You can actually pay down Care Hours with money. But who has that much? Most women can only fulfill Care Hours with time—their own or a registered family member’s. And the penalty system for not meeting Care Standard is based on fines. It’s real money.
And after a while, it’s more than money.
Why am I telling you all this? Listen. Carter, I think at least one of your sisters is in serious trouble.
When you hear from Fred, let me know.
Pop is . . . okay. He’s not doing much, but I suppose he’s earned some time to rest and reset. He asks about you all the time. I know Pop never messages anyone ever, not even you, and I know Fred’s better about keeping in touch than me, but please know how much we all think about you and love you. I’m praying for you, although Pop wouldn’t like to hear me say that. You think about what he’s been through, you understand why he doesn’t pray. But he believes in you, Carter, and I do, too.
I sometimes think it would be nice if I could be really religious again, like I was when I was a kid—do you remember? I got you into it right along with me. You were so cute when you would pray with me; you were just a little booger. But I could use it—sometimes I really could use it, the ability to pray to something and believe I was being heard. Sometimes you have to do things you never thought you’d have to do, and I think that’s when you need your faith the most.
I wonder if you already know what I mean, little brother, without my having to explain. Atheists in foxholes, and so on. And you were always good at reading my mind.
Thinking about you and sending lots of love. And socks, I hope. Let me know if they get there. And let me know when you hear from Fred.
Love,
Gard
SIX
I’m not quite through the scrubby park where, a million years ago but somehow also just that morning, I left a half-finished can of beer in a sack under a bench, when I realize that I’m being followed.
The sun is already beginning to set, since it’s late enough in December that we’re approaching the shortest day of the year. It’s still 70 degrees out at dusk. The wind has picked up, carrying bits of trash and empty plastic bottles to the fences, and carrying, too, the buzzing, insect-like sound of a drone. It’s not zooming past me on some mysterious and uninteresting errand; it’s hanging back and hovering high. I shouldn’t be able to hear it, but the hot wind is at my back, bringing with it the purr of the drone’s small whirring rotors.
My thoughts still aren’t exactly what you’d call clear, but thanks to Rafiq’s booster shot, my vision and my hearing are both crystal, better than they’ve been since my first year in the Wars. I keep moving, slower now, heading for the north edge of the park, where the scannerless gate lets onto the sidewalk. All is empty, all is quiet, except for the far-off echoes of the helicopters ferrying hydroengineers and city replanners and captains of industry over the lake to other New Cities. I don’t know what it’s like in those other places, but in New Chicago, drones are all just doing different versions of the same thing: carrying problems from place to place. The best you can do is ignore them.
Until one of them decides you’re its special personal problem.
Normally I wouldn’t care about being tailed by a drone. They’re unbelievably stupid machines compared to a few others I’ve had to stand too close to. They navigate sensor to sensor, so whatever the nearest thing is that’s putting off a signal, that’s what they’re attracted to, exactly like bugs around a light bulb, seeking their next input. Right now, my wearable’s signal is probably the closest thing there is to a sensor for a few city blocks. It’s happened to me before; I’ve been trailed by a lost or lonely or codeless drone for a block or two, while wandering some of the uglier parts of town, searching for someplace scary enough to suit my worst imaginings of what might have happened to Gard.
You should go home and ask your father.
The buzzing follows me through the park, off the path and onto the sidewalk. There’s no one else around. On the street, I turn around and look for it. Takes me a few seconds, but then there it is, hanging at rooftop level in the slanting light of the end of day. Waiting and watching.
Your average City drone, the type that messengers digital and actual flotsam around the city, looks sort of like a plastic clown head wearing snowshoes. City drones are not elegant. They’re ridiculous, in fact, and I’ve always thought that it’s exactly this doofiness that keeps people from swatting them down as they putter past in their designated lanes on streets and sidewalks—they’re too inept to attack; there’s no satisfaction in it. Even though a drone is almost always just about to hit you in the face when you stop at a crosswalk in certain parts of the city. It’s like sharing a town with a bunch of half-sentient softballs.
But this drone looks like Security, not City. Security drones are black or gray, rather than white or yellow, and the one that’s staring me down now is dark in color, hovering twenty feet overhead like a malicious little moon. At this distance it’s a bit hard to tell, but the twin domes on top are the giveaways: Security drones have blue and red lights like an ambulance. The lights on this one aren’t flashing—yet—but it’s impossible not to notice that they’re positioned to look a bit like mouse ears. Drones are just so inherently, inescapably dorky that they can’t even design a Security drone that looks intimidating. Even though I don’t like the way it seems to be waiting for my next move, it’s impossible to be afraid.
And anyway, this thing can’t be hunting me. Who the fuck am I? I’m no one. I’m just a vet full of weird drugs, a guy with sore feet and a sore arm who needs a beer and something to eat. Go home, drone, you’re drunk. Or else I’m not drunk enough. But as I’m heading toward the corner, I hear the drone’s tiny rotors shift to pick up after me.
I figure I’ll shake it at the stop sign—there’s a sensor in most stop signs, whether the intersection sees a lot of traffic or not. If the drone isn’t really following me, if it’s just momentarily codeless the way I think it is, it’ll pick up a fresh signal at the intersection and reset, scoot off, and leave me be.
Then it occurs to me: Regardless of whether the thing really is following me personally, it must have picked up my trail almost as soon as I left Natalie and Gard’s clinic. And for all Natalie’s noise about private but perfectly legal, they’re operating off the sensor grid at least one story underground, in an unmarked building in an otherwise deserted, unrehabbed part of town. Whatever it is they’re offering there—and I’m still not sure I understand what that is, or even want to—their exact location is obviously supposed to be a secret. All those women I saw there, everyone who found that place, had to have been referred by a friend, or at least by someone who knew where to go. Women who don’t have many options, as Natalie B. put it.
And then I crashed the gate with my lost-sheep act, and brought Rafiq crashing in after me.
And now this thing.
I stop just short of the intersection.
What I’d really like to do is just take the thing down.
It wouldn’t take much. I could chuck a brick at one of its rotors and knock the thing off course, make it crash. Drone interference may be against the law, but it happens all the time. More commonly with City drones than Security, though. Security drones are lightly weaponized. They’re dumb, but smart people know better than to fuck with them.
I never said I was smart.
I backtrack down the block, toward the park gate and the drone, which hangs, awaiting a tug from an invisible hand. I slip back into the park, where the gathering darkness tucks me in. No lamps here, no streetlights. No artificial trees, either, of course, so there’s not much cover, but I figure I’ll find what I need more easily in here than out on the street, and it turns out I’m right: a broken piece of concrete curbing, right there along the path. Fits neatly in the hand. Now I speed up a tick.
The drone hasn’t lingered long at the park gate. It’s looking for me, taking its time, swinging low in wide arcs over eithe
r side of the path. Drones aren’t what you’d call strategic planners. Not too difficult to pull ahead, out of range, although my torn-up feet are protesting all the sudden activity.
My good old bench. You’re not much for cover, but you’ll do.
Goddamn. The sack with the can inside it is still there, right under the seat where I left it. I’m actually reaching for it when I remember that no, not even I drink flat, hot beer.
Just wait here, in a balanced crouch, one hand on the back of the bench, the other hand wrapped around the chunk of concrete. Just wait, be still.
It’s scooting closer now, low and buzzing, a dry insect, too undeveloped for the concept of moral action to apply. As it approaches my hideout behind the park bench, I count down from three, cup the concrete in my right hand, then stand while swinging my arm upward and overhead, putting my force and my weight underneath it, swift and silent just like I’ve been trained to do, keeping my eyes on the target. Underhand overhead lob, heave-ho off she goes.
Easy squeezy. Like a trigger.
The crunch is louder than I expected. The drone’s flashers go on immediately, along with a recorded alert message (Tampering with or otherwise disabling a Security device is a crime punishable by law) that broadcasts through three repetitions at a steadily increasing volume (CRIME PUNISHABLE BY LAW) before the badly hobbled machine veers off, looking like a disoriented animal, something small that’s been kicked too hard. Flashing and blaring and impossible not to despise, the drone starts a precarious descent to the ground, hits the rubberized surface, bounces and skids, lies inert, flashing in silence. Time to move.
• • •
And then I’m at my bus stop, ten blocks to the north and another five east, waiting alone for a bus that won’t be coming anytime soon, ass painfully flattened by the half hour I’ve already spent perched on a narrow metal ledge trying to pass for a bus shelter bench, flicking through a few ads on my wearable, not thinking not thinking not thinking and sipping a fresh cold can-in-a-sack (bought at the corner convenience store across the street that’s just closed up for the night), when Security finally finds me.
A pale gray cruiser rolls up and parks at the curb, right in front of the bus shelter. The driver stays in the car, the other Security officer climbs out. He’s a well-built white guy, a comfortable twenty pounds and about ten or fifteen years on me. His eyes are close-set; his nose is gigantic. No one could call him handsome, even if he didn’t look like he just came from a bar fight.
“Private Carter Quinn?”
“Sir.” I nod, put the beer sack down on the ledge next to my thigh, put my hands flat on my legs where he can see them.
“At ease, young man. That’s all right, isn’t it?” The officer gives me a grin, which has the disturbing effect of splitting his face into two hostile zones: up north, two tiny glittering eyes flank a nose like a clenched fist; to the south, a yellowed crag.
“Sure. That’s all right.”
He glances at his scanner, a black metal rod about the length of his palm, pulsing softly with information ingested and displayed. He’s already got almost everything about me there is to know in his hand.
“You were a long time over there, Private. Look at that service record.” He shakes his head in admiration. “Wish I’d gotten to go myself. You young guys get all the good toys.” Unlike everyone else in the New Cities, there are some Security guys who really seem to worship war vets. They get all wistful imagining the weapons. I’ve never seriously worried about getting caught by Security for anything—this isn’t the first time I’ve tampered with or disabled—because Security looks right past vets like me. And any small act of vandalism I or anyone else might commit—against, say, a drone or a scanner or a not-bird—can’t help but seem like an irrelevance. Security through obscurity. All the data generated by our daily movements, the file-scrubbing and the jaywalking, all of it collected and surrendered, all those feeds pouring in from sensors and wearables and drones and satellites, all of it laying bare every bad move and misdemeanor committed every day within the shrinking city we’ve all agreed to call New Chicago, after the real Chicago, the one where there was real water in the toilets and a real lake on the horizon and crying babies and crowded kindergarten classrooms and information privacy and cheeseburgers. Even if Security was twenty times the size, it couldn’t possibly act on half of what the data shows them about this city, what’s really happening here, what we’re all really doing. A lot of criminal acts without an immediately recognizable data trail—vandalism, for example—get ignored. Not for nothing do the old guys call it Job Security. And when Gard vanished, of course it took them no time at all to declare my sister not worth the trouble to look for, to put her in a file and forget about her.
“It was something, all right,” I agree. “Can I help you, Officer?”
“I wonder if you can, son. I have you in this area most of the day today, is that right? Down in the old park a few blocks that way?” His eyes are concerned; his tone is sympathetic. He glances at my beer.
“Nowhere else to go. Sometimes I like to just get away, sit someplace quiet.” I shrug. I am harmless. “I like that little park. Hardly ever anybody there. I’ve gone a few times. Just sat and . . .” I trail off, give another little shrug.
Security nods. “I had a . . .” He clears his throat explosively. “I had a son in the National Guard. Over there.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
He nods again. After a long pause, he adds, “I like to think that if he’d made it back, he would have made something of his life. Used his service as a way to elevate himself. Not been one of these guys who can’t reintegrate into the social fabric. Know what I mean, Private?”
I keep my gaze nice and low and level. Keep my breathing nice and low and level, too. “I do.”
“I bet you do,” he sneers.
Of course I would get tailed by the one Security officer in all of New Chicago who doesn’t have such a hard-on for war stories that he’ll look the other way if I tell him about getting to trigger off a few H2.0 raiders. This could go badly if I’m not careful. Suddenly I have to wonder why I don’t feel worse, why I’m not galloping into black stars and sick flowery smells and jitters. It’s either Rafiq’s drugs or the beer. And while probably anyone would have to consider engineered beer a miracle of modern food science, I know its limits.
Security puts a boot up on the bench next to me and leans over his knee, lets his hands dangle down between his thighs, very friendly. “So, Private. You ever see anything interesting in your little park, while you’re sitting around getting drunk in public?”
“I’m not getting drunk, sir. And no, I don’t really see much of anything there.”
“ ‘Not getting drunk, sir’? I wonder what your blood alcohol shows.” From his friendly-neighbor position, he hardly needs to flick his wrist to scan me. “Well, what do you know.” I don’t have to look up at him to know that he’s reading my med status. “Looks like you’re telling the truth. Congratulations, Private. You won’t be getting arrested today . . . If . . .”
I let that if hang. For a while. Not too long. But pretty fucking close to too long. “If what, sir? I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong exactly.”
“I’m not sure what you’ve done wrong exactly, either!” Security chuckles. “All I know is, I’ve got a drone in the trunk of my cruiser that shows signs of having been bashed up good with a rock or something. And not just knocked down, either—the camera processor is smashed all to shit, and it’s missing all its recent data. So no accident. Someone knocked the thing down and then gave it a goddamn lobotomy. And just guess, Private, where we found it.”
“I have no idea, sir.”
“Come on. Don’t you want to guess?”
“I couldn’t even begin to guess.”
“Come on, Private! Use that thick battle helmet you got there.” He raps me on the top of the head with his knuckles.
I stand up. Even I know it’s not my best idea.
It’s not going to be a fight. I’ve amazed even myself at how quickly I’ve let my combat conditioning deteriorate, but I know better than to hit back when he delivers an elbow to my side hard enough to break ribs. He’s got the weight advantage, and he’s wrapped his other hand around the fist of his jabbing arm to drive the elbow back in, again, again. Even this, somehow, is better than being knuckleheaded. Better to be forcibly restrained than to sit on a bench being made to look like a chump.
While I’m doubled over: Elbow to the back, right between the shoulder blades. Down I go.
Of course, I reflect, as my chin hits the sidewalk and my teeth snap together, this is exactly what he was after all along.
He’s yanking my arms behind my back and slapping on restraints.
The thing is, I feel fine—I feel better than fine. I can see perfectly, there’s no horrible scent stuck in my craw, no stars crowding the space between my eyes, no static or shrieking hiss in my ears.
Which explains, I suppose, why I can still hear him talking. Incredibly, the whole time he’s elbow-jabbing me—and, ah, there it is, the first kick, right above my hip as I’m lying facedown on the sidewalk, and it won’t be the last—he’s lecturing me, about, of all things, what’s wrong with my generation: “—the biggest problem you kids these days have isn’t quote-unquote Security brutality, and it isn’t the Marriage Protection Laws, and it isn’t even the goddamn Wars, although you all just loooove to whine and make your excuses. You know what your biggest problem is?” He drags me up onto the sidewalk, gets a knee under my belly. “You’re a bunch of entitled brats who don’t even know how much we’ve already lost, and you’re too self-centered to pick up your nads and try to do something about it. Your generation was supposed to have ended the Wars by now! You’ve got the greatest combat weapons technology humankind has ever devised over there, and you still can’t contain those raider terrorists so we can deliver enough engineered water to sustain what’s left of our cities!” A body slam against the side of the shelter. “Oh, but don’t worry, it’s not like your mothers and fathers and sisters and grandparents are depending on you!” Elbow jab to the small of the back. “No, you know what? You should come on back home. Mope around, process your combat trauma and your PTSD. Sit on street corners drunk, like a bunch of twats, instead of staying on the line and defending your post. We don’t exactly have an endless supply of able-bodied men anymore, in case you hadn’t noticed, dipshit.” Another stomach jab. “But don’t worry—when you and your generation of sad-sack clowns get tired of fighting to preserve what’s left of our quality of life, guys like me will rise up.” Assorted plain-vanilla jabs to the face and ribs here. He seems to favor coming in from the right. “That’s right, us older guys—the ones who’ve been patrolling the streets and protecting your families while you’ve been over there wasting triggers on desert rats. Us guys, the ones who’ve devoted our whole lives to protecting what’s left of these sinking cities, we’re gonna rise up and raise hell. I don’t even care if it’s a draft by then—let ’em come and draft me! I say, please, let me take a post. Give me a weapon and let me defend my country and my people. Let me show you how a real man does it. And you know what, son? The Wars will be over in six months. You mark my words. Bring a force of a couple thousand New Cities Security in to replace you sad-sack depressed entitled little shits, and we will Get. It. Done. We will destroy anything or anybody who threatens our survival.”
The Completionist Page 10
