Voyages: A Science Fiction Collection Page 5

  “Is this… rehab, then?” he asked Ben. “Where we go after we… after things go wrong?”

  “It’s Reintegration,” Ben corrected him.

  There was a bird outside, sitting in the middle of that bright green lawn. “Re–” Eli muttered. “Reintegration to what?”

  He turned his head a little and found Ben smiling at him.

  “Home,” Ben said.

  “Home? I don’t… I don’t understand.”

  His head hurt. There was a raw feeling just behind his left ear, and when he reached up to touch it he found a small, thick bandage. Dimly, he could see Ben’s lips moving and understood that Ben was talking, but Ben’s voice came through only as a hum he couldn’t parse into words.

  Home.

  Welcome back, Worker. We thank you for your service…

  Frowning, he looked around until he found a door that led outside and pushed through it with Ben a couple of steps behind. The air outside was cool, fresh, and smelled of flowers. Smelled of cut grass.

  Something prompted him to look up, to look deep into the bright blue sky.

  “We were… out there,” he said.

  “Almost two years,” Ben said. “Mandatory service on the ‘Production Facility’, generating crystalline packets to ship back here so they can keep the lights on. Remember? Fossil fuels ran out, solar and wind weren’t enough, then somebody discovered crystals? Found a huge supply of ’em”–he nodded toward the sky–“way to hell and gone out there. Any of this ringing a bell? Everybody in good health does a stint as a worker. And to remove the pesky problem of lack of communication – they implant a chip to block your memory so you don’t get homesick. It’s a great system. It’s a glorious system.” Ben snorted softly. “Except when it’s not.”

  That all seemed… familiar.

  “I… died,” Eli said. “I thought I died. I thought you died.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said with a whisper of a laugh. “Not so much.”

  Where was I?

  Eli tried to turn around, to take in everything around him, but he lost his footing and sat down hard on the ground. That jarred him enough that he had to bury his face in his hands and close his eyes.

  Too many colors.

  Too much…

  “Lida?” he said through his fingers.

  “She’ll be back,” Ben said after a moment. “Sooner rather than later. I can pretty much guarantee that. Some people last longer. But Lida… it’s a wonder she’s lasted this long. You can put your name on the list to be notified when she gets back.”

  “Did I… know her? Here?”

  “I doubt it. I didn’t know you before we ended up in Production together.”

  Eli spread his fingers and looked up at his friend. His mind was full, all of a sudden – crammed to bursting with images and words and sounds and smells. Memories of family, of a home that wasn’t the unit he had shared with Lida. Of friends and experiences, of being placed on a table beneath a bright light and listening to someone count down from one hundred.

  “Here,” Ben said.

  He was holding a bottle of water. One with a blue and red label.

  “It gets easier,” he told Eli.

  “God among us,” Eli said. “I hope so.”

  ☼☼☼☼

  * Excess Baggage *

  Toby Cobb hit a wall.

  And it wasn’t like he’d been doing anything. Jumping off a roof, slaloming down the curve on James Street, running into traffic. Nope; one minute he was wandering through the big empty great room-kitchen-dining room of yet another stupid house in yet another stupid development, trying to find some decent music to listen to on his phone while his stupid parents followed the stupid Realtor around upstairs, looking at square footage and faucets and windows with a view of a bunch of stupid freaking trees, and the next…

  POW.

  He couldn’t sort things out as it was happening, couldn’t run down any list of, “Well, it might be this.” His brain muddled, and he felt himself being flung through space at something like a billion miles an hour. He was flying, it felt like, but not in any reasonable way. More like, he was being flown. Propelled, so fast he couldn’t track it.

  Then, all at once, he hit the wall.

  No… the floor.

  It’d been a long way down, what felt like miles. When he was all the way down, finally at rest on a solid surface, he began to curl up, knees to chest, huddling like a baby. Every inch of him hurt ferociously.

  Mommy…?

  She was close by. He remembered that. He tried again and again to cry out for her, but his voice wouldn’t cooperate. He was distantly aware of darkness, and cold, but that was secondary to the pain.

  What…?

  From some distance away he could hear music. Led Zeppelin, he thought.

  “What in the world,” he heard a voice say.

  Some time passed, then a different voice said, “Come away, Iris. You don’t know what the situation is. Let’s just leave this be. We’ll call the police, all right? This isn’t something you need to be involved in.”

  “But it’s just a boy.”

  “Never mind. Iris, do you hear me?”

  He heard footsteps. He had the vague sense that someone was nearby, then that changed and he was sure he was alone, left by himself somewhere dark and cold. The pain ebbed a little after a while, and he began to pry his eyes open.

  Outside.

  Outside…?

  But he’d been inside a house. Sweating a little, because it was hot out and they hadn’t been running the AC while the house was unoccupied and for sale. Now, somehow, it was cold. Nighttime. And he was outside. A small voice in the back of his head told him to be scared, told him that something awful had happened. That maybe he’d been unconscious until night had fallen. That maybe he’d been unconscious until it was winter.

  He tried to think Fuuuuu…

  The voice suggested Bomb. Then, in a jumble: ChinaNorthKoreaIrantheyhitusohmygod.

  His body felt crushed, burnt and frozen at the same time, and he supposed a trip to the hospital was a good idea… wherever the hospital was. Wherever anything was. He let some tears well up in his eyes, crushed his eyes shut for a moment and let himself wallow in being scared and hurt. Then he snuffled back the snot that was filling his sinuses and set his jaw. The frenzy in his brain had quieted down just enough for him to begin to string some coherent thoughts together, and they told him he needed to do something, not just lie there. That he might be hammered into pulp, but he wasn’t dead, and he was therefore capable of helping himself. Helping other people.

  Mom and Dad.

  They’d been hit too. Had to have been.

  Tornado??

  Slowly, trying mightily to ignore the shrieking pain that wasn’t letting go of any little bit of him, he moved to his hands and knees. Then upright, on his knees.

  Finally – though he wasn’t sure he could remain standing for very long – to his feet.

  His stomach churned wildly, and he had to fight an overwhelming urge to vomit. The cold helped a little, though after a few seconds it made him start to shiver and he wrapped his shrieking arms around himself in a futile effort to warm up. He’d need to find a coat somewhere. A hoodie. Something.

  You can do this.

  You can… Mom…?

  There were lights off in the distance, what looked like miles away. Maybe less; maybe his vision was screwed up. He took a wobbling step in that direction, nearly fell, but managed to hold himself upright. He sipped in some cold air, afraid of hurting his ribs by breathing deeply, standing quietly until his head had settled down some more. There would be people where those lights were, he told himself. It might be an aid station, something set up by the police, or the National Guard, or whatever.

  Yes. Go there.

  He tried another step, and thought of something he’d heard somewhere: The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

  Screw THAT. You can do this.

  Another step.
A small one, but it was progress.

  And another.

  He smiled a little, as much as his throbbing head would allow.

  Then the wall hit him again.

  This time he screamed. He had time to do that, because the sensation of being slammed by something went on and on. He was being carried, it felt like, and that made him think again: tornado. But there’d never been a tornado anywhere near where he lived, not in his whole fourteen years of life. He knew them only from news reports and the movies. He had what seemed like an hour to think about The Wizard of Oz and Twister and news footage of whole towns that had been flattened before something grabbed him (a hand; it felt like a hand) and once again, he was slammed to the ground.

  “You!” a voice bellowed. “You’ve destroyed the RIBBON, you… you…”

  Didn’t do nothing, Toby thought distantly. Because… come ON. A tornado was his fault? In what universe?

  The hand pulled at him, fierce and irresistible. He was half-afraid that its owner meant to beat the crap out of him if he tried to rise, but lying on the ground seemed like a worse choice than trying to stand. Whoever it was might decide to kick him instead, and he’d seen what kind of damage a good pair of boots could inflict. The kid he’d seen that happen to… God. He’d gotten his nose crushed. Had a ruptured kidney. That information ricocheted around inside Toby’s head as he struggled to his feet and tried again to blink away his disorientation.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you? The extent of the damage you might have caused?”

  A man.

  It was a dark-haired man, wearing some kind of light-colored coveralls. He took his hand back and balled it into a fist – along with the other one – but instead of looking like he wanted to kick some ass, he looked like a little kid having a tantrum. Like he wasn’t getting what he wanted, and instead of trying to solve the problem, he was going to go on pitching a fit.

  “Whaaasss…?” Toby muttered.

  That was all his body could take. He tumbled to his knees, barely managing to arrest his fall by thrusting a hand out in front of him, and got rid of the Cheesy MegaBurger and fries he’d had for lunch. His stomach seized and spasmed over and over until he felt like he simply wanted to sprawl on his belly and lie there – maybe, to die there – and it didn’t matter at all that he’d be surrounded by puke. He couldn’t bring himself to care any more about what had happened; he just wanted all of it to stop.

  A flicker of light caught his attention. It was his phone, lying on the ground nearby.

  Phone…

  That was important, but for a moment he couldn’t figure out why. When his stomach at last stopped break dancing, he slid a hand over to the phone and wrapped his fingers around it, then dragged it up toward his face.

  Not broken. That was good. He wouldn’t need to explain to Dad that he’d broken yet another phone.

  “There are going to be consequences,” the guy in the coveralls said.

  Toby’s brain disagreed, told him Nuh-uh. “Zis nuh broke,” he garbled. “Don’ haffa tell Dad…”

  “You idiot child.”

  To which Toby’s brain responded: Screw YOU, asshole.

  He was scorched and frozen at the same time, every nerve ending in his body alive and screaming. He thought it was very possible his head might explode.

  “Din do nun,” he mumbled.

  “You didn’t do anything? Oh, that’s rich. You didn’t do anything. Do you know what you did? You’ve completely ruined an eighty billion dollar jump. Possibly, very possibly, you’ve created echoes that will rupture the entire time stream. But you didn’t do anything.”

  The guy’s voice had gone steadily up in pitch through all of that, to the point that the last few words were almost a screech. It fried Toby’s tortured nerve endings so badly that tears began to pool in his eyes. He thought about wiping them away, but couldn’t bring himself to lift his hand, couldn’t decide what he ought to do with his phone so his hand would be free. It was all too much to figure out. Trembling, he shifted back bit by bit and sat down on a numbingly cold floor.

  No… ground. Floor, but… ground.

  Dirt?

  They were inside, he was pretty sure, but not in that stupid cookie cutter house Mom and Dad were thinking about buying – unless that house had a basement that was just a big hole in the ground, which Toby didn’t think was possible. There was a lot of dry, dusty, uneven dirt here, and the walls were… stone? Not brick. A collection of stones, like the old, mostly-broken-down wall out at the far end of Josie Martin’s grandpa’s field, a thing that dated back before the Civil War, according to Josie’s Gramps. This place was old, then, Toby figured. Big, and really old. That didn’t fit anyplace he was familiar with, and he had no idea at all how he’d gotten here, unless he’d been kidnapped out of that mostly empty house in Clover Greens.

  “Gonna call the cops,” he whispered, struggling to brandish his phone. “Nine-one-one. It’s… onna spee’ dial.”

  He hovered his thumb over the icon.

  “And you think that will help?” the guy shrieked.

  He was both too old and too young to be acting that way. He wasn’t a little kid, and he wasn’t some insane old person. There wasn’t a lot of light in this wherever to see by, but it was enough to tell Toby that his companion was around Dad’s age, give or take. So, in his forties. The coveralls meant he probably did some kind of manual job. Cable repair, plumbing, trash collection, something like that.

  Not a lot of light, Toby thought. No windows that he could see. Just the screen of his phone, and…

  That guy? He was glowing.

  “Whassss…” Toby hissed.

  He wanted to ask, What are you? An alien? Radioactive Man, like something out of those old 1950s sci-fi movies? Then he realized, slowly, that it wasn’t the guy himself that was glowing, it was his coveralls. Somehow, the fabric was looey… lumi…

  Luminescent.

  “Din mess up your… an’thing,” Toby said. “Gib it up. Weird glowy man.”

  The guy’s face got considerably darker. He flexed his hands, clenched them, unclenched them.

  Finally, he said through his teeth, “You’ve ruined the ribbon!”

  Nut case.

  Struggling not to jiggle his head – because there still seemed like a strong possibility that it might explode – Toby moved back to his hands and knees, careful to avoid that huge puddle of puke. It took a lot of small maneuvers, but eventually he managed to stand. Once again he was grateful for the cold air around him, because it seemed to be helping him pull himself together, helping his brain reorganize itself.

  Stuck in here with a nutball, he thought, though he still couldn’t imagine how, or why. The guy had escaped from somewhere, and had taken him prisoner? Maybe he’d stolen those weird glowing coveralls, because Toby was pretty sure mental patients didn’t usually wear anything like that.

  He needed to call for help. Or run. Either of those options seemed okay, as long as his legs agreed to hold him upright long enough for him to get out of here.

  “I din…” he started. “Didn’t. I didn’t do anything, okay? I was just waiting for my mom and dad.”

  “This is completely insignificant to you, isn’t it?”

  “No. Come on, man. We can deal. Okay? You and me. Sound good?”

  For a moment, the guy didn’t do anything except breathe. Loudly; Toby could hear the rasp of each breath going in and out. Then the guy reached up and grabbed a bunch of his own hair in each hand.

  That, too, made him look like a freaked-out little kid.

  Toby glanced down at his phone, wondering if the guy would flip if he knew the police were actually coming. No service, it said. Not really a surprise, since they were in a basement. Maybe out on the edge of town, where reception was sometimes a little sketchy in spite of all those TV ads that said there was reliable service everywhere. He’d have to go upstairs, or outside, to get a decent connection.

  If the guy woul
d let him do that.

  He was about to suggest that they both go upstairs when the guy said very, very softly, “We may not be able to fix this. I was young once, believe it or not. I remember deciding that most of what happened in the cosmos was of absolutely no interest to me, but trust me: this is very bad.”

  “Uh-huh,” Toby said.

  “You’ve broken the ribbon. You may have even severed it completely.”

  Toby began to think about his parents, about how long it had been since he’d last seen them. Hours? Days? They had to be worried. Scared, maybe. In the strange pale light coming from the crazy guy’s coveralls he glanced down at himself and found himself dusty and messed up, but not hurt. He couldn’t see any blood, any cuts or scratches – which didn’t seem to agree with how much his body hurt, or that feeling of having been whirled around inside a tornado and flung into a brick wall.

  Maybe his injuries were all internal. Which certainly wouldn’t be good.

  “It’s, like, filthy down here,” he said in as casual a tone as he could manage. “It’s gonna bother my asthma. How ’bout we go upstairs” – he nodded toward the staircase he’d located over in the corner – “and we’ll get some fresh air?”

  He smiled at the guy.

  The guy, not at all helpfully, scowled at him.

  Definitely not in the mood for this.

  “And what do you think is up there?” the guy demanded. “What do you think is outside? Answers? Is that what you think?”

  I think you need to go back where you came from, Toby thought.

  At least, he needed to be in the care of someone who understood what his deal was. Like last summer, when there’d been a whole to-do in the neighborhood over Mrs. Fischer, who had Alzheimer’s bad enough that if she went for a walk around the block, she couldn’t find her house again. She’d gotten out of the house one afternoon and was missing for almost three hours. They’d found her almost a mile away, sitting in the middle of someone’s lawn, crying into her hands. She was still weeping when they brought her home, something Toby had witnessed from across the street.