A Girl Called Badger (Valley of the Sleeping Birds) (40 page)

“He’s right about that,” said the voice. “But let’s have a face-to-face before all this mooning and squishy talk makes me spew digital vomit.”

Across the room a red light flashed over a steel door. Round bolts covered the face.

“I don’t understand what’s going on and I don’t like any of it,” said Badger.

“We’ve been in his power since we’ve been here and nothing horrible has happened,” said Wilson.

“At least, not yet,” said the voice.

Machine-arms ripped off the wired discs and the tube in Badger’s arm. Wilson helped her down from the casket. She stretched her stiff muscles and walked with him across the room.         

Wilson spun a large wheel on the door and pushed. The pair held hands and wandered into a vast cavern that soared high into the mountain. A blue light glowed in the center of the room and illuminated rows of vertical caskets along the walls. Thick, dust-covered cables linked each casket to bulbous metal shapes along the sides. Many caskets were in the open position. Wilson saw only a few blinking lights in the levels that stretched up into the darkness.

“In the center,” said the dry voice.

A low glass dome in the center of the chamber was the source of blue light. Four other dark and dust-covered domes formed a complete circle with the lighted one.

The dome was filled with a pale blue liquid and a naked, hairless man floated inside like a drowned sailor under glass. A mass of cables linked metal points on his body to dark machinery underneath. Wrinkles and scars covered his thin face and his eyes were closed. His right arm was missing at the shoulder and his left hand was gone. Instead of legs the emaciated thighs ended in pink, rounded stumps.

“That can’t be alive,” whispered Badger.

“Oh, but he is,” said the dry twigs somewhere in the ceiling.

Wilson touched the glass. “But there’s no air. Does he breathe water?”

“It’s not water, it’s an oxygen solution. I don’t know exactly what, but it keeps me alive.”

Badger stared wide-eyed. “That’s you?”

“The pretty girl gets a blue ribbon!”

“You were part of the Hyperion project,” said Wilson. “To carry man to the stars.”

“And woman. They made these before the war to sleep through the boring part of space travel. Actually, I’m lying. It’s all boring except for the launch and the part about not hitting a planet with your face.”

“Where’s everyone else? Did they actually travel to the stars?”

“They left all right. Took a long trip off a short cliff, if you know what I mean.”

Wilson stared at the empty caskets on the wall. “No, I don’t.”

“They’re dead,” said the voice. “Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“Sorry.”

“You never think something bad will happen until it does. The Chinese nuked a city in Taiwan, invaded, and we reacted. Some wild-eyed Ivan in Siberia got an idea and we reacted. I don’t know why it happened when it happened. One morning you’re fine and the next you’re eighty-sixed. The geniuses working here had already studied the problems of living on alien planets. Your people have been living in bunkers they made as a full-sized test for long-term living quarters. Everything was designed be foolproof and low maintenance, because they expected people to forget how to fix most of it, or to lose the replacement parts. Contrary to popular belief, there’s no Ace Hardware on Venus. Anyway, I guess they already had some kind of plan when the war drums started banging. The survival platoon––the astronauts with the implants––they stayed outside in the test bunkers. Most of the scientists left in a big group to the south. The big bosses and the rest got in the hibernation chambers. They figured they could sleep until the radiation and virus cleared out. The joke was on them, wasn’t it?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m the only one left.”

Wilson pointed to a pair of caskets with blinking of green and blue lights.

“What about those?”

“That’s Dreamer and Twitch, they don’t count.”

“Why not?”

“They’re vegetables. They’ve never woken up or said anything to me. I keep them around just for kicks. There’s not much else to do in this joint.”

“So the caskets don’t work?”

“I didn’t say that. At the ten-year wake-up a few of the sleepers left and didn’t look back. I remember one of them talking about the horrible dreams she had in the casket. Others hit the snooze button. At each wake-up a few more left. Nobody ever took the time to tell me why, I had to figure it out later. I’m just an old freak with no arms and legs. I never had a choice like them. I could have killed myself, sure––cut off the CO2 scrubber or the power and I’m gone in a few minutes. But suicide ...”

The voice trailed off. Wilson gave it a full minute then tapped on the glass dome.

“Suicide is what?”

“It’s never the answer,” said the voice. “One of my friends killed himself when the war started.”

“I’m sorry. So everyone left the caskets?”

“Left or died from power failures, coolant leaks, electrical shorts, or the huge earthquake. Not counting Dreamer and Twitch, the last one flat-lined fifteen years ago. I used backup power to reset the nuke plant and he didn’t wake up.”

Badger walked around the dome. “But what about you? How did you get here?”

“I worked on Hyperion, the big star-travel boondoggle. I used to be one of those guys who did everything. I climbed K-2, Chimborazo, and peaks on just about every continent. Me and a buddy hiked through Austria and Peru just for fun. I was in the Rangers during the war and got my hand blown off, but that didn’t stop me. The Army wanted me to put in my papers, but I told them to pound sand. My captain pulled some strings and got me TDY in this Air Force project as a survival expert. When the virus blew up for real, I was sent down the mountain to get something from Schriever.”

“From Schriever ... the sequencer? Wait––you’re the guy who took it? Jack Garcia?”

“The one and only. On the way back the sirens started. We made it to the western edge of the city when the nukes hit. My van rolled and I got messed up bad. You can see the stunning results of Chinese minivan technology right here. I found out years later that a buddy of mine called Padre pulled me out and drove me and the equipment here to Altmann. They had to amputate just about everything. These doctors were like, hey, let’s put him in this fishbowl, he won’t survive in the bunkers. Let’s keep him from his family and friends. He can watch them grow old and die. Bastards.”

“Did they give you an implant?”

“No. I never wanted one and they only asked once.”

“What were the implants for, again?” asked Badger.

“To keep the astronauts alive. It kills most viruses and speeds up healing. Ever wonder why you never get the flu?”

“What’s the flu?”

“Exactly.”

“So why did all of this have to be secret? And why do we have to come back to the Tombs when we die?”

“Listen, I didn’t make all the rules, it was the guys in the program and they’re all dead. I heard they made a religious thing out of it because there’s nothing like the fear of God to make people do things. One of the survivors in the bunkers used to be a priest. It was Padre, the same friend who saved me from the wreck. He helped develop the stories and rules. Everything else was kept secret, and when the children grew up they didn’t know anything but the stories. Everyone had to keep using the implants in case someone brought the virus here. You probably wondered why you’re named after a founder. It’s because you’ve got the same implants in your body as the first Ensign Wilson. These implants are given to new people at the name-giving ceremony, if that’s what you still call it, and recycled when they die.”

“Do you handle the surgery?” asked Wilson.

“Look at me––I can’t even butter bread. All the surgery is automated, I just start the right machines when the body gets delivered.”

“But why reuse the implants?” asked Wilson.

“There wouldn’t be enough to go around if we didn’t. I remember at the beginning they talked about creating an assembly line, but those guys all left. Nothing came of it.”

“Wait a minute,” said Badger. “If everyone with my implant got sick and died, why did you keep using it? Why’d you put it in me?”

“The other controllers thought the implant worked long enough. But you’re right, I should have stopped using that one a few cycles ago.”

“Other controllers?”

“I’m in a controller bed. Look around, there are three more.”

“It’s not the same as a casket, then,” said Wilson.

“No. They didn’t completely trust automated systems. The controller beds were designed to monitor all cameras, sensors, and machinery inside the mountain and outside up to five kilometers. When it’s your watch-cycle any warning alert or maintenance issue will wake you from hibernation. You fix it then go back to sleep. There were four controllers and I was just a backup. Basically floating eye-candy. But if something can go wrong, it will. Some things were patched together, it’s not like they pulled this stuff off a shelf. So a few years after the war, Dave––that’s his controller bed on the right––didn’t wake on schedule. The emergency system brought the rest of us out of sleep. The other controllers talked themselves blue and tried everything, but Dave just died in his sleep. Other problems came up. I woke decades later and Angela was singing. She wouldn’t stop or respond so the other controllers cut her off from the systems. She didn’t last a week. The same thing happened to Sun and Victor. About fifty years ago, when he could still speak, Victor tried to teach me everything about the controller systems. But I’m still a stupid grunt inside, he couldn’t change that.”

“If you can see everything that goes on outside, why didn’t you stop us? We were looking for the sequencer and it was here the entire time!”

A sigh of white noise filled the room. Wilson and Badger covered their ears.

“I’m no scientist,” said the voice. “Even if I’d known exactly what you wanted, how am I supposed to get the message out? Would you have believed any of it?”

“But you could have done something,” said Wilson. He listened to the low hum coming from the dome as the voice took time to respond.

“It’s not easy to explain.”

“Try,” said Badger.

“I don’t wake up and drink my morning coffee or read the newspaper in this thing. Right now, I actually see myself in an overgrown garden with trees and flowers everywhere. The power plant is a huge cinnamon tree in the middle; brown and strong-smelling. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never seen a cinnamon tree; it’s how I created the interface for the power controls. If I concentrate hard, I can see the two of you in this room, but it’s not real to me. It’s the same way you two are picturing the garden in your minds right now.”

Wilson shook his head. “That’s not an explanation, that’s a description of your conscious mind.”

“I’m getting to that,” said the voice. “By walking to this azalea bush, I can access all the video feeds in the valley. It’s not like I’m turning a switch. In the last year the garden has been changing, and last month even went away for a few days. Imagine being locked in a silent, pitch-black room, all by your lonesome.”

“Don’t worry, we can,” said Badger.

“To answer your question, yes, sometimes I know everything that goes on aboveground, but other times I feel like an old man trying to find his glasses.”

Wilson nodded. “What do you see now?”

The top of the dome flickered with black-and-white images. Static popped and a girl’s laughter echoed in the cavern. On the dome’s surface, a girl set a bowl on the ground and a dog ate from it.

Wilson pointed. “That’s Kaya!”

“And one strange, ugly dog,” said the voice.

“The only strange thing is why it kept following us,” said Badger.

“Dreamer always liked dogs when she was alive. I bet it was her,” said the voice.

Wilson touched the moving images. “What are you talking about?”

“The dusty corners of my old brain remember something about animal implants. But who can tell? I just transmitted a signal and he’s not answering.”

“But you just said Dreamer was a vegetable.”

“Listen, she doesn’t talk to me directly like we’re doing now, or wake up if I ask questions. I’m always by myself in the garden. But sometimes a dog will show up and we’ll play around. It’s always a golden retriever. The dog tells me things when I’m sleeping. Stupid jokes, never anything important. Dreamer liked to tell them before the war. That’s how I knew it was her and not one of the systems. Or my own mind.”

Wilson’s eyes widened. “Wait ... she tells jokes? Dreamer is Parvati!”

“How do you know her name? Did you read a medical log or some database?”

Wilson shook his head. “When I was under– ... when I almost died, I saw things. I shot Sergio. I gave my––your revolver to Mike. I took the sequencer from the base. It seemed just like  a dream before, but now–”

“Somehow she’s linked us together,” Jack said. “Because killing Sergio .... that’s something I’ve never told anyone.”

“Did the black dog pull me out of the ground? Or was Parvati controlling him?”

“Does it matter? There’s no way to ask her.”

The flickering images of Kaya and the dog disappeared and left just an old man under a dome. Wilson looked around at the lines of black caskets lining the walls and felt a sudden urge to be anywhere else.

“We have to go. Reed’s waiting for us,” he said.

“I know,” said Jack.

The floor vibrated and a rectangle of wall slid away with a cascade of dust. Tiny cadmium-yellow lights snapped on and revealed a spiral of metal steps.

“That’s an old rabbit hole that leads out of the mountain. Just don’t be like the others, kid. Come back and visit me.”

“I promise.”

Wilson spread his hands on the dome. On the old man drowning in a web of cables.

“Thanks, Jack, for watching over us all these years.”

“Well, everyone needs a hobby.”

Wilson joined Badger in the yellow light of the stairwell. As they climbed the steps, ancient powder swirled into the air like sparkles of fairy dust.

The motes of dust tickled his nose but Wilson barely noticed. He listened to the faint sound of an old man singing.