Analog Science Fiction And Fact - June 2014 (17 page)

"Oh Randy," said Jennifer. "Don't eat from the bins. Come in and keep me company."

"I'd be happier with the garbage. Your food is all so tasteless to me. And I need to eat much more than you. Besides, you don't really want to see me eat again, do you?"

"Shut up and get inside."

"Shut up doesn't sound very Jennifer," said Randy, but he shut up and went inside anyway.

The interior of the diner was low and dim. One by one the faces of the truckers turned toward Jennifer. The woman behind the counter was rail thin. She was the only one looking at Randy.

"Oh no," she said. "Not in here. His smell will put everyone else off."

"He's with me," said Jennifer.

"Hey, let him stay," said a nearby trucker, his forearms the size of hams. He pulled back a seat from a table in the middle of the room. "You sit down here, lady."

Jennifer smiled at him and sat down at the table. After a moment's hesitation, Randy sat down opposite. Unbidden, the woman behind the counter came out and placed a white table cloth over its top. She returned with a glass vase holding some rather tired looking Abraxan daisies. Jennifer smiled delightedly at the attention.

"What would you like?" asked the woman.

"What would you recommend?" asked Jennifer, hands folded neatly in her lap.

The woman looked her up and down.

"Chicken and yellow pepper salad," she said, thoughtfully. She turned to Randy.

"I'll have whatever," he said. "Honestly. Mix all the garbage up in a bowl and I'll have that.

"He's asking for your stew, Maureen!"

Maureen ignored the trucker who shouted this out.

"I'll give you a salad, too," she said to Randy.

Maureen left them alone. Jennifer smiled at Randy.

"See? This is nice!" she said.

"Hey! Princess! How come you get a table cloth?"

The female trucker who stood by their table was as wide as she was tall. She held a Chechen joint between her teeth, blue smoke curling up into the air.

"I don't know," said Jennifer, politely. "Would you like to join us? There's room for another."

Across the room another trucker laughed.

"There you are, Kim. That's called being polite."

"Shut up, Trey." Kim scowled and stalked away.

"Honestly, Jennifer," said Randy. "We really aren't safe here."

"I'm safe everywhere," said Jennifer. Gold dust settled on the white tablecloth where she rested her ivory hands. "Besides which," she added. "I'm with you, the hero of the resistance. You'll protect me."

"You don't really think that, do you?" said Randy, looking around the room. "You never did take me seriously, did you?"

"Oh, I always did," said Jennifer. "It's just that I'm more pragmatic than you. I think you're right, and that the world is a mess. It's just that I don't think that one person can make a difference."

"Well, I do," said Randy.

"Chicken Salad," said the waitress, dropping the plates on the table.

First one person, then two, then eventually everyone present sat watching Jennifer eat her chicken salad. Until they had seen it, they wouldn't have believed that the act of eating a meal could be transformed into a bravura performance. Each perfectly constructed forkful, the curve that her hand followed through the air, the delicate way her mouth took each morsel from the end of the fork...

Only the clatter of the door disturbed her.

"So, it's true, then."

The man who stood in the doorway wasn't that tall, but he looked mean. He wore a metacarbon skin, ribbed like an old fashioned truck tire.

"I don't want to hear it, Naqash," said Maureen from behind the counter.

The man ignored her. He made his way across to Jennifer's table. She laid her fork on the table cloth and smiled up at him, politely.

"Do we usually have golden cutlery here in here?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Jennifer, brightly. "Would you like to join me?"

The man pushed the salad onto the floor. Randy pulled the pistol from his pocket.

"Put it away," said Naqash. "I've got a sup-pressor running." Randy pointed the pistol at the ceiling. He pulled at the trigger, once, twice. Nothing happened.

"Now, garbage boy, why don't you get on the floor and lick the dirt? "

"I don't need a pistol to fight you," said Randy, standing up.

"Sit down, Randy," said Jennifer, easily. "Noone here is doubting your prowess."

"Do you think he'll protect you?" said Naqash. "He's strong, I grant you, but how well would he fight with four people holding onto him?"

"Not so well, I'm sure," said Jennifer.

Naqash looked around the room. "You see what she is, don't you?" he said to the bar in general. "A princess? I don't think so. She's just a womb for sale. At the end of the day she's nothing more than a whore, just like any other whore you can find along this road. Well, wouldn't you like to have her? Show the stuck up bitch she isn't so special?"

"Who's special?" asked Randy. "She's just the same as the rest of us. She comes from Westcliff."

"I came from Westcliff too," said Naqash. "And you know what, I wasn't deemed to be part of the genetic elite. But just think, if I fuck her then my kid could be. My kid could be one of the chosen."

"You lay a finger on her and you'll be dead before the hour's out," said Randy, calmly. "She must retail for something like half a billion a child. She's lined up for her first next week. I doubt that the man who has laid down that sort of money would take your... intervention... lightly."

Naqash gazed at him.

"Besides," said Randy, smiling widely to show his serrated metacarbon teeth. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to piss off a garbage eater? I don't carry a pistol to protect myself. I carry a pistol so I don't have to do this."

The man was standing right next to him, his crotch pressed insolently close to Randy's face. The man's body radiated heat, way too much heat. Randy leant forward and bit deep into the man's thigh. There was a scream, a spray of red. Randy pulled back, a strip of meat torn from the man's leg. The screaming increased. Now people jumped from their seat, but they didn't move forward: they merely looked on in horror.

"Mmmmm," said Randy, licking his lips "I could eat you all up."

Jennifer looked distressed. Specks of blood were sprayed across her golden forehead. This was not suitable behavior for the region of Jennifer.

"I'm sorry," said Randy, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, "but I did say we shouldn't come in."

"I know," said Jennifer. "I'm sorry. Let's go."

"He tastes funny," said Randy, to the room in general. "He's done something to his VM. Tried to change himself. He's burning up with excess energy."

Naqash was thrashing on the floor, trying to paste the strip of flesh back into place.

"You have to do it right," observed Randy as he walked Jennifer from the room. "Get the balance wrong and you can send yourself psychotic."

They drove higher into the mountains. The road was a wide band of roughened metacarbon cut between the dirty ice sheets that crawled down the tilted slabs of rock. Shelves of ice and snow overhung the road. Jennifer had to wind up the windows to keep warm.

"The cold is worse than your smell," she said.

"You're too clean for me," said Randy. "Too sterile."

Their two regions fought it out with each other, neither of them felt comfortable.

"What's the matter?" asked Jennifer, letting go of the wheel and turning to face him. The car drove itself better without her attention.

"Nothing," said Randy.

"Is it because I made you accompany me into the diner?"

"You were showing off," said Randy. "I thought better of you than that."

"I'm sorry," said Jennifer. "It's what I do. I make the perfect environment for my child. I want people to see that."

"Don't you feel like an anachronism?" asked Randy.

"Not at all," said Jennifer. "People will always want the best for their children. I'm just doing the best that I can. I..."

"Stop the car!" shouted Randy at the same time.

The gravelsnake was stretched across the road, the long tube of its body squashed in several places where the wheels of the trucks had gone over it. Its grey mottled surface was half rotten, half frozen. Randy was out of the door and heading toward it before the car had even stopped.

"Oh, Randy! No!"

"I'm sorry," he called over his shoulder. "I need to eat!"

Jennifer watched Randy as he raked the skin of the gravelsnake with his fingernails, peeling it back to expose the purple flesh beneath. He plunged his head deep into the alien meat and tore a strip clear with his teeth.

Jennifer concentrated on the car's dashboard. She thought that maybe some music would take her mind off Randy's meal. Perhaps a little Bach. The sound of the horn made her jump. The dark green tanker that rumbled down the hill was almost upon them before she noticed it. It was aimed for Randy.

Jennifer jumped from the car and ran across the road, slipping on the ice and the mushed up snake. The cold air bit at her lungs.

"Randy!" she called. The truck had gone right over him. He lay, unmoving, on the road.

"Randy!"

To her relief, Randy stood up, holding his left arm in his right.

"I rolled beneath the wheels," he said. "It caught my arm."

"Are you all right?"

"I think it's crushed. It will heal. That's the benefit of being a garbage eater."

Jennifer was shivering, her lips were numb with cold. The sky was a brilliant blue up here, and the air was bitter.

"Hey!" he said. "I'll be okay. You're the one who needs to get in the car. Look at the way you're dressed!"

"I know," she said. Her silk dress outlined every goose pimple.

"And don't worry," he added. "They won't come after you. They won't be that stupid."

"I know that," said Jennifer. "But that's what makes it so much worse. I don't want to see you get hurt. Stay close to me, Randy."

"I will."

Jennifer felt as if they were driving into space. Would it be possible, she wondered? Build a road that carried on up the mountains and into the stars. Watch the sky fade from blue to black? Build up speed and drive off the edge of the road and f loat out into space? Travel in a line until you met another road that carried you gently down another mountain and onto the surface of another planet?

Randy slept on the back seat, moaning occasionally. He was burning up with heat, his increased metabolism pumping out energy as he healed himself. She let him sleep. They were being followed. She could see it on the car's screen. Six trucks, grinding up the hill behind her. She was moving faster then the trucks, but it was clear that she couldn't turn back. They were herding her toward the road block that waited up ahead.

Four green trucks parked shoulder to shoulder. More than once, Jennifer wondered if she should call her father for help. She didn't bother. She was perfectly safe, her father wouldn't care about Randy.

Just short of the plateau of New Vladivostok she came to the road block. Jennifer slowed down the car and climbed out.

The two women who climbed from the cabs wore metacarbon skins. Razor fins were implanted on the back of their hands. They moved in jerks and rushes. Jennifer didn't need Randy to tell her these were people who had attempted to modify their own virtual machines in order to boost their bodies. The two women were shorter than Jennifer, but much, much stockier. They folded their arms, grey razor fins glinting in the light, and gazed up at her

"Let me past, please," said Jennifer. "You must realize you won't be allowed to harm me."

"We don't intend to harm you," said one of the women. She pointed to the car. "We want the garbage eater."

Jennifer shook her head.

"Then we'll take him from you," said the other woman.

"I'll drive the car into your truck rather than that," bluffed Jennifer, turning to walk back to the car. A metacarbon hand seized her shoulder.

"Please let go of me," said Jennifer.

"Just stay here whilst Geeta pulls him from the car."

"One woman against Randy? Did you hear what he did in the diner?"

"Geeta can look after herself. She's pumped."

"Take your hand off my shoulder."

The wind blew a gentle stream of ice flakes across Jennifer's face. She breathed gently.

"I said, take your hand off my shoulder."

The woman laughed. Jennifer concentrated.

"You bitch!" shouted the woman, snatching her hand away. "That hurts! I can't move my hand! What did you do?"

"Didn't you know?" said Jennifer. "Everything I touch turns to gold. I bend the environment around me toward producing the perfect child. Anything that interferes with that harmony is removed. You think that my friend is dangerous? He's nothing compared to me. Now. Are you going to move your trucks? You're disturbing my balance."

Randy woke up as they pulled into New Vladivostok.

"Feeling better?" asked Jennifer

"Much better," he said, shaking his arm.

"Did I miss anything?"

"Nothing worth mentioning," said Jennifer.

Vladivostok seemed to consist of nothing but loading bays. Train tracks from across the plateau converged on a network of sidings. Trucks lined up to receive the ore they brought, ready to carry it down to the factories of the plain, far below.

"Why do the Slavemakers live so high up?" asked Jennifer, pulling a golden jacket around herself.

"I don't know. Maybe they prefer a thinner atmosphere?"

"This place is filthy," said Jennifer.

"It's cleaner than it used to be," said Randy.

"Look, most of the chimneys aren't working now. Even with virtual machines in their bodies, the people here used to be made sick by the pollution."

Only a handful of the hundreds of chimneys trailed thin black smoke into thin afternoon.

"There used to be black dust covering everything here," said Randy.

"But those days are past," said Jennifer. "Come on. We'll have to rent a mule or something to get higher up...."

They found a woman willing to take them up to the Slavemaker land. She led them along thin paths carved by gravelsnakes, higher and higher, past the scenery, leaving all color behind, until there was nothing to be seen but tumbled piles of grey scree, the white angry foam of churning streams, and the solid grey rocks that were slowly slipping their way down to the plain. Jennifer took it all stoically, wrapped in a golden jacket. Randy became increasingly irritable. There was nowhere near enough food for him up here.