by Mark Wandrey
Sato woke and looked out the window. They were racing through tunnel after tunnel, the train only slightly buffeted as it passed from night into total darkness, then back out again. He yawned and craned his neck to see one of the car’s only working status displays. They were currently passing near Cerro de la Muerte, the tallest mountain in the Talamanca range. His window on the maglev was so filthy, the peak could be right next to him and he’d never see it.
He stood and stretched. Rick was in the seat closest to the central isle. The coach car they rode in was 10 seats across, four in the center group, with a group of three on either side. Every other grouping he saw was full. Rick and he had garnered their own three seats to themselves, courtesy of the strange robed man with glowing blue eyes. Considering at least half the passengers were refugees from Sao Paulo, Sato guessed it wasn’t a surprise nobody wanted to mess with them.
“You okay?” Rick asked. Sato hadn’t known he was awake.
“Fine, I’m just going to get some coffee or tea. Need anything?”
“No. You want me to go get it?”
“I’m fine,” Sato insisted.
Rick’s head turned slightly, examining the area around them. The passage they’d booked, Sao Paulo to Mexico City, was 7,500 kilometers by air. The maglev route covered 11,200 kilometers. There was a lot of mountainous terrain between the two cities. The train had been capable of 1,000 kilometers an hour when it was new. Now it averaged 300.
Sato slipped past Rick and walked down the stained and torn rug-covered aisle toward the front of the car. If the train had been moving closer to its rated speed, walking in this section would have been tricky at best. A few of the warning signs still worked. “Peligro—Curvas Adelante.” Caution—curves ahead. The track was made for a better time. The train took a sweeping turn, and Sato hardly noticed.
“Ayuda?” a boy asked, sitting on the floor at the end of the isle.
Sato ignored him. He’d learned quickly after boarding that handing out money was a huge mistake. The pair had started out much further forward in the train. After Sato had handed a beggar a 5-credit chit, they had to move. Rick had been forced to crack some ribs in the process, too, getting the train’s security involved. The conductor had relocated them to this car, far back in the train, and admonished them against encouraging the beggars.
“Likely many of them live on the train,” Rick had noted after watching how they worked the passengers. Thievery was a way of life to the urchins on any world. They’d checked their meager possessions, all carefully secured by Sato, with locking mechanisms far more advanced than the train they traveled on.
Nemo’s bud didn’t mind being locked away for a couple days. It said it was passing the time reading the collective works of Jules Verne, something it had always wanted to do, but never had the time.
All Sato had on him was a slate and some money. They’d traded a few credits for a massive wad of various Central American currencies. It had helped them blend in, even if it constantly frustrated Sato when he wanted to buy something.
Leaving their sleeping car, he moved through another, and eventually into what they nominally called the dining car. It looked like as many people were travelling in this car as any other, but the center section was dominated by a snack bar. At least, it had once been a snack bar. Now it was four autochefs, with two out of commission. A bored looking railroad employee sat on a stool and made sure nobody accosted either of the surviving autochefs.
Nobody was currently using the devices, so Sato went to the closest one and scrolled through the selection. After a day on the train, he’d already learned how to trigger English menus. As the trip moved on, the autochef selections had begun to decrease. He wondered how often the nutrient and ingredient packs were changed? Probably better not to think about it.
Sato selected a carafe of green tea and paid with several Brazilian real. The tea was hot and the right color. He grabbed a couple plastic cups, then bought two muffins, which also looked fresh. Of course, in an autochef, there was no way of knowing. Since it dispensed them immediately, that meant they hadn’t been cooked on the spot. Less chance of food poisoning from a baked item, he justified to himself as he took the food and immediately headed back.
As he was passing through the intervening car, he noticed a standout sitting in one of the seats. A Caucasian woman, beautiful, in her thirties, with long auburn hair tied back in a ponytail. This was unusual; he hadn’t seen another white person on the train since they left Brazil behind. However, as soon as he entered the car and spotted her, he knew she’d already been watching him.
Of course, an Asian on the train might be rarer than a white person. But the intent way she stared at him immediately set off his suspicions. He stopped and considered turning around, but if she was a potential enemy, that would put more space between him and his guardian angel.
Sato did his best to ignore the woman and keep walking. Playing cool had never been his strong point. Socially awkward, unprepared, and nervous was more his wheelhouse. Despite every ounce of will at his disposal, he looked down at her as he approached.
“Hello, Taiki,” the woman said.
“Uh,” was the best he could come up with.
“Surprised to see me?”
“Uh…”
She gestured to the seat next to her. “Please, sit.”
“Look,” he finally managed, “I don’t know who you are.”
“Right, sure.” She smiled, looking at him with bright blue eyes. Then a frown creased her face. “Are you serious?”
He stared at her face. She was pretty and common at the same time. If she were sitting on a subway in Boston, he wouldn’t have noticed her. Or…would he? “You’re kinda familiar…”
“When I got the flash you’d been spotted at a maglev station in Agua Branca, I couldn’t believe the news.” Her eyes darted around his features, eyebrows narrowing as she studied his face. “It is you, of course. How many years?”
“I-I have to go,” Sato stammered and moved onward.
“Taking a maglev instead of a sub-orbital was smart,” she said, just behind him. He tried to hurry, but the cars were too crowded. Instead he jostled more people and further slowed his progress. “We’ve got eyes everywhere on the planet. Surely you know that?”
Suddenly someone was standing in front of him. His ebony complexion was as out of place as the woman’s alabaster on a train full of cocoa complexions.
“Excuse me,” he said and tried to slip by.
The man moved smoothly into Sato’s way, removing any doubt that he was with the girl, and he was hemmed in.
“It’s been many years, Taiki. We should talk. A lot has happened since you disappeared.”
“Let me go,” he pleaded.
“I think you should come with us,” the black man said.
“That’s not happening.”
Rick Culper’s voice behind the huge dark-skinned man was the most welcome sound Sato had heard in a long time. The man’s head came around in surprise, locking eyes with the twin glowing blue of Rick’s armor. The woman stood slowly, carefully turning her own head to regard the new arrival. Her eyebrows went up, and she took in the figure, mostly obscured behind Rick’s black robes.
“Well,” she said, a thin smile playing across her lips. “You’ve upped your game.”
“Move,” Rick said to the big man between him and his charge. The other man narrowed his eyes, his lips slowly skinning back in a hint of a snarl. “Move, or you’ll regret it.”
“It’s okay, Joey,” the woman said. “We don’t want to make a scene.”
The man moved aside slightly, and Sato wasted no time moving through the space. Rick put out an arm and maneuvered Sato until he was behind him. Then he backed slowly toward the car’s door, never taking his eyes off the big man or the woman.
“Glad to see you got the Æsir working,” she said. “See you around, Taiki.”
“Who was that, and how did she know about the armor? I t
hought you just designed it recently.”
“I thought so, too,” Sato said as they walked. He looked back repeatedly, expecting the pair to follow them through the door. Then he remembered her name. “Adrianne McKenzie,” he said. “Her name is Adrianne McKenzie.”
“Who is she?” Rick asked.
“I wish I knew,” Sato admitted.
* * *
Staying in the same compartment was no longer an option. Neither was upgrading to First Class. Shortly after the encounter, they stopped briefly in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. There the train shifted some cars, losing the only remaining First Class car in favor of a trio of Coach. Instead, they went all the way to the rear. They found the last car about half empty, with only the lowest of the low huddled there.
Many of these passengers carried all their worldly goods. They had bundles of clothing, food, even some furniture or handwoven cages holding chickens. Rick didn’t care as they couldn’t be attacked from the rear now.
He berated himself for not going with Sato in the first place. The man excelled at finding trouble in the most innocuous of places. Leave it to him to find some old girlfriend or professional adversary on a dilapidated maglev train in Central America. Only it looked like she’d found him via security cameras. If she knew they were on Earth, that meant others did, too.
The train stopped briefly after crossing the border into Nicaragua. The little town of La Virgen, perched on the shore of Lago Cocibolca, was an industrial location where many got off for work, and a few got on. Rick and Sato were two of those who got off, quietly and without fanfare. The conductor didn’t give them a second look.
Rick had to scramble to get their luggage. He would never have been able to locate it himself. Instead he slipped one of the station baggage handlers a 10-credit chit, then two more when the man recruited two other workers. They had the Wrogul support case and a pair of crates offloaded minutes before the train wheezed back out of the station on its route north.
“Okay, now what?” Sato asked, watching wistfully as their train left.
“We drive,” Rick suggested and pointed. It was mid-morning in La Virgen. A flickering ancient neon sign announced, “Ventas de Autos.”
“You want to buy a car?” Sato asked.
“You’d rather walk?”
The overweight and balding salesman watched them walking down the dusty sidewalk with confused interest. Rick had bought one of the baggage handlers’ rusty old hand trucks for another 10 credits, or around ten thousand pesos. Everything was piled on the truck, which creaked and groaned ominously under the load. The salesman spoke as they turned into his lot; luckily it was translated for them.
“Can I help you, sirs?”
Rick gestured to the cars. “We want to buy one.”
The man’s eyes narrowed as the translator rendered it into Spanish.
Rick left the handcart and Sato, walking down the line of cars. Of course none of them were fliers; he couldn’t get so lucky. A bunch were medium-sized sedans dating from around 2110 at the newest. They were all electric, a bad choice for their situation. Then he saw a pair of delivery trucks and zeroed in on them. The salesman followed him without comment.
The first ran on hydrogen, which would be difficult to find outside of a city, both in Central America, and even Mexico. But the next one ran on good, old-fashioned diesel. He popped the hood and found a bonus; it had a fuel cell backup, which meant it was a hybrid. In addition to the diesel engine, it had an electric drive that could be powered by the fuel cell, which in turn could operate on anything with an octane rating.
The side had a logo from a supply house in Cartagena. There were a couple of bullet holes in the box, and the remnants of a police impound sticker helped fill in the story. “Does it run?” he asked the salesman.
The man slid past Rick and pulled a locking chip from his pocket. He clicked it into the dash, and all the displays came alive with a series of clicks and hums. A single button push, and the diesel engine turned over with a roar and a jet of black smoke. Whoever had owned it had removed the catalytic system, probably for increased power.
“The fuel cell?”
The salesman pushed a control. The engine stopped, and a power display slowly lit up. Rick could tell the fuel cell had seen better days. Probably needed a new catalyst layer, but it was working. Good enough.
“We’ll take it.”
“One million Córdoba,” the salesman said, showing rotted teeth.
Rick did the math. Converted, it was about 30,000 dollars. “For this piece of junk?” The man shrugged. He reached into a pocket of the robe and produced a 100-credit chit. The man’s face froze, and a look of hunger replaced the indifference. Rick added two more for 300 credits, roughly what the man was asking in equivalent currency.
“You have ID to fill out papers?” the salesman asked.
Rick shook his head and produced another 100-credit chit. The salesman licked his lips. “We’d need a license, too. One that won’t get us pulled over by the policía.” Two more 100-credit chits made a total of 600 credits. “No questions asked, amigo.”
The man turned and waddled quickly toward the office.
“How do you know he isn’t calling the cops?” Sato asked, taking off his coat in the quickly growing morning heat.
“Because the police won’t pay him as much as we are.” A minute later the man was shambling back, a pair of worn license plates clutched under one arm and paperwork in the other hand.
“All legal,” he said. “My cousin has a truck, same model.” He pointed at the truck Rick wanted. “It’s in the shop back of the business getting new brakes.”
“What happens when he gets his truck and the license is missing?” Rick asked.
“Parts are hard to find. Take maybe two, three days.” Rick fished a seventh chit out. “A week, minimum.”
“Sounds good,” Rick said and held out the chits. The man grabbed at them, but Rick caught his hand. “Look, if the policía are waiting around the corner, or even down the road, we aren’t going to be taken in. You have no idea who you’re dealing with, and you don’t want to.” The man’s face blanched, and he tried to pull away. His hand might as well have been locked in a vice. Rick squeezed, and the cartilage popped.
“Please, sir, I no lie to you!”
“I hope not, for your sake.” Rick released the man, who stumbled and fell, sending the 100-credit chits rolling in the gravel. “Because after we deal with the policía, we’ll be back to deal with you.” Rick turned and began loading their baggage. The salesman sat on his sizeable butt, staring after Rick for a long moment before scrambling greedily for the money.
“Still think we’re safe?” Sato asked as he helped secure the cargo truck’s rear door.
“Fifty-fifty,” Rick admitted. He climbed behind the seat and started the diesel engine again. The gauge said they had half a tank, calculated as a 1,200-kilometer range. Enough to get them to northern El Salvador or Honduras, to start.
He backed the truck out of its space and turned onto the road. The last he saw of the salesman, he was watching the truck drive away while massaging his abused hand. Rick decided to head east for Honduras. Their trip had just gotten a little longer.
* * * * *
Chapter Seven
Sato watched Rick operate the truck as if he’d spent most of his life doing it. It was part of the programming built into the armor, of course. More than the clumsy, blunt weapons of the CASPers, the Æsir was an elegant scalpel. Maybe when all this was over with…
“We’re coming up on the border,” Rick said.
Sato pulled himself away from his thoughts and looked ahead. The mountains they drove through were rugged and seldom driven by anyone except farmers and miners. That was exactly why they’d chosen it. Some places, the road was barely wide enough for the truck. Despite precarious drop-offs and crumbling shoulders, Rick never hesitated.
Did your soul make it into this new body? Sato contemplated as th
e truck struggled up a grade. Day had given way to dusk. Sato didn’t know if there was such a thing as a soul, but wasn’t there some divine spark? Something that made them more than a collection of cells and blood? Rick’s presence there, alive and aware of who he was, suggested otherwise. Didn’t it?
The road rounded a bend, and a hundred meters ahead was the Honduras border. Nothing much more than a small building with a wooden gate and a sign saying, “Now Entering the Republic of Honduras.”
“What do we do if they don’t let us through?” he asked Rick.
“We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” was the reply.
Sato wanted to say something, then shrugged. Rick was right; it made no sense to plan for something that might or might not happen. It was unlikely the minimally manned border was well armed, so they could probably just force their way through. The truck was both large and made from tough stuff.
Before he had any more time to consider, Rick was braking to a stop next to the guard shack. He’d dimmed his usually shining blue eyes, so now he just looked like a man wearing a jacket. There was a chill in the high-altitude night air, and a window slid open to show a man wearing a uniform. The sounds of some Spanish language show drifted out, along with the smell of food cooking. The face glanced at the cab, then back along the truck, and back to the cab. Rick gave a casual wave.
The guard rubbed his eyes and yawned, then gave a wave in return, and the gate rose. Rick put it in gear, and their truck rumbled ahead.
“That was easy,” Sato said.
“Smelled like he had dinner cooking.”
“Makes me hungry, too,” Sato replied, his stomach grumbling. They hadn’t eaten since they’d bought the truck earlier in the day.
It was only another hour before they came to the Guatemalan border. This one looked even less used than the Honduran crossing had. Sato was much more relaxed this time, confident it should be an easy job.
The truck stopped, but this time a bored-looking man didn’t wave them through. A pair of soldiers opened the door and examined the truck and Rick. Rick looked back at them, waiting.