Paradigm (35 page)

Sam ignored the plex and closed his eyes again. This time he knew where he was going. Past the engines, up through the cables and switches to the bridge. A gunship this size took a lot of stabilization, there were hundreds of variables that had to be calculated to a degree of precision beyond the ability of a human mind. It was a job only a computer could do. A simple old-fashioned computer was all that was needed, but that was all Sam required.

He was there now. Swimming through the code, gliding across its operational vortex, moving everything. It was like shoving his hands into a bucket of toy bricks and mixing them up. He opened his eyes.

“Didn’t it work?” asked Alma.

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

There was a split-second when he thought it hadn’t. When everything seemed the same.

Then the ship lurched down on one side. The gasp from the troops beneath could be heard from the steps of city hall. Then the tail began to sink. The faint sound of orders being given could be heard, but it was far, far too late. The massive gunship dropped to the ground like a brick, crushing everything and everyone beneath it.

“Holy crap!” whispered Colby. “You did that?”

Sam stared at it. He
had
done it. All those lives.

“
Oh, Sammy. Looks like you’re a chip off the old block after all.
”

As they watched there was a pop, then another and another. Soon the hulk was engulfed in flames, the few survivors running for cover, getting as far away as they could. Sam was shaking. He sat down on the steps and put his head in his hands, unable to look.

“You didn’t have a choice,” said Alma, sitting next to him. “It was them or you.”

“I’m one person, Alma. One. I just killed hundreds.”

“
Did you hear them screaming, Sammy? I did.
”

“Shut up!”

“
There’s a particular tone to the scream when they know it’s the last sound they’ll ever make. It’s funny how much they dread dying. They die so soon anyway. Like I said—mayflies.
”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

“Sam!” Alma sounded really worried now. “Sam!”

“I told you.”

That was Matheson. He might be defeated, but his voice still had that tone of superiority and disdain.

“His brain’s probably fried. You’d be doing everyone a favor if you just put him out of his misery.”

Footsteps. Then a crunch and the heavy sound of a body hitting the floor. More footsteps.

“Sam.” Her voice was gentle. “Look at me.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No. I didn’t think you’d like that.”

He opened his eyes, lifted his head and smiled at her.

“Thank you.”

“
You people make me sick.
”

Sam took a deep breath and raised the drawbridge. Silence.

“This isn’t who I am,” he said, finally.

“But sometimes that’s the way it has to be.”

Sam shook his head.

“I can’t believe that.”

“Well, how about this, porangi—make it count. If they had to die so you could live, then make it bloody count.”

He stared at her. Of course.

“There’s something I have to do.”

Chapter 37

T
he escape from Bakersfield City
was easy. The company troops were no longer interested in the locule or anything else. The few that remained were fully occupied in tending to survivors and keeping the angry citizens of the city at bay. There was no sign of Carolyn Bast or her men. Like her, they seemed to have just vanished into the ether.

Sam knew that she’d regroup and start again somewhere else. But that would take a while.

Hermes Industries was something else. They wouldn’t take the loss of a gunship lightly, and there was almost certainly another on the way.

They drove out of town—Sam and Alma in the GTO, Colby and Bethany in the truck, not stopping until they reached the old Rovers campsite outside Chowchilla.

Sam retrieved the box from the back seat and set it down in the middle of the open ground.

“This isn’t going to work,” he said. “The mayor of Century City already tried.”

Alma didn’t say anything, she just drew her guns and started firing at it. The box jumped around like a drop of water in a frying pan, but when the dust had settled it was unscathed.

“Damn,” said Colby. “What the hell did they make it of?”

“The whole thing was designed by Mutha,” said Sam. “I guess it came up with some new alloy.”

They all stared at it for a few moments, then Sam retrieved it and threw it into the back of the car.

“I’ll hide it again,” he said. “Somewhere they’ll never find it.”

“Now, young lady,” said Colby, sitting on a slab of concrete near where the Rover’s fire had been. “What are we going to do about you?”

Bethany beamed and sat down next to him.

“Are you going to take me home?” she asked.

Sam smiled and crouched down next to her.

“What happened, Bethy?” he asked. “How did you end up with Bast?”

“Was that the nice lady who gave me cake?”

“She wasn’t really very nice,” said Alma. “About minus a billion on a scale of one to ten.”

“No,” muttered Bethany, frowning. “I don’t guess she was. But she did give me cake, and that was nice, wasn’t it?”

After a great deal of patience and coaxing, she told them how Rob and a few others had gone in search of supplies, and while they were gone Phil had taken her to meet some men. She said they were nice and gave Phil a special treat for letting them give her a ride in their helicopter.

Alma shook her head.

“Bastard,” she muttered. “I told you he’d find some way of getting to Rob.”

“Where are they?” asked Sam. “Rob and his friends. Do you remember?”

“Oh, yes. Rob made me practice. I had to say it over and over. Healdsburg.”

“I know where that is,” said Colby. “Small place up north of Santa Rosa. It’s nice.”

Sam had kind of assumed that he and Alma would take Bethany back, but Colby had other ideas. After a lifetime in service all over the world, seeing every kind of violence and destruction, all he wanted was somewhere quiet…and a family. Sam wasn’t sure that Rob’s little group qualified as “quiet,” but it was pretty close to a family, so he smiled and waved as the old soldier and the guileless girl got back in the truck and headed north toward a new life.

“She’ll be fine,” said Alma.

“I know,” he said.

He turned and looked at the car, covered in dust, the back seat still full of Nathan’s junk. He’d have to do something about that.

“Come on,” said Alma. “Drive. It’ll make you feel better.”

Sam smiled, got into the car and turned the key. She was right, of course.

Alma hopped into the passenger seat and they left Chowchilla behind, stopping for fuel outside of Merced, and heading north on the old highway before turning onto successively smaller roads that wound on through low lying hills, each succeeding mile taking them higher and higher. The air outside began to cool and, as the sun grew low in the sky, arid wastelands gave way to verdant meadows and tall pines.

“It’s beautiful,” said Alma.

“Yeah. You can see why they love it.”

It didn’t take long for Sam’s admiration of the countryside to turn to apprehension, however, as the darkness closed in and the road narrowed even further until it was just a single lane of shattered asphalt bound on both sides by towering black trees.

“There’s a light up ahead,” said Alma. “Slow down.”

Sam took his foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop. Alma opened her door, got out, clicked it shut again as quietly as she could, and disappeared into the trees. Sam sighed, pulled out and drove slowly toward the light.

It turned out to be a fairly official-looking road block, with a red and white gate and a small grey hut. As he approached, two men emerged from the hut. They were both big, burly and heavily armed. Sam guessed they worked for the cartel that controlled the trade in toxic fish. They certainly looked mean enough.

He rolled down his window and stopped at the gate.

“Hi!” he said cheerily.

“I think you took a wrong turn, kid,” said the biggest guy, his right hand resting on his gun.

“Isn’t this the road to Lake Tahoe?”

“You got business, you come back in daylight. No one’s doing business now.”

“Yeah,” said the other one. “Scram.”

They turned to go back to the hut.

“It’s not business,” said Sam. “I’m looking for the Rovers.”

“The Rovers?” The big guy stopped, glanced at him, then walked slowly back to the car and leaned on the door, examining Sam’s face. “What for? You ain’t one of them.”

“They’re my friends. I have to see them.”

“Rovers don’t have friends.”

“They do now.”

The man seemed to think about this, then straightened up.

“Open the gate, Lonnie, let the kid through.”

“But—”

“Open the gate, I said!”

Lonnie grumbled, but heaved the gate open.

“Thanks,” said Sam.

“Go along here about a mile, then take the next left. There’s no sign, but it’ll take you to Emerald Cove. That’s were they’ll be.”

“Right.”

“Oh, and kid…I hear you went anyplace else I’ll kill you with my bare hands. Got it?”

Sam nodded and drove slowly through the gate and on down the road until he couldn’t see the light of the roadblock any more, then he pulled over and waited. A few moments later, there was a click and Alma was back in the car. He hit the gas and jounced out into the road again.

“He said—”

“I heard.”

The turnoff for Emerald Cove was dark and narrow and Sam couldn’t help wondering if the guards had deliberately steered him wrong.

“Are you sure about this?” asked Alma.

“It’s what the guy said.”

“I know, but how on earth could the Rovers get their trucks and trailers down here?”

Sam didn’t respond. It was taking all of his concentration to keep the car on the winding path, instead of half way up some tree. After about half an hour they reached the crest of the hill and finally began the descent, which wasn’t much better, but at least Sam knew they had to be close.

Another fifteen minutes and they were cruising along the edge of the black water of the lake, but there was still no sign of the Rover’s camp.

“There!” said Alma, suddenly. “See? There’s a house!”

There was, but the word “house” seemed somehow unequal to the faded grandeur of the structure before them. Even now, with only the feeble light of the hazy moon and half a dozen campfires to illuminate it, the place was magnificent. There could be no doubt that it had once been a home—it had none of the welcoming, multifunctional openness of a resort and plenty of the faded and crumbling opulence that announced wealth and arrogance to whoever clapped eyes on it. Assuming, of course, that they could have got past the fence and security gates that undoubtedly surrounded it in its heyday. The rear of the house was in darkness, the forest slowly reclaiming its land, but the gently curving façade embraced the waterfront even as the decaying remains of its two towering cupolas retained a sense of haughty disregard. It had once boasted three floors, but at some point the roof had collapsed, taking the bulk of the top floor with it. Still, even if they lacked the skills of the original builders, the Rovers had clearly tried their best to at least keep the old structure waterproof. A rough wooden roof had been installed over the second floor, its surface rising and falling with the remains of the walls beneath, echoing the undulating waves of the great cold lake.

Sam could make out some faint flickering lights inside the house, but the bulk of the activity seemed to be limited to the sprawling Rover campsite around it, with its now-familiar mixture of trucks, trailers and aging RVs.

Sam stopped the car near the shore.

“I think we should walk from here.”

Alma nodded.

“You take the main path. I’ll stick to the trees,” she whispered, vanishing into the dark.

Sam was pretty sure he would never get used to the way she appeared and disappeared, though he really hoped he’d get the chance to try. They hadn’t really talked on the drive up, which was mostly his fault—he just couldn’t get the image of the great gunship collapsing on all those men and women out of his head. Alma couldn’t understand that, couldn’t grasp the idea that killing people was wrong, even when they want to kill you. And the troops on the gunship
had
wanted to kill him, but there would have been others, too. There was probably a galley and a mess room. People who cooked and cleaned and kept the ship running and the troops fed. They hadn’t wanted to kill him. They were just doing their jobs, but he’d killed them all anyway.

He trudged along the path to the camp, lost in thought. Back in Century City, she’d said she felt about him the way he felt about her, but nothing had come of it. She was just as prickly as ever and the razor blades were still in her hair.

“And where d’you think you’re going?”

Sam looked up and was surprised to find himself facing three Rovers he’d never seen before. They were lean and unfriendly, the light reflecting off their piercings and the knives each of them carried.

“I’m here to see Vincent.”

“Vincent?”

They seemed taken aback, but quickly resumed their threatening stance.

“Well, he don’t want to see you!”

“I think you’ll find that he does.”

“This place is sacred. We should kill you where you stand!”

“Okay, fine. But before you do that, how about one of you goes and tells Vincent that Sam is here. You know, just in case.”

The Rovers glanced at each other, then the tallest one nodded and the shortest turned and ran back to camp. The other two stood their ground and glared at him until the short one returned and whispered something to the tallest.

“Seriously? Damn.” He looked Sam up and down then jerked his head toward the camp. “This way.”

Sam followed them along the path and into the camp, which was strangely quiet. The Rovers sat around their fires in small groups talking quietly or just staring into the flames. No one sang and no one laughed.

Vincent was standing on the steps of the great house. He waited until Sam’s escort had left, then ushered him inside. The hall was empty except for a large table on which lay a body that Sam assumed was Mario. He was covered with a blue cloth and surrounded by flickering oil lamps.

“He went this afternoon,” explained Vincent. “He’ll return at midnight.”

Sam followed him up the stairs to a large room that faced the lake.

“What are you doing here, Sam?” he asked. “You’re lucky those kids didn’t kill you. They’d be within their rights. Strangers aren’t tolerated in Vikingsholm.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sam. “I didn’t want to disturb you, but…”

His voice trailed off. Now that the time had come, it was strangely difficult to say.

“What happened?” Vincent was staring at him.

“Nothing…”

“You look different,” said the Rover. “What did you do?”

“I killed some people. I didn’t want to, but—”

“Is that all? Jeeze, Sam, you had me worried there for a second.”

Sam glared at him and walked to the window. The view was beautiful, even at night. Emerald Bay was almost a lake itself, attached to the great Lake Tahoe by the narrowest of openings. There was no sign here of the cartel fisheries and processing plants that Sam was sure must hug most of the shoreline, just the natural beauty of mountains, trees and water.

“Nathan is dead.”

Vincent didn’t say anything.

“Carolyn Bast used him as a shell for Mutha. It…the great plex…destroyed him. It told me there was nothing of Nathan left, but when he died he said two words.”

“Lake,” said Vincent.

“And ‘please.’ So there was some of him left, wasn’t there?”

He turned around and looked at Vincent. For some reason, that was the most important thing. That there was something still there.

“Where is he?”

“In the…in the back of the car.”

Vincent nodded.

“We’ll return him,” he said. “He can return with Mario.”

“Thank you.”

“Right. Now where is she?”

“Who?”

“That girl. No way she lets you walk in here on your own.”

“Right here,” said Alma, swinging in from the roof through the window and landing without a sound.

“Nice to see you again,” said Vincent.