The Mountain Cage (40 page)

Farther down the road, the facets of a glassy dome caught the sun, and tiny beings of light danced. Andrew’s friend Silas lived there with his father Ben and several Siamese cats. Andrew frowned as he thought of Silas and of what his friend wanted to do.

Andrew’s own house was old. His mother had told him it had been built before the Transition. Even with extensive repairs and additions to the house, the homeostat could not run it properly. The rooms were usually a bit warm or too cold; the doors made noises; the windows were spotted with dirt.

He watched his mother wander aimlessly along the path. Joan had forgotten him, as she often did. They could be in the same room and she would become silent, then suddenly glance at him, her eyes widening, as if she were surprised to find him still there.

His father, Dao, was different; completely attentive whenever Andrew was around, but content to ignore him the rest of the time. He wondered if Dao would ever speak to him at all if Andrew didn’t speak first.

He moved a little. His right foot shot out and brushed against a loose shingle. Andrew slid; he grabbed for the window sill and held on. The shingle fell, slapping against the cement of the path.

Joan looked up. She raised her hands slowly. “Andrew.” Her voice was loud but steady. He pulled himself up; he would not fall now. Joan moved closer to the house. “What are you doing up there?”

“I’m all right.”

She held her arms up. “Don’t move.”

“I’ve got my lifesuit on.”

“I don’t care. Don’t move, stay where you are.” Her feet pounded on the steps and over the porch. The front door slammed. In a few moments, he heard her enter his room. Her arms reached through the open window and pulled him inside.

Andrew sighed as she closed the window, feeling vaguely disappointed. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“I’m wearing my lifesuit.” He opened his shirt to show her the protective garment underneath.

“I don’t care. It’s supposed to protect you, not make you reckless. You still could have been hurt.”

“Not at that distance. Bruises, that’s all.”

“Why did you do it?”

Andrew shrugged. He went over to his bed and sat down. The bed undulated; Joan seemed to rise and fall before him.

“Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do I have to have a kobold follow you around? I thought you were too old for that.”

“I’m all right.” I wouldn’t have died or anything, he thought.

Joan watched him silently for a few moments. She was drifting again; he knew the signs. Her blue eyes stared through him, as if she were seeing something else. She shook her head. “I keep forgetting how old you are.” She paused. “Don’t go out there again.”

“I won’t.”

She left the room. He rose and crossed to the windows, staring out at the houses below and the forested hills beyond. His room suddenly seemed cramped and small; his hands tapped restlessly against the sill.

Andrew was sitting on the porch with Dao and Joan when Silas arrived. The other boy got off his bicycle and wheeled it up the hill to the porch. He parked it and waved at Andrew’s parents. Joan’s thin lips were tight as she smiled. Dao showed his teeth; his tilted brown eyes became slits.

Andrew sat on the steps next to Silas. His friend was thirteen, a year older than Andrew. He was the only child Andrew had met in the flesh; the others were only holo images. Silas was big and muscular, taller than Joan and Dao; he made Andrew feel even smaller and slighter than he was. Andrew moved up a step and looked down at the other boy.

Silas rose abruptly. Brown hair fell across his forehead, masking his eyes. He motioned to Andrew, then began to walk down the hill. Andrew followed. They halted by the hedge in front of the empty stone house. The troll waved them away, shaking its head; its long tangled hair swayed against its green tunic.

“How about it?” Silas said as they backed away from the hedge.

“What?”

“You know. Our journey, our adventure. You coming with me? Or are you just going to stay here?”

Andrew held out his arm, looking at his Bond. “We can’t go. They’ll find us.”

“I said I’d figure out a way. I have a plan.”

“How?”

“You’ll see,” Silas said. He shook his head. “Aren’t you sick of it here? Don’t you get tired of it?”

Andrew shrugged. “I guess.”

Silas began to kick a stone along the road. Andrew glanced up the hill; Joan and Dao were still on the porch. They had lived in that house even before bringing him home, making one journey to the Center to conceive him and another when he was removed from the artwomb. They had gone to some trouble to have him; they were always telling him so. “More people should have children,” Dao would say. “It keeps us from getting too set in our ways.” Joan would nod. “You’re very precious to us,” Joan would murmur, and Dao would smile. Yet, most of the time, his parents would be with their books or speaking to distant friends on the holo or lost in their own thoughts.

Joan could remember the beginnings of things. Dao was even older. He could remember the Transition, when the world had realized that people no longer had to die. Dao was filled with stories of those days—the disorder, the fear, the desperate attempts to reach as many people as possible with the treatments that would give them youth and immortality. He always spoke of those days as if they had been the prelude to great adventure and achievement. Gradually, Andrew had realized that those times had been the adventure, that nothing important was likely to happen to Joan and Dao again. Dao was almost four hundred years old; Joan was only slightly younger. Once, Andrew had asked his mother what she had been like when she was his age. She had laughed, seeming more alive for a moment. “Afraid,” she had answered, laughing again.

Silas kicked the stone toward the hill. “Listen,” he said as they climbed. “I’m ready. I’ve got two knapsacks and a route worked out. We’d better leave this week before my father gets suspicious.”

“I don’t know.”

The taller boy turned and took Andrew by the shoulder. “If you don’t go, I’ll go by myself. Then I’ll come back and tell you all about it, and you’ll be sorry you didn’t come along.”

Andrew pulled away. Silas’s face was indistinct in the dusk. Andrew felt anxious. He knew that he should be concerned about how his parents would feel if he ran away, but he wasn’t; he was thinking only of how unfair it had been for them to assume that he would want to hide in this isolated spot, shunning the outside world. They had told him enough about death cults and accidents to make him frightened of anything beyond this narrow road. He knew what Silas was thinking, that Andrew was a coward.

Why should I care what he thinks? Andrew thought, but there was no one else against whom he could measure himself. He wondered if he would have liked Silas at all if there had been other friends. He pushed the thought away; he could not afford to lose his one friend.

As they came toward the house, Andrew saw his parents go inside. A kobold was on the porch, preparing for its nightly surveillance; behind it, a troll was clothed in shadows. Silas got on his bicycle.

“See you,” he mumbled and coasted down the hill recklessly, slowing down as he reached the bottom, speeding up as he rode toward his home.

The kobold danced over to Andrew as he went up the steps. It smiled; the golden curls around its pretty face bobbed. A tiny hand touched his arm. “Good night, Andrew,” it sang.

“Good night, Ala.”

“Good night, good night, good night,” the tiny voice trilled. “Sleep well, sweet dreams, sweet dreams.” The troll growled affectionately. The kobold pranced away, its gauzy blue skirt lifting around its perfect legs.

Andrew went inside. The door snapped shut behind him, locking itself. He walked toward the curving staircase, then paused, lingering in the darkened hallway. He would have to say good night.

He found his parents in the living room. He knocked on the door, interrupting the sound of conversation, then opened it. Dao had stripped to his briefs; Joan was unbuttoning her shirt. On the holo, Andrew saw the nude images of a blond man and a red-haired woman; a dark-haired kobold giggled as it peered around the woman’s bare shoulder. The flat wall-sized screen had become the doorway into a bright, sunny bedroom.

“Five minutes,” Dao said to the images. “We’ll call you back.” The people and the room disappeared. “What is it, son?”

Joan smiled. Andrew looked down at the floor, pushing his toe against a small wrinkle in the Persian rug. “Nothing. I came to say good night.”

He left, feeling their impatience. As he climbed the stairs, he heard the door below slide open.

“Andrew,” Joan said. She swayed, holding the ends of her open shirt. “I’ll come up later and tuck you in. All right?”

I’m too old for that, he wanted to say. “I’ll be asleep,” he said as he looked down at her.

“I’ll check on you anyway. Maybe I’ll tell you a story.”

He was sure that she would forget.

In the end, he went with Silas, as he had known he would. They left two days later, in the morning, stopping at Silas’s house to pick up the knapsacks. Silas’s father was out in the back, digging in his garden with the aid of a troll; he did not see them leave.

They avoided the road, keeping near the trees. When they were out of sight of Andrew’s house, they returned to the road. Andrew was not frightened now. He wondered what his parents would say when he returned to tell them of his journey.

Silas stopped and turned around, gazing over Andrew’s head. “A kobold’s following us.” Andrew looked back. A little figure in blue was walking toward them; it lifted one hand in greeting.

“What’ll we do?”

“Nothing, for the moment.” Silas resumed walking.

“But it’s following us.” Andrew walked more quickly, trying to keep up with his friend’s strides. “We could outrun it, couldn’t we? It won’t be able to keep up.”

“That’s just what we can’t do. If we do that, it’ll tell the others, and we’ll have your parents and my father on our trail.”

They came to a bend in the road. Silas darted to one side and hurried through the brush. Andrew ran after him, thrashing through the green growth. It had rained the night before; the ground was soft and muddy, and leaves stuck to his boots. Silas reached for his arm and pulled him behind a tree.

“Wait,” Silas said. He glanced at Andrew, then peered at him more closely. Andrew stepped back. Silas was looking at his chest. Andrew looked down. One of his shirt buttons was undone, revealing the silver fabric underneath.

“You’re wearing a lifesuit.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Of course not. You’re stupid, Andrew. Don’t you know you can be tracked with that on?”

“Not as easily as with a Bond.” He wondered again what Silas was going to do about their Bonds.

“Take it off right now.”

“You can’t hurt me, not while I’m wearing it.”

“I’ll leave you here, then.”

“I don’t care.” But he did. He took off his knapsack and unbuttoned his shirt. Twigs cracked in the distance; the kobold had tracked them. Andrew removed his lifesuit, and handed it to Silas.

As he dressed, Andrew felt exposed and vulnerable. His clothing seemed too light, too fragile. He watched as Silas dug in the mud, burying the lifesuit with his hands. He looked up at Andrew and grinned, his hands caked with wet earth.

“Get behind that tree,” Silas said as he picked up a rock. Andrew obeyed, flattening himself against the bark. A bush shook. He could see the kobold now. For a moment, the android looked like a man; then it moved closer to another bush and was small again. Its dark beard twitched.

“Silas,” the kobold called. “Silas.” It shaded its eyes with one hand. “Silas, where are you bound? You should not come so far without protection.” The creature had a man’s voice, a tenor, but it had no resonance, no power; it was a man’s voice calling from far away. The kobold came closer until it was only a meter from Andrew, its back to him as it surveyed the area.

Silas moved quickly, brushing against Andrew as he rushed toward the kobold. He raised the rock and Andrew saw him strike the android’s head. The little creature toppled forward, hands out. Andrew walked toward it slowly. Silas dropped the red-smeared rock. The small skull was dented; bits of bone and slender silver threads gleamed in the wound. The silver patch on its forehead was loose.

“You killed it.”

“I didn’t mean to hit it so hard. I just wanted to knock it out.” Silas brushed back his hair with one dirty hand. “It’s only a kobold. Come on, we have to go. Now that its link is out, another one’ll come looking for it.”

Andrew stared at the body.

“Come on.” He turned and followed his friend. They came to a muddy clearing and went around it. Silas led him to a nearby grove of trees.

Two cages rested against a tree trunk. Two cats, trapped inside, scratched at the screening. “I told you I had a plan,” Silas said. “Now we take care of our Bonds.”

“I don’t understand.”

The other boy exhaled loudly. “Messing up the signal’s too complicated, and we can’t take them off and leave them because the alarm would go out after a minute or so. So there’s only one thing left. We put them on somebody else. Or something else. The system can’t tell if it’s us or not; it only knows that the Bonds are on some living thing. And it’ll assume it’s still us, because these Bonds are ours. Everyone’ll look for us around here. By the time anyone figures it out, we’ll be far away.”