Asimov's SF, September 2010 (6 page)

"You weren't in much of a state to make decisions at the time. What do you expect me to do?"

"Be smart!” I said, and closed my eyes to ward off an impending headache.

Chen-chi was silent for thirty seconds.

"Do you have a weapons stash?” I asked.

Chen-chi shook her head. “Jo-jo was going to arrange weapons at the rendezvous, but something went wrong after I delivered his activation trigger. The downstream gang lords must have gotten wind of our plan and sent a message back to the here-and-now. They don't know how to initialize a sentience net, but they might have gotten a text message through to the singularity generator when it was brought online a few days ago."

Chen-chi paused as though trying to gauge the likelihood of her theory. “Anyway, they shot at Jo-jo. We got separated, and I hid in the crowd. I didn't think they knew about me. But I suppose they were following me, waiting until I activated you."

"Clumsy,” I said. “Letting yourself be trailed like that. This Jo-jo . . . where can I find him?"

"He runs a machine shop across town. I planted his trigger last week, but with the rendezvous and agent identities compromised, he's gone into hiding."

"Was there a back-up rendezvous?"

"Yes, but—"

"Let me guess. You don't know the details.” This teen was really getting on my nerves. “Well, it looks like we're stuck. Jo-jo will have to do the best he can on his own, and you and I will go our separate ways and lie low till the whole thing blows over."

"You can't do that,” Chen-chi said. It wasn't a plea. It was an unadorned statement of fact, spoken with more confidence than a teenager—or even a time traveler in a teenager's body—had a right to speak anything.

"Why not?"

"Because Jo-jo might hurt Clarise."

I froze. Of course. If Clarise was mixed up with this crowd, then she was likely to be on-scene during the fighting. And this Jo-jo, whoever he was, wouldn't halt the mission just because she was in the kill zone.
I
wouldn't, if it was someone else's daughter.

Slowly, I turned my head toward Chen-chi. “You'd better help me patch up this leg."

Chen-chi worked in silence, stone-faced, wrapping the cloth with cool professionalism. I wondered whether her future self was a physician. That might explain why she was here with no useful knowledge about the mission. But it didn't explain how she knew so much about me.

A few things were beginning to come clear, at least. Our attackers hadn't known who I was—or even where—until Chen-chi attempted to activate me. That meant Clarise hadn't tried to kill
me,
in particular. From her perspective, she had just been attacking two unnamed agents from the future.

My future self's motivations also began to make sense. This mission wasn't a glory jaunt. It was a last-ditch effort to save my family. I hadn't even known it needed saving.

"Chen-chi,” I said after a while, “Who are you to me? The future me, I mean. The one who didn't make it back."

Chen-chi's hands paused in their work. “Does it matter?"

"Damn straight it matters! You know everything about me. Even things I never told Clarise. So were you my psychologist, or some kind of mind-rapist, or what?"

Chen-chi pulled the bandages taut. “I was your wife."

Images rushed me like a brick wall: Emmeline in a yellow ski hat demonstrating the snowplow for a group of students. Emmeline grinning as she snatched my textbooks and backed off with them, telling me to lighten up and go on a date with her. Emmeline bleeding. Emmeline laughing.

Emmeline's grave. A simple square marker and a vase of purple flowers. A viciously cheerful sun denying the collapse of the universe.

"My wife is dead,” I said.

Chen-chi tied off the bandage. “Yes, well, so is my husband. So you and I are stuck with each other."

I exhaled. Slowly, heavily. “All right. Tell me one more thing. How much do our enemies know about the mission?"

"Not much, I think. They didn't know where to find you until I tried to activate you. I don't think they know what we plan to do. They just know that we're here and that we're a threat to them."

"Well. At least they're as badly informed as we are."

Chen-chi almost smiled.

Five hours later Chen-chi and I crouched behind a bookshelf in the basement of a university library. We'd risked a detour by my apartment for the med kit and an undamaged pair of trousers. There had been no sentries posted, so either Clarise hadn't told them who I was, or they didn't think I'd dare to go there. My thigh still throbbed, but it would do.

The books in this section of the library were musty, leather-bound, and frequently stood askew. Through cracks between them, I watched Clarise sitting in a pool of light at the microfilm readers. She sat in direct profile to us, hair down and twisted over one shoulder, her left hand meticulously twirling the knob of the machine. She paused frequently to scribble notes on a pad of paper.

It would have looked like an innocent late-night study session if Chen-chi hadn't told me that in two days, in the neglected conference room behind the microfilm readers, a 60-terajoule explosion would take place. My daughter was playing lookout for what would soon become the deadliest terrorist organization since Al Qaeda.

Why, Clarise?

I had been absent during much of her childhood. I admitted that. But it was because I'd believed in what I was doing. The world needed people willing to take the hard risks and fight the tough fight. I had thought Clarise understood that. Emmeline had.

I glanced at Chen-chi, at the teenage body crouched beside me. Tried to imagine her forty years older. Those years might make her ugly or beautiful, heal wounds, leave scars . . . What was the shape of the mind inside that childhood body? Had she been worth betraying Emmeline's memory?

I did not want to believe that I had ever married again, especially not a woman thirty years younger than I was. It was possible that Chen-chi was lying to me. Just as it was possible that there never would be an explosion, that my daughter was not doomed to kill herself in the aftermath of that catastrophe.

I stifled a sigh. A lot of things were possible. Nevertheless I found myself here, now, with Chen-chi, waiting for Jo-jo to arrive so that we could make contact with him and help complete the mission. Whatever else Jo-jo's plan entailed, it must eventually lead him here, to the source of the explosion. To the moment when the whole world would go mad.

Clarise sighed and flicked her pen against the notebook. I felt a sudden urge to grab her by the elbow and run. Away. To someplace safe, where she'd never hook up with another thug, where I'd never have another flashback. Where all those pesky people from the future would leave us alone.

Screw the explosion and the rest of the city, I just wanted to hold my little girl and keep her safe forever. I shifted my weight into my knees, felt my muscles tense with the precursor of action.

A door clicked open. Footsteps echoed on the tiles. A few moments later a pair of black jeans entered my view. They stopped beside Clarise, and she glanced up.

"Finished already?” she asked.

"Naw, just a breather.” The speaker snagged the leg of an empty chair with his foot and scooted it next to her. I recognized him as he sat down: Sean, the unwelcome boyfriend Clarise had brought to the restaurant. He snaked an arm around her waist and reached for the pad of paper. “What you working on?"

Clarise closed the notebook. “Nothing. Just passing time."

Sean's look turned serious. “Babe. Stop worrying about the harmonic whatever-it-is. Sharken knows what he's doing."

"But his equations are wrong. Look. Gravitational attraction grows as the inverse square of the distance between—"

She'd opened the notebook again. Sean placed a hand on her forearm. His voice was gentle. “Stop it. You're on edge. We all are. But stop pretending it's the machine that's got you spooked."

She sighed and slapped the notebook closed. “I thought my father was done with all that crap. I thought he was pensioned—disability pay. What's he doing on assignment?” She stood. Paced. Sat back down and put her face in her hands. “I could've killed him. I
tried
to kill him. What if he hadn't kicked the grenade?"

Sean lifted Clarise's hair aside and began massaging her shoulders. “Shhh. It'll be all right.” He moved so their eyes were level and brushed her cheek with surprising tenderness. “It'll all work out, babe. You'll see. Two days from now we'll change the world."

"And if the machine doesn't work? My father and his puppeteers will be after us again. Dad's getting old, Sean. He could get hurt."

"From what you've told me about your father, he's not the one you should be worrying about. Two days, sweetheart. You can hold out that long."

Clarise leaned into his shoulder like a cat luxuriating in a sunbeam. I watched the strain ease from her face, aware that the muscles of my jaw had grown taut.

How often had I seen Clarise angry or heartbroken during her tempestuous teenage years? Twenty times? Fifty? How many times had I wrapped my arms around her and held only tension, a bundle of frustration and loneliness that refused to unleash? I had never been able fill the dark chasm left by her mother's absence any more than she could pray away my nightmares.

Watching her rest her head on Sean's shoulder, I forced myself to accept a bitter truth: This punk made her happy. Why she had finally found her solace with a thug mixed up in a terrorist scheme, I could not fathom. But the devotion in his eyes seemed sincere, and the strength she drew from his embrace was unmistakable.

Eventually, Sean pulled back and patted Clarise on the arm. “Boss says I'm supposed to take over your spot. He wants you to explain the machine to the newbies."

Clarise straightened, and if it wasn't for the extra sheen in her eyes her grin would have fooled me as the genuine article. “Don't sleep on the job,” she said as she rose from her chair. “My father might be around."

"I survived dinner with him. Life can't get much worse than that."

"You've never seen him angry.” She pecked him on the cheek and vanished through the doorway with a click of sophisticated heels.

Sean scooted his chair forward and fiddled with the microfilm reader, although it was obvious that he wasn't actually reading anything on it. My gaze shifted to the door of the conference room, now closed, and the low murmur of voices behind it. I was about to circle toward the doorway, try to find a spot where I could hear what was being said, when I heard Chen-chi's quiet hiss of indrawn breath.

"That's Jo-jo,” she whispered. Her eyes were riveted on a heavyset man ambling down the aisle. He perused the stacks as though searching for a particularly elusive call number, but there was a purposefulness about his gait, about the way his eyes kept flicking toward Sean, that was unmistakable.

Chen-chi began to wave at Jo-jo, but I stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and a curt shake of the head. Catching Jo-jo's attention right now would probably attract Sean's as well. If he spotted me and shouted a warning to those inside the study room, we'd lose our best chance to carry out the mission.

I watched Jo-jo through the cracks of the bookshelves. His jaw worked beneath his scraggly goatee as he slid his finger along the books. He paused, adjusted his spectacles, and closed in on his quarry. I gauged his movements, trying to determine what his plan was. Did he know my daughter was in that room? Did he care whether she was harmed?

His first task, no matter what else he planned, would be to take out the scout. That was always a tricky job. Straight hand-to-hand was too unpredictable, gun too loud. An inhalant anesthesia would work well, but I doubted he had access to those kinds of chemicals. Which left short, sharp, cutting implements as his most likely option.

I motioned for Chen-chi to hold still and crept around the edge of the bookcase to the aisle opening directly behind Sean. Sean was watching Jo-jo and didn't see me.

Jo-jo's footsteps approached. Stopped. “Excuse me, son. Can you tell me where to find the medical section?"

Sean looked wary, but he dutifully pointed down the aisle. “It's in the next room over,” he said. He didn't take his eyes off of Jo-jo.

"The one with the Japanese banner?"

"No, the other one. Through the double glass doors.” This time his gaze flicked toward the other end of the hall.

Jo-jo stepped into my field of vision. I saw the flick of the wrist, the faint ripple of a shirtsleeve as a knife slipped into his palm. My mind raced forward through the next few moments: A sudden step, a flash of steel against the jugular. Blood spurting across the chest where my Clarise had found comfort. Soundless gasps from the mouth that she had just kissed. The only man who'd ever made my daughter happy: crumpling toward the floor supported by Jo-jo's free hand, shoved under a desk in a bloody heap.

I caught the knife halfway to Sean's throat.

Jo-jo had grasped Sean with his free arm, pinning the gawky thug against his chest. I used the momentum from my lunge to twist the knife arm behind his back. I stepped forward, pressing myself into Jo-jo and Jo-jo into Sean. “Not that way,” I murmured.

Jo-jo froze. Sean struggled. Chen-chi had moved from behind the stacks and stood like a statue between two towering bookshelves. Through the closed conference room door, I heard Clarise's muffled voice.

I expected Jo-jo to fight me. Instead, he cocked his head as though analyzing the sound of my voice.

"Eugene?” he asked. I stepped back and released my hold, but not before I'd pried the knife from Jo-jo's hand. Sean twisted loose and stared at us.

"What are you doing?” Jo-jo asked. He rubbed his arm where I'd torqued it.

"Stopping a mistake."

Sean's eyes darted between me and Jo-jo, then toward the conference room. His gaze lingered on the knife in my hand. He stepped backward and drew a breath.

I punched him in the solar plexus.

Whatever warning cry Sean had hoped to bellow came out as a surprised grunt. He doubled over, gasping, and stumbled backward. His awkward stagger sent a chair tumbling to the floor with a loud clatter. Inside the conference room, Clarise's voice paused mid-sentence.