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zzambrosius_02CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: The Aftermath, With Ethical Dilemmas
Ambros, Arrenji, and Voukli dropped into a plaza in Paris: obviously a version of Paris, despite the lack of several important landmarks from his own Line’s version.
His visor showed him three layers of force fields, one encompassing the plaza, another wrapped around the outer walls of a smallish fortified cathedral, and a third closely mirroring the walls of the cathedral itself.
“We’re sure he’s in there, then?” Ambros holstered his pistol and relaxed a bit.
Voukli shrugged: “Reds and Blacks have been pressing him and his bodyguards for three days. Traced their last Saltation to here. And this is where the Squids thought he’d go, at the end. His ‘last resort’ they thought.”
“They can’t Jump through our force fields,” said Arrenji: “If the Emperor is going to escape us now, he’ll have to do it on foot.”
Voukli nodded: “He’s supposed to have four women with him. At any one time three of them are armed and armored; whichever one isn’t armored is for his pleasure.”
Arrenji made a face.
Red Warrior Guild soldiers massed in the square near them. Arrenji made a handsign and they approached and spread out along the walls, eventually surrounding the compound completely.
Twenty Black Warriors dropped in, atop the walls, facing the cathedral. Arrenji made another handsign and one of the squads of techs moved forward. After a minute, the heavy oak door disintegrated.
The Blacks jumped down and charged the cathedral, smashing windows and breaking doors and entering through every opening so created.
Red Warriors flowed through the open gate, taking the inside of the wall and laying down cover fire throughout the gardens.
Gunfire broke out, the loud reports of ATL slugthrowers and the sound of blasters, countered by the buzz of Commonwealth microwave projectors and the zing of the Black’s own longarms.
Ambros heard the all-clear even as the Magistriae jogged forward. He followed close behind as they passed into the nave. Blacks were staged on either side of the vestry door, and on the dais behind the altar. More of them herded a sad-looking trio of prisoners into a corner; others dragged the corpses of their enemies aside, leaving a clear path for the Sacred Band trio.
The inner force field followed their movements, contracting as they approached their target.
“Stand ready,” Arrenji said, calm and sarcastic: “We’re about to call on his Majesty Jean IV, self proclaimed Emperor of the Multiverse. I expect he’s not going to welcome us...”
Ambros drew his pistol and APS, activating the plasma sword at full power and extending the blade. Voukli pulled out a Commonwealth drone, and set it to act as a flare; Arrenji had her APS in two hands.
She nodded to the Blacks by the vestry door. One of them slapped a power mod onto the door handle and turned away.
The door blew inwards with a bang. Ambros led the way, then, running the final thirty ells and leaping over the debris that still clogged the entrance.
An elderly monk cowered in the corner of the vestry. Ambros thumbed his APS down to minimum power and stunned the cleric unconscious with the flat of it, then pushed the sword back to full power and began hacking at the final portal.
It took him nearly ten seconds to bring it down: “That must be some fancy reinforcement right there,” he said.
It finally fell, inward as he’d hoped.
Voukli tossed her flare into the room, briefly blinding any occupants.
Then the three of them charged through, firing their pistols continuously. Three lightly armored female ‘bodyguards’ screamed berserk-ly as they fired very old-fashioned gunpowder slugthrowers at the invaders. All three fell within seconds; Voukli’s marksmanship had clearly not suffered from three days of near-continuous combat.
Ambros hit the floor as soon as he was in. He rolled onto his back and sent a continuous stream of high speed “bullets” in the direction of the bed—a huge, curtained, four-poster. He aimed high, to keep the targets’ heads down.
Arrenji and Voukli also fired in that direction, kneeling on either side of him. A man in a black silk nightshirt fell out of one side of the bed; a woman screamed over and over from the other side.
Before Ambros could react, Arrenji whipped out her APS and swiped the fellow’s head clean off. The corpse flopped about, nerves firing randomly in the absence of orders from above.
‘A lot like the entire L’Iriquois Empire at the moment.’ Ambros thought.
The head made faces for several seconds, seeming enraged. Ambros cleared his visor and grinned sarcastically at the late Emperor: ‘Let this face be last thing you see, shithead.’
Voukli placed a tell-tale on the stump of the man’s neck and read off a series of numerals and letters and short jargonish phrases.
Iatros Versingos’ voice came over the radio: “That’s all as it should be. Check the telomeres...”
Voukli handsigned at the tell-tale and then said: “Beyond full telomeres. Artificially augmented by 200%.” She added: “There’s an induced mutation at the 4-70-18 nexus. This guy would be ridiculously fertile...”
“That’s your target. Mission accomplished.”
“Got one more thing to do,” said Arrenji: “It’s traditional, after all.”
She used her APS again, this time chopping out the tall pole at the left of the foot of the bed. The woman screamed again as the canopy fell upon her.
Arrenji tipped her head in that direction, and Voukli nodded.
Voukli put a black silk pillowcase over the woman’s head, before she could see the fate of her Imperial lover...or master.
While Voukli bound the prisoner, Arrenji wrestled the pole away from its curtains and canopy and used it to impale the late Emperor’s head. Blood and brains flowed down as the pole pierced the membrane formed by the APS’s cauterizing effect.
Ambros studied the concubine’s body, artificially kept at an age in the very early teens. She struggled, cursing in Rational French, creatively enough to belie that apparent age.
Voukli dope-slapped her lightly, saying in the same language: “Be silent, fool. Your side has lost. Thank any gods you hold dear that you are alive.”
The woman froze for a moment, then slumped to the floor in an apparent faint.
Voukli stowed her weapons and scooped the bound prisoner up, throwing her over her shoulder and calling Commonwealth Prime: “Bring me home, ’Gatos. I have a high-value prisoner on my back.”
In a second she disappeared. The echoes of her vanishing bang filled the room.
Arrenji put an evac module on Jean IV’s headless chest and watched the body until it Saltated.
She grinned at Ambros, who had no such expression to return to her.
“What’s the matter?” she asked: “This was your plan. Looks like it worked! No way we’d be this successful after a mere three days without your insights...”
He shrugged: “We’ll see. This is a win. That guy...” He gestured at the head: “...that guy is a good riddance. It just seems anti-climactic. Some of his victims—no, almost all of them—would think that he died too easily.”
Arrenji laughed: “I thought about that. Way too easy. But...I didn’t want him to escape again. Supposedly, this is his last resort...”
Ambros nodded agreement: “Squids think so...but who can be certain, right?”
Arrenji retrieved the Emperor’s head, lifting up the pole. “What’s the quickest way to the walls? We want to display this on the plaza side.”
He silently consulted his MPS, then led the way: back into the vestry, through the sanctuary and out via the chapel where they’d broken in.
The wall that fortified the Cathedral had multiple stairways leading up to the parapets. Arrenji trotted up one of them, to west of the Gatehouse. Ambros leaned against a huge oak tree, watching her disappear into the tower.
She appeared again at the highest parapet of the tower, above the Gatehouse. She wedged the pole into a battlement, allowing Jean IV’s head to leer over the plaza like a demented gargoyle.
Ambros mused on the spectacle: “This how every L’Iriquois Emperor ended, save the first. A head on a spike, displayed for the People’s edification...this time, there will be no successor, not in any of the Lines. Gonna be pretty chaotic.”
Arrenji leaned against the parapet, gazing out over the plaza below her. She made a handsign, summoning Ambros to her side.
Ambros could hear a crowd gathering in the streets. The mutter of many voices in conflict piqued his curiosity. He flexed his legs, feeling three full days and nights of near-constant brutal combat in every fiber of his muscles: “I ain’t climbing those stairs.”
He locked his Shifter on to Arrenji’s position, and geo-Saltated up beside her. The echo of his disappearing bang struck his ears as he arrived.
The Commonwealth troops assembled in the plaza, Jumping away in groups as they finished their various assignments. The outer force field faded and vanished. Ambros’ radio gave him the voice of the Black Warrior Commander, mustering her Phalanx, preparing for their next task.
The plaza began to fill with people from the streets nearby, people out-and-about in spite of the sounds of combat still audible in the distance.
Seeing the head of the infamous Emperor Jean IV L’Iriquois high above them, the crowd began to stir. Some applauded, looking around nervously. A couple of ragged cheers went up; a man in Legionnaire’s uniform seized a cheering woman by the arm and shook her, hard.
The crowd turned on him, growling. He reached for his sidearm, then stopped, suddenly aware of the danger he was in.
He fled. Men and women pursued him.
The Legionnaire did not escape.
Ambros forced himself to watch.
After a moment, Arrenji said: “Another widow. More orphans, maybe. More victims of this stupid war.”
Ambros remained silent.
She sighed: “I know. How many widows, how many orphans, was he responsible for creating?”
Ambros nodded: “It’s not like he was an ordinary footsoldier. He saw what the Emperor was all about and said: ‘Hey, I want in on that. I’ll volunteer for the Legion...’ Like volunteering for the SS.”
Arrenji nodded.
Ambros watched the people in the plaza go from one to another and embrace; he saw the celebration begin. People in khaki uniforms, red stars on breasts and caps, passed among the crowd, handing out food and water, giving firearms to volunteers and mustering them for combat in other parts of the City of Lights.
“Sparticists,” Ambros guessed.
“Yes,” said Arrenji.
The explosions and bursts of automatic weapons fire seemed further away, but fighting obviously continued in various arrondissements around the City.
“So...what’s next?” asked Ambros
Arrenji said: “Nothing.”
“What? There’s nothing left to do?”
“Oh, there’s plenty left to do,” she laughed: “The whole operation won’t be over for days, dekamerae even. Voukli is leading an attack on this Line’s version of a War Room; that will cut off the last source of authoritative orders to a billion invading troops, in dozens of Lines. There will be battles fought here and there for a decade before we’ve put down the last Authoritarian remnants. But it’s mostly mop-up and Propaganda now, in most Lines. Sacred Band—the ‘point of the spear’ as you might say—our tasks are pretty nearly done. Go home to Commonwealth Prime, take a nap, eat a hot meal...find your family, find your friends. Oh!”
“What?” he asked.
Arrenji frowned, listening to ‘news’ on her helm’s Command Channel: “Magistri Anni...she’s dead. Another casualty...”
“How? How could she...she had that incurable nerve disease thing...”
“Can’t stop anyone who wants to defend the Commonwealth. Part of the original Ten Acts...she went with a Red Warrior Phalanx to an Allied Line. They...”
“Enough,” he said: “I can’t process this now.”
She nodded: “Head for home...”
“Endaxi,” he said, feeling the tears running down his face: “I’ll do that...”
Ambros dropped in to his usual War Room, stumbling as he reeled towards the seating area.
‘The room’s actually nearly quiet,’ he thought: ‘That’s just because the fighting is dying down all over...’ He removed his helm and collapsed into a chair, slumping into it like a teenager.
He made a move as though to roll his shoulders, but his muscles protested loudly. His joints creaked as he slowly relaxed. His eyes closed. He made an effort to stay awake, but failed. His head rolled to one side.
He slept.
He woke; some dream or nightmare had shaken him awake, but the image faded before he could process it.
He looked around. He was still slumped in an easy chair in the War Room; no one had disturbed him.
He wondered at that. He looked further.
A Red Warrior Spathos staffed a mostly quiet Main Board. The Controller’s post lay vacant, no one dancing or singing or signing, its functions evidently shut down.
Many of the machines and control panels were similarly quiescent. A few lights blinked or strobed slowly. Some Sacred Band Magistrae and Spathae sat or lay around him, armed or unarmed, and as somnolent as he himself had been moments before. Several snored, an incongruous sound in a place that usually jumped with constant activity.
He nodded, knowing that any emergency would call them all back to their tasks. His shoulders reminded him of his own recent exertions.
He got up slowly, and walked equally slowly toward the main entrance to the War Room.
He stopped to study the Information and Data Guild news-board by the door. The headline at the top said: “WAR IS ENDED.”
The articles below contradicted the headline: fighting went on in quite a few places, and huge groups of soldiers from many Coalition Lines were mopping up resistance in many parts of the Human Multiverse.
He spoke aloud, in a bare whisper: “All three Fuhrers are dead, though. And Jean IV, and very nearly all of his children and their clones...” He thought about babies and small children carrying the Emperor’s bloodline, moved to Quiet Lines to be cared for by refugees of another sort altogether. He turned away.
He passed through the force field into the comforting warm wood-paneled hallways. He didn’t stagger or lurch as he went, but he didn’t push himself, either, walking slowly.
He reached his first goal, the locker room where he’d stored his weapons and armor for nearly two years. He placed his hand on the red panel, watched as the light turned green and the door slowly swung open. He disarmed, then stripped off his sweatshirt, boots and socks, and cargoes. He mused on the incongruity: ‘Civvies. The clothes I had handy when the shit hit. Stinky.’ He pulled the Commonwealth cup away from his crotch. His movements traced the shortest lines and curves to his goals, as though his body were saving energy for yet greater efforts: ‘Shouldn’t be necessary. Not for a week or so, anyway.’
At some point in his three days of combat, his bladder had let loose: “...at least twice, by the smell...” he vaguely recalled the incidents: ‘...once while we were in Monroe, and then...at Dachau Three...yeah.’
Even his thoughts came in terse bundles, laconic, almost Spartan. He racked the armor and hung up his clothes.
‘Blood on the gauntlets...and on the vambraces and greaves...’
His whole kit was stained with evidence of his ‘work’, in spite of the nearly frictionless surfaces of the armor: ‘I guess when there’s enough gore, it sticks to anything.’ He looked at his hands, seeing the stains of mud and shit and sweat...and blood. He stared at the evidence of three days of violence and bloodshed, a lot of it on his hands for real as well as metaphorically. He raised his hands and wiped them down his face, from his hairline to the pointed end of his beard, and then on down his chest, rubbing the inner surfaces of his fingers against his pecs and abdomen. He sat there for a long while, meditating on what he’d done.
At length he rose. A gesture closed the locker. He turned to face the wall of mirrors that stood between him and the showers. Diffidently, he rubbed some of the remaining stains onto his thighs and genitals.
Flashes of his memories of the last three days appeared like visions projected before him. People screaming, people crying, buildings collapsing or burning; a thousand Plasma swords flashing as people fought in close quarters; a tank with SS markings disintegrating; hundreds of people, near skeletons, gathering around to praise him at the liberation of Dachau in Nazi Line 2...
‘...and the piles of ash there, and the remains of bones poking out of the piles or spilled on the ground around the crematories...skulls, femurs...seventy-five years worth of mass murder...that’s the dream that woke me...’ He knew the smallest skulls would come back to haunt him in dreams: “Again and again, I bet.”
He didn’t look forward to a Commonwealth lifetime of nights filled with dreams like that.
He made an effort, and looked at himself in the mirror. Naked, with streaks of black and red and brown all up and down his face and body, he looked like some revenant of a forgotten world, where the daily struggle for life was a life-or-death proposition in itself.
He passed on into the shower, and worked assiduously to expunge the stains.
“Out, damned spot!” He laughed, and then covered his face.
He found himself in front of the locker again. He opened it, and began to dress, putting on a Sacred Band red jumpsuit and his
own socks and boots, ‘magically’ cleansed of all the blood and offal. He reached for his belt, and stopped. In the place of his Spathos-red wide leather belt he found two others hanging: one black as his thoughts, one stainless white. He stared for a long time at the sight, his mind blank, eyes barely seeing.
He shrugged and sat down, drawing his first truly deep breath since he’d wakened; letting it out, he relaxed into a meditative state:
“Calm...Relax...Calm...Relax...” It took some time, how long he never knew, to reach those states.
Eventually, he reached down into the footlocker at his feet and drew out his old squire’s belt, crocheted of red linen yarn. He wrapped that around his waist twice and tied it firmly.
He stood in front of the huge mirror again. He combed his hair and pulled it into his usual topknot. He braided it, but left the ends unsecured, so that it might gradually fall out of the braid. He shrugged, not caring one way or the other.
He contemplated his Obligations, and chose the hardest thing first.
‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ he thought: ‘Combat Medical has done some miraculous stuff—for you among others. Maybe Jimmy’ll pull through.’
He couldn’t convince himself.
He turned left into the hallway, and walked aimlessly until he found a bank of elevators.
“Anichte,” he commanded. Half of the doors opened immediately. He entered the nearest, handsigned his destination at the panel. The car dropped down and then sped sideways, pressing him against one wall.
The door opened and he exited the car. Directly across from him stood the arched entrance to Combat Medical. He walked through: slowly, reluctantly. ‘It’s a spacious waiting room, with comfortable sitting and reclining space. ’Wealthers don’t stint on such things...’ As soon as he was in, he saw Kim. He breathed deeply and sighed.
She was nursing Adele. She looked up and saw him. She had a blank look about her; she stared, and tears began to fall.
He crossed the room and knelt before her. He said: “I’m sorry...”
She shook her head and sobbed, once, and then by an obvious effort of will she stopped crying.
“It’s not your fault...” she whispered: “You did everything you could do to keep him from...”
“I know,” he interrupted: “But it wasn’t enough.”
They stayed there, he with one hand on her knee and the other on the suckling baby’s back, her left arm holding the child and her right hand pressed against the side of his face. He closed his eyes.
“Tell me,” he said, at length.
“Medics say he’s all...smashed up inside. An explosive, at close range. The armor held...of course. He’s not dead...” She sobbed again, and again suppressed it: “I can’t cry, Adele stops nursing when I cry. Anyway...Jaíme is holding on, but they...they need cloned parts for his...intestines...and lungs. He wasn’t considered ready for combat, no one thought he would go...so...”
“So they are using artificial transplants to keep him going until...”
She interrupted again: “I don’t think he’ll make it, Ambros. I think he’s already gone.”
He nodded.
They sighed as one.
Adele squirmed. The tableau broke as Ambros rose and Kim turned the baby over her shoulder. After the burp Kim put the baby on the chair beside her and stood up. She embraced Ambros and wept silently for a few minutes.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I did nothing...nothing special.”
“You’re special,” she said.
He shook his head.
“You are.”
“Sure,” he said, unconvinced. After a pause he said: “Luisa? Marie?”
“They were here...I think they took a Red Warrior patrol and went back home—Seventeen, I mean—to look for Luisa’s mom. They were talking about armor and all when they left.” Before he could ask she said: “Randy is here, too. He’s lost two fingers on his hand. The meds will replace them. And your students, the kids...Allie and Gustav...”
He raised an eyebrow.
She said: “At the Temple.”
“I better go there.”
“You’d better,” she agreed. She kissed him and pushed him towards the door.
Ambros strode across the stone floor of the Main Hall of the Command Complex. His boots made little noise, but such sound as they made got taken up and echoed around the room, bouncing in many directions from the granite walls and the barrel arch of the roof. He made a handsign as he passed out of the Hall, and the Archare on night duty saluted him.
He walked through the silence of the City of Athino. He’d lost track of the time while he slept in the War Room. Once on the street, he knew it for pre-dawn.
‘But pre-dawn of what day?’ he wondered. He tried to calculate: ‘The shit hit the fan on May Day...funny the ATLs chose that day to strike...yeah, funny. So...I went for a day and a night and another day before I napped at...Monroe. Then another solid thirty-six hours after that, finishing with...it must be May...fourth, I think, the fourth of May, just before sunup.’
He shook his head and touched his MPS. It went live immediately, with date and time. He nodded.
He noticed how quiet it was, the usual chatter of thousands of people dulled to a mere murmur. ‘This City is noisy, most of the time...people talk, sing, play music, dance.’
Even the Library, which usually had at least half its lights burning, sat mostly dark, with only a few bright windows in the Military Wing.
The Temple of Asklepios loomed at the end of Leoforio Leontari, taking up a full block on the northeast side of the street. Much of the murmur of voices he heard came from the plaza in front of the colonnade that bordered the porch.
Laborers worked to stretch a sunshade across the avenue, from the pillars of the Temple to the stoa across from it. Below, on beds neatly laid out in rows—or in circles—lay hundreds of wounded ATL common soldiers. A great many Medical Guild Seniors and Iatrae moved among the ranks and files, ministering to wounds and applying pain medicines. Juniors and Archarae followed in their wakes, gluing and dressing the wounds. Other Laborers bore litters, bringing more wounded enemy soldiers into the improvised hospital.
Red Warrior Archarae stood in the middle of each circle, armed with pistols and cudgels. They turned slowly in place, watching over higher-ranking patients, each with a bright red knock-out patch visible on hand or neck.
Ambros maneuvered around the bustling scene, approaching the stairs up to the porch of the Temple.
The first beam of sunlight struck the front of the stoa and reflected upon the scene. The sound of soft voices ceased, and most of the Meds and Laborers stood, facing the light with eyes closed. After a moment, they all went back to their work.
He paced across the marble floor, between the pillars of the inner colonnade, and entered the sanctuary. Inside, many more injured lay, these civilian, mostly women or little children. The kids sobbed or wailed, and the women soothed them, or wept in their turn.
The sound of Rational French, Norwegian, Polish, and even several sorts of English, echoed around the room. The Iatrae and their assistants in the sanctuary were all women. Scattered round the room, people with darker skin lay, refugees from the many Africas of the Multiverse.
Ambros passed through. A Priestess of the Cult of Asklepios stood at the altar, hands raised, praying.
He stepped through a force field, and then through doors of translucent aluminum.
‘This lobby usually functions as a waiting area. Full of more wounded today.’
Someone called his name: “Ambros!”
He turned and saw Allie running towards him, dodging from side to side to pass across a less ordered collection of beds and pallets.
She hit him hard, and clung, weeping. He wrapped his arms around her and held tight, until she pulled away.
She took his hand and tugged, leading him back the way she’d come. Gustav lay on a bed against the far wall, prosaic IV bottles around him and an air mask on his face. Bandages swathed his left leg, and the stump of his foot hung in the air, held aloft by a very ordinary pillow beneath his calf. His right leg, bent at the knee, showed the thigh wound Ambros had plugged, now sterilized and glued.
“The doctor said they can fix his foot, but it would be a while. Twenty days, she said.” Allie looked dubious.
Ambros smiled: “They did mine. My left leg.” He sat on the floor and pulled the leg of his jumpsuit out of his boot: “See?”
The scar where his cloned leg was attached still showed clearly. She frowned at it, then reached out and stroked it.
“Okay,” she said, at length
He bloused the fabric back into his boot.
He sat with her a while, not touching, just there. After some time he noticed that she’d fallen asleep. He got up and wandered aimlessly around the lobby, stopping to talk with anyone who greeted him.
He saw a familiar face: “Hey Sarge, good to see you still alive!”
Arlen sat up, then grunted in pain. “Shit, Ambros, you too. Gah!”
“Where’d you get hit?”
“Oh, here and there. Red is gone, got it right between the eyes.”
“Damn, I’m sad to hear that,” said Ambros.
“Yeah. You know what the craziest thing was? After we got in the doors at the cop shop, one of them German soldiers tried to bite me!”
“Did he break the skin? “ Ambros asked, suddenly concerned.
“Nah. Didn’t even get through my sweatshirt.”
The two friends embraced, then Ambros wandered on.
He stopped by one woman, broken by blast or torture he could not tell. She opened her remaining eye and spoke, in a bastardized Rational Spanish:
“Why have you brought me here? Why is the war?”
He bit his lips and stifled his first response, which was not kind. Then he said: “I don’t know why you are here, except that...my people will heal you of your wounds, as much as we can do.” He spoke Spanish, his Line’s version; she seemed to understand well enough.
He looked around the room, recalling what he’d seen outside, and understood: “You are one of many very badly injured people, here and in other places, who were innocents...not combatants...what the enemy would call ‘collateral damage’. This room,” he gestured about the enormous hall: “...is full of such as you.”
“Sí. But...? Why is the war?”
He stumbled a bit, starting and stopping several times: “Um...Jean IV...three fuhrers...the Multiverse...an urge for genetic mixing...irrational thought processes...”
Then he shook his head: “I don’t know. The only thing I can tell you is what I see in History: Authoritarians attack and invade their neighbors. It is among the things that they do; why is beyond me. They do it over and over, though, like bullies, until they punch the wrong person: someone who can punch back.”
She frowned, then smiled: “You punched back?”
He nodded. Then he shrugged: “We did our best. It was enough, this time.”
She took his hand and squeezed it: “Grac’, S’ñor, much’ grac’.”
“D’ nad’,” he replied, clipping his vowels as she had done.
He rose and continued to wander, thinking: ‘But it’s not “nothing”. We burned a billion kilo-bangs of energy—at least—and shed the blood of many of our best people...our original motivation was to preserve ourselves; we extended that to preserving many other Lines, and liberating a bunch of our apparent enemies from their dictators...’
“’Liberating,” he snorted, laughing sarcastically at his own euphemism: “We murdered the 1% in a hundred Timelines, and we are hoping that allows people to reset their worlds for the better.”
“Who are you talking to?” asked Allie.
He’d wandered back to where Gustav lay. He looked down at her, where she sat, leaning against the wall: “Myself, mostly. Trying to rationalize all of the blood on my hands.”
“Oh,” she said: “Well, you saved me, and my brother and dad...and mom....”
She looked at her own hands, still stained with Gustav’s dried blood; her sweatshirt was stiff with it.
“I need a shower,” she said.
“We can arrange that...clean clothes, too.” Ambros touched his MPS, shifted to a channel not overwhelmed with talk of war or medical jargon, and said: “Laborer’s Guild...?”
When he signed off on that Guild, he searched again: “Jonie? I’m taking your daughter to the Baths; you should come along too. No, the Med Guild will ping me if Patrick wakes up. Yes, down three flights of stairs, someone at the lobby desk will speak American...you’ll see us...endaxi...I mean, okay, see you in a few.”
He led them through the streets of Athino.
In spite of the trauma they’d suffered (and still suffered) they craned their necks, pointing and oohing at the sights. ‘Athino is impressive,’ he thought.
“The Akropolis is usually visible from almost any part of the City,” he said, acting the tour guide: “Other major landmarks are the Library,” he pointed: “the Temple of Zeus—sorry, you can’t see that from here...”
As they moved out of the Temple District and approached the street leading to the Baths, they saw a curious sight.
“Those are gorillas,” said Allie, matter-of-factly.
“Yeah,” said Jonie, not as calmly.
Three adult gorillas came knuckle-walking along the Odo Aeolena: A silverback male and two somewhat smaller females. One of the females had a baby at her breast.
The male gorilla wore a vest made of some sparkly material, and trousers tailored to his physique. The females wore puffy pants and shawls.
Before and behind, and to either side, Thinker’s Guild Magistrae with Diplomacy Deme stars on their clothing escorted the group along the street, speaking occasionally in a language of grunts, clicks, vowels and gestures. The male replied, swift movements of one hand augmenting his vocalizations.
Ambros paused by the road and activated his MPS.
After a moment, he said: “Diplomacy must go on, whatever other crises may intrude.”
“What?” asked Jonie.
“That is an Embassy from a new-found Timeline.” Ambros noted the expanded look to these apes’ skulls.
“Planet of the Apes!” Allie exclaimed, laughing.
Ambros’ eyes narrowed and he nodded, thoughtfully: “Yep.” He shook his head: “Baths. We need to get on...”
The building that housed the Baths and the Public Laundry squatted beside the street.
He led them into the Bath side, and spoke as they walked: “The Baths here are public, but you’ve both showered in the public spaces at the Country Fair, so that oughtn’t to trouble you.” Seeing Allie’s expression, he said: “I’ll find you some relative privacy.”
She nodded.
He took their bloodied clothes as they undressed, and handed them large fluffy towels: “You want these back? I could recycle them.”
Allie said: “You said clean clothes? I’d rather have clean stuff.”
Jonie agreed. They wrapped themselves in the towels
“Okay. It’s on its way.”
He stripped down to match them and wrapped a towel around his waist. He put his clothing into a cubbyhole among the hundreds that lined the walls of the anteroom.
“Nobody wears clothes past that door,” he explained.
He ushered them down a long hallway, looking into one shower room after another until he found one unoccupied.
“Here,” he said: “I’ll stand out here and keep watch.”
“You don’t want to shower?” Jonie asked.
“I just did, about a...an hour or so ago. Go ahead, get clean.”
He leaned against the wall, staring into the shower room across the hall from them. His mind wandered.
The Amundsens came out of the shower, looking cleaner and more relaxed.
He smiled, wanly: “How about some clothes?”
They nodded eagerly. He led them back to the anteroom; they arrived just as a load of dry clothes fell onto the big table next to the Laundry. A Laborer entered the space, saw Ambros, and hailed him: “I have the shoes and sandals you asked for...” He set a wheelbarrow beside the clothes and stepped back, waiting.
Ambros waved at the setup: “Take what you want.”
“Umm.” Jonie seemed dubious.
Ambros said: “The clothes in this pile are the collective ‘property’,” —he signed the airquotes American-style—“of the Polity. This is all stuff that has no personal or Household marks on it. Therefore...”
“Therefore free for the taking!” Allie exclaimed.
Ambros looked at her sideways: “You should have checked with your mom before you read my blog...”
“I did!” Allie protested.
“Endaxi,” he said: “Go ahead and get dressed.”
As they sorted through the pile and chose pieces, he asked: “Are you folks hungry?”
“I am,” said Allie
“Are you hungry, Ambros?” asked Jonie.
“Yes,” he said: “As a matter of fact, I can’t clearly recall when last I ate a bite. I’ll take you to my favorite breakfast place, if you like.”
Jonie opened her hands: “We don’t have any money in this...City.”
Ambros laughed: “Don’t worry. My...credit, I guess you’d say, is pretty much unlimited right now. C’mon.”
As they walked along, Jonie inquired: “You have unlimited credit?”
“Not exactly. But that’s a way to say it that sorta translates. Allie has been reading my blog, and our household e-zine. She’ll have a better handle on Commonwealth economic theory. Anyway, you can have breakfast, on me.”
Jonie shrugged: “Sure.” After a moment, she said: “But, I guess I’d like you to explain it a bit more. Where is this place, how’d we get here, and how does the...politics, I guess you’d say—how does that work? Why are they doing all that medical service for Patrick and Gustav?”
The sun cleared the hills and the City lit up like a Christmas tree, every color imaginable visible from any place within the walls. The Akropolis glowed, reflecting all the colors around it, and shining with flowers and fruit of a hundred or more kinds.
Ambros paused in the doorway of a small taverna near Plataeo Sokratosena, allowing his guests to oooh and aaah.
“This City is so fucking beautiful,” he said, brushing away a tear.
Eventually they followed him in. He took a plate and a mug from the stacks at the end of the breakfast bar.
“This is a buffet line,” he said. “Looks nothing like the ones in our Line, but it works the same way. Load up!” He drew tea so they could see how the urn worked, then piled his plate with various edibles.
They followed him; he led them to a table.
They ate for a while. Ambros ate slowly, pausing after each bite. Allie ate ravenously, and went back for more. Jonie ate even more slowly than Ambros, despite not pausing.
Eventually, Ambros’ felt a little energy, and his brain began to work better. He said: “Now that my blood sugar is closer to a healthy level, I’ll answer your questions. I believe you were wondering how this moneyless economy works?”
“Yeah!” Jonie exclaimed. “How do you...I mean...and where are we?”
“This...” Ambros paused.
“It’s a parallel universe, mom. Obviously.” Allie said it casually.
Jonie looked at her, irritated: “So no big deal then?”
Allie rolled her eyes: “I guess it’s a pretty big deal. We’re alive.”
Jonie took another bite of oatmeal: “Talk, please. My daughter seems to get this whole thing way better than I do.”
“It’s cool. You can read the blog later, if you really want the technicalities explained...to the extent that I can explain them. Anyway, I’ve had a fair amount of time the last couple years to process this system, so here goes, shorthand version: economically, this is little ‘c’ communism. ‘From each, to each’, as Marx put it. I’ll get back to that in a minute,” he said, forestalling questions: “Politically, we have what I would call an anarchist-influenced ultra-democratic distributed oligarchy. And culturally, I would call the place outright anarchist. There is almost no successful coercion of anyone above the age of twelve or so.”
“Sounds pretty Utopian,” said Jonie, thoughtfully.
“If your Utopia includes occasional duels, and an entire gigantic multi-Timeline Authoritarian civilization looming threateningly along the horizon, then sure.” He smiled a bit: “They aren’t looming anymore, I guess...”
“Hmm.” Jonie was thoughtful.
Ambros’ MPS pinged: “Looks like Patrick and Gustav are awake. I better get you two back to the Temple.”
“Temple...”
“The Temple of Asklepios, where the Hospital is.” He gathered the plates and bowls and mugs and carried them to the washtub. A sleepy-looking Kopelos in Culinary Guild Colors saluted him gravely as they left.
As they approached the Temple Jonie asked: “Why are you taking care of us? And all of these other people?” She gazed around: “Aren’t a lot of them enemy soldiers?”
Ambros shrugged: “Yeah, a bunch of them were enemies. Their superior officers are mostly dead, so there’s no one to order them to fight anymore. Most of ‘em didn’t want to fight in the first place. And no one else would help them. Their masters scorn them as cannon-fodder.” He gestured at the plataeo: “This scene is repeated in every City in this Timeline, and in all the Commonwealth Coalition’s Allied Lines. We’ll still barely touch the surface of the misery this war caused.”
Jonie frowned.
“We didn’t start the war, Jonie. We’d have stopped it, anytime in the last two hundred years, if we could have. But...I can’t even think how I would try to explain the idea of ‘collateral damage’ in Rational Hellenic. Centuries ago, when the first Timeline Gates opened, the Grand Commune of the Hellenic Commonwealth and Polity met, at the behest of nearly all of the citizens of Hellas. They—we—amended our founding document for the first time, and the last time. Seeing how rife was the misery in so many Timelines, throughout the Multiverse, we added an Eleventh Act to our...’constitution’, I guess you’d call it. We said: ‘The Hellenic Commonwealth and Polity, and its constituent parts, shall endeavor at all times, to the best of our ability, to reduce suffering in any Timeline that we contact’. So...”
By then he had led them through the Sanctuary and into the Hospital lobby. Allie ran to where Gustav lay, awake now, and cradled his head in her arms.
Jonie followed; Ambros smiled: ‘The rest of the story will have to wait. It’s nice to see an occasional happy-ish ending.’
He spoke to a passing Med Guild Apprentice, arranging to have Gustav moved to his father’s side, then went about his affairs: ‘I should try to find Marie and Luisa.”
He dropped in to his Home Line, on the street near Rose House. He approached the property; all the trees and shrubberies around the house were burned, or ripped from the earth and cast about like pick-up sticks. The house itself was gone, vanished.
“Some one must have Shifted it,” he murmured: “I’ll remember to thank Averos...’ The hole where the house had been had nearly filled with water from shattered pipes. He found the shut-off valve and closed it.
He looked around.
‘I see no sign that they’ve been here, since the Shift...’
He called up a holo-map. To his surprise, it seemed that most of his drones were still active. He searched for Luisa’s mom’s house, and found it. He geo-Shifted over.
The house lay in ruins. He explored around it, eventually entering the back garden.
There he found clear signs: bits of Commonwealth-style medical debris, a small puddle of blood, a shoe he recognized as one of hers.
“So Luisa’s mom is probably in Athino. Where would they go next?” He made a guess and Jumped to his Salon.
He found Marie cradling Sly the cat, who seemed none the worse for wear. The beast spotted him and meowed, squirming loose and stomping over to Ambros.
“Rrrow!” the cat said.
“Sorry,” Ambros replied: “Got a little busy. Nice to see you made it through.”
The cat twined about his ankles, purring.
Luisa came out of the office with a bowl of cat food. She fed the cat and then the three humans embraced.
Both women were in Hellenic Infantry Scout armor. Luisa said: “I don’t see how you can wear this stuff for hours or days at a time, and run around in it.”
Ambros said: “Mine is better fitted, just for me. And...practice.”
“Right.”
Ambros looked around: “I’m surprised this place is standing. The glass is all busted, but otherwise...”
“Yeah,” said Marie: “Somebody stole all those books you used to keep by the door.”
He looked over: “Wow.”
“I know. And the fencing masks, all but one. And the swords...”
He shrugged: “Coulda been my students, salvaging stuff.”
“I guess.”
“Trust me,” he said: “I’ve seen crazier things.”
They put their helms on and exited the Salon. Ambros saw an Ant prowling around some wreckage in the street to the west of them.
They heard gunshots; Ambros drew his pistol and pushed the women behind a wrecked car that blocked the entry to his parking lot.
The Ant reached a pincer into a pile of trash and pulled out a man in uniform. The guy dangled in the Ant’s grasp, his sidearm pointed uselessly into the air.
“That’s a cop. State Police by the look of his clothes,” said Ambros. He kept the pistol at his side and waited.
The Ant turned slowly in his direction.
It spoke from its machine part: “You are unit Ambrosss?”
“I am. How do you know that?”
“This unit is (indecipherable) with unit Bruce.” The Ant brandished the cop, who squealed in pain. “Why does thiss unit fire primitive weaponzss at usss?”
Ambros shrugged: “Didn’t get the memo, I guess.”
“Thiss isss humorous remark?”
“Yeah.” He waved his free hand: “Hey Officer? Don’t shoot at the Ants, okay? Just irritates them.”
The cop snarled out a string of curses, struggling to escape the Ant’s clutches.
The Ant spoke again: “Thiss vocalization does not indicate as-ssent?”
“It does not,” Ambros said, amused.
The Ant deftly disarmed the officer of anything that resembled a weapon crushing or melting each item in turn. Then it tossed the man back into his hiding place in the debris.
The Ant stood quietly as Ambros approached. He shoved the debris aside with his foot and held out a hand: “C’mon, officer, let’s get you some medical attention.”
The cop got to his feet, apparently scorning Ambros’ aid. He had his right arm cradled against his chest, and Ambros could see blood.
‘At least one of his legs must be injured, too,’ Ambros thought.
The officer’s uniform was filthy and tattered; his face bore unmistakable signs of trauma, and future PTSD.
“The hell has been going on?” he muttered: “The hell are those things?”
Ambros grinned: “They are Giant Cyborg Ants, with Squids for Brains.”
“Be serious,” said the cop.
Ambros shrugged: “You asked. Hey there, officer...scuse me, Lieutenant Grandson. I know you don’t recall the incident, but once upon a time you tried to kill me.”
“Huh?” The man looked befuddled.
Ambros slapped a med evac mod on the fellow’s hand and stepped back.
Grandson stood there with his eyes closed, leaking tears. It took all of three minutes before the guy vanished with a bang.
“I’m really hungry,” said Luisa.
“I’m getting that way again, myself,” said Ambros: “Let’s walk over to the Benham area, see if there’s an open joint, or someplace we could loot.”
“Can we get rid of this armor?” Luisa wriggled, uncomfortable.
Ambros shook his head: “I don’t think we should even take the helms off, until we’re indoors somewhere.”
The house across from Samuel B’s lay in complete ruins, the bodies of SS men visible in the heaps of wood and glass. One of the apparent bodies twitched, then rolled over.
“Look away,” said Ambros, and made sure they both turned their backs. He walked over the SS man and double tapped him. He went around and did head shots on every visible Nazi.
Samuel B’s had taken several direct hits from mortar shells, by the look of it, but the frame of the building still hung together. Ambros crawled carefully into the wreckage and found what he’d hoped for.
“Got a pen, one of you?”
Marie tossed him one. He scrawled a message on the remains of the bar: ‘I owe Samuel B’s half a fifth of Jameson’s.’
He cradled the bottle carefully as he climbed back over the remains of the door.
The bakery next door stood, miraculously, nearly intact. They could smell bread and hot sugar, bacon and sausage, and other cooking aromas.
Luisa led the way in, Ambros right behind; the barista smiled a welcome. People crowded the seating, eating and drinking mostly in silence.
Everyone stopped and stared at their armor. Ambros cleared his visor, then raised it.
He spotted the owner, whom he knew only faintly. The guy waved.
“Everything’s free,” he said: “We have no electricity, we have to get the stuff in the refrigerators cooked and served.” He lifted a huge kettle from the gas stove and poured steaming water through a big coffee filter into a gigantic urn.
Marie and Ambros took cups of coffee, and Luisa chose tea. They loaded their plates from a makeshift buffet line on the north side of the café.
Ambros went to the long table in the center of the larger room: “If you folks will make room for me, I can get you some news about where things stand in the world right now...” He triggered Shifter and MPS and manifested a four-foot diameter globe above the table.
Folks made room for them with alacrity. Ambros ate a few bites, then said, using his Command voice: “Link to all of this Line’s news sources; link to Commonwealth Prime’s Information and Data Guild newsfeed; link to the Octagon, and tap into all US military communications, including National Guard. Tap into and translate all official military communications from anywhere in this Line. Tap and decrypt any militia signals you can find.”
Marie nudged him: “Should you be showing off this tech?”
“Sure, why not?” He laughed: “It’s not like the whole Multiverse thing is gonna be secret anymore, not in this Line.”
People who heard that frowned or smiled indulgently. Ambros gazed with amusement upon one man, who clearly remained doubtful.
He ate some more, waiting. At length, the MPS pinged him.
The room had been quiet before; now it was silent, as everyone watched the slowly turning hologram.
Ambros swigged a bit more coffee, then stood up, mug in hand. He began to narrate the information he received via Commonwealth tech:
“I’m not gonna bother to explain, much, where the invasion came from. Take it as given: a force of Authoritarian French with the help of Nazis attacked our world from various alternate Timelines.
“The governments of the world were taken utterly by surprise by the event. In the chaos, the enemy made significant inroads, especially in attacking major cites, national capitals included.”
“The enemy succeeded in assassinating the President and the Vice President of the United States, and a number of other world leaders; they also took out most of the officer hierarchy of the US Air Force.”
The globe lit up as he translated reports from Commonwealth Prime:
“Also, in the chaos: anarchist, syndicalist, and pro-Situationist militias have overthrown a number of third-world dictatorships. Most of those militias have already established assemblies and worker’s councils, and are beginning to federate within their local ecosystems. Without any previous organization, mass action against the most polluting global industries shut down most of the petroleum and other fossil fuel facilities.”
“That means we’re gonna have shortages, as soon as everything the pipelines is burned up,” said one guy.
Ambros nodded: “Had to be done soon, anyway.”
“But...”
“Our allies from other Timelines will help us get to an acceptable level of solar and wind power, pretty quick. Fossil fuels are finished, for the most part.”
“C’mon...”
Ambros smiled wryly at the fellow: “Had to be done soon, anyway,” he repeated. “We can’t go on poisoning our only planet...” He looked back at the hovering globe.
Large parts of Europe, Asia, and North America lit up. Ambros continued:
“Every nuclear power on the planet attempted a first strike, mostly aimed at each other. None of the missiles launched; the bombs dropped from aircraft failed to explode.”
“Why didn’t the nukes go off?” someone asked.
Ambros grinned: “My friends from the Commonwealth Timeline sabotaged them, a few months ago. Aren’t you glad they did?”
“Umm.”
“Yeah. The Arab powers and Israel began a mutual slaughter. No nukes; those did not work. But their conventional weapons did a lot of damage. Every government in the region has now turned from those hostilities to deal with revolutions within their own borders. No telling how that will shake out.
“Nazi units opened a Gate in Northern Israel, but local militia destroyed them—with extreme prejudice—and Hellenic Commonwealth troops destroyed the Gate...
“At about that time, Hellenic Technical Guild used a combination of Shifter Holes, brute force, and a small number of nuclear weapons to completely destroy all of the Stable Gates in all of the Authoritarian Lines. This means their only way to communicate with or reinforce their invasions is via Portable Timeline Gates, which have limited capacity...”
Ambros knew he was losing the audience. He didn’t care, but he returned nonetheless to news they could more easily comprehend:
“All of Mexico has fallen to an army commanded by members of a libertarian communist group allied with the Spanish POUM...Chiapas has re-asserted its independence and is in talks with the new central government. The rest of Latin America is in a state of utter chaos, we don’t yet know how that will end...
“England is stable now, and the former government is in the ascendant...for the moment. Wales is in the hands of syndicalist militia, they are assisting English troops in mopping up French Authoritarian units on the outskirts of London, Chester, and...there appears to be nothing left of the force that invaded Scotland.
“France is...France is France. Every department in every province is in a different stage of the invasion and subsequent revolt. Most of Europe is at least temporarily in the hands of Nazi invaders, but that isn’t going to last; they are retreating as we speak. We’ve spiked their escape routes, so they have nowhere to go. Commonwealthers will Shift them to Quiet Timelines and try to educate the common soldiers into sustainable societies.”
“What about Russia?” somebody asked.
Ambros relayed the query; he laughed out loud: “Remember what I said about France? Russia is that, in spades. All of Eastern Europe, too: there’s a long history of anarcho-syndicalist activity there, almost all underground...until now.”
He went on for some time, until a general pattern became clear.
In the chaos of the Invasion, anarchist/syndicalist/pro-Situ and POUM type Militias rose up and overthrew almost all of the extant Third World dictatorships. They established Workers Councils in the fields, factories, mines, and workshops. With the Major Powers busy with the Invasion, they had time to federate, confederate, and seize powerful weapons from their former masters; their Assemblies sent delegates to a mini “United Nations” forum where they vowed to hold on to power after the Invasion was defeated. Most of them sent troops to aid the Powers, but kept them under their own Anarchist style Command.
The same thing happened in the heart of the Great Powers: China, Europe, Russia and the USA; in none of those places were the uprisings fully successful, but no great power, nor any member state of one was unscathed.
His audience was pensive by then: nodding, frowning, thoughtful. A few people, sitting here and there among the tightly packed crowd, seemed utterly dismayed. Most of the others were trying to process the news: to people who had never considered anarchist ideas, or contemplated something like the Commonwealth, the whole world seemed to be changing in a mysterious and perhaps good way.
‘Most people are gonna need a little time...’ Ambros mused: ‘Most people will come to accept, or even support the changes. I hope so, anyway...’
After a moment, he continued:
“China...they’ve closed their borders...looks like they’re falling apart into ethnic and religious warfare...Japan is not responding to queries...Australia looks a lot like the US...”
“What’s happening in the US?” came the next obvious question.
Ambros smiled wryly: “We have, here, a very powerful central government, not easily susceptible to violent overthrow. But...Portland, Oregon, is completely Asemblified. Seattle too. There’s a nearly complete ‘lane’ of organized countryside between them. There are pockets of such independent organizing all over the country. Here in Eugene, the anarchist/antifa militia actually cooperated with the Marine and Army Reserves to repel the invasion. They had help from the Commonwealth.
“Most metropolitan police forces joined with the Nazis almost as soon as they understood the situation. About half of the State Patrol and a number of rural Sheriff’s Departments also went over. Right-wing militias joined in, at least most of them. All of them have suffered unfathomable casualties. Won’t be much left by the time we’re done...we had a list of their memberships, and Commonwealth Special Forces did a lot of the dirty work on them.
“The NYPD is confined to Staten Island now. The city government is in tatters and neighborhood assemblies are forming. That sort thing is happening in a number of big cities...”
“Can you get us closer to home?” one woman asked.
“Yeah,” he nodded: “It’s not all good news...
“Travelling south from Portland: Beaverton seems to have imploded. I can’t tell what happened there, even with close-up drone surveillance. Maybe a Shifter Hole. I didn’t know the ATLs had those...iSalem is where the US Army and various armed leftist groups native to this Line stopped the Nazi’s blitz. Hellenes are helping to mop up there.
“Corvallis?” another woman asked.
He shook his head: “Corvallis is no longer there; pretty much leveled to the ground by the Nazis.”
A family at a table in the corner began to weep, embracing each other. People around them gathered to offer comfort.
A young man in an old Army coat asked: “Wasn’t there anything you all coulda done? You...Commonwealthers, as you call yourselves? You knew this was comin’ by the sound of it.”
Ambros nodded, feeling bleak: “Maybe there was. Something we could have done...? I don’t want to just make myself look good. People argued for a pre-emptive strike, but...” He threw his hands up: “It’s complicated.”
“It always is, ain’t it?” Army Coat grabbed a backpack and slouched out of the café, muttering.
“What do you think we should do, all of us, right now?” The man asking this stood in the pathway between the front door and the seating area.
Ambros grinned: “That’s an easy one: join or form affinity groups. Create neighborhood assemblies. Reorganize your workplaces, form Guilds and Demes, like your local activists mostly have. Chose delegates to a City Commune.” He shrugged: “You can go on the Webz and find a newsmag called Commonwealth Times. Other reading materials will soon be made available to you, courtesy of the Hellenic Commonwealth and Polity. Videos as well.”
“So we need to do some homework,” the guy joked.
Ambros just stared, a small wry grin visible.
The fellow nodded, and slipped away out the door.
Ambros tried to blank his mind, looking for patterns. He thought: ‘The places that I personally visited with my warnings are all in better shape than the surrounding countries. I guess I shoulda done more travelling...’
A woman stood up; Ambros did not know her. She said: “My reading group offers a place for people without family or close friends to gather. We’ll help you find or form affinity groups, and explain the New Way to you.”
One of Zazu’s collective, who sat near her, spoke: “No one is going to be stuck in the first affinity group they join. Things will be very fluid, for a long time.”
The woman said: “Fluid? I think you meant chaotic.”
“That, too.”
Another woman rose: “Anyone who does any kind of fiber arts, a bunch of us are going to meet at the shelter at Monroe Park, pursuant to forming a Guild. Spread this word to anyone you know in what used to be Lane County.”
More announcements of that sort followed.
Heather Davidov strode in, still in armor, grinning broadly: “Ambros! The people at MyFace just announced they’ve collectivized, and your tech buddies have the cell network hereabouts back up and running.”
Ambros acknowledged her. He spoke to the crowd: “That will make everything you all need to do a lot easier. Now...I’m gonna have a drink, and then a walk, and then a nap.”
He poured a healthy slug of whisky into his coffee cup, and sent the remains of the bottle around the room.
He raised his mug: “Here’s to the New World, may we not get fooled again!”
Most of the audience toasted the concept. Ambros memorized the faces of those who appeared angry, appalled, or contemptuous, and grinned at each of them. He thought: ‘Some of those are city employees; easy to see why they are upset... the end of the world didn’t turn out the way they expected, I guess...’
