The Dream Widow (35 page)

His hands hovered over the silver band on Wilson’s forehead. “What does this do?”

“You’ll kill him,” screamed Mary. “Don’t touch it!”

Badger kicked Darius with all the strength she could muster and he fell backwards onto the stone floor. Three soldiers grabbed her arms and pulled her away from the table.

Darius got up from the floor, rubbing his shin. “I think this must be important.”

“We don’t know what it does,” said Badger. “Take it off and you’ll regret it.”

Darius shrugged. “I have to do something before I go, right? Otherwise what was the point of coming down here?”

The azure light that swirled from Reed’s glass dome tripled in brightness and an electric hum filled the air.

“Ugh ... what a headache,” said a voice like metal on a grindstone.

Darius spun and looked around the cavern. “Where’s that coming from?”

“Oh my,” said the voice. “It sounds as if I have guests. Uninvited ones at that.”

Darius pointed the pistol at Badger. “What’s going on?”

Badger stared defiantly at Darius until he pulled back the hammer and touched the stubby weapon to her belly.

“Reed’s back,” she said. “And he’s not happy.”

Thin silver arms with razor claws clacked from the walls and hissed rapidly along their rails toward Darius and his men. The soldiers fired deafening rounds at them without effect.

The first arm cracked Darius across the head and he crumpled. A flock of other spider-arms sliced into the green-uniformed Circle troopers. Several were pulled high into the air and dropped with sickening crunches onto the stone floor.

Seconds later it was over and the metal arms retreated through tiny ports in the walls. The last one cut the rope around Badger’s wrists and sped away. Badger was left alone with the twisted, bloody heaps of five Circle troopers.

She looked around the cavern. “Where’s Mary?”

Reed’s voice said something but Badger’s ears still rang from the gunfire. She rubbed the red marks on her wrists.

“I can’t hear you,” she yelled. “Do something about Wilson! I’ll find her later.”

Wilson’s arms and legs jerked violently under the blanket and he arched his back in pain for a split-second. Sweat beaded and rolled off his face.

“You’ve killed him!”

Badger touched his cheek and a snapping spark of electricity shocked her fingers. His eyes were open but he wasn’t breathing. She shook him by the shoulders then began to press on his chest straight-armed, like she’d seen the Medics do.

Metal clanked on glass and Badger looked up.

Darius grinned at her, his face a devilish mask of blood. The muzzle of his large-caliber pistol pressed against the sparkling surface of Reed’s dome.

Reed’s voice thundered. “No!”

As metal arms shot from the walls Darius pulled the trigger and blew a spiderweb of cracks into the glass. He stepped back, thumbed the hammer, and fired again. The wall of the dome blew apart and a gushing blue torrent knocked over Wilson’s table, the medical instruments, and Darius himself.

Badger slipped and fell to her hands and knees from the force of the wave. She splashed through the sulfur-smelling liquid and held Wilson’s head out of the spreading pool. The top half of Reed’s wrinkled body hung out of the dome and his arms dangled uselessly. The spider-arms swayed within reach of Darius, unpowered and dead like their master.

“You stupid worm,” spat Badger. “Now the reactor’s going to melt and kill us all.”

Darius shrugged. He took a pair of shells from his belt and reloaded the pistol, then waved it Badger.

“Drop your dead boyfriend and let’s go see the reactor, whatever that is.”

TWENTY

A
fter Reed disappeared in a gust of lavender and column of diamond-light, Parvati, Jack, and Wilson faced a group of Chinese soldiers on the cobblestone. The carbon copy of Badger continued to hold Wilson around the waist.

Parvati slid her hand into the crook of Jack’s arm. “Grab him!”

Jack held Wilson’s arm and Parvati snapped her fingers. Blue sky and snow-covered crags replaced the streets of the white monastery and all three dropped half a meter into deep powder. The fake Badger had disappeared.

“That’s a relief,” said Jack, and brushed snow from his knees. “Thought I was going to Chinese prison. Again.”

Parvati waved a large circle in the air with both arms, and a roaring fire surrounded by stone benches appeared in the snow. She sat and warmed her hands.

“I wonder sometimes,” she said, mostly to herself, “Is this how things actually feel, or is it how I think they used to feel?”

Jack sat next to her and pulled off his gloves. “It’s close enough, just don’t stare at the seams for too long. If people are locked in a box for a few hundred years they need something to do, right? This place is a fashion magazine and we’re all in the waiting room.”

Wilson sat on a bench. “What’s a magazine?”

“Something you read when there’s nothing else to do.”

“Spaces of meaningless time,” said Parvati. “That’s what we all are, until we find the purpose of our existence.”

Jack shook his head. “The old man always said I’d turn out bad. Never thought I’d be a human popsicle.”

“What about your purpose, Lee Wilson? Is there anything that drives you, anything that supersedes the daily cycle of needs and survival?”

“Of course. I’m not a ground squirrel.”

“You’re making a joke, but even small animals seek meaning in the daily struggle of life. The foundation of everything created by myself and the other founders is falling apart. Whatever you think your purpose is, you may find a better one in leading Station’s people to a new home.”

“Without an access code to the reactor there won’t be people to lead anywhere, even if Reed wakes me up.”

Parvati nodded slowly. “Twitch has it. I can send you there, but Jack will have to go with you.”

Jack lifted his fur cap and scratched the stubble on his shaved head. “Fine with me.”

Parvati stood from the bench and took a small ceramic pot from her sky-blue robes. She dipped an index finger in the pot and smeared a cross of red paste on the foreheads of both Wilson and Jack.

“What’s that for?”

Parvati ignored him. With a vigorous flapping of cotton cloth, she waved her arms in wide circles. A hole opened in the powdery snow and a tower of crimson light poured into the sky.

“Go through it.”

Wilson peered into the sparkling beam. “How?”

“First time’s the hardest,” said Jack. “Like jumping out of a plane.”

“But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!”

Jack grabbed Wilson by the arm and leaped into the light. The portal closed and powdery snow drifted over a glazed circle of ice.

Parvati sat down with a sigh and rested her chin on her hand. “The best-laid plans of mice and men ... and women.”

THE PAIR BOUNCED against each other as they fell through a maroon sky that deepened to purple and black. Wilson’s skin crackled like a winter lake under a giant’s feet.

Wilson held his knees and became a spinning doll. He closed his eyes. The shattering roar and nauseating tumble ceased and he felt the pressure of soft earth on his left side. Something sharp poked his cheek and the sound of branches swished above his head. The breeze smelled of pine and fresh mud.

He opened his eyes to a nighttime forest and the rough bark of a pine tree. A body in a PLA-green overcoat lay next to him, face-down on a carpet of brown needles.

“Jack!”

Wilson prodded the body in the ribs and it twitched.

“Mother of God,” groaned Jack. “I want a refund, stewardess ...”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

A high-pitched whine arrowed across the night sky. Wilson saw red and green lights blink high above the pine branches.

He pointed at Jack. “Why did you pull me in here? You don’t have a clue how to find Twitch, do you?”

“O ye of little faith,” said Jack, sitting up. “That was a Sparrow that just flew overhead, so we’re in the late 2040’s at the earliest.”

“How can you know that?”

Jack stood and brushed needles from his overcoat. “Because that’s when they came out.”

Wilson looked up at him. “You’re not real––you know that, right? The real Jack is dead. A pickled corpse in one of the controller domes.”

Jack shrugged. “Nobody believes in Santa Claus either but they still want presents on Christmas. The important thing is that I can find Twitch for you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Jack sighed. “Look at the stars. Those are North American constellations. That tree over there is a yellow aspen. This memory is somewhere in the Rockies. We’ll find a stream and head toward a road. Once we get oriented I know where Twitch lives, what he looks like, and how he’s going to react.”

“React to what?”

Jack ran his tongue over his teeth and spit onto the pine needles.

“Me snapping his neck,” he said.

THEY FOLLOWED A BROOK through the forest to a larger creek that gurgled as it gathered speed in the cold moonlight. The trees became sparse and Wilson pointed at a dark ribbon that slashed across the open grassland in front of them.

“That’s a road,” said Jack. “There’ll be cars unless we’re really out in BFE.”

Even after they trudged to the road the night remained as black and quiet as before. Jack searched his pockets for a cigarette and lit it with a tiny sparker.

“Might have a long wait, kid.”

Wilson dropped to one knee and rubbed the hard asphalt with his palm. The road was smooth and clean with a line of yellow dashes pointing to the hills. He stood and dusted off his hands.       

“What about the flying thing?”

Jack blew a cloud of smoke. “Wouldn’t stop even if you hit it with a rock. Shooting at it gets the wrong kind of attention.”

Wilson sniffed and listened to the nightjars as they buzzed across the fields.

“I don’t understand how Parvati can just wave her hands and send us wherever this is,” he said.

“She’s smarter than you or me,” said Jack. “Parvati wore Army blues but she was really just an engineer on contract. The engineered simulation for people in cold-sleep, she was part of that team. A great girl and lots of fun when I knew her.”

“When you knew her? You mean she’s changed?”

Jack spat across the asphalt. “Yeah ... who’d have thought being bottled up for three hundred years would do that? Maybe she was too smart and fooled around with the code too much, tinkering with her own memories. What does it matter? To you I’m just a software bug or some kind of imaginary friend.”

A faint mechanical drone came from the far hills and light glowed on the horizon.

Jack dropped his cigarette and ground the ashes into the road. “Stand on the yellow line and raise your arms.”

“Where are you going?”

“Over here. I look too suspicious.”

Wilson pointed at his yellow outfit and red robes. “I don’t?”

“Just do what I say.”

The approaching light blinded Wilson and he turned his head. He heard the vehicle slow to a stop but the lights didn’t go away. The car clicked and breathed like a machined monster.

“Got a breakdown?” called a man’s voice from the car.

“No. We’re lost.”

“Dressed like that, I believe it. Where you going?”

“I don’t know that either.”

The man had a brief fit of coughing. “Then how do you figure you’re lost?”

“Because wherever this is, I’m not supposed to be here,” said Wilson.

“Fine by me. I can take you to 24 at least. Bring your friend hiding in the dark.”

Wilson and Jack walked up to the lights. The sea-green vehicle had smooth lines, flashy chrome trim, and wide glass windows.

Jack froze once he saw the car and Wilson had to pull him forward. Wilson struggled with the silver handle until Jack pushed him aside. He opened the door and slid inside after Wilson, then pulled his fur hat down around his ears.

The driver wore a black woolen cap and a jacket covered with random green and brown squares. He turned to look at Wilson.

“Jack!”

The driver glared at him with eyes like ball bearings. “How do you know my name?”

“I ... uh ... I saw you at Padre’s a long time ago.”

“I’m so happy to be a celebrity. What about your friend? Is he stalking me too?”

“He doesn’t talk much,” said Wilson.

“Good.”

The driver pulled something from his jacket and laid it on the seat where Wilson couldn’t see. He put the car into gear and accelerated. In the car’s headlights the yellow dashes blurred into a single line.

“A pair of simpletons dressed like clowns in the middle of nowhere,” said the driver. “Somebody dump you two kittens or was it a smack deal gone horribly wrong?”