by Robert Reed
“Jey-im,” said the second man. Then, with a gasp, he said, “No, I’m not. My name is Loo-eek, and it always has been.”
“Good,” Cornell told him.
Porsche echoed that assessment, kneeling in front of the sitting man. “How do you feel, Loo-eek?”
Out of reflex, the eyes smiled.
A sad little voice said, “Sick. And tired.”
“You’ve been stunned for too long,” she allowed. “But it was for—”
“My own good,” he said. “I know. Your friend says that I would have lost my sanity, if you hadn’t done it.”
And you would have remembered too much, she didn’t say.
Too soon, Jey-im tried to stand.
Porsche helped hold him upright, whispering encouragements and crisp instructions. “There’s an apartment not far from here,” she said. “Its AI knows you. There’s a subtle disguise that you should wear in public, and your new life story is waiting there. Learning it is your responsibility. I can’t help you anymore.”
“I know.”
“But if you behave, and you’re cautious enough, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.”
Loo-eek seemed to absorb the words, but he made no comment.
“This civil war helps us,” Porsche admitted. “A lot of people have had to move and make new lives.”
“I’ve lost my family,” he said with a plaintive voice.
On Jarrtee, even adults could be orphaned.
“What about my world?” he asked with a cautious voice. “I know it’s not big and important, but if things don’t change, it may well die.”
“We won’t forget you,” she said, knowing full well that she couldn’t make promises. Yet if there was some group other than the Few, and if they were trying to willfully destroy the jarrtees…well, it only stood to reason that this place and these people would remain important. Perhaps even essential in whatever happened next.
She had no idea what would happen next.
Against the rules, the jarrtee man referred to her by name. “Po-lee-een,” he whispered. “I wish I could walk these other worlds, Po-lee-een.”
Cornell wisely stepped away, giving them a moment alone.
“With you, or not,” he said. “It sounds like a wonderful adventure.”
Porsche waited a moment, then responded.
“This is a huge and lovely world, and it’s in terrible danger.” She took a little breath, gesturing at the sky. “You are partly responsible for the terrible things happening now.”
He squirmed, but he couldn’t deny the words.
“When you contemplate adventure, think about what’s happening here. A species is in the balance. An entire world. And what do you want to do? Take a walking tour of a universe that’s much too big to embrace.”
“That isn’t fair, Po-lee-een!”
“You have a new life, a new vantage point,” she told him. “Think. Work. And spend time with your neighbors.” A sudden inspiration came thundering out of her mouth. “If there’s any group that can help make peace, why not the orphans?”
The man responded with thoughtful silence.
And Porsche retreated, finally. She didn’t look to see if her onetime lover was watching as she walked through the felt grass, heading for the intrusion. All she noticed was Cornell standing against a wall of thick foliage, stroking one blue-black blade with his platinum-white jarrtee hand, and suddenly, with the quietest of voices, she said, “We should leave.”
“What?” Cornell replied. “You don’t want to take a final look around?”
She shook her head, human-fashion.
“I did that already,” she explained. “Years ago.”
3
A warm wind greeted them, stirring the basketball net into a quiet tune.
June had come to the farm. Glancing up at the sky, Cornell said, “A little after midnight, I think.” In their absence, the farmer had plowed and planted his field, a tailored breed of soybean already thrusting its way out of the purified soil. The two of them set out for the farmhouse. They were comfortably naked, holding hands, whispering as they watched for anything threatening. For the time being, the Sky-lords would keep the intrusion open; should trouble come, an escape route would be waiting.
The kitchen light was burning, and as they approached the back door, they smelled the familiar stink of incinerated pizza.
Cornell knocked, entered.
“Dad?” he called out. “You here, Dad?”
Nothing.
Porsche followed him. They found their bedroom in perfect order, their clothing cleaned and folded, the old terminal wearing an antique dust cover, and every imaginable hiding place examined twenty times. As far as Porsche could see, the only thing missing was the pornography in the closet. And the steel box it came in, too.
As they dressed, a familiar voice came from outside. “Not there, old man! I want them there. Where I’m pointing!”
Nathan was out at the utility building, destroying Timothy’s mood by helping load his equipment into a fat yellow truck.
It was impossible to decide which man was happier to see them.
Through a crushing fatigue, Timothy smiled, one long hand sweeping across his forehead. “How did your errand go?”
“Well enough,” said Porsche.
“I was expecting you sooner,” he confessed.
“We took a long way home,” Cornell offered.
Timothy considered asking for details, then thought better of it. The last few weeks had left their mark. He didn’t care about alien worlds or agencies running amuck, just so long as both left him alone.
In contrast, Nathan appeared rested. Rejuvenated.
Grasping Porsche’s hand, he gave her arm a great tug. “I wish I could have gone with you.”
“That makes both of us,” Timothy whined.
Nathan ignored him. With a knowing nod, he said, “They’ve been watching us, but at a distance. And openly.”
The agency, he meant.
“They’ll park up on the county road. A couple men, usually. But they don’t seem particularly interested in doing anything to us.”
A truce had been declared between the agency and the Few. And in the meantime, each was trying mightily to decide what was in its best interests, and how each could achieve its ambitious goals.
Changing topics, Nathan asked, “So what’s our plan now?”
Cornell told him the short-term plan. Porsche wanted time with her family; they were leaving for Texas in the morning, as soon as they could pack.
It was for Porsche to assure Timothy, “You’re welcome to join us, of course.”
A nervous laugh rattled down to a nervous shivering. “I don’t think so,” Timothy replied. “I’m retiring from this business. As soon as I can get my equipment loaded, I’m going back home again. To my home.”
He didn’t know about the Others.
Because it would be cruel to tell him everything, Porsche told him nothing. Extending her hand, she took his hand and shook it, wishing him well.
Timothy squeaked when he said, “About what you did…helping me…thank you…”
“You’re welcome,” she replied.
Timothy retrieved his hand, and as if treasuring her touch, he held it flush against his stomach, staring off into the distance, smiling at things only he could see.
Porsche made waffles in the early morning, using up the last eggs and milk in the refrigerator. The four of them ate at the dining room table, conversations brief and banal, then they cleaned the dishes and stored them neatly, in case the farmer happened to find another tenant for the house.
After a final round of good-byes, Timothy drove off in the rental truck, towing his Brazilian sugar-burner behind him.
Belongings were packed into suitcases, then loaded. Cornell drove the car they had come in, and Porsche drove her Humvee with Nathan beside her. The agency watchdogs were parked at the crest of the hill. Porsche decided on a neighborly wave, then eased the wh
eel to the left, her big tires missing the ugly sedan by nothing, nothing to see in the rearview camera but a cloud of swirling white dust.
They picked up the ancient interstate near Salinas. From there, it was a long straight drive south to Dallas.
Shrouded in electronic camouflage, Porsche told Nathan about her recent travels. “My people wanted to meet with me. To discuss possibilities. Plans.” Then she told him about Trinidad and Aunt Kay and the possibilities of something like the Few, but different. After that bombshell was dealt with—in northern Oklahoma—she entrusted him with another secret.
“There’s going to be a mission. An expedition, of sorts.” She glanced over her shoulder, by reflex. “Past the areas mapped by the Few. Out as far as we can possibly go. Just to have a look around.”
Calmly, soberly, Nathan said, “And you’ll go, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And my son?”
“It’s his decision. He has the talent and my blessing, too.”
Silence.
Porsche looked out over the red clays and scrub timber, and after a few moments, she asked, “What are you thinking, Nathan?”
“I just realized something,” he confessed. Then after a long pause, he told her, and himself, “I’m old. Too old to go with you, I’m afraid.”
Porsche said nothing.
A warm hand took her closer hand, and she held it all the way to Oklahoma City.
Pulling up in front of her parents’ house, just after the sun had set, Porsche sensed that something wasn’t quite right. The front door had been left opened, but no one was waiting for them. With Cornell and Nathan in tow, she stuck her head inside the door and called out, “Mama-ma? Father?”
Nothing.
Then the answer came to her, and she relaxed. She even smiled. Creeping through the house, she spotted the familiar figure standing in the backyard. Her uncle wasn’t doing much of a job of hiding, was he? She’d have to chide him for it, once everyone shouted:
“Surprise!”
Stepping through the back door, out onto the wood deck, she realized with an accelerating horror that this wasn’t a homecoming party. A glance at the faces told her that much. Uncle Jack was staring at the swimming pool, his face red and glowering. Mama-ma was weeping quietly. Leon and Sally were embracing, their expressions simply desperate.
It was Father who approached, who took it on himself to tell her the news.
He looked ancient and worn-out, his plain face glistening with tears. With a cracking voice, he said, “Your uncle has been working…asking questions…which may or may not have anything to do with it…”
“With what?” Porsche asked.
Father swallowed, trying to find the words.
Her younger brother, Donald, was sitting off alone, calmly and steadily beating his head against the wooden privacy fence.
“Your sister-in-law has vanished,” Father explained. “The same way Aunt Kay vanished, it seems.”
Silently, Porsche reminded herself that she was a strong person.
“In fact,” Father warned, “a lot of the Few’s spouses, in a lot of places, have disappeared without any warning.”
Cornell came close. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. “Oh, shit…”
Then something else horrible occurred to Porsche, and watching Donald, watching him trying to beat himself unconscious, she forced herself to ask:
“What about the children?”
Father couldn’t say it.
It was Uncle Jack who rose shakily to his feet, kicked aside spent beer cans, and looked into her eyes, saying, “Linda took Clare, and her other children, too.”
Oh, god!
“All told,” he reported with a slow dead voice, “almost a thousand children are missing. Taken. Lost.”
Porsche looked down at the shimmering waters.
A woman’s face was looking up at her, and for that moment, she didn’t know the face. For a moment, she wanted to tell that woman not to worry, that everything would be all right. That she was strong enough to bear this thing.
Even if she wasn’t, Porsche wanted to lie, telling that poor frail woman that she could endure this terrible day.
More from Robert Reed
Beyond the Veil of Stars
A New York Times notable book from Hugo Award-winning author Robert Reed.
The son of a UFO researcher, Agent Cornell Novak is the perfect candidate for a secret government project, where humans go through "portals" and emerge as aliens. Cornell crosses a portal with Porsche, and together they embark upon a bizarre odyssey. When he returns to Earth, Cornell realizes that his greatest challenge is yet to come, as he faces secrets more shattering than any of his encounters on the other side.
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With a perfect memory and hyper-acute senses, Ryder is the leader of a group of five children, all highly specialized thanks to the genetic engineering pioneered by Dr. Aaron Florida—scientist, philanthropist, and genius.
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Set 2,000 years in the future, THE HORMONE JUNGLE tells the story of hunters and the hunted, fighting on an overcrowded, terraformed Earth, inhabited by trillions of lifeforms—some human, some robotic, some cybernetic.
Chiffon is an android Flower, a courtesan created to give pleasure. Trying to escape her crimelord master, Dirk, in the steamy equatorial city of Brulé, she enlists the help of Steward, a warrior and troubleshooter-for-hire. But Steward doesn't know there's more to Chiffon than meets the eye…
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