“There’s a rumor both sides gave the order and the drone operators refused and no one wanted to make an issue out of it. Last thing a general wants is to discover that he’s in charge of an army of one, in the middle of an army of everyone else.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“What was it, a year ago?” Iceweasel said.
“Eight months,” Tam said.
“Well, shit. That’s impressive. We don’t get a lot of news in here.”
“The point is you don’t know what’s going to happen, we can’t know, but there’s reason to be optimistic. People are tired of shooting each other.”
Tam chuckled. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. There’s a—” She fished for the word. “Credibility for walkaways. A sense we’ve got it figured. Once you realize there’s a world that wants what you have to give, well, it’s hard to convince people to kill each other.”
“Fuck my ass,” Limpopo said, sending Stan and Jacob into giggles. There was some background noise from her end, a muffled conversation. “I need to think, and there’s not a lot of interface stuff here so I’ve got to give someone else a turn. Sit tight and I’ll call tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure,” Tam said, and the house spirit echoed her an instant later. Everyone shouted good-bye and Limpopo said good-bye. The room went silent except for the whistling of breath in and out of Jacob’s snotty nose.
“You’re not going to wait for her to call back, are you?” the house spirit said.
“Are you shitting me? No way,” Iceweasel said.
“You want to pack for the kids or should I?” Gretyl said. The boys figured it out a moment later and exchanged excited looks and began to run in circles.
“You do it. I’ll look around for berths on a train.”
“Check the bumblers.” Seth was also bouncing. “Winds are favorable to the northeast lately, I bet we can snag a ride a long way.”
“Good thinking,” Iceweasel said. “Boys, you want to ride in a zeppelin?”
Both boys babbled and shouted. Then Jacob got so excited he punched Stan, because reasons. They tumbled on the floor, punching and shouting.
Their moms exchanged a look, shook their heads apologetically at the rest of the adults. “We’re trying to let them sort these out on their own,” Gretyl said. “Sorry.”
Everyone else was in too good spirits to be bothered. Tam looked in amazement at her house-mates, her extended family, and realized she was about to start walking again.
[II]
THE TRAIN SCHEDULES sucked. There was a complex algorithm that figured out how many cars to put on which lines when. It was endlessly wrangled by wonks with different models that weighted priorities differently. Gretyl got sucked into the math, disappearing into a set of accountable-anonymity message boards where this was being hammered out, and Iceweasel messaged Tam to say that she was probably going to be stuck in that rat-hole for the foreseeable. So Tam should start exploring alternatives.
There were rideshares heading that way, but they’d have to split into sub-groups and re-form at waystations. This was something that you could automate (Tam helped Iceweasel with a kids’ field trip to the Akron Memorial last year and they’d found it easy), but surface vehicles were slow.
“You need to find a bumbler,” Seth said.
“Yeah,” Tam said. She tapped her interface surfaces, made sure that the house spirit was locked out. “But it’s uncomfortable.”
“Etcetera is my friend,” Seth said. “My oldest buddy. Just because he and Limpopo can’t stand each other, doesn’t mean we have to take sides. You’re not betraying her by being friends with him. If you asked her, she’d tell you.”
“If I asked her, I’d put her in a position where she’d have to tell me she didn’t mind, even if she did. Which is why I’m not asking her. Friends don’t put friends in that position.”
“If she knew you were holding off on talking to him because you were worried about upsetting her, she’d be outraged.”
“I don’t doubt it. That’s why I don’t tell her.”
“Don’t you think that’s all... twisted? Especially since there’s the Other Limpopo” – they’d settled on this because, despite its least-worst awkwardness, all of them agreed “Real Limpopo” was a shitty, most-worst solution – “who was in love with Etcetera and would be glad to talk to him again.”
She sighed and scrubbed her eyes. She’d been staring at screens for a long time. “It sucks. So what? Lots of things suck. Life isn’t improved by being a dick to people who love you.”
“Etcetera loves you.”
“Fuck off.” She let him rub her shoulders. “Argh.” He found the knot in her right shoulder, a gnarl of stubborn pain that felt so good-bad when his thumbs dug into it.
“Right there.” She lolled her head.
“You’re a pushover. I could win every fight by sticking my thumb in this knot.”
“It’s my kryptonite. Don’t abuse your powers.”
“I am gonna call Etcetera.”
“Fuck you.” She snuggled her head against his belly, pushing her sore shoulder knot back into his thumb.
Five minutes later, he called Etcetera.
“Been a while,” Etcetera said.
“Fair enough. It’s all you-know around here.”
“Missed you. Both of you. All of you. It sucks being the pariah.”
“Sorry,” Seth said. This made him miserable. Freezing out his oldest friend was hard on him, but he’d never complained.
Awkward silence.
“We need your help.”
More silence.
“You’re going to like this.”
“We got a phone call. From a prison. In Canada. From an inmate who’d been held there for more than fourteen years, only just got free because the guards unlocked the cell doors and walked away.”
“Seth—” Something in Etcetera’s voice, an emotion as unmistakable as it was unintelligible. Some hybrid human–machine feeling. Deeply felt. Unnameable.
“Limpopo,” Seth said.
There was the weirdest sound Tam had ever heard. It went on and on. She thought it was laughter. With horror, she realized it was sobbing. The only time she’d heard a sim sob, it was in the tunnels at Walkaway U, before they’d figured out how to make them stable. It was a sound sims made before they collapsed.
“Etcetera? It’s okay, buddy.”
He cried a long time.
“You going to be okay?” Seth said, during a lull. “I can get Gretyl, she can help with your guard-rails—”
“I don’t need help. Is she okay?”
He didn’t mean Gretyl. “She sounds amazing. Fiery. Angry. Wants a fight.”
“I want a fight, too. What do you need?”
“You still have contacts who can get a bumbler?”
“You’re going to her?”
“She won’t come to us – if they come to lock her back up, she’s going to fight.”
“Fuckin’ a.”
“Can you help?”
“I’m coming. Find me a cluster and carry it on. I’m going with.”
“You could just phone in,” Tam said. She had enough complications.
“Not if they kill the network. I’ll leave a backup here. But I’m going with.”
“Etcetera,” Tam said, in her most reasonable voice.
“I’m going with.”
Seth shook his head at her, mouthed go with it.
“You’re going with,” she said.
“Get packed,” he said.
[III]