All will be forgotten now save survival.
Riley would have dearly loved to have the luxury of thinking about his own survival, but concerns about Chevie’s fate prevented him from concentrating solely on his own.
Perhaps she has freed herself with my skeleton key.
It depended on the strength of the ether Box had administered. Chevie could already be loose in the catacombs.
I pray that it is so, thought Riley. I hope and pray.
Riley was fleet of foot, but even youth cannot outrun the flow of water, especially when it has pressure behind it. Soon enough there was water at his ankles and then fizzing around his knees, and with the water came the rank smell of sewer that Riley now knew well but would never become accustomed to. Riley took to coughing while he ran, which was not a good blend of activities; and soon his run slowed until his cough played out, and he thought that one more hacking session like that would surely sink him.
Then, mercifully, the levels dropped as the claustrophobic tunnel widened to the expanse of loading bay and dock, which was crowded with soldiers attempting to make good their escape. These attempts were hampered by the fact that all the craft that had been seaworthy had been sunk except one, and Witmeyer stood on the prow fighting off any who would board. Otto Malarkey stood behind her, shaking his head in admiration, the Thunderbolt holding full sway over his emotions.
“Otto,” called Riley, “Chevie is still in there. We must find her.”
Malarkey caught Riley’s outstretched hand and swung him onto the deck of the amphibious craft.
“Ramlet. I am glad to see you. And chivalrous as I surely am, I would most times be overjoyed to add to mine own legend and search out the Injun maiden, but…”
Malarkey did not finish his sentence but instead cupped a hand over his ear and cocked his head to listen. Riley did likewise and soon heard a sound that grew loud enough to blot out the industry of men. The noise became huge and overpowering, stomping on the other senses, rendering insignificant their input.
It was the sound of a howling torrent approaching at great speed.
“Miss Chevron is upstream,” shouted Malarkey over the din. “And unless we be suicidal fish, we ain’t going upstream.”
Around them, men hurled themselves into the canal and swam for safety through the open bridge gateway. Futuristic weapons that had been so clickety-clack were now little more than deadweights to drag a man to the canal bed, and so were discarded without hesitation.
The Revolution was over.
Men swam for their very lives.
Witmeyer smiled at the magnificent man in her life.
“Shall I cast off, King Otto?”
Malarkey watched the wall of water approach and felt the spray on his face and bore witness to its might as crates and craft were tumbled in its depths. He now knew how it must have felt for Pharaoh’s soldiers when they saw the Red Sea bearing down on them.
“Yes, my love,” he said. “Time for us to be away.”
Riley knelt on the amphibian’s deck.
Oh, Chevie, he thought, guilt racking his frame like lashes from a cat-’o-nine-tails. I have deserted you.
And then Witmeyer was behind the wheel and was pulling the amphibian in a tight circle and aiming it like an arrow at the bridge gateway.
Riley took a moment to stop worrying about Chevie so he could fear for himself as behind them the water spread across the dock, sweeping support columns aside like straw and collapsing the entire structure.
I did not realize there was this much water in all of London, he thought.
“Faster!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, as though he could possibly make himself heard in the flood. “Faster!”
And then the wave came down with all the force of a Titan of legend.
I think I told you about my dog, Justin. Well anyway, it’s possible that Justin wasn’t even supposed to be a dog. Maybe he was supposed to be a pig-crab hybrid. A crig or a prab, something like that. My point being that time travelers can mess up everything right down to the molecular level. Things we take for granted, like butterflies or bananas, could seem like abominations to someone from another time stream.
—Professor Charles Smart
The water was rising. A flood of biblical proportions had come to wash away a new ark crewed by violent men whose hearts were avaricious and whose intentions were bloody, and though Colonel Box’s chamber door had been constructed with a seal as a precaution against normal flooding, it would inevitably submit to the weight of water.
Box entered his chamber of opulence with Vallicose close on his heels, and in Vallicose’s fist was a handful of Chevron Savano’s hair. Connected to that hair was Chevie’s scalp, and connected to the scalp was her entire head, and so on.
Vallicose tossed Chevie into a corner like a sack of meat and walked a tight circle around the edges of an Arabian rug. Confusion was twisting her features into a mask of deep wrinkles and squints.
“I don’t understand,” she said, and then again, “I don’t understand.”
Box dragged two pre-packed steamer trunks from behind a tapestry and did eeny-meeny on them, deciding which he should take.
“I have considered this,” he said absently. “Trunk A is my priority. Gold and weapons. Why am I dithering now? Indecisiveness is the ultimate inefficiency.” He dragged one of the trunks around in front of his desk. “Sister Vallicose, we will carry this between us. I have a hidey-hole, if you will forgive the expression, which we can repair to.”
Vallicose’s face fell like melting wax. “I don’t understand, Lord. This is Emergence Day. What about Boxstrike?”
Box patiently explained. “That particular plan has been compromised. It is pointless to waste valuable time bemoaning its failure. I have other plans that have already been set in motion. Backup plans—you have heard the phrase, no doubt. It is regrettable that we must move on; believe me, I am as frustrated as you that this tactic was unsuccessful, but the water is rising and we must be away.”
Vallicose could not abandon the beliefs of a lifetime so easily. “Yes, I see, Lord, but Boxstrike is more than an idea. It is your divine plan to save the world.” She wrung her fingers. “It’s in the Bible. The Rosenbaum’s Gospel. We can’t just walk away from the gospel.”
Chevie was slowly getting her senses back, and she could see that Vallicose was losing her grasp on reality.
That’s the problem with being a zealot, she thought. Eventually you have to deal with being wrong.
And eventually everyone is wrong.
Chevie had no sympathy for Vallicose. It might sound callous, but the Thundercat deserved every shred of anguish that the destruction of her belief system was bringing to her. After all, she had used that belief system to justify all the pain and suffering she had inflicted on countless others for twenty years or more, and now she would have to face the fact that she was simply a monster and not an agent of a new god.
That was all very well, and Chevie could allow herself a scintilla of satisfaction, but the water was seeping under the door and sloshing across the floor. And she was far from being one hundred percent.
Those rugs will be ruined, thought Chevie. And also I will be dead.
So perhaps it might be better to indulge in the smugness re: Vallicose later, when a million gallons of sewer water weren’t swilling around outside the door.
And it may be a sealed door, she thought, but it isn’t a submarine hatch.
She would wait for her moment, then make her move, as she had been taught in her original life as an FBI consultant. In her second life, training as a Boxite cadet, there hadn’t been so much emphasis on survival. Just killing.
Wait for my moment? Chevie thought, rising slowly to her hunkers. Wake up, girl. The moment is here and now. There will never be a better moment.
It was true, Box was o
ccupied with his lecture, and Vallicose was more or less wailing her frustrations. There were no eyes on her.
They think I am still under, she realized.
Chevie searched around for a weapon, and her eye landed on a vase that lay on a velvet cushion, barely three feet away. Not the ideal weapon, but it would have to do. Chevie reached out and tiptoed her fingers over the cushion to the vase. They crept over the lip and into the vessel’s interior. There was something inside, something dry and grainy.
No time for an ugh moment. This is life or death.
Chevie made a spearhead with her fingers and wiggled them deep into the vase.
Now. Move now.
Vallicose and Box were still talking. Box was calm and pragmatic, but Vallicose was right on that thin line between emotional and hysterical.
Chevie was already rising when Vallicose turned toward her.
“And Savano,” she said, “she remembers another future where there is no Empire of Box. Is that…”
Possible, she was about to say. Maybe, or probable. In any event, Vallicose never managed to finish her question, because Chevie’s hand swiped her across the jaw. Possibly not a serious problem for a soldier, being swiped across the jaw, but Chevie’s hand was clad in the armor of a heavy clay vase.
The vase clunked on impact and then shattered, releasing plumes of gray dust into the air, dropping from Chevie’s hand in sections.
“Mother!” cried Box.
Mother? thought Chevie. Oh, God. His mother’s ashes were in that vase.
Vallicose stumbled backward against a silk-covered ottoman, which caught her awkwardly behind the legs, sending her sprawling into a cluster of Roman columns. Chevie was after her like a cat, pouncing on Vallicose, winding her with a knee to the solar plexus. In a flash she had unclipped the Thundercat’s buzz baton and sidearm, and then, making sure to break bodily contact, she touched the baton to Vallicose’s bare wrist, sending fifty thousand volts coursing through the fallen woman’s frame, knocking her unconscious.
Chevie swung around, expecting Box to be looming over her, but he wasn’t. Colonel Box was sitting at his desk where the bulk of the dust had fallen, sweeping it into a pile, and there were tears on his cheeks.
This development was as much a surprise to Box as it was to Chevie, because though she could not possibly have known it, this was the first time since infancy that Box had cried, or even felt remotely saddened—or for that matter, emotional in any way. Emotions were simply a waste of time, and the only feeling Box had ever permitted himself was a slight smug satisfaction when each step of his grand plan had been ticked off the list. He had promised himself to feel some measure of genuine happiness when the throne of England was his, but now it seemed that would have to be deferred until Savano and her ridiculous band were dealt with.
But to have his mother’s ashes scattered like this…Used as a weapon against him. How could Box have foreseen that, even with all of his calculations? Such an act was so random, so barbaric.
But why do I care? he asked himself. This pile of ash is not my mother.
But he did care, and the tears rolled down his cheeks, and he swore that he would kill Savano with his bare hands with savage glee.
Box tidied the ashes into a square, shaping the edges with his index finger, gathering his mother, and then stood, expecting to find Savano dangling from Vallicose’s fist, awaiting her fate, possibly with a final impudent quip on her lips. But he was disappointed (another new emotion) to find that the girl had somehow vanquished his new bodyguard and had him covered with a pistol.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he said, testily. “In every single calculation I have made since your unlikely arrival here, you have been long dead at this point. The odds against your surviving are so overwhelming that it would be better for you, Cadet Savano, if you just lay down and died right now.”
Chevie was inclined to disagree. “I think my odds are pretty good, Box. Better than yours. And another thing. Don’t call me Cadet. I am Special Agent Savano of the FBI. Remember those people? You were attached to them once upon a time.”
Box sniffed. “Once upon a time that shall never come to pass.”
The door had three panels, and now the bottom section surrendered its integrity, totally mulched by the acidity and force of the sewerage. The water level rose a foot in ten seconds, tugging at Chevie’s legs. She needed to leave.
“I am going to go now, Box. And you are going to stay here with your lapdog.”
Box seemed not to notice the gun. “That is incorrect. You are not leaving here alive, Savano. You defiled my mother’s ashes.”
“Gun,” said Chevie, wiggling the barrel. “See? Gun.”
Box made his thinking face, sticking out his jaw and chewing on the problem.
“I would have liked longer to ponder this situation,” he admitted. “But a leader must be adaptable in that we have several fall-back positions, several alternate options, as it were.”
This is insane, thought Chevie. I am not going to argue against insanity.
Huge pounding noises came down the corridor and broke against the door. The high shrieking of tortured metal rose in discordant counterpoint to the bass rumblings of tumbling masonry. It sounded as though a wailing dinosaur was crouched on the roof, battering the walls.
Maybe the tunnel is amplifying the sound, thought Chevie, but she didn’t believe it.
This is all happening. It’s not a nightmare.
Of all the incredible situations that Chevie could recall enduring in either timeline, surely this was the most bizarre: trapped with a fifth gospel saint in an underground lair while sewer slurry threatened to engulf the building.
And there were other factors that she didn’t have time to mentally list. Beyond bizarre.
Chevie and Box came to simultaneous decisions.
“Take off your belt,” said Chevie. “I’m just going to shoot you in the leg.”
“Pass me the gun,” said Box. “I must kill you posthaste and make good my tactical retreat.”
“Excuse me?” said Chevie, incredulous.
“Pardon?” said Box.
“Okay,” said Chevie. “Whatever. I’m shooting you in the leg. Do whatever you like. Dance a jig. But my advice is to take off your belt for a tourniquet and stand completely still.”
The water level rose, knocking over the Roman pillars, lifting the ottoman from its stubby legs.
Too much talking, thought Chevie. I need to get out of this death trap. Riley could be in trouble.
Box seemed a little amused by Chevie’s threat. “What I don’t understand, Cadet Savano, is why you would want to stop me? What was so wonderful about our shared future? The entire world was an inefficient shambles.”
Chevie felt an anger build inside her, and she allowed it to erupt through her words. “What about your world, Box? I was there. I saw it. Most of the planet is enslaved. You bombed half of Europe. Your secret police murdered millions, including my father.”
“So shoot me,” said Box. “With one bullet you will save the world from my empire, but you will doom it to World Wars I and II, as well as the many other conflicts I am certain there have been since I left the future. Is that really better than my empire? Are you willing to make that choice? Especially since you will never know the effect of your decision, as I have had the time pod in Half Moon Street destroyed.”
The water was icy against Chevie’s thighs, but she shuddered mostly from the realization that she was stuck in the past forever.
“Vallicose told me that under my regime apartheid never even developed in South Africa,” Box continued, calmly swishing the water with his fingers.
Chevie was incredulous. “Because you enslaved the entire country.”
“Exactly,” said Box. “So much more efficient. Now give me the gun; you can’t shoot me.”
&nb
sp; “I can’t kill you,” said Chevie. “But I can shoot you.”
“So why haven’t you?”
Yes. Why hadn’t she? The water was rising. Riley needed her. Why was she having this conversation?
“You were speaking,” she said weakly, just to give some answer.
“And you were waiting until I had finished? Really?”
He was right. It sounded ridiculous.
Box’s eyes were suddenly crafty. “You cannot shoot me, Cadet, because I am your savior.”
“Don’t call me Cadet!” But just as Traitor Chevie had once struggled to be free inside Cadet Chevie’s head, now the cadet was stirring in her subconscious.
“You are a cadet. My cadet. And I am your Blessed Colonel. For your entire life you have prayed to me. You have listened to my recorded speeches. Vallicose told me all about our future together.”
Chevie backed up a step. “No. That future is dead. Look around you.”
Box chuckled coldly; it sounded like the ratcheting of a shotgun slide. “Dead? Cadet, really. Do you think that I put all my egg grenades in one basket? No. This is a setback. Boxstrike is destined to occur. You have merely delayed my emergence.”
“All the more reason to shoot you,” said Chevie, already knowing what Box would say next.
“So why don’t you?” Box spread his arms wide. “Go ahead. Pull the trigger and damn yourself to hell.”
Suddenly Chevie’s gun felt so heavy.
He is a man. An evil man. You know this.
“Shoot your savior, your religion. You cannot.”
Chevie pulled the trigger, but the bullet flew wide, blasting a chunk from the brickwork. Box did not even flinch.
“Your own faith protects me,” he said, raising his eyes to heaven. “I am a new god. Shoot!”
Chevie felt a surge from her subconscious as the old Chevie, the scared, cowed cadet, fought to be free.
No. I will not be that person ever again.
She fired again. This time hitting a cushion, which exploded in a whump of feathers. Box was unscathed.