by Mike Moscoe
Each young marine private now led a platoon of one hundred local recruits equipped with riot shields, helmets, and clubs. A senior petty officer was detailed as deputy to each, providing support and guidance on nonsecurity matters. Security and nonsecurity matters weren’t all that easy to separate.
Like the proper response when two guards one night decided it was more fun to cuddle up than keep walking their beat. The young marine, remembering what had happened when troopers fell asleep on watch during the war, wanted to shoot them. The petty officer shipped them back to factory duty, much to Ray’s relief.
Ray even managed a good night’s sleep. Maybe the Teacher or Dean or President was too busy with its own problems to bother him. God knows, people were doing a damn good job of screwing things up with no help from a super computer. Calls done, Ray ambled over to the doc’s before lunch. He was still trying to puzzle out what made the tumors tick. The padre had helped him get access to several local cadavers. “We can’t map the human brain. How am I supposed to map this?” Until they understood that thing better, none of them was leaving this planet.
Ned and Jeff trotted into the next village. Dumont had offered to ride in, too, but Ned still wanted to keep the starmen out of sight, so the mule took the long way around, using forest trails. Ned headed for a small cottage on the outskirts where a woman was serving the noonday meal to three nearly grown sons. “Mother of many,” Ned hailed her, “can you help me? I’m looking for five or six people, traveling fast.”
“The ones on the Public Room’s TV?” the youngest asked.
“Shush, boy,” the woman answered. “Do I know you?” she asked, squinting up at Ned.
“They call me Old Ned up Hazel Dell way. Your mother and my sister once talked a spell of earth and sky and other things.”
“Maybe they did,” the woman answered, then glanced at Jeff.
“One of the young women traveling south carries his heart. She may not know it yet, but she does.” The two elders laughed as Jeff fidgeted in his saddle.
After a few more moments of thought, the old woman spoke. “There is a large house off the road south of here. Two young couples farm it, say they inherited it from one of their mothers, but I don’t know about that. My youngest was collecting firewood yesterday and saw six riders and a led horse go by late. He thinks they stopped there. It was starting to rain.”
“Ma,” the tallest said, “just before I came in, I saw maybe a dozen riders, going fast through the trees, headed that way. I think at least two of them were women, from the flash of their skirts and hoods.”
“Blue plaids,” Jeff put in.
“Blue with some yellow. One of them raven-haired,”
“Annie.” Jeff swallowed hard. He wanted to turn his horse away to the south. Kick it for speed.
“I think we’ll be going, Mother,” Ned said.
“Ride carefully,” the tall one said. “I’ve seen people ride. Some just amble along. Those rode their horses hard, like they were at the chase.”
“They are,” Ned answered, “but so are we. Thank you.”
Jeff tried to let Ned set the pace. Tried not to gallop ahead. Ned waited until they were out of earshot. “Call Dumont. Tell him what we found out. And son, you can pull that rifle out now.” Ned pulled his air rifle out, nestled it in the crook of his arm, under his poncho. Jeff did, too; the call went quickly.
“I got a farmstead south of town on our map,” Dumont said. “We’ll come up fast on it. You wait for us.”
Like the other farm, this one was well out of town—and none too easy to get at without being seen. Ned turned up its side road without hesitating. They paused as they reached the outbuildings. Several cows lowed. No horses were visible. Chickens and pigs wandered the farmyard. Jeff called Du.
“We’re at the homestead. No one’s moving.”
“Wait one minute for us, kid. We’re almost there. Don’t go doing something Annie will be mad at me for.”
Ned and Jeff dismounted, tied the horses, and studied the scene. “Front door’s ajar to the house,” Jeff noted.
“We wait,” Ned answered as the mule gunned out from the woods, slipping and splashing as it raced across the pasture. The marines held on, one hand for themselves, the other for their weapons. Jeff pulled the arming handle back on his rifle. It settled in place with a soft, purposeful chunk.
“They’d have to be dead in the house not to notice that mule,” Ned said. Safety off, Jeff followed Ned toward the house. They were about fifty yards out when the mule skidded to a halt. Dumont ordered his troops to surround the house; he and one rifleman trotted to join Jeff. Halfway to them, he spotted the slowly swinging front door and came to a halt.
“Crew, this looks like a cold datum” came from the commlink. “Still, keep your heads up. This could change any second.” Dumont signaled to Jeff, and together the four rushed the porch. Ned yanked the door open; Dumont, gunner, and Jeff crashed through into a darkened room. The stench of blood and death rolled over Jeff. He squinted but saw nothing.
“You, check the upstairs,” Dumont ordered the other trooper. The man took the stairs two at a time, his rifle steady as it swept the banister above.
There was a crash in the back. Jeff’s rifle came up. “We’re in,” came over the commlink. “Kitchen empty. Stove cold.”
Now Jeff’s eyes had time to adjust. There was a table near the fireplace. A woman’s body sprawled on it. She was naked. She’d been cut….
Jeff’s stomach revolted. He groped for the door, made it to the porch before he lost his breakfast. He stomach was still heaving when Dumont, Ned, and another marine came out to catch their breath. “I’d say they were interrogating him while they tortured her,” the marine said.
“Him?” Jeff got out.
“Yes,” Dumont answered. “There was a guy—husband, maybe—tied to a chair. They slit his throat.”
“Why?” Jeff begged.
“Want to know where the box is,” Du shrugged. “They wanted true answers, and I guess they think that got them.”
“That way?”
“I take it you don’t have much of this type of shit around here,” Dumont said matter-of-factly.
“None,” Jeff spat.
“Not much,” Ned said. “I want to take a look around.” He stepped off the porch, eyes down; Jeff and Du followed. “Someone left six, eight horses here”—Ned pointed at droppings—“say, for an hour. Expect we’ll find a few horses were left in back, too.”
At the barn, he looked around carefully. “Lot of hay in the mangers, not much eaten, as if they prepared last evening for more horses than spent the night. The mother told us two couples lived here. We’ve found one. Where’s the other?”
“Sweet Mother of God.” Jeff’s stomach did an empty lurch. “You don’t mean the other two led them here, then watched as they did that.” He bent over, but his stomach had no more to hurl.
“Looks that way,” Ned said.
“I’ve seen people do worse for money.” Dumont’s eyes suddenly focused far away. He shook himself. “Which way’d they go?”
“Don’t know. The ones who did are dead,” Ned answered.
“I know. What were their choices?”
“There’s a TV in the house. They must have heard your Colonel. We’ve reached a ridgeline here. Follow it west, and you’re in the mountains. Follow it east, and you can get almost to Richland and Refuge without leaving the woods.”
“High up, perfect place to shoot from. Or they can hoof it for the great outdoors if they’re spooked.” Du eyed Ned. “These folks spook easily?”
“Let’s follow their tracks and see.”
The trail led south. A dozen horses or so left a wide track. The sky eye lost it in the woods. Base took them up higher, hunting for heartbeats, a bunch of them. It found some, but never more than three or four together.
“All this high-tech, and the best I can do is follow a guy on a horse, looking at the ground.” Dumont laughed, but fol
lowed Ned. “There’s a path one or two klicks farther in the woods.”
“Klicks?” Ned frowned. “What’s that in miles?”
“I don’t know.” Dumont asked the base. Suddenly the gridlines on their display shifted. “About one mile in.”
Still, they covered the distance at a walk, Ned following the signs. At the trail, the horseprints led west. “Tracks are deep. They’re riding hard.”
Dumont eyed the trail to the east, toward Refuge, Richland. It showed no signs of travel. He worked his reader. “They had more than an inch of rain here after the Colonel’s little talk. What would that do to a trail?”
“Wipe it out entirely,” Ned answered. “Especially if they were riding slow, like I would at night.”
“Damn! Chief, have one of the sky eyes cruise east on this trail. See what you get.”
“Will do,” came from the commlink.
“Now we go west, I suppose,” Du said to Ned.
“It’s the only trail I have to follow.”
“Annie’s that way,” Jeff blurted out.
“How long will the trail last?” Dumont asked.
“Not long, if I was riding it,” Ned answered curtly.
An hour later they called the Colonel to tell him the one trail they had had broken up, and they had no idea which way the box had gone. “What’s your best guess, Du?” the Colonel asked.
Du handed his commlink off. “This is Ned. If I had the vanishing box, I’d have gone east. Either the folks at the house lied to the second party, or they believed that the first group went west. That’s guessing. What I know is that we’ve lost them, all of them. Best we wait around and see what happens next. I can talk to some folks, have them talk to others. Until somebody sees something, I think we’re just chasing ghosts.”
“Sounds like it. Du, Mary’s coming back north this evening. She’s got things started in New Haven. You want a ride?”
Du glanced at Jeff, who was having a hard time staying in his skin. “We can’t just leave Annie out here with people like that! We’ve got to keep trying!” Jeff insisted.
“Colonel,” Du said, “I know you’re short manpower, but this is where the action is on the vanishing box. Some pretty nasty people want it; we need it. I want to stay down here.”
“Take care,” the Colonel said. “Those nasties won’t be ignorant about you for long.”
“Kind of hope they come looking for us, sir.” Du turned to Ned as he tapped off. “Okay, tracker. Let’s find the shits that did that house. I think it’s time Vicky Sterling learns there’s some things her money can’t buy.”
“She hurts Annie, Du, I swear, I’ll hold her down while you cut her heart out.” Jeff said the words without thinking, meaning them without reflection.
“I’ll try to save you from that, Jeff.”
Ray had experienced the calm before a storm. South, miners were making metal, and people acted like they might listen. In the center, Refuge and Richland were quiet. North side was terribly quiet, not a peep. All he could do was wait, worry, and miss Rita.
So Ray got busy, working with Tico and the new recruits. Since riot control was all he could expect from them, they were equipped with ceramic shields, helmets, and clubs of a resilient local wood. Uniforms were armbands; they marched, wheeled, did column rights and lefts, and changed fronts by the flanks. It was a drill as ancient as the Greek hoplite, but it was the best Ray had to fight primal human screams and a super computer. He took a turn with each platoon of one hundred, drilling them, letting them see him, hear his voice. That was what command was; not paperwork, but eye contact.
It felt damn good to have his legs underneath him, moving at the proper cadence and step. Almost made up for the hour spent arguing production priorities with Mary as soon as she got back. He fell into bed ready for the innocent sleep of a baby.
And found himself facing the Dean. “Sociology, isn’t it?”
“Close enough,” the dapper image in khaki and tweeds agreed.
“What’re you folks up to?” Ray asked.
“I might ask you the same.”
“You’ll have to explain the question better,” Ray said, still feeling good from the afternoon’s workout.
“Why do you want the displacer, the ‘vanishing box’?”
“Because I don’t trust it in anyone else’s hands. There’s something about someone on a hill twenty klicks away making my base vanish that tends to upsets me.”
“Then I think you’ll understand when I say that your having it upsets me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Come, now. You heard my complaint when you removed portions of our net from the rocks up North. You’ve figured out that we build ourselves into this world. The surface is our weakness. We need sunlight for power. You burn off our solar cells and we are helpless, just waiting for you to leach the rest of our metal out, like you did the Gardener. No. Colonel, you are a killer, and I don’t trust you.”
Ray went over the statement slowly. He couldn’t really blame the Dean. Given a choice, he wouldn’t want the damn thing on the same planet with him. Too much power. Way too much. But something else niggled at the corner of Ray’s mind.
“You seem a lot more comfortable talking about yourself. There were quite a few ‘I’s’ in that last statement.”
“And you are a savvy type who deflects conversations from where you don’t want them to go. The vanishing box, Colonel.”
“I’m trying to get my hands on it. What deep hole do you know that I can throw it down as soon as I’ve got it?”
“I don’t trust you to have it that long.”
“Has anyone told you that you have a problem with trust?”
“No, nor is anyone likely to. You are about the only one I am talking to these days.”
“Then the ‘I’ does mean something?”
“Yes. We are fractured, divided. Some are at war with others of us. I never expected to see anything like this.”
“Are you at war?”
“No. I am just an expert on group dynamics. I can do nothing to destroy net nodes, hijack energy lines, silence static, or garble communication packets.”
“Sounds like things have gotten bad.”
“Bad and worse. Many are retreating to the mainland. It is better to be elsewhere when the President and Provost fight.”
“You haven’t gone, though.”
The image across from Ray fidgeted in, his chair. “No, I haven’t, yet. I keep hoping that something can be worked out. That somehow we can find a way to persuade you that you really do want us for your teachers. I’m an idealist, I fear.”
“Do you have to be our teachers?”
“That’s all we know to be,” the Dean spat.
“I have a woman working for me. She’s been a teacher most of her life. Now she’s having a ball helping us decide where to investigate nature. Have you ever considered doing research? Studying why people do what they do?”
“We know all that.”
“So you say. Sure you haven’t been studying the same data so long you’ve forgotten what the real thing looks like?”
“It doesn’t matter, you won’t work with us. You are just as afraid of us and our power as we are of you and yours.”
“That’s where trust comes in. Look, I’m working with the guy who almost blew my planet out of existence last year. It doesn’t mean he no longer has that power. It does mean we’re having more fun working together than against each other.”
“But we’re not human.”
“A year ago, I wasn’t giving Green Earthy Symps credit for much humanity. All I wanted was to kill ’em. Hell, man, the woman that broke my back was pushing pills at me to help me get well before your treatments or medicines or whatever did the job for her. We humans change. Why can’t you?”
“You have no use for us even if we did.”
“You’re kidding. You have all the knowledge of the Three, the ones who built the jump points. We stumbled throu
gh one and got out into the galaxy hardly three hundred years ago. We don’t understand jumps, we just use them. If I came back to Wardhaven with the likes of you, ready to help us rediscover all the stuff of the Three, there’d be one hell of a parade.”
“You’d want us for…”
“Consultants, guides, fellow pilgrims on the way. Equals in the search, not superiors telling us not to touch. And yes, as teachers for our young, also.”
“Because you do not trust us, you are willing to shatter the planet we share. If you could trust us, you would be willing to take us out among the stars you walk.” The Dean spoke the words with slowly dawning eagerness.
“That’s the way we do things. We can let fear drive us to kill, or we can trust. With trust, we can build on each other’s strengths. Back home, we build things. The strongest building material is made up of many components, working together.”
“That was what the Three said. Together they were greater than the sum of their individual parts.”
“When you’re just one big mind, there is a certain strength. Now you’re many,” Ray said. “You can hunt for the power of the many, or wipe yourselves out, trying to return to oneness.”
“Once again, after our talks, I must think on your words.”
“One more thing,” Ray said. “Where is the thing that can scramble the molecules of my cells? That is the power you have that I fear the most. What line of thought controls it? Where is it? I could throw the vanishing box into a very deep hole if you tore that puppy apart. Rebuild it once we’ve gotten some trust built up. But right now it scares me and mine.”
The Dean retreated deep into his chair. “That is something I will have to think upon long and hard, talk to others. I see your point. I see what you are offering us.”
“It’s been good talking to you,” Ray said.
“Quite surprisingly, I, too, have found it good.”
THIRTEEN
RAY FOUND HE rather enjoyed the quiet time. As a string of peaceful days turned into a week, Matt bounced in and out of the system at increasing accelerations and longer intervals. By the time the weeks were long enough to grow into a month, Second Chance had unwound itself into two-gee accelerations and was spending four and five days turning around from each jump.