Michael Cunningham - Specimen Days

“We go to Denver,” she said.

“I have to go to Denver. I have something in my mind about June 21, this year. Just that date, in Denver. It’s this little buzzy, pulse-y thing that’s always there, like a song I can’t get out of my head. Marcus had it, too. It’s implanted, for some reason.”

“We go to Denver,” she said again.

“Denver is more than a thousand miles away. And there may be nothing there. Lowell is probably just doing some regular job someplace. Or dead. He wasn’t young when all this started.”

“We see.”

“All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine.”

“Yes,” she said.

They drove without speaking through much of New Jersey. It grew dark. The stars came out. They couldn’t go quickly, what with the wind blowing into their faces through the shot-out windshield and the roads studded with holes deep enough for a toddler to hide in. Simon checked the gas gauge every three minutes.

Every three minutes there was that much less. Bruce Springsteen sang on and on and on.

They had no trouble in New Jersey, though. Sometimes a pod shot by, destined for the shopping and gambling palaces. Its occupants stared but hove on. They drove past mile upon mile of empty factories with jaggedly glassless windows, past row after row of derelict houses. Occasionally, they saw camps of Nadian squatters who lived in the houses and factories. The Nadians sat around fires that sent sparks up into the dark air. Outside a town that had, according to its sign, been called New Brunswick, the headlights illuminated a band of Nadian children on the roadside. They stood pinned by the headlights and gaped at the passing Mitsubishi. Their eyes were dazzling. Most were naked, but one had fashioned a dress out of food wrappers and what appeared to be bandages.

Simon said to Catareen, “Do a lot of you wish you hadn’t come here?”

“Some.”

“Do you wish you hadn’t come here?”

“I must come.”

“Because you were a criminal on Nadia.”

No answer. Back to staring and nostril flares.

The car got twenty-three miles into Pennsylvania before the gas ran out. It hiccuped, stuttered, and stalled. Simon guided it to the shoulder. This being Pennsylvania, the roads were slightly better, but there would be other difficulties here. Pennsylvania had been subcontracted to Magicom, as part of a deal that included, more promisingly, Maine and most of eastern Canada. Pennsylvania was not a high-priority state, but still, Magicom enforced more laws than the New Jersey District Committee did. Here a human (what passed as a human) and a Nadian traveling together would excite more suspicion.

The car had stopped among grassy fields bordered by trees. The night was quiet and very dark.

Simon said, “End of the Mitsubishi.” Catareen blinked and breathed.

He said, “We should get some sleep. Not in the car. We should go out there and try to sleep a little. That sound okay to you?”

“Yes.”

They got out of the car and walked across a field to the trees. The ground was uneven. It smelled like the chlorophyll spray from the park but less strong. As they walked, Bruce Springsteen’s song grew fainter and fainter, until it dissolved entirely into the rustling semi-quiet of the night.

When they were among the trees, they spent some time finding a reasonable place to lie down. The ground was sticks and bracken. They cleared out an area at the trunk of a tree that curved slightly inward, so they could rest their heads against its bark. It was not what you’d call comfortable. It was what presented itself.

Simon lay down on the newly cleared dirt. Catareen sat beside him. She did not lie down.

He said, “Do you mind my talking to you so much?”

“No,” she said.

“It’s my programming. I get steadily friendlier until you set some sort of clear limit. Then I more or less settle in at that level of intimacy. Unless you indicate that you want less. I can ratchet down accordingly, if that’s what you want. This is one of the bugs Lowell was supposedly working on when Biologe went public with us. It’s a repress cap on my aggressive impulses. It’s meant to keep me from killing you.”

“You must be kind,” she said.

“Yeah. There’s no real emotion behind it. Does that bother you?”

“No.”

She might have been telling the truth. How could you know, with a Nadian?

“So,” he said. “I guess you don’t like talking about your past, on Nadia.”

Silence.

He said, “But how about this? Do you have a family here? Did you have a family there?”

Nothing.

“Did you once have a family? Were you married? Kids?”

More nothing.

He said, “Do you think you can sleep?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“I fall on the weeds and stones, the riders spur their unwilling horses and haul close.”

“Good night,” she said. “Good night,” he answered.

He mounded a little dirt pillow for himself and folded his hands over his chest. After a while, he slept. He dreamed of a boy looking at a man who was looking out a window into the darkness in which the boy stood. He dreamed of a train that flew over a golden field, bound for some unutterably fabulous destination.

He woke at the first light. She was asleep. She had curled herself into a ball. Her head rested against his shoulder.

He had this chance to look at her, then.

Her head was slightly larger than a cantaloupe. She had no hair at all. Her eyes, closed, still shone through the veined membranes of her eyelids. Her skin in the dimness was deep green, nearly black. Their skins were not scaly. That was a myth. Her skin was slick and smooth as a leaf. It was thin and fragile-looking, like a leaf.

She breathed steadily in sleep. She whistled that little involuntary song. The thin line of her mouth, lipless, was only that: a line. Their mouths weren’t expressive. It was all in their eyes and nostrils. Her small, smooth head pressed gently against his shoulder as she slept.

Then she woke. Her eyelids fluttered. She was immediately awake and entirely vigilant. She sat up.

He said, “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“We should start walking. We should stay off the road.”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to have to steal a pod somehow. Which will be difficult.”

“I can steal,” she said.

“I don’t mean morally or philosophically difficult. I mean a pod’s security systems are hard to override. I’ll try.”

“Yes. Try.”

“Assuming we’re able to get a pod, we shouldn’t have too much trouble in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is mostly just refugees. Who are mostly harmless. But then we’ll be in Ohio. Ohio is the beginning of the Free Territories.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know about this?”

“Little.”

“It’s all pretty loose out there. After the meltdown, just about everybody from where we’re standing all the way to the Rocky Mountains was evacuated. Temporarily, supposedly, but people didn’t really come back. Who’s out there now, mostly, is the ones who refused to leave, and it’s still impossible to tell how damaged they are by the fall-out. It’s them and the nomads who drift up from the Southern Assembly or down from Canada. They can be nasty. They’re the people who didn’t quite work out in civilized society. Some of them are evangelicals. Some are criminals.”

“Like Nadia,” she said.

“I suppose. In certain ways.”

“We walk now,” she said.

“Yes. We start walking now.”

They were able to stay parallel to the road, though for long stretches the episodes of scrubby forest gave out, and they had to walk across open ground. They moved quickly but not too quickly. Hoverpods shot past on the road a half mile to the left. If someone happened to glance over and see them, they would be semiplausible as refugees seeking food and shelter. They would be less plausible as a man wandering with a Nadian. They had to hope no one seeing them from the road would be suspicious enough to alert Magicom. They could do nothing but hope.