didn’t know Duke was tapping my phone. I didn’t know my friend-of-a-friend would call in the CLU.”

“Who’s Duke?”

“Major T. K. Duke. My commanding officer. Used to be my friend.”

“Used to be?”

“We had a... disagreement. About a girl.”

A harsh pounding rattled through the room. “Police!” came a voice. “Open up!”

“Oh Jesus,” said Angel. Her face suddenly looked like dirty white plastic.

“Keep calm.” Thatcher looked out the window. It was five stories down. No fire escape. “Do you have a gun?”

“A rifle. But it’s hidden on the roof. Couldn’t risk getting caught with it.”

The cop would be armed. No way he could take him on without a weapon, not as shaky as he felt. “Have you ever been arrested?” He looked in the closet.

“No.”

The closet overflowed with clothes, shoes, and junk, but there might be enough room. “They might not have your picture, then. I’ll hide in here. You answer the door. If there’s trouble I’ll come out and help, but with any luck he’ll just ask a few questions and leave. Whatever happens, keep calm!”

“Calm. Right.” She took a deep breath, then left.

He checked and armed his system as he closed the door of the tiny closet, hearing the cop’s rough voice asking Angel “have you seen this man” and demanding to search the apartment. Thatcher tried to visualize the place from the brief glimpse he’d had earlier, hearing heavy footsteps moving from the front door to the kitchen, to the bathroom... The cop seemed to be making a pretty cursory search of it. This just might work.

Booted feet came to the bedroom door. It squeaked open. Creak of the cop’s leather jacket and gunbelt as he looked from side to side. A pause. Two more steps.

The closet door jerked open. Thatcher saw his own terrified face in the cop’s black visor as he bit down.

Rewind.

Desperate, exhausted, Thatcher slipped under the bed as the cop’s footsteps moved from the kitchen to the bathroom. Sipping air he wanted desperately to gulp, he tried to ignore the smell of the worn and filthy carpet and make as little noise as possible. More footsteps; the door squeaked open. Dusty black boots trod inches from his face, while he held his breath. The closet door opened, then closed.

The boots paused, looking around. Drops of sweat slithered down Thatcher’s sides.

The boots departed.

Thatcher clutched the carpet, trembling with fear and fatigue, as the cop admonished Angel to report immediately if she saw this man, then tromped off. He blacked out for a moment, then saw Angel’s face, creased with worry. “I thought you were in the closet!”

“I was.”

She helped him out from under the bed, but even with her help he couldn’t stand up. “Angel. Please. Help me.”

“How?”

“Food.” He passed out again. When he came to, the apartment was silent.

Thatcher spent a long dead time staring stupefied at the scuffed and rusty leg of the bed before Angel reappeared with a warm and fragrant white paper sack. The burgers inside were leathery and greasy. The most delicious things he’d ever eaten.

-o0o-

After he’d eaten the last tiny fragment of french fry, he felt human enough to sit at the kitchen table. “All right, Thatcher,” Angel said, “If I’m going to risk my neck for you and keep feeding you like some mama bird, I want some answers.”

“I’ll tell you what I can.”

“First and foremost: what makes you so special? I’ve never seen the Committee risk so many people in an operation. Why?”

“You don’t know who I am?”

“Bravo never told me anything he didn’t think I had to know.”

“I’m from the Knights. K Division.”

“Jesus.” She sat back and crossed her arms on her chest. “That explains a few things. And opens up a lot more questions. Like, why should we trust you?”

“You saw how they had me tied down and drugged. They were going to kill me. I’m not going back.”

“Could be a set-up.”

“Um.” How could he prove...? “Wait. I shot that guard. By the fence. That wasn’t a set-up. They couldn’t know where we were going. He was really shooting at me. I really shot him.”
Oh my God
, he thought,
I probably know him—knew him. I wonder who it was?

“That’s another thing. How did you do that? You just stepped out there and whipped one shot into pitch darkness. Got him in one. Can you see in the dark? X-ray vision? Telekinesis? What is the big secret that makes you K Division troops so damn unstoppable?”

“Sorry. Classified.”

She stood up, leaning over the table, heedless of the chair clattering to the floor behind her. “Fuck that, soldier-boy. You’re in bed with us now, like it or not, and you’re going to have to put out.”

“No.”

Without warning she slapped him across the face. “Two people died to get you out of there, maybe a lot more. You
owe
us. So talk!”

He stared silent negation at her, but her gray eyes burned back unblinking and he had to drop his gaze. He found his hands were clenched together on the table before him. Silver scars laced his fingers like meridian lines.

He thought about all the different kinds of pain those scars had caused him.

Finally he spoke. “We call it ‘rewind.’”

“Go on.”

“It’s a kind of time travel. We can go back in time, just a few seconds. Do things over.”

“I don’t get it.” But she pulled the chair back up onto its feet and sat down in it. Willing to listen.

“Let me give you an example. I got shot at the fence last night.”

“Not that I saw.”

“No. You didn’t. I rewound, back to a point before the shot. I saw where the shot had come from—was going to come from—and fired at that spot before he could shoot. You have to have a good memory and better aim to make it into the Knights.”

“So it never happened.”

“It never happened. But I remember it. And it still hurts.” The ache was sharp. It would take another couple of days for the pain to fade. There were some wounds he’d taken years ago that still twinged, even though he had no scars to show. Not from those wounds, anyway.

“How does it work?”

“I don’t understand the principles. God knows I tried, but I barely passed the exams and I’ve forgotten what I knew then. It’s bioelectrical, I know that. My body is an integral part of the system. Circuitry along the spine. Wires around every bone.” Seven months in the hospital to put the system in. Hoarse from screaming, sometimes.

“So you have... what, an atomic reactor inside?”

“It runs off ATP, the chemical that powers your muscles. When I’m rested and well-fed I can do six, maybe seven jumps. Right now if I tried I’d probably just pass out.” Eleven percent, said the green digits.

“OK,” she said, standing up. “It sounds plausible enough. I’d like to take you to my superiors. If what you say is true, we can use someone with your talents. Your knowledge.”

Again he felt as though he was being torn in half. He hated Duke, didn’t care about the government—but he couldn’t betray his unit. They were all he had. Job, friends, and family all rolled into one.

He bit his lip and nodded, not meeting Angel’s eyes. Maybe if he played along and paid attention, an opportunity to escape would present itself.

“Wait here,” Angel said. “I’m going to make some phone calls. And buy you some clothes.”

-o0o-

Wind whistled through a leaky passenger-side window, patched with duct tape, as they headed towards a rendezvous somewhere in Eastern Washington. Angel was at the wheel; Thatcher leaned against the door, eating trail mix and scratching. He didn’t know where she’d found the clothes he was wearing, but the shirt was too small and it itched.

The radio was talking again about the terrorist attack on a hospital in Seattle. It had been talking all day, yet somehow had avoided the detail that the hospital was a top-secret military facility. Thatcher switched it off.

“Time travel,” Angel said into the silence. “Sonofabitch. We thought it was a force field, or telekinesis. This explains everything.” She was looking at him like he was a bug under glass. He wished she would watch the road, and not just because he was afraid of an accident. “Did you ever use it for... personal reasons? Like, go back and undo something stupid you did when you were a kid?”

“I wish. My personal best is eleven seconds. Duke says he can do twenty-eight.” He watched wheat fields passing for a moment. There was nothing else to see, no other traffic. “Anyway, I’ve never regretted anything that much. Until recently.”

“Lucky. I can think of a hundred things I’d change if I could.”

“Like what?”

“My parents died in a car accident when I was sixteen. I wished every day for years that I could go back and keep them from going out that night. It was like I could feel another world, right nearby, where they were still alive. It just kept getting farther and farther away.”

“I’m sorry.”

She snorted. “Don’t be sorry. You weren’t even born yet. Save your sorries for stuff you’ve got something to do with.” She looked at him again. “Like the coup.”

“What? I was eight years old.”

“Yeah, but it was K Division that made it possible. There’s no way Haig and his little bunch of hotheads could have taken the White House without you. And you’ve kept them in power ever since.”

“I’m not going to apologize for that,” he said, sitting up. “I wanted out, yeah, but that was just a personal problem between me and Duke. I’m proud of the Knights and everything we’ve done.
Everything.
Before the coup we had stagflation and the misery index, and we were getting our butts kicked in the Mideast. Now we have a roaring economy and every country in the world respects the USA.”

“The world
fears
the USA. Most of the citizens fear it too. Look, you’re too young to remember what it was like before. Back in the last millennium,” she said with hard irony, “there was no barbed wire at the borders. No Citizen Checkpoints, no curfews, no National Identity Cards. And no fucking forced labor!”

“The new millennium doesn’t start until next year, we wouldn’t need those national security measures if it wasn’t for terrorists like the CLU, and don’t give me that ‘forced labor’ crap. Workfare keeps the country strong. Honest work instead of handouts, and a strong national defense to boot.”

Thatcher saw her knuckles whiten on the wheel. “Oh, we’ve still got handouts! It’s just that now the government hands out workers to the defense industry. Workfare laborers get paid minimum, and the average—the
average!
—lifespan on the job is under five years.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “I watched my little sister Cherry die of beryllicosis.”

“What’s... gorillacosis?”

“Beryllicosis. Sort of like black lung disease, only not so pretty. Comes from inhaling beryllium dust. It’s what happens to people who run machine tools at aerospace plants where there are no goddamn workplace safety rules!” Her face was set in a rigid mask of hatred and grief, tears running down like rain. “It took her eighteen months to die, and they didn’t even cover the hospital bills. I joined the CLU the week after the funeral.”

“Uh, maybe you’d better pull over.”

“I am not going to fucking pull over!” she screamed, her face bunching up like a fist. “I am going to keep driving this goddamn car until we get to the rendezvous and I can hand you over, so I never have to think about you or the fucking K Division ever again!”

“You’re weaving all over the road! You could get us both killed!”

“What the hell,” she said. “One less soldier, one less freedom fighter, it all evens out...” And then she jerked the wheel savagely to the right and slammed on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt on the shoulder, crunching through gravel, the left rear wheel still on the pavement. Angel crossed her arms on her chest and leaned her head on the wheel, crying uncontrollably, her voice making a discordant chord with the sound of the horn.

Thatcher fumbled with his seat belt, ran around to the driver’s side. He opened the door, leaned in, and held Angel in his arms. She hugged him fiercely back. The gravel was hard under his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really, really sorry.” There were tears in his eyes too.

“I’m sorry too,” she sobbed. “I’ve been stupid.” She pushed him away, wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “We need to get out of here before the cops show up.”

“Maybe I should drive.”

“Maybe you should.”

They got back on the road, and after a nervous half-hour Thatcher was ready to believe that no flashing blue lights were about to appear in his rear-view mirror. He kept rigidly to the speed limit.

Angel sat with one hand on her forehead, staring off at the point where the road met the horizon. Her eyes were still wet but her breathing had returned to normal. “I shouldn’t have said some of those things,” she said at last. “You seem to be a good kid. You’ve just been part of something bad.”

He started to protest. But then he thought about what she’d said about her sister—about Workfare. About the radio, and how it never told the whole story. About Duke.