Bob remembered. Those bright days on Atopia seemed endless. Carefree days he spent surfing with his friends, but he was always careful. He always kept a bloom of plankton nearby that he could summon up out of the depths, millions of tiny creatures that could, together, support his body if he was sucked into the depths.
“Call to them,” urged the priest.
Bob felt his mind spreading, his consciousness skimming the tops of the sand dunes. He tried calling out for help, but there was no response.
The priest was cradling him in his arms. “Let go and call again.”
Bob’s mind sank further, seeping into the desert floor. And then a tiny reflection, a small chirp in the vastness of mindspace, followed by another. And then a roar.
“You see? They come, they hear you.”
Bob opened his eyes. He saw only the burning eyes of the priest nested deep in the creases of his face. Bob’s mind was thundering now, but around them it was quiet, just the hiss of the sand in the wind.
The priest smiled. “Wait.”
Something fluttered in Bob’s peripheral vision. He turned his head. An insect circled and then dropped, landing on his arm. It stared at him, its antennae waving, it wings flexing. It was tan, with long legs, and looked like a grasshopper. A desert locust. It continued to stare at Bob, bending its hind legs to preen its wings. Bob turned to see another locust land on the sand next to him, and then another. Soon a cloud of them were buzzing around him and the priest.
Over the tops of the dunes, a murmur grew into a roar, and as the swarm descended upon them, Bob felt the relief of the sun finally dimming. His initial revulsion was replaced by joy at the sweet coolness of the insects’ wings on his skin. The swarm enveloped Bob, tens of thousands of them digging beneath him. At their urging, he rose up out of the sands on a writhing mass. Up, up, they pushed him, the swarm rising with his body, and then became airborne, carrying Bob’s body into the sky, westwards, toward the beating heart of central Africa.
22
Spanish moss hanging from the live oaks swayed in the breeze, and a woman, leaning over a crashed drone, looked up. Insects were buzzing, swarming, in the muggy late afternoon heat. Looking around again, the woman rolled up her sleeves and gripped a wrench between her teeth. She ducked her head into the access hatch of the drone.
At the edge of the water nearby, Vince peered around the trunk of an oak. He was caked in mud, soaked, after pulling himself through the bayou. “Connors?” he called out.
The woman’s head shot back out of the access hatch, and she grabbed the wrench from her teeth, brandishing it as a weapon as she turned. She squinted. “Vince?”
Nodding, Vince hobbled out of the water and started across the grass. The drone Connors was working on had crashed next to an old barn. A rusted propane tank sat beside it, its green paint peeling as if it were a slow-motion chameleon blending into the forest.
Vince stopped and tried to shake off some of the mud. “Yeah, it’s me.”
Hotstuff was walking beside him, her virtual projection as pristine as Vince was filthy. She rolled her eyes. “See, I told you we should have gone around.”
“I wanted to find her,” Vince replied in a hushed voice. “Why don’t you make yourself scarce, see if you can log into that drone?” He pointed at the wrecked mess Connors was working on. It must have been damaged in the attack.
“Sure thing, boss.” Hotstuff sashayed up across the grass and faded from view.
“I’m still plugged into your proxxi channels.” Connors shook her head. “I can hear you talking.” She turned from squatting on the turbofan air intake and hopped down to ground level. “So what happened to you?”
If she was happy to see him, Vince had a hard time seeing it. He plucked a piece of mud from his cheek. “Had to wrestle a ‘gator or two back there coming through the swamp—”
“I mean when they took you? Where did they take you?”
“Some voodoo ceremony.”
Connors smiled. “And did they stick any pins in you?”
Vince smiled back. So she was glad to see him. “Naw, they left that for you.” He paused. “I met Sintil8.”
Of course Connors knew who this was, but she surprised Vince by turning around to return to the drone. He closed the last few feet and leaned against the airframe. “Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?”
Connors had half of her body inside the access hatch. “Pass me the knife.” She reached out one arm. “And no, I’m not going to ask, not unless you tell me the truth.”
Vince spotted a blade with tape wrapped around it. He handed it to her. “I’m telling you the truth. He wanted to know what we were doing here.”
“Uh-huh.” Connors grabbed the knife and leaned further into the drone casing. “Mikhail Butorin doesn’t just talk to anyone. Why the hell would he want to talk to you?”
“Aren’t you happy I made it out?”
“I don’t think it’s any coincidence.”
“What? That you’re happy?”
Even from inside the cowling Vince could hear her snort. “No, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that you made it out, or that you magically found me here.” She pulled herself from the access hatch and stared at Vince. “I’m getting the feeling that I’m a pawn in something”—she shook the blade at Vince—“and I don’t like it.”
They stared at each other.
“I’ve already told you what this is about. Trying to find my friend Willy’s body.”
“And why would Mikhail have any interest in that?”
“Because…” Vince took a deep breath, wondering how much he should tell her. “Because Willy’s proxxi found out something about Jimmy Scadden, maybe enough to derail the entire Atopian program.”
Connors’ eyes narrowed. “And what was it that this proxxi found out?”
“We don’t know, that’s why we’re searching for him.” He looked at the drone. “What are you planning on doing with that?”
Tapping her knife against the aluminum shell, Connors stared at Vince. “You expect me to believe that we just crash-landed next to New Orleans, and you randomly met with Butorin who just happened to be looking for the same thing you are?”
Vince shrugged. “Okay, it was me who contacted him. I thought he might be able to help us.”
Connors smiled. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She uploaded some schematics into Hotstuff. A three-dimensional model of the drone appeared floating in space between them. “This one is Alliance military hardware; I’ve got all the tech-specs. Should be able to rewire it for manual control, get us out of here.”
“Need some help?” Vince asked. Hotstuff was already helping Connors on the software side.
She grabbed a wrench and shook her head. “My brothers and I used to rebuild these all the time when we were kids.” Turning, she stuck her head back into the access panel. “Why don’t you go and see about some shelter in that barn.” She pointed with the arm that wasn’t in the access hatch. “Get cleaned up. There’s some water purification tabs I scrounged, some food.”
A light rain started falling, and it looked like worse was on the way. Shelter was a good idea. Vince started up a private comm network with her while he walked to the barn. “Brothers? I didn’t know you had brothers.”
In the shared space that he’d opened up, she replied, “You never asked.”
The barn was in the process of being reclaimed by the encroaching swamp, and the knotted arms of wisteria vines engulfed it, dragging it back into the embrace of the earth. Vince kicked clumps of grass and weed away from the bottom of one door and pulled it, hearing the crack of rotten wood as it opened. “You’re right, I don’t know anything about you. Are you religious, Connors?” Inside it was dim, and his visual systems switched to low-light imaging. The interior was piled with junk—discarded aluminum furniture with legs sticking out, a rusted claw-foot bathtub, jumbled piles of wood. Vince stooped to pick up the body of a plastic doll, and then spotted its head nearby and picked that up as well. He tried reattaching them.