Falling (22 page)

And there, beside the river, the corkscrew silhouette of the tower.

Hurling herself over the jagged wall shielding it from the main building, Jude made straight for it.

Instinct. Isn't it great, huh? Tells you to run upstairs when you're being chased, forgetting that, unlike woolly mammoths, bad guys can climb stairs. Tells you to seek cover when there's something in the sky, forgetting that helicopters have more patience than eagles and can hover, direct ground troops, and wait.

With instinct on their side, it was a wonder that the human race had been around so long.

The tower site reeked of rust. Rust, and something else; a sweet, tart smell, like lemons and honey. The smell of decay. Braces and buttresses reared like giant's feet all around her, guy cables plucked at her feet, threatening to trip her. Shying away from the overhang of the tower's foundations at the last moment, Jude swerved towards the more precarious shelter of a buttress jutting towards the river. Ducking under the long, low arch of metal, uncomfortably aware that she was wider than her cover in several places, Jude froze.

The rain had rallied for a final assault, blurring the air into a grey curtain. Helicopters buzzed, high and distant, like flies trapped behind glass. The leaves entwining the jagged tower fluttered in the wind, a ripple of perpetual motion. Now and then, their motion exposed a glimpse of some strange eco-system; white grubs burrowing, or a flicker of whiskers and eyes like amber beads.

And as she watched, pressed tight against the cold metal, the tower began to grow.

A milimetre, a few grains of rust; a tiny shifting and expansion that could be anything from rain damage to an optical illusion. Then a tiny spur of metal emerging from the rust, like a tendril feeling the way for the vine.

She jumped back, ducking into the shelter of a mangled car chassis part-transformed into a buttress. Damp patches flowered on her exposed shoulders. The thick material of her suit was becoming uncomfortably heavy, and she wasn't likely to win Best Dressed ReTracer any time soon.

She could hear the helicopter still, but not see it. Didn't matter. The moment it turned this way, they'd spot her, and she didn't fancy pressing any closer into this thing, not when it was actually, well, growing…

‘Well,' she told the rain, ‘I suppose I could always ReTrace.'

Actually, why not?

If she was Adrift – lost in time, wandering pointlessly from day to day of her existence – then she could simply move on to somewhere less dangerous. Whether she was dead or alive, it didn't –

The revelation hit her so hard she almost fell out into the rain.

She wasn't dead.

If this was the year 32 After Migration and she was alive here, she had a body here to travel forward into, then she couldn't have died in 27 A.M., either by bullet or defenestration. A fact so simply, blindingly obvious that she'd managed to completely ignore it.

None of which explained what had actually happened here, or how to put it right, but at least she wasn't going to wake up in '27 trapped in a rotting corpse, or anything equally Gothic and impossible.

She fumbled in her pocket, found another of the miniatures looted from the hotel mini-bar. Scotch. That was more like it. She gulped the contents, coughing as the liquid bathed the back of her throat in ethanol and fumes.

Use your head for once and not your feet. Think.

All she needed to do was relax. Convince herself that she'd done whatever she needed to do here, and whatever arcane part of her mind controlled these things would boomerang her back into time. Or forward, for all she knew. The important thing was – away from here.

Grinning like a kid, Jude peered out from her precarious cover. Yeah, the ruin of that house looked pretty stable. Hop over the back wall there, nice and easy, and she could stroll right out through the front door to meet them.

GenoBond's finest, Gawd bless ‘em, were busy staking out the area – a shabby shopping street scattered with burnt-out cars and fractured saplings – and for a moment they didn't even notice her.

There she was, strolling down the uneven pavement with her hands in the air, while, five dozen teenagers in smart green uniforms scuttled here and there, shouting orders, toting flash-stunners and totally ignoring her.

She felt pretty stupid. More importantly, considering the high lunatic quotient that had suddenly appeared when she'd come face to face with Warner at the canalside, she felt lethally exposed.

I should yell. Or maybe I shouldn't. They all look pretty trigger-happy. I should have picked up a white flag on my way out. From somewhere. They're always conveniently to hand in the movies.

Maybe I'll just keep on walking.

Then one of the mini-tank drivers saw her and started yelling, and within three seconds she was walking towards a wall of taut faces and levelled guns.

‘Hey, Warner! Isn't it about time you trained these pretty boys properly?'

The helicopter's tail swung rakishly around as it dipped, heading for the blank tarmac of the road ahead of her. The way the pilot was throwing it around, he was either grossly incompetent, or thought he was a Navy combat ace. The two might very well be connected. The loudspeaker was growling some counter-insult, but Jude elected to ignore it.

Several women in the saffron-yellow robes of the Devout Brides Of The Messiah were leaning out of the upper window of an old carpet shop, nudging one another and giggling. She couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but judging from the interesting shade of crimson that the nearest troops were turning, it was the usual offer of heavenly bliss by way of certain earthly delights.

At least that broke the tension. The gun muzzles were lowered, the tanks stopped at a respectful distance. Up and down the street, raised curtains fell back into place as the residents lost interest. Just another average day in Hammersmith.

As she drew level with the carpet shop and the sniggering Brides, two troopers met her in the middle of the street and frisked her. They didn't exactly look happy about that part. The state her suit was in by now, she didn't blame them.

The helicopter was down, the rotor noise slowing, fading. The door slammed and she heard Warner's voice, tight with strain. ‘Stand down. The prisoner goes in the truck – the rest of you, load up and meet us back at base. Come on, let's move it!'

He was already headed for the truck, a battered prison van with barred windows and a forest of aerials and comms dishes on the roof. Jude watched his retreating back. He looked thinner. And older. No, not older, she decided, as he hunched his shoulders to confront the driving rain. Old. Just old.

The muscle-boys nudged her forward and she obeyed. Docile, letting them steer her towards the open rear door. That last jolt of alcohol had found its way into her system, and she felt hot and dizzy and weak. By the time they reached the truck, her knees were buckled and the troopers had to haul her bodily into the back.

‘Hello there, boss. Have you come to hand over my five years' back pay?'

Warner wrinkled his nose at her. ‘You smell like a dead rat in a brewery waste bin. There are clean clothes in the corner, and a washcloth. Do something about yourself.'

‘People have been saying that to me for years,' Jude muttered, mostly from habit.

The jumpsuit looked prison issue, but she wasn't feeling fussy. They'd left a bottle of water on one of the plastic bucket-seats, too. Ripping the cap off, she upended it over her head, splattering the thin carpeting with icy water. Grime and semi-dissolved acids flowed in long streaks down her forehead, stinging her lips.

Warner grunted, turned his attention to the muscle-boys. ‘You can ride up front. She's not going to give me any trouble.'

‘You sure about that?'

‘You're in no fit state to give anyone any trouble, Jude. Just sit down and clean yourself up.'

The doors slammed closed. An internal lock thumped into place: an external bolt, then another. They weren't taking any chances.

Stripping off the suit, she became aware of dry warmth circulating from under the seats, laced with the scent of petrol. They hadn't bothered to provide her with any shoes, which said something about their intentions. They weren't planning on her walking out of here any time soon.

Warner sat down. ‘So why did you surrender?'

‘I just remembered. I haven't had my Christmas bonus.'

Even with her back turned, she could feel his smile. ‘For which year?'

‘I always liked you, Warner,' she announced, muffled under a turban of towelling. ‘Did I ever mention that?'

‘Only when drunk.' Warner turned in his chair, folding both hands behind his head in a half-hearted stretching motion. ‘Well, here we are at last. What's that poem? “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.”?'

Jude, wriggling hurriedly into the jumpsuit before he got any ideas, only grunted.

‘Particularly, the poet might have observed, if one is a ReTracer.'

Sounds like he'd guessed her masterplan.

‘Unless, of course, he has some of this.'

When she turned, he was standing beside a cabinet set into the padded wall, a loaded syringe in his hand.

‘All right, Warner,' she said softly, watching the glitter of striplight on the needle with the fascination of a cornered animal, ‘what's the dope for?'

‘For stopping a ReTracer from, well, ReTracing.'

Problem. Big problem.

Jude sat down, hoping the gesture would lull him into a false sense of security. Okay, grip the edges of the seat, tense the leg muscles ready to kick…

But Warner was moving away, back out of reach, the syringe held negligently at his side.

‘We could hold you as long as we need to,' he reminded her, tapping the syringe against his thigh. ‘To ask questions. Do the usual tests. Find out how this happened. And how to duplicate it. Publish a paper. Publish a book. I could get a Presidential Commendation, a medal, a seat on the board. You get the general idea.'

Poised to resist, and yet knowing that she wouldn't have to, Jude watched.

‘Or…' Warner looked down at the syringe.

‘Or… ?'

For answer, he turned on his heel, stabbed the needle into the grey wadding lining the walls and depressed the plunger.

Jude blinked.

‘You got old, Warner,' she said finally, watching the pulse beating at his temple. ‘Ran out of ambition. Lost your nerve.'

‘I lost my taste for some of the shite that's been happening recently, that's for sure.'

She busied herself unwrapping the towel from her head, combing her wet hair back with her fingers. Right. Feeling better. Fully dressed, warm, comfortable. Even relatively clean. All I have to do is relax, and I can be out of here before Warner has time for a change of heart.

Relax, right. Easier said than done.

‘And what kinds of things would those be?'

Warner sat down again, just across the van from her. Their knees were almost touching. ‘The thing is, Jude I have this one last little job for you.'

‘Aren't there laws against hiring the dead?'

He almost smiled.

‘I want you,' he said, ‘to go back to Year Zero and make sure no ReTracer prevents bioteching from being legalised, or invented, or however they're going to tackle it. I want you to stop them changing the future.'

Words failed her.

‘I checked your records, Jude. Even back in 27, you'd heard the rumours. You knew GenoBond, and our elected masters, wanted bioteching either controllable, or non-existent.'

Jude pressed her fists against her temples, trying to squeeze some kind of lucidity back into her pummelled brain. ‘That was Harchak, damn it. He was paranoid. Ninety-nine percent of everything he said to me was crap.'

‘It's the other one percent you should be worried about. And Harchak has good reason to distrust GenoBond. They've cheated him before, they'll do it again without a second thought.' He seized her damp hand, held it for a moment. ‘Think about it. You were there to hear that rumour, and you're here now, the only one who's able to stop them. That's not coincidence.'

‘No, it's not. It's all part of me trying to stop myself falling out of a window. This – even this impossible jaunt into the future, breaking every rule of ReTracery – is all part of my attempt to save myself.'

I really have to find another way to solve my problems.

She was laughing. High, thin laughter that didn't sound like her at all. ‘No,' she stammered, fighting her own alcohol-numbed senses. ‘This is ridiculous. I'm not some kind of time-travelling hero. How am I going to stop anyone doing anything? Besides. How would they get back that far? It's impossible.'

‘They have three top level ReTracers. People who've been able to travel through time without limitations, like you do now, for years. Sometimes naturally, sometimes with a little re-engineering. You found out about DiFlorian, but I suppose you never realised why they were working on her…'