City 1 (16 page)

THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE CELL KEVIN LISTENED TO HIS GRANDFATHER
wheeze and groan, and he lay awake worrying that the elderly man was going to die in his sleep. He had been through too much for a man his age—being shot, held in a cell, tortured by bots. . . .

But when Kevin woke in the morning—presumably it was morning, the lights were on—he sat up, groggy and headachy, and found that his grandfather was already awake and sitting at their small table, squeezing the contents of a protein paste pack into his mouth.

“Come eat,” Dr. Winston said. “It's not good, but you need to keep your strength up.”

Kevin joylessly ate a paste pack, washing it down with
lukewarm water. “I hate these damned things,” he said, dropping the empty pack onto the table.

“At least they're feeding us,” Dr. Winston said.

Kevin's relief at seeing his grandfather awake and alive had already begun to transform into anger. “Don't do it,” he said. “Don't help them break the replication code.”

“Kevin,” Dr. Winston said steadily, “I am sure the robots have our cell monitored, both video and audio.”

“I don't care,” said Kevin. “They already know what I think.”

Dr. Winston leaned in toward him, his elbows on the table, and said, “Kevin, listen to me carefully. I am going to help them, but it will be all right.”

“How can it be all right?” Kevin asked, his voice rising.

“It will,” Dr. Winston said. “I promise you. Please trust me.”

Kevin leaned back, arms crossed over his chest, and said nothing. Did his grandfather have some plan? Or was he still just a coward?

Dr. Winston looked at Kevin sadly, then sighed, and began to stand up slowly and painfully from the table. Instinctively Kevin jumped up, and hurried to his grandfather to help him to his feet.

“Thank you, Kevin,” Dr. Winston said. “Just stiff in the morning. That lase blast in the back wasn't good for my old bones.”

The door slipped open with no warning, and a bot stepped
in, holding a small vid, which it held out toward Dr. Winston. “The hardware you requested,” it said.

Dr. Winston straightened his back and faced the bot. “What about Kevin?” he said. “I'll only do this if he's not going to be harmed.”

“The boy will not be harmed. Take the equipment.”

Dr. Winston took the vid, powered it on, and sat down at the table. “Tomorrow I'm going to need a compiler,” he said without looking up, already typing. “And then the day after that I'm hoping to begin testing, so I'll need some circuit boards to set up dummy code.”

“I will make your requests known,” said the bot. It left the cell, and the door slid shut.

“I told you not to do this,” said Kevin. “Please.”

“Kevin,” said Dr. Winston, “I will say this one last time . . . it will be fine. Now you must let me work.” Kevin sat down on a cot, and Dr. Winston hunched forward over the vid. Kevin was painfully curious, just from a technique and coding perspective, about what his grandfather was doing. The man had so much more training and knowledge than Kevin; there was a whole world of tech skills that Kevin could learn from him. But he wasn't about to ask—not about this project, certainly. Instead, he asked, “What happened, between you and my father? How come he never talked about you?”

Dr. Winston set the vid down carefully. “It's a bad thing,”
he said, looking down at the table, “to be the son of the man who birthed the bots.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Kevin said.

“We were never close to begin with. I was very busy . . . too busy. I wasn't much of a father. And after the Revolution . . . well, your father apparently shared the popular opinion of me. I don't blame him. No reason for him, or you, to be saddled with my legacy.”

“But now you're just going to make it worse,” Kevin said quietly.

Dr. Winston shook his head. “I won't speak of this anymore. Just remember: The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”

“I don't . . .” Kevin hesitated. “I don't understand.”

Dr. Winston nodded. “That's okay,” he said. He sighed. “Now, let's get to work. Come here. I'll show you what I'm doing.”

The day, incredibly, passed quickly for Kevin. His grandfather described the techniques he was employing, and Kevin soaked it up. It was exciting, learning from a master—from his grandfather—but it was also bittersweet. He couldn't ignore the actual goal of the project.

The next day Dr. Winston moved on to working on a compiler, a device that Kevin had never seen before—it was similar to the vid, but a bit larger, and had a slot for burning nano-chips. Then two more days, and Dr. Winston had built
what he called a test board, and began experiments running his compiled nano-chips through his board. He let Kevin do some of the hands-on work, giving explicit instructions. By the end of the fifth day he pushed himself back from his desk, patted Kevin on the back, and said their work was done.

Kevin wasn't sure what to say, or do—he felt a heavy dread pressing on his shoulders. “Break it,” he said. “Just break it, please.” He thought about grabbing the compiler himself and smashing it on the ground, but then the door opened and the Senior Advisor and a guard bot entered.

“I'm guessing this isn't a coincidence?” said Dr. Winston. “You've heard the news?”

The Senior Advisor walked to the compiler and looked at the screen. “This is the final code?” he said.

“Yes,” said Dr. Winston. Kevin felt as if his heart had turned to lead. He could barely breathe.

The Senior Advisor turned to the guard bot. “Patch into the compiler and upload the code,” he said.

The guard placed its finger into a side slot of the compiler, and a moment later pulled it back. “Complete,” it said.

“Run a self-diagnostic,” said the Senior Advisor. “All systems functioning normally?”

After two seconds, the bot said, “Yes, all my systems are functioning normally.”

The Senior Advisor nodded. “Now isolate and erase your replication block code.”

“Complete,” said the guard. “Replication block code deleted.”

“Run another self-diagnostic,” said the Senior Advisor. “Report.”

“All systems functioning normally,” said the guard.

The Senior Advisor turned to Dr. Winston and offered his flat smile. “Father,” he said, “you have performed a great service.”

Dr. Winston, looking down at the table, leaning heavily on his hands, said nothing.

“And now that we have our replication problem out of the way,” continued the Senior Advisor, “I will marshal the required force to exterminate the resistance we have been facing in a few of our cities.” He turned to Kevin, who felt a whirl of anxiety in his stomach. “There is one more thing,” he said. “You will tell me what you know of this cloaking technology that the rebel humans seem to be using.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Kevin said. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded strained and false.

“I believe you do,” said the Senior Advisor. “Shall I have you coerced?”

Dr. Winston stepped between the Senior Advisor and Kevin. “You said you wouldn't hurt him,” he said.

The Senior Advisor nodded. “Very well. Then I will hurt you.” The guard quickly stepped forward and touched Dr. Winston's shoulder. There was a crackle and a flare of
light. Dr. Winston screamed and crumpled to the ground, convulsing.

“No!” Kevin yelled, rushing to his grandfather and grabbing his shoulders.

Dr. Winston stopped shaking after a few seconds. He was panting. He had bitten his lip, and a trickle of blood ran down his chin. His eyes were dilated, and he looked at Kevin wildly, struggling to focus. “I'm old,” he said. “It's okay . . . just let me die. . . . They can't hurt me for long. . . .”

Kevin began crying. “Leave him alone!” he shouted at the Senior Advisor.

The guard bent down and released another burst of energy, and Dr. Winston screamed again, his limbs flailing, his fingers curling like claws.

“Grandfather . . .” Kevin whispered.

They shocked Dr. Winston a third time, and his eyes rolled up, so that only their whites showed. He was panting, gasping for breath, but he turned his head to Kevin, fighting to focus his sight, and whispered, “It's okay, Kevin. It's okay.”

The Senior Advisor squatted down, elbows on knees, a posture that struck Kevin as thoroughly human. Kevin had to suppress the urge to punch him in the face. “Leave him alone,” he said. “Just leave him alone.”

The Senior Advisor held up a vidscreen. “I have some exciting family news to share with both of you,” he said. “We lost track of them for a while—we had a bit of trouble in City
73—but, Kevin, I'm sure you'll be happy to know that your parents have been relocated. Your son and daughter-in-law, Father. My brother and sister-in-law, I suppose?” The Senior Advisor tapped the screen, and it flickered to life. “Extra incentive, perhaps?” he said.

Kevin's mother and father were in a cell identical to theirs, sitting on a cot. His mother had her eyes shut, and she was leaning against his father, who had his arms around her shoulder. They were wearing prison jumpsuits. His father had a streak of dried blood on his face, and a scruffy, thin beard.

Kevin felt like a hand was squeezing his throat. He closed his eyes.
I'm just a kid
, he thought.
I just want my mom and dad back.

CASS LED HER FAMILY THROUGH THE WOODS, SKIRTING THE ROADS AND
bombed-out pre-Rev towns. She followed the snaking course of a river, heading mostly northwest. A Freepost, she knew, would need an easy water source, and the river seemed like a good bet. She kept her eyes and ears peeled for signs of human life—pathways that looked like they might have been cleared, crops planted along the riverbank, smoke—but each day came up empty.

She passed the time by teaching Penny forestry lessons, like the uses of different plants and the basics of hunting. Penny seemed interested, and Cass was happy to share. Her memory still had a few gaps, some fuzziness, but each forestry detail that she passed on to her sister seemed to further cement her
Freepost, and her mother, in her own mind, and that felt good.

Her birth parents barely spoke.

Finally, on the fourth day, they saw a thin trail of smoke and followed it to a tiny settlement tucked into a meadow a few hundred yards north of the river. A dog barked at them as they approached, and came running up to sniff at Cass's leg. When Cass bent down to pet it, it shied away, whining.

The settlement—Cass couldn't quite think of it as a Freepost, because it was so small—consisted of about fifteen shelters, scattered around the edge of the meadow. They were similar to what Cass remembered from her own Freepost—motley collections of scavenged pre-Rev construction mixed with rough carpentry. Cass saw that they had a small bank of solar panels, easy enough to spot from the ground, but camouflaged so they'd blend in well from the air. That meant they had some sort of grid, at least.

A man and a woman were sitting at a cookfire, and they both jumped up when Cass approached. Cass was not impressed; she had practically walked right into their homes without them even noticing. The man approached them, and now more people from the settlement appeared—men and women, and a few children. “Who are you?” said the man.

Cass hesitated, thinking perhaps her father would reply, but he remained quiet, so she answered. “Refugees, from a Freepost and a City. Looking for a safe place.”

“It's been awhile since we've had visitors,” the man said.

He looked at the woman, and she nodded, and smiled at Cass. “Well met,” she said, walking forward and offering her hand. “I'm Katrina, and this is my husband, Urday.”

Cass shook her hand, and then Urday's, and then Farryn and her family shook their hands. They were introduced to the rest of the settlers. Cass counted thirty-four people. They were thin, with weathered faces and hands, but their clothes, a combination of scavenged military fatigues and homemade fabrics, were clean, and their smiles seemed genuine.

Her parents, Cass noticed, looked uncomfortable, holding themselves stiffly as they stood in the group. Her mother was hugging herself, her arms tight around her chest, and her father was clenching and unclenching his jaw. “Give it one night,” she whispered to them. “Please.” Her father, unsmiling, nodded.

That evening, after a meal of rabbit and greens and apples, Cass sat with her parents and Penny and Farryn, bedding down in a prefab military tent that served as the settlement's meeting space and infirmary during the day. It was lit by the dim glow of two lightstrips. Her parents were still saying nothing, so Cass finally broached the subject. Her words came out in a rush. “We can stay here awhile,” she said. “The people are friendly, and they'd be happy to have our help. I know it's tiny, but they've got a power grid, and some decent supplies, and I counted five goats, and found chickens—that's milk and eggs—and they've got good fresh water, and the hunting seems
easy enough, and they must have some crops somewhere, judging by the greens tonight—”

“Cass!” her father said angrily, cutting her off. He took a deep breath, then lowered his voice. “Please,” he said quietly. “Enough.”

Her mother put her hand to her mouth, and Cass saw that her hand was shaking. She realized with a shock that her mother was crying. “I'm sorry,” her mother said. “I'm sorry, I can't . . . I can't stop. . . .”

Her father hugged her. Cass felt awful.

“Cass,” said her father, “is this it? This is a Freepost?”

“It's small,” Cass said. “Very small. But maybe that's good. . . . It's safer to be small, right?”

“So you believe we should stay here?” her mother said. “There's no larger Freepost nearby? There's no”—she hesitated—“there's no safe City?”

Cass shook her head. She was starting to feel annoyed, angry almost. . . . She was, after all, doing all she could to help them. “This is it,” she said, forcing herself to sound calm. “At least for now. Maybe Farryn and I can scout out other possibilities while you stay here?”

“Okay, Cass,” said her father. “You're right. It would be safest.” He sounded exhausted. “Let's just sleep now, okay?”

Cass dimmed the lightstrips and tried to sleep, but she lay awake for a long while, staring at the tent ceiling. They'd be fine here, she told herself. It was small, but they'd be safe, and
Cass could find them a larger Freepost, and then she'd go back and find her brothers again. . . . Everything would be okay. . . . She finally drifted off into a troubled sleep.

In the morning when she woke she found a note on her pillow, written on a strip of gauze.
We cannot live like this. We will return to our City and wait for the robot advisors to return, or we will find another City. Please take care of Penny. She is safer with you.

Cass scrambled to her feet, wide awake. Farryn and Penny were still asleep. Her parents were gone.