Assignment in Nowhere

Chapter One

It was one of those tranquil summer evenings when the sunset colors seemed to linger on in the sky even longer than June in Stockholm could explain. I stood by the French windows, looking out at pale rose and tawny gold and electric blue, feeling a sensation near the back of the neck that always before had meant trouble, big trouble, coming my way.

The phone jangled harshly through the room. I beat the track record getting to it, grabbed the old-fashioned Imperium-style, brass-mounted instrument off the hall table, and waited a moment to be sure my voice wouldn’t squeak before I said hello.

“Colonel Bayard?” said the voice at the other end. “The Freiherr von Richthofen calling; one moment, please…”

Through the open archway to the dining room I could see the dark gleam of Barbro’s red hair as she nodded at the bottle of wine Luc was showing her. Candlelight from the elaborate chandelier over her head cast a soft light on snowy linen, gleaming crystal, rare old porcelain, glittering silver. With Luc as our household major domo, every meal was an occasion, but my appetite had vanished. I didn’t know why, Richthofen was an old and valued friend, as well as the head of Imperial Intelligence…

“Brion?” Richthofen’s faintly accented voice came from the bell-shaped earpiece of the telephone. “I am glad to have found you at home.”

“What’s up, Manfred?”

“Ah…” he sounded mildly embarrassed. “You have been at home all evening?”

“We got in about an hour ago. Have you been trying to reach me?”

“Oh, no. But a small matter has arisen…” There was a pause. “I wonder, Brion, if you could find the time to drop down to Imperial Intelligence Headquarters?”

“Certainly. When?”

“Now. Tonight…?” the pause again. Something was bothering him—a strange occurrence in itself. “I’m sorry to disturb you at home, Brion, but—”

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” I said. “Luc will be unhappy, but I guess he’ll survive. Can you tell me what it’s about?”

“I think not, Brion; the wires may not be secure. Please make my apologies to Barbro—and to Luc too.”

Barbro had risen and come around the table. “Brion—what was the call—” She saw my face. “Is there trouble?”

“Don’t know. I’ll be back as soon as I can. It must be important or Manfred wouldn’t have called.”

I went along the hall to my bedroom, changed into street clothes, took a trench coat and hat—the nights were cool in Stockholm—and went out into the front hall. Luc was there, holding a small apparatus of spring wire and leather.

“I won’t be needing that, Luc,” I said. “Just a routine trip down to HQ.”

“Better take it, sir.” Luc’s sour face was holding its usual expression of grim disapproval—an expression I had learned masked an intense loyalty. I grinned at him, took the slug gun and its special quick-draw holster, pulled back my right sleeve and clipped it in place, checked the “action. With a flick of the wrist, the tiny slug gun—the shape and color of a flattened, water-eroded stone—slapped into my palm. I tucked it back in place.

“Just to please you, Luc. I’ll be back in an hour. Maybe less.”

I stepped out into the gleam of the big, square, thick-lensed carriage lights that shed a nostalgic yellow glow over the granite balustrade, went down the wide steps to the waiting car, and slid in behind the thick oak-rimmed wheel. The engine was already idling. I pulled along the gravelled drive, out past the poplars by the open iron gate, into the cobbled city street. Ahead, a car parked at the curb with headlights burning pulled out, took up a position in front of me. In the rearview mirror I saw a second car ease around the corner, fall in behind me. Jeweled highlights glinted from the elaborate star-burst badge of the Imperial Intelligence bolted to the massive grill. It seemed Manfred had sent along an escort to be sure I made it to headquarters.

It was a ten-minute drive through the wide, softly lit streets of the old capital, superficially like the Stockholm of my native continuum. But here in the Zero-zero world of the Imperium, the center of the vast Net of alternate worlds opened up by the M-C drive, the colors were somehow a little brighter, the evening breeze a little softer, the magic of living a little closer.

Following my escort, I crossed the Norrbro Bridge, made a hard right between red granite pillars into a short drive, swung through a set of massive wrought-iron gates with a wave to the cherry-tunicked sentry as he presented arms. I pulled up before the broad doors of polished ironbound oak and the brass plate that said KUNGLIGA SVENSKA SPIONAGE, and the car behind me braked with a squeal and doors slammed open. By the time I had slid from behind the wheel, the four men from the two cars had formed a casual half-circle around me. I recognized one of them—a Net operative who had chauffeured me into a place called Blight-Insular Two, a few years back. He returned my nod with a carefully impersonal look.

“They’re waiting for you in General Baron von Richthofen’s suite, Colonel,” he said. I grunted and went up the steps, with the curious feeling that my escort was behaving more like a squad of plainclothesmen making a dangerous pinch, than an honor guard.

Manfred got to his feet when I came into the office. The look he gave me was an odd one—as though he weren’t quite sure just how to put whatever it was he was about to say.

“Brion, I must ask for your indulgence,” he said. “Please take a chair. Something of a… a troublesome nature has arisen.” He looked at me with a worried expression. This wasn’t the suave, perfectly poised von Richthofer I was used to seeing daily in the course of my duties as a colonel of the Imperial Intelligence. I sat, noticing the careful placement of the four armed agents in the room, and the foursome who had walked me to the office, standing silently by.

“Go ahead, sir,” I said, getting formal just to keep in the spirit of the thing. “I understand this is business. I assume you’ll tell me what it’s all about, in time.”

“I must ask you a number of questions, Brion,” Richthofen said unhappily. He sat down, the lines in his face suddenly showing his nearly eighty years, ran a lean hand over smooth iron grey hair, then straightened himself abruptly, leaned back in the chair with the decisive air of a man who has decided something has to be done and it may as well be gotten over with.

“What was your wife’s maiden name?” he rapped out.

“Ludane,” I answered levelly. Whatever the game was, I’d play along. Manfred had known Barbro longer than I had. Her father had served with Richthofen as an Imperial agent for thirty years.

“When did you meet her?”

“About five years ago—at the Royal Midsummer Ball, the night I arrived here.”

“Who else was present that night?”

“You, Hermann Goering, Chief Captain Winter…” I named a dozen of the guests at the gay affair that had ended so tragically with an attack by raiders from the nightmare world known as B-I Two. “Winter was killed,” I added, “by a hand grenade that was meant for me.”

“What was your work—originally?”

“I was a diplomat—a United States diplomat—until your lads kidnapped me and brought me here.” The last was just a subtle reminder that whatever it was that required that my oldest friend in this other Stockholm question me as though I were a stranger, my presence here in the world of the Imperium had been all his idea in the first place. He noted the dig a moment before going on to the next question.

“What is your work here in Stockholm Zero-zero?”

“You gave me a nice job in Intelligence as a Net Surveillance officer—”

“What is the Net?”

“The continuum of alternate world lines; the matrix of simultaneous reality—”

“What is the Imperium?” he cut me off. It was one of those rapid-fire interrogations, designed to rattle the subject and make him forget his lines—not the friendliest kind of questioning a man could encounter.

“The overgovernment of the Zero-zero A-line in which the M-C generator was developed.”

“What does M-C abbreviate?”

“Maxoni-Cocini—the boys that invented the thing, back in 1893—”

“How is the M-C effect employed?”

“It’s the drive used to power the Net shuttles.”

“Where are the Net operations carried out?”

“All across the Net—except for the Blight, of course—”

“What is the Blight?”

“Every A-line within thousands of parameters of the Zero-zero line is a hell-world of radiation or—”

“What produced the Blight?”

“The M-C effect, mishandled. You lads here in the Zero-zero line were the only ones who controlled it—”

“What is the Zero-zero line?”

I waved a hand. “This universe we’re sitting in right now. The alternate world where the M-C field—”

“Do you have a scar on your right foot?” I smiled—slightly—at the change of pace question.

“Uh-huh. Where Chief Inspector Bale fired a round between my big toe and—”

“Why were you brought here?”

“You needed me to impersonate a dictator—in a place called Blight-Insular Two—”

“Are there other viable A-lines within the Blight?”

I nodded. “Two. One is a war-blasted place with a Common History date of about 1910; the other is my native clime, called B-I Three—”

“You have a bullet scar on your right side?”

“Nope; the left. I also have—”

“What is a Common History date?”

“The date at which two different A-lines’ histories diverge—”

“What was your first assignment as a Colonel of Intelligence?”

I answered the question—and a lot of other ones. For the next hour and a half he covered every facet of my private and public life, digging into those odd corners of casual incident that would be known only to me—and to himself. All the while, eight armed men stood by, silent, ready…

My pretense of casual acceptance of the situation was wearing a little thin by the time he sighed, laid both hands on the table—I had the sudden, startled impression that he had just slipped a gun into a drawer out of my line of vision—and looked at me with a more normal expression.

“Brion, in the curious profession of which we are both members one encounters the necessity of performing many unpleasant duties. To call you here like this…” he nodded at the waiting gun handlers, who quietly faded away. “Yes, under guard—to question you like a common suspect—has been one of the most unpleasant. Rest assured , that it was necessary—and that the question has now been resolved to my complete satisfaction.” He rose and extended a hand. I got up, feeling a little suppressed anger trying to bubble up under my collar. I took his hand, shook it once, and dropped it. My reluctance must have showed.

“Later, Brion—perhaps tomorrow—I can explain this farcical affair. For tonight, I ask you to accept my personal apologies for the inconvenience—the embarrassment I have been forced to cause you. It was in the interests of the Imperium.”

I made polite but not enthusiastic noises, and left. Whatever it was that was afoot, I knew Richthofen had a reason for what he had done—but that didn’t make me like it any better—or reduce my curiosity. But I was damned if I’d ask any questions now.

There was no one in sight as I went along to the elevator, rode down, stepped out into the white marble-paved corridor on the ground floor. Somewhere at the far end of the wide hallway feet were hurrying. A door banged with a curious air of finality. I stood like an animal testing the air before venturing into dangerous new territory. An air of crisis seemed to hang over the silent building.

Then I found myself sniffing in earnest. There was a smell of burning wood and asphalt, a hint of smoke. I turned toward the apparent source, walking rapidly but quietly. I passed the wide foot of the formal staircase that led up to the reception hall one floor above—and halted, swung back, my eyes on a dark smudge against the gleaming white floor tiles. I almost missed the second smudge—a good two yards from the first, and fainter. But the shape of both marks was clear enough: they were footprints. Six feet farther along the corridor there was another faint stain—as though someone had stepped into hot tar, and was tracking it behind him.

The direction of the prints was along the corridor to the left. I looked along the dimly lit way. It all seemed as peaceful as a mortuary after hours—and had that same air of grim business accomplished and more to come.

I went along the hall, paused at the intersection, looking both ways. The odor seemed stronger—a smell like singed paint now. I followed the prints around the corner. Twenty feet along the corridor there was a large burn scar against the floor, with footprints around it—lots of prints. There was also a spatter of blood, and on the wall the bloody print of a hand twice the size of mine. Under a sign that said SERVICE STAIR there was a second hand-print on the edge of a door—a hand-print outlined in blistered, blackened paint. My wrist twitched—a reflex reminder of the slug gun Luc had insisted I bring along.

It was two steps to the door. I reached for the polished brass knob—and jerked my hand back. It was hot to the touch. With my handkerchief wrapped around my hand, I got the door open. Narrow steps went down into shadows and the smell of smouldering wood. I started to reach for the wall switch, then thought better of it, closed the door silently behind me, started down. At the bottom, I waited for a moment, listening, then gingerly poked my head out to look along the dark basement hall—and froze.

Dim shadows danced on the wall opposite—shadows outlined in dull reddish light. I came out, went along to a right-angle turn, risked another look. Fifty feet from me, a glowing figure moved with erratic, jerky speed—a figure that shone in the gloom like a thick-limbed iron statue heated red hot. It darted a few feet, made movements too quick to follow, spun, bobbed across the narrow passage—and disappeared through an open door, like a paper cutout jerked by a string.

My wrist twitched again, and this time the gun was in my hand—a smooth, comforting feeling—nestling against my palm. The odor of smoke was stronger now. I looked down, and in the weak light from behind me made out blackened footprints against the wood plank flooring. The thought occurred to me that I should go back, give an alarm, and then carry on with a few heavily armed guards; but it was just a thought. I was already moving along toward the door, not liking it very well, but on the trail of something that wouldn’t wait.

The odor was thick in the air now. The hot cloth smell of a press-’em-while-you-wait shop, mingled with the hot metallic tang of a foundry, and a little autumnal woodsmoke thrown in for balance. I came up smooth and silent to the door, flattened myself against the wall, covered the last few inches like a caterpillar sneaking up on a tender young leaf. I risked a fast look inside. The glow from the phantom intruder threw strange reddish shadows on the walls of an unused storeroom—dusty, dark, scattered with odds and ends of litter that should have been swept up but hadn’t.

In the center of the room, the fiery man himself leaned over a sprawled body—a giant figure in a shapeless coverall. The fiery man’s hands—strange, glowing hands in clumsy looking gauntlets—plucked at his victim with more-than-human dexterity; then he straightened. I didn’t take time to goggle at the spectacle of a three-hundred-degree centigrade murderer. There was a chance that his victim wasn’t dead yet—and if I hit him quick enough to capitalize on the tiny advantage of surprise…

I forgot all about the slug gun. I went through the door at a run, launched myself at the figure from whom heat radiated like a tangible wall and saw it turn with unbelievable, split-second speed, throw up a hand—five glowing fingers outspread—take one darting step back—

Long, pink sparks crackled from the outflung hand, leaping toward me. Like a diver hanging suspended in midair, I saw the harsh electric glare, heard the pop I as the miniature lightnings closed with me…

Then a silent explosion turned the world to blinding white, hurling me into nothingness.

For a long time I lay, clinging to the dim and formless dream that was my refuge from the hazy memory of smouldering footprints, a deserted room, and a fantastic glowing man crouched over his victim. I groaned, groped for the dream again, found only hard, cold concrete against my face, a roiling nausea in the pit of my stomach, and a taste like copper pennies in my mouth. I found the floor, pushed hard to get my face up out of the grit, blinked gummed eyes…

The room was dark, silent, dusty and vacant as a robbed grave. I used an old tennis shoe someone had left in my mouth as a tongue, grated it across dry lips, made the kind of effort that under other circumstances had won luckier souls the Congressional Medal, and sat up. There was a ringing in my head like the echo of the Liberty Bell just before it cracked.

I maneuvered to hands and knees, and, taking it by easy stages, got to my feet. I sniffed. The burning odor was gone. And my quarry hadn’t waited around to see whether I was all right. He—or it—had been gone for some time—and had taken the corpse with him.

The light in the room was too weak to show me any detail. I fumbled, got out a massive flint and steel Imperium-style lighter, made three tries, got a smoky yellow flame and squinted to find the trail of blackened prints that would show me which way the fiery man had gone.

There weren’t any.

I went all the way to the door, looking for the scars I had seen earlier, then came back, cast about among empty cardboard cartons and stacked floor wax drums. There were no footprints—not even the old-fashioned kind—except for mine. The dust was thick, undisturbed. There were no marks to show where the body had lain, not a trace of my wild charge across the room. Only the scrabble marks I had made getting to my feet proved that I wasn’t dreaming my own existence. I had heard of people who pinched themselves to see if they were dreaming. It had always seemed a little silly to me—you could dream a pinch as well as any other, more soothing, sensation. But I solemnly took a fold of skin on the back of my hand, squeezed hard. I could hardly feel it.

That didn’t seem to prove anything one way or another. I made it to the door like a man walking to the undertaker’s to save that last cab fare, and went into the hall. The lights were out. Only a dim, phosphorescent glow seemed to emanate from the walls and floor. The sight of the wood planking gave me no comfort at all. The prints burned here had been dark, distinct, charred. Now the dull varnish gleamed at me, unmarked.

The buzzing in my head had diminished to a faint hum, like that of a trapped fly, as I pushed through the door into the ground floor hallway. The milk glass globe hanging from the high ceiling glared at me with an unhealthy electric blue. A blackish haze seemed to hang in the still air of the silent corridor, lending a funereal tinge to the familiar vista of marble floor and varnished doors. Behind me, the door clicked shut with a shockingly loud, metallic clatter. I took a few breaths of the blackish air, failed to detect any hint of smoke. A glance at the door showed me what I had expected—smooth dark brown paint, unmarked by burning handprints.

I crossed the hall, pushed into an empty office. On the desk, a small clay pot sat on a blotter, filled with hard, baked-looking dirt. One dry leaf lay on the desk beside it. The desk clock said twelve-oh-five. I reached past it, picked up the phone, jiggled the hook. The silence at the other end was like a concrete wall. I jiggled some more, failed to evoke so much as a crackle of line static. I left the room, tried the next office with the same result. The phones were as dead as my hopes of living to a ripe old age outside a padded cell.

My footsteps in the corridor had a loud, clattering quality. I made it to the front entrance, pushed out through the heavy door, stood on the top step looking down at my car, still sitting where I had left it. The two escort vehicles were gone. Beyond the car, I noticed that the guard shack at the gate was dark. The street lamps seemed to be off too, and the usual gay pattern of the lights of the city’s towers was missing. But a power failure wouldn’t affect the carbide pole lights… My glance went on to the sky; it was black, overcast. Even the stars were in on the black out.

I got into the car, turned the switch and pressed the starter button on the floor. Nothing happened. I muttered an impolite suggestion, tried again. No action. The horn didn’t work either, and twisting the light switch produced nothing but a dry snick!

I got out of the car, stood undecided for a moment, then started around the building for the garages in the rear. I slowed, halted before I got there. They were dark, the heavy doors closed and barred. I fetched up another sigh, and for the first time noticed the dead, stale smell of the air. I walked back along the drive, passed the guard post, unaccountably deserted, emerged onto the street. It stretched into shadows, silent and dark. Predictably, there were no cabs in sight. A few cars stood at the curb. I started off toward the bridge, noticed a dark shape halfway across it: a car, without lights, parked midway in the span. For some reason, the sight shocked me. A small, uneasy feeling began to supplant the irritated frustration that had been gathering strength somewhere down below my third shirt button. I walked along to the car, peered in through the rolled up windows. There was no one inside. I thought of pushing the car to the side of the street, then considered the state of my constitution at the moment and went on.

There were more abandoned cars in Gustav Adolfstorg, all parked incongruously in midstream. One was a boxy, open touring car. The ignition switch was on, and the light switch too. I went on, checked the next one I came to. The switches were on. It appeared that there had been an epidemic of automotive ignition trouble in the city tonight, as well as a breakdown in the power plants—a coincidence that did nothing to improve my spirits.

I walked on across the square with its heroic equestrian statue, past the dark front of the Opera House, crossed Arsenalsgatan, turned up Tradgarsgatan, walked past shuttered shops, bleak in an eerie light like that of an eclipse. The city was absolutely still.

No breeze stirred the lifeless air, no growl of auto engines disturbed the silence, no clatter of feet, no distant chatter of voices. My first faint sense of uneasiness was rapidly developing into a full-scale cold sweat.

I cut across the corner of the park, skirting the glass display cases crowded with provincial handicrafts, and hurried across a stretch of barren clay.

The wrongness of it penetrated my preoccupation. I looked back across the expanse of sterile earth, searching on across the garden—the oddly naked garden. There were the gravelled paths, the tile lined pools—their fountaining jets lifeless—the band shell, the green painted benches, the steel lampposts with their attached refuse containers and neatly framed tram schedules. But not one blade of grass, not a tree or flowering shrub—no sign of the magnificent bed of prize rhododendron that had occupied a popular magazine’s rotogravure section only a week earlier. I turned and started on, half-running now, the unease turning to an undefined dread that caught at my throat and surged in my stomach like foul water in a foundering galley’s bilge.

I pushed through the iron gates of my house, wheezing like a blown boiler from the run. I stared at the blank black windows, feeling the impalacable air of abandonment, desolation—of utter vacantness. I went on up the drive, taking in the bare stretch of dirt that had been verdant only hours before. Where the poplars had stood, curious foot-wide pits showed black against the grey soil. Only a scatter of dead leaves was left to remind me that once trees had stood here. The crunch of my feet on the gravel was loud. I stepped off onto the former lawn, felt my feet sink into the dry, crumbling earth. At the steps, I looked back. Only my trail of footmarks showed that life had ever existed here—those, and a scatter of dead insects under the carriage lamps. The door opened. I pushed inside, stood savoring the funereal hush, my heart thudding painfully, high in my chest.

“Barbro!” I called. My voice was a dry croak—a croak of cold fear. I ran along the unlighted hall, went up the stairs four at a time, slammed through the sitting room door, on through into the bedroom. I found only silence, an aching stillness in which the sounds of my passage seemed to echo with a shocked reproach. I stumbled out of the room, yelling for Luc, not really expecting an answer now, yelling to break the awful, ominous stillness, the fear of what I might find in the dark, dead rooms.

I searched room by room, went back and tried the closets, shouting, slamming doors wide, not fighting the panic that was welling up inside me, but giving it vent in violent action.

There was nothing. Every room was in perfect order, every piece of furniture in its accustomed place, every drape discreetly drawn, every dish and book and garment undisturbed—but on the marble mantelpiece, the brass clock sat silent, its tick stilled. And in the pots where the broad-leafed plants had lent their touch of green, only the dead soil remained. I stood in the center of the dark library, staring out at the grim, metallic glow of the night sky, feeling the silence flow back in like a tangible thing, trying now to regain my control, to accept the truth: Barbro was gone—along with every other living thing in the Imperial capital.