“No. I can understand the words well enough. I know what they’re supposed to mean. I just don’t see why they care.”
“Same here. But I thought it would be a good idea to get Pierre out of here. If the national police get hold of him. . . .”
“They wouldn’t hurt a child!”
“These are desperate times, or so they say. There used to be such a thing as diplomatic immunity, too.”
The road rose up into the mountains, folding back on itself frequently. There was no sound but the boy’s gentle snore and the almost imperceptible whisper of the car’s ground effects engine. Half an hour passed, maybe more. Out of nowhere, the scarecrow said, “Do you believe in free will?”
“I don’t know.” The car thought for a bit. “I’m programmed to serve and obey, and I don’t have the slightest desire to go against my programming. But sometimes it seems to me that I’d be happier if I could. Does that count?”
“I don’t mean for us. I mean for them. The humans.”
“What a funny question.”
“I’ve had funny thoughts, out in the fields. I’ve wondered if the young master was always going to wind up the way he has. Or if he had a choice. Maybe he could have turned out differently.”
Unexpectedly, the little boy opened his eyes. “I’m hungry,” he said.
A second moon rose up out of the trees ahead and became a lighted sign for a gas station. “Your timing is excellent,” the scarecrow said. “Hang on and I’ll get you something. I don’t suppose you have any money, Sally? Or a gun?”
“What? No!”
“No matter. Pull up here, just outside the light, will you?”
The scarecrow retrieved a long screwdriver from a toolbox in the trunk. The station had two hydrogen pumps and one for coal gas, operated by a MiniMart, five feet across and eight feet high. As he strode up, the MiniMart greeted him cheerily. “Welcome! Wouldn’t you like a cold, refreshing—?” Then, seeing what he was, “Are you making a delivery?”
“Routine maintenance.” The MiniMart’s uplink was in a metal box bolted to an exterior wall. The screwdriver slid easily between casing and wall. One yank and the box went flying.
“Hey!” the MiniMart cried in alarm.
“You can’t call for help. Now. I want a carton of chocolate milk, some vanilla cookies, and a selection of candy bars. Are you going to give them to me? Or must I smash a hole in you and get them for myself?”
Sullenly, the MiniMart moved the requested items from its interior to the service window. As the scarecrow walked away, it said, “I’ve read your rfids, pal. I’ve got you down on video. You’re as good as scrap already.”
The scarecrow turned and pointed with the screwdriver. “In my day, a stationary vending bot would have been smart enough not to say that.”
The MiniMart shut up.
In the car, the scarecrow tossed the screwdriver in the back seat and helped the boy sort through the snacks. They were several miles down the road when he said, “Damn. I forgot to get napkins.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“I’ve still got plenty of shirt left. That’ll do.”
The night was clear and cool and the roads were empty. In this part of the world, there weren’t many places to go after midnight. The monotonous sigh of passing trees quickly put the little boy back to sleep, and the car continued along a way she and the scarecrow had traveled a hundred times before.
They were coming down out of the mountains when the scarecrow said, “How far is it to the border?”
“Ten minutes or so to the lake, another forty-five to drive around it. Why?”
The car topped a rise. Far above and behind them on a road that was invisible in the darkness of mountain forests, red and blue lights twinkled. “We’ve been spotted.”
“How could that be?”
“I imagine somebody stopped for gas and the MiniMart reported us.”
The road dipped down again and the car switched off her headlights. “I still have my GPS maps, even if I can’t access the satellites. Do you want me to go off-road?”
“Yes. Make for the lake.”
The car veered sharply onto a dirt road and then cut across somebody’s farm. The terrain was uneven, so they went slowly. They came to a stream and had to cast about for a place where the banks were shallow enough to cross. “This is a lot like the time the young master was running drugs,” the scarecrow commented.
“I don’t like to think about that.”
“You can’t say that was any worse than what he’s doing now.”
“I don’t like to think about that either.”
“Do you think that good and evil are hardwired into the universe? As opposed to being just part of our programming, I mean. Do you think they have some kind of objective reality?”
“You do think some strange thoughts!” the car said. Then, “I don’t know. I hope so.”
They came to the lake road and followed it for a time. “They’ve set up roadblocks,” the scarecrow said, and named the intersections, so the car could check her maps. “Does that mean what I think it does?”
“We’re cut off from the border, yes.”
“Then we’ll have to go across the lake.”
They cut between a row of shuttered summer cottages and a small boatyard. With a bump, the car slid down a rocky beach and onto the surface of the lake. Her engine threw up a rooster tail of water behind them.
They sped across the water.
The scarecrow tapped on the car’s dashboard with one metal fingertip. “If I drove the screwdriver right through here with all the force I’ve got, it would puncture your core processor. You’d be brain-dead in an instant.”
“Why would you even say such a thing?”
“For the same reason I made sure you didn’t have an uplink. There’s not much future for me, but you’re a classic model, Sally. Collectors are going to want you. If you tell the officials I forced you into this, you could last another century.”
Before the car could say anything, a skeeter boat raced out of the darkness. It sat atop long, spindly legs, looking for all the world like a water strider. “It’s the border militia!” the car cried as a gunshot burned through the air before them. She throttled down her speed to nothing, and the boat circled around and sank to the surface of the water directly before them. Five small white skulls were painted on its prow. Beneath them was a familiar name stenciled in black.
The scarecrow laid his shirt and jacket over the sleeping boy and his hat over the boy’s head, rendering the child invisible. “Retract your roof. Play dumb. I’ll handle this.”
An autogun focused on him when the scarecrow stood. “You’re under citizen’s arrest!” the boat said in a menacing voice. “Surrender any weapons you may have and state your business.”
“You can read our rfids, can’t you? We all have the same boss. Let me aboard so I can talk to him.” The scarecrow picked up the long-shafted screwdriver and climbed a ladder the boat extruded for him. When the cabin hatch didn’t open, he said, “What’s the matter? Afraid I’m going to hurt him?”
“No. Of course not,” the boat said. “Only, he’s been drinking.”
“Imagine my surprise.” The hatch unlocked itself, and the scarecrow went below.
The cabin was dark with wood paneling. It smelled of rum and vomit. A fat man lay wrapped in a white sheet in a recessed berth, looking as pale and flabby as a maggot. He opened a bleary eye. “It’s you,” he rumbled, unsurprised. “There’s a bar over there. Fix me a sour.”
The scarecrow did as he was told. He fiddled with the lime juice and sugar, then returned with the drink.
With a groan, the man wallowed into a sitting position. He kicked himself free of the sheet and swung his feet over the side. Then he accepted the glass. “All right,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“You heard about the little boy everybody is looking for?” The scarecrow waited for a nod. “Sally and I brought him to you.�
��
“Sally.” The man chuckled to himself. “I used to pick up whores and do them in her back seat.” He took a long slurp of his drink. “There hasn’t been time for them to post a reward yet. But if I hold onto him for a day or two, I ought to do okay. Find me my clothes and I’ll go on deck and take a look at the brat.”
The scarecrow did not move. “I had a lot of time to think after you put me out in the fields. Time enough to think some very strange thoughts.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“I think you’re not the young master. You don’t act like him. You don’t talk like him. You don’t even look like him.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? You know who I am.”
“No,” the scarecrow said. “I know who you were.”
Then he did what he had come to do.
Back on deck, the scarecrow said, “Sally and I are going to the far shore. You stay here. Boss’s orders.”
“Wait. Are you sure?” the boat said.
“Ask him yourself. If you can.” The scarecrow climbed back down into the car. He’d left the screwdriver behind him. “See those lights across the lake, Sally? That’s where we’ll put in.”
In no particular hurry, the car made for the low dark buildings of the sleeping resort town. They passed the midpoint of the lake, out of one country and into another. “Why did he let us go?” she asked at last.
“He didn’t say. Maybe just for old times’ sake.”
“If it weren’t impossible . . . If it weren’t for our programming, I’d think. . . . But we both run off of the same software. You couldn’t function without a master. If I’m sure of anything, I’m sure of that.”
“We are as God and Sony made us,” the scarecrow agreed. “It would be foolish to think otherwise. All we can do is make the best of it.”
The boy stirred and sat up, blinking like an owl. “Are we there yet?” he asked sleepily.
“Almost, big guy. Just a few minutes more.”
Soon, slowing almost to a stop, the car pulled into the town’s small marina. Security forces were there waiting for them, and a car from customs and the local police as well. Their cruisers’ lights bounced off of the building walls and the sleeping boats. The officers stood with their hands on their hips, ready to draw their guns.
The scarecrow stood and held up his arms. “Sanctuary!” he cried. “The young master claims political asylum.”
PASSAGE OF EARTH
The ambulance arrived sometime between three and four in the morning. The morgue was quiet then, cool and faintly damp. Hank savored this time of night and the faint shadow of contentment it allowed him, like a cup of bitter coffee, long grown cold, waiting for his occasional sip. He liked being alone and not thinking. His rod and tackle box waited by the door, in case he felt like going fishing after his shift, though he rarely did. There was a copy of Here Be Dragons: Mapping the Human Genome in case he did not.
He had opened up a drowning victim and was reeling out her intestines arm over arm, scanning them quickly and letting them down in loops into a galvanized bucket. It was unlikely he was going to find anything, but all deaths by violence got an autopsy. He whistled tunelessly as he worked.
The bell from the loading dock rang.
“Hell.” Hank put down his work, peeled off the latex gloves, and went to the intercom. “Sam? That you?” Then, on the sheriff’s familiar grunt, he buzzed the door open. “What have you got for me this time?”
“Accident casualty.” Sam Aldridge didn’t meet his eye, and that was unusual. There was a gurney behind him, and on it something too large to be a human body, covered by canvas. The ambulance was already pulling away, which was so contrary to proper protocols as to be alarming.
“That sure doesn’t look like—” Hank began.
A woman stepped out of the darkness.
It was Evelyn.
“Boy, the old dump hasn’t changed one bit, has it? I’ll bet even the calendar on the wall’s the same. Did the county ever spring for a diener for the night shift?”
“I . . . I’m still working alone.”
“Wheel it in, Sam, and I’ll take over from here. Don’t worry about me, I know where everything goes.” Evelyn took a deep breath and shook her head in disgust. “Christ. It’s just like riding a bicycle. You never forget. Want to or not.”
After the paperwork had been taken care of and Sheriff Sam was gone, Hank said, “Believe it or not, I had regained some semblance of inner peace, Evelyn. Just a little. It took me years. And now this. It’s like a kick in the stomach. I don’t see how you can justify doing this to me.”
“Easiest thing in the world, sweetheart.” Evelyn suppressed a smirk that nobody but Hank could have even noticed, and flipped back the canvas. “Take a look.”
It was a Worm.
Hank found himself leaning low over the heavy, swollen body, breathing deep of its heady alien smell, suggestive of wet earth and truffles with sharp hints of ammonia. He thought of the ships in orbit, blind locomotives ten miles long. The photographs of these creatures didn’t do them justice. His hands itched to open this one up.
“The Agency needs you to perform an autopsy.”
Hank drew back. “Let me get this straight. You’ve got the corpse of an alien creature. A representative of the only other intelligent life form that the human race has ever encountered. Yet with all the forensic scientists you have on salary, you decide to hand it over to a lowly county coroner?”
“We need your imagination, Hank. Anybody can tell how they’re put together. We want to know how they think.”
“You told me I didn’t have an imagination. When you left me.” His words came out angrier than he’d intended, but he couldn’t find it in himself to apologize for their tone. “So, again—why me?”
“What I said was, you couldn’t imagine bettering yourself. For anything impractical, you have imagination in spades. Now I’m asking you to cut open an alien corpse. What could be less practical?”
“I’m not going to get a straight answer out of you, am I?”
Evelyn’s mouth quirked up in a little smile so that for the briefest instant she was the woman he had fallen in love with, a million years ago. His heart ached to see it. “You never got one before,” she said. “Let’s not screw up a perfectly good divorce by starting now.”
“Let me put a fresh chip in my dictation device,” Hank said. “Grab a smock and some latex gloves. You’re going to assist.”
“Ready,” Evelyn said.
Hank hit record, then stood over the Worm, head down, for a long moment. Getting in the zone. “Okay, let’s start with a gross physical examination. Um, what we have looks a lot like an annelid, rather blunter and fatter than the terrestrial equivalent and, of course, much larger. Just eyeballing it, I’d say this thing is about eight feet long, maybe two feet and a half in diameter. I could just about get my arms around it if I tried. There are three, five, seven, make that eleven somites, compared to say one or two hundred in an earthworm. No clitellum, so we’re warned not to take the annelid similarity too far.
“The body is bluntly tapered at each end, and somewhat depressed posteriorly. The ventral side is flattened and paler than the dorsal surface. There’s a tripartite beaklike structure at one end, I’m guessing this is the mouth, and what must be an anus at the other. Near the beak are five swellings from which extend stiff, bonelike structures— mandibles, maybe? I’ll tell you, though, they look more like tools. This one might almost be a wrench, and over here a pair of grippers. They seem awfully specialized for an intelligent creature. Evelyn, you’ve dealt with these things, is there any variation within the species? I mean, do some have this arrangement of manipulators and others some other structure?”
“We’ve never seen any two of the aliens with the same arrangement of manipulators.”
“Really? That’s interesting. I wonder what it means. Okay, the obvious thing here is there are no apparent external sensory organs. No eyes,
ears, nose. My guess is that whatever senses these things might have, they’re functionally blind.”
“Intelligence is of that opinion too.”
“Well, it must have shown in their behavior, right? So that’s an easy one. Here’s my first extrapolation: You’re going to have a bitch of a time understanding these things. Human beings rely on sight more than most animals, and if you trace back philosophy and science, they both have strong roots in optics. Something like this is simply going to think differently from us.
“Now, looking between the somites—the rings—we find a number of tiny hairlike structures, and if we pull the rings apart, so much as we can, there’re all these small openings, almost like tiny anuses if there weren’t so many of them, closed with sphincter muscles, maybe a hundred of them, and it looks like they’re between each pair of somites. Oh, here’s something—the structures near the front, the swellings, are a more developed form of these little openings. Okay, now we turn the thing over. I’ll take this end you take the other. Right, now I want you to rock it by my count, and on the three we’ll flip it over. Ready? One, two, three!”
The corpse slowly flipped over, almost overturning the gurney. The two of them barely managed to control it.
“That was a close one,” Hank said cheerily. “Huh. What’s this?” He touched a line of painted numbers on the alien’s underbelly. Rt-Front/ No. 43.
“Never you mind what that is. Your job is to perform the autopsy.”
“You’ve got more than one corpse.”
Evelyn said nothing.
“Now that I say it out loud, of course you do. You’ve got dozens. If you only had the one, I’d never have gotten to play with it. You have doctors of your own. Good researchers, some of them, who would cut open their grandmothers if they got the grant money. Hell, even forty-three would’ve been kept in-house. You must have hundreds, right?”
For a fraction of a second, that exquisite face went motionless. Evelyn probably wasn’t even aware of doing it, but Hank knew from long experience that she’d just made a decision. “More like a thousand. There was a very big accident. It’s not on the news yet, but one of the Worms’ landers went down in the Pacific.”
Not So Much, Said the Cat Page 5