Analog SFF, December 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Sipping coffee, I tried some searches on my own. But if Johnson had any connections to the uprising, they weren't overt. He'd been working at his station in the outback for more than a month before the first marches and demonstrations; he was still there weeks after everything was over.

  The desk chimed with a text message. I gestured it open in a pane off to the side of my work.

  We have to talk. 572 Spring Street, 619. Noon.

  Frowning over my coffee mug, I looked for the sender. But the message had been neatly anonymized; the desk couldn't track it back beyond the nearest public trunk line—and when it comes to tracking messages, my desk knows some rather fancy tricks.

  Another chime and an equally untraceable addendum:

  Sorry about Lindquist.

  Very slowly and carefully, I set my mug onto the desk. Then I checked the time and asked for the interurban trolley schedule.

  * * * *

  Hunched, downward-gazing office workers crowded midtown's sidewalks, rushing to squeeze errands into their lunch hours. As I watched them impatiently—but carefully—dodge sauntering, leisure-class shoppers, I thought of Brownian motion and wondered whether there might exist some algebraic function capable of mapping trajectories from the microscopic domain onto the pedestrian.

  Not that microscopic particles typically moved with such attentive wariness. For more than a year I'd avoided entering the city; now I had to acclimate anew to the leery vigilance of the majority of its inhabitants.

  The reminders had begun at the departure terminal. As I passed the beat-up metal lockers where my fellow passengers were busily depositing their guns, a policeman—his big, black holster prominent against his broad khaki hip—swaggered across the tiled floor to ask my reasons for traveling to the city. Halfway through my spurious explanation he stepped forward and frisked me, with rather excessive thoroughness. Without thinking I glared at him and opened my mouth to complain.

  He squinted in surprised anticipation.

  Belatedly catching myself, I shut my mouth and stared at my boots. He grunted—in disappointment, I suppose, or maybe in disgust—and gave me a shove toward the train car.

  As I boarded and found a vacant seat whose cushions were still mostly intact, the other passengers avoided my gaze. But then, they avoided everyone's gaze. Even after the trolley left the terminal, all eyes remained focused on their reading or on the dusty rocks and shrubs passing beyond the train's sand-scoured windows. Nobody but me so much as glanced at the lens protruding from high on the car's far wall.

  As I stepped off the train another policeman, leaning against an ornamental pillar, studied me. I stumbled, glanced away. When I looked back, though, his attention had drifted elsewhere.

  A kilometer and a half from the terminal, Spring Street was a pair of facing rows of steel-and-glass low-rises. I'd visited a few times myself, back when this district was still being developed. Some of the gleam had gone out of the thick-walled buildings in the decades since then, their street-level storefronts having devolved from bistros and boutiques to shops offering work clothes or prospecting services. The ground floor of number 572 had been split between a pharmacy and a sandwich shop—the young man behind the latter's counter eyed me as I passed through to find the elevators. As I waited for the doors to open, I tried to decide whether to find his attention flattering or worrisome.

  The worn carpet of the sixth-floor hallway led me past a series of identical doors bearing content-free signs like Ecotrex Services and Fairhaven Development. But there was no sign on suite 619. No buzzer, either. I knocked, waited, then tried the handle. It wasn't locked.

  The empty room smelled of new paint; I tried to imagine the sort of tenant who would choose pastel pink for their walls. Opposite me, a pair of large windows framed the sixth-floor facade of the building across the street, its awnings tinted slightly blue by the windows’ reflective coating. On the wall above the windows, a shiny camera-mount hung unoccupied, its wires dangling.

  I took a quick tour of the empty offices off each side of the main room. Then I leaned against a window to look down to the sidewalk below. After I'd spent a couple of minutes studying the heads of passersby, the hallway door opened.

  A tall, young man entered, his wavy red hair falling almost to his shoulders. He closed the door behind him, then turned to me and said quietly, “Thank you for coming."

  I didn't say anything. I just stared at his face. And eighteen years into the past.

  Four individuals had inspired, nurtured, and led the uprising: Kushner, Mathews, Patchell, and Vargas. David Kushner's flamboyant charisma drew and ignited the crowds. Juan Mathews's deep knowledge of history, plus his debating skills, won over the uncertain. Zoe Patchell was a natural planner and organizer—and a peerless instructor in the arts of short-circuiting locks and hacking databases.

  But if those three were the heart, head, and hands of the uprising, then Luis Vargas was its soul. He couldn't out-shout or out-argue an opponent, nor disable an antagonist's microphone. But when Luis Vargas brushed the ever-present lock of wavy red hair from his eyes and opened his mouth to speak, the room always quieted—because he spoke with an intense sincerity and passion that no one, not even his enemies, had ever questioned.

  So now I was more than a little bewildered suddenly to be facing Luis Vargas, looking even younger than when I'd last seen him: when he had stood sobbing in the center of the stadium, forced to watch each of the twenty-nine methodical executions that preceded his own.

  The young man before me waited a few seconds, then said, “I'm his brother. Daniel."

  "Huh,” I said.

  He smiled—and memories of that gentle smile drew my thoughts from the final stadium to earlier rallies.

  He said, “When my brother's body was returned to my parents, they had a tissue sample taken. From which I was grown."

  Ah. Well, under the circumstances I supposed that the Central Committee might indeed have granted the Vargas family an exemption from the colony's Genetic Diversity laws.

  Nodding, I said, “Succinctly explained. Not the first time you've had to, I'm guessing?"

  His smile deepened. “The past couple years, more and more people have been staring at my face.” He shrugged. “I'm thinking of printing explanation cards to hand out. Or maybe wearing a little sign.” He mimed a small rectangle dangling from his neck. “What do you think?"

  What I thought was that after my initial shock he had put me at ease remarkably quickly. Not bad for, what, a seventeen year old? “You're pretty funny. Your ... brother—he wasn't known for his sense of humor."

  Another shrug. “I've heard that. But maybe he reserved it. For certain people, or certain occasions."

  Having met Luis a couple of times, I really didn't think so. But there was a quiet intensity when Daniel spoke of his “brother” that made me reluctant to disillusion him.

  Then I recalled the message that had brought me here, and disillusionment was the least I wished him. I asked, “How about murdering his own followers—do you suppose that was another thing that he reserved?"

  At my sudden vehemence, Daniel took a step back, bumping into the wall. “It wasn't me who—” He paused, his lips pressed together. “Look, I'm sorry about your friend. We didn't—” Again he stopped himself. He glanced downward for a second, then back to me. “Hypersensitivity to thilosone butyrate, it's only supposed to affect one person in half a million. There are barely a hundred thousand of us on this whole planet! What were the odds that Lindquist would be affected?"

  This was probably not the best question he might have asked me.

  "The odds?! You idiot! Try taking a basic course in probability sometime! And maybe genetics—that one per half-million number was based on Earth populations. But we started with a gene pool of only ten thousand people. Nobody has the slightest idea what percentage of us will react badly to any seldom-used Earth drug!"

  His eyes had grown very wide at my outburst, and by now he had flattened himse
lf against the wall. His hair clashed badly with the pink paint.

  Time to press my advantage. “Who are you working for? What did you want with Rafe Lindquist?"

  "That's what I invited you here to talk about! I wanted to bring you in from the beginning. I told her that we needed to trust you, that we should be working with you."

  I held up a hand. “You told who?"

  "Carla. The head of my cell."

  I shook my head. “What?"

  "The underground resistance. You have to rejoin us—it's your work that we're finishing."

  Oh no. “I don't have any work."

  He stepped away from the wall. “You gave up when my brother and the rest were killed. But you still want the same things now that you did then."

  Ice climbed my spine. “No. I really don't."

  He took another step toward me. “We know about the Warrant. If we can recover it, we'll finally be able to push through some changes. You have to help us."

  My mouth had gone dry; my heart raced. “No! What are you talking about? There's no resistance! How could there be? Everyone was killed!"

  "You weren't."

  "Me? I'm nobody. Just another face at some rallies."

  "Carla says that some of your people didn't give up. That they went underground and started forming cells. Building up resources, biding their time."

  "This Carla is lying to you! How big is this resistance supposed to be? How many members have you actually met?"

  He smiled—that smile. “I've only met the members of my own cell, of course: Carla and—” His expression softened, to a look of trusting vulnerability that I'd forgotten, a look that begged me to not let him down. “—and now you."

  He had gotten very close. Now suddenly he reached out and gripped both of my shoulders, tight enough to hurt. He said, “You're not alone anymore."

  I shoved him away. He staggered back, nearly falling.

  "You're not Luis! You're just some kid—some kid who's been listening to a lot of croc shit about a mythical resistance movement! You need to wake up, and soon, before you go too far. I should turn you in now, for your own good."

  He shrugged. “For croc shit, you have to admit it's pretty high quality. Like, how did I find out about the Warrant? About you? Who listened to you talking to Rafe Lindquist? Where did the thilosone come from? How did I learn about this vacant suite?"

  "I don't know! Your Carla must have some good contacts—that doesn't add up to a resistance."

  With a sigh, he said, “She told me that you'd be like this. That nobody from the uprising ever wants to believe us when we first contact them. All right...” He pulled his phone from a pocket, held it at chest level. The display lit a few centimeters above the phone; from my position I could see the wrong side of several lines of text. Studying them, he said, “Among your closest friends from the uprising, your nickname was Bender. This nickname was given to you by Fiona Halpern on the second day of the uprising, after the two of you—"

  "What the—?" I lunged forward and grabbed the phone from his hand. I scrolled through the rest, which continued for a few pages. It was all quite accurate, some of it a bit intimate—and none of it known to more than a few people. It was also far too personal and trivial to have been extracted and recorded during any official interrogation.

  I looked up to glare at him. “Who gave you all this?"

  He shrugged. “It was passed to us from another cell. I assume a former associate...?"

  "Yeah, sure.” I tried to figure out how he'd really gotten the information.

  Damn. More mysteries.

  Unless, of course, there actually was a resistance.

  Damn.

  I tossed the phone back to him. “I don't have time for this.” I walked around him to the door. My shoulder, where earlier he had gripped me so tightly, twinged now when I reached for the handle.

  He said, “I'll message you an encryption for contacting me."

  I turned to face him. “Maybe I'll just hand that over to the authorities."

  "You won't."

  His damn smile was starting to annoy me.

  I said, “Look, just stay out of my way from now on, all right?” I turned. Then, over my shoulder, I said, “And Daniel? Try not to kill anyone else, okay?"

  His smile faded. I pulled open the door and left.

  * * * *

  As soon as I got back to Hab Town I consulted a few maps, transferred a few hundred rips into my phone, and threw together a small overnight bag. I checked the results of the searches I'd set up in the morning: my desk hadn't turned up any connections between Johnson and the uprising. I pondered that for a few minutes, then shrugged—it wasn't like I had any other leads to be following just now.

  I biked across town to a certain vehicle dealer.

  "Ms. Dalmas!” On seeing me step through his door, Demetrios Balbani nearly vaulted over his desk to greet me. I braced myself for one of his customary bear hugs, but at the last moment he must have seen me flinch; he stopped and reached out a huge, hairy hand.

  While he gave my arm several vigorous pumps, I asked, “How's the family, Demetri?"

  He waved me to a chair, leaned his own bulk against his desk. “Good, all good. Stavros graduates next month—can you believe it? Getting him out of that mess, Ms. Dalmas, for that I can never repay you.” Then he grinned, deep within the black underbrush of his beard, and pointed a thick finger at me. “Though today you're going to give me another opportunity to try, am I right?"

  I acknowledged his deduction with a sheepish smile. “Have you ever considered a career in private investigation?"

  His laughter was like a baritone sonic boom. “What, finding what someone is seeking? Figuring out when a person is lying to me? So what do you think I do here all day?” He shook his head, then suddenly he strode to the door and peered out toward where I'd parked. “That little bike still behaving for you? New power cell holding up?” He turned back into the room; before I could reply he continued, “But now you're ready for something bigger, am I right?"

  "Oh, definitely,” I said. “But just a rental, for a couple days. A rover."

  His eyebrows lifted. “And where would you be going that requires a rover?"

  I shook my head. “Better you don't know. In case certain people somehow trace me this far."

  "Oh-ho.” He looked impressed.

  "No special supplies or anything—I'll just be spending a night or two, indoors."

  He waggled his finger at me and looked stern. “You don't drive into the outback without supplies.” He held up a hand to stop any arguments from me. Then he returned to his desk and gave it a tap. “Sal, bring around the BR-20, will you?” Facing me again, he said, “Nothing flashy. Top speed is only around a hundred, but she can take a real beating. Sleeps four, almost comfortably. Plenty of room for gear. The power cells are fresh, and—” He pointed his finger at me. “—there's water and food for at least three days. We keep it prepped for the weekend hunters."

  He led me outside. Next to my bike a very large, very orange vehicle now sat grumbling to itself.

  "Somehow,” I said, “I was expecting something a little more ... well, brown."

  "You buy your own rover, you get whatever color you want. For the weekenders all I care is that a rescue copter can find them."

  Demetri led me on an inspection tour. The boxy, slope-sided body rode high on four massive tires; in a windstorm, he explained, the tires could be deflated to leave the body hugging the ground. In addition to the storage spaces in the passenger compartment, exterior access panels on both sides opened to additional cargo holds. As promised, some of these were packed with containers of water and camping food.

  We clambered into the air-conditioned cab and he reviewed the basic controls. “The rest,” he concluded, “you can learn while you drive."

  I nodded. “So what's this costing me?"

  He snorted. “Please. But maybe you'll come to Stavros's graduation?"

  "Are you k
idding? I wouldn't miss it—even if I need a rescue copter to get there."

  His laugh boomed. When it ebbed, though, he seemed uncharacteristically subdued.

  "What?” I asked.

  His head tipped one way, then the other. Finally, frowning, he said, “Stavros—he's a smart kid. He wants to go to the university. So I'm the bad guy."

  "What, because of where you were born?"

  He looked away. “Maybe I could've saved more money. Asked some of my city contacts for a recommendation..."

  I shook my head. “Even if you'd been allowed to move into the city, the Committee would never have let your children attend the university. That's reserved for the wealthiest, most powerful families."

  I regretted the words as soon as they escaped. Demetri was too polite to do more than shoot me an appraising glance. But within my mind suddenly streamed the vivid impressions of an excited young woman being delivered to the university by her haughty parents. I scowled at the memory's intrusion. That was someone else's life, not mine. That young woman's life—prospects, parents, and all—had ended eighteen years ago.

  "Hey—” Demetri slapped the arm of his chair, jolting my attention back to the present. “You meant what you said before, about somebody trying to trace you?"

  I appreciated his shift of topic. “Yes."

  He nodded. “Wait here.” He climbed out of the rover.

  I watched through the windows as he walked around the vehicle and opened one of the cargo holds. Then he reached for my bike; with one hand he lifted it and slung it inside.

  I opened my window as he slammed shut the access panel. He called up to me, “One less clue for the bad guys! Am I right?"

  "Demetri, you are always right."

  He stood there grinning, his finger leveled in my direction. As I sealed the window and waved good-bye, I jotted a mental note to have a talk with Stavros about bad guys and good guys.

  It took me half an hour to reach the north edge of town. For a minute I peered out at the flat, dusty landscape, crisscrossed by innumerable tire and tread tracks. Matthew Johnson's research station sat in a valley about seven hours to the northwest. So, to be safely paranoid, I pointed the rover northeast and told it to drive in a straight line until further notice.