Cates 05 - The Final Evolution (37 page)

Blinking, I looked around. The silence was an anesthetic. I could close my eyes and there was nothing but wind and my own breathing. I’d been walking. Sometimes there were towns or camps with people in them, but mostly it had been open air, abandoned settlements, and silence. Sometimes I just closed my eyes and walked blindly for a while, opening them later with a faint sense of excitement to see where I’d ended up, if I was still alive.

Some of the camps and towns still tried to convince me to stay, to pay me off, to make me their sheriff. It was amazing. People never gave up, even when they’d been given up on.

Blinking, I turned and examined the building to my left; they were all connected, attached, like one huge sinuous building stretching the entire length of the street. A wooden sign hung by one short chain, the other side broken so the sign was on an angle. I turned my head slowly until it looked right-side up to me and read it:
LA ABADÍA
. The doors were thrust inward, the tiled floor barely visible for a few feet before being swallowed by darkness, but I could make out the edge of an old wooden bar. I always investigated bars. It was a policy.

There were a few overturned stools and tables inside, but otherwise it looked neat and orderly. It smelled dry and dusty. The ceiling was low and reminded me a little of the basement of Diocletian’s palace, thick stone columns and rough stone walls. The floor was wood, much abused but still in decent shape.

I set the shredder against the wall and unslung my pack, relief sweeping through my muscles for a second, replaced immediately by a buzzing, humming ache that settled in like it knew my muscles well and liked it there. Dropping the pack on the floor, I adjusted my hip holsters and walked slowly around the bar, keeping my eyes open and turning around steadily as I went. I didn’t know why I bothered, except that old habits were good habits.

The floor behind the bar was covered in broken glass that crunched under my boots as I walked its length. The shelves behind and under the bar were bare except for a couple of huge mechanical rat traps with the skeletal remains of their victims still clenched inside. Someone had already been through here looking for booze. Mixed in with the shattered glass were a dozen or so credit dongles, all useless now that the cops had gone into hibernation without Marin’s codes. I kicked at them a little, studying the floor. I kept at it, walking back toward the center of the bar, and sure enough located the telltale outline of a trapdoor. Pushing glass aside with my boot, I cleared the area until I could see the thin outline of the door’s edges.

I dropped to my knees and felt gingerly around the edges, trying to avoid tiny shards of glass in my fingertips. I found the well-hidden indentation that allowed me to get three fingers under the lip and lift the trap up, revealing a dim, shallow pit in which a stack of paper yen, a pile of credit dongles, and two gleaming bottles of… something sat like a present from the cosmos for my years of service.

I took one of the bottles and held it up. No label, a vaguely cloudy amber color. Could be booze, I thought. Could be rat poison. I took the bottle back around the bar and sat down next to my pack and set the bottle between my spread legs as I undid the straps. I pulled out Mara’s head, eyes still open, still gleaming with artistically rendered life. I set the head gently on a nearby wooden chair so she was staring at me, and then picked up the bottle.

“What do you think?” I asked the head.

Mara kept her opinions to herself. I knew it was Orel in there, a copy of him, but Mara’s not-quite-pretty face made it impossible to imagine the hateful old spider, so I thought of it as Mara.

You’ve finally gone crackers
, Marin whispered.
That’s what
I
think
.

No one’s talking to you
, I thought, dismissing him as I twisted the cap off the bottle. I sniffed the contents—sweet and sharp, definitely alcoholic—and tipped the bottle up for a swallow. It was surprisingly good, light and fruity with a distinct bite I enjoyed, the familiar burn of booze. I took a healthy swig and paused for a breath before taking another, a pleasant warmth blooming immediately in my middle.

Setting the bottle on the floor, I winced a little as a sharp tearing sensation rippled up my back. I stuffed one hand into a coat pocket and pulled out the sheaf of folded paper I’d been marking my progress on. There was no power for handhelds, no signals in the air anyway, and no hard-copy maps anywhere I’d been able to find. So you wandered. I’d found Toledo using ancient signs still planted here and there, and some luck. I scanned through the lists of street names I’d already walked through, taking sips from the bottle, and finally wrote
Calle de Nunez de Arce
on the bottom of the list.

I stuffed the papers back into my pocket and stared around the empty room. The light was failing, and I thought I might see if there was a good defensible room somewhere in here, just stay where I was for the night. Plenty to burn. If there was booze hidden away, there might be food, too. And Toledo was, as far as I’d been able to tell, about as deserted as any place in the world. And there were plenty of deserted places.

After a few more minutes I stood up and took the bottle on a tour. The place had a crazy layout, small rooms linked by narrow hallways, all still furnished with the peculiar wooden chairs and tables, most still in place. Everything looked ready for business, like the vampires were coming later on in the evening to have a few cocktails. I found a winding, darkened set of stairs heading upward and it led me to a larger second floor, more or less one open space with two large windows on the back end, the orange sun streaming in hot and dry. It felt empty, although there were some boxes and some gray sacks piled here and there: a storeroom. As I entered, a platoon of large black rats scrambled out of the way, and I made a mental note to reclaim a few traps to set up around me as I slept.

Between the two huge windows a man sat spread-eagled, his hands flat on the floor on either side of him.

He was tall, had oriental features, and wore a nicely cut black suit and overcoat, black gloves, and the shiniest black shoes I’d ever seen. His trousers had ridden up to reveal black socks and an inch of his tan calves. He stared straight ahead, his head tilted back slightly and resting against the sill of the window.

Setting the bottle down, I unsnapped the holster on my left hip and rested my hand on the butt of the gun as I walked over to the windows. I stopped directly in front of him and studied him for a moment; he looked perfect, fresh and supple, and my underbrain kept screaming to pull the gun and shoot the avatar before he gave up this game and leaped for me.

I forced myself to take my hand from the gun and knelt in front of it. I glanced down at the floor; the cop had placed his gun and badge there between his legs. I picked up the beautiful leather wallet containing his badge and flipped it open. The silvery template inside was dim and lifeless, the hologram’s battery juice dried up. Captain Emil Yodsuwan. I flipped the badge shut and dropped it back at his feet. He’d seen it coming, the shutdown, and he’d found a place of relative privacy to wait for someone to recrank the servers and wake the cops up.

I picked up the gun, a nice chrome-plated auto, pre–civil war. Full clip. I slipped it into my pocket and set about going through his pockets. I found a credit dongle and dead handheld, a spare clip for the gun, and a battered old data cube. I held the cube between my thumb and forefinger for a moment, studying it, and then pushed it into my inside pocket. There was no way to read it, but it might be fun to try.

Satisfied, I turned and walked back down to the front bar, reclaiming the bottle as I passed it. Everything was exactly as I’d left it, only darker. I’d have to break up a table and chairs soon to get a fire going if I was going to avoid having to work in the pitch black the night had become everywhere, but instead of getting to work I slid down to the floor again, stiff back complaining, and sat in front of the head. I stared at Mara for a moment, thinking, but there was nothing to say to her.

A sudden noise made me twist halfway into a kneeling position, hands flying to my holsters. I stayed that way for a few jumpy, irregular heartbeats, sweat breaking out cold and slimy on my face, and then sagged back down to the floor. There was no one there.

I stared at the head. The head stared back. I thought of Grisha, who I’d found half buried in dry, loose sand a half mile or more out in the desert, his hands curled into claws, beetles roaming over his body. I thought of Marko, who I’d never found any sign of. I liked to think he’d crawled away, made his escape, but I couldn’t know that. I thought of them all, in turn.

I could hear nothing except the wind pushing its way through the vines on the canopy, and the light was failing fast. I stared at the head and the head stared back and I felt a familiar weary heaviness inside. I shut my eyes and thought grimly,
There will never be anyone there
.

APPENDIX

Superstes per Scientia

Confidential Memorandum

To: Baklanov, G, DIC

Fr: McKie, Andrew, ADM

cc: none

RE:
Zadravec Diary

Dear Grisha,

As you know I have been depressed of late at our lack of progress. I know you understand the serousness of our situation, but you and I may be the only ones in the directing committees who do; I won’t sling mud in writing but I find myself more and more frustrated at the attitude of those who oppose your efforts to salvage what can be salvaged of this disastrous world.

Grisha, my little professor, where are you? Your absence is terrifying. I know you well enough to know you do not waste time, but I am selfish enough to wish you here. I send this to you hoping it finds you, somewhere, that our courier teams are still intact and functioning.

It is like I can feel the world constricting around me. Every day, fewer of us left. Noise on the line where there used to be voices.

As per your instruction of two weeks ago, we secured and explored the small settlements near Split that you marked. We found no one alive in any of them, though all showed signs of recent habitation. We searched thoroughly and took away several items of possible interest that will be cataloged and digitized according to our usual protocols. One item, however, was of significant interest and I am reproducing portions of it within this memorandum in the hope that it finds its way to you. I suspect you will garner great intellectual pleasure from its contents, if I know you, and it may shed some light on your current mission.

The item is a diary, a journal. It is unusual in that it is written by hand, in ink, and not simply a recording or other digital artifact. It is written in an old script; we had to dig through the archives to find a study of it. To think that someone has been passing this down for decades, perhaps a century—I am unclear when we’re agreed that the practice of handwriting like this died out. But I am digressing.

You know I love my digression, my little professor.

I will not reproduce the diary in its entirety here. Much of it is extremely prosaic in nature, and some was impossible to decipher, as it appears to have been written when the author—whose first name is unknown—was extremely inebriated. I trust, however, that you will find the chosen excerpts instructive, if perhaps depressing. But then how can one be depressed in this world. Depression was decades ago, burned away. Now we just observe, and note, and sleep dreamlessly, waiting.

Zadravec Entry One:
This morning something is different. I sat out in the garden and wished for coffee as the sun rose, but there was, of course, no coffee. Also no police, so I did not complain. I have distrusted this peace, this quiet. Ever since the Little Captain shot himself all those years ago and we were without an SSF Field Officer for the first time since my parents’ time, others have rejoiced, others have celebrated. When no more police came to take his place, people became incautious, believing everything changed. There has been excitement ever since the bombing, the night that was bright as day years ago.

For a while, it seemed to be true. We heard nothing from the police, nothing from the Joint Council, nothing from the army. Nothing. Some celebrated, but the silence was frightening to me.

I remembered when the Little Captain shot himself in the head. He made a strange speech about the future, about there being none. Then there was nothing for a few months. Then the army came. Then the police again, strutting around, an army, too. Then they left again. And nothing since. Except the sunrise at night.

Zadravec Entry Two:
I wish I knew why Henri has left; without word, without me.

*  *  *

Zadravec Entry Three:
Today the strangest thing has happened. A meeting had been called; Carl the provost proposed that we send emissaries to other settlements nearby and negotiate trade agreements, diplomatic exchanges. Cooperation and mutual defense. And also, though this was unspoken, to inquire about their children, if they had any, and if they did, to spy on them and speculate why we were, to a person, barren. Although I think Carl often thinks too much of himself and his title, bestowed upon him because he thought of it first, this was a sensible suggestion and I was willing to be patient.

In the middle of the meeting, the first meeting that has been of any value in months, old Victor shuffled into the square. This was surprising, as Victor does not often leave his house, even now that the Vid Screens no longer function. We all paused in surprise, but he said nothing, simply appeared, and then, suddenly, Marik and Antoine stood up, swaying drunkenly, and started walking. They also said nothing. The rest of us stared after them. I thought it was a prearranged meeting, although Victor did not often socialize or even speak to anyone, preferring to autoscan channels on his Vid rather than to speak to any of us. They walked past the old man, though, who continued to stare at us unblinkingly. I noticed he was not wearing shoes.