Götterdämmerung

Henry Darrow had barely completed his transfer to HomeSec from the soon-to-be-defunct FBI when his former FBI partner - now his partner at HomeSec - presented him with his first case.

"Settling in all right, Henry?" Jillian DeGuerve asked, stopping at his desk.

Darrow, who hadn't even had a moment to take off his hat and jacket, paused. "Why? You have a case for us already?"

Jillian smiled. "That's my boy."

Darrow gave her a scowl that neither of them took seriously. Then he fell into his chair - HomeSec furniture was so much better than what he'd had at the FBI - and invited his partner to spill the details.

Jillian lost no time. She had a penchant for using paper files and hard copies of photos. She attributed this to an obsession with security: A tablet, PCD, or Q-Slate could be hacked, even with top-level precautions. But no one had yet figured out how to hack a lowly, antiquated file folder.

She spread the folder open on Darrow's desk and let him pick through its contents.

At the top of the stack was a large photo of a balding man with narrowed brown eyes. It was a face shot and not much could be seen of his shirt, but Darrow noted that what was visible of the man's clothing seemed out of date - seriously so. The shirt's collar looked vintage, though its dyes seemed unfaded. Maybe this guy liked to shop at consignment boutiques or specialty shops? Darrow filed that mental note away.

"Who have we got here?" he asked Jillian.

"This man was found in a confused and disoriented state three weeks ago," Jillian told him. "His ID papers indicate he's a German national named Hartmut Scharbel."

Papers? Darrow thought. Was Jillian using a turn of phrase? Or was this Hartmut fellow another security-obsessed electronics skeptic? Didn't Germans use RFID grains for identity, purchases, health monitoring, and general tracking, just like Americans were required by law to do?

Papers. The detail stuck out and bothered Darrow, but he didn't interrupt.

"The police who took him into custody contacted HomeSec and the German embassy and learned a few things," Jillian continued. "He never entered the United States, at least not by legal means. Also, he's a vintner from the Rhine Neckar region. And he disappeared in 1978. At the age of 65."

Darrow frowned at the photo. "But the man in the picture is..."

"In his mid-60s," Jillian completed his sentence when it trailed off. "That's the conundrum. Hartmut Scharbel, born April 4, 1912, disappeared on June 15, 1978."

"That's over a century ago," Darrow protested. "There's no way this is the same man."

"It's three weeks shy of 106 years," Jillian agreed. "And you're right. He's aged very gracefully."

Darrow had plenty of protests but he held his tongue. He was sure to have more objections before Jillian was done explaining the case.

"An investigation at the time of his disappearance turned up nothing," she resumed. "Seven years later Herr Scharbel was declared legally dead. His presumed widow, Hannah Scharbel, died nine years later. His eldest daughter, Else, born in 1948, made sporadic attempts to renew the investigation, but never found out anything. Else died in 2013. Her elder brother Hans, born in 1942, died two years later. Her younger brother, Ernst, born in 1951, died in '24. Else's sons, Max and Tyler..."

"Jesus, you're not going to tell me when they were born too, are you?"

"Max was born in 1972, and Tyler in 1974," Jillian said. "Max died in 2056, in San Bernardino, at a ripe old age, but his poor brother died young, of Schliemann's Palsy, in 1998, in San Juan. Tyler died childless, but Max had three children. His eldest, a son, was born the same year his uncle died."

"Can we pare the family bush just a little bit?" Darrow asked.

Jillian smiled. "Sure. Until and unless we need to investigate each of his descendants. For our purposes, let's just note that Max's eldest son, Germaine, had a daughter, Sandra, born in 2030. She had a daughter in turn, in 2059. Her name is Liese, and she lives in Denver."

"Fascinating, but irrelevant, wouldn't you say?" Darrow asked. "I mean, this guy in the photo cannot possibly be the same man they have in custody, so what does it matter how many begats followed after the missing man? The man they've found is either an imposter or... or some kind of mistake has been made."

"Can we be sure?" Jillian asked, with a teasing smile.

Darrow rolled his eyes. He'd been tasked with insane cases at the FBI - crimes that made no sense at first glance, and made less sense the more he's looked into them. Those cases had possessed a certain internal logic, but only if you were willing to believe in ghosts, monsters, psychic powers, angels, and all sorts of other absurdities. When the Theopublicans succeeded at last in killing the Bureau, Jillian had arranged for his transfer to HomeSec. He was grateful to have a job, but he hadn't relished the thought of doing the same sort of work for a new set of disapproving superiors.

But Jillian was enjoying this, and to judge by things she'd told him about her superiors - now his superiors - they big bosses at HomeSec didn't just take these absurd notions seriously, they believed in them... or at least, strove to keep open minds.

Darrow worried that if he kept his own mind too open for too long, his brains just might fall right out. But he'd deal with that later.

"Okay," Darrow said, "so let's entertain the idea that the man in the photo - a photo taken just last week - is the same person as Mr. Schnabel, or whatever his name is, and he hasn't appreciably aged. So where has he been all this time?"

"That's the sticky part," Jillian agreed. "The part that strongly suggests this has to be an imposter. Only, why would anyone pretend to be a random missing German? A man who disappeared from the German state of Baden-W�rttemberg but mysteriously reappeared more than a century later in Indiana?"

"I can't fathom," Darrow said.

"And where did he get Herr Scharbel's old-fashioned paper ID? Or arrange to have a replica made? And again, why Herr Scharbel?"

"That's the real mystery," Darrow agreed. "Because obviously, he's not who his ID says he is."

"A good theory," Jillian said pleasantly, "but everything indicates that he is."

Darrow ground his teeth.

"We checked his paper ID against the data stored digitally in the International Law Enforcement Archive."

"Where his information has been deposited because his disappearance has been an unsolved case all this time," Darrow sighed.

"The ID number on his papers is the same," Jillian ploughed ahead. "The photo is the same. The ID, by the way, is period appropriate: It's exactly the kind of papers issued back then. The photo was processed from photographic film and printed on light sensitive paper - not printed using modern means. There was nothing on his person that post-dates the 1970s. Nothing inside his person either... no modern tooth fillings, no health nits, no PCD, no modern clothing. His shirt was made of cotton. Cotton!"

"So he's got a good bespoke tailor and a lot of money to spend on wardrobe. Or else he shops at vintage clothing sites."

"Yeah? Well, that's not all he's got. HomeSec obtained his fingerprints from the Bundeswehr database. The prints are a match. And that led to the next level of identity confirmation - a PCR. And that was also a match - a 100 per cent match."

"Where did they get the older sample of DNA?"

"That great-granddaughter I mentioned, Liese? She has an old family scrap book that Scharbel's mother kept when he was a boy. There was a lock of hair."

"That's awfully convenient."

"It's also awfully convincing."

"Only in the sense that whoever the hair came from is the same person as that guy in there."

"Aha, so now we reach the 'This is a hoax' stage. Only, why? You already noticed how expensive it would be just to outfit an impostor, not to mention the expense and difficulty of coordinating a deception across a number of non-coordinating bureaus and agencies across international lines. So who pays for this? Who organizes it? And for what reason?"

"Maybe he's someone who needed to disappear? Someone with friends in high international places?"

"Maybe. But why disguise him as a man who has been missing for 70 years?"

"That's exactly the mystery we nee to unravel," said Darrow. "Though I'm not sure there's anything criminal about it."

"You're still thinking like an FBI man," Jillian said. "And I disagree with you about the fundamental focus of our inquiry. I think we need to look into the possibility that the man in the photo - the man now at a psychiatric facility in Bloomfield - is the very same man who went missing all those years ago."

"So what are you thinking?" Darrow asked.

"I hate to say it - "

Darrow couldn't help but to doubt that.

" - but I think maybe we're looking at a genuine case of alien abduction."

"What?" Darrow asked, with a startled bark of laughter. Of all the things he thought she might say, this wasn't it. "You mean like that move, 'Night Sky?' Aw, Jillian. You should hate saying that."

"Okay, I'm waiting for your better explanation," she replied, with depthless calm. "If he's a ringer, what's the point? Why set him up, at enormous cost, to be passed off as a man missing for almost three quarters of a century? And not even a famous man?"

"I can't tell you that. But I can tell you that he cannot possibly be Hartmut Scharbel - at least, not the Hartmut Scharbel who went missing in 1978. But that also means that he has to be someone else. Figure out who he really is, and maybe the rest will become clear."

"That much we agree on," Jillian said. She made her way to her own desk, rummaged beneath it for a moment, and came up with a soft-sided duffel.

"What's that?" Darrow asked.

"My go bag. You're going to need to keep one ready. There's not always time to spare to go home and pack."

"What?"

"We're heading to the airport now," she told him, with a malicious little smile. Darrow reflected that she never used to be this playful, or this confident, when they were partnered in the FBI - years ago, before she transitioned. As a man she'd been tight-lipped, humorless, and high strung. Now she was a different person. Her true self, Darrow supposed, but that wasn't going to be of much help to him considering he had only the clothes on his back to take on the trip, and who knew when they'd be back?

"Nice of you to give me some warning," Darrow griped, shoving to his feet.

"There's one more thing," Jillian said, ignoring his glare as they walked through the office space toward the elevator. "He's silent now, hasn't said a word in weeks. But when they first found him he wouldn't shut up. The thing is, he kept saying the same thing over and over again - 'G�tterd�mmerung.' "

"What the hell is that?"

Jillian paused by the elevator door. The row of lights overheard indicated the car was ascending to their floor. She smiled at Darrow. "I hope it's German for 'Here's a clue.' "

***

Jillian's idea was to look at the area where Scharbel had been found wandering the streets. Darrow's idea was to interview the man himself.

"What would we gain from that?" Jillian asked. "He's essentially catatonic."

"Until I see him for myself, I won't know what to think," Darrow replied."

"Got an intuition about him?" Jillian asked.

"Just call me old school," Darrow said.

Scharbel was being treated... or, Darrow thought to himself, walking up the long, dingy corridor, housed... at the Royce Handorn Institute. Before they got there, Darrow had imagined a pleasant place where gravely ill patients with disabling psychiatric conditions were looked after by a competent, compassionate staff. He quickly realized that the patients here were only grudgingly taken care of, and not with a great deal of sympathy. Researching the facility later on his PCD, Darrow discovered the reason for this institutional disdain toward those in the institute's care: Royce Handorn had been established in 2032 as a facility dedicated to the "treatment" of gays, lesbians, and transgender people. It was originally to be named after President Mike Pence, but a scandal in Pence's last year as president had prompted a change of plans, such that the facility was named after the megachurch pastor who had donated most of the funds for the institute.

The facility switched gears in 2035, when the so-called Blue Crush returned the House and Senate to Democratic hands in the middle of President Perkins' first term. That had saved the country from a plan the Republicans had come up with to establish a network of intern camps for a vast number of newly-criminalized demographics - LGBTQ citizens, socialist agitators, trade unionists - but it had also given rise to the Theopublicans, a party even more zealously punitive and exclusionary than the Republican party that had preceded it. Those same concentration camps were now a campaign promise made by President Kirsch, and Darrow had no doubt that Kirsch would be instituting them just as he had said he would to the zealous chants of supporters shouting "Lock Them Up!" It was, after all, Kirsch who had vowed to shutter the FBI, gut the IRS, and disband what was left of both NASA and the Social Security Administration.

Too bad NASA had been shit-canned, Darrow thought, as he and Jillian entered the ward where forty-eight patients were accommodated in half that many beds, some broken-down sofas, a scattering of cots, and a few wheelchairs. They might actually be able to weigh in on Jillian's alien abduction theory.

Darrow made his way past a screaming, thrashing man tied with restraints to a cot, studied the faces of pale, silent men and women swaddled in filthy bedclothes, and finally realized that Scharbel was slouched in a wheelchair at the far end of the ward.

The harried woman at the reception desk had told them where to find Scharbel, but she had no information on whom among the staff they should consult if they wanted a proper diagnosis. Looking at Scharbel, Darrow thought he seemed dehydrated; he slumped to one side, his hair unkempt, his skin smudged with grime. He was noticeably thinner in the face than he was in the photo Jillian had showed him.

"Jesus Christ," Darrow muttered, squatting in front of the wheelchair to take a closer look at Scharbel. The older mans eyes seemed fixed on a distant point; a thin white crust of dried spit was etched in the corner of his mouth. "Didn't they even give him a bath?"

"Doesn't look like it," Jillian said, before adding, "Doesn't smell like it, either."

She was right about that: The whole ward stank.

Darrow spoke to the older man. "Mr. Scharbel? Hartmut Scharbel? My name is Henry Darrow. This is my partner, Agent DeGuerve. We're with HomeSec - Homeland Security. Do you know where you are? Can you understand English?"

Scharbel didn't respond.

"Mr. Scharbel?" Gingerly, Darrow reached to touch the man's shoulder. Jillian stepped forward, a bottle of ginger tisane in her hand. Darrow had assumed when they'd entered the institute with Jillian carrying the bottle that she's brought it for her own use; now, he realized, she had expected to see the old man in such shabby condition.

Jillian had popped the top off and slid a straw into the mouth of the bottle. She held the straw against the bottle with clenched fingers and allowed the straw to graze the old man's lips.

At first Scharbel didn't react; then, slowly, his lips pursed and grasped at the straw. He managed to get the straw into his parched mouth and drew a swallow. Then, growing eager, he reached fro the bottle, nearly spilling it as he wrenched it out of Jillian's hand.

For several moments Scharbel sucked at the straw greedily as Jillian and Darrow looked on in pity and horror. Then, abruptly, he seemed to lose interest. The bottle was still about a third full; Scharbel's arm dropped and his hand opened, allowing the bottle to roll out of his grasp. Jillian had seen it coming and managed to catch the bottle. Scharbel was still staring into the distance. Then his lips began to work.

Darrow had the notion that he was trying to thank them, but then he realized what Scharbel was saying, in low sandpaper tones.

"G�tterd�mmerung," he rasped. "G�tterd�mmerung..."

"What does that mean?" Darrow asked no one.

"It means 'the twilight of the gods,' " a voice replied, startling both agents. "Sorry," the newcomer said. She was a petite, pretty woman, her dark skin offset by her white orderly's uniform and the fluorescent pigment that moved in slow, swirling patterns across her neck, just beneath her right ear. "You know," she added, smiling at their discomfiture. "Like the opera."

Darrow and Jillian looked at each other. Neither of them knew anything about opera.

"He actually loves it," the orderly continued, extending a hand at Jillian. Darrow thought she was indicating she wanted to shake hands, but then Jillian gave her the bottle. The straw was still stuck through the mouth, and it canted at a crazy, disordered angle. "I played him some Wagner on my PCD. It calmed him down. I sweat he even smiled a few times." The orderly straightened the straw and probed Scharbel's slack lips with it. He took a few apathetic sips and the straw fell out of his mouth once more.

"We're agents Darrow and DeGuerve," Darrow began.

"The HomeSec guys," the orderly said. "Yes, I heard you were here to take another look at him. But, as you can see," she sighed, "he hasn't really improved." She glanced up at the agents. "I'm Keyshanne," she said. "But the residents just call me Keys."

Darrow smiled at that.

"That's a great tattoo," Jillian said.

Keys looked pleased. "Thanks."

"Is that dynamic pigment?"

"Yes, isn't it fantastic? It's like a kaleidoscope. Or, more fitting for this place, a Rorschach test." At the sound of her voice, Scharbel slowly raised his eyes. He stared at keys with the fixed wonder of a child.

"Is he brain damaged in some way? Or has his endocrine system been disrupted? Or is his condition psychogenic in nature?" Jillian asked.

Keys laughed and shrugged. "I'm not a doctor. I couldn't say. I think they did take some scans and stuff, but I don't know the results."

Darrow watched as Scharbel's eyes tracked from Keys to Jillian as his partner asked, "Do you know who would?"

"Trudi?" Scharbel said, now staring at DeGuerve.

Everyone fell silent with surprise and then excitement.

"Trudi?" Scharbel said again, still looking at DeGuerve.

"Anyone named Trudi come up on your exhaustive research?" Darrow asked Jillian.

"No," she replied. Then she leaned forward and addressed Scharbel.

"Herr Scharbel? Verstehen Sie mich?"

Darrow gave Jillian a sharp, aggrieved glare.

"Ich bin nicht Trudi," Jillian continued, her focus completely on the man in front of her. "Ich hei�e Jillian. K�nnten Sie mich vielleicht erkl�ren, wie Sie hier herkommen?"

The three of them watched Scharbel for any indication he heard and understood Jillian. He gave no such sign. He simply sat there staring at her, a smile on his trembling lips.

"Trudi," he said again.

"Ich bin nicht Trudi," Jillian repeated. Then: "Sie wissen, ja, da� Sie in den USA jetzt sind?

Darrow wouldn't have understood the word for "train station," but he nonetheless had a grasp, more or less, on what Jillian was saying to Scharbel.

"Sie sind nichts mehr in Deutschland" Jillian continued, as Scharbel, still smiling, reached feebly toward her. She glanced at his outstretched hand, but kept with her line of questioning. "Wie kommen Sie hier? Mit wem? Und wann?

If the old man knew how he'd arrived in the U.S., he wasn't telling. But he looked positively radiant, his eyes taking on a sparkle they'd lacked before. Trudi, Darrow decided, was a special lady in his life. Or - at least, she had been, more than seventy years ago.

Jillian kept trying. "Herr Scharbel, wissen Sie das Jahr? Es ist schon lange her, seit Sie verschwunden sind. Wir verstehen nicht wie Sie hier kommen k�nnte, und... es tut mir Leid, aber... warum Sie nicht �lter sind."

"Ohhh," Scharbel said. "Ohhh." It sounded like a painful keening, but his smile hadn't wavered. "Trudi," he said again, his hand still reaching. Jillian finally reached out and clasped his hand. His thick fingers clung tight, and his knuckles went pale. He was holding on to her hard, but Jillian didn't flinch. She'd always been stoic, Darrow thought - or else indifferent to pain.

Scharbel sagged back suddenly, as thought exhausted - which, Darrow reflected, he probably was. He didn't' know if they had been feeding the old man, but if they had, they weren't giving him much. "Trudi," he whispered again, and then: "G�tterd�mmerung."

"I'm sorry," Keys interjected, concerned for her patient. "You all are going to need to leave now. He needs some nourishment and some water."

Jillian looked at her. "I don't mean to criticize you personally, because it's obvious you do your best, but these patients are not very well cared for."

Keys sighed again, and her spirits seemed to be damped. "I know," she said. "It's just a few of us trying to see to the whole building. It's not good, not good at all, but it's never going to get any better." She moved around to the back of the wheelchair and took hold of the pair of grips. "But we do try." She summoned a last smile for them and then she wheeled the old man away.

He was still trying, weakly, to call out. "Trudi," he gasped. "Trudi..."

In the parking lot, Jillian had to stop and gather herself for a moment. Darrow saw she was shaking slightly - from anger, he realized. He stood by and waited.

A few moments later Jillian looked at him, visibly calmer, and nodded.

They made their way to their rental car.

***

It took the better part of an hour to drive to the warehouse district where Scharbel had been found sitting on a sidewalk.

"Someone in the kind of shock he's in probably wouldn't have wandered too far," Jillian was saying. "Of course, we don't know how long he was on the streets. If he was a captive... if he escaped... he could have been walking around for hours."

"Escaped?" Darrow shook his head. "How does someone who's almost catatonic escape?"

"Maybe he was attacked," Jillian said. "In which case the scene of the crime might not be too far away from where he was found."

"They have security cams around here, right?" Darrow asked.

"Yes, but a lot of them aren't monitored. Even if they work, there's no one watching."

"What about recorded footage?"

"We had a team check into that," Jillian said. "They reported back that they saw nothing - only two or three cameras caught the police vehicles that responded and took him in. But there's no video of Scharbel staggering around the streets."

"So how did he get here?" Darrow wondered.

"These warehouses service a number of retailers," Jillian said. "Snippet, Crump, Amazon, Hugel-Snordof. Automated delivery vehicles drive and fly from this area. There's a human presence, but only for security purposes. And that security mostly consists of armed guards patrolling the warehouses proper, to prevent theft. In fact, they thought at first that Scharbel might be a warehouse pirate."

Side by side, the agents ranged the streets. Starting from the spot where Scharbel had been found, they proceeded in a roughly spiral manner until, two hours later, Darrow stopped to puzzle over something.

"This warehouse is abandoned," he said.

"So? We've seen a half a dozen just like it," Jillian said.

"Not just like it. Those others had electric fences, or at least razor wire, to keep out... I dunno, squatters. Roamers. Whoever." Darrow peered at the building. "But this building..."

"Nothing," Jillian said. "Which just suggests that whoever used to own or operate it closed down in a hurry, or went so broke they couldn't secure the property."

"Except maybe they didn't," Darrow said, pointing.

Jillian followed his gaze. Just inside the pen cargo doors she spotted a tangle of wire and metal fence posts.

"Someone decided they preferred the open look," Darrow joked.

The agents approached, peered inside cautiously, then entered the vast building. Inside, the place was a warren of half-dismantled storage areas, staging areas, and conveyor apparatus. Darrow turned in a circle, trying to see into every corner. He started toward a far wall.

Jillian followed. After a moment, she saw what he'd seen: A small, roughly oval pit that seemed to have been blasted out of the bare concrete floor.

"Now, what the hell happened here?" Darrow said aloud.

"A loading machine missed its mark," Jillian said.

"Yeah, I don't think so, This concrete is too strong to give like that."

"Unless it was a big loading machine."

"With such a small scoop?" Darrow gestured at the oval indentation. "And sending rubble in every direction evenly? It looks more like a very controlled detonation."

Jillian saw this was true.

"You think this has anything to do with Mr. Scharbel's arrival here, or al least his escape from putative captors?"

"Putative," Darrow said, with a laugh. "Jillian, you tickle me."

"Yeah, you weren't so tickled when you realized I can speak German."

""G�tterd�mmerung," Darrow said. " 'Twilight of the Gods.' You knew it all the time."

"The title of an opera in Wagner's 'Ring' cycle," Jillian mused. "But what does it have to do with... anything?"

"What does any of what we've seen have to do with anything? Man goes missing in Germany. Seventy years later he appears... here. One of these warehouses is not like the others, so maybe it has some part to play in the mystery. And inside that oddball warehouse..." Darrow looked back at the oval pit. He looked back at Jillian. "I'll be g�tterd�mmerunged if I understand how it all fits together."

Her perplexed frown dissolved into a brief smile.

"Are you still thinking alien abduction?" Darrow asked, not sure himself whether he was teasing her or asking in earnest.

"Only if the 'gods' in question turn out to be extraterrestrial. Which might be a fitting description for beings with the kind of technology that would allow them to travel between the stars and conduct reconnaissance and even abductions of human beings without detection. But a more fruitful avenue of investigation might be to find out who this 'Trudi' is - or, was. I looked at Mr. Scharbel's entire family tree and studied his professional and social contacts and I didn't see anyone by that name."

"Hm," Darrow said. "Mistress, maybe?"

"Maybe."

The two agents stood in the middle of the huge, flat concrete floor. It was getting dark, and it was starting to feel colder.

"So what do you want to do?" Jillian asked.

Darrow looked across the way, up a system of starkly skeletal stairs. A story or so up there was what looked like a small cabin or cubicle with a door and a large glass window. It must have been an office at one time. "I think we should just hang out for a while and see what happens."

"You think anything's going to happen? Except we're gonna get cold and hungry and be bored out of our fucking minds?"

Darrow, already walking across the expansive floor, looked back at her. "Shouldn't that be our putative fucking minds?"

***

The wait took a few hours. The chill that persisted in the warehouse grew steadily colder. Jillian offered more than once to take a walk and see if she couldn't hunt down a couple cups of coffee. Between times she did her best to continue her research into the life, times, and vanishing of Hartmut Scharbel with her PCD, but she wasn't having much luck getting into the databases she needed. The information she managed to access included nothing about anyone named Trudi.

Then, at one minute after seven in the evening, a sudden cacophony of voices and the sound of something being moved - something large - reached their ears.

Darrow and Jillian looked at each other, reaching a silent accord to hang back and observe rather than confront the new people on the scene at once.

A few moments later a group of about a dozen people appeared. They wore gray jumpsuits - the sort of work clothes one might have expected to see employees wear while on the job at a warehouse like this one, I warehouses still used much human labor.

"Where did they come from?" Jillian whispered.

"There's a smaller door at the back of the building," Darrow said. "They must have come through there."

With that monster?" Jillian stared at the bulky shape they were moving on a giant wheeled platform. The platform seemed to have a number of casters, some of which jammed or rolled in different directions. The workers grunted and yelled, coordinating their efforts. At last they brought the massive shape to a halt, then set about opening panels to reveal what looked like control panels. One large access panel opened up a large storage area that seemed to contain a pod of some sort. White, elongated, and organic-looking, the pod followed the form of something a nest of wasps might have constructed, only far larger.

The workers were a little like wasps themselves as they swarmed around the machine, Darrow thought.

"What are they doing?" Jillian asked.

Darrow shrugged silently, then gave a sharp look as another five or six people entered from the warehouse's large main ingress. They pushed and prodded a man who seemed to have a gag over his mouth. Sixtyish and pot-bellied, the man was in no condition to fight them off; all the workers, Darrow saw, seemed burly and fit.

One of the new group detached herself from the others and strode ahead. Then, choosing her spot, she turned to face the gagged man. With a gesture, she commanded the others to remove his gag. No sooner was he free than the man was hurling threats and imprecations.

"You'll pay for this, lowlife bitch!" he screeched, his eyes wild.

Darrow couldn't help the sneer that spread across his face. He knew that arrogant demeanor and entitled air. This was an Owner, one of world's all-powerful possessors of wealth and property. Possessors of human beings, too, thanks to certain recent Supreme Court decisions.

"You're going to be working for me if you don't already," the Owner screamed at the woman who seemed to be in charge. "And I swear to Mammon I will take my pleasure with you at least twice daily!"

One of the men holding him in place rewarded the Owner with a solid punch to the side of the mouth for that. The Owner wasn't cowed in the least - he tried to whirl on the man who had hit him. "That's the death penalty, miscreant!" he screamed.

"It's fitting to talk about penalties," the woman said, her voice strong and ringing. She was either a powerful public speaker - maybe a stage actor or an opera singer, Darrow thought - or else she was using some sort of voice amplification tech. "You are about to face trial for your crimes and misdeeds. Once found guilty, you will face penalties you never even imagined."

That sounded like serious business, Darrow thought. The woman had something of an accent, but Darrow couldn't place it. Who were these people? HomeSec had files on any number of dissidents, contrarians, liberation caucuses, terror groups - he looked at Jillian to see if she might have some insight, but Jillian was frowning at the scene below, looking as puzzled as he felt.

"Who are you?" the Owner demanded. "Some sort of terrorists? My security people will be here any time. You won't be walking away from this."

An amused expression flickered across the woman's face. "You're right about that much, anyway. More or less. As for your security people, don't catch your breath."

So, Darrow thought, it was as he suspected; English wasn't the woman's first language. She spoke excellent English, but not of a vernacular variety.

The Owner looked like he had more to say, but the woman interrupted him. This time her voice was overpoweringly loud. Darrow and Jillian both clasped their hands over their ears.

"Sherman McAlary," the woman thundered, "you have poisoned rivers, tributaries, and groundwater. You have poisoned the air, destroyed the ozone, and contributed to the greenhouse warming of the planet with everything that entails. You have dumped tons of highly toxic waste both in rural areas and urban neighborhoods. And even as you poisoned the physical environment of your world and your country, you worked to poison the economic and social climate. You funded media campaigns of disinformation. You worked to target racial, religious, and sexual minorities. You worked to falsify elections. You worked to bring highly ideological jurists to the benches of federal and international courts. You used religion as a crowbar to force workers apart and break their resistance to your predatory practices. You exploited the poor by imposing exorbitant fees on small amounts of money you lent your own workers against the money you owed in wages, but refused to pay them. You authorized corporate assassinations and dispatched so-called morality squads to gang-rape women who raised their voices in protest. You murdered others who showed any sign of resistance. You did all these things, did you not?"

"Fuck, yeah, I did them," the Owner shouted at her, his face red with fury. "It's nothing next to what I'm gonna do to you!"

The woman gestured to the group behind her, and they brought the big pod out of its berth in the huge machine. Cursing and struggling, the Owner was forced toward, and then into, the pod. Once the pod was securely closed, trapping the Owner, the woman spoke again: "By the authority entrusted to me, Wiltrude Schulte, by the international consortium, I receive your admission of guilt and remand you to dimensional storage for a term of two hundred twenty years."

Darrow and Jillian had the same reaction at the same time: What the shit?!

"At which time," the woman's overwhelming voice continued, "you will be retrieved to ordinary space-time and made to answer for the crimes you have committed against humanity, against Gaia, and against the future."

Her voice fell silent and in its place, muffled and vague, Darrow and Jillian could hear the Owner cursing and screaming.

The woman -- Wiltrude! Trudi! -- gestured again, this time to a worker staffing one of the machine's control panels.

The pod began to glow; gold sparks shivered in the air all around it -

And then all hell broke loose, with the pod shuddering as scarlet firebolts erupted out of the air and pummeled it. The golden sparks turned orange and angry, and fell about in a great shower. The workers cried out in panic; some of them fled back, while others leaned into their control interfaces intently, shuddering under the assault of raining sparks.

Darrow and Jillian glance at each other again. Obviously, whoever these people were, this was not part of their plan.

The firebolts grew more intense. The Owner's screams became more intense from within the pod. Was he being cooked? Electrocuted? Or was he merely frightened?

Suddenly, a sharp report rang out; it sounded like a powerful firearm discharging. It might even have been a grenade going off. The sound came from across the warehouse's great open space. Darrow looked around to try to spot the origin of the sound. Then he saw a flash as a similar report sounded. Dazzled by the flash, he couldn't see what was happening.

Two more explosions occurred, just beneath their hiding place. Darrow could see two human beings on their hands and knees among what looked like scatterings of gravel - debris, he realized, that was spread around oval indentations in the cement, indentations that hadn't been there a moment ago...

A third report sounded, together with a flash, and yet another human figure appeared, scrambling awkwardly out of a small oval crater of its own.

"What on earth is happening?" Jillian breathed.

Darrow shook his head.

It was a question the gray jump suited workers seemed to be asking, too. Their cries of panic and shouted queries, together with the scarlet firestorm enveloping the pod and the scattered explosions around the warehouse's open space, made for a chaotic storm of noise. Then a male voice cut above the havoc.

"We can't secure the prisoner!" the male voice declared. He sounded like he was using the same vocal amplification technology the woman had used.

"Abandon the pod!" Wiltrude's voice sounded. "Activate the portcullis!"

His vision clearing, Darrow could see Wiltrude. She was now facing off with a dark-haired man. He wore the same gray jumpsuit as the others. "But the mission!" the man was protesting. "The prisoner! And there are other prisoners reentering normal space-time... the dimensional storage matrix is collapsing!"

"Leave it! Leave them! Let's go!" the woman shouted.

"But how do we punish the guilty?" the man cried.

"There are other ways to punish the past. Now come!"

The workers began to stream toward the back of the building. The white pod toppled out of its storage berth and rolled on the concrete floor. More reports and flashes marked the arrivals of four, then five, then six additional people. The newcomers were now wandering around the floor, some of them wailing, some of them almost running, others shambling as though in shock. A few were dressed in familiar contemporary styles, but most of wore outmoded clothing.

Eight of nine of the jump-suited workers were now pushing the machine on its platform toward the back of the building, where the others had fled.

Wiltrude and the dark-haired man both hovered at the side of the big white pod. They seemed to be working controls of some kind.

The machine rolled out of sight, and the workers disappeared from view along with it. In moments the woman Wiltrude and her dark-haired companion would race out of sight, too.

"No they don't," Darrow hissed under his breath.

"Henry - " Jillian began.

But Darrow was bolting out the doorway, then rattling down the stairs.

"Shit!" the dark-haired man cried, seeing him.

"Go!" Wiltrude gave the dark-haired man a shove; he whirled and ran after others. Wiltrude stepped purposefully toward Darrow as he reached the concrete floor.

"People from the future?" Darrow shouted as Wiltrude glared at him. He stepped off the metal stairs and onto the concrete floor. A fresh bang and flash not three meters away sent shards of gravel tumbling near his feet. Glancing over for a split second, a registered a face: A young woman in a neat, dark suit, her long hair pulled back. She shot a look at him, and he thought for a moment she seemed familiar.

The young woman crawled out of her oval crater, and Darrow turned his eyes back to Wiltrude, who was still advancing on him. "Kidnapping us?" Darrow shouted over the racket. "Taking us out of our times? Are you shitting me?"

"You're the ones in the wrong!" Wiltrude shouted back, still marching toward him.

It seemed to occur to Darrow for the first time to reach for his weapon. He quickly yanked the gun from its holster and leveled it at Wiltrude. "Stand very still," he warned.

She waved dismissively. "Or what? You'll shoot me with that? Be my guest!"

"Stop! I mean it," Darrow said.

Wiltrude was getting closer. She was so close Darrow could see a bracelet of some sort glittering on her wrist, catching the light with ruby glints. "If I could live here... in this past where you so recklessly devour the world... I'd do it. Some cowards even do. But I am a patriot to Gaia! I'm a patriot to the future! I'm not afraid to die here!"

She was almost on him. Darrow wasn't the sort to shoot an unarmed person, much less a woman, no matter how threatening they might appear. He cursed and lowered his weapon. "Back off or I swear I will paste you one!"

Jillian, watching from above, had no such compunctions. She had Wiltrude in her sights, and she squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

"Henry, our guns won't fire!"

Wiltrude looked up, and then threw Darrow a grin. "Your lady friend is right," she said. "It won't do to die in the past. We have precautions in place against your guns."

Her bracelet was now glinting with green specks of light. Darrow realized it wasn't reflecting the light of the burning pod; it was covered with tiny diodes. "But what do you want here?" Darrow demanded.

"Justice," Wiltrude snapped.

The red lights on her bracelet... no, her sleeve, Darrow saw now, as the light around the pod grew brighter and more intense... the red lights had all turned green. All but one. "What's that?" He demanded, pointing at her sleeve. "What are those light?"

"Nothing." Wiltrude raised her arm as if to give him a better look. "Just status indicators."

"Henry, she's up to something," Jillian warned. "She's trying to distract you."

"Not distracting," Wiltrude said, almost ruminatively. "Delaying."

"Why? Until what?" Darrow demanded.

"Until the last of my team are home." The final red light flashed to green as she spoke. "And I can then go join them."

Wiltrude suddenly whirled and ran.

"Stop!" Darrow shouted, giving pursuit.

"Henry!" Jillian screamed.

He didn't see what happened next; he heard a low, hollow crumpling noise, and the dark passage before him lit up with a flickering orangish light. Wiltrude was fast; she was outpacing him. The door at the rear of the building was open. Henry could see the moonlit night outside. If she made it out, she'd have no lack of places to run - twisting back routes with plenty of hiding places where she could easily lose him. Henry strained to run faster.

Then his quarry leapt and hurtled through the door - and disappeared.

Henry, realizing that the doorway was a portal to her time in the future, tried to stop, tried to divert his course - but it was too late -

He flashed into the doorway and through it, and emerged into the open air. Finally, he managed to stop himself. The ground under his feet looked the same as it had this afternoon. Darrow realized he hadn't followed Wiltrude through time after all. Spinning around, he looked back through the doorway at the blazing wreckage of the pod, now distantly within the cavernous warehouse.

There was no sign of any gray jumpsuit-wearing worker from the future. No Wiltrude. No dark-haired second in command. No great machine on casters. Nothing. Henry turned and walked back into the warehouse. He recalled hearing Jillian scream.

"Jillian?" he shouted.

"Henry," she replied. He made his way to where she stood, not far from the wreckage of the pod, which seemed to be dissolving even as he watched, the flames slowing fading. A scorched body smoldered in the ruin. Jillian was on her PCD - summoning help, Henry realized; around them more than a dozen people milled, or else stood still, watching the bonfire of the pod. Some of them jabbered. Many were silent. Henry heard snatches of French, Chinese, Spanish...

He looked at Jillian as she folded her PCD shut.

"Did that just happen?" he asked her, feeling so bewildered and adrenalized that he truly didn't know.

Jillian looked at the mayhem all around them, then looked back at him. Other than that, his partner - who always seemed to have an answer for everything - had nothing to offer.

***

One man stood on the periphery of the wandering, displaced crowd of temporal abductees. He was bald, his face distinctive with large features. He stared at his feet, eavesdropping on snatches of conversation, orders, and queries as Darrow and DeGuerve dealt with the local authorities - until, that is, the sudden arrival of a phalanx of HomeSec agents, who reached the scene only minutes before NSC agents also appeared. After some inter-departmental chest beating over jurisdiction, the NSC guys backed down, but not without taking a few hundred photos - something Darrow was doing, too, using his PCD.

Observing the situation around him, the man smiled. His eyes - brilliant blue, a strange and phosphorescent blue that actually did seem to glow in the shadows - took in every detail. He dropped his gaze when Darrow looked in his direction, knowing that his eyes would draw Darrow's attention. He and Darrow had met before. They were going to meet again, and soon, but now was not the time.

Darrow's attention was drawn elsewhere, and the Blue-Eyed Man looked up once again. Watching the HomeSec agents herd the temporal abductees toward the warehouse entrance, and the vans that waited outside, he sighed and shook his head. These poor souls would be dead before morning. So would the man whose body he'd borrowed.

When a pair of rough-handed HomeSec agents made their way to where the man stood and, grasping his arm, propelled him outside, the Blue-Eyed Man had vanished. In his stead was a confused young man with blond hair, a kid of about 19. A HomeSec agent waiting by the vans scanned him with a portable device that looked like an antique Polaroid camera. The machine beeped a confirmation tone and the operator relayed its information to a Q-Slate wielding colleague.

"Russ Quarley, born September 18, 1960. Disappeared from Summit Grove, North Carolina, on July 7, 1979."

The other man muttered an acknowledgement, and Quarley was shoved into one of the vans. A number of others were already inside. Quarley stared at his feet, trying dimly to piece things together: Who he was, where he was, what was going on.

Then his features changed and his eyes took on the same blue phosphorescence as before. Now bald once more and looking middle-aged, he sat among the other detainees and watched as, one by one, the rest were processed and put into the van. Then he looked at the warehouse beyond, at the spot where the pod had burned and no longer existed, and where a human body now lay blackened and carbonized.

He grinned. The end of all this wasn't long to come. A word came to his lips.

"G�tterd�mmerung."