The aircar had only short stubby wings, but it had several flaps and extensions that I could deploy to increase my wingspan. After a frantic twenty-second hunt while we kept dropping like a stone, I found the correct buttons. The extensions, made of ultralight ultrastrong materials, snapped out, jolting the aircar, and this time when I pulled up on the control yoke our descent slowed.
I drew in a shaky breath. So far so good.
I turned the control yoke to the left, sending us into a lazy spiral, then, once the direction had been established, returned the control yoke to the neutral position.
More turbulence shook the Black Panther, but I managed to keep the nose fairly steady.
Okay, I’d slowed our descent. Now I needed a place to land. According to its specs, the Black Panther needed only 250 meters of runway to do a glide landing. Since the solar panel hexagons were half a kilometer in diameter I ought to be able to land the Panther with a whole 250 meters to spare.
It sounded easy. If I’d practiced on the simulations more it might even havebeeneasy. Unfortunately, this was the part that I’d crashed my aircar on four times in VR. I’d landed correctly twice in a row, then blithely decided to go on to more interesting stuff.
Oops.
“I’m going to land in the hex to the northeast of the fugitive’s hideout,” I told Anaximander. “Starting on my approach.”
The wind was blowing from north, northeast at twenty-five kilometers per hour. In order to land with the nose into the wind, I would have to angle across one side of the hexagon, reducing my runway by about a hundred feet.
Anaximander didn’t tell me to try again, or reach for the controls, so I gritted my teeth and landed the aircar.
The wheels touched down, then bounced. I tried again. Another jarring bounce. My 150 meters of insurance was shrinking, the walls of solar panels rushing ever closer.
I wasn’t going to be able to stop in time.
“I’m taking over!” Anaximander flipped the switch, giving him control of the aircar as we started to touch down again.
“No!” I yelled. There wasn’t enough room to land. I hit Anaximander in the face and flipped the controls back over to me. Then I deliberately bounced the aircar back into the air so that we neatly hopped the wall of solar panels and bumped down on the other side in another hex.
Anaximander was silent as we rolled to a stop.
We were alive, and the Black Panther was still in one piece. Light-headed with relief, I smiled.
My smile set Anaximander off. “You should not have hit me. You could have killed us.” No anger showed on his face, but the edge to his voice was the equivalent of a shout from anyone else.
My own temper flared. “We’d have crashed if I hadn’t taken back over. There wasn’t enough room to land.”
“I was going to switch the Vertical Takeoff and Landing back on. And the reason there wasn’troom to do a glide landing was because you bounced twice!”
What he said was perfectly true. I should have handed the controls over to Anaximander as soon as I realized how close we were going to cut it. I knew that, but I was irrationally angry with him. “At least I got us down. You’re the one who decided to turn my first flight into a damn test!”
Anaximander stared at me for such a long time that I began to feel uncomfortable, as if his silver eyes had lasers that could peel me to the bone. Finally, he said, “What do you mean, your first flight? I know you’ve been studying for your pilot’s license. Every schoolchild takes three years of Pilot Education. It’s a required course.”
If I’d taken such a course, I couldn’t remember it. I didn’t say so aloud, though, frightened of betraying the gaps in my memory.
“Have you flown off AutoPilot before?” Anaximander asked.
“I’ve never flown before, period,” I said flatly. “Only VR simulations.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to tell me this?” Anaximander asked incredulously.
Abruptly, I felt like an idiot. My face burned. “I assumed you knew.”
Another long pause and stare. “Next time tell me.”
I nodded shortly.
“I’ll see that you get more air time,” Anaximander said. As we prepared to disembark, he looked at me and shook his head. “First time piloting. Girl, you are terrifying.”
He didn’t exactly mean it as a compliment, but Itook it that way anyhow. “Thanks.” I grinned. I wondered what he would have said if he had known that I had been up in an aircar only five times before in my life, three of them with him. The other two times . . . The gap in my memory widened into an abyss. I couldn’t remember them.
A trickle of unease ran down the nape of my neck as I taxied over to the solar wall bordering the hex that was our destination. Black Panthers were rare, but aircars were the major nonurban form of transportation. I was eighteen years old. How could I have ridden in an aircar only twice before coming to work for SilverDollar?
I must not be remembering correctly. And yet part of me was stubbornly sure I was. Five times.
Think about it later,I told myself, and unstrapped my seat belt.
At ground level, the solar panels towered over me, two-story glass-topped boxes set at a sixty-degree slant and arranged in hexagons. Underneath the glass, I could see a corrugated surface designed to keep sunlight from reflecting away. Mirrors lined the base of the hexagons to reflect in more sunlight.
It was impossible to look at the mirrors without raising tears in my eyes and risking blindness. I hastily put on the wraparound sunglasses Anaximander handed me, but even with the lenses polarized as far as they would go, the light was still too bright. I climbed down from the aircar with my eyes closed.
Anaximander’s Augmented eyes were impervious to brightness. It would have made more sense to send him in while I watched, but according to Anaximander, the fugitive had no Augments, and Iwanted to prove my boastful words that someone could survive in the Wastelands.
There was also the matter of heat. Neither Anaximander nor I was immune to heatstroke, and the temperature was scorching.
Anaximander and I quickly headed for a small break between solar panels, just large enough for a person to squeeze through. We halted in its shade, and I peered forward through slitted eyes.
It was one in the afternoon, and the sun was almost directly overhead. If the fugitive was hiding here, he would be in the thin shade on the opposite side of the hex.
“Still think Michael Vallant is here?” Anaximander asked.
I was beginning to doubt that, but I didn’t want to admit it. “Yes.”
“I disagree. But just in case you do find him . . . here.” He held out an innocuous-looking white square with a loop of thread in one corner. This time he didn’t assume. “Have you ever used Knockout medi-patches?”
I shook my head. I’d only seen them in movies. I touched the two-inch square gingerly with one fingernail. “How does it work?”
Anaximander looped a finger through the thread and turned the white square so that the side facing out from his palm had a faint red-stripe pattern on it. “You peel off the protective film”—he demonstrated—“then hit your opponent with it. It doesn’t matter where, as long as the patch touches skin. The sedative is absorbed into the bloodstream upon contact. Within ten seconds your opponent will be unconscious.” Without warning,he stepped in close and tried to slap the medi-patch on my arm.
“Hey!” I nimbly skipped back out of range.
“As you can see, the weapon has its limitations,” Anaximander said, expressionless, as if he had never doubted my ability to pass his test. “It’s a weapon of surprise only, a last resort if you get into trouble. If you do find the thief, call me on the headset, and I’ll cross over and take him out.”
For the first time I felt nervous.
It must have showed on my face. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Anaximander asked after I’d taken the patches.
He expected me to back down. My spine stiffened. “Yes. I’m
just waiting for that.” I pointed at a swiftly moving wisp of cloud overhead. The hex was half a kilometer across. If I were going to cross it without killing myself I would need shade. I had chosen to land on the northeast side of the hex because of the direction of the wind.
Anaximander grunted, silently skeptical.
I charted the shadow cast by the small cloud, and when it drifted overhead, I was ready. I closed my eyes again, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the smothering heat.
I was dressed all in white to help prevent heatstroke, but it was hard to imagine how black could have been worse. And I was in the shade!
I walked carefully in the direction the cloud had been moving, trying to match its speed and stay under its protective umbrella. I counted steps, reasoning that about a thousand steps should take me to the other side.
Halfway across, I lost the cloud’s shadow.
My eyes snapped open—and were dazzled by the mirror glare. I shut them again, and spots danced on my eyelids.
Blind, I zagged left trying to find the cloud’s protection again and failing. I took three more steps forward, caught the leading edge of shadow like a physical touch, and then lost it again. No amount of zigging and zagging after that helped.
A thin wedge of panic drove itself into my brain. Without the shade, it was blazing hot in the center of the mirror. I imagined that the clothes on my body were catching fire in the intense heat, burning up.
I would have to turn around and go back, but which way was back? In my frantic zigzagging I’d lost track.
“There’s another cloud coming up. Take five steps to the left.” Anaximander’s calm voice came over my headset. No lectures this time.
I obeyed gratefully, following his instructions in a strange dance across the mirror. Run forward four steps, zag left one, walk forward, left two, run forward.
“You’re at the other side,” Anaximander said.
I opened my eyes but left my sunglasses polarized. The west solar wall loomed over me.
The shadow cast by the wall was narrow, almost falling within the sixty-degree slant of the wall itself. At noon the five feet of shade I was standing in might vanish altogether. A person would have to be desperate to hide here.
Nevertheless, my guess had been right. A black tent stood to my right, previously invisible in the mirror’s harsh glare.
I looped a Knockout medi-patch over my palm and cat-footed closer. I wanted to be sure that the thief was actually in residence before I radioed Anaximander. I listened outside a moment but could detect no sound from within. It occurred to me that the thief would probably sleep during the intense heat of the day and wake at night.
I decided to peek in.
I depolarized my sunglasses and removed the film from my Knockout patch, then lifted a tiny corner of the tent flap.
A quick glance took in the battery-operated fan, large cooler, and bags of half-melted ice that made the tent bearable. Then I focused on the teenage boy lying on a blanket.
Grinning, I stepped inside, hand held out—and he sat up.
He saw me.
He looked too young to be a million-dollar thief, was my first confused thought, no more than nineteen. In the heat he had removed his shirt and wore only denim cutoffs. His legs were tanned, and his body was lean and athletic. His hair was raven dark, his face strong and handsome—and his eyes were violet like mine.
Violet eyes lie.
I recognized him—and then my brain short-circuited, throwing me into the drowning memory, my worst flashback yet.
Plunging down through cold water, murky green at first, but getting darker and colder with every second, every breath not taken—
The drowning memory held me blind and vulnerable. Instinct made me lift the Knockout medi-patchI knew was in my hand though all I could feel was cold water.
My eyes saw only the lightless depths of a watery grave as I slapped out wildly, trying to ward off the thief.
My hand hit flesh, but I wasn’t attacked in return.
“Angel!” he exclaimed. “What the hell took you so long? I’ve been waiting weeks—”
He gave a strangled gasp as the Knockout sedative entered his bloodstream, and when the drowning memory cleared from my vision, he was lying unconscious at my feet.
“HE KNEW MY NAME,” I said to Anaximander when he flew over to join me ten minutes later. I felt as pale and shaken as if I truly had drowned. “How did he know my name?”
“He was trying to throw you off,” Anaximander said after a pause. “He must have hacked into SilverDollar’s personnel files and matched your picture to your face.”
I nodded, even though the small tent had no palmtop computer. I said nothing of my own flash of recognition before the drowning memory washed it away. I wanted Anaximander to think I was competent, not crazed.
“So is it here?” I asked. “What does it look like?”
“What does what look like?”
“The thing Michael Vallant stole.”
“It’s not here.” Anaximander sounded certain although he’d barely glanced around the tent. “He’ll have hidden it somewhere. Help me carry him to the aircar.”
I picked up Michael Vallant’s feet, and we carried him to the Panther. All the while, my mind kept churning, trying to figure things out.
“Angel! What the hell took you so long? I’ve been waiting weeks—”
If he had been waiting for me, it implied that we were partners, that I was also a thief. The thought of stealing from SilverDollar filled me with nausea. It couldn’t be true. It must have been a ruse, as Anaximander said.
But what if it was true and I just didn’t remember?
After wrestling with the hideous thought during the flight back to SilverDollar’s facility, I decided that it didn’t matter what I had done before my memory loss. That Angel was a different person.
I prayed that Michael Vallant didn’t give me away. Before becoming SilverDollar’s employee, I had taken a Loyalty oath that had very strict penalties for deception.
A cordon of guards met us at the aircar hangar when we set down. They took charge of Michael Vallant’s limp body.
Anaximander went with them. When I started to follow, he stopped me. “There’s no need for you to attend the interrogation. You don’t know the particulars of his case so his testimony won’t mean anything to you.”
I was reluctant to let Michael Vallant out of my sight. “I’ve never attended a truth-drug interrogation,” I said. “I should learn the procedure in case I ever need to use it on the job.”
Anaximander frowned. “Another time. You havea doctor’s appointment this afternoon to have your head wound checked.”
I opened my mouth to argue some more, but Anaximander cut me off. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you full credit for the apprehension when I report to Mr. Castellan.”
“Eddy,” I corrected.
Anaximander gave me a very even look, and I backed down. I didn’t want him to think I was trying to impress the boss at his expense. “All right. I’ll go see Dr. Clark.”
The appointment took a total of fifteen minutes—five of them spent in the waiting room. After a quick look under my bandage, Dr. Clark asked me a few questions. Had I had any headaches? Any dizziness? Truthfully I answered no and avoided mentioning my memory problems.
Outside the infirmary, I looked at my watch and frowned. I could have easily attended the interrogation; obviously Anaximander had simply wished to exclude me.
Why? Did he want to do the interrogation alone to make himself look better when he reported to Eddy? Or did he suspect that Michael Vallant knew me?
Deciding that I was making too much out of the words of a thief, I reluctantly began my next history lesson on the World Environmental Crisis. As usual, I decided to take the test first to see if I needed to bother with the lesson itself.
Question One: In what year did the World Environmental Crisis start? The year 2032, 2049, 2059, or 2047? I picked 2049, because it cou
ld be easily confused with two other answers.
A red check mark appeared, and Question Two replaced Question One. What caused the crisis? An asteroid, a volcanic eruption, an epidemic, or a biological agent? Since I knew the Wasteland had been caused by a man-made microbe that ate black topsoil and turned it into gray powder, I selected D. Another check mark.
Question Three: What country released the biological agent? NorAm, China, Turkey-Iran, or Egypt? I was fairly sure NorAm had been the victim, not the perpetrator, but I couldn’t remember with whom NorAm had been at war at the time. I guessed Egypt, but an X appeared and Turkey-Iran became highlighted.
I got the next five questions right, remembering that the blight had soon spread over the whole globe and that the Earth would have become one huge wasteland if the United Nations hadn’t developed an antibody that killed the microbe. Not that the UN had just handed the antibody out for free. Instead, they’d used their possession of the antibody as a way to stop traditional warfare. Countries had been forced to surrender all their weapons of mass destruction or be eaten by the blight.
Question Nine—What effect did the World Environmental Crisis have on mining?—stumped me for a moment. In the end I selected A, the UN began enforcing strict environmental laws, making mining on Earth more expensive. The wording “on Earth” made me remember that SilverDollar had a number of mines on Mars, where there was no environment to pollute.
That gave me a ninety percent, and I went on tothe next module on strip mining, about which I knew nothing. I was forced to yawn my way through twenty-five pages of dense information before I could pass the test.
As soon as it was suppertime, I went to the cafeteria. Anaximander always ate promptly at six, and I wanted to pump him for information regarding Michael Vallant.
Anaximander was very health-conscious so I loaded up my plate with vegetables and brown bread. I didn’t want to waste time being lectured about my diet.
“So how did things go with the thief?” I asked, setting my tray down beside Anaximander’s. Small talk was wasted on him. “Did he tell you where he hid the loot?”
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