Analog SFF, September 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The good news was that I made the drop just fine. The bad news was that whitecaps were even bigger than they looked. Panicked, I tried to dodge them but didn't make it and hit the first one at an angle. Bad mistake: the boat flipped so quickly I don't actually remember it happening. One moment I was thinking “oh-oh” and the next I was in the water.

  Fortunately, I have quick reflexes. Clutching the paddle with one hand, I grabbed the boat with the other and let the current pogo me through the remaining whitecaps into calmer water downstream.

  Now what? The inverted boat would take forever to tow ashore. Furthermore, my mind had belatedly produced the thought that if there was an Upper Kicking Horse Rapids, there was probably a lower one. In fact, I thought I could hear it, though that might just be my imagination.

  What I needed was to get back in the boat, and the first step had to be un-flipping it. The how-to book hadn't bothered to say how to do this, but there were those convenient bailing holes—the only features on the boat's otherwise-smooth bottom.

  Still gripping the paddle, I hooked my fingers in the holes and dragged myself partly out of the water. Then, I reached across to the farthest holes, dug a knee into the nearside of the boat, leaned backward, and plop—it came over on top of me. I got dunked again, but the boat was now upright, and I was still holding its gunwale. An explosion of apples bobbed in the water from a bag I'd failed to close securely enough, but everything else appeared to have been well tied down.

  I still had to get back in the boat, and now I was sure I could hear the lower rapids. I tried slithering over the gunwale, but it dipped alarmingly, and I barely managed to slide back into the water without flipping the boat back onto my head. The downstream roar was louder than ever.

  I was running out of time. Unlike Megan, I was wearing a life jacket, but my imagination was producing rapid-fire images of cracked kneecaps, bashed skulls, dislocated shoulders, and other injuries which would be as bad as drowning, and probably more painful.

  Adrenaline is marvelous stuff. It not only gives you strength, it slows time so you can think through important details, like how not to die. Or maybe there's no true, conscious thought involved, merely chemically directed action that has the same effect. However it works, I realized that the paddle was the key. I placed it crossways, so I could distribute my weight across both gunwales. Then, kicking vigorously enough it's amazing I didn't pull a muscle, I swarmed across the nearside gunwale with all the grace of a beached walrus. I flipped my feet around in front of me, got my butt firmly into the seat, and looked forward to find the source of the roar.

  What I saw was a maze of rocks and ledges stretching nearly to the next bend. I had about one second to think that I should pull to shore to scout the best route, followed by another half-second in which I realized it was too late. Then the foam ate my apples, one by one. I just barely had time to decide that the current had probably taken them along as good a route as any, then I followed suit. I steered to the right of an enormous rock, accelerated, and it was too late for second thoughts.

  As I passed the rock, things began to happen very quickly, but somehow the same adrenaline-induced clarity that had led me to figure out how to get back in the boat now left me thinking like the river, rather than trying to fight it. A secondary rock materialized ahead of me, and I danced my tiny craft sideways just far enough to miss it—like a golf ball rimming the cup on a narrowly missed putt. Another reflex dodge scooted me off line from an impressive hole, but that sent me toward a two-foot pour-over across a wide ledge. Having learned the hard way that it was better to meet obstacles head-on than be caught in the middle of an unsuccessful attempt to dodge, I pointed for the ledge, took three or four sharp strokes to provide headway for steering, and hoped the water was deep enough not to bruise my tailbone. Then I was in the turbulence below, whooping like a teenager.

  I found a gravel beach and pulled to shore, still giddy with adrenaline. From there, I could see Megan, dragging her boat around the first rapids, so, making sure my own boat was well beached, I trudged upstream to help. I suppose I could have offered to paddle her boat through, but I didn't want to stretch my luck, so I simply assisted with the portage. It was tough going, and when we got around the lower rapids, we'd done enough for one day.

  * * * *

  By the time we found Darryl's boat, we were rating portages on a scale like that used for rapids. Leap of Faith Rapids was a class 5—a twisty series of chutes spilling into a fissure of bubbling water—but the portage scored a solid 4, with poison oak at every flat spot and a constant threat of rattlesnakes. The portages around Submarine Hole and Mixmaster were even worse, and there were others where, if it weren't for the threat of losing our boats and equipment, we would rather have taken our chances with the river.

  All the way, I half-expected to see Darryl's boat wrecked on a rock, but apparently Megan was right: he really didn't do anything unless he was sure he'd be good at it.

  The boat was winched ashore with a line looped around a big pine. Darryl was nowhere to be seen, but a well-beaten path indicated frequent trips up a side creek, and a fishing pole and tackle box on the beach suggested he might soon be back.

  The boat's storage lockers were crammed with equipment: another indication that Darryl made frequent return visits. I rifled quickly through, but all I saw were food, stove fuel, a life jacket, clothing, and camping supplies. Nothing that looked like a lab book, though for all I knew, I was looking for a bookreader chip hiding in a bag of granola. I'd never asked Megan what form the notes might take, because until now it hadn't mattered. It probably still didn't, because if I were Darryl, I wouldn't leave them here, unattended.

  All the way downriver, I'd been playing out scenarios in which sometimes we found Darryl with the boat, and sometimes we didn't. Megan must have been doing the same. “Let's paddle back upriver a bit and hide our boats,” she said. “Then we can find a spot to wait for him to come back."

  I'd been thinking along the same lines. Luck had dealt us the advantage of surprise, and there was no need to squander it by strolling up Darryl's trail in broad daylight. If we had to look for him that way, I'd rather go at dawn.

  * * * *

  The current was gentle enough to make upriver paddling feasible, and the walking was a lot easier than most of our portages. Unfortunately, we were in full sun, on a west-facing slope.

  “Damn, it's hot,” Megan said, halfway back to Darryl's boat. We were still wearing our wetsuits—normally not a problem with all of that cold water nearby. But if our goal was to keep out of sight, splashing in the river wasn't the way to do it. Luckily, she'd thought to bring a fanny pack: one of those runner-things that also holds water bottles. She passed me a bottle and a granola bar, and we settled down to wait.

  The water was nearly gone by the time Darryl arrived. One moment I was wondering if the Sun would ever drop below the canyon wall; the next, he stepped into sight so unexpectedly he might almost have teleported from outer space. He walked directly to his boat, bent over the bow compartment, and began rummaging.

  He looked surprisingly like his photograph. Surprisingly, that is, because he'd had time to turn the stubble into a beard, shave his head, gain or lose weight, or do any of the things I would do if I were in hiding. He wasn't even dressed all that oddly, though he probably didn't usually wear hiking boots to work and his pants showed stains. Maybe he figured there was no reason for disguise because anyone who managed to track him this far would see right through it, but the impression was of a person who was comfortable with his appearance and didn't want to change. I again thought about his yearlong search for a soul. Whatever Darryl had been running from, it didn't appear to have been himself.

  It was Megan who first rose to intercept him. She caught me off guard because on the river I had half-forgotten that I was nothing more than a well-paid employee. Relegated to a supporting role, I circled to the side, moving to cut off Darryl's retreat should he make a dash for his camp or the rugg
ed country beyond.

  Megan was halfway to him before he looked up.

  “Hi, Darryl,” she said.

  He straightened, his expression unreadable. “Megan."

  “You left me,” she said, and I wondered which was more important: that, or the nano. Probably both. Marion and I could never stay focused on any single issue, so why should Megan and Darryl? The one thing I was sure of was that my speculations about love triangles were wrong. Megan was obviously the dumpee, not the dumper.

  “We no longer wanted the same things,” he said in another echo of things I'd heard too many times before. “I gave up trying to explain. There had to be a better way to live."

  Megan's eyes swept the beach and Darryl's grubby clothes. “What, this?” She was trying for contempt, but there were a lot of other things mixed in.

  Darryl chose to ignore them all. “You know what I mean. There are just too many nasty uses for that thing. We should have thought them through before we started."

  “So you just decided to stop the project on your own? We'd sunk too much into it. We couldn't afford to just quit."

  “Yes, we could. Graham must have told you so. The company will survive."

  “Who wants just to survive? We were on the verge of being rich, and you decided to piss it away for this?” Again her gaze swept the canyon. Cliffs leaping to a cerulean sky. Water gurgling against grass-and-pine riverbanks. Muscles hardening into contours not seen since youth. Nobody else around. Some people wait years for a vacation like this, and Darryl had found a way to make it a lifestyle.

  Megan wasn't in a mood to see any of that. “What happened to you?"

  “People change."

  “Not that much."

  Darryl's lips were tight. “Maybe I didn't change. Maybe I finally found out who I really was."

  Megan started to retort, then bit it off. She reached into the fanny pack that had held the granola bars, and suddenly she had a gun: a tiny, snub-nosed .22. It didn't look very accurate, but from ten feet away, how could she miss?

  I hadn't signed on for this. Maybe I tensed, or maybe she read my mind, because the gun shifted until it was pointed squarely at my chest, though she continued talking to Darryl.

  “I want the notes,” she said.

  “What makes you think they still exist?"

  “Because you took the chips with you rather than just erasing them as you did with the backups. And because you like to keep your options open, in case there's a time when you need a change of plan."

  The gun shifted. “Like now,” she said, and there was a pop. Even before the first blood appeared on Darryl's shirt, she'd taken two steps backward and lined the gun back up on me. “Don't even think of it,” she said.

  Darryl was still standing, gaping at the blood. “Ow,” he said, which seemed a bit of an understatement from someone who'd just been shot.

  Megan had retreated far enough that she'd have time to get off more than one shot if I tried to rush her. Not that I had any plan of doing so. A .22 may not pack a lot of punch, but the bullets can penetrate. As a kid, I once tried target shooting with an abandoned barn as a backstop. When I was done, there was a nice pattern of holes in the boards on the near side of the barn—and a matching pattern on the far side. I'd have to be pretty desperate to risk letting Megan do to my chest what I'd done to the barn.

  Oddly, Darryl didn't seem badly hurt, and the blood was oozing from several holes in his shirt, all too small even for a .22 bullet.

  It took a moment for my brain to catch up with my eyes. “Birdshot?” I asked. I'd heard of such things: a handful of tiny pellets in a .22 cartridge. In theory you could bring down a grouse if you got close enough. In practice, it had to be a damn hard way to hunt.

  “More like rock salt,” Megan said.

  Darryl paled. Then my brain clicked again, to the reality the two of them shared. “Nanos,” I said. And I'd thought Megan needed a more efficient delivery vehicle. Gads. Nothing like just shooting them into someone's chest.

  “Yes.” The gun was still on me. “Believe me, this isn't a nano you want."

  “What exactly does it do?"

  “Three guesses.” The playful belle was gone, along with every other persona I'd seen her wear. What I saw now was colder, more calculating. Too emotionless not to be another façade, but an effective one.

  “The truth nano."

  “Give the man a kewpie doll. But"—she was now talking to Darryl, who still hadn't spoken—"with a new effectuator. This one's a bit nastier.” Her eyes looked like Marion's when she'd told me what she hoped her lawyer would do to me. “Lie to me now, and you die."

  Darryl finally found his voice. Not necessarily a good thing, since silence seemed his best survival tactic. “The asthma nano."

  “Nah. A heart arrhythmia's easier to make fatal. And this one won't wear off in a few hours. So now, we both have an interest in the antidote. I hope those notes still exist."

  “It doesn't matter,” Darryl said. “This is exactly the type of thing I had in mind when I decided we had to cancel the project."

  He had not said that the notes didn't exist, and Megan was too smart not to have picked up on it. If Darryl hadn't destroyed them, my bet was that they were somewhere nearby, and if they were, it didn't matter what he said now, because she would find them eventually. Even if they were buried, there'd be enough metal in the chips’ plug-in cartridges that the damn things would probably show up on Darryl's gold-nugget detector.

  Darryl must also have realized he'd said too much, because suddenly he rushed her. Pop went the gun. Pop, pop, and I realized that he didn't have much to lose from being shot again. But there's something so intimidating about a gun that it took me until the third shot to figure it out.

  I, of course, had a lot to lose, so I stood my ground until he reached her, grabbed her hand, and wrenched at the gun. It went off again, with a slightly different sound, but maybe that was because it had swung my direction and something whizzed by me, too close for comfort. Then Darryl had it and Megan was staggering back.

  “Your turn,” he said, and shot her point-blank.

  I'd like to believe it happened faster than I could react, because at the moment I certainly shared his attitude. Give her a taste of her own medicine. See how long she can go without telling a lie. It was a frightening mix of Marion's farewell words to me and the way I'd been thinking when I'd infected her with the original nano. The stakes were higher, but the motivations identical.

  Megan didn't simply say “ow.” Instead, she stutter-stepped backward, her mouth working soundlessly. Another step and she was swaying, and there was blood on her wetsuit. Too much blood. Lots of blood.

  I've watched people die before, but always in hospitals, with the patient comatose and the final event announced by the nothing-there tone of a cardiac monitor on flatline. This was different. I don't know what artery Darryl managed to hit, but it was a big one and it didn't take a fancy monitor to count the heartbeats pumping the life from her body.

  I now know that there really is a light in the eyes that goes out at death, at least death by trauma. I have no idea whether it coincides with the precise point of death, but Megan's eyes were alive when I lowered her to the ground and leaned on the wound with all of my weight, in a useless attempt to stem the blood. They weren't alight when the flow slowed on its own and I shifted to CPR. Still, I worked on her for a long time.

  I worked to assuage my own guilt. I worked because I didn't know whether she was an evil person, a greedy person, a driven person, or merely another person lost in a world too subject to change—whether it's divorce, a career that vanishes, or a lover who wants to do the right thing before you're ready. I worked because people change and her chance had been cut short. I worked because my own change was past due. I worked long enough to become more than just emotionally drained: long enough that my arms ached and my own breath came in wheezing gasps.

  When I finally gave up, Darryl was still holding the gun, tryin
g to figure out what had happened. But I knew. There's an old bear-protection trick used in grizzly country: you take a 12-gauge shotgun and load it with slugs, followed by a couple of rounds of buckshot. The idea is that if the bear keeps charging after being hit by the slugs, the buckshot might blind it. Megan had used a similar trick in reverse, loading her gun with nano pellets followed by real bullets. But she'd used too many pellets and forgotten to warn us about the bullets.

  If she'd been able to pull the trigger just a little faster, it might have been Darryl on whom I wound up doing CPR. But I want to believe that murder had never been her intent. Most people underestimate the deadliness of a .22, and I need to believe that she was one of them. Hurt, not kill. That's the norm when love goes away.

  * * * *

  Darryl didn't even know my name, or why I'd been with Megan, though he could probably guess the latter. Still, when I reached for the gun, he surrendered it. And when I threw it in the river, he nodded. As introductions go, it wasn't bad. Then neither of us spoke for a long time.

  “I loved her,” he said at last.

  He needed to talk, but it wasn't wise. “Darryl..."

  “I really did. I always thought that someday she'd understand."

  “Darryl."

  “Did she tell you her father was an accountant? His money was part of what got us started at SNS. But he kept having to tell one of his main clients, a big law firm, to fire people who'd been with them for years. He was a good man and it depressed him. Last year, he committed suicide."

  “About the time your mother died?” The question was out before I could stop it.

  Darryl had been staring at Megan's body, but now I had his full attention. “Has something happened to my mother?"

  Oh, Megan, I thought. Lies and half-truths and onion layers on onion layers. It had been her parent's death that had set Darryl to reexamining his life, but she'd not been ready to admit it, probably not even to herself.

  “Your mother's fine,” I said. “I misunderstood something."

  I could see him start to ask, then change his mind. “Anyway, that made me reexamine what the hell we were doing,” he said. “But Megan acted as though nothing had changed.” He looked back at her body. “Maybe for her, it hadn't."