The Garden’s were warming. The militia had arrived in force while the Gardener and Damien had been occupied in the World. They had sealed most of the holes, and had arranged space heaters and humidifiers in the area. They had even repotted many of the plants, and were talking about using winches to repair the staircase to rescue the rosebushes.
Mary was there. Damien knew, now, what he needed to do. His peculiar kind of calm assurance that had come when he had heard about the Gardens was still in effect. He knew what he had to do. He asked the Gardener to wait a moment, and then ran over to her.
“I’m sorry. I over-reacted. I should have kept my word. I’m sorry. You need to tell me what you’ve done, though,” he said.
“-Not now,” he added hurriedly as she began to speak, “Later. We can figure out what to do next at my apartment tonight.”
“Okay,” she said.
“How’s your cheek?” She seemed guilty and nervous.
“It’ll heal. Nothing broken.”
“I’m going to have the implants taken out. I’m quitting Medusa.”
He was surprised.
“Why?”
“We can talk about this tonight,” she said, “right now, I think you need to go find the SOB who did this.”
“I’ll do that,” he said quietly.
And then she was gone, to help save a sundew.
The Gardener’s truck was almost unharmed. The vandals had been desperately incompetent, and had merely smashed a windshield, leaving the functional parts of the truck like the cameras and mechanical loading arms virtually undamaged.
The cart had been a golf cart at one point. The Gardener had retrofitted it to be remote-controlled from his processor bank at the Gardens. He’s also modified the engine to have a top speed of seventy KPH.
Damien sat it the passenger seat, letting the cart drive itself down the freeway. In a few minutes, they turned off along a small alley.
The slums were not a pleasant place. The spec-less faces started hollowly up at them from cardboard boxes on the street.
Damien was shocked to see fires burning through the smashed windows of the factories. He had never seen a real fire in his life. Who could afford to import wood?
And then he saw that it wasn’t wood. They were burning Styrofoam and oil and dirty rags. Breathing the smoke could quit conceivably kill you. He wondered if there were bodies in those fires. The Gardener made another turn-off, this time barreling down a narrow alley.
The Gardener knew these alley’s well: he was down here every few days, delivering food and goods. It wasn’t enough, but it helped.
Finally, they arrived at a small area populated by nearly no-one. And there, in a corner, they found Darren Rice
The man was in terribly shape. His arm was badly burned from sleeping on a heating vent, and his clothes were ragged. His specs were gone, a terrible cruelty for anyone who had come to rely on them. His body was weak and emaciated.
He stared at Damien blankly. Beside him, the Gardener manifested himself. Of course, the man on the ground couldn’t see him. To him, it was just Damien.
Damien peered downward at the figure below him.
“Are you Darren Rice?”
The voice that replied was husky and hesitant – uncertain.
“Yes.”
“Listen, Darren, I need your help.”
“Help?”
“Here, try these on.” Damien offered him an old pair of his specs. They were obsolete, but far better than nothing.
The man did not resist, but looked vaguely puzzled as the specs began to buzz with life on his nose. Suddenly, he stood bolt upright, as the specs found the location of his terminal, and reconnected him to the rest of his mind.
He stared at Damien with a renewed comprehension in his eyes.
“Thank you.”
“Your welcome. You can keep them if you want, if you can answer a question for me.”
“Anything- Oh, hello.” He had noticed the Gardener.
The Gardener gave him a grave nod. He leaned forward.
“We need to know what you know about the man in black and his friends.”
“What, the Medusa boys-“ he froze. His mouth moved silently for a few seconds, and then he crumpled. Damien caught him before he hit the ground.
“I don’t think I can talk about that.” He seemed a little sheepish.
“What?”
“Medusa’s not known for letting secrets go lightly. They’ve done some funny things to my head, I think.”
“Medusa did this to you?
Something clicked in Damien’s mind. He knew where he had seen that lighter before.
“What did you do?”
He frowned.
“I don’t remember. I think I tried to quit. Say, do you guys have any food?”
Damien and the Gardener met eyes, and were halfway to the car by the time the last sentence had left his lips. The Gardener threw a crate of food from the truck as they raced away. One thought was in their minds: Mary.
The truck stopped outside Damien’s apartment. The Gardener hung in his mindspace as he rushed, limping, down the hallway to his apartment.
Damien froze outside of it. There was blood on the door. He pushed it open and stepped inside, dreading what he might see.
Mary stood at the bathroom sink. There was blood all over her sweatshirt. At first, he didn’t think it was hers, until he saw the angry red line running down her arm, and the first-aid equipment strewn over the counter.
The cut was long and deep. Probably a box-cutter. It looked like she’d packed it with a gene-therapy cream to stop scarring and disinfect the wound, and then sealed the wound with superglue. The clotting agents in the cream were slowing the internal bleeding, but the skin around the cut was bulging and purple.
She was sobbing. The Gardener politely let himself out, as Damien walked across the room, and held her.
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Continue to Chapter Twenty
