Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  The men were close enough to see the serious looks on their faces, the hard set of their shoulders. They looked a little more ragged than the woman, a little more determined.

  “Do you have any socks?” the woman asked.

  “Socks?”

  The woman cocked her head. “Socks. One pair will do, since I’m being fair. I’ve given you a warning you needed, and I told you what to change if you don’t want to stick out like an easy mark. I might have saved you from losing your robot right away. I want to have warm feet again. We make socks over here, but ours don’t work like yours do.”

  Was the woman asking for a legitimate trade or trying to steal from them? She’d only brought two extra pairs of socks. “You offered your information freely. I don’t think I owe you anything.”

  The woman smiled, a slightly predatory smile. “Do you want to keep your robot?”

  The question was so absurd Coryn didn’t even answer it.

  “Then you should give me socks.”

  The men were more than halfway to them.

  Paula spoke up. “You can have one pair.”

  Coryn didn’t like it, but she trusted Paula to understand complex situations and calculate risks.

  Paula stepped back from the table, where she could watch everyone. She pulled a single pair of running socks out of the bottom of the bigger pack with a deft move, glancing quickly between the woman, the brown dog, and the men. She held the socks up. “We’ll be going now. We’ll put the socks on the road right there where you can see them. And you won’t follow us.”

  The woman smiled at Coryn. “Maybe you will keep your robot, at least for a few days.”

  Coryn recovered from her initial surprise at being treated quite so strangely. She started backing away, Paula moving with her.

  The woman gestured at the brown dog. “I’ll send him after you if you don’t drop the socks.” Then she smiled at Coryn. “And thank you for the warm feet. A last lesson for you. The small things matter as much as the big ones Outside. Nothing’s free out here, and I just helped you more than you know.”

  Coryn felt more irritated than grateful, but she managed to choke out a thank you.

  They had backed almost out of almost out of earshot, so she barely heard the woman say, “Find shelter soon.”

  The men reached the woman and flanked her.

  They watched Coryn and Paula closely. Coryn spoke quietly. “Paula?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you turn the camera on the back of your head on?”

  “It’s been on since we left the dome.”

  “Then turn around. We don’t want to look like we’re afraid.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  They turned around. After a few steps, Coryn asked, “Is it okay?”

  “They’re still watching us, but they haven’t moved.”

  Coryn let out a breath. “Put the socks down as soon as we get to the edge of the parking lot.”

  She felt the group’s eyes on them, as if there were a target on her back.

  Paula dropped the socks ceremoniously. They were white with bright yellow toes, and thus easy to see against the greens, grays, and blacks of the edge of the park.

  A few moments later, before they turned back onto the road, Paula said, “They picked up the socks.”

  Coryn’s hands started trembling; her breathing shook as it sped up.

  Paula’s voice remained cool, gentle. “Keep it together until we get around the corner.”

  Coryn managed, and once they had left the park ten minutes behind, she stopped and stared back behind them. The magnitude of what had almost happened suddenly swamped her. Her voice shook. “What if they had taken you?”

  “Then you would go on.”

  “How?”

  Paula didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The wind plucked at Coryn’s shirt and hair. At first, it had felt like the winds in the city parks. Now it was more like the ones that sometimes blew between the taller buildings. She clutched her coat to her, shivering.

  The city never allowed freezing after February. “I never thought it could change temperature so fast,” she said.

  “You have another layer.”

  “I don’t want to stop.” In truth, the cold felt wondrous and strange. She was used to having to speed and race and work hard for physical challenge, and here simply existing challenged her.

  Clouds came in with the wind, rolling down from the north without passing over the city. A wild wind, she thought.

  “Look up.” Paula pointed toward a stand of tall fir trees on the other side of the road. The tops of the trees swayed alarmingly, the branches whooshing and sighing as they brushed the sky.

  The road climbed, slowing them. Paula looked back, her perfect brow creasing in concern. “Maybe we should go back down, find a valley.”

  “I don’t want to go backward,” Coryn said.

  Paula turned around and stopped, still searching behind them. “We haven’t passed any good shelter.”

  “Maybe we should stand between two trees.”

  “It’s going to rain.” Paula fell silent for a time, and then said, “There’s a school building that’s almost a mile out of the way, but uphill, and another one that’s two miles away, and the road looks mostly flat. It’s right on the way.”

  She wanted to get to Lou. But the wind plucked at her coat like a warning. “Any reason to pick one or the other?”

  “Not that I can tell. Both buildings are on.”

  “I thought everything out here was dead?”

  “No. Just slow and stupid. I’m used to systems that sing together. The sensors in one of the houses we just passed talked to each other but didn’t talk to the street, or to me. At least I could hear the house.”

  “Are there things you can’t hear out here?” Coryn asked.

  “How would I know?” Paula stared at her, a patient, waiting look.

  Last week, Paula would have made the decision. But now Coryn was a legal adult. “Let’s go to the one that’s on the way. It didn’t turn out to be such a good idea to get off track at the park.”

  Paula laughed, but she said, “We might have gained more than we lost. You have enough socks.”

  Coryn shivered again. She thought she’d been so prepared. In the city, no one stole robots, or even socks. There were too many cameras. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to a school at all. Won’t there be other people there?”

  “A crowd is probably safer than one or two people.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes. They do teach us basic self-defense. How do you think I managed to get you this far?”

  Coryn grew quiet after that, listening to the wind in the trees and walking faster. Paula was the only person she could remember from every year of her life. Even after her parents died, Paula was there. After Lou left, Paula was there. Sure, she was a robot, but she knew all of the continuity of Coryn’s life, all of the days. She probably knew more than Coryn herself did, since robots remembered more details than people.

  The wind left them alone for a while and then came up with vengeance; she nearly stumbled as one gust pushed her from behind. Maybe a hard wind pushed you down and a fast one just blew your hair around.

  Dark gray clouds churned directly overhead. Paula said, “I don’t hear any more birds.”

  “Maybe they’re all hiding.”

  “There are people ahead of us,” Paula whispered.

  They spotted two men and three children heading the same way that they were. Each man carried a child. The third lagged behind; one of the men called back to him in obvious consternation, his words whipped away by the wind. Paula leaned down and whispered to Coryn. “Should I offer to help them?”

  Coryn blinked, still unused to being the one to choose things. What would it hurt? Besides, the oldest child—the only one who wasn’t being carried—looked seriously frightened. “Sure.” />
  “Hello,” Coryn called as they approached. “Are you going to the school?”

  The man who had been calling to the child looked up, wind whipping blond hair back from his face, which was creased with worry, his eyes wide. “Yes. Can you carry him?”

  “I can,” Paula said.

  The man squinted at her, clearly just now identifying Paula as a companion-bot. He grimaced, but another gust of wind blew some small branches from the trees and littered the street close to them. The smallest child cried out in fear and buried her face in her father’s chest.

  Rain started in big cold drops.

  “Okay,” the man said. “But stay with us. If you don’t, I’m armed.”

  Coryn startled and managed to choke out an “Of course.” Guns were illegal in the city, but not Outside. She hadn’t expected one. Not with kids and all. She took a deep breath and kept going.

  They leaned into cold wind and fat raindrops. Coryn’s clothes were soaked through. Her wristlet suggested it was still midday, but the color of the sky convinced her it must be lying through its tiny little teeth.

  She swallowed. She had wanted to experience real weather. The wind felt far rawer than she had imaged, more magical and more threatening than she had expected. The city’s ability to control it suddenly awed her. She’d never realized what wind could be, so how could she have grasped how much technology it must take to tame it? As this storm reached the city, the wind would be harvested for power, dampened, controlled. The permeable dome would repel it, and, if necessary, the city’s lights would brighten to mitigate the darkness.

  Coryn craned her neck, looking up and around, watching the wind-bent trees with trepidation. Her hair whipped her face and stung her eyes, and her feet squished in her shoes. She was grateful when the school finally loomed up out of the rainy dark, a long low building with only three stories. “It looks like it’s made of brick.” Coryn had only seen brick a few times, in squat historic buildings like Town Hall, which had become surrounded by modern nanofabbed giants. “Is that good?”

  “Probably,” Paula replied. The boy she carried looked about seven, and he clung to the robot with all he had, only occasionally showing his face. When he did, he looked as scared as Coryn. “The heat’s on, and it should be dry and pretty safe.”

  Soon, they were picking through puddles and downed branches in the parking lot. Light shone from a few of the school windows, and a man in a black rain jacket and a soaked red baseball cap stood by the front door. He opened it as the group approached. He greeted the two men warmly, “Hello, Jim, Steve. Good to see you.”

  The blond appeared to be the regular spokesman. He said, “Hi, Erich. Rough night. There’s a few trees might land on the house. Thought it might be safer here.”

  The man glanced briefly at Coryn and harder at Paula. “These are strangers. Do you vouch for them?” he asked.

  “Sure,” the blond replied. “They just met us on the road, but she carried Thomas, and she didn’t have to.”

  Paula set the little boy down, and he raced to the darker of the two men, Jim, and stood close enough that no light shone between him and his father’s leg.

  A long whip of wind ran through the trees in the parking lot, bending them almost in half. “Go on into the gym,” Erich said, raising his voice over the roar. “I wouldn’t wish this storm on my worst enemy.”

  Coryn didn’t need to be asked twice. She grabbed Paula’s hand and hurried past Erich and into the beckoning warmth and light.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Inside the school, Coryn immediately felt merely cold instead of like ice. The wind sounded both muffled and higher pitched, as if it were licking the outside of the building, searching for weak spots. A short hike through a hall of scratched blue lockers led to the sports gymnasium, a large rectangle of carefully polished wooden floor, freshly painted concrete walls, and metal bleachers. A row of tables lined the far side of the room. Half held food and water and the other half had blankets, coats, and what looked like pillows scrounged from couches or chairs. Groups of people stood talking together around the tables.

  Coryn had been expecting chaos. “It looks like they do this all the time.”

  “They might.” Paula surveyed the room, keeping her back toward a wall by the door they had come through. “Storms are common Outside.”

  “They can’t all be this bad!” She shivered at a loud crack, perhaps a tree branch snapping. “Lou used to tell me stories about the weather out here.”

  “I remember.” Paula stood quite still, looking around.

  “I thought she was making it up!”

  The scents of coffee, grease, and sugar infused the air. A young man with a shock of red hair hanging in his eyes carried two plates of pizza across the gym floor. Apparently the school had an oven somewhere. Well, a school probably had a cafeteria. The pizza drew a smile from Paula, who glanced at Coryn. “Eat.”

  “Yes, mother.” But she was grinning, happy to have walls between her and the wind.

  The gray-haired and thin woman at the food table tried to hand Coryn two plates. When she hesitated, the woman squinted at Paula and pulled a plate back, the smile fading from her eyes. Coryn produced an overly cheerful, “Thank you,” doing her best not to show she had noticed.

  She ended up with a cup of barely warm coffee and a plate with a slice of pizza, an apple, and a cookie. Paula carried the coffee and a glass of water. They climbed to the highest step on the bleachers and leaned against the cinder-block wall. A thin window with metal bars across it ran around the top of the room. Wind-driven rain splattered against it. From time to time a gust improbably hooked under the eaves and rattled the glass.

  As she finished off the comfortingly warm pizza, a few young people filled the empty half of the court and started playing a ball game that took three balls and two teams. “You should join them,” Paula suggested. “Hand me your coat.”

  Coryn peeled her wet coat off, pleased that her shirt was dry. Mostly. “They all look like they know each other.”

  “Go on,” Paula said. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  Coryn climbed down the steps and dropped her plate in the recycler, then stood at the edge of the game, trying to figure it out. A basketball hoop hung over the court, but for this game it was merely an obstacle. Players threw a dark ball and a light ball at a far larger multicolored ball, trying to knock it out of the air. One team of four controlled the big ball, and there were two on the dark small one and three on the light small one. A tall boy on the dark team waved her in. She grinned. “Sure.” As soon as she stepped inbounds the ball came at her. She caught it, surprised at its lightness, and threw it at the big ball, knocking it sideways and earning a grin from the tall boy. Well, young man. Her age, anyway. His brown-blond hair looked uncombed, and his pants had been patched in two places.

  The other person on her team was a girl a year or two younger than her, with a long red braid and rather fabulous tats on her cheeks that looked like hundreds of small butterflies in flight. She smiled. “I’m Laurie.”

  “Coryn.”

  “Nice to meet you.” A ball came toward her and Coryn knocked it just right. It was nearly impossible to play and talk, other than one-word directions like left and right and short commentary like good and too bad. She only thought about the storm when a particularly strong wind gust rattled the windows or when the door opened to admit more shivering, wet people.

  A few times, she noticed Erich quite near and had the sense he was trying not to look like he was watching them.

  After about half an hour, the players were all winded and took a break. They made their way as a group to the water table and drank deeply. The red-haired girl, Laurie, pulled her a little bit aside from the others. “You play all right.” The butterflies on her cheeks rippled as she talked.

  “Thanks.” The compliment warmed her; she didn’t often get them from people her own age.

  “Where do you come from?” Laurie asked. “Why do y
ou have a robot?”

  She hesitated. But there was no way to hide Paula’s nature, or to pretend she came from here. “I’m from Seacouver, and I’ve always had a robot. I’ve always had this one. Her name’s Paula.”

  “I wish we had them,” the girl said. “Then we wouldn’t have to do all the work.”

  Coryn managed not to laugh. “They can do work. But usually Paula makes me do work. We all have chores in the city, things we have to do for basic.” As she said it, she realized it was almost certainly the wrong thing to say, so she added, “But they could be helpful here. I can see that.”

  “Does everyone in the city have a robot?”

  The conversation felt uncomfortable, even though Laurie seemed genuinely curious. “Many of us do. At least a lot of the kids and the old people, and also some really busy people.” And all the rich ones, but she had the presence of mind not to add that out loud.

  The other girl grimaced. “I told my dad I wanted one, and he said it would rot my brain.”

  “It hasn’t happened to me yet,” Coryn said.

  “Maybe it only happens when you’re older.”

  Coryn stiffened, and then smiled. “I haven’t seen a lot of people wandering about with rotting brains.” She felt really uncomfortable saying more. “How far did you have to walk to get here?”

  “Just a mile.” Perhaps she sensed Coryn didn’t want to talk about Paula anymore since she drifted back toward the water table.

  The crowd had almost doubled. Except for a few noticeably unhappy small children, most people seemed to be having nervous, slightly frenetic fun.

  A loud snapping sound followed by a crash drew them all toward the door, and when Erich opened it, the entire top of a tree nearly blocked it. Erich and number of others pulled on raincoats and Erich pointed at Paula. “Come on.”

  There was no way to say no, not politely. Coryn didn’t like it, but she pulled her wet coat back on, and they followed Erich and three men into the knife-hard wind. First, they had to force their way through the tangled and broken branches. “Go first,” Erich demanded, and Paula leaned into the tree, her arms forward, her head ducked to avoid scratching her delicate face.