Flashback

way they had for the last half-dozen years. In fact, the thought of inhaling the stuff and going under its influence made him feel slightly nauseated.

“Sato,” he said softly, “I keep hearing from people who Keigo interviewed that the boy kept asking them about F-two… Flashback-two, that old legend. Is there something going on there?”

“Going on there, Bottom-san?”

“Is there something happening with F-two that I don’t know about?”

The big man shook his head in that Sato-way that involved his shoulders and entire upper body more than his massive neck. “There are rumors, Bottom-san, that this F-two has been sold on the streets of New York City and Atlanta, Georgia, in the last months, but as far as I can tell, they are only rumors. There are always rumors of the fantasy drug being available somewhere.”

“Yeah.” If any of the rumors had turned out to be real, Nick knew for a certainty, F-two would have been available everywhere in what was left of the country within a week. A nation addicted to its own past via flashback was ripe for the fantasy version of the drug. Since it hadn’t popped up everywhere, Flashback-two was still a myth. Part of Nick was sorry. Part of Nick was just… confused.

And very weary. He shouldn’t have drunk the sake.

Nick looked out the aircraft window. They’d passed beyond a region of clouds and the starlight and moonlight illuminated a convoluted western topography five miles below. When Nick had traveled by air as a young man, there had been more constellations of lights from small towns dotting even these barren stretches of the country at night, but those constellations had all but disappeared as the small towns in the west and elsewhere in what remained of the United States had fallen victim to the economy and other new realities. One’s instinct was to think of small towns as a better survival-center come catastrophe, but it had turned out that they were more brittle and less resilient than the big cities. Staring now at the solid darkness below, Nick imagined the millions who’d fled those now dark and silent towns over the past decade and a half—millions of the newly homeless who’d embraced at least a chance of survival in the battered big cities.

He dozed off while watching the tousled-gray bedspread of the western canyons, mountains, and deserts roll on darkly beneath them.

Why do you have him in custody?” Nick had asked Chief Ambrose as his father’s old friend and former student led Nick back through overcrowded holding cells to an isolated cell now holding only one man.

“His father and grandfather were both assassinated shortly after the fighting began,” said Ambrose, unlocking a door that led to the isolated cell. He paused to finish saying what he had to say before opening the door to the room. “Evidently they weren’t killed in the general fighting, but were assassinated… or so Roberto believes. His own reconquista unit had been cut off in the Culver City fighting and Roberto was sure that if he surrendered to the National Guard or state authorities or to any of the mercenary armies down from Mulholland, Beverly Hills, and the rest, they’d execute him as well. So he and the few surviving members of his unit found some CHP patrolmen to surrender to and we brought him to the Southern Division barracks’ lockup here in Glendale.”

Nick’s stolen Menlo was parked in the walled and razor-wire-protected visitors’ parking lot outside this North Central Avenue CHP headquarters. He just hoped that no trooper decided to run the plate numbers.

“Do you think he’ll talk to me?” asked Nick.

“Let’s find out,” said Dale Ambrose and swung open the door. The metal cell in the center of the larger room looked strange to Nick. Ambrose nodded and left.

Nick and the young man—in his late twenties, Nick thought—were alone in the room, except for the very obvious video camera near the ceiling in the far corner, and sat opposite each other on bunk beds in the oversized cell.

“I am Roberto Emilio Fernandez y Figueroa,” said the young man in a strong voice. “Someone assassinated my grandfather Don Emilio Gabriel Fernandez y Figueroa and my father, Eduardo Dante Fernandez y Figueroa, last week, and those assassins will reach me soon, Mr. Bottom. Ask me what you wish to know and if I am able to help you without dishonoring my name or informing upon my family or comrades, I will do so.”

“I’m only hunting for my son,” said Nick. “But are you sure your grandfather and father were assassinated? It’s been a pretty crazy week.”

Roberto smiled ever so slightly. He was a handsome man and had been even more handsome before someone had broken his nose and beaten the right side of his face into a swollen red mass. “I am certain, Mr. Bottom. My grandfather knew of one assassination attempt scheduled for the very morning the fighting began—a Great White predator drone missile attack on one of our family compounds—and avoided that. But in the end, he and my father were killed by two separate assassins, people from within our own organization, who had obviously been suborned by the state of California or by Advisor Omura’s people. It was the loss of my father’s and his father’s leadership that turned the tide against us so soon in the fighting.”

Nick had nothing to say to that. He showed Roberto photos of Val and then of Leonard. “My father-in-law reportedly knew your grandfather,” he said softly.

“Yes. I have heard of their Saturday chess games in Echo Park,” said Roberto. The thin smile returned despite the massive bruising around his mouth.

“I’m trying to find out if my boy’s alive, Senor Fernandez y Figueroa,” said Nick. “I was thinking that their only chance—my son’s and his grandfather’s—might have been if Leonard had come to see your grandfather to ask for help. It would have been immediately before the fighting. I’m hoping you might know whether my son and father- in-law left on one of your Friday convoys.”

Roberto nodded slowly. “I have met neither your son nor his grandfather, Mr. Bottom. But my father did mention that Grandfather Emilio’s ‘old chess partner’ had visited not long before the fighting began. It would make sense that your son and his grandfather might have been seeking escape on one of the truck convoys or railway services to which my family extended its protection and patronage.”

“Do you know if that’s what happened on Friday, September seventeenth?” asked Nick. “Do you know if my boy and his grandfather actually got on to some train or truck convoy?”

“I do not,” said Roberto, shaking his head sadly. Even that amount of movement must have pained the man, thought Nick. “I fear that events were too violent and too confused that Friday… my father never got around to telling me what the nature of Grandfather Emilio’s visit from your father-in-law was about. Lo siento mucho, Senor Bottom.”

They both stood painfully, two men moving slowly with bruises and aching ribs as well as two men with death sentences hanging over them. They shook hands.

“I wish you luck, Senor Roberto Emilio Fernandez y Figueroa. And I sincerely hope that things turn out better for you than you fear.”

Roberto shook his head wryly but said, “And I wish you luck, Senor Bottom. And I will say a prayer asking that, if it is possible, your son and father-in-law are well and that you will all soon be reunited. At the very least, we must believe that we will be reunited with our family members in the next life.”

Nick had felt some strange emotions as he finished talking to Chief Dale Ambrose, left the South Division CHP lockup, and got that Nissan Menlo Park the hell out of there.

He twitched awake. Sato was snoring loudly, sitting in the chair across the table from him and sleeping with his massive arms crossed over his chest, the polymorphic smart-cast barely visible under his right shirtsleeve. Nick knew that if he made any noise at all, the security chief would be fully awake in a microsecond.

Nick checked his watch without moving his arm or body. If they were still on the schedule Sato had interpreted from the pilot’s earlier announcement, they should be landing in Denver in about thirty minutes. Nick leaned toward the window just enough to look down into the darkness. Starlight gleamed on high snowfields while a few headlights moved along dark canyon roads. I-Seventy? It didn’t matter. But the mere presence of vehicles on the highways meant that they were approaching the Front Range of Colorado.

Nick silently folded his own arms and closed his eyes.