vN The First Machine Dynasty(11)

"A few days." Javier jumped down a hillside. He turned to watch Amy creeping down more carefully. "You know, you could apply for citizenship in Mecha. That's what I'm doing once I've saved up for the application fee."



Amy snorted. "I thought you had plans for world domination."



"Not world domination, just strategic… seeding."



"Seeding."



"Planting. Sowing. Whatever. The point is it's awesome over there. They sell vN food from little carts on the street corners, not crappy little one-shelf sections at the back of some human store, and you can watch or play any channel without worrying about the failsafe. They even pay the vN to live there and hang out with the tourists. It's our ideal habitat."



"It's thousands of miles away! And I thought Dejima was really crowded."



"Well, that's better than…" Javier frowned. He held a hand up. Somewhere in the trees, a twig snapped.



Javier made a throat-slitting motion and jerked his thumb at a tree. He ushered her in its direction, and held a finger over his lips. "Cops."



"What? Where–"



"Shut. Up." Slowly, carefully, he unslung his baby from his body and handed him to Amy. "You hold him. I might drop him."



"But–"



Javier took a running leap at the tree, and ran up its length for three steps before clinging on with his fingers. Amy watched him disappear into the green shadows above. A cloud of pine needles floated down toward her face. By the time she felt them drift across her skin, she had already heard the cough of police radios.



Behind her, Amy heard cautious footsteps brushing through undergrowth: the swipe of leaves across leather, half-smothered human grunts when a boot sucked free of clay. They reverberated not merely in her ears, but across her skin and over her scalp. Stay perfectly still, a familiar voice within said. None of that giggling that gives the other kids away during hide-and–



–far away, a rock tumbled loudly, like an exclamation point.



The police followed it. So did their radios. So did their noise.



And above her, Javier bounced from tree to tree, hands curling confidently around boughs that greeted him with needles. She saw him hit the tree above her head and crawl downwards, lizard-like, toward her head.



"They're distracted," he murmured. "Go."



She ran.



• • • •

They sat perched in a Douglas fir that clung to a steep, unfriendly overhang with a magnificent view of the police officers and all-terrain trucks clustered below, at what was apparently a trailhead or logging road. From here, Amy could turn her head and watch the trail worm its way up the mountain, its shining length frequently disappearing under the cover of trees. She watched flashlights bobbing along it, now, as the officers hiked. A group had stayed behind to reload one truck's giant battery.



She had been sitting this way – legs and arms hugging the sticky, fragrant trunk of the tree, neck twisting as she struggled to obtain a better view, clothes stained with sap and mud and Javier's gunk – for hours. Javier sat comfortably on a very sturdy-looking bough, ankles hooked around the tree, baby in his arms. He looked completely at home.



Amy rested her forehead against the tree. Rain-wet wind reached up the back of her shirt. The tree swayed. She wanted to go home. She wanted the special vN cocoa from the coffee shop nearest her building, the kind she and her mom drank on winter days from specially coloured cups so the humans wouldn't get confused. She wanted her mom to know where she was. She wanted this to be over.



"When do you think we can climb down?" she asked.



Javier said, "Not for a while. The cute blond one just handed out more coffee."



"I don't see him with any coffee."



"I meant the girl."



Amy squinted. "How can you even tell who's cute and who isn't, from up here? It's dark."



"I saw them earlier, remember? Oh, there she is. She just stood up. Her shoes keep coming untied."



"Oh, the one who keeps bending over!"



"Well, uh–"

"She should just get Velcro shoes. That's what people who don't know how to tie their shoes yet wear."



"…Right. Anyway. They're digging in. We're up here for a while, I think." The bough beneath Javier creaked slightly as he shifted. "And I saw that guy's teeth, earlier. They're a total loss. He's got, like, this one, and it totally sticks out all funny."



"Maybe he can't afford injectables," Amy said.



"Humans are programmed obsolescence, all the way. It's a little sad." His bough creaked again. "They're cute, though. That makes them kinda useful, for a while."