Sleeper Protocol Page 9
I had questions about his offer, but he walked away before I could ask them. He wouldn’t have answered, though. Everything was about experience, and if I slowed down and focused on something like working in the bar, perhaps I’d find out more than I would wandering angrily around town. There was something special about being a sleeper, but I wasn’t allowed to know it. My thoughts were disjointed, but time and experience would work the confusion out. I stood up, moved around the bar, and began helping Allan get ready for the day’s customers.
For the next few days, making myself at home was the only thing I did, and it was easier than I’d imagined. In the daily chores, I found a sense of purpose and an honesty about my situation. Mally kept quiet save for reminding me to drink water instead of beer. I asked several times about my progress to Stage Three.
<
No one showered pity on me, and the smiles and handshakes of the people I met were warm and inviting. Esperance was the kind of place a man could linger in forever. With each passing day, connections clicked in my head. I listened to countless hours of music. I discovered songs that made me happy, others that made me aggressive and excited, and more than a few that simply made me cry. I remembered a girl sobbing behind her apartment door after I told her we weren’t going to be together anymore. There was a beautiful silver-haired woman I’d danced with and known until she died alone one day in her bed, the undone chores of life on the farm left unfinished. Everything I heard reminded me of the person I’d been—and who I was learning to be again.
After a couple of rainy days, the skies brightened, and I shuffled down to West Beach. The late-spring ocean was feisty, with two – to three-foot swells, but not the stormy brew I’d found my first night in town. The children surfed in the waves like dancing pixies, and I wanted to try it. A regular at the bar lent me a board, showed me the basics, and off I went. I paddled out into the surf almost every morning before going to work. The ocean waves brought peace and balance to my life and taught me that perseverance is the only way to truly learn. I struggled to surf, but I could stand up by the end of the first morning. It was three days before the smile on my face wore off. When another storm approached, a day later, I braved the angry white foam with a few others and found acceptance among the other surfers in the futility of surfing in a storm. Rarely can one be graceful when fighting for survival, but the locals promised to take me out to Cyclops the next time the monster wave was glassy and smooth.
I went to bed a happy man.
Chapter Eight
Bennett first thought that Esperance was a shantytown huddled against an angry grey sea. As the maglev slowed and pulled into town, she changed her mind. Clean streets and warm-faced citizens greeted her, and walking through the cool, drizzling rain, she could not help but beam. She’d always imagined the perfect place to live was England. That she’d obviously miscalculated in her assumption made her smile. The town nestled against the Great Australian Bight was a tranquil heaven she would have had to see to believe. Answers could be found in a place like this, where people actually greeted each other on the streets. It was the perfect destination for a sleeper. By the time she’d secured an autocar at the terminus, the idyllic setting was calling to her more than the stuffy hallways of Cambridge. Directing the autocar to the closest public park, she queried her guidance package and surveyed the scenery.
Parked on the overlook, she watched the wide expanse of the Great Australian Bight curve eastward from Esperance, dramatically abutting the foamy, storm-urged sea. Waves crashed into the beaches below, dragging her focus to the surf. A dozen idiots on surfboards paddled and thrashed in the angry waves. Bennett watched the splashing, playful crowd paddle into waves and ride them to shore. A few more surfers gathered around a raging bonfire on the beach, drinking. She called up the imagery provided by the TDF at Livermore and scanned the crowd for her subject.
With a blink, she neurally adjusted her vision to zoom in on the partying crowd. The men outnumbered the women two to one. They were cheering a surfer who rode a wave with shaky legs until he tumbled into the surf. Rising up with arms raised in triumph, the man beamed as two others slapped his hands. The broad-shouldered man faced her, and the match connected at 100 percent accuracy.
Contact. Bennett smiled. She memorized his face. His wet brown hair gave him the appearance of being younger than he was. Blue eyes, strong chin—he was handsome in a quiet, reserved sort of way, probably a man who downplayed his good looks—like some of her students, who shrugged away their appearance and money.
Her target moved up the beach and accepted a bottle of beer from a black-haired girl sitting by the fire. He dropped into the sand next to the girl and drank from the bottle. The girl draped a towel over his shoulder and inched closer to him but not close enough to touch.
Why are people so afraid of what they don’t understand?
Thrilled at the ease of identifying her contact, Bennett watched the scene for a few minutes before her target stood, grabbed a surfboard, and went back into the water for another ride. The cycle repeated itself for a good two hours. He seemed to be enjoying himself, confirming the emotional data that went with Stage Two integration. If the surfing, or his newfound friends, triggered more memories, he’d advance on Stage Three quickly. From there, it was anyone’s guess how long the process could take. Stages One to Three were easy.
The flames began to dwindle as high tide approached. The surfers came out of the water and extinguished the fire, some more creatively than others. As the group dispersed, the target reached the sidewalk of the Esplanade and headed west toward a group of structures on the shore that Bennett identified as West Beach. Following him would have been easy, but she knew where he was going from his protocol reports. Integration meant she would have to go there and see him up close. The closer she could get, the better the chance of interpreting all of the weird data coming off his guidance protocol. That would be the tricky part, and she needed the research funding too badly to mess up.
She blinked to initiate a search program and scan the autocar for listening devices or unsecure connections. It was clean enough to allow her an unsecure voice connection. The subterfuge was silly, but playing the game meant more funding, and more funding meant more research. Such had been the life of an academic for the last five hundred years.
“It’s Berkeley.” The effort not to roll her eyes at the security procedure—using her middle name, which she secretly preferred over her mother’s name—almost made her laugh. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror to make sure the pitch was perfect. “Just got to Esperance, and I told you I’d call. Going to find a place to stay and get a bite to eat. How is everything?”
“Same old stuff here.” Crawley chuckled. “Enjoy your vacation. Your reservation at the Grand Palace Hotel did come through. They messaged here a few hours ago. All of your arrangements are good now. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I’ve got everything I could need.” Message sent—and to General Crawley himself, no less. Everything was as solid as it could be. Her identity-masking programs were in place. The subject’s protocol would only find her as Berkeley Franks, an amateur documentary film producer. In the event the protocol tried to gain additional information, the programming coded by Livermore would alert her to potential data seepage. The rest was clearly up to her, though examinations seemed a questionable proposition. At only Stage Two and a few percent toward Stage Three, unless something devastating happened to the subject and boosted his integration, she might have to wait a while. If she engaged him before then, especially physically, it would end badly.
Bennett sat back and watched the dreary ocean creeping higher up Sunset Beach toward high tide as her car maneuvered into town. He was here, and so was she. The easiest part was o
ver, and she had absolutely no idea how to go about the next phase except that she’d have to be close to interpret the data and get him moving toward integration. As nice and ideal as Esperance was, the answers he needed to find were half a world away.
Making sure he understood that wasn’t going to be easy at all.
A week of daily surfing, rain or shine, set the regulars at ease around me. By the end of the second week, a redheaded surfer named Downy came up to me and asked if I wanted to go out and see Cyclops and maybe even give it a try on a tow board. I almost jumped like a child on Christmas morning and told Allan that if he didn’t need me, I’d like to go.
Allan looked at Downy and his constant companion, a dark-skinned man they called Turk. “You boys keep him safe, will ya?”
“‘Course we will.” Downy clapped me on the shoulder. “Be outside an hour before sunrise, Sleepy. We’ll catch an early boat and get out there at high tide. The only way to surf Cyclops, mate.”
I chuckled. “Sleepy?”
Downy shrugged with one shoulder and winked. “Yeah. You’re one of us, y’know?”
The next morning, a cold rain fell as I waited for Downy and Turk. A slightly levitating vehicle chugged up the slope to Allan’s bar. Downy waved, and I climbed into the backseat next to a girl with dark dreadlocks. She’d been in the bar a few times. They called her Opal.
She caught my eye as I sat down. “A little wake-up juice?”
The bag she offered me obviously didn’t hold water, or juice for that matter, but something amber and potent. I took a swallow, and my throat caught fire. I tried like hell not to cough. My eyes were watering when I finally managed to squeak, “What was that?”
“A little bug juice.” Opal snorted. “Nothin’ that won’t put hair on ya chest, mate.” She chugged deeply to make her point, seeming none the worse for wear.
Mally chimed to life. <
Like I’m going to drink any more of that hell water. The bag made a round through the car and came back to me. I drank another snort. Don’t say a thing, Mally. I’m trying to fit in.
<
All right. I stared out the window. Every day brought new revelations with Mally. Her tone was different, and statements about my well-being and safety happened more than general-information requests and directions. The concern in her voice was easy to detect, and she sounded curious on occasion. I’d asked her a few nights before, after tending bar until closing on a very slow shift, why she sounded more like a mother hen than a computer. I noted that she’d changed over time.
<>
Behavioral guidance? I tried not to laugh out loud. You’re not serious, are you?
<
And that will be when?
<
What do you mean? I waited for a moment, but there was no response.
Low grey clouds hovered above the black ocean swells. The sun would rise in an hour, just about the time we’d arrive at Cyclops. The forecast was promising: a perfect day for surfing. Along the West Beach pier, a trimaran waited. Gathering our boards and supplies, a backpack with a towel for me, and copious amounts of beer for my friends, we boarded the trimaran and cast off. Sailing past the small marina, I saw a crowd of people clambering over three large boats with surfboards and towsleds. I sat down on the webbing between the trimaran’s hulls.
Opal sat near me, so I asked, “Those all tourists?”
“Yeah. Lousy lot of novices.” Opal held out the bag to me, and I shook my head. She grinned as if to say I was a lightweight and had another stiff swallow. “You ready for this beast, mate?”
I’d surfed off West Beach for exactly two weeks and not done too terribly in no more than six-foot swells. I had no idea if I was ready for Cyclops. I wanted to see it before I decided on my level of bravery. I had to know if I could even attempt it. “We’ll see.”
The time it took me to realize that Cyclops was out of my league equated to one wave. Cyclops snarled and thrashed spray in all directions as it crashed down—absolute pure, raging carnage. The thunder of the wave smashing into the shallow water whisked my breath away. The stormy seas raised the wave’s head up to a good eight meters. There was no way in hell I was going out there—not until the weather forecast came true, and the water was smooth as glass. Maybe not even then.
A lanky teenager with crooked teeth sat down next to me. “They call you Sleepy, right?”
“Yeah. You?”
The young man grinned. “Stick.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, and we shook hands. “You gonna ride that thing today?”
“Yeah,” he said after a deep sigh. “Gotta bust my cherry sometime, eh?”
I admired his bravery in the face of that wave. I couldn’t imagine being towed into something like that, regardless of skill. Ride a wall of water churning toward me like a set of shark’s teeth? No, thanks.
My new friends relished the wave and all of the dangers. I could not make myself leave the boat. With excited screams and shouts, Downy and Turk were first in the water. Turk drove the tow sled on a course that should have been too tight for Downy to catch the wave, but over the crest he went and dove straight into Cyclops’s throat. As the wave broke, Downy came out of the swirling maw with his arms in the air and screaming like a banshee. I was screaming right along with him.
Downy made three more runs without a wipeout before switching places with Turk. Another tow sled went into the sea with Opal and a mangy-haired man they called Squid. With a shower spray and a few whoops and yells, they attacked the monster wave. Watching every run made me think that I could get out there, but I knew better. I sat on the boat while my new friends rode the wave and called to Stick. The lanky boy sat on the gunwale, near the bow of the trimaran, smiling at their catcalls. After a few minutes of baiting, he clambered back to the boards at the center of the hull. Stick grabbed his board with trembling hands. He stepped to the gunwale, closed his eyes, and sighed. I’d never seen anyone stronger in my life, I was sure.
“Ya got this, Stick! You’re a helluva surfer, mate!” Downy called from the tow sled.
Stick stepped into the water, strapped the board to his feet like a snowboard, and caught the towline. The line snapped taut and yanked him to an upright position. Standing tall, he appeared calm and composed as they approached the wave.
I pointed at him and said to Opal, “His first time, right?”
“He’ll be fine. He’s a natural.” Opal wasn’t watching me at all. I followed her gaze as a fresh set of waves came toward Cyclops.
The trimaran sat about two hundred meters off the break and about sixty meters from where we’d been collecting surfers and the occasional tow sled at the end of a run. As Stick neared the wave, everyone on the boat focused on him. I wondered if they were recording the run or broadcasting it live as Stick committed to the wave. Downy slung the tow sled into position and dropped Stick perfectly into the cresting wave. His board nosed down onto the face of the wave, and we all cheered. I was up on my
feet, watching Stick ride the face. He gained speed and dropped toward the bottom so he could turn across the wave and run it out.
The board wavered, and Stick pitched into the wave headfirst, his chin up as he looked for the water he was about to enter. I was the only one who could see his neck break.
The shock of the cold water made me realize I’d dived in after Stick. Surfacing, I swam as hard as I could toward where he would surface. The sea swelled up and down as I sprinted through the water. I caught sight of him bobbing facedown in the water. I reached out, grabbed his upper arms, and clamped them against his head like a vise, something that snapped to mind as coming from lifeguard training. Rolling him over, I looked down and screamed. There was blood all over a face that wasn’t Stick’s. I blinked, and the blood disappeared, and Stick’s sightless eyes looked past me.
What the hell? Swimming with Stick inflamed every muscle in my body. I had to get him out of the water before either of us drowned or the sharks got us. Raising my head, I caught sight of Downy approaching on a tow sled, his face ashen.
“What happened?” Downy asked with panic in his voice. “He’s only seventeen!”
“Downy!” I screamed, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Downy!”
“What are you doing? We already called the services!”
“Downy! Get that line fixed around my waist! Do it now!”
Tears cascaded down his cheeks. “What? Why?”
“Do it now!” I roared over the surf.
Downy swung down into the water and tied the towline around my waist. Getting back up on the sled, he looked down at me and I screamed, “Go!”