Lukas slowed to a walk as he approached the pattern in the sand. He’d spotted it minutes ago from almost a hundred meters away. Now that he was close, it was obvious why the pattern appeared so out-of-place among the wide swaths of pale sand and the dark clumps of moss-covered rock that his eyes had become accustomed to over the last few days. It wasn’t the product of time and chance and weather. This was non-random. Deliberate.
Lukas knelt and put his hand in one of hundreds of alternating depressions leading up the shore from the edge of the water on his right. Each one was carved out in shades of green and black—his NVD’s representation of what visible and near-infrared light was available during the late hours of the night.
Footprints!
Lukas grabbed the handle of the carbine hanging at his chest and switched off the safety. There was no one in the water, so his gaze swung left to where the trail rose across the sand and disappeared into the fog.
He began moving up the shore in quick, quiet strides. The mist closed in around him, but within seconds, a slope of dark stone appeared. This one was steeper than what he’d climbed down to reach the sand days ago, yet shorter, and without the collapsing sections that had littered the other with loose rock.
The trail of footprints led straight into a wide cleft in the face of the slope. He followed it without hesitation. If anyone waited on the other end of these prints, Lukas would spot them first—he had the advantage of an NVD. And a weapon if anything went wrong. But that was a last resort. He didn’t want conflict. He wanted to find Rena.
The canyon narrowed as Lukas moved inland. The sand transitioned to darker soil. The footprints faded and eventually disappeared altogether. Half a kilometer in, he reached a section where the wall on the left side sloped up to the Barrens at a lesser angle. The floor, protected as it was from the biting wind, felt warm compared to the exposed shoreline. So the sudden appearance of vegetation tucked against the base of the north wall shouldn’t have surprised Lukas. But it did, because it wasn’t moss or weeds growing in random places. There were orderly rows of low bushes, set into the nooks of the cliff where they’d receive the most sunlight and the least wind. This vegetation had been planted.
As Lukas approached, he could see berries covering the bushes. Vines, with clusters of tiny grapes not big or ripe enough to harvest. Even through the limited spectrum of greens allowed by his NVD, he could see variety among the leafy plants growing farther away from the wall. Dense concentrations of dark, wrinkled leaves. Wide, flat leaves that looked pale. They might have been vegetables under the soil or lettuces growing on top. Probably both. Regardless, the entire crop was designed for cold weather. All these plants would have been cultivated on the same floor of a food distribution center—a lower level where the artificially-cooled air would naturally settle.
Lukas had studied distribution center operations and crop design while doing research on Clarine Waite. He didn’t end up needing that knowledge while eating lunch with Rena’s family, but the information allowed him to have empathy for the people he was investigating, which made his operation seem less like an operation and more like a shared meal.
Judging by the amount of food here in this hidden place, the Outliers would need several dozen of these crops to sustain them … if OCON’s estimate of their numbers was accurate.
Lukas turned his attention to the canyon itself. The walls of this one were now only ten meters tall, having grown shallower as he’d moved inland. But down where it met the shore, it looked similar to many others he’d explored. He’d been following the water’s edge for three days now and would never have thought to enter this particular canyon if it hadn’t been for the footprints.
Standing in the middle of an Outlier crop, he had to wonder how many of the other canyons had food growing within the protection of their walls. If the water indeed surrounded Esh, as Lukas had come to suspect, the canyons on the east and west sides of the city would receive more sunlight, so they’d likely have larger, warm weather crops. He doubted the Outliers would transport their food very far from wherever they lived, so verifying the size and position of their crops would be critical to determining the location of their camp. The one where Rena now lived.
Unless …
Now that Lukas was thinking along these lines, it was possible the Outliers had many camps, each one responsible for harvesting from a nearby crop. They could trade their food supplies afterward, to ensure proper nutrition among each group. And spreading out their population would also be safer from a security standpoint.
Director Terrell did say the Outlier military was becoming more competent and sophisticated.
Lukas exhaled slowly. The fatigue that had been chasing him for days seemed to have caught up.
All things considered, it’s more probable that their resources are distributed instead of centralized. Which means … Rena could be anywhere.
He began walking again, farther up the canyon. He couldn’t allow himself to think about the impossibility of finding her. Negativity would only make his task that much harder.
Thirty minutes later, he found more evidence of Outlier living. A shallow cave along the left wall led him to the end of a drainage pipe with no water coming out and no indication it had ever functioned for that purpose. It stuck out a few meters from the rock, large enough in diameter for a person to fit through if they hunched over. But that was just speculation. What grabbed Lukas’s attention, as he crept forward for a closer look, was the metal grate fastened to the end of the pipe, with hinges welded into place. The welds were shinier than the surrounding metal, indicating they were newer.
Lukas peered through the holes in the grate, but he could only see a few meters. There was nothing to observe but the inside of a tube. He grabbed the short cylinder of a handle and gave it a twist. It pivoted a few centimeters and came to an abrupt stop, locked from the inside.
This is my access point.
Lukas backed away from the drainage pipe. Now that he’d located one of their crops and the path they obviously took to get back underground after harvesting their food, he needed to conduct surveillance … during the day when the Outliers were active. He had to count how many people worked the crops. Determine whether or not there were guards on lookout. Map out the schedule of their comings and goings. Study their interactions with each other to infer how their society functioned. Anything that could possibly reduce his risk for when he’d follow them inside.
Because that’s what he’d have to do to find Rena. OCON’s assault teams scoured the tunnels beneath the city, hoping to track Outlier recon teams back to their base of operations. Rena’s friends, acquaintances, and family had been downrated. Her father arrested. And operatives surveilled all of them in case she decided to make an appearance. Every potential contact point between her and someone else was being explored, and Lukas had no control over any of them. If she turned up, she’d be killed. Or captured, interrogated, and then killed. Following the Outliers inside their labyrinth from out here was the only chance he had of reaching Rena and keeping her alive.
Unfortunately, his provisions were running low. He’d already been out in the Barrens for days, and Terrell would be expecting a report. Lukas had to go back to OCON headquarters, but he couldn’t tell the director about what he’d found. Terrell only cared about Rena as a means of getting at the Outliers. What Lukas had just discovered, and the implications about their crops, would supply Terrell with the last piece of information he’d need to destroy them all. Rena would be irrelevant by then. Lukas needed to buy himself more time.
I’ll make it about the water!
He’d been shocked to discover the shoreline, with its crashing waves. To realize the Barrens weren’t endless … as everyone thought. And if everyone could be so completely wrong about that, what other assumptions needed questioning? Lukas had been forced to confront a difficult fact—that his understanding of reality was sorely lacking. And the cruelest part of that realization was having to sit there for hours, staring at the water and his own ignorance as he waited for nightfall. His disguise would only deceive the Outliers from a distance. Sensing the proximity of the Outliers’ camp, he needed the cover of darkness to safely resume his investigation.
When the sun had set, he’d put on his NVD and started out along the shoreline to the north, looking for signs of Outlier life. He’d expected to veer east, assuming that this was just another lake, though much larger than the one in Esh. But as the water’s edge and his compass needle began swinging in the wrong direction, Lukas realized the land didn’t surround the water. Perhaps, against all logic, it was the other way around.
By the time his compass told him he was northeast of Esh’s Center, having done nothing more than follow the shoreline, it was well after midnight.
I’m walking in a circle, he’d finally admitted to himself. This isn’t a lake.
The Barrens had a limit, at least on that side of the city. To know exactly how limited they were, he’d have to go all the way around, which would require more provisions.
Lukas nodded. That’s how I’ll have to frame the conversation.
Surely such a discovery would warrant more investigation. He just hoped the director wouldn’t assign more operatives to come along and assist him. Lukas would have to steer Terrell down a very narrow path toward the conclusion that more exploration would be a waste of OCON’s time, yet the most important contribution Lukas could make to society. On his own.
o o o
“So … does that mean you won’t be coming around anymore?” Dal asked.
Naina was seated at a table across the room. She turned away from the terminal that had occupied most of her attention for the last twenty minutes, and the expression on her face was somewhere between a frown and a smile. “Not as often.”
“Oh.” He picked up an unidentified piece of electronic equipment from the shelf and pretended to examine it. Like all the other technology crammed into this tiny room, only a few paces across at its widest point, it was a mystery to him. Dal thought he had given up on being intimidated by his surroundings. But there was something menacing about this room. About the sight of so many wires and components and glass surfaces. So many things beyond his ability to understand.
“But … I’ll still be around,” she added.
“Good.” All of a sudden, Dal realized it wasn’t the room or the equipment that bothered him. It was Naina. Her intelligence was intimidating. And the only reason he’d let it get to him was because he actually cared.
She turned back to the terminal. “That is … as long as I have an incentive to come around.”
Dal’s throat suddenly felt constricted. Naina was training for a promotion that would put her in charge of distribution as well as storage, and the thought of not seeing her as often was intensely disappointing. The only way to escape the flood of emotion was to make a joke, but he couldn’t think of anything witty to say. “Who else is going to keep me from slacking off?” was the best he could do.
The perfectly smooth skin on Naina’s forehead wrinkled just a bit. She didn’t bother to look up from the holographic display.
Dal should have come out and said he was going to miss her, but it was one thing to say the words in his mind, quite another to say them out loud. Coward!
Naina moved a hologram with her finger, oblivious to the war raging inside Dal’s mind.
“What is that?” he asked, hoping to restart the conversation and maybe get another shot at proving he wasn’t a complete lowrate. Or whatever the Outlier equivalent was.
“It’s a data mining program.”
Dal walked closer. “What kind of data?”
“Ratings.”
“Like … citizens’ ratings?”
“Yep.”
“How do you have access to something like that?”
Naina looked up and pushed her glasses back into place on the bridge of her nose. “Fijal’s team wrote the program years ago and installed it at our tap into the subCollective.”
“Oh.” Dal had no idea what that meant, but he recognized the name. “Isn’t that the guy who works with Commander Ryce?”
“Yes. But this was before the military got hold of him. He used to work with my mother in Infrastructure Planning. His team developed this utility to compile statistics on Esh’s population and rating distribution. It helped them target areas of the population most susceptible to our recruitment efforts.”
Dal found himself intimidated once again. “Your mom lets you mess around with it?”
“Well, I’m not really messing around. I’m training. She lets me in here because these are the kind of resources I’ll be working with when I get to her level.”
There it was again—Naina’s goal. To work in Infrastructure Planning with her mom. And she was on track to be the youngest planner in the history of the village. She was out of his league.
“Want to see how it works?” Naina was looking up at him.
“Sure.”
“OK. So I’m not an expert, by any means. But I have figured out how to narrow down the analysis to certain parts of the city.”
“Wait. You can look up anyone’s rating?”
“Not that specific. I can select a location. And then there are all sorts of tools that—”
“How specific?”
She pressed her tongue against the underside of her front teeth. It was what she did when she was annoyed. “An address.”
“OK. Let’s test how good you are.”
Naina squinted. That was what she did when she was intrigued. “You’re on.”
“Nine point seven. Negative one point eight, three, five,” he said, leaning on the table where Naina’s terminal lay. It was one of the few addresses he’d ever bothered to memorize.
She entered the X and Y coordinates into the program but stopped before pressing the button labeled Scan. “That’s a residential area. Your parents’ house?”
Dal smiled. “How else would I know you weren’t just making it up?”
Naina pressed Scan, and the results appeared in the air only seconds later. “OK. I’m getting a count of two. A sum of sixty-five. An average of thirty-two point five. And a range of three. The standard deviation is just outputting a bunch of number signs because the sample size is too small.”
“What does all that mean?”
She pointed at the glowing numbers. “So … there are two people currently at that address. The sum of their ratings is sixty-five. And the average of their ratings is thirty-two point five.”
Dal’s eyebrows lowered, and he pulled back his head as if flinching. He didn’t mean to be so dramatic about it, but he couldn’t help it. “That’s not right.”
Naina pointed at the display again. “See. Right here, it shows the results—”
“Yeah, I see that, but your results are wrong. My parents work all the time. They’re both rated in the mid-forties.”
She crossed her arms. Her perfect forehead wrinkled again, deeper this time. “Dal … I don’t care how well-rated your family is. That type of thing doesn’t matter to me. I hope you know that.”
“Uh … OK. Thanks. But it’s not that. I think your program is wrong.”
Naina looked at the display again and shrugged.
“Try nine point seven, one. Negative one point eight, four, one.”
“The Waites’ address?”
This time, Dal shrugged.
She entered the coordinates. “I’m getting a count of three, a sum of forty-eight, an average of sixteen, and a range of sixteen. Wow! Some of them are really low.”
He frowned as he stared at the results. “Yeah. Gareth and Suzanne are just kids. But something’s definitely wrong with your program. There should be four people in the house at this hour, not three—Marshall’s always home by dinnertime. And he and Clarine are both way more than sixteen points above the kids.”
Naina sat back in her chair. “I don’t know what to tell you. Fijal’s program doesn’t lie. Infrastructure Planning has been using it for years. So … they would know if it there was a problem with the accuracy.”
Dal pushed himself away from the desk and began pacing as much as he could in the confined space. Had their ratings gone down because he and Rena had left Esh?
But why would that have impacted their ratings? It’s not like our numbers dropped and dragged theirs down too. We were deleted from the system. So it shouldn’t have affected them. Unless that’s not how it works.
If he was honest with himself, Dal had to admit he didn’t understand how any of it worked. He’d spent so much time trying to deny that ratings mattered, he’d never bothered to learn the system. But there was someone who did, and she needed to know what was happening.
“I have to go,” he announced, heading for the door with only one person on his mind.