7th Sigma

by Steven Gould

  “Jeremy stopped in Perro Frio to brief me. He invited me to travel on with him.”

  “Yes.” Bentham nodded agreement. “After last time … well, I just thought it would be better.”

  Kimble sat up and Ruth shifted the pillow so he could lean against the headboard. “You just wanted her to vent on me instead of you! Lujan said you were scared of her. Heck, you said you were scared of her.”

  Bentham looked sideways at Ruth and smiled. “Oh, yes. Terrified.”

  Kimble watched Ruth to see her reaction and was shocked to see her smile back at Bentham.

  How old is Bentham? He thought back to the times Bentham had dropped by the dojo “just passing through.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. And you call yourself a spy.

  Ruth leaned forward. “Are you all right? They told me about your arm, but is your head bothering you?”

  “No, no. I’m okay. When did you get in?”

  “We got in this morning, just before lunch. Jeremy went off to the barracks and I had a nice talk with Thây Hahn.”

  “Yes. I just spent an hour with the colonel,” said Bentham.

  “Oh, good. Any news?”

  “Let’s see. Your friend Pierce is conscious. Good thing they lifted him out. They had to go in and surgically reduce a subdermal hematoma.”

  “I’m glad he’s all right. He’s not exactly a friend, though.”

  “Friend or not, he’s contrite. He’s confessed to trying to rob you twice and betraying you to the Public Action Committee. Not to mention embezzlement of a client’s funds back in Oregon.”

  “I guessed about the embezzlement. In fact, that’s probably why he betrayed me to Rappaport. What about the PAC? There were still some missing when I last talked to the colonel.”

  “A few, but we got all the officers. The whole thing is a mess. The paramilitary, the PAC—we’ve got them cold. Murder, arms smuggling, sedition, conspiracy. Figuring out what other members of the Church of the New Prosperity are involved is more problematic. The church is screaming religious persecution, and outside, the conservative press is publishing their talking points.

  “Fortunately there are members of the PAC who are singing like birds. Did you know it was Ronson that shot Lujan?”

  “Which Ronson? The one the bugs—”

  Bentham nodded. “Yes. Stories are also surfacing in the community about racism and strong-arm tactics. Hell, even your friend Deacon Rappaport is talking but the man—” Bentham sighed heavily. “Between hearing voices from God above and seeing demons down in the underground portions of the refinery, he’s got a pretty good shot at an insanity plea.” Bentham laughed. “So, how long have you been consorting with demons? The Deacon says it’s the only explanation for his downfall. Well, that and a momentary failure of faith.”

  Kimble tried to smile, but it must’ve looked odd because Ruth said, “I knew you were lying!”

  “What do you mean?” Kimble said.

  “It’s your head, isn’t it? We’ve worn you out with all our chatter.” She stood up. “You need to sleep, I can tell.”

  Kimble slumped down in the bed and shrugged weakly.

  “Come on, Jeremy.” She took his arm in a distinctly proprietary way.

  Bentham eyed Kimble with narrowed eyes as he allowed Ruth to pull him toward the door, but he paused just inside the room.

  “That lecture, the one where I shout about explosive fumes and getting too close and acting instead of just observing?”

  Kimble nodded. “Yes. Invisible like a ghost? That lecture?”

  “Yeah. Well, consider it given.”

  Kimble exhaled.

  “Also,” Bentham added just before he was physically hauled out the door, “good job.”

  22

  When the Teacher Is Ready, the Student Will Go

  It took most of a year and several pounds of sugar but Mrs. Perdicaris finally allowed Ruth to approach, groom, and even ride her, but, for this trip, Kimble still sat on her back. Ruth rode a mare borrowed from the Kenneys. The horse’s name was Susan, after her late mother, Suze.

  For the first leg, to the capital, it was just the two of them. They stayed overnight with Thây Hahn and Thayet. As they were getting ready to leave, Thây Hahn asked Kimble, “Where is the Buddha nature?”

  “Where is the cup?” said Kimble.

  Thây Hahn smiled, bowed, and said, “Travel safely.”

  Thayet hugged him fiercely and whispered, “I’m not going to wait for you.”

  He squeezed her back. “I love you, too, kid. Run away from the boys until you catch them. Oh, and try staying awake through meditation.”

  She cried on his shirt before running into the house.

  Bentham joined them at Northgate and they left the city.

  “Sushi. You’ve got to try sushi.”

  “Milk shakes,” said Major Bentham.

  “Raspberry sorbet,” said Ruth.

  “Café latte.”

  “Caramel café latte.”

  Kimble let it wash over him. Those were the things they missed from outside. No doubt he’d find his own. “I’ve had ice cream and sorbet.”

  “Sure,” said Ruth. “In the winter.”

  Bentham chimed in. “Try it when it’s hot outside.”

  “Try it when your clothes are drenched in sweat and the sidewalks are like griddles.”

  It was late August, but they traveled through one pass at nine thousand feet. Snow dusted the ground. They slept at lower altitudes but were grateful for extra blankets and warm fires. They rode at an easy pace. Kimble’s flight wouldn’t leave Denver for another week, and it was only a couple of hours from the barrier to the airport by the train.

  There were bugs. This part of the territory was rich with old mines. Besides copper and iron bugs, there were occasional flashes of gold and silver—bugs like jewels, their glittering silicon wings flashing like sapphires.

  Ruth’s mount was well trained but still young and full of energy, so she would gallop ahead and back again, to get the edge off her. During one of these exercise periods, Kimble turned to Major Bentham and said, “Tell me about the outliers, Major.”

  Bentham’s face didn’t react, but his body must’ve tensed, for his mount broke stride, half-turning, and Bentham took a moment to get the gelding collected again. “Classified,” he finally said.

  “You remember the not-dog?”

  “Not-dog? You mean the dog-shaped outlier with the feral dog pack?”

  “Yes, that was one of them. I’ve had other encounters.”

  Bentham turned his head sharply. “With the dog-shaped one?”

  “No. Other shapes.”

  “Where? When?”

  Kimble turned his head back to the road. “Sorry. Classified.”

  “Oh, very funny.”

  “When did the outliers start showing up? Are there lots of them?”

  “You were making it up about the other outliers, weren’t you?”

  “Hell, no,” said Kimble. “One of them helped me pull Pierce out of that damn pit when I had the hole in my left arm. It shared its clothes with me.”

  “Clothes? What shape was it?”

  “That was the not-man.”

  “Man-shaped? Are you sure?”

  “Well, I was losing blood. I’m pretty sure that Rappaport saw it, too, though. ‘Consorting with demons.’ Come on. I’ve more data for you. It’s a two-way street.”

  Bentham sighed heavily. “Do you know what’s different about you, Kimble? The reason I kept coming back to you with jobs?”

  “’Cause I got them done?”

  Bentham shook his head. “That was important, but it was because you didn’t shoot your mouth off. The real wake-up for me was when Ruth didn’t know about the bandits, back when I first met you. Over the years you’ve kept things close to your chest. For someone your age, that’s unusual and valuable.”

  Kimble thought he could see where this was going, but he kept quiet, letting Bentham talk himself
into it.

  “If I tell you any of this, can you keep it a secret? Not tell anyone?”

  Kimble was slightly annoyed. He thought he had other virtues. “Never mind. I don’t really want to know. At college, of course, I’ll talk about my own experiences. The various kinds of outliers I’ve encountered and so on. I’m sure I can give out some interviews, do a few HD appearances. Turn it into some cash.”

  “This is serious, Kimble. I’m not saying this for my sake but for yours. You open your mouth about the outliers, you’ll end up in a DHS detainment facility so fast you’ll think you’ve been hit by a train.” He stared hard into Kimble’s eyes. Then he looked away and said in a milder voice, “Besides, you already have cash. The scholarship is full boat—you even get a clothing allowance! When I was in college … grump, grump, you kids today, et cetera, et cetera. You going to tell me about it?”

  Kimble raised his eyebrows, then licked his lips. After another few steps he said, “A Dineh told me about a not-crow. It flew but when it landed on tree branches, they bent down as if it was much heavier than a bird. Personally, I’ve seen a not-steer whose horns seemed to be antennae, sensing metal deeper than the little bugs could. Its feces excavated holes deep in the earth so the regular bugs could get down to deep metal. The not-mule was a duplicate of Mrs. Perdicaris, right down to the bug holes in her right ear. I saw it the same day I saw the not-man.” He looked out of the corner of his eye to Bentham. “These things are not man-made, are they?”

  Bentham stared ahead for a time, then said, “No. They don’t seem to be.”

  “I heard from an ex-soldier, one who was there during the first days of the infestation, that it started near Socorro. But not at the mining school.”

  Bentham looked like he was sucking on a lemon. “West of there, up on the plains of St. Augustin. Did you ever hear of the VLA?”

  Kimble shook his head.

  “The Very Large Array. A radio telescope made up of twenty-seven dish antennas. That’s where it started. The first bugs started eating them.”

  “No spaceship? No meteor crashing to the earth?”

  “Nothing observed. But take something the size of a bug—hell, something the size of a hundred bugs—we wouldn’t detect it.”

  “Why the secret, then? Seems like everyone thinks it was a robotics experiment gone wild. Doesn’t seem like the authorities are correcting this impression.”

  “As far as the world is concerned, America shot itself in the foot, sending a sizeable portion of its land mass back into the Stone Age. We keep other countries away for ‘safety reasons’ but we’re really trying to understand this before somebody else discovers how to use the technology as a weapon. Imagine a bug infestation in the middle of New York or San Francisco.”

  Kimble blinked. “Or Shanghai or Tehran. If the U.S. learns enough, they can use it as a weapon, too.”

  “The U.S. has been a victim of this technology already. We are not going to repeat the experience.” Bentham shrugged. “Besides, the world mostly has it right. We are the victims of this industrial accident. It’s just not human industry.”

  “So where are the scientists studying the bugs?”

  “I’m relieved. If you haven’t sniffed them out perhaps we still have some time left.” His voice sharpened. “So you saw the not-mule and the not-man around the old PeCo Refinery. Where did you see the not-longhorn?”

  “Albuquerque. South Valley.”

  “When you ran into Pritts?”

  “Yeah. You see a lot of these outliers?”

  Major Bentham shook his head. “Very few and only in the last five years. Maybe they were here before and we didn’t see them. Your not-man is the only human-shaped one I’ve heard about.”

  “Are they studying the bugs outside the territory?”

  “Bugs have been transported out in containers too tough to eat through quickly, but they self-destruct when they get beyond a certain range. This is bad since you can’t bring sophisticated spectrum analyzers and other equipment in and you can’t take the bugs out to the equipment. Fortunately, this applies to foreign intelligence operatives, too.

  “Closest thing is a kind of radio astronomy. There are massive antennae pointed into the territory, listening to the bugs, trying to figure out how they communicate. It’s sure not dancing, like bees. And now I’ve really said too much.” He looked at Kimble again. “I really mean it—you talk about this and it’s completely out of my hands.”

  “But maybe I could help! From what you say, my experience is not exactly common.”

  “No. You’re a bit of an outlier yourself. A not-boy if ever I saw one. But do you really want to spend the next several years confined to an ultrasecret research project instead of going to college?”

  Kimble reached forward and absently scratched Mrs. Perdicaris’ neck. “No.”

  “I’ll anonymize the data. I can let them know about these other forms without letting them know about you.”

  “Won’t they push for my identity?”

  “Don’t teach your grandfather to suck eggs. Testimony gathered from a dying bug victim.”

  Ruth returned from her gallop and they dropped the subject.

  For the rest of the day Kimble was quiet, only responding to direct questions. Ruth was remembering her college days, anecdotes sprinkled with bits of advice, but most of it just flowed in one ear and out the other.

  Ruth finally noticed and said, “Where are you, boy? I swear you haven’t heard a word I’ve said in the last ten minutes.”

  “Sorry, Sensei.”

  “Thinking about Martha?”

  Kimble blushed. Martha was in school at UC Berkeley, not that far from Stanford. She’d written to say she’d escort him to Takahashi Sensei’s dojo. “I was thinking about what my major should be.”

  Ruth nodded. “Ah. Are you coming back into the territory? I mean, there are certain fields that don’t mix with bugs. Computer science. Electrical engineering. Metallurgy. Robotics.”

  “Though those technologies may not mix with bugs,” said Bentham, “each of those topics applies to the study of bugs.”

  Kimble looked at Bentham, face still, looking back intently.

  “Are you coming back to the territory?” said Ruth. “I mean, besides to visit?” There was an uncharacteristic uncertainty in her voice, but Kimble didn’t notice. He was staring into the distance, seeing nothing, seeing everything.

  Oh, yeah, I’m coming back. Just try and stop me. He blinked then and noticed the oddly intent way both Ruth and Bentham were watching him, waiting for his answer.

  “Yes, Sensei. I’m coming home.”

  Ruth nodded and then galloped the mare. The wind must’ve been sharp in her face, for when she returned she was still rubbing at her eyes.

  “Study hard. And I don’t just mean aikido, right?”

  “Yes, Sensei.”

  TOR BOOKS BY STEVEN GOULD

  Jumper

  Wildside

  Greenwar

  Helm

  Blind Waves

  Reflex

  Jumper: Griffin’s Story

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  7TH SIGMA

  Copyright © 2011 by Steven Gould

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor® eBook

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gould, Steven.

  7th sigma / Steven Gould.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN 978-0-312-87715-6

  1. Disasters—Fiction. 2. Survival skills—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Seventh sigma.

&nb
sp; PS3557.O8947A615 2011

  813'.54—dc22

  2011011566

  First Edition: July 2011

  eISBN 978-1-4299-9640-2

  First Tor eBook Edition: July 2011