Paradigm

by Helen Stringer

  “Something like that…lots of people have a hand in projects like that, I guess. Specialists for each element. They were building it, but then they found out.”

  “Found out what?”

  “That…someone else had designed it. Someone they didn’t trust.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sam, adjusting his coat and hoping that Nathan couldn’t detect the lie. “Someone bad, I guess. Anyway, my mom and dad and some others thought they should stop, but they got overruled. So a bunch of them left. They stole the prototype box, along with most of the specs and hid them. Then they all just vanished into the Wilds.”

  “But I don’t get it,” said Nathan. “What was so bad about it? Why did it matter who designed it?”

  “I’m not sure. I think there was something else. Something my dad never told me.”

  “So…okay…why didn’t they just destroy it?”

  Sam shrugged, but Nathan didn’t seem satisfied.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Why didn’t they just build a new one?”

  “Dunno. Maybe they did.”

  “No, they can’t have. If they’d made a new one then no one would care about the prototype. So why—”

  “I don’t know!” Sam felt suddenly angry. “I was ten! That’s all I remember!”

  He glared at Nathan, wishing that he was still traveling alone. The answer to his question was Mutha, of course. Mutha designed the box. But Sam couldn’t tell him that without revealing that the great brain was sentient, and every instinct screamed at him not to do that. It would just prompt more questions and more suspicion. He realized now that he shouldn’t have told Nathan anything, he should have just made up some plausible story about how he escaped from Bast and left it at that.

  “I’m going to sleep,” he announced, lying on the cold earth and curling up as tightly as he could.

  He closed his eyes. He could feel Nathan’s boring into his back, but he didn’t turn around. He wasn’t going to talk about it any more. He was free. They were in the Wilds and out of California. None of that old stuff mattered.

  Except that it did.

  After a while the sound of regular breathing told him that Nathan had fallen asleep. Sam tried to do the same, but every time he started to drift off, instead of a restful oblivion, there was the blue muthascreen and those words: “Hello, Samuel.”

  Chapter 15

  THE GENERATOR RAN OUT OF JUICE just before dawn and Sam woke, shivering, the hard ground of the ravine sparkling with frost. Nathan stumbled off to the car, still half asleep, leaving Sam to pack up the heater and place the pocket generator on the dash to recharge.

  The inside of the car felt even colder than the morning air and the addition of two warm-ish bodies soon misted the windows. Sam wiped a hole in the condensation, pushed the cigar lighter in and turned the key. The old engine turned over slowly and stopped. He tried again. Same thing. He sighed. One day, he knew, the GTO would give up the ghost forever and become just another of the rotting hulks that littered the ruined highways.

  “But not today,” he whispered. “Not today. Come on, old girl.”

  He turned the key once more. This time she fired. He let her run for a few minutes, then pulled slowly out of the ravine and headed back to the highway.

  Things got better over the next few days. Nathan stopped asking so many questions, and they acquired some new stock at an abandoned settlement outside of what had been Phoenix. Sam pointed the car north up the I-17, stopping at every small settlement along the way. By that time, Nathan was back on form and sales were pretty good. Good enough for them to be able to afford to gas the car up with actual gas and still have enough stuff left over to buy an old ice chest for the food. As if that wasn’t enough, one store had a shelf with old books. Sam couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen any for sale, and snapped up two: “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” and “The Green Odyssey.” He hadn’t read either of them and reveled in that anticipatory thrill he always felt when he found something new.

  He was enjoying himself, but between the stolen moments in Victorian England or on the plains of a distant planet, he couldn’t help noticing that, when he wasn’t actually selling, Nathan was tense and jumpy and continued taking much more care in selecting their campsites than he had ever done before. Sam thought it was ridiculous, but he kept quiet about it…and about the fact that he’d spotted some of the Rovers’ vehicles in both Bumblebee and Camp Verde. There was no point in making things worse.

  Which is why he was surprised to spot Nathan talking to Vincent in a side street in Munds Park. Sam had been following up a lead on some motor oil for the GTO that had involved him being directed to first one house and then another before coming up empty-handed after all. He was headed back to the car when he spotted them. Nathan didn’t look as frightened as before and nodded and smiled as Vincent handed him something small.

  Sam waited by the car, but didn’t say anything when Nathan returned. If he had ironed out his problems with the Rovers that was fine by Sam. It would certainly make driving around the country with him a lot more bearable.

  They stopped for the night at a clearing among the pines. It was even colder than the desert, but the air seemed fresher somehow, though the sky was the same dirty yellow. Sam organized the food, roasting some something-or-other steaks that he’d bought in town. It was best not to ask too many questions when people had honest-to-god fresh meat for sale.

  “Coffee?” said Nathan.

  “You’re kidding,” said Sam, amazed.

  He hadn’t tasted real coffee in over a year.

  “Yeah. Managed to snag some back in town.”

  Sam watched as Nathan slowly prepared the drink. It was such a rare treat, every care was taken in the preparation, as if it were some kind of religious ceremony.

  “Sam…” Nathan seemed hesitant.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been thinking. I think you need to know…I want you to know…about …about…”

  “The Rovers?”

  “Yes. What have you heard about them?”

  “Just what you told me and some stuff I heard from a journalist at Bast’s dinner—that they used to live on the shores of Lake Tahoe and were genetically mutated after Hermes Industries poisoned the water so now they die before they are twenty.”

  “Not all of them.”

  Sam looked at him as he poured the coffee into a jug, and a light dawned.

  “You mean not you.”

  “Right. I mean not me,” said Nathan.

  He went back to the car to fetch the mugs then sat down on the other side of the fire.

  “It wasn’t just me, though. There were others. Not many at first, I don’t think, but as time passed there were more and more of us.”

  “But that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t understand. We never thought of it as a curse. It was the price we paid for the gift.”

  “What gift? You’re not talking about the fish?”

  “The fish were the best thing that ever happened to us. It was the gift of the lake.”

  “Wait…You’re saying that you all think that the poison in the water that turned the fish toxic and mutated your genes is actually some kind of mystical gift from the lake?”

  Nathan nodded.

  “But that’s ridiculous!” Sam couldn’t believe he was hearing this. “Hermes Industries poisoned the lake. It was an accident. That’s all. An industrial accident.”

  “You don’t understand. Hermes was the mechanism. The lake was rewarding us. They say that we were so poor back then we could barely feed our families. The lake had once been a place where people went on vacation and spent money, but that had stopped years before. Before the second collapse, even.”

  “Okay, say the lake did give you a gift and Hermes Industries was merely the tool it used. How do you explain the fact that your people were thrown off the land by the cartels?”

  “Pun
ishment.”

  “Punishment?”

  “We took the gift for granted and then some of us started to be born without it. Do you see?”

  “Um…see what?”

  “The lake was angry. We were exiled as unworthy. But then, about twenty years ago, there was this guy…Carter, his name was. Anyway, he realized that it was a test and that we would regain our place on the shores of the lake if we threw the bad ones back.”

  “The bad ones?” Sam wasn’t liking the sound of this at all.

  “The ones that didn’t have the gift. Carter came up with this system. When we are born we all get a tattoo. There are nine patterns so there should only be two age groups with the same pattern at any one time. The oldest ones should be dead before the youngest are born.”

  “And if they’re not?”

  “They’re given back to the lake.”

  “You mean they drown them?”

  “Yes. That’s why they never leave California. Well, that’s part of it. All Rovers go back to the lake when they die. It’s called the Return. They can never travel more than a few days distance from it, just in case.”

  Nathan poured the coffee into the mugs and handed one to Sam. He cupped it in his hands and breathed in the aroma. It was wonderful.

  “So you were one of the survivors,” he said, taking a sip and rolling it round in his mouth.

  “Yes. I got rid of my tattoo and stayed out of California. It’s been two years. I was sure they’d have forgotten about me.”

  “But Vincent recognized you out at the warehouse store.”

  Nathan nodded. “What are the odds, eh?”

  “And they’ve been following you ever since because they want to take you back to the lake?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is seriously messed up.”

  He took a gulp of the coffee and considered that, turbulent as his own childhood had been, it was nothing compared to the life Nathan must have had.

  “Anyway, so today Vincent found me and it turned out he didn’t want to take me back to the lake after all. Well, he did, but he had a…proposition. One that meant they’d leave me alone forever.”

  Sam looked at him, but suddenly realized he was having difficulty focusing. Nathan must have noticed because he moved around to Sam’s side of the fire.

  “You see, they’re bounty hunters, Sam.”

  “I know,” said Sam. “You told me. Back at the warehouse.”

  At least, that’s what he thought he’d said. Or had he just thought it? Something was going on. It was as if he was shutting down, a bit at a time.

  “What…” He waited. Yes, he definitely said that. “What have you done?”

  “I’m sorry, Sam, but they’re not going to kill you, just take you home.”

  “Home?”

  There was a movement in the trees and Vincent stepped out, flanked by two Rovers Sam hadn’t seen before. Sam tried to concentrate, to see what it was inside him. If he’d beaten the fish toxin, then maybe…

  “San Francisco,” Vincent was crouching in front of him now. “You wouldn’t believe the bounty on your head.”

  “I don’t…I don’t understand…”

  “Hermes Industries Labs, Sam. They want their boy back real bad.”

  Sam just stared. He couldn’t speak now. He couldn’t even feel Nathan going through his pockets and taking the keys and the cigar lighter.

  “I’m really sorry, Sam. I really…I just didn’t want to die. And…well, I don’t think you’re human. Hearing the plex…all that shit…real people can’t do that.”

  He heard Nathan walk away and then he heard the GTO as it started up and drove away into the night.

  He tried concentrating again, tried to find the drug inside him…whatever it was. But there was nothing. Just the shrinking tunnel that was his vision.

  “It’s a real humdinger, ain’t it, Sam?” said Vincent pleasantly. “The guys at Hermes were real insistent. Said it was the only thing’d work. Okay boys, let’s get him back to the van.”

  Sam didn’t feel them pick him up, he just felt the slight change in the breeze on his face as they moved him swiftly through the woods to where a pick-up and trailer were parked. Then he was lying on a bed and a girl’s face was looking down at him.

  “Is he still alive?” her voice was soft and far, far away.

  “Yeah. He’s fine.”

  Was that Vincent? Why was he whispering?

  The truck fired up and the trailer lurched as they pulled out onto the old highway. But Sam didn’t hear it. He could only hear the GTO.

  How could Nathan have stolen the GTO?

  He struggled to sit up. Or thought he did.

  There were muffled voices.

  He’d kill Nathan for this. Drowning in a lake would look pretty damn good if he ever caught up with him again.

  And the Paradigm Device was in the trunk.

  And…what did they mean “home”?

  And then…nothing.

  Chapter 16

  IT WAS STILL DARK WHEN he woke up. Or was it dark again? He had no way of knowing. The trailer wasn’t moving, though, so they must be parked.

  Sam turned his head and opened his eyes slowly. He was alone. He sat up carefully and looked around. What he had thought was a bed was actually an old sofa covered in blankets and towels, most of which looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in years. The rest of the trailer wasn’t much better. There was a small sink, crammed with dishes and grey with mold, a few chairs, roughly nailed to the floor, and greasy cupboards bursting with more blankets, pans, ropes and ragged clothes. He could see the flickering light of a campfire through the mud-smeared window above the sink and hear talking and laughing. The window on his side was dark. That was the way he had to go.

  He stood up and immediately sat down again. His head was swimming and his legs felt like string. He took a few deep breaths, but it didn’t help much. Outside, a girl started singing a raucous song. Everyone joined in on the chorus. This was probably going to be his best chance.

  He stood up again and made his way to the door at the back of the trailer. It swung open easily. He jumped down, closed the door and waited. The singing didn’t stop. They hadn’t seen him. He turned and ran into the dark, but as he did there was the unmistakable sound of the door swinging open again.

  “Shit!”

  He thought about running back and closing it, but it was too late. He could see a girl walking toward the trailer to check on him.

  The subsequent yelling was quickly followed by the sound of running feet behind him. Sam glanced back and realized he had no chance of getting away. Whatever they’d given him had made him weak as a baby and his legs already felt like he’d run a marathon. The best thing he could do was try to slow them down.

  He stopped and turned around. There were four Rovers with flashlights bobbing towards him. He took a deep breath, looked at the ground, and concentrated. Even in his weakened state he reckoned he could take out the flashlights, and maybe one or two of the trucks if he was lucky.

  The Rovers had stopped running.

  “Hey, Sam!” It was Vincent. “What d’you think you’re doing?”

  Sam felt the slight prickling in his fingers and toes as the pulse built up through his body, then up to that point just behind his eyes. He looked up and the flashlights went out.

  “Whoa! Did you do that, Sam?”

  He didn’t answer. He just tried to stay as still as he could in the black dark.

  “I said, did you do that?”

  Vincent was right in front of him. They dragged him back to the trailer and threw him on the sofa again.

  “I’m really disappointed in you, Sam,” said Vincent, getting a rope out of one of the cupboards. “Cherry, turn the light on, so I can see what I’m doing.”

  He knelt down and started to tie Sam’s hands. Sam heard the click-click of the light switch and smiled.

  “What are you looking so pleased about? Cherry! The lights!”
r />   “They won’t come on, Vinnie. I think the bulb’s blown.”

  Vincent looked up at Sam and saw the smile.

  “Oh, Jeez…you have got to be kidding.”

  He dropped the rope and ran out of the trailer. Sam heard the slam of the truck door and then nothing for a few moments.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” said the girl called Cherry. “You seem nice. Most of the ones we grab ain’t nice at all.”

  “Then why…” whispered Sam, his whispered words fading to nothing.

  “It’s the money. Not barter. Actual cash money. More ‘n we’ve ever seen.”

  She crouched in front of him and gazed into his eyes.

  “What did you do, Sam? What did you do made them so mad at you?”

  “Nothing. I’ve never even been—”

  The hood of the old truck clanged shut.

  “Shit!”

  “What is it?” yelled a voice from the other side of the camp.

  The truck door slammed again.

  “All of you! Start your engines!”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  Sam waited, hoping against hope, but one by one the other vehicles started up. Then Vincent was back.

  “Grab your stuff, Cherry. He’s blown all the electrics in the truck. We’ll have to hook the trailer to Johnno’s.”

  The girl nodded and jumped out of the trailer.

  “That’s impressive stuff, Sam. What was it?”

  “An electro-magnetic pulse,” said Sam. “I was kind of hoping for a bigger one.”

  “I bet you were,” said Vincent. “I can see why the guys at HI thought you should be medicated.”

  He reached into his back pocket and produced a phial of clear liquid.

  “No,” said Sam, his panic rising. “Please. I won’t try anything else, I swear. Please.”

  “Yeah, well, I think we’ve established two things here, Sam. One is that you can’t be trusted, and the second is that you’ve got some crazy ass skills. I’ve had that truck since I was ten.”

  “I’m sorry. Really. Just don’t—”

  It was no use. Vincent pushed Sam back on the sofa, opened the phial, forced his mouth open and poured the contents down his throat.