Lucas did call Wade’s old number. But not right away and only twice and both times was surprised by the busy signal. Then he tried after midnight and got thrown straight into voicemail. Which pissed him off. Not that he was hungry for this chat, but it was sure to happen and why did things have to be so difficult?
His phone rang during next morning’s coffee. “You know what surprises me? It’s the strangers who read an obit and think it’s neat, calling you for no reason but to chat. And it’s not just local voices either. This is the big new hobby, I’m learning. Dial the afterlife. Listen to a ghost telling stories.”
“How you doing?” Lucas said.
The backup said, “I’m busy. And that’s a good thing.”
“What’s ‘busy’ mean?”
“Well, I’m running again. For instance.”
“How do you do that?”
“I’ve got video files, and I’ve built all of our favorite courses. The hills, the effort levels. How my body responds to perceived workouts. I can change the weather however I want it. You’d be amazed how real it looks and feels. And the food here doesn’t taste too wrong. Of course the sense of smell needs work, but that’s probably good news. When it’s polypro season.”
Then Wade stopped talking, forcing Lucas to react. “Is that why I’m getting busy signals? You’re making new friends?”
“And talking to people you know.”
“But you’re fast. Computers are. Why can’t you yabber to a thousand mouths at once?”
“Some of my functions are fast. Scary fast, sure. But right now, talking to you, my AI software has to work flat out just to keep up.” Part of the software made lung noises. Wade took a pretend breath, and then he said, “I still need sleep, by the way. Which is why I didn’t pick up last night.”
Lucas didn’t talk.
“So tell me, Lucas. In your head, what am I? A machine, a program, or a man?”
“I don’t know.”
“Actually, I’m none of those things.”
“Because you’re a ghost.”
The laughter rattled on. “No, no. In the eyes of the law, I’m an intellectual foundation. That’s a new kind of trust reserved for backups. I’ve been registered with a friendly nation that has some very compassionate laws, and to maintain my sentient status, I have to keep enough money in the local bank.”
Lucas said nothing.
The silence ended with a big sigh. Then the intellectual foundation said, “So, Lucas? Do you have any idea who killed me?”
A little too quickly, Lucas said, “No.”
Another pause. Then Wade said, “It was a nice funeral.”
“You watched?”
“Several people streamed it to me. You did a nice job, Lucas.”
It was peculiar, how much those words mattered. Lucas took his own breath, real and deep, and then he said, “You know, I am sober.”
“What’s that?”
“Since the party, I haven’t had a taste.”
Uncomfortable sighs kept the silence away. Then a tight quick voice said, “Tell me that in another year. Tell it to me thirty years from today. A couple weeks without being shit-faced? I think it’s early to start calling that good news.”
The lead pack works, but Lucas catches them easily. Legs eat the distance, the lungs blow themselves clean, and he tucks in behind Pete, shortening his stride and measuring their bodies. Nobody talks, but the men trade looks and the group slows, making ready for the next miserable surge.
The levee curls west toward the bypass and dives under the bridge. Jaeger has vanished. He isn’t below, and he’s not up on the highway either. They follow the levee road down, gravel replaced with pale frozen clay. The air turns colder, tasting like wet concrete. Water sounds bounce off the underside of the bridge. Then the road yanks left and starts a long climb.
Jaeger is above them, and then he is gone.
Pete curses. Sweat bleeds through his windbreaker and freezes, a little white forest growing on his back.
Topping the levee, they hold their effort, gaining speed on the flat. But the road is empty. Except nodding brown grass, nothing moves, and there isn’t anybody to chase.
The pack slows.
“Look,” Varner says. “That pipe.”
The sewer pipe is fat and black, jutting out of the levee’s shoulder, a thin trickle of oily runoff dripping. Jaeger stands on the pipe, facing the stream. With his shorts yanked down, he holds himself with both hands, aiming long, urine splashing in the oil.
Pete pulls up. The rest of the group stops behind him, watching. Then Jaeger turns toward them and shakes himself dry before yanking up his underwear and then the shorts.
“Let’s please turn,” says Audrey.
No one else talks.
Jaeger climbs back to the road, watching them.
“Hey, asshole,” says Pete. “Hey.”
The last months have taken a toll. Jaeger’s face remains lean, but wrinkles have worked into his features. The short black hair shows white. He breathes harder than normal. Forty-three years old, and for the first time anyone can recall, he looks his age.
“I don’t like this,” says Masters.
Pete laughs. “What are you worried about?”
Jaeger’s body turns away, but not his face.
“There’s eight of us,” says Pete.
“What’s that mean?” Crouse says.
“Depends,” Pete says, his bulldog face challenging them. “We’re here, and that man is standing over there. And he beat our friend to death with a chunk of concrete.”
Jaeger starts running, the first strides short.
Audrey shakes her head. “What are we doing?”
Sarah knows.
“We’re just following the man,” Sarah says, her voice slow and furious. “Jaeger can’t be in great shape. But we are. So we’ll keep close and talk to him, and maybe he’ll say something true.”
FIVE
Lucas rode to the airport, the chain clicking. A gray-haired woman handed him the entry form, and he filled in the blanks slowly, paying the late fee with two twenties. Then he pinned the race number to his shorts and strapped the chip to his right shoe, and the new T-shirt ended up tied beneath the seat of his bike.
The pre-race mood was quiet, grim. Conversations were brief. Race-day rituals were performed with sluggish discipline. The normally bouncy voice on the PA system growled at the world, warning that only twenty minutes were left until the gun. Bikes don’t get bodies ready to run. Lucas started running easy through the mostly empty parking lots, past a terminal that looked pretty much shut down, and that’s when a tall man stepped from behind an Alleycat Dumpster.
“Pepper.”
Lucas nodded, lifting one hand.
Jaeger fell in beside him. He was wearing racing flats and shorts and a White Sox cap twisted around on his head. Saying nothing, he ran Lucas back to his bike, watching him strip the shirt he wore from home and then tie it to the frame.
“Lose your car?” he said.
“I know where it is.”
“Got fancy jewelry on that ankle, I see.”
Lucas lifted his foot and put it down again. “Jealous?”
“Jail time?”
“If I drink.”
“With your record? They should keep you in a cage for a year.”
“The jail’s full.” Lucas shrugged. “And besides, the case wasn’t strong.”
“No?”
“Maybe I wasn’t driving.” Shame forced his gaze to drop. “Somebody called the hotline, but it was a busy night. One cop spotted my car and flashed her lights, and my car pulled up and a white male galloped off between the houses.”
“That cop chase after the driver?”
“On foot, but she couldn’t hang on.”
“I bet not,” Jaeger said, laughing.
“A second cruiser found me half a mile away, while he was investigating a burglary. Just happened to trip over me.”
Lucas’s phone
started to ring.
“I don’t know how you run with those machines,” Jaeger said. “Mine’s an old foldable, and I put it away sometimes.”
Lucas opened the line.
“Five minutes,” said Wade.
“Five minutes,” said the public address voice.
Wade said, “How do you feel?”
“Talk to you later, okay?” Lucas hung up.
Jaeger was watching him and the phone. He didn’t ask who called, but when Lucas looked at him, the man offered what might have been a smile, shy and a little sorry.
“See you out there. Okay, Pepper?”
The levee twists to the southeast, ending at the park’s north border. Hold that road, and Jaeger will work his way back into town. Any reasonable man would do that. But as soon as he hits Foster Lane, Jaeger jumps right and surges. And just to be sure that everyone understands, he throws back a little sneer as he crosses Ash Creek.
Pete and Varner are leading, milking the speed from their legs. Audrey is beside Lucas, but she won’t chase anymore. Arms drop and her stride shortens. “You can’t catch him,” she says.
“Watch us,” says Pete.
“Then what?” she says.
Nobody answers. They make Foster and turn together, bunching up as they cross the rusted truss bridge. Pounding feet make the old steel shiver, and the wind cuts sideways, sweaty faces aching.
“I can’t run this fast,” Sarah says.
“Nobody can,” says Crouse.
Up ahead, past the bridge, the road yanks to the left, placing itself between the water and tangled second-growth woods. They watch Jaeger striding out, and then Masters says, “We’ve got to slow down.”
But Pete has a plan. “If he runs the trails, we’ll cut him off.”
“He won’t,” Audrey says. “That would be stupid.”
They come off the bridge, and Pete slows. “We’ll split up,” he says. “Fast legs chase, the rest wait up ahead.”
Jaeger is pushing his lead.
“A turnoff’s coming,” Lucas says.
“Half a mile up,” says Gatlin. “The park entrance.”
“No, it’s there,” he says. “Soon.”
And just like that, Jaeger turns right, leaping over a pile of gray gravel before diving into the brush. Two long strides and he becomes this pale shape slipping in and out of view, and with another stride, he’s gone.
Varner curses.
“Run ahead or chase,” says Pete.
Sarah and Masters fall back. And Crouse. Then Audrey says, “No,” to somebody and drops away too.
Pete and Varner accelerate, Gatlin falling in behind them. Lucas holds his pace, looking at his feet, measuring the life in his legs. Then he slips past everybody and yanks himself to the right, plunging into the bare limbs. The others miss the tiny trail and overshoot. Alone, Lucas drops off the roadbed, following a rough little path to where it joins up with the main trail—a wide slab of black earth and naked roots that bends west and plunges.
Gravity takes him. Lifting his feet, Lucas aims for smooth patches of frozen ground, dancing over roots and little gullies. Then the trail flattens, trees replaced by a forest of battered cattails.
Lucas slows, breathes.
The others chug up behind. “I don’t see him,” says Varner.
Far ahead, an ancient cottonwood lies dead on its side—a ridge of white wood stripped of bark, shining in the chill sunshine. Before anyone else, Lucas sees the black ball cap streaking behind the tree, and he surges again, nothing easier in the world than making long legs fly.
“Five minutes,” said the rumbling PA voice. But a minute later he said, “No, folks. We’re going to have a short delay.”
People assumed that a plane was coming, which was a rare event and every eye looked skyward. Except nothing was flying on that hot September morning. Lucas lined up next to Audrey, toes at the start line. Pete and Gatlin and Varner were on the other side of her. Crouse was a few rows back with Masters. Sarah was missing, and Lucas couldn’t see Jaeger anymore. Like a puppy, Harris sprinted out onto the empty runway and trotted back again. Then he wasted another burst of speed, and Pete said, “What lottery did we lose and get him?”
Laughter came from everywhere, and then it collapsed.
Carl Jaeger had appeared. Where he was hiding was a mystery, but he was suddenly standing at the line. He had come here to race. Inside himself, the man was making ready for the next ten kilometers. Forty-plus years old and nobody could remember him losing to a local runner. It was an astonishing record demanding conditioning and focus and remarkable luck. Staring at the tape in front of his left toes, he didn’t seem to notice the detectives pushing under the barricade, coming at him with handcuffs at the ready.
“Keep your hands where we can see them,” said the lead cop.
Jaeger’s legs tensed, long calves twitching. He looked up, saying, “You don’t want me.” Then he looked down, staring at the gray pavement, and talking to his feet, he said, “Just let me run this. Just let me.”
SIX
The trail leaps out of the marsh and flattens, fading into a lawn of clipped brown grass. Stone summer-camp buildings have been abandoned for the winter, every door padlocked and plywood sheets screwed into every window. Lucas holds his line, and the buildings fall away. Then the trail is under him again, yanking to the left, and the clearing ends with trees and a deep gully and a narrow bridge made from oak planks and old telephone poles.
Habit keeps him on the trail. Seepage has pooled at the bottom and frozen on top, and the ice is broken where Jaeger’s right foot must have planted. The muddy water is still swirling. Lucas cuts his stride. His legs decide to jump early. He knows that he won’t reach the far bank, and his lead foot hits and breaks through, and he flings his other leg forward, dragging the trailing foot out of the muck before it’s drenched.
The effort slows him, and the next slope is dark and very slick and slow, and that’s how the others pass him.
Shoes drum on the oak planks. Pete is up ahead, hollering a few words that end with a question mark.
“What?” Lucas says.
Varner slows, looking down at him. “Where is he?”
Then Pete says, “Got him.”
Lucas is on the high ground again. The woods are young and closely packed, the trail winding through the little trees until it seems as if there is no end to them. Then everybody dives again, back down into the cattails. Jaeger is a gray shape catching the sunshine. Bent forward a little too much, he swings his arms to help drive his legs, attacking the next rise.
A second cottonwood lies in the bottoms, the trunk and heavy roots made clean and simple by years of rot.
“Short cut,” says Lucas.
Pete says some little word. He and Varner are suffering, pitching forward long before they reach the slope. Only Gatlin looks smooth, his tiny frame floating out into the lead.
Lucas steers left, meaning to leap the tree, but he doesn’t have the lift, the juice. His lead foot hits and he grabs at the wood with the mittens, then the trailing foot clips the trunk and slows him. He stops, looking down from a place where he’s never been before. A thin old trail leads up the middle of the cattails. He jumps down and runs it, alone again.
A distant voice drifts past. No word makes sense. Then the only sound is the wind high above and the pop of his feet. Lucas’s face drips. Still running, he pulls off the mittens and bunches them together and shoves them into his tights.
Again, voices find him.
To his right, motion.
Jaeger appears on the high ground, body erect, the stride relaxed. He looks like a man riding an insurmountable lead. Watching nothing but the trail ahead, he dives back into the bottoms, slowing a little, and Lucas surges and meets him where the trails merge. Looking over his shoulder, Jaeger gives a little jump. “No,” he says. And a big nervous laugh rolls out of him.
Lucas tucks in close. Again the trail climbs out of the marsh. And when Jaeger rises
in front of him, Lucas reaches down, catching an ankle, yanking it toward the sky.
Jaeger falls, one hand slapping the frozen earth.
Grabbing the other ankle, Lucas says, “Run.”
Jaeger kicks at him.
“What are you doing?” Lucas says. “You’re an idiot. Run the hell out of here. Are you listening to me?”
Voices drift close. Varner says, “Pepper,” and Pete says, “We got him,” and that’s when Jaeger scrambles to his feet. His eyes are wild, fiery. With a matching voice, he says, “What do you know.” Not a question, just a string of flat hard words. Then he runs, his right leg wobbling. But the stride recovers, and that endless strength carries him off while Lucas watches, hoping for the best.
The others catch up and stop, bending to breathe.
“Good idea,” says Pete.
Varner says, “What’d he tell you?”
Lucas looks at the butcher’s gloves on his hands and puts his hands down, and Gatlin says, “Did you hurt him?”
“No,” says Lucas.
“Too bad,” Varner says. “Next time, break his legs.”
Voices come through the trees. A woman shouts; a man speaks. Then the woman shouts again, her voice scary-angry and making no sense. Lucas surges, pulling away from the others. Wide and carpeted with rotted wood chips, the main trail points south, climbing a final little slope up onto Foster Lane. Jaeger has already passed. Masters stands in the middle of the road, hands on hips. Sarah is closest to him. “Do nothing,” she says. “Just do nothing.”
Masters says something soft.
She says, “God,” and swats the air with her mittens.
Masters looks at Lucas, cheeks red and his mouth tiny, some wicked embarrassment twisting his guts.
“Asshole, run,” says Crouse. The man is angry, but only to a point. A sports fan yelling at the enemy team, he cups his hands around his mouth. “We’re chasing you, asshole.”
Nobody moves.
Pete staggers up to the road, face dripping. Varner and Gatlin cross it and stop at the mouth of the next trail, and Gatlin points. “There.”
“Chase him,” Sarah says.
She isn’t talking to Masters. Grabbing Lucas by the elbow, she shakes him and says, “Go.”
Varner and Gatlin are running into the trees again.
The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition Page 56
