Forewatch (2)
Apr. 4th, 2011 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolPain. A pain was flaring in my head, flaring in time with sound. There were noises around me, sometimes loud, sometimes soft. I wished they would stay soft or go away, because when the noises were loud, my head felt like it would explode.
The noises, I realized, were voices. They had the unmistakable cadence of speech. It must be two voices, I decided – one a low rumble, the other ranging high to low and back again. The syllables swam into clarity, and despite the pain I found I could understand what was being said.
"He had a needle pistol," hissed one voice. "Don't you realize what that means? This is no observer. This is no night watchman! They sent back a protector."
"He could be an assassin," said the deep voice. It had an artificially hollow sound.
"An assassin," repeated the first speaker, disgusted. Griffiths – the name came back to me suddenly. This was Griffiths speaking – a dangerous person. "Why would an assassin come back from the 22nd century to kill somebody who he knows survives?" Griffiths demanded.
"Then I don't know," said the one with the deep, resonant voice. Pierre. That would have to be his name.
"Well I know," said Griffiths. "He's here to kill me and stop what we're doing. What we don't know is how much he knows."
"He's moving around," Pierre said. "We'll have to ask him."
A sack was snatched off my head, and all at once I remembered everything. The Forewatch; Lonnie Street; the Cytonetics squad. And Griffiths and Pierre had captured me.
Griffiths peered down at me. Something was exerting pressure on the top of my head; I assumed it was Pierre holding me down from behind me. Behind Griffiths I saw tiled walls, hard ceilings, sealed fluorescent lights. Someplace antiseptic, I presumed. I heard a faint hiss of machinery in the background.
"Mister Werther," said Griffiths, putting his face very close to mine, "I'll come straight to the point. I want to know who you are and why you're here. You're going to tell me everything I need to know. Sooner or later I'll know everything, one way or another, so you should just talk."
"You're crazy," I said. "I'm just a worker here. Let me up and leave me alone."
Griffiths slapped me across the face hard, then pinched my cheeks between thumb and forefinger. "I don't have time to screw with you," he grated, shaking my head slightly. I blinked his spit out of my eyes. "You know I'm going to remove pieces of you. A hand perhaps. Just a moment." Griffiths stepped back and listened intently to his earpiece. He muttered something, then smiled bleakly down at me.
"Time's up," Griffiths said. "I'm afraid things are coming to a head for our new mother. I really wish I could learn more about you and what you're up to, but I can't stay, and I can't afford the manpower." He looked up at Pierre.
"Something accidental," he said casually. "See to it, then join us. We have to be leaving." Griffiths glared at me one last time, then left.
Pierre drove his elbow into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me again. "Now you just keep quiet," he said, his supernaturally deep voice stern. He opened a door and pulled the cart I was on into another room. It was very hot and humid, and I could hear the hiss of steam and the clatter of metal. I raised my head and looked around. I was in the dirty end of an autoclave room. Several rows of conveyor belts fed surgical implements, clamps and other tools through a steam disinfecting system; sterile objects came out the other end. A line for return carts came back through on the far side of the room. There were also a few spot-sterilizers the size of washing machines for the handling of delicate instruments.
My hands and feet were tied with surgical tubing; they were tight enough that I was starting to lose circulation. Pierre pushed my cart up to one of the conveyor belt lines. He looked down at me without any sympathy in his eyes.
"It should be very quick," he said, grabbing one of my arms and one of my legs and slinging me onto the conveyor belt. "And very little mess." The belt started moving me towards the plastic flaps covering the autoclave inlet.
I wormed my way over to the far side of the conveyor belt. "Now now," said Pierre, hustling over to that side of that line and next to me. "Don't roll off."
I reached out with my bound legs and kicked open the door of one of the spot sterilizers. A gout of superheated steam came out of the open porthole, bathing both my legs and Pierre. It hurt my legs, but I had pants on. Pierre's face and hands were exposed. With a roar he staggered backwards, his shiny red hands flung over his eyes, and tripped over a tray.
I rolled the other direction. Hobbled with my legs bound together, I was obliged to hop a yard at a time for the autoclave return cart line. My ribs were aching and I was having trouble drawing breath properly. A cart was coming through the line; it had trays full of scalpels and forceps on it. I leaped on it with my whole body, my momentum forcing it back into the tunnel, and then I pushed off with hands and arms to bring it through into the clean side.
The cart coasted into the room. I found a scalpel with both hands, used it to cut the tubing that bound my legs. I had just swung my legs off the cart when I heard Pierre's agonized roar coming from the autoclave cart return. Still gripping the cart, I began pushing it along with my legs. I pushed it through a swinging door and out into a corridor, continuing to fumble with the tools in search of something I could use to cut my hands loose.
I scrambled like mad down the corridor. I managed to reverse the scalpel that had cut my legs free, and I inserted the end in my mouth. I realized it was still bloody and covered with chemicals, but this was no time to be picky. I heard the impact of Pierre's massive body plowing through the swinging door behind me, and I knew I didn't have any time to spare. I turned off into a side corridor. The sign overhead read IMAGING.
I took two quick turns and found myself facing a vault door. The door stood open, and there was a control room next to it. I pushed the cart full of surgical tools in through the vault door and let it coast in, then side-stepped into the control room. I ducked down behind the door and used the scalpel in my mouth to cut the bonds securing my hands.
The scuff of Pierre's feet went past my door. The cart crashed into the far wall of the vault-room and spilled metal objects on the floor. I heard Pierre walk calmly into the vault.
The control room had several banks of consoles with a window behind it. I risked raising my body up to look through the window. It was an MRI room, with the huge heavy donut of a magnet dominating the space. There was a kind of bench that slid into it, and other machinery spaced around the room. There was also a button marked CLOSE DOOR. I pressed it, and while Pierre was busy looking behind the MRI for me, the vault door silently closed.
The MRI consoles were still on; the unit had been left warmed up and operational. The user interface was very easy to understand; I cycled through several levels of menus to find the commands to begin a scan at maximum magnet power.
Pierre saw me. He pulled a needle pistol out of his belt – my pistol -- and fired through the window. The window was very thick glass, but needle pistols fire 1mm shells at five thousand meters per second with near perfect silence. Stars blossomed on the glass; the projectiles fortunately missed me. I pressed the COMMIT button and the magnet began to warm up. The fractured glass made it very hard to see through it, but as the MRI's power levels rose with a whine, I could hear Pierre's needle pistol fly out of his hand and hit the torus with a clang. Next a storm of surgical instruments rose out of the cart and filled the room with a tornado of whirling metal. I heard Pierre's screams and decided to leave when they turned into a gurgle.
I began running down the halls of the hospital. I had lost my pistol, and I still had one very dangerous human and four synthetics to deal with. Taking a chance, I ran by the office I had been given. There on my desktop was a small unmarked box. I opened it; it contained a hockey puck sized disc with a button in the very center. I pocketed it, then sprinted towards Labor and Delivery. At the door of the Streets' room there was a sign saying NEW MOTHER RESTING! COME BACK IN AN HOUR. I looked around; none of the nurses were watching. I slipped inside the room.
The lights had been dimmed. Cordelia Street was lying in her bed, apparently sleeping. Her father was slumped in the guest chair. Both of them had a small amount of foam over their nose and mouth.
In a corner of the room, Penry and Marie were preparing some kind of large syringes. Marie had removed her clothes, presumably so she could get into Cordelia's gown, and now looked like the spitting image of a new mother – complete with a flaccid belly. I supposed that as a synthetic she had been grown that way. Similarly, Penry had gotten rid of his mustache and now looked like the spitting image of Cordelia's dad. They looked at me by the wan illumination of the nurse light. I looked at them.
Penry charged me, his syringe held over his head like a dagger. Meanwhile Marie toggled an earpiece. "We're made!" she yelped.
I reached into my pocket and pressed the button on the neural. Marie immediately slumped to the ground. Penry's momentum kept him charging across the room; I was able to catch him and slowly lower him to the foot of Cordelia's bed. I checked Penry's pulse; he wasn't dead, but he was very close to it. His eyes were frozen open. There was a strange gleam in them, something unlike the eyes of a person who was born and grew normally to adulthood.
I dragged Penry and Marie into the restroom, put them in the bathtub, and closed the curtain. As I did so I noticed Marie's syringe drip onto her leg. A single droplet dissolved a pencil-thick hole through her. Nice tool to dispose of inconvenient bodies, I thought. I capped both syringes and put them in my pocket.
I checked Cordelia and her Dad; they were basically just sleeping, and I wanted to keep them that way, so I left them alone. I slipped out the door.
If Cordelia was a 'New Mother Resting', that could mean only one thing. The baby would be in the nursery. And Griffiths would be there too.
I ran for the nursery. My paces slowed, however, when I saw activity there. A group of parents and nurses were looking through the observation window. I peeked over their shoulders. Griffiths was in there with his two remaining synthetics. They were filming.
"There's the beautiful baby," cooed Griffiths. "Isn't she marvelous?" Willers had the camera in close. The baby was awake and swaddled, with a knit yarn cap on her head. She was a little scratched up and red in the face, but her eyes were open and she mostly looked puzzled. The nurses in the room were beaming at Griffiths approvingly while Logan fiddles with some of the equipment cases.
I didn't know what was going on but I knew something very bad was going to happen. I sauntered over to the entrance to the wing and pulled the fire alarm pull. Horns began screaming and strobes began flashing. After a moment's consternation, the nursing corps began barking orders for people to get out of the way. This included Griffiths and company, who were ordered in no uncertain terms to leave while the babies were to be removed out of the smoke zone. "Yes, of course; immediately," murmured Griffiths. His two techs were ushered out of the room, but he himself remained behind to potter with his equipment.
As Willers came out I grabbed him by the shoulder and stabbed the first of the two syringes into his nape. Although we were in view of many of the nurses, I was able to pull him into an unused laboring room while his body dissolved from the inside out. It was really a remarkable process; there was no liquid generated, and when it was done there was only enough of Willers, plus clothing, to make a compact bundle. I stuffed him in the trash and opened the door to the room.
Logan slammed it back in my face, then drove me back into the room. I fell over the bed and rolled to the floor. Logan had closed the door behind him. There wasn't much light in the room but I could see he had a pistol. I grabbed the wheeled bassinet next to the bed and rolled it towards Logan. He shot it three times, splintering it, but I was able to vault over the bed while he was distracted and kick the pistol out of his grasp.
Logan punched me in the kidney, then threw me onto the bed. He tried to leap on top of me, but I caught him in the chest with my feet and pushed him back. He sprawled into the bassinet, butt-first, and before he could struggle loose I had the second syringe into his chest.
"It's too late," said Logan, dissolving and collapsing before my eyes. "We've already won."
"Then you've already lost, synthetic," I said.
"Yes," he wheezed, his chest collapsing. "I know." His face looked sad before his head sagged in on itself like a deflating beach ball.
I stashed Logan with Willers, found his pistol, and left the room. I pushed into the nursery and found it abandoned, except for a ward nurse with foam over her nose, and Griffiths. He was standing next to a plexiglass bassinet with Lonnie Street in it. He had a gun.
"Ah ah," he admonished, the weapon trained on the baby. "Don't make a scene, officer. We'd hate for there to be some kind of a time crisis."
"You know you can't kill Lonnie Street," I said. "You can't change the future we've already seen. She lives to adulthood."
"Indeed she does," agreed Griffiths. "Mister Werther; Ms. Lonnie Street; allow me to introduce you to Ms. Lonnie Street." He reached behind him, his eyes never leaving mine and his gun never leaving the baby, and he opened the clasps securing a case. He opened the case and pulled out – a baby. A complete double for Lonnie Street.
"This is also Lonnie Street," Griffiths said. "She has been grown at extreme expense. She can mature like normal babies; learn like normal babies; in all ways grow to womanhood same as the original Lonnie Street. Of course, she also has some other capabilities."
The baby in his arms turned her head and focused her eyes on me with acuity unknown in a newborn. She smiled, a wise old woman's smile. When she opened her mouth to speak, her voice sounded like the piping of a baby doll.
"I'm the one who becomes the President of the United States, agent," she warbled. "In fifty years Lonnie Street will have to save twelve people on the moonbase by crossing ten yards of hard vacuum with no spacesuit. It will be impossible for a human being to do it. But it won't be impossible for me. I'm grown for this. I was made for this purpose. That girl over there doesn't stand a chance. But I do. Let me take her place, agent. It'll be what my future self fights for, her greatest aim: to see a synthetic person take the highest office in the land. Help me realize my own dream." Those beautiful eyes had the same strange gleam in them I had seen in Penry's.
"No," I said, and shot the talking baby. Griffiths shot me then, two slugs in the left shoulder, spinning me backwards to slump against the wall. I couldn't see what happened to the synthetic baby; the momentum of the shot had thrown her to the opposite side of the room. Griffiths ran over and picked her up. The look he flung at me was one of pure hatred.
I struggled to sit up. "No point in shooting the real baby," I said. "We both know she'll survive. Unless you got another fake baby in your pocket, that is," I added.
"You miserable fool," said Griffiths sourly. "You have no idea what you've done." He toggled his earpiece.
"Bounce-out now," he growled. A moment later he was gone, vanished.
I had just enough energy to get to my Sonor. "I need a cleanup crew stat," I mumbled. Then I blacked out.
**
"I understand I owe you a debt of gratitude," said Senator Lonnie Street. She had come to visit me in my hospital bed. There is nothing quite like trying to recuperate from gunshot wounds while dealing with time-sickness.
"It was my pleasure, ma'am," I said. "I got to meet your Mom and Grandfather. They were really nice people."
"They were tough on me. Didn't let me quit; they never let me give up on my goals. Without them I never would have made it to Washington, that's for sure." She patted my leg.
"I better let you rest, agent," Lonnie Street said, standing up.
"One question, Senator," I said. "During the Moonbase Crisis – how did you get across the vacuum gap the way you did?"
"Same way anybody does something impossible," she answered, smiling lightly. "I didn't. That tale's been exaggerated so many times it's a miracle there's any truth left to it at all. I went through maybe ten feet of depressurizing cabin, agent – and it wasn't completely depressurized yet. I blew out my eardrums and had some severe tissue damage all the same. Honestly, mister, I have no idea how these stories get started." The Senator waved.
"Heal up, hair over, and get back to work," she said genially, then left the room.
Doctor Curmison stayed behind. "Well?" she asked. "What do you think?"
"I don't know," I said. Lonnie Street seemed okay enough. But there was a hint of a gleam in her eye that I had also seen back in 2035 – a gleam I didn't like. And I thought that there were plenty of intervening years between then and the twenty-second century – plenty of years, and plenty of solar maxima, when a substitution could still have been made. "I think I should go back and watch over her – just to be sure."
Curmison nodded, slowly.
"We'll see," she said.
The noises, I realized, were voices. They had the unmistakable cadence of speech. It must be two voices, I decided – one a low rumble, the other ranging high to low and back again. The syllables swam into clarity, and despite the pain I found I could understand what was being said.
"He had a needle pistol," hissed one voice. "Don't you realize what that means? This is no observer. This is no night watchman! They sent back a protector."
"He could be an assassin," said the deep voice. It had an artificially hollow sound.
"An assassin," repeated the first speaker, disgusted. Griffiths – the name came back to me suddenly. This was Griffiths speaking – a dangerous person. "Why would an assassin come back from the 22nd century to kill somebody who he knows survives?" Griffiths demanded.
"Then I don't know," said the one with the deep, resonant voice. Pierre. That would have to be his name.
"Well I know," said Griffiths. "He's here to kill me and stop what we're doing. What we don't know is how much he knows."
"He's moving around," Pierre said. "We'll have to ask him."
A sack was snatched off my head, and all at once I remembered everything. The Forewatch; Lonnie Street; the Cytonetics squad. And Griffiths and Pierre had captured me.
Griffiths peered down at me. Something was exerting pressure on the top of my head; I assumed it was Pierre holding me down from behind me. Behind Griffiths I saw tiled walls, hard ceilings, sealed fluorescent lights. Someplace antiseptic, I presumed. I heard a faint hiss of machinery in the background.
"Mister Werther," said Griffiths, putting his face very close to mine, "I'll come straight to the point. I want to know who you are and why you're here. You're going to tell me everything I need to know. Sooner or later I'll know everything, one way or another, so you should just talk."
"You're crazy," I said. "I'm just a worker here. Let me up and leave me alone."
Griffiths slapped me across the face hard, then pinched my cheeks between thumb and forefinger. "I don't have time to screw with you," he grated, shaking my head slightly. I blinked his spit out of my eyes. "You know I'm going to remove pieces of you. A hand perhaps. Just a moment." Griffiths stepped back and listened intently to his earpiece. He muttered something, then smiled bleakly down at me.
"Time's up," Griffiths said. "I'm afraid things are coming to a head for our new mother. I really wish I could learn more about you and what you're up to, but I can't stay, and I can't afford the manpower." He looked up at Pierre.
"Something accidental," he said casually. "See to it, then join us. We have to be leaving." Griffiths glared at me one last time, then left.
Pierre drove his elbow into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me again. "Now you just keep quiet," he said, his supernaturally deep voice stern. He opened a door and pulled the cart I was on into another room. It was very hot and humid, and I could hear the hiss of steam and the clatter of metal. I raised my head and looked around. I was in the dirty end of an autoclave room. Several rows of conveyor belts fed surgical implements, clamps and other tools through a steam disinfecting system; sterile objects came out the other end. A line for return carts came back through on the far side of the room. There were also a few spot-sterilizers the size of washing machines for the handling of delicate instruments.
My hands and feet were tied with surgical tubing; they were tight enough that I was starting to lose circulation. Pierre pushed my cart up to one of the conveyor belt lines. He looked down at me without any sympathy in his eyes.
"It should be very quick," he said, grabbing one of my arms and one of my legs and slinging me onto the conveyor belt. "And very little mess." The belt started moving me towards the plastic flaps covering the autoclave inlet.
I wormed my way over to the far side of the conveyor belt. "Now now," said Pierre, hustling over to that side of that line and next to me. "Don't roll off."
I reached out with my bound legs and kicked open the door of one of the spot sterilizers. A gout of superheated steam came out of the open porthole, bathing both my legs and Pierre. It hurt my legs, but I had pants on. Pierre's face and hands were exposed. With a roar he staggered backwards, his shiny red hands flung over his eyes, and tripped over a tray.
I rolled the other direction. Hobbled with my legs bound together, I was obliged to hop a yard at a time for the autoclave return cart line. My ribs were aching and I was having trouble drawing breath properly. A cart was coming through the line; it had trays full of scalpels and forceps on it. I leaped on it with my whole body, my momentum forcing it back into the tunnel, and then I pushed off with hands and arms to bring it through into the clean side.
The cart coasted into the room. I found a scalpel with both hands, used it to cut the tubing that bound my legs. I had just swung my legs off the cart when I heard Pierre's agonized roar coming from the autoclave cart return. Still gripping the cart, I began pushing it along with my legs. I pushed it through a swinging door and out into a corridor, continuing to fumble with the tools in search of something I could use to cut my hands loose.
I scrambled like mad down the corridor. I managed to reverse the scalpel that had cut my legs free, and I inserted the end in my mouth. I realized it was still bloody and covered with chemicals, but this was no time to be picky. I heard the impact of Pierre's massive body plowing through the swinging door behind me, and I knew I didn't have any time to spare. I turned off into a side corridor. The sign overhead read IMAGING.
I took two quick turns and found myself facing a vault door. The door stood open, and there was a control room next to it. I pushed the cart full of surgical tools in through the vault door and let it coast in, then side-stepped into the control room. I ducked down behind the door and used the scalpel in my mouth to cut the bonds securing my hands.
The scuff of Pierre's feet went past my door. The cart crashed into the far wall of the vault-room and spilled metal objects on the floor. I heard Pierre walk calmly into the vault.
The control room had several banks of consoles with a window behind it. I risked raising my body up to look through the window. It was an MRI room, with the huge heavy donut of a magnet dominating the space. There was a kind of bench that slid into it, and other machinery spaced around the room. There was also a button marked CLOSE DOOR. I pressed it, and while Pierre was busy looking behind the MRI for me, the vault door silently closed.
The MRI consoles were still on; the unit had been left warmed up and operational. The user interface was very easy to understand; I cycled through several levels of menus to find the commands to begin a scan at maximum magnet power.
Pierre saw me. He pulled a needle pistol out of his belt – my pistol -- and fired through the window. The window was very thick glass, but needle pistols fire 1mm shells at five thousand meters per second with near perfect silence. Stars blossomed on the glass; the projectiles fortunately missed me. I pressed the COMMIT button and the magnet began to warm up. The fractured glass made it very hard to see through it, but as the MRI's power levels rose with a whine, I could hear Pierre's needle pistol fly out of his hand and hit the torus with a clang. Next a storm of surgical instruments rose out of the cart and filled the room with a tornado of whirling metal. I heard Pierre's screams and decided to leave when they turned into a gurgle.
I began running down the halls of the hospital. I had lost my pistol, and I still had one very dangerous human and four synthetics to deal with. Taking a chance, I ran by the office I had been given. There on my desktop was a small unmarked box. I opened it; it contained a hockey puck sized disc with a button in the very center. I pocketed it, then sprinted towards Labor and Delivery. At the door of the Streets' room there was a sign saying NEW MOTHER RESTING! COME BACK IN AN HOUR. I looked around; none of the nurses were watching. I slipped inside the room.
The lights had been dimmed. Cordelia Street was lying in her bed, apparently sleeping. Her father was slumped in the guest chair. Both of them had a small amount of foam over their nose and mouth.
In a corner of the room, Penry and Marie were preparing some kind of large syringes. Marie had removed her clothes, presumably so she could get into Cordelia's gown, and now looked like the spitting image of a new mother – complete with a flaccid belly. I supposed that as a synthetic she had been grown that way. Similarly, Penry had gotten rid of his mustache and now looked like the spitting image of Cordelia's dad. They looked at me by the wan illumination of the nurse light. I looked at them.
Penry charged me, his syringe held over his head like a dagger. Meanwhile Marie toggled an earpiece. "We're made!" she yelped.
I reached into my pocket and pressed the button on the neural. Marie immediately slumped to the ground. Penry's momentum kept him charging across the room; I was able to catch him and slowly lower him to the foot of Cordelia's bed. I checked Penry's pulse; he wasn't dead, but he was very close to it. His eyes were frozen open. There was a strange gleam in them, something unlike the eyes of a person who was born and grew normally to adulthood.
I dragged Penry and Marie into the restroom, put them in the bathtub, and closed the curtain. As I did so I noticed Marie's syringe drip onto her leg. A single droplet dissolved a pencil-thick hole through her. Nice tool to dispose of inconvenient bodies, I thought. I capped both syringes and put them in my pocket.
I checked Cordelia and her Dad; they were basically just sleeping, and I wanted to keep them that way, so I left them alone. I slipped out the door.
If Cordelia was a 'New Mother Resting', that could mean only one thing. The baby would be in the nursery. And Griffiths would be there too.
I ran for the nursery. My paces slowed, however, when I saw activity there. A group of parents and nurses were looking through the observation window. I peeked over their shoulders. Griffiths was in there with his two remaining synthetics. They were filming.
"There's the beautiful baby," cooed Griffiths. "Isn't she marvelous?" Willers had the camera in close. The baby was awake and swaddled, with a knit yarn cap on her head. She was a little scratched up and red in the face, but her eyes were open and she mostly looked puzzled. The nurses in the room were beaming at Griffiths approvingly while Logan fiddles with some of the equipment cases.
I didn't know what was going on but I knew something very bad was going to happen. I sauntered over to the entrance to the wing and pulled the fire alarm pull. Horns began screaming and strobes began flashing. After a moment's consternation, the nursing corps began barking orders for people to get out of the way. This included Griffiths and company, who were ordered in no uncertain terms to leave while the babies were to be removed out of the smoke zone. "Yes, of course; immediately," murmured Griffiths. His two techs were ushered out of the room, but he himself remained behind to potter with his equipment.
As Willers came out I grabbed him by the shoulder and stabbed the first of the two syringes into his nape. Although we were in view of many of the nurses, I was able to pull him into an unused laboring room while his body dissolved from the inside out. It was really a remarkable process; there was no liquid generated, and when it was done there was only enough of Willers, plus clothing, to make a compact bundle. I stuffed him in the trash and opened the door to the room.
Logan slammed it back in my face, then drove me back into the room. I fell over the bed and rolled to the floor. Logan had closed the door behind him. There wasn't much light in the room but I could see he had a pistol. I grabbed the wheeled bassinet next to the bed and rolled it towards Logan. He shot it three times, splintering it, but I was able to vault over the bed while he was distracted and kick the pistol out of his grasp.
Logan punched me in the kidney, then threw me onto the bed. He tried to leap on top of me, but I caught him in the chest with my feet and pushed him back. He sprawled into the bassinet, butt-first, and before he could struggle loose I had the second syringe into his chest.
"It's too late," said Logan, dissolving and collapsing before my eyes. "We've already won."
"Then you've already lost, synthetic," I said.
"Yes," he wheezed, his chest collapsing. "I know." His face looked sad before his head sagged in on itself like a deflating beach ball.
I stashed Logan with Willers, found his pistol, and left the room. I pushed into the nursery and found it abandoned, except for a ward nurse with foam over her nose, and Griffiths. He was standing next to a plexiglass bassinet with Lonnie Street in it. He had a gun.
"Ah ah," he admonished, the weapon trained on the baby. "Don't make a scene, officer. We'd hate for there to be some kind of a time crisis."
"You know you can't kill Lonnie Street," I said. "You can't change the future we've already seen. She lives to adulthood."
"Indeed she does," agreed Griffiths. "Mister Werther; Ms. Lonnie Street; allow me to introduce you to Ms. Lonnie Street." He reached behind him, his eyes never leaving mine and his gun never leaving the baby, and he opened the clasps securing a case. He opened the case and pulled out – a baby. A complete double for Lonnie Street.
"This is also Lonnie Street," Griffiths said. "She has been grown at extreme expense. She can mature like normal babies; learn like normal babies; in all ways grow to womanhood same as the original Lonnie Street. Of course, she also has some other capabilities."
The baby in his arms turned her head and focused her eyes on me with acuity unknown in a newborn. She smiled, a wise old woman's smile. When she opened her mouth to speak, her voice sounded like the piping of a baby doll.
"I'm the one who becomes the President of the United States, agent," she warbled. "In fifty years Lonnie Street will have to save twelve people on the moonbase by crossing ten yards of hard vacuum with no spacesuit. It will be impossible for a human being to do it. But it won't be impossible for me. I'm grown for this. I was made for this purpose. That girl over there doesn't stand a chance. But I do. Let me take her place, agent. It'll be what my future self fights for, her greatest aim: to see a synthetic person take the highest office in the land. Help me realize my own dream." Those beautiful eyes had the same strange gleam in them I had seen in Penry's.
"No," I said, and shot the talking baby. Griffiths shot me then, two slugs in the left shoulder, spinning me backwards to slump against the wall. I couldn't see what happened to the synthetic baby; the momentum of the shot had thrown her to the opposite side of the room. Griffiths ran over and picked her up. The look he flung at me was one of pure hatred.
I struggled to sit up. "No point in shooting the real baby," I said. "We both know she'll survive. Unless you got another fake baby in your pocket, that is," I added.
"You miserable fool," said Griffiths sourly. "You have no idea what you've done." He toggled his earpiece.
"Bounce-out now," he growled. A moment later he was gone, vanished.
I had just enough energy to get to my Sonor. "I need a cleanup crew stat," I mumbled. Then I blacked out.
**
"I understand I owe you a debt of gratitude," said Senator Lonnie Street. She had come to visit me in my hospital bed. There is nothing quite like trying to recuperate from gunshot wounds while dealing with time-sickness.
"It was my pleasure, ma'am," I said. "I got to meet your Mom and Grandfather. They were really nice people."
"They were tough on me. Didn't let me quit; they never let me give up on my goals. Without them I never would have made it to Washington, that's for sure." She patted my leg.
"I better let you rest, agent," Lonnie Street said, standing up.
"One question, Senator," I said. "During the Moonbase Crisis – how did you get across the vacuum gap the way you did?"
"Same way anybody does something impossible," she answered, smiling lightly. "I didn't. That tale's been exaggerated so many times it's a miracle there's any truth left to it at all. I went through maybe ten feet of depressurizing cabin, agent – and it wasn't completely depressurized yet. I blew out my eardrums and had some severe tissue damage all the same. Honestly, mister, I have no idea how these stories get started." The Senator waved.
"Heal up, hair over, and get back to work," she said genially, then left the room.
Doctor Curmison stayed behind. "Well?" she asked. "What do you think?"
"I don't know," I said. Lonnie Street seemed okay enough. But there was a hint of a gleam in her eye that I had also seen back in 2035 – a gleam I didn't like. And I thought that there were plenty of intervening years between then and the twenty-second century – plenty of years, and plenty of solar maxima, when a substitution could still have been made. "I think I should go back and watch over her – just to be sure."
Curmison nodded, slowly.
"We'll see," she said.
