Jennifer nodded and rolled her neck. “I think so. I heard you from outside. Sounded like you needed help, so… I just ran.” She flexed the fingers of her right hand. “I guess I’m stronger than I look. But that was all I had in me and it was lights out.” She looked around. “I take it it worked.”
Rad nodded. “We wouldn’t be here without you, so thanks. With your brother out there…”
“Stop,” Jennifer waved Rad off. “Didn’t seem much point wishing I could get James fixed if the world ended, right?”
“True enough,” said Rad. Then he saw his hat on the floor. He scooped it up and put it on. The band was cold against his skin. “And Kane?” He turned to Nimrod. “He’s dead, I take it?”
Nimrod’s mustache rolled under his nose as he surveyed the blue boundary of the portal. “I don’t think he was ever alive, not really.”
“Never alive?”
“Well,” said Nimrod, waving his hands. “Alive, in a sense, the same as the Fissure is alive. But like Evelyn, it wasn’t him. He was an echo, an afterimage.”
Rad nodded. “A ghost. Like her?”
“Indeed. Evelyn McHale died in 1947 at the bottom of the Empire State Building. The Director of Atoms for Peace was not the same woman, not really.”
Rad pondered this, but it all seemed too big, too dreamlike. He wasn’t really sure Nimrod knew as much as he claimed, and while there was an empty sadness at the thought that Kane had never come back to the Empire State, not really, there was a calmness too, melancholic and cool but one that filled Rad with a kind of nervous hope.
He turned to Soma Street, to the Empire State. To his home.
“Sir!”
Rad turned as two of Nimrod’s agents rushed in, the same men Grieves had left to help up top. Nimrod frowned.
“Yes?”
“It’s Carson, sir,” said the agent in front.
Rad froze. “What about him?”
“He’s in a bad way. He said to get Captain Nimrod.”
Rad turned to Nimrod. Nimrod brushed his mustache with the back of a thick finger.
FIFTY-SIX
They stood in front of the portaclass="underline" Rad and Jennifer and two of Evelyn’s robots and two of Nimrod’s agents. The two robots carried the metal body of James Jones between them, while Nimrod’s agents held a stretcher, on which lay Captain Carson. The old man breathed deeply but too slowly for Rad’s liking, and when he exhaled there was an asthmatic rattle.
“He’ll be better when you get across, trust me,” said Nimrod, his eyes on his other self. “The incompatibility sickness is making his condition worsen. Are you ready?”
Rad pulled his collar up and his hat down, and he looked at Jennifer. She nodded.
“And the sooner we get back, the sooner we can work on getting James help,” she said, looking down at her brother’s lifeless machine body.
Rad frowned. Inside he hoped she was right, but he also knew that getting James fixed, if that was even possible, depended largely on whether Carson would pull through. Carson and his New York counterpart were their best hope, but Rad wasn’t too sure about relying so much on Nimrod’s co-operation.
“OK,” he said, turning to Nimrod. “We’re ready.”
“Very good,” said Nimrod. “These robots will obey your every command. With luck, they will be able to overcome the programming of the robots on the other side, and those will in turn begin reprogramming their brethren — and so on, and so forth. The process will be exponential. When you are ready, simply give them the command, and they will go about their work.”
Rad shook his head. “There’s an awful lot of assuming going on there. You should come with us. We’ll need your expertise, not just with the robots but with James here too.”
“I have much to do here,” said Nimrod, “but I shall try to be quick. With the portal open, we can come and go as we please.”
Jennifer tapped Rad’s arm. “We need to go.”
Rad nodded. He shook Mr Grieves’s hand and reached out for Nimrod’s, but the Captain merely took a step backwards and bowed.
“Quickly, detective.”
Rad frowned. He turned to the robots and the two agents.
“Follow me,” he said, then he hunched his shoulders and walked into the Empire State, the others right behind.
They watched Rad and Jennifer for a moment, and then Mr Grieves coughed. Nimrod turned to him.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Mr Grieves. “We’re still federal fugitives, aren’t we? Even with Evelyn gone…”
“Yes,” said Nimrod, fire in his eyes. “There is something we need to do.” He turned to the two robots behind him. “Come with me.”
In Soma Street the hour was early, but there was something different. Rad paused, letting the others go ahead, as he looked at the sky. Morning would come soon, and it was still cold, colder than the coldest winter in the Empire State, but the deadly bite was missing, the chill that made Rad fear for his life. The Pocket and the Origin were reconnected, and now perhaps the Pocket was healing.
Rad turned around. The middle of Soma Street no longer existed. Instead, there stood a huge arch of shimmering blue, three or four stories tall and just as wide. Evelyn’s New York factory was right there, the silver army frozen in place just beyond the threshold. Rad guessed the portal would be permanent, which meant access to Soma Street would have to be restricted. Something to worry about another time.
Nimrod and Mr Grieves were nowhere to be seen. Rad sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He liked Captain Carson, but there was something about his New York counterpart that made Rad nervous.
“Rad!”
The detective turned. Jennifer waved at him from farther down the street, the agents and robots trudging forward, carrying their charges.
“Coming,” said Rad. And then he pulled down his hat and jogged to catch up. Beneath his hat he smiled.
Home sweet home.
EPILOGUE
The men, near to thirty of them, sat around the circular table so large it occupied the entire room, a great ring of polished wood that circled two desks in a central arena. At these desks — themselves large, expensive, and tax-payer funded — sat two clerks, both female; one was checking through a vast stack of paper while the other prepped her stenotype for the second half of the meeting, due to commence in just a few minutes. Around the room, portraits of the great and good looked down upon the senate subcommittee: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and a dozen other presidents — some famous, effective; some less so.
The recess was nearly at its end, the committee members slowly returning to their seats, sipping from their fresh coffee and laughing about their poor games of golf that weekend, the episode of I Love Lucy from TV the previous night, and the chances of the New York Giants against the Cleveland Indians in the forthcoming World Series. The Giants were going to get their asses handed to them was the general consensus.
The double doors of the committee room opened and a man walked in, leading three others; behind them, two walking machines, hulking silver men nearly seven feet tall, their features a rough parody of human faces, their chests lit with spinning discs the same glowing red as their eyes.
The man in front wore a brown suit that was most definitely bottom rack, while the three behind wore matching black suits of a quality cut with black hats to match. All four were holding guns, and they strode into the room quietly and at speed, stepping through the gap in the circular table that allowed entry into the central space. In just a few seconds the three black-suited men spaced themselves out around the table, each covering enough of the committee members to ensure nobody did anything they might regret later. The two robots stood by the doors, still except for their eyes, which scanned the room back and forth, back and forth.
The clerks seated at the desk made to stand, but the man in the brown suit shook his head and motioned with his pistol for them to sit tight.