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."
"Ewww…"
"Hey, it worked for your mom. She found herself a nice slice of meat, right? You're a big girl now, and if those chimps down there can do anything, it's–"
"Not listening, la la la–"
"I could put in a good word for you with Officer Snaggletooth–"
"Shut up! You're gross." She shuddered. "I don't like him."
"Oh, yeah, sure. You're a total ice queen now, but wait till you're in front of him and your failsafe takes over. He'll have you playing Hide-the-Baton all night long." Javier poked the first finger of his left hand into a circle made by his right thumb and forefinger, in and out, in and out.
Amy turned away. "You're disgusting. I'm not like that."
"Yeah, right. Tell it to your OS. You've got a failsafe like everybody else."
Do you? Do you really?
Of course she did. Amy's mom hadn't spent much time on the subject, but she had said that von Neumann-type humanoids were "allergic" to hurting humans, or to seeing them get hurt. She'd said that's what love meant: the inability to see the other person get hurt without losing a part of your mind, the desire to do anything and everything to keep it from happening. And all vN everywhere felt that way about humans, whether they lived together or not. It was part of New Eden's plan – to leave God's unwanted children with people who could really love and protect them. But when Amy's granny killed Nate, she hadn't suddenly fallen down dead. Nor had Amy. Amy had looked at Nate's body – the limp and twisted heap of it, rumpled like dirty clothes – and had not recoiled.