Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 (32 page)

Bundle bugs came out of the city, their capacious abdomens distended with the waste they’d ingested along their routes. The math could see that the bug crossing through the bears’ probes right now had a lot of restaurants on its itinerary. The beams pierced the dun-colored carapace and showed a riot of uneaten jellies, crumpled cups, soiled napkins.

The bugs marching in the opposite direction, emptied and ready for reloading, were scanned even more carefully than their outward-bound kin. The beam scans were withering, complete, and exceedingly precise.

The math knew that precision and accuracy are not the same thing.

“Lowell’s death has set us back further than we thought,” said Japheth, talking to the four Crows, the Owl, and, Soma guessed, to the bundle bug they inhabited. Japheth had detailed off the rest of the raiding party to carry the dead boy back north, so there was plenty of room where they crouched.

The interior of the bug’s abdomen was larger than Soma’s apartment by a factor of two and smelled of flowers instead of paint thinner. Soma’s apartment, however, was not an alcoholic.

“This is good, though, good good.” The bug’s voice rang from every direction at once. “I’m scheduled down for a rest shift. You-uns was late and missed my last run, and now we can all rest and drink good whiskey. Good good.”

But none of the Kentuckians drank any of the whiskey from the casks they’d cracked once they’d crawled down the bug’s gullet. Instead, every half hour or so, they poured another gallon into one of the damp fissures that ran all through the interior. Bundle bugs abdomens weren’t designed for digestion, just evacuation, and it was the circulatory system that was doing the work of carrying the bourbon to the bug’s brain.

Soma dipped a finger into an open cask and touched finger to tongue. “Bourbon burns!” he said, pulling his finger from his mouth.

“Burns good!” said the bug. “Good good.”

“We knew that not all of us were going to be able to actually enter the city—we don’t have enough outfits, for one thing—but six is a bare minimum. And since we’re running behind, we’ll have to wait out tonight’s anthem in our host’s apartment.”

“Printer’s Alley is two miles from the Parthenon,” said the Owl, nodding at Soma.

Japheth nodded. “I know. And I know that those might be the two longest miles in the world. But we expected hard walking.”

He banged the curving gray wall he leaned against with his elbow. “Hey! Bundle bug! How long until you start your shift?”

A vast and disappointed sigh shuddered through the abdomen. “Two more hours, bourbon man,” said the bug.

“Get out your gear, cousin,” Japheth said to the Owl. He stood and stretched, motioned for the rest of the Crows to do the same. He turned toward Soma. “The rest of us will hold him down.”

Jenny had gone out midmorning, when the last of the fog was still burning off the bluffs, searching for low-moisture organics to feed the garage. She’d run its reserves very low, working on one thing and another until quite late in the night.

As she suspected from the salty taste of the water supply, the filters in the housings between the taproots and the garage’s plumbing array were clogged with silt. She’d blown them out with pressurized air—no need to replace what you can fix—and reinstalled them one, two, three. But while she was blowing out the filters, she’d heard a whine she didn’t like in the air compressor, and when she’d gone to check it she found it panting with effort, tongue hanging out onto the workbench top where it sat.

And then things went as these things go, and she moved happily from minor maintenance problem to minor maintenance problem—wiping away the air compressor’s crocodile tears while she stoned the motor brushes in its A/C motor, then replacing the fusible link in the garage itself. “Links are so easily fusible,” she joked to her horse when she rubbed it down with handfuls of the sweet-smelling fern fronds she’d intended for her own bed.

And all the while, of course, she watched the little car, monitoring the temperatures at its core points and doing what she could to coax the broken window to reknit in a smooth, steady fashion. Once, when the car awoke in the middle of the night making colicky noises, Jenny had to pop the hood, where she found that the points needed to be pulled and regapped. They were fouled with the viscous residue of the analgesic aero the owner had spread about so liberally.

She tsked. The directions on the labels clearly stated that the nozzle was to be pointed
away
from the engine compartment. Still, hard to fault Soma Painter’s goodhearted efforts. It was an easy fix, and she would have pulled the plugs during the tune-up she had planned for the morning anyway.

So, repairings and healings, lights burning and tools turning, and when she awoke to the morning tide sounds the garage immediately began flashing amber lights at her wherever she turned. The belly-grumble noises it floated from the speakers worried the horse, so she set out looking for something to put in the hoppers of the hungry garage.

When she came back, bearing a string-tied bundle of dried wood and a half bucket of old walnuts some gatherer had wedged beneath an overhang and forgotten at least a double handful of autumns past, the car was gone.

Jenny hurried to the edge of the parking lot and looked down the road, though she couldn’t see much. This time of year the morning fog turned directly into the midday haze. She could see the city, and bits of road between trees and bluff line, but no sign of the car.

The garage pinged at her, and she shoved its breakfast into the closest intake. She didn’t open her head to call the police—she hadn’t yet fully recovered from yesterday afternoon’s interview. She was even hesitant to open her head the little bit she needed to access her own garage’s security tapes. But she’d built the garage, and either built or rebuilt everything in it, so she risked it.

She stood at her workbench, rubbing her temple, as a see-through Jenny and a see-through car built themselves up out of twisted light. Light Jenny put on a light rucksack, scratched the light car absently on the roof as she walked by, and headed out the door. Light Jenny did not tether the car. Light Jenny did not lock the door.

“Silly light Jenny,” said Jenny.

As soon as light Jenny was gone, the little light car rolled over to the big open windows. It popped a funny little wheelie and caught itself on the sash, the way it had yesterday when it had watched real Jenny swim up out of her government dream.

The light car kept one headlight just above the sash for a few minutes, then lowered itself back to the floor with a bounce (real Jenny had aired up the tires first thing, even before she grew the garage).

The light car revved its motor excitedly. Then, just a gentle tap on the door, and it was out in the parking lot. It drove over to the steps leading down to the beach, hunching its grill down to the ground. It circled the lot a bit, snuffling here and there, until it found whatever it was looking for. Before it zipped down the road toward Nashville, it circled back round and stopped outside the horse’s stall. The light car opened its passenger door and waggled it back and forth a time or two. The real horse neighed and tossed its head at the light car in a friendly fashion.

Jenny-With-Grease-Beneath-Her-Fingernails visited her horse with the meanest look that a mechanic can give a horse. The horse snickered. “You laugh, horse,” she said, opening the tack locker, “but we still have to go after it.”

Inside the bundle bug, there was some unpleasantness with a large glass-and-pewter contraption of the Owl’s. The Crow Brothers held Soma as motionless as they could, and Japheth seemed genuinely sorry when he forced the painter’s mouth open much wider than Soma had previously thought possible. “You should have drunk more of the whiskey,” said Japheth. There was a loud, wet, popping sound, and Soma shuddered, stiffened, fainted.

“Well, that’ll work best for all of us,” said Japheth. He looked up at the Owl, who was peering through a lens polished out of a semi-precious gemstone, staring down into the painter’s gullet.

“Have you got access?”

The Owl nodded.

“Talk to your math,” said the Crow.

The math had been circling beneath the bridge, occasionally dragging a curiosity-begat string of numbers into the water. Always low-test numbers, because invariably whatever lived beneath the water snatched at the lines and sucked them down.

The input the math was waiting for finally arrived in the form of a low hooting sound rising up from the dumping grounds. It was important that the math not know which bundle bug the sound emanated from. There were certain techniques the bears had developed for teasing information out of recalcitrant math.

No matter. The math knew the processes. It had the input. It spread itself out over the long line of imagery the bundle bugs yielded up to the bears. It affected its changes. It lent clarity.

Above, the bears did their work with great precision.

Below, the Kentuckians slipped into Nashville undetected.