Tesseracts Fourteen: Strange Canadian Stories

by John Robert Colombo

  She released the tension on the bow string, but kept the arrow nocked.

  I thought about shouting, “I’m a Thinker!” but she had started the cloak-and-bow dance, so I followed her lead.

  “Get up,” she said. “Keep your hands behind your head.”

  With the awkwardness of a guy who’d fallen from the sky, crawled around a while, then kneeled for too long, I stood.

  “Move towards the door.” She indicated with her bow towards the rock-obscured opening.

  My need to see her face grew. My data archives scanned random meetings, searching for a reference that might make sense of the woman. Her voice wasn’t familiar, I was certain I had never heard it before, yet part of me knew it, knew her, knew my whole life had been building to this moment. Immersed in my data-space, my hands fell to my sides.

  “Hands up!”

  I jolted back to the moment and returned my now-shaking hands to the please-don’t-kill-me position. Close now, her frame was discernable under the cape. She was my height, my build, and she smelled as though baths were rarer than straight fences in this part of the world.

  After clearing my throat a couple of times, I found my voice. “If you don’t mind me sayin’, your fence sings of a Thinker’s handiwork. Your husband?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “Oh.” More words would’ve filled the awkward gap, but I’m much better with calculations than I am with women. She moved aside so that I could pass her on my way to the door-hole. The moonlight found its way onto the tip of her nose. Her skin was as pale as the moon.

  Still aiming at me, she said, “Keep moving.”

  A question lingered at the back of my throat but I didn’t allow it to escape. “It’s pretty damned dark in there. I don’t suppose you brought an emitter?”

  I took her silence as a “no.” Shuffling between the rocks, I lost my balance and both hands rushed out of my neutral position to save my head from cracking open. “I was falling,” I said, as an afterthought to keep her arrow out of my back.

  “I’m watching you,” she said. Her bow string squeaked in protest as she drew it back once more. For a moment, my mind reached out and plucked it like a violin. My archives chose a low G as the note that should vibrate along its desperate length. Before I continued into the total blackness in front of me, I took a final direction bearing.

  I didn’t like not being able to read her movements, but her breathing sounded easy, not the quick panting of fear. For now.

  A tunnel led to the left, heading northwest. It was dug from the earth and braced with more wood of the same vintage as the fence. The floor sloped at a steep twenty degrees and the top was low, so I had to stoop as I scuffed along. With each step, dust stirred, filling my nose with earthen smells and my mouth with grit.

  “How far?” I asked.

  The bow string again. I’d never drawn one before, but a part of me wondered when it would snap.

  The passage curved to the right, then left again, and I lost a bit of my directional certainty. A part of me needed to know my location, as though it could spell my fate. The more westerly a route, the deeper I moved into enemy territory.

  We reached a branch and I stopped. She nudged my right shoulder with the arrow, so I took the right branch, relieved to be heading slightly more east. Thirty meters ahead, the tunnel opened into a room.

  The overhead emitter glowed dim green. Wires snaked down the ceiling and met more wires on the far wall. A sideboard held a few dishes. On top sat a thermalater and below was a storage cupboard, for water I guessed. All the comforts of home.

  “It’s nice,” I said.

  “Kneel down.”

  I dropped back into position, my hands behind my head again. She released the bow and set it down in the dirt, well behind my reach. Next, she pulled first my left, then my right hand behind my back and tied them together. Neither of us spoke. With her knee, she knocked me face first into the dirt.

  My jaw hit hard, hurting like hell, but I didn’t hear the telltale snap of broken bones. “What was that for?”

  “Your choices,” she said.

  Choices? As far as I could figure, every move since the airship had lost cohesion hadn’t been chosen, more like thrust in my face like a sharp poker.

  “You could’ve killed me back there. If you do me here, you’ll be stuck dragging my body topside for burial.”

  “Who said I’d bury you?”

  I looked down at the dirt. The greenish light made contrast tricky, but I could make out darker patches in the floor, blood stains maybe, bigger than what would leak out of a rabbit or a chicken.

  She moved over to the sideboard. Her hood remained firmly down, hiding her face from mine. I wondered if she was ugly — scarred or savaged by some past indiscretion. Tapping the top of the thermalater, she said, “Can you fix this?”

  “Got any tools?”

  She opened the sideboard. A water purifier with a full tank took up most of the space. Tools had been tucked in around it, and some hung from the inside of the door.

  “I need to walk over there.”

  Her head moved down, slightly, the smallest excuse for a nod I’d ever seen.

  Standing was tricky without the use of my hands, but I managed it with a fraction of my dignity intact. “Take the cover off,” I said.

  Close enough to touch her, my curiosity peaked. The hood was so damned low and the cloth so thick that I’d never get a good look. As she popped the metal top off to reveal the machine’s workings, a good stream of green light found its way into the dark-hood zone. For a second, I glimpsed her eyes reflecting the light back. Their intensity could’ve cut through me faster than one of her arrows.

  She motioned with her head for me to focus on the thermalater. I leaned in closer, angling hard to each side to try and see past my own shadow into the gloomy innards. I opened a maintenance file in my mind and called up the schematic for a unit of similar size and power. A quick comparison to what I saw before me revealed the problem.

  “There,” I pointed with my nose.

  She didn’t move any closer.

  “You see the striped wire leading down to that triangular component with five posts?”

  “Step back,” she said.

  I gave her room to move in and check the workings.

  “Yes.”

  “The wire’s corroded. Probably not bringing enough current to the component, which is called the aggravator. Without enough juice, it can’t get atoms busy enough to warm anything. You need to replace the wire.”

  “I’ve misplaced my spool of spare wire,” she said. I could’ve done without the sarcasm, but she was the one with the weapon, and my hands weren’t exactly in an offensive position.

  “Take a length from up there.” I pointed with my head at the ceiling. “The emitter could move a meter and still throw enough light around the room. And that’d give you two lengths of wire. One for the repair and one as backup.”

  She nodded.

  “Have you got a knife to strip them?”

  She pulled a knife from beneath her cape. A big butcher’s kind of knife that would be awkward to use for close work.

  “Got anything smaller?”

  She shook her head. In my mind, I imagined the smile on her face, telling me she probably did have a smaller one, but she wanted to play.

  “It’ll do,” I said. Sitting back, I bum-shuffled my way to the far side of the room while she worked. The bigger the distance between me and the knife, the closer my heart rate returned to normal. The bow wasn’t far from her grasp. She worked the wire as though she’d been born an electrician. When she finished, she said, “You found it faster than I predicted.”

  I shrugged, too afraid to thank her for the compliment in case it wasn’t one. Then the scenario unfo
lded for me. The thermalater had been a test. I’d been so busy trying to think my way out, I’d forgotten to pay attention to the moment.

  With the unit fixed, she warmed a cup of water, sipped at it, and then turned her hooded face towards me.

  “I miss coffee,” she said.

  “Don’t we all?”

  “You’re an Atlanticer.” Not a question.

  If the uniform hadn’t given me away, the symbols in my tattoo should’ve spelled it out for her: my family crest at the center, an old Boston name. My Thinker level swirled around it, and my battalion logo and rank had been burned onto the fringe. At the far right, two outstretched lines tapered to points — the only part of the design that my mother had chosen for me. On my first birthday, when my parents had sent me to be tested, I had scored off the standard charts. Enticed by the reward, they had decided right there in the facility to enlist me. Thinkers were rare, and one of high caliber would eliminate their debt and buy my sergeant father a promotion.

  “The men in town would kill me for keeping your kind and collect the reward themselves. Convince me not to eat you.”

  “Well, ma’am, I helped you fix the thermalater.”

  “We both know I could’ve done that alone.”

  “I have a spare emitter in my pocket. A yellow one. It’d make your room twice as bright.”

  “Keep going.”

  I wasn’t sure how much more I could reveal that she hadn’t already figured out. Whatever game she was playing with me, I wasn’t privy to the rules. Eating me wasn’t a threat she’d carry through, only another attempt to unsettle me, keep my thoughts jumbled to slow me up. Whatever her ultimate goal, I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be laughing at the punch line.

  I swallowed, tasting more grit than saliva, and shuddered. Hours ago, I had been happy to hit the ground intact. Now I wondered if maybe I should’ve prayed for a hole in my chute.

  Alternatives flipped by, each one ending with my death. The only variable seemed to be the amount of pain before the release. With nothing to lose, I threw my cards, hell, the whole damned deck, in front of me. “I’m a high Thinker. Designed for strategic plotting, navigation, and deployment. I carry more secrets than a brothel whore. With my reward you could upgrade your equipment and have enough standards left over for a half a side of cured pork.”

  She smirked. “With a high reward comes increased risk. A better chance I’d be murdered, not paid.”

  I saw my chance, then, like a tight opening big enough to squeeze through. “I could help you plan the handover, to ensure you get what’s coming to you.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Neither do I. But I’d just as soon not be eaten, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “There’re worse things than being eaten.” Her voice turned the corner from hardened to bitter. Her life here — the cave, the well-planned fence, the sage grass — held twists of its own. Whatever the Pacificers had done to her, she wasn’t loyal to them. My capture was personal. I should’ve slit my own throat instead of following her down the hole.

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “When the time is right.”

  Alone, my hands tied behind my back, I wondered when she would return. In the dim green light I had no sense of time. Hours could’ve passed; I certainly felt exhausted enough for it to be day, but tension and over thinking messes with my internal clock.

  Though I’d been trained to compartmentalize, storing the most sensitive data below layers of operation manuals and navigational charts, I couldn’t help but dwell on the accumulation of secrets I carried. The next strategic offensive, code name Snowfall, wasn’t due to begin for another six days. With almost a week’s notice, the Pacificers could easily ambush our battalions. We’d take huge losses, probably half the airship fleet. A dozen of my colleagues and I had spent three months on the strategy; choosing which waves to send on the primary mission, training the marines, waiting for the weather to be on our side.

  She’d heated a bowl of stew in the thermalater and never retrieved it. The aroma of cooked roots and onions, mixed with a lamb-ish meat smell, filled the cave. My stomach growled loud enough to knock dust from the roof.

  Saliva poured into my mouth from my glands. I hadn’t eaten since the dandelions. By now, the stew would be tepid, but I could run the thermalater for another cycle.

  Checking behind me, I stood and made my way to the unit. With my hands tied behind my back, I opened the door and stuck a finger in. Not too cold.

  Nothing would have made me happier than to lick my finger, but that wasn’t going to happen. She’d taken the knife, so I didn’t have a way to cut my hands free. Instead, I grabbed the bowl, and then, with shaking legs, slowly kneeled down to set it on the dirt floor behind me.

  In my haste to turn around, I stirred up a good-sized cloud of dust, most of which would end up in the stew. But with the kind of hunger spawning in my gut, anything would’ve tasted like heaven.

  Leaning forward with my hands behind my back threw my center of gravity into a tailspin. I knew before it happened that I was going to face-plant into the stew, but it would taste great, so long as I didn’t drown. When it splashed up my nose and into my eyes, I was glad that the contents had cooled.

  “Want a spoon?” she said.

  I should’ve turned around and looked at her, but I had committed to the food, and at that moment I was a rabid dog who’d chew off any hand that got between me and my meal.

  “Greg!”

  I spat out a precious mouthful of stew in shock. Gobs of vegetables and sauce stuck to my nose, my chin, and my cheeks. With the slow precision of a well-crafted plan, I turned around and faced her.

  She still wore the cape and her face still hid in the shadow of the hood.

  “How’d you know my name?”

  She stepped closer, within reach. Pulling a rag from her pocket, she wiped away the mess on my tattooed cheek and pointed at the family crest, then my rank.

  All along, I’d assumed the cave was her home. I shook my head, shocked that hunger had clouded my thoughts. Her facility must be beneath the hill I’d traversed only yesterday. Was it yesterday? Ten seconds of network access would be all the time she would have needed to search on my tattoo.

  She stepped back and crossed her arms on her chest. “How are your wrists?”

  “Sore.”

  From beneath her cape, she pulled the knife free of a leather holder. “Can I trust you, Greg?”

  “Seems kind of unfair that you know my name and I don’t know yours.”

  “As a high Thinker, you shouldn’t ever contemplate fairness. Only precision, elegance, or logic.”

  “That’s not how it works,” I said.

  Leaving my hands still pinned, she tucked the knife back into its holder. “Lying isn’t the way to get what you need.”

  With that, she grabbed the near-empty bowl of stew and left me alone once more.

  I had maneuvered myself closer to the wall and now leaned against it. I closed my eyes and drew my thoughts deep inside my mind, distancing myself from the pain in my wrists and the congealed stew up my nose.

  Embracing data, I floated through my favorites — a list of the first one hundred prime numbers, the coordinates of every evac hospital in Atlantica, the height of every building in Boston. Each idea blanketed me, adding a buffer of comfort between the futility of my situation and the hope of rescue.

  A trade was still a theoretical possibility. But she wouldn’t dare bring anyone down to her cave. Nor would she reveal her cleverly hidden farm.

  The trip for any such exchange would provide my only chance for escape. Whether the kind where I ran and hoped to find shelter, or the kind where I slit my own throat, had yet to be decided. But now I had the spores of a plan.

  D
ecision brought comfort. For the first time in what must have been at least thirty-six hours, I found sleep.

  I woke and had to piss so bad that I wet myself. The smell of the dirt and my own fluids brought me to full alertness. The room was quiet. If the woman was near, she was awfully still.

  “Hello?”

  She didn’t answer.

  In the dim green light of the emitter, I recognized her shape. She lay in the dirt, about as far from me as she could get in the room, and appeared to be sleeping.

  Every muscle in my back, shoulders, wrists, legs, hell, all of me, ached. I needed to stand and walk around. Over to her. Pull back that hood and have a look at her face. I couldn’t shake the haunting feeling that I knew her.

  My mind flashed a thousand warnings. She would never sleep in my presence, especially when she had another place to go, to hide, to do whatever it was she did when she wasn’t with me. But despite my misgivings I struggled to my feet. Ignoring every shred of common sense, I awkwardly made my way across the room. And as the danger volume made my head pound, I knelt on one knee beside her.

  The cloak had been cinched tightly around her body, the hood drawn nearly closed, leaving a small opening for fresh air. Her chest lifted and fell with the long, slow breaths of sleep. If she still carried the knife, I might be able to fumble for it, but could I do so without waking her?

  Instead, I turned so that my hands were positioned over the hood and craned my neck around to try and see my way to undoing the string holding it closed at her neck.

  “Greg?”

  Her voice made me jump. With my mouth was as dry as sand, I said, “Yeah?”

  “Have you ever had a dog?”

  The question threw me. I had expected her to scold me for touching her, or to pull out the knife and cut me. Deceit wasn’t rewarded, so I followed along. “A shaggy one,” I said. “Named Sol.”

  “A male?”

  My hands still waited, right above the string. “Sol was a bitch. The kind that never stops yipping, eats through everything that means something to you, and pisses in your bed.”