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zzambrosius_02
Ambros led Randy from the War Room. They walked the halls.
Randy wore a medallion, one that identified him as ‘New Citizen, Guild or Skolo: Uncommitted’. People working or socializing in the many niches on either side of the hallways saluted him gravely, each after the manner of their own Guilds.
“Why are they all saluting me?” Randy asked.
Ambros grinned: “A general principle: each one thinks that you may choose their Guild; you may one day be a consequential member of their Guild. See, it’s not just War Guild members who are working hereabouts: Thinker’s, Technical, even some Laborers, plus History...they are all here on one sort of errand or another. Recently I eavesdropped on some Road Guild Magistrae at one of the basement cafés here in War Guild Command Complex.”
Randy frowned, clearly thinking hard, then said: “So on the off chance that I might choose their Guild, they...”
“They treat you with respect, and hope for the best,” Ambros finished. As they passed through the building, people began gathering their belongings and preparing for the evening’s ceremonies.
At length they passed through the Main Hall. A woman in Dissenter’s robes, her hair in a tightly braided topknot, held forth for a group of Red Warrior students:
“We Dissenters don’t like to salute; we avoid it when we reasonably can. This is because we see the salute—all forms of it—as the remnants of an economy of exchange, which we should continue to root out, lest it reappear in our midst like some viral contaminant thought slain by vaccines and phages...even a nod of the head as greeting is dangerous if it is seen as requiringa response...”
They exited the building after Ambros checked his Shifter. Other buildings in the area disgorged crowds of people, who headed for various public spaces around the City.
Ambros and Randy wended their way along the streets to Plataeo Sokratosena. They joined the rest of the family at their usual large round table. Randy seemed truly at ease in the situation, being by then fluent in Rational Hellenic.
‘He’s been briefed on this ceremony, too. Of course, he probably hasn’t got anybody he needs to apologize to...’ Ambros gazed at Jimmy, wondering if the man’s turnaround would extend to offering Randy and Kim the amends he clearly owed.
He could see that Jimmy was working himself up for something.
Clem and Ellie arrived, apparently excited by the impending ceremony. Anticipation built as the sun set and full darkness fell. The evening progressed: some people partied hard; most were more contemplative.
The Rose House family mostly drank tea and coffee and chatted. People spoke to each other all around them, and then embraced.
‘Feuds being settled,’ Ambros thought: ‘hatchets buried...’
Finally, Jimmy stood up. He looked each member of the family in the eye one by and one and said, to each person: “I’m sorry.” Then he addressed the group: “I’ve been a fuck-up for too long. I’m doing better...trying to anyway...I need a clean slate, some reassurance that I’m forgiven...”
The whole family took a deep breath together, and let it out in unison as well. Then Kim said: “I forgive you.”
“Clean slate, for my part,” said Randy: “But if you haven’t already, you should apologize to Marissa.”
“I did.”
“Good,” said Ambros.
Jimmy looked right at Ambros and said: “I realize that I’ve been a poor student of swordplay...all of the Martial Arts stuff, including the mental stuff, that you and Magistri Anni have been...trying to teach me. I know you've been worried about how dense I've been. I’m trying to do better. ”
Ambros nodded: “You are doing better. In token of that, I’ll take you with me to Mexico next month. First week of January, a three-day mission.”
Jimmy said: “Okay, thanks.”
Luisa and Marie sat holding hands. Marie said: “We two also forgive. But we’re not ready to forget.”
Jimmy hung his head: “Yeah, I know. No more pressure, Luisa, I promise.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Luisa said: “Clean slate for now. Screw up again and you’ll lose my vote for inclusion in this Family.”
“Mine, too,” said Marie: “You are on severe probation, Jimmy. Go forward, but be...thoughtful, I guess is the word.”
Jimmy nodded, looking her in the eye.
Ambros noticed Arrenji, standing behind Jimmy, a blank look on her face. He gestured for Jimmy to turn around. Jimmy jumped a bit, startled, when he saw her.
She made a handsign that meant ‘calm’, then said, seriously: “I am Magistri Arrenji Athenini, Phalango Iera, of the Line of Estelli, once the student of Nikodemos the Latest.
“I apologize to you, Archaros Jaímos Dekaheptos, for incidents in your training during which I did you wrong. My scorn is a powerful weapon, and I need to be more judicious in the use of it. I thank you for teaching me this.”
Jimmy stood there, mouth open, stunned.
Ambros stepped up behind him: “Do you accept this apology?”
“Um...yeah.”
“Okay, repeat after me: I Jaimos...Archaros in the Red Warrior Skolo...accept these words...in the spirit of community...in which they are offered. Let this be the end...of this dispute...and let no person bring it up again. So say I...Jaímos.”
Arrenji bowed slightly and slipped away through the crowd.
Randy sat there open-mouthed, as stunned as Jimmy. Ambros quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Huh?” Randy said.
Ambros nodded: “Even the highest Status people in the Commonwealth are bound by the customs of the ‘Polity’. We clear the air at the Winter Solstice, and go forward together. Scuse me, I see Tantalos, Regulos’ best friend. I need to apologize to him...”
Ambros sat across the table from Tantalos—a small round table at the far side of the plataeo—and frowned.
“What’s wrong?” asked Tantalos.
Ambros drew a deep breath, then spoke quietly: “I apologized to you for my arrogance toward you in the matter of your friend Regulos; you reacted by bringing up his exile. I’m puzzled.”
Tantalos made a face: “I think you owe me an apology for that, as well.”
Ambros frowned, again: “I...I didn’t do that. Exile him, I mean. I don’t see why I should apologize for something someone else did.”
“But you...” Tantalos paused, now also frowning.
“I never wanted him exiled. He could have gone to any other City in Hellas. He could have stayed here in Athino and just made himself scarce around me...stayed away from Anni’s training ground on my teaching days, frequented a different Plataeo. He could even have apologized to me and convinced me he didn’t mean me, or my friends, any harm.”
Tantlos went off on a tangent: “He wanted me to come with him, you know?”
“I didn’t know that.”
Tantalos’ tears began to run down his face: “I couldn’t do it.”
Ambros felt extremely uncomfortable. He turned his attention inward, pursuing that discomfort.
Tantalos was speaking again; Ambros pulled himself back to the world.
“...and I guess you’re right. I could go to him. I should. Thanks for apologizing, and for listening to me cry, and rant.”
Tantalos got up and walked slowly away.
Ambros sat frowning, wondering what he’d missed. He considered calling Tantalos back, but thought: “Nah. It’s my fault for not paying attention. And he seems to have made a decision...”
He had no desire—nor any right—to interfere again.
The bells tolled over the City and all the lights went out. Ambros stood a little apart, wondering if he’d see the next Winter Solstice.
Young adults in short kitons ran from the Parthenon, carrying torches; wherever they went, the lights came back on, all of them, until the City blazed with its full glory: the colors of the buildings, the more-than-usually festive clothing most people wore, the multitude of trees and flowerbeds glowing with winter blooms.
The bells echoed into silence. Ambros turned back to his family and joined the group embrace.
‘
Early January,’ Ambros thought, as he leaned back in the ugly green plastic chair and smiled crookedly: ‘Always changeable weather here in Chiapas, this time of year.’ In another month there’d be no chance of rain at all.
Jimmy sat in the chair beside him. He had one hand in his pocket, his fingers touching the handle of an ordinary .32 caliber pistol.
Rain pelted down though none of it reached them. A seemingly haphazard arrangement of plastic, canvas and oilcloth tarps intercepted and re-directed the downpour, which quickly filled ditches and barrels along the edges of the café’s outdoor seating area. The water in the ditches ran off onto the terraced hillside. Ambros could see coffee bushes, fruit trees, and maize, yams and gourds, vines and amaranth.
The noise was such that no one could possibly converse.
As rapidly as the rain had begun, it tapered off and stopped.
“Why have you returned to Chiapas, Scharffen?” The scrawny mestizo across from him squinted at Jimmy, then snickered: “This is your bodyguard?”
Jimmy drew the pistol and aimed it between the fellow’s eyes.
“For fuck’s sake, Joaquin, cut it out,” said Ambros: “Not that anyone would miss you if Jimmy blew your brains out. “
Joaquin’s eyes had gone wide.
Ambros made a handsign and Jimmy lowered the gun, but kept it pointed in Joaquin’s general direction.
“Why are you here?” asked Joaquin, more politely.
“Not to see you, that’s for sure.” Before Joaquin could respond Ambros continued: “Where is sub-Commandante Mattias?”
“On patrol.”
Ambros grunted: “Got anything good to drink in this country?”
“Technically, there is no more alcohol in Chiapas.” Joaquin shrugged: “I could bring you some of my own stash, eh?”
Ambros imagined the kind of rotgut moonshine that Joaquin would have access to, and shuddered. “No thanks,” he said.
A young woman in a short dress brought cups of strong coffee out of the café and served the men. As she turned away, Joaquin smacked her bottom.
She turned around, furious, and slapped the back of his head with the tray she carried, hard enough to crack it. She broke the tray along the crack and menaced her assailant with a jagged edge: “Those days are over, puto! Touch me again and I’ll kill you! Mattias warned you once! This is strike two!”
Joaquin raised both hands in a gesture of surrender: “Lo siento mucho, muchacha...I will be good!”
She snarled: “it would be the first time in your life.” She stomped off; Joaquin rubbed the back of his head ruefully. His hand came away a bit bloody.
“If I had known the revolution would make the women so uppity, maybe I would not have joined Mattias and the rest.”
“If the women don’t get uppity after the revolution,” Jimmy opined: “or more likely, during the revolution...then it never was a revolution in the first place.”
Joaquin stared at Jimmy, scared and defiant, as if he were seeing a gargoyle come to life.
The sound of engines growling and people cursing in Spanish and Mayan reached the café. A convoy of beat-up Jeeps and ancient Japanese pickups came into view, slewing back and forth across the slippery road up the hill to the village. The lead truck stopped just outside town. The last truck in line worked its way along the verge of the road and parked by the roadside. That truck had a fifty caliber machine gun mounted in back.
The first person out of the truck wore a black balaclava that covered all of her face except her eyes. She wore fitted fatigues that showed her stocky figure to good advantage, and slung a rifle over her shoulder as she stepped to the ground. She looked around and spotted Ambros sitting in the café.
She strolled over and sat.
Joaquin effaced himself and fled to the kitchen.
“Sub-Commandante Mattias,” Ambros greeted her.
She drew the mask from her face and stared at him: “I see that rumors of your death were exaggerated. What are you doing back in Chiapas, Carlo?”
The rest of the men and women from the patrol split up by squads and occupied tables in various parts of the café, save one squad that traipsed off on foot to patrol around the outer limits of the town. Ambros recalled the drill all too well.
He sighed: “I have a new name. Call me Rothakis. Ambros, since we are friends.”
She nodded, and grinned. The grin made the scar that reached from her temple to her chin writhe like a snake: “Ambros it is, then. You come to see me? Couldn’t stay away, no?”
“No. I came to see you, but not for sex.”
“That’s too bad.”
He shrugged: “I do need to speak to you in private, for a minute or two...”
“The back room...” She pointed.
“Stay here Jimmy. Don’t talk to anyone, even if they tempt you with booze or insults.”
“Yes Spathos.” Jimmy replied, putting the gun on the table in front of him and sipping his coffee.
Ten minutes later they were walking away from the village.
“Who is that woman? Mattias?”
Ambros said: “Iola Mattias. She is the elected military commander of the Zapatistas, the de facto government of the state of Chiapas. Interesting person.”
“Yeah?”
“She speaks at least four languages. She translated the works of Antonio Gramsci into Mayan. Also, von Clausewitz. That’s really what makes Chiapas different from any previous attempt to secede from Mexico. The Mexican military has never come close to beating her in a battle.”
“Oh. You didn’t talk to her for long,” said Jimmy.
Ambros laughed: “She didn’t have to be convinced of the possibility of big trouble in the near future. She probably thinks I was warning her about the Mexican Army or some adventurism by the US government. But she’ll keep that thumb drive safe, and use when it all goes boom. That’s half of my job done, down here in sunny Mexico.”
“Yeah? What else we got to do?”
“We’re meeting some anarchist operatives who have infiltrated the big nationalist industrial union here. Same job as before, give them the warning, hand over a couple thumb drives...
“And then we visit a gathering of that same union’s top brass, to make a speech. The same speech I’ve been making over and over.”
Jimmy shook his head: “Y’know, when I was a kid I really wanted to be a Sandinista. They were my role models when I was growing up: sorta like the disreputable older neighbor kids who were always in trouble. I figured being a revolutionary had to be a lot more exciting than being a rich kid.”
Ambros grinned and said: “The leadership of the Sandinistas was both. Revolutionaries, that is, of a sort anyway, but also rich kids. That’s why their ‘revolution’ fizzled out: they represented a faction of the ruling class of Nicaragua—a youthful faction that hated the dictator—but they were ruling class dolts for all of that.”
“Yeah I know that now. But what I wonder is...”
“What you wonder is...?”
“How did you, of all people, become a travelling salesman for the idea of Assemblyism?”
Ambros laughed: “I volunteered. And as for excitement, hold on a while, sí? The end of the world as we know it is just around the corner. That will be exciting enough to make you shit yourself, I promise.”
“Yeah,” said Jimmy: “And I have a kid now...”
“You, your kid, and the rest of our family have a bugout route set up.”
“Yeah, but can I use it? Ethically, I mean. I should fight, right?”
Ambros pondered that for a bit, then said: “Okay, first I gotta tell you that you did good back there...” Ambros hooked his thumb over his shoulder: “Real good. You drew that pistol at the exact right moment, and I didn't have to signal you. You’re making progress. But.”
Jimmy nodded: “But, right.”
“Hey, if I thought you were trained to the limits of your abilities, I’d say you should fight. As it stands...”
Jimmy nudged him.
“...I’m sorry, vato, but in your current state of training, you’d be a danger to yourself and others.”
Ambros braced himself for anger or rage, but Jimmy merely sighed: “Maybe you’re right.”
“There’s our ride,” Ambros said, pointing to where their guide waited in a Jeep.
Ambros woke part way.
Family dinner at Rose House, the Thursday after the Mexico adventure had segued smoothly into family orgy at the Salon: ‘We wanted to be all together, and this is the only bed in the household big enough for that...’
He tried to stretch. He could not. His heart pounded like a drum. He recalled his dream, just before awakening: ‘Cops shooting at me...beanbag guns.’ He didn’t have to wonder where that one came from.
He drew a deep breath, and thought: ‘At least I can breath...’ He turned his head, and found that he could do that: ‘This is unpleasantly like being under the Halo, isn’t it?’
The others lay in various attitudes of sleep, unaware of his awakening, or of his paralysis. The clock beside the bed said 7:31.
The bedroom at his Salon faded from view and he found himself in near darkness. A very small fire burned in a hearth, and the walls, of wattle-and-daub, flickered in the light of it. He realized that he was sitting up: ‘The hell?’
The smell of the fire and the sounds it made filled his senses.
A woman sat across the hearth from him, looking down and to her left. A great hood and cloak hid most of her from his sight, but he knew her. She tended to the fire, which flared with light.
She looked up at him and smiled.
“My friend,” she said: “I see that you are well.”
He paused and pondered: “Indeed I am.”
She nodded: “I have called you to to me so that I can speak to you about the things we spoke about before...”
“I thought...I believe this is a flashback. You were part of a mushroom trip I took a while back.”
She laughed merrily: “Think about that, my friend.”
He did.
“Oh boy,” he said, as some things fell together in his mind: “Well, you did tell me I’d remember very little of our previous conversation, at least until I needed it.”
“We talked a great deal about the precarious state of your world, as you then saw it. Has anything moderated the danger?”
“Hard to say,” he replied: “I have a bit more hope, but just a bit.”
“I told you when last we met that I can see only a little of what you call the Multiverse. I am a part of...a world ancestral to the one you call the Hellenic Commonwealth Timeline.”
He frowned.
She continued: “I could explain, but maybe then you would be unable to recall this meeting. I think you need to recall thismeeting.”
“What about our first meeting?” he asked.
“What do you remember of that now?”
“I recall...the subjects, and the comfort you gave me, and that I confessed some of my...” He paused.
“Some of your sins?”
“...Some things I’m not too proud of. You may call them sins, if you wish.”
She smiled: “Tell me what you have been doing. Start with last night, and go back in time until you reach the thing I sense that I must speak of.” She gestured: “If you will, I mean. I have no right to hold you, or compel you.”
“Do you not?”
“When last we met, you consented to see me again, if I felt it necessary. That consent may be withdrawn. This you know.”
“That I know. Very well: last night I hosted my family in the big bed at my Salon...the day before...a week before...I attended the Thaskaliad in Athino Prima...I witnessed a religious ceremony in that same City...”
He continued backwards; she sat listening with her head tipped to one side, until he said: “...and I visited a man in Paris, in France...”
“Wait!” she said, putting her fist by her ear: “You had some sort of mission in this ‘Paris’.”
“I did. I was...”
“No. I do not need to know. But that was the disturbance that I felt...whatever that mission was, you must do more of it...”
“I intend to,” he said: “It’s a big part of my job right now...”
She interrupted: “More than that. It is crucial to the future. The future of several worlds that I know well, of worlds I can barely see, and others out of my ken entirely...”
“So...” he said, with a wry grin: “No pressure, then?”
She looked directly at him, for the first time: “None, and all. It will be as it must be!”
Her eyes were dark, dark as pits. He felt like he fell into them, and awoke.
‘This time, I remember it all...’ The paralysis slowly released him. He stretched, as he had intended to do moments before. The clock said 7:32.
Before he could react, he fell into a different trance, this one more like an acid flashback: he could see and hear things that he knew weren’t there, and the colors of the world around him seemed endlessly fascinating to his mind. He stayed where he was, unwilling to move. The sky showed through an opening in crystalline trees, black-purple and irritating to his eyes. “Sand” of hundreds of colors covered the ground.
A voice interrupted his reverie: “Yooou are here...”
He looked around, lazily. A Squid sat behind him, bereft of its Ant. Its single eye gazed at him, steady and unblinking.
He wondered if had eyelids.
“I have none,” it said.
“Reading my mind?” For some reason that seemed really funny to him and he laughed uncontrollably for a while.
The Squid waited until the fit passed, then said: “Not. Do not want to. Reading this...Timeline. And yours.”
Ambros sobered: “What do you see?”
The Squid squirmed in a way that Ambros interpreted as a shrug: “What I see is what must be.”
“Everything begins and ends at exactly the right place and time,” Ambros quoted: “Right?” He sounded a little ironic.
The irony appeared lost on the Squid: “You have found the beginning of wisdom,” said the Squid: “My task here is done.”
Ambros woke again; the clock switched to 7:33 as he stared at it. He frowned, unable to dismiss his recent experiences as pure hallucination. He fell back to sleep, without willing it.
Later that morning Ambros woke up for real. Everyone else was awake.
Marie handed him a paper plate with tacos and salsa, and a cup of coffee.
He sipped: “It’s nice to be able to drink coffee again.”
He set to work on the breakfast; the others were finishing up.
“Okay,” Marie said, rising from the tumbled bed, yawning: “I am taking that guy that’s buying my shop to China with me, to buy silks and then to Bali for batiks. I’ll be gone for a tenday on that trip. Luisa is arranging to go with me...Jimmy and Kim need time in the Commonwealth, Jimmy for training and Kim for teaching and study. Randy can hold down the fort here at the Salon, and Marissa can keep an eye on Rose House. Feed the cats, that sort of thing.”
“When she’s not over here...” Kim poked Marissa, then kissed her. Adele fussed and Kim tended to her.
Marissa blushed.
Randy jogged Ambros’ elbow: “What are you gonna be up to?”
“I need to be in several places more or less at once,” Ambros replied: “Fortunately, Commonwealth tech will make that possible. The Wobblies want me to visit some anti-government radicals in China; I’ll be there roughly when Marie and Luisa will be, but not anywhere near them, sadly. And then I get to meet with some Aussies...That should be fun.”
“Yeah,” said Jimmy, regretfully.
Ambros raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, Okay, I get it. I’m still a liability on some missions. I’m working on it, right?”
Ambros nodded: “Keep working.”
Returned from three days in China—“A mad fuck-up, that...” as he’d summarized it to Marie and Luisa via MPS—and another four days in Australia, Ambros was back to work in Eugene Seventeen.
“Including being a chauffer,” he muttered to himself.
He parked the house truck in the “Short Term Parking” area at the Eugene Airport. He ambled toward the terminal, in no hurry: ‘I got plenty of time.’
He felt somewhat sleepy. Meeting with the AAF—the Australian Anarchist Federation—meant gatherings in the east and west of the continent, and at an outpost near the northern coast of the country. There was also a meeting with indigenous leaders. He got a strange impression from them, as though the danger he warned them of was old news, so far as they were concerned.
The AAF members he’d met seemed like ridiculous stereotypes: “Like a Central Casting version of ‘Australians’ in some political farce.”
He was feeling a bit under the weather.
‘Not exactly hungover,’ he thought: ‘I know how to look like I’m drinking more than I really am. But those folks don’t ever seem to go to sleep.’
He intended to meet Marie and Luisa and take them home; the’yd been in China and Bali, supervising the fellow who’d purchased Marie’s shop and introducing him to the merchants and officials he’d need to deal with as he bought and sold silks and batiks and carpets.
Ambros had arrived an hour before the plane was due, so he could check out the security systems and look over the runways. He had a fake boarding pass, and a nearly empty carry-on bag, so he wouldn’t stand out in the crowd.
He followed a line of people up to the first security gate, passing through in his turn with no more security theater than anyone esle there endured.
He roamed from boarding gate to boarding gate, watched through the windows as people worked around planes and loaded or unloaded baggage. He found the spot where baggage entered the carousel, frowning as he noticed how close it was to a fence.
He’d just decided to have a seat and wait for the women’s plane to come in when a woman in a heavy overcoat approached him: “You are Mr Rothakis?” she asked, in American but with an accent he didn’t immediately identify.
“Yes,” he said, somewhat puzzled.
She pulled her hand out of the right pocket of her coat and brushed it against his face. He felt liquid, enough that it ran down into his beard.
“Hey!” he said, startled, as she turned and walked quickly away towards the security gate and the main lobby beyond.
He grumbled and headed for the men’s room, a hundred or so feet away, rubbing with his left hand at the stuff on his cheek.
Another woman moved to intercept him, subtly. He noticed, though: ‘An identical overcoat...rubber glove showing at the wrist of the hand in the pocket...she looks a lot like the first one...’
His mind put the facts together faster than he could imagine it, and when the second woman drew her rubber-gloved hand out of her pocket he reacted with measured panic.
He stepped to one side, slapping at her hand, sending the small spray bottle she’d carried flying away towards the women’s room. It skittered along the florr, hit the wall by a water fountain, and shattered
He pushed his assailant’s arm up into the air above her head and then arm-barred her to the ground, not gently. Before she could recover, he sprinted into the men’s room.
He deployed his collapsible baton and used it and his belt to secure the door behind him. Then he grabbed a paper towel and dabbed very gently at the moisture on his cheek. He used a second towel for the same job, then activated his MPS: “Averos, can you lock on to this scrap of paper towel?”
After a moment Averos said: “Got it...”
“Handle with care: it may be one component of VX gas or something like it.”
“Akuo sas...” The towel vanished, nearly silently. A small bottle appeared where the towel had been: “Spray this chemical all over yourself and your clothing, and breath as much of it in as you can.”
Ambros obeyed, choking on the foul stuff but grateful for small mercies: ‘At least the War Guilds are prepared for this eventuality...’
Ambros washed his hands thoroughly, then stripped to the waist and began to wash his face: he used cold water first, then as hot as he could get, scooping huge handfuls up and letting the water cascade over his face, leaning forward so that the water, probably contaminated, would not reach any more of his body.
Someone yanked at the door, and found it jammed. Whoever it was started banging and yelling.
Ambros ignored the racket. He sprayed the last of the squirt bottle’s contents on his face and chest and arms.
Only when he was satisfied that he’d done all he could to save his own life did he unbar the door. He stepped back, hands raised, and said: “You don’t want to be too near me, and you want hazmat gear before you touch me, and I expect it would be wise to evacuate this entire building as quickly as you can.”
The uniformed cop stood there looking befuddled.
“Snap out of it, officer. Someone just tried to murder me with poison gas. Probably a two-part nerve agent of some kind. The odds are high that both components are on the floor and in the air in this general area. MOVE!”
Ambros’ Command Voice had the effect he desired. “Um...right!” The cop said, as he backed away, then ran towards the first security gate shouting something in Cop Talk.
Ambros waited to see if he or the cop would seize up and keel over and die. When minutes had gone by and they were both okay, he took the first deep breath of the post-poison moment: ‘Well, that fucks up all my plans for the next few days.’
Ambros sat in a police van, in the back. Chief Black and Detective Sergeant Marta Barkley sat facing him. Black and Barkley both wore Hepa facemasks. They’d taken his clothes and effects and given him an orange jumpsuit to wear. He didn’t mind, in that case: ‘Anything is better than what I had on...’
He was deep in thought, mostly ignoring the questions the cops peppered him with: “...who...how? What made you think it was VX? One of our officers is down...who were those women?
“Do you have such enemies? Who would do this to you?”
He snapped out of his reverie: “Oh, there’s lots of people who don’t like me much. Posse Comitatus would kill me in an instant, if they could manage it. They would not have easy access to the poison, though. You yourself, Chief, told me straight out that there are cops on your force that would happily snuff me. They would have almost as much trouble getting the stuff as the Posse would, though. Burt Roberts could get the poison pretty easily, but he still has the idea that he can get something useful out of me, so he wouldn’t do it. Probably.”
“Who is Burt Roberts?”
Ambros made a dismissive gesture: “Don’t waste my time with disingenuous questions. You know damn well who Burt is..”
“Tell us again what happened. Who were those women?”
Ambros shrugged: “You tell me, I never saw either of them before. I think they were foreigners, maybe Armenian...”
“What?”
“Yeah...they had accents...and they looked...you know who Sheri Sarkisian is?”
“Vaguely. A singer or something, right?”
“Yeah. She’s Armenian-American. Those gals looked sorta like her.”
“Start from the beginning. What happened?” Barkley was playing the good cop.
Ambros shook his head: “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean I’m not repeating it. You each wrote notes, and I bet this van is bugged.”
The two cops looked at each other.
Ambros nodded: “Thought so.”
Black began to bluster: “Listen, Rothakis...” Then he stopped, recalling how ineffective “Good Cop/Bad Cop had been in their past interrogations of him.
Barkley spoke gently: “We’ll have to take you to the County Jail, for some more questioning. It’s SOP.”
“Yeah, whatever. Am I arrested or just detained for questioning?”
“Depends if you cooperate...”
“Well...I’m not answering questions. Once you get the test results back and you know it was nerve gas, you’ll have to let me go. Anything I did was self-defense.”
Ambros activated the MPS and called Averos: “Just in case...”
Averos said: “We sent teams to check your house and Salon, and we did a decontamination routine as a precaution. But there was no nerve agent detectable in either place. This attack was aimed specifically at you, Spathos.”
“Yeah, but in a very public place. The number of potential casualties was enormous. People are still exposed, too. Some of them will surely die, or nearly die. Not all the...authorities here believe it, but...I’m alive because I guessed what was happening. And I only guessed it because Danilos told me about the same thing happening to some politician in his own Line...and he told me about it only yesterday...”
“Good luck, huh?”
“Or Synchronicity. But someone hates me that much; has access to VX; doesn’t give a shit about collateral damage; and somehow knew I’d be at the airport. Who the Hades could that be?”
“We’re thinking about that. We should be able trace the stuff to its point of origin, or rather SB Intel can do that. We’ll get back to you.”
“Efharisto.” Ambros said. On the verge of signing off, he muttered: “Who in the world...” He stopped suddenly.
“Averos.” He said it in a tone that grabbed the cops’ attention.
“Akuo sas,” Averos replied.
“When you contact SB Intel, ask them to put Ambassador Harvey under increased surveillance. Use the public holograph record to track him back in time, and compare his movements to those of that woman Trissi...the one who locked me out of the communications network. Parakalo?”
“I see what you suspect. Tha symfrommei.”
The cops had been staring, and of course had heard only Ambros’ side of the conversation.
Black shook his head and said: “The lady...the one you said attacked you second? She has a broken arm.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“What?” asked Barkley.
“When I figured out what was going on, I got a little hasty.” He looked at her sarcastically, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah I guess I get that.”
A cop wearing a hazmat suit, the headpiece off, stuck his head into the back of the van: “Hey, Chief, the suspect who was down? She started seizing. She’s being transported. EMTs are in hazmat, and she’ll be quarantined. Couple airport personnel are sick, too, but not so bad.”
“What’s the status of this van?” Black asked.
“Clean. Good to go.”
Black rapped on the metal cage separating them from the driver: “County Jail, Morris.”
“Yes sir!” The driver slowly wended his way out of the parking area.
As they reached the road, Ambros said: “Y’all oughtta consider that the women who attacked me might have been pawns. They may have been paid to smear the stuff on me, without any idea what it was. Right?”
Barkley nodded: “I suppose it’s possible.”
The van accelerated and the driver flicked on the lights and siren.
“You get one phone call,” said the desk sergeant, pushing a landline phone towards him: “And that’s only because I’m feeling generous tonight.”
Ambros’ brain was running faster than it had for a while. He felt a rush of adrenaline as he considered what had lately occurred and refined his new plans for the weekend. He pushed the buttons on the phone slowly, as though struggling to recall a number.
By the time Kim picked up, he’d rehearsed his speech mentally. He spoke in Rational Hellenic, so the cops wouldn’t understand his plan: “Kim, don’t talk please, just listen. I’m at the County Jail, picked up after someone tried to kill me. Don’t panic, I’ll be okay. Marie and Luisa are at the airport in Portland; the powers-that-be turned their plane around because of the kerfuffle.
“I don’t want you bail me out, I want to stay the weekend in here. In between interrogations I’m gonna run a little experiment. On Monday morning bright and early, you show up with Dan Castle and make a big noisy fuss. I expect that by then they’ll be glad to get rid of me.”
Several phrases, such as “bail me out” and “County Jail” he’d had to say in American, since they simply did not translate into Rational Hellenic.
‘That’s okay,’ he thought: ‘the cops are gonna make their own assumptions about what I’m doing, and they’ll most likely be wrong.’
Two Jail guards flanked him as they escorted him to an open cellblock on the second floor. They gently guided him into a twenty by twenty foot cell that held a motley assortment of tough guys, drunks, bums, and addled-looking addicts of various sorts, all men. Those compos mentis enough stared at him curiously. The others mostly sat or lay on various surfaces and snored at different frequencies. The cell stank of sweat, vomit, and disinfectant.
He found a spot on a cot and sat down.
Predictably, one of the tough guys walked over: “You can’t sit there, old man.”
Ambros sighed and rolled his eyes: “Do we really have to go through this charade?” He could hear the guards at the end of the corridor laughing.
The tough guy shoved Ambros’ shoulder and said: “Get up, asshole.” He made as if to grab Ambros’ arm.
Ambros slapped the guy’s arm aside with his left hand, sliding his grip up above the elbow and snatching the stooge’s wrist with his right hand. Without getting up, he twisted his upper body somewhat and pressed the arm bar home. With the guy’s elbow bent backwards across his chest, Ambros said: “This can hurt a lot, or we can come to an agreement. You choose.”
“Fuck you, asshole. When I get loose, I’m gonna...aaaaaaaaah!”
Ambros drew back on the fellow’s arm until he could feel the fibers of the elbow stretching. One of the guy’s friends stepped forward and threatened to intervene.
“Ah, ah,” said Ambros: “Your buddy is already hurting a bunch. If I have to deal with you, I’ll have to dislocate his elbow just to be sure he’s out of the fight. We don’t want that, do we?”
Tough Guy Two stood glowering, just out of reach.
“So...can we come to an agreement? Huh?” He turned Tough Guy One’s wrist a bit, eliciting another holler.
“Okay, fine, an agreement! I’ll agree!”
“You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. How’s that?”
“Yeah, sure, sure, whatever.”
Of course Ambros didn’t believe the guy. He said: “Okay, gonna let you go now...”
Three minutes later, Ambros stood with his back to a corner, rubbing a slightly sprained thumb and glowering in his turn. He shivered in reaction to the fight, as his adrenaline spiked and faded.
Tough Guys One and Two lay on the floor in various states of disarray, both of them very extremely unconscious. Everyone else in the cell stared at him in dismay; even the drunkest of the inmates had been awakened by the scuffle.
One older man with the scarred arms and blown-out veins of a long time heroin user staggered over to the toilet and brought Ambros some toilet paper.
“Thanks, man.” Ambros cleaned the blood off of his lips and out of his beard. He used a bit of the TP to stop the bleeding from his nose. Then he sat back down on the end of the cot, where the whole silly skit had begun.
The guards arrived, belatedly. One of them started to lecture Ambros, but the other cut him off: “It was self-defense.” He gestured at the corners of the cell: “And there’s cameras now, so...it’s all recorded.” The other guard shrugged.
“Everybody back against that wall,” ordered the first guard.
Ambros walked over and stood in another corner. The other inmates shuffled or lurched over to the wall, as ordered. Then the guards came into the cell, and dragged the casualties out, one at a time, one man pulling while the other watched, Taser in hand.
At length they locked the cell up again. Soon after, medical personnel with stretchers arrived, and the inmates found themselves unwatched save by cameras for a few short minutes while the authorities evacuated the casualties.
One young man walked over to Ambros, showing his palms in token of peaceable intentions. He sat down slowly, exhibiting clear signs of having been on a major bender. He grinned: “Landry and Meyers ain’t gonna be happy with you, man.”
“Those being the names of the two guys I just...” Ambros gestured towards the guard station.
“Yeah...what you in here for?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s utter BS. My lawyer will be in on Monday, and then I’ll have another lawsuit to file against the EPD. Maybe”
“Oh. I’m in here for disturbing the peace, and public drunkenness, and maybe resisting arrest.”
“Hmm.”
“Tomorrow when I’m all the way sober they’ll gimme a phone call. I’ll have my girlfriend come down and bail me out...”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Whaddaya mean, why? So I don’t have to sit in jail for a week before trial, that’s why.”
“I see. You got a job?”
“Well, no. There’s kind of a shortage of those, for a high school dropout. These days, I mean.”
“Uh huh. You’re not in school either, then.”
“No.”
“So what happens after your girlfriend makes bail for you?”
The fellow frowned: “I go home, she yells at me, we argue, I go to trial in a week or so, judge finds me guilty and fines me by ordering me to forfeit my bail...”
After a pause, Ambros noted: “They rely on everybody’s forfeited bail to keep this joint solvent, don’t they?”
“Well, yeah...so?”
Ambros smiled gently: “So...if you’re not working or going to school, why not just stay here? They’ll have to let you out on your own recognizance by Tuesday. Or Thursday at the latest, right?”
“I guess. Yeah, cause of the matrix thing they do. It’s not like I was violent or anything. Didn’t assault a cop, huh?”
“If you say so. Meanwhile, instead of your girlfriend losing some hard-earned cash, you get food and a cot. Lousy food and a rock-hard cot, and it stinks in here, but still. You got kids?”
“Yeah. Well, she got kids. She’s always pissed off when she has to bail me out cause it’s less money to feed the kids with...I bet her sister would watch the kids while she’s at work, if I’m still in here.”
Ambros sat silently for a while.
“Maybe you got a point there.” The young man leaned back against the wall of the cell and closed his eyes.
Ambros scanned the rapt faces of the other inmates, seeing their minds working. He smiled a sunny smile and leaned back against the wall, copying his neighbor. He closed his eyes.
The next two days bored the hell out of Ambros. The cops tried to make him talk, threatening him with a forgery charge for his fake boarding pass, and with an assault charge. He sat there, smiling a little and concentrating on his meditations. It wasn’t easy with cops yelling and pounding the table.
‘It’s a good exercise,’ he decided: ‘I can use the test.’
In the intervals, he preached his gospel of “Don’t make bail” to each new inmate he met. On Saturday night they moved him to a solo cell.
“This is a sign of my success, huh, deputy?” Ambros said, as the officer escorted him along the hall.
The guard gave him a good imitation of the Evil Eye, and said: “Call it that, if you want.” He shoved Ambros into a tiny holding cell and slammed the door.
“Getting testy these days, guys,” he said. He sat down on the concrete bunk to rest and meditate.
Sunday morning came around. Ambros struggled to keep a straight face as a Deputy escorted him out the door of the County lockup.
“Well sir,” said the jailer: “I sure as hell hope this is the last I ever see of you.”
Ambros laughed, unable to stay deadpan: “That’s up to your fellow officers, Deputy.”
The guard grumbled, and said a few uncouth words.
Ambros strolled off towards his Salon: “I have a lesson to teach today.”
As it turned out, he had more than one lesson to teach. As his class at the Salon finished up, he saw Eddie Roth standing in the parking lot beside an Audi station wagon.
Ambros went around the studio, patting students on the back, helping them disarm, racking some of their armor. When the last of them had showered and left, he walked over to the door and gestured to Eddie.
Eddie came in, looking around with obvious curiosity. “Kim told me about this, but I didn’t picture such a—I guess, sophisticated operation.”
Ambros tipped his head a bit to the side: “It’s been getting more like that. What’s up?”
Eddie looked uncomfortable: “My wife...she’s worried about her sister.”
“Her sister Kim, I guess, not her sister Kate.”
“Well, yeah...”
“I need a shower,” Ambros said: “Meet me at Samuel B’s in a half hour. I’ll see if I can help you.”
Eddie nodded and turned; Ambros sent a command to the door to lock itself.
He came out of the shower room dressed in his best boots, black silk trousers and a heavy wool coat over a red silk shirt. He blacked out his windows with a gesture, then Jumped to the parking lot behind Samuel B’s.
He entered the pub, saw Eddie, and nodded. He got a drink and joined him, seated at the bar.
“What’s up?”
Eddie said: “I really don’t like bothering you like this. You have good reason to distrust me...but Sophia is really worried.”
“Say on.”
Eddie stared at the lines of bottles on the shelves behind the bartenders: “She says that Kim is acting really weird. She—Kim, that is—walks around in a daze sometimes, muttering gibberish. It can be hard to get her attention. She’ll stare at her laptop and wave her hands around, and blink a lot. Adele is the only thing that gets her attention, when she’s in that...state.
“Kim is also just gone a lot of the time, and she never explains her absences. She takes Adele with her. She answers her phone only about half the time, and she’s totally evasive about where she is and what she’s doing. The GPS on her phone is totally blocked...Sophia doesn’t get why. I was hoping...”
“...that I could set your mind at ease, and that you could then set your wife’s mind at ease?” Ambros grinned encouragingly: “I may be able to help.”
They sat in silence for a minute or so. Then Ambros said: “Kim is attending a school in another...country. It’s an extremely advanced course involving physics, psychology, and higher maths. The ‘gibberish’ is Greek; it has a lot of math and physics jargon mixed in. The ‘in a daze’ part...I’d noticed that, too. I figure she has a lot on her mind, what with all the stuff she’s studying. It’s weird stuff. So...as long as she snaps out of when Adele cries, I think things are okay. Right?”
“So she’s going to college in Greece? Some kind of advanced degree program?”
“I didn’t say that. But if you draw that conclusion, and relay it to Sophia, that might be for the best.”
“Huh. But if that’s all that’s going on, how come Kim won’t just say that?”
Ambros waited: ‘Eddie is a lawyer, right?’
Then Eddie nodded: “That’s not all that’s going on, then. But you won’t tell me any more than Kim will.”
“Bingo.”
Eddie sighed: “Okay. I’ll see if that works. I hope it does.”
“Me too,” said Ambros.
Eddie finished his beer and sighed again: “Okay, thanks. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“I’m usually here on Saturdays,” Ambros replied.
Eddie got up and exited the pub. Ambros took his drink to a table in a corner, shaking off the discomfort he’d felt sitting next to Eddie, with his back to a door: ‘And to a huge window. Makes my skin crawl.’
Kim entered the pub, spotted him and grinned. She got a glass of beer and wended her way across the room to him. “Hi, handsome,” she said.
“Hey. Where’s Adele?”
“With the Aunties. Clem is so good with her!”
He gestured for her to sit, and she pulled the chair over close to him. She kissed him and said: “Was that my brother-in-law I saw walking away from here?”
“Yeah.”
“Was he here to see you?”
“He met me at the Salon at the end of class. He’s worried about you, actually. Or rather, Sophia is worried about you and Eddie was the messenger.”
He gave Kim a short version of Sophia’s fears, and let her think about it for a while.
She said: “I’m being clueless, aren’t I? I never even noticed the effect my absent-mindedness was having.”
He nodded, once: “It’s borderline dangerous, too.”
She frowned.
“If you, with your knowledge of the Multiverse, start having an emotional effect on random people...”
She interrupted: “Sophia and Eddie are hardly random people, but I get what you’re saying.” She grinned widely.
A man entered the room and Ambros’ eyebrows arched. He scraped his chair around to aim it at the door, and reached for his walking stick, which he’d set on the floor near at hand. He moved Kim’s chair subtly, so she was screened from any attack by the table and some other chairs. He touched the knives that he kept in his boots, left, then right. He unbuttoned the patch pocket where his Commonwealth sidearm sat in its holster.
“What’s wrong?” asked Kim.
Ambros gestured, a tiny movement of his left hand: it was a Commonwealth military handsign for ‘be alert, dangerous person’.
She moved another chair and put it beside her, guarding her right side. She kept one hand on it throughout the ensuing conversation.
The guy saw Ambros and grinned sheepishly. He approached, hands in sight, and asked: “Can I sit down? My friend Tony says I owe you an apology.”
Ambros gestured at the chair furthest from Kim. Deke sat down.
Ambros gestured at their visitor: “Kim, this is Deke, I told you about him...”
She nodded.
He waited, staying as relaxed as he could. His stick leaned against his right thigh.
Eventually Deke said: “I’m sorry. I see that yer an American. I was drunk that night, and I didn’t realize you and yer...cousin? Anyway, you were speaking Greek.”
“Because my cousin is Greek. I accept your apology...conditionally.”
“What?”
Ambros made a face: “If I’d been a foreigner, what would you have done? Just what you did, I reckon. What if I’d not been capable of defending myself?”
“Well, y’see, I’d probly be in jail again. Probly felonious assault.”
“Probably. Where would I be? In the hospital?”
Deke looked embarrassed and defiant at once: “Yeah, probly.”
“So you really don’t like foreigners, huh?”
Deke started to rant, then stopped: “You think I’m some goat-roping country boy with more muscle than brains, huh?”
Ambros laughed: “That’s the impression you’ve given me, so far. Show me something different.”
Deke nodded: “I don’t like foreigners for economic reasons. I don’t like black or brown people because they’re all so uppity these days. And I don’t like smartasses who use their educations like a weapon.”
“Dude,” Ambros said: “I did no such thing. I was having a civil conversation with my cuz when you assaulted me!”
“Okay, yeah. That’s what happened. I apologize, again.”
“Accepted. You are forgiven for assaulting me. Now your racism...”
“I ain’t a racist!”
“Think about what you said earlier, Deke. What about that is not racist?”
Deke glowered at him: “I suppose you believe ni...you believe black folks are just like me and you?”
Kim frowned, looking pissed.
“Yeah,” said Ambros: “But it’s not something I ‘believe’, like a matter of faith. It’s that all humans are so closely related that it seems silly to let skin color or any other surface feature control my emotions.”
Deke grumbled: “Not related to any nig...black folks.”
Kim spoke up: “99.99 percent of your DNA says otherwise. You share 99.9 percent of your DNA with gorillas and chimps. You share seventy percent with mice.”
Ambros grinned: “You could look it up.”
Deke glowered: “Overeducated shitheads...”
“I have a high school diploma...somewhere,” said Ambros: “But the rest of my education is unofficial and self-directed. You could do that, too.”
Deke snickered, sarcastically: “Well, I try not to use the mouse DNA on a regular basis.”
Kim laughed out loud: “Deke, dude...the parts of your DNA that you share with mice are things like what makes your liver and kidneys and lungs and heart work. Not to mention things like your endoskeleton and bi-lateral symmetry.” She shook her head, making no attempt to conceal her amusement.
“I think it’s funny, too,” said Ambros.
Deke pushed his chair back, grumbling: “I ain’t gotta put up with this shit...” His hands closed into fists.
Ambros reached down and drew one of his knives: “You sure don’t. If I were you I would leave this joint before someone gets hurt.” He flashed Deke just enough blade to make it clear that he had it: “Scram.”
Deke paled, then flushed. Ambros got his feet under him, just in case. His free hand went to his pocket, where the Commonwealth sidearm sat.
But Deke turned and strode out, blustering about “lib-ruls” as he went.
No one stopped him.
Ambros sighed, relieved: “I didn’t really want to hurt him...or kill him...”
Kim said: “You do realize that...this Deke guy will be on the ‘other side’ if the ATLs invade this Timeline? Like, he’ll put on a swastika as soon as he sees that there’s a chance of an Authoritarian victory.
“Oh yeah,” said Ambros: “Then...I might very well have to kill the asshole.”
He hammered the rest of his whisky, then got up to get another.
Kim cautioned: “Don’t get too drunk, old man. Deke may be out there waiting...”
Ambros paused; then he continued over to the bar and got another. As he sat back down, he gave himself a mental dope-slap: “I can find out if Deke is waiting for us. I have the technology...”
Soon he had a real-time 3-d map of the Benham Neighborhood on the table, visible only to him and Kim. He could see Deke stumbling along 4thAvenue, waving his arms and talking to himself. He tagged the guy and ordered his tech to watch out for him: “That guy comes within three hundred ells of me, or of any member of the household, tell me immediately.”
“Akuo sas,” said his MPS, buzzing in his ear.
Ambros finished armoring up. It was ‘Tournament Day’ at Anni’s class, and he had never been able to convince her that he ought to be excused from fighting. One of the other Spathae stared at him, speculatively.
‘Spathisi Dheklani,’ he remembered.
The Tourney went as it always did, with one exception; Anni lost in the semi-finals and Ambros fought Dheklani in the final.
She was spirited and determined, and gave him one of the best fights he’d had in a while. In the end he resorted to trickery to defeat her.
Afterwards, she approached him.
“Good fight, Spathisi,” he said, saluting her. She had dark hair, the kind of brown that is not quite black, and pale skin, with an epicanthic fold to her eyelids. It was startling combination of features: ‘But “normal” here in the Commonwealth,’ he mused, smiling at the dissonance of that thought.
“Efharisto,” she replied: “I thought I should tell you...”
“Yeah?”
“Arrenji asked me to be her chief assistant. I accepted...of course.”
“Good,” he said: “She’s been needing one for a long time, ever since Voukli got promoted. And congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“So, Arrenji and Voukli are giving you private lessons? I thought you fought better today.”
“Yes. That’s the real reason I agreed to the position, frankly. It’s a damn hard job, more than I realized.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Some of my friends who have similar positions in other Guilds talk about a ‘chief assistant’s’ tasks being mostly ‘scut work’.”
Ambros nodded: “But that work has to get done, right? It’s only fair that you gain skills and Status for doing it.”
“Absolutely,” she replied: “Especially since ‘scut work’ in Sacred Band seems to require all the brains and stamina I can bring to the job...” She grinned ruefully: “I definitely didn’t realize what I was getting into.”
“You regret the decision?”
“Not at all!”
“Fair enough. I imagine you’ll be in charge of Arrenji’s calendar, so I expect we’ll be in touch fairly often. Kalamerosas!”
“Ki esos,” she said, and went strip off her armor. Ambros copied her, then set off for the Baths.
