Judas Unchained

She put her hands on her hips, and turned a full circle. “Wilson, it could be anywhere out there. The storms here are really ferocious. They can last for weeks.”

“Months, actually, and they cover most of the planet.” He gave up grubbing through the dirt. “I’m sure I remember using a power drill to screw the pole legs in. We were supposed to secure it.”

Nigel had walked up the slope of the sand piled against the Eagle II’s fuselage. His hand touched the remnants of the tailfin. “This ain’t right, you know. She deserves better than this. We should arrange to take her home. I’ll bet the California Technological Heritage Museum would love to have her. They’d probably pay for the restoration.”

“No,” Wilson said automatically. “She’s broken. She’s a part of this planet’s history now. She belongs here.”

“She’s not so badly broken.” Nigel stroked the top of the fuselage. “They built well back then.”

“It was her heart you broke.”

“Goddamn! I knew it, man, I fucking knew it. You are still pissed at me.”

“No I’m not. We were both part of history that day, you and I. My side lost, but then we were always going to. Wormhole technology was inevitable. If you hadn’t done it, someone else would.”

“Yeah? You have no idea how tough that math was to crack, nor following up by translating it into hardware. Nobody but Ozzie could have done it. I know his wacko rep, but he’s a genius, a true one, a fucking supernova compared to Newton, Einstein, and Hawking.”

“If it can be done, it will be done. Don’t try and personalize this. We represent events, that’s all.”

“Oh, brilliant, I’m nothing but a figurehead. Well, excuse me.”

“Will you two monster egos pack this in, please,” Anna said. “Wilson, he’s right, you can’t let these old ships decay any further. They are history, just like you said, and a very important part of history.”

“Sorry,” Wilson mumbled. “It’s just…I got wrong-footed coming back here. You don’t erase half the stuff you think you have at rejuvenation.”

“Ain’t that a fact,” Nigel said. “Come on, let’s go find a souvenir that isn’t a lump of rock. There’s got to be something lying around here.”

“I never even got a lump of rock last time,” Wilson said.

“You didn’t?”

“No. We didn’t run our science program. I think Lewis picked up his first sample, but NASA kept that once we got home.”

“Damn! You know, I don’t remember picking up any rock, either.”

“Christ,” Anna said. She bent down and picked up a couple of twisted pebbles, and handed one to each man. “You two are bloody useless.”

***

Roderick Deakins strolled down Briggins as casually as anyone could, walking around the Olika district at two A.M. He was grateful there hadn’t been a patrol car driving past, though that was only a matter of time. Olika was where a lot of rich types lived. They had deep connections in Darklake’s City Hall. The police maintained a good presence here, not like the Tulosa district where Roderick lived. You rarely saw a cop there after dark, and then never singularly.

“Is this it?” Marlon Simmonds asked.

Roderick had worked with Marlon many times down the years. Nothing too serious, you couldn’t call them partners, but they’d seen their fair share of juvenile street rip-offs, followed by a string of break-ins when they’d run with the Usaros back in ’69. After that they’d done time together for a Marina Mall warehouse heist that had gone seriously wrong in ’73. When they were paroled they’d drifted into helping out Lo Kin, a small-time boss who ran a protection racket on Tulosa’s westside, where they’d been stuck ever since. All that history and the trust that went with it made them a perfect pair for this job.

“What does the fucking number read?” Roderick hissed back.

“Eighteen hundred,” Marlon said, glancing at the brass numbers screwed into the drycoral arch above the gate. That was the thing about Marlon: nothing much seemed to bother him. His biochemically boosted body weighed at least twice as much as Roderick, and moved along with the inevitable inertia of a twenty-ton truck. His general attitude was a reflection of his physical presence, allowing him to cruise through life knowing there was very little that would get in his way.

“Then that’s it, isn’t it?” Roderick said. The man who was an associate of Lo Kin, the one they were doing this for, had been very specific. The house number, the name of the man they were going to talk to, the short time in which they had to perform the job.

“Okay, man.” Marlon took a harmonic blade from his jacket pocket, and sliced through the wrought iron around the lock. The gate swung open with the tiniest of squeaks from the hinges. Roderick waited a moment to see if any alarms were triggered. But there was no sound. When he waved his left palm around the gate, his e-butler said it couldn’t detect any electronic activity. Roderick grinned to himself. It had cost a lot to get the OCtattoo sensor on his palm, but every time like this he knew it was worth it.