Duncan Long
ANTI-GRAV UNLIMITED
For Maggie, Nicholas, Kristen, and Chad, with much love.
Chapter 1
I drove up the gravel shoulder to the edge of the highway and held my steering wheel as the giant vehicle trained its guns on me. I tried to look friendly. I gave a quick wave to go with my biggest, fake smile. As the road train thundered past, the gun crew waved back and then I held on as my van rocked in the wash of the twenty-six car chain of gray and black composite.
I let out a deep sigh of relief, thankful the gun crew hadn’t done a Swiss-cheese number on me and my van. Then I pulled onto Interstate 70 and quickly matched speed with the road train so I could tag along behind it at a steady 150 klicks per hour.
We hurtled down the ribbon of concrete traveling westward through the barren, treeless grassland that had been baked brown by the summer sun. Only a few abandoned farms and remnants of fencing showed that men had once lived in the area. The only trouble I had from there on was avoiding the wreckage that bounced alongside us from time to time as an old wreck was swept off the road by the train’s “cattle guard.”
The rest of the trip to New Denver was pretty much uneventful except when the road train smashed through a roadblock and shot up some hi-pees. I hoped the gun crew knew what they were doing; the government generally frowned on blowing away their employees. But since the road train kept going without having a fighter plane pound it into the pavement, I decided that the hi-pees must have been renegades.
Which just goes to show that you can’t trust anyone on the interstate.
Hours later, we left the grassland and crossed most of the barren Col-Kan desert. Soon the shadowy, cloud-like Rocky Mountains were barely visible in the distance, and shortly thereafter the spires of New Denver came into sight. Gradually, black charcoal piles that had long ago been houses started to dot the rock and sand alongside the roadway, slowly giving way to rows of rubble separated by sand laced with burnt bricks, bits of charcoal, and scrub brush. I was in one of the suburbs that had surrounded old Denver in its heyday.
It was hard to imagine what the sprawling city must have been like before the water shortage and the terrorist attack. The destruction of this city and a few others had also spelled the beginning of the end for national superpowers; filling the vacuum were the international corporations which took over and formed the world government.
Seeing my exit, I turned off the interstate with a wave to the tail gunner on the road train, then headed down the new plastic roadway leading to New Denver. Fifteen minutes later I neared the glass and steel buildings that looked like tall glistening jewels which had sprung out of the desert around the space port. In the distance, a rocket thundered upward to arch toward some far away part of the earth; the crackling of hot air crackled as the plume of white smoke and fire lifted the vehicle.
After driving through the valley formed by the high, needle-like skyscrapers on either side of the street, I parked three blocks down from Craig and Nikki’s high-rise complex.
And waited.
I wanted to be sure that someone wasn’t onto me before I headed for my friends’ place. After the deaths of my lab team, I didn’t want to bring any trouble with me.
Hearing a scratching sound at the window, I whirled around, drew my Beretta, aimed, and nearly squeezed off a shot in a blur of motion. Realizing my mistake, I eased up on the trigger, and the hammer lowered to half cock. My breath came rattling out as I realized that I had nearly shot a bag lady.
The scraggly woman had more wrinkles than a prune. She didn’t seem to see me through the van window; she twitched a little, brushed at the dust on the van, and then turned away. I decided the light must be shining so she couldn’t see me, or my embarrassment, through the heavily tinted windows.
I tried to gulp down my heart which seemed to be beating in my neck as the rag-covered lady stumbled on down the street. Finally collecting my wits, such as they were, I stepped out of the van and carefully locked its door, shivering in the cold shadow of the buildings. I pulled my jacket down to be sure it covered my pistol which I’d stuffed back into my waist band. Yes, I was definitely becoming paranoid.
But that gun made me feel a lot safer.
I paused a moment and wondered if my friends could really help me or if I was just dragging two more innocent people into hot water but I just couldn’t see how the Kaisers would be endangered as I approached their building. But surely no one could know where I was.
In front of the condo, I stopped a moment and toyed with my shirt collar while looking into the blue-mirrored front of the building, glancing as covertly as possible all around me. A few cars hummed by quickly and a modif-horse and rider clomped a block away. The only person on foot was the bag lady, now rummaging through a pile of garbage at the side of the street. The bot that seemed to be with her liberated a bit of newsfax as they rummaged in the trash and the sheet tumbled in the wind down the sidewalk, paused, and then was swept past me by another gust of wind.
Satisfied there was no danger, I tried to look nonchalant and walked to the portcullis of the crystal building and pressed the call button to Craig’s apartment.
The TV camera along with a remote laser gun swiveled toward me, “Phil?” It was Nikki’s voice.
“Yeah. Could I—”
“Hurry up. Get off the street.” The door flashed open and I stepped into the small cubicle behind it; the door quickly hissed shut behind me.
“Tenth floor?” the elevator asked and I nodded. It whisked me upward at a speed that made my feet swell as my blood tried to stay at ground level. With a gut-wrenching stop that sent the blood back up to my head, the elevator doors opened.
“Tenth floor, the apartment is to your right, number 1018,” the elevator told me. I glanced down the wide hallway before stepping out. Ceiling, floor, walls, and doors were all made of the same tough blue mirrored plastic. The doors to each apartment were almost invisible with only small seams and numbers marking their positions up and down the hall. I stepped onto the mirrored conveyer strip down the center of the hall and counted the door numbers as my infinite reflections. It looked safe. I started down the hall, quickly gliding by each door until I came to 1018, and touched the numbers to announce my presence.
I waited.
No doubt they were checking to be sure it was me. Without a sound, the door dilated opened and I stepped onto the ocean floor.
Or, at least, it looked like the ocean.
Fish, plants, a sunken ship was off in the background, barely discernible through the murky turquoise of the distance. A wicked looking shark seemed to be eyeing me from a nearby cave.
The door closed behind me before I could jump back into the hallway.
Fortunately, Nikki stepped from behind a tall bed of pink coral and waved, “Just a minute…”
She stepped back behind the coral and suddenly everything dissolved as she turned off the 3V. I discovered myself standing in a stark, white room with thick cream carpeting that looked like fur.
The room was windowless and completely bare of furnishings.
“Sorry. You got up quicker than I expected,” Nikki said with a smile that turned into a quivering frown. She stepped toward me and, with a sob, was in my arms before I knew what was happening, her body shaking.
My first thought was that she was glad to know I was alive.
“Craig left me,” she said between tears.
So much for my theory glad-I-was-alive theory. But I could see why Nikki would be pretty torn up if Craig was gone. He was all she had in the way of family. Nikki was a clone. A modified clone.