The Age Atomic

SIX

The air was still and as cold as a slap in the face as Rad pulled the collar of his trench coat up and the brim of his hat down. The streets were slick with a thin layer of dangerous black ice, the gutters and the corners of buildings piled with a dry, sand-like scattering of snow, the kind you only got when it had been cold a real long time.

And it had been cold a real long time.

Rad sniffed the air and immediately regretted it, the sudden sting of ice like a firecracker exploding in his nostrils. He exhaled into the collar of his coat and dragged his scarf up over his mouth and nose.

The Empire State was freezing up and here he was, venturing into unknown territory in the dead of night on the back of nothing but a weird phone call. Just like old times.

He’d parked his car a few blocks south, where there were at least some people and light, but as he’d walked it had got darker and darker, as if the city was fading away, dying as he went north. Come at night, the mystery caller had said, as it wasn’t safe during the day. It sounded backward, but Rad had kept to the letter of the instructions. He hiked north on foot, through streets a little wider than he was used to, among buildings a little lower than he felt comfortable with.

Rad crossed the deserted street and paused.

He was being followed, but the person doing the following was hardly a professional. The attempt to match his own footsteps to Rad’s was poor.

No problem. Rad thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat. In his left, his fingers curled around the short metal rod taken from the deceased — deactivated? — robot gangster, Cliff. In his right, his fingers curled around the handle of his gun.

Rad kept walking, slowly at first and then speeding up. He broke his step and heard the person behind him pause, so he stopped and turned on his heel, but the street was dark with plenty of shadows for people to hide in. Rad saw nothing, and the night was silent.

Rad mentally counted off the bullets in his gun as he recalled loading it that afternoon. He wondered how accurate it was and over what distance; it really was a small gun designed for point-blank defense, and he hadn’t had much of a chance to test it.

If this was Harlem at night — the safe time to visit — then during the day it must be a virtual no-mans-land.

Rad pulled his collar higher and kept walking. He had somewhere to go, and someone to meet.

Kane Fortuna.

Rad shook his head and kept his eyes on the sidewalk. Kane had returned? Was the caller telling the truth? Rad dared to hope he would see his friend again: Kane Fortuna, the Sentinel’s former star reporter, with a misguided career as the Skyguard cut short by a little trip through the Fissure. That was eighteen months ago, and despite searches on both sides of the dimensional divide in New York and the Empire State, his body had never been found.

Rad had assumed Kane was dead, that if you went into the Fissure on one side and didn’t come out the other, then the universe had chewed you up and that was that. Maybe he’d been too quick to jump to that conclusion, but he really wasn’t sure what else he was supposed to think.

Rad picked up the pace as he thought about his old friend. If Kane was alive and well, Rad was prepared to forgive him the naivety that had led him to be influenced by the wrong side. Rad knew Kane; they would talk, and Kane would listen, and they’d work everything out.

Maybe. Rad tightened his grip on the gun in his pocket, and turned a corner. Ahead, on the opposite side of the street, the neon sign of a tavern glowed, a rainbow halo thrown around it as the ice crystals hanging in the air reflected the light.

Rad needed a drink, and some time to think, and a chance to lose his tail.

Smiling beneath his scarf, he skipped up to the door, and went inside.

The tavern was the same as any that Rad had ever been in. Though, if he thought about it, the only establishment he’d ever been in was Jerry’s, near his office, despite the fact that there was no Prohibition anymore and the sale and consumption of alcohol no longer attracted the death penalty. But Rad liked Jerry’s and wasn’t interested in trying anywhere else. Jerry was also rather accommodating when it came to the matter of his tab.

The place was empty, save a barman in a blue shirt, his back to the room. Rad checked his watch, which showed it was eleven in the evening. Maybe the night was young in Harlem. If the daytime was dangerous, then maybe it was at night when it all came to life, like Harlem was operating on an opposing timetable to the rest of the Empire State. Maybe, thought Rad, he’d been a little early, which would explain the person following him and the lack of patrons in the tavern.

Rad slunk to the bar, took off his hat, and unwrapped his scarf as he perched on a stool. Rad waited a moment while the barman did a fine job of ignoring the only customer in the joint, then he tapped his fingers on the bar.

The barman turned to face him, wiping a glass with a towel. He was a young man, his features sharp, his eyes narrow and his hair so greasy it made Rad’s own shaved scalp crawl. He looked like he was chewing something, but whether it was gum or a bad attitude, Rad wasn’t sure.

“You open?” Rad said. It wasn’t the best icebreaker, but he was nervous, more nervous than he realized. He’d been followed through what had felt like a completely empty, alien world. He didn’t like it, and now he had a surly barman to contend with.

“Yeah, we’re open,” said the barman. Rad tried a smile and the barman returned the expression, although it didn’t look that friendly. He was still chewing something, and when he smiled the wet sound was loud and clear. The man’s teeth were filthy, and as the saliva squeaked around them Rad saw that it was dark, nearly black. “What can I get for ya?”

Rad frowned, wondering how hygienic this establishment was. He decided to go for something safe.

“Coffee. Lots of sugar.”

The barman’s smile widened and his nod this time was different, the nod of a man appreciating a fine choice. He even said the same as he straightened up and vanished through a door behind the bar.

Rad reached into his pocket to retrieve his wallet and his hand found the metal rod. He pulled it out and peered at it in the low light.

“Hey, where did you get that?”

The barman had returned, steaming cup of coffee in one hand. He was frozen in the doorway, his eyes wide, locked on the object in Rad’s hand.

Rad held the thing up by one end but before he could say anything, the barman dumped the coffee on the bar, spilling nearly half of it, and reached across to push Rad’s hand away. Rad snatched the rod close to his chest.

“Hey!”

“Put that damn thing away, Jesus,” said the barman. He kept his hands out, his eyes scanning the empty bar behind his single customer. He was breathing heavily and quickly.

“You know what it is?” asked Rad.

The barman leaned across the bar, his face an inch away from Rad’s. Rad grimaced; the barman’s breath was hot and smelled of acetone. As he leaned back, Rad saw the barman’s eyes were bloodshot. The man was either sick or high on something.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” said the barman. “It belongs to him, to one of his machines.”

“Who?”

The barman was very still, his eyes on Rad’s. Rad raised an eyebrow and the barman nodded.

“You don’t want nothing to do with him,” he said.

Rad shook his head and slid off the stool. Enough was enough. As he moved, the barman jerked forward again and grabbed Rad’s forearm tightly. Rad shook it off.

“Bud,” said the barman, “you wanna watch yourself. It’s not safe.”

“So I’ve been told,” said Rad.

The barman flicked his head at the object in Rad’s hand. “You’re not from round here, are you?”

“Downtown,” said Rad.

The barman pursed his lips like he was going to whistle appreciatively. He leaned in to Rad, like a conspirator. Rad found himself getting closer to the man, his nose assaulted by the acidic smell of his breath.

“I heard things were rough, downtown.” The barman said it like it was another place altogether. As far as Rad had seen, that seemed to be exactly the case.

“That so?”

The barman nodded, his eyes glazing over, almost like Rad wasn’t there. He chewed and swallowed and spoke.

“Yeah, man, I heard there were riots, and that they’d tried to storm the Empire State Building.” The barman tried to whistle but his lips did nothing but pass a narrow current of air through them. The tang of acetone was strong and Rad couldn’t stop his nose crinkling.

“I heard there was a hijack,” the barman said. “I heard the police tried to come down on a crowd in an aerostat, but the people, they stormed the ship and took it over and were flying it around the place.” He moved his hands in the air, clearly impressed.

Rad said nothing. The barman was right; since the cold had set in and Carson had abandoned his post, the city was full of disturbances.

There was a light in the barman’s eyes. “I heard there were others, in the city. Y’know? From the other side. Infiltrators, all secret-like, on the down-low. Coming in and stirring things up, right? Trying to overthrow the Commissioner, get their own kind in.”

“The other side?” asked Rad.

“Yeah.” That fire again, fighting its way out of the barman’s bloodshot eyes. “I heard they were called ‘Communists’. From New York.”

Rad frowned. “Com-you-what-now?”

“The Reds…” The barman almost whispered it, and let it hang in the air along with the stench of his breath.

The man was deranged, whatever the hell it was he was chewing pickling his brain. So he’d heard the news from downtown, about the riots and protests, but infiltrators from New York? The Fissure had closed.

Time to change to subject. Rad pulled the metal rod out again but kept it close to his chest. As soon as it came into view, the barman’s eyes widened again and they darted around the empty bar.

“Jesus, mister, you gonna give me palpitations, I’m telling ya.”

Rad’s eyebrow went up again. “You know someone called Geiger?”

The barman shook his head, quickly. “Never heard of no Geiger, but then I don’t know his real name.”

The mystery man. Rad’s caller, he had no doubt about it.

“Who?”

The chewing paused, and this time the barman ran his hand through his greasy hair.

“Either you’re playin’ me, or you’re about to walk into the spider’s parlor with a clue, mister.”

“I came here because I was asked to,” said Rad, raising the tube to his eye line. “Someone wants this back. Sounds like you know who.”

“Oh, mister, mister,” said the barman, backing away and holding his hands up like Rad was asking him to open the register and start counting bills. “You gotta turn around now. Go back downtown.”

“What’s so bad about uptown? Who lives up there?”

“Mister, everyone knows. Maybe not downtown, but around here, nothing goes on that doesn’t have something to do with the King.”

Rad sniffed and placed the rod on the bar. The barman’s eyes were glued to it. Rad watched the barman as he slowly spun the rod on the damp wood top.

“Who’s the King?”

“Come on, mister!”

Rad stopped moving the rod and waited until the barman dragged his eyes from it to Rad’s.

“Who is the King?” said Rad with more force.

The barman shook his head and dragged the towel off his shoulder only to slap it back across the other. He folded his arms and nodded again. “You must know who he is, if you said he wants that back.”

“Can’t say I caught his name.”

The barman shook his head again. “King isn’t his name. King is what he is. The King of 125th Street.”

Rad smiled. “Seems a funny place to be king of.”

The barman didn’t seem to like this. His eyes hardened and the thin smile vanished. “But that’s where he told you to go, right?”

Rad held his breath for a moment, then let it out slowly. The creepy barman was right. The instructions had been simple: come to 125th Street, come at night. That was all Rad had got. He’d looked it up on a map back in his office but the map hadn’t shown anything except a street like any other, running across the upper part of the city, west to east, at a bit of an angle.

“The King of 125th Street…” said Rad, mostly to himself, but his words elicited more vigorous nodding from the barman.

“Lives in a castle.”

Rad glanced up from the bar to the barman. “Lives in a… castle?”

“There’s a light on the top sometimes, green one.”

“Huh,” said Rad. He was getting closer. Whoever this King was, he was involved with something fishy involving robot gangsters and a warehouse full of strange equipment and an army of tin soldiers. He could pay the King a little visit, find out more, and take the information to Jennifer Jones.

“But, mister, come on,” said the barman, pleading. “You gotta go home. Toss that thing in the river and forget you ever came to Harlem.”

Rad smiled and pocketed the rod. He lifted his hat from the bar and placed it on his head. The hat was still cold from being outdoors, and Rad could felt the moisture on the rim against his scalp. Rad patted the pocket of his trench coat, feeling the dead weight of the pistol in it. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

The barman sniffed. “You don’t know what’s out there,” he said. Then he stood back and folded his arms. Rad watched as he chewed, and he saw that the man’s saliva wasn’t black, it was green. He thought back to the antifreeze in Cliff’s hip flask. Suddenly a reason why the barman was interested in the metal rod came to mind. Rad gasped.

“You a robot?” he asked.

The barman’s thin lips split into a lizard grin and he slurped a mouthful of green saliva before leaning back in across the bar. “What, are you crazy? I’m as real as you are.”

Rad retreated from the bar, transfixed by the man’s chewing. The man wasn’t as big as Cliff, and while he wasn’t exactly a perfect human specimen there was a certain handsomeness hidden behind the grime and grease.

“What are you eating?” Rad asked, peering at the barman’s ever-moving mouth. “You chewing a battery or something?”

The barman stopped chewing and sniggered. “Trust me, you don’t want any of the green.”

Rad’s eyebrow went up. Green? “I guess not”, he said. Then he lifted his hat. It was time to go. “Sir, it’s been a pleasure. I’ll be sure to pass my regards on to the, ah, King.”

He turned and made his way to the door, the barman not saying anything but chewing, chewing, chewing.

When the door closed behind Rad, he thought he heard the barman say “good luck” or “go home”, but he wasn’t sure which.