Andrew sat on the steps next to Silas. His friend was thirteen, a year older than Andrew. He was the only child Andrew had met in the flesh; the others were only holo images. Silas was big and muscular, taller than Joan and Dao; he made Andrew feel even smaller and slighter than he was. Andrew moved up a step and looked down at the other boy.
Silas rose abruptly. Brown hair fell across his forehead, masking his eyes. He motioned to Andrew, then began to walk down the hill. Andrew followed. They halted by the hedge in front of the empty stone house. The troll waved them away, shaking its head; its long tangled hair swayed against its green tunic.
“How about it?” Silas said as they backed away from the hedge.
“What?”
“You know. Our journey, our adventure. You coming with me? Or are you just going to stay here?”
Andrew held out his arm, looking at his Bond. “We can’t go. They’ll find us.”
“I said I’d figure out a way. I have a plan.”
“How?”
“You’ll see,” Silas said. He shook his head. “Aren’t you sick of it here? Don’t you get tired of it?”
Andrew shrugged. “I guess.”
Silas began to kick a stone along the road. Andrew glanced up the hill; Joan and Dao were still on the porch. They had lived in that house even before bringing him home, making one journey to the Center to conceive him and another when he was removed from the artwomb. They had gone to some trouble to have him; they were always telling him so. “More people should have children,” Dao would say. “It keeps us from getting too set in our ways.” Joan would nod. “You’re very precious to us,” Joan would murmur, and Dao would smile. Yet, most of the time, his parents would be with their books or speaking to distant friends on the holo or lost in their own thoughts.
Joan could remember the beginnings of things. Dao was even older. He could remember the Transition, when the world had realized that people no longer had to die. Dao was filled with stories of those days—the disorder, the fear, the desperate attempts to reach as many people as possible with the treatments that would give them youth and immortality. He always spoke of those days as if they had been the prelude to great adventure and achievement. Gradually, Andrew had realized that those times had been the adventure, that nothing important was likely to happen to Joan and Dao again. Dao was almost four hundred years old; Joan was only slightly younger. Once, Andrew had asked his mother what she had been like when she was his age. She had laughed, seeming more alive for a moment. “Afraid,” she had answered, laughing again.
Silas kicked the stone toward the hill. “Listen,” he said as they climbed. “I’m ready. I’ve got two knapsacks and a route worked out. We’d better leave this week before my father gets suspicious.”
“I don’t know.”
The taller boy turned and took Andrew by the shoulder. “If you don’t go, I’ll go by myself. Then I’ll come back and tell you all about it, and you’ll be sorry you didn’t come along.”
Andrew pulled away. Silas’s face was indistinct in the dusk. Andrew felt anxious. He knew that he should be concerned about how his parents would feel if he ran away, but he wasn’t; he was thinking only of how unfair it had been for them to assume that he would want to hide in this isolated spot, shunning the outside world. They had told him enough about death cults and accidents to make him frightened of anything beyond this narrow road. He knew what Silas was thinking, that Andrew was a coward.
Why should I care what he thinks? Andrew thought, but there was no one else against whom he could measure himself. He wondered if he would have liked Silas at all if there had been other friends. He pushed the thought away; he could not afford to lose his one friend.
As they came toward the house, Andrew saw his parents go inside. A kobold was on the porch, preparing for its nightly surveillance; behind it, a troll was clothed in shadows. Silas got on his bicycle.
“See you,” he mumbled and coasted down the hill recklessly, slowing down as he reached the bottom, speeding up as he rode toward his home.
The kobold danced over to Andrew as he went up the steps. It smiled; the golden curls around its pretty face bobbed. A tiny hand touched his arm. “Good night, Andrew,” it sang.
“Good night, Ala.”
“Good night, good night, good night,” the tiny voice trilled. “Sleep well, sweet dreams, sweet dreams.” The troll growled affectionately. The kobold pranced away, its gauzy blue skirt lifting around its perfect legs.
Andrew went inside. The door snapped shut behind him, locking itself. He walked toward the curving staircase, then paused, lingering in the darkened hallway. He would have to say good night.
He found his parents in the living room. He knocked on the door, interrupting the sound of conversation, then opened it. Dao had stripped to his briefs; Joan was unbuttoning her shirt. On the holo, Andrew saw the nude images of a blond man and a red-haired woman; a dark-haired kobold giggled as it peered around the woman’s bare shoulder. The flat wall-sized screen had become the doorway into a bright, sunny bedroom.
“Five minutes,” Dao said to the images. “We’ll call you back.” The people and the room disappeared. “What is it, son?”
Joan smiled. Andrew looked down at the floor, pushing his toe against a small wrinkle in the Persian rug. “Nothing. I came to say good night.”
He left, feeling their impatience. As he climbed the stairs, he heard the door below slide open.
“Andrew,” Joan said. She swayed, holding the ends of her open shirt. “I’ll come up later and tuck you in. All right?”
I’m too old for that, he wanted to say. “I’ll be asleep,” he said as he looked down at her.
“I’ll check on you anyway. Maybe I’ll tell you a story.”
He was sure that she would forget.
In the end, he went with Silas, as he had known he would. They left two days later, in the morning, stopping at Silas’s house to pick up the knapsacks. Silas’s father was out in the back, digging in his garden with the aid of a troll; he did not see them leave.
They avoided the road, keeping near the trees. When they were out of sight of Andrew’s house, they returned to the road. Andrew was not frightened now. He wondered what his parents would say when he returned to tell them of his journey.
Silas stopped and turned around, gazing over Andrew’s head. “A kobold’s following us.” Andrew looked back. A little figure in blue was walking toward them; it lifted one hand in greeting.
“What’ll we do?”
“Nothing, for the moment.” Silas resumed walking.
“But it’s following us.” Andrew walked more quickly, trying to keep up with his friend’s strides. “We could outrun it, couldn’t we? It won’t be able to keep up.”
“That’s just what we can’t do. If we do that, it’ll tell the others, and we’ll have your parents and my father on our trail.”
They came to a bend in the road. Silas darted to one side and hurried through the brush. Andrew ran after him, thrashing through the green growth. It had rained the night before; the ground was soft and muddy, and leaves stuck to his boots. Silas reached for his arm and pulled him behind a tree.
“Wait,” Silas said. He glanced at Andrew, then peered at him more closely. Andrew stepped back. Silas was looking at his chest. Andrew looked down. One of his shirt buttons was undone, revealing the silver fabric underneath.
“You’re wearing a lifesuit.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course not. You’re stupid, Andrew. Don’t you know you can be tracked with that on?”
“Not as easily as with a Bond.” He wondered again what Silas was going to do about their Bonds.
“Take it off right now.”
“You can’t hurt me, not while I’m wearing it.”
“I’ll leave you here, then.”
“I don’t care.” But he did. He took off his knapsack and unbuttoned his shirt. Twigs cracked in the distance; the kobold had tracked them. Andrew rem
oved his lifesuit, and handed it to Silas.
As he dressed, Andrew felt exposed and vulnerable. His clothing seemed too light, too fragile. He watched as Silas dug in the mud, burying the lifesuit with his hands. He looked up at Andrew and grinned, his hands caked with wet earth.
“Get behind that tree,” Silas said as he picked up a rock. Andrew obeyed, flattening himself against the bark. A bush shook. He could see the kobold now. For a moment, the android looked like a man; then it moved closer to another bush and was small again. Its dark beard twitched.
“Silas,” the kobold called. “Silas.” It shaded its eyes with one hand. “Silas, where are you bound? You should not come so far without protection.” The creature had a man’s voice, a tenor, but it had no resonance, no power; it was a man’s voice calling from far away. The kobold came closer until it was only a meter from Andrew, its back to him as it surveyed the area.
Silas moved quickly, brushing against Andrew as he rushed toward the kobold. He raised the rock and Andrew saw him strike the android’s head. The little creature toppled forward, hands out. Andrew walked toward it slowly. Silas dropped the red-smeared rock. The small skull was dented; bits of bone and slender silver threads gleamed in the wound. The silver patch on its forehead was loose.
“You killed it.”
“I didn’t mean to hit it so hard. I just wanted to knock it out.” Silas brushed back his hair with one dirty hand. “It’s only a kobold. Come on, we have to go. Now that its link is out, another one’ll come looking for it.”
Andrew stared at the body.
“Come on.” He turned and followed his friend. They came to a muddy clearing and went around it. Silas led him to a nearby grove of trees.
Two cages rested against a tree trunk. Two cats, trapped inside, scratched at the screening. “I told you I had a plan,” Silas said. “Now we take care of our Bonds.”
“I don’t understand.”
The other boy exhaled loudly. “Messing up the signal’s too complicated, and we can’t take them off and leave them because the alarm would go out after a minute or so. So there’s only one thing left. We put them on somebody else. Or something else. The system can’t tell if it’s us or not; it only knows that the Bonds are on some living thing. And it’ll assume it’s still us, because these Bonds are ours. Everyone’ll look for us around here. By the time anyone figures it out, we’ll be far away.”
Andrew stared at his friend. It seemed obvious and simple, now that he had explained. “They might just wander back to your house,” he murmured as he shifted his gaze to the cages.
“Not these cats. They’re kind of wild. They’ll stay out here for at least a day or two.” He opened one cage and removed a Siamese. The cat meowed and tried to scratch. Silas stroked it tenderly. “Hold him.” Andrew held the animal as Silas removed his Bond and put it around the cat’s neck, adjusting it. The cat jumped from Andrew’s arms and scampered away. “Now yours.”
Andrew backed away. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t do it.” His mouth was dry. He would be cut off from the world without his Bond; he had never removed it except when it was being readjusted.
“Coward. I know what’s going to happen to you. You’re going to run home, and your mother and father’ll make sure their little precious doesn’t run away again. And you’ll stay there forever. You’ll be a hundred years old, and you’ll still be there, and you’ll never do anything. And you’ll always be afraid, just like them.”
Andrew swallowed. He took off the Bond while Silas held the other cat. He fumbled with the bracelet and dropped it. “Here, hold the cat,” Silas said, sighing. He picked up the Bond and attached it himself, then put the cat on the ground. The creature began to lick a paw.
Andrew was numb. He blinked. Silas pushed him, and he almost fell. “We have to go, Andrew. Another kobold’ll be here soon.”
Late that afternoon, they reached a deserted town. Weeds had grown through the cracks in the road. The wooden structures were wrecks. A few had become only piles of lumber; others still stood, brown boards showing through the worn-away paint. Broken windows revealed empty rooms.
They walked slowly through the town. A sudden gust of wind swayed a weeping willow, and Andrew thought he heard a sigh. He shivered and walked more quickly.
A stone house stood at the edge of the town. A low wall surrounded it; the metal gate was open. Silas lingered at the gate, then went through it. The broken pavement leading to the front door was a narrow trail through weeds and tall grass. Andrew followed his friend up the steps. Silas tried the door knob, pushing at the dark wood with his other hand until the door creaked open.
The hallway was empty; dust covered the floor. Andrew sneezed. The floorboards creaked under their feet.
Cobwebs shimmered in the corners. They turned to the right and crept into the next room.
Andrew sniffed. “Are we going to stay here? We’ll choke.” His voice was small and hollow.
Silas glanced around the empty room, then walked over to a tall window facing the front yard. “We can sleep here. If we open the window, we’ll have air.”
“Maybe we’d better leave it closed.” Andrew wondered whether he would prefer a closed window and a dusty room to an open window in the dark. Silas did not seem to hear him; he stared through the filmy windowpane for a moment, then pushed at the window, straining against it until it squeaked open.
“Come here,” he said to Andrew. He wandered to the window and peered out over Silas’s shoulder. “Look.”
“At what?”
Silas pushed his arm. “Don’t you see anything, Andrew? Look at the town. It’s like it’s still alive.”
He saw it. The tall grass hid the piles of lumber; only the standing houses were visible, colored by the orange glow of the setting sun. He could walk back to the town and find people preparing supper or gathering in the street. He sighed and backed away, making tracks in the dust as he slid his feet along the floor.
Silas took a shirt out of his knapsack and swept a spot clean. When he was finished, Andrew sat down. Now that he was safe, Andrew felt a little better. He had seen none of the terrible things his parents had warned him against, only old roads, forest, and a deserted town. He said, “I thought it would be worse.”
“What?” Silas removed food and water from his knapsack.
“I thought it would be more—I don’t know—more dangerous.” He shrugged out of his knapsack and stretched.
Silas shook his head. “You listen to your parents too much. Besides, there aren’t that many people around here; it’s too far north.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“You know. Maybe you don’t, because you never went anywhere. They don’t like seasons, most of them. They like places where it’s always the same. Here, the fall comes, and plants die.” Silas said the word die harshly, defiantly at Andrew. “They don’t like to see that.”
Andrew accepted food from his friend, opening his package of stew and letting it heat up for a few moments. Silas smacked his lips as he ate. “Sometimes I hate them,” he went on. “They don’t do anything. I don’t want to be like that.” He paused. “Once my father had this party, when we were living in Antigua, and this guy came, I forget his name. Everybody was just sitting around, showing off what languages they knew or flirting. And some of them were making fun of this man in a real quiet way, but he knew they were doing it; he wasn’t that dumb.”
“Why were they making fun of him?”
“Because he couldn’t play their stupid little word games. This one woman started saying that there were people who just weren’t very smart, and you could tell who they were because they couldn’t learn very much even with a long life and plenty of time, that they just couldn’t keep up. She was saying it to this other man, but she knew that other guy heard her, she said it right in front of him.”
“What did he do?” Andrew asked.
“Nothing.” Silas shrugged. “He looked sad. He left a little lat
er, and I had to go to bed anyway. Know what happened?” He leaned forward. “He went up in this little plane a couple of days later, and he went into a dive and smacked into this house down the road. You should have seen it blow up.”
Andrew was too shocked to speak.
“Luckily, nobody was home. The man died, though. Some people said it was an accident, but I don’t think most of them believed it. That man knew how to fly. He went diving right in there.” Silas slapped his right hand against his left palm.
Andrew shook his head. “That’s awful.” He looked enviously at his friend, wishing that he too had witnessed such an event.
“At least he did something.”
Andrew lifted his head. “But that’s terrible.” He thought guiltily about his own foray onto the roof outside his window.
“So what? It’s terrible. Everybody said so, but it was almost all they ever talked about afterwards. I know for a fact that a lot of them watched the whole thing on their screens later on. A woman was out with her holo equipment just by luck, and she got the whole thing and put it in the system. That’s the point, Andrew. He did something, and everybody knew it, and for a while he was the most important guy around.”
“And he was so important you forgot his name.”
“I was little. Anyway, that’s why my father came here. He decided he didn’t want to be around a lot of people after that. He kept saying it could have been our house.” Silas threw his empty container into the corner and leaned back against the wall, smiling. “That would have been something, if it had been our house. Old Ben wouldn’t have ever gotten over it. I’ll bet he would have moved us underground.”
Andrew pulled up his legs and wrapped his arms around them, imagining a plane streaking through the sky. The room seemed cozy now; the thought of danger beyond made it seem even cozier. Antigua, of course, was safely distant. He looked admiringly at his friend. Silas had seen danger, and nothing had happened to him; Andrew would be safe with his friend.
The Mountain Cage Page 30