“Yes, but he’s pretend.”
“Pretend, yes, but very good at stealing things and hiding out. We could be like Jason Bourne.”
My eyebrows rise in agreement, but my mind can’t help dwelling on how far this kid has come in his CAINing. He sounds like a fifteen-year-old.
“So, what else did you watch?” I say.
Ben smiles, and there is a glint in his eyes, even if his eyes are just artificial visual portals—human-like eye windows that hide his robotic camera lenses. It’s strange: sometimes even I forget that he’s an android.
“It was a movie called Witness. 1985. Paramount Pictures. Directed by Peter Weir. It’s a lot like what’s happening to us. In the story there’s a boy, and he witnesses a murder. That’s where they got the name. Of the movie. Because he’s a witness, get it? Anyway, an Englischer policeman takes him and hides him out in Amish country.”
I laugh and shake my head. “I remember the film,” I say. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. Harrison Ford, I think.”
“Yes. Harrison Ford. Did you like it?” Ben asks.
“If I remember it, I think I did. Did you?”
“It was all right,” Ben says. “Kind of weird. And the policeman guy—the guy who plays someone like you, an Englischer policeman trying to help out and hide the Amish kid... well, he has sex with an Amish woman. That part wasn’t so good. Kind of icky.”
“Oh, my,” I say, and I can feel myself blush for the first time in years. “Well, you shouldn’t be watching things like that.”
“That’s not likely to happen for you, though,” Ben says. “With an Amish woman it’s not.”
“It’s not?” I say, as we continue our walk to the bus station.
“Nah,” Ben says. “Amish women are nothing like the woman in that movie. And you’re no Harrison Ford, either.”
I laugh. “Well, thanks for that, buddy, but getting back to the point, we’re not going to be stealing any buses. At least I hope we’re not.”
“Then what’s the second half of the plan?” Ben asks.
“I’ve been thinking about it. Once we’re pretending to be just off the bus from some other Amish place far away, we’ll try to meet someone who can help us. I’ve read a lot about the Amish, and your people are supposed to be quite hospitable.”
Ben looks at me, and his face is blank for a few seconds before he speaks. “Hospitable. Adjective. Receiving or treating guests or strangers warmly and generously. As in, a hospitable family.”
“Right,” I say. “And maybe you should say stuff like that only in your head. To yourself. Don’t say it out loud when you look things up.”
“Okay,” Ben says. “And maybe we’ll find someone like that. Someone friendly. The Amish are very hospitable.”
“Right.”
“And she’ll have sex with you.”
“Stop it, Ben.”
“Okay.”
“And stop watching movies,” I say.
“We’ll see,” Ben says with a smile.
* * *
Cyrano Dresser stalks back and forth in front of the big screens like a puma in a cage. He hasn’t said much to anyone all morning, and when he speaks it is only to bark orders or snap an instruction at an underling. His hair and his beard are both black and short-cropped, and his eyes are a piercing, impossible blue that both men and women find hypnotizing and dangerous. “Killer blues,” his momma used to say. Well, she was right about that.
The screens show, in real-time, whatever data the wonks are working on at this moment. Data can be instantly transmitted to any screen as soon as the nerd squad comes across anything they think might be of interest. Search grids, phone scans, internet data, aerial and satellite photos and video, CCTV, traffic cams, data from Tempest, ECHELON, PRISM, Carnivore—all of it can be flashed to any of the screens on demand.
The worker drones operating the computers and radios and monitors, tracking all the data being gathered in the search, they don’t know Dresser—but they know they don’t like him. That’s all right with him. He’s not in the friend business. As long as they do what they’re told, we’ll catch these sons of bitches and make it all go away.
Cyrano Dresser is in the “making it all go away” business.
He looks around the room and stares bullets at anyone who happens to catch his eye. They don’t even know his name, but their bosses—whoever loaned them to Dresser for this mission—undoubtedly gave them enough of a scoop to make them all wary. Afraid.
Good.
When these geeks were first recruited for whatever alphabet agency they work for—straight out of MIT or Stanford or Texas freakin’ A&M—no one told them they’d one day find themselves drinking crappy coffee and eating stale cookies in a darkened Hampton Inn meeting room in flyover Ohio, hunting down civilians in Amish country.
Well, there’s a lot they don’t know, Dresser thinks. Like the fact that one of those “civilians” is some kind of killer robot the comically disturbed bastards at DARPA dreamed up. Like a Transformer, only on steroids and in real life. But I’m going to find it and I’m going to kill it. Because that’s what I do. These assholes probably spend all their hard-earned dough reading books and watching movies about androids because that’s what they get off on. And they don’t even know they’re gonna help me kill one. Help me erase it. Like it never was.
One of the agents walks up to Dresser and stands there quietly. Not addressing his boss in any way. Dresser notices him but makes him wait for a few minutes. Finally, he turns to the agent and makes eye contact.
The agent takes an “at ease” stance and waits for Dresser to nod. When the boss’s head moves, the agent speaks.
“We’ve located the boy’s parents.”
“And?”
“We’re sending an agent in plain clothes to ask if they’ve heard anything from the doctor, or anything at all about the boy.”
Dresser looks upward, thinking. “Don’t tell them the boy’s alive. Just say we’re doing some background investigations on the doc. See what they know, but don’t alert them.”
“You don’t want them brought in for questioning?”
“No. I want to be there myself. Look into their eyes when I ask them what they know.”
The agent’s head moves slightly up and down. “Anything else?”
Dresser straightens his back and then looks directly at the agent. “I really don’t want them spooked. Who knows what these nuts will do if they think their boy is alive? After your man leaves, assign someone to watch that farm. I want to know if the doc or the boy tries to make contact. But keep an eye on the parents. When the time comes I’ll go see them myself.”
“Yes, sir,” the agent says. Dresser doesn’t speak again, so the agent turns carefully and walks away.
Dresser looks over the room again and then clears his voice.
He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t scream. He just clears his voice and waits.
Within thirty seconds he has the attention of everyone in the room. He stares at them with his steel-blue eyes and waits until there is absolute silence. When everything has stopped moving and only breaths and the shifting of feet can be heard, Dresser speaks.
“This is the part,” Dresser says, barely raising his voice above the level of casual conversation, “where I give you a profanity-laced rah-rah speech about how we’re all good Americans, and how these... insurgents are evildoers who want to destroy our way of living.”
He stops, inhales, and looks up to the screens on the far wall.
“This is the part where I tell you that we have to find these terrorists in order to save American lives.” He laughs. “This is that part... the part in every crappy movie and TV show you geeks have ever watched... that is, when you’re not pushing pencils or cashing government checks or dressing up like Batman or whatever it is you do on your days off. This is that part, people. But you’re not getting that speech. Not today.
“You see, in real life an insurgent is just
someone that disagrees with me, and that’s all he is. Because you and I have created all of this,” Dresser gestures with one hand, indicating the room around them, “and this is what lets people like me decide who lives and dies.
“A system like ours needs me, because I keep scary shit off the front pages. The shit people like you and your bosses dream up. And this is the cool part of our little arrangement...
“I can do whatever I want, because a blown-up shopping mall or a school bus full of grade-school kids hit with a Sidewinder missile can be explained.”
There are nervous laughs in the room, but Dresser does not smile.
“That’s right. We have whole agencies in charge of explaining things. That’s what they do. Like when a whole town in Texas disappears in a fireball. Right? Fertilizer plant exploded, next story. That one took fifteen minutes in real life. What’s on American Idol tonight, Mom?
“But let me tell you what can not be explained. A killer android walking down Main Street shooting laser beams from his eyes. That can’t be explained. Not yet. That’s the shit people like you—the nerds and the geeks—dream up, and that people like me make go away.
“So here’s your rah-rah speech. Are you ready?”
There are deep breaths, and eyes cut from side to side as everyone wonders but no one speaks.
“Okay then, here we go, so listen up...
“You. Don’t. Matter.”
Dresser lets that little fact sink in.
“That’s it. That’s the speech. Because if you can’t do the job, then you don’t matter to me. And if you can, you still don’t matter to me, but you get to keep doing your job and cashing those government checks and watching Star Trek reruns and dressing like Mork or whatever the hell you people do.”
Dresser holds up his phone and smiles. “Because of people like you, I can kill people... as many as I want... with just this phone. One call, and this Hampton Inn—and all of Cambridge, Ohio—becomes a smoking dimple on the ass of the planet. One call and your family gets to bury you in a shoebox.
“This is what you wanted. This is what you signed up for. And just in case you missed it, an insurgent is anyone I say is an insurgent. Are we clear?”
Silence.
“So now you do your job. You find these guys, because I’ve decided that they are insurgents and I’m going to kill them. And I’d like to do it today.”
Nobody moves until Dresser picks up a cup of coffee and drinks. His eyes go up to the monitors, and the sounds of typing and activity pick up around the room.
Speech over.
Dresser stares at the top left screen, which shows the men searching the old Chevy truck. The video was shot yesterday from a Keyhole satellite two hundred miles up, and this particular footage is from when the Homeland agents first started their ham-fisted investigation of the suspect’s vehicle, a half hour before Dresser himself showed up at the scene.
On the screen, an Amish buggy drives by. The men glance over at it for a moment, then go back to searching the truck.
“Freeze it. Screen one,” Dresser says. He stares at the image for a few seconds, then: “Roll it back ten seconds and let it play again.”
The footage plays once more.
“Zoom in on the buggy.”
The zoomed-in scene replays, and Dresser watches the Amish buggy roll by again.
“Zoom in more,” he says. “I just want to see the top of that buggy.”
The sound of a few keystrokes, and then the image zooms in until the roof of the buggy takes up most of the big screen. There’s a handprint on the left edge of the roof. Like before someone had placed their hand there, the roof had been completely covered in dust...
“That’s it. That has to be our targets.” Dresser pulls on his trench coat and a black ski cap, waves at his go team, and heads for the door. They all follow, armed and ready for action. “Roll that back and find out what farm that buggy came from, and send the coordinates to my phone. I want a name and any other information you can get about whoever owns that farm.”
Just as he reaches the door he turns back and stares down the room that’s now gone quiet again. Everyone looks at him, afraid of whatever might come next.
“You people find these bastards or I’m going to carpet bomb half of Ohio and make you all famous. If you survive, you’ll all get congressional hearings and jury trials. But not me.” Dresser smiles. “Because I never existed. So if I were you, I’d find these two insurgents... and I’d do it fast.”
* * *
We spent the night in the bus station. We read magazines and walked around, and when I got sleepy I powered Ben down for a while so I could get some shuteye without worrying about him walking off. Not that he necessarily stays powered down when I flip his switch, but I was hoping he would.
This morning I got up and got a cup of coffee, plus a lemon tea for Ben from a drink machine near the ticket office. The first bus is due any moment, and as we wait, a woman from the Sandwich Shoppe down the road comes by selling breakfast sandwiches, so I use my cash to buy one each for Ben and me. We eat in silence, watching Amish and Englischers coming and going in the station. People-watching is fun for Ben, who hasn’t seen much of real life outside of his Amish farm—except for all the strange stuff he’s experienced since he woke up as a grown man.
As dawn breaks, we walk up and down Main Street a little for exercise, and we find a woman who’s opening up her thrift store, so we go inside to look around. I’m looking for jackets since it’s gotten colder and we want to look like we were prepared for travel.
I find two black Amish coats—they have clasps where an Englischer coat would have buttons or a zipper. They’re only fifteen dollars apiece, so I buy both, along with a few pairs of black socks and a small backpack to carry everything in.
On the way back to the bus station we see Gordon, the bearded homeless guy from the motel, and he waves and calls me “Kenny” as we pass by. I wave back, and when Ben looks at me strangely I just raise a hand and roll my finger as if to say, Just keep walking.
A bus from Lancaster, Pennsylvania arrives and unloads, and I think this is the perfect opportunity for us. Lancaster is the biggest Amish community in the world, and it’ll be easier to avoid questions if we’re just two brothers in from Pennsylvania, looking for cheap land or jobs.
We walk out into the morning sunlight and loiter around among the people getting off the bus. A few of them walk off purposefully, and I’m beginning to worry that everyone will disperse and we’ll be back where we started. But then a long wagon pulls up and drops off a young man who looks to be leaving—taking a bus somewhere else. The driver of the long wagon, an older Amish man, stops to tie his horses to the pipe that runs in front of the station.
I nudge Ben, nod toward the man, and whisper, “He looks hospitable.”
Ben grins—a look of understanding.
We walk over to the man and Ben says hello in Pennsylvania Deutsch. The man turns and greets him in kind. I feel a glimmer of hope.
The Amish man and Ben speak for a while in their Amish tongue. I try to hang back, but before long the man speaks to me. Unfortunately, I don’t speak the language, so I have to think fast.
“I only speak English,” I say to the man. “I’m sorry.”
“Ah,” the man says in English, a knowing look on his face, “and your brother here speaks the Deutsch... I smell a scandal.” He’s smiling now, so I get the feeling he means us no harm, but there’s something in his eyes that I can’t easily make out.
“I ran away from the Amish as a young boy,” I say. “Rebel Amish wild streak, I know, but after twenty years among the English I really came to miss my family and our way of life, and I moved home. Let’s just say that my Rumspringa lasted an extraordinarily long time.”
“A prodigal,” the man says. “Well, I’m glad to see you got tired of feeding the pigs and found your way back to the flock.” He looks me in the eye as he says this, and I feel that there is pain and knowledge behi
nd those dark eyes of his. Underneath those bushy brows. He’s lived a long life, but there’s something else pressing on him, too. Something new.
“Me too,” I say as the man pats me on the shoulder. “Only now our parents have passed away, our sisters are married, and the farm went to Joshua Hostetler, our sister’s husband, because Ben here was working in the RV factory. So now here we are, looking for cheaper land in a place far away from our home.”
“Not an uncommon story,” the Amish man says. “We all need to spread out more. How are you called?”
“I’m Fred Bontrager,” I say, “and this is my younger brother Ben. Most people call me Doc, though. So don’t be confused if my brother uses that name.”
“I am Mose Shetler,” the Amish man says. “Doc, eh? Did you do medicine among the English?”
I smile, and even manage to blush a little. “I guess you could say that, Mr. Shetler. I worked for a veterinarian when I was on my pilgrimage through the English world.”
“A veterinarian, you say? And please, call me Mose.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why, a craft like that would be very welcome around here. Where are you men staying?”
I look up at Mose and smile, trying to look meek, as if I’ve accepted our situation and I’m prepared to just deal with it. As if I’m saying, Hey, you might offer help, but we don’t really want it. “Well, I suppose we’ll be trying to find an inexpensive motel here in town, at least until we can find work and save up to buy some land or a small farm.”
Mose smiles. He says something to Ben and then slaps us both on the backs and walks off down the street.
I turn to Ben. “What did he say?”
Ben looks at me and grins. “He said, ‘Nonsense, you’ll both come and stay with me.’ And then he told me he had some trading he needed to do, and he would meet us back here in an hour.”
* * *
When we meet Mr. Shetler again after almost exactly an hour, he loads his shopping bags into the bed of the wagon and asks us if we’re ready to go.
“We are,” I say. I am profuse in my thanks to him, and then I ask him the one question that has occurred to me from our earlier conversation. Something that I never asked.
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