The drone was about the size and shape of a medium suitcase, not counting the guns. Most of it was made of a very lightweight alloy, but the plate under the gun ports was substantially heavier, to absorb the recoil pressure from firing. It had landed unevenly on the ground, one side dug into the soft earth while the other stuck up at a low angle. Fergus had to brace himself against a tree and push it fully over onto its side with his legs, the salty sweat coursing over his face stinging his eyes and rendering everything blurry. Finally, it budged far enough, and he relaxed his legs and wiped his face again.
More than five minutes had passed. He could feel other signals out there, but they were stationary. Not that he could trust that; if he was running ops through the drones, when he saw all the others land, he’d have copied them to avoid giving himself away until opportunities improved.
He unscrewed the bottom plate from the dead drone, then pried it off and hefted it in his hands. It might—might—have been thick enough to stop a bullet, but he hoped he didn’t have an opportunity to find out otherwise. Putting his tools away, he headed back again toward the edge of the woods, plate held over his head. Nothing seemed to be moving, so he left the thinning cover of the trees and walked toward his rover, tense for any unexpected movement or spark of signal.
When he reached the vehicle, he walked around it several times, even peering underneath, but nothing seemed to have been touched. If they were operating by hacked drone, it was likely that there was no one physically inside the reserve; he was close to a hundred kilometers away from the nearest gate, and effectively covering that area in person would be noticed quickly. The government was deadly serious about stopping poachers and environmental vandals.
Reasonably sure his rover was safe, he climbed back in and threw the plate down on the seat beside him, and stuck his empty water bottle into the dashboard condenser to refill. He closed his eyes and took one last electrical “look” around him, then powered the rover up to make the trek back toward the gate.
After about an hour of driving, and startling every time he came across one of the gun drones sitting idle on the ground, he realized his back and neck were become furiously sore from being constantly tense, and forced himself to relax.
He had to stop once for a herd of something to cross his path; the rover systems handily identified them as wildebeest, and there seemed to be hundreds of them not particularly in a hurry. He took the opportunity to climb out the window and sit on the top of his rover, half to watch the spectacle of the herd, half to take another survey of potential threats. When the last few stragglers finally cleared the road, he continued on.
A kilometer from the gate, he began to sense more of the grounded drones, but although they were also down, they were putting out more signal, and there were a lot of them in a small area. Spread out in a semicircle, in fact, directly ahead. Now, that, he thought, is the next trap.
It was almost a relief, because he knew where it was for once before he stepped in it.
He grabbed his water bottle out of the condenser and capped it tightly, slowing the rover but not stopping it, and when he had all his stuff restowed in his pack on the passenger seat, he tossed it out the open window into the grass, then popped open the door and threw himself out after it.
Ground and grass was much harder and sharper when you tumble into it at speed, and he lay there for a few moments, staring up at the blue sky and its wandering, unconcerned clouds for a few minutes while resisting the very strong urge to swear very loudly and give himself away. The autopilot on the rover kept it moving forward along the road, and just as he’d crawled back far enough to retrieve his pack, he could feel the drones activate ahead.
Seven of the bulky, armed drones rose up in formation and fired into his poor rover, eventually bringing it to a smoking stop another thirty meters down the road. He felt no small amount of outrage on the rover’s behalf but kept his head down in the grass and used his extra sense to follow the drones as they moved in and around the destroyed vehicle, no doubt checking for his body.
That meant that sooner or later, they’d come looking farther out, and right now he had no cover. There was a small stand of trees a fair distance away to his left, clustered on a low rise in the savannah; he didn’t think he had a shot in hell of making it that far, but it was all he had, so he began the laborious crawl through the thin, tufted grass, listening intently for the drones, which were still clustered around the dead rover.
It was slow going, because he didn’t want to make his path through the grass too obvious from afar. He was concentrating enough on keeping his movements steady and listening for the drones that he failed to recognize, until it was almost deafening, a much louder sound coming his way. He dared to poke his head up just enough to look behind him and see another massive antelope herd bearing down on him.
“Whoa, shit,” he said, and scrambled up to a crouch. Without conscious intention, static began to build up along his arms and torso, and the fragment deep in its can heard and began to sing along with him. “Shit, shit, SHIT—!” he said, as he was engulfed in the fast-moving herd, each animal swerving around him at the very last moment before impact.
Recognizing an opportunity, he stood up straighter and ran along with the herd, trying not to choke in the kicked-up dust and bits of flying turf.
The antelope were much faster than he was, and it was nerve-wracking every time a pair of twisty, thick, clearly dangerous horns appeared in his immediate peripheral vision, but there were enough of them that he could run under their cover until his heart was pounding in his chest and he was sure he would never catch his breath again. As he slipped farther behind in the herd, he spotted one of the umbrella-like trees he’d seen in the distance, and angled toward it.
He collapsed at the foot of the tree, in the precious shade, and took deep, whooping breaths. Chest heaving, he fumbled around for his pack and pulled out his water bottle, and drank down deep gulps as best he could. His arms, he noticed, still had small fingers of static moving up and down against his skin. “Ye can stop now, ye scunner,” he told it, but the bees in his gut seemed disinclined to fully stand down. His own exhaustion and fear likely didn’t help.
He took another long pull from his bottle, already more than two-thirds empty again, then leaned his head back against the rough trunk and looked up into the branches and a large pair of yellow eyes, set deep in a spotted, furry face, staring back down at him from a thick branch overhead.
“Just my luck,” he grumbled. “Hello, kitty.”
The leopard didn’t seem particularly inclined to move—though who knew how much warning he’d get if it did?—but he stayed absolutely still as they regarded each other for several long minutes. At last, the leopard yawned, its bright pink-red mouth and tongue impossibly huge behind a full set of extremely large teeth, and the animal stretched out against the branch in a pose he’d seen his cat, Mister Feefs, do a thousand times just prior to returning to the never-ending business of napping.
It did not, however, take its eyes off Fergus.
His handpad chimed, and he picked it up carefully without moving his head or taking his eyes off the cat. “Guest 3431, what is your status?” the reserve agent asked.
“Drones blew my rover up,” Fergus said.
“Are you still in the vicinity of your rover?” she asked.
“No,” he answered. Even if the line was being listened in on, that wasn’t giving away much.
“Then please remain where you are until we give you instructions otherwise,” she said.
“Happy to,” he said. He didn’t want to move at all, at this particular moment, unless instant teleportation suddenly became an option.
He could already feel new signals in the distance. Two dozen armed drones flew in from the west and dispersed around the hacked ones, probably to keep any from leaving and causing damage elsewhere while something more direct was done.
Sure enough, one by one, the compromised drones suddenly dipped and settled back down into the grass, out of sight. A few minutes later, three official reserve rovers drove into sight, stopping around his blasted rover, and six people with guns got out.
“Guest 3431, do you see our team?” the agent asked.
“Yeah,” Fergus said.
“All compromised drones have been shut down. Our team will safely escort you out of the reserve,” the agent said. “Are you able to make your way to them?”
Fergus blinked at the leopard, who didn’t express an opinion of its own on that. “I can try,” he said.
“Thank you for your patience,” the agent said. “We are sorry for the inconveniences you have suffered. There is odd activity near that section of the park sometimes, though never trouble of this sort, and it was unanticipated.”
“Yeah,” Fergus said. “Wrong place and the wrong time, I guess?”
“Exactly so,” the agent answered. “As you signed a waiver before entering the park, there is not much we can do to express our regret at your unfortunate experience today, but we would be happy to extend you a one-time twenty percent discount at our gift shop in compensation.”
Fergus laughed. “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.” He slid himself away from the tree trunk, then got to his feet. The leopard did not move. Electricity still crawled up and down Fergus’s arms and, with the sweat, made a nasty burnt tang in the air. “Can’t blame you for not eating me,” he told the leopard, and backed away. When he was far enough from the tree, he finally turned and headed toward the rescue team. As if knowing better than he did that the threat had passed, his electricity finally died down and went back to sleep.
He looked forward to the day, not too far away now, when he came for Digital Midendian instead of the other way around.
* * *
—
The Pan-African Lightning was one of the most renowned train routes in the modern world, both for its speed and for the scenic vistas, both pristine and recreated wildernesses, it passed smoothly through from Mombasa to Dakar. It was one of those trips of a lifetime that most people could only dream of.
Fergus booked a tiny private cabin on one of the retro-styled passenger cars, considered his good fortune to be there, and then pulled down the folding bunk and slept like a log until they were already pulling into the station in Kampala, along the northern shores of Victoria Nyanza. Dream images of bright yellow eyes lingered in his mind until he was finally, fully awake.
He stretched, drank some water, then wandered down to the dining car. From the window he could see the dark blue waters of the lake itself and some large wading birds with ponderously long, thick beaks stalking the shallows for meals of their own. Small floating bots moved among the thick green weeds, clearing them in meandering paths dictated by the movements of the water, to keep them from choking out the entire lake surface. Far enough offshore to be unobtrusive he could see the shine of half-submerged monitoring stations; he’d seen pictures, as a kid, of them standing tall and forlorn out of cracked and brittle mud during a decade-long drought.
The train began moving again as he was picking up ice tea, a bowl of some kind of bean-and-coconut soup, and what promised to be spicy rice, and he walked back to his compartment with everything balanced on a tray, grateful for the smooth rails beneath them. They angled away from the shore and briefly through a stretch of city before they were back into the wilderness corridor that lined the scenic train route.
Back in his compartment, he had just sat down to drink his ice tea when he heard tapping and looked up to see a multilegged delivery drone outside the window. He slid the window down and let it in, where it immediately disgorged a PhobosCola can on his fold-down table.
“This is the drone Rosemary,” a recording announced, in Whiro’s voice. “We are currently in jump, heading out toward Titan, as we drew additional Alliance scrutiny in Mars orbit and felt it best to get some distance. Rosemary will find a ride up to orbit on a commercial packager and then separate and connect with Polo when it is safe to do so. A second drone, Sage, should be waiting for you in the Azores by the time you get there. After that, if you do not plan on bringing the Newfoundland piece upwell yourself, we will need to discuss next actions. We are still uncertain where the last piece might be.”
Fergus got the Tanzania piece, still in its can, out of his pack, and listened to the dampened but undimmed song from within. He had to hope that, away from him and other inputs, it would drift back into slumber. Either that or they were going to have to figure out how to make better cans.
He slid it into the now-empty drone slot, then put the new can in his pack where it had been. “Record reply,” he told the drone, and waited for the little green record light to turn on before speaking. “Thank you, Whiro. If Ignatio wishes to send some good, confusing-but-not-impossible sciencey things to Isla on Mars, she’d probably appreciate it. Stay safe, and I’ll check in again soon. End reply.”
The drone sealed its storage compartment, then rotated about 180 degrees and climbed out the window and up the side of the train car, quickly out of sight. He could feel it, like the tiny tickle of electrical feet, make its way along the roof of the car, pause, and then, suddenly, was up and away and gone.
He closed the window with a sigh and turned around, only to find someone in the compartment with him, sitting on the opposite bench as if they had been there the whole time.
“You,” Fergus said. “I guess you like trains.”
“I do,” the Asiig agent admitted. “I think it’s the noise they make. Proper trains, anyway. Did you know that in Japan, the word for underground trains is chikatetsu? Chikatetsu chikatetsu chikatetsu. A wonderful bit of onomatopoeia, that.”
“I didn’t,” Fergus said. He folded up his bunk and sat on the seat that had been tucked beneath it, and took a spoonful of the soup. It was still too hot, and he wanted to enjoy the rice alone, so he pushed the tray aside and looked at the not-quite-human man. Was it the hair? No. Something about his face, his skin texture? No. He still couldn’t put his finger on what looked wrong, until he realized the man never blinked, and that in the black depths of his pupils he would swear he could see stars.
It was Fergus who blinked. Of course. “If we’re going to keep meeting like this, you could at least tell me your name,” he said.
The man shrugged. “I don’t really have one anymore,” he answered.
“Anymore?”
The man grinned. “Ooooh!” he said. “I gave something away! How very careless of me. You’ve done remarkably well with your collecting so far. Very good.” He clapped.
“Yeah, no thanks to you,” Fergus said.
The man raised his eyebrows, and Fergus slumped down in his seat. “Fine, in part because of you. Your masters, anyhow, and this ‘gift’ you gave me. Not that anyone asked my opinion about it.”
“And I’m still not asking,” the man said.
“Then why the fuck are you here bothering me while my lunch gets cold? Just to make sure I remember you’re still out there?”
“I wish,” the agent said. “But no, I had a word of advice for you, actually. Help, even. It seems the Asiig are concerned, and while they prefer not to meddle—oh, don’t make that face; you hardly count—they will, on occasion, nudge. So, here I am, nudging. You know you need all the pieces, yes?”
“We gathered that,” Fergus said.
“One will be harder to find than the others,” the agent said. “Your current search methodology will fail you. To find it, you will have to think outside the box.” As if to demonstrate his point, the agent used his index fingers to draw a circle in the air.
“Boxes are rectangles,” Fergus said. At the agent’s look, he added, “Or square. Well, three-dimensional. Cubes. Or. . . . rectangular cubes.”
The agent sighed. “Talking to you people is so exhausting
. I also have something for you.” He reached out, the movement uncannily smooth, and dropped a small red capsule on the table.
Fergus, after a moment’s trepidation, picked it up. It was about a half-centimeter in diameter and two long. “What is it?”
“When you want us, we will know,” the agent said.
“What if I don’t ever want you?”
“Then throw it away! Throw caution to the wind! Discard a resource of unknown potential, and with it all the branches of future possibility, before you even know where they may carry you! It is not my place to tell you. Or you can keep it in your pocket and not think about it, and forget it is there.”
Fergus put it in his pocket and wondered what they’d just been talking about. “ ‘Think outside the box,’ right, got it. You came all this way for that?”
“It wasn’t much trouble,” the agent said. “Your soup is getting cold, so I will bid you farewell, then. After all, you are running low on time.” The agent stood.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Fergus said, picking up his spoon as if about to resume eating.
“Oh, I would never be so clumsy,” the agent said, waved, and left his compartment. Fergus jumped to his feet and peered down the train corridor, but as before, the agent had vanished. Reentering his compartment, he moved too slowly, and the door hit him.
The soup and spicy rice were excellent, and he deeply resented that he was too irritated now to enjoy them.
Chapter 15
Once Fergus had eaten and then napped, he found that however much attention he tried to apply toward research and planning for his eventual but inevitable need to take the remaining core fragments away from the Alliance, Digital Midendian, and the cult, his mind only wanted to replay Isla in the mini-sub, holding up her bloodied hand, and relitigate everything he did wrong, did sloppily, could have avoided if he wasn’t a selfish jerk with no real survival instinct and a halo of death and destruction around him everywhere he went.
The Scavenger Door Page 27
