“Excuse me, sir?”
The closer of the two men stared at her, eyes wide and eyebrow arched.
“I was wondering if you could give me directions. My...brother and I are from out of town so we don’t know the area well. Do you know if there are any pawn shops around?”
“Pawn shops? I haven’t seen one of those in years, young lady. There’s a flea market about six blocks over. Sometimes you can hock things there.”
“Thank you.” Maggie moved toward the door. She went back and grabbed David’s hand when he didn’t join her right away. He scowled at the two men. She gave them a quick, polite smile before dragging David through the door.
“What was that?”
“What?” he asked.
“We’re trying not to draw attention to ourselves, David. Why were you scuzzing those guys off?”
“They didn’t have good intentions toward you.”
Maggie stopped. David went two more paces before realizing she wasn’t beside him and turning to look at her. They’d made it halfway across the parking lot.
“Can you read minds?” she asked.
“No. It’s more like an impression. I can sense peoples...intentions.”
Maggie raised an eyebrow. Interesting. “That may be a neurological ability emerging,” she said.
He only shrugged.
“And what did they intend?”
“They wanted to—I don’t know—possess you, somehow?”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “You mean they wanted to arrest me. They thought we wanted to steal something, David. And trust me, if either of us had done anything they found suspicious, they would have.”
“Arrest you?”
“Yeah. They were security guards.”
David’s eye widened. “They were?” He gazed back toward the store, looking mildly impressed. Maggie could see the two men standing inside the door, watching her and David.
“Come on,” Maggie said. “We’re losing the light. Let’s find this flea market.”
“We’re not actually going to shop for insects are we?”
Maggie smiled at that. She removed her earrings, necklace, and finger ring. “These aren’t worth much, even in my time. Maybe seventy or eighty dollars all together. It should be enough to buy us three days’ worth of food. Hopefully by then Kristee will be well enough to Travel.”
“Are they metal?” David asked, surveying her jewelry. “You could use them as conduit stones if they’re pure elements.”
Maggie shook her head. “They’re not pure enough. They wouldn’t give me much of a boost.”
The flea market was massive. It sprawled over a full city block. Maggie found a man who sold antique jewelry and trinkets. His eyes sparkled when he saw what she had, but she only got thirty dollars out of him for the lot. She supposed it would have to be enough. His money looked different than in her time—mostly bronze coins with people she didn’t recognize on them. They’d taken the founding fathers off of it completely. The thought made her shrug uncomfortably, wondering what it said about society in this day.
One corner of the market housed vendors selling food. It felt similar to a farmers’ market, except every dish imaginable was for sale. Maggie bought three loaves of bread, some beef jerky and dried fruit, a jar of preserves, and two bags of roasted nuts. It wasn’t much, and it took nearly all her money to purchase it. She supposed if inflation had continued on trend, thirty dollars wasn’t worth nearly as much as she was used to, which meant she’d been more gypped on the jewelry than she’d originally thought.
“We’ll have to make this last,” she told David.
Maggie spied a teenager selling old, used book bags at his booth. Maggie had a dollar and fifty-seven cents left. She asked him if he’d part with one for that amount and he agreed. The pack he gave them was tiny, stained, and nearly worn through at places. They filled it with their supplies and David offered to carry it. Obviously made for a child, they loosened the straps as far as they would go for David to get it over his muscular shoulders. Even then, it was tight.
Maggie wandered around the market for a while, looking at the wares being offered. Things touted as antiques were brand new in her time. Plenty of other things she didn’t even recognize. Some she figured out easily enough, while others completely mystified her.
A plane soared low overhead and Maggie gaped at it. It looked like an extremely miniaturized version of a stealth bomber, except it was red with a white cross on it, and moved with better agility than any craft she’d ever seen.
“What is that?” David asked, coming to stand beside her.
“I think it’s a medevac. It’s heading toward where the hospital used to be.”
After a time, Maggie realized David wasn’t examining the wares. Rather, he watched her examine them. Shrugging uncomfortably, she decided perhaps it they should head back. Despite the falling twilight, Maggie hadn’t been in any hurry because they’d probably be stuck staring at the inside of that copse of trees for the next three days, waiting for Kristee to get better. Might as well take their time getting back. But with David staring at her like that, perhaps it was time to be back in Jonah’s company.
As they made their way toward the outskirts of the flea market, Maggie noticed many booths had emptied. The sun lay below the horizon now, but probably an hour of light remained. Odd, for salespeople to close up shop so early. She didn’t think much of it until they left the market and David remarked on how many fewer people there were on the streets.
“Why would people in this time go indoors with the dark?” he asked. “They have plenty of artificial light to see by.”
“You’re right,” Maggie said. “This is a middle-class area, so by nine, ten, eleven o’clock, the streets empty simply because most people have to get up and work in the morning. It’s not particularly late, though. I’d say seven or eight o’clock at most. Even in my time there’d be a lot more people out on a nice fall evening like this. Maybe there’s an enforced curfew.”
“If that’s the case, we’d best be out of town before dark. We don’t want to get picked up by law enforcement.”
Maggie nodded and they quickened their pace, heading for mountains. As they neared the outskirts of the city, they turned into some kind of warehouse district. David twisted and turned through make-shift alleys, looking for its outer edge. The shadows loomed ominously, but Maggie couldn’t sense anyone else around for miles. The people all went indoors with the darkness.
“Are we lost?” She asked David.
“The mountain’s right there,” he said, “we just have to get to it.”
Maggie chewed her bottom lip. “Hopefully there’s not a wall around this place.”
“If there is, there are plenty of things around here we can stack up to get over it.”
She glanced around. Empty crates and palettes abounded here. She was grateful for David’s confidence. It kept her from worrying.
Twenty paces later, in front of an empty, open carport, something tugged on Maggie’s foot and she nearly tripped. Her shoe lace had come untied and she’d stepped on it.
“Hold up, David. I need to tie my shoe.”
He stopped to wait for her and she rested her foot on a crate so she could fuss with the lace. She’d finished a double knot when she felt an itch between her shoulder blades. Before she could straighten and scratch it, David lunged at her. Wrapping an arm around her waist as he came, he swept both of them into the carport, around the corner, and onto the ground. They came to rest against a chest sitting against the front wall of the port.
“What are you doing?” Maggie gasped.
“Shh. Quiet.” David’s body was rigid. He was poised to pounce, listening intently.
Maggie didn’t hear anything, but his sense of danger infected her, making her pulse race faster. Then she saw it: a cluster of tiny red lights on the back wall of the carport, as if someone stood where Maggie had tied her shoe only seconds before and now shone a laser gun in. The red light
s ran over every inch of the back wall. They covered the wall line by line, then in a circular pattern. They spread out, then clustered together, playing out every pattern imaginable. All in utter silence. No sound reached Maggie’s ears except David’s breathing and her pounding heart.
“What is that?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “It was on your back a minute ago. I thought someone was aiming a rifle at you.”
“Is someone out there?”
“I didn’t sense anyone.”
Maggie sighed, suddenly very aware that she lay on the ground with David practically on top of her. His head was raised, like a deer listening for sound, as he studied the lights on the back wall. After several minutes of silence, during which Maggie did her best to control her breathing, David’s eyes came down to rest on hers. “We need to know what it is,” she whispered, pushing away from him and up to her knees. She inched toward the doorway of the carport. David pulled her back.
“Don’t. Whatever it is, I think it’s looking for us. We have to stay out of its path.”
Maggie swept her eyes over the interior of the carport. The chest they’d landed against sat under a window that faced the same direction as the doorway. She got carefully to her feet and leaned over the chest to look out the window. After a minute, David joined her.
The lights—which did actually look something like laser pen lights—were projected from a black, shiny triangle in the opposite wall.
“What is that?” David asked.
“It may be a camera.” Even as she said it, the triangle shifted and the red lights played over the outer structure of the carport. She and David ducked down as the lights approached the window.
“Maybe it’s the security system for this time period,” she suggested. “This is a warehouse district, so there are probably lots of tools and equipment left here at night. They don’t want people stealing them.”
David shook his head. “I don’t think it’s only this district. I’ve seen those little triangles every ten or twenty feet all throughout the city. I thought it was a decorating trend until now. I think they watch every inch of this place. It may be how they enforce curfew.”
Chills raced down Maggie’s spine. She wouldn’t have thought of it that way. “Do you think there are cops on the way?”
“No way to tell. I saw the lights on the back of your shirt and pulled you in here. I don’t think it touched our skin, much less our faces. But Maggie, I think we’re trapped here. We’ll have to wait until morning when the curfew is lifted before moving again.”
“We can’t stay here all night. I told Jonah we’d be back in a few hours. If I don’t come, he’s gonna freak out.”
“How do you propose to get us out of here?”
“You said yourself it didn’t see anything,” she argued. “Maybe it’ll assume we were animals or something. It’s probably a computer anyway.”
“You don’t know that, and I haven’t seen a single animal since we got here. There may be a reason for that.”
“We’re not staying here all night!”
She got to her feet and made as if to march out of the carport. David grabbed her arm and dragged her back. He put his hands on her shoulders and gazed down into her face. His gaze was intense, but not unkind.
“Maggie, there are one of those things with the lights every twenty feet. We might have a mile of twisting and turning to get out of this area. Our movements probably set this one off. If we keep triggering them, not only will it bring law enforcement, they’ll also have a straight path to where we’ve gone. What then? Kristee probably won’t be able to Travel for days.”
Maggie’s shoulders slumped. He was right. Damnit. They couldn’t run for the mountain with an alien government and superior technology on their heels. They had nowhere to go. Between her and Lila and David, they could defend themselves for a time, but not indefinitely against uncertain numbers.
“It’ll be okay,” David said. “Let’s hope it thinks we were an animal and wait here. With any luck, we can slip out in the morning. Unnoticed. That’s the most important thing right now.”
Shrugging out of his grasp, she sat down in the dirt beside the chest. After a moment, David sat beside her. Rubbing her forehead, Maggie fought down panic. She hated feeling trapped.
Chapter 9: Burrowing for Honey
THE MAN’S MIND PULSED with so much chaos, Doc couldn’t make sense of anything. Thousands of thoughts from the collective pounded jaggedly through it every second, and zeroing in on anything proved nearly impossible. Still, after hours of trying, Doc had trained himself to categorize things. He listened for specific conversations and key words that might give him the information he needed.
Mundane conversations about meals, sanitation, and such, he pushed aside. Many of the thoughts concerned beehives. Apparently one side of the collective compound housed several honeybee colonies. A storm came through the day before, destroying an entire branch. Discussions about the hard work lost and how to repair it came from everywhere. Doc moved on.
Part of a shelter needed to be repaired; planting season drew close and plans were being made; a physical illness was making its way through the drones and needed to be dealt with. Doc brushed past them, looking for something more provocative.
Then he heard it.
Executioner...individuals...
It drifted lazily by him like a remnant of smoke already being scattered by the wind. Doc chased it, threw his consciousness after it with abandon. He couldn’t tell where the thought originated, or what the conversation had been about, but it was the first compelling thing he’d gleaned all day.
And then it was gone, drowned by a tide of communal thought. Because he wasn’t actually a part of the collective mind—only listening in—he couldn’t zero in on specific thoughts, as he suspected the drones could. He had to wait for a conversation to reveal itself to him.
Maggie...
If Doc could have gasped, he would have. It made sense for the collectives to refer to members of the team by their roles, or as individualists in general, but hearing Maggie’s first name was downright disturbing. The collectives didn’t have names—they didn’t identify each other by any such designations. Rather they did so using brain chemistry or their sense of one another. Why would they talk about Maggie by name?
Doc chased the thought, needing to hear it again. It disappeared into the midst of thousands of other conversations. If a mind could run through the collective, that’s what Doc did: moving as quickly as he could through a sea of thought-conversations, listening for the one he needed. He would pause, listen to snatches, and move on, searching.
Key to the individuals’ prophecy...
Full clauses, rather than just words, meant he must be close. Doc dove headlong after the thought and—
A dull thud hit him between the eyes and Doc’s body, sitting far away in the Rocky Mountains, shuddered violently. The thought-jammed ether faded away and Doc became aware of his surroundings: the chill of the cavern, the hard chair he sat on, Joan’s presence nearby. As he came back to his physical self, his arms flew out, flailing, and he nearly fell off his chair. Joan hurried forward.
“Whoa, Doc! You okay?”
Doc put a hand to his forehead, willing the cavern to stop spinning. “What happened?”
“You tell me,” Joan said. “You were perfectly serene and then...it was like someone hit you with a club.”
“I ran into a barrier of some kind.”
Doc glanced up in time to see Joan frown. “How? You weren’t there physically.”
“No,” Doc admitted. The room still lurched at random intervals. At least it wasn’t gyrating anymore. “I heard something, Joan. They talked about Maggie.”
Joan’s eyebrows jumped. “What did they say?”
“First they said something about the Executioner. Joan, they referred to her by name. They said Maggie.”
Joan looked about as disturbed as Doc felt. “Why wo
uld they call her by name?”
“I have no idea. They said something about the key to the prophecy. When I chased the thread, I ran in to something. Some kind of barrier kept me from following the thought.”
Joan sighed, kneeling beside his chair. “This is dangerous, Doc. We don’t truly understand what we’re doing here. Is there any chance they know you’re in there with them?”
Doc rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling every strand of white hair on his head, which was most of them. “Anything’s possible. I don’t see how they could know. This allows me to listen in to their conversations, like intercepting a transmission. If I were a part of the hive in a way that allowed them to identify me, I’d be able to be part of the conversation; to zero in on whatever thoughts I wanted. That’s simply not the way of it.”
“So what was the barrier?”
Doc thought about it in silence for several seconds. “Even if they can’t feel me there, perhaps they’ve taken precautions against this sort of thing. Perhaps they’re shielding thoughts too dangerous for outsiders to overhear. I don’t know.”
He rose from his seat and paced. The man sitting in the chair facing his was sedated—both physically and neurologically—but his eyes were open. When standing, the Arachniman stood well over six feet tall with broad shoulders and a thick chest. An injury marred the spider web tattoo over his left eye, a half-inch thick scar transecting it.
A reconnaissance team happened upon three Arachnimen attacking a small group of individuals nearly a week ago. The other two Arachnimen died in the skirmish. The reconnaissance team sedated this one and brought him to Doc.
“Doc,” Joan said quietly. She looked contemplative. “Even a few months ago, you would never have considered doing this. Why are you so determined about it now? What are you hoping to find?”
Doc sighed. “I don’t know, Joan. Something—anything—useful. With how precarious our situation has grown in past months, I just don’t know how else to contribute.”
“Doc,” Joan said chidingly. “We’ve taken more individuals into Interchron in the past five months than we have in the past ten years. You don’t think that’s a contribution?”
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