“Okay,” Christopher says, looking at the vial swinging in front of him. “I await your brilliant strategy, big brother.”
“We put some of my blood in here,” Gabriel says. “Then, we put this around your neck.”
Christopher looks doubtful.
“Think about it,” Gabriel says. “If you saw a human, and that human had a vial on him that had something in it that you knew could dissolve your sorry ass in mere seconds, would you mess with him?” He doesn’t wait for an answer and instead puts his index finger in the air. “No. No, you would not. That is why you need to wear this. Just the sight of the blood in the vial, and you’re good. The squid will keep their distance and give us room to roam. That’s our plan.”
Gabriel grabs a utility knife and pricks his finger. He grimaces as he squeezes drop after drop of blood into the vial. Pretty soon he’s got what looks like a beautiful, deep red ruby necklace. He replaces the lid, puts his finger in his mouth and holds the vial out with the other hand to Christopher, who takes it.
“So,” Christopher says, “Do I just walk up and hold out this vial and announce, ‘Hi, I’m Christopher, and this here is really bad for you so back off’?”
“Nah,” Gabriel says, shaking his hand out. “No need. Any Tromindox that sees people’s blood being displayed conspicuously like that is going to assume it’s from a Silverwood. I wish we had a syringe to put it in, like the one Kate uses, but this is what we’re working with. We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got. Just make sure it stays out and visible. You’ll be good. Plus, you’ll be with me right? And I’m like a walking Tromindox bomb. They all know it.”
Gabriel starts packing up all the gear he threw on the ground, including his coffee, which he downs before tossing the cup in the bag too. “Now, my friend, it’s time to get moving and locate our digital friend T-441.”
The first people to go digital were war veterans and victims of violent crimes or disfiguring accidents. Damaged beyond recognition, they lost their identity. But then someone discovered a method by which to create a digital face, based on a person’s original face, and an industry was born. Now people without faces could wear a state of the art display that gave them a complete set of their own expressions, the ability to talk like a real person again… going digital gave many people their lives and their identities back.
It didn’t take long for the plastic surgery racket to take notice. Soon women and men displeased with the ravages of time could acquire for themselves a younger, more vibrant face. Never mind that their bodies didn’t match and how that difference became more and more unsettling as time passed. Plenty of people were content just to talk to a pretty face regardless of who could be found behind it. The number of procedures skyrocketed. Bank accounts filled up for some people while they emptied out for others.
Next, of course, came the mob, and the witness protection program, and anyone else who could use a little altered identity. It was no small thing to go digital; the government was quick to get in on the act and regulate it… and to take their cut. But for the right price, a new face could be had. One that would never change. Unless it was reprogrammed, of course. This was the true beauty of the technology.
The digital face wrapped around the front of the skull, like a smooth mask. It had a high-resolution display fused to the head, and pulled 3-D facial information right out of one’s brain and nervous system. Eyebrow twitches, crinkly smiles, even tears became possible. From the side you could even make out a profile. Add hair or a wig or a hat, and you had a very realistic, digital doll.
And who invented this amazing procedure, a procedure that became indispensable to people as soon as they learned it existed?
The Tromindox did. Of course, this fact is hardly surprising.
The Tromindox were in the business of absorbing people and feeding off their thoughts. And while shape shifting helped them hunt, it was by no means foolproof. People tended to stay away from the ratty-looking humanoids. They didn’t look right. The Tromindox knew it; they needed a new way to blend in.
Enter the digital face.
The Tromindox didn’t try out this experiment on themselves at first. They let their prey adopt the new technology, so they might become accustomed to the idea of digital faces in the crowd. Once this sight became routine for humans, the Tromindox knew they could do it themselves and move about unnoticed.
The digital face required an enormous amount of data from the brain, nerves, and DNA of the wearer in order to function. This was no mask; this was you. A real you, preserved in pixels. It could recreate the way you raised your eyebrow, twitched your lip, expressed a change in mood. Everything. The face connected to your very being. Intertwined. Completely you.
Unless, of course, it was someone else.
A black market digital face was costly, but worth it if there was a price on your head. People who had gone digital couldn’t work for the government or in any position that required security because that was far too risky. Going digital was a one-way trip.
Since taking the portals from the Council, Tromindox T-441 somehow found the time to go digital. This will make him very hard to identify. No doubt this was part of his plan.
Gabriel and Christopher are not tracking 441, though. They are instead following the stolen portals, dots moving across the map they received from the Chairman.
This plan seems to be working well, though the two men have to keep moving at all times and occasionally their path leads them straight across a crevasse or through a body of water. But over the several hours they have tracked the portals, they have not lost any ground.
Until Gabriel stops walking and says, “Oh, no.”
“What?” Christopher asks, coming up next to his brother and looking over his shoulder.
The dots representing the portals are disappearing from the map, one by one.
“No, no, no!” Gabriel shouts. He paces back and forth, holding the display out in front of him. “No!”
Gabriel drops his hands, the light sheet at his side. He looks at his brother with the look of a kid whose ball has gone over the neighbor’s fence.
“The portals are gone. We’ve lost him.”
“Let me see that,” Christopher says. He reaches down and takes the display from his brother’s hand. He holds it up in front of him, turns it around a couple of times. He tilts it back and forth. He even holds it up toward the sun and looks through it. “What the hell?” he says. “What are we supposed to do with this? Is this your Chairman friend’s idea of a joke?”
“Aw man,” Gabriel says. He has dropped his pack on the ground and begun pacing and pulling his hair back tight from his face. Christopher always tells Gabriel that he’ll get a receding hairline by pulling like that.
“The portal signatures are fading for some reason,” Gabriel says. “I don’t know why. Maybe the Tromindox have figured out how to mute them. What if they are gone for good? Crap.”
“Well,” Christopher says, “let’s make note of the exact spot where they disappeared and head for that location. Maybe there will be evidence there as to what happened. Or maybe they will reappear, who knows?”
“This makes no sense,” Gabriel continues, as if Christopher hasn’t said anything. “Portals can’t all disappear at the same time like that. They leave an echo, always. Even if the Tromindox did use them all at once. There would be a trace. Unless, of course, this stupid map is sending us a faulty signal. Or we’re being misled and walked into a trap. There’s no shortage of people on that Council who would love to knock off all the Silverwoods, one by one.”
“Well, this is what we’ve got to go on; the last known position of the portals. Right?” Christopher repeats himself, hoping his brother will hear him this time.
Gabriel is not pleased. He knew he was taking a huge risk by cutting a deal with the Chairman. But that’s the art of deals: make the other person feel as if they have no choice. That’s what the Chairman did, what he always does. When the two of them spoke, Gabriel f
elt like he had no other choice but to go along, with the hope of finally locating his family in space and time. But the deal is changing already. The portals are inexplicably disappearing, and this is looking like a fool’s errand.
Gabriel feels like an idiot. His family’s faces gather in his mind, seeming farther away from him than ever. His wife’s hand, the hair on top of his son’s head. All out of reach.
Gabriel retrieves his pack from the ground and swings it onto his back. He looks at his brother. For a guy with a stupid haircut, Christopher can be really level-headed. “Yes, Chris, that’s what we’ve got to go on,” he says, and the two of them head off down the mountain toward the location where the portals disappeared, their boots sliding in the mud and leaves. “In case this is a dead-end, let’s pay attention and be sure we’re not followed.”
“We’re being followed,” Kate says, peering into the rearview mirror mounted on the driver’s side door of the station wagon. Fortunately, the road in front of them is straight or she would have driven right off it by now.
Helen looks up from the glove compartment, where she has rewired the bulb to make a tiny strobe light. She twists around in her seat to look through the back window. She can’t see around the trailer so she cranes her neck to get a view in the mirror. “Really?”
Henry instinctively scrunches his head down as if to hide in the back seat.
“Don’t look back at them, Helen,” Kate says. “Let’s not make it easy to identify us.”
“Well if they’re following us, I think we’ve already been identified, don’t you think?” Helen says. She shoves the glove compartment door shut to stop the blinking.
“Maybe they’ve got the wrong people,” Henry says, hopefully. Clarence the dog sleeps on the seat, oblivious.
Helen leans behind her mother and looks into the mirror again. About fifty yards behind the Country Squire, in the fast lane, a black motorcycle cruises along matching their speed. The rider is dressed entirely in black with a smooth, featureless helmet. Kate slows down, and the motorcycle slows down. She speeds up (as much as you can speed up a two-ton station wagon towing a trailer); the motorcycle waits a few beats, and then speeds up too.
“What is it they say about how to tell if you’re being followed… ” Kate mutters, scanning through her memory of her most recent agent training. What was that technique? Oh, right, that’s right…
Up ahead, a small exit angles off the highway. It’s a spot to pause and stretch your legs or let out the dog. There’s nothing there really to justify an exit—a little ramp off the road, a view of some grass, and then another ramp back on.
Kate waits until the last second and veers onto the exit ramp. Dust flies up behind them, obscuring their view. They pull to a stop and sit still, still watching the mirror on the left side of the car.
The motorcycle speeds by with a roar of its engine—making everyone jump, except the sleeping dog—and disappears ahead.
Kate takes a deep breath. “Alright, let’s get back onto the road and see what happens.”
“What do you mean, ‘see what happens?’” Henry says. “It went by. Just, zoomed right on by. Like we’re not even here. That means it’s not following us, right? It’s up ahead, now.” To Henry this makes perfect sense. You can’t follow someone from in front. It’s a proven fact.
“Not necessarily,” Kate says. “You’d have to be an idiot to just pull off whenever we do. That would give you away. So he’ll probably go on for a few miles and then sit on the side of the road and wait for us.”
“Or, not. Right? Maybe not?” Henry says. This unidentified motorcyclist has made him very nervous. He grips Clarence’s ear. Clarence lets out a sigh but remains asleep.
Kate pulls the vehicle and its cargo back up onto the freeway, and eventually they drag their bulk up to full speed.
“Helen, you watch, okay?” Kate says.
“Okay.” Helen leans her elbow on the passenger door and watches. She watches lots and lots of grass and shrubs go by. Nothing big enough to hide a motorcycle. The black color alone would stand out against the yellow-gray landscape. Every so often there’s a broken fencepost, or a shed far off in the distance. But no motorcycle. Her mind begins to wander back to rewiring the glove compartment, but she restrains herself from messing with it.
A mile of freeway passes; then another mile—it would be difficult to hide in a landscape made up of basically nothing. Especially if you are a shiny black motorcycle. And there is none in sight. Helen wonders how far a motorcycle can go on a tank of gas.
“Dammit!” Kate yells, causing Helen and Henry both to jump partway out of their seats. “There it is again. In the rearview mirror. How did we not see it?”
“I didn’t see it,” Helen says.
“I know, Helen,” her mom says. “It’s not your fault. This guy is good.”
“Or, he just stopped to use the bathroom or something,” Henry says, always hopeful, from the back seat.
“He—or she, or it—obviously doesn’t care if we know it’s there,” Helen says. “Just right out there like that.”
“No, apparently not,” her mom agrees. Kate peers at their pursuer, trying to identify this person with no face, no color, no features. Could it be another bounty hunter, hoping to take her out of commission? Were they followed all the way from the city?
“That’s it,” Helen says. “This person owes us an explanation.”
“Helen!” Henry cries. He knows exactly what Helen is going to do. He is firmly against her doing it.
Helen reaches up to grab the luggage rack and swings out so she is sitting in the passenger window looking across the roof of the car at the motorcyclist.
“Hit the brakes!” Helen yells into the car.
“Are you holding on?” Kate says.
“Helen! What if he’s armed?” Henry shouts into the noise of the open window.
“Are you holding on Helen?” Kate says again.
“Yes! Hit the brakes!” Helen says.
Kate hits the brakes, bringing their motorcycle friend abruptly even with them.
“Hey, you! What do you want? What are you doing? Bug off!” Helen screams. She would make gestures, but she’s busy gripping the luggage rack with both hands. Her voice flies out of her mouth and whips away on the wind, totally inaudible. But her facial expression visible through her hair is unmistakably hostile.
In response the motorcycle drops back to a greater distance behind them. Here they are again, cruising along together down the highway. Nothing has changed. Helen lowers herself back into the car.
“Could you see anything?” Kate asks, trying her best to move past the fact that her daughter just climbed halfway out of a moving vehicle. Maybe Helen is more like her father than Kate previously thought. That is exactly what Gabriel would have done in this situation.
“Nah,” Helen says. She reaches down and opens the glove compartment. The strobe light resumes flashing. Helen pulls out a wire and the blinking mercifully stops.
“Ideas?” Kate says to her children.
“Lose ‘em,” Henry suggests.
“Can’t get up enough speed,” Kate says.
“Run ‘em over,” Henry says.
“I don’t see a good reason to commit murder today,” Kate says.
“True, forget that,” Henry says.
They ride along for a long minute, and then another, their companion still off their left side and back a hundred meters or so.
“Well, if we don’t want this guy accompanying us all the way to Brokeneck, whatever his motives, we’ll have to make a change and see what happens,” Kate says.
“Like, what kind of…” Henry asks.
Kate yanks the steering wheel to the right and the car and trailer swerve off the freeway and into the dusty terrain. The tires pound over the desert, sending everyone airborne with each bump.
“Is he still there?” Henry yells.
“Can’t tell, too much dust,” Kate replies. The scenery behind t
hem has disappeared entirely behind a brown cloud.
“Okay, it’s about time we have a talk with whoever this is,” Kate says.
She yanks the steering wheel again, this time to the left, sending the heavy station wagon into a spin and throwing out another plume of dust and rocks. The car comes to a rest facing their pursuer head-on.
That’s the moment that they hear the snapping sound.
The attachment that held the trailer to the back of the station wagon is not doing so any more. The trailer flies off at a crazy angle, sideways, spinning around and around and rolling over, until it totally disappears. Silence.
And then, a distant crashing sound. Then another, followed by echoes of the distant crashing sounds. Finally, more silence. The only evidence of the trailer having existed is the thin veil of dust that remains hanging in the air.
Kate, Helen and Henry climb out of the car and stand staring, dumbfounded, after the trailer. It would appear that everything they own just ceased to exist. But how?
No. No way. Not possible. Unless…
They all run forward, thinking the same thing.
About thirty yards away, the ground drops off into a deep canyon. Invisible in the grey and gold terrain, the canyon has swallowed the trailer whole. The trailer now exists for the Silverwoods only as a shiny speck—lying at the bottom of a huge expanse. A faraway hawk cries.
Kate, Helen, and Henry stand on the edge, very still. Nobody dares to look sideways at anyone else.
“There’s a cliff, there,” Helen says.
“Yup,” Henry says. “Right there.”
More silence.
Finally Kate turns, slowly, away from the canyon that ate all her belongings. She looks up at the motorcyclist, who has pulled up about fifty feet away and now sits with his engine idling. Now that they can finally see their pursuer clearly, they make out the digital displays running across the front of the helmet. Every few seconds, like a stereo, tiny lights move up, and then down. Almost like… a heartbeat.
Helen and Henry watch their mom closely.
“Mom?” Helen says.
Silverwood Page 10
