“Gettin’ there ain’t the problem,” said Angie. “Apparently there’s so many robots around it we’ll never fight our way through. At least not without that robot–proof gear Max told us about. We’ll be ground hamburger without it.”
She turned to me. “Did you find it? Max said it was supposed to be in Sleeper One.”
I didn’t know who Max was, but the gear I knew about. “It’s there, but we couldn’t get to it. It’s in a locked room, bombproof glass. Need a sec pass. Apparently there’s one in some place called Project Darwin. Another old facility, I think. Got a map to it right here. Athalia and I were about to head there when we got Vargas’ distress call.”
“What?” Vargas was laughing. “Why the hell would the key to get into a room in one base be in another—”
I held up a hand. “Athalia asked the same thing. Found a note at Sleeper One that said the guy who had the key went to Darwin because of some problem and never came back.”
Vargas growled. “Buncha bullshit. Alright, gimme that map, and I’ll see if I can get Thrasher and Hell Razor on the horn and give ’em directions to meet us there.”
“You might want to call the general too,” said Angie. “Keep the ol’ bear in the loop.”
“Haven’t been able to raise Ranger Center for days. Robots must have downed one of our relay towers.” He turned away from the fire and pulled his radio from his pack while the rest of us finished our meal. “Vargas calling Razor. Vargas calling Razor. Come in?”
A scratchy voice answered Vargas through the static. “This is Hell Razor, good buddy. Go ahead.”
“Hmmm,” said Angie, staring into the fire as Vargas continued his call. “A Sleeper Base guy going to Darwin? Makes you wonder if these places — Darwin, Cochise, Sleeper One — were all part of the same thing. Some old pre–apocalypse government organization? A military thing?”
“Could be,” said Athalia. “Makes sense.”
“But what was it all for?” I asked.
Nobody had an answer, and by then we were all fading faster than the last red of the sunset.
I turned to the Mayor. “Any place we can sleep for the night?”
There was a small room in the mayor’s shack and a stable out behind it, but the healer insisted that Vargas spend the night in his surgery where he could keep an eye on his bandages, and Athalia said she would spend the night off in the desert somewhere communing with her god, so that left Angie, Ace and me to figure out how to split up the two rooms. Ace didn’t seem interested in sharing with me, and I agreed with him — that was an awkward conversation I would be happy to avoid — which put Angie in the spot of having to pick between us. Ace didn’t let her.
“I ain’t gonna play kiddie games. When you know your mind, let me know.” And with that he walked out to the stable.
I looked after him, then back to her. “You can send me after him. It’ll be a bit uncomfortable out there, but who cares? I know I’m not the man you knew.”
“No,” she said. “You’re not. And I been thinking on whether or not that matters.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
She laughed. “You sound like you, you look like you — a younger you, which has its merits — but you’re not you. It’s very weird.”
It was weird. I certainly thought I felt like me. But then what else was I going to feel like? The question was, did I feel like him? And I had no idea about that. There didn’t seem to be any way of ever knowing.
Angie sighed. “Alright. You can stay.”
I blinked, heart thumping. “Really?”
“Yeah. You hit the sack while I stand first watch, and I’ll wake you up in three hours.”
She laughed at my expression. “Oh, come on. You didn’t really think…?”
“No, no, I guess not.” I shrugged. “But then why didn’t you go after Ace?”
“Because I’d never cheat on the man you were. And if you’re not the man you were, well, Ace is a good enough guy that he won’t mind waiting a bit.”
“So… you’re givin’ me a test drive? Is that it?”
She stepped to the door and unslung her long gun. “I’m givin’ you the chance to show me who you are. Sleep tight, Ghost.”
My fists clenched as she pushed through the curtain and vanished. I got the feeling that the old me might have gone after her and given her a piece of my mind for saying what she had, and I was definitely a little hot under the collar, but at the same time I saw her point. I was the new kid — literally. I had to prove myself.
I hung my gunbelt on a peg and kicked off my boots, then sat down on the narrow wooden bunk, pulled off my shirt and wadded it up for a pillow. Stripping down completely would have made sleeping easier, but if trouble arrived in the night, I didn’t want to die getting dressed.
The aches of the day’s exertions and the sting of my sunburn made me groan as I lay back, but it felt good to stretch, and pretty soon I crashed and crashed hard. I don’t remember dreaming, but I must have because I woke up sweating, the memory of the gun battle with the eight raiders fresh in my head again like it had just happened, and my heart pounding with horror at what I’d done back there.
Not only had I pulled Athalia into a dangerous situation without bothering to give her any explanation or get her consent, I’d also thought drawing on five men with shotguns was a good idea — a plan, even. What had I been thinking? Even if my gun hadn’t jammed, I would probably still have been dead without the timely intervention of Angie and her long gun. Yes, I’d evaluated my enemies, figured out who was the most dangerous, and picked my targets accordingly, and I could tell myself that I’d made my choice because it was the one with the greatest chance of saving the most people, but part of me wondered if I had been that careless because I was a clone. It wasn’t my life, after all. How, though, did I explain being careless with Athalia’s life too? Was that something the guy lying dead outside the cloning chamber would have done? Was he rash like this? Or was that me?
And now that I mentioned it, was even he the man I was?
Angie’s comment about my loss of a finger and a scar on my forehead hadn’t penetrated when she’d said it, but now that I was thinking back to my former self, I remembered that the dead body at the base had all its fingers and toes. Was I the clone of a clone? Did it stop there? Maybe I was the clone of a clone of a clone. I had no way of knowing how far removed I was from the original.
Thinking on that was the kind of thing that could keep a man awake for days. I wondered for a bit if I was the sort of man who would worry on that. Or if I had been the kind of man who would. I decided, either way, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to be the kind of guy who worried about it.
Life — no matter which life it was — was just too damned short.
– Chapter Four –
A half hour out of White Mesa the next morning and Kate, the doctor’s apprentice, caught up to us. She had a pack on her back almost as big as she was.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
Vargas shook his head. “Go home, little darlin’. It’s likely to be pretty deadly where we’re goin’, and none of us is gonna want your death on our conscience.”
The girl was small and young and wore her hair in sun–streaked pigtails, but her eyes were as hard and sharp as a basalt knife. She crossed her arms. “I’m not your little darling, I’m your medic, and if I don’t come, your deaths are going to be on my conscience. Besides, if you don’t stop these death machines, sooner or later it will be pretty deadly back in White Mesa too. Either those robots will kill us, or the raiders they’re chasing out of the north will.”