“Miss Penn,” Kilel said, “this is Colonel Raleigh Penn. He’s the commanding officer for the Pacific West district.”
Colonel Penn offered his hand in greeting. “Miss Penn.”
Anne balked, from surprise, not fear. “Penn?” The shape of his face, the thinning hairline, the low-slung ears, and the length of the jaw made his face too much like her father’s. A cousin? Dad said something... The gray tinge of his skin contrasted with her father’s healthy tan. She returned his greeting, feeling the mild dampness of his palm and the weakness of his muscles, the opposite of her father’s.
“Yes, Anne.” Colonel Penn took one of the chairs at the table. Kilel remained standing. “Did your father ever mention a brother?”
Anne’s eyes were locked on the colonel’s. He was far older than her father, and his eyes were the wrong color, that is, they were the same rich loam of Anne’s own eyes. He was telling the truth, as far as she could tell, but bessies were knee-jerk liars. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”
“I haven’t spoken to your father, my brother, for almost 30 years.”
“You’re my uncle?”
“We’ve never met, Anne. Bill sent me a video of you after you were born, but that was all I knew about you.”
That has to be a lie. All it takes is a five-minute search of the net to find everything about me. He’s full of shit.
The colonel interlaced the fingers of his pale hands. “Once I heard about the fire, and your detainment, I decided it was best that I bring you the news.”
“What’s happened? Is my dad alright?” Anne draped her right arm across her chest, as if protecting herself from a coming blow.
“Your father has escaped custody. He ran into the mountains toward a forest fire. We found a fire blanket that didn’t belong to the fire crews.”
“Are you saying he’s dead?” Anne forced back her tears, wanting to stay strong in front of this stranger who said he was her uncle.
Kilel offered Anne a tissue. Anne ignored the woman who had caused her so much trouble.
“We don’t know.” The colonel unlaced his hands.
“Do you recognize this?” Kilel showed Anne a close-up photo of the fire blanket, dirty and charred. It was one of the blankets her father had bought in town before the hiking season started. The photo showed a yellow tag with the word “EVIDENCE” in block letters.
“Yes.” Say nothing.
“Did your father own blankets like this one?”
Anne nodded. The photo showed charcoal and ashes around the blanket, but it was odd. No body or any of his hiking gear.
“We aren’t sure, but we think your father used the fire as cover for his escape,” Kilel said. “Because he had a fire blanket, he likely had other backpacking equipment. We think he’s still alive in the mountains, but he’s eluded us so far.”
It’s true. They’ve lost him. A strange joy coursed through Anne’s body. Bill had eluded the bessies for more than two days. He had beaten them, at least up to this point. The joy gave way to terror. If he’s hiding, he could also be badly hurt, in pain, and dying. The lack of any detailed information ripped at her.
“We want to find your father, almost as much as you do,” Kilel said. “We need your help.”
Anne wanted to help her father get away from Kilel, but the worst outcomes gnawed at her. What if he’s alive, but horribly burned? Who will take care of him? I can’t do it alone. Can I? Anne shivered, as if freezing, and she ran her hands through the hair at her temples.
“I’ve studied your records, Anne.” Colonel Penn’s voice was gentle, sympathetic. “You loved that refuge since the day you arrived in Brier Valley. Your science project in eighth grade was on the magpies that nested there. Every year you’ve done something for those creatures, volunteered, reported problems. A good partner to the earth.”
Kilel breathed in, then out. “Anne, the magpies are gone. The species is now gone.”
No, they are not. The inspector’s voice was like sandpaper on Anne’s skin. “I need to connect to my friends. I’m going crazy. I miss them. When can I connect?”
Kilel stepped back and folded her arms. “Colonel, sir, a word?” The two BES officers huddled in the kitchenette and spoke in whispers. Anne watched them, curious at how Kilel spoke to the colonel in hushed tones as if she were a student, or an acolyte.
Could that man really be my uncle?
The colonel agreed with something Kilel said. The inspector turned to Anne.
Queued c-tribe messages flooded Anne’s minds-eye. A kind of bliss flooded her heart. I am alive because I am shared. Everyone she knew tried to reach her after she fell offline, and the virtual touches and words of concerns made her laugh. Mike sent the most texts and messages, cc’ing everyone in town, including his father. Without opening any other message, Anne composed a response to him, but the “send” command was grayed out. As fast as it had materialized, the connection vanished. “No.” Anne shook her head and faced Kilel and the colonel. “No. I need to talk to them. Please.”
“Anne, when you help us, we’ll restore all of your net capabilities.” Kilel returned to her chair. The colonel followed suit.
Fury replaced the blissful emotions. It is torture. They might as well put me on the rack.
Kilel took Anne’s hands in her own. Anne recoiled, as if the inspector’s fingers were gloved in slime.
“My job is to protect wild things.” Kilel didn’t notice or else ignored Anne’s visceral reaction, but the inspector’s face was within millimeters of Anne’s. Her breath was warm, but odorless. The younger woman’s stomach churned. “We have to hold someone to account for the refuge fire. People can’t get away with this kind of destruction anymore.”
Anne glanced at the colonel, whose gaze was on Kilel. His own doubts about Kilel were thinly masked. Is that also fear in his eyes?
Anne shook her head no to Kilel’s statement, not because she agreed with her philosophy of accountability, but because she knew her father’s capture might be the first step in a road to a kind of living death. She knew about disidentification, its horrors, the scarification, the erasure of everything about a person, and the shunning. If Dad’s alive, he couldn’t live that way.
“You understand, then,” Kilel said.
I do, but not in the way you think. How could she help Kilel find her dad if it meant he might die to the world? And she might never see him again.
“Perhaps you could say a prayer.” Kilel’s tone bordered on unctuous.
“What?”
“The cross on your necklace.”
“A crucifix.”
“It’s unusual for teenager—a young adult—these days to wear them.”
“Dad gave it to me.” Anne wanted to spit into Kilel’s eye. “He said we had to pay attention to what we couldn’t see.”
“A sailor’s superstition, eh?”
“No. No!” Anne got up from the chair. “You watch yourself. My father is smarter than you, ten of you, a hundred of you people. You’re chasing him for something that wasn’t his fault. It was an accident. We’re all tired of you people. We’re tired of your harassment and your secrecy. Why don’t you leave us alone?”
Anne shoved away the plate of leftover breakfast, and it flew toward Kilel. Juice-laden fruit and cheese and crumbling bread spilled into her lap. She sprang up, surprised, and stared at the spreading stain on her tunic.
“You little bitch.” Kilel lifted her hand, and Anne blinked in self-protection.
“Inspector!” The colonel’s voice filled the room. “Control yourself.”
Kilel twisted her head toward her superior, her arm cocked to land a blow.
“Get out. Go clean yourself up.”
Kilel took a breath, and the rage left her face. Her forehead and jaw muscles relaxed, and she brushed off bits of food from her tunic. She backed up a step, turned, and left the apartment.
An automated cleaning bot slid from a closet and set to work on the spill.
&nbs
p; Colonel Penn ignored the bot and interlaced his fingers again. “Will you help us, Anne? Your father is a resourceful man. His merchant marine record shows it. His work on the farm shows it, despite his disregard for the law. If your father’s alive, and Inspector Kilel and I think he is, he’ll be worried about you. He’ll want to find you. We can reunite you with him, if you’ll help us.”
The more Anne studied the colonel’s face, the more she believed he was her uncle. The two millimeter gap between the front teeth and the shape of his fingers was exactly like Bill’s. As she accepted her relationship to him, speaking to him became easier, unlike speaking to Kilel, which grew more painful with each word. If you are my uncle, why have you stayed hidden from me and my dad? And what happened to keep the two of you apart?
Kilel returned to the apartment, wearing a fresh tunic, though it didn’t fit as well as the first. She had borrowed it from someone, perhaps one of the guards. The interruption gave Anne a chance to change the subject. “Why don’t you just trace his jack-in sig through the net. You’ll find him instantly.”
The inspector’s anger had disappeared, or it was suppressed. “Pings to your father have led us nowhere. Even these days, some remote places don’t have network services, and I suspect he’ll switch off his net link, or wait until the battery dies in a few days. He’ll be cut off from the world, and we’ll be cut off from him.”
Anne’s father was always forgetting to recharge his netlink battery. Kilel has run out of ideas.
“I’ll help you,” Anne said.
“Very good, Anne,” the colonel said.
“I’ll help you, colonel. Not her.” Anne refused to look at the uniformed woman. I almost said “uncle.”
“Very good, and thank you.” Colonel Penn glanced at the inspector. “You’ll have to, um, tolerate her, Anne. She’s my lead investigator, and I’m a busy man.”
Kilel picked up the tablet. “Let’s talk about where your father might go.”
The colonel lifted his hand. “A moment, inspector, if you don’t mind.”
“Sir?”
“Anne, I would like to ask another question, before we continue the... conversation.”
Interrogation, you mean. “Something about your brother?”
“No, Anne. Your mother.”
“My mother?”
“Do you know where she is?”
♦ ♦ ♦
The bus pulled away from the head of the long gravel drive that led to Anne and her father’s property. The summer crickets were in full throat, as were the tree frogs. Overhead, the sky was a thick purple, with the brightest stars peeking through the manzanita and pines. Anne’s booted feet kicked up dust, her mind entangled in memories of the interrogation, and her belief that more had happened than she was aware. The strange holo-vid stumped her. When she was dropped off at the bus stop in Eugene by the same men who arrested her, her network access returned as if nothing had happened. She reveled in the digital welcome of her friends. After it died down, she spotted the video file in her com’s personal private folder, which the com company claimed was triple-encrypted against intrusion. She played the file in her minds-eye, and it showed a young man, a young woman, and a newborn. Anne had seen hundreds of these kinds of shared images in c-tribes; new parents loved to show off their children. Anne was indifferent to most of these vids, but not this one. The couple were her parents, and the child was her, days after her birth.
Anne rejected Kilel as the source of this personal history. Colonel Penn said he first heard of my birth through a photo sent to him by Dad. Anne speculated and discarded a dozen reasons for the gift, including the simple desire to make a connection with a niece the colonel had never met before the encounter in the detention facility. The familial emotion she felt in the colonel’s presence had already faded. It’s only a video of a new family, like billions of others. It must mean something else.
As full darkness settled on the valley, Anne arrived at the ranch’s gate. She followed the path around the remains of the house to the outbuildings and the coop. She smiled when she saw the warm red glow of the heat lamp. At least the eggs haven’t died of cold.
Anne noticed another light, an ice-like, whitish glare, too bright to be natural. It was an LED lamp. She hadn’t left any lamps on besides the heat lamp when she had gone to town. Someone was in or near the coop. She halted and switched off her flashlight. Her mental map of the property was accurate down to the centimeter, and she stepped to keep distance between herself and the intruder.
Has Kilel come looking for me? Are the bessies back to take me away for more questions? During the interrogation, she said nothing to Kilel about the magpie chicks, assuming any survived while she was gone. She guessed her plan was illegal under the endangered species laws, and she didn’t want to place her father in any more danger because of what she was doing on his land.
Anne’s heart pumped hard as she circled around to a point behind the light. He, or she, or it, was next to the modified nesting box with the eggs. Anne had no weapon and no cover but the darkness. The intruder held still for several minutes, and she crept toward the light. The person was male, with his back toward her. The figure turned around. Anne recognized him.
“Mike?”
Mike Schmidt squinted in the dimness, uncertain about the visitor. “Anne, is that you?”
“What are you doing here?”
“After the BES people took you, you dropped off the com net. I got a little... worried. I didn’t know what to do. I got off work, and I remembered the eggs. I came up here to see if you were here. But you weren’t. I found the eggs... and so I waited for you...”
“You’ve been here the whole time?”
“Not the whole time. I had to go to work. I’ve got my bike and camping gear. Where have you been?”
Anne didn’t answer the question. Instead, she walked up to Mike and embraced him.
CHAPTER 11
♦ ♦ ♦
BILL RETURNED TO THE BRASS and Canvas after dark, and he found the place packed with raucous sailors and longshoremen, male, female, trans, and andys. It was a Friday night, and a band called Shanghai People’s Outlaws stuffed the chords of the latest Sichuan rockabilly into the narrow bar. The hot, smoky air vibrated with the music and hazy recollections of alcohol and mist-fed all-nighters ashore in his youth. He bought a Hanoi with the last of his paper euros, but he was not looking to satisfy his nostalgia. He squeezed into a corner near the front window to watch for Micah.
An hour later, she touched him on the shoulder, startling him; she hadn’t come through the front door, as he expected. Micah smelled of sweat from a run.
“Are you ready?”
Bill couldn’t hear Micah over the music. “What?”
The sailor was agitated. “Do you want a job or not?”
Something held Bill back. He was wary after his near-kidnapping and escape from Kilel, but he couldn’t put his finger on his doubts. “I want to know more about the job first.”
“You’ve got to decide now. I’m not taking you to the ship unless you want the job.”
Bill didn’t like Micah’s demand for an answer. “What’s the name of the ship?”
“Forget it!” Micah started to leave.
“Wait.” Bill grabbed Micah’s arm. He hesitated, feeling a warning in the thick atmosphere. What other choice do I have? “Fine. I’ll go.”
She beckoned Bill to follow. “Hurry up.”
Bill pushed his way through the crowd, getting a return shove once or twice. Years ago, he might have pushed back, but he had no time for stupidity.
“Come on,” Micah urged.
Bill heard a siren. Two dark cars with blue-green lights entered the narrow street. Kilel’s BES cruiser racing through the Brier Valley dust flashed in his mind.
A bouncer at the front door yelled “Cops!”
Scores of people poured out of the door like cattle let loose from a pen. They tore down the sidewalk away from the police cars. Micah plu
nged into the crowd. Bill lost sight off his friend. A wave of disorientation derailed him, and for a half-second, he imagined Anne carried away as the crowd split into pieces and spread onto the adjacent streets. He blinked and the desolate apparition disappeared, but Micah was not in view.
Bill snatched a look over his shoulder, and he saw two green-shirts near the bar’s entrance pushing men and women into the wall. Another pair of BES officers took up positions outside the front door. A patron slumped against the glass, taken down by a staser. Bill’s pounding heart skipped a beat. Janine Kilel was in the face of the waitress who had served him.
Micah waved. “Over here.”
Relief at the sight of a familiar face other than his nemesis drove Bill toward Micah. Another dark car screeched to a halt. It disgorged a security robot. Bill dragged his old shipmate behind a composting dumpster. “Help me move this before the tin can gets here.”
The insistent robot moved toward Bill and Micah, avoiding parked cars and fire hydrants.
“What’s the point of hiding here? Let’s run,” Micah said.
Bill’s heart thumped. “No. We need time.” He heard the muffled steps of the robot’s rubber-shod feet. There was a clicking sound. The robot deployed its staser. Phantom pain from the memory of his staser hit coursed through Bill’s lower back.
“Ready?” Bill said.
The robot’s staser swiveled to the pair.
“Heave away!”
The pair pushed the dumpster, half-full of garbage, into the path of the robot, smashing the staser against a brick wall. The fugitives bolted into the alley.
Micah surprised Bill with her speed, cyborgian toes and all, and he almost lost her again when she turned a corner. Micah came back. “Come on, damn you. We’re lucky the green-shirts haven’t caught up.”
The pair jogged down a cave-like, brick-paved alley, leaping over passed-out derelicts. Micah pounded on a back door, with Bill close behind. The door was opened a crack by a young woman wearing a bra and panties in the ruddy light. Micah pushed her aside. The woman pushed back. “Micah, what the fu—”
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