One Jump Ahead-ARC Read online

  I woke up and hid behind my eyelids, kept them closed as if by not seeing the world I could deny its existence, and tried to dig my way back into sleep. I failed, but as I lay there trying to sleep I eventually recalled the chime. That recollection led me to remember they had to be monitoring me, which in turn meant they had to know I was awake. I couldn't deceive them, I realized, and the thought filled me with despair. How could answering their questions, I wondered, make my life any worse than this? Even as I formed the question I realized that its existence marked a major step on the path to giving up.

  I heard footsteps again behind me and opened my eyes, hoping for some sort of reprieve, knowing the hope was futile but harboring it anyway.

  "The drugs I'm adding now," the voice said from behind my head, "represent the next stage."

  I swallowed several times, until I thought I could speak. As I breathed deeply and slowly, staying unfocused and below the chime's threshold, I managed to croak out, "How long?"

  The voice laughed, a sound filled with surprise and amusement and a hint of pity but no real humor at all. "How long for the drugs to take effect, or how long have you been here?"

  Blackness crawled around the edges of my vision, and I couldn't tell anymore if they were open or closed. Answering was beyond me.

  "None of that will matter," he said, as the blackness completely filled my eyes and crawled up my optic nerves toward my brain, "where you take yourself next."

  Chapter 23

  A light breeze tumbled off the ocean and up to where I sat high on the side of the central peak of our island. Carried on the wind were the strong smells of salt and fish and wet beach grass, filling my nose and letting me know I was home. The wind always blew on Pinkelponker, and the water always rolled fiercely back and forth along our shore. I couldn't remember a time when either had been still. In that way they reminded me of Jennie; she could never stay still, either. She was always moving something: her hands as she gestured or worked, her mouth as she spoke, her hair as the constant breeze played across its strands.

  I couldn't remember walking here, or whether I was done with my chores for the day, but the sun was warm and bright in the sky, and the breeze and the ocean were as beautiful as I'd ever seen them. I was happy to be home. I shaded my eyes with my right hand so I could look far out onto the ocean and perhaps make out the next island. Sometimes you could see it on really clear days. My hand looked odd to me, too big but also not rough enough.

  I forgot my hand and went back to enjoying the day.

  Too bad Jennie's not here, I thought. She'd like this day. She'd like sharing it with me. She'd have some ideas for fun things to do.

  And then she was there, beside me even though I didn't hear her walking up. I must not have been paying attention.

  "Hi, Jon," she said, a big smile on her face.

  I smiled back, but I didn't speak. I never needed to talk much with Jennie; she always knew. I liked that.

  "So after all this time," she said, the smile disappearing, "you've finally come back for me?" Her expression was sad, lost.

  I couldn't remember leaving, but I must have; Jennie always knew more than I did. "I'm sorry," I said, feeling sorrow but not able to remember why I felt it.

  "You gave me to them," she said, her voice rising as she spoke. "You gave me to them, and then they took me away."

  "I wouldn't do that," I said. "I would never give you away. I would never let anyone take you."

  "You didn't let them," she said, and then we were heading down the hill, Jennie riding in a cart I was pulling and looking up at me, pain stretching the skin of her face. "You did it for them. You did it."

  "No!" I screamed. "I wouldn't! I wouldn't!" I kept walking, though, pulling the cart and Jennie on it, but she wasn't Jennie now, she was Jasmine, Jasmine waking up, her eyes blurry, her face etched with pain.

  "My father . . ." she said, as she passed out again and changed back to Jennie, who said, "You never came back, Jon."

  "I couldn't," I said. I stopped walking and knelt beside her, tears seeping down my face. "I couldn't. They flew me away the day after they took you, and before I could even find a way to get back, I was on another island and then off the planet and on to Aggro and then everything went wrong and the whole system was blockaded and I couldn't." I gulped for breath. "I couldn't."

  "My father . . ." Jasmine said from the cart as she struggled to wake up, then failed and fell asleep again.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry." Louder this time. "I'm sorry." Screaming it at the sleeping Jennie Jasmine Jennie Jasmine Jennie. I felt like my heart would explode. "I'm sorry, sorry, sorry." I looked down and my chest was gaping open, blood pouring from it, my heart pounding out my life in apology and still it wasn't enough, not ever enough. "I'm sorry!"

  I stood. The blood loss made me so dizzy I tumbled backward off the mountain, spraying red into the air as I fell and wondering why, why, why couldn't I save her. I fell faster and faster until I was plummeting so quickly the wind carried away the sounds of "I'm sorry" and still I didn't hit the water. I fell so long I wondered if the bottom would ever stop me and grant me release.

  * * *

  The ocean, still as far away below me as when I'd started to fall, extended tendrils of blackness that spread and rose until they wrapped around me and stopped my descent. I hung in the air for a split second, caught between the sky and the blackness. The tendrils accelerated me upward, higher and higher and higher, rocketing me toward the sun until its bright light filled my eyes and its heat burned my skin and all I could see was light. The light said my name, first in Jennie's voice, then in Jasmine's, and then in someone else's. It glowed brighter and whiter and louder until I screamed for it to stop.

  And found myself awake, drenched with sweat under the plastic, trembling, heart pounding, the guilt over Jennie and Jasmine clenching my insides and contorting my face. As I finally internalized where I was, I tried to slow my breathing and my heart. I didn't want to hear the chime again. The noise in my ears dimmed enough that I could hear the sounds outside my head. The familiar voice was back again, talking to me.

  "Jon," it said, "I certainly wouldn't want to have your nightmares. You, however, will continue to have them, and much worse, if you don't stop resisting us. Answer the questions."

  The chime sounded, and I realized that the small effort of listening had cost me ground in my fight to bring my breathing and pulse under control. I clamped my mouth shut and breathed slowly and deeply through my nose.

  "Nothing to say yet?" It said. When I remained silent, the voice laughed lightly, then continued, "On we go then. We both know where this process ends, but if—"

  The voice stopped, and the room turned black. A moment later, emergency strips along the ceiling and floor glowed green into the darkness. The air stilled, a barely perceptible change I noticed only because I'd been enjoying its slight motion across my sweaty face. I pressed against the plastic, trying to move, but I couldn't; it held me tight. The floor shook, the vibrations strong enough that I felt them through the bed that confined me. I wondered if I was dreaming and hadn't really awakened, if all of this had been only another stage in my fall, and then the blackness of the room oozed over the green glow, filled my eyes, crawled into my brain, and carried me away again.

  * * *

  The long grass under my back was soft against my clothing and, where it touched my bare arms, tickled me lightly. Moving my arms slowly across it made me smile. The sky above me stretched cloudless and bright for as far as I could see in every direction. I'd finished my chores for the day and climbed to a nice flat spot not far from the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Jennie was going to meet me later. I completed my chores about the same time every day, but Jennie's healing work never stopped at a particular hour. Some days, she'd be done before I was, maybe have to help only one or two people, and she'd bring me lunch and eat with me. Other days, she'd be healing people so late into the night that when she returned home to
our little cabin she'd be almost asleep, barely moving, and I'd have to help her into bed and give her a little water to drink and some bread to eat.

  Today, I knew she was on her way to meet me, so I stretched out and enjoyed the velvety grass, the clear sky, and the light breeze blowing the smell and taste and stickiness of the seawater over me.

  Sounds like explosions or rockets tore through the air, but I couldn't see anything that could cause them. I wondered if a ship from another island was coming to get Jennie to take her to work there. That had to be it, and that was sad, because it meant I wouldn't get to see her today.

  Something large and shiny suddenly blotted out the sun way over my head. I wondered if it was Jennie's ship. I wanted to reach up for it, to try to persuade it to take me along, but I couldn't move my arms. The shiny thing headed toward me, and even though I couldn't move my arms I knew it had seen me, was coming for me. I heard it calling my name, the sound at first far away and then closer as the thing approached.

  I smiled; maybe today I'd get to see Jennie after all.

  Except the thing didn't stop coming, didn't stop or change course to land beside me, and I wondered now if it was going to smash me into the grass. I wanted to lift my arms and wave at it to move to the side, to stay away from me, but I couldn't; some invisible force pinned my arms to the ground. On down the thing came, until I knew it was going to crush me. The force of it shook me, then it called my name and shook me again. I closed my eyes so my last sight wouldn't be the thing that crushed me.

  Pinkelponker vanished behind my eyelids. As its sky winked out, shreds of memory floated into my consciousness: the voice, the chime, the darkness, the emergency lighting.

  I opened my eyes. A woman stared at me from only centimeters away. She wore a helmet whose visor covered her face entirely, but lights within the helmet illuminated her. I was confused, unsure what was happening. Was this Jennie again? Jasmine? No, the woman was neither of them. More memories flowed in, and I realized it was Lim. She shook me gently with one arm and called my name. I felt her other arm moving but couldn't tell what it was doing. Before I could answer her, my arms were free. I lifted my head for a quick look down my body. She'd cut the sections of plastic that had bound me to the table.

  "Jon," she said, her voice harsh and forced, her breathing ragged, "can you hear me?"

  I nodded and managed to squeak, "Yes."

  "Good," she said. "We have to go. Can you stand?"

  I heard her words. I could repeat each one. I even knew I should understand them. The problem was that I couldn't focus enough to make sense of them, to transform them from sounds into meaning. I squeezed my eyes shut in an effort to concentrate, and then she was shaking me again.

  "Forget standing," she said. "Try not to move when I lift you. This'll be hard enough as it is."

  She crouched beside the table, facing up my body, her head near my waist. She grabbed the far side of me and pulled me onto my side. She tugged me a little farther, and I rolled onto her shoulder. She grunted and dipped slightly as my weight hit her. Movement was strange, at first a freeing sensation and then a nauseating one. As my stomach hit her shoulder, I heaved and threw up.

  "Lovely," she said. "The amount you owe me just went up."

  Bracing herself with one hand on the table that had held me, Lim stood. I felt her arm holding me on her shoulder, and she leaned down on the side away from me. My nose smacked into her body with her first step, and without conscious thought I turned my face to the side. She walked carefully but quickly. I bounced with each step. The only colors I could see were the green glow from the emergency strips and the soft yellow of the thin tubes that ran down the other arm of the suit Lim was wearing and into the weapon that looked as if it had grown from her hand.

  Lim kept me near a wall as we went, my body bumping into it every now and then. The bumps didn't feel good, but I also couldn't quite register them as pain; they were simply more sensations that my overloaded body interpreted as distant and irrelevant. We progressed along a hallway. Here and there in the darkness I caught glimpses of bent and scorched sections of walls. My nose itched from the smells of charred plastic and singed metal that thickened the air. Three times Lim passed men lying on the ground; none moved. I caught a clear view of only one. His head tilted at an angle that even in my condition I could tell was unnatural, and in his chest a hole bigger around than my arm was black and oozing, the smell so strong I vomited again as we passed him.

  "Damn," Lim said, "you'll pay for this." The effort of speaking while carrying me caused her to pinch each word.

  A few times everything went black. Each time I couldn't tell if we'd entered an area with no lights or I'd passed out again, and each time I have no sense of how long I remained in total darkness.

  We rounded a corner and stopped outside a door that displayed both the usual green glowing strips and some additional red lights. I knew if I could clear my head I'd remember what those other lights meant, but I couldn't manage it.

  "Open both airlock doors, Lobo," Lim said, her voice low and strained.

  The door opened, and Lim stepped into a little room. A second door opened, and light slammed into me, everything so bright I had to shut my eyes. I felt Lim take a few steps forward; then she crouched and shoved me off her shoulders. I fell, for an instant alone in the air, and then I hit the floor. My stomach heaved again, but I was empty and nothing came up.

  "Get ready to get us out of here," I heard Lim say. "I'll be back in two minutes."

  Her voice was a whisper that reached me from what seemed an impossibly far distance. The world lurched, and I passed out again.

  Sunlight warmed my eyes. I tried to roll over so it could work on my back, but I couldn't; my arms and legs were stuck. A torrent of memory erased the sun and tore me from Pinkelponker back to . . . where? I was lying down, unable to move, wondering if the voice would know I was conscious again, when the last trail of memory played across my mind and I remembered Lim and the rescue. I opened my eyes. I was indeed back in Lobo, in the small medical room, on the same bed where I'd secured Chung, held by the same restraints I'd used on him. An IV trailed out of my right arm.

  I tried to call for Lobo, but all I managed was a croaking sound more like a cough than a word.

  It was enough.

  "I'm glad you're back, Jon," Lobo said.

  Lim entered the room. "Finally," she said.

  I closed my eyes, held them for a couple of beats, then opened them again. I was still in Lobo, and Lim was still standing there.

  After a couple more croaks, I managed to say, "Water."

  Lim swiveled a tube to my mouth. I sucked on it, gently at first, letting my mouth and throat reacquaint themselves with liquid, and then harder, drinking all I could manage. I turned my head away when I was done, and Lim removed the tube.

  "Thank you," I said. The tube dripped a bit on my cheek.

  "You're welcome," Lim and Lobo each said, Lobo a syllable ahead of her.

  "I scanned you," Lobo said, "and found no implants or broken bones. All your organs are functioning at least tolerably, though you were dehydrated. So, we've loaded you with fluid and some broad-spectrum repairers, but only generics. Can you give us more specifics on what they did to you?"

  "No," I said. "What you've done is all I need. Well, that and some time." I wanted to be better prepared the next time I encountered these attackers—and I was now convinced there'd be a next time. "Did you take blood samples?"

  "Of course," Lobo said. "We were prepared in case my treatments proved to be inadequate to revive you and we needed to seek additional medical aid."

  "Keep them," I said, "so I can study them later." When I had more energy and some private time, I could work with my nanomachines to provide my body with resistance to these drugs. Having more energy seemed a distant proposition; I felt very tired, as tired as I could remember ever being.