Silver smiled at the soldier. She tossed the handgun at him, hard at his face to make him duck, then spun on her heel and leaped into the water. She flattened out into a shallow dive; the water blanking her mind for a second with the cold. She swam underwater for three, four, five long strokes.
She surfaced, gasped a lungful of air, spotted the blimp, and the line trailing it. She would miss it, or it would be close, she thought, kicking off desperately for it. She stroked, concentrating on form and speed, calculating her angle for the end of the trailing line, a slight wake showing where it was in the water.
Then she was on it, her hands grasping the life saver ring’s sturdy plastic, hooking her elbow into it. She held on for a few breaths, letting the blimp tow her. She looked back at the ship, but it was just a cloud of smoke now, she could see nothing from her angle, low in the water.
She found the hook and snapped it to her harness. Fished for the end of the line with her other hand and hauled it up. She found the red button and mashed it. The winch pulled her smoothly out of the water, and she hung, limp, as she rose back up towards the blimp. The ship was on fire, she saw, the wind had spread it to the rigging, which was ablaze. A mass of men had a bucket brigade going, and there was a small knot of men on the poop deck, staring up at the Dutchman.
They fired their muskets at the blimp, at her, but their bullets went wide, lost in the sky. She was already out of their range. One figure, on the deck, just watched her. Red robes. The soldier. He stood there, watching her. She kept her gaze on him, locked eyes with him. She watched him until the bulk of the Dutchman loomed up above her, pulling her up and inside the ship.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The horsemen led them to their fortress…more of a compound, Gold thought. It had low stone walls, maybe four feet high, topped with a stockade adding maybe three feet. Gold could almost jump that high; these walls couldn’t hold her should she want to leave. Truck, too, could make short work of them, if they slowed him down at all.
“Tell Li I want her to stay near to Truck at all times please,” Gold told Uncle. Li nodded, and Gold’s stomach fluttered. Butterflies. She sneered at herself. You are a pathetic old cougar, she thought. But there it was.
Truck did not fit inside, so they stopped in a wide courtyard of packed earth, just outside the front gate. Li and Gold watched the horses being stripped of their saddles and gear and led to a large stable inside the walls. Only after they did this did Kolton come to talk with them.
“Come inside,” she said. “It’s quite safe. You are our guest, and we’d be honored to have you. You’re the first person who I’ve been able to talk to, in English, for…oh, I don’t know. A long time, put it that way. You’re welcome here.”
Gold considered it. They would be hostages if they went in the fortress. She could go, but Li would be alone outside, which she didn’t like, either. Take a risk, she told herself, and see where the bones fall.
“We accept your invitation,” she said, smiling, then bowing. She turned to Li. “Please ask Li to come with me. Bring your box too.”
Uncle did this, but Li touched her arm, catching her eye. You just told me to stay here.
“Tell her I reconsidered. It’s safer in there, with me.” She smiled at Li. “You’ll be safer, less lonely. May as well eat their food and not ours.”
Li nodded once she understood that. She shouldered her sack, with Uncle’s box in it, and clambered out of the cage. Gold helped her, squeezing her arm once before climbing down off Truck’s fender to the ground.
Gold approached Kolton, who was watching her. Her hood was down, revealing the pink fleshy ridge on her face, starting in mid-forehead and all around the left side of her head. Gold could see an implant, of some sort, ceramic-looking plastic, shiny with moisture, inside Kolton’s head. The flesh around the wound was raw and pink, glistening with pus. Kolton watched her as she inspected it.
“Ugly,” she said. “Isn’t it?” She smiled at Gold, and at Li as she came down. “Go on, look. I know it’s there, so no use pretending it isn’t.” She smiled and shrugged. “Let’s go in.”
“This is not a recent wound,” Gold said, knowing it was so. It was almost healed, except for around the edge of the gash in her head. They followed her through the gates, which were thick, almost a foot thick of timber. Good work, but strong defenses meant there was a need for them. Gold filed it away to talk to Uncle about. Uncle had not indicated such unrest.
“Old wound,” Kolton nodded. “You could say that. Courtesy of the Bloom.”
Gold looked surprised. “This caused your wound?”
Kolton cocked her head at her. “Early versions, what we had, didn’t do what later versions did. What we got, near as I can figure it…they just reset your cells. Ignored implants and prosthetics, surgical and otherwise. So they kind of don’t know what to do about the plate, other than reject it. Then, repair the dead cells next to it. Then reject it again.” She spread her hands. “I got this,” she pointed at her head, “four years before our last post.”
“Where did you take this wound?” Gold asked. Soldiers, she knew, loved to talk about themselves, and often revealed more than what they knew they were revealing. It was how Gold worked, how she had played the KGB, and then the CIA, most. Accumulate data, let it pile up around her, in her head, and she would see a pattern and a path forward.
“Paris,” Kolton said. “Riot control duty. Other side had RPGs.”
Riot control? Gold filed it for later. “The ceramic is a plate?” Gold asked. “Why not just remove it and let yourself heal?”
“Sort of crossed my mind, once or twice. Or a thousand times.” Kolton said. “Believe me.” She led them to a building, with a wide, wood planked front porch. “But, part of what this did was fix my brain, not just hold it in my head, so removing it might have, you know, side effects. Here we are. Go on in. Officer country.”
Inside, there was furniture and a wide bed in a nook off to the side. A central fire pit capped with a large hood, dented and blackened with age. Gold ran her finger along the logo on the front of it.
“These were expensive,” she remarked, tapping the hood with one fingernail. “Every housewife wanted one of these.”
Kolton smiled. “I know, right? Amazing that this one survived. We traded the scavengers in the city for it.”
“What did you trade them for it?” Gold asked.
“Slaves,” Kolton said. “Children, about a dozen. They use them to dig. Please, sit.”
Gold’s eyes raised a bit at that. Nothing that surprising there. People repeated the same patterns; she knew all too well. She looked at Li, smiled. Her people did that, pushed children down holes in a crumbling city to dig for salvage. Children like Li. Salvage to trade for rice, she reminded herself. It goes on.
She settled into a wood-frame sofa, Li beside her. It was soft enough. Kolton barked some orders at a servant (slave? Gold wondered), to bring food and water, and towels for their guests to wash with. Kolton sat across from them, took a short pipe from a box on the table between them. She packed it with something aromatic, lit a taper from another candle, and lit it.
“Ganja,” she said to Gold. She offered the pipe. “Have some?”
Gold shook her head. “No, thank you.” Kolton also offered the pipe to Li, who shook her head and almost hid behind Gold on the couch. Gold put her arm around her.
“We all have our little vices,” Kolton said, puffing around the stem of the pipe. “Looks like you’ve got your own,” she said, a hint of a smile creasing her face, mostly around the eyes.
“You said this was officer country,” Gold said, changing the subject. “That man on the horse, is he in charge?”
“I’m in charge,” Kolton said. “Xian Lai is my captain. This is really his place, the fort, but this is my house.”
“The walls are thick, a little short, the gate looks strong. The troops are relaxed, yet well drilled, the riders especially skilled,” Gold said. Kolton watched h
er as she spoke.
“I know, aren’t they great?” Kolton said. “I’m clumsy compared to them and I’ve been riding since I was a kid in Utah. Where are you from? Stateside?”
“Mexico, kind of. Around there,” Gold said. “My point was, who is the enemy that threatens you?”
Kolton looked at her. “We have standards,” she said after a moment.
“Who’s we?” Gold asked. “These troops?”
“The Unit,” she said, studying Gold’s face. “All two hundred and eleven of us.”
“Ah,” Gold said, nodding. “And where are they?”
Kolton waved. “Everywhere. All over China. Maybe even up in Russia, although there’s not much left up there, far as I know.”
“That’s not so many,” Gold said. “Where’d you come from?”
“I’m from Utah. Little town called Roy.” Kolton sucked on her pipe, blew a little smoke.
Gold laughed. “I remember Roy. Little Polynesian place there, had like this fake rainstorm that went through, just behind the tables. Had sprinklers, and a soundtrack. This would have been in the early ’80s.”
“Bit before my time,” Kolton said, eyeing her. “Why are you here?”
Gold ignored her. “China. You just took over?” Gold said. She gave Li a squeeze, reassurance.
“Wasn’t much to stop us, after the Bloom, well, bloomed. Place was more or less deserted. A few survivors here and there. Don’t know why. Why there were survivors, but there were. And now, all this.” She waved another expansive hand, puffing on her pipe.
“Tell me about the Bloom, when it happened,” Gold prompted.
“I don’t want to,” Kolton said. “You, being here, asking questions. Makes an old soldier’s feelers quiver. And I’m just an infantry lieutenant. More of a jumped-up sergeant, really.” She smiled at Gold, and at Li. “You two are quite a sight. Pretty as a picture.” She shook her head. “But you remind me, I need to call you in.”
“Call?” Gold asked. “How?”
“On the radio, of course.” Kolton winked at her. “I’m just a dumb L2, but the Commander will have some questions for you.”
“You have a radio?” Gold said, amazement in her voice.
“How else do you think we keep two hundred troopers spread across Asia connected?” Kolton said, puffing on her pipe.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Carter, she admitted to herself, did everything right. He’d turned the airship in a wide arc, heeled her over so that the gondola’s side door could look down on the target, gotten to the weapons closet and emptied two clips from the M16, and fired 3 grenades. All on target and he picked her up. It was, she decided, impressive.
“You did that well,” she said to him, drying her hair with one of her T-shirts. “Didn’t tell me you could shoot that well.”
“I can shoot,” he said, shrugging. “Don’t like guns.”
“Well,” she said, “thank you. Good flying, and good shooting.” Even the dog was OK, although most of his straw had fallen out when she’d opened the clamshell hatch.
She told Carter about her conversation on the boat with the American soldier. He looked surprised. “Somebody else,” he said at last, as she finished, “from our time?”
“Seems that way. I never saw anyone in the US who remembered anything, apart from you. Most of them are tribal, scraping by. They remember nothing. The past is all legend to them.” She turned on the radio, began hunting through the dials. “If there are any leftovers around, they’re keeping a low profile.”
“Somebody was around, around me, near my mountain. Not too long ago,” he said. “They had drones that kept me there.”
She glanced at him. His story, when he’d related it to her in California, seemed vague, as if he’d lost all sense of time. He was spacey that way, not very clear on how long he’d been in any one place. Canada, for example, he claims to have spent a lot of time in the “woods,” but that sounded, the more he talked about it, to have gone on for centuries, where he lived on the outskirts of several native communities. The business with him being penned on a mountain by drones, she’d noted it then as an item for investigation, but low priority. Too many leads. Too much to track down.
“If there is a military unit still operating, kept from getting old, like you and I, we need to find out more about it.” She went back to what the soldier had said. “He thought we were invading. Worried about it. His land, he said. His.”
“Like, he’s a king or something?” Carter was watching her.
“Like that,” she said. “Encroachment. Like we would upset his applecart, or something.” She snapped her fingers. “He asked if I was from command. He said so. Like I brought new orders for him or something.”
“Left here? Stranded?” Carter asked. They were flying over a wide land west of the delta, low rolling hills and grasslands.
“Yes,” she said. “Left behind. Everyone else died, but they survived.” She looked at him. “I don’t understand it, but that’s more or less my take on him. He spoke perfect American English, like a soldier. He swore a lot.”
“If there were soldiers, they would have officers, right?” Carter said. “Why wouldn’t they have gone back to the US, though?”
“Unknown,” she said. “We need to talk to him, or someone like him. Doesn’t help that we wrecked his ship.”
“Well,” Carter said. “They shot at me first. I was ready to shoot back.”
She looked at him. “M16’s aren’t simple weapons. You fired one before.”
He sucked his teeth. “I have. I found a cache in Canada. National Guard. All sorts of stuff, in long-term storage, packed in grease. Instruction manuals too.”
“You and I should talk about your time in Canada soon,” she said, eyeing him. “I get the feeling there’s more that you’re not telling me.”
“Not much to tell,” he said. “I survived. I found those weapons and figured it out. Tried to stay away from people, not that I met many. The northeast got spared from the nukes, but I’m pretty sure the mid-Atlantic cities and the Midwest got the bulk of it. It’s weird that Boston survived.” He looked at her. “You saw it.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” she said. “How’d you find out about the Midwest?”
“People I was with called the whole south poisoned land. Haunted.” He frowned. “So, when I left I went the long way around, worked my way down the Sierra Nevada.”
“And that’s when the drones caught you?” She corrected their course, tweaking it further west, inland. She gave them some elevation. Still nothing on the radio.
“Yes, in Nevada, or maybe Northern California. I was on the border where the red rocks meet the gray ones. The granite, I mean.” He shrugged. “They came out of nowhere, started following me. Then, if they didn’t like where I went, they cut me off. Buzzed me.”
“Buzzed?” she asked, spinning the dial, holding the headset to one ear. Time was, when she’d first found the Dutchman, that she’d kept the headset on day and night in fear she might miss some crucial radio broadcast. But she’d heard nothing, at least nothing of importance.
The radio was full of noises, she knew. She had heard, at various times, ghostly echoes. Music once; a snippet of jazz on a shortwave frequency. Beeps and hisses. Once, even, clear as a bell, a woman’s voice reading numbers, a long string of them. She’d tried to find that one, as it went on for days, but then ceased, or moved to another frequency. Numbers station. She remembered them, from the Cold War. Spy stuff used for communicating with field operatives. An automated system, she’d decided. Nobody was broadcasting, nobody alive. If people were in orbit, they weren’t using radio to talk to each other, which was odd. Or they were using digital systems she didn’t have keys for, and which sounded like static to her.
She’d considered broadcasting when she found the Dutchman, but decided against it. Drawing attention wasn’t smart without a reason. But she’d seen systems in China that seemed active, on her first trip her
e in the Dutchman. That could signal military operations, or another automated defense system still operating. She needed to talk to someone about the soldiers, or talk to the soldiers without sparking a war.
“Yeah,” Carter was saying. “They would swoop down at me, blare sirens, lights. They got pretty close. It was scary.” He laughed. “They melted my gun. A deer rifle, but they melted it. I’d leaned it up against a tree in my camp, and gone to take a shit, and I smelled something burning. I got back and the stock was all charred and the barrel was droopy. Like a laser or heat ray.”
“Heat ray?” She smirked at him. “OK, Buck Rogers. It was a laser.”
“Whatever,” he said. “They melted it, and that sucked, because that was how I fed myself. After that, I started finding supplies. MREs, on my trail. Parachuted down. And then, pretty soon, after a few weeks of being herded like that, I was on the mountain, and they wouldn’t let me leave.”
“Huh,” she said. “Did you ever learn anything about radio?”
“Um, military emergency frequency is two hundred seventy-three megahertz,” he said. He shrugged again. “It was in the manuals with the other gear.”
She’d tried that frequency before, but it was a good idea. She punched it into the radio control pad. Pressed enter.
Static. Then, as if on cue, a beep beep beeeep sequence of tones. The tones went on, beeping and booping. “That’s Morse code,” she said. “Shit, I need paper. I have some somewhere!”
She scrambled for paper. She had a stack she’d kept from the bunker near Las Vegas. Office paper. Copier paper. She’d found boxes of it, kept five reams. Last copier paper on Earth. She snatched up her clipboard and pencil, clipping in a fresh sheet. She began transcribing. It came back to her, this skill, along with a flood of memories. Hunched over a telegraph in a dusty Post Office in Texas, in a frontier town she forgot the name of. Watching from her porch as the poles went up along the railroad bed. Her daughter, dark eyes wide as she explained what the poles were for, what they meant. She pushed these memories aside and concentrated.
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