Timecaster Read online

  “Take this,” she said, handing me a pill I didn’t recognize.

  “What is it?”

  “Anticoagulant. It will help with the reattachment. May I have your ear?”

  I swallowed the pill and handed her my ear. She had me put my head down, applying more anesthetic. Then she picked up an eyedropper and a different type of living skin—one that was gel-based.

  “You can’t move,” she said. “If I don’t get this right, your haircut will look crooked.”

  “Well, we don’t want that.”

  She put a strap over my forehead, and two more across my chest and legs, securing me to the examination table. I stayed perfectly still while she adjusted my ear. As the bacteria did their work, I felt my ear get hot. The warmth spread to my head, and down my neck, my chest, my stomach, eventually reaching my . . .

  “That wasn’t an anticoagulant, was it?” I asked.

  “Hypererection pill.” Yummi glanced at my groin. “Seems to be working, I see.”

  She lazily trailed her fingers over my belly and then seized me through my pants.

  “I’m married,” I told her as she worked her hand up and down.

  “Does your prenup have a fidelity clause?”

  “No. But I still prefer to remain faithful.”

  Yummi licked her lower lip. “Sex is a normal, healthy biological need.”

  “You sound like my wife.”

  She freed me through my fly and began to stroke me harder. “It’s selfish not to share something this beautiful with others.”

  I cleared my throat, then said, “I’m a selfish guy.”

  Yummi took a two-handed grip, provoking a sublime sensation that gave me chills. “Your wife is lucky to have such a devoted husband. What does she do?”

  “She’s . . . an SLP.”

  “Then as long as I don’t kiss you, she won’t mind.”

  “That’s . . . that’s not the point.” I swallowed and closed my eyes. “I mind.”

  “So you’d like me to stop?”

  Just say it. “Yes.”

  “What about if I did this?” Yummi hopped onto the table and straddled me. Staring deep into my eyes, she slowly impaled herself on my cock. Then she worked her pelvic muscles in a way that could only be described as astonishing.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  “Still want me to stop?” Yummi said.

  “Uhhnnnn . . . yes.”

  “I’ve never had a man reject me before,” Yummi said. “That makes me horny.”

  I doubted there were many things that didn’t make Yummi horny, but I didn’t say anything. No point in being mean to the woman who saved my ear.

  She increased her tempo and began to moan. I concentrated on not moving my hips, not matching her thrusts. I reached up to try to unstrap my head, but it was no good—the straps were locked down. Yummi grabbed my hands and placed them on her breasts, grunting as she did. Then she did more than grunt. She began to moan and, ultimately, scream.

  I glanced sideways at McGlade. Tasty had straightened out his arm and was injecting nanotubes into his bones. She saw me watching and winked at me.

  “I’m almost done here. I’ll be right over, handsome.”

  Just what I needed.

  I thought about Vicki, wondering if she’d made it to Sata’s. I wanted to call both of them, but I didn’t think anyone would be able to hear me over Yummi’s cries.

  After her eighth or ninth orgasm, she eased herself off me. I thought she’d finally had enough. Or perhaps decided to respect my wishes.

  I was wrong on both counts. She simply wanted to change positions, and began to ride me backward.

  For my own part, I was holding out pretty well. While I didn’t have the size or the endurance to make the Olympic hyperfucking team, I had pretty good staying power. So I was able to control myself, even when confronted with Yummi’s overdeveloped Kegels.

  Then Tasty walked over. She ran a finger across my lips and asked, “Is this seat taken?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she climbed onto the table, spreading herself open over my mouth. She was already soaking wet.

  “Please use your tongue on me,” she breathed. “Please.”

  Not wanting to be rude, I used my tongue on her. When someone sits on your face, it’s impolite not to.

  “Aw . . . come on.” McGlade was awake again, looking visibly annoyed. “In what universe is this fair?”

  I tried to answer, but couldn’t talk with my mouth full. It didn’t take long before Tasty climaxed, coming very close to breaking my jaw. Whereas some women were very sensitive after an orgasm, Tasty became more aggressive. There was actually a very real possibility of suffocation. And oddly, the lack of air was making Yummi’s movements feel even more incredible.

  “All right! This is more like it!” I followed McGlade’s line of sight and saw another naked woman walk into the infirmary. Purple hair, in long pigtails. She too was devastatingly beautiful, but her perfect breasts were a bit larger than I preferred.

  “Is this the killer?” she asked.

  Tasty writhed on top of my face, then groaned, “Yes. The one on the news.”

  “I never fuct a killer before. Is it hot?”

  “Real hot!” Yummi screamed.

  “You know what else is hot?” McGlade said. “Fucking a killer’s best friend.”

  I made noise until Tasty gave me some breathing room. “So you ladies know who I am?”

  The purplette gave Tasty a deep kiss, then stroked my hair. “We know. We saw you murder that poor old lady.” Her eyes got wide and she shuddered. “It was horrible.”

  “Are you going to turn me in?”

  “Of course we’re going to turn you in. You’re a danger to society.” She stuck her finger into her mouth, then began to touch herself. “But first, we’re going to hump you until you’re dry.”

  “Come on!” McGlade yelled. “Why can’t you hump me dry and turn me in?”

  Purplette sneered at McGlade. “He’s a killer. A real bad boy. You’re flabby and gross.”

  “I’m a killer!” McGlade said. “I killed a roider in dissytown!”

  “Sure you did.”

  McGlade strained against his bonds. “I’ll prove it! Let me go and I’ll kill somebody else for you!”

  I also strained against the straps, which seemed to excite Yummi and Tasty even further. BHVs were law-abiding do-gooders, so it was ironic that violence and death turned them on. But everyone had their kinks, I guess.

  “Okay, switch,” Tasty said. Yummi climbed off, Tasty sat on my dick, and the new girl took Tasty’s place on my mouth.

  “Either fuck me or knock me out,” McGlade pleaded.

  Yummi frowned at him, then pulled the curtain between the tables, cutting McGlade off from us.

  “Hey! Don’t do that! Aw, come on!”

  After a dozen more orgasms, and two dozen more complaints from McGlade, everyone changed positions again. I still hadn’t come, but it didn’t matter even if I did—erection pills would keep me hard as long as there was stimulation. How many women were in this commune? Fifteen? I could be there for hours.

  “I call next.”

  I followed the new voice, staring at the naked man who had entered the room.

  I needed to put a stop to this and get out of there. Right now.

  I considered reaching for the Nife on my belt, but it would be too easy to accidentally cut these women to pieces. Or cut off a part of my anatomy that I’d grown quite fond of over my lifetime. But maybe, if I timed it right . . .

  “At least let me watch,” McGlade wailed.

  I closed my eyes, picturing the Nife sheath. My right arm was still injured from Sata’s blow. I’d have to grab it lefty, bring the blade up to my head without being able to see it, and cut the strap, all before someone tried to stop me. If I did wing one of the women, at least we were already in an infirmary. Maybe they could reattach whatever I cut off.

  “Okay, switch.”
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  The woman got up, and I made my move, pulling out the Nife and holding the flat of the blade against my head—this was the scary part—slicing the strap before a new set of thighs closed around me, lifting my head after the restraint broke and freed me, not waiting to see if I’d slit my own throat or cut off my ear again, quickly making work of the chest strap, cutting away from my body, shoving some naked girl to the side but spending a fraction of a second admiring her finely sculpted butt, then hacking the strap around my legs and getting to my feet, holding the Nife sideways so everyone could see it.

  “The orgy is over. Anyone comes near me, they’ll get hurt.”

  “You are so hot,” the naked guy said.

  “Thanks.” I tucked myself back inside my pants, then drew the curtain back. McGlade also had his hands in his pants, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t tucking himself in.

  “A little privacy here,” he said.

  “We’re leaving.” I sliced through his straps and carefully sheathed the Nife. “We need to—”

  One of the women screamed. But it wasn’t the kind of scream I’d gotten used to hearing. This one was a scream of fear.

  I spun around, just as four shots rang out and four naked people flopped to the floor, trailing Tesla lightning.

  “Found ya, you fucker,” Teague said, pointing his Glock at my chest from only a few feet away.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I didn’t think. I reacted. Taser rounds would put me down, so I needed to get something between me and the gun.

  Teague fired three times, each one hitting McGlade as I held him in front of me like a shield. With McGlade held rigid by the electricity, I took three quick steps and shoved him at Teague, toppling them both like hyperbowling pins and then running past.

  Once through the door I expected to be greeted by the entire Chicago Peace Department. But the garden was empty, confirming my suspicions that Teague had played a part in setting me up. Why else wouldn’t he have called for backup?

  I sprinted through Eden, hauling ass down the clover path, passing up two more naked women, one with blue hair and the other, incongruously, brunette. I’d never really considered the communist lifestyle, but it certainly had several points in its favor.

  I reached the street level slightly winded. Teague’s car, like mine, was trashed. But there was a police biofuel scooter parked in front of the parking farm. Bad form on Teague’s part, leaving it in the open. I cut off the handlebars with one sweep of the Nife, then cautiously tucked it away again.

  My next course of action was to lose Teague. I had too much stuff I needed to figure out, and I wouldn’t be able to do that with him sticking to my ass like dirty underwear. So I used my DT to find the nearest train.

  Tracking a subject on foot with a TEV was time consuming, but relatively simple. You simply kept the lens on the subject and followed him. Tracking while on a vehicle was harder. Teague had tailed me to McGlade’s, but he also could have guessed I’d visit McGlade, since Teague had access to my complete background.

  But tracking with a TEV was impossible on heliplanes, and very hard to do on trains. To tune in to the fabric of spacetime, a timecaster had to occupy the same space as the subject, and be moving at the same speed, or else he would overshoot or undershoot him. In the case of trains, unless Teague got on the exact same train I did, the space would be different. The speed might also be slightly different, if only by a few inches per second, which was enough to really mess up a trail. The TEV’s internal program compensated for rotation of the earth and the orbit around the sun because those were constants and were mathematically predictable. But with subjects in vehicles, a timecaster needed to constantly adjust the tuning and his own speed and location as the subject moved through spacetime, making it very hard to focus.

  I couldn’t get on passenger trains, not without a chip. So I’d have to hobo a cargo train. I didn’t have appropriate hobo gear, but I figured I could throw something together. How hard could it be?

  My DT led me to the nearest hardware store. I picked up a hundred meters of jelly rope, some molecular bond glue, goggles, a square-foot sheet of heat-resistant aluminum, two iron stakes, a metal-shaft hammer, and gecko tape. Then I watched the four cashiers to see who was paying the least amount of attention. I picked a teenager whose lips were moving; he was on a headphone call.

  I got into line; he rang up my items; I waved my wrist over the pay bar, then walked briskly away before he realized my chip hadn’t scanned. By the time he said, “Hey!” I was out the door just as it autolocked behind me, sprinting out into the street.

  According to uffsee (thanks kindly, Aunt Zelda) the nearest southbound was the Baton Rouge line. Fifty cars, averaging eighty miles per hour, hauling corn. I jogged ten blocks to the track and checked my time. Four minutes until the Hawkeye arrived.

  First I pounded the metal stakes into the ground, leaving three inches of each sticking out. I folded the sheet of aluminum in half, slipping it inside my belt. Then I wrapped the jelly rope around my shoulders and chest, bandolier-style. Knots in jelly rope were notoriously slippery, because they stretched, so I used the molly glue to fuse it closed.

  The ground began to rumble. Train a-comin’. I wound the gecko tape around my knees and hands, making sure the setae were lined up the right way. Then I attached the handle of the hammer to the other end of the jelly rope, and soaked the entire hammer with glue.

  I eyed the train, bracing my feet against the stakes, trying to envision success and push away the catastrophic failure that kept running though my head. I’d talked with hobos before, and they’d said the key was the release. If you went too soon, the jelly rope didn’t maximize its potential energy, and you’d be dragged to a horrible death. If you went too late, you’d hit the train traveling too fast, and splat against it like a bug on a windshield.

  I did the equation on my DT after checking the speed of the train with the built-in laser. Factoring in my weight, my surface area, and the length and diameter of the jelly rope, I should dig in for 5.19009 seconds before letting myself go. If I were off by .6 seconds either way, it wouldn’t end well.

  I readied my timer, gripped the rope under the hammer, and began to twirl it.

  The ground rumbled harder, and I could hear the train now, a gathering storm of pounding engines and steel wheels.

  Of the two ways to screw up, I disliked dragging more. Might be smart to keep the Nife in mind to cut the rope if my head started bouncing off of railroad ties.

  But then, smacking hard into the train, bouncing off unconscious, and then being dragged to death was potentially worse than being dragged from the get-go.

  Or hitting so hard it shattered my bones, then sticking there on the train for ninety minutes until it reached Chicago, every bump and vibration absolute agony.

  I remember Teague playing a video in our office a few months ago called Extreme Hobo Deaths 7. This one guy somehow got his legs cut off, an inch at a time, as he slowly slipped under the wheels. Another one hit upside down and his face was erased, pressing against the rail. He lived, and now spends his days alternating between being fed mush through a tube and screaming for someone to kill him.

  This was really a bad idea. WTF was I thinking?

  Then the train was upon me, and I thought about Vicki, thought about never seeing her again because I was killed in prison, and I threw the hammer.

  It clanged against one of the grain cars, the glue forming an instant mollybond. I braced myself, tensing my feet, leaning slightly back as the jelly rope played out—

  —and that was when I realized I’d forgotten to hit my timer.

  Panic spiked my adrenaline even higher. How much time had already passed? Half a second? A full second?

  Assume a second and count, dammit!

  “One one thousand . . .”

  The jelly rope was uncoiling like a tornado, half of it gone.

  “Two one thousand . . .”

  Now the rope had all played out, tugging o
n my chest lightly as it began to go taut.

  “Three one thousand . . .”

  I leaned back as the rope stretched, going from a slight pull to a serious yank, almost pulling me off my feet.

  “Four one thousand . . .”

  I leaned back at a forty-degree angle, my heels digging into the dirt, gritting my teeth as I strained against the tremendous force.

  “Five one thousand . . .”

  I jumped, springing ten feet into the air, rocketing at the train extremely fast.

  Too fast.t.

  The potential energy in the elastic had become kinetic energy, hurtling me toward the train much faster than it could speed away. I was within fifty yards of it and accelerating, traveling in an imperceptible arc, pinwheeling my arms in an effort to slow down.

  I wondered if the train had its rear cameras on, and if I’d make the cover of Extreme Hobo Deaths 8.

  Twenty-five yards to impact and I was still going too fast. When I hit, I’d fragment like a snowball.

  Ten yards away, and I began to rapidly slow down. As my speed came closer to matching the speed of the train, it seemed like everything was taking a lot longer to happen. The wind, screaming in my ears and drowning out the roar of the engine, was countering my momentum.

  In a fraction of a second I went from worrying about splattering to worrying I wasn’t going to reach the train at all.

  I tucked my knees up and my elbows in, streamlining my body, trying to cut down the wind resistance for the last few yards, getting slower and slower until it seemed like both the train and I had come to a complete stop. I reached out, floating gently though the air, and finally touched the side of the grain car, gently as kissing a lover.

  I slapped my hands against it, the millions of setae on the gecko tape forming van der Waals adhesion and sticking me to the aluminum. Unlike a mollybond, which combined molecules into solid compounds, the gecko tape induced dipole forces. The result was very sticky and incredibly strong, but easy to remove by peeling the material away from the angle of incidence.