Arc Riders (17 page)

Hide in plain sight
, Grainger thought. His coveralls set to mimic sixties government issue, he hiked uphill toward the bridge and his rendezvous
point. Behind was Arlington National Cemetery, where the capsule waited, displaced, with Roebeck and Chun safely out of phase.

He checked his chronograph: five minutes had elapsed since he’d left the capsule. Ten to go until pickup.

Nan Roebeck’s initial orders had been to displace TC 779 straight to the safe house. Grainger’s skin had crawled at the thought.
There were too many unanswered questions to assume that the safe house was in any way safe.

Grainger had made his case to her while TC 779 was still out of phase: “Let me go meet this Calandine, our supposed agent
in place, on neutral ground. Use our comm to ring him on his horizon’s phone, set a meet at a specific time and place. Then
we risk one of us to take a baseline—not all of us if something’s changed.”

“Everything’s changed,” Chun Quo reminded him implacably, with her control wands moving nervously as if she were knitting.
Every time the wands clicked together, the sound grated on Grainger’s nerves. She was an inscrutable Oriental Fate knitting
his shroud. Those wands controlled all their fates in real time—or the person controlling the wands did. One mistake now and—

Grainger didn’t like Orientals. It was a societal prejudice, one he’d brought with him from his own time into the ARC Riders.
The US Department of Energy from his native horizon had an agenda of economic espionage and industrial warfare against Asian
countries inside its International Programs element, where he’d worked.

In his day, you competed with the Asians or you were absorbed by them, turned into slave labor in a milieu where non-Asians
could only rise so high. The US was just barely holding the line when he’d opted out of his horizon, in 2025, despite his
enviable position among one of the most powerful and aggressive of Western elites, the Department of Energy hierarchy.

Amid the flood tide of ravenous underclasses created by the bankrupt US educational and welfare system, the US government
had been staying afloat—barely—by empowering the ivory-tower-supported best of the best, subject to no rules but one: win,
at any cost. Maintain national security through innate or imported technological superiority. Buy it. Steal it. Reverse-engineer
it. Protect it. Field it aggressively in service of the remaining US and friendly Occidental elites who could still read,
write, think, and act globally.

Grainger had done a lot of Asians in his time. Personally and through field assets. He’d been consciously ignoring Chun’s
Oriental background since he’d joined the ARC Riders, as much for his own survival in a new milieu as for the good of the
team. But this revision—this mission; the berserker Orientals at the new Central which had supplanted his own—made Orientals
the enemy. He knew it. Chun knew it. And Roebeck knew it.

And now they all had to ignore it, for the sake of the team. Or the team wouldn’t be a team much longer. Attrition rate in
this unit might already be more than was survivable. Losing your home base usually was.

In the sanctity of the out-of-phase TC 779, Roebeck had said, “Tim, I still like the first plan. Chun delivers you and me
to the safe house in DC. We make a surprise entrance, giving no warning to anyone who might want to conceal a changed affiliation.”
She’d smiled mirthlessly. “We wear our suits for the insertion, take a look around. Chun waits out of phase as a safeguard
against another attack. If it seems safe, we get out of the suits and stash them out of phase, too, gather some ground truth,
get our legs on this horizon.”

It made a sort of rudimentary sense, if you trusted Chun implicitly. Now that they were about to commit to a time horizon
very close to the one in which Grainger had been raised, he couldn’t prevent old instincts from coming to the surface.

“You’re the mission commander,” he’d reminded Roebeck coldly. “I’m just giving you my recommendations.”

Chun said, “You just don’t want to wear your suit, and you know it. Any excuse…” Chun trailed off when he glared at her.

“Fuck my suit,” he retorted. “It’s immaterial to this discussion.”

Everybody knew what subtext was material.

“Tim,” Roebeck said warningly.

“Look, Nan,” Grainger pleaded, shifting in the suddenly constraining environment of TC 779. “We don’t have any way to judge
whether this agent in place, Calandine, has been compromised. We can’t be sure of any mission supports that Central set up
on this horizon, let alone what amounts to a sleeper agent—not his affiliation or anything else. Remember, it’s their Central
that’s policing this timeline. It’s their timeline, so we’ve got to assume it’s their safe house. You can’t even be sure whose
technology is superior on this revision, let alone who’s on what side.” There, it was out in the open. Sort of. “We nearly
had our clocks cleaned back there in 50K, remember.”

Nan Roebeck was the strategist, the team leader, not Grainger. Tim Grainger was—always had been—an operator, and his concerns
were tactical. Had to be.

Tactically, it didn’t make any sense to expose yourself to an arguably superior enemy force without some credible intel or
at least some recon. He wanted to do that recon, and do it alone. He did
not
want to do it
en masse
, with the two women and a vehicle that was more important to the team survival than any of their individual lives.

He especially did not want to do it with Roebeck, leaving TC 779 in Chun’s hands, trusting Chun with both their lives and
with the mission’s success. Not when Chun, who was as Oriental as the revisionists who’d created this timeline, just might
let her heritage cloud her judgment while she waited out of phase in a vehicle that was everybody’s last best hope.

He stared at Roebeck, willing her to see his point of view. He couldn’t be any more blatant than he had been. He wouldn’t.

Roebeck stared back, willing him to see her point of view. Unit cohesion was everything at a time like this. He could destroy
this mission as easily as any revisionists by undermining her leadership or the shared purpose of the team.

Finally Roebeck had nodded, her eyes too bright. “You’re not sure it’s safe to displace directly into the safe house. I can
credit that. But displacing
anywhere
may be our most risky action, and we have to do that to function. Remember what happened—”

“We know what happened, but not how—not what signature they’re using to find us, not for certain,” Chun Quo said. “We only
think
we know what not to do. If we’re wrong and we do the wrong thing, we give them a homing beacon.”

“We can’t sit still forever,” Nan told her. “We have to act. They’ll react. We’ll be ready.” She shrugged. “That’s the job.”

Chun wasn’t finished. “Tim, if you do this your way—without a displacement suit—that’s your style and nobody’s arguing it’s
not correct for this environment—and we displace again to pick you up, then displace again into the safe house… who’s to say
we’re not leaving enough signature for the Orientals”—she said it flatly—“from their Central to fix our position?”

Grainger felt as if Chun had slapped him across the face. She’d been the first to say “Orientals,” not him. He just wanted
to get out of there. “Nan, give me fifteen minutes with this guy. You monitor the realtime events from here. Chun can grab
me off the pavement if it gets too dicey. I’ll agree with the agent on a time up the line to displace to the safe house. I
mean, what if he’s got someone else using it today?”

“You mean, what if the enemy—if Central’s people are using it. Yes, I see.” Nan Roebeck’s long-jawed face squared off. “But
I can’t risk not being able to get to you….”

Chun Quo was clicking her wands impatiently. “I’ll get him. Minute 16 from mission start. Or any minute you like better, Nan.
Just try to make it to the designated pick-up coordinates, Grainger, so I can pick you up the easy way for the inevitable
hot wash to come.” A “hot wash” was what you did after everything went wrong in an exercise that surfaced operational problems
and procedural errors. Chun smiled sweetly. “Can’t lose our only remaining white male.”

“Let’s get these time frames fixed for insertion and extraction,” Roebeck snapped. So they’d decided. Or Nan Roebeck had.
She was still that good.

Now he was roaming the 1967 afternoon, because Roebeck was that good, watching for a man who’d lean against the plinth of
the statue on the left. Whatever she really thought, Nan Roebeck had let him go alone. She’d stayed with the ship.

Grainger checked his chronograph. He had nine minutes before pickup. His facemask membrane was up on his forehead, obscured
by a sweatband tied over it. The sweatband looked like indigenous nonanachronistic cloth from this time, but it was transparent
in all EM wavelengths. TC 779 could record what he saw. The other ARC Riders couldn’t talk to him or hear him in real time
while they were out of phase. Effectively, he was on his own.

The walkways on the bridge were full of jogging soldiers and strolling flower children in fringe and bell-bottoms. The soldiers
and the flower children were so wary of each other, he moved unremarked among them.

Eight minutes left. The statues of gilded horses, men, and women across the bridge had been given to the US by the French,
Grainger remembered. The man waiting under the scant shadow of the left-hand statue on the Lincoln Memorial side of the bridge
was wearing the blue blazer and chinos of his spookish kind, and studying a pro forma map of Virginia. He was sporting the
agreed-upon red socks under his penny loafers.

Grainger walked up to the stranger slowly. Grainger wasn’t wearing any identifying insignia—best not to pick a polarizing
affiliation, best not to make himself an easy target if the agent had switched sides. This close to the Lincoln Memorial,
the air smelled of carbon monoxide and marijuana. Seven minutes.

The golden horse statues, each with a naked man astride and a naked woman beside, stared down protectively on the soldiers
who jogged in formation in white T-shirts and running shorts, spraying perspiration on the brightly clad civilians as they
passed.

The man who should be Calandine ignored everyone until Grainger walked up to him and said what he’d agreed to say: “Excuse
me, does that map show you how to get to Pentagon Mall parking?”

The man squinted at him, got sunglasses from his breast pocket, and put them on slowly. Then he said what he’d agreed to say:
“I’m going to take a cab there now myself. I can drop you.”

“Great. Thanks. I have to meet my cousin.” Having recited the last bit of rote formula, Grainger relaxed one notch. He took
his hand out of his pocket, where it had been curled around the reassuring grip of his acoustic pistol, and scratched the
band of his chronograph. Six minutes. His wrist was perspiring.

Somewhere on the bridge, flower children and soldiers were exchanging angry words. Calandine looked over his shoulder. “Better
catch that cab before they start rounding up those kids. District police and National Guard will close off the area at the
first sign of trouble.”

The dark-haired Calandine touched his sunglasses, stepped off the curb, and waved. A blue and white cab, which had been idling
on the shoulder, rolled into gear and pulled up in front of them.

Calandine opened a rear door and motioned Grainger inside, then got in the front seat. The driver didn’t wait for directions,
but drove across the bridge and toward Arlington National Cemetery.

Five minutes. UFO mythology was alive and well in the sixties, so if worse came to worst, Project Blue Book would have another
entry when Chun and Roebeck showed to pick up Grainger—even if it had to be in the middle of a highway.

Calandine opened a briefcase that he hadn’t carried into the cab. “Here you go. Credit card. Local currency. You can use the
card to get traveler’s checks if you run out of money, but we don’t think you will.” The wad of greenbacks wasn’t more than
half an inch thick, but the denominations were high—and therefore traceable. “House keys. Car keys. And my card, with all
my phone numbers on it.” Calandine grinned and showed front teeth trimmed with gold.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Grainger wanted to know as he took the lot. Nobody who goes to the trouble of providing himself with a driver
and cab as cover, and sits in the front when you’re in the back, is feeling real trusting, or leaving anything to chance.

“Traveler’s Aid,” Calandine said, and looked at his watch pointedly. “You’ve got what—four and a half minutes to find that
particular gravestone you like so much. You can speak freely here.” The “cabbie” was driving into Arlington National Cemetery,
as if to cut across to the Pentagon. All as arranged, so far.

“You’re the one who ought to have the questions,” Grainger said softly. “Can I go to the site now, instead?” It was so hot
in the cab that perspiration was trickling down his neck.

“Sure.” Calandine touched the driver’s shoulder. “Take us to 12th and E.” There was no hesitation in the agent’s response.

“Never mind, I guess I better make my milestones.” Just checking.

The field agent took off his sunglasses and peered at Grainger before peevishly redirecting the driver back onto his original
course, which caused a minor traffic accident among the other autonomously piloted ground vehicles. Brakes squealed. Someone
cursed in Spanish and showed a fist as Calandine’s cab veered around a dilapidated car now stalled across a lane and a half,
with a smaller red car conjoining its left rear bumper.

Two minutes. Calandine said, “I’m a busy man. You people are putting some strain on our arrangement as it is. Don’t push it.
There’s nobody near your site to bother you, if that’s what this is about. You need anything more, don’t hesitate to call.”

You people?

The cab stopped. Grainger said, “Walk me over to see my dead uncle, cousin.”

Calandine got out of the front seat; Grainger got out of the rear seat. The briefcase beside the cabbie was propped open by
the snout of a revolver.