by Tom D Wright
I cannot help sighing. “Some of my friends at the Archives have suggested a few different theories but really, no one knows. After going out on retrievals and seeing some of the things humans can do to each other, though, I can’t say that I blame them. And really, Intellinet isn’t entirely to blame, they just nudged us over the cliff. We put ourselves on that edge.”
Even under her blankets she shivers some more; I pull Danae over to me and extend my duster to cover us both as I wrap my arm around her. She snuggles up silently and continues looking into the fire, her head nestled against my chest. After what happened this afternoon I know she just needs human companionship; right now I am not interested in a reprise of the previous evening, either.
The fire crackles for the better part of an hour. I am contemplating digging out my pipe again when Danae gets up.
She moves back into her own space, sitting straight up, and adds a few pieces of wood to the fire. Just in the little ways that she brushes back her hair and adjusts her clothing, I can tell that she is coming out of her shock. I need to bring a few things out in the open, and this is as good a time as any.
“While I was disposing of our friends,” I gesture down the hill, “I thought about what happened. They knew exactly where we were and what we were looking for. It wasn’t a coincidence that the Disciple found us, is it?”
She stiffens. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Our buddy in black wasn’t keeping an eye on me back in your pub. He was watching you, to make sure you contacted me. When those thugs came around the corner after we left the tavern, they weren’t expecting a fight, they were merely following us. Just like they followed us this morning, on a trail you conveniently left for them every time you dropped back.”
Danae opens her mouth to protest, then lets out a long, slow sigh that seems to physically deflate her. Slowly nodding her head, she stares at the ground while she responds.
“You’re right. But I didn’t have a choice. The Disciple spoke to me in the afternoon just before you came in. He already knew about you, K’Marr, that wasn’t my doing. He even knew about your arrangement with my father, and said you would show up and leave, but he would always know where to find me and Papa. Whatever this thing is that Papa gave you, he wanted it bad. Real bad.”
I am silent, lost in my thoughts. Could the Disciple have really known about the generator, or was he just lucky? Other than Wally, no one outside the Archives had any inkling of what we might have found, yet how do I explain that peculiar note? The prospect that the Archives may harbor a traitor is disquieting, to say the least.
“So how much did he pay you?” I ask, probably harsher than I intend.
Danae flinches, then turns away from me. “Nothing,” she protests vehemently. “Gold had nothing to do with it. He said that if I didn’t cooperate, they would ambush the two of you anyway and then kill you and Papa. But he promised me that if I went along with it and helped him get what he wanted, no one would get hurt. Plus, Papa could keep what you brought. So you see, I thought… I thought I was saving your lives.” Danae turns back to look at me as she states emphatically, “He wasn’t supposed to kill you.”
I have seen more than my share of actors; the abject regret I see in her face is genuine. As genuine as the price she paid. Still, my anger is close to the surface, and it lashes out in my words. “Really? Don’t do me any more favors, okay?”
Danae shrinks visibly and pulls her blanket tight around herself. At this moment I would just as soon just leave her right here in the wilderness to fend for herself, but I know that is just my anger coming out. The truth is she was naïve and foolish, but to someone encountering them for the first time, Disciples can be quite intimidating.
I am already feeling regret for my harsh words. Nothing will derail righteous anger faster than an unrighteous response. “Look, he might have kept his promise if I hadn’t taken out his men in the alley. But after that it was a matter of Disciple honor to get even with me.”
She simply nods. I promised Doc that I would take care of his daughter, and I will keep my word. At least, for long enough to get her back to town. After that, I think she will want to look out for herself.
Night has fallen fast, with clear skies and a light breeze that blows down the rocky hillside, and is going to carry our scent. I rummage through Doc’s pack for spare clothing, but he did not stash any. One of the hired thugs was on the small side, so I grab his pack and pull out a light leather pullover shirt, which I toss to Danae.
“Your shirt is soaked with blood. I don’t want the smell drawing any unwelcome attention, so change into this and throw your shirt in the fire.”
In the decades following the precipitous decline of humankind on the planet, wildlife rebounded with almost explosive growth. A couple of apex predators that have thrived exceptionally well are wolves and cougars, but so has their natural prey. As long as we maintain a fire and do not overly attract them, we will give each other a wide berth, and they will pursue the prey they are accustomed to.
Danae stares at the garment for a moment. I do not blame her, but washing her shirt is not an option, and she did not bring a change of clothing.
When she turns her back to me and starts changing, I work on feeding the fire, but out of the corner of my eye I glimpse a tattoo. Then she tosses the soiled shirt into the flames, where it smolders before it bursts into a blazing pyre.
“So what’s with the tigers on your arms?” I ask.
She is silent at first as she takes up a stick to prod the fire. “I got them a month after my husband was lost at sea.” She pauses, as if debating with herself whether to elaborate, then continues. “My father gave me a children’s book about tigers, something from the Old Times. It said they are solitary animals that hunt and live in their own territory and take care of themselves. I liked that. A tigress only mates for breeding and then if the male won’t leave on his own, she drives him off. At least, that’s what it said.”
“Seems like a fitting symbol,” I respond, only half facetiously.
Danae snorts a laugh, then says, “We recognize our own kind. There’s plenty of tiger in you too. So tell me: this thing we came out here to get; you called it a generator. What’s so important about it?”
It is my turn to poke at the fire while I think of a reply. There is an answer, and there is a real answer. I decide to take her question at face value and give her the simple response.
“I can’t tell you much about the Archives, but I’ll share what I can. You’ve probably heard stories about the Demon Days, when Intellinet caused all computer-based tech to self-destruct, and civilization basically collapsed.” Danae nods, so I continue. “Well, Intellinet missed a few places that had older technology, and one of those places became the Archives. We have managed to keep it running, much of it for far longer than it was designed to last. But some very important things require an advanced infrastructure, which just no longer exists.
“When those things fail—and some of them already have—we don’t have any replacements, and won’t in our lifetime. Probably not for quite a few lifetimes. But if this generator works the way we think it does, it could buy us some important time. I’m not at liberty to tell you exactly how, just that it could.”
How would I explain lifting satellites to higher orbits or salvaging parts from the Lunar bases to someone who probably knows less about science than an Old Time kindergartener?
“So,” Danae says slowly, “this thing wasn’t just another curiosity for your collection. It actually is important.” She bows her head and then looks away. “I’m sorry, K’Marr. Really, I had no idea.”
Danae re-wraps her blanket around her shoulders and lies down, facing the night and her thoughts. For a while, I feed the snapping flames and build up a considerable bed of embers. Distant snarls and yelps from what sound like coyotes echo through the trees, up the hill from where I dragged the bodies.
Mother Earth is taking the Disciple and his compan
ions back into her bosom. There might be something to their beliefs for all I know, but I do not plan to rejoin Mother Earth any time soon.
After making sure my crossbow is cocked and loaded with a bolt, I stack a pile of wood near my bedroll. The sound of the feeding frenzy reaches a crescendo; Danae glances fearfully into the darkness downhill.
Hauling my backpack over, I reach into one of the many tiny compartments I have sewn inside to organize my gear, and pull out one of my small indulgences. I picked up this little treasure on retrieval about fifteen years ago, and use it from time to time when I need a morale booster. Danae looks like she could use a boost, and I am certain she has never experienced something like this.
I am not sure why I am doing this. Maybe I still feel guilty, or I am just a sucker for kittens and crying women. I power the iPod on and unfold the earbuds. The means to modify the playlist is long gone, so I am stuck with the musical taste of someone who has probably been dead for at least thirty years. But it is not a bad collection, and I know exactly what to pull up.
When I crouch down next to Danae, I indicate silently that she should place the earbuds over her ears. With a puzzled look, she complies. She jumps as the auto-morphic earbuds detect her ear and mold into shape over her earlobes. That is another technology we will not see again for a long time.
When I press play, her eyes open wide and her mouth drops as she sits up. She listens to the symphonic sounds of the Moody Blues as they play “Nights in White Satin,” followed by “Late Lament.”
Her head drops into her hands as she quietly weeps. There is something intensely personal about the private world she is experiencing. Embarrassed, I look up at the stars while the playlist moves on to several classic songs from the Twenties.
Danae is immersed deep in her own little world, which leaves me free to get lost in my own.
When I am on retrieval, I cannot let myself get sentimental. My mind shifts into the time-tested coping mechanism used by warriors and doctors, who deal with survival under intense pressure. I lock my emotions away where they cannot interfere with staying alive, which is perhaps why I prefer staying in the field.
Now I make an unprecedented exception and crack that box open for a moment.
The brilliant red disc that is Mars hovers just above the horizon and I think about Sarah, closing my eyes and trying to picture her in my mind. The only image I have left of her after all these decades is my memory of her long, flowing blond hair, fine and soft as down. Her lips are thin but always dance with life, and she wears her emotions on her mouth the way most others wear them in their eyes. But the anger in her lavender eyes can pierce Kevlar armor. It did the night I left her.
After that I was trapped on Earth with no way to return home, so I should have moved on. Sarah surely believed that I had died, and had moved on herself, but for the first few years, I kept hoping to find a way home.
The years passed, but I never stopped holding out for Sarah, until it was safer to hold onto her memory than to surrender to the pain of accepting that what we had was gone. My most recent lover at the Archives told me that, the bitter winter night when she broke up with me, and she was more right than I care to admit.
A year later, she married Wally.
I cannot even remember the last time I let myself say my wife’s name. Now I whisper it, a forlorn declaration of longing floating upward toward that red dot in the sky.
“Sarah. Sarah. Sarah.”
The syllables are like a spell as they leave my lips. For years I felt a constant connection with her, but like my old photographs, that also has faded. Can she sense me softly speak her name, across the millions of miles? It feels like a foreign word as it comes off my tongue, but her name calls forth such a deep ache inside me that I want to curl into a ball.
Decades have passed since I let myself believe that I might hold Sarah in my arms again. I buried that option long ago. But in the cave behind me, a stone’s throw away, is a device smaller than my head which might change everything. It is still a long shot—one hell of a long shot in fact, because we have absolutely no idea yet how the damn thing works. But this is the real debt that I owe Doc.
That just maybe, someday, I will get home.
Chapter Five
Morning does not so much break as gradually materialize around us. During the pre-dawn hours a wave of low clouds rolls in, enveloping us in a dense gray fog. A thin sheen of moisture clings to everything, and the thick air deadens the sound around us.
My breath hangs before me when I toss a few handy chunks of wood into the fire, which I fed throughout the night. I am naturally a light sleeper on retrievals, subconsciously alert and drifting in and out of sleep, but I always feel far safer beside a good fire in the wilderness than within any human habitation.
The genuinely dangerous animals are the two-legged kind, because they are the unpredictable ones. It is much better now than it was the first few years after the Crash. Nowhere was safe during the Demon Days, when roaming bands of starving humans wandered the countryside, preying on whatever they could kill and eat. Other humans made the easiest prey during those days.
I stretch carefully, because during the night Danae crawled over and slipped under my blanket. Neither of us offered, nor gave, anything more than human warmth. She sleeps with her back pressed against me, so when I arise she stirs and murmurs briefly while I tuck the blankets back around her. Then she turns over and settles back to sleeping. She looks so peaceful that I resist a foolish urge to brush the hair out of her face.
Taking my electric light, I head back into the cave and examine the ship for anything else I might want to recover. If something was important enough that Intellinet sent a ship for it, then it’s likely these spare parts in the small hold are valuable. I grab some of everything, like a sort of grab-and-dash jewelry store robbery and stash as much as I can in one of the extra packs.
Tracing the wires back from where I cut out the generator, the thin cables lead to several small devices that I cannot identify. They look like fins, and I do not see anything else that could be any sort of stabilizer or control, so I add those as well.
Professor Leasson can puzzle over them back at the Archives.
Danae is gone when I exit the cave, but she emerges from some bushes on the far side of the small clearing. She gives me a brief smile as she sits by the fire and cleans up.
“How did you sleep?” I ask as I retrieve a thin, twelve-inch handle from my pack, along with some leather shoelaces and a short rope.
“Better than I expected,” she says without looking up.
“Good. We have a long way to go, so I want to get started as soon as possible,” I say, as I unfold the titanium saw blade.
Without waiting for a response, I hunt around the edge of the clearing for several sturdy saplings that are just the right size. The fog is thinning by the time I have cleaned and trimmed them to length. Danae helps me lash them together with the laces and I add some crosspieces for the pack frame. Finally, I use the rope to attach a long strap to the frame so I can sling it over my shoulder.
A few minutes later, the goons’ packs, filled with the generator and parts, are tied onto the crude travois, along with my own pack and Doc’s. As I cinch the last knots in place, I tell Danae it is almost time for us to go. Pulling this thing will be a bit tricky until we get back down to the flat trail, but at least the return trip is nearly all downhill.
We sit by the dying fire and chew on a breakfast of jerky and some kind of fried biscuits that I picked up in Port Sadelow, made of flour, nuts, raisins and some assorted seeds. Not exactly bed and breakfast cuisine, but it will get us back to town.
Before we leave, I break up the fire and kick a thick layer of dirt over the remaining embers. I doubt I will ever return to this site but just in case, I cover the front of the cave with dead brush.
Then I step into the travois and pull the front crossbeam up to my waist, looping the strap over one shoulder to help support the dead we
ight. It does not feel too heavy right now, but I know that as the hours go by the apparent weight will increase exponentially, so Danae gets to carry my walking stick.
Some beams of light manage to push through the thinning fog as we trudge silently back along the path we came up the day before. When we pass the small ridge where Wally lies buried, I glimpse his cairn. I can be loyal, sometimes to a fault, but I try not to let myself get sentimental while on retrievals. Still, I do pause to catch my breath and adjust the travois before we continue.
The forest trail from the cave down to the road is narrow enough that we have to walk single file, and strenuous enough that neither of us wastes any breath talking unnecessarily. The sun has burnt off the last of the clouds by the time we get down to the public road, and although we are under a thick canopy of tree boughs, it is warm enough that I take off my duster.
We make much better time on the open byway; I figure we will reach Port Sadelow by mid-afternoon. The wide road allows us to walk side by side, and soon after we start down the dusty road, Danae breaks the silence.
“Do you have a ship waiting to pick you up when we get back to town?” she asks.
“Not exactly. Normally, I would use my sat phone about now to contact the Archives and arrange for a pickup. But when your buddies ambushed us yesterday, I lost my only means to directly communicate with them.”
“Like I said last night, I’m sorry,” she answers contritely. But she has no idea just how very sorry she is going to be. I decide to clue her in.
“That Disciple was right when he said they know where to find you. They won’t know what happened, but when he doesn’t come back, they won’t care. They’re like killer bees. When one gets taken out, a whole swarm descends on you with their own form of blind justice. You’re lucky if they kill you quickly.”
The grim look that forms on Danae’s face appears completely out of place, and she takes a deep breath. “I’m sure I’ll figure something out. With Papa gone I have no reason to stay in Port Sadelow. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps and become a doctor, but I just couldn’t do it. There were so many things to memorize, and the facts leaked from my brain like water through a fishnet. Worse than that, whenever he had to sew someone up and asked me to help, half the time I passed out. The only way I could help was by not looking, and that drove him crazy. I can skin a rabbit without thinking about it, but stitch a wound? No way. Port Sadelow has no need for a useless nurse that can’t stand the sight of blood.”