Cut Off

by Robertson, Edward W.

  Ness snorted out loud. "What, they don't know how to farm? Too good for Earth algae?"

  "You insult me when all I tell you is what I am told."

  "Sorry," he signed. "Anything else?"

  "He says his betrayers are not far. Another island. To repay the debt he owes us, he will show us."

  "You trust him?"

  "I do not trust him as I trust you. But to betray us for this would be a crime like that his gutbrothers did to him."

  Ness nodded slowly. "Either that or they handed him over to the humans because he's an asshole. Pardon me, a..." He found himself unable to complete his thought, as they'd never worked out a sign for "cloaca."

  "Do we pursue?" Sebastian signed.

  "That's what we're here for, aren't we? Seems to me—"

  The door swung open behind them. Light glared inside. Everyone whirled. A man in a black uniform gasped, breaking the silence. He blurted something in Chinese and reached for the submachine gun slung from one shoulder.

  The gladiator sprung forward, hammer-pods whipping through the air. Gunfire exploded in the tight room, so loud Ness pressed his palm against his ear. The alien shuddered and fell to the floor in a cloud of yellow blood. The guard swung his gun toward Sebastian. Sprite, looking terrified, punched him in the back. It wasn't much of a punch, but it rattled him. Ness and Sebastian drew down on him at the same time. Blue beams creased the air and sizzled through the man's flesh. He screamed and dropped straight down.

  Ness' ears rang so hard he thought he might be sick. He ran past Sprite and cleared the entry. The tunnels were empty, but that wouldn't last for long.

  "Time to go," he signed to Sebastian.

  Sebastian pointed to the ground. "The Swimmer isn't dead."

  "Can you carry him?"

  "Not if we are to move."

  "Then he might as well be. Come on!"

  With all this passing in silence, Sprite bent to pick up the guard's gun, then raised his eyebrows at Ness. "Care to fill me in?"

  "Appreciate your help," Ness said. "But it's time we made our exit."

  "Smart plan. Know how to get out of here?"

  "I was thinking of getting crazy and using the way we came in."

  "I see," Sprite nodded. "You mean the same way the guards are going to be coming in."

  "I suppose you owe us a hand." Ness moved to the door. "The first one probably followed you down here."

  Sebastian was gesturing to him from behind, but Ness only had eyes for the door. He entered the tunnels and Sprite took point, running down the harsh concrete hall. Their footsteps echoed behind them, along with the irregular staccato of Sebastian's spiked feet and the soft slap of his tentacles. Sprite swerved left at a four-way intersection and ran past a series of doors, a few of which were open, showing a chaotic mixture of hotel towels, soap, and robes, along with racks of batteries, dry rice, and tubs of what smelled like dried fish and squid.

  They made another turn. Ness thought he heard steps far down the tunnel. He turned, taking his light with him. Panic shivered down his veins. He had the sudden recall of the tunnels below Hanford, in the midst of a meltdown; of his brother helping to stop it and the gunshot that had ended his life. He stopped running.

  "What are you doing?" Sebastian signed.

  "Call the sub."

  "Stop stopping!"

  "Call the sub!"

  Ness pressed himself into a doorway, raised his pistol, and sighted down the dark hall. The racketing footsteps drew nearer. A circle of light appeared around the far corner, swinging wildly. Ness fired a quick burst. The blue line of his laser illuminated three men in black uniforms. He dropped one, swung the beam over to a second. The men cried out and dropped prone. Machine gun fire blatted down the hall, punishing and deafening, bullets whining from the concrete walls. Sebastian signed swear words with a spare tentacle and fired on the two men. One shrieked and curled up, shrimp-like. The other got off another few rounds before Ness silenced him.

  "Oh my god," Sprite said. Still staring, he straightened and backed down the hall. "Right over here."

  Sebastian had been fiddling with a glossy metal button. As they neared a doorway, he gestured to Ness. "They are moving. In five minutes we may join them."

  "Then let's get out of here and find some place to bunker down." He repeated the sentiment out loud to Sprite.

  Sprite opened a thin metal door. "Upstairs is locked, but somehow I don't think that'll be a problem."

  They entered the stairwell. It was moist and disused and smelled like the puddle of water sitting beneath the stairs. They headed up to the ground floor and found it locked. Ness and Sprite moved back down while Sebastian set to it with a laser. Metal globbed from the lock. The door sprung open. They emerged into an alcove that was hidden from the main halls like a curve of the appendix. Sprite led them through the maze to another set of locked doors. Sebastian lased the lock and they were back out in the warm and humid night.

  Ness took a moment to orient himself. They appeared to be on the north edge of the hotel. The sub was also north, around a bend in the adjoining peninsula. Throughout much of his life, he'd been the type to prefer others to make the first move, or at least to discuss the options before leaping one way or the other, but the last few years had taught him that 90% of getting anywhere lay in taking the first step. He took a quick look around, then sprinted past a gazebo to the boulevard beyond. At the road, they hit a roundabout and Sprite pointed them to the west. They ran past an unfinished construction dig of unearthed rock and overgrown grass.

  A park sat to their right. North along the shore, lights shined from another casino. Ness moved into the trees beside the road and signed to Sebastian. "Hide in the park?"

  "Yes. Another minute for the sub."

  They jogged up an embankment into the untended shrubs bordering the park and tucked themselves into the trees. Ness got out his binoculars.

  "We shouldn't have left the warrior," Sebastian gestured.

  Ness took a long look at the road. No sign of movement. "I'm sorry, were you related?"

  "How does this matter?"

  "He was dead, right? Or next to it?"

  "That is not the Way."

  Ness gritted his teeth. "Seems mighty Way to recognize when a life is lost and that no more should be thrown after it."

  "It offends. He was our brother-in-need."

  "And I was in need of not taking a bullet in the spleen." He forced himself to take a breath. "What should we have done instead?"

  Sebastian was still for a moment. "Made the effort."

  "Which was?"

  "The 'was' is not specific. Make the effort."

  "How am I supposed to do right when you won't tell me what right is?"

  "What does your inside star tell you?"

  Ness gave a groaning laugh. The inside star. Could define it as a "conscience," but it was all too easy to file away Sebastian's concepts under their human equivalents and lose all understanding of what the alien was really saying. The business about the earth wanting to be "right," for instance, to be used in the appropriate way, wasn't some Green Party, liberal hooey about not polluting, or stopping global warming. It ran much deeper than that. Much more weirdly.

  It was like the time he'd gotten in a discussion with a Jewish guy on Reddit. Ness had read some of the Old Testament and had absorbed enough popular culture to think he knew what Judaism meant—don't eat lobster, do wear a funny little hat—but over the course of a discussion that lasted until 3 AM, and delved into Rabbinic texts Ness had zero exposure to, he came to know how little he knew.

  There had been a lot of wisdom in it. A lot of logic. Careful arguments that could only have been composed by dedicated people, with a keen understanding of morality and human nature, spending generations thinking about shit. Though Ness had only entered the discussion to show the other guy what a dunce he was—if there was a faith gene, Ness lacked it; his mother, rest her soul, had been the type of Catholic whose faith began and e
nded with the three-inch wooden cross on her bedroom wall—he closed the chat in a place of respect.

  Course, it had all been so far removed from his understanding he'd forgotten all the details within days. All he was left with was the lobster, and the yarmulkes, and the vague idea that some of its believers were pretty cool people.

  Magnify that unfamiliarity times a thousand, and you got Sebastian's religion. Philosophy. Whatever you wanted to call it. There were times Ness despaired of ever understanding it, and wondered if he only bothered with it because he had nothing else left.

  Yet its difficulties made the act of pursuing it feel virtuous.

  "My inside star," he gestured to Sebastian, "says that everything is such a mess it's a wonder any of us are alive."

  "Each star is surrounded by an ocean of black," Sebastian replied. "Still, it shines."

  "Easy for them. Stars are a million billion tons of fire."

  "The consciousness you carry is more of a miracle."

  "Really? Feels more like a curse."

  "Then that is why you are bad at feeling it." One of his tentacles twitched up. "The sub approaches."

  Ness nodded and turned to Sprite. "Listen, our ride's here. You've been a great help. If we turn up anything interesting, I'll drop off a present at the House of the Lion."

  "You realize at this point I'd be disappointed by anything less than my own spaceship." Sprite grinned and stuck out his hand. "Good luck."

  Ness shook hands. Across the road and past the rocky shore, a tower of steam vented from the placid waves. Sebastian rose from the cover of the leaves. Ness joined him, crossing the boulevard. As soon as Sebastian stepped tentacle on the weedy median, machine gun fire rattled the darkness, the muzzle flashing in an orange aster some hundred yards to the south.

  With bullets searing the air above his head, Ness' first instinct was to throw himself flat, but Sebastian hunkered down and charged toward the sea. Ness squeezed off a few shots, the beams as bright as the lights above the Galaxy. With his position revealed, he popped to his feet and sprinted after Sebastian, whose tangle of scurrying limbs made him look like an ambulatory tumbleweed.

  More shots rang out, three-round bursts from the south and the east. Ness crashed through the thicket lining the road. The shore was just ahead. Sebastian was already wading into the black waters. The channel between the two islands was hardly five hundred feet across and the sub had been forced to idle eighty feet off shore to avoid snagging the bottom. When seconds counted, it could take a heck of a while to swim eighty feet, particularly when you were wholly clothed. It would take Ness much longer to get to the sub than it would take the casino gunmen to run down to the shore.

  Given the alternative was getting shot on the shore instead, he dashed over the rocks and splashed into the channel. It was welcomingly warm and smelled pleasantly briny. Once he was up to his thighs, he dived in, thrashing after Sebastian, whose tentacles whipped the water like propellers, pushing him ahead at a rapid clip.

  Behind him, something cannonballed into the water. Ness' blood ran cold. He rolled on his back and unholstered his pistol, which was designed to be waterproof but generated painfully hot steam when wet. A face burst from the water, black hair plastered and streaming, eyes bulging with panic.

  "What are you doing?" Ness hissed.

  Sprite wiped saltwater from his face. "Running from the machine guns?"

  "They're after me and Sebastian, fool. They don't give a shit about you." He reoriented himself toward the sub and swam on. He'd lost ground on Sebastian, who was already climbing up the submerged hull of the sub and fiddling with the hatch on the tower. Ness redoubled his stroke.

  When he was twenty feet from the sub, the waves in front of him burst like fireworks of water, accompanied by the roar of gunfire. Ness filled his lungs and plunged under the surface. Bullets whirred into the water trailing conical flurries of bubbles. He swam deeper, ears popping, then leveled out and continued toward the dark outline of the sub. As his lungs began to burn, he reached it, fingers trailing its smooth surface, and kicked toward the surface. As he broke into the warm air, a blinding flare streaked from the sub. He scrambled up the side and rolled onto the exposed platform.

  On shore, the mini-rocket bloomed and thundered, throwing rocks into the air. Ness got to the open hatch.

  Below him, Sprite threw himself onto the top of the sub, chest heaving. "You can't leave me here to die!"

  Ness hesitated. Another spray of gunfire rolled in from the trees beside the shore. Ness moved to close the hatch, but Sprite was upon him, dripping and manic, forcing his way inside the entrance, which was wide enough to accommodate the aliens' expansive limbs. Ness shoved him down to clear the way, then pulled down the hatch. Air hissed and his ears popped again.

  A ramp spiraled down into the cramped interior. Sebastian waited at its base, tentacles curled in concern. A second alien stood beside him. The others didn't assign themselves names, or at least didn't deign to tell Ness what they called themselves. Instead, he thought of them as the Collective. The one before him had white mottling on its gray skin. Privately, he thought of it as Number Three.

  It strode toward Sprite, who shrieked and pressed himself against the tangle of struts and panels behind him. Number Three raised four tentacles, encircling them in the space around Sprite, then whirled on Sebastian and exchanged a rapid series of gestures.

  It turned to Ness, producing a square pad and motioning above its screen. White letters appeared on its black face: "COME WITH"

  Ness glanced at Sebastian, who started forward. Number Three barred his way with a pincer, gestured again, and held the pad up to Ness: "ALONE."

  7

  Lewis stepped back from the counter, scratching the line of hair that ran down his belly. "Bullshit."

  "I saw it with my own eyes. Enough weed to keep the entire West Coast blazed."

  "What's a girl like you know about marijuana farms?"

  "I went to Berkeley," Tristan shrugged. "It looked like they had some other stuff mixed in, too. Coffee bushes. Coca plants."

  "Now I know you didn't learn that at Berkeley."

  "I took the leaves to the Kahului library. Once I was reasonably certain what I was looking at, I tried one." She smirked. "Could have run all the way home."

  "You said 'they.'" He narrowed his eyes. "Who's they?"

  "Whoever planted it is gone. Best guess, they set it up after the Panhandler, then the invasion hit and they fled or died."

  "Show me."

  "Show you what?" Tristan laughed. "I went up there with my brother three weeks ago. We were meaning to go camping. Saw it with our own eyes. Why do you think I wanted to keep the shack out of sight?" She cranked her eyebrows together. "Believe whatever you want. But if you or any of your people step foot on my land again, I will bury you in it."

  She turned to go.

  "Hang on." He made to move around the counter, then remembered his nudity and hung behind the safety of the travertine. "Why are you telling me this? What exactly are you proposing?"

  "I'm proposing that you stop fucking up my business. I haven't finalized my plans yet—whether to distribute here, strike up trade with the other islands, or what. Might even make a trip to the mainland and see whether the colonies at San Diego and L.A. have their own supply." She tipped her head. "Whatever I decide, it would help to have an in with the government here. It's going to be a lot of work, too. Make a decision and let me know."

  She walked from the house, mind racing. When she had conceived the lie, she'd been all but certain he'd jump at the chance to get his hands on an unattended field of drugs. If not for personal use, then certainly as a source of profit. More and more, his combination of arrogance and entitlement struck her as the type of thing she'd seen in the trust fund kids at school, in King Dashing, and those who'd taken charge at Hanford. Those traits made them dangerous—there was little they wouldn't do in pursuit of their interests—but it made them exploitable, too.


  She was reasonably sure, then, that Lewis would venture to Haleakala. The key lay in making sure he never made it back. If she could pull that off, he would be neutralized, the aggression of the Guardians of Lahaina would be diminished, and there would be no direct ties of his disappearance to Tristan.

  She headed back through the houses to the downtown. Sands had reopened and Tom was inside, halfway up a ladder with his back to the door, arms stretched up to fiddle with a candleholder he was fitting to the wall. His black t-shirt rode up, showing a gap of skin pale by island standards.

  "Boo," she said.

  "Holy shit." He grabbed the top of the ladder to keep from falling. "You about killed me, Tristan. And all for nothing. They're not here at the moment."

  "Good. Because I came to see you." She meant the words as lightly suggestive, but as soon as she spoke them, she was struck by a vision of the scene on the rug in the pink house as reenacted by Tom and herself. Rattled, she pushed the image aside and plowed ahead. "What was it that prompted you to write to me?"

  Tom climbed down the ladder and drifted across the lobby, glancing around. "Like I said, he said something funny. I asked him if he'd heard what had happened to you, and he shrugged and said, 'That's what liars get.' He sounded way too happy about it. I was like, what the hell?" He laughed some. "I mean, not out loud. Dude has anger problems."

  "I can believe it."

  "What did he mean by that?"

  "I think it means he has a problem with women, too." She considered the skinny, well-meaning boy in front of her and was tempted to ask whether he had a contingency plan in case anything bad ever went down. But that would only invite scrutiny from him, and besides, if he hadn't made preparations for himself, that only proved there was nothing to be done for him. He was watching her; she gave him a close-lipped smile. "He weirds me out, you know? If he says or does anything else, no matter how innocuous it seems, can you let me know?"

  "Totally." He flinched toward her, as if he might try a hug. "Hey, you know, if you ever want to hang out, let me know. Aren't many people our age around here. Or on that mountain of yours, I would imagine."