They crested a rise. Edge-of-Tears pointed ahead. “It should be the next overpass.”
Trowel, the gardener who seemed to be in charge of the seedling bots, shook his head. “It can’t be that one. If it is …”
“What do you mean?”
As they drew closer, they saw and shared Trowel’s doubts. A direct hit from a human missile or bomb had dropped the overhead roadway in their path. The rear of a truck trailer jutted from beneath one concrete slab. Other slabs tilted and jutted like frozen storm waves. Beside the road were the broken stumps of three utility poles.
Once, vertical concrete pillars had braced the upper roadbed. Now they too were shattered. But to either side remained stone drainage ramps that slanted up from the ground to shelves that had supported the upper road’s steel frame. The left-hand shelf bore a small metal sign painted with a contractor’s name.
Edge-of-Tears climbed the ramp to pry at the metal square. It lifted on one edge, opening on well oiled hinges to reveal a panel of polished knobs and buttons. His fingers worked, turning, tapping. Motors came to life and labored. The stone ramp beneath his feet cracked. But the crack was no wider than two fingers when the motors stalled.
Dotson imitated the soldier’s stare at the sky. Visible through a rapidly closing gap in the clouds was a single spark of light. It was just south of the zenith, not far from where the Rac’s embryonic space station had been so short a time before. “Will they see us if we linger?”
“We can’t stay with you anymore,” said the senior gardener. He waved at his fellows, who promptly seized and lifted the poles that supported their buckets of earth and bot seedlings. They headed up the bank as if intending to follow the other road as quickly and as far as possible.
“It can’t be helped,” said Edge-of-Tears. His voice suggested that his name was more apt than ever. “We need to clear that out of the way.” He pointed at a single slab of roadway whose massive end rested against the masonry that should have yawned before them.
The gardeners stopped. One turned and shouted down the bank, “You need a lever. Here!”
Soon all the Racs of both groups were straining to fit the end of a broken-off utility pole under the slab. They leaned into it, grunting, grunting harder when the slab trembled and lifted, cheering when Edge-of-Tears worked the controls again, the hidden mechanism groaned, and the doorway now slid unimpeded into a slot at its base.
Starlight showed them a shallow room and a second door that opened more easily, pivoting inward on heavy hinges. Lights came on, dim at first and then brighter as the door swung shut behind them.
This room was as deep as the highway behind them had been wide. The walls and ceiling and floor were unpainted concrete. Black wires ran from light fixtures to a generator that hummed as it drew fuel from a large, gold-painted propane tank. The smell was of oil and ozone and just a hint of mildew.
Immediately before them were three forklifts, their smaller propane tanks fat and round on their backs, their forks facing the interior of the room and a row of six drab, squat vehicles on thick rubber tracks. The windshields were little more than slits. A padded bench would hold a driver and two passengers. The back was a high-walled truckbed shielded by an arch of heavy steel.
“APVs,” said Edge-of-Tears. “All-purpose vehicles. Not enough armor to do much good, and the only weapons are those in the crew’s hands. But they’re fast. And they don’t mind rough roads.”
Against the walls were stacked crates of guns and ammunition, mines, field rations, and other supplies. Edge-of-Tears was already climbing into the seat of a forklift. “We need as much …”
“What are those?” Dotson was pointing at a dozen racks of cylindrical objects wrapped in protective fabric.
“Missiles,” answered the soldier. He pointed at the shortest of the cylinders. “Antitank. You fire them from a shoulder-tube. Like that.” The tubes rested atop the rack.
Dotson was more interested in another rack, whose contents were nearly as long as he was tall and as thick as his thigh.
“Ground-to-air,” said Edge-of-Tears. He touched a bundle of sturdy metal tubing strapped to the side of one of the missiles. “They launch from a tripod. Lousy accuracy, though.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Moving targets. We’ve got heat-seekers too, but not here. This is all old stuff. Obsolete. Just-in-case backup.”
“I want them anyway.”
The soldier gave him an appraising look. His thought was as plain as if he had spoken aloud: He was in charge of the expedition, but Dotson was the Rac who had grown the bot whose ideas had sparked it. He wore an aura of authority all his own.
It did not take long to fill the APVs with as much obsolete weaponry as they could hold, but by then it was far too close to dawn to leave. “They’ll spot us anyway,” said Edge-of-Tears. “But it might take a little longer at night. Especially if those clouds stay thick or the storm begins. And we only need a little time.”
“Before we left you said two hours, driving.”
“Make it four.” The soldier slapped a tread. “These aren’t as fast as wheels.”
* * * *
When the next night finally came and Dotson flipped the switch that opened the cache’s broad door, the sky was as black as the inside of a cave. The wind was louder than it had been any night of their quest, and occasional drops of water struck his face. He stared upward as if he could see the stars or the bright spark of the humans’ flagship through the clouds. A long moment later, he realized that someone was beside him.
“We’ll stay here.” Trowel scratched the side of his short muzzle apologetically. He held a rapid-fire rifle with a massive clip in his other hand. “There’s light, and the roof is thick.”
“The light won’t last,” said Dotson. He pointed at the generator to one side. Its steady hum showed no sign of faltering. “As soon as that tank is empty …”
“Long enough, I’m sure. We’ll turn out most of the lights and leave the door ajar. It’ll last until you win.” The gardener’s face said he did not think that likely. He lifted his weapon a handbreadth. “Or until the humans go away.”
“That could still be a while.”
“Then we’ll need shelter for the winter, won’t we?”
Edge-of-Tears snorted a laugh as he joined them in the doorway. “It’s all yours, then.”
“Should we wait?”
The soldier shook his head. “Do it now. Before we lose our edge.”
“Our nerve, you mean. They’re going to see us. They always do.”
“It’ll take time to get planes in the air. We’ll split up. We’ll be moving fast. And the wind will help us.”
“Four hours.” Four hours of life as a target.
“Maybe three.”
* * * *
The APVs roared out the door into pouring rain just before midnight. Edge-of-Tears had the lead vehicle. Dotson was behind him. The others followed, and in the back of each vehicle, crammed in between the crates and cylinders, was a pair of Racs with shoulder-tubes and antitank missiles.
The storm quenched the glare of the APVs’ headlights—essential in the dark—and surely the rain washed from the air much of the heat the vehicles generated. But they remained detectable from afar. Shortly after they passed the ruined factory where they had found Trowel and the other gardeners tending seedling bots, the first fighters appeared over the horizon. The Racs left the road, twisting and turning among trees and ruined houses, hoping to evade the human fire.
Slugs from airborne cannons hammered the sides of the vehicles, but their armor was thick enough to survive those blows. Fire sparkled in the air, marking the exhausts of air-to-ground missiles. Two of the APVs vanished in titanic blasts of light and sound and smoke. The remaining four raced onward, jigging in the
ir paths, spurred by the explosions that rattled the landscape around them. One dove beneath a highway bridge. A missile found it anyway, but not before the Racs among its cargo got off a shot of their own. The larger explosion destroyed the bridge. The smaller turned the fighter into a ball of flame.
The other planes sheered off. Dotson drove his APV frantically, desperately, wishing that he knew what he was doing, that he had ever handled more than an ordinary car. Where was Edge-of-Tears? Did he still live? Was he ahead? Behind? To one side or the other?
Was Dotson the only survivor? Then he could not last. Six of the hidden vehicles had started out. Three were already gone. He had seen them, heard them, felt them go. Had he missed the others’ deaths?
Why hadn’t the humans killed them all? The storm. Not the clouds. Not the rain. But the wind, that shook the warplanes in the air and spoiled their aim.
But now the fighters were back. The Rac beside him counted those he could see: “Four. Seven. Ten.”
Dotson wished he knew who his companions were. But he knew only their names: Silvertouch and Laughs-at-Locks. Had one been a musician once, before? The other, a burglar?
Two warplanes collided in the air, victims of the wind.
He had no idea who was in the back, ready to fire what they had at their attackers.
He wished he dared to close his eyes long enough to ask the Remakers, Gypsies, gods of First-Stop, to intervene once more. “Make them cautious!” he keened out loud. “Too cautious!”
Another disappeared in flame.
So did another APV, too distant for Dotson to feel the air and ground shake with pain although the flash was visible through the storm.
Near misses made Dotson’s vehicle lurch and grind its gears. But somehow he never took a direct hit, and then there were the ruins of Worldtree City, hulks of brick and stone to shield him from the human gunners and intercept their missiles. The ground shook. Masonry fell around him. But the tracks of his vehicle roared over every heap of rubble that would have stopped a car or truck on wheels. He hardly slowed as he spun around one corner, another, and here was the avenue he wanted, there the yawning tunnel mouth.
He was diving deep into the interior of the bluffs around the valley. He was safe.
And there was another APV. One more. Wet tracks and puddles and two Racs lowering bodies from the back. A third standing beside it, proudly erect even though fatigue was visible in the set of his shoulders. A military bearing. Edge-of-Tears had made it too.
The rest had not.
Chapter Twenty Five
Tamiko Inoue stared at the guard as she approached the door. He slouched in the corridor, eyes half closed. His cheeks were lean, his muscles cleanly limned under smooth cloth, the sliver of pupil that showed between his eyelids gleaming with an alert readiness his posture belied.
As she approached, those eyes opened wide and held her steadily, darting away only briefly to check other approaches to the door. The guard wore a snug jumpsuit that left no cuffs or collars free for an opponent to grab or an object to snag. He held a compressed-air gun that fired slivers of glass that would shatter when they struck the ship’s hull but would destroy a human target.
Tamiko knew he was not there to stop her from opening the door and entering the small room beyond. But still she hesitated.
“Forget your key, ma’am?” His eyes were as watchful as ever, but now he was smiling and holding his own copy of the magnetic card that barred the door. He remembered her.
She shook her head. That wasn’t the problem, though she was less sure that she knew what was.
He ignored her. He slid his cardkey into the slot in the jamb. The door slid open. “There you go.”
She did not answer as she slipped her own cardkey back into her thigh pocket and entered the room. The door slid shut behind her.
Sunglow was sitting on the edge of her bed. There was still a cast on her arm. The bandage on her thigh was gone, leaving only a livid line of nearly healed flesh. Already the fur was growing back.
“Do you think he’s still alive?”
“He is if Dotson is.” Sunglow was quite sure of that. He would honor the implicit agreement Tamiko had offered by releasing one of her prisoners to pass the word that she herself survived.
“I wish I knew.”
“At least, if he’s dead it’s an accident.” The coon’s fingers twined together, as expressive as any human’s of worry. “You made sure Dotson wouldn’t hurt him. But if Dotson’s dead …”
“You could help us settle this.”
“It’s all settled. You’ve destroyed us.”
“Not entirely. You’ll rebuild.”
“And you’ll be back.”
Tamiko nodded matter-of-factly. Indeed, that was the plan. “You could save a lot of lives.”
“Wherever I told you, you’d attack. And Dotson …”
Tamiko did not need to hear the coon say that if he was still alive, her words could kill him. Or that once Dotson was no longer there, the remaining coons might well vent their anger, their need for vengeance, on the one human in their grasp.
She shook her head. “A quick, surgical strike,” she said. “A rescue mission. And then we can leave.” She reached across the narrow room to activate the veedo and call up all the reasons why Sunglow should want the humans gone as soon as possible: images of the world below—airports and military bases littered with wrecked equipment; ships awash in waves; cities in ruins; a line of hotspots racing along a highway toward the valley of the Worldtree, diverging across the landscape, planes diving and swooping and jigging, explosions on the ground and in the air.
But there were not as many ground explosions as there had been fleeing hotspots. Two of those frantic vehicles had reached Worldtree City and sped through the rubbled streets while human-piloted planes pursued and fired guns and missiles. Then they had vanished from the screen.
“There used to be more of those,” said Tamiko. “We got them too. Most of them. And then you gave up. Or ran out of trucks. We don’t know why …”
“Food,” said Sunglow. She knew better, for she knew the storerooms in the caverns had been full enough to keep the refugees alive for months more. “They’re running out of food. My friends are starving. So’s your Mark.”
“Food shipments don’t blow up like that. And they don’t run so fast, so frantically, or shoot back. These were weapons smugglers.”
“They must have had something impressive.” Sunglow was not surprised, but hearing the human say the words made her both feel and sound hopeful. Her people had not yet given up.
“They were only desperate.” The human’s tone and gesture dismissed the hope as beneath contempt. “And we got them all. There’s nothing left you coons can do.”
“You’re wrong.” There had been no explosions to mark the ends of the last two vehicles. They must, Sunglow thought, have reached the tunnels and vanished from human sight.
“Don’t you want to save him?”
“It’s not up to me.”
“In your position, I …” Tamiko sighed. “Don’t you love him after all?”
The coon only glared at her.
“You’re not very sentimental.”
“I try—we try—to be sensible. To recognize reality.” She paused. “We have our feelings, of course. Our sentiments. But we know the world does not bend itself to suit mere wishes.”
Tamiko shook her head once more. “That’s not very human.”
“It’s as human as the Gypsies.”
“They were monsters, not …” She stopped. She told herself that calling Sunglow a monster was no way to gain her cooperation. And, she knew, the coon was not a monster. Really, she was human enough despite her fur and the shape of her head and her race’s origins in a genetic engineer’s tes
t tube. They shared a common worry, their males, their mates.
She tried to change the subject. “The General thinks we’re too friendly.”
Sunglow did not answer.
“He wants me to use the electrodes.”
Silence.
“He said that if you cooperate, you’ll be well treated when we get home. No cage, but an apartment. Bigger than this one. Though I’ll be there, too.”
“You can be her keeper.” He had laughed when he said that.
Still silence, though the coon had turned and now faced away, her shoulders shaking.
Her voice emerged, a quiet, wordless keen.
Tamiko said nothing more, though she asked herself why she bothered. She knew the answer, of course. It was obvious. They had been two couples. They had known each other briefly, even liked each other, and then …
Of course, the coon had not discarded her mate and then discovered that his replacement was no better.
“You can’t kill us all,” Sunglow said at last.
“We don’t want to.”
“Some of them escaped, you know.”
She was looking at the lifeless veedo screen. “Not really,” said Tamiko. Did the coon think they were blind? “Underground garages or warehouses. We dropped a few bombs down the holes. They were trapped. Now they’re dead.”
Sunglow turned back to face the human woman, but she said nothing more for fear of what she might reveal. Instead her eyes, hot and heavy, noted the lack of weapon, the flat outline of a cardkey in the pocket on the woman’s thigh, and then she looked away once more.
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 150
