Z opened a massive double door and entered a room that looked like the steampunk fantasy library of an eccentric 1800s nobleman. Mahogany paneled walls rose two storeys, with a spiral staircase in a corner providing access to a catwalk and an upper level of book cases. In the center of the room, rising out of a circular banquette, was a giant mechanical brass and enamel model of the inner planets of the solar system. She crossed to the windows overlooking the courtyard and entrance gate, pulled back the velvet curtains and looked out over the wall for any sign of unwanted visitors. Then she remembered the layers of security that enveloped the property.
“Network, show security cameras,” she called-out. The alter ego of the library then exposed itself. Entire wall panels revolved, revealing a giant screen. On it were several rows of camera output. Z knew that if she needed to she could deploy a drone as well and send all of the signals directly to the Malibu Police. She looked closely at the screens, at first to orient herself, then to check for a parked car or pedestrian. In that neighborhood, the presence of either would have been a warning sign.
“Screen, show air security.” The screen changed to show a GPS map of the airspace within a half mile of the house. Although there were a few drones, all had secure ID tags and none were close enough to cause concern.
Z descended to the first floor and walked down a long hallway to the garage. Inside was a small auto collection: fast cars, luxury cars, first of a kind or best of a kind—all of them throwbacks to the mechanical era. Z examined each interior; they were all manual transmission cars—a challenge Z did not want to take on. Finally, she found the lone exception: an automatic transmission Jaguar—crude, brutish, and primitive in mechanics, with an interior as elegant as an English country manor.
Z went back into the house and, minutes later, emerged carrying a duffel bag, a pistol and some ammo. She had no desire to use the gun, but where she was going she had no idea who might find her.
She sat in the driver's seat, right-hand-drive, and held the walnut steering wheel. She checked the readouts. There was a full tank—no, two full tanks, she surmised by flipping a rocker switch between them. Polished burled walnut spanned the gauging. The seat smelled of real leather and horse hair. But the factor more important to Z than the luxury that was present, was the electronics that weren't. Not a single computer chip existed within the sculpted shell of this beast of a car. Its heart beat with small explosions that turned shafts, that spun gears and turned wheels. Even the electronics it contained were simple switches and potentiometers. It couldn't think for itself if it tried. Take your hands off the wheel and it would run right off the road. But it was totally untrackable and that was exactly what Z had hoped for.
She drove the car out through the gate and onto the street, struggling to turn the wheel. “Geez. This is like trying to drive farm equipment—no, worse,” she said aloud. The steering lightened as the car picked-up speed. At the end of the road she turned north onto Las Virgenes.
It was a grey, overcast day outside the tinted glass. Z stopped in Santa Barbara to refill the tanks at an antique car collector’s museum. She kept things brief; anonymity was crucial, even while driving a one-in-three-million automobile. Had anyone recognized her or snapped a photo who knows what they might have inadvertently revealed to the wrong people? Z drove through farmland and beach communities until she reached the turnoff for Highway 1—terra incognita for most people. A famously unreliable road, sections washed away with every rainy season. As a result, it had become a very long cul-de-sac which fewer and fewer people chose to explore except for hikers, artists, and recluses. She pulled-over at San Simeon to read the directions she had been given and zeroed her trip odometer, as instructed. It was to be a treasure hunt from there, on.
Twenty-point-two miles later, after winding along what was often a precipitous, cliffside, one-lane road, spectacular in both its beauty and danger, Z steered the Jaguar onto a dirt road that appeared to lead straight off the promontory, but instead descended into a canyon and along a stream to an isolated beach home.
She shut off the engine, opened the car door and swung her legs out. For a minute, she stood next to the car, waiting to see if someone would come out of the house. When no one appeared, she took a step toward the house, then stopped. Although she didn’t think she would need it, there was every reason to be prepared. She walked back to the trunk and took out the gun she had packed.
She turned and looked up the dirt drive into the canyon behind her. She let her gaze linger on clumps of brush beneath the pines, looking for even a slight movement that might indicate someone lurking behind the leaves. Then she looked up the tree trunks for any hidden cameras. Nothing—but it would be easy to conceal a camera in all this brush. She just had to trust that when the moment came she would meet an ally, not a foe. What she carried with her was valuable and could not get lost.
She turned back toward the house and walked along a flagstone path, covered with wet sand. The waves had clearly been washing inland past the house. She glanced back; the car would be safe. The house, however, was questionable. It showed the signs of high tide flooding. The front door and ground floor windows had been knocked out and a water line marked the exterior walls.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
She climbed the stairs to the main floor where a great room faced out to the ocean. Z imagined the designer furniture that once must have made this room feel warm and comfortable and inviting. Now, it was nearly empty, no pictures on the walls, a cheap couch and work table its only furniture. There were finger marks in the dust on the kitchen counter; someone had been there recently. She opened the refrigerator; the light came on and cool air flowed out. So, someone’s maintaining the solar, she noted as she walked over to the view windows. The gray waves rolled onto the shore, over the flat sands populated by clams and small crabs; over the patio that once held a barbecue, comfortable couches, and a dining table; through the broken glass doors into the game room, laundry, and out into the garage. In a couple hours, at high tide, the water would be knee-deep down there. During a storm surge, it would get higher. Z figured the house had a year or two left in it, then the ocean-fronting wall would collapse from the battering of the rising sea and the whole house would bow seaward, break up and drift away in the currents.
She looked again at the sea-swept patio beneath her; there was so little time for the languorous enjoyment of life. Malign forces seemed always to lurk on the periphery, ready at a random moment to break peace into chaos. For the moment, she lived in a bubble of privilege inside of which she could pretend to be secure. But she could see the forces waiting.
Go to the house and someone will meet you. That is what the instructions said, but it looked like she would have to wait longer than she had expected. Z walked cautiously out to the car, pulled her duffel bag from the trunk, and climbed back upstairs to add a heavy jacket and warm pants over her jogging tights. The next storm was rolling in, bringing with it rain and heavy surf.
“I only hope the roof doesn’t leak,” she said to herself as she opened her tablet and curled-up on the mangey old couch. She thought for a moment, then tucked the gun in-between the cushions. The forces are always waiting, she reminded herself.
Her work at least helped her pass the time, but once the sun began to set and the wind and rain began, Z realized she would probably be in for a long night. She felt her stomach begin to rumble and cursed herself for bringing a gun, but no food. The room darkened and the walls receded. A light inside the house would have been a beacon and she wasn’t sure who might be watching from the darkness.
As another hour passed and the wind blew through every small crack, she grabbed her tablet to use as a flashlight and scoured the house for anything warm to put around her. Upstairs in the bedroom she found an old wool blanket. In the dim light of the screen, she couldn’t tell if any visitors were in the folds so she shook it out, hard, and brought it downstairs. There, she curled into a tight ball on the couch, closed her tablet, and listened to the waves roiling through the rooms beneath her. Of all the things she had done and seen during the past years, this moment was the most unsettling for her. Maybe it was because she didn’t know where people’s loyalties lay anymore, except for Pat. Thank God for Pat. If he were there, he would try to comfort her… he’d try to make her laugh. She smiled at the thought. But she didn’t want him to know about this. She had to do this alone. It was hard to be alone, at that moment, but she realized that her life had been a solitary journey from the moment she had become an astronaut. After all, who would choose a companion who was gone for years at a time? Only Pat was always there. She would have liked to kiss him, just once, to give him the taste of Mars she had once placed under her tongue. Z felt the bones of the house shudder as a strong wave rolled through. She would be safe from surprises; no one would try to enter the house through that surf. As she drifted into sleep, the shudder became comforting to her; even the threat of collapse, being crushed under the weight of the roof or pinned by the wreckage beneath the salt water seemed to promise relief.
Maybe it was when the shuddering ceased that Z awoke with a start. The light of pre-dawn filtered across the sky; the room still gray and silent. The storm had blown past and the waves had stopped crashing into the house. Z held her breath and listened closely. Not a sound. Then, downstairs, the squeak of a loose nail in a floorboard.
Z grabbed the gun and slid down onto the floor, putting the couch between her and the top of the stairs. She tried to reach out with all her senses, as if to feel the movement of air when someone entered the room. She heard a footstep on the stairs leading from the floor below. Then another and another. Whoever this was, they were not trying to hide.
Then, a flashlight beam swept across the room.
“I grew up in the Midwest and missed it so much that when we bought this house we named it Indiana,” a voice said.
“Who sent you?” Z replied.
“Sefa.”
“Tell me something that only he would know.”
“I’m the one who Pat called to run your crew’s genotypes. I was the first person to know you are Marked, Elizabeth.”
Z stood and shielded her eyes from the beam. “Sefa?”
Sefa pointed the light at the ground, and in the bounce light Z could make out a blocky man with a round face. “Have you brought the piece?” he asked. “I don’t have much time.”
“I have it,” Z responded. Then she handed him a box. “The stones fit right at the temples. When you put it on, it grips.”
“You can get in a lot of trouble over this,” Sefa said as he turned to leave.
“I’m already in a lot of trouble. Your intelligence guy was pretty clear about that and about what he wanted if Logisen got a headpiece. I’m levelling the playing field. And I’m going back to Mars.”
Sefa looked back at Z from halfway down the stairs. “You’ll have your package back tomorrow morning. Leave your trunk unlocked.” Then he mumbled, half to himself. “See what I’ve become? My discovery.”
Z leaned over the railing. “Sefa? Before you go. Where can I get some food?”