I had already cleared out the loose rubble from the cave and had deployed all the soft, padding type of gear that I had in my two packs onto the cave floor. I unrolled my sleeping bag and had her to lie down on it while I rummaged through my pack for medical supplies. Her left pant leg was dirty and blotchy with blood. I could see from the stains that she had been hurt just below the knee. She hadn’t been limping terribly badly so there probably was no structural damage; but I figured she had some deep scratches and abrasions and I had the disinfectant bottle opened when she held out her hand.
“I’ll do it.”
“I’m certified,” I replied.
“So, am I. I’ll do it,” she repeated.
I shrugged. If that was the way she wanted to be, I didn’t care. I handed over the bottle and sterile swab. Then, she said something that didn’t make any sense at all. Remember, this was the girl who yesterday had pulled up her pant legs without any hesitation whatsoever and had deliberately flaunted her anklies in my face.
“Turn around,” she said.
I hesitated.
“Z-man,” she said with some heat. “Turn around. I don’t want you looking at me.”
# # # # # # # #
When I was facing the wall, she max’ed out the light on her pinky-ring. I heard her pull a pant leg up, I heard her douse the swab, I even heard the slight intakes of breath when she touched something sensitive. Then, she rummaged in her pack. I heard the rip of a package and some cutting sounds on what I assumed was a sterile pad. There were other undistinguishable sounds – presumably, she was applying medication to the pads. That was followed by more cuts with the scissors – probably adhesive tape. I heard the tape being applied. I was getting ready to turn around but waited for her to tell me it was OK. She didn’t.
I heard more rummaging sounds. Something was opened. Then, no sounds – just the rustle of her body moving from time to time. I did get a faint scent of something, but couldn’t place it. I heard the pant leg coming down again, the sound of a zipper on her pack being closed, and then her voice. “You can turn around now, Z-man. Thank you for not looking.”
I turned around to find her on her knees on my sleeping bag. “If you move to the front of the cave, I’ll get my own sleeping bag out.” I did, and she did. She got herself comfortable on her bag – half leaning on her side against a cave wall, her legs curled up underneath her, the injured left leg on top. I crawled on hands and knees onto my own bag and made myself comfortable in a sitting position against the cave wall and with both of my legs straight out in front of me.
I wanted to ask her why she had acted so strangely about her scrapes, but didn’t want to provoke an argument, not after all she had done to get me hidden. The cave itself wasn’t much. It was high enough that we could move around on our hands and knees, but we had no room to stand. The cave was in the shape of a rough rectangle, barely wide enough for two sleeping bags. We were against the back wall, our packs beside us. There may have been a meter or two of cave floor between the ends of our sleeping bags and the opening. In such confined conditions, our body heat would make the sleeping bags unnecessary.
She must have realized that at about the same time, but this meant something more to her than it did to me. She crawled to the lip of the cave, pulling her bag behind her, and began hanging it over the opening. Once again, the adhesive tape was in use, but this time I got to see the operation. “Have to keep the heat in,” she explained. “We wouldn’t have to do this if the cave were deeper.”
“Air supply?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t have to wait much longer,” she replied cryptically.
She turned her pinky-ring light off and I did the same. We sat in the darkness. I fought off the urge to close my eyes, wondering if there was a real threat or not. I had never seen the soldier in our path. Had he been real? Would airplanes really be collecting heat signatures or was this just a trick to convince me trust her?
My question was answered before I succumbed to exhaustion. A very distinct droning sound passed close by our position. In the silence of the cave, it was very noticeable. I heard her move out of her sitting position and crawl to the front of the cave. Her hand grazed my knee as she passed by. I felt a cool breeze when she pulled the door down. Then, she crawled back to her place, arranged her bag, and I heard her slide down into a prone position on top of it before saying, “It’s still not safe to go outside, but we don’t have to bake in the cave any longer," she said. "During the night, a fleet of copters will investigate every heat signature they recorded that was big enough for a human. If they find a reasonable explanation for each signature, they’ll conclude this area is clean. However, we can’t afford to take the chance that some deer went for a midnight stroll and was photographed. If so, they’ll be back in force tomorrow for visual checks. We’re stuck here for at least a day.”
I heard her drift into sleep and I guess I did too. I never did hear any copter sounds, but I did believe that they were out there checking heat signatures. I also believed that a soldier had been in our path last night. What I couldn’t understand was why a DPS agent was helping me to hide.
# # # # # # # #
I awoke once in the night. At first, I thought there had been a sound, but the cave was silent except for her soft breathing. It was then that I realized that we were touching. She may have been the one to change position; perhaps I did. Both of us were facing towards the walls, but I could feel the touch of one of her feet against mine. I pulled myself away slowly and hunched further towards my wall. I listened for as long as I could – trying to detect anything in her breathing that would indicate she was faking sleep. Were all DPS agents trained to use the sex approach? I tried to forget the feel of her ankly against my leg and was eventually successful.
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 9
The whop-whop noises of a large copter woke me and I was getting up to take a peek when she put a hand out to stop me. “Sometimes, they rotate in place while the camera takes a panoramic shot. Best not to take a chance.”
Her voice didn’t sound sleepy, so I assumed that she had been awake.
“I was just wondering what kind of copter it was.”
“Twelve passenger capacity plus pilot and copilot. It’s armed, but they'll conceal the weapons on this expedition. Top speed about 500 kph when loaded. They can be on you before you realize they’re coming.”
No solar engine could achieve that speed, I thought. I didn’t disbelieve what she had said as I had heard the reverberating beats of the rotor. However, the world was out of oil and that was the only energy source I knew of that could generate 500 kph on such a beast.
We listened as the copter whopped out of hearing. “Now’s the safest time to be out of the cave," she said. “The search area is too broad to assign more than one copter to a sector. We know where it’s going to be for the next five minutes. Are you in a big rush to get out of this cave?”
I knew what she was asking and I had been wondering last night what we were going to do about being stuck in a cave all night and day. “I’m OK for now,” I said.
“I’ll reconnoiter to the left. When I get back, you can check out what the terrain is like to the right.” Neither of us was going to say what we were really doing. “You won’t be waiting for me with a notched arrow?” she asked at the cave entrance.
It was a good thing that she asked. I had completely forgotten to get her promise not to escape. I crossed my heart; she did the same and disappeared.
# # # # # # # #
When I returned to the cave, she was sitting on her rolled up bag, munching on a food bar, and nodding her head up and down. “We’re going to be stuck here for the day,” she said. “I have some music bots from the 1950s and 60s if you want one.”
That explained how she knew that making a cross over her heart was a symbol for telling the truth. She must have learned about it in her How to Be Rebellious course. Obviously, given her outrageous behavi
ours, she had earned a B- in the course.
Since both of us had been assigned the same era to study, that meant that we were in the same graduating year. So, now I knew that she was fifteen-years old and not an adult disguised as a teenager. The touch of her ankly on my leg last night was probably an accident.
The How to be rebellious course was all part of the IOF’s efforts to give us a healthy childhood. As my teacher explained – teenagers have always rebelled against the preceding adult generation. Before the IOF, teenagers would adopt their own unique styles of dress, hair, music, and slang. Some minority of the population generally inspired these changes but, in time, the entire generation adopted them. Of course, this meant that the next generation had to demonstrate its rebellious nature differently. In today’s IOF however, every generation acted pretty much the same as the generation before it, and the one before that, and the one before that. Music hadn’t changed much in the 5 decades of the IOF, hair styles were the same, dress was the same, and so on.
So, to make sure that each generation could release its rebellious feelings, the IOF gave us classes on how to rebel. My graduating class was assigned the 1950s and 60s years and we were ordered to adopt the lingo and music of that period. Anyone not rebelling in the proper manner would be reprimanded – code for a force 3 brain zap. I didn’t use the full set of vocabulary they gave us to memorize, but I did like to pepper my conversation with the word cool!, which I thought was cooler than neat or sweet or any of the other expressions from other decades. I remembered that she had used the word as well. The school gave us a bot full of music from the 50s to study but I rarely listened to it. I guess I wasn’t too rebellious.
I politely turned down her offer; I had other things to study.
# # # # # # # #
Zurt the First had left me another video file. I opened it up to find him sitting on the same stump in the same woods.
"Zurt, I’ve been trying to answer two questions, but I’ve reached a dead end. I’m hoping that you’ll be able to answer them. Don’t bother searching for answers on the Internet or in any of the course materials. The answers aren't there. Perhaps, you’ll have learned something since I took off your brain-band that will help you."
"By now, you’ll have remembered the history of the IOF and you’ll realize how it was so different from the old, Unfair Society. IOF history books paint a picture of a peaceful transition from one society to the next. But, the Unfair Society was full of violent, selfish people. They prided themselves on having the right to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, to anyone they wanted to – no matter what injury or suffering that behaviour caused. However, today’s IOF citizens are expected to believe that everyone in the Unfair Society willingly agreed to wear a brain-band and let the IOF be in charge of making babies. That just isn’t logical. Those kinds of people wouldn’t have done that willingly. But, everything I’ve read claims that it happened that way. Here’s my first question for you to reflect on: Are we being told the truth about the peaceful birth of the IOF?"
"Next topic: Everyone knows that there are still a few dissidents who oppose the IOF. We have been told that these are violent sociopaths who refuse to belong to a peaceful, prosperous society. The IOF protects us from these dangerous people and that is why, from time to time, we have to obey orders that may not make sense at the time. I tried to learn more about these dissidents. I found nothing, absolutely nothing on them. Here’s my second question to you: Why isn’t there any information available on the dissidents?"
"These are very important questions, Zurt. I’ve been thinking about the dissidents and the IOF for a long time. The more dead ends I encountered, the more I knew I had to find the truth. This is why I took your brain-band off. You see, I have a memory of something happening to me a long time ago. If that memory is real, I’ll know that the IOF has hidden the truth of how the IOF was created. If they’ve hidden one truth, what else have they hidden? Until you can answer my two questions to your satisfaction, you must not accept the IOF job offer."
"I’m going to give you a hint about my memory now. If you remember it too, that will mean that it really did happen to us. Are you ready?"
I nodded before realizing that it wasn't necessary.
“Babies should be born, not manufactured.”
[End of Zurt the First's video.]
# # # # # # # #
I remembered a picture. A picture of a woman lying on her side on some black pavement, her bright green coat open around her. A white dress was under the coat. I was immediately struck by a body type that I had never seen before. She was taller and more slender than today’s IOF women. But even more noticeable – she had long locks of red hair framing a white face.
The woman’s face was frozen in pain. She had raised her head and shoulders off the pavement and was reaching out to someone with her right hand. The hand behind her body was keeping a piece of wood upright. A placard was attached to the top of the post. It read Babies should be born, not manufactured!
# # # # # # # #
I didn’t have to think about Zurt the First’s questions – taking my brain-band off had indeed led me to the answers he wanted. No information could be found about the dissidents because DPS agents like Abby captured them soon after they took off their brain-bands. Then, problem-fixers like Rick made the problem disappear. If the fleeing dissident had confided in anyone else, I expect those people disappeared as well.
As to whether or not we were being told the truth about the peaceful birth of the IOF, the answer was crystal clear. If the IOF made dissidents disappear now when only a few were left and all were in hiding, I had no doubt that it would have used violence five decades ago too. The transition between societies could not have been peaceful – the proof was in the picture of that red-haired lady lying in pain on the pavement.
If the IOF had created a completely false description of its birth, I was sure that it had lied about other things as well. Again, I had proof immediately at hand. The DPS agent sitting next to me and bobbing her head to music was an expert liar. I had seen her in action.
# # # # # # # #
I was munching a food bar for lunch – the DPS agent was doing the same next to me. She had taken the bot out of her scalp plug and was just staring out the cave entrance. It seemed like a good time to try to get some information from her. I thought I’d start with an easy question – one that I already knew the answer to. “How old are you?” I asked.
“How old do you think I am,” she replied in a non-answer.
“Fifteen.”
She continued to chew.
“Am I right?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious.”
“How very much like a Z,” she muttered to herself, but I know that she intended me to hear.
“So are you fifteen or not?”
“Why don’t you cut off my leg and count the rings?”
“That only works with trees.”
“You don’t say.”
Since she hadn’t disputed my estimate, and since she previously had shown herself to be argumentative in the extreme, and she hadn’t been argumentative when I suggested she was fifteen, I concluded that I was safe in assuming that her correct age was fifteen. I could proceed with my next line of inquiry. “How long have you been a DPS agent?”
“Long enough to learn how to catch you.”
Obviously, I needed to phrase the question more specifically. “For how many years have you been a DPS agent?”
“For enough years to learn how to catch you.”
I’d have to think of another approach. It took a bit of time before I had devised a question that I thought would pin her down. “Have you worked for the DPS for one year or more?” I asked. “Please answer Yes or No.”
“Yes or no,” she answered.
She didn’t even have to think. The evasion had been automatic. I'd try again. “Please answer Yes …… or….. No.”
&n
bsp; “I did.”
“No, you didn’t. You answered Yes or no when I wanted you to answer EITHER Yes…… OR ……… No.”
“You should have said that.”
“I have now.”
I waited. She munched. I had to ask her again. “Have you worked for the DPS for one year or more? Please answer either Yes…… OR ……… No.”
“Either Yes ……… OR ………No.”
“Why are you being so difficult?”
“I’m answering your questions. It’s not my fault if you don’t know how to interrogate a prisoner.”
“I’m not interrogating you.”
“Sure feels that way.”
It was like we were back by the rock cliff. Another impasse. She could keep stringing this out until I gave up. But, this question was something she didn’t want to answer and so that was telling me something. I didn’t know what that meant yet. I spent some time thinking up a different approach. She was nodding to music again when I turned back to face her. I had to touch her on the shoulder to get her attention. She took the bot out of her scalp plug and looked at me.
“What?”
“I’m having difficulty understanding how you could be an experienced DPS agent and yet be barely out of high school. High school students aren’t given their jobs until they graduate. Could you please explain how you were able to gain DPS work experience before you were eligible to have the job?”
“I’ll give you two explanations. You determine which one is true. OK?”
“OK.”
“Answer #1: As a sophomore in high school, I developed an addiction to brain-band chemicals. The DPS found out about my secret shame and forced me to work undercover for them. Because I’m so young, nobody suspects that I’m an agent. They sneak me just enough chemicals to keep me cooperative. You got that?”
I nodded.
“Answer #2: I worked part-time for the DPS during harvesting. Again, they like me because I’m too young to be suspected. Got that one too?”
I nodded.
“Knock yourself out.”
# # # # # # # #
Several hours later, I felt a touch on my arm and looked up. She had a bot in her hand and an inquiring look on her face. “Did you figure it out yet?”
I Got'cha! Page 7
