by JL Bryan
He also remembered how George Baldwin, the terror agent at GlobeNet, had put him under a couple of times to confirm his instructions. Baldwin didn’t have to drug or hypnotize Ruppert, though—he just had to speak one code word programmed by the Captain, Racca, and Ruppert would drop right into a trance.
In his memories of Baldwin, a second person began to take shape, someone else who’d been in Baldwin’s office. This man wore the black-on-black suit of a Terror man, and he was much older than Baldwin, even elderly, though his lean, rigidly straight figure indicated he’d not gone soft in old age. He’d said very little, mainly just watched Ruppert with blue eyes as pale as water.
The third night, Lucia invited him for a smoke outside. He declined the cigarette but went up with her anyway. He was itching to get outside the cave, spacious as it was, but mainly he felt relieved to see she was no longer so intent on murdering him. Then again, maybe she was going to kill him right now, and just didn’t want to get blood on the floor. He let her lead the way and kept an eye on her as they climbed the steep slope up to the ground.
She sat on the trunk of his car beneath the overhang, looking out towards the night sky, and lit a Marlboro.
“Bad habit,” Ruppert said.
“I’m down to one a day. All you can afford these days, anyway.”
“You want to walk outside?”
She shook her head. “Sky drones patrol the desert. Thermal sensors. We’re okay under here, though.”
“How much longer are we staying?”
“Till Doc says.”
“And then?”
“We move on.”
“I’m feeling a little underinformed here.”
“It’s fine. It’ll be good for your mission.”
“You’re just like Baldwin.”
“What? Your Terror handler?”
“He said the same thing. They were keeping me in the dark because it was good for the mission. It would help keep me believable.”
She didn’t say anything, just looked at him over the burning tip of her cigarette. Flecks of starlight glimmered in her black eyes.
“You never told me how you got involved with all of this,” Ruppert said after an uncomfortable silence.
“Why do you want to know?”
“You know my story.” He shrugged. “Forget I asked.”
“My boyfriend," she said. "He was a doctor, from Mexico. It was illegal for him to practice medicine here--we were in Texas then--because he learned from his father and grandfather, not from a school. But he came to help in the border camps, the refugees from the civil war in Mexico. Terror declared them terroristic. You remember?"
"That's why the put up the Barrier."
"I was nineteen, and he wasn't much older. He taught me to help him, with the wounded and sick. And helped me learn English.
"They hit us with the drones first, at two in the morning, burning down every tent in the camp. Then Hartwell Services raided us to kill off the wounded. Terror men came after, and they took Fernando. He was on their list. I escaped. Later, on the news, they called it a Neocommunist training camp, Latino terrorists secretly financed by China. I never met any Neocommunists. I don't think they exist."
"Did you ever see him again?" Ruppert asked.
"No. And our son was born six months later."
"What?"
"Little Nando. I kept him for almost five years…but they always catch up with you.”
“Who?”
“Terror. It was Child and Family Services, but I know it was Terror behind that. They found us in New Mexico. They knew who the father was! They say I cannot keep him, I am unmarried, I have ties to terrorism…and because his father was a known terrorist. Fernando was only a doctor. He helped victims of that stupid war."
“They took your son?”
“So I start trying to find out what they did with him. Five years ago. It's impossible. They lock up the Social Services networks as tight as military systems. Lots of people trying to find their families.”
“That’s terrible.”
“You don’t have a child, do you?”
“No. My wife, Madeline, she wants to, but…”
“Yes. The charming one.”
“She doesn’t always scream and throw furniture,” Ruppert said. “She has her good points.”
“Like what?”
“She’s very…organized.”
Lucia snorted out a laugh, then covered her mouth. “I don’t mean to laugh. I’m sure she is very organized.”
“I’m serious. She arranges my shirts from lightest to darkest.”
Lucia laughed again.
“She alphabetizes the soups.”
“You’re joking.”
He shook his head.
“Does she have kind of…you know…” Lucia gestured towards her own head. “Sickness?”
“I don’t think so. She takes a lot of pills.”
“Sounds like it.” Lucia jumped from the car and landed gently in the sand. “We should get back. Maybe we can organize the doctor’s soups.”
It was another two days before Ruppert could remember his programming sessions with the Captain and, with Dr. Smith’s help, eliminate the commands. Smith declared him a “free agent,” with his power of choice and self-direction restored.
“As much as I have enjoyed the company of both of you, I believe you’re ready to move on,” Dr. Smith told them over a meal of vegetable stew thickened with dried grains. “Lucia, do you feel safer working with him now?”
“I never worried about my own safety.” She cast a long look at Ruppert. “I guess he’s okay.”
“Thanks,” Ruppert said.
“Daniel,” Smith said, “I want you to understand something. Until this point in your life, you’ve served a dangerous master, but one that more or less protected you for your usefulness. You have no protection now. You have made yourself an enemy of the state. You must remain alert and guarded at all times.”
“Sounds like my old life,” Ruppert said.
“No,” Lucia said. “Your old life was a safe little walled suburb. You’re not a pet anymore. I sprung you from the cage, but now you’re out in the wild.”
“I think I’m liking it,” Ruppert said.
Lucia glanced at her watch. “Sunset. We have to get going.” She and Ruppert began to gather up their dishes.
“Don’t worry about it,” Smith said. “Scrubbing them will distract from my abject boredom.”
Lucia hugged the old man.
“You stay alert, too,” Smith said, looking Lucia in the eyes. “This is on your shoulders now.”
“I can handle it,” she said.
“If I had any doubts about that, I would not have put you in charge. Promise me you’ll return when you can.”
“I promise,” she said.
Dr. Smith shook Ruppert’s hand, then gripped it tight and looked him directly in the eyes. Again Ruppert was reminded of the intensity of Pastor John’s stare.
“The older man from your memories,” Smith said. “The psycho in George Baldwin’s office who observed you.”
“Yeah?”
“I am almost certain his name is Dr. Reginald Crane—the ‘doctor’ refers to economics, not medicine. I believe he is the PSYCOM agent in charge of your case. It’s his mess to clean up, after all. I sincerely hope that you will never find yourself in the same room with him again. But if that unfortunate event does come to pass, you should address him as ‘Duckers.’”
“Why?”
Smith broke into an impish grin. "At prep, Reggie lived in Eton House. Behind Eton House was a small duck pond. One April morning, a 6th grade science class and two teachers--on a nature walk, you understand--discovered him on the bench by the duck pond, cutting class, official school trousers unzipped. He was in full John Hancock position, as one boy called it. They called him the, excuse me, Lucia, the 'Duck-Fucker,' which, by process of evolution, abbreviated to 'Duckers.' He hates it.”
> “Was he actually fucking a duck?" Lucia asked.
"No," Smith said. "However, they said, the ducks were watching. Thank you, Daniel, for helping us,” Smith said. “Be careful out there.”
Lucia drove them out of the cave, again without headlights. There was more moonlight tonight, enough that Ruppert could discern the shapes of the rock formations among which they passed at an alarming speed. If he remembered correctly, it was almost half an hour until they would reach a paved road.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“North. It’s going to take most of the night. I might even let you drive some of it.”
“My own car? Thanks.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, “you’re going to meet Hollis Westerly. You really, really need to not kill him when you see him.”
“I won’t.” Ruppert thought about it. “Keep me back from him anyway, just in case.”
“Oh, I’m definitely doing that,” she said. “Please, Daniel. Don’t make me take a stab or a bullet for this prick. That’s going to be very hard for me to do.”
“I promise.” Ruppert leaned back and watched the stars pass overhead.
Ruppert smelled moisture in the thinner, cleaner air as they climbed north, up into the mountains of northern California. Lucia navigated the twisting roads in the early morning dark, while searching through radio channels for an alternative to the Dominionist preachers and angry talk shows that dominated the airwaves under the Department of Faith and Values approval process. She found a 1950s-style doo-wop station, sighed, and let it play at low volume.
“I never think to bring music,” she said.
“Try the satellite.”
“I tore out your uplink, remember? You can tell by the way we’re not being chased by Hartwell Services and Terror.”
“Right. Do I get any clues where we’re going, or what we’ll be doing there?”
Lucia pulled the car off the road, onto a dirt patch marked as a scenic overlook. She parked and killed the engine.
“You didn’t have to stop.”
“Look ahead.” She pointed.
Ruppert looked for a long moment before he could see a pulsing blue aura at the edge of the trees and rock faces ahead.
“What’s that?”
“Roadblock,” she said. “We almost drove into it.”
“Why would they have a roadblock in the middle of the mountains in the middle of the night?” he asked.
“Either they’re sweeping for smugglers, or they’re looking for someone specific. Hopefully not us.”
“What gets smuggled through here?”
“Everything. Drugs, books, people.”
“You think they’re looking for us?”
“I don’t want to find out. I’ve got a solid ID with me, but we don’t have one for you yet. And they’ll run your car, and then Terror will know where we are.”
“Great.”
“We should have gotten rid of it already,” Lucia said. “I was planning to do that at our next stop.”
“Let’s go back, then,” Ruppert said. “There must be another way around.”
“There might be,” she said. “Maybe smaller roads. We could check a map, but…” She gestured to the cavity where the satellite uplink had been. “I just don’t know my way around here. I’d kill for a phone right now.”
“You don’t have one?”
“You think I'm on the grid? A phone is just a portable tracking and listening device. I’m not paying money to bug myself for them.”
“Mine’s back at my house.” Ruppert thought it over. “What about those emergency call boxes?”
“They just link to the state police,” Lucia said. “Who we’re sort of trying to avoid right now.”
“But they hook into the grid, don’t they?” he asked. “Can you break into them?”
“Wait,” Lucia said. She opened her battered duffle bag, next to Ruppert’s Italian leather suitcase on the back seat, and removed the highly mutated remote control, along with a palmtop computer. “That might work, actually.” She connected a data wire from the computer to the remote. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll be telling them where we are.”
“What were our other choices?”
“Wait here until the roadblock breaks up,” she said. “Which could be a couple of hours, and they might send patrols down this way. Or we can go back and try to find another road, and get ourselves totally lost.”
“Do you think you can handle tapping the call box?”
Lucia shrugged. “Decent chance, as long it’s configured like a normal data system.”
“Let’s do it.”
They put the car in neutral and pushed it as far as they could to the edge of the clearing, and a little beyond, so that it hugged against the dense trees. Then they locked it up and began the downhill hike back the way they’d come, walking in the woods but keeping watch on the road.
It took fifteen minutes to reach one of the yellow call boxes mounted into a telephone pole by the side of the road. They moved towards it, then scrambled back into the undergrowth when a hulking pick-up truck barreled around a sharp corner.
“Hope he slows down before he hits the roadblock,” Ruppert said.
“I hope he crashes right into a Hartwell supervisor,” Lucia said. “That’ll distract them.”
They slipped back to the roadside, and Lucia opened the call box. Inside was a very old-fashioned telephone, the kind that sat in a cradle and was connected by a wire to the main console. The console itself had only one button.
“It doesn’t even have a screen,” Ruppert said.
“It’s ancient,” Lucia said. “Probably a copper line, too. Let’s see what we can do.”
Lucia opened the small toolkit she’d used to pry the uplink out of Ruppert’s car. She lifted the receiver very slightly, then took Ruppert’s hand and positioned his fingers to keep the latch depressed.
“Hold it down,” she said. “It may signal as soon as you lift the phone.”
Ruppert watched as she checked over the receiver unit, shook her head, then worked the flat tip of a screwdriver into the seam between the mouthpiece and the rest of the handset. She tried to pry it loose, grunted, then inserted it into another spot, and then another.
“This is taking too long.” Ruppert glanced in the direction of the roadblock.
“I can’t help it.” She continued working at it until, finally, the mouthpiece popped loose, trailing long strands of a clear, gummy glue after it. She lifted the microphone and wires from inside. “This is like something built by a caveman.”
“Can you do anything with it?”
“I’ve got a couple of programs that might work. This won’t help.” She tucked the modified remote control into the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers worked quickly to patch the phone into her palmtop computer, but to Ruppert it felt like centuries were passing. He could imagine them finding his car up the road, and uniformed cops, possibly even bearing the Hartwell Civil Defense Services logo on their shoulders, poking around the Bluehawk, calling it in to their commanders.
“That’s the best I can do.” Lucia inserted an audio plug into her ear, then tapped at her palmtop. She frowned, tapped again. Frowned, tapped again. Ruppert felt sweat all over his body. His eyes twitched back and forth between the phone and the road.
“Okay,” she said. “Let it go.”
Ruppert released the latch. Lucia tapped at her computer again. Ruppert waited forever for her to speak.
“This is the courier,” she said. “I have the package, but—no, I’m calling from an emergency box. I know, so keep it quick. We’ve got a roadblock across our path—no, up ahead—no, they haven’t spotted us as far as I know, but—look, I just need an alternate route.” Lucia quickly described where they were, then paused for a painfully long time, listening. “But there must be something. I’d rather backtrack a hundred miles rather than—well, tell me quick, then.” There was another long, tense pause, during whi
ch Lucia stared at Ruppert with wide eyes.
“What’s going on?” he whispered, and she gave him an exaggerated shrug.
“Oh,” she said. “Is that—no, it’ll work, it just seems a little—okay, how long will that take?”
Ruppert saw very bright headlights around the next bend, approaching from the direction of the roadblock. Blue lights flashed through the trees.
“Lucia—” he said, but she waved him off.
The headlights brightened. It sounded like multiple cars approaching, and the lead one was turning the corner ahead. They were about to be spotted.
Ruppert grabbed Lucia around the waist and pulled her into the shadows. They stumbled for several feet, then lost their footing and rolled down a steep hill littered with sharp rocks, crashing through brambles along the way, finally coming to rest against the broad trunk of an old redwood.
“What the hell, Daniel?” she snapped, trying to disentangle her arms and legs from him. He clapped a hand over her mouth and pointed.
Up the hill, blue lights pulsed from the area where they’d been standing, sweeping out like sheet lightning through the trees and brush above them. He heard crackling voices from multiple radio channels.
“Right here,” a man’s voice said. “Yeah, someone’s been monkeying around back here. We must have just missed them. Their console’s still attached.” The man paused. “No, sir, we haven’t found a vehicle yet. I’ll have some men—yes, sir. We’re going to need more men for a foot search. I’ll radio—thank you, sir.” There was a brief pause, then the unseen police officer began belting orders.
Search beams flared, filling long swaths of the woods with daylight. Ruppert and Lucia crept around behind the redwood, flat on their stomachs, just as one of the beams flashed onto the tree’s wide trunk. There was blinding light on either side of them, but they were hidden for the moment.
