Psion Gamma (3 page)

When he’d given the Psions a month to come back and look for him, he knew it was time. Staying any longer might cost him his sanity. He’d debated for days whether he should leave a message in case Alphas came looking for him. In the end, he decided against it. The CAG was more likely to come snooping around. If Alphas hadn’t come by now, they weren’t coming.

The horrible dream with Brickert and the bloody ice cream stayed with him all morning as he got everything ready to go. His preparations took about an hour. Then he set about making the chamber look as if it had never been touched. Any evidence of his stay was removed; he wiped down every surface he could think of. When he finished that, he slung his pack over his shoulder with a satisfied sigh. He paused with his thumb on the generator kill switch, watching the machine chug away. The exhaust pipe made a faint rattling sound where it passed through the wall, though he’d grown so used to it, he rarely notice the noise.

“Lucky me this place was here,” he told himself. Brickert would have agreed, but Al would have said it was something more than luck.

So many emotions gripped him, but he swallowed hard and pushed the button. He went to wipe it with his sleeve, but decided to leave it.

Who knows,
he said to himself.
Without another glance, he traced the familiar path to the hidden door, and left the bunker.

He emerged in the noon-day sun from the trapdoor in the middle of the lawn of a large chemical engineering plant. Before anyone could notice something out of the ordinary, he hopped out and erased all traces of the door by smoothing out the grass. He intended to walk to the air rail hub in downtown Rio de Janeiro. According to the maps, the landmark closest to the hub was Estádio de Maracanã. Once he found that, he would easily find the air rail station.

Heading westward, Sammy hoped daylight traveling would be safer because he could appear less conspicuous in crowds. With a seven or eight kilometer walk to make, he tried to keep a good pace. He stayed on the lookout for clothes: shirts, shoes, a pair of pants—anything to get out of the clothes that told a Thirteen or Aegis what he was.

For the first hour or more, he passed mostly industrial buildings, shops, and truck yards. On multiple occasions, trucks flew by him on the road, paying him little mind. He spotted several dumpsters, but nothing inside he could use. When the landscape changed into homes, Sammy grew nervous again. When he was unable to take it anymore, he scampered down a bank, landed in a creek running alongside the road, and smeared mud over the holes and blood stains in his jumpsuit.

About halfway to his destination he found a tattered rag of a shirt strung out over a bush. It had two long tears down the back, several frayed edges, and yellow food stains, but smelled fit to wear. It covered the top half of his jumpsuit, which let him breathe easier.

It was a hot day and stiff breezes whipped regularly through the street. On the back of these winds, he caught a whiff of something that stunk like the bottom of a garbage can. He turned into an area where the sidewalks were busy with pedestrians and mangy, stray dogs. It took considerable restraint on his part to not rush over and speak to someone. He hadn’t had human contact in a month. Most of the kids played football in the streets, dispersing only when a car rumbled through the game. Then they’d converge back into the road as though nothing had happened. Dogs chased and nipped at each other. Flies or fleas swarmed most of them. One dog took quite a liking to Sammy, sniffing and barking happily at the food in his pack. Sammy ignored it for two blocks, and the dog left him alone.

Rows of townhomes lined each side of the street with dusty windows and crumbling eves, each missing several bricks from the siding. They had all been turned into shops or churches. A police car roared down the cobblestone street with sirens blaring. Kids scattered like roaches and heads popped out of windows to investigate. Sammy hadn’t seen or heard a siren since he’d run from the Shocks back in Johannesburg almost a year ago. Instinctively, he ducked into a small shop selling heat-blown glass. He peeked out the window, ignoring the sales clerk’s attempts to coerce him into buying a glass flower. It took about five full minutes before he felt safe to continue traveling.

Not long after leaving the shop, he came to it:

Estádio de Maracanã. The largest football stadium in the world.

Sammy had heard about it, of course. Anyone who knew football had heard of Maracanã. Still, the sight of it mesmerized him. It stood like a bright white temple calling out to its people. This stadium held over a quarter of a million spectators. Four towering statues of stone honored the Great Ones: O Fenômeno, Copa, Pélé, and O Rei. The grounds around the stadium bustled with activity.

The air rail hub was a block away. The surrounding streets were busy, too. According to flyers pasted on every flat surface he could see, two local football clubs were inside battling for a regional title. From inside the stadium’s bowels, a soft buzz of noise echoed out of the semi-open dome. As he passed by the magnificent structure, the buzzing grew louder until it turned into a dim roar of cheers, horns, whistles, and shouts. It built in crescendo until one tumultuous eruption of sound like thunder filled Sammy’s ears, startling him. Half of the stadium bellowed out its approval while the other half whistled in anger.

As he drew closer to the hub, he heard a voice over the intercom announcing the arrivals and departures. He passed a large pink sign with a suspicious looking man in a black hat and coat. Underneath the image, in bold letters, he read
: KEEP THE PEACE! CALL IT IN!
After over three hours of walking, he finally reached the hub. The main building was a long, low oddly-designed structure with strange angles to the roof and windows. Next to it stood a large parking garage of similar architecture. Buses and taxis lined the roads coming and going. Sammy passed them all, picking up his pace in anticipation.

As he crossed over the threshold of the front doors, a wave of noise greeted him. The busyness of couples saying good-byes and hellos, parents directing their children around, and shops and restaurants providing their services warmed his soul in a way that made him feel silly and juvenile. It also made him miss his friends quite badly.

So many people
. . .

Instantly, he felt out of place. It was one thing to be dressed the way he was on the streets of Rio, and another to be dressed that way in an air rail hub. The state of his clothes received several stares and a few pointed fingers from people walking past. Most of them spoke in English, but he caught snatches of conversations in other languages, most he believed to be Portuguese. Parents steered their children away from him. He tried to ward off these worries by returning these looks with a simple smile, but their suspicions resurrected his old fears. He sought out an electronic ticket vendor and brought it to life with a touch of the screen.

Number of Passengers:

One

Round trip or one way:

One way

Destination:

Wichita

Wichita, Mid-American Territory. Correct?

Yes

Closest Hub: Topeka---Distance: 8800 kilometers.

Fare: $130.00.

Accept?

His heart sank. Where was he going to get one hundred and thirty dollars? Even if he could somehow miraculously find a job and work for wages, hard currency was a thing of the past. He had no account to put his funds into. Sammy’s dad had told him about how he used to carry money around for many years, but Sammy had only seen it in history museums. In the NWG, no one carried money. If the CAG was the same way, someone would have to buy a ticket for him.

He sat down to consider his choices, mildly aware that just a few meters away, hanging on the wall, was another one of those pink signs:
KEEP THE PEACE! CALL IT IN!
Thoughts streamed through his head presenting him with dozens of variations on three main possibilities: he could go back to the compound and try his luck there, he could look for work, or he could steal. With enough patience, he could finger enough things to pawn and pay someone to set up an account for him.

The idea of stealing turned his stomach. He’d done all that before and he’d hated it.
Maybe, in my case, stealing is justified. I have to
get back and warn the commander
. These rationalizations didn’t make him feel any better. And if he were caught, the consequences could be catastrophic. He resolved to spend the rest of the day trying to barter a deal with someone to pay his fare to Topeka in exchange for work.

He went through the entire hub, talking to all the restaurant and shop managers, explaining that he was a runaway and needed help getting back to family up north. As he expected, no one needed help from someone who dressed or sounded like him nor were they willing to bother with his dilemma. One burly man with big bushy arms jabbed a meaty finger into the pink sign hanging just outside the front of his restaurant and said, “Beat it kid, or I’ll call YOU in.”

Sammy left in a hurry, pleading his case with the few remaining shops. When he knew he’d gone to them all, he left the hub and hit the streets.

The football match had ended. Fans, wearing combinations of black and blue or green and yellow, flooded the sidewalks around the stadium. Sammy pushed his way through crowds and tried to spot places shabby enough that he could find some type of work. He headed back for the rows of stores and shops he’d seen earlier.

For the rest of the day, he went door to door giving each owner or manager the same story he’d told in the hub. He was from the north, hence the accent, and was trying to get back after running away. The pink signs weren’t seen as frequently around these parts, but he still found no success. As the sky turned from blue to a reddish-orange and the summer heat faded, Sammy strongly considered going back to the compound for the night. He turned onto another road just as the streetlights blinked on above him.

This row of shops was just like the dozens of others he’d knocked on. Five or six doors down, under the illumination of a dim bulb hanging above the front door, he saw a small man wearing an apron over his clothes with a package tucked under his arm. The man turned over the sign so it read:
CLOSED
and locked up the shop door.

Sammy picked up his pace. “Sir! Excuse me, sir!”

The man looked up at Sammy running toward him and took a step backwards toward the door. His apron was red with blood. When Sammy saw the blood, he stopped quickly. Then he relaxed. Above the man’s head hung a large green and yellow sign:

Butcher/Açougeria.

“Yes?” the man asked in a soft voice. “I just closed up. What do you want?”

He was a short man with badly receding dark hair. His face was round and full, but lined. His eyes weren’t hardened like most Sammy had seen today. This was a man waiting to pass judgment.

“My name is Albert,” Sammy said in his most friendly tone. “What’s yours?”

“Floyd.” He extended his hand to Sammy. “Hernandes.”

Sammy took it and shook firmly. “Hi. I need a job, sir. Just temporarily. I’m trying to get up north, and I have no money.”

“Well, I can see that.” Floyd glanced twice at Sammy’s clothes. Sammy couldn’t tell if Floyd’s expression was of disgust or concern. “Forgive me for prying, but where are your parents?”

Sammy used the same story he’d used all day. “I grew up north until my parents moved here. But I ran away from my home. I have an uncle in Topeka. I’m trying to get to him, but I have no money.”

“Your uncle can’t help?” he asked.

Sammy shook his head.

Floyd stared at Sammy, debating with himself.

“I’m not trying to play a trick—”

 “You’re a climber?” Floyd pointed a finger at the spikes sticking out of Sammy’s shoes.

“Sort of. It’s been about a month since I’ve done any. These are my only shoes.”