Apprehensions and Other Delusions Read online

  “What about the rest of it, the pioneer stuff?”

  “Pioneers got them. Better than letting them go to waste.”

  “What pioneers?” you ask. “There aren’t any left.”

  “Yes, there are.” She looks directly at you. “I’m a pioneer, third generation. We lived at Brent’s Tract until you outsiders came.”

  There have been rumors, of course. In war there are always rumors. You have heard about the pioneers that are left, supposed to be hiding in the forests and the hills and what’s left of their towns. The rumor is that they are infiltrators, demolitionists, terrorists. Until now, it was only another rumor, what you’d expect to hear; you didn’t believe any of it.

  “Who’s side are you on?” you ask her, throat and eyes suddenly very dry.

  “My own side. If it were up to me, you and They would leave here tomorrow.” She folds her arm under the stock of the shotgun.

  You feel the dark thick as ink around you, matting the air inside, hovering outside. “How are ... we going to get out of here?” What you want to know most is if you are going to get out of here at all.

  “I’ve got a light and I know where I am.”

  That bothers you. In the dark the light makes you a target. “Won’t They see it?”

  “Maybe, if They look for it. But at this hour, They won’t be, or I don’t think They will. If it gets too dangerous, or there’s any sign of Them, I’ll turn it off and we can go to ground until it’s light enough to move. I’m a pioneer—we have pretty good night vision. By the way—” She tosses something to you: there are two of them, metallic and cold. “Spare fuel for the beamer. I tried them in the laser but they’re the wrong stuff. Anyway, it gives you a little more firepower. Do you want to practice walking before we go?”

  You flounder, trying for traction on the stalks of rotted grain and at last, more for luck than anything else, you’re up and moving. You are not functioning as well as you want, but that will improve.

  “Here. Steady there.” She is beside you, her arm around your back, propping up the weight your ankle won’t hold. “Try again. You’ve got to be able to move out there, once we get started.”

  So you try some more, and the function improves as sensation fades. You walk better—not well, but well enough to cover ground. She moves away from you to leave you to lurch around the shed on your own.

  “Here.” She hands you a broken section of board, a little longer than your leg. “You can use it as a cane for a while.”

  “I don’t want it,” you say, disgusted with the thing.

  “It beats falling,” she points out, then she shifts her old-fashioned shotgun and goes to open the door.

  The darkness is enormous, impending as doom, the cold wind slices through you as cleanly as a laser, the crunchy frost creaks when you step on it, and leaves grey tracks behind you.

  In the dark there is a slash of white—she has turned on her light—and then it is gone again and she is next to you, talking in a fierce whisper, as if afraid of being overheard. “If I don’t get out of this, here’s how to get back to your lines, if they haven’t changed much since yesterday: the village of Craoi-Venduru is about ten kilometers ahead on the road that starts on the other side of the ridge. It’s very small, maybe twenty-five buildings for pioneers, and a central hall. The western end of the village is where They were yesterday, or so I was told. They killed the pioneers ... a long time ago. No one’s done any farming there since then. Don’t worry about the pioneers. There’s a weather and watch station in the central hall. You’ve seen them?”

  “Some,” you say, remembering most were in ruins. “And it was part of the training for the campaign. We’re shown what we can expect to find.”

  She looks at him, curiosity and anger in her face. “When did you get here? Are you part of the A.F. forces? Or have you been here a while?”

  “I haven’t been here very long. Today makes seventeen days. None of A.F. model-4 cyborg group 722s have been here very long.”

  She shakes her head. “Cyborg,” she says, as if she still refuses to believe that’s what you are. She resumes her instructions after a single, short sigh. “We’ll figure you can recognize the central hall. As you enter the town, just outside it, there is a shrine, one of the very old pioneer kind, and the road forks there. One branch goes off to the left, running beside a stone wall. It’s high enough to conceal you. The other branch goes off to the right, toward the river.”

  “So I go to the right,” you say, remembering that A.F. forces are on the far side of the river.

  “No; you go to the left. You don’t know what’s out there, and you’d better find out before you try anything.” She hesitates, then resumes her instructions. “At the end of the wall, there is an old pioneer farmhouse, then—doubling back—an inn of some kind, though it’s wrecked, two more pioneer houses, a graveyard, and then the central hall. Four days ago the tower was intact. And if it’s still there, that’s where you go, into the tower. There’s an observation station in the tower. It has a good view of the countryside and it might still be safe. They’ve been in the town, but They’ve set up Their own platform, nearer the river. So far as I know, They haven’t used the tower for anything.”

  “How do I ... do we get into the tower?” You hope you can remember everything she is telling you, just in case.

  “There is a side door, leading into the cellar. They hadn’t used it at all, at least last week They hadn’t. Go in there and take the stairs you find there. They aren’t the main stairs—they’re narrow and steep. All the access doors on the floor above the cellar are locked.”

  “Were locked,” you correct her.

  “Yeah: they were locked. The inner stairs go behind the walls and the access doors are at the backs of rooms, not very noticeable. Unless They have had to pull back into the town, They won’t bother with the tower, not with Their platform set up.” She stares hard at you. “Think you can find your way?”

  “Sure,” you say, since your life might depend on it.

  “One more thing, a favor.” The word hangs between you colder than the air.

  “What? I owe you.” And you are not sure why she has bothered to keep you alive, except for this favor, whatever it may be.

  “If I should be captured and you are alive to do it, kill me.”

  You know you’ve heard right: you can guess why she asked you. “Kill you?”

  “If it happens, do it, soldier.”

  “If I can’t help any other way, I’ll kill you.” You sound as calm as you’d be if you were arranging to meet for a drink when it’s over. You would say the same thing to any A.F. soldier who asked, no matter what model. But this is a living human, and you are a soldier so that humans will not have to be. You are not supposed to kill them. But you have made your promise.

  She nods, satisfied. “Come on.” With that she starts into the ice-glittered night, away from the safety of the thawing shed. Her light makes a pitiful pool of white and the dark is vaster by comparison.

  So forget your ankle. It will be fixed later. Hit the road at a jog, at a steady, distance-eating trot. Into the plants that line the road, so that you will leave no footprints to guide Them to you, if They start searching. You steady yourself from time to time with the board. Think of it as another weapon, that will make it less shameful. Keep going. Don’t let yourself slow or you will have to stop.

  Your beamer is heavy. Too bad the laser had to be left in the old grain tank, unusable and unnecessary. The beamer is better. And she has her shotgun. A blast from that makes as real a hole as the beamer does. Or so you hope.

  Dog-trot silently, breathe as regularly as you can. Be grateful that you cannot feel fatigue, hunger, hurt. Remind yourself that your guide is a spy, or says she is a spy, and is a pioneer, or says she is a pioneer. Remind yourself that you know not
hing about her, not really. Remind yourself what you’ve promised to do if she gets caught.

  Run. Just run.

  Run and forget. Not too fast—you might get careless—not too slow. Don’t talk, it makes you tired and gives Them something to hear. Don’t think. Just run. Keep your mind on what you’re doing now. That. Only that.

  Wish your ankle, will it, to keep strong and steady. It will be repaired later. The malfunction is like a danger. Use it. Make it part of the running. Somewhere up ahead is a village, a ruin. After that village, there is a river. Once over that river, you’ll be safe. You’ll be fixed. Other A.F. forces will take over the job you’ve been doing. If you make it, the cost is six lives. If you don’t, the cost is eight and one of them is human.

  But according to her, you’re human, as human as she is.

  Watch her in the dark ahead of you, running silent, swift, steady. There’s a light in her right hand, shotgun in the left, a knife in her boot. She carries more than that, you know. She carries your promise. That’s part of her armor, the promise you gave her, to go with her archaic shotgun, just in case.

  Count your steps for seconds, watch the sky for day; beat the sun. It’s the only thing to think of now. Nothing else matters. Nothing else should matter. Beat the sun to a pioneer town called Craoi-Venduru, Be there before They know it, before They can find you, before They can turn on you. The slow wind bites your face and makes your skin feel tight and raw where you feel anything at all. In the dank cold the wind eats into you, sapping your strength, leaching the warmth from you. Count your steps and forget it. You have to get there. Until you do, the rest means nothing.

  It all blurs! You’ve been running since dawn yesterday. Running through the lines, running past the forward troop They sent to intercept your squad. Running to the brush near a loading depot. Running to the place They had stored fuel for Their weapons. Running away when They discovered you. Running for safety, though there is no safety. No stopping for heroics. Or for the dead. Or for the wounded, daubed with spots that look like rust, their bodies loaded with 90-pellets, lethal, decaying the flesh of your squad as they fall. Running as They come after you. Running.

  You’ve got information, so now you run for your lines. Run from Them in Their skimmers when they cut you off: run! Even though the men with you drop away behind you as the 90-pellets spew, run! Run through the trees to a clearing, to a shed. Run from that shed to an unknown town.

  “Wait,” she pants, and you stop.

  “What?” you breathe.

  She switches off the light and stands utterly still. The sky is leaden grey, slate, steel at the eastern horizon where the first light shows. You can see a little.

  “That’s the shrine,” she says, pointing through the brush to something that might be a statue.

  “I remember,” you tell her. Go to the left at the shrine and double back. Go to the central hall. You remember about the cellar entrance.

  “No one’s moving yet,” she says when she is satisfied with the silence around them.

  Up through the brush at the side of the road, then a dash for the shrine.

  There is a luminous globe in front of a statue of what might be an enormous child with a scythe in his hand. The place is neglected, the blade of the scythe broken and jagged. The features of the figure are all but obliterated with frost.

  No time now. Off down the road by the wall and around the end of it. Safe so far.

  Stop.

  There is a sentry patrolling up and down and up and down in front of the wreckage of the inn. Unconsciously you lock the hilt of the beamer against your shoulder, in case.

  She pulls you into the shadows and gestures. You are both to go through the farmhouse.

  “But—” you protest, aware of how risky that can be. The place may be booby-trapped, or so unsafe that it will collapse if you try to get into it.

  She puts her hand to your mouth, shaking her head. She mouths some words: you recognize “careful,” “cover,” and “hide,” but the rest is lost to you. She points to a few of the braces that have been shifted recently.

  So you angle your shoulder against the wall and slide the covering slats aside. When the opening is large enough, she slips past you, into the farmhouse. You wait until she touches your arm, and then you follow her into the gloom, taking care to close the slats behind you as best you can.

  The room is wrecked, the articles in the old chest have been used for target practice, by the look of them. The furniture is broken up, possibly used for firewood. Part of the roof has fallen in. Your footsteps, no matter how cautiously you walk, seem absurdly loud and you feel the fear on your neck that suggests that there are listening devices in the room.

  She beckons and you follow.

  The kitchen is worse than the rest you have seen. The storage racks are gone, the furnace and oven both pulled apart, disemboweled machinery.

  Out the back door—there is only a scrap of lumber now, but there was a door once—and into the shadow of the ruined inn. You crouch lower, to keep in the shadow of the place. You watch here as she moves from darkness to darkness, and you take care to do the same.

  It is becoming day. Shapes are becoming objects in the advancing light. You have passed the two houses and you can see the tower of the central hall ahead. The graveyard is between you and it.

  She flattens and inches forward on her stomach, snaking through the monuments for cover. You follow her, hoping that you do not leave too much of a swath through the graveyard that They can find. You are inured to the cold, or so you tell yourself, no matter how much you fear you will tremble if you stop moving.

  Another one of Their soldiers comes from the far end of the town. He talks to the sentry on duty. They are too far away for you to hear Them.

  You pull yourself even with her behind a carved boulder and whisper: “What now?”

  She holds up her hand for silence.

  “What?” you ask with your mouth but not with your voice.

  “I’m listening.” She keeps her hand raised while They speak, her face blank with concentration. Then the second one turns and walks away toward the river, leaving the sentry to resume his patrol.

  “They’re going back to the shed,” she says, so quietly that the sound of the slow wind is louder. Her face is very close to yours. “They want to bring in that soldier. They’re shifting Their lines. They’re going to mine the bridge and fall back so that the A. F. forces will get themselves blown to dust.”

  “How long?” you ask, as softly as she.

  “Long time. Not until afternoon.”

  “Then we still have time to get into the spire. We can see what They’re doing.”

  She nods, but glances once in the direction of the sentry.

  “No problem,” you say—and hope that it isn’t.

  Her face shows more doubt than suspicion.

  “I’ll go first. I can cover you once I make it to the door. You come after me.”

  “But—” She cocks her head toward the sentry again.

  “Watch him.”

  The sentry starts his walk away from you. Watch him, so you can make a dash for the wall of the central hall while he has his back to you. As he comes forward, watch him. Count.

  Turn. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Turn.

  Twenty-five steps. Twenty-four.

  Watch him mark off the same pattern again, and trust that it is a pattern. And then, as he turns away, run.

  You race around the corner of the central hall (Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve.) into the cellar door and against the wall (Six. Five. Four. Three.)

  Safe—two. One.

  Count the
twenty-five again, and backwards.

  “Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen,” you say to yourself, barely moving your lips. There is a noise just beyond your hiding place. Not the sentry, you say to yourself, It’s her, not the sentry. “Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three—”

  “Two, one.” She is beside you. Presses into the shadows. Presses close to you. You put your arm around her and try to make both of you blend with the wall. You see that her hair is short and shaggy and the color of dark ale. You feel it on your face, cold in a way the air is not cold.

  “The door?”

  “Just behind us,” she tells you.

  “Can we open it without making too much noise?”

  “We’re making too much noise now,” she says. “It’s supposed to open silently. I’m not the only pioneer who uses it.”

  You hesitate. What if there are others? What if her forces are waiting inside? Or what if They have found out about it, and are ready to take you prisoner? What if you have to fulfill your promise to her in the next few minutes? “Try it,” you say before there are too many questions in your mind.

  Keeping low, you work your way over to the door. Holding your breath, the beamer raised, you watch as she presses the hidden latches.

  The door swings open with nothing more than a hiss.

  She goes inside, and you follow.

  There are papers strewn over the floor of the cellar, most of them old, by the look of them, crumbling to dust. Your feet leave indecipherable tracks as you cross them, going toward the stairs. It is a hard job to climb them, for they are metal, clanging from time to time without warning, and so steep and narrow that you have to go up with your feet turned; your ankle weakens quickly.

  At the top of the stairs there is a door, and she has sagged against it.