“All right then.”
The group took a final mournful look at Czerny, then slowly proceeded down the road. Two by two, they traveled east—rarely talking, frequently yawning.
Soon a commuter aerotrain crossed high above them on invisible tracks. The bottom of each car sported glowing white struts that varied in formation from trailer to trailer. From below, the whole thing looked like a giant string of dominoes.
The group stopped in place, craning their necks until the final car passed from view.
“They have flying trains,” Hannah uttered. “Did anyone else know they had flying trains?”
From the blank expressions of the others, it was clear that they didn’t.
“Jesus.”
Amanda rubbed her back. “Come on.”
With a deep breath, the actress picked a pebble from her sneaker and then joined the others. The Silvers followed the road to the elevated highway, and then kept walking.
SIXTEEN
September 6 was a bad day to be a morning commuter on Highway V. A tempic police cordon blocked all northbound lanes at Terra Vista while bright lumic arrows diverted vehicles to the nearest clogged exit. The ghosted image of a U.S. flag slowly rippled above the barrier. A glimmering overlay asked drivers to be patient and kind to their fellow Americans.
Beyond the cordon, twenty state and local policemen gathered to investigate the odd standoff that had occurred here ninety minutes ago. The Terra Vista police chief scratched his jowls in confusion as he processed the testimony. He was a fat and hairy man of churlish disposition. No one had cause to find humor in the fact that his name was James Bond.
The chief was in a particularly foul mood this morning. Two of his men had been banged up in a high-speed road chase that went bizarrely awry. Another two were laid up with cracked ribs and punctured lungs. They rested on stretchers, waiting for the court recorder to arrive. Before their wounds and memories could be undone by revivers, they had to give their sworn statement about the woman who hurt them—a tall and skinny redhead who’d discovered a bold new way to resist arrest.
Everyone glanced up as a pair of ash-gray aerovans appeared above the treetops. The doors of each vehicle were garnished with the familiar golden logo of a spread-winged eagle, perched behind a large number 9. With a pair of steamy hisses, the vans unfolded their rubber tires and descended to the pavement.
Just as the chief expected, the Deps had come out to play.
The Bureau of Domestic Protections was formed in 1961, at the peak of the New Simplicity. The government’s goal was basic: to consolidate their national law enforcement agencies under one umbrella, with clear delineations of purpose between each of the eight new divisions.
In 1988, the Bureau created a ninth department to tackle the growing crimes of high technology. In addition to chasing down the new and savvy breeds of cracker (hacker), jacker (pirate), ripper (scammer), and creeper (pervert), DP-9 was tasked with curbing the felonious misuse of temporis. Each new method of bending time created at least a dozen new ways to break the law. The most common infractions involved swifting (causing mayhem in a speedsuit), rifting (accelerating only part of a victim’s body), clouding (vandalizing the sky with lumic projections), and tooping (using rejuvenators to create illegal copies of objects).
When the preliminary report of the morning’s altercation reached the federal wire, two words—weaponized tempis—raised eyebrows at DP-9 headquarters in Washington. A team was quickly dispatched from the Los Angeles office.
The policemen watched with cynical interest as eight agents emerged from the vans. Six of them were merely boys in suits, technicians with badges. Their leader was a gray-haired shellback with an Old West mustache and enough leathery experience on his face to ease the chief’s mind.
The final Dep was something else entirely.
While her companions were pasty, her skin was a smooth cocoa brown. She wore a short red skirt over stockings and a sleeveless white blouse that flaunted every curve of her sculpted arms. Intricate brass earrings dangled from her lobes like chandeliers. Most intriguing of all were her twelve-inch dreadlocks, finger-thick and scattered like fern leaves. It was an alien hairstyle in this country, even among the odd folk.
A dozen stares followed the woman as she surveyed the scene. She was certainly easy to look at, but between her strange hair and features—her overpronounced cheekbones and near-Asian eyes—she seemed far too exotic to be an agent of the Eagle.
The seasoned Dep-in-charge noticed the chief and approached him. They traded a firm handshake.
“Andy Cahill. Supervising Special Agent, DP-9.”
“James Bond. Poe-Chief, Terra Vista.”
“We hear six of your men came across some interesting sinners.”
“Four of my men,” the chief corrected. “The cycle jocks are State Patrol.”