by Corey Ostman
Good luck, Donner. Don’t come back.
Regards,
Commandant Gene Huber, Red Fox Academy
She finished the document and turned to her father.
“I beat Meat Grinder.”
He exhaled. She recognized the relief, happy to wipe away at least one worry from her father’s mind. He reached over and patted her leg.
“I knew you would.”
She put her hand over his.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He switched off the dome light and they continued north. In the dark, Grace folded the sheet and put it back in her pocket. The bounce of the rough road relaxed Grace. She looked out the window as kilometers clicked by.
Half an hour passed.
“Read it to me again, Gracie.”
She indulged her father.
After nearly an hour, the highway curved along the Platte River toward Port Casper. A road appeared, trailing east past the Glendo Reservoir. It was the road to their ranch.
This represented the farthest Grace had ever been from cloister. Modern education gave students the world, but only through a screen. Riding in the car, the windshield felt like a screen. Now, as she prepared to step outside, she fully understood how much her scenery had changed. She’d been on the new track for longer than she had realized.
Where had it changed?
Beyond her horizon.
“Are you going to be all right? Some rough characters along the road to Port.”
The silence was awkward. He told Grace nothing new and they both knew it. Leaving cloister was always the plan.
“Don’t worry,” she said finally. “It’s only a short hike.” Grace grabbed her duffel from the bed of the whirring electric truck.
She had reached to shut the truck door when her dad turned to look at her. “Gracie, cloister’s cloister. It’s a fish tank. If it wasn’t for the protections we have from the outside, it would be a helluva lot worse, but we’re pretty fish in a bowl, slowly losing our minds. I know the outside won’t alter your core, so I’m in no fear for you. Just feeling sentimental. Call me, and say hey to Raj and his family for me. For us.”
His pride in her made her feel strong. Grace fought back tears, swallowing. “You can connect at any time, Dad. Giant screen. Global communications. Remember?”
“Hmph. Save your money like I showed you.”
He crossed the seats and brought her in close with a quick hug.
“See you, Gracie.”
Ninety kilometers in the distance, an engine flare lit the evening sky. She watched as the bright dot rose above the horizon and angled away.
“Another cruiser leaving port, heading toward the Belt,” he said, wistfully. He got back behind the wheel.
“Love you, girl.”
The door slammed and the truck rumbled away.
Under a starry, moonless sky, Grace started toward Port Casper. She marveled at how similar the sights were to Cloister Eleven. Little had changed in a century, or two, or three. Grass whispered in the breeze, the mesas kept watch, and most of the land remained open, save for small towns. Cattle grazed on the hills and prairies, as they always had. The grass didn’t look as full as the turf on their family ranch, and the cattle were decidedly less robust, but it wasn’t so different outside cloister. Not here, anyway.
Along the highway, modern transports passed her by, centuries more advanced than her father’s truck. They didn’t sound as if they might break down at any minute. Outside of weapons, most technology in Cloister Eleven was crude. You didn’t use machines if you couldn’t repair them yourself. She doubted any of the transport pilots were able to fix their machines.
By midnight, she had covered a third of the distance from the junction to Port Casper. She was surprised that she didn’t feel sleepy. Back at the academy, she was known to snore at lights out. Adrenaline didn’t last this long, did it? Something kept her alert as she pushed forward.
Just before dawn, she left the road and found a scrubby patch under a lodgepole pine and laid out a bed roll, using her duffel as a pillow. Her academy uniform, made of a multi-layer moisture wicking fabric, kept her warm. She fingered the cloth as she laid down. The hand-made suit felt old-fashioned. She knew everyone in Port Casper wore mimic fabric. So would she, Grace decided. But for now, she had her uniform.
Grace removed her weapons, held them by their grips across her chest, and slept. She dreamt of dark times, familiar and unfamiliar voices.
• • •
Grace woke at midday, hungry for breakfast. Her first hazy impulse was to run for the mess, already scenting bacon and toast. Then she moved her head, ripping out blood-crusted hair that had stuck to her bandage and bedroll. She winced, groping for a pain suppressant and her oat and almond ration. It wasn’t much, considering she hadn’t eaten in over a day. She kept an eye open for forage as she resumed course along the soft shoulder of the highway.
Transport travel rumbled heavy on the road, now, but Grace had no interest in bumming a ride. The hike along the highway helped to clear her mind and focus on her new life.
What next? Her duties under the Cloister Act were clear. A licensed protector could only operate under contract from a corporation or the compstate itself. Port Casper, with its vibrant roider economy, offered the best chance at securing her first contract.
She’d intended to go there all along, since Raj was there. He was the only person she really knew outside of cloister. Raj was a contract surgeon for engineering and medical corporations, mechflesh through and through. Something of an inventor, too. If he wasn’t busy creating a new implant for a roider, he was probably modifying himself.
Two months ago, he’d called. He wasn’t a very regular caller, but she’d heard from him once or twice a year since he left Cheyenne. On the vid, he’d worn a lab coat stained with grease, scraps of food, and what looked like dried blood. His dark, thick curly hair sprang perpetually unkempt. His face, always stubbly, was practically a beard that day.
“Happy birthday, Grace! Like the ptenda?”
“Shh, Raj. I’m in the dorm.” She lowered her voice. “You know it.”
“Right, right.” His brown eyes danced.
She saw the grin on his face. “You’re a heap of trouble.”
His smile widened. “A damn good heap.”
“Like a heap in Dad’s stable, maybe,” Grace said.
Raj crossed his arms, sitting back. “What, the ones I used to muck? I’m touched! It’s exactly what I think of when I think of Cloister Eleven.”
“Seriously, though, Raj. How can this help Flora? It’s not like I can strap it on.”
He shook his head. “Did you open the little case on the side?”
“The blue thing?”
“Bingo.”
“What’s it for?”
“Just put it on Flora before she gets into trouble. The ptenda will track it.”
“Oh, right. Trouble. So how many blue blobs do you have on you?”
“Liters.”
“You must be the safest person in the universe.”
“Heh…” Raj hadn’t really answered. She recalled that now.
She thought about his thin smile. The way his eyes had looked like he needed something.
“Things will get better,” he continued. “After you graduate, I mean. You can come visit and I’ll make your ptenda wide-band. You’ll be able to talk to Mars if you want. Or the Belt.”
A friendly invitation to visit and a guarded plea for help. She wondered what he had expected to change by her graduation. She wondered if she’d be welcome, coming early.
As Grace looked toward the horizon, she noticed the change in the land. The rolling hills of Cloister Eleven had given way to the flat plateau that had made Port Casper an ideal launch site.
Well, she thought, it was his dermal dot that got her into this.
Her stomach rumbled. He’d better have bacon.
Chapter 5
Large cities tend to spill outside th
eir borders, and Port Casper, complete with its busy spaceport, was no exception. In thirty kilometers Grace observed the highway widen from two lanes to four, to six. Settlements and businesses began lining the highway as she passed Slater and Chugwater.
When Grace got within eight kilometers of the Port Casper checkpoint, the glow along the horizon told her she was close. Foot traffic increased along with road traffic. Five kilometers out, the dirt shoulders turned to wide, glistening sidewalks under artificial lights. Farther on, the sidewalks were electric, rolling by themselves. She’d never walked on a sidewalk like that before. It was a little disconcerting, how rapidly she strode past the scenery.
She rested at Kimball Park, but it felt too public. She didn’t want to sleep so close to strangers. Grace decided to go the distance rather than spend another night under the stars with nothing but ration bars.
The lights of Port Casper had been visible since sundown, but as the city proper rose before her, she walked in awe. Each hour, a mining cruiser lifted off. One left a plume of rarefied gas in its wake; a smaller one jerked its way through the atmosphere on invisible waves of low-frequency sound.
A kilometer from the checkpoint, her ptenda signaled a scan, and another, and dozens more. They identified her, evaluated her purchasing habits, guessed her weight, and sent a flood of greetings.
One hundred meters from the checkpoint, a plasma billboard flashed and blurted out instructions. The sidewalk curved to the right while the highway continued on, now ten lanes wide.
People jostled, entering the city. But others left, too. Grace was surprised by the number that exited. She decided they must be returning to the smaller enclaves she had passed on her way in. Working in Port Casper, but living outside. Strange, she thought, that they had access to the city but no desire to live in it. Wyoming Compstate was, after all, a free state, unlike some of the sprawling territories back east. The technology to handle the security appeared competent, and uniformed city representatives, protectors one and all, aided people in a friendly manner.
One approached Grace, and she greeted him with a smile. He stared at her face. Probably trying to decide if purple is the new mechflesh fad, she thought.
“Good evening, Miss. First time to Port Casper?”
She looked to his hip. Kwong PhaseWave P86. Unimaginative. His uniform lacked military style, though it was official enough for a compstate contractor. His shoes shone black and practical, and his coat was a full double-breasted gray number with slacks to match. She glimpsed the shimmer in the fabric. Mimic, she thought. The cloth might change to be his sleepwear when he finally went home.
“Miss, I see you are armed and your identification says you are certified to operate as a protector in the Americas.” He continued to read the information scrolling on his ptenda.
“Your place of origin is Cloister Eleven, and you certified on Meat Grinder.” His voice sounded too enthusiastic for a protector. He is fawning, Grace realized.
“I’m honored,” he said. “Port Casper infodoc is on your ptenda. Enjoy your stay.”
Grace entered the city from the south. The lights dazzled. The marketing arrived fierce and penetrating. Her ptenda squawked, telling her where she should eat, offering her places to sleep, commenting on her suit and insinuating that if she didn’t dress the part, she wouldn’t get the part. She fingered her ptenda to squelch the intrusion.
“Get outta the way!”
A man bumped against her as he headed down the street. She stepped to one side and felt nauseous as the man unexpectedly swiveled his head completely around and flashed her a disgusted frown. She noticed the metal plate just above his shoulders and watched as servos rotated his head forward again. She shuddered. It was easy to joke about mechflesh in cloister, but it was repulsive in person. She wondered, pityingly, what drove the man to change himself.
She looked around at passersby. Now that she paid attention, she saw that many were mechflesh. For centuries, competition for work had distilled into body machinery. Enhancements were relatively cheap, or made cheap by low interest loans. They were constructed with a visual patchwork of mechanical or neural enhancements, attached or semi-embedded in flesh. Some of the upgrades seemed unobtrusive and ordinary, like a communications port atop a wrist or a skull pod wrapping around the back of a neck. Some of the upgrades looked like things a person might take on or off. Others were shocking. One woman had mechanical spines in a clockwork of metarm vertebrae, which stretched out and dove back into her body as she walked. Another woman, half of her face covered in logic skin, walked out of a coffee shop. A few men at the door whistled while the woman, obviously disgusted, cinched her skirt lower and turned up her nose. Grace thought of Bill Hoffman.
She looked up at the buildings, now looming as she approached the city center. She passed an engineering firm that repaired mining equipment flown to Earth from the asteroid colonies. The interior lights were bright, each window an odd picture. In one, a man in his thirties walked on five-meter claw arms protruding from his spine, while his natural hands stuffed a sandwich into his mouth. A co-worker lifted the front end of a ten thousand kilogram rover and checked for leaks.
Grace stopped to check the map on her ptenda. Raj lived in Bod Town, a district inside Port Casper. It was rough, so Raj had said. Most of the people Raj wanted to avoid would never venture in, day or night. But it was a good place for mechflesh inventors, if your security was decent.
Raj had cautioned her regarding the lifestyle of Bod Town. “Might take getting used to.”
“Out of the frying pan,” she had replied nonchalantly. But now she saw what he meant as the gleam and polish of modern Port Casper gave way to Raj’s eclectic neighborhood.
Bod Town. A roach that attached itself to a shining princess. The mechflesh junkies of Bod Town had a culture of competition. Upgrades were envied, copied, surpassed. Literally empowered by their lust for tech, the junkies worked for whatever contract would give them the means for more modification.
It even smelled different. More soot. More oil.
Steady on Grace, she thought, and willed her face into a mask of confidence.
But the people were hideous. Some looked barely human, just a bit of skull or a finger with real skin. And the number of appendages reminded her of insects, not people.
“What’re you looking at?”
The grunted question came from a metarm skull complete with blazing artificial eyes. The mechanical mouth didn’t frown, but Grace did see a couple of natural-looking teeth and she thought the tongue might still be human.
“Nothing, umm, citizen.” Grace wished her voice sounded normal.
She moved away, closer to a market, hoping to replace her rations. She sniffed cabbage. No, rotten cabbage. She reached down to get a closer look at a head of lettuce when a blur zipped toward her.
Grace unsheathed Ronnie and extended her gun at the movement.
“Wait! No! Don’t shoot.”
Damn, Grace thought. It was the shopkeeper. No legs, his torso attached to a gyro base.
She quickly holstered Ronnie.
“Sorry.”
She moved on, deciding not to bother with food. She looked down again at her ptenda, hoping the world would disappear around her.
She trudged forward for another two blocks before she spotted Raj. He held his arms high and waved to her.
“Raj!” She closed the distance quickly and they embraced.
“I saw the send from your ptenda as you entered Port. Glad you made it in one piece!” he said.
He took a step back and surveyed her, head to toe.
“You’re looking fit, Protector Donner.” Raj turned and motioned ahead. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter 6
Locked in concentration, Raj held his hands in front of his chest, facing his palms. The fingers of each hand flicked and tapped each other. His wall-mounted display showed a schematic of a roider explosive called a cracker. He wouldn’t attempt the repair until the position
al feedback between his left and right hand improved. Several seconds passed, and he stopped to remove his left hand, wiping his face with it.
He grinned as he caught Grace in a stare. She crossed her arms and stalked back toward the kitchen, where bacon was on the fry.
Raj shook his head. Grace was a surprise—a good one, but he wasn’t ready for her yet. He had deadlines, and worse. He couldn’t ease her into Port Casper life like he’d planned. She was as rough as any cloister ranch-hand, but the city was an entirely new creature. His home, doubly so. Raj scanned the room, trying to see it through Grace’s eyes. It was dark with spotlit workstations, cluttered with pieces of technology she wouldn’t understand. Except for the kitchen and dining table, it would all appear alien to her.
She would probably think that he had stopped caring about keeping a household long ago. Grace knew him well: his problems and his creativity consumed him. He enjoyed, however, when she called him eccentric.
Maybe he could tidy up.
“What the—! Get away from me!” Grace’s voice had the edge of panic.
Raj tumbled out of his chair and bolted for the kitchen. Shit! He hadn’t told her about his roommate.
When he got into the room, Grace had already drawn one of her weapons. Her back was to the door, her stance wide. Raj glimpsed, beyond, the source of Grace’s concern: a spaniel-like, robotic dog with mimic skin.
“Relax, Grace. That’s my PodPooch.”
The machine trotted up to Grace and cocked its head.
“Hello,” it said. “My name is Tim Trouncer. Make yourself comfortable.”
Raj saw Grace shudder and her shoulders slump. He closed his eyes, and through upgraded lids saw the familiar colors: a blood pressure drop and an imminent blackout. Grace exhaled, her body collapsing.
