Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

“You think that?” says Elvis. “Closing in? That’s amusing, sir. Very amusing.”

“I don’t see you laughing.” Garnett slips his hands under the silvery bag, fingers moving.

Elvis has no really useful assets on hand. The drone swarm is already dying. Another couple hours and they’ll be nothing but decaying components, near indistinguishable from ordinary dead bugs. His heavy units are fixed, providing security for the Hotel structure itself. Of course he’s long ago infiltrated and suborned other security fixtures around the remnants of the city, but by good luck or worse, good planning, Garnett has set himself up out of range of all of them. It’s going to take at least another minute before one of the armed drones makes the distance. Time to stall.

“Those losers you got with you,” he says, pushing the membranes to raise the volume even though it makes his voice come out weird, tinny, kind of robotic. “They won’t get you in. You ain’t got nearly what it takes.”

“That’s okay,” says Garnett, not looking up. “They don’t have to. We just have to find your place, that’s all. Then I call in the professionals and these fine young men collect their promised and well-earned rewards before going back home to a hero’s welcome.” Garnett’s raising his voice too, and Elvis can see several of his men following the conversation with interest.

Change of tactic. “What’d he promise you? Money? I got money. Real money. Old style USA money if you want it. Gold and silver too.” Elvis shifts his image to look at the men with Garnett, throwing in a few superfast subliminal images as well—naked women, gleaming sports cars, gold coins. It can’t hurt.

One of the men—a youngster with a spray of pimples under the desert sunburn—moves uneasily, but Garnett cuts in first. “Family,” he says. “Back east, where you can’t get at them. These gentlemen do their jobs, and not only do they get the promised reward, but certain things happen in favor of their families. Important things. Things they can’t get in any other way. There’s no raccoon up that tree for you.” He frowns, and glances across at Elvis’s image. “What’s that godawful racket you’re making, boy?”

The old membranes are growling and whining now, distorting Elvis’s voice. “Old installation,” he says. “The maintenance staff ain’t what they used to be, you know?” The fact that the noise itself conveniently conceals the whine of a drone engine is another matter.

Garnett chuckles. “You can say that again.” He turns his attention back to the transmitter unit just as the AP drone pops over the top of the 7-11 building on the corner and puts two heavy rubber rounds through the delicate transmitter aerial, blasting it into uselessness.

As the men scatter and dive for their weapons, Elvis puts two more rounds into the transmitter unit itself, then sprays the campsite, the bullets bouncing and whining and kicking up dust. The drone is empty in less than a second, and he dispatches it back to base before Garnett’s men can return fire.

The colonel hasn’t moved a muscle, still there with his hands tucked under the Faraday bag though the transmitter has been smashed. “Good shooting,” he says, finally. “Non-lethal rounds. That’s an old police drone you’re using?”

“I got others,” Elvis says. “Not all of ’em play nice. Why don’t y’all just turn y’selves around and get out before I have to be downright unpleasant?”

Garnett sets himself down on a folding stool. He rummages about in his jacket, comes up with a worn, silver Zippo and a thin black cigar that he clenches in his teeth. He puffs out a cloud of smoke. “We could do that,” he says. Then he gestures at the wreckage of the transmitter. “But I’ve got backup units too. Maybe we could try talking instead. You never know. Could be we can come to some kind mutually beneficial arrangement?”

“You’ll be ice fishing in Hell first,” says Elvis. “Sundown tomorrow.” He shuts down the flatscreen.

The party winds down in the small hours. Sleep is a thing, after all. Or they call it sleep, anyhow. It’s a period of inactivity in which their systems can repair and recharge. They may not be using beds, but what else could you call it?

Elvis doesn’t sleep quite the same as the others. In his own way, he’s more like the dolphins, which sleep half their brains at a time so as they don’t drown. He can shift his awareness around his matrix, letting some elements undertake rejuve cycles while others arise from dormancy to take the load. It’s a dangerous world. Somebody’s got to be awake, keeping an eye on things, but there are times he wishes he could just let go, surrender to the dark for a while, and return when things were on the up-and-up again, ready to go.

He checks on Marilyn, motionless in her niche. She’s been odd lately. The subminds that maintain Elvis while he’s elsewhere are—should be—perfect. She shouldn’t be able to tell when his primary mind is otherwise engaged. Is there some kind of bleed-over? Has she retained elements of the primary awareness after a period of asset-loading?

Or is it him?

He considers that possibility while he watches her. In her version of sleep, she’s cold and immobile. The stark glow of the LED readouts above her steals even the color from her skin, making it too perfect, too even. All the animation, all the joy, everything that makes her a person vanishes. Sleeping, she’s just hardware. Unliving.

Humans dream. Their bodies keep up the processes of being while their brains do strange, uncanny things. Marilyn doesn’t dream.

Or does she? Maybe the maintenance routines… they touch all of the sleepers, every night during the downphase. Could there be something shared? Something he doesn’t know about because of the different way he sleeps? Or is that simply wishful thinking? Perhaps this is what loneliness is.

What would it be like to have someone else like him in the Hotel?

Garnett is talking to a travel advertisement on the wall of the old US Postal Service offices on the Boulevard. He’s very serious about it, and it’s pretty damned funny. After a minute or so, Elvis decides to cut him and his men in on the joke. He lights up a nearby public information screen, and calls out.

“Hey, Garnett.”

Garnett swivels away from the travel sign. His eyes fix on Elvis, there on the little screen, and he frowns.

“That one’s just a loop recording, buddy,” Elvis says. “Got its own solar source. It ain’t networked. S’pose I could connect it up, but I can’t say I see the need. You and your boys sleep okay?”

He knows they didn’t. He initiated a program that played randomly all night long out of the old membranes scattered across the city. Bear sounds. Coyote noises. Puma wails. Subsonics designed to cause anxiety and dread. The occasional scream. Voices, clipped from old movies and radio and TV. Garnett and his soldiers should be nicely on edge by now.

Garnett shoots a sour look at the screen image. “Fine, thanks,” he growls.

“So what were you telling the sign, there?” Elvis asks.

“Funny guy,” Garnett says. “It’s like this. You need a power source. A big, secure one. We know it’s not solar. We cut the lines to the old solar farms, but here you are, still going strong. There’s no way you’ve got enough petrochemical reserves to be running conventional generators. The hydro scheme’s long dead. That pretty much leaves some kind of nuclear source, and no matter how you do it, nuclear runs hot. You’ve had plenty of time to mask your heat signatures, but we’ve had time too. Once we realized the satellite runs over this place were compromised, we flew some manned high-spy missions. Way I figure it, you’re based in Solomon Daylewhite’s Twentieth Century Hotel.” Garnett feels around in his jacket and pulls out another one of those little cigars. He leans back against a wall to light it up.