Walkaway

by Cory Doctorow

  They looked up at the sky.

  Gretyl shook her head. “Always a possibility. Maybe TransCanada will flip-flop and come back to lock everyone away. You got to figure this shit is panicking default. Once prisons stop running, what’s next? Their little islands of normalcy are shrinking. It would be a hearts and minds thing for you naughty children to be sent to your rooms without supper.”

  That made the day dimmer.

  7

  prisoner’s dilemma

  [i]

  Gretyl came from the fabber with everything they needed to build shelter—flexible frames and connectors the boys quickly assembled, photo-reactive film they stretched over each piece, clicking it together to make a half dome with a vertical face and a doorway. They set it up in the field where they’d watched the drones. The area in front of the prison’s gates was crowded, no room for new structures big enough for a family of four. It was quieter. The rest of their crew were setting up there, too.

  Limpopo wasn’t ready to go and might never be. She wanted to build an onsen. The mention of this put a gleam in the eyes of those who’d known her at the B&B, including Iceweasel. They emerged a consensus that they’d stay and help. The boys had never seen an onsen—they’d gone out of fashion in Gary—and avidly watched videos about them. They were committed to the project. Gretyl could have headed home, but there was no reason to be there as opposed to here. She could teach her classes anywhere. The little serious math work she did with colleagues was geography independent.

  She didn’t like it here. It was too close to Toronto, to Jacob Redwater. It was weird that Iceweasel named their son after him, but being this close to what Gretyl thought of as “Jacob’s lair” made her edgy. That’s why Iceweasel wanted to stay. She needed to prove—to herself, to the world, to her monstrous father, who knew her every move—that she was unafraid. This had been hashed out during the naming thing. Gretyl understood there was no new information to be gleaned by refactoring that painful discussion. Once, she’d been foolhardy enough to argue with Iceweasel about this—a pregnant Iceweasel at that—and learned her lesson.

  She still jumped at shadows.

  “You hate this.” The boys were at the onsen job site, clicking fabbed bricks together. They’d been promised a salvage expedition to a site where a drone cataloged a whole butt-load of useful matériel, on condition of diligent work and good behavior that morning. Iceweasel had come back and flumfed on the camp bed, swooning, sipping her pack’s straw and glowing prettily with sweat.

  “I don’t hate it. I totally understand—”

  “Hating and understanding aren’t opposites. I want to let you know I know you hate this, and I’m grateful you’re doing it anyway.”

  Gretyl shook her head. “I love you, too.”

  Iceweasel stretched out an arm and felt blindly for her, patted her on the butt. Gretyl took her hand. It was nice to have a kid-free moment. It had been a while. They held hands and Gretyl closed her eyes.

  “I got a new scan today,” Iceweasel said. “The boys, too.”

  Gretyl opened her eyes. “Oh.” She tried very hard to keep her voice neutral and failed.

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “Like what?”

  Iceweasel took her hand back and sat up. “There was a crowd doing it, moms and kids, now the scanners are burned in and working. You know it’s harmless.”

  “I know you can’t be harmed by the scanning process, but—”

  “But someone could steal your scan and do something terrible to us. I know. We’ve been through it. They’re locked to my private key, or a supermajority of our friends’ keys, the usual group, same one we use for the rest.”

  Gretyl shook her head. “Fine.”

  “Obviously, it’s not fine.”

  “Explain why you would feel so threatened that you got yourself scanned, but not so threatened that you wouldn’t just leave?”

  “Getting a scan gives us some insurance.”

  “Insurance? As in, if your father kidnaps you, I can run a sim of you to raise our sons? If we all die, maybe our friends will run us in simulation and wear us around their necks and we can talk out of their tits for the rest of time?”

  “My dad’s not going to kidnap me.” In the first five years of their relationship, Gretyl got good at spotting when Iceweasel changed the subject. In the years since, she’d got better at figuring out when to mention it. She didn’t mention it.

  “How do you know?”

  Iceweasel moved her arm off her face, spat out the straw and sat. “Because I heard from him.”

  Gretyl literally boggled at her wife. “Say that again?”

  “I heard from him. Come on, you know he’s sent me messages. I don’t answer. I never answer.”

  “Before, we weren’t in his backyard.”

  “You’re being superstitious. It’s no harder for Jacob Redwater to get to any place than it is for him to get any other place. Distance isn’t what keeps us safe.”

  Gretyl had also been married to Iceweasel long enough to recognize when her wife was right. She shut up and tried to stop fretting. The boys returned, looking for clothes suitable for a salvage mission. They were distracted by hosing them down and dressing them up. Then all was forgotten, or at least they could pretend.

  [ii]

  The onsen rose, brick by brick. Things got going when some of its crew fabbed construction mechas, which, of course, the boys wanted to pilot. The mechas ran automatically, and had fail-safes. Everyone agreed the boys were good at them and, unlike adults, never bored of repetitive manual tasks, provided they got to pilot robots while they did it.

  At first, they insisted the boys have nearby adult copilots holding dead-man’s switches, but there were no adults with the stamina to keep up with the boys’ drive to build. Also, the onsen was going up fast as it was thanks to their contribution. It would have been a dick move to slow them down.

  “Parenting,” Iceweasel pronounced, “is the art of getting out of the way of your kids’ development.” That settled it.

  Besides, it gave them more time together than they’d had since Stan was born.

  It was a second honeymoon, spent in the heady first days of a—very small—new nation, former prisoners and their families adding more each day, powdering the steel bars of the jails for fabber feedstock, pumping out support struts, spun for minimum weight/materials, structural versions of the bikes they’d ridden, but with more fail-safes. Hoa and friends came for a three-day stay, cycling on more of the same. They found a group of excited ex-cons who wanted to know how the weird bikes worked. Now there were three workshops making variations on the theme. It was getting to the point where serious arguments were brewing about bicycle/pedestrian etiquette.

  Gretyl had forgot how energizing revolutionary life was. Back in Gary, they were set in routine, the kind of thing you have to do if you’re raising kids and keeping some life for yourself. Here, no two days were alike. Every day brought new challenges, new solutions. It had been years since Gretyl was part of a place where there were serious arguments on the message boards. Here they raged, even erupting into fistfights, cooled out by peacemakers who rose to the challenge.

  Just as she was getting pleased with it all—

  “Gretyl.” The way Iceweasel said it froze her. She’d heard Iceweasel sad, afraid, even panicked. But never had she heard that note in her wife’s voice.

  “What?” Gretyl waved her interface surfaces clear, flicked her wrists to shake off the tasks she’d queued. Their shelter felt cramped, not cozy.

  Iceweasel was sweating. Her eyes were wide. Gretyl felt her heart pick up the pace.

  Another woman stepped through the doorway. She was … coiled. Not very tall, hair cut short and stylish, face all planes, maybe Slavic. Her posture was like a cat about to pounce. Gretyl couldn’t guess her age: older than Iceweasel, but in such excellent physical shape it was impossible to say by how much. She had small, square teeth, which she displayed in a quic
k smile. Gretyl knew who she had to be.

  “You’d be Nadie?”

  Nadie nodded minutely. “Gretyl.” She extended a hand. Dry. Strong. Calloused. Perfect manicure, dun-colored polish, blunt tips.

  Gretyl looked from Iceweasel to Nadie.

  “How bad?”

  “Limpopo is bringing the boys. Nadie has a helicopter.”

  “A helicopter.”

  Iceweasel’s hands shook. Gretyl wanted to take them, but she was irrationally, powerfully angry with her wife. This was the other part of being a professional revolutionary: people around you died, all the time. Now her boys, her children, who had the power to make her ache with a force that radiated from the pit of her stomach to the furthest tips of her extremities, just by looking over their shoulders at her with unclouded eyes and sweet mouths, were in the path of unimaginable force. There would be guns and worse. The videos from Akron ran all the time, quick animations dropped into message boards to make cheap points about the brutality of the outside world.

  “How long?”

  “Not long,” Nadie said. “There were long arguments, thankfully. Gave me time to get here. But now they’ve decided, they’re moving.”

  “Why won’t they shoot down your helicopter?” Gretyl asked. Her heart thundered.

  “Because it’s my helicopter,” Nadie said. She tilted her head. “Zotta.”

  “Right.”

  Iceweasel’s hands were fists. There came the welcome sound of boys’ voices and the stamp of machinery. Gretyl didn’t bother with the door. She kicked through the photo-reactive film wall, splintering the cool dark of the interior with a spray of sunlight.

  The boys were each piloting mechas. Limpopo, Seth, and Tam were riding on them, standing on the robots’ shoulders, clinging to the handles on their heads. The boys whooped as they pushed the machines as fast as they’d go, apparently under orders not to worry about what they trashed. The mechas’ arms flailed ahead of them, smashing tents and yurts out of the way.

  Iceweasel and Nadie joined her, coming through the door. Gretyl saw Nadie assess the group, minutely shake her head.

  “We won’t all fit in your helicopter, will we?”

  She’d spoken to Nadie. Iceweasel looked at her sharply. “Gretyl, don’t be an asshole—” Gretyl knew that one. It went like this: I fucked up, now everything you say will remind me of that and make me furious. She knew it. Didn’t have time for it. She ignored her.

  “Not enough,” Nadie said.

  “How many?”

  “I came to bring you four.”

  Gretyl recognized evasion. “How many do you have room for, though?”

  Limpopo dismounted, helped the boys while the rest climbed down. Gretyl spared them a glance, made sure they were dressed, had sun hats. “Get water,” she said to Iceweasel. Air, clothes, water, food. Walkaway triage. “Food.” To Nadie: “How many?”

  “I came for four.”

  Motherhood had made a coward of her. She was ashamed, because she couldn’t say, If our friends don’t go, we don’t go. It wasn’t her life on the line anymore.

  “Take us all.” She tried to mean it.

  Iceweasel was back, yanking compression straps on their biggest backpack, misshapen with whatever she’d thrown into it.

  “How many?”

  Nadie gave her a perfectly unreadable look, looked back to Gretyl. “Could you choose?”

  “I’d rather explain choosing to my kids than explain why there were empty seats next to them when people started dying.”

  “Would it make a difference if I told you they were coming in nonlethal?”

  “Like Akron?”

  “Not like Akron.” They had an audience crowded around. Whatever they saw in their body language kept them quiet. “Exactly not like Akron. Akron made martyrs. It hurt them all over the world. They’re coming in nonlethal, as police, to restore order, to investigate murders.”

  “What murders?” Limpopo said. She was stooped, had a tremor, but asserted herself with a tone that stood two meters fifty and cut hard.

  Nadie shook her head. “No time.” She looked at them. “I can take, uh, one more.”

  They looked at each other. Gretyl said, “She has a helicopter.”

  They looked at each other again.

  “I’ll stay,” Gretyl said. Iceweasel shot her a look of shock and sorrow. Gretyl gave her a look that said she would not entertain argument. It didn’t get much use in their relationship. It meant something.

  Limpopo said, “This is my home. I’ll bear witness. Die, if it comes to that.”

  Etcetera said something soft from her collarbones, pitched for her hearing. A small smile touched her lips. She caressed the speaker.

  “You can’t stay,” Iceweasel said. Stan started to cry, such a rarity that Jake bawled, too. Gretyl hefted him onto one hip and let him bury his face in her throat. Gretyl looked at Limpopo’s face. She was struck by how different it was, how much the years in prison hadn’t just aged her, but changed her. Before, Gretyl had been struck by the pains Limpopo took not to appear to give orders or hint at having authority. Now, she was pure alpha, radiating unquestionable dominance.

  “I’m not leaving,” Limpopo said with unshakable self-assurance.

  It was Seth and Tam’s turn. They looked from Iceweasel to Gretyl. “Gretyl,” Seth said. “You’re a mother, you can’t—”

  “I can.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I will. There’s some things you can’t run from.” She thought of her grad student and what they’d gone through. “I want my kids safe, but our family has no more right to be intact than anyone’s.” She wasn’t making sense, not even to herself. “I’ve done a lot of walking away.” She shrugged. “I’m going to stay.”

  It might have gone on, except for Nadie. She cocked her head, listened to something in her cochlea, discreetly wiggled her fingers, narrowed her eyes. “We’re going.” She held out her hands to take Stan from Gretyl. Gretyl held him and kissed him and blinked hard to keep the tears back. She did the same to Jake. She consciously committed the boys’ smell to her memory, telling herself that she would never forget the smell and faces and voices of her beloved sons. Then she took her wife into her arms and held Iceweasel with an embrace that stretched back through the ages to their first rough, furtive groping, through the years of love and companionship, the hardships and absences, the reunions and the fights and reconciliations. It took everything she had and everything she didn’t even know she had not to cry, especially as she felt Iceweasel’s tears on her own cheeks, salty and as familiar as her own.

  Nadie made an urgent sound. “Takeoff in seven minutes. We’ll have to run.” She ran, Stan on her hip. Iceweasel scooped their other son and ran after her, and Seth and Tam gave her a helpless look and ran, too.

  Then it was her and Limpopo.

  “Do you want to see if there’s anything in the shelter you want to save?”

  Gretyl, moving in a numb dream, went back into the shelter, prodded their bedding and scattered possessions. There were three blankets, two small and one large. The small ones smelled like the boys, the big one like Iceweasel. She took them in her arms. Jake’s stuffed mouse, Mousey, fell out of his blanket. She picked him up by his worn, chewed paw. He stared at her with beady eyes as she tucked him back into the blankets.

  “You can put them with my stuff,” Limpopo said.

  They walked at a fast clip to the prison. Limpopo was distracted, stumbling as she walked and talked into her interface and texted at the same time. Sometimes, she’d ask Etcetera to send a message. By the time they reached the sprawling camp at the prison gates, it was semi-panic as people raced inside the gates or away from the prisons altogether, carrying bundles on their backs. Children cried, but apart from that, it was very quiet. Clipped, tight voices, many in that odd pitch intended for interface mics, not human ears.

  “Inside,” Limpopo said. Gretyl heard a helicopter rotor, far off, brought on the breeze, getting quieter as it flew
away. She stopped in her tracks and brought her hands to her face. She really sobbed. Limpopo led her by the elbow, whispering it was okay, her family was safe. They had to move.

  Gretyl let herself be led. Her mind had split, one fraction was overwhelmed with sorrow and self-recrimination. The other part—the part that made that decision—racing through strategy and tactics for whatever was coming. Nadie said the coming forces wouldn’t make martyrs of them, they were coming to show this was fighting crime, not fighting war. Not fighting for the existence of a society whose end was coming.

  Walkaways had something the default side didn’t have: except for a few children, every walkaway had been default, once. Almost no one in default—and no one whom anyone listened to, period—had ever walked away. Gretyl found it easy to superimpose the default view on situations.

  They would be perversely cheered by a fight, by prisoners and their supporters—criminals-once-removed—brawling and being gassed into submission and stacked like cordwood.

  If they fought back, it might be a massacre, but they wouldn’t be martyrs. They’d be ISIS, ideology-crazed monsters to be put down with whatever regrettable force was necessary.

  All this while Gretyl still sobbed, each part of her observing the other with perverse fascination, wondering which one was the real Gretyl.

  * * *

  The boys’ prison attracted the hardcore networking freaks. They sent runners to the women’s prison asking for anyone with network experience to ride the faders on the routing algorithms that would rebalance their network infrastructure as parts of it were knocked out. Gretyl and Limpopo looked at one another.

  “My place is here—” Limpopo began. One of her friends—the woman who’d shown them Limpopo’s bunk, whose name Gretyl couldn’t place amid the tense emotion—made a raspberry.

  “Don’t be an idiot. You’re not our grandma, you’re just another con. We don’t need you here to look after us. Do your thing. Everyone knows you’re hot shit with programming and ops. Keeping our feeds running will do more to keep us strong than sticking your skinny old body between us and hired goons.”