Death Sentences (32 page)

"Hank!"

He risked calling out his name.

An indistinct echo or a response reached their ears.

The street widened. The stench of burnt flesh wafted to them on the wind. The smoke swirled about them. Their visibility was severely restricted.

Then it happened.

"Commander!"

Shouting out, Hanson aimed his assault rifle. He was aiming at something, there, just beyond the smoke-

Something was coming their way. There were four shadows. They were moving very slowly.

Schmitt ripped the goggles clouded with dust from his face. The smoke immediately stung his eyes, and tears streamed down his cheeks.

Still he strained to see. It really was them. It was Hank's group.

A gust of wind swept by them. The smoke streamed away, and their view cleared.

"Hank! Jasper!"

Hanson ran toward them, calling their names. Then suddenly he stopped in his tracks, nearly falling forward.

"What the hell-!?"

It made no sense. And because it made no sense, they couldn't grasp at first why it made no sense.

The four in Hank's group were running headlong at them. The look of exertion on their faces showed they were giving their all.

But ... and yet ... they were not moving forward at all.

Their feet kicked at the ground. Sand was circling skyward, slowly, gently. They were floating on air. Their feet kicked out trying to find purchase, but in slow motion. Their bodies were still floating.

They were shouting something. Their mouths were open wide. Finally, one foot touched ground. But again the next step took them gradually into air.

It was just like a film in slow motion. Yet this wasn't on film or tape. It was actually happening before their eyes.

It wasn't possible. Such motion clearly defied the laws of physics. Physically, of course, they could deliberately move slowly. But a person could not kick off the ground and physically float in air for such a long period of time, ignoring the laws of gravity.

Of course-it was possible with film to stretch the intervals of time and produce slow motion. But that wasn't how time usually flowed-

(Time-!?)

It suddenly came to him. Time-! It had to be that. The flow of time had been altered. The four men in Hank's squad were caught in a different time stream, cut off from Schmitt's.

In other words, it was a gap in time that had come between them-!?

(Ridiculous!)

His very thought shocked him.

It was an illusion. His eyes were playing a trick. Toxic gases released in the area were affecting his nerves. Things would soon return to normal.

Schmitt shook his head violently from side to side.

He then started to run.

Hank and the others hadn't advanced more than two or three steps toward them. And so he'd have to go to them.

Weapon high, he ran toward them.

Then-he was bounced back. Something, invisible to the eye, had yielded like rubber stretching and then had bounced him back.

He tried going forward again. But there was no way.

"What is going on here? What the ... ?!"

Hanson thumped into it, too, and was thrown on his ass.

(A wall ... of time!)

Or it might be a cage. And Hank's team had been trapped in it.

(No, wait!)

Schmitt turned in a circle, scrutinizing everything around him.

He saw the houses in flames. But-but-the leaping of the flames and the rising of the smoke were odd. Everything was moving lazily, languidly, somehow taking its time.

Was it a wall-? Or a cage-? In either case, it seemed that Schmitt's group was now trapped. It wasn't Hank's group but Schmitt's whose time had been stretched. Which meant that one second beyond the barrier was like ten seconds, twenty seconds, or maybe even minutes in here.

"Aarrrh!"

Someone screamed. It was Guan.

He turned. Guan was on the ground, flat on his back, and was frantically scrabbling backward.

His eyes, crazy with fear, were fixed on a point in space.

At that point-something ominous was there.

Something ... like smoke ... or a shadow ...

Wavering and wriggling, something was taking shape.

(Eyes!)

He first noticed its eyes. From the shadowy entity, what looked like two eyes emerged.

Without stopping to think, he took aim at it. His finger squeezed the trigger.

Pa, pa ... pa pa pa ...

The motor whirred, and the monitor blinked. Magnetic pulses propelled superspeed bullets.

The bullets, however, passed right through the shadowy shape, ricocheted off the invisible barrier, and came directly back at them.

"Drop!"

Before his command rang out, Coolidge had fallen, clutching his shoulder. His cries of agony echoed.

The shadow wavered.

All of a sudden a figure materialized, coming into focus like a holographic projection.

The figure was human. It was looking down at Schmitt. Its eyes were enormous.

(A specter!?)

The part of its face where the mouth would be had not yet come clearly into focus but could be seen slowly moving.

Then they heard its voice. It sounded distant. It sounded like it was coming from someplace far away.

"Did you see them?"

The words came from the specter.

"This took place on Mars in 2131 AD."

It spoke English. But then-was it really English? It sounded rather like English to Schmitt. This was probably because it was the only language he knew. In any case, he understood it. And so it felt like English. But ... nonetheless ... was it really English?

He felt as if ... as if thoughts were being communicated directly to his mind.

In any event-it was his first encounter with a specter. Actually, he'd never had any sort of encounter with the supernatural, specters or otherwise. He didn't believe in it. And so he felt no impulse to flee, his body remained immobilized.

(I have killed too many ...) He thought. (Without mercy ... defenseless people ... and I've been cursed.)

"You! Who are you?"

His voice had finally returned. But it sounded rather pathetic.

"I've been waiting for you. I have something to show you."

The face blurred. And then it cleared again. It was the face of a youth. He looked Asian. His countenance was beautiful. Yet his eyes looked overly large.

The lower half of his body was shrouded in mist. His legs weren't at all visible.

His torso alone appeared, as if poking through the mist.

"Surely you know my name? It is Who May. I am Who May."

"It is Who May!?"

Schmitt repeated his words in a stunned voice.

"You mean the Who May that-"

"It is exactly as you saw. The same thing is happening here. And the same thing will continue to happen ..."

The specter did not take his eyes from Schmitt's face as he spoke.

"And then, in the end, something truly unexpected will happen. That's right.... All will be lost.... There won't be anything left behind ..."

His voice trailed sadly.

"What are you talking about-? So you're Who May? What the hell are you trying to say-!?"

Schmitt was shouting now.

"I didn't intend ... I didn't mean at all for this to happen I can only talk to you here, like this ... I'll soon vanish I have seen it all ... I have seen it all disappear, because of me ... And yet I too will just vanish with it ... That is why I had to tell you. And I have a request of you. You can change things. You can return time to its course. I ... well, it's too late ... I knew too much ... I can't come back ... The best I can do is to project myself into the vortex like this."

Schmitt-it dawned on him.

The eyes of the specter were staring at him from directly in front. And it was speaking.

But ... but then ... (it's not looking at or speaking to me!)

As soon as he realized this, his entire body began to shudder.

(There really is someone!)

Someone was watching him. He had felt it all along-someone gazing on him.

Now at last he knew who it was.

That had to be it. That's why he hadn't been able to find the seer.

(Someone-is inside me!)

"... Another universe ... inconceivable ... with words I would fashion it ... or so I thought. But words proved too imperfect for the task. And so I used a little trick where their imperfection caused distortion ... Dobaded ... Exactly ... The word was a sort of adhesive ..."

Sakamoto listened. He listened through the ears of the man named Schmitt, mercenary leader of the Massacre of 2131 on Mars.

Through his ears ... ? Well, that wasn't it exactly. The words came to him as sounds he did not understand. And yet he did understand. He grasped their meaning.

". . . from the continuum that is the universe, words have been cut out, crudely segmented. However you put them together, you won't return to the original universe. I tried to fill that interval with the word dobaded. It was a pluripotentiated word.... Or, rather, one might equally well say that it was a word that was not yet a word ..."

He didn't understand. (Did he say dobaded?) Who was this Who May? Naturally, he knew him as the one who had writ ten the spell titled "The Gold of Time." But ... but ... what was this Who May trying to communicate to him in spectral form?

By showing him the tragic events on Mars, was he trying to make clear the futility of efforts to contain the spell?

(It must be a dream.)

That was the quickest way to explain things. Under the power of the spell, he was dreaming.

"But through my experiments I eventually discovered the secret affinity obtaining between words and things. First was `Mirror.' With `Mirror,' what I tried to make was ... even if I could not make actual substances, with the spectral figures engendered with `Mirror,' I could re-create the universe as a spectral existence amid their reflections .... Once convinced of this, I transformed them into works ..."

The specter chattered on.

Specter ... ? In Schmitt's mind, there was no other way to refer to it, except specter. But, then again ... was it really a specter? If so, I too must be some sort of specter-such were Sakamoto's thoughts.

`And so, on that fateful night ... `time' popped into my head. Time ... time stream ... just as I had used words to project substance, I could now express time. I realized that ... I had the power to stretch or shrink time as I liked, to soar on it, to spin or distort it ..."

(Time ... ?) Did he mean "The Gold of Time"?

"Exactly ... that was when I felt something enticing me. `Write time. Tell what time is ...' And then immediately afterinspiration came to me. `The shade of the shadow of light ...' Precisely! Light itself is, in fact, the shadow of time ... and if one poked through to the other side of the shadow, would you not attain a vision of time itself-!?"

(I knew it!)

"Light ... a shining! Such connections brought to me the magical power possessed by gold. Gold! Truly, gold itself was the substance that contained the key to unlocking the secret of time. When time congeals ... a chunk of forgotten time, greedily hoarded ... at that time I caught a glimpse of the dream of alchemists, which was to control time!"