Pennsylvania Omnibus (6 page)

He was beginning to breathe heavily from the exertion, and
was still struggling with his equilibrium.  Dawn kept a hand on his shoulder to
steady him as they ran.  They rounded another corner, and in the distance Jed
could see the check-in area, and beyond that, the entry doors.  He was shocked
at how similar this terminal was to the one back on Earth. 
Maybe they had
the same people build it
, he thought.

Dawn pulled him into a small administrative alcove, and he
bent over to put his hands on his knees and draw in deep breaths of the stale
air.  Alien air. 
I’m on another planet
, he thought. 
I guess
I’m
 the alien, though.

“I hope you guys aren’t planning on blowing this popsicle
stand without me,” a voice said, and Dawn snapped to attention.

The man whose voice they heard was just rounding the
corner to enter the alcove when Dawn stepped forward and drove her elbow
surprisingly hard into the man’s face.

The man was big.  Very big.  He dropped to one knee and
his hand came up to his face.  Dawn braced herself against the wall and kicked
hard at his head, but this time he was ready and he caught her leg and tossed
her easily to the ground.

“What is wrong with you, lady?” the man said.  He was
bleeding from his nose, and his eyes narrowed as he tried to focus through his
blurry vision.  When his hand dropped from his face, Jed recognized him.  It
was Jerry Rios.

Dawn was back on her feet and Jed could tell that she was
ready to resume her attack, but he stepped in between her and Jerry and put his
hands up, palms out, to convince her to stop.

“This is my friend,” he said.  “This is Jerry.  He was
arrested at the same time I was back in West Texas.”

Dawn lowered her hands and rolled her eyes.  She exhaled
deeply, pursed her lips and shook her head before stepping past both Jed and
Jerry to sneak a look back down the concourse to see if anyone was coming or
had seen them.

“You guys were never in West Texas,” she said.  “Are you
ready?”

Dawn spoke matter-of-factly, with no hesitation or
indication that she might have second thoughts.  “Okay, from here on in we
walk.  Do not run.  Walk quickly and act like you belong here.”  As she talked,
Dawn examined the flat muscled area above her elbow that she’d used to hit
Jerry in the face.  Seeing that there were no lacerations, she rubbed it before
looking back up.  Jerry watched her do this and snarled as he checked his own
nose to see if it was broken.

“Sorry about that,” Dawn said.

“Sure,” Jerry replied.

“Okay, pay attention,” she continued.  “If anyone says
anything to you or asks you to stop, you keep walking.  Mutter something like
you don’t understand them, but keep walking.  We’re looking for a man named
Donavan.  Do not stop until we run into Donavan.  Any other name on the tag, I
don’t care who it is, you do not stop!  Got it?”

“Donavan,” Jerry said.  “Got it.”

Before Jed could say “Got it,” which he dearly wanted to
say, Dawn had already turned the corner and was gone.  Jerry and Jed had to
walk hurriedly to catch up with her.

“We’re going to turn left up here,” she said, “then
another quick left through a doorway.  Someone will probably say something to
us there, but keep walking.”

“How do you know all of this?” Jed asked.

“I’ve been here before.”

They turned to the left, and then Dawn headed immediately
toward a door marked
Staff Only
.  The door had a push bar release, and
just as Dawn punched open the door, Jed heard a voice to his right say “Wait a
minute!”  Jed scampered through the door and saw that Dawn and Jerry had turned
right after entering the hallway, and were walking at a fast clip toward
another distant door.

Jed heard the door swing open behind him, then footsteps. 
Voices, one male and one female, shouted, “Sir!  Sir!  I need you to stop!” 
Jed didn’t stop.  He caught up with Jerry and Dawn and he could hear the
footfalls behind him speeding up and they were catching him just as the trio of
travelers reached the far door.

“Sir!  All of you!  All three of you!  We’re going to need
you to stop and come back to the desk!”

A hand reached up and grabbed Jed by the shoulder just as
the door swung open and a uniformed man stepped through. 
Donavan
was on
the man’s nametag.

Donavan recognized Dawn and looked past Jed toward the two
staff members who had just reached him.

“Okay, you two.  Back to work.  I’ll take care of this. 
Thank you for your diligence,” Donavan said with authority.

“But sir!”

“Back to work.  I’ll take care of this.”

Before Jed could fully process what was going on, the
three had been shuffled past the second door and they were walking through a
heavily fortified parking lot toward a waiting Transport Authority minivan.

“You barely made it, Dawn,” Donavan said.  He guided the
vehicle through a maze of heavy concrete barricades, and Jed could hear distant
explosions.  Fantastic beams of light sped by overhead like ethereal shots
fired from nearby cannon, and when the explosions were close, the ground would
shake, and night turned into day all around them.  “And I was expecting two of
you, not three.  This’ll cost you more.”

“How much more?” Dawn asked.

“I don’t know.  Seven total.”

“Seven hundred thousand unilets?  Have you lost your
mind?”

“I could take you back and you can work it out with
Transport… if that’s what you want.”

Dawn was quiet for a few beats.  “We’ll make it work…
somehow,” she replied.

An explosion off to the right, on the other side of the
concrete barricade, shook the van violently.  Jed looked at Jerry, and with
their eyes they asked one another,
What have we gotten into?

“How many unilets do you have left?” Dawn asked Jed under
her breath.

“Let me see,” he said.  “Five hundred ninety-eight
thousand… minus the one hundred thousand from the flight…  Four hundred ninety
eight thousand.  And that will make me completely broke.”

“We’re all broke,” Dawn whispered to him.  Then she
gestured toward Donavan.  “He just doesn’t know that unis will be worthless
real soon.”

“I have just a bit over one hundred thousand unis,” Jerry
added.

Dawn reached forward and tapped Donavan on the shoulder. 
“Six!” she said loudly.  “We have six.  You’ll have to take that, Donavan.
 It’s all we can get.”

“Six?  You’re kidding me, right?  The price was three for
one
person, and you want me to move three people for six?  What do you
think this is, some cut-rate BICE shop?”

“They’ll only have to cut two of us, Donavan.  The Plain
kid doesn’t have an implant.”

“I only have a TRID, not a BICE,” Jerry added.  He looked
at Jed and shrugged.  He didn’t know if it would help in the negotiations, but
it couldn’t hurt.

Donavan shook his head and pounded the console with his
hand.

“Unbelievable.  So now you have me doing discount hack
work!  Okay.  Okay.  Listen, lady.  I’m going to do it, but you owe me, do you
hear me, Dawn?  You owe me big!”

“Okay!  Sheesh.  Settle down, Donavan.  You’re making six
for driving us a few blocks.  Think of it that way.”

This little response inflamed Donavan all the more. 
“Driving you a few blocks?  Driving you a few blocks?  Is that what you think
this is?  I just secured three
criminals
from a secure facility in the
middle of a major enemy offensive… all at the risk of my own neck, don’t you
know!”  He exhaled loudly and struck the console again with the flat of his
hand.  “Driving you a few blocks!  Wow!”  He turned to Dawn and pointed at
her.  “You owe me big, Dawn. 
Big!
”

Dawn rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Yes, Donavan.  I owe you big.  Are we there yet?”

Indeed, Dawn did owe Donavan.  She
owed him even more after they arrived at the underground BICE chop shop, and
Dawn discovered that Jed had hidden the gold coin in his pod.  This little fact
triggered another loud argument between Dawn and Donavan.  In the end, after
Dawn admitted that this time, she really, really,
really
owed him
big-time
, Donavan agreed to go back to the station for the coin.  Jed
told him precisely where it was, and Donavan wrote down the pod number on a
piece of paper so he could remember it.

There was one last argument when Dawn told Donavan that
she wasn’t going to pay him the six hundred thousand unis until he returned
with the coin, but this time the hostility storm blew in fast and didn’t last
long.  Jed heard Donavan curse under his breath as he left.

Dawn went under the knife first.  Removing a BICE was a
complicated but minor operation, and they only used some form of local
anesthetic.  Jed and Jerry sat against a far wall, and the operation took place
in the middle of an expansive room and not in any kind of specialty operating
theater.  A slice was made along the hairline at the rear of the neck, and the
BICE unit was removed with practiced precision. 
They’ve done this
before
, Jed noted.

Jed and Jerry talked during Dawn’s operation, but there
wasn’t too much they could say.  All they had were questions, and there weren’t
many answers to those questions available to them.  They were both just glad to
be alive, and no matter how bad it was here, they both agreed that it had to be
better than if they’d been sent to Oklahoma.  At least now they had a lifeline,
however tentative it might be.

Jerry went to the operating table next, but before he did,
Dawn instructed him on how to transfer the unis from his TRID to Jed’s
wristband.  Once the unis were on the band, Jerry headed to the table and Dawn
filled Jed in on some of the things that were happening—or at least, what he
could expect to happen next.  TRID removal was a lot easier than removing a
BICE, Dawn told him, and it wasn’t nearly as dangerous.  Being
caught
without a TRID was what was dangerous.

She told Jed that she hadn’t expected to come on this
trip, even right up to the moment when she’d given him the note and the coin. 
Coming along was a last-minute exigency that she’d have to explain in greater
detail later.

They needed the gold to get into the Amish Zone.  Getting
to the AZ meant that they would have to travel safely through the battle that
currently raged all around them in this new world, and there was only one man
Dawn knew who could accomplish such a thing.  That man was her cousin.  Pook
Rayburn.

A harrowing walk of a few blocks through a darkened city
under siege brought them to Pook’s place of business.  From all appearances,
Merrill’s Grocery Supply was mostly a bombed-out shell of its former self. 
Broken crates of canned and packaged groceries and kitchen supplies were
scattered helter-skelter around the place, and Jed was surprised when they
found Pook Rayburn himself still working at his desk in his second-floor
office.

“What in the world happened here?” Dawn asked, as she gave
her cousin a hug.

“Which world?”  Pook replied with a wink.  “
We
happened here.  We—that is,
the resistance
—happened.  It’s a major
offensive.  This is the closest they’ve ever come to the City.  I barely
learned about it in time to warn you.  I’m glad you made the trip.  There
probably won’t be any more after yours.”

“It’s that bad?”

“For now it is.”  Pook placed a file he’d been looking at
back on his desk and sat down, indicating that the rest of them should sit down
too.

Jed was surprised to notice that there were no computers,
no electronic devices anywhere to be seen.  Jerry must have noticed the same
thing, because he leaned over to Jed and whispered to him.  “Apparently the
resistance is purely analog… like you folks in the Amish!”

Pook overheard the jest and smiled.  “All of this,” he
pointed to the paperwork and files on his desk, “this all has to do with my
legitimate business.  Everything else, I keep up here,” he said, pointing to
his head.  “Anything digital can be traced and tracked.  A lot of things that
are
not
digital can be traced and tracked.  We try to avoid leaving a
signature anywhere, but…” He hesitated a moment before speaking again.  “…But
as this war develops, it seems that there are no guarantees about anything.  I
suppose uncertainty is always the product of any war…”  Pook looked up and
appeared to decide against whatever it was he had been going to say.

“How did the trip go?” Pook asked.

“Not bad when you consider how bad it could have been,”
Dawn said with a sigh.  “Things have obviously gone downhill since I was here
last.  The biggest road bump was when Jed here and his new friend Jerry got
pinched by Transport for insurrectionist conversations during their
holo-trip.”

Pook looked at Jed and nodded his approval, as if he were
impressed.  Jed responded silently by pointing at Jerry.

“That’s a story you’ll have to tell me later.”  Pook
looked at his cousin. “Do you have the gold to get yourself into the AZ?”

“Donavan had to go back and get it from the station.”

“Donavan?” Pook snorted with obvious dissatisfaction.

“Jed thought he was busted, and he hid the gold in the
seat of his pod.”

Pook nodded again.  “Okay… well… Jed here is a thinker. 
I’ll give him that, for sure.  How do we know Donavan won’t skedaddle with the
gold?”

“I told him I wasn’t paying for the exfil or the BICE
removal until he shows up with the gold.”