The Age Atomic

FORTY-TWO

The floor was cold and smooth. Rad could feel it against his cheek, against his hands. With his chest pressed to it, the cold had seeped into his skin like damp in an old house. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the floor was white, streaked with black veins. Marble. He closed his eyes again and wished he would die so the buzz-saw vibration in his head would leave him in peace. Even with his eyes closed, the darkness spun around him. Stretched out on the hard floor, he felt like he was tied to a gyroscope set on high, the ground rolling and bucking as it attempted to throw its unwanted occupant off.

Then the buzzing died a little, and Rad felt his chest tighten with adrenaline as he remembered what the feeling meant. He’d experienced it before, only that time he’d been wearing a mask to help alleviate the worst of the symptoms.

Rad opened his eyes, gritting his teeth against the nausea, and pulled his chin across the floor to look up.

They were in New York.

There were boots nearby, tall with black pants tucked into them. From somewhere above a voice came, annoyed, impatient.

“Hey, buddy, wake up!”

Rad blinked, but when his eyes reopened there were more of the black boots. He’d passed out, maybe only for a second, he couldn’t tell. He tried a breath. It was OK, but it made his head spin. Crossing into the Origin without a mask… damn, it hurt. He wasn’t going to be much use for anything for a while, that much he did know.

Carson. Dammit. Which also meant…

Rad turned his head, ignoring the way his cheek tugged on the cold floor. Next to him was another prone form, a long bundle of green winter coat topped with long brown hair. Special Agent Jennifer Jones, out for the count, her golden mask facing away. The men around them — the police — were in for quite a surprise if they hadn’t seen her already.

Two hands under his armpits and Rad was on his knees. He sagged between the officers as the world spun, his breathing rasped, his eyeballs two red-hot coals. He felt the tears stream down his face. He blinked to clear his vision.

They were in Grand Central, back on the main concourse. It looked the same, although there were features not present in Carson’s version — a big, long kiosk not quite in the center of the space, and signs with arrows. Grand Central in New York City was clearly in full use.

The middle of the space seemed to be sectioned off by police tape reaching right to the wide sweeping stairs that rose up on either side of the concourse. Beyond the tape more cops corralled people — lots of people, in hats and coats, holding newspapers and briefcases and umbrellas; people talking to each other, talking to cops who shook their heads, people craning to look and see what the commotion was; men and woman and children holding hands.

Then Rad closed his eyes and let himself hang between the cops, the sensory overload threatening to pummel him into unconsciousness again.

He could guess what had happened. He and Jennifer had popped into existence right in the middle of the concourse, right in the middle of all the people who were now crowding around the police line.

That would have been quite a surprise for the good people of Manhattan.

“Hey, hey,” said a voice. Rad opened his eyes and found a scowling policeman clicking his fingers in his face. Rad flinched, each snap like being hit on the back of the head with a rubber mallet.

The officer backed away, and one of his colleagues leaned in for a pow-wow.

“Are they drunk?”

“Or worse.”

“Call said they’d just appeared out of thin air.”

“Call also said my mother is the Queen of England. Come on.”

Rad opened his eyes. The police reapplied their grip, and he was on his feet.

“And her.”

Rad struggled to stay alert. He watched as more cops tiptoed towards Jennifer, each of them with one hand on his gun. After shaking her gingerly, satisfied that she wasn’t going to leap up and knife them, they holstered their weapons and rolled her over.

“Jesus H Christ!” said the first officer. The second just shook his head, and put his hands on his hips. Then he shook his head again and waved over the scowling cop.

“What the hell?”

The scowling cop reached for Jennifer, but then Jennifer moved. In one quick motion she was on her feet, and she spun around, the long split tail of her winter coat spiraling out around her like a fancy ball gown. She turned, and looked left and right and all around, her golden metal face bright in the lights of Grand Central, her gloved hands out on each side, fingers splayed, ready for a fight.

The cops were fast too, forming a circle, a dozen guns pointed at her, a dozen voices commanding her to stand still, to give up, to lie down, to get down, to not move lady, to freeze right there. The circle moved, expanding outwards, the cops circling, not sure what they were dealing with.

Then Jennifer seemed to see Rad and she stopped turning and moved towards him, causing another round of shouting. The cops holding Rad up dragged him back a step, and then someone took the initiative and tackled Jennifer from behind. She fell with a cry, her metal face connecting with the hard floor with a surprisingly loud and bright sound, and then a cop put his knee in the small of her back and she was handcuffed and Rad passed out.

When Rad woke again he felt better, although his throat was as dry as sandpaper and his nostrils were filled with the scent of old urine and damp concrete. The surface below him was still hard but Rad could feel slats underneath the naked skin of his head. He was on a narrow wooden bench in a small room.

He swung himself over the edge, his head pounding but bearable, mostly. The buzzing behind his eyeballs flared with the sudden movement but quickly reduced to a constant pressure rather than a panic-inducing pain.

Rad looked around. He was in a cell, and he was on his own.

“Rad?”

Rad jerked around at the voice. There was a grill high in the wall behind him. He stood on the bench, which creaked beneath his weight, and looked through.

“Gah!” Rad pulled back and nearly fell off the bench, and then he gripped the edge of the window with his fingers and pulled himself back up. Jennifer’s golden face was six inches from his behind four thick grey metal bars.

“You’re OK,” she said, and there was relief in her voice even if her artificial face was unable to show emotion.

“We’re in New York,” said Rad.

“I noticed.”

Jennifer’s mask tilted a little, quizzical. “Are you feeling OK?”

“Apart from a sore head and a little difficulty breathing, just fine and dandy, thanks. But last I remember that damn fool Carson was shooting at me with the honking big ray gun of yours.”

Jennifer chuckled. “‘Ray gun.’ I like it.”

Rad waved his hand. “Whatever. You’re holding something back on that thing. The only time I saw you use it was when you shot at that silver robot, the one that called itself Elektro. Blew half of it away, as I recall.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Only because I missed. I borrowed the gun from the Empire State Building when everything went crazy.”

“Borrowed?” said Rad.

“Borrowed.”

“Go on,” said Rad.

“It’s the same kind of technology used by Nimrod’s Department here in New York to send agents across the Fissure, but while out in the field. Only modified. Improved.”

Rad frowned. “To be used as a weapon?”

“Kinda,” said Jennifer. “It sends the target through the Fissure, but not necessarily to New York.”

“Where else is there?”

“Oh, nowhere in particular. That’s the point.”

“Ah,” said Rad as the penny dropped. “Neat. And I assume Carson made his own adjustment when he fixed it, to make sure it sent us here and not into the hereafter.”

“Worked, didn’t it?”

Rad rubbed the back of his neck. The effort of talking was bringing his headache back.

“Yeah, worked all right. Don’t suppose you have an aspirin? How do you feel?”

Jennifer shrugged, and stepped back a little on her own bench. “Never better. I was out for the count, but I feel like I could take on an army right now.”

Rad frowned. He wondered what the King of 125th Street — the real king, her own brother, masquerading as the King’s robotic servant, the Corsair — had done to her that made her immune to the effects of being in an incompatible universe. He decided not to go there.

“Must be the mask,” he said.

Jennifer nodded. “Must be.” Then she turned quickly to face the door, and said in a low whisper: “Someone’s coming.”

Rad turned towards his own door.

“I don’t hear-”

There was a heavy clank as his cell door was unlocked, and then it swung open on big hinges, oiled and silent. Two uniformed police stood in the corridor outside. They glanced at Rad standing on the bench, then up at the grill that connected the two cells. Then one of them scowled — it might have been the bad-tempered one from Grand Central, Rad couldn’t be sure — and entered the cell.

“Time to talk, pal,” he said, lifting his hand to reveal a set of cuffs.

Rad sighed. He hopped off the bed, holding out his wrists.

“Take me to your leader,” he said, but the cop didn’t get the joke.

“What kind of a name,” asked the plainclothes cop, “is ‘Rad’, anyway?”

Rad sighed and drummed his fingers on the table. The interrogation was going nowhere and fast, for the both of them.

The cop took a drag on his cigarette and then squinted down at the paper on the table like he was changing a child’s diaper. Periodically his eyes flicked up to Rad’s, the expression unchanging. Another cop, also in a suit but without a cigarette, sat next to the first and didn’t take his eyes off Rad.

“It’s just a nickname,” said Rad.

Another drag. “Short for something?”

Rad nodded. “Bradley.”

A final suck of tobacco. “So let me get this straight,” said the first cop, pausing to grin sideways at his companion. “You’re telling me your name is Bradley Bradley?”

Rad sighed and stilled his restless fingers. “So now you see why I might chose to go by something a little shorter.”

The first cop seemed to hold his breath. Then one eyebrow slowly went up and he nodded.

“That so?” he said, with the air of someone who didn’t believe a word Rad was saying. Which, as far as Rad could tell, was the case.

Rad smiled sweetly. “Yes, that is so, officer.”

The other cop adjusted his tie and took a deep breath. At this, his colleague sat back, pushing his wooden chair on the hard floor and making it squeak. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes. Rad eyed them, enjoying the smell of the smoke but not knowing whether he really used to have a habit or whether he’d never smoked in his life. Being from the Empire State, it was a little hard to tell.

“Your name is Bradley Bradley,” said the other cop, “and you’re a private detective in a city called the Empire State, which exists inside a Pocket dimension connected to New York by a gateway-”

Rad nodded. “The Fissure.”

The other cop smiled. “The Fissure, right. And this Empire State is being overrun with robots, and you and your friend were sent here by another version of a man from New York who you think is in charge here, to figure out whether there’s another army of robots being built to fight the first lot, because a friend of yours saw them in a dream, along with some broad with blue eyes.”

Rad’s eyebrow went up. He wasn’t sure whether that deserved an answer, but he said “Correct” anyway.

The first cop lit another cigarette, and Rad’s nostrils twitched at the curl of smoke as the cop waved the match out like his life depended on it.

“And then everyone will be ready for when the little green men arrive in their flying saucers?”

Rad sighed. “Look,” he said, slowly, carefully. “I’m not crazy. I need to speak to Captain Nimrod.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’re crazy,” said the other cop. His smoking friend nodded behind his cloud. “Not crazy, no. A wino, though. How much have you had to drink today, buddy?”

Rad sighed in disbelief and sat back heavily in his chair. “Drinking?”

“You and your girlfriend were found in a heap in the middle of Grand Central Station, and before that, people said you was screaming. Caused a fuss. Someone said you was screaming about a gun; someone else thought you had a gun. We had to shut down the whole damn terminal because of you, and now you’re telling me that the Martians are coming.”

Rad closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Nimrod. There’s a government agent by the name of Nimrod. He knows me. He’ll sort it out.”

The first cop gasped in mock surprise. Then he nudged his colleague with his cigarette arm.

“Hey, Johnny, get this down, will ya?”

He leaned forward on his elbows across the table from Rad, and he took a drag on his cigarette. When he spoke his voice was a low, conspiratorial whisper.

“So, tell me, this Nimrod. He FBI? Or CIA? Or maybe — oh, he’s not KGB, is he? That would be bad. But, no, you don’t look like a Communist. Oh, I know!” the cop leaned back, triumphant. “He’s P-I-T-A! Just like you are, buddy.”

Rad shook his head and wondered whether he should ask for a cigarette.

Jennifer’s cell was empty, and had been for a while. Rad sat on the bench, his fingers straying over his scalp. He missed his hat, presumably being held with his trench coat, scarf, and belt in a box somewhere nearby. His shoes were slip-on, so at least he’d been allowed to keep them. And it was warm in the cell, and the ground wasn’t shaking.

Rad wondered how long it would take for the collapsing structure of the Pocket to start damaging the Origin. Maybe it would take a long time, given the difference in size between the two dimensions. Or perhaps it would happen all at once, catastrophically, both dimensions vanishing down an eternal plughole.

If the robot war didn’t destroy both dimensions first, of course.

A series of footfalls sounded outside his cell, then kept going. Rad stood, and a moment later Jennifer was returned to the cell next door. Rad was on the bench, his face to the grill, almost immediately.

“What happened?”

Jennifer stood in her cell, stretching out what must have been a leg made stiff by sitting in the uncomfortable chair in the interrogation room. She glanced at Rad, and then continued to rub the top of her thigh.

“Nothing much. They asked a lot of questions, and I answered all of them. They didn’t seem that interested, just noted it all down.”

“Huh,” said Rad. “You were lucky. I got the wise guys. They didn’t believe a word I said.”

“Why are they holding us here, anyway?”

“Well,” said Rad, and then he paused. Jennifer had a point. The questioning was a lot of bother for two people who were supposedly just drunks causing a scene.

“They haven’t said anything about charges.”

“No,” said Rad. “They haven’t. They’re holding us for something, though.”

“For what?”

Nimrod? Rad didn’t dare hope. “They took down everything you said?”

Jennifer nodded.

“And you told them about being an agent in the Empire State, and about the robots and all that jazz?”

“And all that jazz, yes. The never-ending winter and the falling buildings and all.”

“And they didn’t say anything?”

“Only to ask more questions. Maybe they were distracted by this.” Jennifer tapped a knuckle against a golden cheek.

Rad tugged at his bottom lip. “If only we could convince them to get hold of Nimrod. He’d get us out.”

On cue, there was a sound at Rad’s door. Rad heard Jennifer hopping up onto her bed to see into his cell as he stepped down from his bench and faced the door.

The cell was opened by a uniformed officer, not one Rad had seen before. He held the door open for a man in a brown suit and hat. The newcomer was built like a football quarterback with a thick, almost non-existent neck.

The man glanced at the policemen, then at Rad. “So, you coming or what?”

Rad smiled. “Agent Grieves, are you a sight for sore eyes.”

Mr Grieves raised an eyebrow, a tiny smile flickering over his small mouth before vanishing without a trace.

“Yeah, swell to see you.” He glanced at the cop again, then cleared his throat. He waved at Rad. “Now hurry up. We ain’t got all day.”

Detective Steven Sachs took the second-to-last cigarette from the pack, then stared at the solitary remaining smoke before squeezing the pack in his fist.

“Shit,” he muttered, his fingers automatically fumbling for the box of matches in his jacket pocket. Box retrieved, he lit his cigarette and then waved the match out with his characteristic flourish.

Bryson pushed his chair out from his desk and turned it around to face his partner. He leaned back, placed his hands behind his head, and sniffed loudly. “One of those days, right?”

Sachs nodded, not looking up from the paperwork on his desk. “You got that right.”

“Lot of paper for those two drunks?”

Sachs sucked his cigarette and shook his head. “They’re being transferred. Look at this.” He held up one of the sheets of paper. It was onionskin, a carbon copy, and when Bryson took it it nearly tore. Sachs watched as Bryson’s eyes flicked over it before settling on the symbol at the top of the paper.

“Holy shit, this is from-”

“Yep,” said Sachs, snatching the delicate document back again without much care.

“So that stuff about the government?”

“Yep,” said Sachs. He pulled the typewriter on his desk towards him, adjusted the paper he’d carefully loaded just moments before, and selected a single key on the keyboard. There was a clack, and he leaned forward. “Ah, shit,” he said, adjusting the paper again.

“Detective Sachs?”

“The one and only.” Sachs didn’t move, but when Bryson sat up straight in his chair with a clatter, he sighed, sucked on his cigarette, and turned around.

Three men were in the office, dressed in black suits and black ties. They were young, clean-shaved, and each wore a black hat. Sachs thought they looked like a trio of advertising copywriters from Madison Avenue. He looked them up and down and sighed.

“Can I help you?”

The first man in black smiled. “We’re here to collect the fugitives.”

Sachs sniffed. “Bradley Bradley and the girl with the party mask she refuses to take off? Be my guest, buddy.”

The man’s smile tightened a little. “Thank you.”

“You’re too well dressed to be FBI,” said Sachs. “You CIA or NSA?”

“No,” said the first man. “Now, if you would be so kind?”

Sachs and Bryson stood. The agents looked at Bryson, who smiled self-consciously and straightened his tie. Sachs coughed, long and hard, and pulled his jacket from the back of his chair.

“OK,” he said. “Follow me.”

Sachs slipped into his jacket as they walked. After a few steps he saw the desk sergeant walking towards them.

“Sergeant Ross,” he said, the sergeant touching the brim of his hat and coming to a halt, expectant. Sachs indicated the three agents with him. “Those two in the cells, from Grand Central. We’re handing them over to…” He frowned as he glanced at the first agent.

The first agent smiled and gave a small nod.

“…these guys,” Sachs concluded.

“Sir?” The Sergeant switched the clipboard he was holding from one hand to another.

“We’re handing them over to another authority. They ready to move?”

The sergeant looked at Sachs and pursed his lips. He glanced at the trio of agents, and peeled the top sheet on the clipboard back and folded it over.

“Something wrong, Sergeant?”

“They’ve already gone,” said Ross, turning the clipboard around to show his superior. Sachs grabbed it and starting flipping through pages like he was a doctor surveying the chart of a dying man. “They were collected just fifteen minutes ago. An agent signed for them already.”

The men in black crowded Sachs; he could feel their breath, smell their aftershave. He continued to scramble through the paperwork until the clipboard was snatched out of his hand by the first agent. The detective didn’t protest, but in the silence that followed as the agent read the sheet he fixed Sergeant Ross with an angry glare.

“A Federal agent signed for it?” said the agent, turning the clipboard around, his finger next to the signature line on the release form.

Sergeant Ross peered closer, the color draining from his face as Sachs watched.

Sachs grabbed the clipboard back and read the line. “Agent…” he peered closer, deciphering the spider scrawl. “Shit. Agent ‘Kissmyass’? What are you, a moron?”

He slapped the clipboard against the Sergeant’s chest. Then he turned to Bryson, who was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at the floor. “And don’t think you can squeeze out of this either. They only left fifteen minutes ago, we gotta be able to-”

A hand was on his chest, the fingertips only brushing his shirt but somehow there was strength and purpose there. Sachs looked up and the first agent shook his head.

“We’ll handle this,” he said. He nodded to his colleagues, already drawing guns from holsters beneath their jackets. The first agent looked at Sergeant Ross. “Take my agents to the cells. Follow their directions. Move. Now.”

The sergeant turned on his heel, the two agents on his tail.

Sachs sighed.

“Who would have come in to take them?” asked Bryson.

“Enemy operatives,” said the first agent. “Don’t worry, detective, you will be fully exonerated. I need a phone.”

Sachs led the way back to his own desk, then stood smartly to one side as the agent lifted the black phone off it. He tried to see what the agent was dialing, but he lost track of the turns. It didn’t seem to be any kind of regular phone number.

“Enemy agents?” asked Sachs. He shook his head. “What, like… Communists? Spies?”

“Morrison,” said the agent into the receiver. “Cloud Club.”

Sachs raised an eyebrow. Wasn’t that an old nightclub at the top of the Chrysler Building? Perhaps it was a code.

“Morrison,” said the agent again, and then he nodded as he listened to something. “Nimrod is out?” A pause. “Understood.” he said.

Sachs clicked his tongue. Nimrod? The name mentioned by the black guy. So, who were they, really? Spies? Communists? Secret agents from the government? This was exciting. And the agent — Morrison? — had already said that no blame would fall on Sachs.

Sachs puffed his chest out a little. Here he was, in the middle of a spy thriller like the kind he was so fond of reading.

“Confirmed,” said Morrison. He replaced the receiver and lowered the phone back to the desk.

Sachs was on tenterhooks.

“The fugitives who escaped are the two most wanted criminals in the United States of America,” said Morrison.

Sachs couldn’t help but gulp.

“We need to put out an APB, and inform the FBI that there are felons loose in Manhattan. Armed and dangerous. They are spies who are acting against the government of the Western Hemisphere. Do you understand me, detective?”

Sachs nodded. He now understood that the statement Bradley had given him and Bryson — and the one taken by Mortimer and Zapf from the girl — were all part of a cover-up, a clever disinformation plan to confuse the police, to buy time to let someone else — an inside man — come and get them. Sachs’s brow knitted as he tried to untangle it all inside his own mind. “They’re really that dangerous?”

Morrison’s expression was firm. “And as of right now,” he said, “Rad Bradley and Jennifer Jones are both public enemy number one.”