For the rest of the boat ride, I had simply stared around me in amazement, trying to match what I saw in the Everglades with what I remembered from the DVDgigaroms I had watched all my life on Mars. The boat startled large white birds with long, skinny legs, sending them clumsily into the air. I saw turtles sunning on logs. Dozens of kinds of tiny, colorful birds. Trees that were draped with long, dark moss, so that they looked like hunched-over old women.
Again and again I marveled at the new sights and smells. When Nate finally stopped the boat and cut the engine, I was able to hear bird cries and insects buzzing and the splash of fish jumping.
Amazing, I told myself again and again. How could anyone live in all this and not believe someone created it? Just amazing, I thought, awed. I envied all the people who had grown up on Earth—which meant everyone in the solar system except for me—because they were able to see stuff like this every day of their lives.
I had mentioned how cool I thought Earth was—and everything on it—to Nate when he first helped me out of the boat and set me up in the wheelchair on dry land. He’d given me a strange look, followed by a smile. He said he would be happy to discuss that later but needed to get us supper first.
Then he had disappeared for 15 minutes, returning with three fish, each a little bigger than one of his large hands.
As he started a fire, I watched an insect with wings land on the inside of my arm, just above the place where the old man had jabbed me and left a small scab of drying blood. The insect seemed so delicate, I marveled that it could fly.
I felt a tiny pinprick. Had this tiny thing actually bitten me? I kept watching the insect. It began to swell.
“What are you doing?” Nate the wild man asked me. “Slap it. It’s sucking your blood.”
“Acck!” I slapped it. Blood spread across my arm.
“What planet are you from?” he joked. “Haven’t you seen a mosquito before?”
So that’s what the little flying thing was. A mosquito. I’d read about them. I sure wasn’t going to tell this man why I didn’t know what it was. Dad’s note had urged strict secrecy. From everyone.
Nate threw me a small can. “Spray this repellent on yourself. As the sun sets, they’ll come out in droves.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Thank me by trading with me,” he answered.
“Trading?” Ashley echoed. “What do Tyce and I have that we can trade?”
“We’ll trade information.” Nate knelt beside the fish he had dropped on the grass. “You tell me things. I tell you things. Simple, right?” He yanked loose his huge knife from his belt.
“Easy for you to say when you’ve got the knife,” I told him. “Plus, you’re easily 30 years old. I’m only 14 and in a wheelchair. At this point I’d be dumb to disagree with you.”
Nate laughed. “Thirty-two. Which has nothing to do with this knife. Because you don’t understand. The way I was raised, a man pays his debts. You saved my life twice. From here on I’m your protection. And from what little I can figure, you’re going to need it.”
He picked up one of the fish and held it upside-down. With a quick movement, he slit the fish’s belly from the tail to its gills. He reached into the fish and pulled out a stringy clump of gleaming, colored tubes.
“What’s that?” I asked. I was torn between two curiosities. What he’d meant by what he’d said. And what I was seeing.
“Fish guts,” he said. “How can you be as old as you are and not know that?”
He must not know I’ve grown up on Mars, I thought.
Ashley poked the guts with her finger. “Hmm.” She had spent a lot of her life in a secret institute. Evidently this was new to her, too. She sniffed her finger and made a face.
It took less than a minute for Nate to take the guts out of the other fish too. He left the guts in a neat pile beside him. “Dinnertime,” he announced.
“People eat fish guts?” I asked, startled. I could smell them from where I sat. I didn’t know if I was that hungry just yet.
Another strange look from Nate. “Where exactly are you from? Mars or something?” He chuckled, then punched me on the shoulder.
I shrugged as an answer. I doubted he’d believe me anyway.
“I save those to use as bait to catch a turtle or two,” Nate said. “Turtle soup tastes great. And you can boil and eat it right out of its shell. God’s made it an animal that provides its own bowl.”
Nate rose and rinsed the gutted fish in the water beside us. He stopped at a bush and cut loose a green branch. “See. This is our frying pan.”
He poked the branch through one of the fish and held it above the fire. “Now, while these fish cook, let’s talk.”
CHAPTER 11
“I’ve got some questions, then,” I said. The smell of the roasting fish made my mouth water. I wondered what “real food” would taste like. That was the kind of thing you could never experience on DVD-gigarom. Sure, I’d had a few meals in the prison. But they had been pretty tasteless, just like the nutrient tubes I’d had all my life on Mars. The only difference was that the prison meals had been served on a tin plate rather than in a tube.
“I’ll give you what answers I can,” Nate replied. The fire popped and sent ashes and sparks upward, hitting him in the chest. He absently wiped the ash off. I now understood why his clothes smelled the way they did—wild and smoky.
“You had a neuron rifle programmed to allow you to shoot our pilot. I don’t think you’re a soldier. Even if you somehow stole or found the rifle, it takes a Combat Force computer to program it for you. Which means someone high up arranged it for you. So I’d like to know who gave you the rifle.”
I stopped long enough to try the fish. Nate had instructed me to peel the meat back from the skin so I wouldn’t eat any scales. As promised, the white meat fell from the bones. With hesitation, I placed some in my mouth.
Wow! I’d never tasted anything so good in my entire life on Mars!
Nate smiled at my reaction. “More questions?”
I nodded but ate all my fish first, then licked my fingers clean. “All right. How did you know our names? How did you know there was a tracking device on board and where it was? How did you know we were going to be coming down that channel at that time? How did you get the little black box to jam the electrical currents?”
Ashley jumped in. “You knew there would be boats chasing us. How? How did you know where to escape? What did you mean when you said Tyce cost you a million dollars? And that now all three of us would be on the run?”
“And,” I added, “you said you guessed we needed protection. What made you guess that?”
“You mean aside from the obvious?” he responded, grinning. “That you’ve escaped a Combat Force prison on the space base?”
“How could you even know that?” Ashley asked him. “Unless someone told you ahead of time. So who was that?”
“Even if someone didn’t tell me,” Nate returned, “there are the prison uniforms that are too large for each of you. Before you fall asleep tonight, I’ll give you the clothes I got for you. You can change, and we’ll burn the prison outfits.”
“So you did know ahead of time,” Ashley said.
“Yup.” Nate took his knife out of his sheath again. I hoped he meant what he said about protecting us.
He slid the knife under the fish on the branch. With the fish balanced on the blade, he handed it to Ashley. “Eat carefully. I’d hate to see you burn your fingers or your tongue.”
Nate propped the next fish on a branch so it would begin to cook. Ashley prayed quietly before she ate.
“I never used to do that myself,” he said, waiting respectfully until she finished before he spoke. “But after a few years here in the swamps, I’ve learned a whole new appreciation for the nature of creation.”
A few years in the swamps? No wonder it seemed like he was as comfortable living in the dangerous wildness of the Everglades as I had been living under the dome on Mars.
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br /> “I’ll get to your questions first,” he said next. “Most all of them are answered by telling you how I knew you’d be on this swamp boat on that channel when you were. But my answer is going to lead to my own questions, so be ready to return the favor.”
I wasn’t going to make promises, so I kept my mouth shut. Ashley was too busy eating to speak.
“As you might guess,” Nate said, “I live here in the Everglades. About five years ago, I retired from the Combat Force. I was so tired of the fighting and the politics and the way the world was going that I decided I was done with it. So I ran—as far away from everything as I could. This natural preserve was as far away and wild as I could get.”
Ashley spit some fish bones out, then smiled an apology at me.
“Yesterday, at the cabin I’d built 50 miles from the nearest road, my former commander dropped in on me. Literally. By helicopter. Turns out I hadn’t hidden myself as well as I thought. But then I was a fool to believe they wouldn’t keep track of me. Not after the kinds of jobs I’d been given during my military service. I used to be part of an elite commando group. We’d be sent into places when the government wanted a problem solved quickly and quietly. …” His voice trailed off and he stared into the fire.
It didn’t seem like the kind of silence to interrupt. I gazed above him at the late-afternoon sky. The smudged clouds glowed with pinks, reds, and purples as the setting sun bounced light off them.
“Cannon—”
Ashley interrupted. “Cannon?”
“My former commander,” Nate explained. “I was part of an elite platoon of the Combat Force. Called the EAGLES.”
“Eagles?” I asked. “You flew?”
“EAGLES. I won’t even try to explain what it stands for. In short, we were trained to fly anything, pilot any kind of boat, drive any vehicle. We were experts in things that now give me nightmares. Everything. Cannon is no longer in the EAGLES platoon. He’s now one of the top-ranking generals in the Combat Force. Imagine my surprise when he offered me a million dollars and the guaranteed privacy of a new identity for the rest of my life to help him with one last simple job. It didn’t seem smart to turn him down. Not when it was obvious he could find me whenever he wanted.”
“The simple job was to get us,” I said.
“Yup, again. He told me who you were and gave me descriptions and some clothes he promised would fit. He told me that you would be released from prison because of a hostage taking. He provided me with the neuron rifle, the black box, and the time and location to wait in ambush. He warned me about the tracking device on the swamp boat. And he told me that once I stopped the swamp boat, because of the tracking device, there would be very little time before more soldiers from the prison began pursuit.”
Nate paused. “I wasn’t really doing it for the money. More to be left alone. He promised me he didn’t mean you any harm, and I decided to take his word for it. I think I decided to believe him to make it easier on me. But I was just fooling myself. I mean, why does someone like him want to go to all the trouble to kidnap you guys?”
I could guess. It had something to do with robot control. But that wasn’t something I wanted Nate to know.
“So instead of bringing you to him for whatever reasons he had in mind, I’m now promising to keep you away from him. That might answer all your questions. But only lead to more.”
“Like how did the general know all of this?” Ashley said. “And what does he want with us?”
“You said he showed up yesterday,” I added. “It wasn’t until today that my dad got us out.”
Ashley nodded. “Tyce, it was only a half hour before you got out of your cell that I was called down and released. How could anyone have known a full day earlier all of this was going to happen?”
I still didn’t even know who my dad had taken hostage and how he’d managed to do it. I wished I hadn’t ruined Dad’s note by falling in the water.
“Tyce?” Ashley prompted me.
I sure wasn’t going to let Nate know what Ashley and I needed to do. Dad had stressed the importance of keeping it secret. Even though Nate was now helping us, it still didn’t seem smart to trust him. Not until I knew how much of what he told us was the truth.
I found my voice. “I guess when we know who sent the general, we’ll have all the answers.”
“Not all the answers,” Nate corrected me. “Because now you owe me some. Who are you two that my commander wants you so badly? What’s with the stuff in the boat? Those robot contraptions? And why were you taken to this high-secrecy Combat Force prison in the Everglades?”
“Ashley,” I said, “Dad told me we had some money cards. Did you imprint them?”
“Yes. At least mine. Yours was already imprinted. I think they used a thumbprint from a cup you had handled in prison.”
That was good. Although I’d never used a money card on Mars, I knew how they worked. There was a special hologram place on the card that would hold only one thumbprint. Computers at banks, money machines, or store cash registers compared the thumbprint of the card with the thumbprint of the person with the card. If both prints matched, the transaction went through. If they didn’t match, the reading machine immediately destroyed the card. This meant Ashley and I were safe from Nate. He couldn’t just take our money cards and get rid of us. He needed Ashley and me to get the money.
“You’re not answering my questions,” Nate said firmly.
“I’d like to trade you something else instead,” I answered. After all, Dad had said we had unlimited use of the money cards.
“What’s that?”
As the darkness fell upon us, I gave Nate my best smile as I made my offer. “How much money will it take for you to help us get where we need to go?”
“Where would that be?”
I coughed. “Ashley?”
She gave Nate a weak grin. “We, uh, can’t tell you. Yet.”
CHAPTER 12
Nate stared at the campfire. Ashley had fallen asleep in her sleeping bag. I sat to the side in my wheelchair.
I couldn’t sleep. My arm itched, and there was a big lump on the surface of my skin. Nate told me it must be from the mosquito bite. I told him the mosquito had bitten me higher on my arm than that. When he laughed at me, I didn’t bother going into detail about how that old man in the prison had jabbed my arm.
I watched the fire flicker beyond my toes. Nate had made sure to keep the fire as small as possible so it couldn’t be spotted by military pursuers. Suddenly, surrounded by the hum of mosquitoes, I felt lonely and afraid. It was a different kind of fear than I’d felt when all those crises had happened under the dome on Mars—the oxygen leak, the hostile takeover of the dome, and when Dad, Director Rawling, and I had almost been blown up by a black box under our platform buggy. I’d been on Mars—a world I knew well—then. Now I was on Earth, an alien place for me. Dad was in a military prison. And Mom and Rawling, the only other two adults I could count on, were 50 million miles away.
Yet now there was so much for Ashley and me to do. She’d spent most of her life in something she called the Institute, where she’d received her robot training along with 23 other kids her age. She’d only been able to tell Dad and me a few things about it during the trip from Mars to Earth, and we had intended to wait for a secure Internet link to try to use those clues. But would that be enough for us to find it?
I wanted to start keyboarding my thoughts.
Starting tomorrow, we have only five days left of our countdown. If we find out where the Institute is, will that be enough time to reach it?
Even if we find the place in time, what then? How can we get in, if it’s surrounded by guards? How exactly are we supposed to go about exposing it to the world through the media?
And what if we can’t trust Nate? What will happen to Dad if we fail?
On Mars, I’d learned the habit of keeping a journal. I’d found it helped me sort my thoughts. I had the comp-board with me, and it was tempting to add to
my journal now. Especially because I could analyze all the angles once they were written down. But I didn’t want Nate to be tempted to take the comp-board from me and read the journal to learn more about Ashley and me. He already knew we were worth big bucks if he delivered us to his former commander. If he found out how much more we were worth as experimental technology, he might decide to change his mind about helping us.
Without a way to get my thoughts down in my journal, it felt like my head was filled with rolling marbles.
I sighed and looked up at the stars. They didn’t look as clear from Earth as from Mars. Logically I knew why, of course. Earth’s atmosphere distorted the light waves. But logic didn’t take away my sense of awe at the beauty of the stars as they seemed to twinkle.
I thought of all I had seen on my first day on Earth outside the prison. How incredible it was to see everything that lived out in the open. On Mars, nothing lived outside the dome. Without that little man-made bubble of air and moisture for protection, life couldn’t exist. But here on Earth …
“Kid?” Nate said, appearing concerned. “You all right?”
“Sure,” I said, hiding my worries.
“You want to tell me about all this gear you have? Those things look like robots and …”
“Robots?” I forced myself to laugh. “You don’t see any equipment to run them, do you?”
It made me glad I hadn’t made him curious about any information in my comp-board. Before Nate could say anything else, a loud, groaning roar echoed from out of the darkness.
“Relax,” Nate said. The fire’s tiny glow must have been enough light for him to see me flinch. “Male gator. Letting the world know he’s here.”
“Oh.”
“He’ll mind his own business,” said Nate. “We’re fine here.”
“Oh.”
“You’re interesting to watch.” Nate chuckled. “You look around as if the world is one giant candy store. And I agree. It’s unbelievably amazing. But because most people see it every day, they take it for granted. Living in the swamp, I had to learn all over again how incredible the process of life and ecology is.”
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