I got to my feet, cursing myself for all kinds of a fool, and took my needler from the inside pocket of my coat. These represent as high an achievement of the gun-maker’s art as I can imagine, being no bigger or heavier than a water-pistol, rechargeable by solar power and capable of firing a needle-sized steel pin at supersonic speeds, three per second to the limit of the thousand-pin magazine. I’ve always hated the things: the timeline that developed them was found littered with needlers and all-but-empty of people, and if you think that is coincidence then gods bless you for your innocence. But like the device or not I was a fool for not having it in my hand from the moment I climbed through the window.
And so, needler in one hand and stunner in the other I ran through the door and collided head-on with Messoune, who was hell-bent on coming the other way – gods know why; I never did figure it out. I’d like to take credit for tactical brilliance but the plain fact is that the shock of the impact set both guns off. Police records are full of cases where people blaze away with handguns and manage to miss from a distance of only a few feet, but my stunner and needler were literally touching him when they discharged. He was moving a good bit faster than I – well, for whatever reason we went back into the room and landed in a heap on the floor with me at the bottom of the pile. I had just enough wits to stun him again, then rolled free as he thrashed; his brain might not be able to send signals to his muscles but feedback, shock and neural overload made him twitch like an epileptic.
By this point I was beyond caring about his condition, I just wanted him to lie still so I could kill him. I stunned him a couple of times more, then noticed the blood on the floor and on his clothes. The needler had removed a chunk of flesh from the general area of his liver and kidneys, a piece about the size of a small apple: not nearly enough damage to kill him. So I leaned over and put the barrel of the needler to his eye and pulled the trigger. I was beyond anger, past rage, gone into a dark place where all my intellect was bent to the task of killing him as thoroughly as possible.
The needle doesn’t really have enough mass to penetrate steel-reinforced bone, but when it leaves the barrel it has speed enough that impact vaporizes the metal with heat and force capable of turning solids into gas. His head rocked with the impact and gouts of gasified brain-matter blew out of the eyesockets – the other eye went up like a missile, optic nerve still attached. I wiped my hand clean on a bedsheet and retrieved the needler from across the room, mindful to be less showy in the future. When the gun was knocked out of my hand it had discharged at least three times, leaving a pocked trail in the walls and ceiling and a haze of plaster dust in the air.
I sat down to think, and I thought first about being sick to my stomach. Then I thought about what I was going to have to do next and I really was sick. Oddly that seemed to clear my head and I was able to focus on planning out my next steps instead of just reacting to one thing after another. I was on my own in a building that might be full of enemies, and I was going to have to be smarter and better prepared than I had been, or I was going to be dead. So first I went to the little wash-stand, cleaned my hands with soap and rinsed my mouth with clean water from the jug. Then I went back over to the body and shot him in the other eye. I thought he was dead, but I wanted to make sure. I had plenty of needles, and it felt… satisfying. So I turned the needler up at an angle to point under the ribs and pulped the intestines and lungs, just for... Well, just because. Then it was time to move from the personal back to the mission. Time to try to remember all the mission training I had thought I would never need…
The next bit was harder. I couldn’t go off and leave the two women since I didn’t know how long they would stay stunned, and I didn’t trust my ability to tie them up securely enough. So I rolled them over on their backs and put a needle into each woman’s eye, quick and professional and as clean as any of that sort of work ever is. I didn’t vomit again but only because there wasn’t anything left to come up. Mostly I wanted to go find a place to curl up into a giant ball of self-loathing and stay there until I died of shame, but my instincts told me I didn’t have much time to linger. To cover my tracks I planted some sparklers on the oil lamp and on the metal can of lamp oil in the wardrobe – those are button-sized incendiaries with a timer that can be set at intervals from a few seconds up to a couple of hours, and they have a handy sticky backing - locked the door, closed it and tested it. So far, good.
I had an hour before the fireworks would go off, and I was pretty sure that the fire would spread quickly with a gallon or more of lamp oil for a starter and walls, floor and ceiling of waxed and painted wood. So to keep the place from coming down around our ears I would need to find Makhearne, finish doing what we came for and get out, all in less than an hour. I couldn’t risk using the radio link to talk to Makhearne – at this range it was certain that Frost would overhear, and even if she couldn’t read the message she would have to know who it came from and that we were very close by. All this went rushing through my head and I focused on it: anything to keep my mind from Messoune’s black empty eye-sockets and those poor women…
Down the hall I went. Off came the shoes and down the stairs I crept, shoes hung on laces draped around my neck. At the foot of the stairs the stone-walled stairwell opened on the right into a large basement, so large a space I assumed it had to extend under the courtyard. The area was divided by wooden half-walls, some with wire mesh continuing up to the ceiling, and by racks of shelving filled with spare parts and half-assembled pieces of equipment. In the uncertain light it would have taken half an hour or more to make a thorough search of the place, but as it happened I heard voices coming through the archway on the far side and so made my way there, crouching beside the opening and carefully – very carefully – extending a snooper wire around the edge.
I could hear a woman’s voice, but too soft and indistinct to make out any words. Once, twice a man cried out – Makhearne’s voice I recognized despite the distortion. The little camera on the tip of the wire showed a flight of steps going down to a hallway with a series of doors along the left-hand side and another opening at the far end. The fathest door showed a faint rim of light on the stone flags of the hallway floor. Time was precious and I had no way of knowing how many people were in the building or when they might discover me, so I retracted the snooper and padded down the hall with a stunner in my left and the needler – which I liked a lot more now – in my right. My plan was simple: to throw open the door and shoot anyone who needed shooting, then sort out what to do next.
Of course the door was locked… leaving me standing in the passage looking at a thick iron-bound wooden plank door secured by a deadbolt whose shadow I could see in the thin line of light between the door and the jamb, standing there and thinking – What now? The stunner was useless and the needler practically so; I could pump the entire magazine of needles into wood and ironwork and possibly blow my way through, but any element of surprise would be long since flown. So I paused for a moment to listen to the… not a conversation, more like a diatribe by the woman punctuated by grunts of pain from the man. Who could it be but Frost, whose voice I had never heard, and Makhearne, who was beyond words?
“I’ve set Tesla to one last test, but the poor dear doesn’t know that I don’t care a particle whether he succeeds or not. Of course it would be very convenient if he were to have perfected the device at last. I have dreamt of that, you know: the great cities aflame… But Tesla seems unable to direct his blows in any useful way. Most of the planet is ocean, you know, or empty space: Siberia, the Amazon forest, the deserts. So tiresome. You wouldn’t have any… insights, perhaps? Some thoughts on how to make my weapon better serve my will?”
There was another groan that tightened into a shriek, then a sound as though a book had been slammed onto a table. A brief silence was broken by a bubbling moan. “Ah. Dear man. Stubborn even when there is no point to it, nothing to gain and all to lose. Tesla’s talent is prodigious – really, you should see the part that generates and stores electricity. It is a marvel, far beyond… Perhaps you will have a chance to examine it. From extremely close range! But I have more than one arrow in my quiver, Donneval. I find I have grown tired… Tired of fighting narrow-minded, stupid old men. Tired of your interference! Tired of doing my best to bring along these… well, savages, really, stupid, stubborn savages who don’t know to simply accept what is best for them. Would you care for wine, my dear? Well… perhaps not, under the circumstances. But I shall. And we will talk, while Tesla sees to his machine. Then we will try the sword one last time, and if it fails again…
“Where was I? Yes – Tesla. A genius, in his way, but a man who needed… focus. Discipline. Firmness - that, I could provide. Along with a sense of… urgency. All of this is powered by one of his little machines, did you know? He draws the current up from of the earth and down out of the sky, then pumps it up to quite frightful levels and discharges it to make his weapon strike. But I’ve had him working on another project, did you know? I gave him all my information on temporal gates. My, you would have laughed to see his face! Those people that Nemor contacted, the ones that you dropped a mountain on – you do remember them? Yes, I see that you do. They are still out there, did you know? I’ve contacted them myself, and built a gate of sorts, too. Ah – naughty boy! You know I can’t let you do that!”
That slamming sound came again, loud as a gunshot, and I winced because I could not imagine it was anything but something pounding on human flesh.
“If this last experiment fails – and it will; for all his genius Tesla is so impractical! The man can create a thunderbolt worthy the gods and can’t say where it will land! Well, as I say – if it fails, then I will send a signal and when they try to open their gate I’ll be ready to give them a hand from this end! Then the gate will open and I’ll step through, and then Tesla will ground the whole planet across the arc! It’ll be bad for those people on the other side, of course – everything electronic will go out in one big spark, and it will be no party on this side either! But I’ll be there, not here, and I can pick up the pieces. I’ll be able to start over, Donneval, and this time I’ll not make the mistake of being soft. So we’ll just sit here, won’t we, and wait for Tesla.
“And it will be an empire for me in this world, or an empire for me in the next one. And won’t that be wonderful!”
I padded down the hallway a very shaken man. I will tell you that it tore me to go away and leave Makhearne in the hands of that monster, but what else was I to do? There was no way through the door with the tools I had to hand. Perhaps I should go interrupt Tesla. Would he be willing to help me? With a gun in each hand I felt able to be as persuasive as Madame Frost herself.