“Kirsten, it’s fairly obvious. There’s nothing else in the region that would be of interest to a cyber-expert like yourself. If you were simply trying to get as far away from Washington as you could, you’d have taken the easier route south.”

Kirsten smiles wryly. “You’re so damn reasonable about it all, Dan. Keep it up and I’ll be confessing all my sins back to hacking the Orange County Republican Party’s bank account when I was in third grade.”

“So young, so gifted, so wicked,” Dan observes piously. “And what did you do with the liberated funds?”

“Gave them to the Sierra Club and the SPCA.”

Alan, who has unwisely taken a mouthful of his tea, snorts and spews. “Jesus, woman. Give a man some warning.” He fishes in his pocket, produces a faded blue bandana and mops his chin. “So getting into a super-restricted top-security shoot-intruders-on-sight droid-manned military facility ought to be a freaking breeze, right?”

Kirsten’s heart slams against her ribs in something close to panic. “Look. It’s obvious; you’re right. I think I ought to go. Now.”

As she begins to push away from the table, Dan says, “Toussaint and Caitlin have already seen you. You can’t protect the community from knowing you’re here, or from guessing where you’re going. We can at least help you get there.”

“No. It’s too dangerous.”

“Kirsten, it’s more dangerous if you go alone. Perhaps none of us here has the knowledge to get onto the base or to know what to do once there, but we can give you an escort. If you’re worried about endangering us—don’t. Increasing your chances of success increases our chances of survival.”

“And just how would you keep us from following you down the road, anyway?” Alan’s level stare is a challenge. “You can make it harder or easier, for all of us. Your choice.”

Kirsten glances from one man to the other. Logically and pragmatically, they are right.

Despite herself, Kirsten feels nothing but relief. She ought to thank them. But she blurts out instead, “Will you take care of Asimov? He can’t go with me.”

“Of course he can stay with us.” Somewhere above them, a bell begins to ring, and Dan sets down his cup. “We’ll put the matter of a convoy to the community after supper. Meanwhile, let’s help set the tables.”

7

She finds herself again in a world of white. Monotonous, perhaps, but expected.

The effect is magnified by the all-white machine humming between her legs. The soldiers call them “stink bugs”, and it’s a more or less apt term, given the military snowmobiles’ reliance on methane as a method of propulsion, together with the wasp-like drone that marks their passing.

Adding to the monotony is the group’s mode of dress. Cammo-white is the call of the day, and Koda can’t help but flash back to a movie she’d once seen as a child. Willie….Somebody, she remembers. Something about a chocolate factory and a young boy who, dressed almost exactly as she is now, gets reduced to his component atoms and flies across the room to materialize inside of a television, a shadow of his former self.

“And here I am, off to rescue the natives of Oompa Loompa Land.”

Her wry thoughts are whipped away by the wind. As she rides on, she smiles, remembering Maggie’s goodbye to her. A quick, if heartfelt hug, a quiet “Be safe.” and it was over. It was as if the woman had read her mind and had given her exactly what she needed.

A shadow crosses over her and, looking up, her smile broadens. Wiyo rides the winds above her, sleek elegance personified.

ANGEL or demon! thou, — whether of light The minister, or darkness — still dost swayThis age of ours; thine eagle’s soaring flight Bears us, all breathless, after it away. The eye that from thy presence fain would stryShuns thee in vain; thy mighty shadow thrown Rests on all pictures of the living day.

The past stares at her through a curtain not quite opaque.

She can smell chalk dust, hear the quiet hum of the clock as it limps its way toward the final bell, and feel the filtered, somnolent sun resting on her shoulder. She can even see Mr. Hancock’s pinched face and the bald pate that shines in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the tiny classroom. He wants her to slip up. She can feel it, just as she can feel the ancient prejudice that runs through his veins like tainted, bilious blood. It is not a new feeling for her, living as she does in a country that proclaims freedom for all but those it has conquered.

She won’t slip, though. She never slips. The hunger of her intellect far outstrips his paltry teaching skills, and he knows it. The anger sharpens the gray of his eyes to flinty chips, and his permanently sour expression becomes more so. Had she been raised any differently, she might feel a spark of bitter pride in his anger. Instead, she feels only sadness.

A piercing cry from high above draws closed the curtain to the past, and Dakota once again looks up, eyes narrowing as Wiyo banks left, flutters, then swings around and low in warning.

“Ho’ up,” she murmurs into the mic at her throat.

Though she wears no stripes on her arm, nor brass on her collar, the soldiers listen as if she does. They split formation, half the group pulling to a smooth stop against the left side of the road, the other half doing the same on the right. As a unit, they unsling their weapons while still astride their snowmobiles, ready and waiting for anything.

Koda lifts an arm, and Wiyo settles on it, folding her wings comfortably as her eyes stare directly forward at a danger only she can see.

“Damn good watchdog you got there, Ma’am,” the young lieutenant on her left comments, voice quiet with awe.

Wiyo, surprisingly, takes no exception to the comment, and Koda smiles a secret grin as the hawk settles more comfortably against her.

A moment later, they all can hear the loud, blatting roar of a truck running out the last of its life as it heads toward them. As the vehicle barrels drunkenly into view, Wiyo lifts easily away, strong wings lifting her once again into the cutting air.

Weapons are immediately raised to high port, zeroing in on the oncoming truck with deadly purpose. Koda raises her arm again. “Steady. Let’s find out who it is, first.”

Not a droid, surely. Dakota can easily see the blood painted across the inside remains of a shattered windshield. And the man, or woman, inside leans like a potato sack against the steering wheel, head bobbing violently with each rut the truck’s bounding wheels hit.

“He’s gonna hit us,” the young lieutenant—Andrews, Koda remembers—softly warns, his hands tightening their grip on his weapon.

“Steady….”

“Ma’am?”

“Steady….”

Then the man, for it is a man, sees them, and his eyes widen to the size of saucers. He yanks the steering wheel sharply to the right, but it’s too late. The front tire catches a patch of black ice, and, sliding, the front bumper plows into the snow bank on the left side of the road. The truck flips, end over end. The weakened, shattered windshield gives way and the man is ejected out into the winter air, a flightless bird with his own peculiar, dying elegance.

The truck ends its own flight smashed against a tree. There isn’t enough gasoline left for an explosion. Instead it shudders, and dies.

Dakota moves first, bounding over the snow bank and racing to the downed man as fast as she can plow through the two feet of snow under her boots. He lies in a bloody heap in the snow, limbs bent in ways human appendages weren’t meant to bend. There are two ragged holes in his heavy parka, each tinged with soot and coated in dark, viscuous blood. His eyes are, surprisingly, open. One is crazy-canted, filled with blood, and staring off to the side. The other, however, is very much aware, and filled with terror.

Discerning the reason for the terror, Koda immediately reaches up and loosens her collar, displaying her bare neck to the man. At her side yet again, Andrews does the same.

The man relaxes slightly. The fear leaches from his eyes, but horror remains. One hand, at the end of a terribly mangled arm, reaches up and grabs the leg of Koda’s pants, spasming into a shaking fist. “D-Daughter,” he rasps, coughing on the blood pooling around his lips. “My daughter. Help—Help my daughter.”

“Where is your daughter?” Andrews asks.

“P-Prison. They—they took her aw—away from me…sh—sh—shot me—tw—twice, couldn’t hold…on….help her….please.”

“We will. We will,” Andrews hastens to reassure. “We’ll help her, buddy. But we gotta help you too. You’re….”

The young lieutenant’s voice trails off as the light and awareness from the man’s good eye slowly fades to a blank, glassy stare.

“Damn. Goddamn.” He looks up as a hand descends on his shoulder, squeezes briefly, and lets go. “This blows, Ma’am.”

“You’re right. It does.” Koda looks down at the corpse lying at her feet. “Let’s cover him with snow. We’ll relay his position back to the base once we’ve gotten the women out, alright?”

After a moment, Andrews nods, his shoulders slumped in a posture of defeat and resignation. “He deserves better. Hell, we all do. But I guess you’re right. It’s the best we can do for now.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Went to a party in the county jail. Prison band was there and they began to wail.”

SUPPER IS DONE, the tables cleared and pushed to one side of the room. The benches have been dragged into a large circle in front of the hearth, where a fire is blazing behind a six-foot brass wire screen. Asimov and Her Majesty, the calico cat, have taken up wary positions opposite each other on the warm bricks by the poker stand and woodbin.

The community’s two dozen school-age children, almost as quiet, are bent over books and worksheets at a pair of tables near the window. One child with long black braids and coppery skin—boy or girl, Kirsten is not sure—jabs determinedly at the keys of a calculator with the eraser end of a pencil. Another, a pair of headphones bulging under her cotton-blonde hair, conjugates French verbs. Kirsten can just hear her soft murmur: je suis; tu es; vous etes; nous sommes.