Pills and Starships (12 page)

And that would really have raised his buddy Rory’s eyebrows. Because you sure as hell don’t get much ash or mud here on the grounds of the resort.

So that’s when I knew we were going off-campus.

He’s my brother, what can I say. I had more doubts, yes, when I saw the boots, because I’m a good girl, a/k/a wuss. Always have been.

But I wrestled with the doubts and after a while I won. I don’t need to detail my wrestling match here. You get it. Anyway, I put the boots in a shoulder bag, along with some water Sam told me to bring. I slathered on the sunscreen. And we left.

First he made me go out with him to the common area, where he says the microphones are, and have a fake conversation about how we were going for a marathon swim, in case someone was listening in. Sam says they don’t monitor guest activity in all the pools. And then there was some sneakiness getting off the grounds. First we went toward the pools, through a couple of places they apparently have cameras in. But then we ducked down a hallway where they don’t.

Sam had it planned.

He led me through this small staff exit near one of the kitchens, past a field of perfumed food compost they keep nicely hidden and surrounded by bushy fragrant herb plants like lavender and sage and mint and rosemary. We hunched down into the cover of some hedges and changed into the aforementioned boots, tucking our clean shoes away in our bags. He showed me a hose where we could wash off when we came back; he took me past a huge solar-panel array, a gravel lot full of parked e-buggies and buses, and then some satellite dishes all pointed in the same direction.

And suddenly we were in a jungle. At least, that’s what it seemed like to me. The trees and vines and shrubs were thick around us, there were beetles and ants on the ground and birds on tree limbs, and the only place to slip through it all was a narrow dirt pathway, barely a shoulder’s width across, with protruding roots that constantly bumped against the toes of my boots and made me stumble. It was shady and, except for a few birdcalls and the sounds of the ocean breeze in the high-up foliage, very quiet.

It was uncomfortable and irritating.

And also strange—mostly in a good way.

I’ve never been in a park before where there weren’t paved walkways; I’ve never been in one where you didn’t know for sure that hundreds of other people had already walked there that same day. Sam said it wasn’t even a park we were going through. He said it wasn’t planted on purpose but had just grown that way.

“This is nothing,” he boasted. “Wait a bit.”

He showed me where some trees were marked, a triangular notch you had to know about to tell it was out of place, so you could find your way. We bent over and half-crawled through a big metal pipe under a gravel road, full of dead leaves and some garbage, and then it got even wilder; the narrow path was gone and we had to push our way through branches that snapped back at us, making me a little testy. I got a branch in the eye once and swore loudly. It hurt.

But there was a wild smell in the air, a smell I didn’t recognize, that lifted my spirits. I couldn’t decide what it reminded me of—something long ago or from another life.

Then suddenly there was lava.

It was dried up, it wasn’t hot—I didn’t see any orange-lit holes where Sam could murder LaTessa. It was just these big, gray tongues lapping at the jungle.

We jumped onto one and walked up it for a while.

But by this time I was getting nervous, because it was neat and all, I had to admit that, but it was taking forever.

“It’s not that far now,” said Sam.

We were walking up a lava slope and then we stopped to look around. You could see the canopy of trees beneath, the jungle we’d just come through, and stretched out in the distance beyond it the resort, all these white buildings. Beyond the blobs of white you could faintly see the ocean shining.

“Pretty good, huh,” said Sam.

I nodded. It was breathtaking.

And we were all alone. No tour guide or anything.

And no parents.

The wind picked up our hair and cooled the skin on my arms so it rose into goosebumps.

I felt a stab of—well, I would have to call it grief.

Mixed with longing.

Because it was beautiful. And lonely.

There was all this air around us, and there was the big blue sky above. Beneath us there was a huge lake of emerald green, the specks of white, the shine of water on the horizon. And above it all just the two of us, in our thin, fragile bodies of skin and bone.

We were alone, standing on the lava slope, feeling the wind, and waiting for time to pass.

And I thought:
So
this
is how it’s going to be
.

It almost flipped my stomach. But I didn’t want to pass the sadness along.

“It was totally worth it,” I said, and smiled at Sam.

“Oh,” he replied, after a second. “Oh—you mean the
view?
Yeah, cool. But this isn’t where we’re going.”

When we finally did get to our destination it was through these tunnels in the lava—tunnels Sam said the corp didn’t know about, which were actually called lava tubes. They were spooky like a Halloween scene, all gray and black inside, with wrinkled walls and cavernous rounded ceilings. I half-expected bats to flap out at us like in an old horrorvid. But of course that didn’t happen, since bats all died out from a white fungus on their noses in the 21st c.

And when we came out of the lava tube we were in a caldera, Sam said, which is like a dent on the side of a volcano where the ground once collapsed inward after an eruption. It was surrounded on all sides by lava sloping up, so that it was like a bowl-shaped valley, protected on all sides.

It was full of fruit trees and greenery and life. We wandered through a grove going in, and I looked up and saw avocados and mangoes and bananas and I don’t know what else, all growing right in front of me and just hanging off branches to be picked—stuff I’d only seen pictures of on face, mostly, that we only get to eat in powdered form or sometimes, on special occasions, dried and sweetened.

People lived there. Mostly Hawaiian looking but there were some whites and blacks and Asians and mixed people like us too, and they were all wearing beachy style clothes, ragged shorts, and bare chests, in the case of the guys, or halter tops or shirts for the girls and women, with patterned sarong-type skirts that wrapped around their waists and tied.

All the colors were pretty muted though—no reds or yellows.

“It’s camouflage in case of flyovers,” said Sam. “They’re rare. But they can still happen.”

And the whole encampment was hidden that way, I saw. There were these pavilion tents with big cloths strung up overhead, whose green was exactly the green of the trees—even patterned with leaves and branches, or some of them had actual leaves and branches positioned on top. Some were mud brown and some were green and gray, in splotches. In the middle of these tent structures there was something Sam told me was called a Quonset hut—long and low and rounded on top like a half-cylinder, a house-sized tube laid on its side and sunk into the ground.

It was painted green too, and palm fronds decorated the top.

“But wait,” I said, getting alarmed. “These people, Sam. What about their codes? I mean we were vetted so we don’t
need
to show them. We don’t need our handfaces. But what about these people? How can their vaccines possibly be up to date?”

“I know,” said Sam, nodding. “That’s why I haven’t introduced you yet. First off, they don’t get too many new bugs here. It’s pretty rare. Because it’s an island. But remote or not, there’s always a chance. There could be a bug here we don’t know, and they could be immune to it, and we might not be. Or also, you and I could carry a bug
we
don’t notice, that doesn’t hurt us but could hurt them. It’s a risk we all take. But you need to choose for yourself before I expose you.”

“So, I mean—you’ve already dealt with them!” I was suddenly scared. “You met them in the flesh without your protection!”

“And they met me,” said Sam solemnly. “They took the same risk. In fact, theirs is the greater risk. They said it’s a risk they have to take—that now and then they have to take a risk like this one.”

I gazed at him for a minute. It was against what we’d been taught. It was the first rule of safety we’d grown up with. And here was Sam, breaking it.

Like it was nothing.

“I don’t know, Sam!” I burst out. I was pretty much panicking.

Sam was already exposed, though. That’s what I thought next. He was exposed and I wasn’t. And where would I be without him?

He said they’d give me a general shot they had, if I agreed to come in, but there’d still be some risks on both sides. They didn’t have our same vaccines and we didn’t have theirs.

Long and short, I agonized for a few minutes and went back and forth on it. Finally I gave in. I’m not going to lie—I was afraid. But more than anything, I think I submitted to what Sam wanted because I felt I couldn’t go back. I felt I had to be there, I had to go forward, I had to stay with him.

It probably wasn’t the smartest decision. But I made it.

And we walked forward into the clearing.

“That’s where they keep their tech,” he explained, pointing to the Quonset as he led me through an open area in the middle of the tents. There was a little shelter there with a hole that went down into the ground. “That’s well water. And in the Quonset there are power hookups and weather systems on the wallscreens and face and all that. But we don’t have clearance to go inside it yet.”

“What
is
all this?” I asked, though I was barely listening to his monologue, since some kids around his age were waving at him from a far tent, where they were kicking some kind of ball around on the dirt.

“You know: a settlement.” Sam lifted a hand at them and then stopped walking to turn to me. “It’s what you might call a rebel camp.”

“Rebels against what?” I glanced around to see if I could spot any men holding clunky black weapons who could possibly want to shoot me. But all I saw was a couple of ladies in not too much clothing, busy cooking pancake-like items on a hooded portable stove.

“Against the system,” said Sam. “Against the service corps and their partners and the armies. Against the whole power structure of how things have come to be.”

I looked around and it seemed like a kind of picturesque place, but it didn’t seem like they were doing anything
super
illegal.

I mean, there’s no law against tents. Is there?

“Are you sure you’re not being overdramatic, Sam? I mean, aren’t they more like back-to-the-land, off-the-grid people? That’s not illegal, it’s just hippie.”

“Come here,” said Sam.

We went behind a tent and past the kids playing ball and through a gate.

And that’s when I saw them.

These weird, massive creatures almost as long as I am tall. These hard-looking, big brown humps on their backs, white and brown spots on their legs.

I almost screamed. But didn’t. But I did freeze and stare.

“Sea turtles!” Sam exclaimed proudly.

They were clustered around a pond. Instead of mud around it there were piles of sand. And in the sand there were some big oval objects I realized had to be eggs—though they were
so
much larger than the broken eggshell I’d collected. They were way bigger than that, and one of the turtles was flipping sand over them.

The turtles raised their heavy-looking heads slowly as we walked nearer to them, and their huge brown-black eyes didn’t blink. It was so cool how different their eyes were from ours—there didn’t seem to be any whites at all.

I was rooted to the spot, but then—the way their stiff heads moved so slowly on those thick, stalklike necks as if maybe they needed some lube in the joints or something—it came to me:
Of course.

I got it. They had to be turtle robots.

“Way impressive,” I said. “They look so real!”

“They
are
,” said Sam. “I mean, think about it. These people don’t have the money for robots.”

I stepped a little closer, my boots sinking into the sand. The turtles didn’t move; they were completely inert.

Faulty sensors, I thought. “Come on. Classic robot defects—look how sluggish their reactions are! See how their heads move so slowly? I’m serious, they’re pet robots that are defective.”

“Seriously,” said Sam, “turtles are just
like
that. See, Nat, they breed them here. They have to keep the sand and water a particular temperature and everything, because most turtles went extinct from temperature change. If it’s too hot the eggs all come out one sex. I’m not clear on the different species yet, but that’s what happened with the loggerheads and the hawksbills, maybe, I think.”

I stared at the turtles. They moved with this intense, almost insane deliberateness. Like for them there was really no hurry. They were chill.

It was very hard to believe they weren’t robots, to tell you the truth. I mean, I’ve never seen a so-called wild animal that’s longer from head to tail than my arm. The closest I’d come before today was probably turkey vultures eating carrion on the road—those buzzards can get pretty big, and the poor things have wrinkled red faces that hang down like an old man’s butt. Or maybe the raccoons that lived in the gardens of our complex, but they’re not really wild, since they get fed garbage and live under Invisinet.