Eschaton 01 The Other End of Time Read online

  In the elevator he was fidgety, glaring at Dannerman. Just before they reached the ground floor he asked, "Do you know what this is about?"

  "Don't have a clue."

  "Neither do I. Listen. Maybe you're not as big a prick as I thought you were, but my orders are that that package stays in your belly bag until you hand it over to the guy it's meant for. No peeking. I don't want to have any trouble with you."

  "You won't," Dannerman said, meaning it. He didn't want to cross Jarvas just when the man was being nearly human. In any case, he was hoping that the subway ride would give him a chance to engage Jarvas in conversation.

  But that didn't happen. Jarvas was working at the business of being a bodyguard. He stayed close to Dannerman, keeping anyone else from touching him even on the subway, his good hand always near his own weapon, and he wasn't talkative. When the train speeded up to pass what some terrorist had done to the Fourteenth Street station, all lightless and covered in dark green radiation-proof foam, Jarvas crossed himself awkwardly with the arm that was in a cast. Dannerman considered mentioning to him, as a conversation opener, that he really had nothing to worry about, the residue from the terrorists' nuclear satchel bomb was no more dangerous than the general atmospheric levels-as long as you didn't linger there, of course. But as soon as he opened his mouth Jarvas gave him a warning scowl.

  He closed his mouth again, and followed Jarvas meekly as they got out at Chambers Street.

  The Floridians had their place on Embassy Row, just like the rich foreign countries. Theirs wasn't one of the big-money establishments-it wasn't anything like the Swedish embassy on the corner, twelve stories high and immaculately kept, and of course not a patch on the embassy of the United Koreas across the street. But then Florida was stretching a point to have an "embassy" at all, since it wasn't really an independent nation. At least not in name.

  The Floridians took themselves as seriously as one, though. Both Jarvas and Dannerman had to turn over their guns even before they got to the scanners in the vestibule, and then Dannerman had to turn over his ankle gun as well. Jarvas gave him a scowl for that; at least, Dannerman thought with resignation, the scanners hadn't picked up the bomb-bugger. Then they had to sit for half an hour in a sort of barred quarantine chamber before a guard was available to escort them to the office of Major General Martin Delasquez Moreno. Jarvas sat like a stone, a scowl on his face. After a moment Dannerman decided to improve the time; he checked his mail, wiped it all, then accessed a news broadcast. But he had time only for a couple of items before the door guard leaned in and ordered no electronics.

  Then they just sat.

  When the armed guard came for Dannerman he pointed to Jarvas and said, "You stay."

  "Hey! I've got my job-"

  "Your job is stay here. Come on, you."

  Leaving the fuming Jarvas behind was a surprise for Dannerman, but not altogether unwelcome. It occurred to him that, without Jarvas by his side, it was a chance to sneak a quick look into the leather bag; but it really wasn't, with the armed embassy guard watching every move.

  When he got to the office of General Delasquez the man seemed surprisingly young-probably a relative of somebody high in Florida's government, Dannerman supposed. He was wearing the full dress uniform of a general of the Florida State Air Guard, and when he shooed the guard out with an offhand gesture the man was meek to obey. Delasquez closed the door. "Hand it over," he ordered; and then, when he had the leather bag in his hands, "Turn around. This is not your concern."

  But by then what was in the satchel was no longer much of, secret to Dannerman, because he'd felt its contents as he took it out of his belly bag. It felt like a few dozen pebbles. It wasn't pebbles, though. When the general had finished his inspection and had locked the bag in a drawer and told him he could turn around again, he forgot to put the jeweler's loupe away, but by then Dannerman had figured out that they were gemstones, almost certainly the diamonds Jerry Dixler had mentioned Pat was buying.

  "Wait," the general ordered, and keyed on his phone. Dannerman couldn't see the picture, but he knew his cousin's voice when she answered. "Your application has been received and is satisfactory, Dr. Adcock," the general said. "The documents will be processed immediately." And then, to Dannerman, "You can go."

  With their errand completed, Jarvas loosened up a little. He listened almost politely as Dannerman answered his questions about what had happened in the general's office, then actually managed a grin. "Got that done, anyway; your cousin'll be happy about that." Then he stopped short in front of the Swedish embassy, eyeing the curbside vendors. "Hey, Dannerman, how about some candy? I've got kind of a sweet tooth."

  "Not me, but go ahead." As he watched Jarvas haggling with the woman at the pushcart he wondered how Jarvas got away with his drug habit; the candy addiction was a tip-off, and so was the fact of his mood swings. In some ways Cousin Pat didn't seem to be as sharp as he'd thought. But it was good that Jarvas was mellower; maybe on the way back he would be more talkative.

  The other good thing in his future, he thought, was that that night he could go back to the theater. He must have smiled, be-^-cause the guard outside the Swedish embassy gave him a suspicious look before going back to eyeing the vendors and loafers along the crowded sidewalk. Dannerman kept getting nudged as people bumped against him, but if any of them were pickpockets, as they likely were, he had nothing left in his belly bag worth picking.

  He felt droplets of cold water hitting the back of his neck and looked up; the meticulous Swedes had permanent crews at work in hoists overhead, to keep the building washed down. Even so, they were just barely keeping ahead of the pollution. As he moved away he felt someone touch his arm. It was a young boy, no more than fifteen. "Vill herrn vaxla? Vagvisare?" he hissed.

  Dannerman shook his head, but the boy persisted. "Vill ni knulla min syster? Renflicka, mycket vacker. "

  Dannerman realized the boy had taken him for a Swedish tourist. "Asshole," Dannerman said cheerfully. "I don't want your sister, and besides I'm an American."

  The boy changed gears without a blink. "Okay, sport, how about a little American happy time? Sticks, ampoules, mellow patches, I can get you anything you want."

  "No sale." And then, as Jarvas came toward them, munching on caramel popcorn, he said, "You can try my buddy there. He might be in the market for some dope."

  It was a light impulse, and he regretted it. The boy took one look at the expression on Jarvas's face, and then dodged across the street to try his luck with the Koreans. And all the way back in the subway Jarvas stood cold and angry beside Dannerman, and wouldn't say a word.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dan

  There was one job remaining for Dannerman to do that day. It was a fairly nasty one, and not one he looked forward to, but it was best to get it over with. So at quitting time Dannerman went looking for the Cypriot astronomer, Christo Papathanassiou. The man was standing over the screens in his office, preparing to shut them down for the day. When he saw Dannerman in the doorway he gave him a quick, apprehensive look. "Sorry to bother you, but I need to talk to you for a minute," Dannerman said. "I've got a problem."

  Papathanassiou sat down again, stiffly waiting. "See, Dr. Papathanassiou, I'm in a little trouble with my cousin, and I don't want to make it worse. When I went down to the lobby to get something for Dr. Chesweiler that man was there and he started up again."

  The astronomer still didn't speak. He didn't look surprised at what Dannerman was saying, only sadly resigned.

  "And now," Dannerman went on, "I'm really worrying about not telling my cousin about it. You see, what the man says- well, he says you've been mixed up with some bad business. You have a brother-I think he said the name was Aristide? Yes. And this Aristide was implicated in an assassination on Cyprus. A Turkish tax collector, I think he said. Shot in the back as he was opening his own front door."

  Papathanassiou stirred. "I know of this case, yes. A very sad business. But it was long ago, m
ore than five years, and Aristide is only my half-brother. My father's youngest son, by his third wife. We were never close, so what has that to do with me?"

  "Well, Aristide's on Interpol's wanted list, and it seems they have some idea you helped him get away."

  Papathanassiou nodded somberly. "I was aware they had that idea. I was questioned at the time, of course. That is all. Never since. But how does it happen, Mr. Dannerman, that you know so much about Interpol?"

  "Who, me? Oh, I don't know anything about Interpol," Dannerman said quickly. "That's just what the man said. But if Pat finds out I knew about this and didn't tell her she'll be even madder."

  "Madder about what?" Papathanassiou inquired.

  "Well, that's where I have this problem. She wanted me to get some data for her, and I said I'd already done it. Actually I hadn't. And now I can't remember the specs for what she wanted, and I can't ask her, because I'd have to admit I lied about doing it already, and I can't look them up because they're in her secure file. So what I wanted to ask you, Dr. Papathanassiou-"

  The old man held up his hand. "Permit me to guess," he said. He didn't seem angry or surprised, only sorrowful. "I imagine what you want is for me to give you the access code for the secure file. Simply so you can carry out Dr. Adcock's orders, of course. And then, I imagine, you will no longer feel it necessary to tell her about this other matter."

  "Well… yes. That's about it," Dannerman agreed, and did not enjoy the expression on the astronomer's face.

  It was a long subway ride to Coney Island, and at rush hour the trains were packed. It hadn't taken long, after Papathanassiou left-without saying good-bye, Dannerman remembered-to access the secure file and dump it all into a coded transmission for the National Bureau of Investigation office. But it hadn't left time for anything like a leisurely dinner-at least, not if he wanted to get to the theater early. The best Dannerman could do was to pick up some falafel and a juice box, figuring he could stave off starvation on the way, and then there just wasn't enough elbow room in the standing-room-only subway car to eat them. They were at lower Manhattan before he was able to squirm his way to the corner of the car. He managed to eat his dinner there on the long stretch under the East River, doing his best to avoid spilling hummus on the luckier seated passengers around him, but he took no pleasure in it. For one thing, all that congested body heat had caused all the high-tech micropores in the garments of his fellow passengers to open, and the collective odor was not appetizing. More than that, there was the depressing business with Christo Papathanassiou. Dannerman could not help empathizing with what the old man must be feeling. Hilda was right about one thing anyway, Dannerman admitted to himself. He had the bad habit of letting himself feel what his victims went through. In a way, it was an asset for a professional spook. It had certainly made it easier for him to get along with, for instance, Use of the Mad King Ludwigs, not to mention even the Carpezzios. But sometimes it made him feel, well, guilty.

  By the time the train had come out of the ground and begun to run on the old elevated tracks, Dannerman even found a seat. He took advantage of the time to run through his messages, none of which mattered to him, and then did what most of his fellow passengers were doing: stared blankly into space, or watched the advertisements as they circled around the display panels just under the ceiling of the car. What caught his eye was a commercial for a soft drink with a mild tetrahydrocannabinol content-the obligatory surgeon general's warning ran in inconspicuous type under the prancing cartoon figures, along with the legend "Not to be sold to anyone under 14." The figures, comically struggling with each other for the soda, were the seven aliens: the Sleepy with its red-shot eyes and pursy little three-cornered mouth, the Happy with its ominous shark-toothed grin, the Bashful, the Doc-all of them, in their sanitized and anthropomorphized Disney-like forms. As cartoons, the creatures were funny and not at all threatening. But suppose, Dannerman thought, suppose the real creatures were somewhere not far away, possibly as close as Starcophagus. Suppose the messages from space had in fact been warnings. Suppose the creatures were actually a clear and present danger that the world really needed to be warned about. Dannerman remembered the little song the taxi driver's Grumpy doll had sung-"Hi-ho, hi-ho, to conquer Earth we go, we'll steal your pearls and all your girls, hi-ho, hi-ho." But it might not be a joking matter.

  Dannerman dismissed the notion; it was simply too fanciful, and, besides, he had nearer concerns. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and thought about just what it was that he was going to say to Anita Berman.

  There were a million ways of breaking off a relationship. The trouble was that they all started from the same point: you had to want the relationship to be broken off, and Dannerman was a long way from being certain of that. It was the job that mandated the break, not his personal wishes. Although the life of an NBI agent was surely full of interesting incidents, there was a part of Dan Dannerman that sometimes thought wistfully about what it would be like to live a more settled existence. To have, a home of his own, for instance. In something like a four-room apartment somewhere in the outer suburbs, with a regular job that didn't require him to move somewhere else on short no-i ice. A home that he could share with someone else on a more or less permanent basis. With someone, for example, who was, a lot like Anita Berman…

  That wasn't a useful speculation, either. He wasn't going to resign from the Bureau, for what else would he do with his time? By the time he got to the stop for Theater Aristophanes Two he had managed to bury that line of thought along with imaginings about the aliens and the memory of his conversation with Christo Papathanassiou, and was only looking forward to an evening that was all his own.

  The people who got out with him were a mixed lot; Coney Island wasn't the worst neighborhood in Brooklyn, but it wasn't the best either. It was not what you would consider a natural place for a theater, but the old Ukrainian Orthodox church they had converted into Theater Aristophanes Two had one great advantage. It was cheap. It was a sound building, too, because the Ukrainians had done their best to make the area livable-built a church, tore down the worst of the burned-out tenements, turned some of the vacant lots into vegetable gardens. But when the Ukrainians moved out and the immigrating Palestinians, Biafrans and Kurds moved in, the neighborhood went sour again. The new people apparently didn't go in for farming-maybe there weren't any farms in Palestine or Iraq? Anyway, now there was little behind the chain-link fences but burdock and trash, and the church had lost its congregation. The theater group had been able to pick it up for a nominal rental and a lot of sweat equity-it needed the sweat work, because it had been looted twice and flooded three times in Atlantic hurricanes. On warm evenings it still smelled a little like low tide at the beach. It wasn't very big, either. Maximum seating capacity was not quite two hundred. That had its good aspects; it was easier to fill than a bigger house, and most of all it kept the theatrical unions from bothering the group… even though it also meant that Theater Aristophanes Two had no chance at all of ever turning a profit.

  But that, of course, wasn't what they were there for. The members of the group were there because theater was in their blood-or because it was what they were trained for and nothing better offered itself.

  Dannerman arrived early. The lobby doors were locked; but when he knocked the "manager," Timmi Trout, peered out of the ticket window and came out to let him in. "Dan," she said, pleased, "hey, we thought we'd lost you. I should've known you'd be here for the opening, anyway. They're still rehearsing- it's a mess, because we open in an hour, and that idiot Bucky Korngold's out of the cast because he got himself arrested yesterday on some damn drug charge. Can you imagine?"

  Dannerman could imagine very easily. Practically everybody in the group had a day job, of course. Bucky Korngold's had been dealing drugs; he was one of the people Dannerman had been investigating in the Carpezzio matter. He said, "Mind if I go in and watch?"

  "Of course not." She hesitated. "Anita's going to be real glad to see you
, you know. She's been kind of worried about you… hut, hey, you'll talk to her yourself. Go on in."

  He did, and took his seat in a back row as inconspicuously as possible. The cast wasn't so much rehearsing as shouting at each other for missing cues and stepping on each other's lines-normal enough for a final rehearsal at Aristophanes Two-and he saw Anita Berman at once. For one thing, she was the prettiest woman on the stage: slim, tall, red-haired, with a deep, carrying voice that was perfect for unmiked theater (and of no use at all in the heavily enhanced productions on Broadway).

  She saw him right away, too. When she caught sight of him at the back of the theater she looked startled, then perplexed, then gave him a tentative, not quite forgiving, see-you-in-a-minute wave. And it wasn't much more than a minute before the director abandoned his attempts to get the performance running like clockwork. "Go back for makeup, all of you," he ordered. "A bad dress rehearsal means a good show, they say. Maybe you can take comfort in that. I know I will."

  And Anita Berman jumped down from the stage and ran up the aisle to meet Dannerman. It was clear she'd made up her mind for forgiveness. "I'm real glad you're here," she said, putting up her face to be kissed.

  She clung to him for a moment, then pulled back to look at his face. "I guess we've kind of been playing telephone tag."

  "I'm sorry about that," he said, meaning it-meaning at least the "sorry" part. "I've got this new job and it keeps me really on the jump."

  "I figured it was something like that. I guess you're making a lot more money there-?"

  "Maybe soon, anyway," he said vaguely. "But it takes all my time. Matter of fact, I'll have to be going out of town pretty soon."

  "Ah," she said. "For very long?"

  "I don't know that yet."

  She was silent for a moment, then said, "Dan, dear, listen. I've been thinking about us. I know some men still like to be in control, and maybe-well, if you think I was rushing things, talking about moving in together-"