A sixth extract from COWBOY ANGELS

2.

A streamlined, aluminium-skinned railcar coupled to a flatbed wagon was waiting at the little terminus on the far side of the East River ferry crossing. Stone helped David Welch lash the Jeep to the wagon, and the railcar rattled along the ninety-odd miles of single-track railroad that cut through the woods and bogs of Brooklyn and Long Island, past the settlements of Jamaica Bay, Rockville, Wantagh, Bay Shore and New Patchogue, to First Foot and the Turing gate. Stone had plenty of time to work through the file Welch had given him. He ate the packed lunch Susan had provided -- home-baked biscuits, home-cured ham and pickles, hard-boiled eggs and an apple, one of the season's first -- and read reports by field officers and local police, studied photographs and forensic documentation. He wanted to have all the facts at his fingertips. If he was going to talk to Tom Waverly, he wanted to know everything the man had done.

The first four assassinations had been staged to look like street robberies or home invasions gone bad. Eileen Barrie had been killed by shots to the head from a small-calibre handgun, by a knife-thrust to the heart, by garrotting: murders that were up close and personal. Then, after someone in the Company had put two and two together and every surviving version of Eileen Barrie had been given protection, the subsequent murders had been textbook examples of executive actions. The car bomb that had killed her outright but left the officer sitting next to her unharmed except for superficial burns and burst eardrums. And the latest killing which, with its combination of careful planning, patience and split-second action, had Tom Waverly's fingerprints all over it.

When he'd been working for the Company, Tom had specialised in assassination. He'd once hiked through a forest and set up a position in a tree and for three days had focused on the window of a house, waiting for his target to show for just a second. He'd once lain all day on the flat roof of an office building in the August heat of Miami, still as a basking snake under the ghillie blanket that hid him from police helicopters while he'd watched the front of the courthouse, killing his target with a single shot as a phalanx of bodyguards hustled the man across the sidewalk toward his limo. Stone wondered if Tom had turned freelance and was killing Eileen Barrie's doppels to order, or if he was working off some kind of massive personal grudge. But although the file contained comprehensive summaries of the circumstances and methodology of each murder, there was nothing, not so much as a single speculative sentence, about possible motivations for attempting to eliminate Eileen Barrie from every known sheaf.

The railcar sounded its horn. Stone glanced out of the window and saw a familiar cluster of wind generators standing proud on a low hill, their sixty-foot triple-bladed props lazily revolving, glimpsed the roofs of the little town of First Foot through a scrim of pine trees. The railcar rattled past the station's single platform, entered the long loop that led to the Turing gate, and began to pick up speed: trains always ran through gates as fast as possible, to minimise the power expenditure needed to keep them open. Two white horses in a field briefly chased after it, heads down, manes rippling, and it left them behind and sped past a coal-black locomotive with a flared chimney and cowcatcher that stood on a spur, rushed down a steep grade in a cutting and plunged into the tunnel at the far end.

Although Stone braced for it, the black flash that pounded in his head, the knockout punch of collapsing probability functions, was every bit as bad as he remembered. Then the railcar emerged into daylight, drawing away from a row of two dozen artificial mounds, each mound turfed over and pierced with a short tunnel, each tunnel the entrance to a Turing gate, each gate a portal to a different sheaf, a different alternate history.

There were bigger interchanges at Chicago, San Diego and White Sands, but the Brookhaven interchange was the oldest. It was where the Many Worlds theory had been experimentally validated when the first Turing gate, a mere hundred nanometers across, had been forced open in the high-energy physics laboratory in 1963, where the first man to travel to another sheaf had taken his momentous step in 1966, and where the first cloned gate had been produced in 1969.

Cloning gates using symmetry-breaking technology based on the Feynman-Schwinger-Dyson n-manifold manipulation was the only way of providing multiple points of entry into any sheaf. The physicists and mathematicians who developed the first Turing gates had quickly discovered that each time a gate accessed a new sheaf, a stochastic energy-horizon phenomenon created a unique quantum state or signature that no other gate could ever reproduce. This so-called quantum censorship principle meant that only one gate could link the Real with a particular sheaf, and that link would be lost forever if the gate was shut down. Although it was theoretically possible to produce secondary links via an intermediate sheaf -- to travel from the Real to the First Foot sheaf via the Nixon sheaf, for instance -- it was impossible in practice, because locating a particular sheaf in a multiverse of possible sheaves was, as Murray Gell-Mann, one of the leaders of the original Brookhaven Project, had put it, like finding a needle in a haystack the size of the Universe. Before cloning technology had been developed, there had been only a single, fragile link between the Real and any other sheaf. Afterward, primary gates were locked away in a facility more secure than Fort Knox, cloned copies were deployed in large interchanges and clandestine facilities, colonies were established in a dozen wild sheafs, and the Real was able to take control of the destiny of other, less fortunate Americas and establish the Pan-American Alliance.

There were more than a hundred cloned gates in the Brookhaven interchange, linking twenty-two different sheaves to the Real. Stone saw a long freight train drawing out of a grassy mound like a chain of scarves from a magician's sleeve, saw other trains waiting in sidings or on loop roads or loading bays of the marshalling yard. Strings of passenger cars and strings of freight cars, well wagons loaded with shrouded tanks and helicopters and APCs, reefers, grain hoppers, tank cars.

AH-6 'Little Bird' helicopters, quick and manoeuvrable as humming birds and armed with rockets and .50-calibre machine guns, swooped and hovered overhead, checking each arriving train. More than three years after President Carter had put an end to empire-building and declared that the business of the Pan-American Alliance was not war but reconciliation and reconstruction, the Real was still vulnerable to terrorist attacks by misguided patriots and militias and fanatics loyal to former regimes in client sheaves.

The railcar rocked over a gleaming web of rails under signal catenaries, gaining speed as it headed toward a tunnel set in the grassy mound covering another gate. Again the sudden plunge, the sharp judder, the momentary black headache, and then the railcar was slowing under a sky sheeted with low clouds, sliding into a station under a geodesic dome of grimy white Teflon.

The air under the dome was hot and wet, and tasted of diesel smoke. Crowds moved everywhere beneath banners hung from scaffold towers.

BROOKHAVEN: GATEWAY FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND RECONCILIATION.

DEMOCRACY AND SOVEREIGNTY FOR ALL AMERICANS.

ONE NATION UNDER MANY SKIES.

STILL WINNING THE WAR.

Soldiers in all kinds of uniforms (Stone wondered if most were recruits from post-nuclear-war sheaves, as in the old days) were outnumbered by gaggles of fresh-faced Reconstruction and Reconciliation Corps volunteers in jeans and Planning For Peace T-shirts. A team of wisecracking construction engineers sat on their tool boxes, watching the human parade. A column of troops in black coveralls and what looked like silver motorcycle helmets marched past at double time. Soldiers and civilians milled around kiosks where girls in Stars-and-Stripes T-shirts were handing out free cigarettes and coffee and sandwiches. As he followed Welch toward a turnstile checkpoint tucked under the dome's white curved flank, Stone thought that the noise under the dome was like the cackling of the sky-blotting flocks of geese that flew down the Hudson ahead of the first winter blizzards.

At the checkpoint's steel and glass booth, Welch pushed the sheaf of travel order papers into a slot. The marine inside the booth checked the papers and returned them through the slot with two square white plastic badges -- dosimeters. A light overhead turned from red to green, the turnstile unlocked with a heavy clunk, and Stone and Welch walked out into grey light, warm gritty air, and the smell of recent rain. Aid workers were climbing into a long line of yellow school buses. In the distance, the superstructures of troop ships and cargo ships rose above cranes and warehouses.

A black stretch Cadillac equipped with smoked bulletproof glass and anti-mine flooring drove them down the Long Island Expressway toward Manhattan. Welch handed one of the dosimeters to Stone. 'We've done a lot of rebuilding, but we can't do much about the radiation.'

'What happened here?'

The file hadn't given Stone much information about the Johnson sheaf's pre-contact history.

'They had themselves a Second World War in the middle of the century,' Welch said. 'The US, Britain, and Soviet Russia defeated Nazi Germany and Japan, a cold war developed between the free world and the Soviets. In 1962, the Soviets stationed missiles in Cuba, which was part of the Communist bloc. After a standoff, their premier, a fellow by the name of Khrushchev, agreed to withdraw the missiles, but a bunch of high-ranking military officers assassinated him and staged a coup. The Soviet Navy tried to break a shipping blockade around Cuba and the President, one of the Kennedys, responded by sinking several of their ships and threatening to invade. The Soviets took out Guantánamo Bay and Miami with tactical nukes, and it stepped up from there.' Welch was examining the cut-glass decanters in the little drinks cabinet. 'We have generic whiskey, generic brandy, generic gin, but no ice, and no mixers. I guess we'll have to rough it.'

'Nothing for me.'

'It helps sluice the radiation out of you,' Welch said, and slopped an inch of amber whiskey into a tumbler.

'I guess New York got hit,' Stone said.

'Plenty of places got hit. The Soviets threw everything they could from Cuba before the US nuked it down to bedrock. Short-range missiles took out most of Florida, New Orleans and Atlanta; sub-launched missiles hit Washington, DC, and most of the West Coast. And a fair number of long-range bombers got through a defensive line above the Arctic Circle, too. They hit Detroit and Chicago, they hit Boston, and two of them hit New York. One dropped its load on the Brooklyn Naval Yard, but the bomb didn't go off. The second was shot up by a fighter plane, blew itself up over the Hudson, and took out most of downtown. The bomb it was carrying wasn't big, twelve kilotons or so, but it was dirty, jacketed with iodine-125 and cobalt-60. And that's why we're wearing dosimeters more than twenty years later.'

The limo overtook a column of army trucks. It sped past a gang of shaven-headed men in orange coveralls lengthening a trench alongside the Expressway under the watchful gaze of soldiers with assault rifles.

Stone said, 'It looks like they're still at war here.'

'A little local difficulty with the European Economic Community, and Australia and Japan. The Soviets came off worst in WW3. A good deal of Russia is still uninhabitable, and the rest is a bunch of outlaw states run by criminals and warlords. But America is in pretty bad shape too. The Europeans and Japanese provided aid, but it came with all kinds of strings, and we arrived in the middle of a resurgence of isolationist politics and some serious sabre-rattling on both sides. The locals were as grateful as hell to get help from fellow Americans, but the Europeans took serious exception, especially when we set up trade barriers and seized their assets in the States. Right now, we're fighting a nasty little war for control of Texas and the Gulf. Canada's staying out of it, and so is China -- we're feeding China a little technology in exchange for neutrality -- but despite our best diplomatic efforts, the Europeans aren't backing down. There's some internal opposition against us, too. Secessionists in the South, Midwest survivalists . . . In short, the usual set of grudges.' Welch took a sip of whiskey, made a face, and said, 'I guess I should tell you about rules of procedure. The guy in charge of our side of the investigation, Ralph Kohler, told me to make sure you got anything you want. I assume you have no problem with that. As for the locals, we had to inform Ed Lar, the local FBI officer in charge of the manhunt, that you were being brought in. These days, protocol demands full and frank cooperation with the locals.'

'He knows I'm the guy Tom Waverly wants to talk to.'

Welch nodded.

'Does he know that I'm working for the Company?'

'A lot of things have changed since you quit, but we still maintain cover for all operatives. We told Mr Lar that you're a forensic psychologist employed by our FBI, and you and Tom have history from working together on serious crimes in the Real. I doubt that Ed Lar believes it for a second, but he can't question it publicly without causing a diplomatic incident.'

'We have to pretend to be something we're not, and the locals have to pretend that they don't know we're pretending.'

'It's a wicked old world.'

'Do I need to talk to Ralph Kohler? Or to this local guy, Ed Lar?'

Welch shook his head. 'Ralph's an attorney, a political guy. He's done a lot of good work toward preventing this thing turning into a full-blown diplomatic crisis, but he'd be the first to admit that he doesn't know anything about pounding the bricks. As for Mr Lar, we promised to keep him informed about the progress of your investigation and share any hot leads.'

'And has he promised not to interfere?'

'Not in so many words, but we made it clear that you're an independent operator, and in any case he's already badly overstretched by the manhunt. The locals are eager to catch Tom before we do. It's not just the political fallout because Tom shot the mayor's nephew; it's also a matter of pride. They've set up running roadblocks, and checkpoints at train and bus stations. They're making random stops in public places, they're searching every hotel and rooming house in the area, and empty apartments and business places . . . They've even sent squads of Port Authority police to help us check every piece of luggage and freight due to go through the Turing gate.'

'Even so, Mr Lar knows that Tom wants to talk to me. That makes me a hot lead, and he'd be a fool if he didn't put a tail on me.'

'Let's worry about that when you need to get close to Tom.'

'I want to work this as I see fit.'

'Absolutely.'

'And you're, what? My partner, my line manager?'

'My job is to deliver you safe and sound, and see that you get what you need to do the job. Other than that, I'm happy to keep out of your way. I gave up active service a while back.'

'So did I,' Stone said.

Welch had booked him into the Plaza Hotel, a corner room on the fifth floor that overlooked the trees of Central Park. The horse-drawn carriages were plying their immemorial trade here as in all the other versions of New York that Stone had visited. A gallows -- this was something he hadn't seen before -- stood in front of the Grand Army Plaza. He counted fifteen corpses, barefoot in grey pyjamas, placards with block printing he couldn't quite read hung around their necks. Shaved heads, swollen faces black with congested blood. Two sailors posed while a third took their photograph.

'The locals' idea of justice,' Welch said. He'd brought his tumbler of whiskey with him, and a cigarette drooped from the corner of his mouth as he sat on the edge of the bed and used his handkerchief to remove dried mud from his combat boots. 'Spies and black-marketeers, mostly. They hang 'em on the Great Lawn in the park. Night rallies with flaring torches, speeches, loyalty pledges, marching bands, Girl Scouts selling cookies . . . the whole nine yards. Afterward, they display the bodies pour encourager les autres. They'll hang Tom Waverly there if they get the chance. Why don't you try on the suit, get rid of that hick-from-the-sticks look.'

A black suit and a white shirt were laid out on the king-size bed, alongside black lace-up shoes, black socks, a cell phone, a billfold containing two thousand local dollars, ID and documentation that backed up Stone's FBI cover story, a local driver's licence, and an NYC Military Zone pass.

Stone checked that the cell phone worked, asked if he could use it to contact the local office if he needed information.

'My cell number is on speed-dial,' Welch said. 'Call me if you need to know anything.'

'You aren't coming with me?'

'I have a meeting with General Grover, the local who's in charge of security in the New York Military Zone. Ralph Kohler wants me to smooth his feathers, feed him bullshit about cooperation and full and frank exchange of information. As I said, this isn't like the old days when we could do whatever the hell we wanted and make up some story to tell the locals afterward. We don't coerce, we cooperate. Anyhow, you won't be on your own. I've arranged a driver for you.'

'I can drive myself.'

'You think you can handle Manhattan traffic after three years in that back-to-nature sheaf? And if Ed Lar does have people dogging your tail, you'll need someone with local knowledge to shake them if you want to go somewhere you don't want them to know about.' Welch watched Stone take his Colt .45 and shoulder rig out of the kitbag and added, 'Are you seriously going to carry that?'

'You bet.'

'Jesus. Try to remember that you're not working for Special Ops now, Adam. You have diplomatic cover, but you don't have carte blanche. If you start shooting at people, I won't be able to keep Ed Lar off your back.'

Stone shrugged out of his checked shirt. 'Back when you were working for Special Ops, I remember that you liked to boast that the only time you fired your weapon was on the ranges.'

'I'm proud to say that's still the case.'

'I guess you don't need to carry a piece into an embassy reception or a courtesy meeting with some local general, but I'll be moving in different circles. Don't worry, I promise I won't shoot at anyone unless they start shooting at me.' Stone buttoned up the white shirt. 'Your file didn't have anything about the Real version of Eileen Barrie. About whether or not Tom tried to make a hit on her.'

'I haven't been told everything about this operation, Adam. You know how it is -- compartmentalisation and all the rest of that horseshit.'

'Tom seems to be trying to kill off every doppel of the woman. So why wouldn't he go after the Real version too? If he had any sense, he would have hit her first.' Stone pulled on the suit trousers, sat down on the bed beside Welch to lace up his shoes. 'Unless, that is, he's trying to intimidate her. Or draw attention to her. Does he know her? Have they ever worked together on the same project?'

Welch sighed theatrically. 'You read everything in the file?'

'Cover to cover.'

'Then you know as much about that as me. And all I know is that the Company has decided that we don't need to know. Maybe her work is classified, and we aren't on the bigot list. Maybe the DCI's office is trying to limit blowback. The point is, Tom is hiding out somewhere in this sheaf. You're here to help find him. To help bring him in alive. Don't get sidetracked by trying to figure out his motivation, or every angle of the operation.'

'His motivation might lead him to me. She's a scientist. A mathematician,' Stone said, shrugging into his shoulder rig. 'In the Real, and in all the sheaves where she was killed. That has to have something to do with why Tom has been doing this.'

'I guess that's one of the first things they'll want to ask him after you find him.'

Stone stood up and pulled on the suit jacket. 'Maybe it's one of the first things I should ask him.'

'That's the spirit. How's the fit?'

'A little tight around the shoulders, but otherwise not bad. I've never met Ralph Kohler, but he has to be a confident son of a bitch, setting this up before he knew I'd agree to help.'

'Was there any question you wouldn't?'

'How do I get to the murder scene? Can I use the limo?'

Welch mashed his cigarette in the empty whiskey glass. 'If you're ready to go, I'll ride down with you to the lobby.'

In the elevator, Welch examined the knot of his tie in a mirror and said, 'While I head off to cooperate with General Grover, you can go find the ride I arranged for you. Walk over to Madison Avenue and go a block north to the corner of East 60th Street. There'll be a yellow taxi parked with its sign unlit, a woman driver. Climb in, she'll take you where you want to go.'

'A taxi? That's cute, David.'

'Wait until you see the driver,' Welch said, and blew into his cupped hand and sniffed his palm to check his breath.

'As long as she keeps out of my way while I check the scene.'

'She'll do whatever you ask her to do. It goes without saying, by the way, that if you do find anything the locals missed, I want to hear about it before the locals do.'

The elevator stopped and its door slid open to reveal the marble-floored lobby.

Stone said, 'Why would I want to tell the locals anything?'

'I think I'm going to enjoy working with you again, Adam. You're still a cowboy at heart, aren't you?'

>
>This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Buy the hardback or trade paperback.

Read more here.

Index