Carbon Run

by J. G. Follansbee

  In her frenzy, Martin’s com fell out of her pocket. The net light glowed green. It was live.

  Millicent’s eyes filled with tears. “We could’ve survived it. The family could’ve made it. Even after the forest burned down, thanks to you. We wanted to replant. We ordered the seedlings, but the government clamped down. Everything stopped. We had to get permitted and reviewed, and even when we did, they said no until there was further studies.”

  Martin’s head reeled with the memories of his own terror on that day more than a decade past. What had I done?

  “We decided to plant the seedlings anyway. Someone found out. The bessies stopped us before we even left the house. Arrested my dad, threw him in fucking jail. How could planting trees hurt the earth? The world had gone insane.”

  Martin shook his head, as if saying no to the reality around him. He stared at the com with its green indicator. The augmenter was still on his ear, but he needed to touch the com to activate a connection to the net and maybe send a call for help.

  Millicent had not tied Martin’s feet, but he had to touch the com with his skin so the DNA reader would know him as the owner. Martin wheedled his tormentor, looking for an opportunity to move. “It’s not my fault. The engineers, they failed me. It was their fault.”

  “You’re to blame. It broke Daddy—jail, the government rules, they broke him. It killed him. Everything he worked for was for nothing. It was gone. All because of your stupidity.”

  Martin got to his feet, pulling the chair up with him.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Millicent cocked the gun’s hammer, and Martin heard a round go into the gun’s chamber.

  “Not my fault.”

  “The world is damn near extinct because of you.” Millicent whipped Martin again. The barrel came down on his temple, but he managed to direct his fall, pointing his face at the com. He hit it with his forehead above his left brow, and he yelped in pain. Streaks of white light swirled in the back of his eyes. He succumbed to a numbed state, like the instant before a dream. Martin eyed Harry, whom he imagined for some bizarre reason was dressed in an Italian suit, and around him were the Algid Project engineers, the programmers, and Molly Bain. Panic twisted their faces and the skin between their fingers was purple with the pressure, and they argued like a flock of chickens. Who ordered the changes... No one tested these... Molly was the last to review the subroutines... The commands came from her net ID... The government wants answers now... We’ll all be dissed...

  The connection light came on in Martin’s visual field, and his mind cleared. “Anyone. Anyone. I’m hurt.” He sent a message in his half-conscious state. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Get up off the floor.” Millicent ordered. “Get up before I shoot you.”

  “Darling, remember your promise.”

  “Shut your trap, Harry.”

  The woman grabbed Martin by the loose folds of his habit and pulled him up. Her rage powered her like a dynamo. As she lifted Martin back into the chair, he saw his com, blood smeared over its anodized surface. To his horror, the activity light had gone dark. Either the battery had died, or he had damaged it with his skull. Blood from his forehead streamed into his left eye, and he blinked as the salty liquid stung.

  Harry started laughing. “Are you winking at my wife?”

  “Harry, I just can’t stand that this man is alive, so soon after I buried my daddy. I just can’t stand it. I buried my daddy not two days ago, and here’s his murderer. What am I supposed to do?”

  “It is an unusual situation, darling.”

  Martin was lost. His call for help had failed. He had no means to escape, nowhere to go, and he thought another blow would kill him.

  “Harry, I’m afraid I’m going to have to break my promise.”

  “Oh, no.”

  The woman stepped around to Martin’s right. He felt the cold barrel of the automatic on his uninjured temple. Tears caused by the stinging blood and his own misery flowed down his face.

  Millicent hissed, like a monstrous reptile. “Mr. Scribb, now you’ll know what a real execution is like.” Maniacal rage appearing like a mask over her pained features.

  Martin heard a crash. Millicent gaped, and her head evaporated.

  Harry had time to scream “What—” and then his chest imploded, as if a huge, invisible weight crushed it, driving his body into the couch. He was hit again, and his body somersaulted backward, landing on a dining table.

  In shock, Martin turned toward the crash. Standing in front of the remains of the glass door was a robot, black as night. He discerned its shape by the reflection of the weak light in the room. It stood on two legs, like an ostrich, and some sort of weapon was sticking out in front. The gun retracted into the egg-shaped body. The robot stepped backward through the door and turned. Martin watched it move down the steps, and in the yellow glow of the porch light, it broke into a loping run, disappearing into the evening.

  Martin couldn’t move. His captors’ sudden deaths froze time for him. One moment he was at the end of his life, and the next, their lives were gone. He hadn’t seen them before they boarded the bus in Osoyoos, talked to them before they kidnapped him in Yellowknife, known anything about them until they brought him to their home. They were dead now.

  The weight of his guilt for causing so much pain in the world rose from his gut like a worm, eating him alive, and he cried out in a prayer to Heaven for mercy. I have brought untold misery to the world, and now I have caused two innocent people to die horribly.

  The smallest voice in a corner of his mind he had learned to ignore spoke up. No, it was not your fault.

  An hour passed before Martin calmed down enough to think. Flies collected on the gory remains of Millicent and Harry. He saw the kitchen knife on the coffee table, and he stepped around Millicent’s body, going down on his knees, turning around so as to pick up the knife in his stiff fingers. He managed to turn the blade on his bindings and cut them.

  His habit was spattered with blood and brains. He went into the bathroom. Purple welts rose around the cuts on his face. He opened the sink taps and threw water on his face, washing off the blood. He massaged his wrists where the twine had rasped the skin.

  Martin reflected on how the robot found him. Was the colonel watching over me? He remembered the puzzlement in Millicent’s face just before her head disappeared in a red mist. He vomited into the sink and collapsed on the floor.

  Martin awoke when he heard a com ring, not his own. The sun peeked through the windows. He realized if the owner—Millicent or Harry, he don’t know which—didn’t answer, the caller might think something was wrong. Martin had to leave fast or face the prospect of a police call and arrest on suspicion of murder. They would never believe a story about a robot. Martin couldn’t go back to Yellowknife looking like he had just committed a mass killing.

  Martin took a breath and held it. He left the house through the smashed door and saw the truck. Inside, sitting on the bench seat, was his shoulder bag. He got in, and realized the truck would not start for him. The biometrics were keyed to the dead couple, and maybe others, but he didn’t have the override code in case they loaned the truck to a friend.

  His com was still in the house. He went back to the living room, which resembled an abattoir. He found the device, net light still off, covered in his blood. He wiped it with a cloth folded on a kitchen rack. He caught his blood-soaked, distorted reflection in the clean chrome of the range hood. He was a butcher gone berserk.

  Praying for forgiveness, he found the couple’s bedroom and a clothes hamper. He stole a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from Harry, who was about the same height and weight as Martin. He found socks and a pair of heavy work boots. He also took a winter coat from the mud room, stuffing his filthy habit and shoulder bag into a light backpack hanging on a peg. His begging bowl fit into one of the coat’s pockets.

  When he returned to the living room, he saw something that brought up the little that was left in
his stomach. A round white object, with pinkish sinews hanging off of it like threads, and a thicker, whiter string leading from one end, lay in a corner. It was an eyeball, thrown aside when the robot destroyed Millicent’s head. Fascinated and repulsed, Martin saw his chance. Fighting revulsion, he picked up the lifeless globe by the optic nerve, dangling it before him like a child’s toy.

  A com rang again. Time was slipping away. Martin paced to the truck, holding the eye in front of him like a charm against evil, and he climbed into the cab. He prayed for deliverance, and maneuvered the unseeing organ in front of the biometric camera. He pushed the truck’s start button, and the dash came to life. He stifled a yelp for joy when he saw that the batteries had a full charge. Harry must have plugged in the truck before coming into the house.

  Martin tossed the useless eye onto the crabgrass. He unplugged the truck, drove to the highway, and turned north.

  CHAPTER 15

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  JANINE KILEL CONFIRMED THE INSTRUCTIONS to her auto’s AI as it turned up the gravel road to the Penn ranch. The AI navigated the twists and turns of the road, which followed a wide, shallow stream. Cutthroat trout patrolled the eddies and pools, ready to pounce on unwary prey. The fish were free from the worry they might be fooled by a fly fisherman’s sleight-of-hand with thread and feathers. BES had banned the sport as cruel.

  The car found the ranch and rolled into the dirt drive. The dust and heat of the afternoon blasted Kilel, and she scanned the property: charcoal remains of the house, intact outbuildings, grass in the yard the color of electrum, two tents at a makeshift campsite, crime scene tape flapping in the distance at the boundary of the wildlife refuge. Kilel noticed an enclosure about the height of a man and the length and breadth of her car, made of rough-cut wood and chicken wire, with a wooden shed inside. The loose feathers and manure on the floor identified it as a chicken coop, but no birds scavenged for a meal inside or out. An orange outdoor extension cord snaked to an outlet on an outbuilding. The coop end of the cord ended in a lamp that gave off a thin, reddish glow.

  “Can I help you?

  Kilel spun around.

  “Inspector Kilel. I’m sorry if I startled you.” Anne Penn stood about fifteen feet away. A basset hound barked and ran up to Kilel. The inspector stiffened, and the dog sniffed around her ankles.

  “My apologies.” Kilel bowed. “I should’ve warned you I was coming.” A deliberate oversight on my part. Kilel glanced behind Anne.

  “This is my friend, Mike,” Anne said.

  Kilel raised her eyebrows, assessing their relationship. Without moving her attention from the young man, Kilel’s gaze followed the path behind the pair. It merged with the edge of the burned wildlife refuge. “Well, Anne, I hope you’ve recovered from your ordeal.”

  “What does it look like to you, inspector?” Her tone was defiant.

  Kilel shrugged. “No, I don’t suppose you have. I was trying to be sympathetic. I know it’s been tough.”

  “I don’t need your sympathy. It’s because of you that I’ve lost my dad.”

  Kilel expected Anne’s resentment, but she wasn’t sure why Mike Schmidt was with her. The second tent. A lover? A protector? Kilel clasped her hands her at her back. “You know that’s not true, Anne. Your father broke the law. He ran. It’s my job to bring him in.”

  “It’s an unfair law.” It was Mike that spoke. He’s here to support Anne, probably because he’s in love with her. They did not touch each other, or even stand very close to each other, in the way lovers do.

  “Bessies like yourself are nothing but thugs.” Mike’s voice pitched higher, breaking like a teenager’s.

  Kilel was experienced enough not to rise to Mike’s bait. In her earliest days at the Bureau, she might have argued with the young man, pointing out that the BES was given power by the national legislature and the UN to enforce the carbon laws and the updated species protection laws after the Spike magnified the effects of the Warming. After a few of these informal debates degenerated into shouting matches, Kilel learned to let insults such as “ bessie” roll off her back.

  Anne stepped closer. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m investigating a crime.” Kilel peered toward the refuge. “My prime suspect has escaped. I haven’t found him.” I was close. I know it. “You were the last person to see him, Anne. You know him best. Can you help me with any ideas on where he might have gone?”

  “I don’t understand,” the young woman said, anxious for any word of her father. “I told you everything I know when you held me in Eugene.”

  Kilel told Anne about Yesler City and boarding the Aganippe. “Someone was missing from the manifest. Was that your father?”

  “I’ve never heard of that ship. I don’t know where my dad is going. I haven’t heard from him since the fire.”

  Kilel knew Anne was telling the truth. BES intelligence showed no calls or other contacts from Bill Penn to his daughter since the refuge fire, though she had tried several times to reach him. He was either dead or off the grid. More likely a broken or lost com.

  “I’ve gone through his records while he was a sailor, before you were born. He’s been to fifty ports or more. Did he ever talk about a favorite, where he had many friends?”

  Anne didn’t pause to think. “No.”

  “Did he maintain any contacts in the shipping industry after he quit the merchant marine?”

  “No one came to visit, if that’s what you mean. He kept his papers up-to-date, I know that much.”

  “Why would he do that if he’d given up that life?”

  Anne stiffened at the implicit accusation. “He was very proud of his time at sea. I guess he always thought he could go back, if he needed to.”

  “I think he’s done exactly that. I wonder if he’ll come back.”

  “What are you saying? Of course he’ll come back. Everything he has is here.” Anne turned sadly toward the black pile of ash that was once her house. “Or was.”

  “Sailors are fickle,” Kilel said, as if instructing a child.

  “When they are hounded by police for something that wasn’t their fault.”

  Kilel ignored Anne and stepped toward the chicken coop. “Do you mind if I ask what’s going on here?”

  “It’s just eggs,” she said nervously.

  “I don’t see any chickens.”

  Mike flexed his hands.

  “We lost all of them because of the fire, but they left fertile eggs. We’re trying to hatch them.”

  “I see. Very... resilient of you.” Kilel moved another step toward the coop. She’s lying. Why? A notification displayed in Kilel’s minds-eye. It told of new video feed in the area, which was not noted during the initial survey of the crime scene. “Excuse me.”

  Anne and Mike glanced at each other, both uneasy.

  An automated signals monitor on a BES satellite sent Kilel more information via her minds-eye. A live video feed was operating on the edge of the wildlife refuge. The monitor gave a GPS location, and Kilel scanned the refuge in the direction of the coordinates. The video feed was set to update on a new priv-chan, hiding the images. Kilel ordered a scan of com company records, and the scan reported that Anne Penn had purchased the priv.

  Kilel cursed under her breath; the com companies were in a constant battle with BES over encrypted private channels. Enterprises bought them to protect trade secrets and negotiations. Individuals purchased them to hide everything from illicit affairs to criminal conspiracies. BES regarded the channels as subversive and a nuisance, though they were legal, provided they weren’t used for banned activities. Abuse was rampant. The channels were also expensive, and Anne Penn wouldn’t have spent so much money unless she had a reason to cover up something. She’s lying about communication with her father. Why else would she buy a priv?

  Kilel fired off a question at Anne. “What’s going on in the refuge?”

  Anne swallowed. “What do you mean?”

  Kilel struggled to keep a wave
of contempt from showing on her face. She headed for the GPS coordinates of the video feed’s origin. Anne and Mike followed. A dusty haze hung a inch or so off the burned ground of the refuge, still marked with small evidence flags. Kilel followed a path of beaten grass. Movement in a tree on her right caught her eye. She gaped as a male Klamath magpie with its red breast patch flew across her field of vision, screeching in alarm. “What in hell...”

  “It’s the male from a nesting pair,” Anne said, “the pair that survived the fire, though we think there might be a second pair.”

  Kilel’s heart leapt in gladness. This was why she did her job, to protect these helpless creatures. Not that she minded confronting scofflaws. “Do the refuge biologists know about this?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen or heard from them since the fire.”

  Kilel’s step quickened. The last remaining nesting pair from an endangered species. More precious than all the gold on earth. She ignored the puffs of ash that settled on the legs of her crisp uniform. Her minds-eye kept track of her progress toward the source of the video feed until she came to the snag of a dead pine. A ladder was propped against the snag.

  Kilel turned on Anne. “Is this yours? What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” Anne said defensively. “I know these birds. I’ve watched them for years.”

  Kilel ignored Anne’s pleading and climbed the wobbly ladder. The male magpie stooped over the BES agent as if she were a predator. As Kilel neared the nest opening, the female screeched, though she was not visible. The male swooped closer to Kilel’s head, but the agent ignored the animal. Her eyes focused on a fingernail-sized camera at the top of the nest’s opening. “What in the Mother’s name is this?”

  “It’s just a video camera.” Anne was frantic. “There’s an egg in the nest. Mike and I wanted to watch it.”

  Mike piped in, “It’s the only magpie eggs left from the fire. We’re trying to help the family.”

  Kilel was livid. “Knowingly interfering with a natural process in a protected area without permission is a crime.” She rarely caught environmental criminals red-handed, and finding an illegal wildlife camera so soon after a devastating fire unhinged her. She tore the camera from its mount and held it out to Anne. “This is why the earth is in so much trouble. People like you have no sensitivity for nature. You never let anything alone. You never let nature take its course. When will you stop trying to make nature into something it’s not?”