The Red: First Light

by Linda Nagata

  “Sure, I know. I just need some video. It’s an excuse to be here.”

  “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m due in physical therapy.”

  I’m not hiding my irritation, but he’s pretending not to see it. “I’ll go with you. That’ll be good for some pics.”

  I start the chair rolling and he follows along beside me, saying, “You know who I saw on my way in here? Thelma Sheridan. She was heading out. Now there’s an interview I’d love to do.”

  I get a chill up my spine. I can’t help glancing over my shoulder, half expecting to see red seeping through the walls.

  “You know who she is, right?” Elliot asks. “Vanda-Sheridan? The DC that owned the trucks in Dark Patrol?”

  “She’s the deep inside of crazy.”

  He gives me a thoughtful look as we get on the elevator. “Could be. You almost have to be crazy—obsessive, driven, usefully delusional—to come out on top in a world this big. Sane people just can’t keep up.”

  The elevator pauses and two civilians get on, while Elliot starts filling me in on what he thinks I should know. “Thelma might be a little more intense than usual because Vanda-Sheridan is on the downswing. One of their specialties is spy satellites, and the equatorial launch platforms that put them into orbit. But they’ve had problems lately. Malfunctioning rockets. Satellites going mysteriously offline. Lost data. The defense department has filed an action against them for what happened at Fort Dassari.”

  The elevator pauses again. My wheelchair decides we’re on the right floor. Elliot gets off with me, saying, “If Vanda-Sheridan doesn’t bribe the right judges, they could lose their contract.”

  I hit the stop button on my wheelchair, as a shiver runs through me. “Those Vanda-Sheridan trucks—they were carrying equipment to build a portable radar tower. It should have been activated that day the Shikras came, but it wasn’t, because I arrested the contractors.”

  What if my encounter with the pedophiles under the trees was more than chance? What if it was one of those inexplicable coincidences Lissa mentioned? The Devil wouldn’t object to prostituting little girls to delay construction on a radar tower.

  I look up at Elliot. “If that tower had been working, we would have known the planes were coming.”

  “You can’t blame yourself.”

  Maybe not, but if defensive fighters were scrambled or missiles launched, Vanda-Sheridan might have done okay in the market.

  I press my palms against my forehead, sure that I’m losing my mind.

  Elliot crouches beside me. “Hey Shelley, you okay?”

  I make myself sit up straight. Elliot hasn’t heard about the red stain that bleeds through everything; he hasn’t heard Lissa’s theory. “It’s a fucking butterfly effect,” I tell him. “If I hadn’t lost contact with my angel, Guidance would have pulled me back, I wouldn’t have arrested those contractors, and my squad would be out on patrol, right now.”

  ~~~

  Maybe I’ve given Elliot something to think about, because after spending just a few minutes with me in physical therapy, he decides there’s research he needs to do, and takes off.

  Later, I’m having lunch with my dad in the cafeteria when a supply sergeant tracks me down. He issues me the promised tablet: a hand-sized device preloaded with my army ID and dot-mil. “So I don’t miss any important reports concerning modifications to the uniform or the number of pets allowed in military housing,” I tell my dad.

  “Can I call you on that thing?”

  “Yeah, they come with military and civilian addresses.”

  I text the number to him and to Lissa, and then I hook up the tablet with my civilian accounts. When that’s done, I put in an order for new uniforms. “Just another exciting day at Kelly AMC.”

  “May you be bored for a long, long time,” he tells me.

  “You sure that’s what you want? You know that never goes well.”

  He grants the point with a nod. “Jimmy, I’m going back to New York. There’s office drama happening. I need to be there.”

  I’m not surprised. “I guess we’re lucky they let you stay away this long. Dad... I just want you to know I love you, and I really appreciate you being here for me, through all this.”

  He grips my shoulder. “Stay safe, and keep coming home. That’s all I ask.”

  ~~~

  Information moves in mysterious ways. Lissa proves it when she calls me in the afternoon, waking me up from a chaotic dream of Ransom telling me I’m beloved of God, while Shikra fighter jets bear down on both of us. Grateful to be awake, I put the phone to my ear. “Hey, love.”

  I don’t get any soft syllables in response, just a challenge. “I know who you talked to this morning.”

  Guilt sets in, but I’m still groggy, so I have to go over the list in my head. There was my dad, the physical therapist, Elliot, Kendrick . . .

  “Thelma Sheridan,” Lissa says.

  I sit up, my heart hammering. I can’t confirm or deny, but Lissa doesn’t need me to.

  “My boss was on the phone with an official from Vanda-Sheridan. They found out Pace Oversight was negotiating a research contract with the army. Did you know about that contract?”

  Kendrick mentioned it to me, but I shouldn’t be passing on what Kendrick said.

  “I’ll assume you know,” she says impatiently. “Vanda-Sheridan wanted to buy in. My boss wasn’t interested, but she kept their rep on the phone long enough to find out that they’re working on a theory similar to ours. So I guess my idea isn’t as crazy as you thought.”

  I have to be honest with her. “What goes on at Vanda-Sheridan isn’t really a good measure of sanity.”

  That earns me a little laugh. “Okay, I can’t argue with that. The Vanda-Sheridan rep had a meltdown when he understood my boss wasn’t going to let him play. He promised to inform the army that Pace Oversight is compromised, because of my connection to you.”

  “Your boss knows about us, right?”

  “Of course. She told the rep to do what he felt was necessary, and hung up. Five minutes later, she gets a frantic call from the army liaison, saying that Thelma Sheridan had threatened you during an interview, that there were further security concerns, and under no circumstances should we allow Vanda-Sheridan to be a party to the contract.”

  It shocks me that the army would reveal that much. “They’re desperate to lock down your research.”

  “They’d like to, but we’re not taking the contract.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Pace Oversight wants exclusive ownership of anything we discover. If there is a rogue program, it’s operating throughout the Cloud, so it’s not just an army issue. The way my boss sees it, if we do the research on our own, and if we succeed in working out how and why the rogue program operates, we’ll be in a position to convert that knowledge into dragon-scale money.”

  I don’t like the implications of this at all. “Is that what this is about, Lissa? Money?”

  A few silent seconds pass before she says, “Yes. At Pace Oversight it is. It’s the promise of money that lets me do the work, and I want to do the work. I want to know what’s going on. I want to understand it.”

  “What does that mean for you and me?”

  “It means I won’t be working on the army contract, so I won’t go to prison if I tell you what I learn.” That little half laugh again. “I might get fired though.”

  “And lose all that money?”

  “Shelley, it’s never been about the money with you.”

  ~~~

  The next morning, a hospital janitor stops by my room. He peeks shyly past the door. “Lieutenant?”

  He’s a kid, maybe nineteen. A civilian, so I don’t worry about formalities. “Hey. What can I do for you?”

  He edges into the room. “I saw you in Dark Patrol. That was you, right?”

  “Yeah, that was me.” It’s the first time anyone at the hospital has mentioned the show.

  “I really liked watchin’ it. It made
me think, you know?”

  I’ve got a pretty good idea where this is going, and it doesn’t make me happy.

  “What you do out there,” he says. “It’s important. It matters to people. I want to be part of that.”

  “People die out there,” I remind him.

  His bony shoulders pop up in a shrug. “People die here, in good ol’ San Antonio. My brother shot himself last year. Two of my friends gave it up in a car crash a couple months ago. I want to get the fuck out of here, and live before I die.”

  He tells me he’s already signed up for the recruit exams, so I wish him luck.

  After that, word of Dark Patrol spreads. Within a few days I could swear the entire hospital staff and half the patients have seen it. I get slammed more than once for my cynicism and antiwar rants, but mostly people are moved by the show. If the army created it to improve public relations, then Dark Patrol has to be counted a success.

  It bothers me though, that people accept my precognition as a gift, a blessing, a supernatural talent. No one questions it, any more than I did when I was in the field. When the nursing staff starts calling me King David, I decide that I will kick Ransom’s ass if I ever see him again.

  I gripe to Specialist Bradford. “You know, I just finished reading the King David story—”

  “Do tell, Lieutenant!” she says with sarcastic enthusiasm, as she changes the dressings on my legs. “You actually took time to read the Bible?”

  “Yes. And there’s nothing in there about David getting his legs blown off.”

  “David listened to God. He wasn’t as stubborn as you. He didn’t drag his feet. You need to open your heart to God, Lieutenant. Shape up and fly straight, because anyone can see that He has plans for you.”

  “I thought God had plans for everyone.”

  “Of course He does. But He’s using you to reach a million others.”

  Yeah. And that worries me. A lot.

  ~~~

  Lissa calls every evening. She’s compiling a model of God, or at least of His footprints in the Cloud. She tells me that Thelma Sheridan has good reasons for being paranoid. “Really weird things have been happening with her company. Did you know she’s married to a former mercenary?”

  “No way.”

  “Yep. Twenty years. She’s the brains and the momentum behind Vanda-Sheridan, but Carl Vanda... Well, you know how Elliot insists these big defense contractors create their own markets?”

  “You mean the way they get together to set up the next war?”

  “Right. Well, rumor says that’s Carl Vanda’s role in the company. Or it was his role. Four weeks ago he was in a plane crash. An engine malfunction, caused by some minor oversight in the maintenance. He broke his back. Suffered a lot of damage to his internal organs. This would be right about the time—”

  “Hold on. Let me guess. Right about the time Ahab Matugo got his hands on those Shikras?”

  “You win the prize. It might be a coincidence that Carl Vanda was dropped from the picture at such a critical time—”

  “Another one of those weird coincidences you were telling me about?”

  “Exactly. He’ll be in recovery for some time to come.”

  It isn’t just Vanda-Sheridan. Lissa sees the effect everywhere. “It can be positive or negative,” she says, “but I’m starting to think it touches everyone at some level. We don’t necessarily notice, because with most people it’s subtle—”

  “Not with me.”

  “Sure, but it’s leveraging you through the reality show, using your story to affect a million others.”

  I listen to the booming beat of my heart. “Lissa? You’re not the first to tell me that. Carol Bradford said the same thing. Do you think this rogue program put those words in her mouth? Do you think it put that thought in your head?”

  A few seconds of silence slip by. Then she says, “It’s easy to get paranoid, talking about this stuff... but there are infinite variables in the world. Chance is always in play. We’re not puppets. But even if the program manifests only now and then to engineer a weird coincidence, that could be enough to change lives. I mean, we all have an image of ourselves, right? I think it leverages that image, using our beliefs, our hopes, our expectations, giving each of us a chance to shine in our own personal story.”

  I scowl at my titanium legs, stretched out, lifeless on the bed. “I’m not shining.”

  “It’s not over yet, baby.”

  Not for me, maybe. But it’s over for Yafiah, for Dubey, for all those nameless corpses I put into the village graveyard. Why didn’t their stories matter?

  In the corner of my vision, the skullnet icon wakes up.

  I don’t really want a chance to shine. I think that when God’s making plans, it’s best to stay out of the way.

  ~~~

  After fourteen days, Dr. Masoud performs a minor surgical procedure to extract the tubes that have been feeding his concoction of growth hormones and paralytic to the titanium-bone interfaces in my thighs. As he sews up the tiny wounds, the induced paralysis starts to lift. For the first time since waking in the hospital, I can feel a feathering of low-grade pain from my thighs. I flex the truncated muscles and feel them tighten. It isn’t much, but after so many days without any sense that my legs were even a part of me, I’m elated.

  “I’m not going to put the dressings back on,” Masoud says. “There’s no need for them anymore. The healing process is well along, the stumps are dry, and the cuticle has grown in.”

  “So I’m cured?”

  He smiles. “You’re well on your way.”

  I try raising one of my stumps. It’s hard. The muscles are weak from disuse, but I manage to lift my thigh an inch or so. The robot leg drags like a dead thing.

  “It still doesn’t work.”

  “It will,” Masoud promises with a fatherly smile. His eyes are bright. I know he’s dreaming of his Nobel prize.

  ~~~

  The next day, I go to meet my maker.

  Joby Nakagawa is the engineer who designed my legs. He has a large playroom, a.k.a. a lab, in the hospital basement, across the hall from the morgue. Dr. Masoud is standing in the doorway, waiting for me when I roll off the elevator.

  “Come in, come in,” he says impatiently. “We have a lot of interested observers waiting for you.”

  He’s not kidding. A small crowd—at least twelve people, all of them well-dressed—is gathered in a swath of open floor space. They’re standing in clumps of two or three, chattering, contributing to a buzz of conversation that falls off with astonishing speed as I enter the room. Everyone turns to look at me. The only person I recognize is Kelly AMC’s administrator, Colonel Gleason. The others I classify as academic types or corporate executives. Several greet me with words and smiles of welcome. Others just look tense.

  There’s definitely excitement in the air.

  Above my head, models of airplanes, dirigibles, and rocket ships hang from the ceiling, while the walls gleam with racks of cyborg body parts, both gray and black. More mechanical parts clutter the workbenches on one side of the room. In a corner, a 3-D printer hums quietly, working on some project I can’t see.

  Dr. Masoud shepherds me past the spectators to an expanse of plush beige carpet. Three tripod-mounted video cameras stand along its perimeter. On the opposite side is a console table that’s tipped away from me so I can’t see the virtual keyboard. A monitor hangs above it, suspended from the ceiling. Both the console table and the monitor are at a height that lets them be used standing up.

  A small man is at work behind the table. His gaze is fixed on the monitor as his hands hover and dart above the keyboard. He’s barely five-three, but the time he’s spent in a gym shows in his athlete’s build. I don’t think he’s older than thirty. His features are an interesting racial mix—I take a wild guess at Scandinavian and some Asian vintage, probably upper-class Japanese. His hair is an almost-colorless blonde, down to the stubble on his cheeks, and his skin is so pale I suspect h
e never steps out into the Texas sun, but his green eyes glisten from beneath heavy Asian eyelids.

  “Joby?” Masoud says tentatively. “This is Lieutenant Shelley.”

  “Yeah, I guessed,” Joby snaps. He continues his silent typing while everyone looks on: the little prince, commanding the devoted attention of his audience.

  Already, I don’t like him.

  I turn to glare at Masoud. “You said I’d be standing up today.”

  “We have to turn you on first,” Joby says. He types for a few more seconds, then looks up with a impish grin. “I’m ready. Are you?”

  “What do you have to do?” I ask suspiciously.

  “Just throw a switch. Masoud has been guiding the nerve growth in your legs. You should be more or less integrated with the mechanical system. Anyway”—he shrugs—“we can try it.”

  “And the legs will work? I’ll be able to move them?”

  “Hopefully.” He raises his hands, holding his fingers poised above his console. “Ready?”

  Joby does not inspire my confidence, but I’m too far along in this cyborg transformation to back out now. “Yeah, I’m ready. Do it.”

  “Cool.” His hands descend together toward the console, but then he hesitates. “I should probably warn you that we’ve never actually done this on a person.”

  The way he says it, the sadistic anticipation in his eyes: I know I’m screwed. I try to protest, but before I can get more than a monosyllable out of my mouth his fingers touch the keyboard.

  A crippling fire shoots from my thighs to my hips and I scream, doubling over in a spasm so sudden and harsh that I collapse out of the wheelchair, coiling into a fetal ball as I hit the carpet, growling because I don’t have the breath left to keep up my screams as fire shoots up my spine—

  —and drains away.

  There’s still pain in my hips and my back—a cramped, biting pain—but it’s bearable. I gasp and choke and sob for a few seconds, my fingers digging at the carpet. The skullnet icon glows as I pull myself together, unwinding the knot of my body.