Atlas (3 page)

Alejandro wiped his eyes. "We just agreed that you'd have to join the military. So yes, you'll work. And yes, you'll carry a gun."

"Well sure, but I meant the civilians. They don't have to get jobs. They aren't allowed weapons. Think about what that must be like. To walk the streets and not worry about where your next meal is going to come from. To sit in the park and not worry about getting shot in the back, or hit by a two-by-four. That's living, bro. That's freedom. Not like here." I finished my beer and slammed the glass upside-down on the countertop. "Come with me."

"I had someone rob you this morning, and you still want me to come with you." Alejandro laughed, like I'd just told him the funniest joke. "I'm not going with you. And that's that."

Alejandro came with me.

He said it was because he'd changed his mind, and wanted to ensure he got the money above and beyond what he owed me back, with full interest. But I didn't believe it. He'd always been there for me, and I think he felt it was his duty to come. And while he wanted to look out for me, I'm sure he also wanted a change just as badly as I did, despite all his fervent declarations to the contrary. Who could resist the promise of a better life? That's what made people immigrate, wasn't it? Or border hop, anyway...

I sat in the rear bed of a pickup truck that was making a run for the UC border. It was pitch black out there: the truck had shut off its headlights for obvious reasons. I was assured the driver wore night vision goggles, though from the way the truck jolted and swerved, I had my doubts.

The darkness heightened my other senses. I heard the rush of the passing air, which was interrupted by the occasional rustle from a crushed tumbleweed, or the screech as the undercarriage scraped uneven ground. The electric motor itself was soundless, as the driver had disconnected the pedestrian warning speakers. I smelled dust, and fuel, and human sweat.

Alejandro sat on my left. In the light of the half-moon I could barely see his face, let alone the faces of the others crowding the truck bed. Men and women who appeared as vague outlines against the night sky. 

"Scared?" the man sitting on the other side of me said in English.

"Yeah," I said.

"Me too." His accent made me think he was indigenous. Nahua, maybe. Late twenties, or early thirties, judging from the timber of his voice.

"Lucky we're on the same truck then," I said. "Back a scared man into a corner, and you've got a fight on your hands. Back two scared men into a corner, and you've got yourself a war."

The man laughed. "That's a good saying. I like it. I'm Tahoe Eaglehide."

"Rade. And this is Alejandro." I pointed at Alejandro beside me.

"
Hola
," Alejandro said.

"You're Nahua?"
I asked him.

"Navajo."

"Interesting." I regarded him in the dim moonlight, but could barely make out his features.

Tahoe was returning the favor. "What's a whitey like you doing on the wrong side of the border?"

"The same question could be asked of you."

"It could." Tahoe sounded amused. "But I'm not a whitey." He fiddled with his jeans and retrieved something. "Here."

I regarded the dark mass in his hand dubiously. "What is it?"

"My wife.
She
is Nahua."

I accepted the item. It was some kind of locket. I opened it, and a backlight illuminated the picture of a wholesome young woman.

"Nice," I said.

"You like her?"

"Sure. Not my type, though."

"She's quite the beauty," Tahoe said. "After four or five
cervezas
."

I smiled, then shut the locket and handed it back.

"She's the reason I'm doing this," Tahoe said.

"What, to get away from her?"

"No," Tahoe said. "I'm going to send everything I make to her and my unborn child."

"Ah. Good man. I guess we all have our reasons."

"We do."

The truck swerved sharply, bouncing and jostling everyone.

"We should've just walked," I complained to Alejandro, switching back to New Spanish. "I don't think these guys have a clue what they're doing."

"No no no." I could barely see Alejandro shake his head. "They're experts, Rade.
Experts
. They come here every night. Know exactly what they're doing."

The bed jerked with a bang as the truck hit what must have been a wide depression.

I gave Alejandro an exasperated look, which he probably couldn't see anyway. "Know what they're doing huh?"

"Hey," Alejandro said. "We're driving with
our headlights turned off in the middle of the night. I think the driver's doing an amazing job under the circumstances. Cut him some slack, okay?"

I crossed my arms, sitting back. This was going to be a long ride.

"You guys looking forward to joining the military?" Tahoe said.

Alejandro leaned over me and answered, in English. "Hey, we only join the military if we get caught."

"You think we're not going to get caught?" I could hear the humor in Tahoe's voice. "Interesting. Tell me, do you agree with the EEI Act?"

"Of course not." Alejandro said. "The UC should open its borders and let people come and go freely. None of this drafting crap."

"But you can see why they do it, don't you? Drafting all of-age immigrants and illegals to fight for them, because the majority of their own citizens won't do it?"

"Doesn't make it right," Alejandro said.

"What do you think, Rade?"

I shrugged. "It's a way in for us, isn't it?"

"So you're glad to be fighting for the UC?" Tahoe persisted.

"Well sure. I'll be fighting for my new homeland. And so what if I have to kill a few of the UC's enemies."

"You're forgetting that UC technology won't make you invincible. You may very well die for the UC. Something its own citizens refuse to do."

"Last I heard, no citizen of the UC was ever stopped from volunteering."

Tahoe's head bobbed in the dark. "This is true. But very few citizens volunteer. Immigrants make up the bulk of their army."

I exhaled loudly. "So what's your point?"

"Think about this: How good can a country's military be when its ranks are almost completely made up of soldiers from other countries? Wouldn't actual citizens fight harder? Patriotism and all that?"

"Not necessarily," I said. "Natural born citizens don't understand just how good they have it. Sure they're patriotic, but not like us. You gotta love a country a whole lot if you're going to give up everything to move there. And when you want nothing more than to be a citizen of that country, and you've wanted it your whole life, you'll fight, even die for that privilege, don't you worry. Because you have way more to lose than any natural born."

"I like that answer," Tahoe said. "And agree with it. I'm looking forward to fighting for the UC, too. Though for me, it's all about going into space. I've always dreamed of traveling to the stars. And the UC military is my ticket."

The stars winked out and the truck bed instantly became pitch black.

"I wonder if the universe is trying to tell you something," I mused. "As soon as you bring up the stars, they vanish."

"Story of my life," Tahoe
muttered.

The driver turned on the headlights.

We were traveling inside a tunnel that had walls made of coarse sandstone.

"See?" Alejandro said, the ambient light reflecting off his features. His eyes glinted excitedly, and looked like dark gemstones. "Told you these guys were
expertos
. We're going to slip right under the UC border. We're
not
going to be caught, or drafted. I knew I hired the right crew. Did you know, they dig a new tunnel each time the
gringos
sniff out the old one? It's the only way to get past the robot drones and cameras."

"Only way to get caught, you mean," Tahoe said.

Alejandro leaned forward and gave him a dismissive wave. "Will you just shut it?"

I glanced at Tahoe, who raised an eyebrow. I could make out his features now that the headlights were on. I guessed his age at around twenty-five. Both sides of his head were shaved to the skin, and the top was buzzed, very much like the "high and tight" military haircuts I'd seen floating around on the Net. He was clean-shaven except for a soul patch just below the lower lip.

I could see the outline of well-defined muscles beneath his white t-shirt, and he had some of the biggest shoulders I'd ever seen.

"So that's what you look like," Tahoe said. "
Dissuader?"

I nodded. "You?"

"Construction. Though I'm an astrophysicist by training."

"Nice. How'd you end up in construction?"

He shrugged. "You know what the jobs are like where we're from."

"I do indeed."

As the pickup sped through the tunnel, I saw a flash of metal in the distance.

"Did you see that?" I said, quietly.

Tahoe nodded. "And so it begins."

In moments a drone was hovering alongside the truck, police siren blazing. It was a basket-ball sized metallic sphere crisscrossed with grooves and grates. There was a small flashing emergency light on top, a miniature version of the one found on the police robots. Multiple exhaust nozzles circled the X- and Y-axis. The rearmost nozzle was constantly firing, while various other nozzles let out occasional bursts so that the drone followed the contour of the cave and remained alongside the truck. Painted in big blue letters on a ring down the middle of the drone were the words: Customs Patrol System.

The drone matched our speed for a few seconds then tore past.

I glanced at Alejandro. He wasn't looking very happy.

A few minutes later the CPS drone returned with another. The miniature emergency lights on top of both of them were flashing blue.

The first drone blasted a brief siren yelp, followed by the announcement, "Moderate your speed," in New Spanish. A man's voice. Deep. Authoritative.

The pickup truck surged forward in response.

The drones pursued, emergency lights flashing, sirens wailing.

The truck sloped upward, and the tunnel abruptly fell away. We were back under the stars.

What followed next was rather anticlimactic.

The pickup stalled.

At least, that was the impression I had, because even though I couldn't hear the engine all this time, the pickup started to bleed off speed. It bumped over hollows and tumbleweeds, jostling us around in the back. The wailing CPS drones pursued the whole way.

"You will stop the vehicle immediately," one of the drones blared.

As the pickup slowed to about ten kilometers per hour, people started jumping out of the rear bed.

One of the drones spun away. "Halt! You are trespassing on UC-controlled territory!" I heard a slight
plunk
come from the general direction of the drone. A fleeing refugee dropped. Another
plunk
. Another runner fell.

The remaining refugees fled the pickup truck in a panic, and the second drone pursued.

Only Alejandro, Tahoe and I stayed where we were in the truck bed.

Abruptly the driver slammed on the brakes, parked the pickup, and he too jumped out, along with the occupant who rode shotgun.

"That's our cue," Alejandro said.

I blocked him with my arm.

"Rade, we have to go
hombre
!"

I shook my head. "I'm not in the mood to have 12 million volts passing through my body today."

There was another vehicle out there, something small and fast, and it zoomed along the desert floor, its way lit by high beams. I noticed tiny lights marking where the runners had fallen. The small vehicle pulled up to the first one, and I thought someone jumped out. The light marker vanished, and the vehicle continued on its way, heading toward the pickup truck. Behind it, more light markers vanished as the occupant who had jumped out collected the refugees.

Tahoe began to sing a quiet, traditional indigenous song.

"Rade." Alejandro was getting really antsy now. "Let's go
hombre
!"

I didn't move. I listened to Tahoe's song. It was calming somehow. Peaceful.

"Remain where you are," a drone blasted beside me.

I hadn't noticed its return to the pickup truck. The other drone was here too, on the other side of Tahoe. Somewhere along the way the drones had stopped flashing their emergency lights and wailing their sirens.

Tahoe had paused his song when the drone interrupted, but he continued now.

The small vehicle stopped beside the pickup truck. A dune buggy of some kind.

"Damn it, Rade," Alejandro said. "I told you to run!"

A dark figure strutted out, and walked in front of the buggy's high beams so that he was silhouetted. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a robot because of that bright light.

"Freeze!" the figure said in English. "Hands behind your heads and out of the truck!"

Tahoe ended his song and carefully raised his hands.

Alejandro and I followed suit.

When we got out, the figure made us lean against the dune buggy. On the side was written:
United Countries Border Patrol
.

The figure ordered us to put our hands behind our backs, and then plasticuffed us. Mine were done up a little tight, but what was I supposed to do? The only way to reset plasticuffs was to cut them off and put on a new pair. And I doubted this guy or robot or whatever it was would do that for me.