Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  The chaos around her made her reel. Three rounded vans painted in outrageously bright primary colors sat on the road. Near them, at least five strangers and one small, white dog watched the ecobots secure the attackers with what looked like big nets that tightened around their arms and torsos, leaving their legs free. Coryn blinked at the number of attackers. Erich, Marina, the two men who had been holding her, three more men she was seeing for the first time. There was also a stocky woman who looked older than them all. Erich was the only one she recognized from the school.

  Why send so many people after her and Paula? Where was Paula?

  “Hey!”

  Paula’s voice. Coryn whirled, shivering with the release of fear. She let the packs fall and raced into Paula’s arms.

  “Are you okay?” Paula whispered.

  “Now.” She stepped away and looked at Paula. Other than a few hairs out of place, she looked exactly like usual. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  “No.”

  Coryn’s voice still shook. “They told me they reprogrammed you.”

  “They planned to.”

  The ecobots herded their captives up a ramp into a truck that Coryn hadn’t even noticed. “What happened?”

  “They stunned me briefly with something—maybe a beam weapon?—and dragged me outside.”

  “I didn’t notice?”

  The door slammed shut on the truck. The bed had a top, which the robots latched down. No one would be getting away.

  “They were very quiet,” Paula said. She smiled. “And you do sleep deeply.”

  “Not that deeply.”

  “Want to bet?”

  One of the men who had been standing near the vans headed toward them. The expression on his face looked triumphant, which made Coryn smile. His wore his long black hair in a loose ponytail, a few silvery strands making him look a little older than his fit physique suggested. He wore jeans and hiking boots and a simple green shirt with rolled-up long sleeves. Most people she’d seen out here would look shabby in the city, but not this man. Paula leaned down and whispered, “Be careful,” in Coryn’s ear before she went back to prim and proper robot mode.

  Coryn held out her hand. “Hello. I’m Coryn Williams. Did you help us?”

  “Lucien.” His deep voice rumbled from his chest. “Lucien Lapatsa.” He took her hand and shook it. “We’ve been watching that group. We had enough evidence to have them arrested, and we were tracking Erich. So when we saw them intersect with you in the barn, we called for help.”

  Coryn glanced at Paula. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome.” The string of ecobots and the truck pulled away, and she and the man—Lucien—stood watching until they disappeared from sight.

  She had a stray thought. “How did you know we were in the barn?”

  He blinked. “Satellite.”

  So it was more like home out here than she had thought. “Does someone always know where we are?”

  “No. Not like in the city. Don’t expect to be saved. One of our friends saw you in the school and suggested we watch out for you. Since we were here anyway, waiting to take down Erich, we did. What are you doing out here alone anyway? It’s not safe.”

  “I’m heading for the Palouse to find someone.”

  “You just left the city? On your own?”

  She might as well paint it in on her forehead. “Yesterday morning.”

  He sighed. “Okay. Well. Don’t stay out by yourself. We’re heading up the 90. Not as far as you’re going, just to Cle Elum. But we can give you a lift.”

  Coryn felt lighter. A smile crept across her face, and she felt a little bubble of happiness rise. “That would be fabulous.” If she understood the map right, that would make up all of the time they had lost so far.

  He glanced over at the gaudy vans. “So. Lesson number one. This is a barter economy. Sometimes. You can’t barter your way out of everything. Some people take credit against a future favor, but almost everyone takes trades.” He watched her closely, as if assessing whether or not she understood. When she nodded slightly, he asked, “What will you trade for your ride?”

  “I’m almost out of extra socks.”

  He blinked at her. “What?”

  She laughed. “Sorry. You’d have had to be with us. If there’s any hard jobs to be done, Paula and I can help. We can clean up your cars, for example. Do dishes. Paula’s strong. We can lift things.”

  He smiled. “All good options. Lucky for you, I don’t need even that much. I’ll trade you the ride and some advice for news about the city. I grew up Inside, and there are days I still miss it.”

  She considered him, reminding herself that no one Outside had proven trustworthy yet. He was handsome in a far-older-man kind of way, a little rugged, and not particularly threatening. In fact, he seemed kind; both his voice and his gaze projected concern.

  He had also just saved her and Paula.

  She hadn’t done so well on her own so far. Making it to Cle Elum would be progress. She held her hand out again. “I’d be happy to tell stories.”

  He shook it again and seemed to relax a little, pleased with her answer.

  She glanced back at the garish vans. “Can I sit by your dog?”

  “Of course you can. His name is Aspen.”

  “Aspen? That’s pretty.”

  “It’s a kind of tree.”

  “I know that.”

  “The name doesn’t fit him.”

  She found herself laughing a little. “Paula stays with me.”

  Lucien smiled. “Good. Let’s get you bundled into one of the vans, and I’ll see that Aspen and I are both near you.” He gestured toward the vans. “Which one do you like the most?”

  The front van was white with yellow and blue, the back yellow with bright red doors, and that middle one had a bright blue door and bright blue fenders on a faded red body. She pointed at it. “Is that okay?”

  He smiled. “Sure.”

  Lucien led her toward the van she’d chosen. The vans were slightly rounded in the front and the back, like oval balls, and the wheels were almost as tall as Coryn.

  “Why do they have such big wheels?”

  “We’re not always on roads. Even when we are, most roads in the rewilding areas are being let go, and some are being ripped out. We drive through some pretty rough country.”

  He opened the door, and she ducked into the van. Inside, it looked bigger than it had from the outside. A long table with bench seats full of drawers filled the nose, and the back half was given over to neat bedding, a small kitchen, and two chairs that stared at a blank video wall. Below the front window and just above the table, an interactive whiteboard had pictures and notes scrawled on it. Lucien pointed toward the front. “Have a seat.”

  The red plastic cushion softened when she sat on it, reacting to her weight and bending enough to be perfectly comfortable. The front was almost all window, thick enough that the images outside appeared slightly distorted.

  Lucien appeared in the doorway, snapping his fingers. “Up!”

  Aspen bounded in and sat, regarding her cautiously, his tail thumping the floor like a drum. He had pale bluish-gray spots and streaks over a short white undercoat, pure white legs, and a white head. One eye matched the blue in his coat and the other was a pale brown. She patted her lap hopefully, and he cocked his head to the side, reminding her of the wild dog she’d fed earlier.

  “Go on,” Lucien said.

  Aspen hopped up and landed on her. He lifted his face and licked her cheek before turning around to sit on her.

  “Good boy,” Lucien said. “I’ll be right back,” he told Coryn, and then glanced at Aspen. “Stay.”

  The van pleased her. Everything had a place. The roof and upper walls and benches all had drawers or cabinets in them. Color splashed everywhere, primarily blues and reds that were lighter, less jarring versions of the outside paint.

  Nothing about the vans was meant to blend into the ba
ckground. Why did they try to draw attention to themselves?

  Lucien came back with two other people, a woman just a few years older than Coryn and an older man with Hispanic features and warm brown eyes that matched his skin. They piled into the seats opposite, which left Coryn with no one next to her except Paula.

  The man held his hand out. “I’m Pablo.” He had a gravelly voice and scars all over the back of his hand.

  She smiled at him and took his hand, almost letting go as she felt his rough skin. “Coryn. And this is Paula.”

  Paula said, “Pleased to meet you,” in her warmest voice.

  Pablo put his hands together in what looked almost like prayer and gave a small bow, just a few inches. “You must be a good person. Aspen is very picky.”

  That delighted her, and she clutched Aspen a little closer. He reached his little nose up and licked the underside of her chin.

  The girl said, “I’m Lucien’s cousin, Liselle. People often think he’s my dad, but I’m older than I look.” Sure enough, her thin face matched Lucien’s in shape, and her eyes had the same grays in them, like morning skies just before the clouds opened to let in sunlight.

  The vans pulled out and headed northeast. The blank wall sprang to life, filling with satellite images of the area, the vans highlighted in brighter colors. “Wow!” she said.

  Pablo smile, an easy, soft smile. “We don’t want to be surprised.”

  “I guess not.” She forced herself to stop staring at the video. “Thank you all. I’m pretty sure I’d be dead.”

  Liselle shook her head, the black curtain of her hair waving across her shoulders. “More likely left behind or about to be sold for a slave. We’ve figured we’d catch Erich eventually—it’s stupid to set yourself up as a lord that close to the city.”

  “Thinks he’s a warlord,” Lucien added. “He’d have sold you and your robot for money and bought whiskey with his profit.”

  Aspen seemed to sense her sudden dread; he leaned into her and rested his face on her chest. She looked down into his one blue and one brown eye, and drew her fingers though his unexpectedly soft fur. He was more fur than dog and actually surprisingly slender. “Thanks again for saving us.”

  Lucien leaned toward her. “You were lucky. If you’d run afoul of just any common thug we wouldn’t have stopped them. So be grateful you drew the attention of a true bad guy. We’ve been out to catch Erich for a long time. Kidnapping you gave us direct evidence of a crime.”

  That caught her attention. “Do you work for the city?”

  He shrugged as if to say doesn’t everyone? But she recognized it as a nonanswer and pursed her lips.

  Well, Lou was out here. So was she. But she had thought the Outside was full of people who had never been in a city. Another thing she’d been wrong about. “Are you police?”

  “Not exactly. You don’t need to worry about that. But we haven’t been Inside for a long time. Tell me some news?”

  The trade. She suddenly felt tongue-tied. “How long do we have?”

  He chuckled. “You can stay with us overnight up at Cle Elum, so you’ll have as much time as you want. We’ll keep our promises, too, help you out.” He paused, as if thinking through nuggets of wisdom. “For example, you should dress Paula in clothes that a person would wear, not a robot.”

  It seemed so obvious in hindsight. Duh. “You’re right.”

  “Do you have any?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll solve that.” Liselle said. “Tell us about the city.” She sounded almost as hungry as Lucien for news.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Coryn sat back, the dog warm on her lap, and realized she felt safe—really safe—for the first time since she’d walked out from under the dome of the city. Knots of stress she hadn’t noticed released from her neck, her back, her gut. Telling a story about the city was small trade for such unexpected relief. “I don’t know where to start. I mean, you’re from the city, right? You know things, right?”

  Silence fell, so all she heard was the gentle rolling of the wheels and everyone breathing. The dog’s breath was surprisingly sweet. She started hesitatingly. “Well, we finally made it to ninety-five percent city-grown food, which means we could live inside the dome completely.”

  They showed no sign of surprise.

  “You knew that. What else? Half of us are transitories. No home address but always a place to sleep, even if it’s a little one. I was about to be kicked out of where I was living, since I’m an adult now. I would probably have become a transitory, trading chores for basic-basic or picking up a simple job so I could save for better schooling.”

  “Was that why you left?”

  She found the question mildly offensive. “Of course not. I would have done okay with that life. I spent two weeks of my last summer vacation living transitory. It wasn’t bad. Went north into Seattle proper. Paula helped me find small places we could afford, and I got to stay in a tent-camp at Volunteer Park for two nights. They had movies every night and free food.”

  Liselle smiled. “I love the botanical gardens there. And some of the trees with the loopy branches.” She leaned forward. “How happy do people seem?”

  “Most are happier than me.” Aspen jerked in her lap and resettled. “I mean I left, right?” She paused, groping for words. She’d never tried to organize her own thoughts, her unrest, her sense of not belonging, into something substantial enough for words before. Now, they seemed to take on a life of their own, spilling out of her with increasing ease. “Everything’s just too perfect in the city, too unreal. It’s like stacked virtual worlds, one on top of the other, like you can be a physics geek or a dancer or get lost in reading and talking about books. But none of it felt real.” She looked around again. Liselle smiled at her, and Coryn felt like it was a little encouragement to keep going. “Almost everyone is nice, in a cold-distracted way, but I didn’t have anyone I was really close to unless you count Paula. She’s my friend, but she’s still a robot.”

  She hadn’t really meant to say that much. She’d gotten confident and then gone too far, and now the sympathetic looks Lucien and Liselle directed at her crawled up her spine. “I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me; I mean, I’m just saying that’s how it seems to me.”

  “Okay.” Pablo smiled that easy smile again. “I think it was brave of you to come out here. After all, we did.”

  She cleared her throat. “Good.” Out of the window, tall trees closed in around them, blocking the sun. “Look, do you have specific questions?”

  “You said you’re going to find your sister,” Lucien asked. “When did you see her last?”

  She swallowed. “Four years ago. We write to each other.” She didn’t like how the conversation kept curling back to her personal life. “What can I tell you about the city?”

  Liselle sat back and looked thoughtful. Pablo asked her, “How happy are people other than you? Do you see protests? Can you tell if people are happy with how things are run?”

  That was a harder question. What did she know about how other people felt? It wasn’t like she’d ever tried talking to anyone about this kind of thing. “I think so. I mean, not everyone. There’s never everyone happy, right? But, like I said, most people seem happier than me.” She twisted her fingers through Aspen’s fur. She’d like to give them whatever they wanted, if only she knew what that was. “I hear about protests on the newsfeed sometimes, but they don’t seem to be very big.”

  Lucien looked up from a tablet he was poking at and asked, “What are the protests about?”

  “What’s it always about? Some people have too much.”

  “Do you think that’s true?” Pablo asked. He leaned in a little, his curiosity genuine as far as she could tell. It still felt a little like a test.

  “I . . . I haven’t thought about it much.” She took a deep breath. “No one’s poor. Not with basic. Even if I never earned enough to go up in the job market, I’d have had food and doctors. Doesn’t everyo
ne in the city have more than most people out here?”

  Pablo steepled his hands and leaned toward her. “Some people out here have a lot of power.”

  “Like Erich? That’s why they want to steal Paula, right? She’d give him more power here.”

  Pablo reached a hand across the table and scratched Aspen behind the ears. “Robots confer status here more than power, and they seldom last long. The real power is in the NGOs.”

  She glanced at Paula. Robots didn’t last long.

  But Paula didn’t appear to hear that. She looked curiously at Pablo. “What about the NGOs?”

  Liselle answered, her voice tinged with bitterness. “They have all of the resources. Or 90 percent of them, anyway. They’re like the angels and the devils, and we’re all the ones in between trying to broker life and peace.”

  The van slowed for a moment and then sped up again. Lucien looked out the window before turning back to them. “The NGOs are the best and the worst things out here. But people like Erich kill more people.”

  Pablo grinned. “Only directly.”

  It felt like an old argument. Coryn filed it away to ask more questions about when she got a chance.

  Paula spoke, startling Coryn a little. “They wanted to reprogram me. I have been pondering what that might mean. What did they want to program me to become?” She glanced at Coryn. “After all, if they kill you, then I’m pretty much available to be reassigned. But no one tried to kill you. Therefore, they wanted to make me something I’m not.”

  Coryn swallowed hard. That danger had never crossed her mind. “What if they didn’t want any traces that you used to be mine left? So if they got caught later, they could make up any story they wanted?”

  Pablo went to the sink and poured water for everyone. Coryn drank gratefully, using the time to think a little. “How come there aren’t more robots out here anyway?”

  “There’s more than you see,” Liselle explained. “Farms have some, usually. Some people have helper-bots for the sick or the old. They’re expensive and hard to maintain, and having one can make you a target. So a lot of the tech that’s out here is hidden.”