Fragments (29 page)

Kira angled Bobo toward the side of the highway and looked off, scanning the city
around them. Here at the point of junction the highway was ridiculously wide, dozens
of lanes across, and nearly at ground level. The north side was some kind of a rail
station, but the south looked like a residential neighborhood, and probably the best
bet for finding a small boat. She slid off Bobo’s back, stretched her legs, and grabbed
her rifle. “One of you come with me. Let’s see what we can find over there.”

“I’ll go,” said Samm. He jumped off Buddy and followed Kira, catching up to her quickly
with long, easy strides. They clambered over a cement barrier, then another and another,
countless different roads and lanes and directions all running into and past and around
one another. “It’s a good plan,” he said.

Kira hoisted herself over another barrier. “The boat? Afa’s not an idiot.”

“I think I’ve been unfair to him.”

Kira grinned. “Don’t get all mushy over one good idea.”

“It’s not just that,” he said, “it’s everything. He’s been stronger than I expected.
Or more resilient, at least.” He followed her over the barrier.

Kira nodded absently, scanning the trees at the edge of the road. “He’s been through
a lot.”

“Eleven years alone,” said Samm, “running and hiding without anyone to help or share
it with. It’s no wonder his mind broke.” He shrugged. “He’s only human.”

Kira froze. “Wait,” she said, turning to face him. “You’re saying he’s . . . that
it’s okay that he’s crazy because he’s human?”

“I’m saying that he’s done much better for himself than a lot of humans would have,”
said Samm.

“But you think being human is a liability,” said Kira. “That being human somehow excuses
his deficiencies because hey, at least he’s not crapping in his pants all the time.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you meant,” said Kira. Is that what you thought about me? ‘She’s pretty
smart,
for a human
’?”

“You’re a Partial.”

“You didn’t know that.”

“We are engineered to be perfect,” said Samm. “We’re stronger and smarter and more
capable because we were built that way—I don’t see why it’s so bad to recognize it
out loud.”

Kira turned away and vaulted the last barrier, splashing down in the thin mud beyond.
“And you wonder why all the humans hate you.”

“Wait,” said Samm, following closely behind her. “What’s this really about? You don’t
normally get this angry.”

“And you don’t normally make sweeping racist statements about how stupid humans are.”

“Heron does,” said Samm. “You never bite her head off.”

She spun to face him. “So you should be allowed to hate us, too? Is that the problem—I’m
being unfair to you?”

“That’s not—” He stopped in midsentence. “Ah.”

“‘Ah’? What ‘ah’?”

“I see what this is about, and I apologize for bringing it up.”

“I told you what this is about. Don’t try to shift the blame anywhere but your own
perfectly engineered shoulders.”

“You keep calling the humans ‘us,’” he said softly. “You’re still identifying with
them.”

“Of course I’m identifying with them,” she said. “It’s called human empathy. That’s
what humans do, we identify with each other—we care about each other. Obviously Heron
has no heart whatsoever, but you, I thought, were different. You . . .” Her voice
trailed off. How could she explain the betrayal she felt when he talked like that
about people she loved? When he continued to not understand how horrible that kind
of attitude was? She turned away and started walking.

“I’m sorry,” he said behind her. “But Heron is right. You’re going to have to figure
out who you are.”

Kira threw her hands in the air, yelling back without turning around. “So I can ‘choose
a side’?” She was crying now, and the tears were hot on her cheeks.

“So you can be happy,” said Samm. “You’re tearing yourself in half.”

I
t took them an hour to find a boat, never talking to each other beyond simple monosyllables:
Here. There. No. It was a small motorboat, maybe twelve feet from stem to stern, mounted
on a trailer and packed into a backyard practically overflowing with trucks and off-road
vehicles. Kira walked around it, splashing in the shallow water, determining how it
was attached, how to unhook it, where they might be able to push a truck or break
a fence to get the thing out of the yard. There didn’t seem to be a way. She simmered,
still angry at Samm, but finally spoke without looking at him.

“I don’t think we can get it out.”

“I agree.” His voice was plain and unemotional, but he was always like that. Was he
as mad at her as she was at him? The thought that he might not be made her even angrier
than before.

“Whoever lived here was obviously an outdoorsman,” said Samm, glancing around at the
dirt bikes and camping trailers lying near the immovable boat. “He might have something
smaller in his garage.”

“Or
her
garage,” said Kira, immediately regretting the tone of petulance in her voice.
You can be mad at him without being an idiot, Kira.
She focused on the problem at hand, looking at the truck’s tires again, wondering
how far it would get if she tried to start it: The tires were flat, and the gas in
the tank was twelve years old, so if it started at all, it wouldn’t get far. To the
end of the street? The end of the driveway? They were only a block from the south
fork of the highway river; if they could just get that far, they could dump it in
and row it the rest of the way. She tried the door to the house, supposing that if
the owners were home when they died, the keys to the truck might be inside. The door
was locked, and she pulled her pistol to shoot off the lock when suddenly Samm emerged
from the garage, loudly banging a small metal rowboat against the door frame.

“There are oars inside,” he said, nodding back toward the garage.

“It’s kind of small.”

“It’s the best I could find,” said Samm, “I’m only a Partial.” There was no vitriol
in his voice as he said it, because there never was, but Kira felt a small surge of
anger that could have come from the link—or it could have come from her own raging
mind. Whether she felt it or not, he was clearly still thinking about their argument,
and the revelation gave her a joint thrill of anger and triumph. She forced herself
to keep a cool expression and went inside to get the oars.

By the time they made it back to the highway junction, first rowing and then carrying
the boat up the small incline, Heron and Afa were standing alone. “I tied up the horses
in the train yard,” said Heron.

“She made me get off my horse,” said Afa. “I hate that horse.”

“You should be glad to be rid of it, then,” said Kira. She looked at Heron pointedly.
“They’re safe?”

“I gave yours a gun just in case.”

“Perfect,” said Kira. “Ready to go?”

Heron glanced at Samm, then back at Kira, calculating silently. “What happened between
you two?”

“Nothing,” said Samm. Heron raised an eyebrow.

They slipped the boat back into the water, helping Afa in and positioning him carefully
in the center. The boat sank lower under his weight, but it held, and he clutched
his backpack tightly to his chest. “We need a bigger boat. I brought all our nacho
sauce.”

“Yum,” said Kira. She wanted to look at Samm, to see if he was rolling his eyes or
making some other outward sign of derision over Afa’s childlike behavior, but she
didn’t dare, and she knew he wouldn’t be anyway.

“It will get wet,” said Afa.

“We won’t let it get wet,” said Samm. They shoved the boat farther from the shallow,
inclined shore, and Heron and Kira piled in after Afa. They took the oars, and Samm
pushed them even farther out before getting in himself. He was wet to the waist, and
dripped and sloshed all over the bottom of the boat; Afa reached out dispassionately
to knock him back over the side, but Kira held him back. They settled in, kept their
weight as balanced as possible, and began to row.

The river grew deeper and deeper as they rowed out into it. The lines of cars, stopped
or crashed in their drivers’ last moments of life, looked like lines of squat brown
animals slowly wading into a watering hole: Here was one with just its front tires
wet; here was another with its engine submerged; here was one with its only the roof
and antenna poking up from the water. They rowed without speaking, the water lapping
at the edges of the boat, and soon even the diesel trailers and giant shipping trucks
were submerged, with only the very tops shining up through the water like steep metal
sandbars.

The edges of the river highway were lined with trees, tall and no longer limited by
human supervision; they had reclaimed backyards, parks, and even some portions of
the road. Every mile or so they passed under a bridge, the old roadways between one
side of the highway and the other, and often these were hung with moss and vines—not
kudzu, but something with smaller, darker leaves that Kira didn’t recognize. She plucked
one off as they glided beneath it, and she saw that it was waxy to the touch. She
rubbed it softly between her fingers, wondering what it was called, and dropped it
into the water.

The greater hazard below the bridges were the flocks of waterbirds that had taken
up residence there, streaking the concrete supports with yellow-white droppings. Under
the third bridge a roosting flock was disturbed by their passage and flew away, first
diving down before swooping away from the water and soaring high into the air. Afa
flailed at them, startled by the sight and sound of a hundred swarming birds, almost
toppling the boat, but Kira was able to calm him. She handed her oar to Samm and focused
her attention on keeping Afa mellow. The river was long, even longer than they had
expected, and Kira started to wonder how accurate their map had been. Right as she
was ready to turn them around, certain they’d somehow missed their turn, they passed
the ballpark Heron had seen on the map. Kira announced that they were close, and listened
and nodded reassuringly as Afa told her about the technical specs of the data center.

The road rose above the water only once, an overpass in the final interchange before
leaving the highway and entering the city. They carried the boat over it, scanning
the city as they did, and Kira pointed out the building she guessed was the data center—a
fat brick building with two square towers. They walked down the other side of the
overpass and got back in the boat, though they could only row for a few more blocks
before the depth became too inconsistent to bother. They waded the final mile, probing
the ground before them with sticks to keep from falling into any sudden sinkholes.
There were two, and they had to go a full block out of their way to avoid the second
one. When they arrived at the data center, Kira smiled proudly—it was the same building
she’d spotted from the hill. The water level reached almost to their knees, and Samm
looked up at the multistory building.

“I hope the computer you’re looking for isn’t on the first floor,” he said. “Or in
the basement.”

“I won’t know until we get them turned on,” said Afa, splashing toward the corner.
“The emergency generator should be outside somewhere. Find some paint thinner.”

Kira glanced at Samm, then immediately looked away, aiming her question at Heron instead.
“Paint thinner?”

Heron shook her head. “Maybe he’s doing some home improvement projects.”

Afa’s answer was lost as he walked around the corner of the building, and Kira and
the Partials hurried to catch up. “. . . breaks apart the resin,” he said. “It’s not
an effective long-term solution, because the fumes it puts out are toxic, but it’ll
get that motor running better than it has in twelve years.” He was back in lucid mode
again, perhaps more lucid and eager than she had ever seen him—here, in his element,
he was all genius with none of the child to slow him down. It made Kira, in contrast,
feel like the slow one.

“What are you talking about?” asked Kira, tapping the ground ahead nervously with
her stick as she raced to keep up.

“That,” said Afa, rounding the back corner of the building. Behind the data center
was a series of power poles, cables, and giant metal blocks, once painted gray but
now mottled with rust. He splashed up to the gate and wrestled with the locks. “We
need to get these started, at least one of them, and the best way is with paint thinner.”

“Let me do it,” said Heron, pulling a pair of thin metal prods from somewhere on her
belt. She inserted them in the lock on the fence, twisted them slightly, and the lock
popped open. Afa raced in, nearly losing his balance in the water. The metal blocks
were marked with various icons and labels and warnings. Even looking at them, Kira
wasn’t sure what they were for.

“This place was one of the biggest data centers in the world,” said Afa. “If it lost
power, half the planet lost their data. It pulled power from the overall power grid
like everybody else, but it had all these as backups—if anything happened to the main
grid, or even to one of these generators, there were ten other generators on site
to pick up the slack. They’re diesel-powered, so we just need to find the . . . I
don’t understand.” He sloshed off in another direction, and Kira read the labels on
the nearest metal block.

“These aren’t power generators,” she said, “they’re . . . cold generators?”

“It’s a cooling system for the data center,” Afa shouted. He splashed back, nearly
falling as he came. “I’ve never seen one this big. But where are the generators?”

“Let’s look inside,” said Heron, and they followed her in. The building was more ornate
than Kira expected, an older style of architecture done with brick and plaster and
wood paneling. Even the ceilings were vaulted. The first floor of the building was
just as flooded as the outside, thanks to the shattered glass and poor seals in the
doorways; it came just past their knees, and a coating of dust and debris floated
on the top of it like a crust. There were a few offices, but most of the floor was
taken up with a single giant room filled end to end with rows of computer towers—not
just screens, like the portable computer Afa carried with him, but giant bricks of
memory and processing power, each one taller and wider than Kira herself. The first
floor had hundreds, lined up like obelisks, bits of wire and insulation floating in
the water around them.