Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  “Seacouver.”

  “Seattle proper?”

  “No. Old Vancouver, the Canadian one. Actually by Surrey. It took us three days to get down here.”

  “That’s fast.” Coryn figured it would take her five. But then her gear had never been as wickedly strong as this looked, all dull black metals and big wheels. She’d have killed for the money for a bike like this. She ran her fingers along the smooth metal frame. “Are these wireless shifters?”

  “Yes. No wires anywhere.”

  “Even on the brakes?”

  The rider pointed at her bike. “Do you see wires?”

  “How are the roads out here?”

  The woman unclipped a gel tube from her belt and snapped off the top. “Good if you know where to go. That’s why the tours. We use roads the cities keep up.” She lifted the gel to her mouth and sucked at it.

  “I wish I’d brought my bike.”

  “Can I pet your dog?”

  “Sure. His name’s Aspen. I’m Coryn.”

  “LeeAnne.”

  “So, do you know my sister, Lou?” She pointed toward her.

  LeeAnne scooped Aspen up. He started licking her arms, making her smile. “He must need salt. I never met Lou. But I know of her.”

  “Victor?”

  “Of course.” LeeAnne’s face didn’t light up at his name. “Did he tell you how long it would be before we ran into trouble?”

  Now she was getting somewhere. “He didn’t. I heard we’re skipping the mountains with the horses and going by the river.”

  LeeAnne glanced west, even though distant clouds obscured the Cascades. “The gorge is beautiful, but it may be harder.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s easier to defend than to get through.”

  “Will we have to get through defenders?”

  “It depends on how well the hack jobs hold. The damned ecobots have been hacked so many ways from hell in the last decade I have no idea if what we did will hold.”

  “I thought Bartholomew did the hacking?”

  LeeAnne handed Aspen to Coryn. “Were you listening? Everything’s been hacked so many ways it’s hard to tell who’s running what machine on any given day.”

  “So you’re going to join us in Portland?”

  “We’ll go ahead. Take the gorge. Ride in. This was just a chance meeting and you never met us.”

  “I’ll forget your name tomorrow.”

  LeeAnne grinned. “You can forget it in an hour.”

  Coryn watched the bicyclists pack up their lunch trash and prepare to depart. She supposed they would go soon, too, but she didn’t see any of Lou’s crew near the horses. Maybe she had time to stretch her legs before climbing back on River.

  She called Aspen close to her and left quietly, walking along the weedy stream bank until she found a place to pick Aspen up and cross the water with a long jump. They walked along the far bank looking for tracks. She spotted some that were probably coyote, then the double oval of deer tracks. She wasn’t certain, but it looked like a doe and a fawn.

  As she knelt to run her fingers around a muddy track that might be a cat or a coyote, a breeze carried heated voices from somewhere behind her. She turned, listening carefully. One was Lou. The other? A man. At first she thought of Bartholomew, but then she decided it must be Victor. She scooped Aspen up, holding him tightly to her chest. She walked quietly toward the conversation, listening.

  The words were muffled with distance, but full of anger and sharp tones. The voices were so visceral they drove a cold shiver up inside her even though it was perfectly warm now standing in the midday sun.

  “—your sister and the dog. Take the robot. She’s from your family. She’ll go with you.”

  “No. Who would keep Coryn safe?”

  “Then leave them all. She’s not going to make good press. Can you imagine? Child runaway with dog and companion robot part of Portland takeover team?”

  “I can’t leave her out here. I’m not missing this. I’ve been planning it too long.”

  “We have.” The male voice rose. “This is many of us, hundreds of us, not just you. This is directed at all the cities everywhere, not just here. You have a part, and you have to play it.”

  Lou spoke so softly that Coryn had to strain to hear her. “I’m in charge of my team, and Coryn is on it.”

  Coryn grinned at that. Lou defended her more to other people than to her face, but at least she defended her. Coryn stopped, afraid that if she got any closer they would hear her, or maybe see her. A thicket of blackberries and alders blocked her view of them, and she assumed it blocked their view of her. She kept Aspen close, hoping he wouldn’t bark.

  “I told you to drop Shuska, too.”

  “She’s my backup, my protector.”

  “She’s a wildcard.”

  A pause.

  Victor didn’t seem comfortable with silence. “Besides, you don’t need protection. Not from me, you don’t. Stand your ground and listen to me. You work for me. I can change that any time.”

  Lou’s answer to him came out steady. “You can’t change that today. Today is action, and you need me.” Some rustling of bushes suggested movement Coryn couldn’t see. “We all need each other. You do your part,” Lou continued. “I’ll do mine.”

  Coryn wished she could see their faces, see what they were doing. Were they close to each other? Far apart? Was Lou’s face as tight as her voice sounded? Was she in any kind of danger? Although surely not. Coryn was already convinced Lou was a far better leader than Victor. People liked following Lou.

  When the silence held, she started to back up, still holding Aspen.

  Lou burst out of the trees that had blocked Coryn’s view of her and Victor. She stopped right in front of Coryn, tears streaming down her face. She held her hands up to forestall conversation and swiped frantically at her cheeks as it removing the tears would wipe Coryn’s memory of them.

  Before either of them said anything, Victor came out. He stopped, about ten feet away, his face red with anger and his jaw tight. One fist was clenched and one arm raised.

  Lou stepped toward him.

  He stared at both of them, still, his raised fist slowly, very slowly, unclenching. “Be careful,” he spat at Lou. “Nothing is guaranteed in this world. If you do your job maybe you can keep it. Leave soon—it wouldn’t do for you to be late.” He left, going back the way he had come.

  Lou stared after him. After she could no longer hear his footsteps, Coryn set Aspen down and leaned over and opened her arms to offer Lou a hug.

  For a moment, Lou hesitated. But then she stepped into the hug, returning it with strength even though she stepped back out of it quickly. “Don’t tell the others,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s been gone a year now. It’s better that way. I don’t want them to be afraid that he might come back. He’s just mean because that’s all he knows. He’s on the same side we are.”

  Coryn disagreed, but this didn’t seem like the time to say so.

  Lou started back toward camp, glancing over her shoulder and saying, “You heard the boss. It’s time to go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Halfway through the next day, they stopped at the top of a hill festooned with fast-spinning white windmills and peered through a face full of wind to more hills on the far side of the Columbia River Gorge. The river sparkled in the noon sun, choppy with whitecaps.

  They rode alone again. The bicycles had left an hour after they came, and Victor and his riders had chosen to go up and over the mountains on Highway 12, leaving Lou to lead her group through the gorge. Coryn had been pleased to see the last of Victor.

  She took a deep breath and savored the fish and salt smell of the river, keeping her horse pointed directly into the wind even though it made him prance. Lou, beside her, squinted downward, one hand over her eyes for shade. “Do you have any news?” Coryn asked her.

  “Nothing useful. There was a fight between two
groups of ecobots outside of Seacouver. Then one whole side just stopped, like their programming stuck.”

  “How did you learn that?”

  Lou glanced at her own wristlet. “I get news from the Foundation.”

  The mysterious Foundation, yet again. So many things she half-understood. “Are the bicycle people really hackers?”

  “Everyone’s a hacker these days. But yes, some of them. I saw you talking to LeeAnne. She’s supposed to be one of the best. The government trained her, back around the time of the great taking. She had to learn a lot of operating systems.”

  “You sound like you wish you had studied computers.” Coryn stood in her stirrups to get a little more of the wind.

  “I’d have been terrible at it. Mostly it just irks me to be dependent on people when I don’t understand what they do.”

  “You know none of us can stand up to an ecobot, right? If we get into a fight with them, we die if they want to kill us.”

  “I know.” Lou headed Mouse down the paved road. Coryn let them get a little ahead. Blessing brought Shadow up beside her, holding him back so his pace would match River’s. Coryn slowed River even more, letting additional distance open up between them and Lou’s big buckskin. She smiled up at Blessing. “How’s your morning?”

  He started whistling a tune. “Like that. Happy as any last morning.”

  “Last morning?”

  “I had a teacher once who taught me to treat every minute like my last. Works pretty good.”

  “Almost every morning out here could have been my last. So is today any different?”

  “That’s the point. Do it. It helps.”

  If she’d been smart enough to treasure every day in Seacouver she might not have had so much trouble with the last few years. “If I can.”

  “Do you want me to remind you when you fuck up?”

  “Ouch. Sure.”

  He cocked his head and smiled. “Just wanted to know, ma’am.”

  She laughed. “Did you know Lucien? You sounded like you might, that day we were all in the same barn with the tornado.”

  He didn’t answer for a long time. “I know a lot of people who have died out here.”

  “You’re ducking my question.”

  “So tell me about yourself.”

  “Not until you answer me.”

  He must have seen that she meant it. “I met him. A few times. That’s all.”

  “Did you like him? I liked him.”

  “I like everybody. Tell me about you so I can like you.”

  “Funny how people need to know each other’s secrets to like them.”

  “I’m just making conversation.”

  She doubted Blessing just did anything. But she wasn’t interested in being the one withholding secrets. “You already know my sister is a raging lunatic who plans to attack a megacity. You know I just left a city, not long ago. When I’m not running around on a borrowed horse, I ride bicycles and I run marathons and I never made a lot of friends in the city. But I kind of miss it. I’m starting to be afraid they won’t let me back in.”

  He laughed again.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Stupid city is afraid you’ll get infected if you stay out too long.”

  “Well, I am trying to attack it.”

  His laugh inspired her, right along with the situation. Here she was, riding down a steep hill, leaning back to keep her weight off a horse’s kidneys and laughing like a crazy person.

  As soon as they made it down to flatter ground, he asked her, “Do you want to go back?”

  She didn’t have a yes or no answer. It wasn’t all that clear inside her anymore, more like a jumble of mixed memories and feelings. “I miss being part of something. I mean, in the city you’re part of this great big system of systems. It protects you and it holds you and it feeds you and it traps you all at once, you know?”

  “You’re part of something out here.”

  She leaned forward and patted River on the neck, realizing after she sat back firmly in the saddle that it had been an easy thing to do, and that she and the horse were comfortable with each other. “If nobody will tell me what’s going on, then am I really part of it? I think I was even more clueless about the city when I lived Inside. But can you tell me why we’re attacking a city? I get the whole they don’t give us what we need to save nature thing, but doesn’t this seem a little extreme?”

  “That’s an easy answer. It’s to be noticed.”

  “Noticed? I suspect we’re risking more than being noticed. Isn’t it illegal to hack ecobots and send them in to attack the city?”

  His lips thinned, and he looked uncharacteristically serious for a long moment. “Remember, we got called in to help.”

  “We work for the city. The same city that we’re lying to about coming to help, because we really just want to breach the borders so that we can—what? I really don’t get it.”

  “We’re going to get attention. Think of it as a demonstration. We’re not planning to hurt anyone. Maybe you’re thinking too hard,” he told her.

  If she owned River she just might go off by herself. Not that being on her own had worked out so well. She took three deep breaths. “Maybe you need to think harder.”

  He frowned at her and went silent, apparently a little miffed at her suggestion that their plan appeared crazy. She liked him; she liked him best of all the people she’d met out here. Right now she might like him even more than Lou. But she felt uneasy around him as well. He was out to help her—he’d proven that by saving her life. But she wasn’t at all sure what he really believed about the crazy politics of Outside, or how loyal he was to Lou.

  After a while, she turned to him. “Promise we’re not going to hurt anyone.”

  “How could I promise that?”

  “Promise we don’t mean to? That we’re peaceful?”

  He looked solemn. “I promise.”

  She extended her hand.

  He encouraged Shadow to get close to River. They managed to touch fingers, which she figured was as good as shaking hands.

  The road neared the base of a wide bridge that spanned the Columbia. Lacework struts lined the bridge deck. It looked quite stable and very pretty.

  Roads ran along both sides of the river. Lou pulled Mouse to a stop in front of the bridge and waited for them. When they caught up, she pointed across the water. “That’s Oregon. The bridge is new—the old one washed out after a wicked fire got followed by a storm that dumped half a mountain on it. If you look, you can see parts of the old bridge under the water.”

  Coryn looked, even though the sky had started to cloud up. Nothing.

  Lou continued. “The Columbia used to be heavily dammed. It still is, but all three of the big downstream dams are gone. The John Day, the Dalles, and the Bonneville Dam are gone now, and that’s restored a lot of salmon. There’s footage of all the dam destruction. It’s pretty beautiful to see an old engineered thing blown up and watch how fast the water forgets it was ever there.”

  “You speak pretty.” She smiled at her sister. “Are we ever going to get a break with real tech where I could watch it?”

  “You have your wristlet back.”

  “But there’s nothing to see.”

  Lou glared at her.

  Coryn didn’t feel like going into a long conversation on AR. She had always loved it, and Lou had always hated it, swearing that it made her sick. “Can we still see where the dams were? In real life?”

  “You can still see the scars of the old lake-beds, and there’s lodges perched in strange places. But the river is better. The first summer I was out here we did a two-month study on it. The salmon runs are doing great, and of course we don’t need hydropower anymore.”

  “Why did we?”

  “No one understood the sun or how to store it. Neither of us has ever had to charge a battery, but Mom told me she had to plug her tablet into a wall when she was a little girl.”

  “Are we crossing the bridg
e?”

  “Maybe on the way back. We’re supposed to be rushing to the city’s aid. I doubt they want us to stop and sightsee.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Everyone had gathered close, even Shuska on her draft horse. Lou called out directions. “We’re going to keep going for about a mile.” She pointed down the road on the near side of the river. “There’s a big rock there on the left and some picnic tables. We’ll stop there and bed down. It’s a little early, but I know there’s water for the horses and I want them fresh for tomorrow. Besides, the light leaves early here.”

  Coryn looked up at the steep hillsides they’d come down. That was easy enough to believe.

  It would be good to rest. Coryn rode next to Blessing as they grouped up to get in the last mile. She reined River close enough to speak to him without having to shout. “I think you want the city to do okay. I think you were helping the Listeners. But you want Lou to do okay, too. I want to figure you out.”

  He narrowed his eyes, looking perturbed. “Let me know what you find, okay?” He pulled Shadow up so in a moment he rode by Day. She was on her own, left to try and puzzle out the unspoken words that seemed to be riding right alongside them in a cloud of dust and airy words.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  After sleeping near it, and riding alongside it for a whole morning, Coryn found herself more accustomed to the Columbia. Still, every once in a while, some magical element of the river would catch in her peripheral vision, as if calling her. An island. A young buck on a beach. A lone man in a yellow kayak.

  They stopped and ate together on a bluff, then rode west along the river again, the road a flat ribbon carved into the middle of a cliff. Coryn pulled River up beside Mouse, encouraging him to speed up a little to make up for his shorter legs and slower natural gait. “Will you tell me where we’re going?” Coryn asked.

  “The Foundation is ordering us to Vancouver to defend it from a possible ecobot attack.”

  “Which you engineered.”

  Lou laughed, sounding more excited than nervous. “We’re going in through the Camas Gate if we can, and then to the Portland-Vancouver Bridge.” Lou glanced at Coryn. “And you love bridges, don’t you? That’s the PV Bridge for short. It’s beautiful. If we can’t get in through Camas, we’re to report why, and we may get orders to engage wherever we the city stops us. Could even be at the gate.”