The Watchtowers- EarthWatch Page 3

  For a moment, Agdinar thought he'd succeeded in controlling the AV, but then something missing from his training—which had been limited to only showing him the AV's controls—interfered and started to affect the engines. He shouldn't have stopped them completely at once. The excess energy had shifted back, sucked in from the outside cloaking shield and thrown into the front-collision energy shield. Not a good thing for transportation.

  It must have been quite the spectacle to see the AV, like a huge winged insect, appear in the night illuminated by a spherical flame at its rear, a burst coming from the quantum vacuum's energy it used to fuse atoms and propel itself forward. Agdinar saw the Hawks stop, start to run, and quickly scatter around.

  He also saw a bunch of trees ahead, and a rock that came out from the ground like a miniature promontory. For a second, he wondered what those boulders were doing in the park. But then the AV skidded over the rock and ran straight into a cluster of trees.

  The crash was strong enough to activate the emergency system. He was taken immediately into low-grade stasis, as the inner shield stopped everything in the cabin—likely also his heart.

  * * *

  Coming back was sudden, and painful. Agdinar had no idea how the AV did it, but whatever the mechanism, it needed improvement. He felt diffuse pain in the chest and didn't want to know what else might be wrong above his shoulders. He couldn't think, and when he tried, strange equations drifted all over his view-field, as if his suit’s AI was damaged.

  Those people. In danger.

  Agdinar willed the cabin to open and stood, unsure if his head would crash into a defective, though invisible, overhead cover.

  He was standing on a visible AV; he had never seen the entire thing. He was so used to invisibility that he forgot most of their equipment shifted, all or in part, in and out of view. The wings of the AV were damaged, but the nanorobots had been released and were attempting repairs. That wouldn't matter—even with a repairable AV, he was in a massive amount of trouble.

  The AV was visible. Visible.

  Humans had seen it, and covering up his mistake would take painful work from Management. Even if those who saw his vehicle were Hawks—criminals deeply believing in government conspiracies—Agdinar was sure to lose any argument trying to justify what he had done. Long, possibly permanent stasis was his most certain future.

  He didn’t feel fear for what might happen to him in Tower City. He had decided, focusing all his stubbornness on one thing, that saving the two nightwalkers was his priority. At least, he would be doing something to save the down-world from its daily chaos.

  As soon as he stepped out of the AV, the machine shimmered and disappeared. He was standing alone on the park’s path, in total darkness.

  Agdinar walked on the path, while his suit's AI showed him images of highlighted figures rushing in the dark. The Hawks would be back, and soon.

  “Stop there,” he heard a tense voice say. There was a figure in the dark, ahead of him, but he could only see it in reconstituted, blurry retinal views.

  Back in the woods, the Hawks were taking positions behind trees, trying to wrap around their stand. There were enough Hawks, and trees, for Agdinar to be certain they'd jump slowly forward and close in on them.

  But whoever was in front of him was not with the Hawks.

  “I tried to help you,” said Agdinar, keeping his voice down. “Saw you were in trouble.”

  “I'm alone. Stay away.”

  The suit’s AI told him that she was a female—a useless fact, as he could hear her voice, musical while unusually husky. His suit was also telling him she was armed and lying—another female was hiding behind a tree at the end of the path where they stood—and it even managed to encircle in his lateral retinal view-panels the other girl's somewhat twisted and surely sprained right ankle.

  Two lone girls at night in Central Park. He wasn't going to speculate on what might have driven them there and what could have happened if he hadn't show up.

  “My name is Agdinar. What's yours?”

  “I saw that thing crash. Are you with the military?”

  Agdinar remembered he was dressed in a one-piece, body-fitting dark suit, not unlike a Special Forces trooper. But his contained more AI than the entire country.

  “No,” he started and then paused, unsure of what he could say. No Watcher in recent history had been so close to an ancient human being. “Well, really I'm just a pilot.”

  “I know the spy planes the military uses in the city. That's like nothing they have.”

  It was a detailed comment about something few New Yorkers knew about. It surprised Agdinar, but he decided to avoid any lengthy talk. His personal shield could take a shot or two, if the girl used her gun. His AI had estimated her to be between 15 and 18 years of age, as human females grew in spurts and their age was tricky to assess without deep scans. And that night was not the time for prolonged scans.

  “Let's leave my ship for another time,” he said. “I don't know if I can fly it now, and we need to get out of here.”

  “Your ship? Why do you talk like this? Who are...?”

  The girl was interrupted by a blinding flash. The Hawks had flown a lighting drone, which now floated high overhead and cast a dome of light over them. They were being sized up for immediate attack. Agdinar knew it was time to do something, but he was stunned and unable to move. The flickering light revealed a girl with a gun, as expected, but that wasn't what had stopped him from breathing.

  She was the most beautiful human he had ever seen.

  Chapter 4

  The vacillating light over them shone with green hues. It was strong enough for Agdinar to see the down-world girl, four feet away and holding an old gun with some difficulty; the cumbersome barrel revolver was too heavy for her right hand. The recoil of shooting with that silver cannon would throw it away, and perhaps topple her backwards. The girl had dark hair like him, longer than his and flowing down like a fountain. And her eyes were large and beautiful; they could have been black or brown, but it was hard to tell with such harsh lighting.

  “We need to leave, and soon,” he said.

  “No, and don't move. I don't know if you are with them.”

  “And what? Are you going to wait until they shoot me to know?”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “You will also be dead.”

  Agdinar advanced one step and the girl tightened her grip on the gun. “I said don't move,” she said.

  “We have no choice. I can help you to transport your friend, so she doesn't hurt her ankle even more.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  The girl was ready to raise her gun again and point it toward him, but Agdinar ignored her and ambled forward and to her side, while signaling the exact tree where her friend was hiding.

  She nodded, surrendering her stand. “Let's go,” she said, “but you will have to tell me later how you know these things.”

  “I'll do that, if you promise me to be more careful next time.”

  * * *

  The first explosive bullet hit a tree on their left, when they had barely walked half the distance to the one hiding the second girl. Some of these bullets were engineered to explode in the proximity of skin, so even a glancing shot could be fatal.

  The girl fell and lost her gun behind a tree. The overhead drone was trying to place them under its most intense illumination. No time to a search for the gun.

  Agdinar helped the girl to stand and, as he held her with one arm, noted a strong perfume that wasn't flowery but stung like an aromatic spice.

  Two charges dropped from the sky and exploded ten feet away.

  Another charge took a piece of the tree they'd just passed.

  The girl was dizzy from the blast and, as she turned like an animal ready to fight, her body crashed into Agdinar’s. Her face touched his, pressing together the flat of their cheeks.

  Her skin. It was quite warm for the cool night, and she breathed even warmer air over him
. He felt it on his lips.

  “We have to go.” This time she was the one encouraging him to run.

  A small cart-like vehicle was driving off the park’s trail to head in their direction. It was a team of Hawks: two were sitting in the front and one was standing, handling a large gun that was set in a turret.

  Two more deafening explosions nearby, one of them large enough to be from a drone-launched grenade.

  The girl took Agdinar's hand and startled him.

  “Do you hear me?” Her voice was strained. “We have to go."

  They started to run, just as the cart’s gun began to spew a fountain of bullets. They made three parallel threads on the ground, crisscrossing the gap between the off-road vehicle and them. The Hawks were not trying for more than a warning.

  As they rested behind the tree, the girl tried to help her friend to sit straight—the ankle was a serious problem—but she kept lowering her head and staring at the ground. She was a younger female, her hair black and styled with long curls on some patches; a thin girl with both very dark skin and European features that to Agdinar seemed foreign and he couldn't place. Agdinar had been taught all that related to New York, but almost nothing about the rest of the world.

  “What's your name?” Agdinar asked the girl who had come with him, and immediately regretted it, as he didn't want to reveal his own name.

  “I'm Sarinda, and this is my friend Tysa. And you?”

  “It's Agdinar...from Sweden.” Mentioning a European country was just a studied defensive strategy, useless at the moment but at least suggesting that his mind was still working.

  “Weird name. A Swede? You...”

  Another grenade interrupted them, for some lucky failure way off course. The Hawks were confused about the position of their target. The rising full moon might have been fooling their night vision.

  ...You do have a way of always getting yourself in a lot of trouble.

  “Dhern? How did you get here?”

  ...I would have come earlier, but first had to disentangle myself from the AV, and then, much worse, move through all that dirt and biological plant tissue. Kind of slow jumping.

  “Can you help us?”

  “Who are you talking to?” Sarinda asked, nudging his shoulder.

  ...I can try to help, but who are your companions?

  “This is my friend Sarinda, and her...” Agdinar said, trying to sound warm to the strangers. And he nodded, trying to get Tysa’s attention, but her head was still turned down.

  “I'm not your friend,” she said, “and who's that in your comm? I didn't see you had one—is it one of those implants?”

  ...I see you are making good friends. Have you thought how you are going to explain this to Management?

  Agdinar had thought that, and concluded it wasn't going to be possible. “Don't worry, Dhern,” he said, “I'll find a way.”

  “Dearn? What kind of name is that?”

  A cracking sound in the distance. More movement from the Hawks, but they were still settling on the cluster of trees at the beginning of their path. Theirs was a careful, deliberated approach.

  “He's a colleague from India,” Agdinar said, adding another lie. “He helps me with...when I'm flying. I work for a company.” He thought that lying was hard, but it should get easier with practice.

  ...I would have liked better to be a god, maybe Shiva, if from India. Or better, a smarter god, yes, Brahma, surely Brahma would be better. Clearly more like me.

  “Shut up, Dhern. Just think how to help us escape.”

  “It looks like your friend is another spy like you.”

  “Spy?”

  “Yes, from the West Coast Countries.”

  Agdinar knew about the secession movement that had started in northern California and swept the Western Coast. “No. Not them,” he said. “I work for a private airline—we fly and test new air—”

  “That thing you fly isn’t commercial. I saw it appear out of nowhere—and only the military has planes so small and with cloaking technology.”

  Humans had started to play with light redirection, a primitive form of the Watchers' phasing technology. But the Watchers could make all things, people as well as huge cities, not only invisible but penetrable by other matter. He couldn't tell Sarinda any of that; in fact, there was almost nothing he could tell her.

  Agdinar was going to say something to keep the conversation going, surely making another mistake, but then a new explosion shook them, leaving a cloud just a few feet from their tree. The Hawks were getting too close.

  ...Let me guide you from tree to tree. Get the other human.

  “We need to go, Sarinda. Help me with your friend...Tysa.”

  “Why leave the tree now?” Sarinda gestured toward Tysa, who was still crouched and seemingly asleep.

  “They're going to hit us hard, and it won't survive.”

  Sarinda didn't argue anymore. They held Tysa from both sides and raised her to a stand, dragging her to the tree behind them. Before they could deposit Sarinda's friend on the ground and away from the Hawks' line of sight, there was another explosion, this one large enough to topple them backwards. Their previous hiding tree had been cracked open and the branches split in two irregular canopies that now lay on the ground; just as if they'd hit the tree with an ax, dead center. The debris from other broken trees filled most of the gap to their new position.

  ...Again, Agdinar, move to the tree on your right.

  Dhern was capable of quantum calculations of the first order, but he couldn't be right all the time, in a situation never recorded in the Watchers' historical vaults. By saving the girls from the first attack, Agdinar had caused a time bubble. A bubble was kind of a limbo, where past and present were only connected by nimble tendrils of causality. Every step the trio took was creating billions of new possibilities on top of an already vast landscape of parallel universes. Dhern's predictions would be fuzzy at best.

  As they took their fourth step, Tysa’s good foot got tangled in a bush and she fell.

  “STOP!” A loud projected voice startled them. It was coming from ahead of their path. The Hawks had finally surrounded them.

  Tysa looked at Sarinda and Agdinar, as they both tried again to straighten her up. Her eyes were quite bright, and in the darkness they appeared glassy. She was shuddering, barely able to stay upright. Her clothing—a battered blue jacket with a hood, and eroded black jeans—was old and wrinkled, a look more common in the Hawks than the dress-conscious population of New York, Sarinda included.

  “Leave me here,” Tysa said. “You two try to get away.”

  “No, you can't stay,” said Sarinda. “They will...they'll kill you.”

  “Don't worry about me, just go.”

  There had been great strain in Tysa's voice, and she was now biting her lips. Agdinar had never felt the force of such contradictory emotions—the worry and an unplanned certainty, mixed with confidence and a great deal of fear. He didn't understand how past humans could manage such a range of feelings, all at once, and get them all out while saying so few words.

  The world outside the Towers was much more complicated than the images he had been capturing.

  He admired the courage of Sarinda's friend and understood the hard logic of saving those who could be saved. Agdinar had wanted to take Tysa with them, while waging whether to use any of the advanced means he'd brought with him, as it would mean revealing who he was and where he had come from. No present-day human would believe that there was a quasi-alien civilization, from a distant future, floating over their skies and watching the land. Even less believable would be that they'd been doing it since even before there was a United States of America, and from the look of things, probably way after it would cease to exist.

  Still feeling responsible, Agdinar turned and took Sarinda's hand to drag her away. It was so strange for him to be touching someone from the past. At least, his night adventure had proven the Watchers were wrong about something they kept telling each
other: the end of the world wouldn’t happen if they made physical contact with down-world humans.

  What Sarinda didn't know, as she walked slowly next to him, or would have even understood as possible, focused as she was on reaching the safety of the next ring of trees, was that, for as long as Agdinar kept holding her hand, she had disappeared not just from sight but from the material world.

  ...Well done, Agdinar.

  Chapter 5

  It would have been incredibly hard—impossible, really—for a human of the twenty-first century to understand how technologies of the seventy-second worked. Agdinar looked like many teenagers from Sarinda's time, but his suit and the surface of his body had more computational power than the entire country, and he could match the military’s most sophisticated weaponry—except for those semi-rusted nuclear weapons, which still threatened the world.

  He could vanish into thin air, cross through walls, and was in principle invulnerable to bullets or explosions. Even if he was hurt, the nano-medicine inside his body would repair any internal damage in seconds. When sufficiently determined, or angry, he could project all sorts of damaging energy waves from his suit.

  For Sarinda, he could be a magician at best and a sorcerer at worst.

  They were sitting behind a tree, on a somewhat wilder corner of the park. He released Sarinda's hand, but only after leaving her comfortably secure between the edges of the tree's thick trunk.

  She was still afraid. “Do you see them?”

  “Yes, two of them are carrying Tysa to their vehicle.”

  “Vehicle? It's a XAT, an extreme all-terrain. The Hawks stole them from the National Guard, you know, when they tried to take New York back from those animals. Where have you been?”

  Agdinar couldn't tell her that he'd spent years asleep—almost dead—in stasis and had missed half of the last decade. So, he kept silent.