Immunity Index Page 7

  Alan was on his feet, scowling, before Irene had finished. “He has a radio tag around an ankle. We can track him.”

  Irene followed him to the little office nook in the living room. “Open IDSleuth,” he told the screen. “This will tell us where he went.”

  A message said: “Subscription expired.”

  “Hey, Ruby!” he shouted toward the kitchen. “Did you renew the tracking subscription?”

  “You mean IDSleuth?” she shouted back.

  “Yes. For Nimkii.”

  “They raised the rates a lot.”

  “You didn’t talk to me about that.”

  Irene knew where this discussion was going. “I’ll go look outside. Tell me if you learn something.” She didn’t wait for an answer. She wasn’t even sure if Alan had been listening.

  She ran up to her room, put on heavy boots, slipped on her phone, grabbed a whistle—and what else would she need? Her wallet with an ID because the authorities might get involved. She ran down two flights of stairs and out.

  “Nimkii!” she shouted, running to the moat. “Pedazo!” He knew that name, too. Maybe he hadn’t gone far.

  Grass was trampled in a wide area around the pen, as if he’d hesitated over where to go. It would have been dark. He’d never been outside a pen in his life. He would have probably been frightened and would seek someplace that felt safe. What would that be? She walked in half circles, head down, looking for more trampled grass.

  He’d headed west, then come back. East? Yes, around to the gate of the pen. He’d looked at it for a while, then kept going … to the area where they unloaded food. A bale of hay had been ripped up and some of it had been eaten. Then?

  No clues. She shinnied up the winch’s scaffold and saw an obvious path trampled through the alfalfa field alongside the pen. The tracks led straight to a line of aspens to the north that served as a windbreak. She slid down and ran toward it.

  On the other side of the aspens was a creek, then a bit of scrub lowland, and beyond that a cornfield. He’d passed through the aspens—white-barked, tall, slim, straight, leaves rattling in the wind and a few already turning yellow. He’d shoved down some of them. On an impulse, she tried pushing on a tree. It didn’t move. She pushed harder, and her feet slipped on the wet ground. Yet Nimkii had felled an identical tree. A big, strong, frightened animal was roaming loose.

  Her phone rang: Alan. “Irene, where are you?”

  “East. I’m at the north creek. He’s come through here, I think. I’ll keep following him.”

  “We’re about to get the tracking up. Then we’ll call the sheriff. They have tranquilizing darts for the rifles.”

  No!

  Alan was right, though. Nimkii needed to be captured. But where would they take him?

  “Just find Nimkii,” he said. “We’ll take it from there.”

  “All right.” That wasn’t what she wanted to say, but that was what she had to say.

  All right. Keep going. She ran out of the aspens and splashed through the stream. His path through the scrub was easy to follow. Far downstream, a buck stood outside a clump of dogwood large enough to hide a herd of deer. He turned from the cornfield to look at her, then turned back to stare at the field. He was standing guard and knew where there was danger: in the corn. Maybe he feared a mammoth.

  She sprinted to the edge of the field. The corn grew more than two feet above her head. If he was in there, he’d tower over it, but she’d never see far enough to spot him.

  But there up ahead: mammoth scat. She knelt to look. Not dry at all, but cold, so it was at most an hour old. Trampled weeds led east along the edge of the field. She would follow the trail. How far could he go in an hour? How far would the buttery scent of his fur travel? Would he trumpet or grumble? Answer her call? Or would he run from her?

  The wind rustled the corn behind her. Another breeze sounded deep, resonant, yet no leaves rustled. It sounded again. It carried a hint of buttery scent. Then an inhalation lasted longer than the breath any other wild animal would draw.

  She turned, knowing what she would see.

  Nimkii. Looking at her, very close, only half hidden by cornstalks.

  How much did he hate her? How frightened was he? Could she outrun him through the brush? He was close enough to touch her with his trunk.

  “Nimkii.” If she stayed calm, he’d be more likely to stay calm.

  He blinked.

  “Nimkii, are you lost, pedazo?”

  He roared. In a cat throat the sound would have been a mew.

  Running would be a provocation. Especially if it made him feel deserted.

  “Nimkii, would you like to follow me? I know the way to go home.”

  She took a step toward the creek, then turned back and gestured, long sweeping movements with her arm as if it were a trunk. He was smart. He would understand—she desperately hoped.

  “Come with me, follow me.” She held her breath and waited for him to turn and flee, to attack, or to hesitate, still undecided.

  Instead, he reached out! He wrapped his trunk around her wrist—and didn’t yank.

  She needed to stay calm. She stifled an unbearable urge to shout with joy.

  “Come with me.” She took another step, pulling on his trunk. He took a small step.

  “Keep going, we’ve got it.” His trunk felt warm, its long hair rough like a dog’s. She turned to lead and slid her hand down to the end of his trunk to clasp the thumblike extension at its end.

  He followed, each of his steps as long as three of hers.

  She heard faint sirens even before they had reached the creek. Of course. A mammoth couldn’t be allowed to roam free, especially not if he was frightened. He had no survival skills. He was going to be shot full of tranquilizers and hauled away. How would he react? The best she could do was lead him to someplace to make the capture easy on him. I’m sorry, Nimkii. If he was frightened now, he’d be terrified then. And he’d blame her. Hate her forever.

  But what else could she do? “Let’s go to the road and then head home.”

  They walked downhill, then splashed through the water. He stayed docilely beside her. She let go of his trunk and reached up to gently gather a handful of the hair hanging from his flank, yard-long hair reaching to his knee, and his knee was at the height of her elbow.

  They passed a bare, dead oak snag next to the line of aspens, and suddenly she had an idea of how to get him home safely, a crazy idea but better than what was likely to come. He’d seen people on horseback. Had he understood it?

  She tugged on his hair. “Nimkii, stop for a minute. Come over here. Yes, here. Like that. Okay, now hold still.”

  She climbed up the tree trunk, out onto a branch, and pulled herself onto his back.

  Nimkii took a few steps and shuddered. Irene already regretted the idea. He curled his trunk to reach over his shoulder and touch her leg splayed across his back. The tendons in her groin hurt, pulled too wide. But his hair and underfur were soft, and a thick layer of fat cushioned his shoulders, like sitting on a hairy pillow. She put her arms around his shoulder hump and held on.

  “Forward, mighty steed!” If she was going to die of stupidity, at least she could have fun doing it. She rocked back and forth to urge him to move. He took a hesitant step and shuddered again. “There you go. Another step. Keep going. I’ll steer when you need to turn.”

  He began walking through the alfalfa field. Good. She tugged the hair on the left side of his head. He turned his head, and she rocked, and he turned his body. He kept walking, slow and uncertain.

  They were spotted even before they reached the road. A car came racing toward them and stopped a hundred feet away.

  She smiled and waved. “We’re going back to the farm!”

  If this worked, it would make a great video. And everyone would know where to find Irene Ruiz the dupe. Well, it was now too late to do anything but cope.

  She urged Nimkii onto the road’s old worn asphalt to continue toward the farm.
Ahead red lights were flashing. Two sheriff’s cars. Would they spook Nimkii? Maybe the tracker was on again. She ought to call ahead and warn them. She lifted up her wrist and told her phone to place a call.

  “Alan. I have Nimkii.”

  “We’ve spotted him. On the road.”

  “I know. I’m riding him.”

  “You shouldn’t be doing that!”

  “He wants to come back home. It’s scary out here. So we’re on our way!”

  “She’s riding Nimkii!” Alan shouted to people around him. “They’re coming here.… Irene, listen, we can come and tranquilize him. We’ll be right there.”

  “But he’s coming home. You don’t need to do that.”

  “We’ll come to meet you!”

  “I’m fine. Be careful. Don’t spook him.”

  “We’re coming.”

  Irene knew she should be afraid. She should be worried about a long list of things. Or … this could be performance art. Sure. Girl rides mammoth. She ought to be dressed in prehistoric furs and leather. Her T-shirt would have to do. At least it was brown.

  “Ahead, mighty steed! Now, stay calm, Nimkii. This is where things get tricky. I’ll try to get you to your pen. How about extra elephant chow today? And apples. A watermelon or two. Think about the watermelon, not about all the annoying people and cars.”

  They passed a man on the shoulder of the road recording a video. He backed away. She waved and smiled—a big smile—regardless of the consequences. Nimkii turned his head and stopped, but she rocked to keep him going. The driveway was coming up. She tugged on his fur. “Okay, now turn down here. Pedazo, can you smell it? It smells like home, doesn’t it?”

  Apparently it did. He rumbled, turned willingly, and walked a little faster. The rumble might have been a purr. Another sheriff’s car was approaching with its lights flashing. Then the car steered onto the gravel shoulder, still far away, and stopped. A man in uniform got out.

  “Are you all right?” he called.

  “Yes. The mammoth took a little walk, but now he wants to come home. I don’t think there’ll be trouble if we all just stay calm.” She patted the hump. “Nimkii, you’re calm, aren’t you?” He was still purring.

  “Irene!” Alan shouted from far up the drive. “Is he coming back?”

  Irene didn’t want to shout too loud for fear of spooking Nimkii, but she waved and tried to act relaxed.

  Relaxed? She was riding a full-grown male woolly mammoth. No one had ever done that before—maybe in all of human history.

  Nimkii knew where he was going and seemed focused. Alan and Ruby ran toward them, followed by Will’s barking dog. What if the dog attacked Nimkii?

  “Hold the dog!” Irene said.

  Alan grabbed it by the collar and held tight, looking stunned. Ruby looked angry, but she always looked angry.

  “Open the gates!” Irene called.

  Alan jumped. “Ruby, take the dog!” He ran ahead to the pen.

  Nimkii seemed to have no interest in anything besides the open outer and inner gates. He rushed toward them. Irene held on tight.

  The slipper-soft feet made no noise on the bridge, but the wood creaked. Once inside, he finally stopped, turned around as if to reassure himself, and trumpeted as loud as he could, deafening. The vibration traveled up Irene’s legs to her fingers and the top of her head. He was home.

  Behind them, Alan closed the gates. Irene leaned forward and hugged Nimkee’s shoulder hump tight. The sheriff, a deputy, and the man from the side of the road, still recording, had come to the outer fence. She waved at them.

  Now she needed to get down. A snag of a tree stood close enough. She tugged on his fur.

  “Nimkii, take me to the tree.” She rocked toward it.

  He took a few steps, uncertain. She rocked again. He started walking. With a little more coaxing, he stood close enough for her to grab the trunk and shinny down. He stepped back and watched, shifting his weight.

  When her feet were on the ground, she turned to face him, her hand out.

  “We had a great trip, didn’t we? Now it’s time to get back to work. You entertain the visitors while I get you some yummy food. We can play again sometime soon.”

  He twined his trunk around her arm, and when he seemed ready, she lowered her arm and began walking away. She could slip through the inner gate, now closed, and then she’d have a lot of explaining to do.

  In fact, all sorts of things might happen, a lot of them bad, maybe catastrophic, but whatever came next, it had been worth it for now. Nimkii was safe, and he trusted her.

  * * *

  Berenike had almost finished her work shift, managing the morning rush hour with no special problems other than the usual cranky customers because there were never enough cars, a boring job at best, demeaning in every other way. Worse, her job and its drudgery gave her too much time to think.

  Being fired wouldn’t ruin her life. What came after it would, since no one would want to have anything to do with her. A sheltered home? That would be like jail, and it would last only as long as the funding for those homes did, and then—maybe one of those reeducation camps? She’d heard rumors about them, none of them good, and she believed the rumors.

  Swoboda would be a worse fate, though … if he was telling the truth. He’d sent her a message, and she’d ignored it. She had nothing to say to him.

  But according to her phone, Papa hadn’t even received her message to him from yesterday. Maybe he had been arrested. Maybe the next time I see him we’ll both be in a camp. But she was catastrophizing. On the other hand, catastrophes happened.

  Or they might not happen. Two more days. And then, everything might change, if everyone was lucky and everything went right. If she could last for two more days …

  Her replacement, Jalil, arrived with only a few minutes to spare before his shift started, not eager to come early to a job he hated and couldn’t escape. They’d gone through training together, selected by AutoKar at high school graduation. Supposedly they could say no to the training, which had a guaranteed job at the end, but then they’d have nothing, no other scholarships or offers, because they’d turned down an opportunity. And once hired, they couldn’t even switch to another company, because a court case had ruled that AutoKar deserved to recoup its investment. Shared anger had turned them into friends.

  She trusted him enough to have told him about the coming mutiny. He was all in. Their role was simple: they’d merely ignore corporate rules that ran counter to old-fashioned freedom, like no cars for people who weren’t citizens in good standing. Every customer would be equal. No revenge, only justice. And an important part of the infrastructure would remain up and running. Then …

  In two days, they’d be free—if everything went right. It couldn’t possibly be that simple, but she’d do her part, and she was going to try to enjoy it while it lasted.

  As he walked in, Jalil looked around for customers, then waved his phone.

  “Hey, you gotta see this. She looks just like you.” He wasn’t smiling.

  His display showed a video of a young woman up in Wausau riding what looked like a woolly mammoth.

  “It escaped from a farm where it was, where she works, and she brought it back. It’s a real woolly mammoth.”

  She looked exactly like Berenike, only skinny. Fuck. Swoboda wasn’t lying. Berenike gripped the edge of the counter, a little dizzy and a lot angry.

  “Well,” she said when she could speak, “her ride’s better than anything we’ve got.”

  Jalil nodded, complicit. “Some coincidence, hey? I thought you’d like to know. I’ll go clean some cars for a while.” He’d give her some space to process. He knew what he’d seen and what it meant, and he sympathized. He knew how close to second-class a young black man could be, too, if one or two tiny things went wrong for him through no fault of his own.

  I’m a dupe. Really.

  Breathe deep. One step at a time. Had Swoboda seen that video? It had been posted a few hours
ago. She checked his message. He had seen it, and he’d somehow identified the woman in it: Irene Ruiz. “Everyone’s going to see this,” he said, joy lilting in his recorded voice.

  Fuck.

  Using Irene’s name and location, Berenike looked her up in the corporate database: age twenty-two, mother Celia Ruiz, an artist—Berenike knew about her, an author of kids’ books—from Madison, Wisconsin. Irene had used AutoKar until early summer for trips in Madison, where she’d been living in a University of Wisconsin dorm. At the end of May she’d received a bachelor of science in environmental ecology.

  The database had several photos of her, and every one of them confirmed that they were look-alikes: dupes.

  Berenike paused, breathing deep. Fuck. Fuck Swoboda, fuck everything. But stay calm.

  There were likely more dupes, too, everyone knew that. She would need to look for them. She ought to learn everything she could as fast as she could.

  Using Irene’s face and her own face as parameters, she ran the database’s facial recognition. Three potentials came up, but two were only 75 percent matches. A 98 percent match was Avril Stenmark, who had just graduated from high school and was now at the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus, living in a different hall from the one where Irene had lived. Her father was Michael “Mick” Stenmark, assistant United States attorney; mother Emily, real estate manager.…

  Company policy forbade personal searches, and sending data to her own phone would be monitored, so she used the work-around she’d learned from a friend: she wrote the information down with the paper and pencil she always carried in case she needed to do something subversive. It was easy to find herself doing something subversive. Her hand shook, though, and she had to struggle to write legibly.

  There was a lot she needed to do. “Hey, Jalil,” she called over the intercom, “I’m going!”

  “I’ll come down, then.” He took his place behind the counter as she left, and he gave her a sympathetic look. “You be careful.”

  “Thanks.” No amount of carefulness might be enough.