by Gary Gibson
‘If they haven’t seen us by now,’ Rozalia murmured, as if reading my thoughts, ‘they never will.’
‘I wonder how the others are doing,’ said Yuichi. But no one answered him.
Rano Kau itself soon slipped to rearwards, and sooner than I’d anticipated Rozalia began to guide the dinghy in towards the rocky cove and the wrecked trawler. I saw it from the sea for the first time, its upper deck leaning towards us, streaked and pitted with rust.
Up above on the headland lay the coast road where Rozalia had been arrested. Should another patrol have chosen that moment to drive by, they would have had little difficulty in seeing us. That was unavoidable, and so we had to work fast.
Rozalia cut the engine a few metres from the water’s edge, jumping out and into the shallow water, taking hold of a short rope attached to the prow of the dinghy in order to pull it farther up the beach.
‘Give me a hand,’ she yelled. ‘We’re going to need to get this thing out of sight.’
Soon we were all splashing about, hauling on the rope until the dinghy slid up and on to the sand. We decided to hide it directly behind the wreck itself, on the seaward site, where it couldn’t be seen from land. I kept glancing towards the coast road, expecting to see approaching headlights, but there was nothing.
‘Okay,’ said Oskar, checking his rifle before snapping it shut and nodding to the rent in the trawler’s hull. ‘Let’s go see what’s in there.’
We followed in his wake, our feet leaving shallow impressions in the sand.
The bottom of the hull had been torn nearly in half, and gaped like a set of open jaws. I wondered under what circumstances the ship had gained such a deep and mortal wound, and if it had had anything to do with whatever cataclysm swept away the island’s original inhabitants. The tear was easily wide and tall enough to walk right inside, just as Rozalia had said.
I ducked down slightly as I followed Oskar into the dim interior of the beached craft and saw grey tarpaulins hanging from a cord strung from one end of the wreck to the other, like a washing line. Oskar tugged at a tarpaulin, and it fell onto the sand, revealing a tiny transfer stage.
The stage had been crammed into the available space on top of a crude platform, constructed from yet more tarpaulins, stretched across a rough wooden framework about three metres across. Most probably Casey and Wallace had scavenged the wood for the platform from one of the town’s many abandoned houses. I pressed my hand against it, and found to my surprise that it was a great deal sturdier than it appeared. I saw one of the rugged laptops normally used to control the portable stages sitting to one side of a field-pillar, connected to it via a cable. Yuichi stepped towards the laptop and tapped at its keyboard; the screen sprang to life in response.
‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Does it show the last programmed coordinates?’
Yuichi looked at me, his expression strained. ‘I don’t know why, Jerry, but he’s gone back to where Nadia got killed.’
I closed my eyes and listened to the sudden, terrified pounding of my heart.
Because the stage by necessity was so small, we had to transfer across to the bee-brain alternate in pairs, rather than all at once.
I went first, along with Yuichi, both of us with our weapons levelled in case we found Casey waiting on the other side. But once the shimmer of transition faded, I saw we were all alone.
In fact, everything looked just the same as it had the last time I had been here with Rozalia, except that it was now just before dawn, if I remembered the time-deviation between this alternate and the island’s.
I stepped out of the stage’s perimeter and saw a drone drop slowly out of the sky and settle onto its charging station. A light on its undercarriage switched from green to red as its central rotor fell silent.
The air smelled damp, moisture beading the grass. It must have rained sometime in the last couple of hours. The air shimmered around the stage as Rozalia and Oskar next arrived from the island. I continued to keep my rifle at the ready, wary of any surprises. The SUV I had last ridden into the city with Rozalia was still there, along with the EV truck.
‘Casey was here no more than a few hours ago,’ said Rozalia, stepping away from the transfer stage and towards the SUV. ‘Look.’
She pointed at a square of dry grass next to the SUV, barely visible in the dim light of dawn. The jeep had been parked there and had kept the patch of grass dry from the rain. Casey had obviously driven it into the city and not yet returned.
She stepped back, peering into the distance. ‘Guess it’s not much of a leap to assume he’s gone north, into the city.’ She looked at me. ‘Not really anywhere else he could be going.’
Yuichi headed for the SUV. ‘Well, at least we can take this—’
‘Hang on,’ I said, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. ‘I want to take a look at it first. Rozalia?’
She nodded, and together we crawled in and around the SUV for a solid twenty minutes, while Oskar and Yuichi watched in apparent bafflement. I couldn’t find a trace or scent of anything, and neither could Rozalia.
‘Mind telling us just what you’re looking for?’ asked Yuichi after a couple of minutes of this. ‘You worried he might have planted a bomb on it or something?’
‘Not a bomb,’ said Rozalia. ‘Worse.’
‘Remember what I told you back at the Mauna Loa?’ I said. ‘Casey smeared stuff onto our SUV so the bee-brains attacked us. ‘
‘Bile, to be precise,’ said Rozalia, peering at the back of a wheel and running her fingers along the rim.
Oskar blanched. ‘You were serious about that?’
She nodded.
‘So, did you find anything?’ asked Yuichi, when we finally gave up our search.
‘It’s clean, as far as I can tell,’ said Rozalia.
‘Maybe we should take the EV instead,’ said Oskar.
‘Nope.’ Rozalia shook her head. ‘We’d need to check it too, and there’s a lot more of it to search.’
‘How are we even going to find him?’ asked Yuichi. ‘I don’t remember anyone telling me just how we were going to do that.’
I looked over at Rozalia. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘the first time I came here it was because we were looking for labs with samples of whatever genetically engineered bug triggered the extinction event on this alternate. And since, according to Wallace, Casey’s looking for some way to wipe out the Authority, he could only be heading for those same labs.’
‘Makes sense to me,’ said Rozalia, nodding.
‘We all got shots to keep us safe while we’re here,’ said Oskar, ‘so there’s obviously an antidote already in existence . . .’
Rozalia shook her head. ‘Except we only have enough for ourselves, and there’d never be enough time to manufacture and distribute in enough quantity to make any difference to the Authority.’
‘Then what’s the point of even being here, if it might be too late?’ Oskar went on. ‘Or is there any way of figuring out if he’s already gone and done the deed?’
Yuichi stepped over to the control rig for the transfer stage and tapped at its keyboard. ‘Looks like he’s been back and forth between here and the island a good few times over the last couple of days. I don’t see any other programmed destinations, or any place that might be the Authority.’ He glanced over at us. ‘If he hasn’t been there yet, then my guess is, whatever he’s got planned, he hasn’t done it yet.’
‘So we go looking for him at Retièn’s gene labs,’ I said.
Oskar nodded his agreement. ‘It’s just about the only place Casey could be, assuming there’s something there he can use to wipe out the Authority. And Casey has been on missions here more than anyone else, if I think back.’
I looked back across at the ruined, collapsing city and the ramshackle Hives rising above its skyline, and shuddered.
‘You know,’ said Oskar, rubbing at his chin, ‘it just hit me that maybe we don’t have to go chasing after Casey at all.’
‘How do you mean?�
� asked Yuichi.
Oskar pointed to the stage. ‘That’s the only way in and out of this alternate, right? If Casey wants to go anywhere – the Authority, the island or anywhere else – he’s going to have to come back here, surely? So maybe all we need to do is sit tight right here and wait for him to show up.’
‘He’s got a point,’ said Yuichi, looking at me and Rozalia. ‘We’d have a hell of a welcoming party set up for when he did show up.’
‘I don’t see any problem with that,’ said Rozalia, nodding towards the supplies tent. ‘We’ve got food and water to keep us going for a while, not to mention that we’re a good safe distance from the Hives.’
‘What about the night patrols?’ I asked. ‘Could they come this way?’
‘It’s possible, but not very likely this far from either Hive,’ she said. ‘Besides, we’re way out in the open here and we’d see them coming from a long way off. And even if they did, we could transfer back across to the island in a pinch.’
I felt myself begin to relax for the first time in a long while. Maybe things were going to work out okay after all, and Casey had painted himself into a corner, trapped on this world with no way past four heavily armed Pathfinders.
Yuichi shrugged, unslinging his rifle before walking inside the supplies tent. He returned moments later with an armful of cans.
‘If anyone fancies cooking some of this up,’ he said, ‘I’ll take first watch.’
‘Hey,’ said Rozalia, not long after. ‘Incoming.’
Yuichi and Oskar had gathered up some loose wood and made a campfire. It was getting gradually lighter as daybreak approached. At that moment, I had been close to dozing off. Yuichi was sitting quietly nearby, looking contemplative, while Oskar stood on the roof of the EV, scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars.
I sat next to the monitoring screen for the drones, which showed an aerial heat-map of the city and the Hives. If Casey was travelling back towards us from the city, the drone currently in the air would pick him up, and we’d have at least some warning that he was on his way. So far, it had found nothing apart from the seemingly random movements of night patrols. A second drone sat in its charging slot nearby.
I glanced up, following the direction of Rozalia’s gaze, to see the dark speck of the second drone dropping towards the charging station.
‘Does one of those things stay up all the time?’ I asked her.
‘Pretty much.’
I turned to look at Yuichi, who had spoken.
‘They run on automatic, twenty-four hours a day, long as you keep the station’s batteries topped up.’
The drone dropped low enough that I could hear the lawnmower buzz of its rotor. Once it was in place, the other drone, now recharged, would lift up and take over surveillance.
The buzz increased rapidly in pitch, the speck moving faster against the dawn sky. I frowned; it was coming in awfully fast . . .
I rolled to one side, thinking the drone was plummeting straight towards me. Instead of slowing down, it had picked up speed, giving a high-pitched whine as it executed a kamikaze dive into the transfer stage’s control rig. The sound of the impact rolled across the grass and the reservoir beyond, echoing faintly.
Oskar scrambled down from the roof of the EV, his mouth open in shock, and dashed over to peer down at what was left of the rig.
‘It’s smashed to pieces,’ he moaned, reaching up to grab at his head. ‘Oh, Jesus. Jesus. We’re fucking stranded.’
I stared, dry mouthed, at the smashed pieces of machinery lying scattered all across the clearing.
Oskar walked stiff-legged back over to the EV and vomited noisily next to one of its wheels.
‘This can’t be happening,’ Rozalia mumbled. ‘It can’t be.’
I looked at Yuichi. ‘There must be some way we can get back,’ I said.
He stared helplessly at the ruins. ‘I don’t think so, Jerry,’ he said quietly. ‘I really don’t.’
I went over to kneel by the smashed rig, pushing my hand through the bits and pieces of shredded component. ‘Maybe there’s still some way we could try to fix it . . .’
‘No, Jerry,’ Yuichi repeated. ‘Look at it, for fuck’s sake. It’s completely trashed.’
I tried to make sense of what had just happened, to quell the dreadful awareness that we might very well be lost on this alternate forever. ‘Could it have been an accident?’ I asked, looking around at him in panic. ‘Some failure in the drone’s programming, maybe, or . . . ?’
‘No,’ said Rozalia, her voice taut. ‘You saw what happened. It didn’t just crash – it aimed itself at the control rig.’ She turned to look at the second drone, still sitting on its charging mount. ‘It’s got to be Casey. Somehow he programmed the drone to do that. He knew we’d try to find him. Nothing else makes sense.’
We’d walked into a trap, I thought numbly. Like blind men stumbling into the mouth of a lion.
Oskar staggered back over from the SUV, wiping his mouth before grabbing hold of his rifle from where he had dropped it. He lifted it to his shoulder and fired at the surviving drone, still parked on its charging station. The drone tilted backwards, then slid off its mount before falling to the hard-packed soil. A small trickle of greasy smoke rose from a bullet hole in its ventilator grille.
I heard a click, and Yuichi stepped forward. He had taken the safety off his own rifle and now had it aimed straight at Oskar’s belly. There was a look in his eyes I had never seen before.
‘You idiot,’ Yuichi seethed. ‘You stupid, asinine, trigger-happy, moronic fucking idiot.’
Oskar stared back at him in fright and confusion.
‘Yuichi, don’t,’ I said.
‘I could have reprogrammed that drone from here,’ Yuichi continued, ignoring me. ‘I could have rebooted it, cleared out its memory, then sent it back up to search that whole damn city for Casey. But no. You had to fucking destroy it.’
‘Yuichi. Stop. Please.’
It was Rozalia this time. She had lifted her own rifle to her shoulder, and aimed it at Yuichi.
‘We can’t do this,’ she continued, and I could tell she was fighting to keep her voice steady. ‘We’re all in this together. Trying to kill each other isn’t going to help us figure a way out of this mess.’
‘For all we know, Casey could have been watching us through the damn thing’s cameras the whole damn time we’ve been here!’ Oskar screamed. He threw his rifle to the ground and fell to his knees, and I saw that he was weeping. ‘Don’t you understand?’ he wailed, tumbling to his knees. ‘We’re dead. Dead!’
‘Is it possible?’ I asked. ‘Could he have been watching us from somewhere else in the city?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rozalia said quietly. ‘The drones broadcast their data back to us, so I guess it’d be possible to rig up some kind of portable control unit. Except Casey doesn’t have the brains or the know-how to do any such thing.’
‘But if anyone could, Wallace could,’ said Yuichi.
‘What does it matter any more?’ Oskar shouted hoarsely. ‘There’s no point looking for Casey any more, not if we can’t get home, not without—’
They all ducked as I fired my rifle into the air. I was wasting a bullet, but I didn’t care. I’d had enough. Oskar tripped on something underfoot as he scrambled backwards from me.
‘You’re not thinking straight,’ I shouted. ‘None of you is. Why the hell would Casey strand himself here along with us? Does that sound to you like something he’d do?’
I brought my rifle back down, pointing it at the ground.
‘Jerry,’ said Yuichi, ‘did you see what just happened?’
‘I did. But do you really believe Casey doesn’t have some other way out of here?’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Rozalia.
‘Use your brains,’ I said. ‘There has to be more than one transfer stage around here. With access to every transfer coordinate the Authority has, who’s to say Casey can’t scrounge up a se
cond portable transfer stage from somewhere, as a backup in case someone tracked him down the same way we just did? That way, if someone discovered his secret stage back on the island while he was on some alternate, he wouldn’t necessarily get trapped there – he’d always have a way out. What makes more sense to you – Casey dooming himself with the rest of us, or him figuring out some way to strand only us?’
Oskar gaped open-mouthed at me. Yuichi chuckled and shook his head, then walked away to the edge of the clearing, his back to the rest of us.
‘Maybe he made a mistake,’ Rozalia said slowly.
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘he’s overplayed his hand. He didn’t need to attack us.’
‘God damn,’ said Yuichi, turning back towards us. ‘You’re right. If he’d just left us alone – assuming we’re not completely insane, and he really does have another stage out there somewhere – he could have got on with his job while we just sat here waiting forever for him to turn up.’
I pointed towards the city. ‘He’s panicking,’ I said, suddenly sure beyond a doubt that I was right. ‘Otherwise, he’d never have done something this stupid. He’s trying to slow us down, and that means we still have a chance of stopping him.’
‘Then we need to find that other stage as well,’ said Oskar, his voice low and full of venom, ‘because if we don’t we’ll be stuck in this shithole alternate for the rest of our very short lives.’
When Rozalia’s eyes met mine they were full of bleak anger. ‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘And then we kill the fucking son of a bitch.’
‘Yes.’ I nodded, and saw the others were doing the same. ‘And then we kill him.’
TWENTY-THREE
Yuichi rooted around inside the supply tent until he located the laminated maps of the city, then spread them out for us on the fold-down table. Once again, I found myself studying a map of Sao Paolo, a tangle of blue and red lines sketched over it with marker pens indicating the last-known safe routes. My eyes followed the length of the Pinheiros as it cut diagonally north to south through the city. A circle around several city blocks in the north-west indicated the location of Retièn’s laboratories.