Apprehensions and Other Delusions (26 page)

And then someone has taken you by the shoulder. Firmly.

You’re awake, reaching for your beamer.

“Shush,” she says. “Easy soldier. I’m here.” She puts her hand into yours, gripping. “It’s me.”

You nod in the dark, trying to remember your day, why she’d wake you now. When is now? “What time is it?”

“About two hours before dawn. We have to get out of here now, before it starts to get light. They’ll find us if we don’t leave.” She squats down beside you. “Look, I’m going to put your boot on. It’s going to hurt. Okay?”

“It won’t hurt,” you say, but then you add, “But sure, okay. Go ahead.”

She moves down your leg, taking the jacket off as she goes. You feel how cold it is now, much colder than it was.

“It’s not too bad,” she says as she touches you gently. Her hands are cold.

You pull away.

“I’m going to have to bind your ankle very tight. As tight as I can get the bandages. You’ll be able to walk more easily, as soon as you’re used to it.”

“I’m ready.” You aren’t, but since you’ll never be, she might as well do it now and get it over with.

First on goes the sock, which is surprisingly warm. “How?”

“I’ve had it in my pocket,” she says.

A warm sock isn’t too bad. You know better than to hope that the boot will go on as well.

It doesn’t.

If she were using a vice to mash your bones it couldn’t be worse, or so you tell yourself as you try to think of anything but the agony she has caused. You push back against the wall, eyes shut and smarting, sucking short gulps of air through your clenched teeth. As she tugs at the bindings to tighten them, you hear her say, “I’m sorry, I’m very sorry.”

It’s nothing, you say inside. It’s the malfunction. It isn’t pain. Cyborgs don’t feel pain. It isn’t possible for you to hurt. It’s the malfunction, the malfunction, the malfunction. You don’t know what you say to her, if anything.

“That’s about all I can do without meds. I don’t have one. Wait a bit and then try standing on it. We’ve got to be out of here, in case they check on that boy.” She nods toward the corpse, as anonymous as a sack in the dark. She takes her jacket from you and for the first time you wonder how she kept warm; it was freezing in the loft.

“There’s a warming sheet up there, part of the thawing,” she answers. “Some pioneer farmer used it to protect his crop. Not that it’s done him any good.” She goes into one of the storage troughs and comes back with something strange in her hands.

“What?—” Too late you realize it’s a weapon.

“Another piece of pioneer equipment.” She raises the thing, resting barrels against her shoulder.

You laugh, a braying sound in the cold, as you fight against the fear and your ankle. “It looks like a beamer, a little,” you tell her, because in this light even a broom would look like a beamer.

“It’s a 20-gauge shotgun,” she says.

Immediately you are filled with questions: what is such an archaic gun doing here? Does it even work, after all this time? You keep from asking them. She answers anyway. “There’s a big pioneer center about fifty kilometers back. It belonged to one of the big combines, so there’s lots of buildings with shipping centers and all the rest. They were using it for supplies. I found this in the pioneer stuff They discarded. I took it and all the shells I could find, and five incendiary grenades. When I got out of there, I used three of the grenades to blow up the bridges on the estate.”

“What about the rest of it, the pioneer stuff?”

“Pioneers got them. Better than letting them go to waste.”

“What pioneers?” you ask. “There aren’t any left.”

“Yes, there are.” She looks directly at you. “I’m a pioneer, third generation. We lived at Brent’s Tract until you outsiders came.”

There have been rumors, of course. In war there are always rumors. You have heard about the pioneers that are left, supposed to be hiding in the forests and the hills and what’s left of their towns. The rumor is that they are infiltrators, demolitionists, terrorists. Until now, it was only another rumor, what you’d expect to hear; you didn’t believe any of it.

“Who’s side are you on?” you ask her, throat and eyes suddenly very dry.

“My own side. If it were up to me, you and They would leave here tomorrow.” She folds her arm under the stock of the shotgun.

You feel the dark thick as ink around you, matting the air inside, hovering outside. “How are ... we going to get out of here?” What you want to know most is if you are going to get out of here at all.

“I’ve got a light and I know where I am.”

That bothers you. In the dark the light makes you a target. “Won’t They see it?”

“Maybe, if They look for it. But at this hour, They won’t be, or I don’t think They will. If it gets too dangerous, or there’s any sign of Them, I’ll turn it off and we can go to ground until it’s light enough to move. I’m a pioneer—we have pretty good night vision. By the way—” She tosses something to you: there are two of them, metallic and cold. “Spare fuel for the beamer. I tried them in the laser but they’re the wrong stuff. Anyway, it gives you a little more firepower. Do you want to practice walking before we go?”

You flounder, trying for traction on the stalks of rotted grain and at last, more for luck than anything else, you’re up and moving. You are not functioning as well as you want, but that will improve.

“Here. Steady there.” She is beside you, her arm around your back, propping up the weight your ankle won’t hold. “Try again. You’ve got to be able to move out there, once we get started.”

So you try some more, and the function improves as sensation fades. You walk better—not well, but well enough to cover ground. She moves away from you to leave you to lurch around the shed on your own.

“Here.” She hands you a broken section of board, a little longer than your leg. “You can use it as a cane for a while.”

“I don’t want it,” you say, disgusted with the thing.

“It beats falling,” she points out, then she shifts her old-fashioned shotgun and goes to open the door.

The darkness is enormous, impending as doom, the cold wind slices through you as cleanly as a laser, the crunchy frost creaks when you step on it, and leaves grey tracks behind you.

In the dark there is a slash of white—she has turned on her light—and then it is gone again and she is next to you, talking in a fierce whisper, as if afraid of being overheard. “If I don’t get out of this, here’s how to get back to your lines, if they haven’t changed much since yesterday: the village of Craoi-Venduru is about ten kilometers ahead on the road that starts on the other side of the ridge. It’s very small, maybe twenty-five buildings for pioneers, and a central hall. The western end of the village is where They were yesterday, or so I was told. They killed the pioneers ... a long time ago. No one’s done any farming there since then. Don’t worry about the pioneers. There’s a weather and watch station in the central hall. You’ve seen them?”

“Some,” you say, remembering most were in ruins. “And it was part of the training for the campaign. We’re shown what we can expect to find.”

She looks at him, curiosity and anger in her face. “When did you get here? Are you part of the A.F. forces? Or have you been here a while?”

“I haven’t been here very long. Today makes seventeen days. None of A.F. model-4 cyborg group 722s have been here very long.”

She shakes her head. “Cyborg,” she says, as if she still refuses to believe that’s what you are. She resumes her instructions after a single, short sigh. “We’ll figure you can recognize the central hall. As you enter the town, just outside it, there is a shrine, one of the very old pioneer kind, and the road forks there. One branch goes off to the left, running beside a stone wall. It’s high enough to conceal you. The other branch goes off to the right, toward the river.”

“So I go to the right,” you say, remembering that A.F. forces are on the far side of the river.

“No; you go to the left. You don’t know what’s out there, and you’d better find out before you try anything.” She hesitates, then resumes her instructions. “At the end of the wall, there is an old pioneer farmhouse, then—doubling back—an inn of some kind, though it’s wrecked, two more pioneer houses, a graveyard, and then the central hall. Four days ago the tower was intact. And if it’s still there, that’s where you go, into the tower. There’s an observation station in the tower. It has a good view of the countryside and it might still be safe. They’ve been in the town, but They’ve set up Their own platform, nearer the river. So far as I know, They haven’t used the tower for anything.”

“How do I ... do we get into the tower?” You hope you can remember everything she is telling you, just in case.

“There is a side door, leading into the cellar. They hadn’t used it at all, at least last week They hadn’t. Go in there and take the stairs you find there. They aren’t the main stairs—they’re narrow and steep. All the access doors on the floor above the cellar are locked.”

“Were locked,” you correct her.

“Yeah: they were locked. The inner stairs go behind the walls and the access doors are at the backs of rooms, not very noticeable. Unless They have had to pull back into the town, They won’t bother with the tower, not with Their platform set up.” She stares hard at you. “Think you can find your way?”

“Sure,” you say, since your life might depend on it.

“One more thing, a favor.” The word hangs between you colder than the air.

“What? I owe you.” And you are not sure why she has bothered to keep you alive, except for this favor, whatever it may be.

“If I should be captured and you are alive to do it, kill me.”

You know you’ve heard right: you can guess why she asked you. “Kill you?”

“If it happens, do it, soldier.”

“If I can’t help any other way, I’ll kill you.” You sound as calm as you’d be if you were arranging to meet for a drink when it’s over. You would say the same thing to any A.F. soldier who asked, no matter what model. But this is a living human, and you are a soldier so that humans will not have to be. You are not supposed to kill them. But you have made your promise.

She nods, satisfied. “Come on.” With that she starts into the ice-glittered night, away from the safety of the thawing shed. Her light makes a pitiful pool of white and the dark is vaster by comparison.

So forget your ankle. It will be fixed later. Hit the road at a jog, at a steady, distance-eating trot. Into the plants that line the road, so that you will leave no footprints to guide Them to you, if They start searching. You steady yourself from time to time with the board. Think of it as another weapon, that will make it less shameful. Keep going. Don’t let yourself slow or you will have to stop.

Your beamer is heavy. Too bad the laser had to be left in the old grain tank, unusable and unnecessary. The beamer is better. And she has her shotgun. A blast from that makes as real a hole as the beamer does. Or so you hope.

Dog-trot silently, breathe as regularly as you can. Be grateful that you cannot feel fatigue, hunger, hurt. Remind yourself that your guide is a spy, or says she is a spy, and is a pioneer, or says she is a pioneer. Remind yourself that you know nothing about her, not really. Remind yourself what you’ve promised to do if she gets caught.

Run. Just run.

Run and forget. Not too fast—you might get careless—not too slow. Don’t talk, it makes you tired and gives Them something to hear. Don’t think. Just run. Keep your mind on what you’re doing now. That. Only that.

Wish your ankle, will it, to keep strong and steady. It will be repaired later. The malfunction is like a danger. Use it. Make it part of the running. Somewhere up ahead is a village, a ruin. After that village, there is a river. Once over that river, you’ll be safe. You’ll be fixed. Other A.F. forces will take over the job you’ve been doing. If you make it, the cost is six lives. If you don’t, the cost is eight and one of them is human.

But according to her, you’re human, as human as she is.

Watch her in the dark ahead of you, running silent, swift, steady. There’s a light in her right hand, shotgun in the left, a knife in her boot. She carries more than that, you know. She carries your promise. That’s part of her armor, the promise you gave her, to go with her archaic shotgun, just in case.

Count your steps for seconds, watch the sky for day; beat the sun. It’s the only thing to think of now. Nothing else matters. Nothing else should matter. Beat the sun to a pioneer town called Craoi-Venduru, Be there before They know it, before They can find you, before They can turn on you. The slow wind bites your face and makes your skin feel tight and raw where you feel anything at all. In the dank cold the wind eats into you, sapping your strength, leaching the warmth from you. Count your steps and forget it. You have to get there. Until you do, the rest means nothing.

It all blurs! You’ve been running since dawn yesterday. Running through the lines, running past the forward troop They sent to intercept your squad. Running to the brush near a loading depot. Running to the place They had stored fuel for Their weapons. Running away when They discovered you. Running for safety, though there is no safety. No stopping for heroics. Or for the dead. Or for the wounded, daubed with spots that look like rust, their bodies loaded with 90-pellets, lethal, decaying the flesh of your squad as they fall. Running as They come after you. Running.

You’ve got information, so now you run for your lines. Run from Them in Their skimmers when they cut you off: run! Even though the men with you drop away behind you as the 90-pellets spew, run! Run through the trees to a clearing, to a shed. Run from that shed to an unknown town.

“Wait,” she pants, and you stop.

“What?” you breathe.

She switches off the light and stands utterly still. The sky is leaden grey, slate, steel at the eastern horizon where the first light shows. You can see a little.

“That’s the shrine,” she says, pointing through the brush to something that might be a statue.

“I remember,” you tell her. Go to the left at the shrine and double back. Go to the central hall. You remember about the cellar entrance.