The Age Atomic (13 page)

 

TWENTY-SIX

 

Security agent Jan Holzter had been on the money. Behind the closed doors of Tisiphone
Realty it was organized chaos.

Every desk on the floor was occupied, half by men, mostly in rolled-up shirt sleeves, cigarettes burning bright, filling the air with a thick fog of tobacco smoke. Some shuffled paper, a lot held telephones between shoulder and ear as they jotted down notes. The other half of the staff were women, most looking considerably less flustered than their male counterparts as they focused on typing and filing, filling the air with a machine gun clatter of keys striking paper. The cacophony that filled the office wasn't loud, but it was constant and unending.

Nimrod watched the hubbub through the open door of his office. Behind him, the ticker tape machine sprang into life, slowly feeding paper onto the floor. Mr Grieves quickly picked up the tape and began to read.

Nimrod folded his arms and turned around. “Well?”

The agent pulled the tape through his fingers. “All departments acknowledge the alert and are awaiting further information. The Vice President has been taken to a secure location and the President is currently at the State Department in DC.”

“Very good.”

“Also the Secretary of Defense wants to speak with you, urgently.”

Nimrod sighed. He should have expected this, but it was exactly the kind of distraction with which he didn't want to deal. Nimrod was keenly aware that it was Atoms for Peace, not his Department, in favor with the Secretary. “He can wait.”

Mr Grieves smirked as the phone on Nimrod's desk rang. Nimrod nodded and Grieves picked it up. He listened a moment, and as Nimrod watched his smirk quickly faded.

Grieves held out the phone to his superior. “It's the Secretary.”

Nimrod gritted his teeth and closed the door of his private office. Then he took the receiver.

“Mr Secretary, we were just talking about you.”

The Captain smiled at Mr Grieves and walked around his desk, phone pressed tight against his ear.

“Yes, Mr Secretary. I believe so.”

Nimrod sat heavily at his desk and listened a moment longer, then barked a laugh.

“Bad? My dear chap, ‘bad' does not begin to describe it. What I am talking about is nothing less than the end of the world.”

 

The door to the Department opened, and Captain Nimrod stormed out. Irena lowered her newspaper, trying to keep the surprise from her face. But it wasn't an issue, as the target wasn't watching. Nimrod muttered under his breath and waved one hand in the air like he was arguing with someone who wasn't there as he strode the short distance across the lobby and vanished into the corridor leading to the main elevators.

Irena listened until she heard the elevator ping and the doors open. A moment later the doors rattled shut and silence returned.

Irena leapt from the sofa and crossed to the window to get the best reception. She looked down, trying to get an angle on the street below, but the stepped shape of the Empire State Building hid the main entrance.

The radio clicked in her ear.

“Cloud Club, this is Alpha One,” she said. “We have a problem.”

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

 

The lobby of the Chrysler Building was deserted. Nimrod noted the fact, but didn't pause as he strode across the marble floor and into the walnut and silver interior of the elevator.

She
would know he was coming, of course. She saw everything in the city, some said, though Nimrod knew that if this was so, she ignored most things. Maybe she had heard the conversation between him and the Secretary of Defense, the conversation Nimrod cursed himself for not expecting. But that would have been like trying to pick a single conversation out of a stadium full of people; even the Ghost of Gotham had her limits. Besides which, he doubted she found it very interesting. For someone – some
thing
– with such power, she was remarkably single-minded. Perhaps that was not surprising. Nimrod had often tried to imagine what it was like, to die and be brought back, granted with all the power of the universe. If your mind didn't break, then, with the universe at your fingertips, surely your perspective changed somewhat.

The Secretary's decision was a disaster waiting to happen, Nimrod knew that now. The order to hand over all responsibility and duties to the Director of Atoms for Peace and allow her department to proceed with their operation was not just ridiculous, it was foolhardy, perhaps even suicidal.

There was no alternative. He had to see her, talk to her, convince her to change her mind, make her understand that they should be working together, not fighting. Nimrod just hoped there was enough left of a human being inside the Ghost of Gotham that he could make her see reason.

The elevator pinged, and the doors opened. Nimrod felt his mustache bristle as he stepped out into the lobby of the Cloud Club and found himself alone. Ahead of him, the giant doors of the Director's personal domain, with their silver sunray decoration and frosted glass, were closed.

Beyond, the former nightclub was quiet. The room was truly cavernous, and Nimrod had the odd sensation of walking through a cemetery, or into a mausoleum. The Cloud Club was a relic of another era, when New York City had been an entirely different world. Nimrod pondered this as he walked to the single desk, the one the director of Atoms for Peace had no need for. He noticed, for the first time, that the desk was dusty. His eyes moved over the murals on the wall. For some reason they looked dull, faded.

Maybe there was something left of Evelyn McHale. In a way, she was like the room, a relic of another era. She had been plucked from time and then dumped in an alien world. She may as well have been taken to Mars.

Nimrod walked to the great glass wall and looked out over the city. The Empire State Building sparkled in the sun, and below the streets were filled with people and cars. Nimrod smiled. None of them knew they lived in just one universe out of… well, who knew. None of them knew about Atoms for Peace or the Director, although there would be plenty in the city who remembered Evelyn McHale. Many had even seen her ghost, glowing in the night.

Nimrod turned back to the empty room.

“Director?” His voice didn't echo as much as he thought it would. “Evelyn, I need to talk to you,” he said to the ceiling.

There was nothing, not even an unusual breeze or a drop in temperature or a knock on the wall, one rap for yes, two for no.

Nothing. No one came, not the dead woman, not agent or guards. No staff at all; the Cloud Club was empty.

Nimrod frowned, and then wondered how far he could go before the orders from the Secretary of Defense circulated around the building.

Nimrod straightened his tie and brushed down the front of his safari jacket, and marched towards the door.

It was time to find out what Atoms for Peace were really doing.

 

In the elevator Nimrod punched the button for level B6, the last-but-one sub-level listed on the panel, and to his surprise the key lit around his thumb. If Atoms for Peace were hiding anything, it was going to be down there, under the city.

Level B6 was a series of plain corridors, lined with polished grey concrete and lit by functional utility lights. Nimrod's footsteps echoed as he walked down one corridor after another, each intersection he came to presenting him with a choice of three equally featureless alternatives. He counted each as he passed through: First right, second straight, third straight, fourth left. There was no signage, no doors, no cameras, no mirrors. He had passed no security stations, no gateways or doors or screens. He was alone.

Was it normally like this? Or were Atoms for Peace otherwise engaged elsewhere, their Director included? Nimrod stroked his mustache as he walked, aware that his unimpeded progress was likely deliberate. They were letting him in, giving him free reign. Setting a trap.

After five minutes, Nimrod arrived at the first obstacle, a tall green door. Underground and despite counting the intersections, Nimrod had lost his sense of direction, though he knew he must be several blocks out from the Chrysler Building already. His own Department was just a floor of the Empire State building and some of its sub-levels. It was staffed and run more or less like any government field office, albeit one more covert.

This… this was something else. Atoms for Peace were building a web under the biggest city in the United States. How far the web crept, Nimrod was now determined to find out.

The green door opened at a touch, and led to a short corridor that ended in an identical door. Halfway along the corridor were two smaller doors, black iron with shuttered windows like the doors of a cell. One was locked, the other opened into a small, sparsely furnished office. Nimrod didn't much like the idea of working underground, where you would never be able to keep track of the time. Standing in the doorway, Nimrod glanced around the office. There was no clock.

The other green door was also unlocked, and led into a laboratory-cum-workshop.

“Hello?”

Nothing. Nimrod's voice echoed up to a high vaulted ceiling, much higher than the ceiling in the corridors outside. The concrete here was older, damp stains trailing down from the ceiling. The room was old, part of something else – the city's water or sewage system, reclaimed by Atoms for Peace.

Against the opposite wall was a square metal cage. Its doors were open, and within was a frame with horizontal armrests, though it looked far too big for a man. The frame was connected to pieces of electrical equipment inside the cage and out. The main slab was shiny at the center and dark around the edges, like it had been recently cleaned. On the cement floor in front of it was a large, irregular dark patch that reminded Nimrod of spilled blood.

Nimrod stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned slowly on his heel, taking in the contents of the workshop. There was a regular oscilloscope, a rotometric signal dampener, and, against the wall, next to a small coat rack with six hooks to hold laboratory coats, a sequential field inverter, the device as big as a car, with modifications and upgrades Nimrod didn't recognize.

He stopped, and found his heart rate was a little high. He had been hired by the US Government for a number of different skills, one of which was his expertise with electronics, cybernetics, and robotics. Although he was not as knowledgeable (or as pompous) as his Empire State counterpart, Captain Carson, he was expert enough to understand the purpose of the facility.

It was a robotics workshop, similar to the ones set up in the aftermath of the Empire State incident. As had happened at the end of World War II, when Nazi rocket technology had been stripped out of Germany and taken to the United States along with Germany's scientists, so the Empire State had surrendered some of its robotics technology. There was a rumor that a scientist had been brought across as well, a Pocket universe version of someone who already existed in the Origin universe; Nimrod had dismissed the story, but now he wasn't so sure. That would have explained the office, and the cell-like quarters. If a scientist had been brought across, to allow him the freedom of the city would have been far too dangerous.

Nimrod turned back to the stain on the floor. He was getting a very bad feeling about what Atoms for Peace were doing in their secret laboratory.

It was time to go lower.

 

The button lit, and the elevator descended. Nimrod knew now that his journey was being controlled from elsewhere, that he was being observed.

Level B7 – the last button on the elevator panel – appeared to be the same as the floor above: concrete corridors, utility lights, and not a soul. Nimrod decided to head in a straight line, and thought that he had, but soon found himself back at the elevator lobby. He shook his head, and rubbed his mustache, and checked his watch – he'd been stalking the underground portion of the Atoms for Peace base for nearly two hours, and he was tired and footsore.

The elevator was still open, and Nimrod walked into it, his eyes on the floor, his hands in his pockets as he considered his next move. He reached for the elevator controls and stopped, his hand in midair. The panels in the elevator were different – there were just two floor buttons: “1”, which was currently lit, and “2”, beneath.

Nimrod frowned. He was in a different elevator.

Nimrod punched “2” and the doors slid shut.

 

The descent to level 2 was longer than Nimrod expected, the elevator taking him deep underground. When the doors finally opened, the scene was very different from the floor above. The architecture was still bare concrete, but the elevator opened directly into a single corridor, lit in a deep, flickering orange from the opposite end. Raising his hand to shield his eyes against the light, Nimrod saw the corridor end in a black door with a square window, through which the fire-like light shone.

Reaching the door, Nimrod could see nothing through the window except a bright point of orange light and a lot of black space. The room beyond was clearly enormous.

The door opened onto a viewing platform, constructed out of metal grilling. Looking down, Nimrod could see through to the floor beneath, thirty feet below. To his left and right metal staircases headed down, weaving back and forth twice before they reached the bottom.

Nimrod stepped forward, and gripped the platform's handrail as he looked out into the space. The metal was cold against his palms, and as he looked out he gripped them tight enough to feel the cold against his bones.

The space was truly cavernous, as big as the largest Air Force hangar he'd seen above ground, hidden in the desert. It was lit from above by large white floodlights, but they did little to dispel the orange glow coming from the center of the room, where a huge torus was held in mid-air by a framework of silver struts. Above the torus was another black metal platform, perhaps octagonal, around the edge of which looked to be control panels and instrument banks. Two twisting black staircases led from the platform to the floor.

The torus was the source of the light. The entire object was glowing orange, like iron in a fire: darker around the edge and almost white in the center. A brighter light moved around the ring, anti-clockwise, throwing the orange light around the hangar, and across the robots assembled on the floor – robots surrounding the central structure from one side to the other, filling the room wall-to-wall, end-to-end.

Nimrod gasped. Robots. Hundreds of them, maybe
thousands
. Each identical, tall and silver, row upon row upon row. Nimrod counted fifty units from one side of the room to the other, then lost count as he tried to count the rows going back.

The robots were vaguely man-shaped, but huge; from his elevated position, Nimrod estimated each was at least seven feet in height, with rectangular torsos that were wider at the shoulders than at the waist by a considerable girth. The worst thing was the heads – each had a face, each identical, a toy-like parody of human features: triangular eyes, and a mouth that stretched across the square face. The mouth was a black plate, angled and vicious, a separate piece that could clearly open and close like the robots could… eat something.

Each robot had a black circle in the center of its silver chest; as his eyes adjusted to the orangey gloom, Nimrod could see the discs shine, like dark glass portholes.

Nimrod squeezed the handrail and shook his head, trying to understand what he was looking at, remembering the Director's talk of war.

And here was her response. Atoms for Peace were indeed preparing for war. They were building an army. An army of robots.

The robotics laboratory was one thing; this was entirely another. The Secretary of Defense be damned – this was going straight to President Eisenhower.

There was a sound as Nimrod turned, like a button of his jacket clicking against the platform railing, an innocuous sound he barely registered before a black bag was yanked over his head and his arms were pulled back sharply.

He cried out and got a mouthful of dry cotton. He spat the fabric out and struggled, pulling his shoulders around, trying to break free, but the needle that entered his neck was thin and sharp, and the last thing Nimrod felt was pain and then numbness and the last thing he heard was the roar of the ocean, far away.