Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  Her long, reddish hair hung limply around her shoulders and bunched awkwardly where she’d slept on it. Even in the low light, her face looked splotchy and pale. “I need help this morning.”

  Behind her, Paula said, “You look fabulous.”

  “I pay you to say that.”

  “You do not.”

  “Any idea what they want?” Coryn took a last look, fluffed her hair in the vain hope of it doing anything besides lying down flat and stringy, and stepped out the door. Maybe coffee would help.

  “None,” Paula said. “They seem to have plenty of silencing tech. In fact, they seem to have a lot more tech than I expected. But they keep it hidden.”

  “It’s not as if I thought everyone in the Outside would be living in caves.” In the city, everyone and everything was festooned with subtle flashing and talking and beeping. Here, quiet. The tech seemed like bare bones scaffolding, and when something familiar and city-like showed up, it looked as incongruous as an evening party outfit on a commuter bicycle.

  Dawn light washed the campfire pale. Liselle balanced a plate and cup and gestured for Coryn to sit in a folding chair. Coryn sat, and Paula stood behind her, arms folded.

  This morning, Liselle was dressed in sky blue all the way down to her shoes, which looked like they had come from the same feed-lot as her shorts. Maybe they had, except surely none of it was printed. The same dye lots? It was out of fashion in the city to wear the same material or color on more than one part of your body, but they weren’t in the city anymore, and Liselle did look good in blue. She handed Coryn a plate with fresh eggs and cooked potatoes on it. Coryn took it, slightly confused at being treated with what looked like deference.

  They wanted something from her.

  Well, they would eventually tell her what. In the meantime, the eggs smelled of pepper and hot sauce, and she ate them greedily before downing two cups of delightful, bitter coffee. The warm food tasted good; the warm cup felt like heaven.

  After Lucien took her plate from her, he and Liselle both sat watching her.

  Coryn fidgeted, unsure how to pass the test in his gaze.

  “Look,” he said. “I’d like to tell you more about us and offer you an opportunity. But only if you’ll promise to keep what you learn secret.”

  “Secret from who?”

  “Anyone you meet on the road.”

  “What about my sister?”

  “She’s all the way in the Palouse?”

  Coryn hesitated. Everything else Lou had told her had been wrong. “As far as I know. That’s where I’m going, anyway.”

  “You can ask us later, when you’re close to there.”

  “How would I do that?”

  “We’ll show you.” Lucien leaned closer to her. “First, do you agree?”

  She swallowed, looked around, and then back at Lucien. “I agree to listen and to keep your secrets. But I can’t promise any more than that. I need to find my sister.”

  Lucien began by repeating a question he had asked yesterday. “You left on purpose, and you don’t want to go back. That’s right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Coryn took a deep breath and thought her answer through before she spoke. “I can’t find myself inside of all the people.”

  Liselle’s voice was soft. “Was that all?”

  Coryn’s blinked away tears and forced herself to keep looking calmly at Liselle. “My parents died there.”

  Lucien knelt in front of her. “How?”

  This defined her, but everyone wanted to know it. Julianna. Now these two. She took a deep breath and looked directly at Lucien. “They killed themselves. My mom never fit. I hadn’t known my dad agreed with her, but he wasn’t very emotional.” Lucien looked quiet and thoughtful as he watched her. Listening. Maybe waiting, so she said a little more. “I don’t want to become them. When I was little, I loved the city, but after they died, I didn’t fit. I never really fit again. I tried. I still love the city, but it seems more important to find Lou.”

  Paula squeezed her shoulder softly, almost a caress, and Coryn fought back more tears she didn’t want. This was no time to get emotional about things she couldn’t change.

  Liselle looked almost shaken. “I’m sorry.”

  “Is there anything else we should know?” Lucien asked. “When did your sister leave you?”

  Coryn took another deep breath, getting some control, but still relieved when Paula spoke into the silence. “Lou left as soon as she could,” Paula said. “She hated the city as much as their parents did. She wanted to do environmental things. She’s been out here a few years. Her notes home are short and very positive, so much so that Coryn grew suspicious. And last summer they got shorter. Coryn no longer believes everything is okay, so she chose to come find Lou.”

  Lucien didn’t respond directly to Paula but kept looking at Coryn. “Suicide is serious. Was there anything specific that made your parents ill? Were they depressed?”

  What a stupid question. “Of course they were!” Coryn spoke a little too loudly.

  Paula took over again. “Marianne, Coryn’s mother, used to tell me that only the smart ones knew enough to notice how bad the city is.”

  Lucien laughed. “Maybe we’re all brilliant.” He swept his hand in the general direction of the camp. “Almost everyone out here wants to be here, at least on most days.”

  Paula asked the question Coryn hadn’t quite stirred up the courage to ask. “What do you want from Coryn?”

  Lucien looked at Coryn rather than Paula, and waited yet another minute or so for her to finish collecting herself and sit up straight. When he spoke, it sounded a little like a prepared speech. “As listeners, we can’t take sides. But many people want the cities to change, the borders to open, and for things to be more equally distributed. There may have been a time when locking almost everyone inside of bubbles and keeping the rest of us out made sense, but there is a lot of anger and a lot of pain out here. There should be free movement, or at least more resources for the people who live out here. There’s no reason some kid born in Cle Elum shouldn’t get to go to a university in the city.”

  “Aren’t some of the people out here from Inside, and just out to help? To do jobs?” Earlier, he had suggested a lot of people from Inside went Outside.

  “Like your sister? Sure. Many idealistic people come out to work for the NGOs—who by the way, hire almost exclusively from Inside. But many children are born out here, and they have almost nothing. People from Outside never get jobs to run anything. Just to be strong backs, and mostly there’re robots for that. For most, this place is dark and unconnected.”

  “What do you mean?” Coryn asked. “Specifically?”

  “People who spend their lives out here get to see a doctor, on average, about once a year. They’re lucky if they can find one in an emergency.” He took a sip of coffee. “How often do you go to the doctor?”

  “Whenever the city says to.”

  “So even someone on the lowest social rung in the city, an orphaned student with no significant financial resources, gets medical monitoring all the time.”

  It was hard not to bristle at his tone of voice. It wasn’t her fault the city provided medical care. “Yes.”

  “You’re not getting it now.”

  “I know that.” Coryn got up and poured more coffee, buying herself a moment to think about what to say next. “Didn’t you tell me you’re from the city?”

  “Just like you. The city is threatened by its wealth, and by the fact that it doesn’t care what happens out here.”

  “Of course we do!” Coryn protested. “We know we depend on the wild.”

  “No.” Lucien sounded bitter. “If the city knew that, it would help more. That’s what we’re trying to do. To help by gathering information.”

  Liselle watched her closely. “How does that make you feel? The idea of helping?”

  A test. She thought about the army again, and the idea of Listeners being
out here as a sort of security measure. “So do you work for Seacouver?”

  “We work for peace. We work for everyone.” Lucien pulled his ponytail out, thumbed a comb loose from his back pocket, and started untangling his long hair. “We collect and analyze data so we can get some idea of what is going on, both Inside and Outside.”

  “But you won’t hurt the city?” she asked.

  He winced as he tugged the comb through a knot at the back of his head. “We never hurt anyone if we can help it.”

  Not a very good answer. If the city ever wanted her, she might want it back. “I used to love the city. Even now, I miss a lot about it.”

  Liselle pressed her. “But what about the system? What about the way it works? Do you love that?”

  “That could change,” she allowed. “But there are a lot of systems. The city isn’t one thing.”

  “Any concentration of power is dangerous,” Lucien countered. “That’s what we finally learned before we stopped the war on wildness.”

  The vehemence in his voice surprised her into silence. But she thought about the old robot that reported her to the orphanage’s managers, and the forces that buried her parents. She thought about the center of the city, and the jobs in government that she would never have. “It feels that way. Like power can be tough.”

  “Okay.” Liselle seemed impatient with the long conversation. She glanced at Lucien, who nodded. “Good enough. Here’s what we want help with. We’ll give you a way to communicate with us. You can use your wristlet—we’ll just upload some new capabilities. We want you to tell us who you talk to and what they say. Take pictures. Tell us what you see, what people you talk to say. We’re particularly interested in the ecobots, but we’re also interested in movements of people.”

  “Is that why you were stopped by that string of people yesterday?”

  “We could have driven by them.” After she said that. Liselle looked away, biting her lip.

  Coryn was convinced they wouldn’t have driven by, and Paula had been certain the meeting with the silent army was planned.

  Before she could decide what to say next, a couple bundled up in heavy winter coats wandered into camp and sat down, pouring coffee for themselves. The conversation turned to the continuing effort to clean up after the windstorm and a rumor that the power had gone out in part of Spokane Metro, although how that could happen wasn’t clear. “Maybe part of it was on the old grid still,” the woman suggested.

  The man shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Coryn was about to ask a question when she noticed a small shake of Paula’s head. A warning.

  As soon as the couple left, Lucien said, “We just want to know what you see and what you hear. We’re recognizable. We know that. We chose to be bright and memorable so that people who want to tell us things can find us. But we also need an army of people who are just watching out there. We’re Listeners. Loud, easy to find Listeners. Formal Listeners. But we also need secret Listeners.”

  She frowned. “And if I hear something I don’t want to tell you?”

  He smiled grimly. “We can’t make you tell us anything.”

  These people had saved her life once already. She owed them. She didn’t like it, but she should do this. In a barter economy, she might need help again.

  Paula gripped her shoulder a little too tightly, like a warning. Coryn shook her off. They could talk about it later. In the meantime, she didn’t see what it would hurt. “I’ll try. But I’m not going off course. I came out here to find Lou.”

  “We would never ask you to give up on your family.” Liselle held her hand out.

  Coryn stripped her wristlet off, opened its security, and handed it over. Liselle stood, “It will just take me a few moments, and then we’ll get you a ride out of town.”

  After she’d surrendered her wristlet, she wondered if they would see the pictures she had taken of the books in the van while the silent army surrounded them. But Liselle didn’t even leave. She merely pushed a series of buttons and whispered commands at Coryn’s machine. As she handed it back, she said, “I added an app. It’s two taps below home. Try it.”

  Coryn held the machine out and tapped it twice. She saw her own face.

  “You point it at whatever you’re taking a picture of.”

  She pointed it at Liselle.

  “Not us!”

  She snapped a shot of Aspen, which whooshed off of her small screen as soon as she took it. “Is it still here?” She pointed at her wrist.

  “Yes. In case we don’t get it. But these pictures won’t get in your way.”

  Coryn felt a little dubious, but at least they hadn’t seen the other pictures she’d taken.

  “You can get texts from us in the app and also send us short ones. So you can give us context for pictures.”

  “Okay.”

  Ten minutes later, Coryn and Paula stood in their used clothes with their packs. Liselle and Lucien shook her hand and Paula’s. Coryn leaned down and gave Aspen a hug, whispering in his ear, “I hope I see you again.” She probably wouldn’t though. To her surprise, leaving Liselle stung, too. It had almost felt like they were becoming friends, and even though there hadn’t been time to really tell, it had felt good.

  Their ride turned out to be a truck taking apples out of a warehouse in Cle Elm and bringing them back to the city. So it wasn’t going their way at all, except that it led them out of Cle Elum and back onto the highway. The driver treated Paula like a person, so much so that Coryn wasn’t entirely sure he knew she was a companion-bot. Could such a simple thing as clothes make that much difference?

  It was already late morning when the truck dropped them off, but Liselle had given them extra food for lunch and dinner and also handed Coryn a spare first aid kit. It had warmed some from the bitter early morning, and the air smelled of rain. As long as there wasn’t any wind, Coryn was willing to deal with it. As soon as the truck was out of sight, she turned to Paula. “So you didn’t think that was a good idea?”

  “You could get into trouble.”

  “With who?”

  “City police for one. Spying is illegal.”

  Coryn frowned. “At first I thought they were helping the city. I mean, they got the robots to save us.”

  “They got the robots to arrest Erich. Saving us might have been an unintended consequence.”

  “We know he was a bad guy. We know he was going to steal you and reprogram you.”

  “But we don’t know why.”

  “Is everything about taking a side out here?”

  “I’m not even sure I can define the available sides yet.” Paula stared down the road, which was forested on one side with high trees and reforested with light green saplings on the other. “There seem to be far more than two options.”

  “True enough. But I don’t think helping them will hurt anything.”

  “You’re being stubborn.”

  Coryn smiled. “Maybe.”

  “You don’t even know what they put on your wristlet. They could be tracking you.”

  “Do you want to look at it?”

  Paula held a hand out, and Coryn dropped the wristlet in her palm. “It’s okay if they track me,” she said. “If they’d wanted to steal you, they could have done that right there. They saved us, and I’m willing to help them. If they can track me, they can save me again. End of story.”

  Paula peered at the wristlet, almost certainly sifting through data she’d downloaded from it in seconds. “I think it’s just communication software. I can’t tell for sure without risking breaking it.”

  Coryn took it back, feeling better when it snapped around her forearm. They had arrived at the interstate again, the road a crisp black ribbon under their feet. They walked along the side, heading downhill. From time to time, cars or trucks or skateboards passed them. Coryn kept hoping for a horse.

  With luck, they’d be near Lou in two weeks. Less than ten marathons left. Maybe they could even make better time if the roa
ds were good. There were hills between them, but they had just crossed the highest mountains and gotten a ride up the worst part. Maybe they weren’t doing that bad after all.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The first day out from Cle Elum had been memorable for a steady rain, but the next two had been full of blue skies and pleasant spring weather. Before they’d gone to bed in a copse of trees the previous night, though, the sky had darkened. Now, at almost midday, a heavy layer of black clouds pressed down on them, so close Coryn fancied she could reach up and touch them. Weather reports suggested rain and wind. At least there weren’t any high wind warnings like the first day.

  They were making good time, and they hadn’t had any mishaps since Erich captured them in the barn.

  Three middle-aged women passed them on the road, heading west. A few minutes later, they came up on a couple and two teenagers pulling an old-style metal grocery cart with clothes and goods in it. A small black dog in a ragged red raincoat balanced on top of the cart, trying to look in all directions at once. Coryn dutifully took pictures, even though neither group of travelers seemed remarkable.

  The reliable little pings of thanks that scrolled on her wristlet screen every time she sent them a picture or a generic text made her feel like she was part of something, and reminded her that someone knew she and Paula were still out here, still moving.

  An hour later they ducked behind a rock and hid from two ecobots heading east like they were, and ten minutes after that a whole pod of ecobots passed her head-on, rattling and rumbling as they dropped four legs each to get over a break in the road where a stream had washed the pavement away. A long string of bicyclists followed the ecobots, stopping at the break and tossing bicycles back and forth before struggling uphill too slowly to overtake the ecobots.

  It took half an hour before they saw anything else. A coyote crossed in front of them, but she didn’t take a picture of it. Whatever the Listeners were working on, it wasn’t the environment.

  Rain pelted her in big, slow drops and then grew faster and harder. Paula found a farm and beckoned her into the barn. “Aren’t barns a bad idea?” Coryn grumbled.