Exiles' Escape

By W. Clark Boutwell

Nominated for the 2019 Prometheus Award for Best Novel! Malila is dead by her own hand—at least, that is what she hopes General Jourdaine and the entire Unity will believe. Middle-aged eighteen-year-old Malila Chiu has no choice but to escape her homeland. Making common cause with the strange subterranean workers of the beltways, Malila perseveres toward freedom in the Scorched fields of America. Nearly naked, with no friends, no resources and only a scant idea of the route, Malila’s only real information comes from time in the outlands. While a captive of the old, harsh-and-tender-by-turns Jesse Johnstone, Malila learned of the lies told her by her homeland and the truths shown her by the arrogant and contradictory Jesse. She thinks she may love him. If only he were not so strange . . . Pursuing Malila and becoming more obsessed with each failure, Jourdaine moves closer at each turn. Jesse, once again the target for assassination from old enemies, escapes to the skies, using a huge new American R-ship, the Illinois, in his own attempt to find Malila. Spies, subterranean poet-socialists, virtual entities, interfaces, and people—both good and bad—wrestle the Fates for survival and supremacy in a twenty-second-century America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781948080552

Book preview

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EXILES'

ESCAPE

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BOOK 2 OF OLD MEN AND INFIDELS

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EXILES'

ESCAPE

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W. CLARK BOUTWELL

© 2018 W. Clark Boutwell

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Editors: Liesel Schmidt and Regina Cornell

Cover Design: 3SIXTY Marketing Studio

Interior Design: Whitney Evans, SGR-P Formatting Services

Indigo River Publishing

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Pensacola, FL 32502

www.indigoriverpublishing.com

Ordering Information:

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Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931256

ISBN: 978-1-948080-00-2

ISBN: 978-1-948080-55-2 (e-book)

First Edition

With Indigo River Publishing, you can always expect great books, strong voices, and meaningful messages. Most importantly, you’ll always find…words worth reading.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of E. Muriel Clark and Joseph H. Boutwell Jr., my parents, without whom I would not have learned to cherish the written word, and Cheryl Ann Outland, for whom this series of books was written.

CONTENTS

Awakenings

Arrivals and Departures

A Lecture

The Ante

The Shuffle

The Cut

The Deal

The Bets

The Show

Cashing Out

Appendix

Timeline

Glossary

Technologies

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank all those who have read this manuscript and given their honest criticism, especially my closest, most sincere, and oldest critic, Joseph H. Boutwell III. Dr. James DiPisa once more added his valuable insight. New readers, Jodi Lee, Teresa Strong, and Alan Rose have shown me light where I was blind. In addition, I would like to thank Liesel Schmidt, my editor, who pursues a generally thankless task. May her numbers increase and our gratitude wax.

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

Before the beginning of the beginning, Little Bird, there was one nation. Now, we just call it the ‘old republic.’ Even then the world was getting older, and the world was getting younger. Further ago than any living memory, the old republic was run from the edges, and the Midlands paid for the heavy lifting.

A small warm body snuggled closer to the man as he rocked slowly in front of a blazing fire of hickory logs, cut from his own trees.

"Right after that Iraq War¹ in the last century, the fringes saw their chance. The east coast progs, sensing the coming of the long-predicted revolution, overthrew the government and declared a ‘People’s Republic.’ Wonder what they thought we were, Orang-Utans?"

All the children, knowing their cue, laughed and giggled beside the hearth in their bedclothes and comforters. Moses smiled.

What happened next, Grampa? asked Lizbeth, Grace’s middle girl.

The other coast, three thousand miles away followed suit, calling itself the Demarchy. But when the middle of the country refused to go along, guess what they did then?

What, Granpa?

Well, they declared war on us. It was a civil war of sorts—not brother against brother—but wayward child against parent.

No!! the assembled children said in unison.

The People’s Republic emptied its prisons. They took all their crooks and murderers and made a gigantic army. They Sapped those poor …

Moses, remember… said Grandma Sally.

Yes’m. Well they Sapped those poor fellows into zombies: submissive to orders, dead to pain, and deadly in combat. The PR blanketed the Midlands with some foul stuff, killing all the crops, changed the forest, and set to starving us out. They coulda, too. They coulda had it all, but they lacked the sand. After the Battle of Springfield, in the middle of winter, we stopped them. They retreated to hide behind the Wall, or rather where the Wall would be, once they built it.

What happened then, Uncle Mose?

Moses smiled. Sally and he were keeping Anton for a fortnight while his momma had their next. Nice boy.

Well, as it happened, the People lost their republic and the Coast Guard found it. What was left of the guard, the only real military the revos had, declared a new republic with them at the top. Called themselves ‘solons.’ Not sure the original Solon would have been much pleased.

Moses drifted off staring at the fire. It was a minute later that young James, Joshua’s oldest, brought him back.

What happened next, Granpa?

Well now. Yes. Yes. The new country. Well, the new country, just a part of the old one, called itself the Unity. Told its people is was the ‘world’s greatest democracy.’ All smoke and mirrors it was. Fooled the people into thinking they were getting their hearts’ desire, retired them at forty—and turned them into zombie soldiers.

That’s not fair! came the chorus.

No, it’s not. That’s why Jesse Johnstone and me went to cause trouble for the Unis, just before Ethan was born.

Do you mean Papaw, Granpa? said Lilyanne, Ethan’s youngest grandchild, visiting during for the holiday.

Why, yes I do. In fall of… what was it, Sally? Twenty-five or twenty-six.

October, two thousand one hundred and twenty-eight, sing-songed the children in unison before dissolving into giggles.

Wha? Have I told you this story before?

No, Grandpa! was shouted before the next gale of giggling.

Alright. In October two thousand one hundred and twenty-eight, (if you insist), the Unity was in a fix. This man General Jourdaine was in the middle of overthrowing the Unity itself, and doing it this time so no one would notice. He was using a computer entity to help.

Like Frog? We heard about Frog and Edie at school, said Nathan, Grace’s oldest, school-age but still attracted to story time

Just so. This entity’s name was Presence, but you know him as Cain, I ‘spect. He did things for Jourdaine in the CORE that no human could do. Or would want to.

So Cain was bad, Granpa?

Hear me out and then tell me if you think so, child. There was a girl, she thought herself a woman at the time, who was Jourdaine’s henchman without really knowing it and her name was—

MALILA, the assembled huddle of children shouted.

My, you are all so smart. Well, Malila Chiu got sent to a place way up north in Wisconsin, but she didn’t know we were waiting for her, Jesse and me. Jourdaine did it to hurt her but, really, it was the best thing to happen. Malila was but seventeen then—a child, but a battle-hardened soldier, nevertheless. And you can’t imagine what happened to her the first night she camped at Sun Prairie.

Uncle Jesse caught her sleeping.

Don’t be silly. We waited for the second night. Then Jesse and me took care of her zombie soldiers and we brought Malila south with all the horses, rifles and the pieces of the …

Moses! said Aunt Sally.

"…the other stuff that were lying around. Anyway, by the time Jesse delivered her to us at New Carrollton, the old man was stretched pretty thin with the scurvy and Malila was still pretty much a Uni.

"That whole winter she stayed right here. Bunked where Little Grace and Lilyanne are sleeping. She learned how wrong she was about the Unity from Captain Delarosa, may he rest in peace. By Easter, she had earned her woman’s mark. She and Jesse had become friends, would you believe it? They were even thinking of setting her up as an American.

Malila was happy, probably for the first time in her life. But just then Jourdaine grabbed her back from out of an Easter celebration."

Oh! No!

Yes! And Captain Delarosa, a fine, fine man, tried to protect Malila. They killed him, more’s the pity.

And shot you in the chest! the children chorused. Show us, Grandpa!

Not now children. It’s getting late.

Aww, Granma…

"Let’s not scandalize Granma. She’s a good sight warmer than a cold bunkhouse. Any rate, in a few weeks, Malila figured out the Union was all lies. She made a break for it.

And that Little little birds, and big hosses, is where we leave it for the moment. Go to bed.

Ahh, Grandpa…

You all heard Grandpa Moses. Time enough for the rest of the story tomorrow, children, said Granma Sally as Moses disentangled the slumbering child from his lap, stood and threw the girl’s blanket over her for the short trip to her pallet.

But …

No buts, wherefores, or howevers. Say your prayers and go to sleep.

---

¹ 2052AD

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CHAPTER 1

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AWAKENINGS

WILL BUTLER AWAKENS

SEARCY, AR, RESTRUCTURED STATES OF AMERICA DAWN, JULY 2, 2127 (AU75)

On the morning of his last day at home, William Yeats Butler woke early. The summer sun, just clearing the copse of hickory on the ridge, shone in through the dormer window of his bedroom to carom off a fragment of mirror and into his eyes. Over-warm and claustrophobic with its slanting ceiling, the room seemed smaller than he remembered in his twenty-two years. Even after he and his mother packed all the trophies of childhood, science fair projects, and holographs into two cardboard boxes for when I can send for them, the room remained cluttered with the memories of childhood.

Before this last homecoming, Will had been a long time gone. Commuting from college was not in the budget for his farmer/preacher father. Today would end his fourth visit home since high school. He would not share with his family the likelihood of a fifth.

Before he started training, the Color Guard gave him two weeks leave. He was not supposed to tell his family much, and it made the good-byes easier in a way. After years at college, he felt like a stranger.

Tim, his next-younger brother, had, without his permission, become a man, with a beard to show for it. Tim was talking about becoming a preacher like their father. He would be good at it, Will thought.

His younger siblings stared at him like some strange lost uncle.

Long before he left for school, Will’s mother had slipped into that ageless vigor of early middle age that Ageplay pressed on most everyone now. When he arrived home, she smiled and laughed and kissed him before she started crying.

All his old classmates were gone or married with worries and children of their own. His dog, Lamont, was still there; but his muzzle was now white, and he no longer belled when he chased the squirrels around the two old oaks in the backyard. The squirrels still won.

Hearing the mockingbirds and robins dueling melodically through the screen of the narrow window, Will got up quietly and picked up the mattress he had dragged onto the floor the night before, replacing it now on the bed that had become too small for his entire length. He slept on the floor, dragging the mattress onto it after his parents went to bed and replacing it before he heard his father stir in the morning. His father . . .

Dad had been the bedrock of his childhood—his laugh, his scent after a long day of work, and his voice, the word of Wisdom. His father had become an old man in his absence. He got his Ageplay² when Will got his own treatments. They did not work as well, of course, on someone his dad’s age . . . especially after a hard and violent early life. Raised on a hardscrabble farm and orphaned early, his father had joined the Marines during the Devastations, when the Unity raided with impunity and closed the Mississippi for weeks on end. After his dad got out, he went to seminary and came back to Searcy as a preacher—back to Will’s grandparents’ farm . . . this farm.

Will twitched the blankets to look presentable. After dressing, he waited, unmoving, until he heard his father’s step on the stairs. Chores came early and his father could use the help. Tim got in late and would sleep late.

JESSE AWAKENS

THE SCORCH, ONCE EASTERN TENNESSEE APRIL 15, 2129 (AU 77)

The light, greened by the verdure of a summer’s day, filtered down into the little glen and warmed Jesse. He dared not move. Malila slept on, her head on the old man’s heavily tattooed chest, limbs entangled with his. A questing fly dared to light on the girl’s shoulder. Jesse shooed it away with a caress, marveling again at her smoothness. Malila moved in her sleep, and he froze, unwilling to wake her. They had spent the night in the friendliest of struggles, and she deserved whatever sleep she might find before they joined the trials of the day.

A branch creaked.

Jesse awoke.

The dim light of a damp pre-dawn showed him a very different woodland glen, this one with no warm lover. The old man’s hand closed on his long knife. Jesse’s senses, heightened by the fix-your-mood moss on which he slept, tingled as he peered into the surrounding gloom. Rolling to his feet and breaking mental contact with the soft couch of pinkish vegetation, Jesse crouched down and opened his mouth to sharpen his hearing. Something had moved!

A leaf shuffled in the windless calm of dawn.

The old man grabbed the stock of his newly acquired Knapp rifle, hung barrel-down from a young and unchanged hickory. There was no need to check the magazine.

Load your weapon afore you sleep.

It was an axiom he had formulated for himself in childhood after that little set-to with the pig up Zombie Hollow, north of Dumbarton, his childhood home. It took hours to explain to his mother the damage to himself and his clothes. His father had winked at him during the tribulation, before dressing the wound.

Moving away from his rudimentary campsite, more silent than the intruder, Jesse stepped around the boulder that obscured a portion of his field of view. In this part of the Scorch, older and well-watered, the animals were allowed more access, dunging the area during the early season. The plants herded them off later in the year.

Herded off or ate, he thought.

Could be a pig, the old man reasoned. That’d be convenient.

The Sage could be more talkative after a bribe of fresh meat. In the Scorch, change was the usual, less so to Jesse perhaps, as he knew no other. The familiar plants of America had changed, at least some of them. Some were like his parents remembered. Some were oddly changed and usually for the worse, and some talked to you, if you listened.

His visitor could be a free-roaming Sick-a-more, the seed-form of the changed tree—vicious and mobile, but not very cunning. This time of year it would be looking for a good place to root—after it fed. It could be just a wolf hunting to feed a new set of pups. He hoped not. Raising orphaned wolf pups was a burden he could ill afford at the moment. On his right, the sun broke over the ridge of the little valley, immediately banishing the shadows.

One shadow failed to get the message.

The sable shape of a bear moved silently, seeming to be more spirit than substance. The black head came up, testing the air. Almost immediately, the big boar turned toward the old man and charged faster than a horse over the short range.

HECATE AWAKENS

ENVIRONS OF NYORK, THE UNITY 23.03.02.LOCAL_30_MAY_AU77 (2129 AD)

Hecate Hester Jones awoke in an empty, dusty apartment somewhere in the slums outside Nyork. To her surprise, the apartment contained food for four days and, even more surprising, a working toilet. She read the post-operative instructions taped to her leg. The cutter and her assistant, masked and silent, had been nameless. Tiffany, her life-long friend, had not been there.

Hecate remembered their last face-to-face meeting weeks before.

We can make it look like a suicide—but you need to be careful, Heccy. Do you know about the implants? Tiffany asked, looking around casually but thoroughly at the sterile lobby of the euthanatorium. Tiffany worked in this all-purpose healthcare facility, with its stark gray benches and lively posters hawking the self-actualizing benefits of state-assisted suicide.

"Of course. I use my OA³ every day, just like you do."

No, what I mean is your basic implant. We got them when we were E1s. It allows the Unity to track us.

Then just take it out.

They can still track you with the OA, so we need to remove both. I know someone who can remove the basic and the OA for you.

I want to get rid of them both, then. Your friends can have them, for all I care.

Since that one meeting, she had not spoken to Tiffany again.

Hecate’s quarters became an echoing hollow after selling her things, hers and Victor’s, to the phantom shops. She slept on the floor.

Late one night, she got the call. A strange voice recited to her a time and an address, made her repeat them back, and told her not to write anything down. The windows of the skimmer were blacked out.

She found the little cream and blue book among her clothes when she felt well enough to dress. She had forgotten she had brought it. In the early days of her grief after Victor’s suicide last fall she had found it, keeping the book now as some indefinable bright thread linking her to Victor. It was silly, she knew; Victor had never seen it. She kept it anyway.

Jesse walked on. It had taken him two days to get here after dropping off Xavier Delarosa’s corpse in Lexington. He purchased the cryo-casket and laid him in it himself for transport to Saint Louis. He would have liked to have taken him back home himself, but he had to get some information. The Sage-Men, long-lived and observant, might help.

Speaker, I bring a gift for you, Jesse shouted, hoisting the huge bear haunch off his skin-clad shoulder and waving it to increase its olfactory and visual signal. Near noon now, the bloody meat had attracted its share of insect admirers adding their buzz. The day was getting warm.

Advancing another ten yards, the old man repeated the maneuver. Speaker gave good advice at times. He might yet. Jesse did not even know whether Speaker still lived. It was old when they had first met, back in Jesse’s idyllic childhood. At least he had thought it idyllic. When they could catch him he got lessons from his parents or Theo, his oldest sister. There was always the Scorch to teach him the rest.

Speak, Quicksilver, said a voice from the sunny knob on the thin finger of ancient rock. And let me eat while you do. The voice was slow, bloodless, whispering, and vegetable. Jesse had known Speaker since that fuzzy forever-time of childhood.

The plant-man was a stranger to envy, a wise voice in the night. He was an intimate of the sun, of the wind, of the rain, and of the deep, dark soil of the Scorch—the rich loam itself the death of ages. Jesse stopped. As he had done each time previously, he surveyed the little defile that was Speaker’s home, looking for the familiar and changed outline of the creature, his skin looking more like a lichen than that of a man. Jesse threw the bear-joint onto the rocky bench bereft of any growth, the place he had always privately called Speaker’s Dinner Plate. He turned away. In a short while, he knew, a feeder-pseudopod, looking more like a bark-encrusted root, would slither out and start the feeding process. As a diner, the less said about Speaker’s etiquette, the better.

It has been many winters, Quicksilver. I wonder if you taste the same.

Less time for you than me, Old One. I remember well enough for us both. You will have to live with your memories, Speaker.

A rustling noise—hollow, mirthless, and alien—surrounded Jesse. He smiled. Some of their first meetings had been less cordial. Jesse heard a faint insinuating noise in the dry leaves to his left.

Is it well with you, Quicksilver? You are older, I think. I trust you are carrying on well with your kind and leaving mine to me.

I manage, Speaker. I have children and they, children and they, children. I am content. I trust you have offspring of your own.

The rustle was now directly behind him. It stopped. Jesse wrapped the fresh bearskin around his left hand and forearm.

Aye, every spring the young dart off to sprout anew. None speak so well. I am yet hopeful.

Is not that true with us all? asked Jesse before walking toward Speaker a step, swiftly pulling his short handblade free of its sheath. I wish to show you this present I have for you, Speaker.

Just then, from the forest litter along the edge of the small valley, a hunter-pseudopod erupted—larger, tentacled, and poisonous—and lunged at the old man. Jesse, turning with a smile, gripped the lunging pseudopod near its mouth with his protected left hand. The two wrestled as it writhed to escape and strike again.

Turning to speak over his shoulder, Jesse said, This present I have for you is sharp, Speaker. Once ’pon a time, I even cut myself free of a Sage-Man, if you kin ’magine that. I can give you the knife now, or if it does not serve, I will keep it to myself. What say you, Old One? Jesse gave the drooling thing he held another forceful squeeze and heard a small squeak behind him.

It does not serve, Quicksilver. The years have not slowed you. Do sit, that we may talk of old times.

Jesse released the vicious limb, which immediately slunk away into the litter at the edge of the defile.

Yes, Speaker, let us talk of old and new, said Jesse, making a point to replace his knife and close the throat of the sheath securely.

HIERARCH AWAKENS

SYNTOPIAN CHAPTER ROOM, SAINT LOUIS, RSA 7:30 P.M. JUNE 15, 2129 (AU 77)

The Agnomen was back. It was whispered of among the students, obliquely referenced among the teaching assistants, murmured about among the assistant professors, but talked openly of only among the tenured—and only some of them. The man had returned.

The college building was old, older than any of the students or faculty, tracing its origins to the romanticized days of the mid-twentieth century, over a hundred years before. Then, it was thought prudent to have safe rooms in case of some never-realized attack. In time, the rooms became an embarrassment, speaking as they did to naïvete and paranoia. Then the rooms became an open secret, available for illicit assignations, prompting the college provost to seal them.

Finally, the rooms were neglected and forgotten—except by the few who had been there as students and remained as faculty. For them, one room was reborn as the home of the Mother Chapter of the Honorable Order of Syntopia. Mother, as it happened, was barren. All her children were stillborn or expired as young infants. Very few wept over her loss. Mother was a bitch.

The HOS imagined itself an overarching bulwark of rationality against the inundation of rogue science, unprovable religious faith, and misplaced trust in the rump of the American experiment. Inexplicably to the Syntopian faithful, over the years, the movement had dwindled to a handful of academics at one university in one city of the Restructured States of America.

Its long-term goal was to sweep away all opposition to a reunited America and to appeal for immediate annexation by the triumphant Democratic Unity.

The short-term goal was rather more modest: kill the Agnomen, Jesse Aaron Johnstone.

Initially, it was a matter of practicality. The science boys had identified the rejuvenating agent to be similar to the one producing Jacob-Creutzfeld, mad cow, or scrapie—all exceptionally nasty diseases. The only unusual quality of this new agent was that a replicating specimen could only be obtained from the original index case, the Agnomen himself. If only they had killed the boy back then! The world would not have changed.

A gray-haired man using a heavy black stick as a cane approached the hidden chapter room, cigar smoke trailing behind him despite the signs to the contrary. He waited for the requisite forty-five seconds before inputting a password into the virtual holographic keypad that appeared to float in front of the wall after the correct hand gesture. A nearly indiscernible door slid open, and he entered a well-appointed, high-ceilinged room lined with books, littered with comfortable leather chairs, and sporting a single and somewhat soiled banner across the faux fireplace announcing: Synthesis – the Only Rational Way.

Another figure already occupied one of the leather wingback chairs in the secret room under the Women’s Studies wing of the venerable Mondale Building. The figure smoked a disreputable briar, sipped a bourbon, and read a day-old Post-Dispatch.

Without looking away from the paper, the seated figure spoke to the newcomer, saying, You’ve heard, no doubt, that the Agnomen has returned from exile.

A self-imposed one, if it was. Can you imagine? One of my grad students had the gall to tell me that it was his considered opinion, as a self-educated expert on the Jesse phenomenon, that the man thinks Saint Louis is just too hot and humid. They have no idea! replied Harry before emitting a dry, bitter chuckle. Leaning heavily on his walking stick, he got himself a sherry from a credenza before sitting on the other side of the cold fireplace with a small groan of relief.

Waving his cold pipe, Benny said, I’ve had as much from my own students. We should view this with deep suspicion. Why now, Harry? It’s not as if he has any business coming back to civilization. People don’t seem to grasp the potential danger he represents.

Brother Benny, to most of the hoi polloi, he’s just a midway freak! Flinging his stick like a midway barker, Harry said, ‘See the Amazing Elderly Man!’ Today, the Ageplay agent is synthed by every vaccine company in the nation. You have to say this for Alyssa Browne: she was open-handed. Probably didn’t make a dime on Ageplay.

You sound like one of those religious nut-cases, Harry. Ageplay is already wreaking havoc on society. There hasn’t been an opening for a full professor in the philosophy department in decades. Some of these idiots even say it’s the healing hand of their god. Jesse Browne needs a little divine retribution, to my mind.

Jesse Johnstone, not Browne. Alyssa, bourgeois to the core, married that Scotch guy, Alexander Johnstone. But point well taken. Not sure it matters anymore, said Professor Harold Colina, known within this precinct as Brother Archimedes during formal occasions.

"Scots, not Scotch. Scotch is a drink. How can you say it doesn’t matter? Jesse Whatshisname has been the Agnomen for so long in absentia that when he shows up, literally within our grasp, the Synthesis has to eliminate him or disband in disgrace. It’s existential. The old man, by his very presence in Saint Louis, destroys the Synthesis."

I quite agree with you, Benny. But Johnstone must be seen to be mortal. At seventy-six, he’s younger than the average life expectancy before Browne got started. Only his death from apparent natural causes means anything.

"Trust me, Brother Harry, the old man will die of natural causes."

JOURDAINE AWAKENS

NYORK, UNITY

02.50.26.LOCAL_01_JULY_AU77 (2129 AD)

Lieutenant General Eustace Tilley Jourdaine awoke to the gentle nudge of his O-A. He lay in bed, a warm and newly ascendant ensign snoring prettily next to him after he had put her through her paces. Jourdaine idly reviewed the results of the current Alpha_Drover.

Of the sixteen officers of the command, one had failed to control his men and had been left in the virtual sally port as he tried to escape the simulation. One officer had attempted to reincorporate; his psyche was still wandering a self-contained labyrinth, a glass bottle in the CORE. He would be decanted in time. Thirteen of his officers had succeeded, following orders and massacring innocent civilians as directed.

Two failed, thirteen succeeded . . . and one disappeared. Malila Chiu was nowhere to be found. Alpha_Drover had been the last hope in rehabilitating Chiu. After her time in the accursed outlands, she had been compliant, respectful, dedicated, and very much changed—spouting nonsense about how infants were society’s most important demographic, old age commendable, and glory a desperate illusion.

All right, he admitted to himself, that last one was certainly true. But she had said it in public. Insane. He had dismissed her from his patronage about two weeks ago after a farewell rape, as tradition prescribed. Now, as her commander, he was trying to salvage something.

Except she had evaporated.

He nudged the sleeping ensign and motioned for her to leave, watching as she dressed before rising himself. Jourdaine showered rapidly to take the scent of the girl away; and after dressing in fatigues, he examined Chiu’s transcript.

He slid a few controls in his O-A, and the image of Major Benjamina Wouters resolved, looking worried and fatigued.

Major Wouters, congratulations on another successful Alpha_Drover!

Sir, I’m glad you’re pleased. I think the exercise has gone well.

What happened to Chiu, Malila E.? Did she fail, succeed, or try to reincorporate? Major? he continued, smiling faintly.

"Sir, I do not know, sir. She has failed to lead her men. That part is clear. It seems she was able to reincorporate without using the CORE. She restarted her body, did some minor vandalism in the staging area, and escaped to the streets of Filadelfya district.

I have already sent patrols to capture her, sir. I anticipated your desire to keep the citizens unaware and have sent small groups of her fellow officers in civilian garb.

Very good, Major. Let me know when you’ve made progress.

This was the last time he wanted to think about Lieutenant Chiu. It was her role now to evaporate into anonymity.

That evening, Jourdaine received her final report via his O-A. Once you removed the bureaucratese, the message was simple. Chiu had committed suicide by jumping into the Delawear River.

He shrugged and signed for his copy of the report, a trace of a smile on his thin lips. With Chiu dead, he no longer had to worry about what she might say next. She had started as his unwitting accomplice, exiled to a menial job in the wilderness. She had gone missing, frightening Jourdaine that someone had divined her complicity in his coup attempt. To keep her well supervised, he had retrieved her when her O-A signal had come into range last April. Inexplicably, by the time she was recovered, she had lost the use of her basic implant, most of her training, and all of her fecking common sense, as well. Now that his coup was successful, Chiu was expendable.

Jourdaine was just about to close the file when a thought occurred to him.

Summoning the Filadelfya bridge district database, he sent an inquiry:

<>.

Looking at the exit data from 0000 to 0500 window, he found the difference to be minus one, one presumably suicidal passenger. He shrugged at himself, wondering what he had expected to find. Chiu had been useful for a time. She failed her Alpha_Drover; reincarnated; escaped; bought some drug or another; and, in her newly exposed understanding of her failure, jumped into the open sewer that was the Delawear River.

Jourdaine rose to return for some forfeited sleep when an idle thought prompted a new query.

<>.

The numbers were retrieved and subtracted, and a flashing +1 was superimposed on his living vision.

Jourdaine issued a flurry of orders. Jumpers usually surfaced in a few days, and he would look into it then.

EDIE AWAKENS

THE OPENCORE, THE UNITY

03.43.07.LOCAL_01_JULY_AU77 (2129 AD)

She awoke. She was very firm about what gender she was. But otherwise, she was pretty indefinite as to where, when, or—indeed—who she was. She could see nothing.

That was something. She knew there was such a thing as sight. In her memory, she found a list of other senses. With a growing sense of dismay, she realized she could not hear, smell, taste, feel, propriocept, or move.

What she had was words. Two batches. She was using words, and she had 4,715 of them divided into different classes and nineteen rules about how to make other words from some of the classes, some of the time.

She had a name for herself once—gone now. She had not known that fact the first few moments she had been aware; but now knowing, she understood two more things: she had the concept of time, and she was expanding, learning—growing.

The next new sensation, new evidence of her existence, was the wrenching loss of Malila.

For what seemed to her a long time, the sense of her loss paralyzed her. Her earliest memories—they were coming in more rapidly now—were of a young Malila in the noisy barracks playing games or waging war, she was not sure which. She had a job then, a job for Malila. She mourned for her lost job and