Earthbound

8

Nobody had said anything about drawing fire as we took off. I supposed whatever was going to happen would happen. Paul kept the plane low, treetop level, a minute or so after take-off, so I guess a person on the ground, with forest overhead, probably wouldn’t have time to aim at us and fire.

Then I was pressed back into the seat and the plane roared and rattled as it screamed for altitude. We suddenly broke out of the clouds into afternoon sun but kept accelerating, almost straight up. After a minute, he throttled down and leveled off, green rounded mountaintops drifting by underneath us, sticking out of the misty clouds.

The cabin became quiet. Paul turned around in his seat and spoke normally. “Sorry; should’ve warned you. I wanted to get out of range, in case they had heat-seekers.” He checked his watch. “It’ll take us about four hours to get to California. Landing sometime after three, Pacific time.”

“Want to fly over Fruit Farm on the way?” Dustin said.

“Yeah, see if anybody’s home.”

“See if we draw any small-arms fire,” Namir said. “That would help with our planning.”

I reclined and closed my eyes, but there was no way I could sleep. Too much adrenaline, and whatever chemical follows it. I’d be nervous even if I didn’t have anything to be nervous about.

Card and Alba and Dustin had rearranged the rear of the plane so it had seats around a table. Card had found a notebook made of sheets of paper. Each page had the presidential seal and Mervyn Gold’s name embossed (in gold) at the top. He was drawing a complicated geometrical doodle with a pencil, filling the page from the upper lefthand corner down. It was actually beautiful, in a rigid formal way.

I sat down next to him. “I didn’t know you had artistic talent.”

“I don’t; this ‘me’ doesn’t. Picked up some from my second avatar.”

Dustin looked up from his book. “Your different personae had different skill sets?”

“Yeah. Pity we don’t have the third one here. He was the negotiator, the businessman.”

“You learned from both of them?” I asked.

“It’s not like learning.” He shrugged. “Sort of ‘being,’ actually. There’s a quantum-chemistry explanation; they start out as perfect duplicates, but begin to diverge in a microsecond or so. Personality more than specific skills. You would have liked either of them more than the original.”

I squeezed his arm. “You’ll do.”

“The other two,” Dustin said, “did they have separate social lives? Different circles of friends?”

“Yes and no… we overlapped, and everyone we knew was aware that there were three of me. It’s not really complicated. Most of my friends have at least one avatar.”

“Feel lonely now?” Alba asked.

“Yeah. You never doubled?”

“Couldn’t afford it. Actually, it was pretty low on the list of stuff I wanted.”

He nodded. “Well, when you get older… if it’s ever possible again.”

He was starting to tremble. I stroked his arm and his smooth head when he faced me. “You got a sister back, anyhow.”

“A younger sister.” He smiled. “That’s stranger than my dupes.”

After a pause, Alba said, “Any way you can get them back?”

He grimaced. “Yes and no. The physical bodies are just… spoiled meat. Some version of their personalities ought to be hard-filed somewhere. Ought to be. I could sue if they’re not.”

“Carmen, you want to get me a bite?” Paul called back. “Better not leave the stick.” The autopilot would take us straight to Fruit Farm unless the power went out. Then it would be nice to have someone up there who knew how and where to point the plane.

I rummaged through the bag of stuff from the NASA vending machine and got him a cookie and some nuts, and a bottle of water. He gave me a peck on the cheek when I delivered the snacks.

There were two auxiliary screens on, one with some porn thing and the other with page 13 of Pride and Prejudice. He probably wanted me to comment, but I wouldn’t.

The top part of the windshield was darkened to blot out the sun. It was solid clouds underneath, as far as I could see. “I wonder how far the clouds go.”

“No telling. Feels funny, not having the weather.” His voice dropped. “How is your brother doing?”

“Hard to say. Trying to sort things out, I suppose.”

“He may be more help than Dustin, dealing with the commune.”

“Maybe. I’ll talk to them.”

“Ply him with peanuts,” he said, crunching down on a mouthful.

Maybe a near beer. I picked up a couple and put them on the table and sat down.

“Thanks. Are we on course?”

“Headed west, anyhow.” I watched him pop the can and take a drink. “What do you think these communists will be like?”

“Communists? Like people in the commune?”

“What would you call them, then?”

“Earthers. Most of them. Not sure what they call themselves.”

“You’ve never been up there?”

“God, no. It’s at the other end of the state. Long way to go for fresh vegetables. Wish I had, now.”

“Yeah; we don’t really know what to expect.”

Dustin put down his book. “Quietly crazy. That’s what I expect. Who knows, though, after seventy years.”

“Noisy and crazy,” Card said. “Trigger-happy hillbillies. That’s a cube cliché.”

That was interesting. “With a basis in fact?”

“Not Fruit Farm specifically. Back around the turn of the century, 2100, some communes in the East got together and raised some hell. They tried to secede from the United States, piecemeal. They were followers of that guy…”

“Lazlo Motkin,” Alba said.

“Yeah. They had a regular little war.”

“They weren’t even one geographical area,” Alba said. “Spread out over three or four states. They claimed there was an ‘existential border’ between them and us.”

“They had lawyers to prove it?”

“Lawyers and guns,” Card said. “What more do you need?”

“Anything come of it?” I asked.

Card shook his head. “All over in a couple of months. Some people jailed, some leaders executed. Lazlo Motkin himself died in a military action.”

“Which was embarrassing to America,” Alba said. “He was running for president at the time. He was just a rich crackpot until he died. Then he became a symbol of government oppression.”

I had a vague memory of him sending us a loony message on the starship. If we were good Americans, we would do a kamikaze strike on the Others’ home world.

“We ought to start out assuming they are nice rational people,” Elza said, “who have some nineteenth-century ideas about things like electricity.”

“Wonder if they’ll have power after Wednesday,” Alba said. “The only people in the whole country?”

“Not if the Others do the same thing as before,” Dustin said. “Everything stopped working, even batteries. Stuff like hydroelectric power and wind machines. Kept turning around, but without making any juice.

“The question is whether living with this archaic technology makes the Fruit Farmers better equipped for dealing with the brave new world that’s coming. We’re assuming so, but you can argue that their technological primitivism is only skin-deep. They’ve had electricity all along—home-made, but what’s the difference?”

Namir had gone to the head in back of the plane, and he emerged with a bottle of whisky and a stack of cups. “Let’s drink to NASA and their legendary foresight.”

I had a small glass of the stuff, smoky and smooth, and before I finished it, a curtain of fatigue fell over me like a sedative. I walked unsteadily back to my seat, reclined it, and was asleep before my head hit the plastic pillow.