The Burning Road

by Ann Benson

  “Even with the foam filler?”

  “It doesn’t make that much of a difference. It helps, but I can still feel everything. God, I would kill to be able to wear a nice pair of high heels again.”

  “I’m afraid your fuck-me-pump days are over, babe. Sorry. At least you didn’t lose the foot … and you can always wear fishnet stockings, if the mood strikes you.” She patted the side of Caroline’s foot affectionately and let go. “Let me see your hand now.”

  Caroline held out her freckled left hand, conspicuously presenting her wedding band. She extended her fingers tauntingly and laughed. Janie slapped the back of the hand lightly, then took it in her own and brought it closer for a good look.

  “Okay, I’m jealous,” Janie said. “Are you happy? Your guy gets in, and mine doesn’t. Yours marries you. Mine says he’ll marry me if he ever gets here. But do I have a ring yet? No.”

  Caroline laughed lightly and shook her head. “Oh, my, are we ever self-absorbed … you really do need a different job.”

  “I guess I do,” Janie said with an ironic chuckle. She turned Caroline’s hand over and examined the palm, and saw nothing unexpected—the bruises were all gone, and all that remained were faint scars where one or two buboes had been. “It looks really good. You’ve been taking good care of your hands. I was afraid your body would overreact when they injected your ID sensor, because your immune system was so whacked out from plague. But it didn’t—everything looks fine.”

  Caroline drew her hand away suddenly. “That was almost a year ago. How come you didn’t tell me you were worried about this before now?”

  After the briefest pause, Janie said, “I didn’t want to concern you. I told you what to watch for, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, but not what it might mean.”

  “Well, nothing happened, so don’t worry.”

  “I worry about everything. You know that.”

  “God help us when you have kids.” She lowered her voice, so Caroline’s husband, Michael, wouldn’t overhear. “Speaking of which, did you get your period?”

  Caroline made an uncertain face and shook her head no.

  “Wow. Well, maybe … how late are you?”

  “Just a day.”

  “Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Caroline had been so ill with plague in London, so racked with infection, that Janie thought there would be terrible implications for all of her body systems, and in truth Caroline’s kidneys were not what they once were. When you get pregnant, she’d told her, you’ll never get out of the bathroom.

  But she hadn’t gotten pregnant, not in eight months of doing the deed every day, sometimes twice, depending on her cycle, and using no birth control. It was not a good sign.

  A severe fall, they’d explained to the immigration agent at Logan Airport. Scraped her hand. It explained the bruising, the bandages, the limp, and the extremely shell-shocked mental state in which Caroline had made her appearance at the immigration office in Boston. She had a little concussion, Janie explained for her. She’s still a bit dazed. And though her strange condition had raised a few eyebrows, Caroline did not set off any of the biosensors, because they’d made sure she was contagion-free before trying to leave Britain. The breath Janie held as Caroline passed through the readers was one of her life’s longest, and without question, the most happily expelled.

  “Now, about your foot. I am not entirely happy with that toe. It looks a little tender to me.”

  “It is a little tender.”

  “You wear socks all the time?”

  “Except when I’m wearing sandals.”

  “You really shouldn’t leave that toe exposed. If you scrape it or bang it into something, it could be a problem. Are you replacing your socks regularly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Washing them in hot water with lots of bleach?”

  “Of course.”

  “Washing the new ones before you wear them?”

  Silence.

  “Caroline, it’s important.”

  “I know. But sometimes I forget.”

  “Try not to, please. A lot of them are imported. They don’t go through the same kind of inspections U.S. goods go through.”

  “That’s why I can afford to buy them. But, okay, I’ll be more careful.”

  As Caroline pulled a clean cotton sock over her damaged foot, Janie removed her gloves and stowed them in a plastic bag. She would dispose of them in the foundation’s biosafe refuse room the next day. As she washed her hands in the kitchen sink, she said, “So, your prince is apparently still charming.…”

  “Yeah, but he complains about us not having any royalty here.”

  “What—he never heard of the Kennedys?”

  “Too Irish for him.”

  “Oh, poor baby. Is he still trying to get you to make Yorkshire pudding?”

  “I think he may be giving up on that one. I tried to make it again last week, but I just can’t use all that fat, not without gagging, anyway. So it was dry. He looked pretty disappointed.”

  “Still doesn’t want you to work?”

  “No,” Caroline said. “And to tell you the truth, I’m not unhappy to be staying home.”

  “It probably grows on you,” she said as she wiped her hands on a paper towel. “I imagine it would, I mean. I don’t really remember how it felt—the last time I wasn’t working or in school was when Betsy was a little baby.” She tossed the towel in the wastebasket. “And that was only for a few weeks.”

  There was a conspicuous silence. Caroline saw the conflicted look on Janie’s face and said sympathetically, “Staying home’s not for everyone. You had a practice.”

  “And I hope to again,” she said.

  “How is that looking?”

  “Well, until a little while ago, not too good.”

  “Oh? Is there news?”

  “Actually, there is. I found something I think might be unique enough to qualify me for a reapplication.” Once again, she explained what she’d discovered. With each additional recitation, she was more and more convinced that it was worth pursuing. “Thing is, though, I’m going to need some help. With a data search. As I review what I’ve already found I see a couple of things that just scream for another look.”

  “And those would be …?”

  “Well, for starters, why did this thing pop up all of a sudden? Wouldn’t there have been at least a few incidences prior to this sudden surge?”

  “Maybe there were and no one caught them.”

  “Maybe. It also might have happened B.D.”

  “Oh,” Caroline said, “things did actually happen before the database, didn’t they? Sometimes I forget.”

  “Yes, and contrary to our rose-colored view of those good old days, it wasn’t all pleasant.” She let out a long breath. “It’s possible that there were a few cases of whatever this is, and no one connected them. Or maybe someone connected them and was working on something and then didn’t make it through the Outbreaks.”

  “A reasonable assumption.”

  “I’m bothered by how quickly this seems to have showed up, because I have a suspicion that it’s a genetic problem. At least that there’s a genetic propensity.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Janie took a copy of the list of names out of her purse and handed it to Caroline. “Take a look at it. Tell me if you notice anything.”

  Caroline took the list and started reciting names. “David Aaronson, Elliot Bernstein, Michael Cohen …” She looked up and shrugged.

  “These boys are all Jewish.”

  Caroline was quiet for a moment. “And if that’s the case, just who do you think you’re going to get to help you?”

  “Your prince, my dear. Your lovely half-Jewish prince.”

  Michael Rosow, former British biocop and pursuer of international biocriminals—one of whom now happened to be his wife—son of a Jewish father and a Christian mother, did not like the
idea one little bit when Janie presented it to him.

  “My king will not be pleased,” he said adamantly.

  “Your king barely knows he’s king. He wouldn’t know a database if one rose up out of Loch Ness and swallowed him. And you don’t really give a damn if he does or doesn’t, anyway. You aren’t going back there anytime soon. So tell me what really bothers you about doing it.”

  He waited a moment before answering. “I’m afraid I’ll get caught, that’s all.”

  Janie had no snappy comeback for that response. “I understand that. And I’d be surprised if you weren’t uneasy about it. But if we could figure out a way for you to get in there without getting caught, would you do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we could borrow an identity.”

  Michael gave her a very direct and castigating look. “Shall we just cut off someone’s hand, then?”

  Janie winced as she recalled the nauseating episode in London that gave rise to Michael’s question. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Right,” Michael said. “You’ll want to wait at least a year between, of course. Only proper.”

  Eventually, with adequate prodding on Janie’s part that even she would have agreed bordered on nagging, Michael let it slip that once someone was into a computer and had established an identity, he could use the specialized infrared device that was standard equipment on biocop palmbooks to get into the database anonymously. The database would record the entry as having been made by the person whose sensor had activated the computer initially, and there would be no trace left of the true interloper.

  “How can I get one?”

  “You have to be kidding,” he said. “I got one only because I’m a lieutenant. Anyone below that rank isn’t allowed to use one.”

  So, she thought, he can do it. It was only an unknowing accomplice she needed now.

  On the way home from their house, Janie stopped outside one of the nicer-looking local watering holes, one she’d often noticed but never entered. On this particular evening there was no line outside, so she ran a comb quickly through her hair, straightened her clothing, and went inside.

  The computer bar was all glass and chrome, with low lighting, Early Meat Market as Janie expected it would be, perhaps a bit more elegant by virtue of its lofty patronage. She entered at the height of happy hour, when throngs of young nouveau riche technoelite milled about and dropped credits, the new electronic dollars, on overpriced drinks at a rate that would alarm a Rockefeller, all while attempting to make a little cyber-time. They would sit at their numbered terminals and exchange anonymous witticisms with attractive customers at other terminals. And although she was quite comfortable with her own techno-savvy and not in the least bit threatened by the brilliance oozing all around her, Janie couldn’t help but feel terribly out of place—she was a good twenty years older than any other woman in the establishment.

  So she sat at one end of the bar, anonymously nursing a glass of Pinot Noir while the play progressed all around her. She watched intently, observing the actions of these smooth cyber-youths, her eyes tuned for the one detail that would spark an idea.

  And eventually she was rewarded, not by the unanticipated detail but by a pattern that emerged gradually, somewhere in the middle of her third glass of wine, which she brazenly allowed herself because she was taking the bus home that night—alone but, for a change, not unhappy. She’d noticed that people made contact on their terminals after logging on, and if someone showed an interest he or she would get up and leave the terminal in operative mode to pursue real human contact. The computer would maintain the operative mode for an additional five minutes. So they could get in—and the person who’d been on the terminal would have an alibi. No one would get blamed.

  She tossed down the last of her wine in one determined belt and left the bar, never having traded a phrase with anyone.

  “Tomorrow night I want to take you out, just you and me,” she said to Caroline on the phone later, when a bit of the haze had worn off.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “There isn’t one. Yet. But I’m working on it.” She explained her plan.

  Reluctantly Caroline agreed to help, and made the offer Janie had hoped she would make.

  “Caroline, this is great—you don’t know how I appreciate your help with this.”

  Caroline sighed and said, “I just hope this works out better than the last time we got dressed up to get you something someone didn’t want you to have.”

  7

  Alejandro’s horse was skittish all afternoon, for the smell of death could not be escaped. The roads were littered with the bloating bodies of those men who had succumbed in their attempt to escape the wrath of Charles of Navarre. Soon Alejandro came upon a section of the road where the bodies were all charred, as if some generous benefactor had come along and sacrificed the oil required to sustain the burning of a corpse, at least long enough to keep the animals at bay.

  He had seen such horrors a decade ago on the route to England as they rode past Paris and headed for Calais. France had been horribly ravaged by the Plague Maiden, who seemed to plant her kiss on every other forehead she encountered in her journey of terror across Europa. Back then the wars were new and oil still plentiful, far more plentiful than men with the strength to dig graves. So bodies had been burned where they lay and he could still see the pyres in his mind. He had written of one such road in his long lost book of wisdom.

  Who, if anyone, was reading it now? Who had discovered the secrets of his life, the intimacies of the soul that he’d laid bare on its parchment? He would never know unless he returned to England, which seemed an impossibility.

  Now as he rode he was coming upon flaming bodies before the fires had gone out, and he found himself whispering one prayer after another, almost continually, for the souls of these dead. So he guided the unhappy horse into the brush and went through the woods in a parallel route, for he did not want to leave the tiniest hint of his journey.

  They stopped at every watering place along the route to Paris, and when the water seemed good Alejandro strained it through his cloth and took his fill. In one spot the water seemed particularly sweet and fine, so he filtered it into his water bag and drank until he thought he would burst.

  When they came upon a drinking spot only a short distance after the last one, he himself had no need but he urged the horse forward. It was an ooze more than a spring, with no clear shore, and it lacked the ripples of fish or frogs or insects. The animal seemed completely uninterested.

  “What, my friend, are you so sure of your next drink that you can afford to pass this one by? Surely you are smarter than the man who rides you.” He jumped down off the horse, took him by the reins, and led him to the edge of the water. But the animal would not drink.

  “So it is true, then, what they say about a horse who is led to water.” He stroked the animal’s neck. “I had believed it a witch’s tale.”

  He knelt down beside the water and ran his fingers through it, and as he did so his nostrils began to tingle at a familiar smell. Sulfur. The same smell he had known outside Mother Sarah’s cottage near London.

  He leaned closer, sniffed harder. It had to be—and he had thought never to find the stuff again! He ran back to the horse and grabbed his water bag. After taking a long drink of the filtered water, he poured out the rest. And without using his Nipponese cloth, he filled the bag with the yellowish magic liquid that seeped up out of the ground.

  He would have to obtain another water bag. But no matter. This could not be passed by.

  “We should be in Paris by now,” Kate said unhappily.

  “It is not far.”

  “But we ride and ride, and we never seem to get there … I do not understand this route you have chosen. Père will be worried.”

  It was not the first time she had protested their indirect route, and just as he had before, Guillaume Karle did his best to put her off. And when she would not be igno
red, he responded to her complaints with a cryptic explanation. “Your père said only to present you alive and well. He did not specify a route. Or a time.”

  “I am becoming less well with every league we travel. And why must we stop at these farmhouses so often? You disappear inside and leave me outside for all the world to see.”

  His reasons were always good enough to soothe her, but never enough to silence her completely. And so she waited in perturbed agitation outside cottage after cottage, fuming impatiently while Karle slipped inside to deliver news, or receive messages, or formulate new schemes to advance his rebellion. Sometimes he returned with food, but more often he would leave behind a bit of what little they had.

  He came out from one house with a half-loaf of bread. He broke it in two and handed a piece to Kate. Though far from fresh, she took it eagerly and tore off a chunk with her teeth. “Were we in Paris,” she said with something like a sneer, “we might have jam for our bread. We might even have bread with some regularity.”

  “Soon enough we shall be there, and you can spread such delights as you can find on your bread. But even Paris wants delights these days.” Then he gave her a look of frank disapproval and chided her. “You sound like a princess with your concern for such things.”

  She could not keep herself from reddening. “I care not for delights,” she said, her voice full of hurt, “even jam. But sometimes merely the thought of a good thing can bring a sense of its pleasure—I am hurting no one with my little dreams. The one delight I truly desire is that of rejoining Pere.”

  “Soon enough,” Karle said again.

  The continued postponement began to wear on her. “Perhaps I shall leave your company and ride directly to Paris,” she said on the third day of their travels. “Then you can be about your important business, and I, mine.” She sat proudly on her horse, expecting thanks for her announcement that he would soon be free of his obligation to care for her.

  Instead of expressing gratitude, in a voice of disbelief Karle said, “Are you mad? A maiden alone is easy prey for an errant knight. And there are plenty about.” He chuckled cynically. “And though I will admit you wield it well enough, your little knife is no match for a sword.”