Beneath the Gated Sky Page 15

  “I’ll get it out,” he promised.

  “But keep the box closed. For now. Just wait for us.”

  “I’ll be there,” he promised, stepping down the sagging stairs.

  Then she turned and jogged for a moment, pausing where the sun was brightest, where the newly leafed trees were farthest apart. A trio of lasers, each wearing a different kind of camouflage, came awake with a jarrtee word. Already focused on a specific part of the sky, they carried her next scrambled words on beams of coherent light.

  “Trinidad,” she whispered.

  Then, “What’s happening, cousin? What do you see?”

  She waited for an instant, concentrating on the silence within her right ear. No response, no response…and finally, the expected voice arrived…probably no more than ten seconds after she said, “Trinidad.”

  “Cousin,” she heard. “I’m looking, but nothing seems unusual.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not visually. Not on any government bands, agency-wise or otherwise.” There was a pause, a distinct inhalation. Then he screamed, the single word—one of the few genuine universal words—twisted into a piercing, scalding roar:

  “SSSHHHHHEEEEEEEETT!”

  Silence.

  And once again, because it seemed like the absolute best thing to do at that instant, Porsche ran.

  An industrial robot was on the television’s main screen, standing waist-deep in fire and molten metal, a shiny can of deodorant clutched in one ceramic hand. “If it’s strong enough for me,” promised a harsh machine voice, “then it has all the power vow will ever need.”

  “We’re almost ready,” said Cornell. A sideways glance, then, “Where’s Dad?”

  She told him.

  The building had a back door. Cornell glanced at it, saying nothing.

  Porsche asked her eavesdroppers for an update.

  “No one is there,” she heard. And she repeated it aloud.

  “Ninety seconds till,” Timothy announced. “Everything looks good. Perfect, even.”

  A slippery sensation passed through Porsche. Time seemed too slow, and a focused, enraging impatience took hold of her. She noticed Cornell looking over Timothy’s shoulder, rocking side to side. Timothy was hunkered over the terminal’s keyboard, no buttons left to push, hands held lightly against his aching belly. Then something moved, something barely in her eye, and she half-turned, looking out the narrow east door, seeing nothing but the immobile brown tree trunks and the green branches nodding in the May breeze.

  Again, Porsche asked if they had company.

  “No,” she heard. A whiff of irritation in the voice?

  Impossible.

  “Forty seconds,” Timothy called out.

  Three steps took her to the doorway, and she quietly asked herself, “What is it?”

  Looking southeast, past the old windbreak, she watched the dirty brown field, and beyond, the perfectly empty, shockingly white graveled road.

  “Thirty seconds!”

  Within the range of her eavesdroppers, there was nothing. They were telling her exactly what she wanted to hear, and they were wrong. She felt it. It was exactly like having your lover claim his boundless devotion, but between the sweet words was that sense of doubt that he could never hear for himself.

  “Fifteen seconds,” two voices said, in ragged unison.

  Porsche saw the odd motion again. Sudden, subtle. She found herself staring at the windbreak, at the dappled shadows. “Where are you?” More frustrated than fearful, she began to squint, urging the visitor to show itself. “Come on now…come on…”

  “Five,” said Timothy.

  Cornell said, “Four.”

  Then both men said, “Three!”

  And she heard a different voice. Quick and soft, and close, it felt as if a mouth was being pressed against her ear. “Porsche,” it said with a delicate fondness.

  Trinidad?

  “Two!” the men were shouting, in the distance.

  Milky white noise sputtered in her ear, then dissolved, the voice of her cousin shouting, “Trouble!”

  “One!” Cornell cried out.

  “Save yourself,” Trinidad begged. Then she heard, “Porsche,” again, something tacked on to the back of her name but some kind of brilliant shroud engulfing it, erasing it.

  “Here we go,” said Timothy, with excitement.

  “Trinidad?” she called out. “What’s happening?”

  Cornell noticed Porsche standing in the open doorway, talking to herself, and he took a half-step, asking, “What is it?”

  In a huge, tremulous voice, Timothy called out, “No!”

  The others turned, looked.

  “I don’t understand!” he sputtered. “We’re not…”

  “What is it?” Cornell was repeating.

  “This is…fuck…!”

  Cornell’s face was illuminated by the television screen. There was no sign of Hawthorne Klay; an ordinary afternoon news program was in midstride. Cornell was staring at the images, arms at his side, hands making fists, a baffled and very tired face framing a mouth that hung open, ready to speak as soon as words occurred to him.

  Outside, wild birds were cackling. They had been cackling for several minutes, Porsche realized. Too late.

  Again, she turned to look out into the bright day.

  “This should work,” said a furious voice. Timothy’s voice. “I did everything right. Every fucking thing—!”

  In the windbreak, in a synchronized motion, faceless men stepped from behind old walnut trees. Their features were hidden behind thick stockings that were green one moment, shadow-black the next. Gloved hands held stubby, big-barreled weapons. There were three faceless men, and following them were three more men. Armed. In motion. Making straight for the open door.

  Porsche turned, screaming out, “Run!”

  Then in her next breath, she used a single word, a humanized jarrtee word, telling the Few-made defenses to drop the invaders, now.

  Nothing changed.

  The men continued to approach the metal building, showing not so much as a shred of urgency.

  Again, she said the word.

  Nothing.

  She started to turn again, to look at Cornell and warn him again. But the television and every machine suddenly went dead, plunging the interior into darkness.

  “What is it, what is it?” Timothy was chanting.

  Then with a clear and determined voice, Cornell shouted, “We’ve got to go. Go!”

  There was a soft thud followed by the shrill screech of metal being split open, and a fist-sized projectile burst through the garage door, dropping between Porsche and the others, a thick fountain of pink smoke dividing them.

  “Get out the back!” she screamed.

  There were more thuds, the blunt rounds driven into the steel. Ragged holes were punched into the long south wall, columns of smoky light pouring into the darkness. She glimpsed someone running. Maybe. Then she dropped to her knees, one hand grabbing the doorjamb, and peered outside in time to watch the faceless men firing another salvo, the jamb lurching as the entire building absorbed the blow.

  If the enemy wanted her dead, she would be dead.

  Porsche stood and stepped into plain view, hands raised up over her head.

  The men lowered their guns, then with the casual scorn of school yard bullies, they began to trot toward her.

  She waited for a half-moment, then ran.

  Someone shouted: “Wasps! Use ’em!”

  There was a thud-ud-ud, and a blunt blue-black machine streaked past her ear, slamming into the building, a paralyzing dose of amps pumped into the sheet metal, and lost.

  She rounded the corner, sprinting beside the building’s north side.

  In the distance, over the warm, almost summery breeze, came the urgent whump-whump of helicopter rotors.

  A point guard’s instincts took hold.

  A glance over her shoulder, and she saw a bulky figure bursting into view, aiming at
her with a smooth professional calm.

  Thud.

  She responded, throwing her head down between her forearms and her weight pitching forward, the mechanical wasp passing close enough to leave the hair on her arms standing erect.

  Wrestling gravity, she managed to straighten herself, then milked more speed out of her legs, looking out at the empty field as another man came around the corner, stepping directly into her path.

  Porsche was close enough to make out a nose and long chin beneath the camouflage.

  He was aiming his weapon. Slowly, then quickly.

  Someone said, “Stop.”

  She sidestepped left, then right, and suddenly he was off balance, fighting his ample muscle and bone. Then she went left again and lifted her right elbow and made sure that she struck his chin, bone to bone, his head thrown back as she drove into his body, her right knee riding up between his legs, testicles absorbing the brunt of her momentum.

  The man went limp.

  Went down.

  She rounded the corner and found the back door hanging open, a narcotic strawberry smoke pouring from inside. Barely breaking stride, she kept moving, crossing the yard and crashing into the windbreak, through junipers and bursting into the open again. Someone was running in her shadow. She heard him, felt him. Risking a half-glance, she saw a figure without any gun, arms pumping and his long legs closing the gap. She looked ahead, straight on. A fiery sprinter’s pain blossomed in her lungs, spreading across her chest and pouring into her legs, congealing, making the legs heavy as stone, and as stiff, and hopelessly tired.

  Against the sky, she saw the silhouette of the backboard and pole.

  Someone was directly ahead of her. A male someone standing motionless on the stubble, and because she wanted it badly, she decided that it had to be Cornell.

  Her pursuer grunted:

  “Under…arrest…treason…”

  Porsche couldn’t outlast him. So she put on a surge, winning another step or two, then half-fell, half-squatted, trying to bounce off the lumpy earth.

  Like in a thousand basketball drills, she reversed direction.

  Charging the faceless man, she faked left before diving right.

  But the man was too alert, or too tired to react. He bulled his way straight for her, dipping his head at the last instant, driving a bony broad shoulder into her body; suddenly Porsche was on her back with no memory of falling, lying on a bed of rotting stalks and fragrant dirt, the enemy straddling her, trying to grab her by the wrists.

  An incandescent rage took her.

  She pulled her right hand free and took a blind swipe, slicing off the mask, a familiar face framed by the hard blue sky.

  The younger fisherman, the one who had sat in the back seat, wore a composed expression and a bloody cut above his eyes. The eyes were fastened to her eyes and a half-smile was building. Then his mouth opened, something exceedingly important to be said.

  He never got the chance.

  A metallic rectangle appeared in the sky. Porsche recognized its shape and the blue-gray color, though she couldn’t remember from where. The rectangle came closer, grew larger. Then the man’s head jerked sideways, taking the impact, and there was a hollow crash followed by tools banging, the old toolbox slipping off his skull, then dropping to the ground.

  The fisherman shuddered, collapsed.

  A voice came from a distant place, and Nathan’s face appeared, grim and ashen.

  “Where is he?”

  Porsche tried to stand. Where was who?

  The old man turned, staring back at the farmhouse and the utility building and the rising columns of strawberry smoke, and with trembling hands cupped around his mouth, he shouted, “Cornell? Cornell?”

  A pair of exhausted wasps dove into the ground at his feet.

  The fisherman was gripping the back of his head, his moans growing stronger.

  Nathan stepped over the wasps, calling for his son again.

  Porsche had mistaken him for Cornell. Cornell hadn’t escaped, nor had Timothy, obviously, and she’d left them behind—

  “Cornell?” the man cried out.

  A black helicopter, seemingly carved from anthracite, rose up over the windbreak trees, then hovered.

  Porsche grabbed Nathan by the arm. “We can’t help him! Not now!”

  He looked at her for an instant, his mouth working, no sound coming from it.

  She let go and grabbed the toolbox, then she was running again, begging Nathan to follow her.

  A hammer and screwdriver and a block of scrap pine were already set at the disk’s center—a trick Nathan already knew, thank goodness. As they stepped onto the old glass, the sky filled with the starry glow of thousands of earth-rooted intrusions. Neither noticed. Armed men were racing across the open field. The helicopter revved its engine, dropped its nose, and came hard. Porsche didn’t have any cushion. She opened the toolbox and grabbed the yellow handle of a second screwdriver, then sliced her finger on a bent nail. Then she shut the box and latched it, every motion precise and swift. Then she positioned it and the other five objects, building a ring around herself. When the ring was right, she felt it. There was an electric surge, and the six keys were suddenly locked in place. “Come here!” she shouted to Nathan, and she looked up once more, masked figures kneeling on the sunflower stubble, taking aim.

  Without sound or genuine motion, the intrusion opened.

  A squadron of wasps were launched, too late.

  Porsche grabbed a thin hand, then pulled. Hard.

  The disk around them vanished, engulfed by a rubbery black whirlpool that swirled beneath them.

  She pushed Nathan, hard, forcing him downwards.

  Then she returned, running carefully along the whirlpool’s lip, grabbing each of the keys in turn and flinging them into that realm where nothing but sentience could endure.

  Above her, with an explosive roar, the intrusion slammed shut.

  And again, for a second time, Porsche had lost her home.

  The Old World

  1

  “…World, world…a new world…”

  The voice was soft and astonished; Nathan’s new mouth struggling with a cackling language. He tried to say, “Porsche,” and twisted it into gibberish. Then after a desperate deep breath, he exclaimed, “We need to climb! Climb!”

  Climb was a weak translation.

  Porsche was barely half the size of Nathan, her monkeyish body dressed in short golden fur, four long supple limbs ending in strong hands, and a prehensile tail that stood erect, displaying caution. She was standing on every hand, a phantom pain reminding her of her punctured human finger. Under her palms were the remnants of another disk, its glass shattered into shards and sand. The ground beyond was black as oil and littered with masses of rotting wood. In the distance, standing in a thin warm mist, were what passed here for trees.

  “Climb,” Nathan repeated, in despair.

  They were surrounded by chocolate-colored tree trunks that rose high, erupting into a canopy of fat branches and overlapping leaves, nothing but a thin amber light falling on tiny them.

  They lived in the canopy.

  Porsche knew it, and felt it. Newly minted instincts screamed, telling both of them to climb. To ascend. Escape death’s realm! Embrace the sky, and safety!

  Again, Nathan attempted to say her name.

  “Poo-chay.”

  His new face would have a passing resemblance to his human face—the intrusions did their best with each species—but whatever he was lay hidden under a male’s hairy plume and the long white beard.

  “Relax,” Porsche advised. “We’re safe here.”

  The coffee-colored eyes seemed to rattle around in their sockets. “Are you certain, Poo-chay?”

  “What you’re feeling is a reflex,” she assured both of them.

  Nathan gave a human nod, then whispered, “My son?”

  “Alive,” she promised. “They wanted to capture, not murder.”

  He picked u
p one of his front hands, holding it open before his face.

  “We’ll free him, and Timothy, too.” She tried to sound utterly certain, adding, “and we’ll make the agency pay…”

  “Yes,” he muttered. Curling his tail around his right leg and holding tight, he wondered aloud, “What could have gone so wrong?”

  “I wish I knew, Nathan.”

  “We couldn’t stop them, could we?”

  She couldn’t, no.

  With his new old-man hands, he touched her face.

  Porsche curled her tail around his tail, lending comfort. “If we’re going to help anyone,” she told him, “we need to find help here.”

  Nathan tugged on his beard, then his glorious plume, saying, “My first trip to another world, and I can’t enjoy it.” The hands dropped, and he added, “Anger. And fear. They feel the same here as there, don’t they?”

  The trees weren’t trees, though they were alive.

  Like coral reefs, they were built from smaller organisms knitted together into one magnificent community. Fungi reached deep underground, monopolizing the flow of water and minerals to the world above. Long, long worms encased in polycarbonate shells formed the trunks. Only the canopy was vegetable, feeding on brilliant sunshine and sending the excess calories below as sugary syrups and proteins—a sophisticated, enduring economy born from the soulless organisms.

  They hurried to the nearest tree. Nathan grabbed the knobby pseudobark, then hesitated, telling her sadly, “I’m not strong enough to climb this.”

  But he intended to try, his tone implied.

  “Human-old is different from being old here,” Porsche assured. “Arboreal species anywhere are rugged. These bodies of ours have redundancies. Extra muscle, heart, and bone.”

  He nodded, his tail trying for an optimistic tilt.

  Then she was climbing, showing him several flavors of confidence. “When this mess is finished, we’ll come again. For a real visit.”

  “Yes?”

  “This is a lovely world,” she promised.

  He said nothing.

  Porsche’s neck was long and limber. She easily looked down the length of her golden back, showing Nathan her optimism. “We’ll take a vacation. With Cornell.”