Part 8 (2/2)

<> There might be something heavier and more uncomfortable than a pack full of canned goods, but I don't want to find out what. The first job, once we realized that we needed to get Dave's place moved, right away, was to get all the really indispensable stuff cached at some distance from it. Canned stuff with Vitamin C was number one on the list; if we had that, we wouldn't get scurvy. If we didn't have that, not only would we be facing scurvy, but we'd have to pick a lot of berries the next summer, and come up with some way to can or dry many pounds of them, and do a great deal of work we wouldn't really want to make the time for.

After the indispensables for staying alive, dealing with emergencies, and not getting sick, we would move all the nice small things, appliances of one kind or another, that shave so much effort off a day and free up so much time. After that, if we still weren't interrupted, we would gradually move the million and ten small luxuries that could help to make life way out in the woods bearablea-books, wine, audio recordingsa-and finally, if One True left us alone long enough, anything else that we could take before we dropped a load of rocks across the entrance and left forever.

Caching the portable stuff meant taking it out, a packload at a time, to about twenty different hiding places, since we wanted to make sure we had some of everything in each cache, so that if one of them got found, we wouldn't lose all of any item. What shall it profit a man to keep his dialytic water-purifier membranes, if he lose his canned tomatoes? I was glad that I hadn't been doing this decades before, when Dave and his band had been hiding out here, since there must have been many times this much stuff to carry. Of course, then there had been eleven men doing it.

It was late afternoon, and I was crossing a high saddle down into Kearney Park, enjoying the colors, smells, and sounds in their near-outlined clarity. I'd made seven trips that day and was looking forward to finis.h.i.+ng this one and having an evening soak in the tub. Another week and we should have all the food cached, and then it would only be a matter of a few days to get all the other irreplaceables moved before we could at last begin our excavations in the new cave. If I was right that they wouldn't try to send hunters out again until a thaw was well underway, we'd be doing our excavation comfortably in the shelter of the cave, possibly for weeks or months, while the pursuit grew frustrated, and the scent got cold.

With luck it might be several years before we were spotted again, and though sooner or later one of these spottings would lead to our capture, at the moment it looked like we had some years of freedom left. And, as I'd explained to Dave, life with Resuna wasn't unpleasanta-if Dave hadn't been there and determined to stay out of One True's grip, I'd probably have just gone back to Resuna because it was easier.

Aside from getting caches sited and filled, we'd made enough time to explore the cave around the new hot spring, probing with some six-foot star drills that had been in the back of an old general store. The water drained into at least one more big chamber below, and we'd also tapped into some openings under the clay that we were optimistic about.

Meanwhile, though, we had to move the canned stuff. I had a packful of cans of tomatoes, peaches, and sweet potatoes to get into the cache in Kearney Park, before going home. I pushed off to make a slow glide, down through the trees, avoiding any open s.p.a.ce too easily watched from orbit. It was harder than usual to safely descend the hard, icy, steep patch in front of me. I had to work at it, turning tight and constantly so that I didn't build up any speed. The extra weight on my back made it much tougher.

I hurtled back among the trees, still going faster than I really wanted to, and followed a deer trail I knew well through a thick patch of growth. Then a b.u.mp turned out to be a log, the ski sc.r.a.ped and jammed, and I flipped forward and landed in a hard face plant.

I sat up, face stinging from the snow, head aching where forty pounds of tomatoes, peaches, and sweet potatoes had slammed right into the place on the back of my head where I had all the scars. I was all by myself, and feeling half crazy with anger the way you do when you do something stupid and hurt yourself entirely through your own stupidity. I plain old bokked all over the place, forgot that I had to hide, forgot everything I'd been thinking of, and just gave myself over to my rage. I released the skis, pushed up, wiped the nasty mix of snow, mud, and pine needles from my face, angrily hurled the pack to the snow, and screamed ”f.u.c.k!” several times, jumping up and down in a rage, not caring if anyone heard me, or if I was visible to an overhead satellite, or much of anything except about the way my whole body was clenched like a fist and my back and head hurt. I hadn't done anything like that in twenty-five years or more.

Long practice will have its way; in the middle of it all, I said, out loud, very calmly, ”Let overwrite, let override.” Instantly I felt better.

With all the canned goods in the cache, even having gotten the job done a little early, I had plenty of time to take the long scenic route home, but I just knew I had forgotten something, so after a few hundred yards I turned around and went back to take a look and see if I could figure out what was bothering me.

Everything was right where it should be, so it wasn't that I had forgotten any physical objects. Had I forgotten some part of the careful system we used to keep everything hidden? I looked around the cache to see if anything was wrong with the concealment, but everything was fine there. Then I looked to see if I'd left any track or trace I should cover.

Two thick ruler-straight tracks ran across the meadow through the deep fresh powder from the place where I had fallen to where I stood. I had come in a straight line, instead of circling around among the trees. No wonder I'd gotten here so quickly.

That big straight track might as well be a gigantic arrow pointing straight at where I stood. Worse still, it was pointing at a sizable part of the vital stocks we would need to live through the next year.

I stared at that for a long moment, wondering first what had possessed me to do something so astonis.h.i.+ngly bokked up. Then I wondered why I couldn't remember it. Then my blood froze, and I remembered falling down, losing my tempera-and invoking Resuna. Which had, as far as I could tell, popped up, taken care of the task for me, and put me on my way home, but which also had a strong interest in seeing me get caught.

If the jack in my head was still operating, One True now knew everything. I couldn't imagine why it hadn't just kept control once it got Resuna back into my head, but for some reason it hadn't. Why had it turned me loose again?

The silence, the clarity of the colors and outlines, the chill of the air in my nostrils, were all sinister to me now. I had betrayed a good friend in a moment of sheer involuntary idiocy, I had put myself back in reach of Resuna and thus under the control of One True, and I would be giving up the whole dream of living up here and letting the world just slide bya-back into the dull world of forced retirement, of Resuna holding Mary and me together, of drifting from one predictable, unimportant activity to another.

I felt like crying; I felt like taking my knife and just opening a vein right there. It would be so good to just cease to be. It was very likely that there was no longer anything I could do for Dave; I was miles away with no way to communicate with him. Chances were that fifty hunters were zooming in toward him in disksters, and he'd be captured any minute and turned within a day. Probably I'd even see him againa-after he was turned, we could pal around together and our copies of Resuna could have a nice chat. Probably One True would find him a nice wife, or even put him back together with Nancy and Kelly. Probably when I did see him, he'd thank me. Probably he'd be having to say ”Let overwrite, let override” every ten minutes for the next few years; probably his life would seem as if he were suffering seizures every few minutes.

I was disgusted to realize that once Resuna had me again, it wouldn't bother me a bit. I'd be able to look the man right in the eye and think I'd done him a favor.

I wasn't sure I wanted to live to see that, but I wasn't sure I wanted to just kill myself now, either. Mostly I just wanted to not feel what I was feeling. I have to admit that the real reason for doing what I did next was not shame, nor acceptance. It was pure absolute dead solid cowardice. I just didn't want to face that situation any further, and since I couldn't get out of the situation, I tried instead to get out of facing it.

I looked around that meadow, up the saddle, toward Columbia Peak, and saw it for what I figured would have to be the very last time with eyes that were completely my own. Tears stung my eyes, and I said, ”Let overwrite, let override.”

Nothing happened.

I said it again, and once again, nothing happened. There wasn't a trace of Resuna.

I said it again, several times. I started to lose my temper and shouted it several times, but no Resuna camea-only distant, distorted echoes from cliff walls.

I was all by myself, no idea where to go or what to do.

<> I think I stood there for quite a while, because the blue-edged deep shadows were longer by the time that I finally sighed, wiped my eyes, and decided that absolutely n.o.body would be benefited if I just stood here and froze to death.

I had three choices. I could try to get away on my owna-in the winter, with no supplies since Resuna would know where all the caches were and I wouldn't dare go there.

I could ski downhill till I found a road, and follow the road downhill till I found an emergency station, and then call up the system and turn myself in. Somebody would come out pretty quickly in a diskster, take me home, and get a new copy of Resuna installed.

Or I could gamble. I could proceed as if I knew that I had only been running part of Resuna, with its communications section not working. It was even possible, I supposed, that the blows to my head had smashed my cellular jacka-it was possible, since it was only an inch or so from where the biggest scar wasa-or that it had all happened during a gap in satellite coverage, or any number of other things had prevented the betrayal.

That last option was the only one that had any chance of working out and didn't make me feel like a skunk.

If I was right, and One True had not been contacted, or not contacted reliably, then all we had lost was one cache. In that case, if Dave and I moved fast, we could go to our drop-everything crisis plana-hurry over to the new place, camp there, move in a couple of caches, start digging, live rough for a while until we had a chance to scavenge enough supplies to start building it up.

It was just possible that all was not losta-if we moved fast enough.

I pushed off hard and took the fastest concealed route I knew to make it home, skating the whole way, throwing myself upslope, rocketing downslope just barely in control, half-blind with sweat and tears and terror, not caring about the way my muscles screamed at it. I was over that high saddle in no time, down into the Dead Mule drainage, and racing for home like a madmana-still skiing as carefully as I could, because I knew I was frustrated and angry, and I thought that if I face-planted again, or kissed a tree, or just took a bad fall, the rage and fear and frustration might overwhelm me. I might automatically say ”Let overwrite, let override,” and be back with Resuna again.

I hit a long run down a ridgeline into a bowl, and put on even more speed; any faster and my stopping distance would be greater than my seeing distance. It was likely I was already too late, but it would be certain if one more thing went wrong.

<> The sun was still up, but close to the ridge, when I finally glided up to the rock shelf, popped the skis off, and ran inside. Dave wasn't home. Probably he was off hunting elka-we'd been needing fresh meat to replenish the larder. He might well be out till after dark, which might could work out better.

We'd figured out a procedure for just such occasions, so I got going on it. Each of us had a ”jump bag” ready to go, packed with personal essentials for surviving a night in the woods if we had to, plus a little package of sentimental stuff and some dry rations. The two jump bags sat side by side on the floor near the entrance; if one of us discovered that it was time to run, and the other one was out, then if we were to meet up at the new hot spring, the signal would be both jump bags being gone.

If just your partner's jump bag was gone, that would signal that neither this cave nor the new one was safe, and that we were to meet up whenever we could at a specific ruined house two drainages away; whoever got there first, unpursued, would wait a week for the other.

We had agreed that the one-bag-gone signal would only count if a specific red blanket had been left on top of the laundry hamper. That way your partner doing routine repacking or rearranging wouldn't send you running off into the woods for two weeks.

We had never a.s.signed any meaning to the situation that I discovered: my jump bag was there, Dave's jump bag wasn't, Dave wasn't there eithera-and no blanket on the hamper. I needed to leave him a signal to run for the new hot spring, which I thought made the most sense in the circ.u.mstances. I was figuring that if One True had gotten everything from my memory, we were too screwed to recover from it and would be captured whether we stayed here, went there, or went to the ruined house. On the other hand, if One True hadn't gotten enough information to find us, the new spring was the best place to hidea-it already had the necessities for us to stay in it for a few weeks and let our trail get cold, it was comfortable and safe, and it had lim less trace of Dave or me around it than this place did.

I had no signal from Dave, and I had no way of leaving him the message that I wanted to leavea-writing a note of any kind would risk its being read by the hunters, if they found the cave before Dave got home. The question was, how long should I stay here? Dave might be very close at hand, in which case I could just let him know when he came in the door. Or he might have carelessly left his pack elsewhere while repacking or cleaning, or he might be far off. Given his occasional carelessness (I often wondered how he had survived so long without detection), he might even have run for it and forgotten to put the blanket on the hamper.

I decided I could spare him five minutes for a quick look through the rooms; if his pack was on the kitchen table or by the hot tub, as I'd found it before, I'd tease him later but take it with me. Otherwise, I'd take my jump bag and leave a circle-and-dot, which means ”I have gone home”a-it was one of those very old trail signs from G.o.d knew where in the past. I hoped he would interpret that to mean ”Go to the new hot spring,” and that it would be sufficiently cryptic if anyone else found it.

I walked through all the rooms quickly, not seeing his pack. One of the three doors that I had always a.s.sumed were closet doors in his sleeping room was standing open, light coming out of it. When I took a step forward, I saw, through the open door, beyond what I had thought was a closet, a big room. A finished ceiling and wall were visible through the mock closet. Not yet thinking clearlya-it had been a day with too many surprisesa-and still looking for Dave, I walked through the closet and into the big room.

My first thought was not especially profound; it was only that Dave couldn't have made this s.p.a.ce with a shovel and pick. The walls, floor, and ceiling, now that I could see the whole room, were finished with tile, the overhead lights were running off real power fixtures and didn't seem to be just long-life lanterns, and the whole place seemed more like a lab or a workroom. At first I thought the object in the center of the big room was a large worktable, then that it was a raised bathtub. I got closer to it, and said, softly, ”Dave? Dave, are you back here? We got big trouble.”

I took another step, and now I realized what that big object was: a suspended animation tank.

Stuff clicked. Dave had been able to disappear for so long because he'd been sleeping under this hill. No wonder n.o.body could find him. Probably his story about the packloads of dirt was a convenient lie. Most of the ”scavenged” stuff had probably been stored down here for him. When he did wake up, with common germs having diverged for many years from what he had gone to sleep with, he got a whopping cold as soon as he went where any other human being had been, and if hea-or whoever he worked fora-hadn't planned for it, he'd had to steal medicine.

It seemed ominous that this hideout had always been intended as a one-person place; whatever he was doing with his band of cowboys, he hadn't ever intended to take them along. He couldn't, with just one tank available.

No wonder, when we were planning the new cave, so many ordinary technical and engineering things had seemed to be mysteries to him. He hadn't designed this placea-all he knew was how to operate it. The place had been set up by whoever he worked for.

”Currie, that better be you in there,” he said. His voice came from a doorway in the corner.

I froze for a second. ”Yeah, it is. I didn't mean to nose around, Dave, but we've got a situation. I had a relapse of Resuna this afternoon and I don't know how much it uploaded to One True. I think we have to run for the new hot spring.”

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