Sunrise Alley

by Catherine Asaro

  His desperate move had saved her life—but at what price? The chances of keeping Charon out of that system were small. "Maybe this was what he wanted all along."

  "I couldn't let him kill you."

  She breathed out. "I'm grateful to be alive."

  "But?"

  "We have to get help or we could have a world-spanning nightmare on our hands." If they didn't already.

  "I know." He started to say more, then stopped.

  "What is it?" Sam asked.

  "You were right about Dr. Polk. Charon tried the procedure on him first, and ran Polk as a submesh in his matrix until he integrated Polk's mind. Then he erased Polk's personality."

  Grief welled in Sam. "For that, he will pay." She would see to it if it took her entire life, even if she had to become an EI herself to live long enough. "How did he get to Linden?"

  "I'm not sure how they know each other. I have to be careful when I access any part of Charon's code, to make sure it doesn't influence mine. I haven't had enough time to go through all his memories yet."

  "Can you stop him?" It was beginning to seem futile. No matter what they did, they kept playing into Charon's hands.

  Turner spoke firmly. "He won't control me."

  She thought of how Bart had manacled her to the table. "Anything I can do to help, I will."

  "My thanks, Sam." He rubbed the small of his back. "None of that will matter if we don't find help soon. We'll starve out here."

  Sam wondered why he rubbed his back. He might tense up in response to his emotions, but more likely, the changes in his limbs strained his muscles as his body adapted to their new weight and structure.

  "Do you need to eat?" she asked.

  "I should. But I can go without for a long time."

  Sam couldn't even think of eating now. "I'm okay."

  "Do you need rest?"

  About two days worth. "Not yet."

  "Are you cold?"

  "I'm okay. Really." The brisk hike kept her from feeling the bite of the wind. She was walking by rote now, her body aching, too tired to rest. If she stopped, she thought she would collapse and pass out.

  They continued on, Sam unable to talk anymore. Gradually she became aware of a rumbling. "Do you hear that?"

  "For the last ten minutes," Turner said. "It's an engine, I think." He indicated a line of low hills ahead. "Beyond those."

  "Friend or enemy?" She laughed unevenly. "To be or not to be, a friend or enemy, that is the question."

  He didn't smile. "You need to rest."

  "I'm fine."

  "If we can't find shelter, we'll sleep on the ground."

  "I'm really fine." She dragged her mind into focus. "You sound different."

  "I do?"

  "Less confused. More certain." She thought of their trek through the EI's base. "You handled it well when we had to crawl to the cavern. If you hadn't already told me, I would have never guessed you got claustrophobic."

  "It's odd. Closed-in spaces seem less threatening now. I don't know why."

  Sam wondered if his matrix was reprogramming itself to minimize or even delete the fear. "Do you know why they bother you?"

  His shoulders hunched. "When I was little, my uncle used to put me in the closet if I misbehaved. I hated it."

  Sam stared at him. "That's horrible."

  He shrugged, trying for a lack of concern he obviously didn't feel. "I dealt with it."

  Personally Sam thought Turner had been given far too many things to "deal with" as a child. That he had turned out so well was a tribute to the strength of his character. It didn't surprise her that Charon had found his will far stronger than he expected. "You're amazing."

  He laughed self-consciously. "I'm a mess." His forehead creased. "I don't know why I'm afraid of heights. It's more about edges than the height itself."

  "Have you always been that way?"

  "No, actually. Only since Charon rebuilt me."

  "Maybe he coded it into you." It seemed strange, even neurotic, but so did a lot about Charon.

  "To what purpose?" Turner asked.

  "Maybe he's hung up about it. Most people don't like edges." Sam thought of a visit to Paris, years ago. "You should have seen me the first time I went up in the Eiffel Tower. I was a wreck."

  "You say it so casually." Longing touched his voice. " 'The Eiffel Tower.' Like anyone could visit there."

  "I'll take you," she said. "If we make it out of this mess, I'll take you all over the world."

  "I would like that." He didn't sound like he really believed her.

  "I will, Turner."

  "I've never traveled."

  "Would you like to?" Maybe he didn't want her hauling him all over the place.

  "I'd love to." He stared at the hills ahead. "We had no money. My dad told people he sent me to live with my aunt and uncle because he had too many kids. He couldn't afford me."

  Sam winced. That had to have hurt. "Is that what your mother said, too?"

  "Only when he was around." He sounded subdued. Scarred, but on the inside. "She used to come see me, when he didn't know. She wanted me home, but whenever she brought me to the house, he sent me away. He gave her an ultimatum: get rid of me or he would leave her and take the other children away from her."

  Sam had to make a conscious effort not to grit her teeth. She could guess what happened: he banished Turner to remove the reminder of his wife's adultery from his house. But it also had punished her child. "He was cruel to deny you."

  "Ah, well." He tried to laugh, but it came out forced. "Can't have the bastard around."

  "He was the bastard. It was his loss."

  "Not really. They had ten kids. I was number eight." He drummed his fingers on his legs. "They kept nine and ten. I guess they deserved it more."

  Sam wanted to keelhaul his father. It made her aware of how much she had taken for granted. Her parents had been strict, exceedingly so, but they had also lavished her with love and attention. She had been an only child. They hadn't been able to have more, though her mother had once told her they had hoped for a large family.

  "You deserve the world," she said. "Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise."

  He answered in a low voice. "I've always been afraid that if I loved someone, they would give me away."

  "I'm not going to leave you." She plunged ahead, needing to say the words before she thought too much about them and her fear of commitment made her back off. "No matter what happens. No matter—no matter how much you change. I won't walk out."

  "Neither will I, Sam, no matter what happens to me." He took her hand and intertwined his metal fingers with her human ones. After a moment, he said, "I used to play softball with my brothers."

  "Did they know you were their brother?"

  "I think so. I looked just like one of them. Both he and I take after our mother." He spoke awkwardly. "We never talked about it, though."

  "What do they do now?"

  "Most are married. A few went to college." His expression turned nostalgic. "I miss them."

  "You could go back."

  "They think I'm dead." Bitterness edged his voice. "My mother's husband is probably glad."

  She curled her fingers around his, offering support. "What about your real father?"

  "I don't know him. He stopped seeing my mom after she got pregnant."

  "What a charmer," Sam muttered. Turner's mother didn't have the best taste in men. Sam thought she might understand, though, if her personality as well as her appearance showed in Turner. He struck her as the type of person who would always be idealistic in his view of human nature no matter how many times life showed him otherwise. She could relate. She was the same way. Linden had been like that, too. It made it too easy for people like Charon to take advantage of them. But what few people understood, including probably Charon, was that such a character trait didn't make them stupid or weak. Charon was finding that out the hard way. It could be an advantage; he might continue to underestimate them.
/>   Turner spoke tiredly. "Maybe I should just accept it. Turner Pascal is dead." He lifted their clasped hands, causing his sleeve to fall down to a joint where his cabled arm bent. "It would horrify them to see me like this. Hell, Sam, most women would recoil if I touched them."

  She kept her hand in his. "You're alive. Alive and miraculous."

  His face gentled and he rubbed her knuckles on his cheek. Then they walked on, across the desolate fields.

  * * *

  Sam stood with Turner at the top of a bluff, their arms around each other, wind blowing their clothes. A town lay before them, a tiny one, but it meant people and help. The rumbling came from a factory beyond its outskirts.

  They started walking, but within moments they let go of each other and were running. Sam had thought she was exhausted, but now she sprinted with energy. At the edge of town, they slowed down, passing a holosign that read Welcome to Tugtown. The letters were blue, but they cycled through the spectrum. A holicon in one corner offered a wireless connection to a site with information about illustrious Tugtown. Sam had no glove to access the sign, but her clever-card was in her wallet. Sooner or later she might have to use it, giving away their location.

  They jogged onto Main Street, which consisted of a few stores, restaurant, post office, and motel. The street signs had dimmed; Tugtown had closed up for the night. However, holos were still lit over at the motel.

  They slowed to a walk as they reached the hover lot in front of the motel office. Pads for cars lined the asphalt but only a few vehicles were parked there. The sign above the door said Vacancy in three-dimensional red letters that floated. Part of the second "c" was missing, which made it look like a firefly caught in the sign. Beyond the window, Sam saw a teenage boy working at an aged Luminex console that had to be at least fifteen years old. Its luminous white surface had faded to a dull ivory.

  Turner pulled down his sleeves to hide his hands. As Sam opened the door, it played a Bach invention. Inside, the office had a few chairs against one white-washed wall. Holoart swirled on the walls, soothing pastel patterns that gave the illusion of depth and thickness. The boy was slouched behind the console, eating a sandwich with lettuce sticking out the sides. As they entered, he looked up with a start, his eyes widening.

  "Evening," Sam said.

  The boy dropped his sandwich onto a plate that sat on the console's holoscreen. "Whoa! Who are you?"

  Sam hoped he didn't treat the rest of his equipment that way. Lettuce rarely helped the guts of a mesh system. She and Turner went to the other side of the console. "I'm Sam." She lifted her hand. "This is Turner."

  "Where did you come from?" He peered past them at the window to the hover lot. "I didn't hear no car."

  "Truck. It stopped a long ways back. We had to walk here." Sam didn't need to act tired; reality took care of that just fine.

  "Hey." He picked up his sandwich and took a large bite, making Sam's mouth water. "Ultra."

  Turner gave him a sour look. "Can we get a room?"

  "Oh. Yeah. Sure." The boy snapped an e-pad out of a slot on the console. "I gotta have your card."

  When Sam pulled the clever-card out of her wallet, Turner shot her a look of alarm. As soon as the motel system accessed it, their location would go into a worldwide database and anyone who knew how to trace such transactions would know they were at the Two Pines Motor Inn in Tugtown, Iowa.

  Sam sent him a warning glance, cautioning silence. They didn't want the boy alerted to anything unusual about them, besides which, it was almost impossible to find food or lodging anonymously. The only reason they had managed so far was because both she and Turner were savvy about the systems that tracked people. But they couldn't keep it up much longer. What they really needed was to contact someone who could help them. Who, she wasn't sure. Right now, she trusted no one.

  "Here we go." The boy handed her the card and an e-pad with the registration protocol. After she pressed her thumb against the pad, he sent copies to whatever mesh they used for the motel database. Then he clicked her card into his console, keying it to open the door to their room. "You've got fast fiber-optics in there, best in town," he told her. "You want holo-movies, flat-screeners, holo-mail, mesh functions, just drum up the menu. It'll whiz you through payment options."

  "Thanks." Sam handed the card to Turner so he could press in his thumbprint, allowing him to use it as a key. As he took it, his cuff fell back, revealing his hand.

  "Whoa." The boy stared at the cables. "What zipped you?"

  Turner yanked down his sleeve. "It's a prosthetic."

  "Ultra." The boy grinned. "I gotta friend, he wants to cybordize his hands. Make 'em mesh-accessible."

  Turner regarded him with a marked lack of enthusiasm, the look of a Hilton bellboy dealing with the closest approximation to his counterpart at the Two Pines Motor Inn. Sam held back her smile.

  "It's not a trivial procedure," Turner said.

  "Yeah." The youth nodded sagely. "I'll bet."

  Sam drew Turner away from the desk. "Good night," she told the boy.

  He lifted his hand. "Yeah, ultra."

  They went outside, under the firefly sign. As they walked to their room, Turner grumbled, "Ultra? What way is that to talk to guests?"

  "He's just a kid."

  "We would never do that at the Hilton."

  Sam grinned. "You're being a snob, Turner."

  "I am not. I just think the job should be done well. I always took pride in my work, even when I slopped food in a cafeteria."

  She certainly would have gone to that cafeteria. "I'll bet all the women mourned the day you left."

  Turner laughed. "I doubt it." He leaned closer to her. "But I'd dish up potatoes for you anytime."

  "Sounds delicious." Sam took his hand, her five fingers threaded with his eight. "I was wondering." She lifted their hands. "Why eight fingers? Why not five?"

  "Octal." He wiggled his other hand at her. "Two make hexadecimal. It's more how I think now."

  "Amazing."

  At their room, Sam opened the door with her card, knowing she was leaving yet another clue to their trail. Inside, the queen-sized bed had a quilt patterned in holo-threads that created three-dimensional blue and gold squares. A similar tablecloth covered a round table by the window. The wall across from the bed consisted of a large screen for movies, with its console by the bed. Sam wondered if the kid in the office had assumed they were married. What a thought. The cyborg groom.

  Sam flopped on the bed. "It's not much." She hoped he didn't think this was the type of place she would usually take him.

  "It's great." He sat next to her. "But your card will give us away."

  "I know." As much as Sam wanted to sleep, preferably in his arms, it would have to wait. "Turner, we can't keep running. We have nowhere to go."

  "I don't want to be a prisoner."

  Sam made a face. "I don't want to be dead."

  "I already am."

  "Turner!"

  "It's true."

  "We have to contact someone."

  "And if I refuse?"

  "You're free to go." More than anything, she wanted him to stay. But she wouldn't force him. "I'll give you a head start of three hours."

  He stared at her. "I'm not going to desert you. What if Fourteen or some mechbot shows up?"

  Sam took his hand. "You can't protect us forever." When she slid off the bed and went to the console, her body protested with stabs of pain, especially her left arm. The bandage was fraying now. "We need more protection than we can provide ourselves. I want to call Thomas Wharington."

  His hand clenched on his knee. "We just got free of him."

  "Thomas wasn't at Hockman. Or Sunrise Alley."

  "Why should I trust him?"

  "We have to trust someone."

  "We can manage."

  "You know we can't." She hated admitting it; she had always fiercely guarded her independence. But they had to be realistic. "The longer we wait, the better the chance Bart and
his cronies will reach us, or that copy of Charon in your matrix will subvert your programming. Hell, Turner, he may have already."

  "I can't believe we're having this conversation." He hit his fist on the bed. "I'm Turner, not Charon."

  "We need help."

  He spoke tightly. "Like the Alley helped us."

  "The Alley changed." Sam's first impression of Bart had been a good one, based on her experience with EIs. "Charon affected them. We need to warn the military. Bart could intertwine with high-powered meshes all across the globe. If he acts with malice, I hate to think of the damage he could cause."

  "Sam—"

  She didn't relent. "We have to act."

  Turner rubbed his eyes. "I've tried to calculate strategies and outcomes, but none of them work. We've been outmaneuvered every time. Or maybe I just don't understand what I'm doing well enough. No matter how hard I try to escape what Charon intended for me, it happens anyway."

  Sam grimaced. "I doubt he intended this mess."

  "I never meant to endanger your life."

  Her voice softened. "I know." She sat at the console. "Let's call Thomas."

  After a long moment he said, "All right."

  Sam breathed out silently, grateful he intended to stay. When she turned to the console, her vision blurred, but she rubbed her eyes, determined to stay awake. Then she logged into one of her accounts.

  It only took a few minutes to access a system she had used in her Air Force work. She doubted even its high-level security could hide her from anyone seriously intent on finding them; a savvy enough spy could monitor this screen or trace incoming connections to Thomas's machine. He wouldn't usually be available after midnight, but she was betting he would pay close attention right now to his video, mesh, and holo-mail, given the way she and Turner had vanished from Hockman.

  She wrote on the screen with a light stylus: Thomas, this is Sam Bryton and sent the message with encryption.

  Then she waited.

  Within seconds, sooner than she expected, a response appeared: This is Thomas. Where are you?

  She wanted to be relieved, but before she let herself feel it, she wrote: Thomas or Thymus? Only he would get the joke. As a little girl, she had misspelled his name Thymus, like the spice thyme.