Watching Yute (30 page)

Another step, another, another. She
concentrated on the slow, steady rhythm of them. Different sounds
came from sandier paths, deeper sand, sand grinding against stone.
Every few metres, a slightly different surface, a slightly
different sound. Step, step, step.

After enough steps, she was at the
little camp. She had made the trip so many times, she could have
done it blindfolded. So many times, sometimes with Cheryl,
sometimes to find her there, sometimes to just wait here for
her.

She wasn’t coming today. Today Cheryl
was in a plastic container. She wasn’t coming today.

Cassidy leaned against the familiar
chunk of wall, not daring to look at Cheryl’s mural. She stared at
the flap of the tent, building her courage to go in. Her trembling
wasn’t so bad here. She thought it would be worse. Despite the
slight improvement in calm, there was still a part of her that just
felt like crumpling into a little ball, and screaming until she
suffocated. But she didn’t have the energy.

Take a step, another step. Go to the
tent, open the flap. Sleeping bags opened and arranged as blankets
were the first thing she saw. She couldn’t bear to walk on them.
Her little terminal was sitting nearby. If for no other reason, she
had to come here to get that. As she picked it up and stuffed it in
her thigh pocket, her face was close enough to Cheryl’s clothes
duffel to smell her flowery deodorant. She felt the trembling
trying to force its way back.

Cassidy remembered Cheryl’s cute little
diary. She reached into the duffle to look for it. Her hand was
greeted by a silky little thing that always made Cassidy melt when
she saw Cheryl in it.

Today, the lace may as well have been
spikes. She forced her hand a bit deeper to grab the diary, and
yank it out. She clutched it to her chest, now trembling as bad as
ever. The pretty silky thing had fallen out a little, and it almost
seemed to stare at her.

She couldn’t handle being in this tent
anymore. So many wonderful memories that now only seemed to rip at
her. She ran out with the diary, only to be faced with the mural.
Run, keep running, get away from this place.

She ran across one ruined building, and
another. She came to an open patch of sand and allowed herself to
fall, crumpling into that little ball she’d thought of before, and
let her scream loose.

~~~

“
Are you sure?” Armil asked
Cipriana. Seated on the floor in his decorated meditation room
aboard his airlimb, in the soothing dim, the Grand Elder seemed all
the more ethereal.

Cipriana sat at the other side of the
detailed floor rug, and nodded solemnly. “I think I need to stay
here. Now that I feel what Marcus felt, and...”

“
And the others look to you
for stability.”

“
Stability.” Cipriana gave a
soft chuckle. “Now that I’m apparently going insane.”

Armil smiled gently. “Marcus seemed to
bear his ‘insanity’ well. He really was well-loved here, wasn’t
he?”

“
Yes, yes he was.” Cipriana
sighed deeply. It felt like there was more to say on the subject,
but it didn’t matter now. It was nothing of consequence in the end.
“You’re going to ask Cassidy as well, right?”

“
Yes. What do you think
she’ll say?”

“
I... I really have no
idea.” She looked towards the door as if she expected Cassidy to
walk in right at that moment. “She’s very hurt.”

“
So are you, and you said
no.”

“
She’s very
hurt.”

~~~

Cassidy had fallen asleep on the sands,
luckily having enough sense to have crawled into a spot where a
shadow protected her from the afternoon sun. The diary sat open
nearby, after a little reading before Cassidy had fallen
asleep.

Beeping came from Cassidy’s thigh,
gradually waking her up. She didn’t realize what it was at first,
and her half-awake hand groped her thigh, feeling the terminal
through the pocket material. She opened the flap, hit the answer
button, and left the terminal on the ground, screen facing
up.

“
Hello?” it was Brandy’s
voice. Goddam, why now? “Hello? Cass?”

Cassidy yelled out loud enough to be
heard with the terminal being off to the side. “What?!”

“
Cass, is that
you?!”

Cassidy sighed. “Who the fuck else
would it be?”

“
You’re okay? What’s going
on, all I can see is the sky.”

“
I’m okay. What have you
heard?”

“
On the news they said there
was some kind of attack at your base. You’re still at that funny
temple place, right? You’re okay though?”

“
I’m unharmed.”

“
Good, good.” Brandy paused
for a bit. “Were any of your friends hurt?”

A silly question, really. Darn near
everyone here was at least a little bit of a friend. In response,
Cassidy just lazily outstretched her arm, and laid the back of her
hand over the terminal. “She was.”

“
Who?”

Cassidy tapped her hand against the
terminal to draw attention to her ring. “Her.” She drew her hand
back and clenched her fist around the gift Cheryl had once given
her.

Brandy was silent for a moment as she
put the pieces together. “You married that girl? And
she…?”

No, she never married Cheryl, she
didn’t get the chance. They were slowly headed that way, but Brandy
didn’t need to know the details. “She. Was. Stabbed. And.
Died.”

An ugly silence came that pressed down
on Cassidy’s lungs and weighed in Brandy’s gut. Cassidy clenched
her hand against her chest. The silence continued, and laying on
her back staring at the sky, Cassidy almost forgot the terminal was
even on.

Brandy’s voice came again, timidly.
“Do... do you want to talk?”

“
What?” Cassidy replied,
“Speak up.”

“
I asked you if you wanted
to talk.”

Why was it that when something bad
happens, everyone feels the need to ask stupid questions? If she’d
wanted to talk, would she have walked out into the desert, when she
could have gone and talked to Maxine or Cip?

Ha. Cip. What, if she talked to Cip
now, was she talking to her and the ghosts of Marcus and the
statue? How could she look at Cipriana the same now? Whether she
was crazy, or there was something to this, it was weird either
way.

Brandy’s voice came again. “Cass? Cass
say something. Are you even there?”

“
No.” Cassidy lazily groped
across the sand attempting to turn off the terminal. Her hand
knocked it, spinning it a little.

Brandy got a view of the sky spinning.
What, don’t you think I care? I really feel bad that you
lost-“

“
You gave up the right to
give a damn about me when you started blocking my
calls.”

“
Cass… that was a long time
ago…!”

Cassidy sat up and sighed. This gave
Brandy a partial view of the side of Cassidy’s head. “I don’t mean
to snap. Look, I know with you and me... I know it was my fault. I
sucked as a girlfriend. I knew that the day after you dumped
me.”

“
That doesn’t matter now,
Cass, that’s ancient history. I’m calling as a friend.”

Cassidy leaned over the terminal and
looked down at Brandy’s image. She took off her ring, and dropped
it in the sand beside the terminal. “That’s ancient history now,
too. She never had the chance for me to neglect her, and dump me,
so happy ending, huh? If I want to talk to her in the future and
reminisce on old times, I guess I have to use a goddam ouija board,
huh? I can’t let her down anymore now after I let that asshole with
the knife walk past me, huh?"

Cassidy calmed down a little, and
collapsed back onto the sand. The trembles started reasserting
themselves again.

“
Put your wedding ring back
on.” Brandy commanded softly.

Cassidy paused, and looked over to the
ring and the terminal. “It’s not a wedding ring.” She wished it
was. At least there would be some official on-paper record that
implied Cheryl meant the world to her. It would be an honour to be
her widow. “It’s just a... kind of a promise ring. Teenagers do
that kind of thing, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“
Put the fucking ring on
now.”

“
Holy fuck, alright
already!” Cassidy obeyed. The moment the metal found its place on
her finger, she was glad it was back on. Dammit, she was crying
again. Loud.

“
Cass, hon, it’s
okay…”

Cassidy kept crying, and pushed out the
words “No, it’s not okay. It’s not.” Feeling like a fool, she
reached over to the terminal and shut it off so she could lie down
and cry without Brandy listening in or interrupting.

~~~

Doc Brock followed his two soldier
escorts from Armil’s troops, watching the temple get closer and
closer. He realized that he was probably the only person around who
wasn’t already fairly familiar with the temple, so he tried to not
gawk too much.

Readings of the sand showed plenty of
active nanites. When sealed in a test container with a transmitter,
he found that upon receiving a certain frequency, the nanites would
agitate, swirling the sand in the container around. It brought new
meaning to ‘tempest in a teapot’. Another frequency turned them
off, dropping the sand, looking none the worse for wear.

As for any other abilities of these
nanites, he could only guess right now. Did they replicate
themselves, or were they produced by a separate nanite fleet? How
far were they spread? It seemed obvious that they were the cause of
the big sandstorm, and the little ones on the helipad.

The little sandstorms seemed to happen
just to dump nanites onto visitors. The big one may have been just
a diversionary tactic. If he could find the controlling server,
computer, or nanite cluster, he could extract some better
answers.

Readings concerning nanites on the
personnel were just as fascinating, but equally inconclusive.
Everyone had nanites running around in their bloodstream, even
himself. A more ‘casual’ test, not specifically looking for
nanites, would likely have turned up nothing.

As it was, nanites in blood samples he
took practically self destructed upon leaving the host body. He
wouldn’t have seen the remains if he wasn’t looking for them. The
remains would have to be examined later at a proper facility. As it
stood now, the only look he could get at ‘live’ bloodstream nanites
were though external imaging scans, and that was quite limiting as
well.

The lightest ‘infections’ were in the
recent arrivals. Himself, Armil, and Armil’s troops. The regular
staff were a bit more laden with them, but the highest
concentration of them seemed to be in that Captain Cipriana Ulrica
Reichenbach. What a handle on her.

He had asked Captain Reichenbach if she
was experiencing anything that might be caused by the nanites, but
she said no. She didn’t seem shocked to hear that she had more
nanites than anyone else, but she had a naturally passive
nature.

Cipriana, Cipriana. He must remember to
use first names around here. It wasn’t his first dealing with
military that behaved casually, it should be easy. But what kind of
name is that? Sounds Italian. I’ll have some Cipriana Alfredo,
please.

Lost in thought, he found himself
nearly all the way to the temple, and the first stone step was just
ahead. His escorts had stopped, and now stood on either side of
him.

“
Sir,” the one said “This is
as far as we go. We won’t take guns into the temple.” Indeed, the
members of Armil’s troops who now guarded the doorways were
equipped only with spears.

“
Ah, I see.” Brock looked at
the rifle, and at the step. “May I see it for a moment?” The
soldier reluctantly gave up his firearm. Brock stood on the sand,
pointed the rifle skyward, away from the temple, and pulled the
trigger. Nothing.

“
Ah.. where’s the
safety?”

The soldier smirked a little, and
flipped it off. Brock successfully fired one shot into the sky, and
then stepped back up onto the first step.

He aimed at the same spot of sky, and
pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, the firing pin hit the back of
the next bullet, and nothing happened.

“
Ooh… !”

The soldier stepped up to turn the
safety off again. “Oh. It’s off. I guess you jammed or something.
Let me re-prime it.” The soldier prepared the rifle again. He
passed it back to Brock, and Brock tried to fire again. Nothing. He
passed the rifle back to the soldier.

“
Your gun is probably fine.
You have your rules about no guns in the temple? I think the temple
agrees. Your gunpowder might be soaked with nanites. Or something.
I’ll have to borrow it again later.” This was a very impressive
trick. He didn’t bother to mention the idea that nanites in your
gun powder could theoretically also result in unwanted firing, but
if it didn’t happen yet, it probably wasn’t going to happen
soon.

Brock aimed one of his instruments at
the gun. “Yup. Nanites. Lots of em.” The soldier made an uneasy
face. “Just uh.. wash your hands well before eating.” Total
malarkey, but it made him feel better. “The two that were killed,
they were at the top of the stairs. Yes?”