Keepers

by Brenda Cooper

  Lou glanced at Coryn, who had mysteriously gathered the patronage of this strong woman. “No. Thank you. I’m sorry I have to go.”

  Juliana’s smile disappeared. “The city is about to kick you out anyway. Portland’s court sent its list of incorrigibles from the protests up this morning.”

  Lou tensed. “I see.”

  “Eloise will meet you at Longview Station. Drop off there. It’s the stop before Portland.”

  “Okay.” Lou turned to Jake. In spite of his bowed frame and thin cheeks, he was still as handsome as a near-centenarian could be. He didn’t do anything so physical as marathons, but Coryn claimed he rode a stationary bicycle and race-walked. He must do something to stay so alert. Another icon. The Canadian half of the Jake and Lake Show, the man who stood up to the United States government and survived. Together, Jake and Julianna had created Seacouver. True to his nature as the quiet power, Jake smiled and took her rough hand in his far smoother one. She squeezed softly, so as not to break any of his bones. “Perhaps I’ll see you again,” she told him.

  “That’s likely. Good luck.”

  “Thank you. I could use some luck.” Then Lou was face to face with her sister again. Coryn had her small, white dog with her. Aspen. He licked Coryn’s face, looking at home in the city. Coryn had collected him from murdered Listeners on her way to find Lou. Well, Coryn and Aspen were both safer now. Maybe.

  Lou ruffled Aspen’s fur. A sudden sharp pang of loss tore her breath, but she refused to show it. She hugged Coryn once, briefly, and turned away to climb up the steps. Even though she wanted to stop, she didn’t let herself look back, afraid Coryn would notice the tears at the edges of her eyes.

  Soon enough, the noisy station grabbed her attention. She’d never ridden the hyperloop. Orphans couldn’t afford it.

  Security-bots stood at the top of the steps behind a black line, watching with perfect and slightly creepy focus. They wore red-and-yellow Loop Authority uniforms. All of them had been designed to look female. They wore the same faces and bra sizes, had the same long legs and long arms and long-fingered hands, but different skin color and hair. Lou tried to avoid them, which might have been the point of making them so uncanny.

  Flashing white signs pointed to where the security scanning area started. She stepped over the line, and an area of the floor right around her feet lit up, a sign for the guards that the building had recognized her chip and vetted her. The light under her feet went off, and she stepped forward.

  Multicolored neon light rods arched right to left above her. Softer white light spilled up from the floor. Most people on the platforms looked well-dressed and walked fast. Companion-bots trailed teams of people sliding into pod gates. She shouldered her backpack and handed her ticket to a post with arms and a pleasing voice. It ran a palm over the ticket, reading her destination. “Go to pod sixty-seven.”

  “Thank you.”

  It was already looking at the next customer. She squinted at the signs and went right, walking past five doors before finding the one with a red flashing 67 on it. She stopped in front of the door and waited for it to open.

  When nothing happened, she looked around, worry thrumming through her nerves.

  Her wrist buzzed at her again. No pictures, just a place. Hotel Shamiana.

  Well, good. She’d needed a more specific destination than Yakima.

  Come soon.

  She whispered into her wristlet. On my way.

  The door in front of her slid silently to the right. Inside, a square box sat in front of her. One gull-wing door opened up and she stepped into the pod. There was a single seat, a small table, and no windows whatsoever. She sat. The moment she clicked the seatbelt buckle, the door closed her in.

  Whoever had been here last had left a whiff of musky perfume that almost made her gag. The car lurched forward, two hard jerks, and then the ride smoothed. Although she couldn’t see outside, she knew her pod was joining with other pods to create a grouping of eight, some of which held cargo while others held people. She felt a whisper-soft bump as her pod joined others in front, behind, and to the right. She expected to hear clicks or whirrs or something, but it was silent in the car except for her own breathing.

  The superpod started up, smoothly and with less fuss than she expected. A slight pressure pushed her back in her seat, and she wondered if they were in the main tube yet.

  Entering main tube flashed on the wall in front of her.

  Okay then. This would be fine. It would.

  Travel time to Longview Station: 31 minutes and 15 seconds.

  The pressure increased, but not badly. No worse than the farm trucks she occasionally rode Outside, and no worse, really, than being on a galloping horse. Smoother than a horse.

  She hadn’t brought anything to entertain herself with, so she imagined seeing Matchiko and Shuska again, sharing a three-way hug, talking over tea. She had refused to go with them when they broke free from Portland Metro after the failed attack. It had been an almost impossible thing to do, a thing so hard something inside her had ripped. But she had to be sure Coryn was okay. She hadn’t known about Coryn’s powerful protectors when she left Matchiko and Shuska—Lou had met them later, on the plane flight between cities. The same flight she was reversing now, if at lower altitude. She smiled at the thought. So much easy travel.

  How badly was Matchiko hurt? What had happened?

  Travel time to Longview Station: 16 minutes and 43 seconds.

  The walls still felt too close. She shut her eyes, hoping they’d get there before the tiny space drove her crazy.

  It felt good to be going home. Not that home remained. RiversEnd Ranch had gone bankrupt with the Lucken Foundation, in trouble for helping to fund the failed attack-within-an-attack on Portland Metro. But she didn’t feel guilty about that anymore, not after the way she’d been grilled during her captivity in the loft where she and her friends had been held by the same foundation.

  She’d been stupid. She wouldn’t be that stupid ever again. She and Shuska and Matchiko would find the Returners behind the real plot, the one that had killed people and that had almost succeeded at bringing Seacouver to its knees. They were all trained Wilders, and they had a reputation as some of the best. A well-earned one. The three amigas. None of them were Hispanic, and she couldn’t remember who first called them that, but she liked it. She opened her eyes, glancing at the trip timer.

  Travel time to Longview Station: 9 minutes and 12 seconds.

  The hyperloop might be twice as fast as an airplane, but she’d liked the plane ride. She hated being locked in a tiny box.

  What could have happened to Matchiko? At least Shuska was whole and only Matchiko hurt. Shuska could carry either of them, but both of them together would be unable to carry Shuska. She’d met Shuska first, one cold fall morning when she was still new on the farm and she and Daryl were tracking a collared wolf that was broadcasting its mortality.

  They’d rounded a sharp corner and entered a clearing where a big woman was holding off three burly male Returners. Shuska had wielded a machete and two of the men had rivers of blood running from their limbs—one an arm and one a thigh. Blood ran down the woman’s face and spotted her clothes.

  While she had the upper hand, it couldn’t stay that way long.

  A dead wolf lay beside the small game trail, a long gray beauty with blood matting her coat.

  Somewhere nearby but out of sight, her mate howled.

  Daryl pulled out his stunner and took down two of the men before the last one noticed. Lou pulled her weapon as well, but hesitated. Daryl had ordered her not to shoot any time he had the situation in control.

  The remaining male combatant froze, disbelief flooding his face. Then he looked directly at Daryl and lunged toward Shuska, a metal knife-blade glinting in sharp sunlight.

  Lou fired on him without thinking about it. He dropped, stunned, and Shuska spit on him, hissing, “Wolf killer!”

  That one incident had started Lou’s reputa
tion for being ruthless, even though she hadn’t killed her opponent. Killing had come later.

  RiversEnd had just lost a seasoned ranger in a wicked snowstorm the week before. Daryl hired Shuska as a replacement on the spot. She’d been close to Lou ever since; this was their only separation since that day.

  Perhaps Coryn had been the only force in the world strong enough to split Lou from Shuska and Matchiko.

  Travel time to Longview Station: 0 minutes and 15 seconds.

  The superpod drifted right and stopped. The light over the door turned green. She snapped the seatbelt free, gathered her things, and stepped out. Longview Station only had enough space for two superpods at a time, although tunnels and bridges led away from the main room, which was much shabbier than Seacouver’s had been. Two other people got off with her, so the rest of the pods must be full of cargo. Julianna had told her to look for Eloise, but she certainly wasn’t waiting on the platform.

  Well, maybe she was outside.

  One of the people who had just disembarked drifted her way and whispered, “Follow me.”

  So Eloise had been in Seacouver with her? And Julianna had said nothing? Damn the whole city for its intrigue and secrets.

  She kept a bit of distance since that appeared to be what Eloise wanted. Robotic cargo handlers passed them both, smart carts with flashing lights that made quick turns. Additional robots that looked like they were built into the pod bay doors began unloading boxes from the five cargo pods. The dance of the robots. It was always a part of the city, even a place as small as this northern end of the Portland Metroplex.

  She followed Eloise up a moving walkway and along a straight tube only three times as wide as the hyperloop tube itself. Two of the cargo-bots ran ahead of them, whirring softly. Insipid music flowed down from ceiling speakers, utterly failing to calm her. A thin line of windows showed the late afternoon sun illuminating the Columbia River to their right and reflecting on the shiny metal of active train tracks to the left.

  Eloise led her down another escalator. It left them off at a nearly-empty parking lot that looked old enough and outsized enough to have been built before cars with human drivers were outlawed. Weeds colonized the cracks and holes in the concrete, as if the lot were wilding itself.

  Eloise led Lou across a wooden walkway above a weedy, damp wetland. The same boat they’d escaped Portland in on the day of the second attacks bobbed in the water, a low, sleek beauty with wide seats. The other woman gestured for Lou to climb aboard and took the taller pilot’s seat. She pushed the on switch and the engine rumbled to life, the boat shaking faintly, as if it were a horse that wanted to run but was being held to a quivering stand by the will of the rider. After she glanced at all the gauges, Eloise pushed the scarf off of her head and said, “I can get you as far as Camas.”

  Lou leaned in. “Can you get me to Kennewick? That’s the closest place to drop me for Yakima.”

  Eloise gave her a flat, unsympathetic look. “I haven’t got that much time.”

  “One of my friends is hurt.”

  “The Asian girl or the big one?”

  The tone in Eloise’s voice pissed Lou off. “Matchiko. The ‘big one’ is Shuska.” She forced herself to smile. “Please?”

  Eloise glanced at her wrist and then at a slate she pulled out from a drawer near her right knee. She nodded and held her hand out.

  Lou stripped her wristlet and handed it over. Eloise dropped it and her own devices into a bag and drew the top closed, then dropped that into another bag and then another one, and put the whole assembly down between her feet. This was the same way they’d hidden their identity from Portland Metro when Eloise took the three amigas out of the city before she left Matchiko and Shuska to fly to Seacouver with Coryn and Julianna.

  Eloise smiled as broadly as Lou had ever seen her, as if now that she’d decided to go to Kennewick, she was going to make it memorable. “Hold on!”

  Lou clutched the railing just in time. The engine gave a great high whine and then Eloise opened the throttle and the sound lowered to a deep thrum. They were off, the bow pushing waves away to each side and the wind of their passage blowing Lou’s hair against her cheeks.

  Eloise gave out a soft, happy yip at the speed, and Lou yipped as well, a statement of joy that she was Outside again, free again. Dark water flew by under the boat and the air smelled of cedars and firs, and of the great river itself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eloise was good with the boat, confident and sure. They hugged the starboard shore, moving upriver fast enough for a great wake of water to rise up behind them. The air smelled of trees and leaves and water. It had a bite to it, and the wind pulled at her hair and stung her cheeks.

  Lou would see Matchiko and Shuska soon.

  After an hour, the high bridges of Portland rose in front of them. Eloise slowed until the nose fell and the boat rode flat on the water.

  The Portland-Vancouver Bridge spiraled up from the Washington side of the border and crossed the wide river in a high curve before turning gracefully downtown. She hadn’t ever crossed the PV Bridge, but Coryn had, riding on the back of an ecobot with two more of Julianna’s minions, Blessing and Day. That thought made Lou stiffen; Blessing and Day had worked for her once. Or so she had thought. “Have Blessing and Day always worked for Julianna?” she asked the back of Eloise’s head.

  Eloise turned with a half smile. “Always is a long time.”

  Lou clamped her mouth shut. Just one more way she had been naive.

  The PV Bridge split the sky and threw a long, looping shadow on the river. Coryn’s companion robot, Paula, had died somewhere on that bridge. Been shot. To hear Coryn tell the tale, Paula had gone out in a blaze of glory protecting Coryn from the city’s police force.

  Movement caught her eye as a figure flew above them. She blinked. A person?

  Eloise laughed. “That’s the zip line. The bridge’s most famous feature.”

  She hadn’t known that. Coryn could probably tell her everything about the bridge. But then, Coryn loved bridges and full, busy places.

  Lou loved neither. She didn’t mind the river though, or the boat, or even the silence of her companion.

  As Eloise negotiated the tricky current where the Willamette joined with the Columbia, Lou glanced upriver toward the Pearl District. They were too far away for her to make out the loft where she’d been held captive for days before Coryn rescued her. But she knew it was there, and she shuddered at the memory of being locked away with the other protestors, fed water and paste, and questioned for hours.

  Not that she had known anything useful. The questions had taught her a few things, though. It wasn’t the city that held her, but the NGO she’d worked for. Her boss had tricked her into joining an attack on Portland, but her bosses’ boss had known next to nothing. He was merely a lazy waste of energy covering himself in fancy clothes. Meeting him had explained why they were always short of resources on the ranch. At least she felt anger now, instead of the despair that had fallen over her those three dark days.

  It had taken most of the plane ride to Seacouver after Coryn rescued her, but she had come to terms with herself; she would be smarter now. No one was going to take easy advantage of her again.

  They passed the Camas Gate under a shielding line of drones. She pointed toward the gate itself, a large metal structure on the Washington side of the river. “Look at all of those police vehicles. There were hardly any when we came in a few nights ago.” Now, two straight lines of cars and trucks blocked the road. Uniformed men and women paced along the shoreline, the airspace above them clotted with drones.

  Eloise nodded, but she kept her face pointed forward into the wind, her expression grim, her lips thin, and her eyes narrow.

  A light pop of air told Lou when they passed through Portland Metro’s protective dome. As if leaving the dome had oiled her tongue, Eloise started talking. “The city is still on high alert. Drones out. Extra security. Twice the usual number of police-bots. Both
cities. I suspect they’ll stay that way for months.” She leaned down and grabbed the nested bags, unearthing their electronics.

  Lou sighed in relief. She was certainly persona non grata in Portland Metro, and now she’d gotten in and out of it with no notice. Some system somewhere would know that she had disembarked at Longview Station, but it would probably assume she’d walked away from it without ever entering the cityplex.

  Good.

  She liked confounding automated systems.

  As soon as Eloise finished buckling her wristlet on, she gunned the engine again. The bow of the boat rose and they raced through the glittering waterfalls of the Columbia River Gorge. Water fell like ribbons from the tops of cliffs, sometimes like satin and other times like lace.

  About half an hour out of Camas, they passed a team of robots carefully thinning a forested slope. The robots were five or six times as big as humans, hulking machines painted in camouflage greens and browns. Not full ecobots, but slave labor doing some of the more dangerous wilding. After Portland, she’d grown nervous of large robots, but these looked normal and uncompromised. Maybe because they had fewer brains and weapons than the far smarter versions that Lou usually worked with.

  Long after they’d passed out of sight of Portland, but before they reached The Dalles, Eloise slowed the boat. The sun had gone down so far that the automatic lights on the bow and stern had come on. She turned to Lou, her face serious. “We need to talk.”

  A doe and two fawns stood like slender statues at the edge of the water, watching the boat. Luck. Deer were always luck for her. Maybe Eloise would answer more questions now that they were beyond the city’s sensitive surveillance. “All right. What can I help you with?”

  “You know there are layers to last week’s attack?”

  “Of course.” The littlest fawn lowered its head to drink from the still water at the edge of the river. They moved slowly to avoid spooking the deer. “Sure. We were on the bottom, the clueless and pissed-off Wilders. The counters and burners and planters and cullers. The people naive enough to think the system actually cared.” Anger choked her throat, and she took a deep breath and watched the deer, letting nature calm her. “We were too stupid to realize our bosses would trap us.” She blinked back an angry tear and took another deep breath. “And of course, the rich people in the city.”