Sleeper Protocol
Page 17
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Across the tent, Berkeley sat reading a holobook. I made a wall transparent and looked outside. The snow was now nearly a foot deep around the hexhab, but more importantly, the sky was beginning to clear to the west.
“I think the storm is over.”
Berkeley didn’t look up. “Yeah.”
“I’m ready to get out of this tent.” I yawned and stretched. It was more than that. Being patient sounded good in theory, but I needed information. I wasn’t getting it here. “We’re leaving in the morning.”
Berkeley winked at me. “Okay.”
“I have to get to Tennessee.”
She smiled. “I said it was okay.”
I cued the tent material back to its normal burnt orange, sat down next to Berkeley, and pulled a blanket over our legs. She was doing a decent job of pretending she was reading instead of editing footage of our time together. The discussion we’d eventually have would not end well.
Her hand found the top of my leg and paused. She did not share my feelings at all. I was playing a role in her mind. She cared for me but in a fleeting manner, as though she’d helped me board a train or find my way in an airport. Specifically, she was helping, but she wanted more. I was a cog in that decision wheel, and when the time came for her to choose between whatever she wanted and me, I would be left in a cloud of dust. Three hundred years ago, there was a five-year hole in my life during which I choked out of a very similar cloud.
The next morning, we broke camp. The hexhab discharged its unused organic mass and deflated in a matter of minutes. I stuffed it back into my pack and exhaled a cloud of steam. The snow-capped mountains stabbed the clear indigo sky like the points of sharpened white pencils. “Where are we headed?”
“North.” Berkeley shrugged into her backpack. “When we get to the TransCon, we can hitch a ride over the Continental Divide and avoid the front-range area.”
“Why?”
Berkeley smiled. “Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re new to all of this.”
Bullshit, I thought. “So?”
“The TransCon is a thoroughfare. A free-trade shipping lane.” She shrugged.
“Like an interstate highway?”
“Yes!” Berkeley winked. “That’s what it used to be. Now it’s a TransCon with four levels of magnetic levitation. The trucks on the top levels push the sonic barrier. It’s really something to see.”
“Why not just head east from here? The front range can’t be more than a couple of hundred miles.” Tennessee seemed farther and farther away.
Berkeley squinted at me. “Not after this much snow. Many of the old roadbeds would be avalanche zones now.”
Trusting her seemed so natural and, at the same time, so wrong. I shrugged good-naturedly. “We’ll need snowshoes.”
“Touch the knobs on the back of your boots. Now twist them clockwise.” I did, and sure enough, a hexagonal webbing formed around my foot. I’d like to say I took to snowshoes naturally, but even enhanced physiology and reflexes couldn’t overcome gravity. I fell to the ground like a baby deer on ice from a movie I’d once seen. How can I remember that and not my own name? Standing again, I took five full strides and relaxed into what had to be the right rhythm. My feet ensnared each other, and I slammed face-first into the icy powder again.
“Dammit.” I smacked my hand on the snow.
Mally spoke in my ear. <
I snorted and worked my way to my feet. “You ready to get going?”
Berkeley was already walking through the trees. “Leaving you behind as usual,” she chirped, and I slogged along the top of the snow to catch up.
We made the Continental Divide at Stony Pass by nightfall two days later. Heading north in the clearest of weather, we’d walked something like forty kilometers that day and said a total of ten words to each other before we lay down for the night. She cuddled against me and kissed my neck, but I brushed off her intentions.
“Are you okay, Sleepy?”
“I’m fine,” I said, knowing fully well she would know I was not. I hoped like hell she would drop the whole thing. I wanted to get home, and all she wanted to do was wait and be patient. I could not take it much longer.
I lay in the dark, my mind whirring like a top. The world outside the hexhab was quiet, without even a breath of wind against the tent’s sides.
After I’d stared at the ceiling for an hour, Mally asked quietly, <
No, thanks. I’ll be okay. Will you connect to the hab and make the ceiling transparent?
<
I’d had A Field Guide to the Stars when I was a kid. Damned near had it memorized. My father gave it to me for a birthday present, but it was late. Other kids in my class were busy watching MTV, and I was sneaking out into the backyard on clear nights. Twin cedar trees dominated the eastern edge of the yard. The grass was cool and moist against my back. I remembered tracing the line from the Big Dipper to Arcturus. In the summer, I’d trace the line farther to Spica in Virgo. Winter brought Orion to the night sky, and I would trace his belt into Taurus the bull. I saw myself straining on bright nights to see the Pleiades, lying flat against the hillside in dark clothing so my parents wouldn’t see me in a chance glance out the kitchen window.
They wouldn’t have cared except for the nights it was too cold to stay out longer than a few minutes. I could have asked permission, but they’d have said no. That wasn’t the point. I wasn’t out drinking or experimenting with drugs like my classmates were. I was staring up into the night sky for hours on end and wondering when I could go there, when I could look down on the planet and not see lines. I wanted to see only possibilities, not boundaries. I dreamed of a time when the snickering and taunting would end, a point in the future when I’d not be ridiculed for thinking about something bigger than me.
Berkeley made noises in her sleep that made me want to laugh. She snuggled closer, snaking an arm across my chest, and I relished her warmth. I wished more of my past, my identity, would float to the surface. The desire to know was there, and it helped me get past the times when doubt and confusion swept in to drag my thoughts down. The memories were not all pleasant, and fortunately, they were short lived. Flashes of feelings, raw emotions tinged with regret, would appear and disappear quickly before I could put a name to a face. All of them were part of who I was, but they were baggage I wanted desperately to leave behind so I could create something new. Whatever I did in this future world had to be my choice.
Chapter Fourteen
As far as Mally could tell me, Berkeley wasn’t uploading anything. That she was still filming our time together in some fashion was likely, but I had no way of knowing. As good as I felt, my trust in her was low. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her about the bandwidth and her movie. Mally was right—she had to be filming me. I was the star of her show and likely the butt of her joke. As much as it bothered me, I did nothing. The sex was too good to throw away.
We hiked out of Stony Pass on a warm day and continued up the Continental Divide. By the time the sun reached its zenith, we were walking in shirtsleeves. Snow melted quickly, leaving puddles in our footprints as we marched.
Berkeley glanced over her shoulder. “How are you doing with things?”
“Things?”
“Yeah.” She smiled.
“I know that I was a soldier. I see lots of faces and bits of memories that are starting to knit themselves together. Beyond that, I’m hiking with you and hoping like hell it doesn’t snow again for a few days. That good enough?”
The trail descended a small peak into an aspen-covered saddle. In between the two hills, Mally came to life in my ears.
<
How far away? I looked at the snow-covered forest floor and white-flecked trunks of aspen trees and could not find them.
<
A large tree stump sat a couple of meters off our path to the east side. After another fifty meters, I stopped and acted as if there was something wrong with my boot. Berkeley paused as well, just as I’d hoped. In that moment of silence, I closed my eyes and listened. I lowered my head for a second and heard them come out of the brush. Berkeley startled, and I brushed her back with my left arm.
<
I pushed Berkeley toward the way we’d come. “Run. Go!”
To her credit, Berkeley sprinted off like the wind, never looking back. The men screamed and charged, their rebel yell echoing off the aspens in the wide clearing. They watched Berkeley flee and turned their attention to me. She’d get away from them, and that was what I wanted. With any luck, she’d be calling for help any second. I dropped my pack on the ground and stepped back from it, my hands in the air. “I don’t want any trouble.”
A mangy-bearded man, missing most of his teeth, sneered at me. “Don’t care much what you want, boy.”
<
Anything else?
<>
Taking a deep breath, I stepped back another step. “Take what you want.”
The two men flanking the bearded man spread out, putting me at the center of a triangle. The bearded man stared through me. “We’ll do just that.” He whipped the bowie knife out of his belt with his right hand and palmed it, with the blade up above his thumb and forefinger. With a lunge, he swung the knife at my neck, and time slowed down.
My left hand grabbed his wrist, and I spun into his body, slamming my elbow into his chest then bringing my fist down to squarely punch him in the balls. Air exploded out of his lungs as I dropped him to the snow and removed the knife from his hand. Holding the knife pointed down from my fist, I faced the white-haired man with the gun before he could react. He squeezed the trigger, but I was already moving, closing the distance to let my swing rip through the soft tissue along the side of his neck. Warm blood spurted across my face and then rushed down his chest—not a mortal wound but one with a significant effect. He dropped the gun and went down on one knee, clutching at his neck.
The boy stepped up with his machete and swung. I was fast enough to save my forearm, except for an inch-wide chunk of flesh that he separated neatly. Red flooded my vision, and I grabbed his wrist, locking the machete at arm’s length, and stepped in for the kill. The knife went straight and deep under his solar plexus. Pain, then shock, raced across the boy’s face as he dropped to the snow.
The leader was up again, coming at me with the crazy eyes of rage. Deflecting his attack was easy, and I stepped into him with the knife, pushing it into his throat, feeling bone and pushing through it. The crack echoed off the trees. I dropped him quickly. The white-haired man raised the pistol. Without a thought, I flung the knife at his hands, embedding the blade between his knuckles. Howling with pain, he dropped the gun—a rusty revolver—and ran. I did not let him live to fight another day. Running him down within a few meters, I tackled him and sat across his shoulders, twisting his head violently until he quivered and fell limp.
Three bodies lay sprawled in the red-flecked snow at my feet. I threw the ravaged knife into the forest and knelt. My mind whirled at what had happened. I’d done what I needed to do, and that was what mattered. I was alive, and they were dead. Berkeley had escaped, too. I looked at the bodies and the bloodstained snow and tried not to retch. The snow washed most of the blood from my trembling hands. The rusty pistol came apart easily, and I tossed the barrel and lower receiver in different directions and did the same with the empty magazine. As much as I’d thought we needed them, the very sight of them and their intentions disgusted me. When my feet were strong enough to carry me again, I stood.
“Berkeley!” I yelled into the forest. There was no reply. “Berkeley!”
From behind me, on the shallow downslope toward the valley floor, Berkeley scrambled up from the brush. I watched her face as she closed the distance. Her expression of relief gave me hope and steeled my shaking legs.
“Here!”
“Are you okay?”
She responded a few seconds later. “Yeah.”
Trudging up the hill, she reached my position and gasped. The happy look on her face became revulsion in an instant. “What did you do?”
The three bodies answered her question for me. I reached out for her shoulders, and she flinched. “Are you all right?”
“You’re bleeding!”
I touched my left forearm and winced. “It’s not too bad.” The wound stung as the cold seeped inside.
“Bullshit.” She knelt at her pack and came up with a first-aid dressing and a metal canister. “Press this down on the wound while I get ready to clean it.”
I pressed the dressing into the wound. There was more of my own blood on the snow around me than I’d previously thought. My legs wobbled. That looks bad.
<
Ask me that question later, Mally. Why didn’t you stop them, say we were armed and dangerous or something like that?
<>
Not yet. I shook my head.
The metal canister held antiseptic foam that Berkeley sprayed into the wound. It hardened into a dermatological bandage. “What is that stuff?”
“Quickskin. Treats everything from blisters to amputations. Do you want to sit down?”
The bodies in the snow told me to move on. “No. We need to get away from here. Quickly.”
Berkeley looked up at me. “Why?”
“What if there are more of them? Are they connected to the drone?”
“I doubt it, Sleepy. We’re far away from any running water up here. Probably just locals who wanted our gear or something.”
Allan had called it a lawless frontier. Defense came much easier than offense, especially when you did not know the enemy or where they came from. “We need to get higher, where a lot of people wouldn’t want to be at night.”
“You’re right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Stuffing the first-aid kit into her pack, I discovered a camera inside. After helping her into the straps of her pack, I donned my own, and we stepped over the leader’s body and headed up the next hill, saying nothing for several hours. We decided to camp on the east side of Carson Peak, above the tree line at an altitude of four thousand meters. The hexhab inflated more slowly in the high, thin air. While we sat and watched the tent grow in the fading light, the chill rising up from the rocks matched that from Berkeley.
“I’ll set it for camouflage,” she said as she stepped into the vestibule. “As long as we’re quiet, no one will see it.” Inside the tent, Berkeley sat on a cushion and hugged her knees to her chest. I almost didn’t hear her say, “You didn’t have to kill them.”
Her words stopped my efforts to open a waste receptacle. “I-I don’t know what happened back there.”
“I’m not buying that. You could have controlled yourself!”
I shrugged. “I reacted. Once you were safe, it was like a switch flipped
in my head.”
Her chin touched her chest, and her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “What are you?”
My shoulders drooped. “I’m a soldier, Berkeley. What happened back there wasn’t anything more than self-defense. They attacked us.”
“They attacked you.” Berkeley sniffled. “Not me. You should have run instead of killing them.”
“I didn’t mean to kill them, okay? I just acted. If they’d killed me, what do you think would have happened to you? If I’d chosen to run, I’d have left you behind for them, Berkeley. I’m too fast for you to stay with me. You understand? I made my choice to stand there and let you escape.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know about any of this.”
I shook out a blanket from her pack and draped it across her shoulders. She sighed.
I stepped back. “Do you want me to leave you alone for a while?”
“Yeah. I don’t think we should sleep together, either.”
She wouldn’t look at me. I’d seen that reaction before. The memory came up quickly, and I stepped back through the vestibule: the dark-haired girl gloated over the divorce papers, leaving me a tearful mess. I am not the same man! I don’t make those mistakes! The cold air slapped my face, and the image from my dream faded. That’s not something I need to be thinking about right now.
<
Just another memory, Mally. You can’t see those, can you?
<
That’s probably a good thing. I pushed down the thoughts of dark hair and amethyst eyes and the hurt they brought in short stabs of memory. I would deal with it later.