Revolution World (12 page)

Max and Kalliope made plans for a group martial arts class while everyone else started cleaning up.

"Welcome to the neighborhood," Clio sighed as she helped pick up some of the mess.

"Thanks for coming," Seth said with shining eyes. Only the presence of so many others kept him from twirling her in the air like a princess and promising her the moon.

Clio shrugged and smiled, "It was nothing."

"Got us out of Sunday brunch with the family," Kalliope interjected, picking up bits of broken door. "Mother is a terrible cook."

"I've been eating those repulsive waffles every Sunday for over a quarter of a century," said Clio with a shudder.

"I think she actually puts cement in them," muttered Kalliope. She was sad that she had missed her chance to take apart one of the weapons. She brightened as she inspected the construction of the Omerta facility.

"Wow, you guys are really tossing this place up. Is that bacterial concrete you are using?" she asked. Seth broke out of the trance he'd been in, watching Clio.

"What? Oh yes. And of course layered solar panels and wind turbines on the roof. We have a small nuclear generator, but we need every scrap of energy we can get for those servers," he replied.

Thalia walked back in. "Did you hear the government snatched Ed Martinez over in Driftwood? Happened just last night!" she cried.

Kalliope swore fiercely and stalked out the door with Thalia close behind her.

"Too bad you couldn't allow a little more natural light," Clio said as she followed her sisters out. The complex was completely enclosed under a large roof that extended twenty feet past the building in every direction. "Even with these fluorescents, it's like a cave in here."

"We use special light bulbs here to improve the efficiency of the cooling system, but we programmers are used to the dark." Seth replied.

"You'll have to give us a tour sometime," Clio said with a smile.

"Not today, though," Max declared rejoining them as Seth's dad waved goodbye and his hologram winked out. "Or Gloria will use my skull for a soup bowl."

"Oh, sure." Clio said. "We had a break-in a few months ago ourselves, so I know how paranoid you are afterwards. I was ready to hook ants up to lie detectors for weeks."

"Did you ever find out who did it?" Seth asked.

"No, but we're pretty sure they had inside help. You guys should think about that too. Maybe the DARPA guys were working with an informer," she replied as the girls made their goodbyes and headed for the door.

"Oh, we are going to think about a lot of things," Seth muttered as he watched them go.

CHAPTER NINE

S
eth violently threw down his VR gloves. He almost picked them up and threw them down again, just for emphasis. He felt like throwing things right now. "I can't believe she stood me up," he cried in frustration. Max smirked. "The path to love is never smooth."

"You shut up," Seth replied. He fidgeted for a minute in a frustrated way. Then he pulled up some work on a screen. He tried to tell himself he could just get some work done since Clio had totally forgotten that she was supposed to meet him online to play Revolution World tonight. Max watched him from the couch with a bemused smile.

Of course women forgot him. He was just a boring nerd. Seth wondered if there was a vat or two of liquor around he could drown himself in. He should probably do something more socially correct, like spend a few hours down in the exercise room, practicing his martial arts.

He wondered if Clio was off with Jason Schmidt, the designer of Revolution World. He'd met Jason once and remembered thinking at the time how handsome and charismatic the man was. Now Seth realized that the world could do with fewer handsome, charismatic single men.

"A rose without thorns would not smell as sweet," offered Max. He had been hanging around for the last half hour, snacking on nuts and offering bad dating advice.

Seth ignored him and proceeded to write horrible code for the next ten minutes. Max watched him for a while before losing patience.

"Why don't you just call her?" he asked.

"Why should I? It's no big deal. She is obviously too busy to play with me tonight," Seth shrugged a bit too hard.

"Right. So there's no reason not to call her up and make sure she's alright," Max replied.

Seth thought on this. The more he thought, the more sense it made. Perhaps she just got overwhelmed at work. Or maybe there was something wrong with her home equipment. That could certainly happen. Maybe he'd call and she'd need help.

He saw himself going over to her house bearing food and tools, rescuing her from the horrors of a bad satellite connection. She'd fall into his arms with gratitude. Seth recalled the many nights that Max escorted lovely ladies around town while Seth had stayed home alone, playing computer games and eating junk food. Max clearly knew more about women.

"Maybe I should check on her," Seth said cautiously. He wondered if the Omerta on-site chef was still awake. Their chef did not suffer after-hours requests gladly. He tended to require elaborate bribes. But Seth knew his limitations and food preparation was one of them. Maybe instead of having to promise his first-born child to their chef, he could just stop at one of the local cafes. He was already reaching for his keys when Max responded.

"Have you seen Harmony lately?"

Seth paused. "No. Why?"

"Oh, no reason. Interesting family," Max replied, turning to a screen to call up a few mathematical constructs. Seth eyed his uncle. They were over twenty years apart in age, but Seth had always felt as though Max were the older brother he would never have. And right now, he was acting suspiciously.

"Have
you
seen Harmony lately?" Seth asked Max deliberately.

"Oh you know. Here and there. Now and then. She's a very busy woman." This last part he said wistfully. Max had been gently tweaking a rotating representation of a fourth dimensional differential equation, but now he paused to stare off into nothing like a lovesick teenager.

"I thought you were interested in the engineer one. Kalliope?" Seth replied.

"What?" Max replied shortly. "God, no. Cute for a girl her age, but no." He toyed with a set of nonlinear variables like a cat might toy with a bit of string after it had eaten a bucket of fish. More because he felt he should than because he really wanted to.

Did Max have a crush on Clio's mother? Seth decided that while torturing his favorite uncle would be very entertaining in a revolting sort of way, he had much more important business at hand.

Less than an hour later, he was on Clio's doorstep with a bag full of steaming Indian food, feeling like a fool. The house was pitch black. She was obviously not here, even if her scooter was parked right out front.

He called her for the hundredth time.

"I'm on your doorstep with curry," he sent. He waited for a bit, listening to cicadas buzz eerily and swatting as mosquitoes circled him like buzzards at a hit-and-run. He sighed and gave up.

She had really forgotten him. She didn't care. She was probably out having a fabulous time with her friends. Her muscular and attractive man friends. He was an idiot to believe a woman might care for him. He left the containers of food on her doorstep and trudged back to his car. Halfway there, he heard a rustling in the bushes. He turned to look as something burst out of the underbrush and headed toward him.

Reflexively, he delivered a perfect open-handed strike to the head area. He was pretty pleased about that since he hadn't been practicing much lately. Then he realized the head was covered in blond curls and emitting a very feminine shriek.

"Damn it! That was cool. I mean, it hurts like hell, but how are you so fast?" Clio said. Her voice was muffled because she had fallen backwards into a bush and was fumbling back to her feet.

"Oh holy Christ on a stick!" Seth cried. It was no wonder women didn't like him, he thought despondently. His natural impulse was to smack them around. He was born a monster and should not be allowed in polite society.

"Can you teach me to do that?" she wanted to know, rubbing her forehead.

"Uh. Well. Actually, we've arranged weekly sessions with our martial arts instructor for the Junior League at the Omerta campus," Seth babbled. "Remotely, of course. Max has been going to their guns class and wanted to reciprocate. You could join us."

He looked at her. Clio was filthy. She had dirt smeared on her face and twigs in her hair. She was wearing some sort of military camouflage with night-vision goggles pushed up on her forehead and combat boots. She was so beautiful.

"That will probably bruise," he said miserably. Clio wiped her nose and shrugged, fiddling with some sensors on her wrist.

"Whatever. Look, sweetheart, this isn't this best time. Maybe we could get together for dinner or a gaming session sometime? I'd love that," she looked at him with that heart-melting smile of hers.

"We were supposed to do that tonight," he blurted out before he realized it. There was something about her that made him tell the truth, despite his better judgment.

She looked at him for a long minute before she remembered.

"Oh no."

She saw the little cartons of food on the porch and her face fell.

"Oh crap."

"It's OK," he rushed to say. "Really. You are busy doing, uh, something. I understand."

He tried to soothe her even as he backed towards his car, his heart breaking a little with every step.

"No. Wait," she said. "Wait."

There was another rustling movement in the bushes. Clio turned to focus on it. And then the biggest, scariest bunny Seth could imagine popped out of the bushes. Seth thought he'd seen everything on the globenet, but nothing prepared him for the total horror that was a rabbit the size of a bicycle with fangs like fence-posts.

"Ah, crap," said Clio.

She raised her arm and fired off a series of little popping projectiles. The rabbit monster shrieked and flailed. Seth found himself in his car with the doors locked. He was pretty sure he'd screeched like a small child on his way to the car. Not his best day ever. Clio bent over the still form of the animal, then straightened up and plunged into the scrubby Hill Country undergrowth. Seth was reminded of every action-movie hero honey he'd ever watched.

Seth waited for a long minute before deciding he was acting like a sissy boy. He got out and looked at the beast on the ground. After a moment, he rolled it over, cringing at the enormous claws and fangs. It was asleep, not dead. So he followed Clio. He'd wondered whether or not these were test subjects escaped from her labs or some new horror. He'd heard the wildlife was bigger here, but this was ridiculous.

*****

Clio couldn't believe Seth was here to see her dressed like G.I. Jane. It was so horribly embarrassing. As soon as she rounded up the last of these rabbits, she would find a nice hole to crawl in and die.

"Look, this really isn't a good time," she whispered to him as her wrist sensors pulsed gently. They were watching several hulking rabbit shadows sedately munch on bushes. Seth didn't reply. She just knew that he was so repulsed by her appearance right now, he didn't even want to look at her.

"They aren't mean," she began. "Well, alright, they are a wee bit mean and vicious. And they breed like, well, rabbits. Our local ecosystem can't deal with an incursion of this, uh, magnitude," Clio whispered again, her eyes on the beasts. She really couldn't imagine a scenario that was worse than this one. "If this wasn't a problem that I created, do you think I would be out here in the mud and the bugs when I could be at home flirting with the most interesting guy I've ever met?" she rambled.

Clio straightened up suddenly, realizing what she just said. She looked at Seth. He gave her a goofy grin. Why, oh why, did she always say the dumbest things?

That's when she realized that the rabbits in the field were a diversion. A second group of rabbits attacked.

It was like Clio flipped to automatic pilot. She began aiming and firing rapidly. In the back of her mind, she sobbed helplessly as she watched three huge beasts leap towards Seth. She had put down four. She quickly reloaded her sedation gun and looked for Seth. Seth was fighting and he was fighting well. What a man.

All her life, she realized she had been thinking of her romantic partners as boys. Seth was a man, a man worth fighting for. But how would he ever make it through this? She tried not to think as she systematically took down more of the attacking animals. After what seemed like hours but could only have been a few minutes, she stopped. No more rabbits attacked. Clio realized she was kneeling on the ground surrounded by bunny bodies, gasping for breath.

Where was Seth? She stumbled towards where she'd seen him last, quietly letting sobs shake her to the core. There he was, lying on his back under a pile of twitching rabbit corpses. She collapsed next to him and drew him into her lap as gently as she could. He was as still as death. Oh no.

Clio wiped the blood off his face as she cradled him in her lap. She held him to her gently, quietly sobbing.

CHAPTER TEN

"W
hy the hell did you make mutant huge rabbits?" Seth asked into her chest. He quite liked where he was, but Seth had begun to feel like a pervert, letting her hold him like this.

Clio shrieked and flung herself away from him.

"Seriously. Didn't you ever watch
Night of the Lepus
? Huge bunnies are always bad news," he continued, slowly getting to his feet and wiping blood off his face.

There was an awkward silence.

"Well," Clio said briskly, "I think that's all of them." She grabbed a rabbit by its ears and started dragging it back to the house.

Later, after they'd rounded up the bodies and had showers, they warmed up the Indian food and had a very late dinner.

"Sorry about the lack of warm water in the shower," Clio apologized, "My generator has been out. Kalliope was supposed to come by and replenish the bacteria on the chlorophyll battery, but I guess she forgot."

"Don't worry about it," Seth replied, munching on
naan
bread and
saag paneer
. He had taken at least three showers to get the bunny gore out and didn't care how cold the water was.