No More Lonesome Blue Rings Read online

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  I hid in a ruined cafeteria, smothering my exhausted cries amidst a mound of freshly laundered towels. I popped open a self-heating soy cutlet and made myself choke it down. I drank. I cried some more. I've had my share of furtive noises in the dark, shared my body but never my soul. I'd never expected to hear those words. Especially not now. Not at the end of my life, in a clinic for those condemned to a painful demeaning death but living under a suspended sentence.

  The day passed in silence. I slept, when I could. Once the light sifting down the stairwell faded, I crawled upstairs to watch the twilight through a cracked door. When the last sunlight disappeared, leaving a black sky scattered with sapphire blue stars, I quietly swung the door open and tiptoed out.

  A few solar lamps still lit sections of the road. Buildings were only visible by how they blocked out the sky. The chlorine smell had faded with the day, leaving a loamy smell that seemed almost tangible. No insect song stirred the night, no bats cut the air. Nothing flies here. I've never seen a plane or a helicopter, actually. We're all nailed to the ground.

  I'd lose my way in the dark. I couldn't help it. I looked around and picked out a cluster of six stars in the eastern sky. They'd move as the night passed, but at least they'd lead me eastish as I crept towards other people. If there were other people. If the Townies hadn't eradicated everyone except the Red Bands and I.

  Moving cross-country, I shuffled around the concrete flowerbeds along the roadways. I came across more than one of the electric carts the staff uses to get around, tipped over or run into a tree. Trying to hold my breath steady, moving slowly so as to not trip in the dark. I hadn't had my medication in hours, and my tremors were growing more persistent and more violent. My hands quivered so badly that I couldn't have lifted a pill to my mouth if I tried.

  I stumbled on for hours, beyond the main buildings, through parts of the complex I'd never visited, through warehouses and loading docks and silent machines, past tubes wider than I am tall and canisters taller than my old house, into machine-groomed woods. The night blurred around me, one featureless moment turning into the next in a long stumbling hallucination.

  Then I heard the unmistakable metallic click-click of a weapon cocking. A gruff voice said "Hold it, townie."

  I stopped. I surrender! "Ah urdo!"

  A flashlight illuminated my side. A different voice said "A Red Band?" His tone changed to incredulous. "How the hell did you make it out?"

  I held out my right wrist, to show the blue tattoo, but he didn't notice. "You're two miles inside our line. The Townies ate half our people, but you made it?"

  I wanted to slap him, but tried to hold still. As still as possible. Not actively flail around.

  "That's enough, Stevens," said a second voice. "Jimmy, you can take her back to HQ."

  "Yessir." The third voice didn't bother to hide his reluctance. "Come on, you."

  The headquarters had been some sort of industrial complex amidst the forest. Half a dozen buildings no larger than mid-range private homes stood in a rough circle. Lights shone in the windows, showing people gathered and talking and arguing. Men and women in Montague uniforms lay exhausted on the grass, sleeping. A row of figures along one building were wounded, injuries bandaged and splinted and cleaned, and then drugged into unconsciousness. I didn't have the strength to argue as a couple of office managers read my name off my tattoo, entered some stuff in a handheld, and bickered like I wasn't even there, debating if I could be trusted to not wander off and hurt myself. Eventually I looked around for an open patch of grass out of the way, sat down, and, safely surrounded by people, immediately fell asleep.

  I was awakened by someone shouting "Sherry Rogers!"

  I blinked. Crud filled my eyes. My tongue tasted like a dead skunk. Muscles I hadn't used in years complained. My back had cramped from sleeping in the ground, and a spasm made me gasp as I tried to sit. The sun must have risen above the horizon, but I couldn't see it through the smoke-shrouded buildings of the main complex.

  "Sherry Karen Rogers!"

  The shouter was a soldier. Montague isn't supposed to have their own military, using only security guards. But he wore body armor. He carried a nasty-looking rifle with telescopic sight and this and that. He had a helmet with computerized goggles covering his upper face. The name PETERSON was embroidered above his pocket. As security guards went, he was a soldier.

  I used the tree beside me to claw my way up. The tremors had receded with rest, but if I didn't get my medication soon I wouldn't be able to walk. The prions can't advance, but my nerves don't work so well any more. When he shouted my name a third time, I raised my hand and walked towards him.

  Peterson blinked. "A Red Band?"

  I thrust my wrist out at him. "Ooo!"

  "Blue band? What the hell is a blue band?"

  I wanted to slap him. We'd all had a hard night, though, and my emotions had spent the last day scraping over the cheese grater. Instead I held out my hands, palm-up.

  "You're needed at the border," he said.

  He must have seen the look on my face through the shivering. "I don't make up the orders, lady. I just follow them. Come on."

  Peterson had to help me climb into the golf cart. I'd hardly sat when he put the vehicle into gear. I slid across the vinyl as he spun the wheel, almost tumbling out, but he grabbed my arm just in time. Muttering to himself, he stopped the cart and walked around to buckle me in. He cinched the belt and asked if I was okay.

  The sudden rush of adrenaline had made my spasms worse. I had to exaggerate my nod to differentiate it from my uncontrolled tremors. I clenched my jaw, trying to hold my face still, and wound up only clanging my teeth together. I had to consciously relax, let my jawbone hang loose, to avoid injuring myself further.

  Peterson didn't care about things like gullies or rocks, barely swerving to avoid trees. I rocked bonelessly against the shoulder belt with every bounce and rattle.

  We pulled up next to a line of other vehicles in an open grassy space. Peterson unbuckled me. I tried to walk, but the maniacal ride had shaken my nerves too badly to keep my balance. I trembled with frustration until he slipped an arm around my midriff and quick-stepped me towards a cluster of people standing on the other side of the vehicles. Most of the people wore military uniforms, but a few wore business suits. The crowd parted as we approached.

  A few yards beyond them stood Richard. Between two Townies.

  I stopped dead on my feet. Peterson staggered and grunted, staggering under my dead weight. He tugged, and I allowed myself to be urged forward, to stand near the front, beside a table littered with papers, writing implements, palmtops, and remnants of breakfast.

  The woman closest to the Townies said "Here she is." She wore a severe blue pantsuit that probably cost several hundred dollars before it got dragged through a war zone. "As you can see, she's fine. We didn't hurt her."

  Richard looked at me. "I was worried about you."

  I tried to shake myself free of Peterson's grasp. He released my waist. I wavered on my feet, and he put a steadying hand between my shoulderblades. Resenting his touch, but unable to stand without it, I looked at Richard and held my hands open.

  "The Townies wouldn't have hurt you. They can't kill anyone. But you might have gotten hurt walking here."

  The woman said "He demanded you be brought here before we talked. So talk, Miss Rogers."

  I glared at her and tried to say I'd love to.

  She recoiled as if slapped. "You made all this fuss over a tard?"

  I'm still in here, you fucker. In that moment I wished I could walk even more than I wished I could speak, just so I could kick her as hard as I'd kicked yesterday's Townie.

  "Seeing her was my condition," Richard said. "Not theirs. Sherry can understand everything you say. If you give her her medication, she'll even stand on her own. And she will break you at cribbage."

  "Your condition for what?" demanded the woman.

  "Translating." Rich
ard nodded to the woman. "Aidan Redding, vice-president of Montague Corporation for this universe, permit me to introduce Spring and Sand, two representatives of the Townies. Their own word for themselves translates as 'human,' of course. I've taken the liberty of explaining the origin of the word Townie to them. They wish to return the sentiment, and believe it is appropriate to refer to the people from Earth as 'Carnies.'"

  "Now you want to talk," Redding said. "When the Corporation gets the Portal back, they'll bring the Army with them. We will destroy you."

  "Carnies have been on this world for ten years," Richard said, hands folded calmly over his stomach. The two Townies stood even more still. A sudden wind ruffled the trees behind them, and carried the ocean's bitter scent to me. "In all those years, you have only managed to injure one Townie."

  "We filled you people with bullets!" said Redding.

  "Injured Townies disappear," Richard said. "They heal almost immediately. They come back. Townies don't die. That's how this universe works. Carnies have death. You brought it with you. They really don't understand it."

  "We'll figure out how to export it. We have nucleonic bombs. We have designer plagues, superstring viruses, dimensional vortexes." Redding thrust up a finger with each name, enumerating doomsdays. "Maybe we can't kill the Townies, but we will eat the planet away from under them. Leave them eating vacuum, forever, or burning inside the Sun. We made a trade. You broke the agreement."

  "The