Where are we?
We are fifteen meters south-southeast of the landing coordinates you provided, the plane said. You were unconscious again. I opted for concealment.
He reached back and removed the interface plug from his socket, breaking his link with the plane. He gazed dully around the cockpit until he found the manual controls for the canopy. It sighed up on servos, the lacework of polycarbon leaves shifting as it moved. He got his leg over the side, looked down at his hand flat against the fuselage at the edge of the cockpit. Polycarbon reproduced the gray tones of a nearby boulder; as he watched, it began to paint a hand-sized patch the color of his palm He pulled his other leg over, the gun forgotten on the seat, and slid down into earth and long sweet grass. Then he slept again, his forehead against the grass and dreamed of running water.
When he woke, he was crawling forward on his hands and knees, through low branches heavy with dew. Finally he reached a cleaning and pitched forward, rolling over, his arms spread in what felt like surrender. High above him, something small and gray launched itself from one branch, caught an-other, swung there for an instant, then scrambled away, out of his sight.
Lie still, he heard a voice telling him, years away. Just lay out and relax and pretty soon theyll forget you, forget you in the gray and the dawn and the dew. Theyre out to feed, feed and play, and their brains cant hold two messages, not for long. He lay there on his back, beside his brother, the nylon-stocked Winchester across his chest, breathing the smell of new brass and gun oil, the smell of their campfire still in his hair. And his brother was always right, about the squirrels. They came. They forgot the clear glyph of death spelled out below them in patched denim and blue steel; they came, racing along limbs, pausing to sniff the morning, and Turners .22 cracked, a limp gray body tumbling down. The others scattered, vanishing, and Turner passed the gun to his brother. Again, they waited, waited for the squirrels to forget them.
Youre like me, Turner said to the squirrels, bobbing up out of his dream. One of them sat up suddenly on a fat limb and looked directly at him. I always come back. The squirrel hopped away. I was coming back when I ran from the Dutchman. I was coming back when I flew to Mexico. I was coming back when I killed Lynch.
He lay there for a long time, watching the squirrels, while the woods woke and the morning warmed around him. A crow swept in, banking, braking with feathers it spread like black mechanical fingers. Checking to see if he were dead.
Turner grinned up at the crow as it flapped away.
Not yet.
He crawled back in, under the overhanging branches, and found her sitting up in the cockpit. She wore a baggy white T-shirt slashed diagonally with the MAAS-NEOTEK logo. There were lozenges of fresh red blood across the front of the shirt. Her nose was bleeding again. Bright blue eyes, dazed and disoriented, in sockets bruised yellow-black, like exotic makeup.
Young, he saw, very young.
Youre Mitchells daughter, he said, dragging the name up from the biosoft dossier. Angela.
Angie, she said, automatically Who re you? Im bleeding. She held out a bloody carnation of wadded tissue.
Turner. I was expecting your father. Remembering the gun now, her other hand out of sight, below the edge of the cockpit. Do you know where he is?
In the mesa. He thought he could talk with them, explain it Because they need him.
With who? He took a step forward.
Maas. The Board. They cant afford to hurt him. Can they?
Why would they? Another step
She dabbed at her nose with the red tissue. Because he sent me out. Because he knew they were going to hurt me, kill me maybe. Because of the dreams.
The dreams?
Do you think theyll hurt him?
No, no, they wouldnt do that. Im going to climb up there now. Okay?
She nodded. He had to run his hands over the side of the fuselage to find the shallow, recessed handholds; the mimetic coating showed him leaf and lichen, twigs... And then he was up, beside her, and he saw the gun beside her sneakered foot. But wasnt he coming himself? I was expecting him, your father.
No. We never planned that. We only had the one plane. Didnt he tell you? She started to shake. Didnt he tell you anything?
Enough, he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, he told us enough. Itll be all right... He swung his legs over, bent, moved the Smith & Wesson away from her foot, and found the interface cable. His hand still on her, he raised it, snapped it into place behind his ear.
Give me the procedures for erasing anything you stored in the past forty-eight hours, he said. I want to dump that course for Mexico City, your flight from the coast, anything...
There was no plan logged for Mexico City, the voice said, direct neural input on audio.
Turner stared at the girl, rubbed his jaw.
Where were we going?
Bogot, and the jet reeled out coordinates for the landing they hadnt made.
She blinked at him, her lids bruised dark as the surrounding skin. Who are you talking to?
The plane. Did Mitchell tell you where he thought youd be going
Japan...
Know anyone in Bogot? Wheres your mother?
No. Berlin, I think. I dont really know her.
He wiped the planes banks, dumping Conroys programming, what there was of it: the approach from California, identification data for the site, a flight plan that would have taken them to a strip within three hundred kilometers of Bogots urban core...
Someone would find the jet eventually. He thought about the Maas orbital recon system and wondered if the stealth-and-evasion programs hed ordered the plane to run had done any real good. He could offer the jet to Rudy for salvage, but he doubted Rudy would want to be involved. For that matter, simply showing up at the farm, with Mitchells daughter in tow, dragged Rudy in right up to his neck But there was nowhere else to go, not for the things he needed now.
It was a four-hour walk, along half-remembered trails and down a weed-grown, winding stretch of two-lane blacktop.
The trees were different, it seemed to him, and then he remembered how much they would have grown over the years since hed been back. At regular intervals they passed the stumps of wooden poles that had once supported telephone wires, overgrown now with bramble and honeysuckle, the wires pulled down for fuel. Bees grazed in flowering grass at the roadside...
Is there food where were going? the girl asked, the soles of her white sneakers scuffing the weathered blacktop.
Sure, Turner said, all you want.
What I want right nows water. She swiped a lank strand of brown hair back from a tanned cheek. Hed noticed she was developing a limp, and shed started to wince each time she put her right foot down.
Whats wrong with your leg?
Ankle. Something, I think when I decked the light She grimaced, kept walking.
Well rest.
No. I want to get there, get anywhere.
Rest, he said, taking her hand, leading her to the edge of the road. She made a face, but sat down beside him, her right leg stretched carefully in front of her.
Thats a big gun, she said. It was hot now, too hot for the parka. Hed put the shoulder rig on bareback, with the sleeveless work shirt over it, tails out and flapping. Whys the barrel look like that, like a cobras head, underneath?
Thats a sighting device, for night-fights. He leaned forward to examine her ankle. It was swelling quickly now. I dont know how much longer youll want to walk on that, he said.
You get into a lot of fights, at night? With guns?
No.
I dont think I understand what it is that you do
He looked up at her. I dont always understand that myself, not lately I was expecting your father. He wanted to change companies, work for somebody else. The people he wanted to work for hired me and some other people to make sure he got out of his old contract.