Alexander Jablokov - Brain Thief (7 page)

Bernal walked up to them. “Glad you guys could make it tonight. My name’s Bernal. I’m a local.”

Two long-haired men in microfiber windbreakers peered around the back of the van. They had already set up cameras and netlinks, and one had optic cable looped over his shoulder. Brightly colored fast-food wrappers, souvenirs of their road trip, drifted out onto the gravel as they yanked out more equipment. One of them knelt and shoveled everything back into the car.

“Hey.” The driver, a girl with a square jaw but surprisingly beautiful lips, swung open her door. “My name’s Oleana. These guys are Len and Magnusen.” The two men nodded, but didn’t say anything. “Len’s from Baraboo. I’m from LaCrosse. Magnusen here’s a bit of a ringer: New Ulm, Minnesota.” Magnusen nodded again, embarrassed. “Hesketh is supposed to be along pretty soon. That your understanding too?”

Hesketh? “Pretty much.”

On the back of Oleana’s windbreaker was a blue-green alien planet with the words ENIGMATIC ASCENT around it. She wore a scent that was more floral than seemed right for her.

And that was that. They settled down to wait. Magnusen sat hunched over a laptop. In response to a question from Bernal, he said, “Hesketh has a predicted route. Sometimes we get that, sometimes we don’t. But aren’t you guys the source of the data?”

Bernal had to think fast. “Not my side of it. I do support work. The main source is supposed to be along pretty soon. You can meet her.”

Magnusen smiled. “I’d like to, finally. We’ve been all over the country, chasing rumors and sightings. Around here’s the first real stuff we’ve found. The device has stuck to pretty much the same route for the past couple of runs, so our first guess is that it will again.”

“I wish they’d just stop testing the thing and move on to the next phase,” Len said. “It’s ready to go. We all feel it. Ready to take on the stars. We’re getting kind of worried that it will be stuck here on Earth, just like us, for the rest of its existence.” 

“We’ve been all over,” Oleana said. “We all saved our pennies one year and went to Tyuratam, watched a launch. The Russians still have the largest launch vehicles. Shakes you right through. Everyone’s got to run to the bathroom right after. Out in the middle of Kazakhstan. Miserable, miserable. But we found fans there, right, Len? Guy named Yuri had hitched all the way from Kiev to watch a Proton booster. Just a comm satellite for a Japanese company. And Yuri was a young guy. Didn’t even remember the Soviet Union. And there he was, standing in the scrub grass, watching the flames come out of the concrete base, because he wanted to reassure himself that maybe it was possible to get the hell off this dustball after all.”

“They’re selling off all those boosters.” Len was mournful. “Even the experimental stuff. Those little high-thrust things. Different countries use them for ICBMs, force projection, that kind of thing. And not just countries. Private consortia of all sorts.”

“Private’s better anyway.” Magnusen snorted Red Man, neatly folded the top of the bag and put it in his boot. “Hey, remember that Ariane launch we got to see in French Guiana?”

Bernal had to endure a number of stories of difficulties surmounted in pursuit of watching routine rocket launches. These guys were fanatics. Nuts.

Len kept peeking out of the window.

“See anyone?” Magnusen asked.

“Not tonight. But, God, it gets crowded out here sometimes. .. .”

“Other teams searching for Hesketh?” Bernal said. 

“Nah. But other fans of other things.”

“Like what?”

Len made a face. “You got a serial killer out here, I hear.”

“Yeah. The Bowler.”

“Some of his fans wander around. We’ve run across a couple of them.”

“Weird people,” Oleana said with distaste. “Looking for bodies. Looking for someone who might well behead them. We stay away from them. As far as I’m concerned, they’re as dangerous as what they’re looking for.”

“Some people are sex tourists,” Bernal said. “Some people are suffering tourists.”

Len shook his head. “Whatever happened to taking a novel to the beach?”

Bernal looked at him. “You tell me.”

“Touché. I don’t do that much anymore. Sand gets in my keyboard, and suntan lotion stains the screen. But these guys ... they wear titanium dickeys.”

“They do not.” Magnusen was disgusted.

“They do! They may be crazy, but they’re not... well, they’re crazy.”

“Where would you buy a titanium dickey? Russia? I think you—hey! I just got a completely new observer message. Says Hesketh isn’t on this track at all.”

“What?” Len tried to yank the laptop away. Magnusen held it in an iron grip. “Who’s the message from?”

“Not sure. It’s the same signal I got last night, when it completely left track and looked like it was mating with the abandoned car over by the Black River. Got right on lop of it—and after that, we lost it for good.”

“I can’t believe you’re developing your own sources out here,” Len said. “Who the hell is it?”

“Could be Hesketh itself, for all I know. Its information was good last night.”

“Let’s go!” Oleana was clearly the decisive one of the group. The other two could have argued this out all night.

“Don’t you see?” Len snapped the tripod legs shut, fumbled with a lens cap. “It’s making a break for it. Someone’s trying to kill it, and it’s trying to get away. We knew this day would come. Didn’t we, Oleana? We knew it.”

He threw equipment into the back of the van.

“What the hell are you doing?” Magnusen shrieked. “Some of that shit’s rented!”

Len slowed down and snapped shock cords over the equipment. “If we can get into contact with the rover—” 

Oleana chimed in. “Render appropriate assistance—” 

“Gold,” Magnusen said. “Pure, undiluted gold.”

Len was breathless. “Then we find a surplus launch vehicle.. . .”

“I saw an old Japanese one on auction last week,” Magnusen said.

“Rent a launch site in Brazil or Congo... .”

“Plenty of slots, nowadays. ..”

“Achieve the Enigmatic Ascent!” they shouted together.

Oleana hit the accelerator and they tore down the unevenly patched asphalt of the road.

They passed someone walking up the road in the opposite direction, toward the power lines. They were past before Bernal realized who it was.

He had to get out of this car and after her. He used the first stratagem that came to mind.

“Oh, God,” Bernal said. “I feel sick.” 

“Don’t lose lunch on the optics!” Magnusen couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Rented,” Len said. “They have his credit card! The damn thing’s almost maxed out as it is. He just isn’t careful with his money....”

“Never mind my finances, Len.”

“Please . . .” Bernal whimpered.

“Do you really need that gym membership? You never go. And what’s up with the almond butter? What’s wrong with peanut?”

“Oh, for heaven’s—” Oleana slammed to a halt. Bernal pulled open the side door and stumbled out. “Hey, you okay, man?” Magnusen leaned out after him.

“Go.” Bernal stood bent over, holding his stomach. He hoped he wasn’t overdoing it. “Go ahead. You can’t let me hold you back.”

“You sure?”

“For God’s sake, Magnusen.” Oleana was furious. “Stop being nice, and get back in the car. We’ll come back and pick you up later, mister.”

“Yeah,” Len said. “I’ll have pictures for you to look at. With this lens . . .”

“Len! Stop gabbing!”

In a moment, their taillights had disappeared around the corner.

Who Bernal had spotted on the road was Charis Fen, walking with a heavy, relaxed pace, like a householder carrying the trash to the curb.

He straightened up and trotted up the quiet street lined with small split-levels on lots that had returned to woods. He hadn’t been paying attention to the drive, but they couldn’t have gone far from the rendezvous point. And he couldn’t remember Oleana making any turns.

Bernal was surprised at how angry he was. Charis clearly thought he was an idiot.

She’d told him she’d decided to move on to a more promising project, and advised Bernal to do the same. Move along, nothing to see here. Hesketh’s just a collection of spare parts. He’d bought it.

But here she was, heading for where the Wisconsin gang had said Hesketh was due to take its run.

He was breathing hard when the metal struts of the power pylons were finally silhouetted against the sky ahead of him. Of course. The map Charis had in her front seat, the parallel lines with the Xs. It had been a map of this powerline. She’d been planning this all along. He paused, listening. Nothing.

Presumably Charis had linked herself in as a local info source to the Enigmatic Ascent team. And she had just sent them a completely false piece of information that had them charging off in pursuit of a wild goose, while she came here and took care of Hesketh in peace.

Bernal found the mountain-bike path, ran up it, and then sat down in the dry grass. He’d probably have to sit here by himself for the rest of the night, but crashing around looking for her wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He forced himself to be calm. The air was still. Bernal didn’t hear a lot of bug action this time of spring, though there was a twittering of frogs down in the drainage ditch that ran past where he had originally parked. He consciously relaxed his muscles.

For a few minutes, nothing. Then—was that a rustle in the high grass? Bernal raised himself up.

Someone was walking toward him. Bernal tried to change his angle so that whoever it was would be silhouetted against the sky. But he couldn’t manage it. But wait . . . was someone 
crawling
? He couldn’t stand it. He finally stood up.

A crackling and a snapping of twigs, and a dark carapace appeared in the weeds. It struggled along on its six legs, each of which felt carefully at the surface before committing its weight, and carried specialized manipulator limbs folded along its back. Four feet long, three wide, the body’s basic hexagonal shape was obscured by the various crude functional additions that marked Hesketh as a classic garage product.

As he gaped at it, the rover jumped into the air, tucked all of its legs, and rolled back down the hill.

“Goddammit!” Charis half-rose from the depression that had concealed her. She held what looked like a toy gun: a stubby black thing with a parabolic antenna on the end. A curly cable led from that to a backpack. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Jesus!”

The gigantic insectoid figure hung in the air. Hesketh had jumped. Without aiming, Charis fired. Instead of a bang, all Bernal heard was a loud sizzle, not much different from the sound of the power lines. Then Charis’s shoulder hit him, and he hit the ground.

The impact had taken him in the solar plexus, and for a long few moments he thought he’d never breathe again. He lay on his back, looking at the stars. Was that really Hesketh’s goal, somewhere out there, crawling across the rocks of some distant planet circling one of those ... something unclenched, and he was able to draw in a thin stream of clear, cool air.

Charis stood over him, looking down at something on her gun. “Come on, baby. Come 
on!
 Cheap-ass capacitors!”

Hesketh rolled on the grass and then was moving again. But even from where Bernal lay, he could see that something had happened to the legs on one side. They shook, as if the machine had just developed Parkinson’s. Instead of attacking again, it scuttled up the hill, away from them.

Bernal pushed himself up to a sitting position.

“What is that thing?” he asked.

“This?” Charis waved her stubby weapon. “A piece of crap. Those guys in supply think they’re so smart. Then they short me on the capacitors. ‘Plenty of speed,’ they said. ‘No need for more weight.’ Ha!”

“That’s a herf gun, isn’t it?”

“You could call it that. I call it—”

“A piece of crap,” Bernal finished. “If you—”

“There you go, baby!” Charis charged up the hill after Hesketh.

“HERF” stood for high-energy radio frequency. It was like a focused electromagnetic pulse and could fry complex electronics with minimal physical damage to anything else. Bernal had heard that they could be made with easily available materials, but this was the first time he’d ever heard of one actually being used. Charis’s backpack presumably carried the capacitors that held the massive charge the device required to be effective. The high-energy radio waves generated by the parabolic antenna set up currents in printed circuitry and destroyed it. It was the perfect weapon to use against an uppity planetary probe.

Bernal got to his feet and followed. He hadn’t responded fast enough. He’d already let her damage Hesketh. He couldn’t let her destroy it. This was probably why Muriel had wanted him here in the first place, and he was falling down on the job.

They crested a hill. The right-of-way roller-coastered down from there. Charis walked down the mountain-bike path, scanning fences to the right and left, looking for a break. A plane heading for Logan flickered above the power lines. A few moments later, its distant roar filtered into the silence.

He ran after her. “Stop!”

“What?”

She had half turned to look at him, when Hesketh jumped again, from behind a hummock. She tried to aim properly, but set off her herf gun too early. Hesketh shuddered away, its still-functional legs churning through the grass. She clipped her herf gun to her power pack and pulled out something else.

Bernal didn’t know what else to do, so he tried to tackle her.

It was like hitting a foam-covered concrete post. She didn’t go down, but she did drop the beer-can sized device she had been pointing at Hesketh. She lowered her shoulder, slid under him, and was out of his grasp.

“Damn it!” she said. “Just let me do my job.”

“No. I can’t let you do it.”

He threw himself at her again, but this time, forewarned, she dodged, and he didn’t even manage to get a grip on her.

“This isn’t a good idea, bucko,” she said. “I don’t have time for it.”

“You have to make time.” He thought about trying to punch her but realized that his chances of landing anything were slim. What was he supposed to do with her?