I thought about Vicki, who’d gone through something like this, too. Except that she’d been alone with whatever it was she’d found out. And Jennifer Kelton, thirty years ago, apparently driven to tears by the same secret.
Calienté.
It doesn’t matter anymore, she’d said about the religious ceremony at her daughter’s wedding.
It doesn’t matter anymore.
Alex was breathing softly in his chair. The fire was dying, so I got up and tossed in another log. The supply was getting low. We’d probably have to cut more. That would be fun.
I woke again to the smell of bacon. Alex was in the kitchen. I got up, kept the blanket wrapped around me, and wandered in. He was seated at the table watching a newscast. “What’s happening?” I asked.
“Actually, something has happened.”
“They didn’t come back, did they?”
“No. Nothing that pedestrian.” He got up and headed for the living room. I followed.
He looked up at the shelf, with the half dozen or so books lying on their sides. “They’re all cheap novels,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Except that one.” He pointed at the coffee table, where a large book lay open. I looked at him. “Not just any book,” he added.
We sat down on the sofa, and he opened it to the title page. It was Churchill’s Their Finest Hour.”
“Alex,” I said, “at the moment I think we have bigger problems.”
“This is one of the volumes of his History of the Second World War. It’s priceless.”
“Good. If we get out of here, we can make a killing.”
“Chase, the History is supposed to be lost. Except for a few fragments. Now we have an entire volume. Not only that, it’s the Keifer translation. And let me show you something else.”
I was thinking how his breakfast was getting cold, but I knew better than to bring up trivia when he was on a roll.
“Look at this.” He opened it to the inside cover. It was stamped. ADMINISTRATOR’S LIBRARY. “The bureaucrats owned it and they didn’t even know what it was worth.”
“Maybe Kilgore himself had it.”
“I’d hate to think he’s that dumb.”
The rest of the morning’s news was routine. A tax revolt in a place called Champika, and a triple murder in Marinopolis. There’d been an accident at one of the shelters they were building against the Mute invasion. Two dead.
Along with the bacon, he was eating eggs and home fries. I leered at it, and he smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “This was the last of it. But they have a grain dish. Something like oatmeal. You could try that. Looks good.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“Well, yes. Actually, the larder’s full.”
I decided cinnamon toast, orange juice, eggs, and coffee were just what I wanted, and passed the order to Kellie. I can’t really say I enjoyed it all that much, though. It’s hard to concentrate on food when you keep waiting for the skimmer to land and bring somebody who’s going to insert mental blocks of some sort.
It was hard to believe such a thing could really work. That they could induce an inhibition so strong that it would prevent me from acting on whatever I wanted to act on. But I didn’t want to give them a shot at it.
The cliff edge ran right by the window. I got up, went over, and stood on my toes to get a better look down. I couldn’t see much other than a tree that was growing almost horizontally out of the cliff edge.
“It’s a long drop,” said Alex.
“We need to go out and look around.”
“Too cold. We have no coats.”
“We could wrap up in blankets.”
“You’d need boots, too.” He scooped up some of the bacon, put it in his mouth, and took a bite out of a roll. “There’s no place to go anyway. We’re on a plateau.”
“No way to get off?”
“Can’t be sure, but it’s a safe assumption.”
“If we wait for it to get warm—”
“It won’t help if we go out and freeze.” He finished with the roll and indulged himself with more eggs. “I don’t suppose you could rig a transmitter of some sort?”
“From the HV? No. I doubt anybody could do it. Certainly not me.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“How long do you figure we’ve got? Before they come back?”
“Don’t know. Not long. I think they’ll want to get it done as quickly as they can.”
Jackets were packed in our luggage, but they weren’t worth much in those temperatures. Still, I put mine on and went outside. The air had a knife-edge to it. The plateau was small. If I’d been dressed for it, and the snow wasn’t up to my ankles, I could have walked across it in five minutes.
Without getting too close, I looked over the edge. There were a few patches of forest down there, a lot of ridges and gullies. And a river. A large mountain lay to the south. (At least I thought it was the south.) And immediately below us, I could see something moving, an animal of some kind. And that was it. No human habitation was visible anywhere.
Alex came up behind me. “Careful,” he said.
Something with wings showed up and took an interest in us. I found a dead branch and picked it up. Just in case.
I decided I’d go out every day and look over the edge. It didn’t take long. The following afternoon, I saw five people in the valley. It looked like a hunting party. They were directly below me. I called out and waved, but they never turned around. Another one, trailing the rest, emerged from a patch of forest. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he looked up and saw me. I waved again. Yelled. He kept going. They passed below where I was standing, so I found a dead branch and threw it over the side.
I tossed it well away from them, so there’d be no danger. It landed silently in the trees, but it must have caught their attention. They stopped, and I followed up with a rock. Which was all I could find on short notice. It landed in much the same place, while I jumped up and down and waved and yelled. One of them raised his weapon, and I realized he was going to take a shot at me. I ducked.
They use disrupters for hunting on Salud Afar. So I had no way to know whether he’d actually fired or not. But it was clear they weren’t friendly, and as they walked away, I was tempted to lob a few more stones down on them.
But it gave me an idea. I had a paper notebook in one of my bags. I dug it out, and began writing a message on each page: HELP. WE’RE PRISONERS ATOP THE PLATEAU. NEED RESCUE. And, as an afterthought: CONTACT ROB PEIFER. REWARD. I signed it with Alex’s name.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Giving us another shot. I wish we had some plastic bags around here.” I did a search but found nothing. No bags. Also no rubber bands. No plastic containers. No paper clips.
In the end I simply crumpled the notes up, sixty-two individual pages, went back out, and walked around the rim, giving them to the wind.
“Well,” Alex said, when I got back, “who knows?”
The house was comfortable enough. It had an old-world feel, with its fabric chairs and wooden walls. We kept the fireplace going, even though we no longer needed it. The living room had a wall-length set of windows and a mahogany-colored domed ceiling. The kitchen boasted a magnificent view, which included the valley and the mountain. It must have been the tallest mountain on the planet.
The furniture was all hand-carved. The chairs and sofa used gold fabric. Metal lamps stood on the tables. Under other circumstances, it would have been a lovely retreat. Except, of course, that you wouldn’t want to try skiing, or any other outdoor sport. But for a place to sit by the windows with a good book, it was hard to beat.
When I got back from throwing paper off the cliff, I kicked off my shoes and socks and settled down in front of the fireplace again. “Well,” I said, “it doesn’t look very encouraging out there.”
Alex gazed up at the domed ceiling. “You don’t suppose they have any gravity belts here anywhere?”
Ah yes. I
t was probably a good thing that old staple of fantasy epics had never proven feasible. Drunks at six thousand meters. Not a happy prospect. Although we could have used a couple at the time.
“As soon as I get warm,” he said, “I want to take a look at the utility shed. Maybe there’ll be something useful in there.”
The shed was sparse. We found a few spare lighting fixtures, two shovels, some nuts and bolts and nails, a backup calibrator for Kellie, a broken HV, a drill, an ax, thirty or forty meters of cable, two ladders, a box of ceiling hooks, a few flowerpots, two cans of paint, three pristine brushes, and some fishing gear.
Fishing gear.
We went back inside and debated whether we should disable Kellie. “She’s probably reporting back,” said Alex.
“Disable her, and we still have no guarantee we aren’t being watched.”
Nevertheless, we both felt it would be a good idea to put her out of action. So we asked her whether she could be safely disabled.
“Yes,” she said. “Is that what you wish to do?”
“Yes.”
“You are certain?”
“Yes. Nothing personal.”
“As you wish.” Her lights went out. I disconnected her power source just to be safe.
“Okay,” said Alex. “We’ll have to assume they’re still watching us. You have anything to say you don’t want them to hear, we go outside.”
I looked out at the snow. Somebody was going to pay.
That afternoon, a skimmer came in from the east. It threw a scare into me. I hurried outside. It was a big white vehicle with THE DOWNTOWNERS stenciled across its hull, along with a G clef and a few musical notes. I waved and shouted.
It kept going. Then it arced around and started back. I could see the pilot, a male, with a woman beside him. And it looked like two kids in back.
I waved some more. “Help!” Alex ran outside and jumped up and down.
One of the kids saw me. I watched him push the other one and point in my direction. They laughed. “Yes!” I said. “Alex, we might get a break here.”
Alex kept waving.
I cheered.
The pilot was looking at us now.
“Help!”
The pilot waved back. Hi.
You idiot. Can’t you see we’re out here without any jackets? Freezing?
I squeezed my neck and tried to look in distress.
The kids laughed again, and the pilot waved a final time and began to climb. We watched them dwindle and finally vanish.
That night, while Alex paged through Churchill, I sat by the window and looked out at Callistra.
Vicki’s star.
Bright and solid. The anchor of the heavens. It was the kind of star people write fairy tales about. That they take their kids into the backyard to see. Blue and beautiful. A beacon of assurance that all’s right with the world.
TWENTY-ONE
When you see the horseman in your rearview mirror, it’s time to throttle up.
—Etude in Black
In the morning, I told Alex I was going out to the utility shed.
“Why?”
“I want to get a shovel. In case somebody else flies over today, I’d like to be able to make it clear we need rescuing.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“You can help, if you want.”
“Sure,” he said. “We can use an idea or two.”
We went out to the shed. “I can’t just sit around here,” I told him, “knowing we don’t have any way to defend ourselves, and Agent Krestoff might be back anytime. With Corel. And somebody to stick pins in our heads.”
“They don’t do it that way.”
“Good. I’m much relieved.”
We got the shovels and picked a spot in front of the villa. It was still cold, but not as brutal as it had been. We began moving snow. Alex admitted it was a good idea, and within a few minutes we’d spelled HELP. In very large letters. But it didn’t look as if they’d be very visible from the air, so we tore up some bushes and branches and laid them in the letters.
When we’d finished, half-frozen, we went back inside. We took the shovels with us. They’d be the weapons of last resort.
I hobbled into the washroom, filled the tub with hot water, climbed in, and sat there until I got some feeling back.
That night I made us a hot supper. First cooking I’d done in a long time. We had meat loaf with a garlic flavor, a green vegetable, and mashed potatoes. Potatoes had originated on Earth, had spread across the worlds of the Confederacy, and had even made it to that far-off place. It was a good meal.
That night we settled in again to watch news accounts from around the world. People in places we’d never heard of were arguing about the cost of education. Others were angry that their neighbors were buying things like skimmers in other areas instead of shopping locally. Townspeople in a place named Shay Gaionne objected to ordinances requiring better maintenance of houses. Juvenile delinquents were a problem in some areas. And gangs. A large city on a coast somewhere was trying to decide whether gambling should be allowed near churches. Still others complained about the quality of entertainment. There were reports of another incursion by the Mutes. “They fired on a Coalition patrol boat,” said the reporter. “Fortunately, there appear to have been no injuries.”
“What do you think, Alex?”
“About the attack? I don’t believe it. The Mutes are nowhere near here.”
The Coalition government was entering its political season, and there was an ongoing debate about banning involuntary mind wipes. Some candidates called it murder; others insisted it constituted a fresh start for people they referred to as psychologically disabled.
Alex fell asleep during an interview of a long-winded legislative candidate. I watched for a few minutes. Then I shut it down, turned off some of the lamps, and took a seat by the windows.
The world beyond the pale illumination cast by our lights was utterly dark. Callistra must have been in a different part of the sky. Or maybe it was cloudy. At night, you never could tell. There was nothing out there, no sign of an aircraft. No artificial lights anywhere. I rearranged the cushions and decided they smelled vaguely of pine.
I wondered about Ben and asked myself what he might be doing at that moment and whether he ever thought about me. He’d always maintained that Alex was deranged and that I shouldn’t be working for him. Sitting in the villa on that night, wondering when the bad guys would come to get us, I suspected he might be right.
A lineal block.
The prospect of losing part of myself, of going back to Rimway after they’d taken my freedom of action from me, drove me into a rage. I promised myself I wasn’t going down without a fight. I would at the very least take out that nitwit female agent.
I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have an idea locked away, a memory that was still there but that I could not act on. They had done it to Vicki, and she’d become so desperate that she’d gone on to a complete mind wipe. Get rid of it. Get rid of everything she remembered about her life. What a price to pay.
What was it about?
ULY447? The Calienté mission? And a religious service that just didn’t matter anymore?
Alex woke me early next morning. “Got work to do.”
“What?” I said. “What is it?” I remembered the sign in the snow.
“Did somebody come?”
“No. The wind filled it in during the night.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t think it had much of a chance anyhow. We don’t get a lot of traffic here.”
“It was worth a try. So what’s the work we have to do?”
“Get dressed,” he said. “I’ll show you.” He leaned back and smiled. “Agent Krestoff and the mad doctor could come at any time. We want to be ready.”
Twenty minutes later I went downstairs into the living room and found the extension ladder leaning against one wall. Snow had been tracked through the doorway when he brought it
in from the shed.
“Problem?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
“The ladder.”
“No. No problem.” He was standing by one of the windows. The sun was just climbing into the sky.
“This place makes me dizzy,” I said.
“Of course.” He pointed at the tree that hung out over the edge of the precipice. “Look,” he said.
“Yeah. It’s hanging on for its life.”
“Doesn’t it give you any ideas?”
We plowed back out into the snow. “I don’t think there’s an imager anywhere inside,” he said. “I’ve gone over the first floor pretty thoroughly. They might be able to hear us, but I doubt they’re getting a picture.”
“Okay.”
He opened the door to the utility shed and picked up the ax. I laughed. “They’re going to have guns,” I said. “I doubt we’d have much chance with that.”
“That’s true, Chase. But we’re low on firewood.”
“Ah.”
“I’m going to get some.”
“Good idea.”
“Meantime, I want you to paint the living room.”
“Paint the living room?”
“Yes. I’ll explain later.”
“Alex—”
“Trust me.”
“This is why the extension ladder’s in there.”
“Of course.”
“You want me to paint the ceiling, too?”
“No. You won’t have to do that.”
“Then we’ve got the wrong ladder.” I indicated the step ladder. “This is the one we want.”
“We might need both.”
I picked up one of the paint cans. “It’s frozen.”
“It’ll thaw.”
“You know, working with you can be frustrating at times.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“Okay. What color did you want me to use?” There were two cans. The labels described them as forest green and sunrise gold.
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