Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  “What do you think now?”

  “She was right.” The path turned, and she had to call Aspen off a lawn and back into place beside her. “But that’s not what matters. What if Lou gets hurt or she loses her job? It would kill her to be stuck on basic in the city. That works for some but not for her. Not for me, either. I couldn’t think of what to do even though I wanted to stay in the city.” She stopped talking to catch her breath and take a drink. “It’s not okay if she gets hurt. I have to protect her.”

  “Why?”

  “If I don’t do it, who will?”

  “When you’re older, you’ll understand that not everything gets done.”

  “This is my sister!” Anger drove up her spine, shooting a rush of speed down her legs; she surged ahead of Julianna for the first time ever. She stayed ahead for a long time, forcing it, feeling the pain. The sound of Julianna’s footsteps faded behind her. True, it might be the rasping of her own breath that hid the older woman’s steps, but it surprised her; she slowed a little. When Julianna drew near her, she noticed tears on her cheeks.

  She hadn’t though the woman could cry. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s the little things that matter. I used to know that. That’s what that picture gallery is for. To remind me of things we’ve lost, things we’ve stolen.” Julianna paused as they neared a corner, jogging in place. “But when you stay involved in the big politics for years, when you care about all the species instead of one of the species, you forget the politics of family and the individual elephants.”

  “Is it all politics?”

  “That’s not what I meant to say. I meant to say it’s all about the little things.”

  This time Coryn managed to bank her anger so it didn’t translate into her calves, into running away. “Saving Lou is not a small thing.”

  Julianna stayed silent for a long time, and whenever Coryn glanced over at her she saw the tears continuing in a slow stream, controlled, but present nonetheless.

  They reached the table again, now at the end of the seventh mile. This time, Julianna came to a stop.

  Refilled water glasses and food had been set out for them: figs, potatoes, peeled eggs, and bananas. The older woman sank into her chair, her words rasping from her throat. “I’m sorry.”

  Coryn drank her water, waited.

  “I love ideas. I’ve always loved ideas. That’s how we started Seacouver, with ideas about seawalls and shared green infrastructure and shared commerce where no one could out-vote or out-tax our needs.” Julianna’s voice calmed, her face softened. “Those were all ideas. But implementing them cost us. Maybe I lost so many people I forgot what it’s like to love a single person.”

  Coryn nodded and started peeling a banana. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Add resources.”

  “What resources?”

  “Will you trust me?”

  Coryn finished her banana in silence. “Not until you trust me. Withholding information doesn’t show trust. I can’t trust you if you don’t trust me.”

  Julianna picked at a purple fig, exposing the deep mauve pulp and tiny dark seeds inside. “There are some things I can’t tell anybody.”

  “You knew Lou and the ecobots were coming in. You had to, or you wouldn’t have had a plan in place to get us out. Did you also know they would be stopped and captured?”

  Julianna sucked at the fig and wiped her chin before she answered. “I didn’t suggest that they come in. If I’d been there, I’d have told them they didn’t know enough to go in anyway.”

  “Lou wouldn’t have listened. I don’t know anything—she doesn’t trust me either—not anymore—but she was following a plan. I think it was cooked up by Victor, and by other people that worked in other parts of the wilding. Someone gave them an all clear but I don’t know who.” Coryn stood to stretch, trying to think through the possibilities. Someone above Lou was directing this. Was that Victor? Or someone above him? “Maybe the Foundation people sold her out. Victor, her boss. He seemed to hate her.”

  Julianna smiled softly. “Blessing is almost trained, and he didn’t put it as well when he tried to explain what happened. But he did say Victor was jealous of Lou, that he has been for a long time. Blessing used to work with Lou.”

  “I know. Isn’t the Foundation running the wilding? Why would they tell Lou to come in and then sell her out?”

  “They didn’t. The people who work in the field, like Lou, are fierce. They want to save the world. The people who live in the city and run the NGOs are a mixed bag. Heroes and villains.”

  “Lou said something like that.”

  “Some people with power are ruthless. The people who started the foundations were old when that happened, way back when we made Seacouver together. They were allies. They cared a lot—they were all heroes. Big ones. They spent huge personal fortunes to save all of us. They could have built private enclaves and let the poor die off, but they didn’t.” She picked up another fig, holding it up and admiring it. “Most of them are dead now. In some cases, the heirs don’t understand what their parents did. So maybe someone in the field bragged about the protest, and it got upstream and they decided to stop it, or maybe Victor wanted Lou out of the way so she wasn’t a threat to him. Something happened, but I don’t know what. Not yet.”

  “Lou fought with Jeremiah Allen at the gates.”

  “Did you hear what they said?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  There was so much to learn. Coryn let a long silence go by. “Is Day?”

  “Is Day what?”

  “Trained. You told me Blessing is almost trained. Is Day all the way trained? He seems so sure of himself.”

  She laughed. “Day has worked for me since he was ten. He’s one of my best; I notice the quiet ones. He thinks the hackers might be the problem. That maybe they took the NGOs money and sold them down the river.”

  How many other Lous had been captured? Was there someone like her with every convoy of ecobots at every gate? And if she spun out the conflicts in her head, how many were loyal like Lou and how many were really part of the group that meant to attack the cities and bring them down? And that, of course, forced her to confront the idea head on. “Could someone really take a city down?”

  “Enough people might.” Julianna reached for a towel and dipped it in water to wash her face. “There’s a lot of fail-safes, but then there’s a lot of hackers out there, too. Every city depends on programmers. That’s why they’re our elite. Programmers are the architects of our infrastructure.”

  “I never wanted to hurt a city.”

  “I didn’t either. Don’t either. I built the damned things—at least Seacouver—and in some small ways, this one.”

  There was so much to think about. She lifted her hands over her head, feeling the stretch in her back and sides. “What about the silent army? When I was with the Listeners, we stopped by this long line of people who were on their way to Seacouver. I think one of the Listeners went with them. I never figured out what they were trying to do. Do you know?”

  “No.”

  Coryn stopped stretching. “Can we walk? I don’t want to get cold yet.” Aspen waited at her heels, looking up at her.

  In answer, Julianna stood and started walking along the mile loop.

  Coryn watched the rigid back in front of her for a few paces, then sped up to move alongside, where she could see the other woman’s face. “No one ever told me. They called them a silent army. They were on their way to get into the city peacefully.”

  “Well, that can be done, you know. The dome isn’t impermeable.”

  “But the dome registers every entrance and exit, right? No matter what?”

  “Yes.”

  Coryn picked up her pace, still walking, but far faster. “Back to Lou. If you had to guess, where do you think she is?”

  “She’s might be in the main jail, but I can’t verify. Not yet.”

  “If she is ther
e, will you help me get her free?”

  Julianna cast a raised eyebrow at her, eyes widening. “You want me to break her out of jail?”

  “Well.” Coryn glanced at Julianna. Her eyes lit with a strange delight Coryn hadn’t seen there before. This must be what she loved—figuring out how to manipulate things. She hadn’t been in office for a long time, but clearly she had a lot of power and contacts.

  “Yes,” Coryn said. “I do want you to help me break her out of jail.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Coryn walked out of her post-run shower into a glorious early afternoon complete with sunshine and a light, city-sanctioned breeze. Blessing, Day, and Julianna were laughing together at the same table she and Julianna had used earlier. The water glasses had been replaced and a new pitcher set out by fresh bowls of nuts and fruit.

  The snacks alone would have been a week’s food allowance on her student budget.

  Coryn really wanted some time alone to think about what else she needed to know, but when Julianna waved her over, she went. Aspen trotted at her heels and curled into a quiet ball by her feet, watching for treats or crumbs to drop from the sky. “Do you have any news about Lou?”

  Julianna stopped laughing and looked serious. “No. I’ll tell you if I learn anything. Willing to debrief?”

  “Debrief?”

  “I’d like to hear your story. I want to know all the details of what happened while you were Outside.”

  Didn’t Julianna already know? Clearly she had talked with both Blessing and Day, and clearly she had been both getting reports and giving instructions to both of them. “Mostly, I just tried to get myself killed,” she said, as airily as possible. She waved a hand toward Blessing and Day. “And these two saved me at least once. I kind of stumbled my way to Lou, and then I played bad detective trying to figure out what she was up to, and then I joined a revolution I didn’t know much about, got rescued from that, and managed to get separated from my sister all over again.”

  Blessing grinned at her as she talked. She hadn’t decided what to think about him, again or maybe even still, and it made her stumble over her words. She was trying to be funny, but in spite of his smile, the look on his face suggested she wasn’t managing it. “And I lost my companion, who I should never have taken Outside in the first place. So I don’t really see how there’s much to talk about.”

  Blessing spoke before anyone else could. “Perhaps you bravely left the safety of the cloying and difficult city to find your only family member. From there, you survived natural dangers like windstorms and tornadoes, had the good luck to be rescued from a dangerous warlord who tried to capture your steady and faithful companion robot, made friends with the Listeners who rescued you, and acted as a secret spy for them. You made friends along the road—” He grinned and pointed at himself and Day. “—And then discovered your employers—the Listeners—had been brutally murdered.” He stopped for a sip of water and then continued, exaggerating his dramatic delivery. “But wait—there’s more! After you discovered the brutal murder, you took on extra responsibility and adopted the murdered Listeners’ abandoned dog. In spite of the dangers you’d already encountered, you kept searching for your sister. You got captured by a dangerous retro-religious hacker gang that treats women like second-class citizens. But your faithful companions—” He waved at himself and Day again. “—and your long-lost sister saved you just in the nick of time. Even though you found your sister at the worst possible time for her, you convinced her to let you come along, and you joined her well-coordinated attack on the city.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh at him.

  He rose, throwing out his arms in a sweeping gesture. “But little did any of you know, the notorious hacker had other plans, and he betrayed your sister and many others for the sake of money, paid to him by evil people in power. You were rescued by your friends once again, in order to fight on.”

  Despite herself, she burst out laughing in earnest.

  “See why I keep him around?” Julianna said. “But really, even though the truth has to be in between those two stories, I’d like to hear the details. Who did you meet? What happened? It might help us figure some things out. Are you willing?”

  She wondered if that made her more like Blessing and Day than she wanted to be, but she nodded. “Sure.”

  Julianna took her through question after question, lingering on the dynamics in the schoolhouse, and on everything about the Listeners. “Pablo. Did you get his last name?”

  “No.”

  “Did he seem to be in charge?”

  “Lucien seemed to be in charge. At least he was the person who talked to me the most, except for Liselle, and Liselle was only a few years older than me.” The memory hurt.

  “Pablo wasn’t killed?”

  “He left the caravan long before that. He went with the silent army, in disguise.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, although Lucien tried to convince me he didn’t.”

  Julianna used a slate to show her a number of pictures. She identified Lucien, Liselle, and even Bartholomew before she found Pablo. She smiled when she saw him, remembering that he had seemed friendly. “That’s him.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And he got away?”

  “Yes. You don’t have to ask me twice.”

  Julianna smiled. “Sorry. I’m just relieved.”

  Coryn leaned forward. “Tell me more about Bartholomew.”

  “When we get there. I want to go through your story in order, so we don’t miss anything.”

  It took another hour to get to Bartholomew. When they finally got there, Coryn walked through everything, including talking about what it felt like to be in the tent guarded by an armed man and to think she was about to die. By the time she finished that story, her hands and voice shook. “Do you think they would have killed me?” she asked Julianna.

  Day spoke up. “They killed a friend of mine a few years ago.” He said it in his usual flat tone, but Coryn heard the slight stutter in it.

  She touched his hand. “I’m sorry.”

  He smiled back at her. “I’m glad they didn’t kill you.”

  “What would they have done with the body?” Blessing asked.

  Julianna gave him a withering look, and no one answered.

  Coryn cleared her throat. “Bartholomew. Tell me about Bartholomew.”

  To her surprise, Day was the one who answered. But maybe, because of his friend, he knew the most. “First, that’s not his name. People think he’s Mike Smith, only he didn’t want to be anything so ordinary. So he took on a saint’s name—Bartholomew was one of the disciples. Are you familiar with the Bible?”

  “Only a little.”

  “Well, I don’t think Bartholomew is either. But he likes the idea of a patriarchy, and you can’t have that inside the cities any more. So he made one. I don’t know why his followers put up with it, except maybe because he’s such a brilliant hacker people have paid him a lot of money for a long time. Some of his male followers are techs, too. He has a reputation for being brilliant and for never talking to anyone about who hires him. He also has a less well-known reputation for taking money from more than one client who may have conflicting interests.”

  “So then why do people pay him?”

  “Because he can do things they can’t. Systems are pretty complex, and he can get into some that the best cracking programs can’t. There aren’t very many humans who can outdo programs anymore.”

  She reached for a handful of nuts. “And the people who would prefer a human are the bad guys, right?”

  Day smiled at her. “No. But they’re rebels. Anyone fighting the city. But, as we know, the city may need to be fought, or at least some people in the city may need to be fought. That’s a talk over a beer. Yes, he would have killed you, but the Foundation probably needed him to get the ecobots into the city.”

  Julianna interrupted. “Assuming the pr
otest was a good idea at all. But it wasn’t.”

  “There’s that.” Day raised an eyebrow, looking a little comical about it.

  “Well,” Blessing asked Julianna, “what would you have done in Lou’s shoes? She didn’t know much, and she was being fed a mix of truth and lies and sent off to be a hero.”

  “I’m not blaming Lou.” Julianna directed Coryn back to the hour-by-hour recital and seemed really interested in the eagles and the buffalo and everything Lou had said about how the cities weren’t supporting the wilding enough for it to succeed.

  After she got through the part where Bartholomew suggested he might have control of utilities, Julianna took a long look at Coryn. “Take a break. Have dinner. Sleep. We’ll finish this after our run tomorrow.”

  Dinner? Coryn blinked up at the sky, amazed to see how low the sun was. “You really do run every day,” she said.

  Julianna grinned. “Almost. I have a feeling there will be a few days coming up when it’s hard to run.” She got up quickly, and was gone.

  They didn’t see Julianna again that night. Eloise called them to dinner and fed them salads and huge slabs of vat-grown meat and even a glass of wine each. Afterward, Coryn took Aspen out, slightly dizzy from her first wine.

  The garden smelled almost cloying, and Aspen raced in circles around her feet, periodically stopping and simply putting his head up and taking in deep breaths. “I can only imagine what this must smell like to you,” she told him.

  “Coryn? Can we talk?”

  She turned to find Blessing walking across the lawn toward her. She still wasn’t ready to talk to him alone. Not yet. She let him come without giving him an answer, but as soon as he was close enough to hear, she spoke. “You lied to me. You said you were from Outside, and all along you were working for Julianna, taking notes for her, pretending to be one thing and not being that at all.”

  He grinned. “I was born Outside. I already told you that. I never promised to have always been there. Think back carefully.”

  She glared at him. “Your smile isn’t going to save you.”

  His smile merely widened.