TWENTY-EIGHT

 
 

NIMROD STROKED HIS MOUSTACHE. Rad had a great deal of trouble thinking of him as anyone other than Captain Carson. He was identical. The voice with strange clipped accent. The smile. The way his eyes shrank to slits when he smiled. The same grey and yellow patina across his front teeth. Identical, like Rad was identical to Sam Saturn's killer. That didn't make him feel any better.

  Rad sucked in another breath. The mask was comfortable enough, sure, although the way the heavy filter pulled out and down was annoying. He could feel the rubberised edge of the mask stuck all around his face, forming a tight seal. The goggles misted just slightly, but it was no problem. He could still see fine.

  It was the breathing that was the problem. If he sat still, and didn't speak, he could pull air into his lungs, and push air out. He could breathe, but it was a conscious effort. He had to take over the manual controls from his brain stem, and move the muscles of his ribcage himself. It was tiring, and somewhere in the back of his mind the seed of panic was sown. It was the same spark that entered the mind of someone being strangled, or drowned. People with asthma had it bad, Rad suspected. They'd get that spark every time they had an attack.

  It was worse when he spoke. He had to time his breaths with his words, which resulted in strange pauses and broken sentences. He remembered his first encounter with the masks in the alley. The two goons – who now stood in the office, picking their nails and choosing their cigarettes with the greatest of ease – had not only moved with agility, they'd sucker-punched him good and proper, and had still been able to hold a conversation. Well, one of them had. Rad glanced at Chinless on his left and Bullethead on his right, trying to remember the voice and match it to the face. The man who had applied his fists to Rad's face and asked the questions had been the heavy man with no neck – Bullethead – while his friend had stood back and not done much at all – Chinless here, who Rad remembered the Bullethead had called Grieves when the Skyguard had dropped on him. Rad looked at their faces and thought he preferred them with their masks on.

  Another breath. In, out. The intake felt like sucking on elastic, as if the rubbery air was resisting and would snap back into the soup can if Rad let up the pressure. Breathing out made the goggles mist, momentarily, and his eyes hurt as the pressure inside the mask increased, the foreign air, absolutely, positively refusing to be pushed back out into the atmosphere through the respirator.

  Rad figured he'd get used to it. Perhaps it was a case of learning the rhythms of the mask. He imagined they would become second nature after a while. He didn't know how long that would take. He didn't want to find out either. He needed to get back to the Empire State.

  Chinless lit a cigarette, wreathing his face in smoke. He put the cigarette to his lips, then pulled it away, holding it in midair while transferring thick grey smoke from his mouth to his nose. It wasn't particularly classy, but Rad was fascinated. The Prohibition in the Empire State covered tobacco as well as alcohol. While the latter was easy enough to distil and sell in places like Jerry's speakeasy, tobacco was another matter. Rad was then very glad of the mask. Before Wartime he'd been a chain smoker. Safe in his little rubber and glass universe, not a single whiff of the rich smoke was available to him. Then the thought occurred to him that maybe there was no "before Wartime" and that maybe he'd never smoked in his life, that the tingle in his nose the sight of the smoke produced – and the sharp craving that followed it – was another element of his life "reflected" from his New York City original.

  "I apologise for the way my agents Mr Grieves and Mr Jones here were forced to manhandle you, Mr Bradley, but I felt it was really time for us to meet." Nimrod vaguely indicated the two goons as he spoke. Rad glanced at them again but neither seemed particularly interested in the conversation.

  Rad shifted in his wooden chair, then regretted the motion as he struggled to pull a proper, full breath. He wasn't restrained at all, which was a pleasant feeling, even though he knew he wouldn't make it to the door without getting dizzy. They knew it too. That was why he wasn't restrained to the chair. He was restrained by the mask.

  Rad managed, "They're making a... (breath)... habit of it. A bad habit (breath)."

  Nimrod laughed, and clapped his hands. At this sign of humour from their boss, Chinless Grieves and Bullethead Jones smirked.

  "My point being, Mr Bradley, that I was most displeased you failed to make our previous appointment. Getting in touch with you in the Empire State requires considerable organisation and expense. Travelling to the Empire State, even more so." Nimrod leaned over his desk on his elbows. The desk was covered with papers, in stacks, in file folders, in loose sheaves covering the blotter. The paper crinkled under his elbows.

  "You have cost me a lot of time, and a lot of money." Nimrod paused, then sat back and folded his arms. "There is a lot riding on this. We can't let one unreliable factor ruin our plans. There is too much at stake."

  "That so?"

  Nimrod nodded in exactly the same way that Carson would nod. Rad's eyes flicked to some pictures on the wall behind Nimrod's head. A certificate or diploma, with a bright red seal. Something else that was also text, too small to read from his chair. But three pictures, sepia photographs, showing the impossible landscapes in white. Carson – no, Nimrod – as a young man; the airship; the companion with blond hair. Rad frowned.

  If Nimrod could see Rad's eyes roving behind the mask goggles, he gave no indication.

  "That is so, Mr Bradley. I'm not sure you are taking this seriously."

  A hard-won intake of oxygen. "Oh, the end of the world seems pretty serious to me." And another. "That's what you said on the phone anyway."

  Nimrod nodded.

  "How did you call me, anyway?"

  "We have the Fissure tapped for a variety of purposes. Communication is one. Monitoring and observation is another."

  Rad nodded. "Carson explained the Fissure. A tear in the world, he called it. So, it allows travel too?"

  "Yes," said Nimrod. "Although the two realms are not entirely... compatible, shall we say. The environment in each rejects material from its opposite." With one arm still folded, he pointed at Rad's face with the other hand. "The mask helps. The environment is not lethally toxic, but it is exceedingly uncomfortable."

  As if to prove his point, Nimrod stopped speaking and the office was filled with the sounds of Rad's heavy, slow breaths coming through the respirator. Nimrod smiled. "You'll get used to it. You acclimatise."

  "So you pulled me through the... Fissure?"

  Nimrod's mouth turned upside down. "Not through the Fissure itself, but using its power. The Fissure is a single, physical location, but its influence spreads out across the whole city. A 'field' of sorts. If you can detect the field, measure it, you can tap it as a power source and use it for all sorts of things. You can even use that power to cross from here to there, using mirrors and reflections. Fascinating really, quite a trick. But physical transfer between the Origin and the Pocket is even more expensive than a telephone conversation. I'm going to have the department accountants on my back for this one, eh?"

  Grieves and Jones sniggered. Grieves puffed his cigarette and said something back to Nimrod, although Rad couldn't catch it. Nimrod exploded with laughter, slapping the top of his desk.

  "So if you're Nimrod, who's Captain Carson?"

  Nimrod's laughter died. "I was hoping you could tell me. I am Captain Nimrod."

  "His ship," wheezed Rad. "Carson has a ship, under his building. Like an airship, of some sort. Said it was called Nimrod."

  Nimrod steepled his fingers. "Ah."

  "Still no clue?"

  Nimrod shrugged, then rotated on his swivel chair to face the back wall of his office. He looked up at the photographs.

  "I was commander of the Carson, a hydrogen dirigible of experimental design, on an expedition to the Antarctic. Funded by the United States government, mostly scientific, partly military. I was recruited, you see, due to my not inconsiderable experience with Arctic exploration. It's in my blood. My father cut through the jungles of Africa in the nineteenth century, claiming lands and treasures for Queen Victoria. I followed in his footsteps, although I was no good in hot climes. The snows called me!"

  Rad looked at Nimrod's back, ready to start with the questions, but took a breath and found the effort required to ask what he wanted was just too much. "No kidding," he managed at last.

  "Of course," Nimrod continued, lost in his own personal nostalgia trip, "money was the issue, and funding seemed to come more easily from the United States. So we upped sticks and moved from London to New York in 1921. My family tree had some branches here already, including property in Manhattan, so it was not quite such a wrench as it may have been."

  "Uh-huh."

  Nimrod spun back around to face Rad, his face somewhere between delight and surprise. A beaming, open-mouthed smile, forehead creased and narrow eyes as wide as they could go, which was not very.

  "Extraordinary," said Nimrod. "You really have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? London? England? Africa? No? The Arctic and Antarctic? Polar ice caps?" Nimrod shook his head, paused, then frowned. "Even New York City? Manhattan?"

  Rad shrugged, because it was easier than speaking. He saw Grieves finish his cigarette and laugh silently, shaking his head. Jones said nothing. Rad figured that he probably hadn't heard of any of these places either.

  Rad wasn't sure what to make of it. The Empire State was the Empire State. Polar ice caps? Sounded weird.

  And yet... something, something stirred in his mind. He thought again of Claudia. He had no memory of their wedding day, like he had no knowledge of what London was.

  "I'm in New York City, apparently," he managed. "You said so yourself."

  "Yes, yes, I did." Nimrod went back to stroking his moustache. "The name may be different, but I feel you will recognise New York. Manhattan, at any rate. The Empire State was born out of New York City, and takes its image, more or less."

  "You said 'we'. You and these two beauties?" Rad managed to nudge an arm in the direction of Grieves and Jones. Grieves straightened against the door, like he wasn't quite sure whether he was being insulted or not. He looked at Nimrod for support.

  Nimrod met his agent's eye, then turned back to Rad.

  "Alas, I am at the mercy of the State Department when it comes to staff. When I say we, I mean myself and my companion, Keats." Nimrod leaned back in his chair and tapped one of the photographs on the wall behind his head with a fingernail. Nimrod the younger and the blond man. Nimrod held his head up, pulling the loose skin of his neck tight, and sucked air through clenched teeth.

  "Keats was my batman and engineer on every voyage. On our last expedition, there was an… accident."

  Nimrod's eyes narrowed and he gulped. He kept his head up and was staring at the wall behind Rad. Rad didn't like where the story was going. The old man cleared his throat.

  "Keats was injured. Very badly. We brought him back home, and I even managed to fashion… devices, to help with his breathing and alleviate at least some of his discomfort. A 'life-support', you could say. When the position was offered here, they also offered to take care of Keats, to help him rehabilitate and even regain something of his former life."

  Nimrod coughed again and lowered his head. He glanced at the top of his desk and shuffled some papers. Rad kept quiet.

  Nimrod lifted a single sheet of paper and pretended to read it. He didn't look at Rad as he spoke.

  "We came by ship, but Keats died during the crossing. I had been reading his favourite book to him as we travelled, as it seemed to ease his pain. After he died… well…" Nimrod tapped his breast pocket, which Rad could now see was filled out by something flat and rectangular. A small book.

  Rad tried to nod, but the soup can just slapped his chest. "I understand."

  Nimrod put the paper down and smiled at the detective. Rad wasn't sure whether his eyes were wetter than they were usually.

  "He always had an affinity for the great Romantics. Always claimed he had been named after John Keats." Nimrod's eyes went far away again. His fingers found the book in his breast pocket and tapped against it again. "Don Juan, by Lord Byron. Have you read it?"

  Rad sat up and coughed. Nimrod leaned forward in concern, his glazed eyes clearing and his hand automatically adjusting his tie, as if he was suddenly aware that he had said too much. Rad recovered after a moment and ran a finger along the rim of the mask under his chin.

  "Can't say that I have." He cleared his throat. "Any chance of a drink? Can I take this mask off?"

  Grieves looked at Nimrod, and Nimrod nodded and waved at the door. The agent pointed at Jones, who shook his head without taking his eyes off Rad. Grieves left the office and closed the door behind him with a click. In the brief moment it had been open, Rad could hear footsteps, voices, and typewriters. Wherever Nimrod had his office, it was a busy workplace.

  "A capital idea, Mr Bradley," said Nimrod, clapping his hands again as he was fond of doing at regular intervals. Just like Carson. Rad actually found it easier to think of Nimrod as Carson, or maybe Carson's brother. The personality and manner were identical. Nimrod, captain of the Carson. Carson, captain of the Nimrod. After his personal journey back through difficult memories, he had appeared to regain his composure. Rad wondered how many times the agents had heard the story of Keats. They sure hadn't shown any interest on this occasion.

  Rad cleared his throat, looking forward to his drink. The air pulled through the mask was smelly but completely dry.

  "Its image, you say?" he asked.

  Nimrod nodded and said nothing.

  "An image of the city. New York City – this place – what? Reflected? Reflected through this Fissure thing. And the people in it. You, for example? Nimrod and Carson, two sides of the same coin."

  Another clap of the hands and the expansive smile. "We will make a private detective of you yet, Mr Bradley. An excellent deduction." He paused, and leaned in, voice low. "Or are you merely, how can I put it, 'playing' with me? You are accepting the facts somewhat easily. Have a care, Mr Bradley. This is no elaborate practical joke."

  Rad shook his head, exaggerating the otherwise natural movement so it would be clear with the rubber hanging off his face.

  "Hey, I've given up fighting." He waved a hand dismissively as he took a long breath. "Carson had a theory about doubles and the Empire State being some kind of Pocket. That runs with your tale. If my city is an image of your city, then this makes New York the Origin. That's the word Carson used."

  "Interesting nomenclature. Pocket is quite accurate. The only place you know of is the Empire State, because the Empire State exists in a pocket. There is nowhere else."

  Rad laughed. "Just the city and the fog. Explains why I could never figure out what was on the other side of the water."

  Nimrod hrmmed to himself, and there was a tap on the glass

of the office door. Grieves was a grey shadow behind the bubbles, hunched over a tray. Nimrod glanced at Jones, who sighed, nodded at his boss, and opened the door with complete disinterest. The tray wobbling in Grieves's thin arms held four cups and a tall, narrow pot. Steam rose from the spout, and Rad wished he could smell what it was. He was still smarting from using up his coffee ration prematurely.

  "Thank-you, Mr Grieves," said Nimrod, as his minion set the tray down on the most stable stack of papers on his desk. Nimrod busied himself with the cups, and inclined his head towards the detective. "Help him with the mask, would you? I think we can afford you maybe ten minutes of the freshest air New York City has to offer!"

  Rad gripped the arms of the old wooden chair. He didn't quite know what to expect as Grieves rolled his knuckles and approached. Rad saw Jones smile behind Grieves, then laugh into his fist. He didn't like the Bullethead. This wasn't going to be good.

  Grieves yanked the mask, the straps catching behind Rad's ears. Rad yelled, and instinctively raised his hands to them, then stopped. A wave of relief flooded over him as breathing suddenly became effortless and automatic. He smiled at Grieves, who just shrugged, then looked at Nimrod. Nimrod, at least, returned the smile, and pointed to the jug.

  The aroma, the sweet, sweet smell of coffee. Richer, deeper than he had ever experienced it. Rad could almost taste bitterness at the back of his throat as he took a deep breath, wide nostrils flaring even more. Even with a full coffee ration, it had never smelt like that.

  Rad smiled, licked his lips, and leaned in towards the desk. A second later, his head cracked its edge, and he toppled from the chair onto the cheap carpet of Nimrod's office, white foam bubbling at the corner of his mouth.

• • • •

Rough hands with short fingers gripped Rad under the armpits and hefted him back into the chair. Cold hands with long fingers slapped his cheeks lightly.

  Rad opened his eyes, looked around with a narrow gaze, then widened his eyes in shock. He managed to get his hands to his chest; Nimrod barked something at his agents. Rad's eyes closed and he felt his head pushed backward. A shadow passed over his reddening vision, and when he brought his head to the upright position, he was looking at the world through the steamy goggles of the mask. Each hard-won breath was a battle, tainted with rubber and a chemical odour that stuck in the back of his throat. Each was a blessed relief, easing the buzzing in his head and the knife-hot pricking behind his eyes and the stabbing pain in his chest.

  Nimrod looked relaxed, at ease, sitting back in his reclining office chair, fine porcelain saucer in one hand, fine porcelain cup in the other. He was holding the cup just in front of his mouth, nostrils flaring – as Rad's had done as he enjoyed the rich aroma.

  Rad sighed, coughed, then took a laboured breath. "No coffee?"

  Nimrod shook his head, but he was smiling as he sipped his own drink. Rad closed his eyes and focussed on not coughing.

  "What happened?" he asked at last.

  Nimrod sniffed loudly and set the cup and saucer down on the desk. His chair snapped back into the upright position with a clatter of old springs.

  "This environment takes some getting used to." Nimrod almost sneered as he looked Rad up and down. "For some it takes longer than others." The sneer broke into the grey-yellow toothed smile.

  "What exactly did you want to... (breath)... tell me in person anyway?"

  "Nothing that couldn't be relayed via the telephone, but I always like to meet my agents for a face-to-face interview, and I thought it was important you saw me in vivo so you could be sure I was who I said I was."

  Rad nodded. It was a fair point. While his week had been odd, to say the least, he was pretty certain that he never would have believed any of it unless he'd been dragged through the Fissure himself to meet Captain Carson's alter ego. He wondered whether the offer of a drink was just a ruse, another demonstration that he was telling the truth about the "incompatibility", as Nimrod had put it, of the Pocket and the Origin.

  "When I went to visit Carson," Rad huffed, "I went looking for answers. For days I've just had hints here and there of something big happening, with me smack in the middle of it all." He paused for breath and raised a hand, indicating to the others that he was not finished. "With Kane not only acting up, but not being around most of the time, Carson was the obvious choice. And I was right, he knows about the Pocket and the Origin."

  Nimrod nodded. "He would, yes."

  Rad shuffled in his chair with impatience. "That's just it. How would he know? He said he had 'probed' the Origin through the Fissure, but he seemed to make some pretty good guesses. How is the Empire State related to this... place, whatever you called it."

  "New York City."

  "Right." Rad nodded and sat back. It wasn't that he hadn't ever heard the name before, it felt like he'd known it well, in childhood, and hadn't heard it for thirty or forty years. Which was impossible, because it was the year Nineteen and he was a forty-four year-old man with no childhood.

  Grieves turned his back to Rad and moved around Nimrod's desk. Nimrod looked up, and leaned his ear towards Grieves as his henchman whispered something quickly. Rad couldn't hear behind the wheezing of his mask, but Nimrod's eyebrows moved around on his forehead as he took the information in. Grieves stood back, and Nimrod nodded, chewing his lip. For the second time, Grieves left the office and closed the door with an almost inaudible snick.

  "Time is short, Mr Bradley," said Nimrod. "One of the... side effects, you could say, of the Fissure. Time does not necessarily run in parallel between the two cities. We must get you back to the Empire State."

  Rad shook his head vigorously and summoned the strength to stand. He slid his lead-like legs towards the big desk, and practically fell onto his clenched fists. Nimrod jerked back instinctively as the respirator hanging from Rad's face swung towards him with the movement.

  "I'm a detective. I have a case to solve. If I'm a pawn on someone's chessboard, fine and dandy. Just tell me which side I'm playing for. Black or white?" He sucked in a lungful of stale, flavoured air. "What's the deal, Nimrod? What is the Empire State?"

  Nimrod stared at up at Rad leaning over him; Rad could hear Bullethead Jones peeling himself from the wall and moving around until he was directly behind him. Nimrod watched his henchman over Rad's shoulder, and shook his head. Looking back at Rad, Nimrod felt his stomach with his right hand until he located a small pocket in his tunic. He extracted a pocket watch, a gold half-hunter, and flicked his eyes towards it.

  "Very well. We can return you home via the Fissure itself. That will lessen the risk of time dilation, although may not eliminate it entirely. Besides, perhaps you might like to take a look at it for yourself? It will give us a little extra time."

  Nimrod stood and smiled coldly as he looked down at the detective bent against the desk.

  "Crossing the Fissure itself is something we try to avoid." A pause, a beat. "But you're a big strong man. You might just survive."