Unknown - The_Growing_589064

Walking over to the closet, she shuffles through the few remaining uniforms that hang with military precision on the rail, turning up nothing of interest. A quick pass-through of the bathroom makes her wish she hadn’t, and then she heads back to the nightstand, opening its single drawer with a smooth tug. Her search yields a small bible, well-read, but with nothing pressed between its thin, fragile pages.

With a soft sigh, she replaces the bible, closes the drawer and lifts the lamp, heading back into the living room and closing the bedroom door behind her.

“Anything?” she asks Kirsten as her partner steps out of the kitchen.

“Not unless you want to count the swarm of drunk cockroaches breeding merrily in what’s left of the beer. You?”

“Zip.” She takes another quick look around the living room. “There’s no way to tell if he’s been gone hours or weeks in this mess.”

“Maybe Maggie and the others have found something by now.”

“Maybe,” Koda agrees, though it’s clear she doesn’t really believe the word she’s uttered. “Shall we?”

“None too soon for me, thanks.”

*

Dakota, Kirsten, Manny, Andrews, Harcourt, Maggie and several other ‘insiders’ are packed shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip in the Colonel’s small office. Before them, just inside the door, stands Tacoma, a slightly chagrinned expression on his otherwise somber face. “I wish I had better news to report,” he intones. “Fact is, it’s just been too dry, and with all the base traffic, trying to track one human male is difficult, to say the least. Especially if he doesn’t want to be found.”

“Alright, then. We’ll need to—.”

Before she can finish, Maggie is interrupted by the door being flung open, almost sending Tacoma across the room. Kimberly, winded and disheveled, steps through, a mess of slickly printed leaflets in her left hand. “Toller’s gone.”

“General Hart’s assistant?” Kirsten asks.

“Yes, Ma’am.” Moving fully into the room, she closes the door behind her and tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I thought that since you guys weren’t having any luck in the search, I’d see if Toller knew where he was. I went over to his house. It was all closed up, which isn’t like him. He must have forgotten to lock the side door, though, because it opened right up.” She worries her lower lip for a moment before continuing. “He wasn’t there. His uniforms were gone. His luggage was gone. All that was left behind were these.”

Dakota takes the leaflets from Kimberly’s outstretched hand, riffling quickly through them and glancing at the titles only.

Android = Armageddon

Multiculturalism: Satan’s Garden

Will YOU be among His Saved?

Curling her lip, Koda tosses the pamphlets onto Maggie’s desk where they splay out in a fan of Fundamentalist claptrap. “Answers that question.”

“What now?” Kirsten asks, thumbing through the leaflets and wincing at the titles.

“Little weasel’s got family in Grand Rapids,” Andrews remarks. “We could—.”

“I’m there,” Tacoma interrupts, already headed for the door before he’s stopped by his sister’s voice.

“Wait.”

He turns, eyebrow raised. The expression is so eerily like that of his sister’s that Kirsten finds herself turning to the woman beside her to make sure she’s still there and not suddenly across the room.

“Look,” Koda continues, spreading her hands out on the desk, “I appreciate wanting to find the man, but what I appreciate more is the fact that those androids out there aren’t going to wait for us to do that. We need to start planning for the war that’s just outside our doorstep, and that planning includes everyone in here.” Turning her head slowly, she eyes them all, watching as they straighten and seem to throw off the fatigue touching each and every one of them.

“I shall endeavor to track down your vermin and his master.” Harcourt’s voice is soft from the corner where he’s been quietly standing throughout the proceedings. He eases his way forward until he is standing before Maggie’s desk. He holds up a hand in the face of Dakota’s immediate objection. “We had a deal, Ms. Rivers, as you’ll recall. I enter and leave when I please, as I please. While I am far too old to be lobbing armaments at the enemy, I am quite experienced in hunting down animals who have gone to ground, as it were.” He smiles slightly, and there is something of the predator in it. “Make your plans, prime your trumpets for the walls of Jericho. I shall play my small part through to the end.” His own look, diamond hard and razor sharp, cuts off any and all objections at the knees. His smile broadens infinitesimally, showing the points of his canines. “I bid you all adieu, then, and wish you luck.” He turns to Dakota. “Should you wish to contact me again, you know where to find me.”

With a slight incline of his head, he eases forward as the bodies give way, and slips through the door, leaving everyone to stare, stunned, after him.

“Be right back,” Dakota remarks and pushes through the crowd and through the door.

*

“Fenton, wait!”

Hearing Koda coming quickly up behind him, he stops, back still turned to her, and surveys the land before him. His voice is soft and contemplative as he recites from a favored poem.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.”

With a smile set on his face and a fine walking stick in his hand, he turns to his listener, eyes seeming to glow with vitality and a surge, seldom seen, of good humor.

“I believe, for my purposes, I shall take the road less traveled. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I’d rather you didn’t take any road.”

“Ah, but where would be the fun in that, Ms. Rivers?”

“This isn’t a game, Fenton.”

“True, but it is an adventure, and one which I am uniquely suited to undertake. Androids have no interest in me, an old man well past his prime, and I am more than wily enough to avoid their reach should they change their circuited minds on the matter.” In a rare show of warmth, he reaches out and lays a gnarled hand on Dakota’s wrist. “I know the import of hunting down the good general, Dakota. He may hold few secrets, but any secret is one too many if it is given unto the enemy.” He squeezes the thick wrist under his hand briefly before drawing away. “We all have our parts to play in this, Ms. Rivers. Allow me the dignity to see mine through, no matter what that end might be.”

After several moments of complete silence, Koda finally nods. “You’ll have some help, however.”

“I assure you, Ms. Rivers, I am quite capab—.”

His discourse is interrupted by a loud whistle, and a moment later fiercely beating wings herald the arrival of Wiyo, who lands easily on Dakota’s wrist. “She can see what you can’t. She can warn you if there’s danger ahead, or behind. She’s a friend. Take her with you, and I’ll feel much more comfortable about letting you go.”

The face of granite, the face that has frightened years off of criminals through the decades, dissolves like sugar in water, transforming the harsh planes of his face into soft lines of wonder and joy.

“Wiyo, hup.”

The redtail easily hops from Koda’s wrist to Fenton’s arm, then sidesteps up until she is perched quite comfortably on his shoulder.