Silver Eyes (3 page)

I grinned at Anaximander's departing back. Yes! My first assignment!

Back in my room, I changed clothes. Before dropping the exercise sweats on the floor for the housecleaning robots to launder, I carefully transferred the note to my white pants.

“Violet eyes lie.” I had written those words. What did they mean?

Lie to whom? About what?

I was starving, but that wasn't why I hotfooted it over to the cafeteria. Ben was just finishing his breakfast when I arrived. He groaned when he saw me but paid for my stack of pancakes.

I snatched the debit card out of his hand when he would have pocketed it again. “That's mine, I believe. Now what was that spending limit again?” I teased. “A hundred and fifty dollars? Two hundred?”

“Fifty!” Ben was on his feet, reaching for the card.

I laughed and eluded his grasp. “Okay, fifty it is. See you at lunch.” I waved him off.

After wolfing down my breakfast, I put in an hour doing lessons. Learning by computer was faster than classroom learning, but one hundred times duller. No other students to joke around with, no teacher to lure off topic . . . no one to tattle when I skipped out. I usually whipped through four modules a day in an effort to impress Anaximander, but since he had failed so far to notice my diligence I figured he wouldn't notice today's absence either.

I made it safely back to my quarters without encountering anyone and lost no time doing a computer database search on “Violet eyes lie.”

If the message I had received was secret or dangerous in some way, using Ben's employee card instead of my own would prevent the search from showing up as a debit on my payroll statement. The precaution was probably unnecessary, but it made me feel better.

One hundred thirteen sites.

I screened through the first twenty article summaries, but none of them contained all three of my search terms so I paid for a full-text download. It brought me within sixteen dollars of the limit Ben had insisted on, but I had to know.

While the computer completed the download, I paced the room. My white bedroom and tiny bathroom looked plain and bare, incapable of concealing anything. Compelled, I searched my sock drawer for more secret messages. I felt slightly silly when my labors produced only a handful of lint, but not silly enough to stop myself from searching the rest of my clothes.

I had almost given up when I found another scrap of paper deep in a decorative pocket of my blue jeans. Before I read the pinprick message, I examined the paper it was written on. One edge was torn, and when I took out the “Violet eyes lie” message, the two pieces of paper matched up. It was a receipt for potatoes, not exactly helpful. A third of it was still missing; there must be at least one more message.

The message on the other side spelled “Renaissance.”

Renaissance
referred to a time in European history when there was a great flourishing of the arts and sciences, but the image that popped into my mind when I read it was of a hairy Neanderthal
man.

And then I was drowning again for the second time that day.
Cold water closing over my head; my boots dragging me down into the dark green depths.

When I surfaced again, I put my hand on the wall to steady myself. My pulse thundered in my neck. By the time I stopped being scared, I was angry. Why the hell did that keep happening?

In my mind, I went back over the times the drowning memory had overtaken me—eight times in all. I came to the disquieting realization that the episodes hadn't started until after my training accident. Worse, they usually happened when I was trying to remember something and failing. The puzzle was that I couldn't remember ever drowning either. In fact, I was positive I could swim.

The computer flashed blue, signaling that the download was complete.

I skimmed through the first one hundred articles the computer had pulled up but failed to find anything significant. Usually the words
violet, eyes,
and
lie
were separated by a lot of text and were totally unrelated.

I was about to skip over an article titled “Movie Sets the Fashion: Violet Eyes In,” when a word farther down caught my eye. “Renaissance.” The second secret message I'd found. “The movie
Escape from History
is based on the true-life story of Project Renaissance.” Frustratingly, after that the article went back to talking about fashion. The last twelve articles were duds.

I took the results of my first search and added in the term
Renaissance.
One site only, the article I'd already read. Then I tried searching for
Project Renaissance
and hit the jackpot: 20,529 hits. Too many to look through.

With only eleven dollars left on Ben's debit card, I was faced with the choice of downloading a random sample of Project Renaissance articles, which might or might not be relevant, or downloading
Escape from History.
I picked the movie.

Mistake.
Escape from History
had a rating of one and a half stars out of five. In my opinion, they'd given it one star too many. It sucked.

Pallid blonde, who looks too old to still be in high school, is supersmart and is picked on by her 1950s-era classmates. Hunky guy moves to town and romances her, then vanishes. Everybody in town pretends they never met him. Blond girl discovers that the reason she's supersmart is that she's the result of an illegal genetic experiment called Project Renaissance. Scientists have been
watching her from hidden cameras her whole life, the 1950s town where she lives is fake, and the year is actually 2098. She escapes and tracks down her boyfriend only to find out that he was part of the setup. He never loved her; the evil scientists hired him to get her pregnant. The movie ends with her supersmart baby being taken away from her to be raised in the fake 1950s town where she'd started out.

By the end of the movie, I wanted to slap the main character. She'd spent half the movie either in tears or screaming hysterically. If she was so supersmart, why had it taken her so long to figure out that her boyfriend was a scuzzball? His name, Judas, ought to have been a clue.

It was a stupid movie, but it scared the hell out of me. Because the blond girl's name was Angel, and she had violet eyes. And the cardboard 1950s town and hidden cameras had struck a chord.

I had a terrible feeling that the Angel in the movie was supposed to be me.

Which was ridiculous. I did well at school— okay, very well—but I wasn't genetically engineered to be supersmart like the blonde in the movie. Or at least I didn't think so. The truth was, without classmates to compare myself to, I couldn't judge how intelligent I was. I tried not to think about how easily I'd outwitted Anaximander in the maze.

The whole movie was so hokey I couldn't tell what was based on truth and what was pure Hollywood. I was willing to believe that Project Renaissance had been a real genetic experiment aimed at creating supersmart people, but I still didn't know what “Violet eyes lie” meant. The
blonde had been lied to, but had told no lies herself.

I gave Ben back his debit card at lunch and paid for my own sandwich. I sat by myself and didn't attempt any conversation. Even after lunch, I was still so rattled I forgot to play my little head game and actually arrived at the aircar hangar at 12:50
P.M.,
the same time that Anaximander did.

“Ready to go, I see,” Anaximander said. If he was pleased, I couldn't tell.

“Ready to catch the bad guy.” A sudden thought occurred to me. “What's the fugitive's name, anyhow?”

“Michael Vallant.”

In my mind I saw the face of a good-looking, dark-haired boy.

And then the image pitched me back into the drowning memory:
falling through green water, arms flailing helplessly, sinking
—

I
WAS GASPING FOR BREATH
when I tore free of the memory, as if I really had been drowning. I wouldn't have been surprised to find my clothes soaking wet, the sensation had been so real.

“Angel?” Anaximander was looking at me funny.

I faked up a smile. “It's nothing.”

“Then let's go.”

My smile slid off my face as soon as his back was turned. I shuddered. The drowning memory always made me feel horribly vulnerable.

“We're taking the Black Panther,” Anaximander said a moment later.

Exhilaration blew away the lingering cobwebs of fear. “SilverDollar has a Black Panther?” Black Panthers were state-of-the-art aircars.

“Yes,” Anaximander said. “Mr. Castellan likes to have all the newest toys.”

The sleek, bullet-nosed craft was capable of speeds that scared any thinking person; as soon as I saw it my hands itched to take the controls.

To my surprise, Anaximander let me sit in the pilot's seat. “Go ahead,” he said expressionlessly. “Take her up.”

It was another test. I had been studying for my pilot's license, had spent hours flying—in virtual reality simulations. The Black Panther had a few extra controls. Fortunately, I had been watching the other times Anaximander had flown us so I knew how to start the engine. It purred smoothly under my hands.

I glanced at Anaximander, but he said nothing, waiting.

There was no way I was going to ask what to do next. He would tell me quick enough if I did anything wrong.

Fortunately, aircars were as close to idiot-proof as could be made. The computer called out the preflight checks, and I verified that all the gauges were lit and reading correctly.

“Please set course,” the computer said in my ear. I was wearing a headset, but Anaximander had an Earradio Augment and didn't need one.

“The Wasteland.” I named the specific solar hex that was our destination.

A minute passed while the Panther's computer consulted Alberta Air Traffic Control to lay in a course and altitude that would not cross anybody else's flight path.

“Flight path laid in,” the computer said.

I switched on the AutoTakeoff, and the Black Panther rose straight up in the air. The aircar's vertical takeoff never failed to put a grin on my face.

I hung onto the control yoke out of habit, but the computer did the flying.

The Black Panther accelerated smoothly instead of blasting forward the way I would have preferred, but the Wasteland was so close we'd barely started when we arrived.

Destination reached, the AutoPilot beeped, and the Panther went into a circling pattern at 914 meters. The computer polarized the cockpit windows against the blinding mirror glare from below.

“Shall I land?” I asked Anaximander. My fingers hovered over the AutoLanding switch.

“Yes, but do it manually. We don't want the engine noise to alert the fugitive.” Anaximander reached over and turned off the ignition.

The four powerful engines faltered and then died.

The aircar bucked and bobbed, starting to fall and hitting air turbulence on the way down.

My heart stuttered and fell along with it. I pulled up hard on the control yoke, but without the engine power behind the aircar, we still fell. Glide landings had been covered in my VR simulations, but I'd spent most of my time practicing loops and barrel rolls and other fancy tricks. I hadn't spent much time on the basics.

In VR, glide landings had seemed boring. Real life was a bit different.
We were falling.
My mouth dried.

Anaximander crossed his arms and watched me, seemingly unconcerned at our plummeting.

Pride rescued me from panic. Anaximander was in the copilot's seat. If I screwed up, he could take over in a blink.

Besides, we were 914 meters above the ground.
I glanced at the gauge. Make that 823 meters and gaining speed.

The aircar had only short stubby wings, but it had several flaps and extensions that I could deploy to increase my wingspan. After a frantic twenty-second hunt while we kept dropping like a stone, I found the correct buttons. The extensions, made of ultralight ultrastrong materials, snapped out, jolting the aircar, and this time when I pulled up on the control yoke our descent slowed.

I drew in a shaky breath. So far so good.

I turned the control yoke to the left, sending us into a lazy spiral, then, once the direction had been established, returned the control yoke to the neutral position.

More turbulence shook the Black Panther, but I managed to keep the nose fairly steady.

Okay, I'd slowed our descent. Now I needed a place to land. According to its specs, the Black Panther needed only 250 meters of runway to do a glide landing. Since the solar panel hexagons were half a kilometer in diameter I ought to be able to land the Panther with a whole 250 meters to spare.

It sounded easy. If I'd practiced on the simulations more it might even have
been
easy. Unfortunately, this was the part that I'd crashed my aircar on four times in VR. I'd landed correctly twice in a row, then blithely decided to go on to more interesting stuff.

Oops.

“I'm going to land in the hex to the northeast of the fugitive's hideout,” I told Anaximander. “Starting on my approach.”

The wind was blowing from north, northeast at twenty-five kilometers per hour. In order to land with the nose into the wind, I would have to angle across one side of the hexagon, reducing my runway by about a hundred feet.

Anaximander didn't tell me to try again, or reach for the controls, so I gritted my teeth and landed the aircar.

The wheels touched down, then bounced. I tried again. Another jarring bounce. My 150 meters of insurance was shrinking, the walls of solar panels rushing ever closer.

I wasn't going to be able to stop in time.

“I'm taking over!” Anaximander flipped the switch, giving him control of the aircar as we started to touch down again.

“No!” I yelled. There wasn't enough room to land. I hit Anaximander in the face and flipped the controls back over to me. Then I deliberately bounced the aircar back into the air so that we neatly hopped the wall of solar panels and bumped down on the other side in another hex.

Anaximander was silent as we rolled to a
stop.

We were alive, and the Black Panther was still in one piece. Light-headed with relief, I smiled.

My smile set Anaximander off. “You should not have hit me. You could have killed us.” No anger showed on his face, but the edge to his voice was the equivalent of a shout from anyone else.

My own temper flared. “We'd have crashed if I hadn't taken back over. There wasn't enough room to land.”

“I was going to switch the Vertical Takeoff and Landing back on. And the reason there wasn't
room to do a glide landing was because you bounced twice!”

What he said was perfectly true. I should have handed the controls over to Anaximander as soon as I realized how close we were going to cut it. I knew that, but I was irrationally angry with him. “At least I got us down. You're the one who decided to turn my first flight into a damn test!”

Anaximander stared at me for such a long time that I began to feel uncomfortable, as if his silver eyes had lasers that could peel me to the bone. Finally, he said, “What do you mean, your first flight? I know you've been studying for your pilot's license. Every schoolchild takes three years of Pilot Education. It's a required course.”

If I'd taken such a course, I couldn't remember it. I didn't say so aloud, though, frightened of betraying the gaps in my memory.

“Have you flown off AutoPilot before?” Anaximander asked.

“I've never flown before, period,” I said flatly. “Only VR simulations.”

“And it didn't occur to you to tell me this?” Anaximander asked incredulously.

Abruptly, I felt like an idiot. My face burned. “I assumed you knew.”

Another long pause and stare. “Next time tell me.”

I nodded shortly.

“I'll see that you get more air time,” Anaximander said. As we prepared to disembark, he looked at me and shook his head. “First time piloting. Girl, you are terrifying.”

He didn't exactly mean it as a compliment, but I
took it that way anyhow. “Thanks.” I grinned. I wondered what he would have said if he had known that I had been up in an aircar only five times before in my life, three of them with him. The other two times . . . The gap in my memory widened into an abyss. I couldn't remember them.

A trickle of unease ran down the nape of my neck as I taxied over to the solar wall bordering the hex that was our destination. Black Panthers were rare, but aircars were the major nonurban form of transportation. I was eighteen years old. How could I have ridden in an aircar only twice before coming to work for SilverDollar?

I must not be remembering correctly. And yet part of me was stubbornly sure I was. Five times.

Think about it later,
I told myself, and unstrapped my seat belt.

At ground level, the solar panels towered over me, two-story glass-topped boxes set at a sixty-degree slant and arranged in hexagons. Underneath the glass, I could see a corrugated surface designed to keep sunlight from reflecting away. Mirrors lined the base of the hexagons to reflect in more sunlight.

It was impossible to look at the mirrors without raising tears in my eyes and risking blindness. I hastily put on the wraparound sunglasses Anaximander handed me, but even with the lenses polarized as far as they would go, the light was still too bright. I climbed down from the aircar with my eyes closed.

Anaximander's Augmented eyes were impervious to brightness. It would have made more sense to send him in while I watched, but according to Anaximander, the fugitive had no Augments, and I
wanted to prove my boastful words that someone could survive in the Wastelands.

There was also the matter of heat. Neither Anaximander nor I was immune to heatstroke, and the temperature was scorching.

Anaximander and I quickly headed for a small break between solar panels, just large enough for a person to squeeze through. We halted in its shade, and I peered forward through slitted eyes.

It was one in the afternoon, and the sun was almost directly overhead. If the fugitive was hiding here, he would be in the thin shade on the opposite side of the hex.