by Rusty Coats
Levi took a breath that seemed to bring back some of his authority. "The early tests showed that Avalon triggered those sections of the brain, and that point-zero-five percent of the population had a predisposition to addiction if those sections were routinely stimulated. Fantasy-prone people. A genetic anomaly."
"They're junkies, then?"
He shook is head at Rita. "They develop a dopamine tolerance and need to fix more frequently. If they don't, they become lethargic and nauseous." He shrugged. "They simply form a habit."
Rita tugged at her hair. "Then how?"
"Cassady fabricated the effects with injections. When the Centers for Disease Control came to investigate, Cassady provided the victims. By the time we were using patches, the United Nations was looking for a way to suspend the Project. Cassady kept pumping them with fatality projections until they pushed Prohibition through the International Congress. Cassady had them running scared."
"But you bailed out."
He nodded. "You were either with them or against them. The stakes were too high. DeMaster came forward and called the disease 'pure fiction.' Look what happened to him." He gave his wife a glance, but turned away when he found her crying into the scratched prisms of her ROM cross. "If they suspected I'd tell anyone, they would have killed me. The only way out was jump all the way over the fence, where they couldn’t chase me. So I ran a sabotage mission for the Sons, a suicide run to the hydroelectric dynamos that fed the Campus. When I came to, I was in a hospital tent at Jasper."
I thought of DeMaster, about his only speech about the disease and how the next day they found him dead of a heart attack. Only the Southpaws could smell the truth, so they banished Janak and plunged an icepick into his brain, stealing his sense of smell. Levi said they would have killed him if he'd told the truth. He was right.
Gretchen stepped between us. "Who, Levi? Who wouldn't chase you?"
He glanced up at me, his eye bloodshot and raw. But his mouth wouldn't form the word, still too afraid. So I answered for him. "The Neuromantics."
Their eyes drilled into me, Gretchen and Levi and Rita and every member of the Council, and I heard Gretchen ask why. But her voice was behind the din of whispers only I could hear. They whispered pieces of that elusive code, the one I'd been trying to piece together since I saw Adam McFee's body consumed by that bolt of light, the one that had taken me back to Avalon and then had driven me out.
Jasper is empty, but full of souls.
Here there be dragons.
A memory of the future.
"Why?" she asked again.
I saw the sunlight burn the scratches on the ROM hanging from my sister's neck. And as the red merged to blue in the prisms of my mother's work, I wrapped my fingers around Gretchen's cross and gave a sharp yank, breaking the hemp twine.
"Because of this.”
Rita dug through the pile of clothes for my stainless-steel palmtop. I dropped my mother's ROM into the slot and watched it spin behind the sapphire glass, the lens hitting the tracks for the first time in since Prohibition's birth. A Councilwoman shrieked that my gadgets violated the Creed and Rita told her to shut up as I stared into the torn visor of my fedora.
And into the eyes of my mother.
She sat behind a fourth-generation Mensa, its smoky surface scratched from her fits of frustration, the ROMs piled like silver coral. She wore a Japanese bun, a style that seemed to pull the years away from her face. Beneath the image was a dashboard: Play, Pause, List, Run. She'd loaded very few controls, conserving bytes.
I told the fedora's filament mike, "Play."
The snapshot came to life and my mother brought a tobacco cigarette to her lips and inhaled, then said through the smoke, "There's not much room left on this ROM, honey, so I can't talk long. But I want you to listen very carefully. This is important."
The view on my fedora panned across my mother's familiar office. The room was in a shambles. The WPA posters had been ripped off the walls; files littered the floor. The Murphy bed -- installed because my parents often worked straight through the night -- had been gutted. It looked like my apartment. The only thing missing was Regan.
"This happened while your father signed my release forms at the Campus jail for breaking into the Darlings’ home. Our apartment looks the same. Every ROM has been taken or destroyed. This is the only Mensa still functioning. The others were stripped. The people who did this were very thorough, but they were not thorough enough, because they didn't find what they were looking for.”
A small window opened beside my mother and listed the menu in hypertexted titles. Next to them were four icons.
"Six months ago, I broke off a partnership with Dr. Paul Cassady," she said. The first icon -- a neon-blue brain -- flashed. "We'd been working for several years on a way to archive human consciousness. It began as a project to expand the dimensions of the Library, going past oral and visual biography, into the framework of the human spirit. Cassady had been working on locating the areas of the brain responsible for sub-verbal commands, and I worked on the program to interpret electrical and chemical reactions. Just before I broke off the partnership, we successfully uploaded four hundred gigabytes of my memory into Merlin's matrix. Although the upload was non-linear and makes little sense -- conscious and subconscious stimuli alike were moved into the buffers, creating a mishmash of images, sounds and wave formations I believe are tactile memories -- it was a success. And I believe our success is at the heart of why the Avalon Project is being dismantled. We --"
The ROM skipped from the scratches accumulated after years of riding on Gretchen’s neck. The recording coughed on missing bits of data. The second icon -- a microchip diagram known as the insignia of the programmer's disease -- lit up.
"This ROM contains proof that the programmer's disease is a hoax manufactured by Cassady and the Neuromantic Party, which has infiltrated the Centers for Disease Control and the United Nations. But I'm afraid that this proof won't stop what's begun. DeMaster was our last hope, and they killed him."
She picked a flake of tobacco off her tongue. "More importantly, this ROM contains the code to archive consciousness, which Cassady and the Neuromantics were looking for when they tore this place apart. I've destroyed my notes, my earlier programs and everything regarding this project. You now possess the only copy.
"Cassady and the fascists of the Tomorrow Crusade have chosen Avalon as their Olympus. They may succeed. But they do not have this code, Gretchen, and they want it desperately. May it take them an eternity to unlock the secret you hold in your hand.”
My mother rubbed her bloodshot eyes, and for a moment she let her fatigue show. Then she cleared her throat and sat erect again, staring evenly into the camera.
"I know you've joined the Sons of David, and I know my obsession with this Project probably pushed you away. Your brother seemed born for Avalon -- he was more at home there than anywhere he’d been before -- and it may have seemed that we loved him more. That was never true, sweetheart. I want you to know that.
"But Jack is gone and you have run away, and now it looks inevitable that we will be robbed of Avalon, and your father and I see that all we have to show for our work is a failed dream and a broken family. This ROM and its secrets are all we have left of the future we loved so dearly. May it survive, along with the memory of our dreams.
"End transmission."
The image froze. I stared at the exhaustion in her eyes and the lightning streaks in her hair, then said, "Exit." And my mother faded away.
The fedora’s visor cleared and the Sons of David Council appeared in her place, their faces blurred red by the fedora's memory chip. Rita and Gretchen stood in front of me with Sunny on the floor, drawing pictures in the dust..
"She was right," I told Gretchen. "Cassady worked with the Neuromantics to push Prohibition. The programmer's disease was just a foil to get the U.N out of Avalon."
Gretchen gulped air like a drowning woman fighting to reach the surface. "Why?"
/> "A paradox," I said. "A memory of the future."
Rita put her hand on my shoulder and I grabbed her, held her close. The chip pulsed and as Rita nuzzled my chest, I told the fedora, "Play message."
The memory chip blinked, then shot the message to the visor. Two words burned across a dark screen, the words cloaked in a Sumerian battle code, three millennia old. I didn't need a signature to know it was from Monk, or a translator to decrypt it.
She's Alive.
AVALON XXVII: Neuromantics
I heard shouting in the meadow and flipped up the visor in time to see horses burst from the forest like pheasants. In their saddles were twenty men in black trench coats and black fedoras, pointing stun rifles at the purple sky. I knew right away they weren't local boys.
"Better get over here," I said. "Tomorrow’s riding in on horseback."
Gretchen left Sunny on the floor and peered through the glass. One of the black hats unloaded lightning into the backs of six women carrying fresh vegetables from the market. The tomatoes flew into the air as if waiting for a juggler's hands.
Gretchen's face trembled. "It's you, Jack. They're hunting for you."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I called the datacops and told them you were here."
I stared at her, remembering how she'd slipped off for a Chautauqua after Marigolde's Council voted to let Rita and I stay. I said, "Oh."
In the meadow, the residents of Marigolde were scattering while the black hats took target practice, filling the field with ozone and bodies. When the leader turned to laugh I saw the insignia on his back, the globe with its chrome continents and lapis-lazuli seas, pierced by a Tesla coil. And then I saw the scar on his neck.
I wondered what Janak's hobby was before I came along.
Rita was shoving our belongings into a hemp knapsack. She packed the aloe for my skin and dropped her wire-rimmed cheaters into a zippered pocket. I grabbed the heater I'd taken from the guard at New Hope, checked its charge and cursed loudly. The battery had almost enough juice to deliver the shock of static cling.
Gretchen ran over and said, "Follow me."
Rita tossed the knapsack over her shoulder. She shot me a distrustful glance, shaking her head, and I passed it on. "Fool me twice," I said, "shame on me."
But Gretchen held my arm. "You won't get out alive unless you follow me."
Someone yelled that the horses had stopped outside, but we didn't need a town crier to know when they kicked in the doors below and began blasting the Library. Screams leaked through the hardwood planks like steam.
Levi ran to the huge doors and slammed a thick wooden bolt through the eyes. He pulled a plank in the wall and revealed a hidden compartment the size of a pillbox hat. Levi reached in and pulled out an antique pistol.
"Use the exits!" Levi drew a bead on the door. "I won’t hold them back for long."
Most of the Council sat behind the great table, stock still, as if they'd been turned to salt. Levi shouted, "Move!" and got no response. Then he turned to the four of us.
"Get them out of here, Gretchen," he said guiltily, then stared at his daughter and offered a small smile, his eyes wet. "Please. Please, go."
"Jack," Gretchen urged, talons ripping my skin. “Now or never, Jack.”
I stared at her gold-flecked eyes and saw her: The girl in my family ROMs, the ticklish sister in the scuba suit beside me. And it was enough.
"OK."
Gretchen scooped up her daughter and jumped onto the stage. Rita and I followed as the Neuromantic bootheels rang out. Behind the curtain was a solid wall with a cracked redwood plank in its hand-carved wainscoting. Gretchen grabbed the small sliver, yanked down and stood back as the wall slid open on silent rollers.
I was almost through the portal when the Neuromantics splintered the doors off their hinges. They fell with an enormous crash, destroying the last four rows of pews.
Levi didn't wait for the dust to settle. He unloaded the antique pistol into the first four Neuromantics who stormed the door, the hand cannon bucking and speaking fire.
The fifth bullet fizzled, jamming the pistol. Levi fought the rusted chamber as the metallic tips of Neuromantic stun rifles poked through the opening. Finally, it clicked into place and he took aim on the pale eyebrows beneath Janak's black fedora, and must have thought he'd killed the Southpaw. But the kick wasn't from the pistol. It came from Janak's rifle, and the force tossed him across the room, his clothes on fire.
"Well," Janak said, "looks like we've interrupted your aborigine congress. But where is the guest of honor?"
"What are you talking about?" It was the lambchopped elder. "Who are you?"
There was the unmistakable crackle of a stun rifle. Then screams.
"Let's try that again."
I slammed the passage door shut, trying to blot out the sound of bodies hitting the floor. But the wooden planks conducted the noise, and our feet felt each body fall.
"Momma?" Sunny asked urgently.
Gretchen hushed her and led us through the dark passage to a ladder. Light came in through camouflaged skylights as we climbed down to a cellar. Sunny rode piggyback on me as Gretchen led us through a dank room filled with food jars and stacks of cedar chests. At the end of the room was a small staircase leading up.
"Change into these," Gretchen said, tossing us clothes from the chests. They were hooded white robes made of cabled hemp with bright blue belts, missionary garb. I sat Sunny down and shoved the robe over my head. Gretchen spun the combination lock on a safe and found two credit ROMs.
"These will pay your Tube fare back to the city and give you religious immunity if the datacops try to search you. When you get to the city, pass these to anyone in our hostels. They'll feed you and give you a place to stay, no questions."
Two stories above us, the great Council table crashed and splintered.
I grabbed Sunny. "Hide. Can you hide in those chests?"
She looked at them and nodded. "Chest Best Nest."
Sunny climbed into a chest and closed the lid over herself, holding her index finger to her lips. When she was hidden, Rita smeared some dust on the top to cover her tracks. Gretchen finished tying my robe, glanced up and angrily yanked the fedora off my head, then handed it to Rita for the knapsack.
"Take the trail to the old gas station, then follow the north branch," she said, smoothing my robe. "Treat those burns for at least another week. As for the fever --"
I put my hand over her mouth, shushing her motherly fussing, and kissed her forehead. Then I touched the palmtop in my pocket. It still held the ROM Gretchen had worn around her neck for eight years.
"I'm taking your cross out of here," I said. "I hope that's all right."
She kicked open the cellar door and said, "Use it to crucify them."
We cinched the robes into kilts and ran hurdles over the bodies in the meadow. The trail went behind the silo apartments and disappeared into the surrounding forest. We ran until the sun disappeared behind Shasta and the sky was streaked with bruises.
At the top of the third hill, Rita rasped: "Wait." She grabbed her knees and spit into the dirt. "God," she wheezed. "Do you think we could just have a nice, quiet date?"
I heard horses break through the branches, tugged her arm and said, "No."
We ran. Behind us, the Neuromantics barked orders and jabbed spurs into their horses. They were gaining on us. Somehow, we were going to have to lose them. So at the top of the fourth hill, with our hearts punching against our throats, I pointed at a familiar mound of dirt and tugged Rita's arm.
"It's the old gas station," I panted. "We'll have to hide in the ditch until nightfall."
Rita didn't nod, she just ran beside me toward the soft pile of loam I'd hauled out of the ditch. I heard a horse bay, looked back and saw three black fedoras bouncing through the greenery, their stun rifles catching the last sunlight.
We didn't stop until we were behind the pile of dirt. Jakob had hung the rope ladder on a tr
ee branch. While Rita stared balefully into the muddy hole, the black fedoras crested the third hill. I untied the ladder and lowered it into the hole, trying to ignore the gasoline splash when it hit bottom.
Rita winced. "Just tell me you don't have any matches."
"Not even two sticks."
I went first, knapsack slung over my shoulder. Rita followed, gulping air before climbing down. At the bottom I led her around the tank, its hull decaying into red flakes as our feet sloshed in puddles of ancient gasoline.
Overhead, the sky had turned indigo. Rita and I crouched behind the tank, hidden by the massive curve of its hull, and listened as the Neuromantics rode up.
"We've come six kilometers, Mr. Janak," one of them said. The hole gave his voice an echo. "I don't believe they could have run this far. Perhaps we missed them."
"Or," another said, "perhaps they didn't even come this way. All we saw were two idiots in missionary robes." His horse made a grunting sound. "I say we turn back."
"I concur," the first Neuromantic said. "We can dispatch our people in Redding."
"Besides," the second one said, "it's getting too dark to see."
Janak waited long enough for the fumes to make Rita swoon. Finally, he said, "At the Southpaw's Yukon Station, they had a test called a Sloat Hunt. They took us into the tundra, alone, gave us a knife and a survival kit, and told us not to come back until we had the pelt of a Sloat. Our instructors never described the Sloat, except to say it was an excellent predator and, odds were, strong enough to kill a few trainees."
Rita swayed and I buried her face into my robe, hoping the cabled hemp would filter the odor. Stars burned against the dark sky.
"Of course," Janak said jovially, "there's no such thing as a Sloat. We knew this. And four trainees walked back to the Station to tell our instructors they'd seen through the ruse, believing their sharp thinking would impress the academy. Our instructors told them, 'We told you not to return without a pelt.' And then they executed our classmates."
Janak paused. "The rest of us came back with our kills, as ordered. Since no one knew what a Sloat really was, no two pelts were the same. Bear pelts, seal pelts, human pelts. All were acceptable." Another pause. Then: "You see, gentlemen, I came here for two pelts. And I won't return to the city until I have them. Now. Your decision is this: You may help me find these pelts, or you may be these pelts."