Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 (30 page)

And there was a Crow raiding party, the sight stunning Soma motionless. “This only happens on television,” he said.

The caves and hills these Kentuckians haunted unopposed were a hundred miles and more north and east, across the shifting skirmish line of a border. Kentuckians couldn’t be here, so far from the frontier stockades at Fort Clarksville and Barren Green.

But here they definitely were, hopping and calling, scratching the gravel with their clawed boots, blinking away the rain when it trickled down behind their masks and into their eyes.

A Crow clicked his tongue twice and suddenly Soma was the center of much activity. Muddy hands forced his mouth open and a paste that first stung then numbed was swabbed around his mouth and nose. His wrists were bound before him with rough hemp twine. Even frightened as he was, Soma couldn’t contain his astonishment. “Smoke rope!” he said.

The squad leader grimaced, shook his head in disgust and disbelief. “Rope and cigarettes come from two completely different varieties of plants,” he said, his accent barely decipherable. “Vols are so fucking stupid.”

Then Soma was struggling through the undergrowth himself, alternately dragged and pushed and even half-carried by a succession of Crow Brothers. The boys were running hard, and if he was a burden to them, then their normal speed must have been terrifying. Someone finally called a halt, and Soma collapsed.

The leader approached, pulling his mask up and wiping his face. Deep red lines angled down from his temples, across his cheekbones, ending at his snub nose. Soma would have guessed the man was forty if he’d seen him in the Alley dressed like a normal person in jersey and shorts.

Even so exhausted, Soma wished he could dig his notebook and a bit of charcoal out of the daypack he still wore, so that he could capture some of the savage countenances around him.

The leader was just staring at Soma, not speaking, so Soma broke the silence. “Those scars”—the painter brought up his bound hands, traced angles down either side of his own face—“are they ceremonial? Do they indicate your rank?”

The Kentuckians close enough to hear snorted and laughed. The man before Soma went through a quick, exaggerated pantomime of disgust. He spread his hands, why-me-lording, then took the beaked mask off the top of his head and showed Soma its back. Two leather bands crisscrossed its interior, supporting the elaborate superstructure of the mask and preventing the full weight of it, Soma saw, from bearing down on the wearer’s nose. He looked at the leader again, saw him rubbing at the fading marks.

“Sorry,” said the painter.

“It’s okay,” said the Crow. “It’s the fate of the noble savage to be misunderstood by effete city dwellers.”

Soma stared at the man for a minute. He said, “You guys must watch a lot of the same TV programs as me.”

The leader was looking around, counting his boys. He lowered his mask and pulled Soma to his feet. “That could be. We need to go.”

It developed that the leader’s name was Japheth Sapp. At least that’s what the other Crow Brothers called out to him from where they loped along ahead or behind, circled farther out in the brush, scrambled from limb to branch to trunk high above.

Soma descended into a reverie space, sing-songing subvocally and supervocally (and being hushed down by Japheth hard then). He guessed in a lucid moment that the paste the Kentuckians had dosed him with must have some sort of will-sapping effect. He didn’t feel like he could open his head and call for help; he didn’t even want to. But
“I will take care of you,”
Athena was always promising. He held onto that and believed that he wasn’t panicking because of the Crows’ drugs, sure, but also because he would be rescued by the police soon.
“I will take care of you.”
After all, wasn’t that one of the Governor’s slogans, clarifying out of the advertising flocks in the skies over Nashville during Campaign?

It was good to think of these things. It was good to think of the sane capital and forget that he was being kidnapped by aliens, by Indians, by toughs in the employ of a rival Veronese merchant family.

But then the warchief of the marauding band was throwing him into a gully, whistling and gesturing, calling in all his boys to dive into the wash, to gather close and throw their cloaks up and over their huddle.

“What’s up, boss?” asked the blue-eyed boy Soma had noticed earlier, crouched in the mud with one elbow somehow dug into Soma’s ribs.

Japheth Sapp didn’t answer but another of the younger Crow Brothers hissed, “THP even got a bear in the air!”

Soma wondered if a bear meant rescue from this improbable aside. Not that parts of the experience weren’t enjoyable. It didn’t occur to Soma to fear for his health, even when Japheth knocked him down with a light kick to the back of the knees after the painter stood and brushed aside feathered cloaks for a glimpse of the sky.

There
was
a bear up there. And yes, it was wearing the blue and white.

“I want to see the bear, Japheth,” said a young Crow. Japheth shook his head, said, “I’ll take you to Willow Ridge and show you the black bears that live above the Green River when we get back home, Lowell. That bear up there is just a robot made out of balloons and possessed by a demon, not worth looking at unless you’re close enough to cut her.”

With all his captors concentrating on their leader or on the sky, Soma wondered if he might be able to open his head. As soon as he thought it, Japheth Sapp wheeled on him, stared him down.

Not looking at any one of them, Japheth addressed his whole merry band. “Give this one some more paste. But be careful with him; we’ll still need this vol’s head to get across the Cumberland, even after we bribe the bundle bugs.”

Soma spoke around the viscous stuff the owl-feathered endomorph was spackling over the lower half of his face. “Bundle bugs work for the city and are above reproach. Your plans are ill-laid if they depend on corrupting the servants of the Governor.”

More hoots, more hushings, then Japheth said, “If bundle bugs had mothers, they’d sell them to me for half a cask of Kentucky bourbon. And we brought more than half a cask.”

Soma knew Japheth was lying—this was a known tactic of neo-anarchist agitator hero figures. “I know you’re lying,” said Soma. “It’s a known tactic of—”

“Hush hush, Soma Painter. I like you—this you—but we’ve all read the Governor’s curricula. You’ll see that we’re too sophisticated for your models.” Japheth gestured and the group broke huddle. Out-runners ran out and the main body shook off cramps. “And I’m not an anarchist agitator. I’m a lot of things, but not that.”

“Singer!” said a young Crow, scampering past.

“I play out some weekends, he means; I don’t have a record contract or anything,” Japheth said, pushing Soma along himself now.

“Welder!” said another man.

“Union-certified,” said Japheth. “That’s my day job, working at the border.”

More lies, knew Soma. “I suppose Kentuckians built the Girding Wall, then?”

Everything he said amused these people greatly. “Not just Kentuckians, vol, the whole rest of the world. Only we call it the containment field.”

“Agitator, singer, welder,” said the painter, the numbness spreading deeper than it had before, affecting the way he said words and the way he chose them.

“Assassin,” rumbled the Owl, the first thing Soma had heard the burly man say.

Japheth was scrambling up a bank before Soma. He stopped and twisted. His foot corkscrewed through the leaf mat and released a humid smell. He looked at the Owl, then hard at Soma, reading him.

“You’re doped up good now, Soma Painter. No way to open that head until we open it for you. So, sure, here’s some truth for you. We’re not just here to steal her things. We’re here to break into her mansion. We’re here to kill Athena Parthenus, Queen of Logic and Governor of the Voluntary State of Tennessee.”

Jenny-With-Grease-Beneath-Her-Fingernails spread fronds across the parking lot, letting the high green fern leaves dry out before she used the mass to make her bed. Her horse watched from above the half-door of its stall. Inside the main body of the garage, Soma’s car slept, lightly anesthetized.

“Just enough for a soft cot, horse,” said Jenny. “All of us we’ll sleep well after this hard day.”

Then she saw that little flutter. One of the fronds had a bit of feather caught between some leaves, and yes, it was coal black, midnight blue, reeking of the north. Jenny sighed, because her citizenship was less faultless than Soma’s, and policemen disturbed her. But she opened her head and stared at the feather.

A telephone leapt off a tulip poplar a little ways down the road to Nashville. It squawked through its brief flight and landed with inelegant weight in front of Jenny. It turned its beady eyes on her.

“Ring,” said the telephone.

“Hello,” said Jenny.

Jenny’s Operator sounded just like Jenny, something else that secretly disturbed her. Other people’s Operators sounded like television stars or famous Legislators or like happy cartoon characters, but Jenny was in that minority of people whose Operators and Teachers always sounded like themselves. Jenny remembered a slogan from Campaign, “My voice is yours.”

“The Tennessee Highway Patrol has plucked one already, Jenny Healer.” The voice from the telephone thickened around Jenny and began pouring through her ears like cold syrup. “But we want a sample of this one as well. Hold that feather, Jenny, and open your head a little wider.”

Now, here’s the secret of those feathers. The one Jenny gave to the police and the one the cluenets had caught already. The secret of those feathers, and the feathers strung like look-here flags along the trails down from the Girding Wall, and even of the Owl feathers that had pushed through that fence and let the outside in. All of them were oily with intrigue. Each had been dipped in potent
math,
the autonomous software developed by the Owls of the Bluegrass.