“Where are we?”
“Listen. And breathe.”
We sat without moving, and then she smiled when she heard it: seagulls and the slosh of water against a quay. We could smell the ocean. Wonsan port was close. I lifted her to her feet and we did our best to brush off the dirt, walking into the sunlight and moving toward the sound of water until within a few minutes we stood outside a gate, beyond which a line of cargo ships waited, moored to their piers and sitting calmly as men worked to load them, offload them, or drop the lines that kept them in place, stuck against a pier. A man sat on a chair near the rusted portal. Margaret said something and they talked for a while before he finally stood, swinging the gate wide. We passed through, and even before the thing clanked shut behind us I knew that we had nothing to fear from the North Koreans. It was too late for them to catch us. And I was about to laugh when down the quay a group of men walked toward us, their hair short and skin deeply tanned so that it contrasted even against the dark khaki of their uniforms. I yanked Margaret to the side, pulling her behind a forklift where we waited for them to pass. At first she was about to say something but I motioned for her to be quiet. The men walked slowly. They didn’t say anything, but between the forklift’s roll bar and seat I saw them searching the quay, and each one rested a hand on the butt of a flechette pistol. We didn’t move out until they disappeared.
“Americans?” she asked.
“Yes. What did the Korean at the gate say?”
She pointed to a ship whose sailors were about to move the gangplank away on huge rollers, the boat’s Korean name emblazoned in white. “The Songdowon. Headed for Bangkok and due to leave in ten minutes.”
I fingered the gold bars in my pocket and prayed they would be enough. We ran up the gangway and into a group of startled Koreans. Margaret said something to them, hurriedly, and one of them escorted us through a maze of narrow passageways where we had to duck through more small doorways than I could count, before finally we reached the bridge—its bulkheads covered with computers and screens, and speakers blaring with multiple Korean voices. The man said something to his captain, who looked us up and down and then muttered.
Margaret pulled out her hand, showing him the gold. “He wants to see it,” she said to me, “show him.”
When I did, their eyes went wide. At first I thought we had done something wrong because the Captain flew into a fit, dashing over to one of the radios and yelling into it. Margaret must have seen the look on my face because she grabbed my shoulder, holding me back.
“It’s OK, Murderer. He’s telling his men to hurry it up and cast off, and to forget about waiting for one last container that was due to arrive an hour ago.”
“Why?”
“I guess,” said Margaret, smiling, “that gold is worth a lot more than we realized.”
Something occurred to me then, and I grabbed Margaret’s coveralls. “Tell him I want paper. A lot of it. And some pens.”
She squinted at me. “Why?”
“Just do it.”
Margaret spoke to the captain and he nodded, laughing at the same time he answered.
“He said paper is expensive, but not that expensive, and you can have all you want. And his own personal pen, just as soon as they get underway. Murderer,” she said, and then started crying and laughing at the same time. “We made it.”
I saw a statue out the bridge window, in the middle of a public square below us off the quay; it was a winged horse that leapt from its base, taking flight.
“What is that?” I asked. The captain saw me pointing and said something as Margaret translated.
“That is a relic. A leftover from worthless North Koreans who were too stupid to realize the truth.”
“But what is it?” I persisted.
“It is Chollima. The winged horse. North Korea promised its people that if they worked sixteen hours a day, anything would be possible, even to fly.”
ELEVEN
A Warmer Clime
Blessed are they who follow his commandments, for they will find a tree of life, and will enter through the gates of His city.
MODERN COMBAT MANUAL REVELATIONS 22:17
We stayed in our room. It reminded me of the scout car, but neither Margaret nor I wanted to give the Korean sailors more time to examine us, to recall any of a hundred ads they had seen on holos or video posters among the millions in downtown Wonsan that showed the generic face of my sisters—warning everyone to report suspected sightings. The men on the dock haunted my thoughts, and I dedicated at least a day to considering our options. If they had been sent to search for us specifically, they would have spoken with the guard already, who probably told them about the two women looking for transport to Thailand. We should have killed him. But then that wouldn’t have solved it either because as soon as they found the body they’d go after any ship that had left port. Why the Songdowon hadn’t been boarded yet was a mystery, but judging from the sun outside our porthole it still headed in the general direction of Thailand and at constant speed. I didn’t care if they boarded anyway. But for Margaret it was a different story; she hadn’t chosen the same path as me, still had a road to travel before she came to the same conclusions I had. And maybe she never would. For me, the path was almost done, and I knew it because I saw the ending now, the logical conclusion to everything I had learned, and there was no more fear of it, only a recognition that one last thing had to be done.
I wrote. Margaret busied herself with exercise and sleep while I scratched on the sheets of paper the Koreans had loaned me, the pen giving my fingers cramps until I finally grew accustomed to the motions.
“What are you writing?” she asked. It was the third day of our trip and only a few days remained until we would dock in Bangkok.
“About my life. What there was of it.”
She laughed. “You speak as though it’s already over, Catherine, when it’s only just begun. Once we arrive at Bangkok you’ll see; our sisters will find us, and we’ll be among family again.”
It wasn’t the right time to tell her, so I grinned. “You may be right, Margaret. But anything can happen at sea, and I want to be prepared.”
“You think they’re after us.”
“Can you swim well?” I asked.
Margaret looked at me quizzically. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just tell me. Can you swim well, have you recovered from everything or do you need more rest?”
“I can swim. I’m fine, we’ve gotten nothing but rest lately.”
I nodded, and returned to my work. “The night before we dock, I want you to jump overboard and swim for land. You should make it, and even if you miss Thailand it shouldn’t be hard for you to make it there on your own, from wherever you reach shore.”
“But where are you going?” Margaret asked. She approached behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you remember the test? The final one, when we killed our pets?”
Margaret nodded. “It was a true test, and looking back I see why they did it.”
“I remember mine too. And I just remembered what happened next, for the first time in years, and it didn’t come as a hallucination or as a result of spoiling. I remembered.”
Our Group Mother concentrated on her tablet, smiling as the numbers came in and told her my story. She glanced up at me and her smile disappeared. “Catherine. I think you twisted too hard.”
“Excuse me, Mother?”
“Look down.”
I did as she told me and saw that the cat’s head had come off from my twisting it, so that it now lay in two pieces, its blood running down my forearm. I laughed.
“I’m sorry, Mother. But did I pass?”
“You passed. Discard the carcass in the can by the APC and join your sisters.”
I was about to leave when a thought occurred to me. “Can I keep the head?” I asked.
“Why on earth would you want to do that?”
�
��When the flesh decays, I can glue the skull to my helmet. It will strike fear in my enemies.”
“You can keep it,” she said, and turned to the remaining girls. “Next.”
My sisters all grinned at the cat-head when I boarded the APC, all except for Megan, who frowned. There was no point in explaining it. Megan would see when we arrived in war, how the gesture would make men hesitate before firing, give me time to fill them with the wisdom of my flechettes as they focused on the tiny skull, the one that prophesized their death.
It took less than a day to reach our staging point, where they loaded us onto ships for the last leg, and then a week before our APCs jumped into the water, submerging completely and then popping up with a shriek to head for Bandar’s beaches. Our heads-up relayed images from the vehicle cameras. Ahead of us we saw the flashes of guns that fired from the city, and the billowing clouds of smoke that rose from ruined buildings, every once in a while punctuated by the flash of plasma as our ships fired continuously at our enemies. The landing would be hot, as predicted. Megan sat beside me and I shook my Maxwell at her.
“We are warriors, my Lily. Soon the APC will let us into battle where everything will unfold as it should, as we have been taught.”
“I know, Catherine.”
But I saw that she still wouldn’t smile. “Then what’s troubling you?”
Megan tried to smile but it was a feeble one, and her face went red from embarrassment.
“Tell me,” I insisted.
“Your skull. The one glued to your helmet.”
I had forgotten about it, and now laughed with an added excitement, the fact that soon I would see if it worked. “But why would that bother you?”
“Because I didn’t think of it. I’m jealous. It should have been me to make a gesture like that, and yet here you are, a proven killer to our enemies before any of us have fired a single shot.”
I didn’t get a chance to respond, but felt horrible. It hadn’t occurred to me that Megan could get jealous, since she had won the title of Lily and the ultimate honor of command. The sounds of water disappeared and the power increased to our wheels as we felt land beneath us, the APC’s plasma cannon pounding every few seconds to shake our tiny compartment with each shot. When the floor finally dropped out from beneath us, we dropped into wet sand.
Targets filled my heads-up. Without thinking we rolled from under the APC and moved up the beach toward a concrete bulwark, behind which the figures of Iranians popped up to shoot. An autocannon sent its flechettes to howl by, sounding like angry insects before they popped and crackled against the ceramic armor of our APC, and I had to will my nerves to calm so my aim would steady. It wasn’t fear. The excitement of my first battle had induced a level of anticipation that was now impossible to control until finally, after missing with several shots, I screamed and jumped up, kicking sand into the air with each step as I ran in slow motion, cutting the distance between me and the concrete bulwark. A rage had filled me, burning with an intensity that was un-ignorable and which gave me the strength to reach the fortification in seconds. There I hid in defilade, the lip of the wall a meter over my head. Iranians shouted at one another directly above me. I lobbed a grenade over, and then followed it with three more, waiting for them to detonate before I leapt upward, grabbing the top, then letting my Maxwell hang by its flexi so I could heave myself over and land in the middle of ten dead soldiers. There were children among them. Boys my age. Some of them were alive and screamed, but others lifted their weapons to fire and I took their lives, the Maxwell swinging into my hands with such speed that they never had a chance to pull their triggers. Our own plasma, from the APCs, exploded on either side. It was easy to ignore the danger. This was a killing ground, a holy place, and if God intended for me to go out with friendly fire then it was His order to me that as many should be taken before my turn came, sending me through the concrete trench line in a sprint, firing from the hip at anything living or dead. Time melted into a frenzy of images, of men and women running toward the city, so they made easy targets for artillery and disappeared in clouds of brilliant gas. When it was over we sat among the blood and laughed.
“You are fearless,” Megan said to me. We kissed and the others grinned, a few threatening that if we didn’t swear off love they would turn us in. But they were joking. When we finished, Megan’s smile faded and she pointed at my helmet. “The cat skull is gone, Catherine, I’m sorry.”
But I screamed with joy and when everyone stopped laughing explained to her, “I can kill without it.”
“I understand,” said Margaret. “I mean I follow the story, and it must have been glorious to have spent time in the early days, in true combat. But I don’t get your point, Catherine. What does it matter now? What are you trying to say?”
I smiled at her and lay down the pen, tired from having written so many words in the past twenty-four hours that my head pounded.
“I never needed the cat skull. And you don’t need to worry about why you should swim for land. Nothing we do can change God’s plan, and it was He who spoiled my aim and made me furious so that I charged the Iranian defenses, He who took my talisman to show that I didn’t need it. We never found the skull, no trace of it. Everyone can choose to run, Margaret, to pick her own path and even ignore the route God lays at her feet, but it will never feel right. I know this now. You can’t know it, because it takes time to learn, time that has only just begun to pass for you, but which may one day catch up. Someday, if you keep your mind open, you will see it as I have, and will know what you are supposed to do.”
“You’re going to kill them, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Who?”
“The crew. The Korean sailors.”
I laughed at that, the futility of such a gesture, and shook my head. “No, Margaret. I’m going home.” I saw the confusion on her face and wondered how long it would take for the realization to grow in her, if it ever did, and then spoke with patience. “The Americans will board this ship before we dock. You will be gone. I will be here and will return to their cities for discharge, and will never feel the warmer clime of Bangkok. That is for you to feel, but not me.”
Margaret started crying, and then pounded her fist on my table, scattering some of the papers. “But why? You don’t have to do this, Catherine; maybe you’re wrong and Thailand is the answer. Why would you give them a victory after so much effort to run?”
“Because,” I said, “it isn’t their victory. One day you’ll understand, but not today. Just believe me, that I believe this, and swim for it when I tell you to. This is what I have to do to make it all worthwhile.”
I left her there, standing, and climbed into my bunk, pulling only a thin sheet over me because already the temperatures had gotten warmer as we sailed south, and the compartment felt steamy. Her sobs lulled me to sleep then, a sleep so deep that I didn’t dream, one that could only have come from having achieved what had eluded me all these years: acceptance.
The water seemed to glow all around the ship as Margaret and I worked our way up, taking more than an hour to reach the top of the huge stack of shipping containers at the vessel’s stern, where a crane towered over us. We lay on our backs. Even with the ships’ lights we saw the stars clearly, the first chance I’d gotten to look at them since Megan and I had shared a foxhole aboveground, so long ago. Tomorrow we would dock. But there was still time to enjoy a moment or two, and when I found out that Margaret had never seen the stars the obvious thing to do was to show them to her.
“There are so many,” she said.
“Millions. Billions. I heard men talk about them, in the tunnels, and apparently they plan to visit them someday.”
“You lie,” said Margaret.
“It’s true. All these wars are good in a way, they’ve spurred an effort to launch men back into space finally, to mine asteroids and other planets. Already teams are on their way.”
She didn’t say anything, then reached over to hold my hand. “That�
�s what I want to do someday. Go out there and just look at things. Study them.”
“Like a scientist?” I asked.
“Why not?”
I laughed, but quietly since we weren’t supposed to go on deck at night, let alone atop the cargo. “We are killers, Margaret. Not scientists. Only people like Alderson or Lev can be scientists, because they have a way of disconnecting their curiosity from any sense of responsibility or accountability. They are cowards.”
“Still,” she argued. “I think I’d like to try. I don’t want to go through life as a trigger-finger.”
“Well, you’ll have to go to a nonbred school. And you’ll need a last name, because nobody will call you Doctor Margaret.”
We laughed for a bit and then stared some more, the warm air tropical now, so that a sweat broke, making me wish I was the one going for a swim. There was always the danger of sharks, but the calculus was obvious so that even Margaret saw it eventually, that risking sharks was preferable to the certainty of death at American hands. For her, at least. She hadn’t yet understood my motive for staying, but at least she had accepted it and her pleas for me to join her had stopped the day before.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“I think so. How far is it to the water?”
I looked over the edge and felt dizzy from the height; up there, the wake’s waves looked small and white.
“We’ll climb down,” I said, “to the deck, and you can go over the railing. Swim as far from the ship as you can, as soon as you hit the water, and then head northwest.”
Margaret nodded. “I should get started.”
We climbed down the outsides of the containers, and then across them until we hung over the deck before dropping two meters onto it. Margaret landed with a thud beside me. We both looked over the railing then, to our west. Stars silhouetted a black shape on the horizon, which rose from the water in a hump and had a few lights twinkling in its center—an island. We smelled land. It was close now, and Margaret looked at me while her eyes teared. She pulled me in, hugging me tightly for what seemed like five minutes, and by the time she let go she had stopped crying.
Subterrene War 02: Exogene Page 29
