The Rise and Falling Out of Saint Leslie of Security (16 page)

Everett winked his bloodshot eye at himself in the mirror, and recalled the surprise on Boris’ face when he volunteered to take charge of the situation. “We should help this woman. Let me head the operation if she defects."

Grinning, he slapped the lift car's steering wheel. He was more excited now than he'd been since he discovered his past life identities. He'd been running around like a madman, making sure the two fugitives had all the help they would need to make their mythic way to the North Creek cell of the Sons of Adam. He'd sent operatives out to stock his camp in the Adirondacks. He'd authorized the use of his favorite safe house in Boston, he'd gotten the scrambler to them, and by now they should be getting ready to take a lift car, he made sure would be there for them, out of the amusement park city. Everything was going according to plan. Within a day or two, they should be hiding in one of his camps, getting ready to get to North Creek.

Everett couldn't resist taking the chance to see Saint Leslie in person. This was why he'd risked crossing the southern restricted flight zone, and flew out to Hartford to deliver the scrambler himself. Now he was on his way to North Creek from that very meeting, and his nerves were singing!

Everett, your mind's wandering.

He was so tired. He shook his head to clear his blurring vision.

Hang in there, old man. Soon you'll be safe and sound in the Atheist cell underground. Ah, you're a poet. You can get some rest. Clean up. All you need to do now is make sure the head surgeon is lined up for your pretty little saint. Your daughter....

He recalled how scared he'd been when it finally came to seeing her. The USA set up the meeting place with Roger Calvin. Everett waited in that damned alley for at least twenty minutes before they showed up. He kept telling himself he'd walk right up to them and introduce himself to Leslie. Then he'd watch her face to see if she recognized him. But when he saw them approaching the mouth of the narrow alley, he stumbled backward into the night shadows. The Roger character had to stumble in the dark after him, and follow Everett's soft whispering.

Everett didn't like Roger right away. He could smell a long, festering fear on this man. Everett pegged him as a chronic loser, a man desperate on the inside but too much of a coward to do anything about it. Roger was an annoyance and completely forgettable. He might survive this experience, if he was lucky, but he had nothing to offer Everett or the United Sons of Adam. Eventually he would just be in the way. Everett decided he'd put him out of his misery when he was no longer of any use to Saint Leslie. Then, from behind the line of shadow, where it was cut by the street lights, Everett turned to his daughter.

Her face was dappled by dull light, leeching through the leaves of a young oak tree from a street lamp on the corner. She looked grim, as the breeze sighed through the branches. For a second, Everett thought she was glaring directly at him, and his stomach dropped. He felt an instant dread racing through his body, making him dizzy.

She knows who I am! She can see me and she knows me!

Overwhelming guilt surged through him. It was like being caught in an undertow. But then the splotched light shifted just a little, and he realized she wasn't even looking in his direction. She stared at Roger's back, apparently waiting for his return. As quickly as his fear emerged, it sank back inside him to an invisible place. He sighed and handed the scrambler to the unkempt man. The pair took off, and he got out of there as fast as he could, haunted by his brief loss of composure.

The fact is, she didn't recognize you, you idiot. She barely saw you. Her memory's shot because of the head implant anyway. She couldn't possibly know who you are. And even if she could—who would be more afraid?

Clips from an old Johnny Phallus movie play on Channel 32—a science fiction adventure, about a group of Indians who take over the District of Columbia and subject it to a military occupation. Johnny plays the Indian leader, who heroically puts down the devious, brutal rebellions of the increasingly desperate white men. Station disclaimers and commentary follow the film, pointing out Johnny Phallus's terrorist sympathies.

The irrepressible Dr. Bankley wags a finger on Channel 64, smiling affectionately at the vision eye. “You see,” he says, “critics typically misuse the term ‘censorship'. We don't live in a totalitarian state. Our media is not ‘censored,’ by definition. What is appropriate to watch, what is appropriate to say, is directed and governed by the more civilized exigencies of the free market, which naturally selects what is good, what is appropriate, and what is important—and weeds out what is trivial, awkward, unseemly, or just in bad taste."

"In a related story, the War on Misinformation continued today with Rhode Island authorities confiscating seven personal work screens allegedly used to hack into the World Wide Web beyond sanctioned American sites. The teenage owners remain at large. Sources could not say whether or not their actions were related to Atheist organizations, or if the teenagers had indeed been exposed to a virus, but Terror Alert Status was raised across the nation to Arrogant Bloodlust."

A campaign ad follows, showing a film clip of Father Washington goosing the Secretary of Defense: “Tired of the same old characters in the Washington soap opera? Vote for Democratic Nominee Harry Halfdan in November. Harry Halfdan. Bringing a whole new cast to the Fall line up."

They traveled into the night and through the next day, stopping to switch lift cars at least a half a dozen times, walking from where they landed one car to where the next one was hidden. It rained off and on throughout the entire trip. It seemed whenever Leslie's clothes felt almost dry it was time to get out and walk again.

Roger barely spoke. At least she had gotten him to explain their route to her. They were headed to Vermont, to a hunting camp used as a safe house in the Adirondacks, where they could rest. From there they would hike to the Hudson River, take a boat into a town called North Creek and have Leslie's head mem removed. The Sons of Man were bringing a surgeon from Albany, who would meet them there at the Atheist cell.

The safest way out of the country was to cross the border into Maine, which meant they would have to fly further north into Canada, and eventually circle south again to reach their destination. The Nation of Vermont was considered a part of the ‘third world', and not a threat in itself to United States security. But it had become a breeding ground for terrorist groups and all its American borders were closely guarded.

Not every former state that successfully seceded from the Union was considered a third world country. But Vermont had already been weakened by decades of guerrilla warfare before it managed to break away forty years previously, taking with it Albany and the disputed Adirondack Territory. In the early days of the United States’ fragmentation, the Adirondacks had become a haven for groups who made wild claims of persecution, such as the Nation of Islam, several Atheist and ‘humanist’ factions, as well as some Arab Americans who had been officially linked to Terrorist groups as old as Hamas. Refugee camps throughout the Adirondack wilderness had become recruiting areas for extremist, anti-American movements of all kinds. Even a militia group, calling itself the Neo-Green Mountain Boys, who conducted small raids along the southern border and into the Berkshires.

But for all the anti-American rhetoric from these groups, it was generally believed they were jealous of US affluence. The refugee camps were cesspools of poverty and disease. Sanctions against Vermont stayed in place, while the current government—considered a false democracy by Washington—remaining in power successfully weakened the power structure of Albany. And a competing faction vying for control of the country from Montpelier grew stronger every day, with Washington's assistance.

A restricted flight zone enforcing the Southern Vermont border formed a crescent, beginning below Albany and reaching all the way to Watertown and the Northeastern corner of Lake Ontario. Another restricted flight zone down Lake Champlain along the East side of the Adirondacks—straight through the middle of the country—had been implemented ostensibly, to ensure delivery of humanitarian aide to refugee camps that proved the absence of terrorists. But, this was only one of the functions it served. It also provided a buffer for the US sympathizers in Montpelier. And, of course, it kept military pressure on Washington's enemies.

Flying into Vermont was easier from the Canadian territory of Quebec. There were random patrols to enforce the US agreement with Canada on limiting trade with Vermont, but they could easily be avoided. Especially when you had a way to distort communication signals.

Even with the scrambler, the Sons of Man were being cautious. Leslie was impressed by the planning that had gone into their route. She knew it would have been possible to cross the restricted zones instead of taking their longer, circuitous route. But the great arc of their journey to the eventual hideout in the wilderness meant they avoided appearances in towns where they might easily be spotted by security operatives or Vermont authorities. It also removed a great deal of risk of being shot down by random patrols.

In each new lift car they found directions to the next ride. Leslie couldn't read them, but they seemed clear to Roger. He only managed to get them lost once, in the middle of the night somewhere near the rocky Maine coast, the darkness falling on them in sheets of cold rain. They wandered for about two hours before they found the car. All Roger said was, “Sorry about that,” and resumed his sullen reticence.

Leslie wondered why the Atheist organization had gone to such expense to help them. She didn't believe their motives were altruistic, and was prepared for the likelihood the Sons of Man wanted something from her. It was a persistent thought.

When do I get the bill for all this?

By the time they quit the last lift car—in a small clearing surrounded by tall conifers—it was dark again. The rain continued, falling like ice slivers shattered from up high in the opaque sky. Leslie thought she heard the hoarse rush of a nearby stream somewhere in the woods, felt the presence of the mountains hunkered in the night around her. They walked a winding path to the camp, Roger leading with a flashlight from the lift car. When they reached the quiet building, Leslie's fingers and feet were wrinkled and soft. The place stood only one story high, made almost entirely of wood.

"There are supposed to be solar batteries inside,” Roger grunted, and climbed the rotting steps of the porch. His torchlight stabbed through the doorway and he followed it in.

Once inside the building, Leslie peeled off her sopping jacket while Roger searched for the pantry to turn on the lights. He opened a cracked, peeling door and disappeared. After a minute, a hanging light went on over a table in the kitchen, and illuminated the dusty sitting room before her. When she saw the fireplace and the stack of wood beside it she smiled. How long had it been since she had built a fire? One thing she could remember about her childhood.

"I'll light a fire to dry our things,” she called. She knelt on the cracked brick hearth.

"The freezer in here's stocked. Are you hungry?"

Leslie looked up. He stood by the pantry holding fresh steaks. His hair was matted and damp, hanging over eyes only half focused on the world around him. Leslie felt sorry for him in that moment. “Very.” She returned her gaze to the fireplace.

Leslie wondered what Roger was thinking. She'd been trained to kill, and yet she knew how the physical act had still changed her. How was it for him? His involvement in all of this was a mistake for which she was responsible. If the situation were reversed she'd hate him with a hardened core of steel and ice. She didn't know what to say to him.

I wish I could be alone to talk to Gun right now. Gun would know what to do.

She placed larger sticks over a pile of kindling, then used a little of Gun's precious power to produce a flame. Smoke slowly rose as the kindling ignited, and she watched flickering tendrils grow and writhe around the large sticks. Soon, she smelled the steaks frying in the kitchen.

She undressed to her bra and panties, hung the clothes with her jacket on the mantle, and left her shoes and socks on the hearth. Then, dropping the scrambler beside her, she sat on a rug against the fire's warmth to listen to the counterpoint rhythms of the rain on the roof and the popping flames. Her mind began to race over the events of the last few days. Everything had happened so fast. Now she was here in Vermont—a fugitive, whose only chance for ultimate survival was the removal of the head mem—the loss of her greatest ally. She was afraid to be without the gentle motion of the head mem's assistance. She was terrified to gain the memories she knew stirred uneasily beneath its blurring tentacles. She was afraid to learn who she really was. She'd grown so accustomed to the head mem, she assumed her intelligence originated there. She didn't want to watch herself grow dull and alone.

Roger emerged from the kitchen, then disappeared through a doorway in the back of the room. “Here's the bedroom,” he called. “Not much, but there are a couple of cots.” He reappeared holding a few hangers. Undressing to his shorts, he used the hangers to drape his clothes by the fire. Then he returned to his cooking.

When he approached the fire again, he held a plate of steak in each hand. He passed one to Leslie then sat cross-legged beside her, balancing his plate on the crux of his hairy calves and thighs.

She watched him as he tore at the steak with fingers and teeth. Since they'd met, he'd been an uncomfortable mixture of rashness and fear. He'd broken down in panic at least twice already, and even though he acted arrogant and sneering, he was mostly passive. Still, in his apartment when Leslie had first seen him, his eyes were bright with spirit and intelligence, like the dappling of light on water.

Now they were like dull gray marbles—marbles too heavy to control, since, every time he lifted them toward her, they rolled to the side and out of focus. That dullness and uncertainty in his gaze irritated her. She resented his weakness. Did she have to deal with every trial alone from now on?