gamma world Sooner Dead

by Mel Odom

  “You could go see—”

  Colleen stuck her head through the tent flaps and glared at the guards. “She can see me.”

  The guards didn’t move.

  “Now, if you please.” Her words carried an edge to them.

  Reluctantly the guards stepped back and allowed Hella through. Hella ignored both of them as she entered the tent. Colleen zipped the flap closed behind her then switched on a small device in the center of the dome roof.

  “You’re not really wounded, are you?” Colleen studied her. “I would have noticed it, and I don’t think you would have waited all day to come see me.”

  Hella didn’t speak.

  Colleen pointed at the device. “That’s a white-noise generator. It keeps anyone outside the tent from listening in. Even those men standing guard can’t hear us speaking in here.”

  That also meant Stampede probably couldn’t hear her over the comm link. “I’m out of touch with Stampede. He’s going to come looking.”

  “Tell him you’re with me.” Colleen flicked a switch on the white noise device.

  “Stampede?”

  “Yeah. I lost you for a minute.”

  “I’m with Dr. Trammell. She’s going to look at my wound. While I’m talking to her, you’re not going to be able to hear me.”

  Stampede hesitated for a minute and Hella knew he was uneasy about the situation. The comm links were important in their line of work. “Okay, Red. If you get into trouble, you can always shoot your way out of the tent.”

  Hella smothered a smile since Colleen couldn’t hear the exchange. She nodded and Colleen switched the white-noise generator back on.

  The tent was small and neatly organized. A tiny desk and a computer occupied one corner, and an airbed took up about a third of the space. An energy-charged pad lay on the ground and kept the dust and allergens at bay. The air inside the tent smelled too clean, almost as if it were canned.

  Colleen sat on the airbed and gestured at the desk. “Please. Sit.”

  “Thanks, but I’m all right.” Hella sat cross-legged on the floor.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “You came out here to find Scatter.”

  “Or something—someone—like him, yes.”

  “Why?”

  Colleen composed her thoughts before speaking. She still looked worn out from the hard traveling they’d done that day. “Dr. Pardot believes he can reverse-engineer some of the technology that created Scatter.”

  Hella took a breath and considered how best to proceed in her questioning. She thought about simply asking the woman how they knew about Scatter or his people, but she decided that might spook Colleen. Hella didn’t want to do that. “You told me this has something to do with your daughter, Alice.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she dying?”

  Colleen opened her mouth and looked shocked, as though she’d just been slapped. “I never told you that.”

  “Not in words but when you touched my mind, it opened up something that hasn’t completely stopped.”

  Embarrassed, Colleen shook her head. “I never intended for that to happen.”

  “I didn’t think so but it did.” Hella hesitated. “When you were in Blossom Heat, still suffering from the drugs Pardot kept you on, you dreamed of Alice. I saw her. I saw you. In the lab where you were trying to find a cure for her.”

  Tears filled Colleen’s eyes, and Hella almost panicked. She hadn’t meant to make the woman cry. Hella had seen people cry before, but she’d never been the cause of it. She and Stampede lived apart from other people and didn’t get involved on an emotional level or even get close to them. She didn’t know whether to apologize or run.

  “Alice has a disease.” Colleen’s words came hard and sounded hoarse. “A horrible, deadly disease. And if I don’t save her, she’s going to die.”

  Images of the dying rodents overlapped with those of the child in Hella’s mind.

  “There is nothing—nothing—as horrible as the death of a child.”

  Despite the gravity of Colleen’s words, Hella almost objected. Any death was horrible. When they’d burned the Wroths back at the Coyle River, Hella would have been hard pressed to figure out whom she felt more sorry for. Age wasn’t a distinction in her world. Death, when people weren’t looking, took everyone.

  “I will not allow my daughter to die.” Colleen’s voice shook with emotion.

  “How did you know to look for Scatter out here?”

  “I’ve dreamed about Alice for almost two years. I was desperate to find a way to save her. So I took drugs to amplify my precog abilities.” Colleen took a breath, more under control. “I forced myself to see a way to save her. And I did. Even then, though, I almost killed myself before I found an answer. If Dr. Pardot hadn’t found me and saved me when he did—” She shook her head. “Then no one would have been alive to save Alice.”

  “How do you know Scatter can help you?”

  “I know he has told you how his people found a way to save themselves from the disease in his world.”

  “Yes.”

  “By putting their personalities into the machines.”

  Hella nodded.

  “Alice is wasting away, Hella. Dying a little bit each day. If Dr. Pardot is successful in his endeavors, we’ll be able to replicate the machine bodies in our labs. I can save my daughter.”

  The possibility didn’t sound like salvation to Hella. It sounded too much like becoming a ’Chine. “You didn’t just dream up Scatter, though. You already knew his people existed.”

  Colleen shook her head. “You’re asking too many questions. Dr. Pardot would be unhappy to learn that I’ve told you as much as I have.”

  “I’m not going to tell him. And what you know could help Stampede and me”—Hella was going to say, save us, but changed her mind.—“help you save your daughter.”

  For a time Colleen remained silent. Then she nodded. “We knew his people existed.”

  “How?”

  “One of them came through a ripple in our city. Dr. Pardot and I got to examine it—him—but never managed to speak with him.”

  “Why?”

  “There wasn’t time. It—he—expired too soon after we made the acquisition.”

  “How?”

  “Damage from coming through the ripple? From colliding with the ground? Or maybe he was damaged and dying before he appeared in our world. We don’t know.”

  Hella thought about the entry Scatter had made into their world and figured it would be hard to destroy a fractoid. However, Dr. Pardot’s disruptor had taken Scatter out pretty quickly.

  “You’ve been an amazing help to us, Hella. You and Stampede. Dr. Pardot is aware that we’re probably alive only because of the two of you and that we wouldn’t have been able to recover Scatter without you. Please don’t think any of us take that for granted.”

  Hella didn’t, but she also didn’t doubt that Pardot would still rather follow his agenda than give in to any sympathetic feelings of gratitude. Guides were worth time and money only if they were taking people where they wanted to go and getting them there safely. Even that didn’t mean the client wouldn’t bushwhack a guide to keep from paying him or to maintain secrets. Stampede had taught her that early.

  “If you already have Scatter, why are you searching for another fractoid?”

  “Because we have to have two of them.”

  “Why?”

  “One of them doesn’t survive alone.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Dr. Pardot’s investigation into the fractoid we found months ago revealed that, and the tests he’s conducted on Scatter bear that out.” Colleen leaned forward and caught Hella’s hands. Hella just barely kept from turning her hands into weapons. “Please, Hella. I know Dr. Pardot can be hard to get along with, impossible at times, really, but we need you and Stampede.”

  Hella sat quietly, looking into the woman’s liquid gaze.

  “Wh
ether he’s told you or not, Scatter needs to do this too. Otherwise he’ll die just like the last fractoid did.”

  CHAPTER 23

  After Hella finished relating her conversation with Colleen Trammell to Stampede, he sat back and scratched his chin. His ears flicked in irritation. Then he fixed his gaze on her. “Do you believe her?”

  Hella thought about that for a moment then nodded. “Colleen has too many reasons to tell us the truth. At least some of the truth.” She let out a disgusted breath. “The problem is trying to figure out what they’re not telling us. Before it gets us killed.”

  “Remember the golden rule to scouting, Red.”

  “Try to save one life a day, especially if it’s your own.”

  “Yeah. That’s the one.” Stampede lay back inside their shared tent and crossed his arms behind his head. “Also, take one day at a time. We’ll follow this trail a little farther and see where it takes us. We’re not any more invested than we want to be.”

  “I know. But I have to tell you, I don’t want the death of that kid on my head. I don’t want to dream about her or what I could have done if there was something I could do.”

  “That little girl isn’t your problem. She isn’t our problem. There are some things we can’t do anything about.”

  “You say that, but it seems to me you and Faust went out of your way to help another kid not so long ago.”

  Stampede didn’t say anything for a while. “Get some sleep. We’re going to have a long day tomorrow, and when we head into the Amichi Mountains, we’re going to have to be at our best.”

  Hella rolled over onto her side and closed her eyes. As wound up as she was, she expected sleep to come hard. Instead it came for her in a rush and carried her away almost at once.

  For three days, Hella rode point on Daisy and almost grew bored. If it hadn’t been for Riley’s insistence that Colleen Trammell’s precog visions were coming faster and stronger, she would have thought they were wasting their time. Usually she thought that anyway despite Riley’s news.

  She occupied some of her time hunting fresh meat for her and Stampede. Game was plentiful and she had a selection of deer, quail, squirrel, and rabbit. At least hunting gave her something to do that focused all of her attention for a time and she didn’t have to think about anything else.

  Since the night in the tent, Colleen hadn’t gone out of her way to speak to Hella. The woman seemed happy to know that Stampede and Hella continued to guide them and didn’t want to jinx the arrangement. Or maybe the precog visions were taking their toll. Or maybe Pardot was watching her more closely. Hella had had to admit it could have been any of those things.

  Scatter also kept his distance. The fractoid remained talkative to Pardot for the most part, but not anyone else. Scatter’s interest in the new world around him even seemed to wane.

  On the next day, they cut an unmarked trail at the foothills of the Amichi Mountains.

  When she saw the clearing snaking through the wilderness ahead of her in the early evening of the next day, Hella reined Daisy in. “Have Riley hold up his troops.” She formed a weapon of her right hand as she stepped down out of the saddle and told the mountain boomer to stay.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I just cut a trail someone’s been using a lot lately. I’m going to give it a look.”

  “I’m coming to you.”

  Hella eased through the brush and stayed low. Her passage didn’t even disturb the foliage around her. Her rifle hung down her back, and she remained cognizant that a sniper up in the foothills could take her out in a heartbeat.

  The narrow trail held tracks through the heart of it. Judging from the tread and wear, horses as well as motorcycles used the route regularly.

  “Too far off the trade roads to be used by traders.” Stampede suddenly stood in the trees only a short distance away. He surveyed the hillside covered with trees and brush ahead of them.

  “Not too far for highwaymen. They like little bolt holes like this to run to after they take out a caravan.” Hella tracked cardinals and bluebirds flying along the hillside in front of them. The birds were a good sign. They meant that no one lay in hiding in front of them. If someone were up there, all the birds would have left the immediate area.

  “I know.” Stampede scratched the underside of his chin, and his ears twitched. “We make an attractive target.”

  “Not to mention we’re practically delivering ourselves to their doorsteps if this is a run for highwaymen.”

  “Riley says Colleen Trammel’s precog is pulling her straight through this.” Stampede scanned the surrounding countryside. “This is the easiest way of going. We know that.”

  Hella nodded. “Have you ever heard of a precog having a vision of something happening then not living long enough to see it come true?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think it could happen?”

  Stampede shifted his big rifle and kept it at the ready. “Anything can happen. We just need to make sure it doesn’t happen to us.”

  “The trail goes up into the mountains along the same general route we’re taking.”

  “I see that. Taking the trail would mean faster travel time.”

  “But we’d risk discovery by whoever uses this trail if they happen along.”

  “I know. We’ve got Riley and his hardshells with us. No matter who’s running this trail, they’re not expecting that. Let’s roll with it for right now.”

  “Sure.” Hella went back for Daisy, and they kept heading east. Stampede talked Pardot and Riley into bedding the expedition down early for the day so he and Hella could recon the area from higher up on the mountain.

  An hour later Hella told Daisy to stay below the ridgeline of the mountain she and Stampede has chosen as their observation point. Working in tandem, they made their way to the top and hunkered down.

  The Amichi Mountains had been shorter in the past, before the collider blew up. The resulting tectonic plate shifting out in California had manifested across the West. In the Redblight the mountains had grown taller, the swamplands more vast, and some of the fallout of mutations and strange creatures had taken up more frequent residence there.

  The people who lived in the swamplands were hard and cruel. Strangers weren’t tolerated as a general rule, and in many places were considered a delicacy. Legend held that the human stock that had once existed there had interbred till a number of genetic problems manifested. Still other legends held that some of the creatures that crossed over from other worlds had added to the gene pool in strange and deadly ways.

  Whatever the truth was, the bottom line was that the Amichi Mountains were a bad place to be.

  Hella scanned the surrounding terrain with her binocs, and Stampede did the same with his telescope. For an hour they ate jerked meat in silence and watched the landscape. Just as dark closed in, a silver mist swept in from the west and came to a stop in front of them.

  A moment later Scatter formed out of the mist and stood before them. “Hello.”

  Stampede’s ears twitched. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you.” If Scatter noticed Stampede’s irritable attitude, he gave no indication of it. “I thought it best that we should talk by ourselves. I do not trust Dr. Pardot or Dr. Trammell.” He paused. “Actually I do not trust any of them. I trust you.”

  Hella couldn’t help smiling at the bald-faced honesty.

  Stampede’s eyes narrowed and he looked grumpier. “Then why are you staying with them?”

  “Colleen Trammell will guide us to the next ripple. Once there, I hope to find a way back to my world or to locate the other person from my world.” Scatter looked from Stampede to Hella then back again, as if knowing he would be the one who needed the most convincing.

  “You could have mentioned this earlier.”

  “When?” Stampede looked patient. “Dr. Pardot has never given me any time by myself.” He smiled. “Plus, I did not know for certain that I could trust y
ou till I discovered they do not trust you.” He paused. “Does that surprise you?”

  “That they don’t trust us?”

  “Yes.”

  Stampede shook his head. “They don’t trust anyone outside of their own skin. That’s the way most people are.”

  Frowning, Scatter shook his head. “The ways of your world are very confusing. In my world there are no subterfuges, no secondary agendas. Quite frankly, I do not like your world. I much prefer mine. Everything there is a known quantity.”

  “Your world wasn’t always that way. Otherwise you wouldn’t be in that body.”

  “True.”

  “Dr. Pardot gave you time to see us now?”

  “No. Dr. Pardot has, for the moment at least, succumbed to his own excesses. In addition to being very frail, flesh-and-blood bodies exhaust easily. Dr. Pardot’s exhausts more easily than most, it appears. I could not imagine living in such a vessel.”

  Hella smiled. “We don’t think of our bodies as vessels.”

  “You should. That’s what they are.”

  Stampede’s ears twitched. “Pardot is asleep?”

  “Or in a fatigue-induced coma, yes. At present he requires no medical attention.”

  “Has he told you about the other fractoid they found?” Hella continued scanning the countryside. Even with Scatter’s ability to break into a collection of tiny robots and ride the wind, she didn’t know if he’d escaped Riley’s security equipment.

  “No. But I knew about him anyway. Who told you?”

  “Dr. Trammell. How did you know about the other fractoid if they didn’t tell you?”

  Scatter held his hand up level with his face then blew. Fine, silver dust blew off his hand for an instant. Then he made a fist and drew the nanobots back to him. “Dr. Pardot was marked by—”

  The screech was so painful that Hella had to cover her ears. “I take it that’s someone you know from your world.”

  “We had never met, but I know him, yes. I read his history. He was a very good man.” Scatter paused. “Dr. Pardot is marked by warning nanobots that broadcast a constant stream of information about the deceased as well as the danger declaration. The other fractoid marked him at some point.”