Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  Paula chimed in. “You’re a rebel.” She sounded satisfied about that.

  “Bad robot.” Hadn’t Paula been discouraging her from leaving? But then Paula was better at human psychology than humans. That had been true of companion-bots for a long time. This wasn’t the moment, but if she remembered later she was going to ask Paula if she had secretly been hoping Coryn would come out here. But even so, could she believe her?

  Could Paula lie to her?

  The van rumbled and rocked, and Aspen sat warm in her lap, and she fell into a fretting doze. If the Inside and the Outside were really so different, and if the webs of what they believed were so different, did that explain why Lou seemed to have grown away from her? If so, what could she do about it?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The van drove up a smooth patch of road, with healthy-looking trees and no ecobots or long lines of strangers in sight. The blue sky looked as if the wind had blown it clean, even though the road itself was still stained with small branches from the recent windstorm. Clearly someone or something had cleared the serious fall—cracked and downed trees with recent saw cuts lined the low bank on the upward side of the road. In spite of the relative calm, Lucien seemed twitchy, pacing inside the small space.

  Liselle looked at him. “Are you okay?”

  “I think . . . I just want to go ride in front.”

  “You hate not getting all the news.” Liselle made a shooing motion. “Go on. We’ll be okay.”

  He looked grateful, opening the door the next time they slowed and hopping out.

  Coryn wondered if she had failed as a storyteller.

  She and Liselle rode in a slightly awkward silence until Coryn said, “I’m looking forward to seeing Cle Elum.”

  “It’s nothing like Seacouver,” Liselle warned.

  They passed a deer standing frozen by the side of the road in a small clearing, its big ears twitching back and forth and its coat a luxurious, warm brown with pale spots. Coryn stood up close to the window, entranced, until it shook itself briefly and bounded between two tall trees.

  “How are you doing?” Liselle asked her. “You just got Out. Is it too much?”

  Coryn laughed, her first since the barn and the ecobots. “Too much information? Too much sky? Too many bad guys?”

  “Too much of anything.”

  “I studied Outside before I left the city. I read about burned forests, storms, and bad soil. I talked to one of my friends about land with almost no people on it, and I saw pictures of roads with cracks and pits and holes in them.” She hugged Aspen so close that he gave a small yelp and she let go. “I read about untended forest. I stared at pictures, but it’s another thing entirely to smell it, to see it, to realize the vast emptiness. I hadn’t been able to imagine that. I’m not entirely sure I can imagine it now, even though I’m looking right at it. Since we’re inside the van it’s like vid, even though I know it’s real. Like that deer.”

  “That’s okay,” Liselle said. “Give it time. It’s hard to switch between. I was born out here, and I had to go to a city four times before it stopped making me sick. The first time I could barely walk.”

  “Sometimes the city felt overwhelming to me, and I was born there. But you get used to all those things that support you. I miss the traffic systems and the news and the AR—Oh, the AR—and . . . .” She let her thoughts trail off. She’d left that behind her, at least for now.

  They passed through a reforesting zone, a vast open area with shattered stumps and rocks that had been scarred black by fire. She spotted a herd of huge animals browsing in the juvenile trees. “Are those deer?”

  “Elk. You can tell by the white butts.”

  Sure enough. “Are they as big as they look?”

  Liselle laughed, a high tinkly laugh full of friendly taunting. “Don’t ever make elk mad. They’ll chase you. A male is seven hundred pounds of muscle.”

  “People used to hunt them, didn’t they?” They looked so beautiful. So majestic. “I heard we ate them.”

  Liselle frowned. “People still do. They’re all microchipped, but some go missing every year. And then the NGOs hunt some on purpose, just to keep the right amount. You have to have the right amount of everything you know, and that’s all up to people now.”

  “I thought we were introducing wolves.”

  “Returners kill them faster than they kill the elk.”

  Coryn had heard that term. People who resented the great taking and wished life was like it used to be. They passed a sign that said, SEVEN YEAR PLANTING. “Are those all cedars?” she asked.

  “Over half are firs. See the darker ones with the slightly droopy leaves? Those are cedars. They were sacred to native people here. They made boats and baskets and art out of them. In fact . . .” She stood up and rummaged in a bowl, and brought out two carved wooden earrings. They were shaped like suns or flowers and had been sanded and rubbed so they glowed. “You can have these. Maybe you need something made from trees.”

  Coryn held her hand out, and the earrings landed in her palm. “They’re beautiful.” They were lighter than they looked, almost like feathers. She never wore her mother’s earrings. She kept those in the box she often carried in her pocket. She did have on small nanofabbed earrings, something very trendy in the city, with clever geometric shapes. She pulled them out and washed them. “Trade?”

  “You didn’t have to.” But Liselle looked pleased, so it was the right thing to have done. Coryn slid the wooden earrings into her ears and shook her head, pleased at the light touch on her neck.

  Even though Pablo was warm and Lucien handsome, Liselle was the easiest to be around.

  They passed a REFORESTING IN PROGRESS sign. Robots with buzzing, crackling saws at the ends of long appendages thinned small trees that grew close to each other, easily lifting fifteen-foot trees and tossing them into chippers or simply onto the ground to rot. Smaller round robots slashed at blackberry bushes. A mechanical army, every piece working together. In front of them, the forest looked ratty and wild. Behind them, it still looked wild but also like it had room to breathe and places for animals to thread through trees. “Are those also ecobots?” she asked Paula.

  Liselle looked out the window. “Of a sort. They’re workers—they can make decisions, but not hard choices. The ones that rescued you? They can decide if humans live or die. They have rights and power, within strict lines. These don’t have nearly that much leeway.” Liselle stared up at the forested hill and the robots above them, looking lost in thought. “What about your robot? What rights does she have?”

  “Paula?” Coryn handed the question on.

  Paula twisted in her seat and chose a relaxed position. “I have the right not be abused. I have the right to make decisions that are aligned with my basic framework of instruction, but not to violate that. For example, I am Coryn’s protector. If you attack her, I can kill you. But I cannot kill her.”

  It sounded harsh, almost shocking, spoken out here that way.

  Liselle must have thought so, too, since she changed the subject and started naming off tree species.

  Fifteen minutes later, detour signs directed all three vans to rumble and rock up a steep ridge on a gravel road. As they wound upward, the reason for the detour spread out below them: a river of jagged rock had buried the road. A dark slash of mountain had given way, the edges crisp and surprisingly even.

  Huge robots worked the rock fall, bots bigger than buildings, far bigger than the ecobots. Of necessity, bigger than most of the rocks in the fall.

  The road ended abruptly, buried in rocks and dirt and crushed trees, and crawling with robots.

  A shadow blocked the light of the front window. Aspen yipped; Coryn looked up. A robot towered over them. It seemed like she had to look all the way up to the gray, cloud-darkened sky. The robot looked vaguely humanoid, with four legs and four arms, all of them multiply jointed. In some ways it seemed more like a giant spider than a robot. Its metal body had been dinged and scraped,
and here and there patches showed where it had been repaired.

  If Paula hurt herself, self-healing nanomaterials would re-create whatever part of skin she needed, but this creature clearly didn’t have such skills. It was expressionless, powerful, and yet it also looked worn down and slightly sad.

  To her surprise, it reached out a huge hand and curled long, gripped fingers around the van, one of them draping itself along the window where she stood. Two large scratches marred the multicolored metal joint in front of her, and the side of one finger had been gouged by something sharp.

  “Sit down!” Liselle snapped.

  Startled, Coryn sat. Aspen leapt into her lap, his claws digging into her thighs. Her stomach fell out from under her as the robot picked them up.

  It carried them with authority, as if they were merely another rock, but the van barely tipped. Nonetheless, she shoved her clenched fist in her mouth as the harsh rasp of her own breath filled her ears.

  It set them down, and the van kept driving as if nothing at all had happened.

  Coryn clutched Aspen close, unable to stop shaking or slow her breathing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  High clouds faded from bright to burnt orange as they turned off of the interstate into Cle Elum. Coryn glanced over at Lucien, who had rejoined them. “The roads are good here,” she said, surprised.

  “The main one through town, anyway. Cle Elum is one of very few places with independent taxing authority between here and Spokane Metro. The others are Wenatchee, Yakima, Walla Walla, and Metro itself. There used to be seven Washington cities, but Leavenworth burned ten years ago. Flames the size of skyscrapers. Seared so hot there are rumors that tree roots are still burning underground today. They never rebuilt.” He said it with a little nod of casual triumph, as if it was obvious that losing a smaller city was good.

  They swerved to miss a big truck, and she clutched Aspen tighter. As they rumbled into town, they passed a decent sized shopping mall, a few trucks, and a ranger station surrounded by ecobots. Slightly run-down shared-living housing lined one side of the road, the bottom peppered with small coffee shops and common-things stores, and the tops full of apartments with ragged plants and bicycles and chairs on the balconies. Free bike stands lined the streets like they did in the city. They passed five riders with night lights just starting to glow on their tires.

  It was getting too dark to see by the time they turned right again at the top of a little hill and turned again to slide the vans into three adjacent spots in an old cracked parking lot. Other vehicles had been there awhile; awnings stretched out over clusters of chairs full of people talking around small campfires.

  Liselle said, “These are all family. You’re safe enough here, with us, and everyone in this circle is safe to talk to. But don’t leave. We’ll give you a ride out of town when it’s time. Cle Elum can be dangerous, and your robot is valuable.”

  “Paula.”

  Liselle grinned. “Paula is valuable.”

  “She is!”

  “Good thing you’re learning,” Paula replied. “You haven’t called me stupid robot for at least a day.”

  “Stupid robot.”

  “Come on,” Liselle said. “We need to find something that makes Paula look more human.”

  Liselle led Coryn and Paula through the parking lot and up a small hill to a falling-down red barn with a faded picture of a horse-drawn carriage on it. Clothes filled one room, ragged and colorful cottons and bamboo. Old. None of them looked like they had been printed in the first place. “Find some for yourself, too,” Liselle said.

  Coryn frowned. “I like my outfit. I designed it just for this trip.”

  “You might as well wear a sign that says, ‘Escapee from the city.’ You can keep it if you can carry it.” She led Coryn toward a floor-to-ceiling stack of shelves.

  Paula had started picking through the clothes on the far side of the room. Her uniform was made exactly for her and designed to move where her joints moved. She probably wasn’t going to be much happier than Coryn with the idea of wearing mass-market junk clothes. Coryn eyed a pile of shirts suspiciously. “How old is this stuff anyway?”

  “Older than anything you’ve ever worn,” Liselle said. “It’s made better than anything from a 3D printer.”

  Coryn bit back a snarky reply.

  Liselle started handing them things. Coryn held them up and shook her head: too blue, too ragged, too rough.

  “Pick something,” Liselle said. “I’m hungry.”

  Coryn sighed and selected a long, sage green shirt she could wear over her own tight-fitting one, and a pair of blue jeans with white stitched seams. The legs were too long for her, but Liselle rolled the cuffs up. If she had a mirror she could laugh at herself, but it probably was time to go native. She already felt a little less different than everyone else out here.

  Paula ended up with brown pants, a navy blue sweater that her dark hair almost blended with, and a dull red overcoat that would make her easy to spot, but which also looked decidedly nonrobotic. It had enough pockets she could carry a number of her tools and things. After modeling her new outfit in the mirror, Paula held up a wide knitted black scarf that could cover some of her face. Liselle tugged it up around her neck and up over her chin, leaving only her nose and eyes uncovered. “There,” she said. “Doesn’t that make her look a little more real?”

  Coryn didn’t like the term. “She looks less like a robot.”

  Liselle narrowed her eyes at that but recovered quickly. “And you look less like a city girl. Let’s go find food.”

  Paula stood her ground, staring at Coryn, until Coryn remembered her manners. “Thank you.”

  Liselle nodded at Paula while speaking to Coryn. “No problem.”

  The camp must have had a hundred people in it. Liselle took her around and introduced her to at least half of them. Twice they sat down and ate, once a salad and once an oatmeal cookie redolent with cinnamon. Coryn watched for Pablo but didn’t see him. It made her even more certain he had stayed with the wandering army, or the gathering army, or whatever it wanted to be called.

  Everyone around the campfire outside the colorful vans stopped talking as they approached. Liselle introduced her to the people who had been in the first and last vans in the little caravan. One of the women who had been riding in the front van, Kimberly, dished her out a thin vegetable soup and another man, Chizen, filled a huge bowl with salad. Most everyone seemed to be eating at once.

  At first she didn’t see Lucien, but then he stepped in from behind her. “I might have found some people you can travel with. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

  She bristled. “I’m not sure I want to travel with anyone.”

  “It’s safer,” he countered.

  She wanted to be up and moving as soon as it was light. They were back on track now—Cle Elum was just over three marathons from where they’d left the city. Less than ten marathons left to go. She chose not to argue until she could talk with Paula. As if he’d heard her unspoken thought, Lucien said, “You might as well sleep in the van tonight. We’ll be right outside in tents. We can find a pillow and an extra blanket.”

  “Thank you.” She looked forward to being alone. If only she weren’t sure they were hiding something from her.

  To her utter disappointment, they didn’t shoo Aspen back in after them. As soon as Liselle finished helping her set up and closed the door, she asked Paula, “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think they’re outside talking about you.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I still have very good hearing.”

  “You’re an awful brat for a robot.”

  “Makes me a good match for you.”

  Coryn rolled so she was staring up at the roof of the van. “No, really. Something big is going on, isn’t it? We left the city to look for the peaceful Outside, the one Lou keeps writing to me about, but that doesn’t exist. And then there’s that army Pablo went with.”

 
“I never did figure out what they want. But they were going toward the city.”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing we left.”

  “Maybe it’s a tough time to be out here,” Paula countered. “The city has more defenses than we do.”

  “I need to see Lou. I don’t understand what, but I feel like something bad is about to happen. I want to be with Lou if that’s true.”

  “We should have let her know you were coming,” Paula said, for about the tenth time since they’d left the city.

  “I want to surprise her.”

  “I want to find her at all.”

  “Stop being such a worried robot.”

  Paula didn’t bother to reply.

  Coryn worried. What if they didn’t find Lou? What then?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Coryn woke to the smell of coffee and eggs. Lucien stood in the open door, politely looking away as she pushed herself up off the bench and ran her fingers through her hair. His hair was tied tightly away from his face, making him look a bit severe. He radiated physical power and energy. He drew her the way a vid star or a singer attracted, with presence and something unnamable. “Good morning,” she mumbled, trying not to express how awkward it felt that he’d seen her sleeping.

  He spoke in a serious voice. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

  Paula glanced at her and raised an eyebrow.

  “Can I wake up for a minute?”

  He smiled. “Use the camp bathroom. It’s in the middle.”

  She gestured for Paula to follow her and climbed down the steps. Aspen wrapped himself around her calves and almost tripped her as she stepped onto the ground. “It’s cold!” she proclaimed, pulling her arms around her. She gratefully took a light coat Paula handed her, although it only helped a little. Ice outlined every blade of thin grass along the path. “Is that frost?”

  “Yes,” Paula said. “It’s cold enough to snow.”

  “I’d like to see that!”

  “It’s too dry. Maybe someday.”

  After she performed her basic morning rituals, she scrubbed at her face with her bare hands, trying to feel presentable.