No Going Back

by Mark L. Van Name

  No, I’d never have children.

  “... your own,” she said, “you’ll understand how I’m feeling.” I’d missed something, but I didn’t need her to repeat whatever it was. “So when can I expect you?”

  “Sometime after early morning,” I said, “though I don’t yet know exactly when. I need you to do one more thing before then, though.”

  “What?”

  “Lobo,” I said over the machine frequency, “are there SleepSafes in Dardan?”

  “Of course,” Lobo said. “One is not far from her, and another is on the northern tip of the city, near the water. That chain is in every major city on almost every human world. Paranoia is universal.”

  “Mr. Moore,” she said, “did you hear me?”

  “Yes. Sorry. I was thinking. I want you to go to the SleepSafe hotel on the northern edge of the city, near the ocean.”

  “I can’t afford to stay at one of those.”

  “We’ll work it out,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone you’re going. Leave immediately. Take multiple taxis.”

  “I don’t have the money for that,” she said.

  “She does now,” Lobo said over the machine frequency. “I deposited enough for the room, food, and taxi fares into her account. Should anyone examine her accounts, she won a newstainment contest. That cover won’t hold up under close scrutiny, at least not yet, but I’m working on it.”

  “How did you do that?” I said, again over the machine frequency.

  “Isn’t it enough that I did?” Lobo said. “What’s wrong with having a few tricks up our sleeves—mine being strictly metaphorical, of course?”

  I shook my head. Now was not the time to pursue this. “Lydia, check your wallet. Your contest victory means that you now have the money you need.”

  A pause. “That’s amazing! How did you do that?” Another pause. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to repay you. Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m sure. Don’t worry about it. What I need you to do now is leave. Right away. Take a taxi west, then one south, then northeast, west again, and finally north and to the hotel.”

  “So no one follows me?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Please. Go now. Enjoy the hotel. Take your comm. I’ll contact you later on it.”

  “And you’ll bring him to me today?”

  “Today,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Okay. Thank you again.”

  She terminated the call.

  “Can you get us in position to monitor the area around the SleepSafe?” I said aloud.

  “Yes,” Lobo said, “in a while.”

  SleepSafe specialized in temporary rooms for both the paranoid and those who really were being hunted. Each was a nondescript building constructed like a fortress. They allowed no weapons inside and had no surveillance in their buildings. The outside of each was covered with cameras and sensors. Any guest in any room could tune into any or all of them, so it was easy to learn if anyone was watching the place. You could not, however, see or hear the other guests as they entered or left the hotel; software blanked out that part of every feed. Each hotel contained multiple escape chutes that led from panels beside each bed to exits that would appear only when they opened to discharge a guest. The exits were never in the hotel itself. Instead, they were built into nearby buildings. The parts of the chutes that connected to the beds moved in the walls, so even if you knew what room someone was in, you couldn’t know for sure where the person would exit. If whoever was chasing you had somehow managed to find out where every exit was and had a big enough team to cover all of them, then they could catch you leaving, but that almost never happened.

  Chang would be safe in this hotel for the short time we needed her out of reach from the police and the newstainment teams.

  I yawned. “What time is it?” I said.

  “Past midnight and into the next day,” Lobo said. “We need to stay here for at least another six hours, maybe more, so the morning feeds can play with this story and then move on to whatever next passes for news around here. You should sleep.”

  He was right. There was nothing else I could do. I hated being useless, but I’ve also learned that when on a mission, always eat, sleep, and use the bathroom when you can. You never know when you’ll get the next chance to do any of them.

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t let me sleep too long.”

  “As if you could,” Lobo said.

  I chuckled. Live for over five years with anyone, even a dumb machine and most certainly Lobo, and they can’t help but know a fair amount about your habits.

  I grabbed a fish sandwich and some water from our stores, wolfed them down, and stretched out on my cot. I fell asleep instantly.

  Unfortunately, I dreamed.

  Fragments of scenes from my past, some accurate, some exaggerated, seized my mind and shook me. Each faded into the next so quickly I felt as if waves of pain after pain after pain were breaking on me, pushing me under, drowning me.

  A young boy, Manu Chang, stared trustingly at me as I led him into danger. Images washed over his face. Swirling clouds of gas. Lobo roaring in. Guards firing rifles. Manu screaming for help, and I couldn’t find him or Jack, the man to whom I’d entrusted him.

  Benny, who was first a friend, and then the one who trained me to kill, and finally, at the end, my friend again and my savior, perched on a rock ledge above me, screaming at me from his cart, pushing me harder and harder. One boy tackled me, forcing me face first into the sand. Another jumped on my back, pinning my arms. Benny screamed as they hit me that I had to fight back to save myself, but they were my friends, and I didn’t want to hurt them, I didn’t want to hurt them any more.

  Those same boys falling to the guards of the shuttle we were hijacking, each wearing a stunned expression as if unable to believe that this was no longer training, that he really was dying.

  A boy, Nagy, tall and emaciated from living with rebels in the jungle, infected with the violence he’d seen and done as a soldier when he was still a young teenager. He rushed a column of armed troops, brandishing a branch as if it were a weapon. The soldiers fired into his body, killing him instantly. His only friend, a young, smaller boy I knew only as Bony, screaming and crying and watching as he lost the one person he believed cared about him.

  Leading a squad of my fellow Saw soldiers into a clearing in the middle of a village on Nana’s Curse, seeing the bodies of more than a dozen dead children spread here and there like so much trash, all of them cut, broken, bleeding.

  I screamed at the scenes to stop and sat upright, soaked in sweat, as I came awake in a rush. My jaw ached with the effort of stopping myself from screaming. So many children, so much senseless death and suffering, and I’d been unable to stop it. I’d managed to get Manu and Bony to groups that promised to protect them, but that was it; the others died, and I had been unable to do anything to save them.

  Lobo wondered why we had to keep going, keep trying, keep doing our best to save every child we could. Nothing would bring back those I’d lost, but I could do my best to stop any more from suffering. The need shoved me forward faster and harder than the wind from the sandsurfer’s motor had taken me across the desert far below. If I could save enough of them, stop those using children as soldiers, stop the abusers, the kidnappers, the defilers—stop them all, then maybe one day it would be enough, enough to balance my failures. Enough to let me sleep and not dream, not remember.

  I had to try. If Lobo didn’t understand, he could either support me or leave. No one else had to walk this path with me. I’d been alone for the vast majority of my many decades of life, and I was fully prepared to be alone again, if that’s what it took.

  I stood and shook my head to clear it. I started doing slow squats, a twenty-count on the way down, all the way down until I was sitting as low as I could, and then another twenty-count back up. Repeat. Over and over. Easy at first, then my legs feeling it, eventually burning, sweat rolling off me, my eyes ope
n but seeing nothing, just the count and, finally, the pain, the freeing pain filling me.

  I have no idea how long I did them nor how many times I squatted, but eventually I switched to push-ups. A five-count down, almost but not quite touching the floor, and a five-count up. Over and over, not even trying to count them, my body a machine that ultimately brought me again the shaking and the pain that consumed me, filled me, cleansed me.

  When I finally could do no more, I stopped, rolled over for a few seconds, and stood. I showered for a long time as I used hot water to relax my muscles. The nanomachines would return them to normal soon enough, but for now I enjoyed the feeling of physical fatigue and hard work. As I relaxed, I focused again on the tasks at hand: returning Tasson to his mother, and getting the other children to their families.

  I dressed, grabbed two more of the fish sandwiches and some water, and headed up front.

  “Okay,” I said into the air, “I’m ready to talk.”

  “I shall broadcast the news to the stars,” Lobo said.

  I ignored him. “Here’s what I’m thinking we should do about Tasson and then the others,” I said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jon Moore

  The possession of massive amounts of computing power is not the only advantage Lobo gains from having his armor composed of a mixture of biological and nanomachine components. He also can modify, within limits, his external shape, create and open hatches as necessary, and change his outer appearance. We took advantage of all of these capabilities to disguise him as a gourmet food supply ship. A little before noon, we touched down in a private landing zone that served a lot of businesses not far from the SleepSafe. The company whose logo we sported used the landing site frequently, so no one gave us a second look.

  The challenging part came next: I had to obtain a truck that wouldn’t appear too odd when parked next to Lobo.

  “If only the SleepSafe would let us land on its roof,” I said as I dressed in faded gray overalls and an equally plain gray cap, an outfit we hoped would help convince anyone who noticed me that I was just another guy working deliveries.

  “If only we hadn’t started this mission with such a bad plan,” Lobo said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “It’s going to work.”

  “So go make it happen,” he said. “I’ve done my part.”

  I finished dressing. “Let’s go,” I said.

  Lobo opened a hatch in his side.

  I walked out and headed immediately for a crowd of men unloading a fish transport about thirty meters away. As I walked, I talked softly and nodded my head. Ten meters away from the men, I stopped, listened to nothing for a few seconds, and said, “Fine. It’s your money.” I turned left and made for the nearest exit from the landing zone.

  Once I was outside, I turned right, in the opposite direction from the SleepSafe and toward a bustling commercial district that ran down to the ocean. Pre-fab permacrete office buildings filled the first block. The structures transitioned to wood as the area morphed into a tourist zone. The street widened and added a tree-lined center lane. Restaurants, bars, and a few shops selling local art lined both sides of the road. Not a lot of tourists came to Studio, but proximity to the ocean drew those from the desert, and people who came to see any of the giant art exhibits anywhere nearby needed places to sleep, eat, and shop. As near as I can tell, the desire to acquire objects is almost as common in most humans as the cravings for food and sex.

  At the first intersection, I turned left and then left again into the alleyway that served the shops and restaurants via their rear entrances. Customers never want to see the goods arriving or the trash departing. Ideally, I would have arrived for the early morning deliveries that are common at restaurants on every planet, but the stories about the events at Privus hadn’t lost their number one status until late in the morning.

  I scanned the alley. From where I stood to the end of this block, it was devoid of vehicles.

  I reversed direction, crossed the street, and checked again. Nothing.

  I returned to the main road, crossed it, and looked down the alley to my right. A taxi was dropping off two workers, but otherwise, no vehicles were in sight. I couldn’t afford to use taxis; they logged everything in them in real time to both their owners and local police servers.

  Down the alley on the other side, though, I finally got lucky. A faded white transport with “Derrick’s Seafood” in red on its side sat behind a restaurant four buildings down. If there was a Derrick, he was a brave man, because you had to do a lot of tricky processing to make the local fish safe to eat. Maybe he imported what he sold. A single man watched delivery carts roll out of the transport and into the back of the building.

  I walked over to him.

  “Got a minute?” I said.

  He glanced at me and went back to watching the carts. “Do I look like I’m pressed for time?”

  I laughed. “No, but,” I paused until he looked my way again, “you do look like a man who wouldn’t mind making a little extra money.”

  Now he stared at me and left the carts to their own devices. “I’ve got a job,” he said, waving his arm to take in the transport and the food containers, “as you can see.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to hire you,” I said. “I want to rent your vehicle.”

  “It’s not mine,” he said. He pointed at the writing on the side of it. “As you can also see.”

  “I understand,” I said, “but it’s yours right now. I need it for no more than two, three hours, and I’ll bring it back here or call you with its location; your choice.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t do it. See the owners if you want; maybe they’ll help you.”

  I took out my wallet, thumbed it open, and stepped closer to him. “I’m in a bit of a rush. I need it for a surprise”—I held up my hands as he started to speak—“nothing illegal, just a surprise my boss told me to arrange, and I’m behind schedule.”

  “I told you,” he said, “it’s not mine to rent.”

  I pushed my wallet closer to him, its display clearly visible. On it was what Lobo assured me was half a year’s pay for a typical Dardan worker. “My boss is very private,” I said, “but he can also be very generous. This is yours; I just need the transport—not the carts, you stay with them—for a few hours at most.”

  His eyes widened when he saw the number, but then his face tightened. “What’s your deal, buddy? Did old man Derrick send you to test me? Why would he do that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know who Derrick is, and I don’t care. All I care about is making my boss happy and not losing my job. To do that, I need a transport like yours for a few hours. I should have started on this job earlier, but”—I shrugged—“I blew it.”

  He said nothing.

  I closed my wallet and put it back in my pocket. “Your call. Sorry to bother you.”

  I turned and walked away.

  When I’d gone four steps, he said, “I’d need some ID, something I can give the cops if you’re not back here in three hours.”

  We’d expected that, so I had a fake ID ready. Lobo had made it, so it would pass at least a few levels of checking and in the process misdirect the police should the guy turn me in. “No problem,” I said.

  The man’s face softened as he stared at me. “Give me your word you won’t do anything wrong with it.”

  Back on Pinkelponker, before my sister, Jennie, healed me, when I was still mentally challenged, one of the lessons my mother and father had drilled into me was that you never gave your word lightly and you always kept it. I liked the lack of guile in the man and his attempt to believe that others would do as they said. It would probably get him in trouble, but not with me.

  I stared into his eyes and stuck out my hand. “You have my word.”

  We shook hands. I pulled out my wallet and handed him the ID.

  “Then I suppose no one will really be hurt by me loaning it to you for a few hours. If old man Derrick complains, I’ll tell hi
m I was helping a guy in need.”

  I opened my wallet. “I’ll transfer to yours when you’re ready.”

  He shook his head. “Tell your boss not everyone’s for sale,” he said. “Maybe even think about getting a new boss when this is over.”

  I’ve spent so much time dealing with criminals, government officials, and corporate executives on the make, people who manipulate and hurt others every day, that I don’t often run into men or women like this man, people who don’t see the worlds as the same use-or-be-used, kill-or-be-killed battlegrounds that those people do. Part of me pitied the man for his naiveté; con men with far less practice or skill than I have would have taken him for all he was worth. A greater part of me, though, admired his sincerity and his good heart.

  Before Jennie fixed my brain, she used to tell me that I might not have a smart head, but I had a smart heart. I wondered, not for the first time, if any of that boy with a smart heart still remained inside me.

  I hated myself for lying to him about the cover story, but I had to do it to protect both the boys and myself. I would, though, return the transport.

  “I will,” I said. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  A cart walked out of the transport.

  “That’s the last one,” he said. He handed me the transport’s controls. “See you in three hours.”

  “Maybe sooner,” I said.

  He nodded.

  I walked into the transport and told it to take me to the landing zone.

  CHAPTER 10

  Lobo

  Jon, before I review what I know and why that should matter to you, it might be helpful for me to explain to you some very relevant things about me that you don’t yet understand.

  You know that Jorge Wei created me by harvesting tissue from children, infusing it with nanomachines, and injecting it into my computing systems and my armor. You know that these treatments caused my entire body, all of me, to become a computing substrate. At some level, you understand that the sheer number of processing components and the massive number of interconnections in that substrate are what give me the vast computational power that makes me, well, me.