Traitor (Rebel Stars Book 2) (3 page)

Increasingly tired of being kept in the dark, Rada tuned them out and plunged into the files Toman had sent to her device. Absolution, as it turned out, was something like a religious community—or, as Toman had called it, a game preserve. Situated at the southern end of Las Reinas, Absolution sat on the Gulf Coast surrounded by a few hundred square miles of steaming jungle. The religious element of the city was that technology and means of living were restricted to how things had been a thousand years earlier.

Apparently, this was due to the residents' belief that the Panhandler virus had been some kind of divine/cosmic punishment for human advancement, hubris, etc. There had been countless such cults over the years and Rada had patience for none of them. Aliens conquering Earth was proof of godly wrath? You might as well write a bible about the fight between one ant colony and another.

She knew she ought to be cramming for the mission, but as they soared over the sprawling territories of Las Reinas, she found herself staring out the window at the ruins of the old world. Some of the cities had been reclaimed and rebuilt, but after the plague, the survivors often found it easier to start somewhere new than to try to farm the rubble and pavement. Though a millennium of weather and scavenging had sanded many of the old cities down to mere hints in the landscape, when viewed from above, Rada understood, at last, how much had been lost.

The terrain shifted from desert to highlands to an uninterrupted carpet of jungle. They touched down at a small but modern airfield. Rada was used to existing in artificial environments. These required massive amounts of energy and money to make nonlethal, and thus tended to be cool and dry. There in the jungle, the air was so humid and stifling she wanted to crawl under a porch and leave the System to its fate.

A car awaited them. This time, there was no security, but all Rada cared about was the air conditioning. The vehicle headed east down a quiet road shaded by the thronging canopy. The pavement was plastic, outdated, but in reasonably good repair. With little else to see, Rada read up on their destination. After an hour, the car moved to the shoulder and came to a stop in what looked suspiciously like the middle of nowhere. The engine shut down. Taking the AC with it.

Rada looked up in alarm. "What's going on?"

Webber popped his door. "No cars on the reservation."

"I thought they were fine with anything the old people used. The old people had more cars than
we
do."

He laughed. "Sure—giant metal oil-burners you had to pilot yourself."

She could already feel the heat infiltrating the stopped car. "Toman couldn't have found us one of those?"

"He thought it would draw too much attention. The last thing we want to do is spook our target."

Rada opened her door and stepped out. Even in the shade, she was miserable. They were really going to travel the rest of the way on foot? Toman was one of the richest men in the galaxy—he couldn't have rented a chopper to deposit them outside Absolution's walls? This was an outrage. This was—

She stopped mid-step, arrested by a sudden case of perspective. She had known real hardship. Real hardship was being trapped in a cave on Nereid, chipping for days at the ice that had cascaded over the entrance. That should have killed her.

Jungle heat? Uncomfortable, nothing more. Time to toughen up and do the job.

The car's trunk yawned open. MacAdams got out packs and three large, square jumbles of metal tubes. Webber expertly unfolded them into bicycles, the joints cunningly concealed in welds and paint. They mounted up and continued east. For the most part, the forest looked uninhabited, but now and then dirt roads spoked from the highway, showing glimpses of rough, simple houses. They passed through a village, slowing to swerve their bikes around staring children and panting dogs. The people wore denim and cotton that looked impossibly scratchy. Their shoes were garishly bright and appeared to be made largely of rubber.

As the village disappeared behind them, Webber sketched out a rough plan. Absolution faced the ocean on one side and was hemmed in by a wall on the others. Fortunately, all they had to do to be allowed through the gates was pose as pilgrims seeking a more enlightened path. Once they were allowed in for testing, they could start poking around for the absconded FinnTech employee.

Down the road, a man walked toward them, supported by a walking staff he clearly didn't need. His head was shaved and he wore a loose green robe with patterned white stitching. Rada intended to blow past him—he was obviously a monk, and if you could count on monks for anything, it was that they'd beg from you—but Webber slowed.

"Good afternoon," the man said. "Looking for Absolution?"

Webber planted his feet, straddling his bike. "Aren't we all?"

"My name is Fell." The monk extended his hand, shook with Webber, then returned his hand to a pocket of his robe. "I live in a monastery outside the city. I like getting to know my neighbors."

"Well, we're looking to join them. Any tips?"

The man smiled wisely in a way Rada found highly annoying. "They'll let you in or they won't. Not much you can do to sway the outcome. So you might as well be honest, yes?"

"Do people sometimes try to lie their way in?" Rada said.

Fell laughed, actually placing a hand on his belly. "All the time! Tourists, sociologists, thrill-seekers, radicals: there's no greater trap for human curiosity than a place you're told you can't enter. Good luck!"

He waved and went on his way, staff clacking on the pavement.

"That wasn't much help," Webber said.

"Whatever." Rada returned her feet to the pedals and started forward. "At least he didn't try to sell us anything hand-carved."

She sweated freely, sipping from a dwindling water bottle and trying not to think about pre-plague water purity standards on a giant mudball covered in more bacteria than there were stars in the universe. A half mile after meeting Fell, the jungle stopped abruptly. Grass grew in the clearing, battered by the sun. Ahead, a mortared wall of white stone enclosed a wide sprawl of low buildings.

They stopped their bikes and walked them toward the portcullised gate. When they got within two hundred yards, a bang clapped through the dense, searing air. The roar of an old fashioned rifle.

"Stop right there," a woman yelled out from the gates. "Show me your backs and get walking. Another step forward, and the next bullet goes through your skull."

2

The Red Men came for him in the middle of the day.

The knock on the door was like a hook in the ribs. His mom felt it, too. She rose from her chair like the screen of a device springing to life. She told Ced to go to his room, but he knew that if she went to the door alone, something bad would happen to her. He followed behind her, the soles of his footies whispering on the plastic floor.

Two giant bugs stood outside. Their heads and bodies were pitch black and they had square red crosses on their chests and foreheads like evil spiders. One smiled and spoke his mom's name. Ced's vision shifted like when he got up from a dream. They weren't bugs; they were men in hats and uniforms. One of the men looked down at Ced and smiled, but Ced didn't believe him.

The man's partner gestured Ced's mom outside the apartment. She moved into the hall, letting the door shut. They spoke too softly for him to hear. After a minute, the three of them walked back inside.

She crouched over him, put her hand on his shoulder. "These men are here to help you, okay? They're just going to give you a little shot."

He stared up at the Red Men. "What is it?"

"It's to keep you from getting sick. Okay?"

She took him to the kitchen and set him on the table. One of the men got out a little white wand and pulled Ced's collar down.

The man smiled. "It won't hurt a bit."

It was the last time Ced would believe those words.

The man put the wand to Ced's neck. His skin went warm, fuzzy, and then so did Ced. The wand puffed like the smallest snake. It puffed a second time, then the Red Man drew back and wiped the wand with a swab that smelled like when Mom cleaned the toilet.

The Red Man tapped him on the shoulder. "See? All good."

At the door, they spoke to his mom for another moment, then left, boots thudding down the hall. Ced still felt fuzzy and went to lie down.

Pain woke him, hot and awful. He got out of bed and fell on the worn red rug beside his bed. He tried to call out but he wasn't sure if he was actually speaking. Then his mom was lifting him, brushing his hair from his eyes. Her face was as big as a moon, her eyes like wet fires.

He remembered shivering. Burning. Pain scraped up his spine in steady waves. Sleep got him away from the worst of it, but it hurt too much to stay asleep for long. Drifting in and out, that pain was the only constant. Though he didn't truly understand what death was, he thought he wanted it.

A few days later, he woke. Something was different. He felt so good he thought the pain was gone, but it was just so much fainter that it felt like a relief by comparison. His sheets were sweaty, but his body no longer burned.

The first thing his mom did was hug him. The second thing she did was bring him soup and water. The third thing she did was make the wall screen start to play movies. The fourth thing she did was sleep.

While she dreamed in her bed, Ced dreamed with his screen. He'd seen movies before, but only cartoons, and he'd thought their endless, domeless skies were as made-up as the dragons and genies that flew around them. This time, when he saw the trees moving in what they called the wind, and watched as the ships streaked from a blue sky to the black one that
he
knew, he understood these places were real.

They were Earth.

It had tree-filled parks, but instead of hundred-yard squares between apartment buildings, these parks stretched for miles and miles. It had streams, but instead of rivulets he could cross in three or four hops, some were wider than apartment blocks. And the hills—these were so big you could ride an elevator up them all day long and still not reach the top. Finally, the world was as big as his imagination. He was in love.

When his mom came in the next morning to check on him, he sat up in bed. "Mom, why can't I go outside?"

She blinked. Her eyes were red like cherry syrup—had she been crying? "You can. You just need to feel a little better first."

"No, I want to go for-real outside. Like on Earth."

"We can't go outside here, honey. It's not like Earth. There's no air to breathe. And it's so cold you'd freeze into Comet Ced."

He laughed. "Why do we live here when we could live there?"

His mom cocked her head. "Well, we have more freedom here. People don't tell you what to do."

"What about the Red Men?"

"What Red Men?"

"The men who made me sick."

"They're from Health and Safety. We have to keep your immune system strong. This place is like a petri dish. You had a little reaction to the medicine, that's all."

"Oh." He scootched down the bed. "Well, I want to go outside. For real."

"Sure. All it costs is money."

"What's money?"

"You know what money is."

"But what
is
it?"

"It's what adults use to prove they're better than each other." She gazed at the faded square of rug. "Do you really want to go to Earth?"

"The most and the most. I want to go outside and run in a new direction every day and never see the same thing twice."

"That's because you're an explorer." She reached for his hand. "So I guess we'll have to get you somewhere you can explore your heart out."

* * *

A few weeks later, once he was all better, she started to go out flying more. That meant he went to stay with his Aunt Amanda, who got much meaner as soon as his mom walked out the door.

The fifth time his aunt told him to clean the dirt from his shoes when they weren't even dirty, he snapped. "My mom
never
makes me clean my shoes!"

Amanda rolled her eyes. "Your mom's not here, is she?"

"Well, I hate it. And it smells funny here."

"You're the reason she's gone, aren't you? So quit complaining. And clean your stupid shoes."

He stared up at her, momentarily forgetting his anger. "I made her leave? Forever?"

The heavyset woman sighed, face softening. "Not forever, you silly little boy. On the flights. If she's ever going to get you to Earth, she's going to need a whole lot more money."

Somehow, he hadn't connected the two things until then—that his mom had started working more because of what he'd said about Earth. Abruptly, he wasn't mad anymore. Well, a little at Aunt Amanda. But after that, he tried to be better.

There were good things about staying with Amanda, too. Like he got to see Stefen more. Most of the other kids only wanted to play Crews, but the big kids always got to be the captains while the little kids like Ced had to be powder monkeys and swabs. Besides, Crews was boring. Every time, it ended with the captains arguing about who was dead and who'd shot whose ship the most.

Stefen, though, he'd play the things they saw on the movies. Jack and the Black Hole. Swimmer Hunters. And Ollie and Lisa, who got stranded on an alien planet and had to survive without any grownups at all. Ced liked that movie so much he didn't mind when Stefen insisted he be Lisa.

Stefen lived right down the block, and every morning, Ced ran out to meet him in the cramped, smelly street. With the lights glaring from the dome overhead, they weaved through the pedestrians, dodging the angry-looking boys and girls who'd been crewed for real, ranging further and further through the maze of apartment blocks. Sometimes they bought spicy curd from the street carts and while Stefen paid, Ced snatched up packets of salty black sauce, which they tried to make you pay extra for even though the curd was no good without them.

One day, knowing Aunt Amanda wouldn't be home until night, Ced led Stefen all the way west to Brookings Boulevard. The air smelled like the oranges in the trees in the middle of the street. On the other side, the buildings were glassy and shiny.