by J L Bryan
“They took your son?”
“So I start trying to find out what they did with him. Five years ago. It's impossible. They lock up the Social Services networks as tight as military systems. Lots of people trying to find their families.”
“That’s terrible.”
“You don’t have a child, do you?”
“No. My wife, Madeline, she wants to, but…”
“Yes. The charming one.”
“She doesn’t always scream and throw furniture,” Ruppert said. “She has her good points.”
“Like what?”
“She’s very…organized.”
Lucia snorted out a laugh, then covered her mouth. “I don’t mean to laugh. I’m sure she is very organized.”
“I’m serious. She arranges my shirts from lightest to darkest.”
Lucia laughed again.
“She alphabetizes the soups.”
“You’re joking.”
He shook his head.
“Does she have kind of…you know…” Lucia gestured towards her own head. “Sickness?”
“I don’t think so. She takes a lot of pills.”
“Sounds like it.” Lucia jumped from the car and landed gently in the sand. “We should get back. Maybe we can organize the doctor’s soups.”
It was another two days before Ruppert could remember his programming sessions with the Captain and, with Dr. Smith’s help, eliminate the commands. Smith declared him a “free agent,” with his power of choice and self-direction restored.
“As much as I have enjoyed the company of both of you, I believe you’re ready to move on,” Dr. Smith told them over a meal of vegetable stew thickened with dried grains. “Lucia, do you feel safer working with him now?”
“I never worried about my own safety.” She cast a long look at Ruppert. “I guess he’s okay.”
“Thanks,” Ruppert said.
“Daniel,” Smith said, “I want you to understand something. Until this point in your life, you’ve served a dangerous master, but one that more or less protected you for your usefulness. You have no protection now. You have made yourself an enemy of the state. You must remain alert and guarded at all times.”
“Sounds like my old life,” Ruppert said.
“No,” Lucia said. “Your old life was a safe little walled suburb. You’re not a pet anymore. I sprung you from the cage, but now you’re out in the wild.”
“I think I’m liking it,” Ruppert said.
Lucia glanced at her watch. “Sunset. We have to get going.” She and Ruppert began to gather up their dishes.
“Don’t worry about it,” Smith said. “Scrubbing them will distract from my abject boredom.”
Lucia hugged the old man.
“You stay alert, too,” Smith said, looking Lucia in the eyes. “This is on your shoulders now.”
“I can handle it,” she said.
“If I had any doubts about that, I would not have put you in charge. Promise me you’ll return when you can.”
“I promise,” she said.
Dr. Smith shook Ruppert’s hand, then gripped it tight and looked him directly in the eyes. Again Ruppert was reminded of the intensity of Pastor John’s stare.
“The older man from your memories,” Smith said. “The psycho in George Baldwin’s office who observed you.”
“Yeah?”
“I am almost certain his name is Dr. Reginald Crane-the ‘doctor’ refers to economics, not medicine. I believe he is the PSYCOM agent in charge of your case. It’s his mess to clean up, after all. I sincerely hope that you will never find yourself in the same room with him again. But if that unfortunate event does come to pass, you should address him as ‘Duckers.’”
“Why?”
Smith broke into an impish grin. "At prep, Reggie lived in Eton House. Behind Eton House was a small duck pond. One April morning, a 6 ^th grade science class and two teachers-on a nature walk, you understand-discovered him on the bench by the duck pond, cutting class, official school trousers unzipped. He was in full John Hancock position, as one boy called it. They called him the, excuse me, Lucia, the 'Duck-Fucker,' which, by process of evolution, abbreviated to 'Duckers.' He hates it.”
“Was he actually fucking a duck?" Lucia asked.
"No," Smith said. "However, they said, the ducks were watching. Thank you, Daniel, for helping us,” Smith said. “Be careful out there.”
Lucia drove them out of the cave, again without headlights. There was more moonlight tonight, enough that Ruppert could discern the shapes of the rock formations among which they passed at an alarming speed. If he remembered correctly, it was almost half an hour until they would reach a paved road.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“North. It’s going to take most of the night. I might even let you drive some of it.”
“My own car? Thanks.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, “you’re going to meet Hollis Westerly. You really, really need to not kill him when you see him.”
“I won’t.” Ruppert thought about it. “Keep me back from him anyway, just in case.”
“Oh, I’m definitely doing that,” she said. “Please, Daniel. Don’t make me take a stab or a bullet for this prick. That’s going to be very hard for me to do.”
“I promise.” Ruppert leaned back and watched the stars pass overhead.
Ruppert smelled moisture in the thinner, cleaner air as they climbed north, up into the mountains of northern California. Lucia navigated the twisting roads in the early morning dark, while searching through radio channels for an alternative to the Dominionist preachers and angry talk shows that dominated the airwaves under the Department of Faith and Values approval process. She found a 1950s-style doo-wop station, sighed, and let it play at low volume.
“I never think to bring music,” she said.
“Try the satellite.”
“I tore out your uplink, remember? You can tell by the way we’re not being chased by Hartwell Services and Terror.”
“Right. Do I get any clues where we’re going, or what we’ll be doing there?”
Lucia pulled the car off the road, onto a dirt patch marked as a scenic overlook. She parked and killed the engine.
“You didn’t have to stop.”
“Look ahead.” She pointed.
Ruppert looked for a long moment before he could see a pulsing blue aura at the edge of the trees and rock faces ahead.
“What’s that?”
“Roadblock,” she said. “We almost drove into it.”
“Why would they have a roadblock in the middle of the mountains in the middle of the night?” he asked.
“Either they’re sweeping for smugglers, or they’re looking for someone specific. Hopefully not us.”
“What gets smuggled through here?”
“Everything. Drugs, books, people.”
“You think they’re looking for us?”
“I don’t want to find out. I’ve got a solid ID with me, but we don’t have one for you yet. And they’ll run your car, and then Terror will know where we are.”
“Great.”
“We should have gotten rid of it already,” Lucia said. “I was planning to do that at our next stop.”
“Let’s go back, then,” Ruppert said. “There must be another way around.”
“There might be,” she said. “Maybe smaller roads. We could check a map, but…” She gestured to the cavity where the satellite uplink had been. “I just don’t know my way around here. I’d kill for a phone right now.”
“You don’t have one?”
“You think I'm on the grid? A phone is just a portable tracking and listening device. I’m not paying money to bug myself for them.”
“Mine’s back at my house.” Ruppert thought it over. “What about those emergency call boxes?”
“They just link to the state police,” Lucia said. “Who we’re sort of trying to avoid right now.”
“But they hook into the grid, don’t the
y?” he asked. “Can you break into them?”
“Wait,” Lucia said. She opened her battered duffle bag, next to Ruppert’s Italian leather suitcase on the back seat, and removed the highly mutated remote control, along with a palmtop computer. “That might work, actually.” She connected a data wire from the computer to the remote. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll be telling them where we are.”
“What were our other choices?”
“Wait here until the roadblock breaks up,” she said. “Which could be a couple of hours, and they might send patrols down this way. Or we can go back and try to find another road, and get ourselves totally lost.”
“Do you think you can handle tapping the call box?”
Lucia shrugged. “Decent chance, as long it’s configured like a normal data system.”
“Let’s do it.”
They put the car in neutral and pushed it as far as they could to the edge of the clearing, and a little beyond, so that it hugged against the dense trees. Then they locked it up and began the downhill hike back the way they’d come, walking in the woods but keeping watch on the road.
It took fifteen minutes to reach one of the yellow call boxes mounted into a telephone pole by the side of the road. They moved towards it, then scrambled back into the undergrowth when a hulking pick-up truck barreled around a sharp corner.
“Hope he slows down before he hits the roadblock,” Ruppert said.
“I hope he crashes right into a Hartwell supervisor,” Lucia said. “That’ll distract them.”
They slipped back to the roadside, and Lucia opened the call box. Inside was a very old-fashioned telephone, the kind that sat in a cradle and was connected by a wire to the main console. The console itself had only one button.
“It doesn’t even have a screen,” Ruppert said.
“It’s ancient,” Lucia said. “Probably a copper line, too. Let’s see what we can do.”
Lucia opened the small toolkit she’d used to pry the uplink out of Ruppert’s car. She lifted the receiver very slightly, then took Ruppert’s hand and positioned his fingers to keep the latch depressed.
“Hold it down,” she said. “It may signal as soon as you lift the phone.”
Ruppert watched as she checked over the receiver unit, shook her head, then worked the flat tip of a screwdriver into the seam between the mouthpiece and the rest of the handset. She tried to pry it loose, grunted, then inserted it into another spot, and then another.
“This is taking too long.” Ruppert glanced in the direction of the roadblock.
“I can’t help it.” She continued working at it until, finally, the mouthpiece popped loose, trailing long strands of a clear, gummy glue after it. She lifted the microphone and wires from inside. “This is like something built by a caveman.”
“Can you do anything with it?”
“I’ve got a couple of programs that might work. This won’t help.” She tucked the modified remote control into the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers worked quickly to patch the phone into her palmtop computer, but to Ruppert it felt like centuries were passing. He could imagine them finding his car up the road, and uniformed cops, possibly even bearing the Hartwell Civil Defense Services logo on their shoulders, poking around the Bluehawk, calling it in to their commanders.
“That’s the best I can do.” Lucia inserted an audio plug into her ear, then tapped at her palmtop. She frowned, tapped again. Frowned, tapped again. Ruppert felt sweat all over his body. His eyes twitched back and forth between the phone and the road.
“Okay,” she said. “Let it go.”
Ruppert released the latch. Lucia tapped at her computer again. Ruppert waited forever for her to speak.
“This is the courier,” she said. “I have the package, but-no, I’m calling from an emergency box. I know, so keep it quick. We’ve got a roadblock across our path-no, up ahead-no, they haven’t spotted us as far as I know, but-look, I just need an alternate route.” Lucia quickly described where they were, then paused for a painfully long time, listening. “But there must be something. I’d rather backtrack a hundred miles rather than-well, tell me quick, then.” There was another long, tense pause, during which Lucia stared at Ruppert with wide eyes.
“What’s going on?” he whispered, and she gave him an exaggerated shrug.
“Oh,” she said. “Is that-no, it’ll work, it just seems a little-okay, how long will that take?”
Ruppert saw very bright headlights around the next bend, approaching from the direction of the roadblock. Blue lights flashed through the trees.
“Lucia-” he said, but she waved him off.
The headlights brightened. It sounded like multiple cars approaching, and the lead one was turning the corner ahead. They were about to be spotted.
Ruppert grabbed Lucia around the waist and pulled her into the shadows. They stumbled for several feet, then lost their footing and rolled down a steep hill littered with sharp rocks, crashing through brambles along the way, finally coming to rest against the broad trunk of an old redwood.
“What the hell, Daniel?” she snapped, trying to disentangle her arms and legs from him. He clapped a hand over her mouth and pointed.
Up the hill, blue lights pulsed from the area where they’d been standing, sweeping out like sheet lightning through the trees and brush above them. He heard crackling voices from multiple radio channels.
“Right here,” a man’s voice said. “Yeah, someone’s been monkeying around back here. We must have just missed them. Their console’s still attached.” The man paused. “No, sir, we haven’t found a vehicle yet. I’ll have some men-yes, sir. We’re going to need more men for a foot search. I’ll radio-thank you, sir.” There was a brief pause, then the unseen police officer began belting orders.
Search beams flared, filling long swaths of the woods with daylight. Ruppert and Lucia crept around behind the redwood, flat on their stomachs, just as one of the beams flashed onto the tree’s wide trunk. There was blinding light on either side of them, but they were hidden for the moment.
“We should have taken my computer,” she whispered. “If they can trace where I called, then the whole deal is blown. Wow. That was stupid.”
“We should get moving,” Ruppert whispered. Already he could hear boots crunching through leaves as they descended the slope towards them.
They crawled along the ground, moving straight downhill from the redwood, the only direction along which they had any hoping of concealing themselves. Narrow shafts of light streaked across the woods ahead of them, either flashlights or gun lights.
Ruppert’s hand reached ahead into empty space, and he toppled forward. Lucia grabbed onto him, which slowed his fall but did not break it. They went over the edge of what he first thought was a ditch, until they slid down a muddy bank and splashed into frigid, running water, deep enough that Ruppert’s shoes only brushed against the pebbled bottom. They’d fallen into a creek.
Ruppert grabbed onto exposed tree roots to keep himself from drifting away, though he wondered if drifting might not be the best option. Lucia clung to the bank a few yards downstream, and she was looking at him with wide eyes, pressing one finger to her lips.
“Watch your step there,” a man’s voice spoke directly above them. Ruppert heard several branches snapping, and a clump of loose earth tumbled from overhead, between Ruppert and Lucia, and into the creek.
The narrow beams played along the surface of the water, dangerously close to them. The police were about ten feet over their heads, and only the darkness of the waning night and the shadows of the forest protected them.
“Kill the lights,” a voice said. Then, several seconds later, “I’m not reading anything on thermal.”
Ruppert believed it; he and Lucia were neck deep in what felt like the runoff from a glacier.
“We’re gonna need more feet down here,” another voice said. “Get some guys downstream, too. They might be swimming.”
Then a sound like a clap of thunder boomed in t
he distance, echoing down all the ridges and canyons of the mountains around them.
“The hell was that?” one of the cops asked. They muttered among themselves.
The crackling crosstalk of the police radios ended, replaced by a single commanding female voice. “All units, all units, we have a possible T1 on Diablo Mountain,” she said. “Repeat, Diablo Mountain, possible T1. All units respond.”
One of the cops began to speak: “Sir, we think we might have these hackers on foot.”
“Forget it,” a voice crackled back. “Emergency boxes are lighting up all over the valley. It’s a distraction.”
“Ten-four.”
The boots and the beams of light retreated up the hill, and then they were gone.
Lucia hauled herself from the cold water and climbed up on the creek bank.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get your car.”
“What happened?” Ruppert began to climb the muddy slope.
“They set off a bomb somewhere to break up the roadblock,” she said. “Terrorism takes priority.”
“That was nice of them.” They hurried up along the steep hillside.
“It’s a lot of trouble,” Lucia said. “And it could draw federal attention. Everyone’s going to hate me. I just hope no one gets caught.”
They climbed back up to the emergency phone box, but Lucia’s computer had been severed and confiscated. They hiked back up along the road, keeping to the trees so they could jump out of the way at a moment’s notice. They found the car intact and undisturbed. The police probably hadn’t had time to find it, and it was not very visible from the road. Ruppert looked ahead, where the edge of flashing blue light had disappeared.
“Let’s go,” Lucia said. “We’re as safe as we’ll ever be.”
They drove for thirty minutes among winding roads, eventually turning off on an unmarked, unlined street that became a dirt track. Lucia stopped in front of an overgrown brick gate thick with vines. She stepped out of the car and approached the gate, where she pressed a button set into an ornate frame.