by Greg Keyes
“Or as Lily puts it,” Lena told him, as they walked along the beach, hand in hand, “technology is something humans don’t have to worry their pretty little heads about. ADVENT will take care of all of that technical stuff, don’t you worry.”
“That sounds like her,” Amar said. “Does it jibe with your experience?”
“Yes, actually,” she said. “But growing up that way, it doesn’t seem like a bad thing. You don’t have to understand biology to breathe, so why should you learn how a media screen does what it does?”
“No, I get it,” he said. “I don’t know much about the stuff either. I couldn’t have built a radio, like Sam did.”
“Well, you have other qualities,” she said.
“Nice to hear. So what are you helping her with right now?” he asked.
“I’m learning a little about cybernetics,” she said.
“Go on.”
“It’s all very hush-hush,” she said. “You may have to torture it out of me.”
“I’ve got training along those lines,” he said. “Don’t tempt me.”
“I believe you do tempt me, sir,” she said.
“I don’t deny that,” he said, leaning in for a kiss.
“Battle droid,” she said a few minutes later, when they both got their breath back. “A sort of support robot for you guys.”
He thought about that for a moment.
“What?” she asked.
“I just wonder how that will go over,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Generally, when we run into a robot, it’s trying to kill us,” he said. “Having one on our side—that might be hard for some to trust.”
“Well, it’s only in preliminary stages,” she said. “Lily is actually going to want to talk to you about the features it ought to have.”
“Here’s a better idea,” he said. “Let’s have a general round table on the subject with everybody, or at least the squad leaders. If they’re included in the process, they’ll more likely be on board with it.”
“I’ll mention that to her,” Lena said. “We have to be back at the ship in an hour. Is there anything you want to do before we go back?”
“I’m doing it,” he said.
CHAPTER 13
THE WESTERN GHATS were mountains in the southwest of the Indian subcontinent. The part of the range they were interested in lay in what had once been the state of Kerala. Civilization there was old, and it had formed the hub of the spice trade for millennia. Black pepper, nutmeg, cloves from the distant islands of Maluku all passed through the port at Cochin. Indeed, so important was Kerala that Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal decided it ought to be conquered, so beginning an era of colonialism that wouldn’t end until the twentieth century.
Now Kerala, like the rest of planet Earth, had new colonizers.
Much of the Ghats had always been thinly populated—the population of Kerala had lived mostly along the coast. This was now doubly the case—the Ghats were contagion zones, and strictly off limits. But whereas Kerala had once had an extensive backwater transportation system of inland waters, rivers, and canals, outside of New Kochi, these backwaters had not been maintained, and years of flooding and meandering had taken their toll, turning them into messy, brackish marshes.
Which made them an excellent place to hide the Elpis. The real challenge was finding a place deep enough that the ship would not be revealed at high tide. It took a little patience, but in the end they found such a place.
The plan was for Sam and Amar to lead an expedition to discover if the ship was still there after all these years and in sound enough shape to be worth their time. The elder Dr. Shen was better, but the way was going to be physically demanding, and Sam wanted to delay his journey there until it was deemed necessary. That meant that Lily was going instead, and she was taking Lena as an assistant.
Amar had deeply mixed feelings about this. In his time on board the Elpis, he had come to realize that Lily was not only healthier than her father but also that she was far brighter—and that was saying something. He didn’t know what her IQ was, but it had to be off the charts. From their description, a handful of notes, and an examination of Lena, she had not only figured out how the bio-implant worked but also built a detector that would expose that sort of device. Of the two Shens, Lily was the least expendable.
But she was also stubborn, and she outranked him.
(Having Lena in harm’s way didn’t settle easily on his shoulders either.)
For his people, he chose Chitto, Nishimura, and Dux, who was by that time pretty well mended. DeLao’s arm was still stiff. To round things out, he added Chakyar, a young man originally from Dubai. He had some medical training and spoke Malayalam, the predominant language of the area. He was only twenty-three, but he already had a streak of gray in his otherwise black hair and eyes like a summer sky.
They made their way over the crumbling infrastructure to Piravom, a settlement on the outskirts of New Kochi that was supposed to have a resistance cell tucked away in it. When they reached it, they found an ADVENT patrol checking the place, but they soon left.
Pivarom was bigger and more crowded than most of the settlements Amar had experience with. It appeared to go on forever and seemed more convoluted than a human brain. Among the huts and stalls and family-sized tents, a few old architectural gems stood out: Syrian Christian churches that didn’t look quite like anything he’d ever seen, a Hindu temple of Shiva. A river separated the settlement into two parts, which had once been connected by a bridge. It bustled with attractive houseboats called kettuvallam, adorned with elaborate wicker roofs and walls.
He very soon had cause to celebrate bringing Chakyar along. English had lost much of its currency here. But even with the advantage of a translator, Amar began to think they were getting the runaround. This man said to go see that man, that man to see such-and-such woman. They seemed to be going in circles.
Then they turned a corner and found themselves surrounded by men with knives. One of them, a sharp-featured, clean-shaven fellow in his late forties or early fifties, stepped forward.
“You’ve been looking for us,” he said in English. “Tell me why.”
“Don’t you want the current passcodes?” Amar asked.
The man gave him a long, searching look. It felt as if the others were drawing nearer.
“We aren’t current,” the fellow finally said. “Our radio is down.”
“If you have the parts,” Sam said, “I might be able to fix that.”
The man studied them again and then nodded. “We are vulnerable here,” he said, “so I must be cautious. You will wear hoods and be conducted to our base. Is that acceptable?”
“It is,” Amar said. He had more or less expected it.
* * *
“My name is Valodi,” the man said, when they reached their destination and their stifling black hoods were removed. “Welcome to my command.”
It appeared to have once been some sort office building, although it had decidedly seen better days. Valodi offered them a seat and had some food brought, some spiced lentils and rice with a little fish.
“I’m sorry if we seem rude,” Valodi said. “But we’ve had to relocate several times this year, and raids have become near constant.”
“I understand your caution,” Amar said.
“Tell me why you are here,” Valodi said.
“We need a guide,” Sam said, “into the Ghats. I can show you the place on a map. It would be good, too, if we had some sort of ground transportation.”
“That’s a lot to ask,” Valodi said. “What do you have to offer in return?”
“Well, for starters,” Sam said, “I can fix that radio. We also have medicine, ammunition, and so forth. You tell us what you need, and I’ll tell you if we have it.”
The man nodded. “Medicine we can use, certainly.”
“But the most important thing I can offer you is hope,” Sam said.
“That
is also in short supply,” Valodi said. “Can you explain more plainly what you mean?”
“Not yet,” Sam said. “Not here. But I promise you, it will be worth it.” He smiled. “One more thing I can offer you is of immediate practicality.”
He took a small, baton-shaped device from his bag.
“One of our scientists just developed this. We haven’t tested it, but it should be able to tell you if someone has been chipped without having to find the scar. Test it, and you can have it. And several more like it.”
Valodi took the device and examined it curiously.
“That’s easily tested,” he said. “Fix our radio, and we can discuss the rest.”
* * *
After Sam got the radio working, the Pivaromis warmed to them quickly. The chip detector also worked and was a big hit with them, as they had apparently also once been Trojan-horsed by someone who appeared to have had their chip removed. Valodi assured them that he would guide them into the mountains himself, but the vehicles would take a couple of days to procure. As a sign of good faith, he let them wander the settlement, which of course meant they now knew their way to and from his hideout.
It was toward the end of the southern monsoon season and stifling hot. The rain pounded outside as it had for most of the day and all of the night before. Amar and Sam sat playing cards with three of Valodi’s men in a dirty white room with no electric lighting. All of the illumination came through a bank of broken windows and the liquid curtain beyond. A few mosquitos had taken refuge in the room and were doing their best to suck him dry. A tokay gecko the size of a squirrel clung to one corner of the room, croaking now and then.
Amar had been playing for about an hour and was still a little uncertain of the rules, although Sam seemed to be doing fine.
Lena walked into the room.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Lily is getting restless,” she said. “There’s a power node just outside of town. She wants to get some readings from it. She says it could help her synthesize their energy source.”
“That sounds like a very bad idea,” he said. “Please ask her to consider not going.”
“I second that,” Sam said.
“And if she insists?”
He sighed. “Then come back here and get us. We’ll assign her a detail.”
“I’ll tell her,” Lena said, “for a kiss.”
“Oh, whatever,” Sam said. “If that’s what it takes.”
Lena’s look of outrage was probably not entirely affected.
“You threatened to kill me once,” she said, “if you don’t remember.”
“Well, that was, what, a couple of months ago?” Sam said. “Cut me a little slack.”
“If you try and kiss me, I’ll cut something,” she said. She said it lightly, but beneath her tone, Amar felt there was still some resentment there. Lena did not forget, and she did not easily forgive.
“I’ll take one for the team,” Amar said. He stood up and walked her out of the room.
They stood in the darkened hall for a moment. Her gaze searched his, as if trying to find something. Then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. It was soft and sweet and seemed to linger well after their lips parted.
“I’ll tell her the Chief said to sit tight,” she said.
He returned to the game, but his mind was no longer on it. Instead he stared out the window at the rain, the misty encampment, at some children rolling around in the mud, just as he had once. It rained almost every day during monsoon season, and kids got bored.
* * *
An hour later, Lena burst back into the room, soaked, out of breath, and ashen. Her face and arms were covered in small, blood-bright scratches, as if from thorns.
“Lena!” Amar blurted, running over to her. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“I tried,” she said. “I tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted.”
“Lena,” Sam said, “slow down, ease back. What’s going on?”
But Amar already knew. Back in the kampung, when he was a kid, families would get together and watch bootleg movies from back before the conquest. Some of them ended badly, and every time he watched them he hoped that this time everything would turn out okay. Of course, it never did. This felt like that to him. As Lena gasped out her story, he let his hands drop from her shoulders and stepped back. He hoped it wouldn’t turn out the way he feared, but he knew better.
Lily Shen couldn’t be convinced. Lena had tried to talk her out of it at first and then begged her to let her find some soldiers to bring along. Lily had been impatient, arguing that soldiers would only attract attention that a woman alone would not.
Lena didn’t know exactly where the power node was, and was afraid if she came looking for help they might lose Lily entirely, so she’d instead chosen to go along with her.
“I thought she was just going to take some readings,” Lena said. “But then she opened up a panel and starting fiddling with it. The next thing I knew, an ADVENT patrol showed up. They took Lily.”
“Alive?” Sam asked.
“She was alive when they took her,” Lena said.
“What about you?” Amar asked. “How did you get away?”
“I ran,” she answered. “I was unarmed, and there were four of them. Lily ran, too, but she tripped and fell into a canal. I was already on the other side.”
He remembered a joke his uncle used to tell. Two men were running from a bear. One of them said, “It’s too fast—we’ll never outrun it.”
“I don’t have to outrun it,” the other man said. “I just have to outrun you.”
It didn’t seem all that funny at the moment.
“You left her there,” Amar said.
She stared at him, a look of stark betrayal on her face. “What else was I supposed to do?” she asked. “Would you rather I was taken, too?”
He realized that he had spoken aloud what he had meant to be a private thought, almost never a good thing.
“No,” he said. “No, of course not. You’re right. Now at least we know what happened. You did the right thing. I’m just trying to wrap my head around this.”
But what he was thinking was that Lena should have found a way to stop her.
“I’ve got mine wrapped,” Sam said. “This is a disaster.”
“You can say that again, brother,” Amar sighed.
Everything had been going great. They were a few days from finding the ship. They had the beginnings of a supply route and the support of the local resistance. And now this.
Lena still looked stricken, but now she also looked a little angry.
“I’m sorry,” Lena said. “I wish I could have stopped her.”
If wishes were horses, Amar thought.
“It’s fine,” he lied. “It’s going to be okay. This just makes things a little more complicated.”
He looked northeast, to where the night sky was tinged with blue city light. The rain began to come down harder.
“We’re going to have to go get her, that’s all.” He stood up. “I need to talk to Valodi.”
* * *
“They didn’t kill her outright,” Valodi said. They were in his command room, an unassuming space with a small desk and a map drawer. A faded portrait of Mahatma Gandhi was fixed on the wall, slightly crooked. “That’s a good sign. Next they’ll take her to processing.”
“Do you know where that is?”
He nodded. “We’ve surveilled it but never made any attempt to rescue anyone. If that’s what you’re planning, it won’t be easy.”
Valodi had a tendency, Amar found, to understate things. His expression suggested that what he really meant was that it would be nearly impossible.
“That’s what I’m planning,” Amar said. “Lily is vital to this mission.”
“What’s so special about her?” Valodi asked.
Amar was weighing whether he should tell him when Sam made the decision for him. “Have you ever heard of Dr. Raymond Shen?”
he asked.
“Of course,” Valodi responded. “I was with XCOM. Only for a short while, near the end, but we’d all heard of him.”
“Lily is his daughter.”
The leader’s eyes widened. “And her father?”
“Still alive,” Sam said. “But losing his daughter will be a terrible blow—maybe even a fatal one. But to be frank, she’s a genius. I don’t know that we can pull things off without her, even if he lives.”
“You still won’t tell me of the mission?”
Sam sighed. “I would rather not,” he said. “Not here, in a settlement, where a thousand electronic ears might be listening. But you have the power in this situation. If I have to tell you to get your help, I will.”
Valodi considered that. “When we first met, you said you were up to something big,” he said. “I think maybe I’ve nevertheless been thinking too small.”
“Game changer,” Sam said.
Valodi nodded. “Okay,” he said, “I can wait. Right now, we’ll concentrate on freeing Shen. We can discuss the other matter when it’s appropriate. What’s the plan?”
Sam’s relief was evident on his face.
“This is your city, so to speak,” Sam said. “What would you suggest?”
* * *
Lena showed up while they were prepping the mission. She had a shotgun and was wearing a flak jacket, along with a highly determined expression.
“No,” Amar said.
“I lost her,” Lena said. “I’ll get her back.”
“You’re not fully trained,” he said.
“I’m trained enough,” she said. “Put me out front, use me as a diversion. But let me come.”
“Lena—”
“KB.”
It stopped him cold. She had never called him that before.
“I heard the tone in your voice when I told you what happened,” she said. “The doubt. There’s some little part of you that thinks I might have turned her in. That I knew about my implant, and that this is all some elaborate plan. Can you tell me that thought didn’t go through your head?”