Orphan's Triumph

EIGHTEEN

WE DEPARTED THE ABE IN EARTH ORBIT, and our shuttle landed at Reagan, inside Greater Washington, but on the military side of the field. We arrived a day ahead of schedule, on purpose, so the receiving personnel weren’t expecting us. Howard wore civvies and insisted I do the same, also, so no one would notice our arrival with the most important POW in human history. Howard had a tarp stretched over the Ganglion, stenciled “rock samples,” so no one would notice. Maybe they wouldn’t, but they probably noticed the twenty plainclothes, assault-rifle-toting security Spooks that surrounded the “rock samples,” and the chain-gun equipped tilt-wing that hovered above them.

A Spook convoy met Howard and our prisoner and hustled them off to Fort Meade, so the interrogation could begin. I had my own agenda.

The Space Force staff sergeant at the disembarkation desk said, “We didn’t expect you, General. But I can call up a pool car and driver in a couple minutes.” I smiled at her. My first stop back here on Earth was personal, so I wasn’t entitled to a car at taxpayer expense, though VIPs in Washington rarely observed the demarcation. Besides, any infantryman who couldn’t carry his own duffel one lousy mile down a paved road might as well be a Squid. Or too old. I pointed out the window at the blue sky. “No, thanks. I’ve been away a long time. Looks like a nice day for an old infantryman to get reacquainted with home.”

Outside, the day was Potomac-July steamy, a welcome change from the “Nuclear Winter” that the Slug Blitz had brought, so long ago. Beyond the port’s fence, pure electrics, sleeker and silenter than the hybrids I coveted as a teenager, whooshed silently along the guideway. Behind the nose-to-tail, ninety-mile-per-hour river of autodrivers, trees had leafed out greener even than I remembered from childhood. The air smelled of deciduous forest in summer and triggered my childhood memories like Proust’s madeleine. I squinted against the sun, and my chest swelled. It was good to reacquaint with home.

Ten sweaty minutes down the perimeter road later, my duffel had gained twenty pounds. I was so reacquainted that I thumbed down an airfield-maintenance Elektruk. I tossed my duffel into the ’truk’s open back, climbed in alongside it, and got a dusty, windy lift across Reagan to the civilian terminal.

The Elektruk stopped in front of the car rental pavilion. I waved to the Trukker, then hopped over the tailgate. When I brushed dust off my sport jacket, the twenty-year-old sleeve split from the shoulder at the seam. I stood alongside my duffel, sweating and muttering on the sidewalk outside the civilian terminal, wiping sweat off my upturned hat’s inner band.

A middle-aged woman in a business suit clicked by in heels, toward the entrance. Her makeup was the color of new chalk, and her hair spiked like a turn-of-the-century goth. As she passed me, she tossed two coins into my hat.

I sighed and stared down at my vintage civvies. They looked fine to me.

I stepped into the terminal’s cool and was ten feet from the first of a dozen Hertz kiosks when the holotendant popped on and smiled. “Welcome, new Hertz customer! Please-”

“I’ve had an account for years.”

The holotendant turned a palm toward the thumbreader. “-Identify yourself.”

I pressed my sweaty thumb against the reader’s platen.

The holotendant’s smile replicated. “Welcome, new Hertz customer.”

“Yeah. I guess it’s been a while.” I commanded, “Create new account.”

Pause. She flickered as she smiled. “Your identity does not appear in the TWD. You must be in the TWD to create an account.”

I rolled my eyes. “What’s the TWD?”

The holo flickered into a professor wearing a Hertz-yellow mortarboard. “To register for the Tracking Waiver Database, please contact your local law-enforcement agency. Thank you for visiting Hertz.”

Professor Mortarboard vanished, and the kiosk darkened. I stepped back four paces, then forward. The kiosk flashed alive again and ran me through the same routine. I said, “I have to be in Pennsylvania by dinnertime. Look, I’m a lieutenant general-”

The kiosk winked dark again.

Behind the middle of the kiosk row was one single kiosk. The attendant seated there was either live or a theater-quality holo.

I walked to her, hat in hand, dropped my cloth duffel off my shoulder. Sweat dripped off the tip of my nose, and I panted. “Can you help me get to Pennsylvania?”

She was probably nineteen, as chalky and spiky as the businesswoman had been, and her eyes were downcast at a flatscreen from which canned laughter rippled. She looked me up and down, her eyes narrowed, and she pointed at the public-announcements flatscreen above baggage claim.

A message scrolled across the screen: “To assure a pleasant experience for Reagan InterUnion’s travelers, solicitation is prohibited on the terminal grounds.”

I tugged my torn jacket sleeve back up to my shoulder. “I’m not panhandling. I just haven’t rented a car in a long time.”

She eyed my dusty shoes. “Apparently.” But she flipped up a keyboard and poised her fingers above it. “Home address?”

“I don’t have one. At the moment. On Earth.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised.” She flipped the keyboard back down and whispered into the bud mike on her lapel.

Forty seconds later, a cop stepped alongside us. He cocked his head and read the name and rank stenciled on the duffel at my feet.

He turned to the girl as he pointed at me. “This is your vagrant?”

She shrugged, rolled her eyes, and waved her sitcom back up on her flatscreen.

The cop said to me, “How can I help you, General?”

“I need to rent a car. Personal business. But I’m not in this TWD thing, apparently.”

He nodded. “For a citizen to drive on a guideway, he has to waive his Thirty-eighth Amendment right of freedom from satellite tracking.”

I snorted. “What idiot would waive that right?” Even tracking off-duty soldiers’ dog-tag chips had been curtailed years ago.

He shrugged. “Every idiot who wants autodrive commuting. Which is all of us. Anyway, no waiver, no rental. And it takes a day to register in the database, sir.”

I sighed. If you sell poison cheap enough, democracy will find suicide an irresistible bargain. “I have to be in Pennsylvania tonight.”

The Hertz girl looked up. “I’m allowed to rent you a manual drive with no tracker. But you can only drive back roads. And the mobile recharge coverage costs extra, because nobody knows where you are.”

I smiled. “Actually, I’d prefer that.” But looking old and shabby didn’t make me an easy mark. “And I’ll decline the extra coverage.”

Her jaw dropped. “Nobody declines the mobile recharge coverage.”

“I do.”

She pointed at my wrist ’Puter. “If that’s not registered, I’m required to offer to rent you a temporary, so you can access the net.”

“And the temporary has a tracker?” I shook my head. “Just the car, thanks.”

She shrugged, then sighed, and a contract form appeared on her flatscreen. “Thumb here, here, and here.”

Four hours later, I sat behind the wheel of my rental car as it rolled to a silent stop on a dirt road somewhere in southeastern Pennsylvania.

The car slightly changed the whine it had been reciting for the past twenty miles. “My motive batteries are now fully depleted, except for emergency flasher power. If you have not already arrived at a charging station, mobile recharge is on the way. If you do not have prepaid mobile recharge service, you may purchase it on the net. Thank you for choosing Hertz.” The car shut down, and its flashing dash light turned from amber to red but kept winking.

I slammed my palms against the wheel, then exhaled and eyed the unconnected ’Puter on my wrist. I slid the door back manually, stepped out into the road, and surveyed my situation, hands on hips.

The country I could see was forested and silent but for insect drone. The only hints of the hand of man beyond the road itself were weathered, cut stumps amid the second-growth trees. I kicked a tire, cursed the car, cursed 2067 Earth, cursed the Hertz girl, and, finally and most appropriately, cursed my own stubborn stupidity.

According to the Navex, before it went Benedict Arnold on me with the rest of the car, the backside of my destination was just over the rise to my front, two hundred yards away. I stripped off my sport jacket, rolled up my shirtsleeves, lifted the first of my packages out of my duffel, then locked my duffel in the car.

Then I sighed and hiked up and over the rise. As predicted, a hundred yards past the rise’s crest, dull in the late slant of early-evening sun, I came to a locked metal farm gate astride the road, flanked by three-strand wire fencing. A metal sign on the gate read “National Historic Site. Authorized access only.”

I sighed, stepped to the gate, and swung a leg over.

A shadow flickered across my shoulders and forearms, then a tin voice above me said, “Halt and be recognized.”