The Dream Widow (8 page)

At the switchbacks he changed to the jumping trick––Ut-kurdana. Instead of following the path, Wilson leaped from one corner of the switchback to another up the sloping granite and sprinted through the pine forest along the shoulder of Old Man.

A branch struck his face like a steel wire and Wilson slowed his steps. After a minute the pine forest thinned into open space. The path followed an abrupt precipice for hundreds of meters. Far below gleamed a lake surrounded by tall spruce and pine, and fed by a spring that poured from the sheer granite of Old Man. The white-capped peak of the mountain rose above the evergreen pines, and a golden eagle curved his wings on an updraft, almost close enough to touch.

A cliff jutted over the lake like the sloping nose of a stone giant. His mother sat on the edge, her feet dangling in space.

“Mother.”

She didn’t look at him, but tilted her head to watch the eagle. Wilson chose his steps carefully along the cliff.

“Mother. I was worried about you.”

She dropped her chin and shook her head. “Go back.”

“Only if you come with me. Let’s go.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Why not? I don’t want to see the stupid, ignorant faces pretending to understand, pretending to be my friend, pretending to care. I don’t want to see them ever again. The tragedy is, nobody will remember me when I’m gone. Nobody will talk about how I slaved every day to make clothes for them. The only thing they’ll talk about is the poor old girl who killed herself. The tragic old widow who was only a widow in her dreams.”

“Don’t say things like that.”

“I’m old enough to say what I want.”

Wilson sat on the edge next to his mother.

“People don’t look at me the same, either,” he said. “Since I’ve come back I don’t think anyone really trusts me.”

“Running away to help Badger, that’s all they remember about you,” said his mother. “No matter what you do from now on.”

“All I can do is try every day to change their minds. That’s what I’m working on, showing a good example.”

“I’m done with good examples,” said his mother. “I tried my best and I’m done. I’m done with Reed. I’m done with everything.”

“Are you done with grandchildren?”

She turned and stared. “Is Kira–”

“No, not yet. But I want you to be around when that happens. You can give up on everyone else but don’t give up on me.”

She reached out to hug him and almost fell. Wilson grabbed his mother and helped her walk back along the nose of granite.

“I might have a place where you can get away from everyone,” said Wilson. “If you’re interested.”

His mother nodded.

On the way back to Station they met Badger in the forest. She was covered in sweat and panting from the long run.

“Are you okay, Mary?” she asked between breaths.

“Oh, I’m fine, dear.”

“Good.” Badger leaned against a nearby tree. “Super. Glad I ran up here.”

“Thank you, Kira,” said Mary.

“Will ... why is your mother smiling at me like that?”

“No reason,” he said with a grin.

FOUR

T
he frozen canvas of the tent’s entrance flap crackled as the surgeon pushed inside.

“He’s dead.”

“Thank you for that obvious fact,” said Darius.

“Calm down,” said the Consul. She shifted in her chair and crossed one leg under the bear pelt on her lap. “Continue.”

The surgeon cleared his throat. “Patient found in the position he was left in last night––tied to a post outside the guard tent. Multiple lacerations to his extremities and torso. Superficial burns. Cause of death: hypovolemic shock from blood loss, complicated by exposure to the elements.”

“Thank you, Sal.”

The surgeon bowed and left the tent.

The Consul watched Darius, her mouth pursed but with a half-smile. She bounced her crossed leg over and over, causing the soft leather trousers to squeak.

“The body count is rising as high as a royal hunting trip, Darius, but I’m still waiting to see this valley full of treasures. At this point I’d probably settle for a clan of slightly enigmatic mountain folk.”

“I promised to find it, Your Grace, and I will, but that disgusting savage had nothing more to tell us.” He leaned closer. “As long as Your Grace enjoyed watching my interrogation.”

“I struggled to stay awake. You’re one of the best I’ve seen with an iron, but it gets old the fortieth time.”

“I apologize, Your Grace. I’ll vary the techniques next time.”

The Consul nodded. She pulled her long fingers from the bear pelt and rubbed them unconsciously, like a spider cleaning her mandibles.

“Now that I’ve seen you interact with my soldiers and the tribes, I understand how we’ve expanded so quickly in this region. You have a talent for finding and exploiting the weakest point in people.”

“Thank you, but I’m just a small cog in the giant Circle machine.”

“A giant machine powered by these tribal beasts.”

“Your Grace is quite correct.”

“How did they control so much land in the old times? It’s a mystery, considering the huge resistance we’ve had in these new sectors.”

“Indoctrination,” said Darius.

“Explain.”

Darius licked his lips. “Before the great war, children were taken from their parents–– by force if necessary––and placed in training centers. These organizations claimed to teach useful skills to the children, but the true value was in shaping their minds. The children who performed well and did as they were told were rewarded. The ones who asked questions or resisted the artificial beliefs of the national training were cast out and lived on the edges of the old society.”

“That sounds like the tribal schools in your sector.”

“Your Honor has an excellent memory. The training model from the old times was an inspiration to me. I began using it last year.”

The crunch of boots and a murmured conversation came from outside the tent. A guard raised his voice.

“Senator Darius, a messenger!”

“Let him pass.”

A soldier in an olive-green jacket and trousers stepped into the tent. He dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

“We found this, sir!”

Darius took a folded note from the soldier’s hand.

“Where did you find it?”

“Buried, sir, near the burned village. It was inside an empty crate.”

“Dismissed.”

Auburn clay stained the creases of the note. Darius flattened the coarse material on top of his writing desk.

“It’s a message left by the fleeing tribals,” he said. “But it’s in code. If Your Grace allows, I’ll try to decipher it.”

The Consul covered her mouth and yawned. “Go ahead.”

Darius took a clean sheet of paper and a stylus and placed them to the right of the clay-streaked note. He peered at the tribal code and scribbled letters on his paper, scratching a few out. After a few minutes he set down the stylus.

“What is it?”

“A simple substitution. They wouldn’t have had time to prepare a more complex code. What am I saying? There’s no way they could have a sophisticated–”

“I mean the message.”

“My apologies. It reads: ‘We are traveling west. Follow the sunset three days to a valley called Station. Leader Yishai.’”

“It’s remarkable that they would leave a message like that,” said the Consul.

“We know that some of the tribals left the village after it was attacked and gathered at a pre-determined spot. This note was almost certainly left for any stragglers.”

“It could be a trap.”

Darius smiled. “It’s not. They really are that stupid.”

“LISTEN––I’M NOT that stupid. I just don’t understand,” said Mast. “It’s not doing the tricks that’s the problem. I can handle that. I can do everything you’ve taught me. I just don’t get how it works.” He leaned back in the one chair in his and Mina’s quarters.

Wilson slowly paced the carpet in the small room.

“Let me try again. Hundreds of years ago and before the war, this place was a center for smart men.”

Mast nodded. “The founders.”

“Right. These men studied how to make the human body stronger, faster, and free of sickness. To do that, they added tiny machines to their bodies. That’s one of the reasons the founders survived––the sickness that killed almost everyone else didn’t affect them.”

“How does this explain the tricks?”

“I’m getting to it. The Founders were sending other men to the stars. These men would be so far away and out of contact for so long that every single machine they took on the journey had to be simple and fool-proof. That’s why the tricks they needed to survive used meditation and images in the mind to work.”

Mast shook his head. “But how can your brain control anything?”

“It’s no different than throwing a knife. Your brain sends a signal to your muscles, you raise your arm, and based on muscle memory through training, you release the blade. Images in the brain and concentration trigger the implant systems. But it’s just like throwing a knife––you have to practice.”

“That’s a word I can do without,” said Mast. He flipped a wooden blade over and over in his hands.

“Not to change the subject,” said Wilson. “But is Mina still friends with Kaya? Is Kaya still having problems with her old boyfriend?”

In the corridor outside Mast’s room, a teenager in a dark brown jacket pressed his ear harder against the door.

THE SELA PASS. You’ll never get a postcard from there unless it’s been auto-signed by the President and starts with the phrase “Please accept my sincerest condolences.”

Sela was the cold landscape of a beige moon, an alien planetoid of toffee mountains. It was sharp and strange to soldiers from places like Scranton and Everett.

Inside the rocky slit of a hideout, Jack peered through binoculars at the Chinese fortress built into a copper mountain less than a kilometer away.

“No updates,” he whispered into the radio. “Wait a second ...”

In the parched riverbed below the fortress, two Monpa shepherds whacked sticks at a ragged congregation of goats. Both natives wore dark blue clothing and black caps. One tottered weakly with a staff––obviously an old man of advanced age––and the other was a young boy.

“Are they coming this way, Sarge?”

Jack lowered the binoculars. “Pass the word to hold fire. Notify Bravo.”

He glanced at the three soldiers next to him. Dutch squinted through the eyepiece of his scout rifle. Slim whispered into his radio and Red checked his scoped ACR. Bravo Team was in another cave about fifty yards west and up the mountain a bit, with the Indian army liason.

The shepherds kept coming and Jack stabbed his fingernails into his palm. Too much daylight to make a break over the ridge––the Chinese would see everything. They had at least a battery of mortars and recoilless rifle above the old fortress.

It looked like the old man and the boy were heading straight for Bravo’s cave.

Slim rubbed his eyes. “What are we––”

“Quiet,” Jack whispered.

The pair of Monpa prodded their white and black goats closer and closer. Each step was a gleaming needle jabbing toward the pupil of Jack’s eye.

A teenage boy with serious eyes popped out of nowhere two meters down the slope from Jack. He wore a fringed leather jacket and trousers of thick, homespun cloth like a poor man’s Davey Crockett.

“Wake up,” yelled the teenager.

Jack pulled the trigger on his ACR. All three rounds went through the boy and he disappeared. The shots echoed through the valley.

“Holy shit!” said Red.

The gunfire startled the goats and they hightailed it down the mountain. The two shepherds sprinted behind the herd, the old man moving with newfound vigor.

Jack clicked the command radio. “Bravo this is Alpha One. Move to south ridge.”

“Bravo One copies. OTM to ridgeline.”

“Cover them,” said Jack.

His team fired careful shots at the waking beehive of the Chinese outpost as Bravo snaked out of the cave and up the slope. With a whistle and ear-ringing boom, rounds from the recoilless rifle began to smash into the mountain nearby.

“Bravo in position,” said the static-filled radio.

“Alpha OTM,” yelled Jack. “Go!”

He pushed his pack and the ACR out of the cave and scrambled up the slope behind Dutch. Dull shotgun-shells of rock and hard cinnamon dirt sprayed around him.

Halfway up the slope the teenager appeared again, this time within an arms-length of Jack.

Jack reached toward the boy but a deafening crack threw him into empty space. He woke seconds or minutes later, his side wedged against a rock wall. The teenager bent over Jack and mouthed silent words. The golden tubes of empty rifle casings bounced noiselessly over Jack’s combat boots and down the dirt slope. Something wet trickled into his eyes and he closed them.