Escape Velocity: The Anthology Read online

  You’ve cost the Services a helluva lot of dollars. She scrubbed it and wrote more.

  We need to test your ability to hear voices from a distance.

  ‘Is that what this is all about? Using me as some kind of listening device? I thought there were CIA bugs for that?’ Abner thought he’d spoken calmly but he could see her pained expression. Hell, her spectacles blurred as if they were about to crack. She staggered back and leant against the wall while she wrote again.

  Use your pad for the time being. We go to the test lab in 30 minutes.

  He knew he’d shouted not only from her reactions but from his increasingly sore throat. She’d left some botanical magazines; evidence she’d read his notes under interests. Must be worried he was slipping into insanity, or maybe the distraction would help his brain learn to adjust to the implant.

  Three days of testing, zapping the electrodes, and increasing hatred of all things military passed before Abner got away. Their mistake, letting him wear his everyday clothes. He faked a collapse when a single guard accompanied him from the lab. As the idiot ran for help, Abner helped himself to the staircase and out.

  He smiled at the simplicity of his escape route, but frowned again at his current dilemma. Hating crime, to the extent of handing back litter to louters, he now heard more than was good for him. How could he ignore obvious law breaking now he could hear it happening? Ignorance really was bliss. Pity they hadn’t programmed his hearing to hear only plants growing, or dragonflies, but those sounds wouldn’t benefit the damned military.

  He recalled that McBain had marched up to him accompanied by a visitor even taller than her. Also in white but in a knife-sharp army uniform encrusted with three stars. The visitor’s voice boomed into Abner like a shockwave. His hearing shut down immediately, a neat trick built into the implant by the Silverstein wizards. Nevertheless, the pain streamed like a hot knife into his brain – the mother of all head bangers.

  A nurse rushed over with an iced flannel and placed it on Abner’s forehead while another brought a glass of whiskey-looking medicine that tasted of paraffin.

  Ten minutes and he was ready; as normal as any other mutant. This time the general wrote: We are taking you to G Bay. A mission for you.

  He thought about where G could’ve been. Somewhere operational, where secrets might be overheard now that electronic bug detectors matched the cunning of the bugs. Somewhere too long to spell out quickly on a pad. His return note said: I don’t wanna go Guantanimo Bay.

  The soldier didn’t blink. You’ve no choice. U cost us 2 much.

  How much?

  U don’t want 2 know.

  Then why did he ask? Abner shut up in more ways than one.

  When Abner sprung the tab on the can of beer there would have been fizzing. He pulled out the foldaway table – an act he knew should squeak, and he relaxed on a hard bench in his parents’ trailer holiday home. The cupboards bulged with food, most within their eat-by-date. His dad must be on a hoarding binge again, worried that terrorists will invade, or maybe it was a forecast asteroid hit. He hoped they wouldn’t return for a few weeks.

  Abner snarled at the beer. Cheap, tasting of metal.

  He turned on the TV. Few channels reached out there so the picture looked like an Aztec carpet. He couldn’t hear it anyway. He wondered if McBain was on the ball and his hearing would settle down once his brain adjusted. He’d best do it in small stages. Already he’d found that it was human voices his aids now focussed on. Low frequency sounds like engines and road noise hardly bothered him.

  He wondered if he should ease out one of the earplugs – not easy because they were like gum; he would roll it in a ball and squeeze it into his ears. Perfect silence, except he usually heard his heart beating, Worrying when it skipped a beat. Between thumb and forefinger he eased his right plug out. Darn that clock! He shoved the plug back in and stood, knocking into the flimsy table. He knew the wretched clock went right through him earlier that morning but had forgotten to pull its batteries. He yanked open the rear compartment and ejected them. He sat back down and pointed a victorious finger at the dead chronometer. He’d not realized how many clock tocks were the same frequency range as human voices. He pulled out the earplug. All this experimenting, they should pay him. Good the arguing had stopped in the next valley. Thanks ma and pa for possessing the urge to be so isolated.

  Occasionally he heard a jackal, maybe an owl, crickets, but they didn’t hurt, filtered by the implant program. He clenched his fist – not daring to hammer the table. The fact that in the absence of human speech he could hear other sounds without deafening himself proved to him that they were clever enough to do a proper job on his ears but chose to amplify human voices so he could be a listening post for them. Maybe they wanted him to listen the Cubans to death.

  He stopped his silent rage for a moment and cocked his head towards the wall.

  Cables lay inside a plastic conduit leading to the kitchenette. A fridge was on, making its gurgling music, no other gadgets. He stood and placed his ear to the conduit. He could hear a sloughing sound like millions of tiny feet running through the wire. A smile grew as he reckoned he could hear electricity. He bet he’d be the first. He rushed over to unplug the fridge, and listened at the wall again. The tiny feet pattered but less so, confused at the lack of output, no flow possible. They slowed, seemingly reluctantly and stopped. Not liking his toxic beer to be warm too, he switched the cooler back on.

  He released a small laugh at the results of his experiment, especially as it meant he knew something that McBain didn’t. Not that he could think how it could help him, or the planet, to be able to hear electricity, unless terrorist electricity was different to good ole American juice. He reinserted his earplugs to keep out the external night noises so he could catch some sleep.

  Bright dawn rays turned dirty yellow by the old lace curtains brought unwelcome consciousness. He recalled hearing electricity, and unplugged his ears prior to plugging in the kettle. Just as the realization that voltages were different in other countries, he heard a woman’s soft voice.

  ‘Abner, can you hear me?’

  Shocked, he turned around the sparsely furnished trailer, looking to see if someone had sneaked in and spoken quietly. Of course no one had. Anyhow, his watch showed only 5:10 am. It was spoken as his mother would, especially when she’d been calling him for dinner and finally entered his room where he’d been stuck in a Game Boy shootout. The voice was feminine but mellow compared to the screeching from the next valley. Nevertheless, he slowly opened the door and staying on the top step looked out over the plains. The wind rippled through the wheat in the adjoining ranch land, a line of windbreak poplars a mile away threw long shadows towards him; the rising sun blinking through the branches if he turned his head this way and that. Maybe it was the soughing of the bowing wheat or the rippling poplar leaves whispering.

  ‘Say something, Abner.’

  ‘No.’ He clapped his hand over his mouth to prevent more leakage.

  He wanted to reject the outside with the door, but he needed to check no one lurked behind the trailer. He reached back to his table grabbed his earplugs, and once his defences were inserted, he ventured out. The underneath of the trailer was boxed in to keep out critters, so he had no choice but to sneak around. Loose twigs and stones seemed eager to make alert noises forcing him to step carefully. He shivered when his thin black shirt failed to protect him from the cool air rushing along from those dancing crops he’d just seen. He reached the corner of the trailer noting a long rust stain from a broken rain runoff spout. His body stayed put while his head and neck peered around. No one. The voice was either a random memory flash back or... he didn’t want to think about the alternative just yet.

  If it was memory then his earplugs would do nothing to stop him hearing such a summons again. But then would the physical act of putting in the earplugs tell his subconscious to stop hearing his name being called; like a pop-up blocker on the internet?


  Back inside, he again threw the switch on the electric kettle and shook some coffee grains from a jar of instant into a mug. No, he needed something more distracting, stronger. He opened the cupboard for his pa’s Jack Daniels while the kettle gathered strength for its gurgling, A shot glass burned his throat, a second soothed it. The agitated kettle was put out of its misery and so as not to have wasted energy Abner poured himself a coffee. The aroma of old stale coffee would’ve bothered him before the whiskey but already his brain was relaxing.

  Damn it, he had to know. He pulled out both earplugs simultaneously.

  ‘—and we both know what that means, don’t we, Abner?’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Ah, hello, lover boy, and there’s me thinking I’d got it all wrong.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Fair question,’ whispered the husky voice. Abner tried to place her, searching his memory for all the women he’d heard recently. Her accent was Manhattan. Wasn’t one of his high school teachers... No, this voice was deeper, but it could be why it rang familiar. He noted that she hadn’t given her name.

  ‘You gonna tell me?’

  ‘Only if you help me and I sure need help, Abner.’

  Weird, her voice while the same had slipped its accent to be nearer the prairies one he used. What if he went, say, Hillbilly, would she follow? Get a grip, man, this could be serious. How come he could talk to someone he couldn’t see, unaided, no cell phone? And they in return? It would mean he wasn’t the only one who could tune in to human voices miles away – up to four miles according to McBain – unless she really was close up and he hadn’t seen her. He hadn’t looked on the roof!

  ‘I know where you are.’

  ‘Good, then tell me ‘cos I’ve no idea.’

  That threw him. If she didn’t know where she was, maybe she really did need his help. If it was a bluff, what was the point?

  ‘What do you want from me?’ he said, knowing too late how feeble it sounded.

  ‘I need a friend, who like me, can hear voices miles away.’

  If only. He would like a friend, especially with a similar hearing problem, and a woman. Even so, she can’t be for real.

  ‘Find another one. I want to be left alone.’ He heard the unmistakable sigh of exasperation.

  ‘Abner, you and I are the only ones.’

  Suspicion bubbled up, fuelled by her accent switching back to pure Manhattan.

  ‘Okay, you aren’t on my roof, but you are with them – the Institute.’

  ‘Roof? Ah, you think I’m that close. I wish I was, but I’m not too far away and I know where you are.’

  ‘How did McBain track me down?’

  The free flowing conversation halted as he waited for an answer. A minute passed, three. Maybe she was relating the communication to McBain. She was not as far away as Florida, but maybe she was phoning - texting.

  At last her voice. ‘Sorry about that, Abner, someone close by and I didn’t want them to think I was talking to myself.’

  ‘Pretend you’re on a cell phone.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘So, how did you track me down?’ Maybe she worked hard at avoiding his questions.

  ‘You must know that our aids are programmed to tune into just human voices, discarding other noises. That wasn’t easy, and involves probability functions; however, each person has a distinctive wave pattern. Humans already know this; after all, we recognise the voices of TV characters even when heard out of context, right?’

  ‘So, you listened to a recording of my voice and were able to focus on it from a distance? I’m my own homing beacon? Hell, I don’t think I’m that good.’ Yes, he could track down a person, say, Clint Eastwood, using the memory of his voice, but only if he was within four miles of him in a sparsely populated area. Of course, he was at his parents’ holiday home – rather too easy for the military to guess, and then pass on to their human locator.

  She had yet to give him her name but would he believe it, any of it? He’d keep quiet for a while, see if she revealed more information if she, or they, thought he was sneaking away.

  ‘Abner, are you going to be my friend? Seems silly for the only two people in the world like us to be apart? You don’t need to worry, I’m a good looker; at least my mother says so. Haha. Okay then, my name is Harmony.’

  Yeah right, Harmony for someone with hearing problems. He thought it funny too; funny that she thought he’d be sucked in by the old line that she was a beauty. He’d met a dozen women whose internet blind dates hooked him with gorgeous photos, but were plain insane Janes up close. Not that he would’ve minded if they’d indicated inclinations to his passion – wild plants. And nor had Harmony – he might as well go along with that name for her for now. Strange because if she was a pawn of the Institute or the military, then they’d have briefed her. Maybe she was saving it as a trump card. He smiled as he kept quiet.

  ‘Abner, you haven’t plugged your ears have you?’

  Was that a genuine concern he detected in her voice? He stifled a laugh as he opened another ale. Hey, maybe he really should make his escape. He was too easy to find here. Maybe Harmony hadn’t gotten a good fix on him yet. Running looked an attractive course of action and before they send a helicopter.

  With his elbow in the air to drain the rest of the can, he froze. A different female voice to Harmony’s. Faint, as if from inside a car, but getting closer. Even before he could discern her words, he knew the words came from the same woman as before. He tensed as he anticipated the cajoling she’d use to make Enrico torture the boy. Abner fingered his earplugs, rolling the two soft lumps around, wanting to cut out the horror and yet knowing how compelling the uniqueness of the situation was to witness it.

  Her voice, raised again, ‘Look, he’s shit hisself. Now he’ll tell us.’

  ‘No, he needs softening up more...’ Enrico’s voice became indistinct. They must be right on the threshold of his hearing, or... oh no. He shoved in the earplugs just as the first scream travelled the four miles to him.

  Dead to the aural world, Abner stuffed a few travel and food essentials into a bag, but paused at the closed door. If he could hear whatever cabin torture was going on four miles away then so could Harmony. She could be up to four miles in the other direction, but either way it might be a trap, and help them to locate him. Naw, too unlikely.

  ‘Hey, Harmony, did you hear that quarrel?’

  ‘Abner, what fight is that, honey?’

  He stayed quiet. If genuine, it meant she was in the opposite direction of Enrico. It also meant that if he wanted to put distance between him and Harmony he had to travel towards the torturing. Dilemmas.

  Admittedly, he was drawn to the seductive tones of Harmony. If he could persuade himself that she was a genuine loner, like him, who needed company, and wasn’t there to take him back to the Institute... An if too many.

  Shouldering his stuff bag he closed the trailer door, descended the steps and stood on baked prairie dirt. He faced west towards the gulch he knew must hide a cabin, where a young man was being tortured. Part of him wanted to help, right the wrong, but the two assailants might be armed. Better to get to a phone. He stepped over a pile of rusting cans, and turned the corner of the trailer to face east. There lay Harmony, allegedly. Could be anywhere east in an arc from north to south. He felt he should head away from Harmony but not straight for Enrico’s trouble spot. The nearest town was Topeka, fifteen miles to the southwest. Good choice but how to get there undetected? He’d arrived by bus from Florida and cab from Topeka, but vehicles raise dust. He’d have to walk. Hiking was a pleasure for him and he had no hurries.

  He grinned as a subterfuge sneaked into his head. He had to pull out an earplug, then flipped open his cellphone. Luckily, his aid dimmed local noises so he didn’t need to pull agonized faces as he put a call for a taxi from Kansas City airport, using his parents’ account, but directed to a store five miles north of the trailer. That Yellow Cab will smoke signal the
wrong location to any watchers. He rammed the earplug back in before either shrieks from the west or entreats from the east tugged at him.

  Feeling pleased he set off. He never understood the difficulties most folk have with long walks. It only involved putting one foot in front of another. The thought amused him, and he followed his perambulatory advice although he had to stop to slip off his jacket because of the late-morning heat.

  Along the worn out tarmac, clumps of vicious thistles waited to ambush his ankles. Every few metres he’d step up on a rock or a gate to see any signs of the cab dust. He increased his pace feeling an increasing urgency to create distance. Even so, he’d stop to admire the sky blue of a cornflower, and once, alongside a derelict building, to gasp at the heady aroma of a fig tree in full bloom.

  He marched on with a mixture of concern and pleasure until the hairs on the back of his neck lifted. Not needing ears to feel the throbbing of rotor blades, Abner dived into the scrubby long grass beside the road. Grit and plant detritus flew up in mini tornadoes. A thought skidded through that maybe it was the crop-spray Huey from the Hogan Ranch a few miles south. With squinted eyes he looked up. An Army Apache helicopter hovered like an angry bee.

  Abner awoke in clean sheets; a consolation of being incarcerated within a ‘caring authority’ like a military hospital. They cared so much for him that he now had three instead of two armed guards, and two more to guard them. He had his own TV camera following him on a ceiling track even to the bathroom.

  While he sat in a clinical chair next to his bed, Dr Susan McBain entered. Abner smiled both in embarrassment at his escapade, and amusement because a guard shadowed the tall doctor. She motioned for Abner to remove his earplugs. He stiffened in readiness for the crashing waves of humanity’s squabbling, but was shocked to find the volume turned to whisper.

  ‘That’s right, Abner. While you slept, we tweaked the programming of your implant. With practice you should be able to adjust volume and