On the last day of Autumn, Na’Rodney
Jones Castillo-Vargas Daylight Hatshepsut lost his only friend. Sitting beside Great
Uncle Bruce’s body, gently holding the cool hand, he said softly, “This isn’t
what I meant when I said I wanted things to change.”
There was a heavy knock at the door
downstairs.
He bolted to his feet and shouted,
“Don’t answer the door, Payne!” He dashed out of the bedroom and took the steps
down the narrow staircase six at a time, using the rails like parallel bars,
swinging his feet down. He heard the door unbolt and cursed.
Payne screamed but stopped abruptly.
Na’Rodney landed at the bottom of the stairs. Two women dressed in black suits,
white shirts with black ties and sunglasses held Payne between them.
Then someone clotheslined him with
a forearm, knocking him backwards and partway up the stairs where his head
slammed against the edge of a step and he blacked out.
When he woke up, his head throbbed
and his ears rang.
The farmhouse was an inferno and black
suits were using flamethrowers on the well-kept, red painted barn, the old
Quonset hut storage shed, the slat-sided corn crib and the new garage.
Another man and women stood near
him. He couldn’t see Payne.
Na’Rodney scrambled to his feet,
fell back to his hands and knees and threw up.
“You should take it easy there,
kid. You have a concussion,” said the woman.
“Who are you?” Na’Rodney said,
lifting his head.
“Doesn’t matter,” said the man.
“What about G’Uncle Bruce’s books?
They matter!” He flexed his fingers, digging into the cold soil.
“They’re burning,” the man said.
“What are you going to do with
Payne?”
The man laughed, “Nosy kid, aren’t
you?”
The woman’s voice was a cold
counterpoint to the waves of heat from the fire. “We’re making your uncle disappear.”
“He’s my great uncle,” Na’Rodney muttered
as he surged to his feet, launching himself forward and hitting her at the
knees. She hit the ground as the man punched him in the head and Na’Rodney went
down again. The man said as the woman kicked him in the head and Na’Rodney
blacked out, “He’s as stubborn as the old man.”
When Na’Rodney woke up a second
time, we was sore all over. Especially his ribs. Something jingled as he rolled
to his side then rolled back. When he patted his belly, he found a pair of cold
metal disks. He picked them up and held them to his eyes, vision blurry for a
bit until he recognized them as maglev train tokens. He threw them as far as he
could. He wasn’t leaving until he found Payne. The nearest train was in Duluth
which was being torn to bits by giant deconstruct and recovery robots – “dearr”
– reprocessing pavement, brick buildings and concrete rebar into raw materials to
be shipped south for the construction of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Vertical
Village. He would be refusing their oblique invitation.
Besides, Duluth was over a hundred and
forty klicks away.
He shivered. From his EMT classes,
he knew he was shocky and possibly had a concussion. He also knew had to find
his cousin, Payne. The sun was setting. He rolled to his hands and knees, gagged
and tried to throw up his insides. Nothing came out but a thin trickle of nose-burning
hydrochloric acid. By the time he could move, it was dark and the Minnesota
December night breathed frigid at his back.
Blue flames still wandered over
what was left of the house, flaring sometimes into orange fire. The ground was
frozen hard but he crawled like a baby until he could feel heat. Fuzzy thoughts
were starting to jump out at him with startling clarity.
Payne. He had to find his cousin
before he got hurt. He’d spent his life protecting Payne from town bullies the
way G’Uncle Bruce had spent his life protecting both of them from bigger
bullies. As a retired president of InterPol
he’d called in favors if anyone powerful chose to bother him or his un-adopted
sons.
Na’Rodney knew he couldn’t protect
Payne or Angelique. The most powerful person he knew now was professor Manaar
Minix who ran the Coleraine Minerals Research Laboratory. He had little
education. Less power.
His breath formed a cloud in front
of his face. He wasn’t going anywhere tonight. He’d die of exposure if he let
himself curl up on the bare ground too far from the house. Besides, him and G’Uncle
Bruce and Payne had slept out under the stars plenty of times. Of course they
made sure Payne was tight in his bag so he wouldn’t wriggle free and wander
around. Childhood Disintegrative Disorder had whittled him down from a smart,
sassy pre-adolescent to a twelve-year-old-sized toddler.
Suddenly he felt dizzy and said
loudly, “This is a post-hypnotic suggestion, Rod. Go to the split rock cache for
further instructions.” Slapping his hands over his mouth, Na’Rodney silently
cursed as he lay down. He wasn’t going anywhere tonight.
He crawled to the foundation of the
burning house until the ground felt hot then laid down, parallel to the wall.
Heat radiated from the ground. He was on the back side of the house, so anyone
coming up the driveway wouldn’t be able to see him.
Not that anyone would be coming. Most
everything outside of the Vertical Villages had been shut down. Squinting into
the night he caught the flicker of firelight from the white wind turbine a
quarter mile from the house as it turned slowly in the wind. He watched the
rhythmic whirl while his back warmed up, then rolled over again to warm his
front. Something banged and he jumped. A plume of sparks swirled into the night
air. With that image, Na’Rodney drifted off to sleep. His last thought was that
anyone who thought he’d die in his sleep was crazy.
He opened his eyes on starry
darkness. He sat up stiffly and stretched. He could still feel heat from the
coals when a breeze blew, but it was over. He let a wave of dizziness pass
before he tried to get to his knees, then stood up all the way, swaying a bit.
Shadowy lumps lit by fire flares were all that was left of the four
outbuildings. Only the chimney remained of the house, the lower third buried
with blackened debris. The charred ruin of a CHEAPALIN converted Jeep Cherokee sat
in the pile of garage charcoal. And under the house’s charcoal? An incinerated
library and G’Uncle Bruce’s bones.
Na’Rodney’s eyes teared up and he
turned away, heading for the trail to the back forty. He’d hiked it hundreds of
times and picked his way along the familiar path even in the moonless darkness.
The horizon was starting to glow with sunrise.
It was going to be the shortest day
of the year, the first day of winter.
Na’Rodney turned off the main path
on a deer trail that meandered through low underbrush. He kept his head down as
the morning light grew stronger and the sky to the east bled red. That usually
meant, “Snow. Crap,” he said. His stomach rumbled, too.
The glacial terrain of this part of
North America was strewn with boulders of every size. Another rough kilometer
off the main trail, Na’Rodney stopped in front of the house-sized rock he’d
been looking for. The hike had kept him warm after leaving G’Uncle’s pyre but he
wouldn’t stay that way long in his thin blue sweater. His feet would be
freezing soon in the gray canvas Converse® tennis shoes. Turning sideways, he
slipped into an inverted V-shaped cave. Half-way in, the crack widened to a
hollow, almost as if the thing had once been a massive geode.
In the dark, he reached for a ledge
where they kept an LED flashlight.
He touched flesh instead and
staggered backward, falling on his butt.
The flashlight flared to life in
his face, blinding him. A female voice said, “Oh, it’s you.”
He recognized the voice and
replied, “What the hell are you doing here?” as he got up from the cold ground,
careful to keep his head down. He’d cracked it more times than he cared to
remember. “This was G’Uncle’s and my secret.”
“Bruce said I was supposed to come
here if anything drastic happened to the farm,” the voice replied. The female
attached to the voice turned off the flashlight, plunging them into the dark
again.
“Why would he want the housekeeper
to come here?” Na’Rodney snapped. Angelique Mary Ozaawindib had been a pain in
the neck since she started working for them two years ago. Her parents had died
in a car crash, though she’d declared her independence from them when she was
sixteen because they were, in her own words, “failed crack-chemists and
everything that that implied”. No matter what kind of people Angelique’s
parents been, he hated that she’d just dumped them. He’d have given anything to
still have his whole family – Mom and brother dying by a Toronto terrorist’s
bomb; unable to deal with it, Dad left him in G’Uncle’s care two months later.
Angelique was saying, “...same
reason he wanted his unadopted great-nephew and retarded nephew to come here.”
“Take that...” He froze, motionless.
All he needed was to make his concussion worse and he’d never be able to find
Payne. He rubbed his forehead, then thumb and middle finger rubbed his temples.
“Just shut up.”
In the darkness, Angelique
relented, “I meant that everyone he drug into his orbit looked like something
the cat ate and threw up.” She paused, “Where’s Payne?”
A heavy silence fell then Na’Rodney
said, “G’Uncle Bruce didn’t care about you.”
“Was that why he was tutoring me in
differential equations and made sure I learned jujutsu from the only
Master in Duluth?” Angelique snapped. “Now where is Payne? You didn’t leave him
back at the house, did you?”
Jealous, he ignored the second
question and said, “He let you do that?” Na’Rodney turned away from the voice.
“He said I couldn’t.”
Angelique had the grace to remain
silent. A moment later, the flashlight came back on, this time aimed at the
roof of the cave. “You still haven’t told me where Payne is.” She was sitting
on the floor, on a thick mat, her legs crossed. She held out an envelope. “This
is addressed to you.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t read it
already.” He reached for the envelope.
She pulled it back a bit, “I said it
was addressed to you. Where’s Payne?”
“Why would that stop you?” he tried
to snap the envelope with his fingers.
She pulled it away. “Because I
loved your great-uncle Bruce.”
Na’Rodney swallowed hard then took
the envelope. The flashlight reversed as she illuminated herself. He grunted
and tore it open, shaking. If she hadn’t been such a pain, and if G’Uncle Bruce
had ever given him time to do anything but chores, study and teach Payne, he
might have gone for her.
He took the light then the letter.
Holding the light in his teeth, he unfolded the paper. It was one sentence in G’Uncle’s
tight handwriting, though the hand was steadier than it had been in years. He
folded it, put it in his back pocket and said, “There’s a door in the floor
here that leads to a secret chamber where he has stuff stored for us. By the
way, the people who burned the farm down and immolated G’Uncle Bruce’s body
kidnapped Payne.”
“What?”
Shaking his head, he pointed the
light at the floor and said, “You’re gonna have to move your butt if I’m gonna
open the door.”
“No! What about Bruce? What about
Payne?”
Poking in her direction to get her
to scoot off the door, Na’Rodney explained the death, folks in black and
Payne’s disappearance. He bent over, moved the mat aside and scooped his
fingers under a recessed handle.
He wasn’t sure what he was
expecting – maybe an underground redoubt stocked with a furnace and air
conditioner, food, computers, a library and entertainment systems in order to
survive a nuclear winter. What he found was a ladder leading down to a concrete
floor two meters below.
“Well, at least he left us something.”
“What?”
“Let’s find out,” he said and
climbed down the ladder. Dim lights came up showing a room walled with
unfinished concrete blocks and shelves. He turned off the flashlight. On the
shelves were stacks of clothing for various seasons, labeled packets of
freeze-dried and dry foods and two external frame backpacks, a red one half full,
a green one empty. They sat beneath a shelf jammed with camping gear
appropriate to different seasons.
Angelique climbed down after him
and he moved aside. On one of the shelves, sitting by itself, was a clipboard.
He felt Angelique beside him. It was a single page, but when he was done, he
sniffed and handed it to her. She said faintly, “He pretty much knew this was
going to happen, didn’t he?”
Na’Rodney squeezed his nose, wiped
his fingers on his blue jeans then said, “He was smart.” He turned the flashlight
on again and strode to the half full pack, put the light in his mouth and aimed
it inside. He reached in and began to take out books, turned to lay them out on
the floor in a semi-circle around him. He swiveled around on his knees and
aimed the light, reading, “CARRIE, by Stephen King; DUNE, by Frank Herbert;
PHILOSOPHI AE NATURALIS PRINCIPIA by Sir Isaac Newton; ORIGIN OF SPECIES by
Charles Darwin; and a German Bible, probably a GUTENBERG.” All five were sealed
in plastic bags that had inflated sides, holding each book in a transparent
bubble. At the bottom was another envelope addressed to Angelique. Na’Rodney
took it out and handed it back to her.
She tore it open and read it under
the dim light. She said, “Each one of these is worth a lot of money – the King
is a first edition, signed copy. Bruce says that if we approach any of the
people on his list, we should be able to sell it for market value.” She paused
and choked.
“What?”
“The Gutenberg?”
“Yeah?”
“When he wrote this, the copy he
has there he got from someone he knew at the University of Texas at Austin.
It’s worth somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty million dollars.”
His mouth opened and he squeaked.
“Excuse me?”
Angelique ignored the squeak and
added, “The buyer he lists here lives in Augsburg, Germany.”
“How are we supposed to get there?”
She held up the letter, “The first
buyers – the ones that might be interested in CARRIE, are in or near Duluth.”
“So?”
“The copy of DUNE has a buyer in Minneapolis-St.
Paul Vertical Village.”
Na’Rodney gulped, the sound audible
in the hidden underground room. He managed, “Then?”
“The one by Sir Isaac Newton? We’re
supposed to sell that for ninety-five thousand dollars in Chicago Vertical
Village.”
“Does he say what we’re supposed to
use the money for?”
“He says we’re supposed to bribe
people then pay for passage in whatever way we can to cross the country, the Atlantic
and Europe.”
“Where are we going?”
“The Erg of Bilma?”
“Which is where?”
“I think it’s in Niger – it’s a
part of the Sahara.” He didn’t respond. He went back to the pack and replaced
the books in the order in which he’d taken them out. He leaned the pack against
the wall, crossed over to the ladder and climbed up. “Where are you going?” Angelique
asked.
“Home,” he said back down. “You can
go to the Erg of Bilma for whatever crazy reason G’Uncle Bruce is sending you.
I’m going to go find Payne. I don’t think his kidnapping was part of G’Uncle’s
plan. Have a nice trip.” He turned, climbed and left the cave behind. Reaching
the main trail, on impulse, he ran back to the house. He was kicking through
the foundation debris which were still hot, cursing and crying when Angelique
caught up with him.
She called from the side, “I
brought you a winter coat, a change of clothes and boots.”
He walked out of the charred ruins
and took the coat, sat down, flipped off his tennis shoes and put the boots on,
lacing them tight. They were his, well-broken in and they fit like warm gloves.
He’d wondered where they’d disappeared to. She handed him mittens when he stood
up.
She was wearing the red pack. He
studied her until she said, “I packed as much food as I could get in there.
Layered the clothes, and added the tent,” she turned showing him the tent and a
slender, rolled sleeping back on top.
“You’re going to the Erg of Bilma,
then?” he asked. She nodded. “Why?”
She shrugged, “There’s nothing for
me around here anymore. Coleraine will be shut down in another year – there’s
already talk of one of the dearrs making its way along US 2, eating deserted towns.
It’ll get here. Then what could I do, become a driver for the robot dearr? A
farmer?” She paused, shrugging her shoulders hard enough to toss the pack up
and settle on her shoulders better. She belted it around her middle.
“Why does he want us to go there?”
She dug the letter from her back
pocket and handed it to him. “He says that a coalition of African nations is
building something like the Ptolemaic Ancient Library of Alexandria. They are
requesting copies of everything that’s ever been printed.”
Na’Rodney rolled his eyes skyward.
“Another group that believes that ebooks are a bad thing?” He shook his head in
disgust, “Just like G’Uncle Bruce.”
“You think ebooks are a good thing?”
He swung his arm around to take in
the farm and then pointed at the house, “Look how far paper books got G’Uncle
Bruce – his freakin’ funeral pyre!” He couldn’t stop the tears that welled up,
but he’d be damned if he was going to wipe them away in front of her. “Of
course paper books are stupid! Ereaders were the most profound revolution in
the world! Paper rots, it’s heavy and impossible to keep for very long. Books
take up space and they make you take care of them when you should be taking
care of more important things!”
She glared at him. “Funny you
should say ‘the world’ when what you meant was ‘for the wealthy’.”
“That’s not what I meant! Anyone
can buy an ereader. They’re cheap and easy...”
Angelique held up a hand, saying,
“This isn’t an argument we can finish in five minutes – or five hours. The only
way we can do justice to the discussion is if you come with me.”
“You’re going to the Erg of Bilma right now?”
“Coleraine for starters, then it
seems to me Duluth would be next,” she said.
“I have to find Payne.”
“Can’t we do both? Coleraine’s an
hour away by foot.”
He snorted and said, “Follow me.”
Leading her around the concrete block foundation they scurried to the tree
line, ducking into the half-leafless woods of mixed hardwood trees and pine. He
stopped at another pile of glacial till boulders. Kneeling, he moved a flat
stone to one side.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking out my skateboard.”
He pulled a hunter’s orange body
board from a small cave under the rocks. “What good’s that going to do us?”
He stood up and tapped the surface
of the board. It changed color from orange to a rippling copy of the dry brush
underneath it. Tucking it under one arm, he said, “It’s not going to do us any
good until we get to US 2. It and 169 were coated with CHEAPALIN years ago.” He
flipped it over. The bottom was coated with a thick, black, asphalt-like
substance. “This has CHEAPALIN, too.”
“You’re kidding!”
He snorted, “Yeah, G’Uncle Bruce
didn’t know about it ‘cause he’d have screamed his head off about me risking my
life road surfing.” He shrugged. “Now THAT was fun.” He led the way to the
power line clearing right-of-way and turned east to follow it to Swenson Road about
one kilometer further. Once they reached that and had hiked another klick or
so, they took Scenic Highway, staying to the side of the road while Angie
muttered, “No idea why this stupid road ever got such a stupid name,” and ready
to duck into the ditch if anyone else was out. She said, “So we get to
Coleraine and you find Payne. How are we supposed to get to Duluth? Walking will
take forever.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we
come to it,” Na’Rodney said, setting off for town.
Muttering to herself, Angelique
said, “There aren’t any bridges in northern Minnesota.”
There’d also been no large towns north
of Coleraine even when Na’Rodney had joined G’Uncle Bruce on the farm. There’d
never been much traffic. There was less now since the Consolidation and
Recovery of the Wild had spawned the dearrs and their harvest of building materials
for the four-kilometer-tall Minneapolis-St. Paul Vertical Village.
When they heard the whine of an
electric Polaris Ranger XL ATV with the loud, gravel-crushing noise of fat
tires on the road behind them, they panicked at first, rolling into the ditch
after tripping each other. The vehicle was covered by a complete, metal cab in
the same camouflage green as the body with the Coleraine Minerals Research Lab logo
stenciled in white on the side.
Na’Rodney jumped up, “Doctor Minix!
Doctor Minix!” The ATV’s whine faded and the vehicle rolled to a stop then
backed up.
A thin, graying woman with a large hair
bun pinned at the base of her neck opened the door and leaned out and exclaimed,
“Na’Rodney! Why are you hiding in a ditch?” Na’Rodney signaled to Angelique,
hurrying to the ATV, relating what had happened. Dr. Minix gestured to the two of
them, saying, “Get in. Put my mineral samples on the seat and get down on the
floor.”
“There’s not much room...”
Angelique said.
“Place the backpack in the boot. We’re
not going far. Na’Rodney, toss the board in the front seat.”
Settled, she started the ATV
rolling again, saying, “That explains the sky last night. I was hoping it
wasn’t going to come to this.”
“Come to what?”
“Your great uncle has espoused some
pretty radical ideas to the technophiles in Washington.”
“Like his book love?”
“He was a highly vocal Paper. He also
believed that regular people should be able to check up on anyone in authority
over them.” She paused, adding, “Though I dare say he made plenty of enemies
when he worked for Interpol. I take it he never made it clear why he opposed ebooks,
did he?”
“Information fluidity, he called
it,” Angelique spoke up.
“He was a misanthrope,” Na’Rodney
exclaimed at the same time. “He didn’t trust anyone to leave the written word
alone. He said it changed often enough when people had to do it by hand – like
when scribes or typesetters shortened things for convenience or if they didn’t
think a word or two were necessary. He figured there would be nothing stopping
anyone making whatever changes they wanted to make...”
“Shut up and get down,” Doctor
Minix breathed sharply. She tossed the body board into the back seat. Na’Rodney
pulled it over them and tapped it to life. “I’m taking the railroad bed trail
back into Coleraine. I don’t think there’ll be anything on 169, but we best not
take the chance.” They drove for twenty minutes, then the ATV slowed and came
to a stop, Dr. Minix spoke with someone for a few moments, then drove on. She
breathed again, “I see your cousin.”
Na’Rodney tried to sit up.
Angelique held his arm while Dr. Minix pressed down from above. She said, “Not
now. He’s with two men, drinking a can of soda.”
Na’Rodney squirmed harder, “What
kind is it? Artificial color or artificial flavor or preservatives can set him
off! If they gave him the wrong kind…”
Angelique whispered, “Stay down! If
they see you, they’ll just beat you up worse than yesterday then arrest Dr.
Minix and me.”
Dr. Minix cursed then said,
“They’ve got a CHEAPALIN car, probably armored, but something far worse.”
“What?” Na’Rodney tried to sit up
again.
“It looks like they’ve called up a
dearr. I can see it from here.” Dr. Minix kept driving, turning right then left
twice. The ATV rolled to a stop as she said, “You can look now.”
Na’Rodney and Angelique peeked over
the front seats. To their right was the dearr, an asphalt grinding milling
machine and concrete crusher with an earth-mover trailer behind it. Fifty
meters long, it was as wide as the highway. Silent now, it hulked, steaming and
buzzing at the edge of town. Angelique whispered, “Bruce said they wouldn’t get
here until the town closed down!”
Dr. Minix drew a deep breath and
said, “Looks like the town is about to get closed down. Starting with your
farm.”
“They can’t do that!” Na’Rodney
exclaimed.
“Earth Government can do anything
it wants to as long as they say it’s in the name of technological advancement, Humanity’s
best interest. When they’re done, the Vertical Villages will be humanity’s
greatest achievement since space travel,” she murmured.
“What about your job?”
She snorted, “We still need iron,
copper, nickel, tungsten and sulfides – and we need people to supervise the
High Energy Physics Lab at the Soudan Mine. I’ll be here for a long time.” She
paused. “As long as I don’t get arrested helping you.” She looked back up the
highway to where the folks in black were standing beside the car. She said, “We
have to get your brother back and then send you on your way.”
“My cousin,” Na’Rodney said. “Payne
is my cousin.”
“Whatever,” Angelique and Dr. Minix
said at the same time. The doctor stepped into the intersection. She signaled for
them to follow, saying, “Bring your things. This is where I have to leave you
off.”
“What?” Na’Rodney exclaimed.
Angelique stopped with the backpack
half on then jerked her chin at Na’Rodney. “Listen, I have an idea. You have to
take the pack.”
“I’m not gonna take that thing! It
must weigh a ton!”
“It doesn’t weigh a ton! Now get
over here and take it before the folks in black see us and pack Payne into the
car and leave town!”
Na’Rodney huffed, walked over and
took the pack. It was lighter than he’d expected. He settled it on his hips and
belted it without thinking. He said, “I think what we should do...”
“What we’re going to do is this...”
Angelique began.
“There’s nothing for it but to...”
said Dr. Minix.
From the edge of town, the dearr
roared to life, lowering the massive blade and rumbling forward, pushing up a
wave of worn asphalt, grinding it and spewing it into the trailer behind it. In
the distance, a yellow blob moved. “There’s another scraper bowl coming up from
behind,” shouted Angelique.
Dr. Minix pushed them back to the
ATV and shouted over the noise of the dearr, “You’re going to have to rescue Payne,
get past the dearr then take Itasca County 10 south until you can intersect
with US 2. Even then, you’ll need to travel at night.”
“Why can’t we just beat up the
folks in black and take their car?” Na’Rodney asked. Both women stared at him
then shook their heads in unison.
Dr. Minix shouted, “We need a
distraction...”
Na’Rodney shook his head. G’Uncle
Bruce often decried his great-nephew’s impulsive behaviors. He tossed the road
board to the surface of US 169. CHEAPALIN on the road reacted with the board’s
CHEAPALIN. It was a bioengineered DNA patchwork of cellulose, heme, eel, ameba,
peat moss, alfalfa, leukocytes, iron and a mix of Notothenioidei and Noctilucan
cells, more commonly known by its acronym CHEAPALIN. The entire network of
asphalt roads in North America had been converted into living organisms and the
two identical magnetic fields repelled each other. He felt like he was sliding
on resurfaced ice with newly-sharpened ice skate blades. The advantage was that
he could push off from rough asphalt because his foot wasn’t magnetic and
wouldn’t slip. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw someone, but
ignored it. He was accelerating toward the folks in black like he was on a
frictionless skateboard! None of them was paying attention to him as he slipped
toward them, shoving as fast as he could. Terminal velocity – he couldn’t push
himself any faster – so he crouched, leaning forward to tilt the board. The
extra mass of the pack allowed him to accelerate “downhill”.
When they noticed all they did was
stare. Neither one drew a gun. Or a flame thrower.
Payne dropped his can of soda and
cried, “Na! Na!”
They went for whatever weapons they
carried concealed.
He was ready to stand, bracing
himself to grab Payne, just as Angelique streaked from behind a house, leaped
into the air and kicked first one, then the other folk in black, laying both
out in the road and then landing on her feet, crouching, facing the two
unconscious agents.
Na’Rodney grabbed his cousin in a
trick they’d practiced several times when supposedly out sleeping under the
stars. Na’Rodney swung his cousin up. The younger boy wrapped his legs around
him from the side, under the backpack, crooning, “Na. Na. Na.”
Na’Rodney spun the board under his
feet, reversing its direction so it would slow down, then dropped to his feet,
Payne still clinging to him. He looked at Angelique and said, “G’Uncle was
right, you’re downright scary.” She opened her mouth to reply, but one of the
folks in black groaned. “We should get moving,” he said. “Should we take the
car?”
“Only if we want them to track us
from the air and pick us up any time they want to.” She looked around and said,
“The Doc said we should hike down 10 then pick up 2. Sounds like a good plan to
me.”
“Yeah, but they’ll expect that.”
“What else can we do?”
“Blue Bill Bay Road to its end then
cut through the marsh to Rydberg Road...”
She closed her eyes. “Trout Lake
shoreline to what, Blackberry?”
He tilted his head sideways.
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Sixteen klicks; a day of hard
walking, maybe three for us. Cold,” she said.
“You have a tent, there’s three of
us, shouldn’t be a problem. We should take our time. We can camp out in one of
the old places on the lake.”
“I didn’t pack much food.”
“Should be able to forage.”
“When we get to US 2?”
“Take it south to Duluth.”
Payne smiled and said, “Doof!”
Na’Rodney ruffled the boy’s hair and nodded.
“We can’t all ride on your road
board,” Angelique said.
“We’ll keep an eye out for a POS
and cannibalize it.” He held up the board, “That’s how I built this.”
“What about Payne?” The female folk
in black lifted her head, looking blearily at them. Angelique kicked her in the
face.
“Cruel.”
Angelique shrugged. “Your G’Uncle
did things he regretted too so he could protect you guys. Like killing people
who found out too much about you and paying people off who found out too much
out about me.” She paused, lips thinning and added before Na’Rodney was able
to, “Both of us owe it to him to deliver the coordinates of the Last Paper
Library in the US to the Library of the Information Apocalypse.”
“The what?” Na’Rodney said, prying
Payne from his side and walking east toward the 169-County 10 split. They still
had to get past the dearr and any potential human occupant.
Angelique kicked the other folk in
black in the head just in case. Na’Rodney said, “Search their pockets. See if
you can find something like a magic wand,” he held up his hands indicating
length, “Maybe about this long.”
She searched then pulled something
free from the male’s back pocket. “This it?”
“Yup. Point it at the car and
trigger it.”
“How?”
“Don’t know. Fiddle with the
thing...”
Fire leaped from the end, engulfing
the car. She kept it on long enough for the fire to continue on its own then
ran to join him and Payne. “Now we need to get going.” They crossed the highway
and kept walking, watching the dearr. It had continued to tear up the road
unabated. It didn’t slow down as they approached it. “There’s a cab in the
middle,” she said. “For a human occupant.”
The asphalt scraper led the dearr,
in the middle was a concrete grinder, crunching curbing when it came up. At the
end, it towed a scraper bowl into which crushed concrete and broken asphalt
poured from a conveyer belt. Between the grinder and the bowl was a small,
caboose-like cabin with a cupola jutting above and wrapped in windows. On the
very top...
“Machine gun,” Na’Rodney said,
unconsciously crouching and pulling Payne into a crouch as well. His cousin
giggled, going along with the game.
“Or laser cannon,” Angelique said.
“Nah – too dangerous to leave with
a computerized destruction machine. Same with no missile launcher. Besides, a
machine gun can tear up a human or a car easy as a laser and more cheaply.”
They scurried past as the dearr
clanked along. Once they reached the intersection, Na’Rodney said, “Looks like
they’ve decided not to put humans in the...”
Gunshot sounded from the
approaching replacement bowl. “Who is that?”
He scooped up Payne again and ran.
Alongside him, he got the clear impression that Angelique was holding back.
Frozen ground jumped up in a puff after another gunshot rang out. “Rifle!” he
shouted as they ran alongside 169 then ducked into the trees and brush and kept
running.
“The dearr will follow us!”
Angelique cried.
“It’s a robot!”
“What about the extra bowl with the
human in it?”
“It’s a robot, too! He can’t drive
it anywhere – it’s programmed to replace the full one that’s headed into town!”
“You’d better hope you’re right!”
They ran until they came to Blue Bill Bay road, running deeper into the woods.
Panting, they stopped at a rectangular, empty hole in the ground, an exhausted
Payne now on Na’Rodney’s back.
Once they’d caught their breath,
Na’Rodney said, “We have to keep walking. At least until nightfall.”
Angelique nodded and they kept on in
silence until Na’Rodney said, “The Papers and the Library of the Information
Apocalypse?”
“Bruce was a Paper. The African
nations building the Library are Papers.”
“Why would anyone want to be a
Paper?”
Angelique shook her head. “We can’t
understand it very well here, but once the developed countries stopped making
paper books, they stopped sending the used ones to developing countries and the
information flow stopped.”
“They can get e-readers.” Na’Rodney
exclaimed, throwing his arms into the air and with them the backpack, tossing
him off balance.
Angelique caught him and shoved him
forward. “They can get them but can’t maintain them. The Library is intended to
be a place anyone can come, whether they have technology or not, and read.
They’ll send out trucks full of books as well – that way, anyone, anywhere can
borrow a book whether they live in powerless foxhole in the middle of the Great
Plains or at the pinnacle of Nairobi Vertical Village.”
“Why would they need books?”
Na’Rodney exclaimed.
Angelique shook her head. “Take out
your phone.”
“What?”
“Your phone. Take it out. Call up a
copy of Stephen King’s CARRIE.”
“Why?”
“Just do it,” she snapped, then
stepped behind him and unzipped the backpack.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting the real copy of CARRIE.”
“What,” Na’Rodney began. Angelique
cut him off by forcing him to his knees. “Hey!”
She pulled the wrapped book free,
popped the plastic and took it from the bag.
Scrambling to his feet, Na’Rodney
spun around. “You can’t do that! G’Uncle Bruce sealed those for us to...”
“You won’t believe me until you see
it with your own eyes. Read the first paragraph of your online copy of CARRIE.”
“What?”
“Just do it!” she snarled, waving
the hardcover book. He looked down at the screen. “Shut your mouth and follow
along while I read from the original. ‘When the girls were gone to their Period
Two classes and the bell had been silenced (several of them had slipped quietly
out the back door before Miss Desjardin could begin to take names), Miss
Desjardin employed the standard tactic for hysterics: She slapped Carrie
smartly across the face. She hardly would have admitted the pleasure the act
gave her, and she certainly would have denied that she regarded Carrie as a
fat, whiny bag of lard. A first-year teacher, she still believed that she
thought all children were good.’”
“Mine doesn’t say that,” said
Na’Rodney softly. “This is what mine says, ‘When the girls were gone to their
Period Two classes and the bell had been silenced (several of them had slipped
quietly out the back door before Miss Desjardin could begin to take names),
Miss Desjardin employed the standard tactic for hysterics: She knelt down and
touched Carrie gently on the shoulder. She hardly would have admitted how much
this poor girl needed a guiding hand in her life. The daughter of a
religion-crazed bigot, her mother regarded Carrie as a fat, whiny bag of lard.
A first-year teacher, Miss Desjardin believed that all children were good.’”
Na’Rodney blinked and said,
“Again.” He read his passage, eyes on his phone as she read the paper copy out
loud. He looked up, “They’re different.”
“That’s what your great uncle and
the rest of the Papers are worried about. If someone, somewhere went to the
trouble of changing an electronic work of fiction, how many works of nonfiction
will be changed?”
Na’Rodney took a deep breath and blew
it out. Turning away and taking Payne’s hand, he started walking. The noise of
the dearr had faded behind them. All they could hear now was the sound of themselves
walking, or in Payne’s case stumbling, through the woods. “We have to keep
moving.” He paused, throwing her a look, “If we want to make it to the Erg of
Bilma before we all die of old age.”
Anger flashed on Angelique’s face
and said, “Good plan. Besides, you have an argument to lose with me.” Pushing
roughly past Na’Rodney, she led the way through the woods as the sun fell
quickly to the horizon on the first full day of Winter.
First appeared in PERIHELION SCIENCE FICTION, June 2013
Copyright © 2013, Guy Stewart
