Walkaway

by Cory Doctorow

  She thought she heard Gretyl behind her, splashing through the same puddles. Part of her wanted Gretyl to catch up, so she could apologize and take back the awful things she’d said. Another part understood her feelings about Gretyl were caught up with her feelings about her father. Any apology Gretyl offered would never make up for the apologies she never received from him.

  She made for camp’s edge, wanting to be far from humans and wanting to find somewhere to balance on one foot while she finished dressing. She laced up her boots and stood, pulling her shirt off a tree-branch and pulling it on, fighting through the overlapping layers of wicking stuff and insulating stuff and brightly colored rags woven in bands around it, a look she’d invented that many others had flattered her by copying. Suited and booted, she calmed. She ran her hands over the shirt, which looked fucking awesome and was acknowledged as a technical and aesthetic triumph, in which she took enormous pride.

  She scrubbed her cheeks with her palms and planted her hands on her hips and looked at the sky. She’d had a lot of summer nights at the family cottage, staring at skies like this, impossibly populated by cold stars that reminded her of humanity’s general insignificance and comforted her with her father’s specific insignificance. Sometimes, there’d been cousins on stargazing nights, a few she’d felt affection for, and she panged at the thought of them, lost to her, being twisted into the gnarled shape of a zotta mired in self-delusional garbage.

  Something snagged her attention, coming up over the tree line. It was the Better Nation. As she saw it, she heard it, which was incongruous, because the bumblers were not supposed to run their impellers except for emergencies. It was transport that went where the wind blew, making hay while the sun shone, treating nature as a feature, not a bug. The impellers grew louder—an insect buzz, then a swarm, then a full-throated roar. The Better Nation was supposed to be on its way to Nova Scotia.

  There was a breeze out of the woods that left her in goosebumps. The hair on her neck stood. She was rooted to the spot, staring at the zepp straining across the sky, twisting to and fro as it fought the winds. It grew faster, and she realized belatedly that it was descending as well as impelling. Her heart thudded in her ears.

  “HELP!” she shouted, without meaning to. “HELP THEM!” She smacked her interface surfaces, turning on her cameras and sensors without consciously deciding to.

  The sound of her shouts in her ears unfroze her feet. She ran through camp, toward the zepp. She saw black shapes moving through the sky behind it, invisible except where they blotted out starlight. Inaudible over the impellers’ whine, a shrill tone of machines laboring beyond their safety margin.

  Others were around, aiming scopes at the sky. There was shouting. Cursing. A fan of pencil-thin, violet lasers lit the sky, so bright it hurt to look. They converged on a black shape, tracked it jigging and jagging across the sky. She followed them down to their source, saw three of the university crew frantically plugging hydrogen cells into a rig like a miniature antiaircraft gun on a wide metal plate they weighed down with their boots. She ran to them and stood on the plate, freeing two of them to move closer to the batteries.

  The drone in the lasers’ path fell. The lasers followed it until it fell below the tree line. Where they briefly touched the trees, the lasers set sizzling fires that smoked but quickly extinguished themselves as nearby shaking branches spilled payloads of raindrops on them.

  The lasers retargeted, skewering another drone. As a third one opened fire with small missiles that wove through the sky on cones of flame, they split into two and targeted both drones. In the same eyeblink instant, two of the missiles found the Better Nation, one hitting the bag. The other hit the gondola. That one skated its surface and spun out of the sky like a maple key, detonating beneath it, shock wave sending up the gondola’s tail. The whole thing shook like it was caught in the teeth of an enormous dog. The missile on the gasbag blew. There was a sound like a thousand balloons popping as the cells bag ruptured in a cascade that swept back and forth across the bag’s length. The zepp fell, but it didn’t free fall—some of the cells, incredibly, were intact, a tribute to their fail-safes—but it came down fast.

  Another drone caught fire and became a meteor. The lasers jumped to the remaining one, but it lifted as the stricken Better Nation smashed into camp, plowing a furrow through the roofs and walls of five hexayurts before its nose made contact with the road and it crumpled, the smoking remains of the gasbag settling over it a moment later. The sound—rending noises ending with a tooth-vibrating crunch—blended with shouts of dismay and terror. Walkaways swarmed the gondola, using their hands to bend back the smashed fiberglass hull to get at the people inside.

  Etcetera ran past with a pry bar, but didn’t see her. He was fixed on the Better Nation, the zepp crew he’d befriended. The Mohawk kids were right behind him, with tools of their own, hammers and a wrecking bar. She remembered some of their friends had gone up in the airship. She pushed her fists into her guts, somewhere between punching herself in the stomach and massaging it, trying to drive the grief out.

  One of the hexayurts that had been knocked down, right at the start, was the one she’d shared with Gretyl. The zepp had only grazed its roof, but the light, composite panels bent, then snapped, leaving the walls to tilt like ancient tombstones. Moving as if in a dream, Iceweasel walked to the yurt, kneading at her stomach. More people raced past her and there was a chorus of explosive bangs, the remaining gasbag cells overheating. She felt the fire’s heat on the back of her neck and smelled her hair singeing.

  Before going to bed, she and Gretyl had taken advantage of the spacious privacy of the hexayurt to unpack their jumbled gear, squeezing the water out of the wet stuff and folding it carefully, coiling their rope and swapping the cells of their devices. It was still all laid out in the precise, Cartesian grid that Gretyl created, barely ruffled by the fragments of roof that tumbled into it. Next to it was the air mattress, trillions of mezoscale bubbles that filled if you laid the bed out and gave it a few brisk shakes, but deflated easily if you rolled it from one corner.

  On the bed: Gretyl, on her side, dressed to chase Iceweasel into the night, like she was sleeping. Between her and Iceweasel, the air wavered with a cloud of steam, and she bent over Gretyl, solarized by the flashlight beam that her computer automatically sent arcing from her chest, without Iceweasel noticing. She reached a hand for Gretyl’s shoulder, touching it, then cupping and tugging it, trying to rock Gretyl onto her back. She was dead weight.

  There was blood on the bed beneath her head.

  Iceweasel tried to breathe three deep breaths. Got to one. Snapped into focus. She bent to Gretyl’s mouth, heard her breathing, slid a hand onto her neck and felt for a pulse, encountering blood but not caring. The pulse was strong. She played light over Gretyl, probing with her fingers, starting at her feet and working up, checking each arm, then her throat again, her chin.

  Now, at last, she examined Gretyl’s head, probing carefully, unmindful of the chaos and bangs. There was a shallow cut on the back of her scalp, bleeding profusely, but small. There was no dent, no pulpy depression like the one that she’d half-seen/never-unseen on Billiam’s head. She heard her own breathing, slowed it down, peeled back each eyelid, looking at the contracting pupils, were they the same size? Gretyl blinked, brushing her hands away from her eyelids, leaving behind smears of blood from her fingertips.

  Gretyl blinked several times, moved her arms and legs weakly, tried to sit up. Iceweasel held her down. “You’re hurt.” She spoke into her ear, trying to be calm and comforting.

  “No shit. Fuck.” She blinked more. There were screams from the crash, and some that sounded nearer. Iceweasel looked into the night, dark and spotted with erratic orange flame-light. While she was distracted, Gretyl sat, shrugging off her restraining hand. She touched her scalp wound, and she stared at the blood on her palm with an affronted scowl. “Fuck this,” she said. Iceweasel folded the bloody hand in her own bloody hands.


  “Babe, you have a head wound. You should lie down, in case there’s a spinal injury or a concussion.”

  Gretyl stared out, seeming to have not heard; then, “Fine in theory, but I don’t think we get to choose tonight. Let’s go unfuck this. Help me up.” She turned to Iceweasel, stared with an intensity that admitted no debate, shifting her grip to pull her hand. Iceweasel struggled with herself, then pulled. Gretyl staggered, put her free hand to the back of her head, straightened.

  “What the fuck is going on?” she said, as she lurched in the direction of the fire.

  They were nearly upon it when someone grabbed Iceweasel’s arm and yanked. She swung around, hands in fists, eyes wide, heart pounding, sure she was about to be tazed by a merc sent by the zottas to terrorize them. It was Etcetera, his face smudged, eyes panicked. “Come on!” He yanked again, oblivious to the fact that she’d been about to break his nose.

  Even with a head wound, Gretyl was faster on the uptake. She yanked Iceweasel’s other arm, and they followed Etcetera to another yurt where the wounded lay on air mattresses, lit by pea-sized OLEDs hastily stuck to the walls and casting overlapping crazy shadows. It was chaos, an impromptu morgue, but she saw some were moving, some were attended by people crouching over them. Pocahontas, one arm bandaged, soothed a figure on the ground, a hand on his forehead, other hand holding a screen and concentrating on the readout. Iceweasel supposed she was conferenced in to the pool of walkaway docs who helped with care around the walkaway net, and she wondered how many of these skirmishes they’d dealt with in the middle of the night, lately. She wondered who was crawling walkaway net, doing traffic analysis to find and target those docs.

  Before long, she was conferenced into a doc of her own, working with a mercifully unconscious zepp-rider, burned terribly and groaning every time she touched her, following the doc’s directions, sometimes asking him to send them as text because she couldn’t always understand him through a very thick Brazilian accent. She wondered what time zone Brazil was in, and whether it was the middle of the night there. Presently, another Brazilian doc came on the line and helped her set a broken leg using an inflatable cast from a pack that, ironically, the zepp had dropped off the day before.

  She looked up from her patient, who’d been palpably grateful for the painkiller she’d placed under his tongue. Gretyl sat on one of the few empty pads, face in her hands. She went to her, put her arm around her shoulders, kissed her tentatively on her ear, tasted dried blood and smelled stale sweat and scalp oil. Gretyl’s thick hair was a mat of blood.

  “You okay?”

  “Just tired. I ice-packed my head, and someone in Lagos checked me for a concussion and pronounced me bloodied but unbowed. But shit, girl, I feel like I’m about to collapse.”

  “That’s probably because you’re about to collapse.”

  “You think?”

  “Lie down. We’re almost through. Even Etcetera’s taking breaks.” He’d been manic, torn between rescuing more aeronauts from the burning wreck and tending the ones they’d gotten out. He’d pulled two dead ones out of the Better Nation and wept as he carried them, then tended three more who’d died on the infirmary’s mats, helping carry them to another yurt that was now a morgue. Limpopo shadowed him for some of that, so had Seth, helping around the edges, gently calming him before he hurt himself.

  “Okay. How about you?” Her voice was thick, groggy.

  “What about me?”

  “You need a break, too. Look like walking death. I’ve got an excuse, I’m an old lady with a scalp wound. You’re bursting with youth’s vibrant juices. When you start to look like a zombie-movie reject, it’s a sign for you to take it easy. You can’t help anyone if you’re not taking care of yourself.” She paused. “I know I embody the opposite of that advice, but I’ve got an excuse: I’m an idiot. What’s yours?”

  “You’re right. I’m going to grab a piss and do a walkaround and I’ll come in. Leave room on the mat for me, old timer?”

  “I’ll use you as a pillow if you’re not careful.”

  “Done deal.”

  Gretyl tilted her face up and they kissed, and Gretyl kept her mouth closed, which she did when she was self-conscious about her breath, which was darkly hilarious under the circumstances. As ever, Iceweasel kept kissing until her lips parted, and they mingled breath and saliva for a moment that stretched like taffy before she broke off and struggled to her feet, putting one hand on a wall panel, which flexed and bowed, then bounced back when she got her balance.

  She glanced back at Gretyl before she ducked through the door, and she was on her side, motionless. Iceweasel squinted until she made out the rise and fall of her chest, then stepped through into the night.

  It was coming on dawn, gray with pink on the eastern tree line, black on the western one. Limpopo and Etcetera sat on folding chairs on the roadside, Etcetera holding her and weeping into her neck. Limpopo locked eyes with her; they raised their eyebrows at one another in simultaneous are you okay? that made them both smile wearily. Iceweasel tossed her an okay sign and blew her a kiss. Limpopo kissed back and she turned to the dark woods, digging out the paper gauze she’d pocketed on her way out of the tent to use as bumwad. She picked her way through the underbrush, killing her chest-light when it came up, letting her eyes adjust as she sought out the requisite log with a tree nearby to use as a handhold.

  She assumed the position and did her thing, listening to the sounds from the camp, the crackle of small things in the underbrush. She should have brought a shovel, but under the circumstances, no one would blame her for a lapse in woodcraft. She’d pack out the bumwad, at least, put it with med-waste in the incineration pile.

  There was a louder sound in the brush, not scurrying and small. Big and stealthy. She tugged up her pants, tabbed them closed, peered into the night. She dropped the bumwad, patted her pockets, which had accumulated a litter of small devices and objects through the night. Nothing of use. Disposable wrappers. She looked into darkness, taking a step toward camp, trying to find a club-worthy branch. She snatched one up, sodden with water and rotten. She listened intently for the steps. No one from camp would sneak through the woods. She had visions of mercs, wearing smart stuff that was more than dark, bending light to make itself invisible.

  She took another step. Someone abruptly yanked at the club and she reflexively tightened her grip, so she went with it, off balance. She fell with an oof, a confusion of sinking into wet things and colliding with sharp rocks. In the instant between standing and falling, a part of her brain that she was rarely on speaking terms with took over. She rolled with the fall, taking most of it on her shoulder, using the momentum to goose her motion as she got to her knees, then into a runner’s stance. She ran, because someone was right behind her and there was the camp, and if she could—

  She couldn’t. Someone was in front of her, small but wiry, effortlessly catching her hands as she raced past, a grip immovable as a steel clamp, not painful but perfectly unyielding. She nearly crashed into the unseen person, but it sidestepped her neatly as a cartoon toreador avoiding a bull, swung her around in a parody of a square-dance move, bringing her up short with her hands pinned before her. She focused on the person who held her wrists, a woman, she thought, small and short-haired, features painted in a dazzle-array of grays and greens. She had small white teeth, visible through her parted lips, and eyes hidden behind a matte visor hooked behind her ears.

  The other one was right behind her, moving swiftly and almost silently, breath easy. She made herself relax, feeling for just a little slack in the grip of the woman holding her. Was that it? It was. With terrified strength, she feinted a head-butt at the visor, then yanked her arms so hard she felt skin leave her wrists, felt something in her shoulder or maybe her ribs pop. It didn’t matter. She opened her mouth to scream as she ran—

  Then she was back in the woman’s grip, a strong hand over her mouth. The small woman smiled, a You’ve got moxie, kid smile, or that’s what Icewe
asel chose to believe. Then the person with the large, male hand over her mouth—smelling of machine oil and something else that tickled her memory—clamped something to her bicep that immediately tightened like a blood-pressure cuff. She felt a tiny lance of pain as the automated syringe found home. Her panic was pre-empted by another feeling, a delirious feeling like syrup in her spine and down her butt, delicious like stolen snoozebar sleep. The feeling grew. She smiled as her eyes closed.

  4

  home again, home again, jiggity jig

  [i]

  Default smelled. It wasn’t a technological smell. If there was one thing walkaway had, it was technological smells. It was an inhuman smell. There were background processes looking for BO and bad breath, zapping them with free ions and tasteful anti-perfume. It smelled like something just unwrapped.

  When she woke, the smell was her first clue, before opening her eyes. She noticed it before she was fully awake, experiencing a gorgeous state of being aware of not being awake, a drug-feeling. She got that feeling once from something very good Billiam had. Not Billiam. Limpopo. No, Limpopo didn’t try new pharma, just stuff she knew. Seth had the pharma thing, downloading new stuff and piloting it in full sensor gear for the analytics groups to pore over, then showing up with a basket of fresh apples and a vaper set to dose them with weight-adjusted amounts.