Palimpsest Ambush
Almost a hundred
kiloyears had passed since the Yellowstone eruption that wiped out
the Benzin and the hunter-gatherer tribes of the Gulf Coast. The
new Reseeding was twelve thousand years old; civilization had taken
root again, spreading around the planet with the efflorescent
enthusiasm of a parasitic vine. It was currently going through an
expansionist-mercantilist phase, scattered city-states and tribute
empires gradually coalescing and moving toward a tentative
enlightenment. Eventually they’d rediscover electronics and, with
the institution of a ubiquitous surveillance program, finally
reconquer the heights of true civilization. Nobody looking at the
flourishing cities and the white-sailed trade ships could imagine
that the people who built them were destined for anything but
glory.
Pierce stumbled along
a twisty cobbled lane off the Chandler’s Street in Carnegra, doing
his faux-drunken best to look like part of the scenery. Sailors
fresh ashore from Ipsolian League boats weren’t a rarity here, and
it’d certainly explain his lack of fluency in Imagra, the local
creole. It was another training assignment, but with six more
years-subjective of training and a Stasis phone implant, Pierce now
had some degree of independence. He was trusted to work away from
the watchful eyes of his supervisor, on assignments deemed safe for
a probationer-agent.
“Proceed to the Red
Duck on Margrave Way at the third hour of Korsday. Take your detox
first, and stay on the small beer. You’re there as a level-one
observer and level-zero exit decoy to cover our other agent’s
departure. There’s going to be a fight, and you need to be ready to
look after yourself; but remember, you’re meant to be a drunken
sailor, so you need to look the part until things kick off. Once
your target is out of the picture, you’re free to leave. If it
turns hot, escalate it to me, and I’ll untangle things
retroactively.”
It was all
straightforward stuff, although normally Pierce wouldn’t be
assigned to a job in Carnegra, or indeed to any job in this epoch.
Training to blend in seamlessly with an alien culture was difficult
enough that Stasis agents usually worked in their home era, or as
close to it as possible, where their local knowledge was most
useful. As it was, two months of full-time study had given him just
enough background to masquerade as a foreign sailor—in an
archipelagean society that was still three centuries away from
reinventing the telegraph. It’s a personalized
test, he’d realized with a jittery shudder of alertness, as
if he’d just downed a mug of maté. Someone up the line in
Operational Analysis would be watching his performance, judging his
flexibility. He determined to give it his all.
It took him two
months of hard training, in language and cultural studies and local
field procedures—all for less than six hours on the ground in
Carnegra. And the reason he was certain it was a test: Supervisor
Hark had changed the subject when he’d asked who he was there to
cover for.
Margrave Way was a
cobblestoned alley, stepped every few meters to allow for the slope
of the hillside, lined on either side with the single-story bamboo
shopfronts of fishmongers and chandlers. Pierce threaded his wobbly
way around servants out shopping for the daily catch, water
carriers, fruit and vegetable sellers, and beggars; dodged a rice
merchant’s train of dwarf dromedaries loaded with sacks; and
avoided a pair of black-robed scholars from one of the seminaries
that straggled around the flanks of the hill like the thinning hair
on the pate of an elderly priest. Banners rippled in the weak
onshore breeze; paper skull-lanterns with mirror-polished eyes to
repel evil spirits bounced gaudily beneath the eaves as he entered
the inn.
The Red Duck was
painted the color of its namesake. Pierce hunched beneath the low
awning and probed the gloom carefully, finally emerging into the
yard out back with his eyes watering. At this hour the yard was
half-empty, for the tavern made much of its trade in food. The
scent of honeysuckle hung heavy over the decking; the hibiscus
bushes at the sides of the yard were riotously red. Pierce staked
out a bench near the rear wall with a clear view of the entrance
and the latrines, then unobtrusively audited the other patrons,
careful to avoid eye contact. Even half-empty, the yard held the
publican’s young sons (shuffling hither and yon to fill cups for
the customers), four presumably genuine drunken sailors, three
liveried servants from the seminaries, a couple of gaudily clad
women whose burlesque approach to the sailors was blatantly
professional, and three cloak-shrouded pilgrims from the highlands
of what had once been Cascadia—presumably come to visit the shrines
and holy baths of the southern lands. At least, to a first
approximation.
One of the lads was
at Pierce’s elbow, asking something about service and food. “Give
beer,” Pierce managed haltingly. “Good beer light two coin value.”
The tap-boy vanished, returned with a stoneware mug full of warm
suds that smelled faintly of bananas. “Good, good.” Pierce fumbled
with his change, pawing over it as if unsure. He passed two clipped
and blackened coins to the kid—both threaded with passive RF
transceivers, beacons to tell his contact that they were not
alone.
As Pierce raised his
mug to his lips in unfeigned happy anticipation, his phone buzzed.
It was a disturbing sensation, utterly unnatural, and it had taken
him much practice to learn not to jump when it happened. He scanned
the beer garden, concealing his mouth with his mug as he did so. A
murder of crows—seminary students flocking to the watering hole—was
raucously establishing its pecking order in the vestibule, one of
the sailors had fallen forward across the table while his fellow
tried to rouse him, and a working girl in a red wrap was walking
toward the back wall, humming tunelessly. Bingo, he thought, with a smug flicker of
satisfaction.
Pierce twitched a
stomach muscle, goosing his phone. The other Stasis agent would
feel a shiver and buzz like an angry yellow jacket—and indeed, as
he watched, the woman in red glanced round abruptly. Pierce
twitched again as her gaze flickered over him: this time
involuntarily, in the grip of something akin to déjà vu.
Can’t be, he realized an instant later.
She wouldn’t be on a field op like
this!
The woman in red
turned and sidestepped toward his bench, subvo calizing.
“You’re my cover, yes? Let’s get out of here
right now, it’s going bad.”
Pierce began to
stand. “Yarrow?” he asked. The sailor
who was trying to rouse his friend started tugging at his
shoulder.
“ Yes? Look, what’s your exit plan?” She sounded
edgy.
“But—” He froze, his stomach twisting. She doesn’t know me, he realized. “Sorry. Can you get over the wall if I create a
diversion?” he sent, his heart hammering. He hadn’t seen her
in three years-subjective—she’d blown through his life like a
runaway train, then vanished as abruptly as she’d arrived, leaving
behind a scrawled note to say she’d been called uptime by Control,
and a final quick charcoal sketch.
“I think so, but there are two—” The sailor stood up and shouted incoherently at
her just as Pierce’s phone buzzed again. “Who’s that?” she asked.
“Hard contact in five seconds!” The other agent,
whoever he was, sounded urgent. “Stay
back.”
The sailor shouted
again, and this time Pierce understood it: “Murderer!” He climbed
over the table and drew a long, curved knife, moving
forward.
“Get behind me.”
Pierce stepped between Yarrow and the sailor, his thoughts a
chaotic mess of This is stupid and
What did she do? and Who else? as he paged Supervisor Hark. “Peace,” he
said in faltering Carnegran, “am friend? Want drink?”
Behind the angry
sailor the priest-students were standing up, black robes flapping
as they spread out, calling to one another. Yarrow retreated behind
him: his phone vibrated again, then, improb ably, a fourth time.
There were too many agents. “What’s
happening?” asked Hark.
“I think it’s a palimpsest,” Pierce managed to
send. Like an inked parchment scrubbed clean and reused, a section
of history that had been multiply overwritten. He held his hands
up, addressed the sailor, “You want. Thing. Money?”
The third agent,
who’d warned of contact: “Drop.
Now!”
Pierce began to fall
as something, someone—Yarrow?—grabbed
his shoulder and pushed sideways.
One of the students
let his robe slide open. It slid down from his shoulders, gaping to
reveal an iridescent fluidity that followed the rough contours of a
human body, flexing and rippling like molten glass. Its upper
margin flowed and swelled around its wearer’s neck and chin,
bulging upward to engulf his head as he stepped out of the black
scholar’s robe.
The sailor held his
knife high, point down as he advanced on Pierce. Pierce’s focus
narrowed as he brought his fall under control, preparing to roll
and trigger the telescopic baton in his sleeve—
A gunshot, shockingly
loud, split the afternoon air. The sailor’s head disappeared in a
crimson haze, splattering across Pierce’s face. The corpse lurched
and collapsed like a dropped sack. Somebody—Yarrow?—cried out behind him, as Pierce pushed back
with his left arm, trying to blink the red fog from his
vision.
The student’s robe
was taking on a life of its own, contracting and standing up like a
malign shadow behind its master as the human-shaped blob of walking
water turned and raised one hand toward the roof. A chorus of
screams rose behind it as one of the other seminar ians, who had
unwisely reached for the robe, collapsed convulsing.
“Stay down!” It was the third agent. “Play dead.”
“My knee’s—”
Pierce managed a
sidelong look that took in Yarrow’s expression of fear with a
shudder of self-recognition. “I’ ll
decoy,” he sent. Then, a curious clarity of purpose in his
mind, he rolled sideways and scrambled toward the interior of the
tavern.
Several things
happened in the next three seconds:
First, a brilliant
turquoise circle two meters in diameter flickered open, hovering
directly in front of the rear wall of the beer garden. A double
handful of enormous purple hornets burst from its surface. Most
arrowed toward the students, who had entangled themselves in a
panicky crush at the exit: two turned and darted straight up toward
the balcony level.
Next, a spark, bright
as lightning, leapt between the watery humanoid’s upraised hand and
the ceiling.
Finally, something
punched Pierce in the chest with such breath-taking violence that
he found, to his shock and surprise, that his hands and feet didn’t
seem to want to work anymore.
“Agent down,” someone signaled, and it seemed to
him that this was something he ought to make sense of, but sense
was ebbing fast in a buzz of angry hornets as the pinkness faded to
gray. And then everything was quiet for a long time.